PK'S NOTE: Guys, my apologies but I'm not being as comprehensive in checking conservative blogs and news sites as I used to in finding articles and issues that I think are important to know about. I just don't have the time anymore to devote to it. But I do hope to post a few things that help to bring about awareness of what is going on in our world today and maybe inspire you to seek out more and share with others.

Low-Information Leadership

By Peggy Noonan
....It’s a shock for most people that it’s a shambles. A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” I couldn’t think of one, and it’s the same question I’d been asking myself. The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operation with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them.
It’s a leader’s job to be skeptical of grand schemes. Sorry, that’s a conservative leader’s job. It is a liberal leader’s job to be skeptical that grand schemes will work as intended. You have to guide and goad and be careful.
And this president wasn’t. I think part of the reason he wasn’t careful is because he sort of lives in words. That’s been his whole professional life—books, speeches. Say something and it magically exists as something said, and if it’s been said and publicized it must be real. He never had to push a lever, see the machine not respond, puzzle it out and fix it. It’s all been pretty abstract for him, not concrete. He never had to stock a store, run a sale and see lots of people come but the expenses turn out to be larger than you’d expected and the profits smaller, and you have to figure out what went wrong and do better next time.
People say Mr. Obama never had to run anything, but it may be more important that he never worked for the guy who had to run something, and things got fouled up along the way and he had to turn it around. He never had to meet a payroll, never knew that stress. He probably never had to buy insurance! And you know, his policies were probably gold-plated—at the law firm, through his wife’s considerable hospital job, in the Illinois Legislature, in the U.S. Senate. Those guys know how to take care of themselves! Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe that’s to his credit, knowing he was lucky. Too bad he didn’t know what he didn’t know, like how every part has to work for a complicated machine to work.
Here I will say something harsh, and it’s connected to the thing about words but also images.
From what I have seen the administration is full of young people who’ve seen the movie but not read the book. They act bright, they know the reference, they’re credentialed. But they’ve only seen the movie about, say, the Cuban missile crisis, and then they get into a foreign-policy question and they’re seeing movies in their heads. They haven’t read the histories, the texts, which carry more information, more texture, data and subtlety, and different points of view. They’ve only seen the movie—the Cubans had the missiles and Jack said “Not another war” and Bobby said “Pearl Harbor in reverse” and dreadful old Curtis LeMay chomped his cigar and said “We can fry a million of ‘em by this afternoon, Mr. President.” Grrr, grrr, good guys beat bad guys.
It’s as if history isn’t real to them. They run around tweeting, all of them, even those in substantial positions. “Darfur government inadequate. Genocide unacceptable.” They share their feelings – that happens to be one of the things they seem to think is real, what they feel. “Unjust treatment of women—scourge that hurts my heart.” This is the dialogue to the movies in their heads.
There’s a sense that they’re all freelancing, not really part of anything coherent.
For four years I have been told, by those who’ve worked in the administration and those who’ve visited it as volunteers or contractors, that the Obama White House isn’t organized. It’s just full of chatter. Meetings don’t begin on time, there’s no agenda, the list of those invited seems to expand and contract at somebody’s whim. There is a tendency to speak of how a problem will look and how its appearance should be handled, as opposed to what the problem is and should be done about it. People speak airily, without point. They scroll down, see a call that has to be returned, pop out and then in again.
It does not sound like a professional operation. And this is both typical of White Houses and yet on some level extreme. People have always had meetings to arrange meetings, but the lack of focus, the lack of point, the sense that they are operating within accepted levels of incoherence—this all sounds, actually, peculiar.
And when you apply this to the ObamaCare debacle, suddenly it seems to make sense. The White House is so unformed and chaotic that they probably didn’t ignore the problem, they probably held a million meetings on it. People probably said things like, “We’re experiencing some technological challenges but we’re sure we’ll be up by October,” and other people said, “Yes, it’s important we launch strong,” and others said, “The Republicans will have a field day if we’re not.” And then everyone went to their next meeting. And no one did anything. And the president went off and made speeches.
Because the doing isn’t that important, the talking is.
The president is interested in Ronald Reagan, and in the past has seemed mildly preoccupied with him, but he misunderstands him. Mr. Obama shows every sign of thinking Reagan led only through words. But Reagan led through actions, as every leader must. The words explained, argued for and advanced those actions; they gave people a sense of who it was who was acting. But Obama’s generation of the left could never see or come to terms with the fact that it was, say, the decision to fire the air traffic controllers, or the decision to take the hit and bleed out inflation, that made Reagan’s presidency successful and meaningful. With an effective presidency, everything is in the doing. The words are part of the doing and at some points can be crucial to it; at some interesting points they even are the doing, such as looking at the Soviets and declaring that we knew what their system was and wouldn’t accept any but an honest interpretation of it, and yes, that constituted a change of attitude and approach. That took words. But it’s never all words, it can’t be. It’s making the right decision and carrying it through—executing it.
Mr. Obama learned only half of Reagan’s lesson.
...Mr. Obama’s problem now is that people think he is smart.
They think, as they look at his health-care vows, that either he didn’t know how bad his program was, what dislocations it would cause, what a disturbance it would be to the vast middle class of America . . .
Or he knew, and deliberately misled everyone.
If they thought he wasn’t very bright, they might give him some leeway on that question. But they think he’s really smart.
So they think he knew.
And deliberately misled.
They think he knowingly quelled people’s fears when he knew they had every reason to be afraid.
Which makes him just another dishonest pol, just another guy hiding in the deliberately obscure paragraph on page 1,037 of the omnibus comprehensive reform bill.
He has taken himself down, lowered his own stature.
Commentators like to decry low-information voters—the stupid are picking our leaders. I think the real problem is low-information leaders. They have so little experience of life and have so much faith in magic—in media, in words—that they don’t understand people will get angry at you when you mislead them, and never see you the same way again.

State Department drops $1,000,000 on an embassy sculpture

By Meredith Jessup
One lucky artist scored a $1,000,000 paycheck from the U.S. Department of State after its Office of Art in Embassies awarded him the contract for a granite sculpture to be displayed at the new U.S. Embassy in London....The Weekly Standard notes that the State Department also purchased “a bronze sculpture, ‘Flowers’, by American artist Donald Baechler ($150,000), for the new U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan; a mosaic mural by Miotto Mosaic Art Studio in Carmel, NY ($150,000), for the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil; and a work entitled ’The Black Arch‘ by Saudi Arabian writer Raja Alem and artist Shadia Alem, for the new U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”

Healthcare.gov can't calculate subsidies, so will pay insurance companies whatever they ask for

By Thomas Lifson
The federal government is dumping the consequences of its Obamacare website failures onto the private sector health insurance companies. The private sector is now expected to scramble and under severe time pressure do what the feds couldn't in the three-plus years. Unable to calculate what subsidies should be for lower-income insurance buyers, it is asking insurers to estimate the subsidies, and it will cut a check to them for whatever they ask for.
...As with so many other aspects of Obamacare, decisions are being made on the fly, to cover up for systemic failures. The consequences on other parties will be severe, and serious complications are foreseeable. No private sector company could possibly operate in such a slipshod fashion.

The plan is to pay insurance companies whatever they calculate the subsidies should be, and then in the future, when (if?) the government is able to calculate the actual subsidies, settle up. Consider, for a moment, the incentives facing health insurance companies, already hard-pressed to re-do the cancelled insurance policies, now that by presidential decree they are supposed continue offering the "substandard" plans O-care declared intolerable.

If insurance companies generously calculate the subsidies, that means they will charge consumers lower prices, counting on the subsidy to make up the difference. If the feds decide that the subsidy was too high, then the insurance companies will have to go to the policy holders and demand more money. Does anyone think that would be a smooth process? How many lower income people would even be able to come up with the extra scratch? How long would it take, and at what cost, to collect from millions of hard-pressed consumers?

Some Reid staffers exempt from Obamacare exchanges

By Chris Frates
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of Obamacare's architects and staunchest supporters, is also the only top congressional leader to exempt some of his staff from having to buy insurance through the law's new exchanges.

Reid is the exception among the other top congressional leaders. GOP House Speaker John Boehner, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have all directed their staffs to join the exchange, their aides said.

In the charged atmosphere surrounding Obamacare, Reid's decision only gives Republicans more ammo to attack Democrats already suffering politically from the law's botched rollout.

In September, Reid told reporters, "Let's stop these really juvenile political games -- the one dealing with health care for senators and House members and our staff. We are going to be part of exchanges, that's what the law says and we'll be part of that."

10,982,920: More Americans onDisability Than People in Greece

The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,982,920 in November, up from the previous record of 10,978,040 set in May, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. The 10,982,920 Americans taking disability benefits in November outnumbered the total populatio n of Greece, which is 10,772,967, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. The record 10,982,920 total disability beneficiaries in November, included a record 8,941,660 disabled workers (up from 8,936,932 in October), 1,883,594 children of disabled workers, and 157,666 spouses of disabled workers.

Anti-Gun NFL: National Frauds' League

By Michelle Malkin
...Guns and Ammo magazine first broke news last week of the sports empire's rejection of a commercial created by gun-maker Daniel Defense. The polished paid spot emphasized home security protection and self-defense without even showing or mentioning any of its actual products. But a quick flash of the company's logo at the end of the ad, which includes a DDM4 rifle, apparently violated the NFL's high-minded advertising regulations.
The fantasy-land football ad policy document will launch even the casual Super Bowl viewer into a fit of gigglesnorts. It outlines copious content restrictions covering alcohol, "nude or semi-nude performers," firearms, gambling, and "movies, video games and other media that contain or promote objectionable material or subject matter (e.g., overtly sexual or excessively violent material)."
The NFL is free to accept or reject any advertiser it wants to, of course. But its "prohibited content" list seems a far more accurate description of your average Super Bowl half-time performance and ad rundown. Between Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunctions and Beyonce's leather-clad dry-humping, the football execs have embraced lucrative vulgar ads over the years that have featured:
--An upside-down clown who appears to pour Bud Light beer up his rear end.
--A bizarre sex-change operation analogy to tout Holiday Inn's hotel upgrades.
--A barefoot Kenyan runner violently dragged to the ground by white hunters and forced to wear a pair of Just For Feet running shoes.
--A flatulent Budweiser horse whose emissions cause a candle to torch a woman's hair.
--Ad characters getting electrocuted, run over by buses, kicked, punched, tackled, thrown out of high-rise buildings, and attacked by crotch-biting dogs.
Skeezy Super Bowl spots have degraded women with everything from soapy car washes and jiggling bikini tops to squirty burgers and suntan lotion sessions to group stripper pole dances. The NFL regularly airs trailers for violent Hollywood movies and video games. In the aftermath of the Newtown massacre last year, for example, a commercial promoting the shoot-em-up flick "Gangster Squad" aired during a Colts-Texans game, and a spot promoting the M-rated video game "Hitman: Absolution" aired during a post-game show.
The NFL's laughable ad policy also restricts "social cause/advocacy advertising," presumably in the interest of neutrality. But the league itself has discouraged players from using weapons at home for legal self-defense and has opposed legal Wisconsin concealed-carry weapons holders from bringing their weapons into Lambeau Field.
Meanwhile, notorious motormouth Bob Costas was free to hijack Sunday Night Football last year to attack America's "gun culture." The wannabe MSNBC host exploited the murder-suicide of NFL player Jovan Belcher, claiming that "handguns do not enhance our safety" and ignoring the millions of successful defensive uses of handguns...

The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,982,920 in November, up from the previous record of 10,978,040 set in May, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.
The 10,982,920 Americans taking disability benefits in November outnumbered the total population of Greece, which is 10,772,967, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
The record 10,982,920 total disability beneficiaries in November, included a record 8,941,660 disabled workers (up from 8,936,932 in October), 1,883,594 children of disabled workers, and 157,666 spouses of disabled workers.
- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/10982920-more-americans-disability-people-greece#sthash.YWRXMeyB.H14Ef0Ao.dpuf

The Human Wealth of Nations

The latest Program for International Student Assessment global education scores are a warning to both parties.

Are the schools that serve the world's leading economy really only as good as those in Hungary, Lithuania, Vietnam and Russia? That's the conundrum posed by Tuesday's news of one more mediocre U.S. showing on international educational progress. If the findings land amid exaggerated angst about national decline, they still suggest that both Washington and the 50 states ought to be less complacent about prosperity and human capital.

Since 1998, the Program for International Student Assessment, or Pisa, has ranked 15-year-old kids around the world on common reading, math and science tests. The U.S. brings up the middle—again—among 65 education systems that make up fourth-fifths of the global economy. The triennial Pisa report also shows—again—that East Asian countries like Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea produce the best outcomes.

U.S. performance hasn't budged in a decade. For 2012, U.S. students placed 26th in mathematics, a bit below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average, and 17th in reading and 21st in science, close to the average. The U.S. slipped in all categories compared to international competitors, plunging from 11th in reading as recently as 2009.

...The U.S. is way out front in one measure: per-student spending. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland spend more. Despite laying out $115,000 per head, the U.S. did no better than the Slovak Republic, which spends $53,000.

Perhaps most depressingly, the data show no statistically significant U.S. achievement improvement over time. None. In an era when it pays to be thankful for small mercies, at least we're not getting worse, but America's relative standing is falling as other countries improve.

...Such results should trouble anyone concerned about America's economic future and the human capital produced by the K-12 system. Economies grow by exploiting scarce resources, people most of all. The ultimate source of wealth is ourselves, and the Pisa findings suggest that U.S. schools are failing tomorrow's labor force. Too few students are being prepared with the skills they'll need to compete in a world-wide market and sustain American economic dominance.

Why Zombies?

By Sally Zelikovsky

....There is nothing overtly political about The Walking Dead.  Without taking a conservative or liberal stance on any of the situations in which the characters find themselves, they are constantly confronting legal, moral, and philosophical conundrums that require some kind of resolution.  Because the living are rebuilding something of a society while trying to survive -- in a lawless world, with dwindling resources, surrounded by death -- their  struggles connect with principles conservatives hold dear: self-reliance, personal responsibility, building a civil society in an uncivil world, creating realistic rules to live by that comport with our moral compass but allow us to survive amidst lawlessness, weighing and making moral and ethical decisions that preserve individual liberty while balancing it against that which is best for the common weal.

The show is about persevering in the face of annihilation, remaining tenacious when the odds are stacked against you, employing survival techniques and self-reliance while developing interpersonal relationships with people you don't know and have no reason to trust but must rely upon anyway.  Viewers must grapple with the desperation the characters experience and how it often compels them to behave in ways they normally would never condone.  Is it right to put one's family above others?  Should groups share food, resources, and munitions and work together to stay alive, or is it literally every man for himself?  Should one bring children into this world?  When is it acceptable and not criminal to kill another person?  (At some point, everyone will have to kill someone he or she once loved.)  How do you know if others are a threat?  If they are, do you preemptively kill them or wait until they show their hand, when it might be too late?
...Too many living beings in our world respond with minimal, if any, rational thought.  Zombies have excuses to behave the way they do.  With our cognitive abilities, we do not.

Conservatives correctly conclude that today's progressive zombie army is destroying morality, responsibility, civility, and liberty.  We are struggling to survive in a morally bankrupt, fiscally apocalyptic world where instinct reigns over reason.  Not only must we battle the progressive zombies who threaten our humanity, civility, and society, but because of them, we are often compelled to fight amongst ourselves.  We see this currently playing out within the GOP as moderates, establishment types, social conservatives, and Tea Partiers clash over the direction the party should take.