What a Shock

Wow, who knew?!  You can't actually keep you doctor?  Shocker.



Not only that, it's going to be more expensive, too.  Premiums are going to go up.

I'm stunned.

Really.

(H/T: Hot Air)

This Obamacare Letter Should Go Viral

This woman's letter ought to go viral.  What's happening to her is happening all over the country as people struggle to make their way through the Obamacare landmine only to discover they are totally screwed:

My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us. 

On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?

Read the whole thing.  It's a nightmare.

Graphic via R.J. Matson

Lie of the Year

The new AFP ad against Landrieu:



(H/T:  The Hayride)

Michael Moore: Obamacare is Awful

Michael Moore declares Obamacare to be "awful" and...wait for it...says single-payer is the way to solve all the problems:

I believe Obamacare’s rocky start — clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could — is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.

Why am I not surprised?

Wasn't that always the intent?

Dear Gallup: For WHAT is Obama Most Admired, Exactly?

Gallup has issued the results of its annual poll of Most Admired men and women.

I find the results quite depressing and ominous for the future of the country.

My initial response after reading the list was "who in the hell answered this poll?  Where did they get these people?"  Apparently Gallup says that the respondents are equal parts cell phone users and land lines;  they are supposedly from all 50 states, and are all over age 18.  In short, it seems like a fair poll on the surface.  A total of 1031 adults were polled.

And the best we can do is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?  Seriously?

What, exactly, are we admiring Barack Obama for?  I'd be interested in a follow-up question to the Gallup respondents to see if they can cite one thing that these people did that are truly worth admiration.  Or do they just say "Barack Obama" because he's president?  Or Hillary because she's famous (infamous?).  Are these respondents political at all?  Informed on the issues?  Educated? Just breathing?

What is it that we admire about Barack Obama?

His efforts to get to the truth about the massacre in Benghazi?  Ooops, no.  Not so much.  His attempts to protect his Ambassador to Libya while stationed in Benghazi?  Nah.  Can't be that.

How about his program to sell weapons to drug cartels in Mexico?  Was that admirable?  I don't think the family of Brian Terry would think so.

Do we admire him for his absolutely relentless push to pass Obamacare, a law that is still being deciphered, its faults and foibles still revealing themselves, and the inoperable, poorly written website that accompanies it?  Do we admire him for the amateur roll out of this unworkable, giant new entitlement program?

His commitment to keep education at the state level and keep the federal government out of your child's classroom?  Not even close.

Maybe its his ability to relate to the common man, the little guy, the average Joe on the street.  Hmmm, no, it's probably not that either.

I guess it could be that people admire Obama for his commitment to the privacy of American citizens and his adherence to the Fourth Amendment.  Wait, no..., that can't be it.

His protection of the Second Amendment?  Nope, not that either.

Immigration.  That's it - protecting America's borders and saying no to amnesty.  The idea that immigrants need to follow the laws in place and follow the path to citizenship that millions have followed before.  The protection of American values and culture, the belief in American exceptionalism!  Dang it, no.  That's not it either.  Obama has just vowed to fight for amnesty (probably trying to protect the Democratic politicians on the chopping block this cycle.)

His refusal to bow to foreign leaders?  Nah.  He's done that at least eight times, not to mention chumming it up with dictators.

I don't get it.  Maybe we admire him for his golf game, his lavish vacations and White House parties, his general ineptitude and his arrogance.

As far as Hillary Clinton goes, I see nothing admirable there either.  It was on her watch as Secretary of State that four Americans were murdered in Benghazi, a situation that should never have happened given that the consulate there asked repeatedly for increased security and was denied.

On the Gallup poll Barack Obama gets 16% of the vote; runner-up to him is George W. Bush with 4%.  Hillary is at 15% with Oprah Winfrey behind her at 6%.

I just don't get it.  At best it's a dismal sign of things to come.  If we are to assume that the poll respondents are informed, educated Americans (and there's certainly no evidence of that) then all hope for conservative values in this country is lost.

At best these are people that vote.

Scary.

H/T:  Memeorandum

There Is No Pleasure in "I Told You So"

I have been dumbfounded at how many people these days are shocked, shocked I tell you!, that they're being dropped from their insurance plans.

We tried to fucking tell you.

When I was political blogging every day this is almost all I talked about for two years.  I looked back into my archives and sure enough, it took about two seconds to find a post where Obama is blathering that utter bullshit about how you could keep your insurance.

It also took about thirty seconds to find comments from straight up liberal nut jobs who declare Obamacare is the best thing since sliced bread except that "it doesn't go far enough."  

It was as plain as the blue in the sky that Obamacare was going to be a nightmare and that people would find themselves dumped by their insurance plans like a litter of unwanted kittens.

Dumbasses.

While I would like to say, "I told you so!", it simply does no good (and gives me no pleasure) because most of those people still believe in unicorns and pixie dust and believe Obamacare will save the planet.

Even worse, these people in the White House are still pushing this big lie; why?  Because there are still plenty of idiotic, uninformed people out there who still want to believe it:

In the meantime, the White House site still makes the claim "If you like your plan you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law." This turned out to be a big lie by the Obama administration. 

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, tweeted, "FACT: Nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans." This is just another fairy tale.

You liberals thought Obamacare was going to make life better?  Quit trying to help me!

This is why I quit political blogging (for the most part.)  I'd been banging my head against the proverbial wall for nothing.  I ranted, railed, researched, and reported.  I typed, protested, linked, and posted until my fingers bled.  It did no good whatsoever. You can't educate a person who chooses to keep their head in the sand.

Mark Steyn today:

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period.” But the entire premise of Obamacare was that, in order to cover (some of) the uninsured and (in many cases) uninsurable, other Americans were going to have to pay significantly more. Obamacare was always intended to be the Great Disruptor: Avik Roy reports that, by 2010, administration officials knew that 93 million Americans would lose their current plans under Obamacare. Small businesses are cutting back on full-time workers; medium businesses are dumping employees’ spouses and children from their plans; and the largest businesses are eating nine-figure bottom-line increases. Delta Airlines claims that it will spend an extra $100 million on health-care expenses next year: Even with cutbacks on complimentary mini-pretzels, a tenth of a billion is a big sum to recover. Meanwhile, the Obamacare plans won’t recognize your preferred doctor, and major hospitals won’t recognize the Obamacare plans.

Oh yeah, that slippery slope that is Obamacare is about to get really interesting.

If you haven't considered just going off the grid yet, this might be a good time to invest in survival gear.

The wealthy are okay with all this; the line I keep hearing is "Oh, but we can afford to help those less fortunate.  We are so lucky and so blessed, we can afford to give more."

Okay.  Go right ahead.  Pay a shitload of money each month for your healthcare and subsidize that of the poverty ridden masses.  There are more and more of them every single day thanks to the Obama regulation nation and welfare expansion state.  Those of us in the middle are getting the proverbial finger up the ass and trying to figure out how to survive.  We aren't eligible for subsidies (even if we wanted them) and can't afford the tripling of our insurance rates.  We were told we could keep what we have, right?  Sure.

Why can't I just keep what I have?

Steyn again:

But the fact remains that nowhere in the Western world has the governmentalization of health care been so incompetently introduced and required protection by such a phalanx of lies. Obamacare is not a left–right issue; it’s a fraud issue.

Hope you are happy, lefties.

I'm going back to blogging about day trips now.


Added:

John Hinderaker at Powerline has an excellent post:  The Lies of Obamacare Documented.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Smart Power

This comment...:

"Well, I think that you're citing a study that I believe was conducted by a health insurance company that's critical of the Affordable Care Act, so that part I'm not particularly surprised about," White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said." 

...pretty much captures all that is wrong with this presidential administration.

Earnest said this in response to yet another study that predicts higher health care premiums under Obamacare.

That study, which Mr. Earnest finds fault with, was conducted by a company that doesn't toe the political line, apparently.

Yet what of all the other studies?

The Society of Actuaries predicts higher premiums.
Actuaries consulting firm Oliver Wyman predicts higher premiums.
Aetna predicts higher premiums.
Even Congress predicts higher premiums.

There are more.

The problem here though, is that this White House is soooo elite, soooo smart, sooooo intelligent, that they think the only conclusion that is correct is their own, all evidence to the contrary be damned.  (And we're not just talking health care here).

That's scary.

About ObamaCare...

Watch this...(yes, I know it's 58 minutes, but you need to see it):

Get Ready For Taxamageddon

I heard a caller on a local radio talk show today say "For the life of me I can't understand why anybody would vote to re-elect Barack Obama!"

I've spent the better part of three years trying to figure out why anybody would vote for him in the first place and I've yet to find a liberal who voted for him that could coherently explain to me why they did.  All I get is mushy-feel-good tripe.

All the news around here is depressing today.  The first thing out of the gate this morning I got word that my insurance will be going up between $50 and $60 a month and the co-pay will be increasing as well.  I guess we all saw that one coming.  The closing line of the memo was a reminder that my paycheck will be less than it was last school year.

I love my job.  I really do.  I love teaching.  But this year we'll begin implementing the Common Core State Standards and a new teacher evaluation system which makes is more than extremely difficult to be scored "highly qualified" and now we'll be getting less money for it.  More pressure, less money.  

It's a condition I guess we all better get used to.  Have you read Grover Norquist's piece in American Spectator today?  It's all about "Taxamageddon" and I wouldn't advise reading it with sharp objects nearby. 

Basically, on January 1, 2013 when the tax cuts lapse, some $500 billion will be added to the nation's tax burden.  That doesn't include the ObamaCare taxes that will begin to kick in:

Of the 20 new taxes or tax hikes in Obamacare, four will take effect January 1, including a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income (on top of existing capital gains and dividend taxes) and a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, such as wheelchairs, pacemakers, and children’s braces.

After outlining a series of tax hikes vile enough to make one want to jump off a cliff (but do it before the death tax goes up!), Norquist closes with this:

Election Day sits only 56 days from a $500 billion tax hike, and the only way to stop it is to re-elect a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, add at least four Republicans to the Senate, and install Mitt Romney in the White House. Then, through reconciliation, the House and Senate can extend the lapsing tax cuts for one year, enough time to pass a real revenue-neutral, Reagan-style tax reform, like the one outlined by Rep. Paul Ryan, which drops the personal and corporate income tax rates to 25 percent. 

A vote for Obama is a vote for an immediate $500 billion tax hike and the long term continuation of Obama’s downward path toward the fate of Europe.

Which brings me back to the original question.  Why would anybody in their right mind vote for this guy?

Here is a liberal's take on Taxamageddon:

The fact is, once one rips the scales from one's eyes (the scales inserted by the likes of Grover Norquist) one realizes the expiry of the Bush tax cuts especially will lead to a new era of growth. Whatever minor immediate dip in GDP occurs, will be more than corrected for by higher productivity, more jobs and more investments....in labor, not just speculative capital. 

Said liberal babbles on about "al-Qaeda phantoms" and "useless wars" before concluding that the Laffer curve is nonsense and so is a vote for Romney.

The Heritage Foundation has a page dedicated to determining how Taxamageddon will affect you and says:

Taxmageddon falls primarily on middle- and low-income Americans. That’s because, contrary to the President’s rhetoric about “the wealthiest Americans,” 60 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to middle- and low-income taxpayers. The expiration of the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will cause these taxpayers to pay a tax that was never supposed to hit them, and the expiration of the payroll tax cut is a tax hike almost exclusively on middle- and low-income families.

It's all quite depressing.

Read Norquist's piece if you dare.

And vote Romney.

(Graphic via Heritage Foundation)

One More Chance

I'm sick to death of parsing the Supreme Court ObamaCare ruling.  Did Roberts change his vote?  Jan Crawford's story is causing quite the uproar.  Did he have ulterior motives?  What were his true intentions?

I've swayed and wobbled since Thursday's ruling from feeling sick and nauseated to thinking he did us a favor in that certainly we will be able to defeat Obama in November because of this.  I mean, the only hope for the Republic now is to overturn this power grabbing, convoluted law.

At this point, whatever Roberts intended is beside the point.  Here we are.  I think Paul Ryan summed it up perfectly for me yesterday when he was speaking with George Stephanopoulos:

Look, this is the most important election in our lifetimes. This ruling -- and I guess this was John Roberts' thinking -- he raised the stakes of this election higher than it could have been raised. 

This election is a choice of two futures. Do you want a government-centered society in a government-driven economy and government-rationed health care? Or do you want the American opportunity society with a safety net, a free economy, economic freedom, personal liberty? That's what we want. That's the American idea. We have one more chance as a people to get that back, and that chance is going to come on November the 6th.

Whatever Chief Justice John Roberts was thinking, Paul Ryan is correct.  This is now the most important election in our lifetimes.

And Ryan is correct.  We have ONE more chance.  That's it.

To that end, it becomes critical that conservatives retake not only the White House but the Senate and hold the House.

Find out about those toss up Senate races and pick a candidate to support.  Send whatever contributions you can.  Real Clear Politics is a good place to start looking at the races.

One more chance.

The Supreme Court Awakens Resolve and Determination

Romney has raised a lot of cash today.  I just made a donation.  You can too.

As of right now, the Romney campaign has raised over $1.5 million today:

Reaction to the Supreme Court opinion from around the web:

I linked to this yesterday but I want to be sure you see it.  The Supreme Court decided that ObamaCare is a "tax."  In fact, it's at least twenty new taxes.

Mitt Romney's response:



The stock market plummeted in the hour after the decision came down.  When I was blogging this morning the market was at -135.51.  It's now at -156.78.

Professor Glenn Reynolds:

I do expect a lot of re-energization among Tea Party folks who had perhaps grown a bit complacent. 

Via The Foundry, the Senate may consider repeal through reconciliation:

Now that the individual mandate has acquired the official constitutional status of a “tax”, there is no longer any doubt that the Congress, and more specifically the Senate, can repeal it pursuant to the simple majority vote threshold available under the Budget Act’s reconciliation process. Some Senate insiders were concerned that the reconciliation process would leave too much of Obamacare intact, including the individual mandate. But today’s decision, while alarming in so many other ways, dispels with that concern. 

The mandate is now a revenue provision. Therefore, it is germane and not subject to a Senate parliamentary point of order to strike it from a repeal bill. The Senate’s filibuster process that would require a supermajority of 60 Senate votes to approve repeal is now irrelevant.

The thread at Memeorandum grows.

American Power:

I'm not surprised by today's ruling. I noted previously (somewhere around here) that the Court's decision on Arizona's SB 1070 was a warning against premature football-spiking. Chief Justice John Roberts, I suspect, is being extremely careful about preserving the institutional legitimacy of the Court --- and by extension, the legacy of "the natural court" under his leadership. 

Sister Toldjah:

The fight over ObamaCare has never been just about what’s allowed under the Constitution or some spurious notion of a “right” to health care. At the core is a conflict of visions over the nature of government and the relation of citizens to that government: Is it a federal government of limited, specific powers and a freeborn citizenry with inherent rights that cannot be revoked, or is it a paternalistic State of unlimited power, with citizens reduced to wards?

In the end, ObamaCare is a political question of the purest, most basic kind: What is the nature of our polity?

Doug Powers:

Though Obama and the Democrats have won the day, given the lack of popularity of the health care law (two thirds of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to overturn at least some part of the law), in just a few months they may very well look back and view this time as the moment that was the last straw for voters and the end of the president’s re-election hopes. We’ll see. 

And be sure to read the reaction at NRO:

The Court has failed to do its duty. Conservatives should not follow its example — which is what they would do if they now gave up the fight against Obamacare. The law, as rewritten by judges, remains incompatible with the country’s tradition of limited government, the future strength of our health-care system, and the nation’s solvency. We are not among those who are convinced that we will be stuck with it forever if the next election goes wrong: The law is also so poorly structured that we think it may well unravel even if put fully into effect. 

That's good advice.  Take heart and keep fighting.  Stronger than ever.

Check out the 2012 Senate races.  We need to take the Senate.

The sleeping giant awakes.

The ObamaCare Verdict Live-Blog

Here we go.

As we wait for the long anticipated Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare here are some links you might be interested in.

Legal Insurrection is on the story and will be updating.  Professor Jacobson's analysis is always spot on.

ScotusBlog will have the ruling immediately at their live blog site here.

Tabitha Hale outside the Supreme Court and offers this picture of the chaos outside:

Stay tuned for updates.

Update 1:  More coverage at CSPAN.

Ed Morrissey has an open thread up at Hot Air.  His prediction?

 I think there’s still a decent chance that the court might uphold it, but a slightly better chance that the whole thing will get tossed, more out of convenience than anything else, but the mandate will still be the key. 

The only prediction I'm making is that the ObamaCare ruling will be the last one.  There are other rulings to come in like the Stolen Valor case.

Update 2:  Here come the opinions.

Alvarez case:  the decision of the Ninth Circuit is affirmed.  Stolen Valor is unconstitutional but Congress may be able to do a new law.

Update 3:  Mandate is unconstitutional via Fox.

The opinion is authored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Wait:  SCOTUS blog says the individual mandate survives as a tax.  Everyone is trying to figure it out.  The mandate may have been struck down in the commerce clause but struck down as a tax.

Don't panic yet.

Update 4:  It appears that the mandate survives; Chief Justice joins the left side of the court on the mandate.  The law will stand.

The law will stand.

Well, this buts Romney in a difficult position, doesn't it?  One of his campaign points is that he will repeal ObamaCare on day one.

Update 5:  Obama will speak within the hour on the decision.  I won't be watching that one.  Sorry.

Professor Jacobson has a pep talk.

Update 6:  There will be a lot of parsing to come.  I'm no legal expert by any means.  But it seems to me that what they've said is that if you don't buy insurance then the government can "tax" you.  The government can mandate that you buy insurance and if you don't, they can tax you.  Can't we repeal taxes?

You want to read the decision?  Here it is.

Let's find some more informed commentary.

Shannon Bream broadcasting from the steps of the Supreme Court, says that the Court holds that Congress cannot penalize states by taking away their Medicaid funding, under the ruling if the states refuse to accept the new influx of new Medicaid patients..

Statement from Mitch McConnell:

“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: Congress must act to repeal this misguided law. Obamacare has not only limited choices and increased health care costs for American families, it has made it harder for American businesses to hire. Today’s decision does nothing to diminish the fact that Obamacare’s mandates, tax hikes, and Medicare cuts should be repealed and replaced with common sense reforms that lower costs and that the American people actually want. It is my hope that with new leadership in the White House and Senate, we can enact these step-by-step solutions and prevent further damage from this terrible law.”  

Nothing yet from Romney.

Update 7:  On Twitter, Michelle Bachmann:

Ed Morrissey:

So what now?  Mitt Romney and Republicans can now run on repeal as a big issue in the campaign.  They should emphasize the tax argument when they do, because this tax hits everyone.  The ruling may alleviate some of the bad polling the ACA has received, but probably not by much.  It’s going to remain deeply unpopular for the next few months.  On top of that, the decision to uphold the law also means that the fight is still on over the HHS contraception mandate.  We can expect the Catholic bishops to keep up the pressure on the Obama administration’s attempt to define religious expression for the purpose of controlling and limiting it — and we can probably expect the challenge to it to reach the Supreme Court, too. 

 Eric Cantor has announced that the House will vote (again) to repeal the health care law on July 11.  For all the good that will do.  Why bother?  The Senate will laugh and throw it back.

Update 8:  As the folks at SCOTUSBlog parse the opinion, Amy Howe notes that "those subject to the individual mandate may lawfully forgo health insurance and pay higher taxes, or buy health insurance and pay lower taxes."

It seems to me now that the thing to do is to defeat Obama in the fall and take the Senate.  That's never been more important.

For the record, the stock market is currently tanking.

Update 9:  Check out this "calculator" at WaPo to see how ObamaCare will affect you.

Current Drudge screenshot:

Certainly this all becomes a political issue now.  ObamaCare is the largest tax in American history.

Via Twitter, the Romney campaign says they've raised over $100,000 since the ruling came down.

Update 10:  Juan Williams:  "We live in very partisan political times."  That's why they pay him the big bucks to comment on Fox News.

Awaiting comments now from John Boehner and Mitt Romney.  I won't be covering Obama's comments.  You can find that on your own if you're so inclined.

Via Twitter:

Exactly!

Update 11:  Lots of reaction at Memeorandum.

Update 12:  So much for civility in discourse.

Marco Rubio on Fox:  "You don't have to buy health insurance but if you don't you're out of compliance and you have an IRS problem."

Jeffery Lord says this could be the beginning of a political revolution:

Obama…who adamantly insisted the individual mandate was not a tax…has now been saddled by the Supreme Court as the taxer-in-chief.This in fact can be a huge potential victory for -- Mitt Romney.This is Romney's moment to lead the charge against tax increases, in this case the ultimate insult -- a tax for simply drawing a breath. A tax mandated by the Supreme Court and propagated by his opponent.

Still awaiting comments from Romney.

Update 13:  Ann Coulter tweets:

And VP contender, Bobby Jindal:

Romney in his speech now vows to repeal ObamaCare.

"What the court did today was say that the court does not violate the Constitution."   Romney says the law is bad law and raises taxes on the American people by $500 billion dollars and cuts Medicare by $500 billion dollars.  Romney says up to twenty million Americans will lose their current insurance under ObamaCare and that ObamaCare is a job killer.  "Most troubling of all is that ObamaCare puts the federal government between you and your doctor."

Romney wants to keep in place pre-existing conditions coverage.  He also vows to help lower the cost of health care and health insurance.

"This is the time for the American people to make a choice," he says.  Are you comfortable with more deficits?  Bigger government?  Or do you want to return to a time when consumers make their own choices in health care.

If we want to get rid of ObamaCare we have to get rid of Obama, he says.

"We must replace ObamaCare."

Romney took no questions.

The stock market is -135.51 right now.

I'm going to sign off here for now.  We've still got the Eric Holder contempt vote today so maybe there will be some nugget of fun today.

Do no be disheartened.  Regroup and reload.  We have the ballot box in November and like it or not, your best shot right now is Mitt Romney.  Get involved and do whatever you can to support Romney and get him elected.

Retake the Senate.

Never give up.

Summer at SIGIS

First day of summer.  It's currently 91 degrees and so humid you can't even go outside.  And it's going to get even better!

It's sort of an anti-climactic day it seems.  After yesterday's wall to wall coverage on Fast and Furious, I got up today hoping for exciting news from SCOTUS.  In a way, I was hoping the ruling on Obamacare would come down but on the other hand, I'm glad it didn't.

If the ruling had come today, we'd all be talking about that instead of Fast and Furious and I think everyone needs to know about Fast and Furious.  I bet the Obama administration was hoping that Obamacare ruling would come today.  Distraction.

Have you read Katie Pavlich's book on Fast and Furious?  I have not but it's on my list.  Right now I'm reading (in my ADD fashion) The Great Destroyer by David Limbaugh, American Son by Marco Rubio, and The Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg.  Two of those are on my Kindle app and one is hardback.  (BoR will be proud of me).

So, with no SCOTUS news to blog about, I got out and did my part to stimulate the economy a little; I bought my mother one of those portable ice machines.  The ice maker in her refrigerator went out a while back and for what they're going to charge me to fix it, I could buy a new refrigerator.  That would be silly because the refrigerator works just fine and isn't that old.  So, I've ordered one of these ice machines.  Steve has one at his office and assures me they are wonderful.

I'm also in the market for an iPad, I think.  I've been using my Dell Streak but it's dying.  The battery life has always been short but now it just won't hold a charge.  I'm going to play around with it and do some things but if I can't get it worked out then I'll be finally biting the expensive bullet and buying an iPad (which I covet anyway so it will be okay).

I use the Streak primarily as a reader but I know there is so much more I would do with an iPad.  If you have one, share with me what your favorite apps are.  I have an iPhone but for reading purposes, it's really too small.

On another note, Mr. SIGIS and I are headed to Minden Saturday to celebrate Milly Rose's birthday.  I'm excited about that!  We may (or may not) go back down to Coushatta tomorrow for more veggies.  And next month we've got an exciting trip to Jefferson planned; we're meeting up with blog buddies Mike & Beth and will be staying at The Excelsior House again, this time in the Diamond Bessie suite!  Can't wait!

And meanwhile, we're still on baby watch!

Other than that, I'm procrastinating yard work and watching the dogs sleep.

And so it goes at Chez SIGIS.

Summer.

Obama Denies Small Business Owners Impacted by ObamaCare

In yet another example of Obama's total lack of business acumen or experience, in an interview with KTIV (Sioux City) Obama denies the possibility that Obamacare is pushing serious burdens on small business owners.

Via The Washington Examiner:

"That'd be kind of hard to explain," an incredulous Obama told KTIV of Sioux City, Iowa. "The only folks that have been impacted in terms of the health care bill are insurance companies who are required to make sure that they're providing preventive care or they're not dropping your insurance coverage when you get sick," he said. "And so, this particular company probably wouldn't have been impacted by that." 

 It would be difficult to be more out of touch or insulated from the complexities of small business ownership than that.  "The only folks...impacted...are insurance companies"?

Yet consider Scott Womack who owns several IHOP franchises:



He currently provides insurance to only his management staff yet ObamaCare would require him to provide insurance to every full time employee.  Mr. Womack explains that his current profit per employee is $3,000  yet the Obamacare mandate would cost $7,000 per employee.  He's looking at major cuts including cutting employee hours and services.

Mr. Womack was planning on building more restaurants throughout Ohio yet the Obamacare mandate will preclude that.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how that cuts into economic growth.

The regulations of the Obama administration, and Obamacare in particular, are certainly stifling economic recovery.

In the interview with KTIV, Obama insisted that his administration has enacted fewer regulations than "the previous administration."

"I know that there's a perception sometimes that there's all kinds of regulations coming out of Washington," Obama said. "The truth is we've seen fewer regulations coming out of my administration than the previous administration." 

 Again, misleading.

It's not necessarily the number of regulations coming out of his administration so much as it is the cost of the regulations and their effect on growth that is at issue here.

Last November Bloomberg reported that while Obama had (at that point) instituted fewer regulations, they have cost more.

The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms.

And of course, the kicker here is that these numbers do not include independent agencies such as the SEC and the EPA.

In 2009, Michigan Science did an extensive study on the effect of the EPA's Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.  It's not pretty.

His his book, The Great Destroyer, David Limbaugh recounts the story of Peter Schiff who explained the impact of government regulations on his investment company.  Mr. Schiff testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Regulator Affairs in September 2011:

Regulations have substantially increased the costs and risks associated with job creation.  Employers are subjected to all sorts of onerous regulations, taxes, and legal liability. The act of becoming an employer should be made as easy as possible. Instead we have made it more difficult. In fact, among small business owners, limiting the number of employees is generally a goal. This is not a consequence of the market, but of a rational desire on the part of business owners to limit their cost and legal liabilities. They would prefer to hire workers, but these added burdens make it preferable to seek out alternatives. 

In my own business, securities regulations have prohibited me from hiring brokers for more than three years. I was even fined fifteen thousand dollar expressly for hiring too many brokers in 2008. In the process I incurred more than $500,000 in legal bills to mitigate a more severe regulatory outcome as a result of hiring too many workers. I have also been prohibited from opening up additional offices. I had a major expansion plan that would have resulted in my creating hundreds of additional jobs. Regulations have forced me to put those jobs on hold. 

The evidence that this administration is stifling job growth is insurmountable.

For anyone to believe Obama's misleading gibberish is inconceivable.

Obama has often been touted as a great orator and while I fail to see that or to agree with it, it is safe to say that he is a master at just saying whatever he wants to say and expecting you to believe it for no other reason than that he said it.

Shame on you if you do.

Obama says that only insurance companies have been hurt by Obamacare?

Shame on him.

On Revising (and Erasing) History

Via Instapundit, Victor Davis Hanson has penned another piece that outlines the mass of contradictions that is Barack Obama.  It is difficult not to paste the entire thing here but start with this; after noting Obama's chastisement of the Supreme Court and his warning against overturning law, Hanson writes:

I am confused: I thought we were supposed to welcome such judicial audit. Was not that the charm of the Warren Court? Did not the Obama administration go to federal court to ask justices to set aside the Defense of Marriage Act that it was entrusted to enforce — seeking judicial help not to follow a law that it chose not to seek to overturn in Congress? 

I also thought that a younger Barack Obama once had regretted that the Supreme Court had never addressed “redistributive change” and, per the U.S. Constitution, had confined itself only to defining negative liberties rather than demanding positive “rights” that legislatures were supposed to ensure — or else. And did ObamaCare really pass with broad majorities? I thought that it received no Republican votes in the House and only squeaked by. And it would have been filibustered in the Senate without the Ted Stevens pseudo-scandal and various sweetheart deals to swing senators. Or is that now inaccurate?

Of course Mr. Hanson's memory is correct; it is Obama being the revisionist in this case.  In the mind of a narcissist like Mr. Obama, events exists only as they suit his needs.  If history needs revision, well who better to do it?

There's more:

I need to go to a re-education, or perhaps a re-memorization, camp. What happened to “unpatriotic” presidents running up $4 trillion in debt in eight years, or is trumping that in three then patriotic? Was the presidentially appointed Simpson-Bowles commission the proper bipartisan way to address deficits, or were its findings coopted by the one-percenters? In December 2010, I thought suddenly raising taxes was supposedly the wrong thing to do in tough times. Was it not by March 2011?

Again, it just depends on your point of view, I guess.

