BloggeRhythms

Conflicts continue around the world, with very slight chance of abating in a way satisfactory to both sides of those involved in the various wars. Therefore, there’s little that can be added here to project or comment about the myriad possible outcomes.

 

Instead, there are two items in the news today that point out where significant influence derives from on issues that should be the responsibility of decision-makers far above those actually taking action themselves.   

 

According to the Daily Caller, “Senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett came to the rescue of health insurance companies seeking taxpayer bailouts to shore up profits under ObamaCare according to a Republican staff report by the House Oversight Committee.

 

“[According to the committee report] Chet Burrell, president and CEO of Care First Blue Cross Blue Shield, wrote personally to Jarrett in March 2014 that insurers would need taxpayer funding from Obamacare’s risk corridor program in order to cut back on substantial losses… Jarrett initially protested that the administration had already promised insurers 80 percent of what they wanted in the first place, but eventually conceded that HHS’s ‘policy team is aggressively pursuing options.’ The next month, the Obama administration issued rules that would permit taxpayer funding to be doled out to insurers through the risk corridor program, which was originally supposed to be budget neutral….”

 

Therefore, in this case, a White House “advisor” was given the unilateral authority and responsibility of bailing out insurers who otherwise would have financial losses, the solution to which rested in penalizing taxpayers further for covering shortfalls caused by flaws in the health care tax itself. Which leads one to wonder how many other major decisions are made by unqualified underlings doing the incumbent’s bidding.

 

Then, in Chris Stirewalt’s column this morning, he reports that “Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, released a new TV ad depicting domestic violence and the cries of an endangered toddler to encourage support of a bill that would expand federal restrictions on access to firearms.”

 

Mr. Stirewalt goes on, “The 30-second spot, prefaced with a warning, features a man forcing his way into a woman’s home while she frantically calls for help. After he grabs a boy sitting on the couch, the woman tries to fight back until he raises a gun to her face. The ad ends with the video fading to black and the sound of a gunshot.”

 

Now, while obviously, the ad’s intent is to demonstrate the perils of guns and highlight the need for control, or ideally for anti-gun advocates, banning of weapons altogether, it actually does the reverse.

 

Because, in visualizing the scene set up in the ad, and thinking about what took place, the first question coming to mind was: What would this intruder have done if the woman he attacked was armed herself? And the answer’s quite simple. The intruder would have been on his way to the hospital with gunshot wounds, unless even better, he was dead.

 

Therefore, this ad is ridiculous because it not only illustrates the perils of being unarmed in the face of danger, it underlines the point of why otherwise defenseless people should avail themselves of every type of weapon attainable.

 

But, if you’re Michael Bloomberg with a cadre of security personnel at your beck and call, obviously defenseless women and others similarly in danger aren’t something you spend very much time really thinking about, if ever at all.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios