Tag Archives: Northern Virginia

Beware Fake News

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Northern Virginia had a weather problem this week which resulted in people being stuck in traffic in the snow for many hours on Interstate 95. It does seem as if the problem was not dealt with as quickly as it should have been, but it’s Virginia and it’s snow. The south doesn’t really do snow very well, and southerners would do well to stay home at the sign of the first flake. However, there was some interesting commentary on this event on social media.

On Tuesday, Red State reported:

Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have been chock full of posts over the last 24 hours or so from understandably angry folks in the Virginia/D.C. area who have either been stuck for hours on I-95 in the middle of freezing temperatures and snow on the roads or who have family members and friends who are.

The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, someone who you never want to see in your state because when he’s there that usually means trouble is ahead, tweeted out a map image this morning showing how long the logjam is. He noted that “some people” had been stuck in their vehicles “for over eight hours”:

Some of the social  media was confused as to who was in charge:

As the frustrations mount and the insane clips and photos of what things look like continue to roll in, some have taken to the Twitter machine to blame Republican Glenn Youngkin, who I should point out is the Gov.-Elect and won’t be sworn in until January 15th. The blame was so predominant that as I write this, “Youngkin” is trending on Twitter.

For instance, Jonah Goldberg, who we have been reliably told is a truuuue conservative or something, said on Twitter that “If I was Glenn Youngkin I’d be flooding the zone to get this I-95 crap fixed. DC suburbs are vengeful about this kind of thing.”

The article includes the screenshot below:

I guess you only blame the Governor for horrible traffic problems if he is a Republican.

Money Doesn’t Always Win Political Races

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A number of the Democrat victories in Virginia were heavily funded by George Soros. George Soros also poured $800,000 into a political campaign in New York to unseat Sandra Doorley, a Republican District Attorney in Monroe County, New York.

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line Blog posted an article about Tuesday’s elections.

The article reports:

George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, succeeded in toppling two fine Northern Virginia prosecutors this year in Democratic primaries. Pouring unheard of amounts of money into local prosecutor races in Arlington and Fairfax Counties, Soros was able to take down Commonwealth Attorneys Theo Stamos in Arlington and Raymond Morrogh in Fairfax. They will be replaced by prosecutors who are borderline qualified, if that, and who very likely will adhere to the radical, anti-law enforcement agenda of Soros, their money man.

The article concludes:

Add the amount Soros spent on the Monroe County race to what he spent in local prosecutor races in Virginia and elsewhere, and you see how badly the Hungarian billionaire wants to “decriminalize crime” (Lonsberry’s phrase) in the United States.

Fortunately, Monroe County voters don’t share Soros’s pro-criminal agenda. They reelected Doorley handily. She captured around 56 percent of the vote.

Afterwards, Doorley thanked Soros for his involvement. She declared:

The Republican Party in Monroe Country is not dead, and we are alive and well. And look at all the great people, here. We still have the energy and we will be back. And I am back for another four more years, so, thank you, George Soros!

Soros deserves to be taunted. However, I don’t buy the suggestion, other than in jest, that his large contributions to left-wing candidates in local races are counterproductive. Soros made a difference in Virginia, and I suspect that Doorley’s race was closer than it would have been without the Hungarian’s $800,000 contribution to her opponent.

Soros keeps probing for weaknesses in the opposition to his radical plans for America. He does so skillfully. Fortunately, Monroe County passed his “stress test” on Tuesday.

Money does not always win elections.

 

What Hillary Clinton And Tim Kaine Will Mean For American Jobs

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The Washington Examiner posted an article about the immigration policies of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

The article reports:

Sen. Tim Kaine, who told Telemundo in Spanish that he and Hillary Clinton would push legalize 12 million illegals in their first 100 days in the White House, is also a proponent of bringing up to 1.8 million more foreign workers sought by U.S. outsourcing companies.

Kaine, who on Wednesday is expected to win the nomination as the Democratic vice presidential candidate here, was one of several co-sponsors of S. 169, the so-called I-Squared Act, that would have boosted visas for high-tech workers from 65,000 to 300,000 a year.

Because the H-1B employment visas last six years, that bill and a similar one currently under consideration in the Senate could bring in 1.8 million new workers.

The visas have become controversial because many big firms who apply for the visas are replacing higher-wage American workers with cheaper foreign help.

There is a rule that states that American companies cannot replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers, but that rule exempts jobs where the employee is paid $60,000 per year or more. Obviously, jobs in information technology routinely pay more than that, so American workers can easily be replaced.

The article concludes:

Kaine cheered immigration reform as a plan to help companies like those in high-tech rich Northern Virginia find workers. In a 2013 trip to Oracle, he said, “Immigration is fundamentally a talent issue. How do we attract and train the most talented people in the world to come to Virginia and help grow our economy?” He added: “I am encouraged by the bipartisan proposal laid out by a group of senators that recognizes the need for a comprehensive solution to an immigration system that hasn’t been seriously reformed in more than 25 years.”

We do need immigration reform. We need to make it easier and cheaper for skilled workers to come to America. We also need to make it illegal for new immigrants to immediately go on welfare and food stamps program. We need to encourage people to assimilate and become part of America and the American dream. I am not convinced we are doing that right now.

A Wake-Up Call From Northern Virginia

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Channel 5 in Northern Virginia reported last Tuesday that five arrests related to ISIS have been made in Northern Virginia in recent months.

The article reports:

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The article also mentions Reza Niknejad of Prince William County. He was dropped off at Dulles International Airport last year with plans to join ISIS. No one has seen him since. I think it is time to start paying attention to what is being taught in the mosques of America. Terrorists in America are not materializing out of thin air. I realize that they have the internet, but I am inclined to think that they also have inspiration closer to home.

Most of the large mosques in America are built and funded by the Islamic Society of North America. This organization is named as a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Exhibits in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. The exhibit which names the group is the Muslim Brotherhood document entitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” If you have never read this document, please google the exhibits and read it. It is chilling.

Hurting The People You Claimed You Wanted To Help

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ObamaCare is in effect now. Some of the penalties for not having insurance are on hold until after the election, and the employer mandate is on hold until after the election, but ObamaCare is now the law of the land. There are a few court cases pending about the birth control mandate, but right now we are stuck with ObamaCare. So what does that mean?

For one thing, it means that confusion abounds. The U.K. Daily Mail reported on Friday that the staff in a hospital in Northern Virginia was turning away patients who couldn’t figure out whether or not they were covered by ObamaCare.

The article cites one example:

Patients in a close-in DC suburb who think they’ve signed up for new insurance plans are struggling to show their December enrollments are in force, and health care administrators aren’t taking their word for it.

In place of quick service and painless billing, these Virginians are now facing the threat of sticker-shock that comes with bills they can’t afford.

‘They had no idea if my insurance was active or not!’ a coughing Maria Galvez told MailOnline outside the Inova Healthplex facility in the town of Springfield.

She was leaving the building without getting a needed chest x-ray.

‘The people in there told me that since I didn’t have an insurance card, I would be billed for the whole cost of the x-ray,’ Galvez said, her young daughter in tow. ‘It’s not fair – you know, I signed up last week like I was supposed to.’

The x-ray’s cost, she was told, would likely be more than $500.

As she said, she did what she was supposed to, and now she can’t get the medical care she needs. The article points out that even if she had her medical insurance card, the Carefirst plan that Ms. Galvez signed up for has a $5,500 per-person deductible for 2014–that is the amount she would have to pay out-of-pocket before her coverage would apply to medical expenses.

The article concludes:

President Obama has attracted widespread criticism, and a ‘lie of the year’ award from one newspaper’s fact-checker, for promising that Americans who liked their health plans would be allowed to keep them.

Dr. John Venetos, a Chicago gastroenterologist, told the Associated Press on Thursday that he is seeing ‘tremendous uncertainty and anxiety’ among his patients who signed up for Obamacare plans but don’t have insurance cards.

‘They’re not sure if they have coverage,’ Venetos said. ‘It puts the heavy work on the physician.’

‘At some point, every practice is going to make a decision about how long can they continue to see these patients for free if they are not getting paid.’

We need to scrap ObamaCare and make a few changes to the previous healthcare system that would expand coverage for those who may not be able to afford it. We need to make insurance portable across state lines, we need to link insurance to the person–not the company he works for, we need tort reform. and we need tax subsidies to make sure low-income people can afford health insurance. What we don’t need is to mess up the insurance for the 90 percent of Americans who actually like their current healthcare plan.

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