Political Potpourri

Readers- Owing to time constraints (and not our much-rumored feud with Megyn Kelly) we don't have a commentary today. But cartoons? Oh yeah, we've got cartoons... 

Putting The Court Before The Hearse

Liberals, who are simple creatures lacking in nuance and are in need of constant supervision, are high-fiving each other over the decision of a Texas grand jury to indict the videomakers behind a series of heartbreaking, stomach-churning exposés of shady practices at Planned Parenthood, while bringing no charges against the Benihana baby butchers.

"You see!" the liberals cheer, "this means that the videos were all lies and Planned Parenthood never did anything wrong!"

Not surprisingly (and certainly not for the first time), the anti-life Lefties couldn't be more wrong.

There are really two entirely distinct issues on the table (not that "the table" is anyplace you'd want to be inside a Planned Parenthood): what the videomakers and clinicians actually did, and how those actions are judged by the law. 

The videomakers lied and forged fake identification to get their hidden cameras into Planned Parenthood, and this is against the law. And they surely knew it was against the law and took the risk anyway because sometimes that's what has to be done when authorities won't act. How many civil rights marchers, black and white, were legally arrested when trying to end segregation? Breaking the law doesn't necessarily make your cause wrong.

The videos (both edited and unedited) clearly and repeatedly showed Planned Parenthood officials and clinicians playing semantic games and using creative bookkeeping to make their sales of fetal tissue (and gross violations of ethical medical practice) have the appearance of legality. But obeying the letter of the law while circumventing its meaning doesn't necessarily make your cause right.

The videos demonstrated great wrongdoing, but because of the way they were created the videos cannot be used as evidence of a crime. And this is what the grand jury rightly decided.

Hope n' Change can't predict the eventual outcome of the legal process, but we're guessing that Planned Parenthood (which recently received millions of dollars of "desperately needed" tax money then announced they'll spend 20 million of those bucks to support Hillary Clinton's campaign) will escape real damage, while the videomakers will pay a significant price for their cause.

But conflating those purely legalistic determinations with moral guilt or innocence would be a huge mistake. 

Put another way, it may be true that "if the surgical gloves don't fit, you must acquit." But that doesn't mean someone isn't getting away with murder.

AND THIS JUST OUT...

Republican front-runner Donald Trump has announced that he's pulling out of tomorrow's GOP debate owing to his feud with moderator Megyn Kelly and a general dissatisfaction with Fox News.

As is the case with all things Trumpish, opinion is divided on whether he's taking a principled stand against what he sees as unfair journalistic practices, is frightened of another tango with the razor-sharp Ms. Kelly, or is so filled with hubris that he's simply lost interest in winning over any remaining voters who remain undecided.

Hope n' Change can't say which explanation (or combination of explanations) is closest to the truth, but we will say that Trump has again confirmed the fact that no one can predict what he will do. 

Whether or not that's a quality voters actually want in the Oval Office remains to be seen.

Snow Jobs

Much of the country has been blanketed with historic levels of snowfall which meteorologists cite as definitive proof of global warming because "everything is backward in a leap year."

In any event, the snow is so deep in Washington DC that, for the first time in over seven years, there are actually places where you can't see the bulls**t.

Only kidding! The steaming brown mounds can still easily be spotted at places like the State Department, which issued notification that their mandated production of the latest round of Hillary Clinton's felony-laden emails would be delayed by at least a month owing to the inclement weather.

Here at Hope n' Change, we're enjoying lovely Texas weather  - but we know that many readers are quite literally out in the cold right now. To you, we say stay warm, stay safe, and take comfort from the knowledge that, for now at least, Obama is stuck spending time with his family instead of golfing.

UPDATE: HEALTH FREEZES OVER

For those of you following the continuing saga of the Jarlsberg family's Obamacare woes, here's the latest...

Daughter Jarlsberg was finally able to speak to someone about her erroneously cancelled insurance and had it magically reinstated by making a credit card payment over the phone to some functionary. Or so she thought. When she went to see her epilepsy specialist, her insurance card was again rejected.

She called Blue Cross and was told that her policy had never been reinstated, there was no record of her phone call, and that the transaction number she'd been given didn't exist. Oddly, the money she had paid over the phone was shown as a new balance in her account which hadn't been applied to any plan. Perhaps Blue Cross thought it was simply a tip for their excellent service.

Currently, there is some question about whether she's insured or not, and whether the hundreds of dollars of medical bills she's run up this month will be covered, reimbursed, or even applied to her deductible.

Meanwhile, the charming folks at Healthcare.gov are STILL sending threatening warnings about terminating the insurance of Stilton & Mrs. Jarlsberg unless they produce more "proof of income" than the four friggin' copies of every conceivable fiscal document they've produced already. A recent phone call to Healthcare.gov failed to confirm whether anyone has even received or looked at those records, and we were told to "call back in a few weeks if you still have a problem." And indeed we will!

Still, we should give credit to Healthcare.gov for being at least a little proactive.  They recently sent us a PDF of what they described as a very, very important form that must be filed with our taxes under penalty of further healthcare: the 1095a.

The multi-page form was, of course, almost entirely blank. Honest. Here's a picture of the first page, which is labeled (in the meta data) as "Why Form-1095a Is Important."

At least we know who it's from.

The form really must be important, too, because it wraps up with two full pages explaining the critical nature of the invisible information in Arabic, Chinese, French, French Creole, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Urdu, and Vietnamese...



Amusingly, the Jarlsberg family is at least receiving bills from Blue Cross for our soon to be terminated policy. Although cryptically, the bills keep showing that Blue Cross owes us money. Fearing that this is a trap which will let them cancel our policy for non-payment, we're sending them a check for the exact amount of money that they claim we're owed.

Because dealing with all of this logically hasn't gotten us anywhere.