A third video of Obamacare’s creator found, insulting Americans

Finding out who wrote it: A third video of Obamacare’s architect, Jonathan Gruber, has been discovered in which he bluntly insults the American public.

“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012. He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

Video has also been found where Gruber saying, “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.” Other video shows him saying “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference” between various components of Obamacare.

O boy! Obama wants to regulate the internet!

On Monday the Obama administration declared its desire that the FCC should increase its regulation of the internet, embracing White House proposals for something progressives like to label “net neutrality.”

By backing a policy commonly referred to as Net Neutrality, President Barack Obama is advocating for that the internet to be regulated like any other public utility. “To put these protections in place, I’m asking the [Federal Communications Commission] to reclassifying internet service under Title II of a law known as the Telecommunications Act,” Obama said in a statement on Monday.

Since the issue of “net neutrality” became a hot button progressive issue several years ago, I have tried to figure it out, all to no avail. The issue is so complex that my first instinct is that the government should simply leave well enough alone, since any action the government takes is usually harmful.

Now, however, with Obama putting his brilliant support behind it I have no doubts — these regulatory proposals should be doused with gasoline, burnt to a crisp, then buried in a hole so deep no one will ever be able to dig them up.

I say this not because of any personal hatred of Obama, but because I have seen the disaster of Obama’s biggest regulatory effort, Obamacare. Why should anyone with any brains at all ever trust him again with any future regulatory effort in any area of public policy? No one should. He and the present generation of Democrats proved with Obamacare that their ideas about government regulation are bankrupt. They should quietly sit down and shut up, and let some adults who know how to think run things.

Obamacare enrollments far below government predictions

Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration admitted today that enrollments in Obamacare in 2015 will be 30 percent below their initial predictions.

Federal officials on Monday sought to lower expectations for upcoming enrollment in Obamacare, announcing that they now believe that only between 9 million and 9.9 million people will be enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans by the end of 2015. That is well below the 13 million people that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for Obamacare enrollment by the end of 2015. Open enrollment for 2015 plans resumes Saturday.
The new projection, more than 30 percent reduced from the CBO estimate, comes from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the Obamacare health reform program.

HHS also said it now appears that it will take longer—perhaps quite a bit longer—than 2017 to reach a “steady state” of 25 million Obamacare enrollees that CBO had been projecting for 2017 enrollment. The reduced projection is due to recent data showing “mixed evidence” about how quickly—and how dramatically—people will shift from employer-sponsored health insurance and non-Obamacare plans into insurance plans sold on government-run marketplaces such as HealthCare.gov, according to HHS. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence once again illustrates how blatantly Obama was lying when he said, “If you like your plan you keep your plain. Period.” The goal was always to force people from the plans they had to government-run healthcare.

Speaking of lies, video from 2013 of the man who designed Obamacare for Obama shows that the Democrats knew they were lying when they described Obamacare in 2009 and 2010, and that they were doing so because they consider the American people “stupid.”

Of course, this story should surprise no one. Lying to the public has been the Democratic/leftwing method of operations since Bill Clinton arrived on the political scene. In fact, it amazes me that anyone is surprised by this.

Why the polls underestimate Tuesday’s Republican sweep

The answer is very simple, at least according to this particular pollster:

The American people cannot stand Barack Obama. They dislike his policies. They dislike his “above it all” demeanor. And they rose out of their chairs and off their couches and came out in droves to defeat anyone who they thought was even remotely supportive of him or his administration.

Yep, I was one of those dumb pollster/analysts who thought that no president in a midterm election could possibly be as big of a drag on candidates as was Obama. But I was wrong. He wasn’t just a drag; he was his own voter turnout machine for Republicans.

How could this be? How could the voters be so blind? Don’t they realize that Barack Obama cares!?

A simple but powerful strategy for Congress against Obama

I’ve read a lot of analysis offering many ideas on what the Republican Congress should do to combat Obama in the next two years, but the best proposal I’ve read yet was posted as a comment to this website earlier today by mpthompson:

The best thing the Republicans can do would be to craft small, simple pieces of legislation that have the broad support of the American people (hmmmm,hmmmm border enforcement) and dare the Obama to veto. Do this week after week until it’s drilled into the electorates heads as to who is really the obstructionist.

Regarding Obamacare. Craft a one page amendment to the law that removes the mandate so that people can choose for themselves whether they want to participate (a pro-choice amendment so to speak). Then another amendment that removes the restrictions on they type of coverage a company can offer (another pro-choice amendment). Then let the public see the Dems for the big-government fascist they are.

There are a host of proposals that could fit this strategy. In addition to the ones suggested above, what about the approving the Keystone pipeline, cancelling the Obamacare medical tax, limiting the abuses of the IRS, limiting Obama’s travel expenses, and punishing the National Park Service for its partisan administration of the law during the Occupy movement and the government shutdown.

I am sure that my readers could think of many many more.

Update: It appears that the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), might be planning to follow this strategy, at least when it comes to Obamacare.

EPA threatens $75K per day fines to man who built pond on his own property.

We’re here to help you: The EPA is threatening a man with $75K per day fines unless he tears down a homemade pond he built on his private property, using water from a 2-foot wide, 6-inch stream.

Johnson’s pond was created with a dam on a nearby creek in Fort Bridger, which he built about five years ago. He got the right permits from Wyoming state agencies. “I acquired a stock pond reservoir permit,” he said. “They said go ahead and build it. When I was done with the project, I got a hold of them again and did a final on it, and they sent me a paper back saying I’m in good standing, that my pond was exactly exercised as permitted.”

The EPA maintains Johnson broke a law by failing to obtain a federal permit before constructing the pond.

As Johnson himself notes, this is really a power grab by the EPA. The agency has wanted control over every piece of U.S. water for decades — no matter how small or temporary. In the late 80s they tried to claim that any temporary wet spot was a wetlands that they had jurisdiction over. Now, it is every minor creek. In both cases, the EPA never made any effort to document if any environmental harm was being done, only that they should have complete control over everything.

CDC deletes ebola info from website

Incompetence: One day after posting information that said ebola could be spread by a sneeze, the Centers for Disease Control has deleted that information from its webpage.

It could be the deleted webpage was wrong, which raises the question: Why had they posted it in the first place? Or it could be that the deleted webpage was right, which raises the question: Why did they delete it?

Or it could be that they haven’t the slightest idea what they are doing, which raises the question: Why do so many Americans still want to put their trust, and their lives, at the mercy of these government hacks?

Two Republican senators propose limiting ability of government to confiscate property

Theft by government: Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) are both proposing limits to the federal government’s ability to confiscate private property.

Since these confiscations are essentially unconstitutional and illegal, “limiting” the government’s ability here to me seems to be a weak response. These confiscations should cease entirely, now. Still, at least these Republicans are making sounds they want to do something about this fascist behavior.

TSA confiscates a toy ray-gun belt buckle

Does this make you feel safer? At an airport security checkpoint the TSA confiscated a belt buckle made to look like a toy Flash Gordon ray-gun.

It wasn’t a real gun. It wasn’t even a toy gun. It was a belt buckle fashioned to look like a 1940s science fiction ray-gun. Even if it was one of the actual Flash Gordon ray-guns that was used in the movie serial, it couldn’t have done anything.

But it wasn’t. It was a belt buckle.

I am so glad we have the TSA looking out for us!

Cheap alternatives to Obamacare on the rise

Finding out what’s in it: The purchase of short-term health plans outside of Obamacare is sky-rocketing as citizens scramble to avoid the law’s high costs.

A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral. The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch — that the policies only last for a year — is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

“Applications rose 30 percent compared to last year,” eHealthInsurance.com Enrollment Specialist Carrie McLean told FoxNews.com. Other providers said they also see rapid growth in the plans, which have a typical monthly premium of just over $100, compared to traditional plans that cost an average of $271.

The irony here is that when Obamacare caused the cancellation of hundreds of thousands if not millions of health plans that people liked, wanted, and could afford, Obama and the Democrats claimed that those plans were cheap and bad plans that those people shouldn’t have liked or purchased in the first place. The Democrats knew better, and because they cared, they passed Obamacare to force everyone off those plans. Now, because Obamacare plans are so expensive many simply can’t afford them, people are buying these short-term health plans, which are exactly like the kind of garbage health plans that the Democrats claimed Obamacare had eliminated.

Thank you Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Your wisdom knows no bounds!

Note also that when government creates a situation where needed products or goods are no longer affordable, some form of black market in those products or goods is going to appear, no matter what. This is an example of that.

Doctors flee Obamacare

Finding out what’s in it: Because of low reimbursements, complex paperwork and regulations, and requirement that doctors treat patients even if they don’t pay for treatment, almost a quarter of a million doctors have opted out of Obamacare.

Remember, it was the Democratic Party and Barack Obama that gave us Obamacare, and only them. They got no help from anyone else, and actually were not interested in anyone else’s advice. They knew better, and the result has been this disaster. Remember this on election day.

Obamacare forces actors’ union to drop older members from healthplan

Finding out what’s in it: Actors’ Equity Association, the union for stage actors, is dumping its older members from its health insurance plan because of the rising costs of Obamacare.

I guarantee to you that more than 80 percent of the members of this union voted for Obama and support Democratic policies blindly. Now those policies are blind-siding them cruelly, as this quote from the article demonstrates:

“They keep saying there’s a comparable Obamacare option, but there’s not,” one actor said. “I won’t be able to afford to go to [my doctor] anymore.”

Will these liberal actors change their votes? I am pessimistic. From the late seventies to the mid-nineties I worked in the movie industry, and during that time I observed a strong hostility and close-mindedness among this community for any political ideas not labeled “Democratic.” They are the most partisan people I have ever met, and will probably carry that partisanship to their graves — which is likely to happen sooner now that Obamacare is there to “help” them.

The Grand Tetons used as the Obama adminstration’s private playground

The law is for the little people: Obama administration officials, including Vice-President Joe Biden, have been routinely using a closed lodge in Grand Teton National Park for their personal and family vacations.

Vice President Biden and several top White House officials have vacationed with their families at the same log cabin in Grand Teton National Park. Located on Jackson Lake, the rustic getaway is the perfect escape from the fast-paced Washington grind. The cabin also happens to be owned by the federal government, and was banned 20-some years ago by the National Park Service for anything other than “official use.”

This abuse is really not restricted to just elected officials. Park officials also often take advantage of their positions of power to use park facilities for their own pleasure that they ban the public from using.

Obamacare website easy to hack

It appears the wrong people can find out what’s in it: The Obamacare website, which has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars (depending on who you ask), turns out to be very easy to hack.

The website requires those enrolling for ObamaCare to supply their first and last name, home address, social security number and paying information — including credit card data. Lamar Smith, chair of the committee looking after the security of the website, said there had been hearings on the “lack of security” around the website. He told Fox News: “What we”ve discovered is that it seems to be easy to be hacked, the security is not secure.

It appears the site was hacked on July 8 but the hack wasn’t discovered until August 25. That gave the hackers almost two months to rummage through the personal files of Americans. How nice.

Largest sunspot in a quarter century spews flares

The largest sunspot seen in about a quarter century produced another powerful X-class flare today, the sixth in less than a week.

This was the sixth X-class solar flare from NOAA 2192, a record for the number of X-class flares generated by a single group so far this solar cycle. It was also the fourth X-class flare since last Friday, continuing a period of intense flaring activity. This sunspot group has grown again a bit, and maintains its magnetic complexity. A degradation of the HF radio-communication was observed over South-America, the Caribbean, and West-Africa.

The last sentence is referring to some radio communications blackouts that have occurred in these areas because of the flares. For more information about the sunspot itself, go here.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, as predicted by many doomsday fear-mongers in the science community, our technological civilization was destroyed by these flares and we are now all dead.

Vulnerable Senate Democrats are all Obama rubber-stamps

A vote for Obama: Every single one of the most vulnerable Democrats running for the Senate voted with Obama more than 96 percent of the time.

As senior writer Shawn Zeller writes in this week’s CQ Weekly cover story, Democrats … have been distancing themselves from Obama on the campaign trail not in votes on the Senate floor — whether it be Mark Udall of Colorado, Mark Pryor of Arkansas or Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana: “Udall disagreed just once, on a Pennsylvania state judge’s nomination to a federal district court. Pryor parted with Obama three times, and Landrieu four, but only one of those votes was on a policy matter. In July, Landrieu voted against Obama’s request for $2.7 billion to deal with the surge of Latin American children entering the U.S. illegally.” Indeed, all of the most vulnerable Democrats voted with President Obama at least 96 percent of the time on the 120 votes on which Obama has urged a “yes” or “no” vote.

There are many take-aways you could get from this story, but I want to emphasis one: These Democratic candidates are all liars and consider the voters stupid. By claiming in their campaigns and debates that they are independent of Obama they are telling us that they think you are too stupid to see through their lies and will vote for them anyway.

Bottom line: a vote for a Democrat this election is a vote for the policies that Barack Obama has foisted on this country the past six years. Is that what we really want?

Note: Sorry for the lack of posts today, but up until now I have honestly not seen anything in the news that I consider worth posting.

Obamacare causes AIDS drug prices to skyrocket

Finding out what’s in it: Because Obamacare has forced AIDS patients off their old health plans, their cost for drugs has skyrocketed.

I wonder how many of these patients, most of whom are gay and thus mostly liberal and supporters of the Democratic Party, will continue to vote Democratic. I wonder if they will finally begin to connect the dots, and realize that their loyalty to the Democratic Party might literally be killing them.

Democrats demand the right to regulate internet speech

Fascists: The Democrats on the Federal Election Commission on Friday called for the heavy regulation of speech on the internet.

In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that the Left wants to regulate conservative political sites and even news outlets like the Drudge Report.

Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.

And if you vote for these thugs, you identify yourself as someone supporting fascism.

Heath insurance premiums skyrocketed because of Obamacare

Finding out what’s in it: A new study has confirmed that Obamacare caused dramatic cost increases in health insurance premiums in 2014.

Read the article. Its facts are indisputable and quite depressing. Obamacare is destroying the health insurance industry, which in turn will eventually destroy the health care industry.

Why anyone would vote for the people that gave us this law is beyond my comprehension. Unfortunately, millions are going to, and based on my analysis of the trends of recent polls, the Republicans might get a majority in the Senate but just barely. In a sane world (as used to happen in the past), this would instead have been a landslide election, the voters kicking the Democrats out of power and thus forcing that party to clean house and find better people to run as their candidates.

Sadly, too many Americans instead seem to be as disconnected from reality as their leaders, and increasingly choose party over reality and bankruptcy over competence when they vote.

55,000 Connecticut citizens to lose their health plans

Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare, tens of thousands in Connecticut are expected to lose their health plans this year.

For about the past week or so, health insurance broker Stephen Hunt has been getting phone calls from unhappy clients. “They just keep building up and up and up and up and up,” Hunt said.

The calls are coming from clients who have been notified by their insurer that their policy expires at year’s end and most will have to purchase plans with much higher premiums and much higher deductibles, he said. “We’re not talking about a minor difference in premium. We’re talking about a mortgage payment difference in premium for a lot of people,” Hunt said.

How can this be? Obama and the Democratic Party promised us that under Obamacare, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.” They couldn’t have been so stupid as to propose a law that would do exactly the opposite of what they promised, could they? They wouldn’t lie, would they?

California orders churches to fund abortions

Fascists: In a sudden change to its health insurance regulations, leftwing California is now requiring churches to fund abortions.

California’s Department of Managed Health Care has ordered all insurance plans in the state to immediately begin covering elective abortion. Not Plan B. Not contraceptives. Elective surgical dismemberment abortion. At the insistence of the American Civil Liberties Union, the DMHC concluded that a 40-year-old state law requiring health plans to cover “basic health services” had been misinterpreted all these decades. Every plan in the state was immediately ordered, effective August 22, to cover elective abortion. California had not even applied this test to its own state employee health plans (which covered only “medically necessary” abortions). But this novel reading was nevertheless quietly imposed on every plan in the state by fiat.

… Several other California churches have received similar notices from their insurers, and others will follow. While California (like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS) exempts churches from its contraceptive mandate, there is no exception to this bureaucratic abortion mandate. This leaves California churches in the illogical and impossible position of being free to exclude contraceptives from their health plan for reasons of religious conscience but required to provide their employees with abortion coverage.

This is clear proof that the left’s long claim that it is the champion of freedom and religious liberty is quite hollow, and if any speech or religion happens to believe something different than the left, the left is going to aggressively move to deny it its freedom.

A citizen pulls over a cop and issues him a warning

Watch the video below the fold. The citizen saw a cop on patrol in an unmarked car, which is illegal in Washington, and flagged him down to tell him that he was in violation of the law.

Seim then went through all the normal steps of a traffic stop: taking the officer’s name and asking to see his license. Then after a lengthy discussion about the law, Seim let him off with a warning. He urged the officer to speak with his bosses about their illegal patrol cars.

» Read more

Obama quarantines American soldiers in Africa but not Africans

Incompetence: Even as the Obama administration refuses to consider any real travel restrictions for African citizens of ebola-ravaged countries, it has ordered military officials to quarantine American troops in Africa for up to 21 days if they suspect they might have ebola.

According to CNN, “Commanders also will be given the authority to isolate their entire unit in the region for the final 10 days of a deployment if necessary. All troops will be monitored for 21 days after returning from the mission.”

Currently, citizens of Ebola outbreak countries are required to self-report their possible exposure. The “honor system” of self-reporting was violated by Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was the first to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., when he did not voluntarily disclose that he’d carried a pregnant woman in the throes of Ebola.

The restrictions for American troops actually does make sense. The lack of restrictions for Africans, however, is the height of blindness.

Democrats oppose an ebola travel ban

Incompetence: Congressional Democrats have expressed strong opposition to any travel bans from ebola infected countries.

Remember, these are the same people who conceived, wrote, and passed Obamacare, without really reading it or even considering the concerns expressed by many people about the law (all of which have turned out to be true). Thus, it is not surprising they don’t have the brains now to recognize that a quarantine is exactly the right approach to handle ebola at this time, We have a very infectious disease that hasn’t yet broken out into the general populace which we can still keep confined to a small area, where we can more effectively fight it. A quarantine, enforced by a travel ban, will accomplish this.

But these Democrats care! So what they don’t have the ability to think? Let’s vote for them again!

Houston mayor says she will reduce scoop of pastor subpoenas

How nice of her: The lesbian Democratic mayor of Houston has backtracked and promised to narrow the scope of the subpoenas her government issued to several pastors, demanding access to their sermons, speeches, and communications with church members.

She is still a fascist, as she is still going to go forward. She also has not yet specified exactly how she plans to narrow the scope of her demands, since as far as I can tell, none of her demands are constitutional or even reasonable.

40 to 63% increases in heath insurance premiums in Minnesota

Finding out what’s in it: The health insurance premiums for one major Minnesota health insurance company are expected to increase by 40 to 63 percent in 2015.