E. J. Dionne had a different point of view.  He agrees wholeheartedly with Obama's blast against the Supreme Court:

So imagine the shock when President Obama decided last week to speak plainly about what a Supreme Court decision throwing out the health-care law would mean, and then landed straight shots against the Mitt Romney-supported Paul Ryan budget as “a Trojan horse,” “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism.”
...
Progressives would be wildly irresponsible if they sat by quietly while a conservative Supreme Court majority undid 80 years of jurisprudence. Roosevelt wasn’t a wimp, and Obama has decided that he won’t be one, either. Conservatives are unhappy because they prefer passive, intimidated liberals to the fighting kind.

People like Dionne make me want to bang my head against a wall.

Hanson has the last word:

“Truth,” after all, is not the Socratic absolute, but a socially constructed commodity, defined by power and predicated on race, class, and gender, concerns that can be made to serve the greater good, if adjudicated by — well, again, fill in the blanks.

Read the whole thing.

When "On Your Own" Meant Freedom and Liberty

I've been stewing over this Obama speech since last Friday.  Did you see (or hear) this?



In a speech in Vermont, The Great Uniter takes a sharply partisan turn toward Republicans.  He sounds defensive, doesn't he?  Is he worried about something?

This is the part that just slays me:

"You know, if you're out of work, can't find a job, tough luck; you're on your own. If you don't have healthcare, that's your problem; you're on your own. If you're born into poverty, lift yourself up out of your own -- with your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots; you're on your own," Obama said in remarks before a cheering crowd in Burlington, Vt. "Hey, they believe that's how America has advanced. That's the cramped, narrow conception they have of liberty."

Wow.  Just wow.  Clearly the man has no concept of economics or of what made America great.  We did not become the greatest country in the world by cradle to grave handouts or by massive expansion of the welfare state.  Obamacare alone created yet another massive entitlement system on top of the expansion of food stamps and extensions of unemployment benefits Obama has enacted.

Republicans do not believe "you're on your own."   I'd like to see his research on conservative charitable giving.  Healthcare?  Charity hospitals and clinics abound throughout the United States.

This is the part that got me: the insinuation that if you're born into poverty the only way you can get out is by some government handout.  Think of all the people born into poverty through the decades, since the beginning of America even, who had nothing yet worked hard, studied hard, and found a way to succeed.  THAT'S what makes America great is that the opportunity is there; the grit and determination of the individual to make something of himself makes the difference.

What pride is there in doing nothing but taking government handouts?

Obama mocks the way that America has advanced?  He says we have a "narrow conception...of liberty"?

Liberty is when the government leaves us alone; when it does the job the founders enumerated and no more.

Later in the day Obama said in another speech:

"I hear politicians talking about values in an election year," he said. "Let me tell you about values. Hard work, personal responsibility -- those are values. But looking out for one another, that's a value. The idea we're all in this together, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, that's a value."

He is confusing the idea of "looking out for one another" with unconstitutional mandates and government handouts. He's confusing it with cradle to grave handouts and entitlements.  He's confusing it with creating a society dependent on the federal government for its every need and whim while wrecking innovation and small business.   Let churches, neighbors, and families look out for one another.    


If Obama is truly his "brother's keeper," somebody ought to give him the number to his brother's hut in Kenya and maybe he'll leave me alone and let me worry about my own brother.


I agree with him on one thing.  Of the upcoming election, Obama said:

"I think it's going to be a clarifying election about who we are and what we stand for."

He's got that right.

Alert Al Franken: Individual Liberty is a GOOD Thing

One of the biggest lies we were told during the Obamacare debate was reiterated by Obama himself over and over and over again:

"If you like your doctor or health care plan, you can keep it..."

As it turns out ... wait for it.... it's not necessarily true.  Shock!  Anyone with a grain of sense knew all along that wasn't going to be true.

Via The Foundry:

Four reputable research institutions have run the numbers and found that not only is Obama’s claim false, but employees will be dropped from their current coverage by the millions. This week’s chart outlines each of the four studies.

Here's their chart:

Somebody should alert Al Franken.  This blurb showed up on my Facebook sidebar today:

Now, that's not misleading at all, right?  Republicans think your employer should decide?  As opposed to what, say....the federal government?  I certainly have a lot more options about my own health care decisions pre-Obamacare as I'm going to have when he gets done with me.  Not to mention the unintended consequences of Obamacare such as employers keeping workers at under 40 hours a week so they don't have to provide health care for them or even worse, not hiring at all.

The majority of Americans want the law over turned.

We can't stand four more years.

"People Are Just Afraid of Change" Goes Before The Supreme Court

All eyes are on The Supreme Court this week as arguments against ObamaCare begin today.  For a summary of what will be argued when, check out this post at The Foundry.  Today's 90 minutes of argument are "mostly technical" on the issue of the Anti-Injunction Act.

Tomorrow things will get interesting with two hours of argument on whether the Constitution allows Congress to compel Americans to buy a product (in this case, a "financial instrument.")

The argument on this seems ludicrous to me (emphasis mine):

"The challengers to the reform say that never before has the government forced people to buy a product," Neal Katyal, who defended the legislation in appellate courts while serving as Obama's acting solicitor general, said in an interview with AFP. "We're not forcing you to buy a product. Health care is something all Americans consume, and you don't know when you're going to consume it." Katyal added that "we are not regulating what people buy, we're regulating how people finance it." 

 That seems to be no difference at all, to me.

Neal Katyal also provides yet another example of the liberal attempt to sway the court:

Katyal also framed any decision overturning the law as judicial actvism, bordering on tyranny. "If the Supreme Court struck this down, I think that it wouldn't just be abouthealth care," he said. "It would be the Supreme Court saying: 'Look, we've got the power to really take decisions, move them off of the table of the American people, even in a democracy.'" 

Michael Hammond, writing at Red State, points out that the liberal media has a long-standing practice of attempting to intimidate the court:

The justices are only human. 

And conservatives have fallen down in failing to make a bigger issue over liberal attempts to threaten and intimidate the court -– first, in the New York Times, then in the Washington Post [“Will Conservatives save Obamacare?” by Robert Barnes, the Washington Post, March 18, 2012, page B1] -– and repeatedly by Bob Beckel and others on Fox. 

All of the threats are thinly veiled (“Roberts is protective of the court’s reputation, however, and sensitive to the perception that its decisions are politicized.”), but they are nothing more or less than disguised threats to attack the court if it doesn’t do as liberals want.

There's absolutely no point in falling down the rabbit hole trying to anticipate how the court will vote and I'm not about to try.

What IS clear is what is at stake.  The objections conservatives (and others) have to ObamaCare have been made clear and it is now up to the Court to decide.  My position has always been that this law is a huge over reach of government authority and treads on state's rights, individual liberties, and personal freedom, not to mention the staggering expense and new taxes:

Neal Katyal says the opposition to ObamaCare is just that "people are afraid of change."  I'm afraid the problem is a lot more serious than that.

I'm apprehensive and naturally pessimistic.  I'm the one who never believed Obama would get elected in the first place ("How in the world could people vote for him?  You can't elect a president on the basis on one speech!"  "He's got no record!  He's only been in the Senate for 117 days!").  I am not particularly optimistic about how this will turn out.

As the Supreme Court does not allow live-coverage you will have to wait for audio later in the day.  The Foundry will be posting updates as will others.  Jamie Dupree is inside hearing arguments and will update when he gets out.

The White House Spin Is Making Me Dizzy

This is why so many people hate politics and/or politicians.

The spin.  The doublespeak.  The lies.

Case in point.  Consider White House chief of staff Jack Lew this morning talking with George Stephanopoulos on the contraceptive issue that has been raging; it's really the same thing that grated during the Obamacare debate.  This morning Jack Lew said (emphasis mine),

You know, George, from the very beginning, the president had two important goals here. One is to guarantee that every woman has a right to all forms of preventive health care, including contraception, secondly, that we do it in a way that respects the legitimate religious differences and the religious liberties that are so important in our country. 

On Meet the Press this morning, Lew said:

We are now in a place where we can say with certainty that women are going to have the right to health care and we can say that religious institutions, including Catholic hospitals and universities, won't have to pay for or do the administrative work to provide benefits that they find objectionable.

First of all, when exactly did health care become a "right," and two, when did contraception become a "right"?  And when did I, as a woman, not have access to health care?  Sure, women at one time were denied the right to vote, but health care?  I don't remember that one.

And on the issue of contraceptives, women have managed their contraception choices for ages without the government guaranteeing their right to it.

It's all about the doublespeak.

Now all of a sudden Republicans are apparently denying women access to contraceptives because they don't want the government dictating every aspect of our daily lives.  Bullspit.

And now, the government is attempting to force insurance companies to provide it whether they want to or not.  As Rick Santorum pointed out on Meet the Press this morning:

No one's denying them access to birth control. This is, this is outrageous. I mean, the, the bottom line is that you have the federal government now saying we're going to give you a right and then saying, by the way, we're going to tell you how to exercise that right. We're going to control you, a religious, a church-affiliated group as to, you know, what you provide to your employee. And if you don't like it, tough, because our rights, our right to tell you what to do trumps your deeply held convictions about what your dollars should be spent for. And the idea that you can have the insurance company, and by the way, many and--of--a large number of Catholic social service providers are self-insured, and so the self-insured is the insurance company, they're going to be forced to still provide.

So all that compromise business about how the Catholics won't be forced to provide contraception is baloney.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

Lew went on with his spin cycle when he said on the subject of a Senate budget:

So it, it is a challenge in the United States Senate to pass legislation when there's not that willingness to work together. Congress didn't do a great job last year. It, it, it drove right to the edge of a cliff on occasion after occasion. I actually think it's unfair to blame the United States Senate for that. A lot of that was because of the extreme, you know, conservative approach taken by House Republicans.

Hunh?  It's the fault of conservatives that Harry Reid hasn't passed a budget in the Senate in over 1000 days?   When David Gregory pointed out that the Democrats control the Senate, Lew then blamed the tea party:

Yeah, but it--the positions that ended up tying the Congress in knots came out of the House. It came out of the tea party wing in the House.

Ridiculous. 

So.  According to Jack Lew (on two different programs) today,  contraceptives are a natural born right and the conservative tea party wing is to blame because Harry Reid can't pass a budget.

I'm getting dizzy. 

No wonder people hate politicians.