OOPS, We're Doing It Again: ANOTHER ND Refinery AND POTUS Pushes For Changes In ObamaCare AND Back To LBJ's "Vietnam-Style" Body Counts -- November 21, 2014

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

Developers of a nearly completed diesel refinery near Dickinson are eyeing the Minot area as the potential site for a similar plant.

the second refinery would process about 20,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil per day, the same capacity as the Dakota Prairie Refining LLC facility near Dickinson.

“Minot’s a little different situation, but the demand for diesel up there is even stronger than it is [in the Dickinson area].

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Another Inconvenient Truth Mr Obama Never Acknowledged

Link here. From 2008 - 2014, under Mr Obama's entire tenure (all numbers rounded) --

• Jobs created in the US, not counting Texas: a NEGATIVE 350,000 jobs
• Jobs created in Texas: a POSITIVE 1,400,000 jobs

California, Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Louisiana, and North Carolina best positioned for influx of immigrants. The rest of the country? Er, not so promising.

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ObamaCare

POTUS Looking For Three Changes In The Law -- Who Benefits?

CNBC is reporting:

The Obama administration late Friday called for numerous significant changes to rules controlling the Obamacare health care program, including ones that would shorten open-enrollment seasons, increase transparency of insurance plans and prices, and push current customers toward lower-cost plans.

Let's look at each:

• shorten open-enrollment seasons: benefits insurance companies; the shorter the better (for any number of reasons)
• increase transparency of insurance plans and prices: benefits larger insurers at expense of smaller insurers (again, for at least two reasons); may benefit consumers, but unlikely since it's all gobbly-gook for most
• push current customers toward lower-cost plans: counter-intuitive, that's why it's so "nice"; benefits the insurance companies; lower-cost insurance plans will have higher deductibles

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Body Counts

Updates

November 18, 2015: from The Fiscal Times --

Our military is being interfered with and directed by President Obama and a national security team that one retired general has described as “pathetically weak.” It includes Susan Rice, former human rights activist focused on Africa, and Valerie Jarrett, lawyer and former real estate developer. The Obama White House is remarkably devoid of ex-soldiers; that’s not an accident. The president’s contentious relationship with the military is well known.

The New York Times recently detailed efforts to disrupt Highway 47, ISIS’s critical supply route between Syria and Iraq’s Mosul. The U.S. has apparently been loath to bomb that essential artery for fear of civilian casualties. There have been 250,000 people killed in Syria. The U.S. is worried about truck drivers who may be willing to work for ISIS.

Yesterday the U.S. launched airstrikes on hundreds of trucks conveying oil to market, destroying 116. But we made certain no civilians were hurt by dropping leaflets an hour before the strikes, alerting ISIS to the imminent bombings. Was ever a campaign so absurdly restrained?

Earlier this year, that caution ignited controversy, when an Air Force official told legislators that in the bombing effort in Syria and Iraq, “There’s a target of zero civilian casualties….”

He explained further that even if there was only one civilian at risk, his pilots would withdraw, no matter how important the target. The upshot of that policy is that 75 percent of our combat missions return to base without dropping a single weapon. 

Original Post

 

Reuters is reporting:

Air strikes by U.S.-led forces in Syria have killed 910 people, including 52 civilians, since the start of the campaign against Islamic State and other fighters two months ago, a group monitoring the conflict said on Saturday.

The majority of the deaths, 785, were Islamic State fighters according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Islamic State, a hard-line offshoot of al Qaeda, has seized land in Syria and neighboring Iraq, where it has also been targeted by U.S.-led strikes since July.

Three comments:

• back to LBJ's Vietnam body counts
• it's wonderful that George Bush is not doing this
• another Reuters story pushing the Nobel-Peace-Prize POTUS off center-stage to make room for Hillary

Similarly, the story that POTUS is expanding the war in Afghanistan will help move the Nobel-Peace-Prize POTUS off center-stage to make room for Hillary. This allows Pocahontas and Hillary to say they will bring the troops home. Interestingly, the story was reported by The New York Times. The New York Times calls it a "shift" (their word, not mine); John Kerry, had he done this, would have been accused of flip-flopping. LOL.