Radio America Online News Bureau

Archives for October 2013

Three Martini Lunch 10/25/13

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy learning that no extension of Obamacare enrollment can take place without congressional approval, assuming President Obama honors that part of the law.  They also discuss the horrifying statistics that more people have been dropped from insurance thus far than have received coverage for the first time – and they hear how the reality of Obamacare is exactly the opposite of what was promised.  And they discuss how the U.S. Marine Corps is poised to blow eight million dollars on unisex caps while military readiness plummets.

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Three Martini Lunch 10/24/13

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Democrats embrace delays in Obamacare implementation just days after calling GOP efforts to delay anarchist and terrorist tactics.  They also cringe as the healthcare.gov contractors refuse to take any blame for the massive exchange problems at a House hearing and Democrats call the session a “monkey court”.  And we observe three years of the Three Martini Lunch by reflecting on our very first crazy martini – and it’s a doozy!

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‘We’re Extremely Vulnerable’

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U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno shocked many on Tuesday, when he stated that just two Army brigades were currently combat-ready as a result of the financial toll taken by sequestration and other cuts in military spending, but a retired U.S. Air Force general says the problems can be seen throughout all service branches.

“The Air Force, at one time, grounded a third of all their squadrons because of the cost savings driven by sequestration.  That means their readiness is declining in almost dramatic terms,” said retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Tom McInerney, who served as both assistant vice chief of staff and commander-in-chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe during his time in uniform.

“The Navy is cutting down their steaming hours or flying hours and the Marine Corps the same thing.  They’re all about a third in decreased readiness, which permeates the whole force and you atrophy gradually.  Without a doubt, the sequestration has had a huge impact, negative impact, on U.S. military readiness.”

Sequestration was the default result of the 2011 Budget Control Act that was passed to resolve that summer’s debt ceiling showdown.  Lawmakers were supposed to come up with areas to trim spending but failed to reach any consensus.  As a result, sequestration kicked in, with President Obama and Democrats demanding half of the cuts come from military spending in exchange for some trimming in entitlement spending.  The military’s sequestration cuts followed closely on the heels of another major drop in funding.  The combination of actual cuts and reductions in planned spending increases totals roughly one trillion dollars over 10 years.

The Defense Department, like all government agencies, have been known for extravagant spending at times, but McInerney says the rules of sequestration prevent officials from prioritizing the spending reductions so critical programs are suffering.

“It doesn’t give the Department of Defense the reprogramming authority that they would like, so much of it cuts across the board.  It’s a straight line salami slice.  If you’re able to go into certain areas where you can delay certain modernization or do certain things, that enables them to keep their readiness up.  They don’t have that tool right now but that’s what they need,” said McInerney.

If the military cuts from sequestration are not restored, McInerney says readiness will be at historically low levels.

“We will have the least ready military since the end of World War II, the 1948-49 time period.  We (also) had that dropdown under President Carter, but this will go below the Carter readiness problems,” said McInerney.  “This administration will have the lowest since 1948.”

But McInerney asserts that even at today’s readiness levels, our national security is compromised.

“We’re extremely vulnerable.  Look what’s going on in Syria.  Look what’s going on in the Middle East.  The Saudis are breaking diplomatic relations with us,” said McInerney, who contends the Obama administration is standing by while Russia and Iran are running roughshod throughout the Middle East.

“We are doing all the wrong things.  We are not helping Gen. al-Sisi in Egypt.  That’s one of the reasons why the Saudi Arabians, who are really one of our closest and most influential allies in the region, have just broken off diplomatic relations.  Our military readiness is having an impact on that.  We do not have the influence let alone the diplomacy to carry to leadership role that we should be carrying,” said McInerney, who says adversarial nations are keenly aware of our weakened position right now.

“Our enemies see that so they are just being emboldened.  That’s one of the dangerous things that’s going on and it’s going to have very far-reaching repercussions,” said McInerney.

The general says the smart thing for the government to do would be to replace the military funds cut by sequestration and start providing help to places like Egypt.  However, he doesn’t expect the cuts to be reversed anytime soon because the other half of the equation would require some entitlement reform and he doesn’t believe the Obama administration is serious about addressing that.

“I don’t see sequestration going away until the administration is willing to get into the entitlement area and start going into those areas, which are all going broke as it is, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid  and all that.  The administration has not been willing to make what I think are balanced cuts, because in the final analysis they’re going to go broke anyhow,” said McInerney.

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Three Martini Lunch 10/23/13

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Paul Ryan for pointing out states are foolish to believe the federal government will be able to bankroll their expansions of Medicaid.  They also discuss a CBS report showing how the Obamacare site is badly misleading people into thinking their new health care policies are much less expensive than they really are.  And they react to an administration official getting fired for tweets slamming Obama policy and personal characteristics of his colleagues.

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‘Absolutely Appalling’

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Outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is facing considerable outrage after comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan in a new fundraising email.

In the final days of the government shutdown, Grayson told MSNBC’s Al Sharpton he believes the Tea Party is about as popular as the KKK.  He is now circulating a fundraising email that shows a burning cross and two klansmen in the background.  The graphic uses the cross to begin spelling out “Tea Party”, and the caption reads, “Now You Know What the ‘T’ Stands For.”
“I find it absolutely appalling, not only as a black Tea Party activist, but as a human being and as a former teacher because he’s totally distorting history and what the Constitution stands for,” said Jennifer Burke, national outreach director for theteaparty.net which is the largest grassroots tea party group in the nation.
“He’s taken the history of the Democrat Party, because they were the party of the KKK.  They were the ones that were burning crosses and lynching black people and shooting them because they were the wrong color.  He’s applying that horrible time in our history to a group of people who simply want constitutionally limited government and who want the government to respect the freedoms that the Constitution grants us in our God-given rights,” said Burke.
Grayson is not backing down.  The man who once said the GOP health care plan was for people to die quickly and once called an opponent a member of the Taliban, doubled down when questioned about the fundraising message.
In a response to foxnews.com, Grayson says Tea Party activists repeatedly raise questions about President Obama’s eligibility and religion.
“One could go on and on, because there is overwhelming evidence that the Tea Party is the home of bigotry and discrimination in America today, just as the KKK was for an earlier generation.  If the shoe fits, wear it,” said Grayson in the statement.
Burke says those remarks disgust her even more.
“One thing that Alan Grayson is not known for, if you ask me, is just being of sound mind,” said Burke.  “I’ve spoken at many Tea Party rallies.  I’ve interacted with Tea Party people around the country.  The only time I’ve experienced racism was in the left’s response to me, calling me an Uncle Tom or an Aunt Thomasina or telling me I hate my race, what kind of a black person am I to stand with the Tea Party.  That is the only time I’ve experienced an attack.”
Burke says it’s possible some outrageous remarks made it into the comment section on some Tea Party sites or an offensive sign appeared at a rally somewhere, but she says that is not in any way indicative of the movement and liberals know it.
“To apply that to the millions of Americans who simply want a constitutionally-limited government is disgusting.  I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it.  Hurling that racist accusation against the Tea Party has been an effort to shut us up,” she said.
“Historically, in the past, you shift the conversation and instead of them making their point, which is typically based on fact, which is what we on the right do, they shift and make you defend how you’re not a racist.  Well, it hasn’t shut us up and so you see people like Alan Grayson heightening this incendiary attack against the good men and women of the Tea Party movement,” said Burke.
Grayson was elected to the House in 2008.  His controversial rhetoric and a strong Tea Party tide led to his sound defeat in 2010, but he was sent back to Congress from a more liberal district in 2012.  Grayson received 63 percent of the vote last year, but Burke says Grayson’s actions should disgust people on both sides of the aisle.
“People need to start seeing beyond what letter is next to a person’s name and look instead to what that person stands for and what that person is saying.  No sitting congressman should have this level of incendiary defamation against Americans who simply want a constitutionally-limited government.  I hope the people of Florida, instead of sitting there cheering for this kind of thing, are sitting there embarrassed and thinking, ‘We’ve got to get this man out.  He’s a horrible representative for this state and this nation,'” said Burke.
The Tea Party has been taking shots from both sides of the aisle.  Both Democrats and Republicans who disagreed with the party’s fiscal strategy in recent weeks point blame at the Tea Party.  Nonetheless, Burke says the movement remains rock solid.
“I think the Tea Party movement stands stronger actually.  We have a few people who have emerged in DC as standing on principle and standing for the Constitution despite being fought from both sides of the aisle,” said Burke, who says President Obama and Democrats accused conservatives of demanding everything they wanted before reopening the government when it was actually Obama and his allies who insisted on 100 percent of what they wanted.
“The American people are tired of this tyranny that we’re seeing rising in America and we will fight for our Constitution.  I don’t care what the name-calling is,” she said.
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‘Dereliction of Duty’

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Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is accusing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie of ‘dereliction of duty’ for dropping his appeal to a state court decision and effectively allowing gay marriage to be enshrined in the Garden State.

“For Governor Chris Christie just to allow a lower court to ultimately decide this for the people is a dereliction of duty,” said Staver, who has argued in defense of traditional marriage in many states and says this change in New Jersey is not some minor matter.  “We’re talking about the redefinition of marriage.  We’re talking about a policy that essentially says boys don’t need fathers, that girls don’t need mothers, that two people of the same sex are just as good as mom and dad who are male and female.

“This has long term significant effects on the family, on children and when we destabilize the very structure of the family, we impact the structure and stability of government,” he said.

A lower state court ruled that forbidding same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the New Jersey Supreme Court refused to delay the enforcement of that decision.  The chief justice advised Christie to drop the appeal altogether, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Defense of Marriage Act as reason for why the state’s appeal had little to no chance of succeeding.

“I think the chief justice is speaking out of turn before this matter was fully briefed and argued.  I don’t think the chief justice has the benefit of looking at the full issue and I think it was another example of judicial activism,” said Staver.  “We’re talking about marriage.  We’re not talking about some kind of other benefit.  We’re talking about marriage, the full redefinition of marriage.  That’s the problem and that’s a significant difference.”

With Christie seen as a major candidate for the GOP nomination in 2016, this decision could make marriage an issue of greater debate within the party.  Staver says the Republicans know better than to abandon traditional marriage because the impact at the ballot box would be a disaster for the party.

“If the Republican Party were to move away from marriage as one man and one woman and to adopt some kind of alternative system or, even worse, same-sex marriage, the Republican Party would lose much of its membership.  They would destroy themselves as a party, and the quickest thing to start a third party would be for the Republican Party to move away from marriage as one man and one woman,” said Staver.

But Staver is quick to stress that he does not believe Christie’s decision is any sort of indication that the GOP plans to change on this issue.  He believes Republicans will continue to defend the traditional family.

“I don’t think it’s going that way.  I think there’s enough people in the grassroots that are holding some of the leaders’ feet to the fire.  I think there’s a number of leaders who are very strong on this issue and there are obviously some Republicans who are a little weak.  That’s what the purpose of elections are and I think some of those people will ultimately be finding new jobs,” said Staver.

New Jersey is just one state where same-sex marriage advocates are challenging state laws and in some cases a state constitutional amendment.  That’s what is happening in Michigan, where a federal judge has invited activists to challenge the state’s traditional marriage amendment in his courtroom.

Staver says repeated episodes of judicial activism could ultimately erode the credibility of the American judiciary.

“If they continue to go down a road of judicial activism where they just have their own ideology that does not conform to the Constitution to common sense or to history and research, I think the courts could ultimately make themselves illegitimate and delegitimize their entire structure.  Once people lose confidence in the court system, we ultimately have a real problem within the judiciary.  I think that’s potentially where we may be going if this continues to go down that same path,” said Staver.

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Three Martini Lunch 10/22/13

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are happy to see Consumer Reports telling people to stay away from the Obamacare exchanges.  They also cringe as new post-shutdown polls show the GOP taking a pretty big hit.  They react to the widow of Rep. Bill Young telling Charlie Crist and two other Dems to stay away from his funeral.  And Greg pays tribute to his dad, who was honored by his hometown last night for 35 years of excellence in city leadership.

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‘Won’t Work Because It Can’t Work’

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President Obama admitted the recently unveiled online health insurance exchanges have been a technological headache.  He also insists once those problems are fixed people will discover that the exchanges offer wonderful health plans at affordable prices, but a prominent congressman says the facts are not on the president’s side.

“They’re still trying to sell a program that the American people know won’t work.  And it won’t work because the same things that are wrong with the website, that is the challenge of getting into it and having it work are the same things that are going to be wrong throughout the entire healthcare system when Washington is running it,” said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a former physician who authored a free-market version of health care reform that is still awaiting House consideration.

The exchange woes are very real in Price’s district as well.  At a town hall on Monday, many constituents had tried to navigate the website with no success.  Price stresses that whenever the online problems are fixed, the biggest problems will just be starting.

“The real problem is not that the website won’t work, it’s that the program won’t work because it puts Washington in charge and that’s not what people want,” said Price.

On Monday, Obama vowed swift attention to the exchange problems but spent most of his address touting 20 million hits on the healthcare.gov site and almost half a million Americans accounts created on the exchange.  But Price says the lack of any actual enrollment numbers is a major red flag.

“It’s a complete lack of transparency by this administration that touted itself as the most transparent ever.  I’m not certain if they won’t tell us how many have signed up because it’s such a paltry number or whether they don’t know.  Both of them are awful problems to have by an administration that is trying to run one-sixth of our economy and all of our health care,” said Price.

Stopping Obamacare through defunding or delay was the goal of congressional conservatives during the recent standoff over government funding and the debt ceiling.  And while Price supported those efforts, he says the wall-to-wall coverage of the shutdown obscured just how terrible the Obamacare exchange rollout really was.

“That’s because the mainstream media tend to focus on one big story at a time and they can’t handle more than that’s because the American people’s attention is difficult to have focused on more than one thing,” said Price.

Despite the failure of the GOP to slow down or derail Obamacare in recent weeks, Price believes its fate is sealed by its own massive flaws.

“This system won’t work because it can’t work.  It doesn’t work for patients.  It doesn’t work for families, doesn’t work for doctors and certainly doesn’t work for employers or employees.  At this point, we’re seeing how it doesn’t work for states from an exchange standpoint or the federal government from a financing standpoint.  I think the whole thing will implode.  The sad thing about all this is there will be real people who will be harmed from a quality health care or accessibility aspect that wouldn’t have otherwise,” he said.

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Three Martini Lunch 10/21/13

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see the Obama administration simply admit the online health care exchanges are a disaster.  They also cringe as a new report shows 15 percent of Americans between 16-24 years old aren’t in school or working.  And they react to a Portland, Oregon, school district spending over $500,000 to root out racist concepts like rugged individualism, showing up on time and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

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Bathroom Wars

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Girls at a Colorado high school are being forced to allow an older boy to use their bathrooms as the  result of a policy of transgender accommodation and the girls are being threatened with punishment if their complaints don’t stop.

The debate is happening in Florence, Colorado, located near Colorado Springs.  Parents of several girls are seeking a legal remedy after their daughters were required to share bathrooms with a male who maintains his true gender identity is that of a woman.
“First of all, it’s our position that a teenage boy’s presence into the bathroom for teenage girls is inherently harassing.  It’s inherently violative of their privacy rights.  It’s also intimidating when you have a boy like this, who is not a freshman, going in there with younger freshman girls.  They feel violated.  They feel intimidated, and that’s been expressed to us,” said Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute, who is representing the families of the girls involved.
The girls further allege the boy has made sexually harassing comments in that setting.
“Details continue to emerge on this in terms of what what kind of comments may have been made.  We’ve heard some reports that he’s commented on what girls are wearing or their figure while in the bathroom.  If you can imagine that scenario from the reference and framework of a teenage girl, I think that’s pretty harassing,” said McReynolds, who reiterated that a boy simply being in the girls’ restroom is ample harassment in itself.
Also galling to the female students and their parents is the backlash the girls have suffered from their own school administrators, who have vowed to punish the students if their protests persist.
“Some of the students have been warned that they need to stop talking about this.  They need to stop talking about their constitutional privacy rights, more or less, or they may face repercussions in areas such as participation on school athletic teams,” said McReynolds, who detailed the legal efforts to rectify the problem.
“What we’re really going for is a solution that can be workable for everybody involved.  That’s what we don’t have right now.  Our students are in a scenario where they’re being told, ‘If you don’t want to be in this situation where this guy walks in while you’re in the bathroom, then you’ve got to confine yourself to one staff bathroom that is very inconvenient, that’s not even open all the time that they’re on campus for athletic activities and things like that.  You just have to give up your right to use the other dozen or so bathrooms on campus.  You just have to clear out so that this one other student can do whatever he wants,'” said McReynolds.
“There are workable solutions short of litigation that are available.  We hope the school will go that direction.  They haven’t given us much indication yet of what they are going to do.  There can be solutions that can be acceptable if not perfect to both sides,” he said.
McReynolds and the Pacific Justice Institute were actively involved in unsuccessful opposition to California’s AB 1266, legislation passed earlier this year to allow self-identifying transgender students to use restrooms designated for the opposite sex.  it is scheduled to take effect in January.  He says one of many problems with this movement is the lack of a threshold for some to receive transgender recognition.
“That’s one of the really troubling aspects to this.  It depends on who you ask and it depends on where you go.  Here in California, the new law we have really has no standards for how you determine gender identity.  That’s fairly consistent as you look around the country and seems to be the case in Colorado as well,” said McReynolds.
“Colorado has some specific regulations that refer to situations where students will be in a state of undress, which is obviously one of the big concerns here.  It says that reasonable accommodations have to be made for transgender students.  There’s a lot of vagueness and haziness in there but that’s what we’re plowing through in this scenario,” he said.
But he says the goal of the transgender activists is very clear.
“They would insist that every school district in America is subject to these same kinds of situations and scenarios because of the way that they would interpret federal laws like Title IX and just general definitions of gender,” said McReynolds.
“We’re starting to see it all over the place.  If you do the math, experts tell us transgender individuals make up about .3 percent of the population.  So if you have a high school campus with a couple thousand kids on it as is the case in a lot of places, there’s a pretty good likelihood that within that school or within that district, and especially as these kinds of behavior become more bold, you’re going to be seeing more and more of these,” said McReynolds.
Transgender activists are largely dismissing this story, claiming the girls are likely either trying to get the male student in trouble because they don’t like him or concocting stories of harassment because of opposition to the policy.  McReynolds is not buying the argument that this is much ado about nothing.
“If there were nothing to this, I don’t think the school district would be currently conducting a law enforcement investigation, which is what they’re doing.  Beyond that, you’ve got to ask yourself, when you have somebody who is acting very peculiarly to say the least, sometimes dressing as a girl and sometimes dressing as a boy, why are we indulging that and making everybody else pretend like that is normal, when clearly it’s not,” said McReynolds.
The speed with which issues like this have emerged throughout our culture even surprises McReynolds, but he says the warnings against enabling this movement are already coming true.
“Just a few years ago, this wasn’t on much of anybody’s radar.  Now we find ourselves right in the middle of it.  Just a few months ago, I testified before the California legislature on AB 1266 on this same issue and it was just astounding for me to listen to the things being said on the other side.  Again and again, we heard there would be no problems with this legislation, that we were just being ‘transphobic’ for suggesting that there might be problems resulting from these kinds of policies,” said McReynolds.
“Now, unfortunately, what we predicted is coming true in a number of different locations,” he said.
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