The insurer started informing brokers Tuesday about rates for individuals if they renew coverage with the company for next year, said Heidi Michaels, an agent with the Dyste Williams agency in Minneapolis. In the half dozen consumer scenarios she’s looked at, Michaels said she’s consistently seeing premium jumps in the neighborhood of 40 percent to 60 percent. Her analysis, however, did not take into account significant discounts that consumers could see by way of federal tax credits, depending on their income. “They’re going to get substantial rate increases,” Michaels said in an interview Wednesday. “I haven’t seen one below 40 percent.”

Letters with these rate increases will go out the end of October, just before election day. (The company has pulled out of the government exchange, which means they don’t have to keep their rates secret until after the election, as required by the Obama administration, the most transparent in history!)

However, these rate increases indicate strongly how high the rate increases will be across the board. They are going to be ungodly high, possibly so high no one will be able to afford them.

“We’re not gonna move.”

Watch the video below the fold as a string of university officials from Southern Oregon University harass several students whose only action is standing on the sidewalk and handing out Constitutions.

It made me very proud to watch these college students defy authority to defend their very clear constitutional rights. The school wanted them to move to the very small restricted “Free Speech Zone”. The students refused, noting that the Constitution and Bill of Rights essentially designates the entire U.S. a free speech zone. The students also refused to give their names to one official, noting that they were uncomfortable doing that. Since the official had no authority to take their names, the official had to back down.

In the end, the school did nothing to them, and they remained on the sidewalk, handing Constitutions out of fellow Americans. Kudos to them all! We need more Americans willing to stand up like this and not be cowed.
» Read more

The silent Obamacare protest of doctors

Faced with Obamacare’s high costs and deadening bureaucracy, doctors are finding ways to opt out.

Physicians across the country are responding to this evolution — most recently in response to the Affordable Care Act — by shielding their practices from government interference. This comes in many forms: Rejecting new Medicare and Medicaid patients, transitioning to third-party-free practices and ditching small private practices for employed positions with ever-larger hospital-owned networks.

Incompetence is incompetence, and if you are so stupid as to write an unworkable law that conservatives rightly predicted would do exactly the opposite of what you want — raise costs instead of lowering them, shrink health coverage instead of widening it, corrupt health care instead of improving it — than no one should be surprised if you exhibit incompetence in other areas as well. For example, the incompetence demonstrated by President Obama and the Democratic Party by imposing Obamacare on us is now being illustrated again in how Obama is handling the arrival of ebola on American shores: badly, foolishly, and with nothing but failure as a result.

Houston demands that pastors hand in their sermons on homosexuality or be held in contempt of court.

Fascists: The city of Houston has issued subpoenas demanding that pastors hand in any sermons on the subjects of homosexuality, gender identity or the city’s first openly gay mayor Annise Parker or be held in contempt of court.

Among those slapped with a subpoena is Steve Riggle, the senior pastor of Grace Community Church. He was ordered to produce all speeches and sermons related to Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality and gender identity. The mega-church pastor was also ordered to hand over “all communications with members of your congregation” regarding the non-discrimination law. “This is an attempt to chill pastors from speaking to the cultural issues of the day,” Riggle told me. “The mayor would like to silence our voice. She’s a bully.”

The only reason the city government and the mayor are demanding these sermons is to silence their opponents. Their actions are blatant violations of the first amendment and the freedom of speech, and are an effort to oppress any opposition to their own personal political agendas.

1 in 4 Americans can no longer afford to see their doctor

Finding out what’s in it: Because of the high cost and high deductibles of Obamacare-mandated health insurance plans, 25% of Americans now believe they can no longer afford healthcare.

That any of these Americans are even considering voting Democratic in any future election is shameful. They conceived it, they wrote it, and then they shoved it down our throats, in one of the most partisan maneuvers ever seen in these United States. Until the Democratic party moves to fix the problems caused by this monstrous law — mostly by repealing it — they do not deserve the support of anyone.

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