Random stories and quotations that add up to something

I found a few things interesting from a recent issue of National Review. Here goes:

1. Republicans were not able to stop Obamacare, but there was one tiny victory they had – requiring Congressman/women and some of their aides to enroll in what the law calls "exchanges." Now, congressional Democrats are starting to worry that they won't be able to attract young, single staffers, are going to have to pay much more for exchange cover. He then they paid today, thanks to the obscure, intricate regulations and Obamacare. So, guess what? The Democrats are trying to create an exemption for their offices. Is anyone surprised? Congress always passes stupid laws for the rest of us, but they are the first to make sure they get exemptions from it.

2. We now have a new Secretary of State, John Kerry. Listen to a few of these comments by him. When he testified before Congress, he was asked about Benghazi and finished an answer by saying, "we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done." On another day, he made a casual comparison of those who died in the Boston terror bombing to the thugs who lost their lives on the Turkish ship when they attempted to break an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Here's one more Kerry comment on jihadists: "I think the world has had enough of people who have no belief system, no policy for jobs, no policy for education." Well, the individuals he's referring to actually do have a rather well-developed belief system. It's called Islam.

3. I love reading about cars, so I was interested in what happened to an automobile company called Fisker. It was going to build a beautiful plug-in luxury car called the Karma. Unfortunately, the company is nearly bankrupt. Here's for all of us come in – the American taxpayer is on the hook for a loan of over $500 million given to it by the Department of Energy. I keep in mind these are the same people who brought us Solyndra. In fact, VP Biden stood at the site of a proposed Fisker plant in Delaware, promising that the government's investment would return billions of dollars. This is what we get when we have an inefficient government trying to determine winners and losers in the private sector.

4. Remember the terrible explosion in Texas, where a fertilizer-plant blew up, killing 15 people? Some on the left argued that this was due to Texas's lighter regulatory touch. Actually, the facility was supposedly regulated by no fewer than seven agencies. The problem was not the regulations but the regulators –OSHA , for example, had not visited the site since the Reagan Administration. Here we go again: the federal government thinks it knows best, but it fails often in doing its duties.

Well, those are just a few items that interested me. I hope they are instructive to all of us.