State Department contract awards were posted this week for "Transportation services in support of Mandela Funeral" and "Accommodation in support of the Nelson Mandela funeral in South Africa." The accompanying Justification and Approval documents estimated the cost of transportation at a maximum of $8,286,194.74. The transportation contract covers only ground transportation in South Africa. Costs for Air Force One and other air travel are not included. Two contracts were listed for the cost of lodging: one for $2,042,850 for an estimated "3,240 lodging room nights" and another for $1,190,573 for an estimated "2,490 lodging room nights" stretching from December 6, 2013 to January 20, 2014.
It is unclear from the documents if the lodging and transportation contracts covered just the president and his support staff, or if it included George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and other current and former government officials. The transportation contract included passenger vehicles, SUVs, vans, buses, pickup trucks, box trucks, and "larger capacity vehicles"

Let’s not have any reality in our reality television, please

By Ed Morrissey
....Anyway, the point is this: A&E knew that the Robertsons were fundamentalist Christians when they started making oodles of money off of them. That was part of the schtick. In fact, that’s part of GQ’s schtick in this interview, too, which comes across in bucketloads in the profile — pointing at the rednecks and laughing. Yet the moment that Phil Robertson expresses what is actually a mainstream Christian belief in sin, he’s booted off the show because he’s … what? Too real? Or too Christian?
Some people argue that this isn’t a First Amendment issue, and they’re right. It’s not a case of government censorship, but then again, no critic of this action that I’ve read or heard is insisting that the government or a court restore Robertson to the show, either. It’s a case of egregious hypocrisy, and a case of anti-Christian bigotry posing as a tolerance stunt. And this coming from a media outlet that survives on so-called reality television.

'The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with.'

By Daniel Halper
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal criticized the suspension of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson by network A&E.
“Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with. I don’t agree with quite a bit of stuff I read in magazine interviews or see on TV. In fact, come to think of it, I find a good bit of it offensive. But I also acknowledge that this is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views. In fact, I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended," said Jindal in a prepared statement.

For Duck Dynasty, Many Options Exist Outside Anti-Christian Hollywood

By John Nolte
Make no mistake about the anti-Christian leftists in Hollywood, the mainstream media, and GLAAD; the goal here is to put on a bitter Show Trial until A&E caves even further and yanks "Duck Dynasty" off the air. The problem for A&E and the political left, though, is that in today's world, the boys of "Duck Dynasty" hold all the cards.
What the Left is going to do over the next few weeks is launch a McCarthyistic campaign to toxify "Duck Dynasty" right out of Hollywood. The political left and the media already hated the show for daring to be proudly Southern, proudly Christian, and a monstrous hit; so the bonus of toxifying Christianity as de facto bigotry while killing the show is seen as something of two-fer among this crowd. But whether this anti-Christian jihad is successful or not, it can only backfire.
If the show survives, it will only grow in popularity with mainstream Americans. This shrill non-troversy is already upping the show's profile and tens of millions of Christian conservatives in America are likely to now see "Duck Dynasty" as something even bigger than it was before. We all know in our hearts that in the wolf's clothing of tolerance that this attack on "Duck Dynasty" is in reality nothing less than an attack on us, our Christian faith, and who we are; so we now have a personal stake in the success of "Duck Dynasty" we did not just 48 hours ago.
If, however, the show is cancelled and therefore driven out of Hollywood (no established Big Entertainment companies will dare pick it up) , only Hollywood loses -- and more than just millions of dollars.

National Lampoon's ObamaCare Vacation

State exchange chiefs skip town, while Obama hires a hit man

....Out in Hawaii, Coral Andrews stepped down from her position running that state's exchange on the same day as Ms. Pearce. Fewer than 500 people have enrolled thus far in the Aloha State's exchange, despite having received $205,342,270 in federal exchange planning and establishment grants.

That sounds bad unless the point of comparison is Oregon, where enrollment stood at all of 44 people at the end of November. The Beaver State's $303,011,587 in grants in hand works out to about $6.9 million a head. Enrollment since has improved to 7,597 as the state abandoned trying to fix the digital site and moved to all-paper applications and direct insurer recruitment. Rocky King, the functionary responsible for that anachronism, was placed on extended medical leave this month.

PK'S NOTE: Truly, this has exploded into one of the funniest meme's on the Internet. Twitchy.com is a good place to start to find some.

Pajama Boy: The Obama Machine’s Id

The new face of Obamacare is a man in a plaid onesie. Of course.

By Charles C W Cooke
...And now, courtesy of Organizing for Action, we have Pajama Boy, a metrosexual hipster in a plaid onesie who wants you to spend your precious Christmas days talking to him about the president’s vision for health insurance.
...Pajama Boy is, as Obama might put it, a composite character: part Chris Hayes, part Rachel Maddow, part Lena Dunham. One of the funnier photoshops from last night features the caption, “Mommy said I could stay up late tonight.” If so, he isn’t waiting for PBS to broadcast the boobs and bad language on imported British comedies, as overgrown children once did; he’s ignoring his bedtime to ensure the Howard Zinn special on All In records properly.To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to screw up one Obamacare personification may be regarded as a misfortune; to screw up them all looks like carelessness. Or, perhaps better: ignorance. The harsh truth is that the advertising machine behind the Obama administration seems not to really know what normal human beings are like. In Colorado, when OFA-wannabe group, ProgressNowColorado, was charged with selling the law to young people, it drew on the worst of cartoons. All the women were sluts; all the men were idiots; all the girls were playing extremely violent sports.

Pajama Boy, An Insufferable Man-Child

By Rich Lowry
...But it’s hard not to see Pajama Boy as an expression of the Obama vision, just like his forbear Julia, the Internet cartoon from the 2012 campaign. Pajama Boy is Julia’s little brother. She progressed through life without any significant family or community connections. He is the picture of perpetual adolescence. Neither is a symbol of self-reliant, responsible adulthood.
And so both are ideal consumers of government. Julia needed the help of Obama-supported programs at every juncture of her life, and Pajama Boy is going to get his health insurance through Obamacare (another image shows him looking very pleased in a Christmas sweater, together with the words “And a happy New Year with health insurance”).
The breakdown of marriage and its drift into the 30s mean there are more Julias and Pajama Boys than ever. The growth of government feeds off this trend, and at the margins, augments it. The vision of the Obama Democrats, distilled to its essence, is of a direct relationship between the state and the individual without the mediating institutions of family, church and community that are an inherent check on government power.

Tocqueville wrote long ago of the infantilizing tendency of such all-encompassing government. "It would be like the authority of a parent," he wrote in a famous passage, "if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood." If you wanted to depict what Tocqueville was getting at in one meme, Pajama Boy wouldn't be such a bad way to do it.

'Pajama Boy' and perpetual adolescence

By Rick Moran

....As we all know, children are much easier to control than independent minded, liberty loving adults. The drive to create a "perpetual adolescent" class is to make it easier to further the statist cause. I'm sure Obama and his friends believe it's for our own good. They say as much when they point out that paying more for insurance and accepting coverage for things we don't want benefits everyone.

But take a good, long, hard, look at Pajama Boy. He is the future of America unless the radical left can be stopped.

The Obamacare Generation

The ACA depends on Millennials picking up the tab — as they already are for other entitlements — in the midst of a bad economy.

By Victor Davis Hansen
....Among these unanswered questions, the most disturbing pertain to the demand that millions of so-called Millennials must purchase health insurance — estimated at about $1,700 a year — that they will hardly use. Their premiums supposedly will subsidize older, in-need Americans who cannot pay the full costs of coverage that they will draw on frequently.
We forget that young people are already targeted for a number of government redistribution plans. Of America’s age cohorts, the under-30 bunch is the least likely to be employed, and the most likely to work at low-wage or part-time jobs.
Millennials already pay high payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare coverage for the elderly. Yet most economists predict that both programs will soon prove insolvent and will not be able to extend the present level of benefits to young contributors when they retire.
...Young people in America owe in aggregate about $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. While some of their interest rates are subsidized, many are not and range from 5 percent to 9 percent at a time when mortgages can still be had for about 4 percent.
...When interest rates creep up, the cost of servicing the national debt may claim one-third of the yearly federal budget. The millennial generation will come of age in time to pay higher taxes and receive fewer government services to cover for prior generations who wanted more things on credit billed to their grandchildren.

Ten Broken Obamacare Promises

By Alyene Senger
Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, many of the President’s famous promises have been routinely broken. As he so ironically threatened in 2009, “If you misrepresent what’s in this plan, we will call you out.”[1] To that end, here are 10 promises of Obamacare that have already proved to be broken.
Promise #1: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”[2]
Reality: Millions of Americans have lost and will lose their coverage due to Obamacare.
Obamacare has significantly disrupted the market for those who buy coverage on their own by imposing new coverage and benefit mandates, causing a reported 4.7 million health insurance cancelations of an existing policy in 32 states.[3]

Liberals, Unions and Teachers Find New Uses for Dead Children

By John Ransom
Liberals in Ohio have used the death of a 14-year-old homeschooler in order to try to pass legislation that would require all homeschooling families to first have a home visit by some bureaucrat or another to see if they’re worthy enough for homeschooling.
14-year old Teddy Foltz was pulled out of school by his mother because teachers suspected child abuse, the story goes.
The child was subsequently beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend who is now serving a life sentence for murder and is eligible for parole in 33 years. The mother was sentenced to 15 years for complicity in the death of her son.
If it were up to me, I’d give the both of them the death penalty.
But as I said before a liberals never let dead kids go to waste. Or rest in peace.
One Ohio liberal is using this murder for all it’s worth, while practically ignoring the criminals.

...“[Teddy’s law] is breathtakingly onerous in its scope,” says Mike Donnelly, a staff attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association. “It requires all parents who homeschool to undergo a social services investigation which would ultimately determine if homeschooling would be permitted. Social workers would have to interview parents and children separately, conduct background checks and determine whether homeschooling is recommended or not. If it is not recommended, parents would have to submit to an ‘intervention’ before further consideration of their request to homeschool.”
Teachers unions hate homeschoolers, considering them a drain on education funding that's divided per pupil. More homeschoolers, less funding.

..."Teddy Foltz-Tedesco was killed because those responsible for protecting him did not step in as the law or common sense would have dictated,” concludes Donnelly. “Why? Although news reports indicate that abuse had been reported for years prior to Teddy’s death, it does not appear that any serious intervention was made by government authorities charged with investigating such allegations.”
And you, the homeschoolers, and me, we’re going to pay.
That’s the union way.