et ceteras

Tuesday

The results of Tuesday's off-year elections should warm conservative hearts across the fruited plain, so I feel like I should lead by talking about those results. However, I will wait until later in this post because first I want to comment on the following disaster:

Obamacare

If you recall, Obama & Co. claimed that their laughably misnamed Affordable Care Act (ACA) would reduce costs, add "not one dime" to the national debt, and result in as many as 40 million people obtaining medical insurance who did not have it before. And don't forget, there were also those assertions that people would be able to keep their doctor and keep their current insurance plan. As of today, all five of those claims have been proved bogus.

It was originally forecast that there would be 21 million people enrolled in ACA programs come 2016. However, now that 2016 is nigh, even Obama's own administration is predicting that the real number will be less than half of that.

And don't forget that many of the people enrolled in ACA programs had coverage they liked prior to ACA being implemented, only to wind up losing it because of ACA -- so it's not like they were "rescued" from the ranks of those who were uninsured prior to Obama's ascendancy. In reality, Obama & Co. forced them into the ranks of the uninsured and then forced them into health plans that charge higher premiums and provide fewer benefits.

Rather than allow health insurance companies to compete in a free market -- which would, by nature, dictate that they respond to consumer demands -- the ACA conjured up regional co-ops which could only offer specific types of policies and would be propped up by federal funding to protect against any financial losses they incurred... Twenty-three such co-ops were created and eleven of them have already failed, with seven of those failures having occurred in the past month, and they went under despite receiving more than $1.1 billion in federal subsidies... Plus, various news reports indicate that up to nine of the twelve remaining co-ops are showing warning signs of impending failure.

Health care? My ass.

Affordable? My ass.

Let the record show that many Republicans predicted these failures would occur because of the ACA's nonsensical incentives. Let it also show that many Republicans warned that Obama & Co.'s promises were actually lies, and that not a single Republican voted for the ACA.

What will happen to the people who lose their ACA coverage because the ACA's own programs collapse? Let me hazard a guess that the same federal government which created the failure will use it as an excuse to "fix" things by taking control of everyone's health care under the euphemism "universal coverage." And let the record show that many Republicans have been saying all along that Obama & Co. set the ACA up to fail precisey to bring about that end game.

Remember these things when you go to the polls next year.

Tuesday

Which brings me to Tuesday's elections. From coast to coast, politicians who support the ACA were hoisted out of office on their petards, while those who oppose it were voted into office. In other words, the public is still not falling for Obamacare's lies.

But the elections were about many things, not just Obamacare, and the results were pro-conservative almost every way you look at them.

There was even an election result for conservatives to like in San Francisco, where incumbent Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose claim to fame is his passionate support for Frisco's sanctuary city status, got swept out of office by a 2-to-1 margin.

In Virginia, a state many believed had transitioned from red to blue, the GOP maintained control of the state senate without conceding a seat despite a furious push by the Democrats. It is worth noting that Virginia's Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe (a longtime Clinton ally and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee) had publicly encouraged the public to vote Democrat by saying that a senate takeover was needed for him to enact his agenda.

It is also worth noting that Virginia's results represented a solid slap-down of America's gun control nuts advocates. Having identified two particular senate seats they thought were especially ripe for the taking, and expecting that they would be able to exploit capitalize on emotions following the August slayings of TV journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the advocates invested more that $2,200,000 into advertisements in those races, versus only about $110,000 spent by the NRA. If you do the math, that means the NRA spent only five percent of what its opponents spent. Yet it was the NRA's preferred candidates who won.

Then there is that city in southeast Texas...


Houston
Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have allowed transgender people to use the opposite sex's bathrooms, and which by some readings would have also allowed them to use the opposite sex's locker rooms and showers.

Keep in mind that transgender is not transsexual. The former means people who "identify as" the opposite sex, whereas transsexual means people who have undergone a sex change operation. Therefore, had it been allowed to stand, the HOPE Act would have forced the city's women to share public bathrooms (and probably locker rooms and showers) with strangers who are equipped with penises, so long as the penis-equipped strangers said they felt like a woman that day.

I ask feminists, i.e. liberals, to imagine the possibilities the HOPE Act would have opened up for perverted heterosexual men and hormonally cresting teenage males to get close to unwanting women -- and then consider the fact that the act was loudly supported by Houston's liberal and presumably feminist mayor Annise Parker. (If her name sounds familiar, it might be because she previously gained fame when she threatened the First Amendment by demanding that the city's pastors turn copies of their sermons over to the authorities.)

Lest you be tempted to believe that Houston voters' defeat of HOPE and rebuke of Parker were a given because, you know, Houston is in Texas, you might want to keep the following in mind: 1) Parker has been elected mayor of Houston not once, not twice, but thrice; 2) white voters (those most likely to be Republicans) make up just one-fourth of the city's population; 3) roughly 62 percent of the city's Hispanics are Democrats; and 4) roughly 90 percent of its blacks are Democrats.

Then there is that state with mountains in the east, bluegrass in the middle, and Churchill Downs in the west...


Kentucky
Kentucky has been a state since 1792. It has had 61 governors, only 8 of whom have been Republicans, and it has had a Republican governor for only 8 of the 86 years since FDR became president. Yet on Tuesday, Republican Matt Bevin defeated Democrat Jack Conway by a margin of almost 9 points -- despite the fact that Bevin is an unapologetic tea partier, not one of those milquetoast moderates.

On top of that, Tuesday's election increased the number of statewide offices held by Republicans from one of six to four of six.

Tellingly, one out of every four Kentuckians receives federally paid health care, yet Bevin still won while being openly opposed to Obamacare in particular and to federally provided health care in general.

And for those who believe the words "conservative" and "Tea Party" and "Republican" are somehow synonymous with "racist" and "sexist," you might want to chew on the fact that Bevin's running mate, Jenean Hampton, is an avowed conservative black woman born in Detroit. Tuesday's election made her the first black person ever to be elected to statewide office in Kentucky.


And...
...Although if hasn't gotten much media attention, the latest nationwide Quinnipiac poll shows Ben Carson beating Hillary Clinton by a margin of 50-40, Rubio beating her 46-41, and both Cruz and Christie beating her 46-43. So things are looking promising for the GOP.


But...
...don't read too much into that. I happen to believe Hillary is imminently beatable and have been saying so for some time, but a great deal can change between now and then and turnout (approximately twenty percent on Tuesday) is always a big question mark.

Until next time, take care.