Chicago is famous for three things ...

Woman Personally Hailed By Barack Obama in Obamacare Rally as One of Obamacare's Few Success Stories... Now Reports the Obamacare Insurance is Too Expensive, and She Won't Have Insurance At All

What's puzzling about Obama?

Walter Russell Mead - The Most Shocking Obamacare Revelation - is concerned and appears puzzled by the fact that Obama has not shaken up his staff for failing to alert him to the fact that the Obamacare rollout was going to be a fiasco. It was, after all, his signature achievement, the domestic policy on which his Presidency will be judged. How could he not care enough about it to keep close track of its development and implementation?

OK. On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as — the way it was supposed to. Ha[d] I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great. You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right. And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

I have a theory. It’s as wild as Jack Welch’s theory in 2012 that the unemployment report was being manipulated. But it makes sense if you stop analyzing Obama in the traditional sense: as someone who wanted to be President to do something or to be someone.  How about viewing the Presidency as a way to get rich?

 

I have always viewed Obama as an accidental President.  At the end of Bush’s second term the “inevitable” Democrat candidate was Hillary Clinton. I believe that Obama initially ran to raise his visibility and perhaps lay down a marker for a high ranking position, or a future candidacy after the Hillary presidency. But in a surprise to everyone, race trumped sex for the media who adopted Obama as their pet.  One added factor was the Conservative community’s hatred of the Clintons who were widely viewed as both immoral and corrupt. As a result, most of the hostile fire was directed at Hillary while Obama was largely unknown.  Being so new, he had no public record. Thus his race, his ability to mirror people’s innermost wants and desires back at them, plus the financial crisis that erupted near late in 2008 led to his election.

 

Once in office, no one in my memory has enjoyed the trappings of the Presidency as much as the Obamas. From "date night" in New York to incredibly lavish parties while millions lost their jobs, the Obamas live the high life.  I’m persuaded that Obama views the Presidency in much the same way as the Mexican presidents view their office, as a way of getting very wealthy. The Mexicans do it like conventional third world dictators do: via graft while in office. The Clintons showed us how U.S. presidents can shamelessly use their former status to become incredibly wealthy. You can be sure that Obama will follow that path.

 

So if I’m right, and time will tell, America has a President who likes the trappings of office, likes to play golf and is really not that concerned with either foreign or domestic issues. In Obama’s view America was there before he took office, will be there after he leaves, and will provide him with the lifestyle of the Presidency (minus Air Force One) for the rest of his life. In the meantime, “no drama Obama” will do or say anything to remain where he is until he achieves his goal of a super-rich retirement. When people say it’s all about “him” they have no idea how right they are.

Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report

 President Asterisk.

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Let's see, the IRS harasses Obama's opponents, Candy Crowley gets in the ring and slams Romney during the debates and now we learn that the employment numbers were faked.

Their credibility is shot.  See Chrissy ("thrill up his leg") Matthews challenge Jack Welch on this very topic.



UPDATE:  Ace of Spades explains:

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

...

Obama moved the Census Bureau into the White House chain of command, under Rahm Emmanuel, just three weeks into his first term.

It was apparently very high on his priority list.

 

Let's review: the labor Department gets its data from the Census Bureau which the Obama Administration put under its direct control, unlike previous Presidents who may have wanted to manipulate employment statistics, but could not (view the Welch/Matthews video where Matthews says that Nixon could not do what Obama was able to do).

UPDATE 2:  Zero Hedge 

 

On Friday October 5, 2012, the BLS released what was arguably the most important report of Obama's first term: the final jobs number, and unemployment rate before the November 2012 presidential election. As so many predicted, it "plunged" from 8.1% to 7.8% allowing the president to conduct countless teleprompted speeches praising the success of his economic recovery. It also served as the basis for the infamous Jack Welch tweet: "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers" and prompted the pro-Obama media to quickly brand all those who questioned it as conspiracy theorists. The Atlantic did perhaps the most exemplary job in its task to discredit the "random anonymous cranks" who challenged the bullshit spewed by the administration's manipulative economic data reporting apparatus. From The Atlantic's Unemployment Plummets To 7.8%. [read the rest]

Navy SEALs cite shabby treatment by Team Obama

As Team Obama fundamentally transforms America, the military is part of that transformation. 

Navy SEALs are the toast of America, but revelations show that the top brass has not always watched their backs during the Obama administration.

SEALs have brought exhilarating moments for the White House. The storied SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011 and rescued U.S. cargo ship captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates in 2009. Hollywood transformed both operations into blockbuster movies — with the administration’s help.

But some in the special operations community cite shabby treatment.

A book by Billy Vaughn, father of a SEAL killed in the Aug. 6, 2011, shootdown of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, blames the administration for leaking too much information about his son’s unit.

Another book by two former SEALs tells the “shameful ordeal” they endured based on allegations of prisoner abuse by one unreliable sailor and one determined terrorist. Instead of issuing gratitude for nabbing the “butcher of Fallujah” in Iraq in 2009, U.S. Central Command court-martialed the SEALs on felony charges.

The two authors and a third SEAL were acquitted by military juries when the prosecution’s case fall apart.

Read the whole thing.

The N-Word

Bud Norman would prefer that no one use the N-word, including those with skin of a darker hue than mine. 

The notion that the word is acceptable when used by someone of a darker skin color is now commonplace. A professional basketball player who used the slur in a “tweet” was recently fined $25,000 for the offense, a sizeable amount even to someone drawing professional basketball player’s salary, and he offered the same justification. The resultant controversy prompted two well-known dark-hued sports broadcasters to admit that they use the slur routinely, with neither offering any apology for the habit, and one indignantly implied that criticism of the practice is an effort by lighter-skinned people to dictate the behavior of their darker brethren. Both agree that lighter-skinned people should not be permitted use of the word, but for reasons having to do with linguistic empowerment or something it should be widely used by the darker-skinned.

Although we have no desire to dictate the behavior of anyone, beyond the obvious rules against rape and robbery and murder and such that the requirements of a civilized society, but it does seem a sign of strange times that the stigma against racial slurs is regarded as racist and racial equality is to be achieved by having different rules of social etiquette for different races. We would prefer that the word fall into disuse for the same old-fashioned reasons that we were taught to avoid it, because it is rude and vulgar, but that seems unlikely now that rudeness and vulgarity are celebrated as authentic self-expression and righteous rebellion against rules that vanished decades ago. The great appeal of racial slurs is that they’re only words left with any shock value, and the easiest way to gain all-important attention is to shout them with a carefully posed defiance at a gullible media.

Insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the ACA.

Andy McCarthy

As a practical matter, it is nearly inconceivable that insurance companies would be able to reissue the canceled health-care plans. The process, as Avik Roy expertly explains, is too extensive and complex to complete in the few weeks between now and Obamacare’s coverage deadline — something that an administration that can’t, after three years, get a functioning website running should know. But even if it could be done, the insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the letter of the Obamacare statute. Similarly, the state insurance commissioners would be insane to permit them, and Americans would be insane to buy them. The policies would be legally unenforceable.

 

Repeat:  The policies would be legally unenforceable.  Policies that don't comply with the law can't be enforced in court.  For example, you can't sue a hit man for failing to kill someone if he signed a contract to do so.  If a woman buys a policy that does not cover maternity care so that she will get a lower premium can sue the insurance company for maternity care because the insurance company issued an illegal policy.  

 

To repeat: insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the letter of the Obamacare statute. Similarly, the state insurance commissioners would be insane to permit them, and Americans would be insane to buy them.

The Cost of Press Corruption

 

The corruption I’m referring to is, of course, hiding the truth about ObamaCare until this monstrous fraud went into effect and imperiled the health care of everyone in the country.  The press knew before the law passed what the truth was, thanks to Congressional hearings Four years ago, GOP showed exactly what was false about Obama’s keep-your-coverage promise.  But in the words of "Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds, even after the truth was revealed:

  ....the press continued to treat Obama’s promise as true — and the critics as lying racists — until, oh, about last week or so.

 

The servile press knew that ObamaCare was designed to completely overturn America’s health care system. They knew that President Obama repeatedly lied when he said that people would be able to keep their health insurance if they like it. They knew that President Obama repeatedly lied when he said that people could keep their doctor if they like him. They knew that President Obama repeatedly lied when he said that people would see their premiums go down by $2500 under ObamaCare. The shameless hacks in the press were aiding and abetting a fraud on the American people knowing full well that it was a sting.   They wanted the American people thinking their health insurance and doctor were going to be there if ObamaCare was not the better bargain they were told it would be. They lied until it was too late.

Make no mistake, the bottom feeding scum suckers of the press were doing the lying. Of course they were repeating the lies of Obama, the father of this lie. But as the spreaders of this shameless propaganda they amplified and drove it home with endless repetition.

But, you say, that the press was fooled by Obama. On the contrary. There were plenty of people who could see the obvious:

• That you could not insure millions more
• Maintain the current level of care
• Insure the chronically ill for the same price as the healthy
• And still cut costs. 

If you genuinely believed that, you are a moron and should not be left unattended.

There were even those who bothered to read this 2000 page monstrosity and knew what the law said and how it was going to be implemented. To see the obvious did not require expertise in insurance or even in math, all it took was the reasoning ability of the average adult.

Of course the members of the press can fall back on the excuses that Obama’s been using: that he is unaware of things that every American knows. That “shovel ready jobs” aren’t, and that buying insurance is complicated. It’s really an admission of stupidity and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Obama’s that stupid; that his only skills are giving speeches and telling lies without remorse. But are the members of the press really ready to admit that they’re stupid? I’ll grant you that many are. After all, being able to write in complete sentences with the help of an editor is no guarantee that you can also tie your shoe laces. But there are literally thousands of people who call themselves reporters and editors and when you get that many people focused on an issue there is a certain amount of collective intelligence. Like the million monkeys who eventually end up writing all of Shakespeare by hitting random typewriter keys.   There is no excuse for ignorance in this, they knew. 

No, the logic of this scandal is that the press knew the President was pulling a “sting” and they were his happy co-conspirators. They adored the man, Obama, (he sent a thrill up their legs) and they loved the idea of government control so much that they were willing to scam the American people. And now that the scam’s exposed they are trying to tell everyone that they’re innocent.

But that’s a lie. Obama knew he could not carry off the con without the active connivance of the press. Like Newman and Redford in The Sting, Obama needed a large cast of characters to fool his marks and the press enthusiastically volunteered. Obama got what he wanted, the press got what it wanted and the American people have been fleeced of their money, their insurance and their doctors.  Now the press is busy cleaning up and covering up their part in the scandal.  To convince people to quietly walk away.  This is called "cooling the mark." 

In my local paper this morning there is an article about a public meeting on ObamaCare.  The reporter referred to the ObamaCare lies as "mistakes" and quoted the government shill defending this bill as part of the "social contract."  I want to know who signed this particular contract for me because I didn't.  They are trying their best to get us to walk away and accept their scam after a brief grumble.   Sorry.  There are too many shoes still to be dropped.  The people who get their insurance through their employers are going to find that they have also been scammed, like the  people who bought their insurance as individuals.  The biggest parts of this scam are ahead of us; the effects have barely begun.  The ones who participated in it, Democrats in government and in the press, are going to regret it.  Many of us are not marks and we won't be "cooled."

NOTE: This has been edited since first posted.

Obamacare Schadenfreudarama

Jonah Goldberg pens a classic.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the unraveling of ObamaCare.

Read the whole thing.

Millions Who Lost Health Insurance Are All Racists For Being Furious With Liar-In-Chief

Billionaire Oprah Winfrey says people lack respect for the Liar-in-Chief because of the color of his skin.

Some disagree ...

Level of disrespect?

I'll tell you a level of disrespect, you hateful shrew:

How about disrespecting the millions of Americans who just lost their health care after being promised dozens of times by the Liar-In-Chief that they could "keep their plans"?

How about disrespecting the families of those killed in Benghazi? A president who lied right to their faces about the cause of the attack and didn't lift a finger to save them.

How about disrespecting the families of the hundreds killed by Operation Fast and Furious? A president who gave or sold thousands of military-grade weapons to Mexican drug cartels as part of a truly evil plot to demonize gun-owners.

How about disrespecting all of those conservatives, Christian, and pro-Israel groups targeted by Obama? A president who used the IRS to win the 2012 election and then lied about it.

You're a hack, a clueless know-nothing, a Leftist kook who claims entirely legitimate criticism of the Liar-In-Chief's outrageous activities is based on "racism".

Go drink a nice, tall glass of shut-up juice and get the hell off of my television.

"It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it." Mark Steyn: Thus Spake Obama

There is only one Mark Steyn and he is able to skewer pompous idiots like no other. Read the whole thing.

The reason for the benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is that millions of his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no fewer than 27 times during his press conference — have had their lives upended by Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the mountain of human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to order that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original shells. Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work, he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .

The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy. By “we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder provinces of his decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how complicated insurance is. What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of Sclerosis? But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever passed her lips, but certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you like your cake, you can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back with “What we’re also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.” That contribution to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await the reign of Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have slipped over his eyes.

Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day after his election, he’s “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Well, apart from his signature health-care policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I was not informed directly that the website would not be working,” he told us. The buck stops with something called “the executive branch,” which is apparently nothing to do with him. As evidence that he was entirely out of the loop, he offered this:

Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.

Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of hands.

This is what's so disturbing about Obama

The "Knockout" Game

It's a Black thing, you wouldn't understand.

Apparently it's gotten popular enough that the news media has finally discovered it. Up to now they pretended it didn't happen.  The victims and perpetrators were not the right color to fit the Liberal narrative.

A few Baltimore ("Charm City") residents having themselves a little fun.

 

Jews feel picked on, but they're just random victims. 

 

The press is very, very good at hiding things they don't want discovered. Like the fact that Obama lied about ObamaCare which they knew but covered up for three years. 

 

They even cover up racist gang attacks on their own, like this example from the Virginian Pilot. 

 

And remember Trayvon Martin?  There were any number of conjectures as to why he attacked George Zimmerman.  Having read about the attack in Baltimore, I was always of the opinion that he was just playing the "Knockout" game.  The attack described by Zimmerman fits the description.  But Zimmerman wasn't knocked cold and Trayvon lost the game.

What’s the Obamacare line today?

Another rube self-identifies.

“The president’s own commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps”

That is part of the mis-named "Affordable Care Act" commonly known as ObamaCare. But what is it?

Katrina vs.ObamaCare

The Katrina analogy would be a great one if George W. Bush had deliberately started a devastating storm on a party-line vote.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 15, 2013

ObamaCare law is doing exactly what it was supposed to.

There’s a lot of chatter in Washington that Democrats on the Hill feel like they were lied to or misled by the White House. But if you understand how our Constitution works — and they should, given that they only took an oath to defend it — it’s Obama who should feel lied to.

The law is really quite clear. It was so clear that the Congressional Budget Office — their own in-house think tank — said that millions would lose their health-care plans. Obama even said so with the Democratic leadership in the room.

More to the point, the law was intended to cause millions of people to lose their existing plans so they would enter the exchanges.

Now the same people who literally wrote the law feel betrayed when the law does exactly what they intended. That’s like getting mad at a remote-control car when you crash it. Yes, the website’s failures make the panic more acute, but the fact remains that the Affordable Care Act is doing precisely what it’s supposed to do.

The Left lives in an echo chamber. The entire collective believed their own propaganda that the country had a health care crisis. That's what they said. That's what the media faithfully amplified. What they did not realize was that most people were satisfied with their health care and their insurance. So when this was yanked away from them they got really, really mad.

"Incorrect promises"

"If you like your health plan you can keep it."

“Honey, I didn’t break my wedding vows. That was just an incorrect promise.”

What does Congress think of “enforcement discretion”

Bud Norman has another good piece on Obama's latest foray into lawlessness.

Wonder what Congress thinks of “enforcement discretion?” Sort of leaves Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the congress critters as powerless eunuchs.

Obama tells insurers to break the law because he won't enforce it.

Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton advised President Obama to "honor the commitment" he made and to allow Americans to keep their health care plans, if they like them. That was a central promise Obama made when he sold Obamacare, but one that turned out not to be true when Obamacare began to be implemented last month.

"So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got," Clinton in an interview released Tuesday.

Now President Obama is taking Clinton's advice and trying to honor that commitment. In remarks today at the White House today, Obama said, "I completely get how upsetting this can be" to lose insurance plans that I promised Americans would be able to keep. "To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear."

But there's a catch with president's proposed solution. The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare's eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use "enforcement discretion" to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they'll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans -- plans they technically can't sell under ObamaCare.

That will work ... not!

This is insanity on stilts.  What company would leave itself open to death by lawsuit is they actually did this?