Wednesday stuff, for want of a better word

My day is not proceeding as planned.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.

But I still found some good stuff out there:

For all the criticism aimed at him for daring to defend his nation from nuclear annihilation, Netanyahu successfully shifted the paradigm — not far enough, but it’s movement in the right direction.

Apparently 25 years or so is all it takes for New Yorkers to forget the horrors of Progressive government.  I know this is unfair to the small, smart minority that didn’t vote for de Blasio, but I hope that New York goes to hell in a hand basket very quickly (kind of the way Hollande’s France or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe did).  That seems to be the only way in which people invested in liberalism learn lessons.  (And sadly, sometimes, even the worst that can happen isn’t bad enough.)

Here are Seven devastating facts about Obamacare that you should memorize and politely slip into conversation whenever you find yourself trapped in conversation with those who still believe it’s a winner.

Jonah Goldberg suggests that the Republicans might want to be there for Tea Partiers because, ultimately, Tea Partiers are there for the Republicans.

And two from Keith Koffler.  The first is about Obama’s fraudulent conduct with regard to his “changing” views on gay marriage, and the second is about his administration’s fraudulent conduct regarding Obamacare.

I think it’s important that we stop using the word “lie.”  In the context of politics, we tend to think of a “lie” as an after-the-fact cover-up (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). What Obama has done, repeatedly, is to commit fraud.  Fraud is a very specific legal animal.  Here’s as good a definition as any, culled from a fairly recent California case:  “The tort of deceit or fraud requires: “(a) misrepresentation (false representation, concealment, or nondisclosure); (b) knowledge of falsity (or ‘scienter’); (c) intent to defraud, i.e., to induce reliance; (d) justifiable reliance; and (e) resulting damage.” (Engalla v. Permanente Medical Group, Inc. (1997) 15 Cal.4th 951, 974, 64 Cal.Rptr.2d 843, 938 P.2d 903, internal quotation marks omitted.)  Fraud is not a lie.  It’s much worse than a lie because you’re not just protecting yourself; you’re deliberating setting out to make others rely on you to their detriment.

And of course, Sebelius seems charmingly insouciant about the fact that your private information could end up in the hands of felons that Obama’s government has hired to collect that private information: