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Thursday, October 31, 2013

The President has set the tone for the way the federal government operates.


James Taranto quotes Joe Klein:  

"The President should set the tone for the way the federal government operates," Klein concludes. "This President hasn't done that."

Taranto comments:  "It seems to us the problem is precisely that he has done that."

There's nothing more to add.

Liberal Obama-Bots are now lying that they never lied about ObamaCare


Everyone now admits (well not everyone) that Obama lied when he told us over and over that you could keep you insurance and your doctor if you wanted to, and that thanks to ObamaCare your insurance premiums would decline by $2500. 

Via Megan McArdle
The administration reiterated that, in Obama’s words, “We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” They also promised that the average family would save $2,500 a year on premiums. There was no fine print about how some folks would lose their insurance, be forced into narrower doctor networks, and see premiums rise, even though they seem to have known what was going to happen.
How was this supposed to happen?


 Q. Obama says his plan will save $2,500 annually for my family. How?

A. Through a combination of developing efficiencies in the system, expanding coverage to all Americans, and picking up the cost of some high-cost cases. Specifically:

-- Health IT investment, which will reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending in the health care system. Examples include extra hospital stays because of preventable medical errors and duplicative diagnostic tests;

-- Improving prevention and management of chronic conditions;

-- Increasing insurance industry competition and reining in the abusive practices of monopoly insurance and drug companies;

-- Providing reinsurance for catastrophic cases, which will reduce insurance premiums; and

-- Ensuring every American has health coverage, which will reduce spending on the “uncompensated” care of uninsured people who end up in emergency rooms and whose care is picked up by institutions and then passed through higher charges to insured individuals.
If this sounds reasonable to you, you are one of those people who run up credit card debt and pay the minimum every month.  In other words you are fool and financially illiterate.

But now Obama flacks like Ezra Klein are trying to tell us that that they were always telling us the truth.  Let's look at the record.

Here's Peter Suderman in Reason who takes Klein apart with his own words:


This is a point that The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein made on MSNBC last night in a discussion of Obamacare’s effect on premiums with The Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy. Roy noted that, when compared with today’s rates, individual market premiums bought on an exchange would be dramatically higher for many younger, healthier people—with rates doubling in some cases versus the rates he found online.

Now it’s true that those online rates are teasers that don’t apply to everyone; 26 percent of the market will either pay more or not get coverage. But that still leaves roughly three quarters of the market who will see far higher rates. Maybe, Roy said last night, that’s just fine, because we believe that it’s “a good thing for people to pay double for their health insurance because we’re now protecting the sick. But that’s a debate we didn’t have really in 2009.”

Except that according to Klein, it is a debate we had:“This is a debate we had,” he said. “This is what frustrates me here. I remember doing this debate over and over and over again. So Evan Bayh wrote the Congressional Budget Office—[Bayh] was a senator back then—he said: ‘What’s going to happen to average premiums?’ The CBO came back and said, ‘Well, average premiums are going to go up a bunch. And then people like me went in and looked at what they [the CBO] said, and they said, ‘Average premiums are going to go up but that’s because people are going to have to start buying better health care because they’re going to get subsidies, because we’re going to make them pay for better health care because now they can afford it.’”

Far higher rates for younger, healthier individuals were to be expected. “This was out there,” Klein finished. “And we talked about it a lot.”

I'm not so sure. Liberal wonks like Klein may have talked about it—we’ll get to that a little later. But the president and his administration did not talk about it much at all. Rather, the overarching message from the White House, and from the law’s supporters generally, was that Obamacare would cause health insurance premiums to drop.

Let’s go back in time to when President Obama first began to make the case for his health care overhaul. Here’s how he touted his health plan in May 2007, early in his run for office. “If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less.” On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama continued to sell the law as a way to lower health premiums, promising at least 15 times to reduce health premiums for families by $2500 on average. And as Buzzfeed notes, Obama didn’t stop pointing to lower premiums when he made it into the White House in 2009. In May of that year, he told C-SPAN that if health industry groups commit to savings—“we end up saving $2 trillion…a lot of those savings can go back into the pockets of American consumers in the form of lower premiums. That’s what we are driving for.”

From the very beginning, in other words, Obama’s message was not that the law would result in higher premiums, but better coverage. It was that the law would lower premiums, end of story.
Now maybe you think that’s not fair. After all, these statements were made before the specifics of the law had been drafted, and before experts at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere would weigh in.

So let’s flash forward a few months, to the end of 2009, in the weeks leading up to the Senate’s vote to pass the health care law. What was the White House saying then?

A headline from the White House blog on November 4, 2009 makes it clear that the essential message about premiums hadn’t changed:“Word from the White House: Objective Analysis Shows Reform will Help Small Business, Lower Premiums for American Families.” [emphasis added] The “objective analysis” in question was a report from Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a key architect of both Obamacare and the Massachusetts health care overhaul.

The White House blog post touted Gruber’s conclusion that the health care legislation would save individuals anywhere from $500 to $3000 a year, and families even more. And those savings, the post emphasized, would “come in addition to the more generous benefits consumers would receive by purchasing insurance through the newly created exchange”—as well as “in addition to increased protections” for individuals with preexisting conditions. Gruber even claimedthat the savings would come for those who did not qualify for subsidies. Low-income individuals eligible for assistance, he said, the savings would be much larger.

This is November of 2009, long after the bulk of the legislative work has been completed. And yet the White House and a prominent Obamacare adviser were still both claiming that premiums would go down, and that benefits would go up, for individual insurance purchased through an exchange. This was the message that the administration was selling. This was the debate they were having, from the time Obama started running for office until well into the first year of his presidency.

Of course, we still haven’t talked about the Congressional Budget Office report that Klein mentioned—the one responding to Sen. Evan Bayh’s query about how the health law would affect insurance premiums. That came out shortly after Gruber’s report. The White House wrote up that report on its official blog too. And once again, the primary message is crystal clear. The headline to that post reads:“CBO Confirms Families Will Save Money Under Health Reform.” The second paragraph says that the health law “will mean lower premiums for American families.” And the very first bullet point in the list of highlights says that “Americans buying comparable health plans to what they have today in the individual market would see premiums fall by 14 to 20 percent.”

The only hint that higher premiums might be on the horizon if the health law passes comes a little later, when the post says that“where the CBO does see premiums rising, it's not because Americans are paying more for the same coverage – it's that they’re making a choice to purchase better plans that weren't previously available to them.” And it downplays this point by suggesting that the CBO may have understated the cost-savings the law will produce.

Yet even the admission that CBO does see some premiums rising turns out to have missed the mark. Part of the reason we’re now seeing some higher premiums in the exchanges is because of the coverage requirements exchange-based plans have to meet. It’s not that individuals are making their own choices to buy more expansive and thus more expensive coverage. It’s that insurers are being told by regulators that more expansive coverage is what they must sell.

Even by the time the CBO report arrives, there’s still no mistaking the message that the Obama White House was selling to anyone who would listen: that premiums would go down, that benefits would go up, and that if premiums did happen to go up, it would only be as a result of an individual choice to buy more robust coverage.

But what about the wonks, like Klein? What kind of conversation were they having at the end of 2009? If you take Klein as representative, you find that it was somewhat more nuanced than what was coming out of the White House, and that the higher cost of individual premiums was mentioned. But the emphasis was still on lower premiums, not on the tradeoffs made to get more robust coverage.

At the beginning of November 2009, for example, Klein quoted and linked to Gruber’s paper with no commentary, under the headline “Massachusetts provides evidence that health-care reform lowers insurance premiums.”

Later that month, Klein looked at the CBO analysis requested by Bayh. In the third paragraph, he notes that in the individual market,“average premiums are expected to rise by 10 to 12 percent.” His post goes on to explain that, according to the CBO, this is because the average insurance policy purchased through the exchange will cover a much larger share of an individual’s costs and a slightly wider range of benefits. In the end, what we’re looking at, he says, is “a 10 to 12 percent increase in premiums for insurance that's about 30 percent better than what people are getting now. It's a steal.”
So this is the discussion that Klein was having: Yes, average premiums increase somewhat, but benefits increase even more. But what about others? Not Paul Krugman; one of his posts referenced the CBO’s report and conclude that “premiums would stay about the same for people with group coverage, while falling significantly for most of those in the small-group or individual markets.”

Whether Klein’s discussion of individual market premium hikes in the exchanges would have led a typical reader to expect the kind of rate increases we’re seeing in California is another question. The percentage increases he wrote up were just 10 or 12 percent, not the 100 percent hikes Avik Roy has pointed out. On the other hand, Klein was talking about averages, and the biggest hikes are concentrated amongst the young and healthy demographic. It’s not possible say with certainty what most people would have taken away from his discussion of trade-offs.

But we do have some sense of what Klein wanted people to take away. First because in Klein’s initial write up of the CBO report, he goes on to emphasize that the individual market hikes occur before the application of subsidies, which he notes will be available to about 57 percent of the market. “So in the final analysis,” he wrotes, “the effect of reform on your typical individual market purchasers is to give them insurance that's about 30 percent better but only 10 to 12 percent more expensive, and then assure them subsidies that will lower their payments by more than 50 percent.” Yes, we’re still talking about averages. But it looks fairly plain that his message is first and foremost aboutlower premiums, not the tradeoff of better benefits for higher premiums.

Finally, we have an idea of what Klein wanted readers to take away from his analysis of the health law’s effect on premiums, because a few days later, he followed up with another post. The concluding paragraph of that post reiterates the key points from this original. “The individual market sees costs go up, as people can purchase better insurance at a lower cost,” he wrote. “And after subsidies, most people are paying less and getting more than they would absent reform.” Indeed, “most Americans will see their premiums go down even if you account for the better insurance plans they'll be purchasing.” The headline he wrote for his post emphasizes the main point: “To repeat, the CBO found that premiums go down under health care reform.”

This is the debate that even those relatively few Americans who follow wonky policy pundits were hearing—not one that emphasized tradeoffs, but one that repeatedly emphasized that Obamacare would have mostly positive impacts on premiums, and that any negative impacts would be modest. So it’s worth asking: Was this the sort of debate that effectively prepared people for the sort of rates we’re seeing in California, and that we’re likely to see in many other states as well? Or was it, as Roy said, a debate we didn’t really have in 2009? Decide for yourself. But when you do, know when it comes to the discussion of Obamacare and premiums that people were having in 2009, this is what was out there. And this is what the law’s administration backers and other supporters talked about a lot.


Let me repeat:  Liberal Obama-Bots are now lying that they never lied about ObamaCare

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Chuck Todd Lying for a Living

On Morning Joe,we have an excellent example of a presstitute lying.  Chuck Todd tells one whopper after another.  Told to explain why Obama repeated the lie that "If you like your insurance you can keep it. Period." Gave this answer ...

CHUCK TODD: They put themselves in the companies. They were making promises that they were hoping the insurance companies were going to keep. But when you think about that initial statement, and at the time all of us said we're highly skeptical of how he can make that promise because let's look -- let's look at our own company. We can't decide to keep our health care if Comcast decides to change health plans. Okay. We can't. We’ll get a choice. We’ll get a, maybe an A, B, or C. So when the president said it, he was basically only people on Medicare, Tricare, or Medicaid.
To which I respond:
  • Who told you that Obama was hoping the insurance companies were going to fulfill Obama's promise?  You lie.
  • " at the time all of us said we're highly skeptical of how he can make that promise"  Really F. Chuck?  Because I don't remember one of you bringing up this skepticism.  You lie.
  • Finally F. Chuck, we're not talking about employer provided health care here.  This is a benefit provided by the employer.  We're talking about individuals who don't get that benefit but now end up paying thousands of dollars more per year for crappier insurance with higher deductibles in many cases.  We're talking about old men who are forced to buy maternity care insurance, F. Chuck.  You lie.
And because I think the F. Chuck Todd is probably smarter that a Maine potato, I take this next statement is also an out-and-out lie ...

CHUCK TODD: I never understood why he said if you like your health care plan you can keep it because he was relying somehow on the insurance companies to keep this promise.
 
You lie.  You never understood why he lied?  Let me buy you a clue you effing moron, he was trying to get elected and was lying through his teeth because if he told the truth he would lose.  F. Chuck Todd knows very well why Obama lied.  And then repeats the lie about relying on insurance companies keeping Obama's promises for him. 
 
F. Chuck Todd knows his audience and knows they are mostly mindless partisans because that's who watches MSNBC.  The like to be lied to by the likes of F. Chuck Todd. 

The best euphemisms for Obama’s giant “if you like your plan you can keep it” lie

Via Hot Air:

1. Dan Amira of New York Mag:

“overly simplistic guarantee”

2. Rep. Steny Hoyer, Minority Leader, House of Representatives:

“accurate…not precise enough.”

3. Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico:

“sweeping generalizations that can be contradicted by individual experiences”

“soundbites”

“pithy promises”

4. James Carville on “The O’Reilly Factor”:

“I think what he could have made is a more nuanced, accurate statement.”

5. Josh Barro, Business Insider:

“never a reasonable promise…yes, that statement is proving false — and it’s a good thing.”

6. Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary

“You can make that point if you want.”

Also, argle, bargle, blerg.

7. Sen. Harry Reid, U.S. Senate, along with Carney, just eschewing euphemism for more lies:

“He didn’t say anything wrong. That was true.”

8. Chuck Todd, MSNBC:

“promises that they were hoping the insurance companies were going to keep.”

Update: And, a lovely euphemism for the victims of this broken promise, from the American Prospect, which goes all out in the headline by calling them “phony victims.”

The body of the article refers to them as “exemplars.” Those would be the middle-class exemplars formerly known as anecdotes, I guess.

Famous Presidential Lies


Jonah Goldberg

The most famous presidential lies have to do with misconduct (Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” or Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations”) or war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of war” and then plunged us into a calamitous war. Franklin D. Roosevelt made a similar vow: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

Roosevelt knew he was making false promises. He explained to an aide: “If someone attacks us, it isn’t a foreign war, is it?” When his own son questioned his honesty, FDR replied: “If I don’t say I hate war, then people are going to think I don’t hate war. . . . If I don’t say I won’t send our sons to fight on foreign battlefields, then people will think I want to send them. . . . So you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.”

And now we have the biggest Presidential lie about domestic policy ever uttered by any President, and it was repeated until everyone can say it, like a slick commercial.

“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

As an aside, the Virginian Pilot spins it as a Republican accusation rather than a fact: "Republicans: Obama Broke Promise to let people keep their plans."

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Under Pressure From The White House, NBC Throws Its Reporter Under the Bus and Censors News That Obama Wrote Regs to Disqualify and Terminate Health Insurance Policies

 
 
Ace of Spades makes an important point:  Everybody in the executive branch works for Barack Obama and that includes everyone at HHS,  If he wants to redeem his promise he can do so with one phone call.

This means Obama has the actual power -- not the puffed up, falsely asserted unconstitutional power, but the genuine legal power -- to call this agency and tell them, "We sold this bill as permitting people to keep their insurance; please re-write the regulations in a way that will honor this promise."

Remember, regulations are supposed to add details to the spirit of the law. They are not supposed to change the meaning of the law. Obama's regulations -- written at his behest, or at least with his connivance -- change the meaning of the law to render the "grandfathered policy" provision a nullity.

...The White House is taking the position that even a minor escalation in policy premium -- something that always happens, given the constant inflation in health care insurance costs -- constitutes a "new policy" which is then not grandfathered.

This is absurd. A regulation could easily be written that any escalation in premium equal to less than the rate of health care inflation + 1% will be considered the same policy and thus grandfathered. They are deliberately writing the regulations to disqualify the maximum number of policies, because they want to force the maximum number of people into the exchanges, which are, effectively, high-risk pools, and need a lot of healthy bodies to have any shot at solvency.

And any policy that is cancelled can then have its rates forcibly jacked up by ObamaCare, in order to subsidize others.

... Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.

That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.

So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.

"And then I ended it with period"

obamacare.png
 
The HHS wrote its regulations in contradiction to the law of the United States and not only "interpreted the provision narrowly," as Lisa Meyer said, but actually changed its meaning to take back the protection the law afforded.

The Back-End of ObamaCare

I went to see my doctor today and talked about ObamaCare. He suspects that the problems at the front end may well be a smokescreen for problems at the back end.
 
He has not been contacted by anyone to see if he wants to participate in the exchanges. Every doctor should have been asked if they want to participate, but he believes that most have not.
 
Keep in mind that under the ObamaCare exchanges you have to see a doctor who’s enrolled as part of the system. If this is true, most people in our neck of the woods who want to sign up for ObamaCare will have a very tough time finding a physician who will treat them.

The Devil is very good looking.

 
 
The Devil is very good looking.

A book I read a long time ago made an incredibly important point about the detection of evil men. People who rise to levels of importance but who are fundamentally evil almost always have the ability to disguise their true nature. They can only be detected before they do great harm by noticing the nature of the people around them. These are people who don’t or can’t disguise their true nature. This is why it was incredibly revealing to many people that those around Barack Obama were like people like Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Bill “Bomber” Ayers, Tony “Fraud & Bribery” Rezko, Valerie “Slum Lord” Jarrett. The list goes on but suffice it to say that in addition to the individuals just mentioned Barack Obama is the product of the Chicago political machine, arguably the most – or one of the most – corrupt political machines in the country.

Obama actually brags about his ability to mirror the people he is in contact with. It explains his campaign slogan in 2008: “Hope and Change,” a totally meaningless phrase in terms of content which people who are gullible interpret in such a way that it means whatever the hearer wants to hear.

The gullible are not only those who are classified as “low information” voters but also members of the intelligentsia. Even people like George Will and Charles Krauthammer tried and failed to understand Obama because they expected him to reveal himself by talking to them. Of course they could not perceive the real person because he was holding a mirror up to them and they were seeing themselves.  And they would look at the people around Obama and say that "guilt by association" is not a legitimate way of judging a person.  They could not be more wrong.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Kerry and me.

 
 
Kerry Dougherty is a columnist in the Virginian Pilot and is unquestionably the most mainstream of the ones that the Pilot pays. She’s also a good writer. You feel that you get a chance to know her from her stories about her parents, especially her mom, who was apparently a heavy smoker who liked a cocktail or two. This is the sort of family that people can relate to: neither plaster saints nor “Mommy Dearest” villains.

The other thing to respect about Daugherty is that she’s more than willing to take on the conventional corruption that passes for local government in places like Virginia Beach. Here the big money comes from real estate interests who are always ready to saddle the taxpayers with expensive things like “light rail,” a boondoggle that is designed to enrich only the developers along the line at the cost of a billion dollars.

So I was disappointed to find Kerry using the label “ultraconservative” as a way of smearing Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia. There is no question that Cuccinelli is a conservative, but one of the ways that the MSM uses to demonize people on the Right is to label them and ridicule them rather than engage them in debate.  Cuccinelli is Catholic and opposes abortion. Cuccinelli's opponent has been making the case that he is waging a "war on women"  because he opposes abortion. So is opposition to abortion an "ultraconservative" position outside the American mainstream?  According to the Washington Post, no fan of Republicans,
By 56 percent to 27 percent, more Americans would prefer to impose limits on abortions after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than the 24-week mark established by the Supreme Court, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
An additional 10 percent of those surveyed volunteered that they would prefer to outlaw abortion in the United States altogether or limit it sooner than 20 weeks after fertilization.
The fact is that the country is roughly evenly split between people who oppose abortion and those who support it. But when you ask people to get more granular, you find that only 19% say that abortion should be legal in all cases.  
 
That means that about one in five are in favor of abortion up to the moment of birth: for convenience, for fetal abnormalities, for sex selection, and  - since we’ll soon be able to test for the homosexual gene – to abort babies who may be homosexual. Those who oppose abortion in all cases, 17%, are roughly equal to those who favor it in all cases; neatly balancing the scales. If you remove those who support abortion in all cases and add those who have no opinion (22%), 78% of Americans would like some limits to abortion which puts them at odds with Terry McAuliffe and his supporters at Planned Parenthood as well as with Barack Obama.

We wonder if Kerry Daugherty would like to reconsider who should be tarred with the “Ultra” label, or if she has other issues in mind?

"Laugh While You Can Monkey Boys"

a_leftbehind.jpg

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.

Beware the Tea Party

TeaParty.jpg

I swear Obama didn't know what he was up to.

a_srwhz8d.jpg

News media to American people: “Screw you.” It's all about Barack "he didn't know" Obama

ObamaCare is a disaster for the American people. Initially the headlines were about the fact that the website isn’t working. Now we’re learning that hundreds of thousands (soon to be millions) of individuals and families buying their own policies are being cancelled and the ObamaCare alternatives are thousands of dollars more expensive. Middle class America is being crushed, but the news media are obsessively focused on the effect it’s having on Obama and the Democrats. Who cares if Mrs. Jones can’t afford both ObamaCare and rent; the real question for the media is how is this going to affect Obama and the other Democrats in the 2014 elections.
 
And if you think the devastation is bad for those subject to the “individual mandate” wait until the one-year delay in the corporate mandate kicks in. That’s where most people are insured and there is every incentive for companies to terminate their medical plans or to pass the premium increases on to their employees. That’s when you can see the real effects of ObamaCare on the economy.
 
The economy is going to take a hit. Because you can’t take thousands of dollars away from American families and not effect the economy. There is no economic difference between a massive tax hike on individuals and the money ObamaCare is going to suck out of the disposable income of the middle class. Make no mistake, this will affect the Middle Class hardest. The poor will turn to Medicaid; the rich will shrug off the added cost. The Middle Class, those earning between $45,000 and $200,000 will be hit hardest and it will that’s the sector of the economy that has the biggest impact on the sales of groceries, housing, cars, fuel, even entertainment. With an economy barely keeping its head above water, this is like throwing a drowning man an anchor.
 
But you can bet that when the economy declines into an ObamaCare induced recession, the media will call it “unexpected,” and be surprised.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

How bad was the introduction of Medicare part "D"

One of the excuses that the Left has run out is that when Medicare part “D” was introduced there were problems with it too. The reaction by many is to say , yes … but. In other words to assume that the comparisons are accurate. Why? Because the rollout of “D” was eight years ago and only affected older people so very few of the people commenting on ObamaCare remember it or have any personal experience with the “D” rollout.

So let’s see how bad the “D” rollout was. It happens that there was an article in the Washington Post about it, but like most articles it wasn’t very helpful because it wasn’t very specific.

Let’s go to Jack Hoadley at Georgetown University a fan of ObamaCare for a more in-depth look at “D.”

He first notes that the press introduction was delayed because of technical issues, but the public was allowed to access it on November 8, 2005.  How did that go?
Visitors to the site could not access it for most of the first two hours. When it finally did come up around 5 p.m., it operated awfully slowly.
During the 2005 signup period for Medicare Part D, the number of daily visitors to the online Plan Finder peaked at about 160,000 for a program that would enroll more people than are expected to enroll under the Affordable Care Act.

Seniors in 2005 were more likely to use the program’s 1-800-Medicare call centers than the online resources, but the daily volume there never exceeded half a million callers. The call centers experienced both dropped calls and frustrating wait times to get through, especially in the first days and weeks.

Glitches continued with the Part D website and call center throughout the open enrollment period. But the program added both phone lines and customer service representatives and implemented other upgrades over the weeks. The website – both its functionality and the accuracy of its information – was the source of ongoing frustration for its users, but it did get better over time.

By the end of open enrollment in May 2006, over 16 million successfully enrolled for drug benefits in Part D (not counting another 6 million automatically enrolled as a result of participation in both Medicare and Medicaid). Initial glitches did not deter their enrollment. And today, Part D enjoys widespread popularity.

So how did that compare to the rollout of ObamaCare? I just tried to access HealthCare.gov and received the message that millions of Americans are getting a month after the biggest government program launch in American history:

The system is down at the moment.

We are experiencing technical difficulties and hope to have them resolved soon. Please try again later.
In a hurry? You might be able to apply faster at our Marketplace call center. Call 1-800-318-2596 to talk with one of our trained representatives about applying over the phone.


To compare the Part "D" launch to the ObamaCare rollout is like finding your car with a scratch in the parking lot vs. a head-on collision with a Semi-truck. The Part “D” rollout allowed people to enroll via the Internet and phone, ObamaCare was Internet only. I repeat, you can’t enroll in ObamaCare by phone.   All applications have to go through the computer system that doesn't work.   

Second, the initial interest was lower for Part “D” than ObamaCare because it was aimed at seniors, not the entire population. However, in the six months following the rollout, 16 million signed up, far exceeding the 7 million expected to sign up for ObamaCare.

So we can conclude that the problems with Part “D” were in no way comparable to the fiasco ObamaCare is experiencing. And that’s just the issue of technology.

Once Part “D’ got rolling it was discovered that the cost was actually BELOW expectations. The cost and adverse selection problems with ObamaCare have yet to be fully seen because so few have actually been able to enroll in the commercial plans, most choosing the Medicare plan. ObamaCare is an actuarial and financial nightmare for anyone who isn’t on life-support or needs a heart transplant RIGHT NOW. Premium increases, deductible increases and coverage for things that the insured doesn't want or need for the healthy middle class who need insurance for medical catastrophes are going to be ruinous. On the other hand, Sandra Fluke is going to get free birth control pills. That’s worth destroying the health care system to save it, isn’t it?

In other non-news: Obama lied to Merkel about NSA spying.


Obama lies as easily as breathing.

President Barack Obama knew of the organization’s spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel – and approved of the efforts, a National Security Agency official has reportedly told a German newspaper.

The Economic Times writes the “high-ranking” NSA official spoke to Bild am Sonntag on the condition of anonymity, saying the president, “not only did not stop the operation, but he also ordered it to continue.”

The Economic Times also reports the official told Bild am Sonntag that Obama did not trust Merkel, wanted to know everything about her, and thus ordered the NSA to prepare a dossier on the politician.

Remember "you can keep your insurance & your doctor if you like them & premiums are going down $2500?"  Perhaps the biggest lies told by any president in the history of the country.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Obamacare is an oxymoron

The most anti-American president of this country does not care for the well-being of average Americans, whether democrats or republicans. His is not a “care” but a bevy of threats, compulsion, breaking of laws that appear in the Constitution.

His so called “Health and Human Services” have nothing of “human”. The HHS are there to jeopardize the physical and mental health of American citizens, from unborn babies through elderly citizens. Americans are the victims now of their government silent economic and psychological terrorism. They now have to live under pressure wondering about their fate, as a result of this threat against their livelihood and their health safety.

Let me be clear: If you like your insurance, you can go fuck yourself because fuck you.


What Obama really said.

The Twisted Morality of Death Panels

tcfkg 

Remember how Sarah Palin was ridiculed for mentioning "death panels?" Now, a mere four years later, Liberals are claiming they're absolutely essential.
Canada has death panels – and that’s a good thing. So reads a headline at Slate, where author Adam Goldenberg defends letting a government committee intervene in healthcare to decide who lives and who dies.

Liberalism loves death.

Shocking: Bigoted White Tea Party Woman Beats Petite Black Female Reporter ... Ooops

"Out of the way, what do you think this is .... Asshole!"



Do not take my picture!

Via TownHall

I’m sorry, I got that wrong. Stupid me. I’m never going to make it in this business. It was actually a big black liberal woman who whaled on a petite white conservative female reporter last weekend.

Whew, thank God I corrected myself because we all know that if a hulking honky Tea Party mama with dragon nails had smacked down a svelte progressive black female reporter (and on film, no less) it would have caused a media firestorm that would have escalated into:

1. Daily front page coverage by the New York Times

2. Watts-like riots across the nation

3. Non-stop bit**ing from Al Sharpton

4. The end of the Tea Party as we know it

5. And a drunk Kanye would’ve surfaced on a quickly-cobbled, specious Hollywood telethon against racism sporting white Levolor shades and a red leather Michael Jackson jacket and somehow pin all this Tea Party violence on George W. Bush’s primal hatred for black people.

Another ObamaCare Problem


... the biggest single domestic policy lie in presidential history

If You Like Your Healthcare Plan, You Can Keep Your Healthcare Plan

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action


At one time the news media would be outraged.  Freedom of the press and all that.  Today it's either ignored or applauded by those same people.

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service.

Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland's Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6.

How many questions will paid liar Jay Carney get about this at the next White House press briefing?  Any?  Will there be outrage?  Wanna bet?  And what can the courts do?  Who will enforce a court order against this administration? 

The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times about problems inside the Homeland Security Department, were seized under a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a “potato gun” suspected of belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, a Coast Guard employee. Mr. Flanagan has not been charged with any wrongdoing since the raid.

The warrant, obtained by the Times, offered no specific permission to seize reporting notes or files.

It sounds like the American Gestapo used a bogus search warrant to seize her files and identify whistleblowers.  It's the Chicago way.  Would you be a whistleblower if you worked for the government and saw wrongdoing, knowing that your press contacts can have their records seized using a search warrant for some unrelated subject? 
 
Here's a thought, whistleblowers.  Use the "new" media.  Leak to Rush Limbaugh (use his e-mail) or Glenn Reynolds or any other blogger, even me.  It will eventually even get into the old government-loving press and your tracks will be covered.  And if it doesn't, it will get around to anyone with a computer or a radio and that means just about everybody.  That's how it's done in other repressive countries.  

Glenn Reynolds comments:
It’ll be interesting to see how other media organizations respond to this rather Putinesque episode.

If they ignore it Glenn, it will tell you a lot. If they don't ignore it, how the Obama administration reacts will tell you even more. Congressional hearings were once a way of bringing a wayward administration to heel.  The hearings before Congress during the Obama administration have seen a long line of witnesses that have both stonewalled and shown a level of contempt for Congress that is unprecedented in my lifetime. Does anyone really think that Eric Holder will prosecute any miscreant in this administration? Holder's job is to protect Obama by any means necessary.

Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website


 
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

From the Washington Examiner:

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

Culture of corruption meets crony capitalism.


Thursday, October 24, 2013

Chris Matthews calls Ted Cruz a "baby killer"


Matthews is facing tough competition in the "on-air crazy" department so he's amping up the volume to compete with the other certifiable loons on MSNBC. 

That tingle up his leg may be the result of his electric shock treatments for a serious mental disorder.

No bid contracts to Halliburton: bad. No bid contracts to CGI: good.


The media is fine with no-bid contracts as long as the contractor is not Halliburton and is a Democrat crony. 

The difference between Halliburton and CGI?  Halliburton performed, CGI failed spectacularly despite gargantuan cost over-runs.

The media averts its gaze.

Healthcare.gov lying about prices



CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's website costs $360, more than 50 percent higher. The difference: Blue Cross and Blue Shield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.


The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634.

Remember that "bigger-than-a-pinprick-but-still-“unbelievably-small" attack on Syria?


Remember "smart diplomacy?"

Even The Washington Post, which is usually loathe to report anything embarrassing to the administration, seems alarmed by America’s recent estrangement from Saudi Arabia. The paper’s veteran foreign affairs writer David Ignatius likens the situation to a car wreck, the train wreck metaphor apparently having been reserved for the Obamacare stories, and although he allots some of the blame to the Saudis he does not spare the Obama administration his criticism. He notes that in the past week Saudi Arabia has declined to take a seat on the United Nations’ Security Council as a deliberate affront to America, and notes that the former Saudi intelligence chief publicly expressed “a high level of disappoint” in America’s stands on Syria and Palestine. There’s also a great deal of Saudi disappointment in America’s weak response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which threaten all of the Arab and Sunni Islam world, and in Obama’s support for the radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, and a “knowledgeable Arab official” is quoted as saying that the Saudi monarch “is convinced the U.S. is unreliable.”

The Saudi monarch is a terror-loving tyrant running a backwards and troublesome land with typical Middle Eastern brutality, but his country has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy in the region since Franklin Roosevelt started sucking up to it back in the ‘30s. Losing Saudi Arabia to the Russian sphere of influence, along with its considerable economic clout and central position in the Muslim world, is a worrisome development. Worse yet, this time the Saudi’s concerns are all quite reasonable, except for the lack of appreciation for America’s Israel-bashing attempts to coddle the Palestinians, and are shared by such essential allies as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and of course Israel, which has its own reasons to worry about Iranian nuclear bombs and American fecklessness. Throw in the reports that Secretary of State John Kerry is facing the same sort of dissent within his own State Department over the still-lingering-despite-the-news-blackout Syrian civil war, and America’s Middle Eastern policy seems in complete disrepair....

Obama won the presidency and wowed those naïve German crowds by promising to make America the most popular kid in the international school cafeteria, but that seems to be going about as well as the promises that Obamacare would lower your insurance premiums, allow you to keep your coverage, and be a model of bureaucratic efficiency.
Oh, and the Germans are pissed.  Is there no end to how much damage Valerie Jarrett can do?

Obama confidant Ben Rhodes is the Stuxnet leaker.

In the summer of 2012, Joseph issued multiple tweets under his @natsecwonk account suggesting that Rhodes was the source of classified information leaked to the press about the Stuxnet virus, a joint U.S.-Israeli cyber warfare effort to sabotage Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program. Joseph, as an official in the non-proliferation bureau of the State Department and later inside the White House, was part of the administration’s team working on the Iranian nuclear issue.
I suspect Rhodes did it under orders.  Remember, it make Obama look good.

Cops: Self-described Militant Atheist Violently Attacks Pastor After Sermon


For reasons that won't pass the laugh test, atheists always tell you that they are guided by logic.  That includes beating you up.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Ted Cruz Won




First, the Left knows victories are won through the fight. This is the core of the new Alinskyite model of the Left — continuous agitation, continuous fundraising, continuous energy. The fight builds support and support builds the fight.

The Cruz-led fight over the last few weeks has done the same thing for conservatives. Cruz strengthened the fight against Obamacare because he exposed the insider D.C. establishment in a way nobody else has. True, polls show that Americans have a lower opinion of the Republican Party after the fight. But many of those with a lower opinion are regular conservative Americans who saw the establishment members of the GOP turn and bolt in the face of the fight. Over two million signed a petition supporting Cruz. That’s a heck of an email list, generated almost overnight. ...

Some in the GOP think they can win a couple of elections over the next few years and unravel the program once the GOP gains the White House. This ignores the shrinking attention span of the body politic. It also ignores the fact that many in the GOP are part of the problem. The establishment GOP needs a series of inside straights even to win the seats necessary to implement this plan. Worse, the Republican Party seems unable to grasp the ground game of the new Left. The Left changes the narrative in the short term and ends up winning long term. Compromise is never the game. Battles are won each day, and not deferred.

What evidence does the GOP offer to show they are likely to draw those inside electoral straights necessary to repeal Obamacare after 2016? What makes anyone think they will win the Senate or White House? It certainly isn’t the performance in 2012 where an unpopular incumbent saddled by economic malaise crushed a Republican known for compromise and civility.

Fighters win these days, and Obama knows how to fight.

I think he's right.

Now you know why Valerie Jarrett is the most powerful person in the Obama Administration

 
Anonymous White House tweeter Jofi Joseph is a jerk, but that's part of the job description for working in the Obama administration.  He tweeted this sometime before being uncovered and fired:
  
“I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me,”

 
He apparently had a big following among the Washington press corps, because it appears that most agree with him, including his opinion of Obama's most powerful lieutenant. 
 
You knew Barack Obama thinks highly of himself, don't you?   Obama is so egocentric that after he's gone they are going to retire the word.  After him no one else can wear that moniker.  Bill Clinton was a shrinking violent by comparison, Lyndon Johnson an amateur. 

Which explains why Valerie Jarrett is virtually co-President.   Not even Michelle "My Belle" Obama can possibly suck up to him like Valerie

“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

I have seen the last part of this quote in various places and times, but I'm not sure that most people who have quoted it have fully explained why this is such an incredible insight into what's going on in the White House.  That wasn't satire. That wasn't said tongue-in-cheek.  Valerie is the undisputed world champ ass-kisser and has found someone in Obama who will actually believe it.  Obama genuinely believes what Valerie Jarrett said about him.  And since it's impossible to top that, Obama has made Jarrett a quasi  Prime Minister and Head-of-Government while he takes the role of Head-of-State.  What's unfortunate about this pair is that Obama's vanity far exceeds his ability and Jarrett is a stupid, venal and corrupt hanger-on from the depths of Chicago.  All of which means that America has serious problems.  I'm not sure that there's an answer other than time, and faith that America can recover after his term is over.

Florida Blue is terminating about 300,000 policies


Remember Obama promising that you could keep your health plan if you like it? That was a lie.

Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions

So was the lie about saving $2500 per year.

Some receiving cancellations say it looks like their costs will go up, despite studies projecting that about half of all enrollees will get income-based subsidies.

Meanwhile ...
Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.
Kris Malean, 56, lives outside Seattle, and has a health policy that costs $390 a month with a $2,500 deductible and a $10,000 in potential out-of-pocket costs for such things as doctor visits, drug costs or hospital care.

As a replacement, Regence BlueShield is offering her a plan for $79 more a month with a deductible twice as large as what she pays now, but which limits her potential out-of-pocket costs to $6,250 a year, including the deductible.

“My impression was …there would be a lot more choice, driving some of the rates down,” said Malean, who does not believe she is eligible for a subsidy.
 
The troubles with the ObamaCare website may actually feel like a gentle wind before the storm.  Most people don't know how much more they will be paying yet because they have not been able to get through.  
 
Jay Carney is starting to get questions about the disastrous, horrible, really bad rollout of the ObamaCare website.  You have to know that he won't be asked about the ObamaLies about ObamaCare because racist.
 
Obama lied, people lost their health insurance.  But don't worry, he's got his.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Juan Williams: ObamaCare Rolled Out Failed Program To Spite Republicans

Juan Williams joined the Special Report panel today and said that the Obama administration rolled out the ObamaCare website that failed disastrously because of Republicans opposition. Juan supports going forward with an inoperable ObamaCare site because delaying it until it worked would give the GOP talking points. Put another way, Juan is OK with millions losing their insurance coverage, losing their full-time jobs, and have their financial future ruined if they get sick to make Obama look good. This is beyond the pale and shows how morally SICK Liberals are.

Roll the tape:



A little later, Steve Hayes called out Williams about this. This is beyond politics as usual, it's morally bankrupt.

Iowan Finally Buys Health Care Through Obamacare Site After 100+ Tries


Did Obama promise us smart government? Really smart. Better than that dumb Bush?
An Iowa City man may have the distinction as the Hawkeye State’s first Obamacare enrollee, but it didn’t come easy. Edward Voss, a computer programmer, told the Des Moines Register he had to try more than 100 times before he was ultimately able to sign into HealthCare.gov.

Voss said he didn’t know whether or not he had actually enrolled in a plan until CoOportunity Health, one of Iowa’s two carriers in the exchange, called him on Friday to congratulate him for being its first enrolled customer.

Why is Obama's job appoval still over 40%?

Obama's Job Approval Declines to 44.5% in 19th Quarter

Barack Obama's Quarterly Job Approval Averages

Better than Nixon and Johnson,

Three post-World War II presidents -- Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton -- had significantly higher 19th quarter averages, all near 60%, than Obama. Two presidents had lower 19th quarter averages than Obama: Richard Nixon, whose 19th quarter came during the Watergate investigations, and Lyndon Johnson, attributable mostly to the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War. Obama's 19th quarter approval average is most similar to those of Harry Truman and George W. Bush.

Sounding smart to stupid people

Bud Norman has a funny, insightful article on the subject of things that people say that make them sound smart to stupid people.  Of course it may make them sound stupid to smart people, but since there are more stupid people than smart people, the odds favor bullshit.

Many years ago we had a friend on our high school debate team who adopted the odd habit of adding an extra syllable to words. When devising a plan he would “strategetize” rather “strategize,” for instance, and he was adamant that “conservativism” rather than “conservatism” is the political philosophy espoused by conservatives.

He did this on the belief that most people are impressed and intimated by multi-syllabic words, and that by adding an extra consonant to a three-syllable word he could make it one-third more impressive and intimidating. Judging by the awestruck looks that would cross some people’s faces whenever he unleashed one of his new and improved coinages, and they way they seemed willing to accept whatever nonsensical argument he was making, we were forced concede there might be something to his theory. We tried to persuade him that although his highfalutin and fundamentally incorrect verbiage made him sound smart to stupid people it also made him sound stupid to smart people, but he’d laugh off the criticism by noting that because there are far more stupid people than smart people he would ultimately be more widely regarded as smart by saying such stupid things. As much as his mispronunciations grated on our sensitive ears, we had to admit there was probably something to that theory as well.

Norman note that Obama used this insight in his recent campaign speech in the Rose Garden again extolling the wonderfulness of ObamaCare when he promised that a “surge” of the “best and brightest” professionals from the public and private sectors would soon have it all worked out.

Other examples abound in Obama’s political career. He once promised “peace in our time,” apparently either unaware or unconcerned that the slogan was famously associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous attempt at appeasing Adolf Hitler, and his apologists have created such formulations as “leading from behind.” “Hope and Change,” “Yes, We can,” “the failed policies of the Bush administration” and all the other vague slogans of his first presidential campaign had the same winning effect on the stupid and same calculated disregard for the smart, and all were delivered with a smug cocksureness and upraised chin that even our shrewd high school friend could not equal. It might not work with Obamacare, as even the stupidest among us can figure out when their health care costs are rising and grandma’s hip replacement is being put off, but most of the time it seems to work well enough.

We were particularly taken with this epiphany when we though of Ann Althouse, famed blogger and law prof at University of Wisconsin, Madison. She voted for Obama in 2008, totally taken in with his claims.  Proof, if anyone needed any more, that stupid is alive and well in academia. It's the one place where you can write an academic paper deliberately designed to be filled with total CRAP, and get it published.  And don't get me started on the super-concentrated collection of stupid in the press and the media. 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Andrew Klavan: Are You A Racist? A Frank Conversation


Hannity Dials Obamacare Call Center, Operator Says No One Likes It So Far


Why seniors still need newspapers


Things I found in my in-box.

I was visiting my daughter last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.

"This is the 21st century," she said. "We don't waste money on newspapers.

"Here, use my iPad."

I can tell you this. That fly never knew what hit him.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

McAuliffe's taxes


Terry McAuliffe, multimillionaire and Democrat candidate for Governor of Virginia revealed that he reported $9.5 million in taxable income last year, but few details. 
 
A few questions were raised by others, such as where the money came from, why he was paid nearly half a million dollars by a car company that is struggling and from which he resigned, and exactly how much money did McAuliffe make from an insurance scam that took advantage of the terminally ill? 
 
But I have an addition question.  One of the details omitted was the amount he paid in state income taxes, and more interesting, in what states did he pay those taxes.  
 
Since he's running to be Virginia's governor, wouldn't it be interesting to find out that a lot of the taxes he paid went to other states?  Just speculation of course, but the lack of detail makes this a real possibility. 

Virginian Pilot = Chicken Little over Global Warming


The technical illiterates and moral reprobates at the Virginian Pilot publish an editorial from time to time telling us that if we don't decrease our newsprint use ... uh carbon footprint ... we're all going to die.  It's the same tiresome dreck that you can hear from that crazed loon street preacher on Granby Street  telling you that you're going to hell unless you repent.  Which only goes to show that you can have a job and go to work in an air-conditioned office and still be an ignorant, irritating, obsessed nut. 

I'm willing to do my part, but somehow they never take me up on my eminently sensible suggestion that we impose a $1 tax on every newspaper sold.  Do it for the environment!

Meanwhile, here's an interesting essay that shows, with pictures and graphs that even a 6th grader can understand, that it's the nature of earth's climate to change over time.  And no ill-educated nut at the Virginian Pilot can stop it, no matter how often he bares his ignorance for the amazed public. 

From 400,000 AD 'till today

Brooklyn group of black youths blocks white couple's car, bloody victims in racial attack: cops



NY Daily News

A group of 10 black youths — one of them a 12-year-old girl — surrounded a white couple's car in Brooklyn, viciously beating the husband and yanking the wife to the pavement by her hair as they peppered the two with racial slurs, authorities said.
Oh, and don't worry, it's not racial:
“It’s not just a black and white thing. It’s stupid teenagers thinking they can do whatever they want,”
Yeah!  Right.


This attack is reminiscent of an attack in downtown Norfolk last year. You may remember it because it became national news after the Virginian Pilot decided that it would not report on its own reporters getting beaten up by a gang of black youths.
 
Same scenario: white couple in a car get noticed by a gang of blacks, get stopped, car attacked, guy gets out and is beaten up by the gang, woman pulled out of the car by her hair and attacked.

Also part of the pattern is how a biker gang swarmed and beat a couple driving an SUV in New York city recently. 
Is it a new sport in Obama's America?

SMART DIPLOMACY: Assassination pushes Libya towards civil war two years after Gaddafi death

Fighting rages in Benghazi as Tripoli braces for fallout from the kidnapping of prime minister Ali Zaidan
We swear it was a spontaneous act cause by a video.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Where Obama's Dreams are in Full Flower


Ace of Spades:

Remember the story about a Yale professor, embarrassed because Tea Partiers aren't as stupid as he thought? Read this comment on that Yale professor's blog, by a self-identified Brazilian named, Rodrigo Del Cistia Andrade:


Let me add an international twist:

I am a Brazilian self-taught Software Engineer. I also taught myself English, to the point where I managed to hold a Cambridge CPE, despite the fact that I've never stepped on anglophonic soil and zero formal training. So my analytic and reasoning faculties seem to be in working order.

Now, with that out of the way, here's why I strongly identify with the Tea Party: in my view, they are right, and they are the US's lifeline. They represent the virtues that led to American Exceptionalism (and YES, this does exist).

I find caricaturing Tea Partiers extremely ironic, and it would be hilarious, weren't it so revolting. In my experience, being a lefty liberal is EASY. It is the default stance of the intellectually lazy. All you have to do is feel (specially "good about myself" kind of feel), and never solve anything. Here's, in my view, why:

I live in the logical endpoint of Fabian socialism. Born to and raised in a culture where the concepts of "right" and "left" are non-existent (I take that back, actually "right" is a language stand-in for "evil"). We have over 30 political parties, and they are all some variant of the left. From Social Democrat parties to "Trotsky-ish" parties. Our *current* constitution, which dates back all the way to the Guns 'n' Roses era ( 1988 ), is pretty much a Soviet Constitution (1936) copy/paste job. Culturally, the population is in pretty much a state of "1984 meets Brave New World" in terms of ideology.







Brazil is also a country where:

- the utter government control of the private sector trough bureaucracy managed to destroy entrepreneurship. To the point that it exists, it has to deal with the accepted fact of life that the bribes which feed the corrupt bureaucrats demand to allow business to exist have to be factored in business plans.

- a crushing tax burden that sustain a permanent dependent underclass of favelados in welfare ensures the populists remain eternally in power and that any semblance upward mobility is quickly "corrected". For an employer to put 10.000 in the pocket of an employee, with will costs him nearly 18.000, so jobs market are always tepid at best so informal work and tax dodging schemes are commonplace.

- The relentless attack on Catholicism (the historical prevalent brand of Christianity practiced here) over the past decades eroded any semblance of morality form a large chunk of the country, and that coupled with utter corruption and/or incompetence of law enforcement made way for drug cartels to take over. Violence and crime spiraled to such inhuman degrees that between the 50K murders in average a year, this year we saw a soccer referee stab a player to death and then be beheaded and quartered in the field by the spectators for his trouble. His head was placed in a spike in the middle of the field, as an added dramatic bonus.

This act barely caused a murmur.

I could go on for ages with more evidence of social rot, but you probably already got the gist of it.

Now, remember, being immersed in this cultural cesspool since birth I, like most Brazilians, never even *knew* that this wasn't actually just "the way things are". I mean, we get a gut feeling that something is off, but like Plato's cave dwellers, light is something really frightening and instinctively avoided. And the *obvious* solutions by all the *smart people* are always the same: more government "compassion". More "social programs". More "awareness". Less "greediness".

Imagine my shock when by a quirk of fate a Mark Levin book ended in my hands. That led me to Burke, Locke, Smith, Mises, Friedman, Hayek and many others. Conservative philosophy is what gave me a glimpse of the shinning city in the hill and a will to fight, along with a battle plan, to improve my lot in life, and of those I can reach.

So, Dan, I understand you are surprised that your results showed Tea Partiers not the raging buffoons the media portrays them as being. The most obvious things are often the easiest to miss. But never doubt that being conservative is quite the intellectual effort, if only to overcome the moroseness of the mind that liberalism creates imposes with all its group-think and easy answers.

Best wishes,

Rodrigo