Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

JUDGE SLAMS HHS: Your Regulations Do Not Trump the Constitution

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Health Reform: In yet another legal blow to the president's signature law, a federal judge rules that its contraceptive mandate does not trump Catholic groups' right to exercise their religious liberty and conscience.

Religious liberty advocates and First Amendment defenders are cheering the stunning decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in New York that promises to speed up the unraveling of ObamaCare. Cogan not only found that the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that requires health insurance to include contraceptive coverage was constitutionally questionable, he actually forbade HHS from enforcing it.

As the New York Post details, in ruling on the lawsuit, Cogan decided that the plaintiffs "demonstrated that the mandate, despite accommodation, compels them to perform acts that are contrary to their religion. And there can be no doubt that the coercive pressure here is substantial."

Most prior lawsuits have focused on the law's constitutionality. Cogan's ruling deals with its regulatory enforcement based on the phrase "the secretary shall determine" that appears in the Affordable Care Act no fewer than 1,005 times. This ruling essentially says that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cannot enforce a mandate that Congress did not approve and that she cannot unilaterally decide what the First Amendment means or whether it is rendered irrelevant by her edicts.

In other words, regulations do not trump the Constitution.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Just Biden Time

Guest strip by @BiffSpackle:



Hat tip: Liberal Logic 101.

INFLATION: Keeping It Real

Guest post by Jim Quinn

The BLS reported the CPI this morning. They tell me that inflation is well contained and has only risen by 1.2% in the past twelve months. Our beloved Federal Reserve chairman is worried inflation is too low. It is fascinating that the only people worried about inflation being too low are Ivy League educated economists and bankers whose wealth depends upon the middle class sinking further into poverty. As a person who lives in the real world, I can honestly say I like it when the things I need to buy cost less today than they did last year. When did inflation become a good thing for the average American? Our country was somehow able to grow from a fledgling new country to a world power in just over a century while experiencing mild deflation, except during times of war. The fallacy that inflation is beneficial to the common man has been peddled by bankers since 1971 when Nixon and his cronies closed the gold window and unleashed the inflationary boogeyman in the form of feckless politicians, captured Keynesian academics, and greedy soulless bankers.

It is no coincidence inflation accelerated the moment politicians, academics and bankers were unleashed to spend your money at will in order to obtain votes, Nobel prizes in economics, and ill-gotten obscene levels of wealth. David Stockman described Nixon’s dreadful sellout of the American people in his brilliant new book:

“Nixon’s estimable free market advisors who gathered at the Camp David weekend were to an astonishing degree clueless as to the consequences of their recommendation to close the gold window and float the dollar. In their wildest imaginations they did not foresee that this would unhinge the monetary and financial nervous system of capitalism. They had no premonition at all that it would pave the way for a forty-year storm of financialization and a debt-besotted symbiosis between central bankers possessed by delusions of grandeur and private gamblers intoxicated with visions of delirious wealth.” -David Stockman – The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

The USD has lost 83% of its purchasing power since 1971. The moment Nixon began playing politics with the USD and bullied the Federal Reserve Chairman into pumping up the money supply prior to the 1972 election, the inflation genie got out of the bottle and led to the miserable stagflation of the 1970′s. It took extreme measures by Paul Volcker to get it back under control in the early 1980′s. Since Volcker we’ve had nothing but academics and toadies who have chosen to change the definition of inflation in order to mislead the average American regarding how badly they are getting screwed. Every refinement, tweak, adjustment, or revision to the calculation of CPI has been designed to produce a lower figure. Why control inflation when you can just change the calculation to suit your purposes?

Over the proceeding decades, the BLS has sliced and diced the CPI in such a way that they can make it say whatever TPTB want it to say. They need to keep the mushrooms (you) in the dark regarding your standard of living deteriorating, while the beneficiaries of inflation (bankers, politicians) see their standard of living soaring. They have made hedonistic “adjustments”, quality “adjustments”, substitution “adjustments” and geometric weighting “adjustments”, all with the sole purpose to reduce the level reported to the American people on a monthly basis.

A Dramatic Poetry Reading By Mr. B. H. Soetero

See if you recognize any of these.


And, no, I'm not a birther, but it would seem that Mr. Obama is.


Monday, December 16, 2013

DEMOCRAT LOGIC COMICS: RINO Misdirection Edition

Priorities:


Looks like John Edwards was right: there really are two Americas.

There's the Beltway ruling class. And the rest of us.


Note: Our long-serving intern Biff Spackle has his own Twitter feed: @BiffSpackle. Not that we're endorsing following him, mind you. Just in the interest of full transparency. Like the most transparent administration ever.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

"What happened on Thursday... will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration"

Avik Roy of Forbes is one of the unsung heroes in the battle against Obamacare. His latest article -- "Government Takeover: White House Forces Obamacare Insurers To Cover Unpaid Patients At A Loss" -- outlines the increasingly frenzied thrashing of an administration that is operating completely outside the boundaries of the Constitution.

Of all of the last-minute delays, website bungles, and Presidential whims that have marred the roll-out of Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges, what happened on Thursday, December 12 will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration. The White House—having canceled Americans’ old health plans, and having botched the system for enrolling people in new ones—knows that millions of Americans will enter the new year without health coverage. So instead of actually fixing the problem, the administration is retroactively attempting to force insurers to hand out free health care—at a loss—to those whom the White House has rendered uninsured. If Obamacare wasn’t a government takeover of the health insurance industry [before], then what is it now?

On Wednesday afternoon, health policy reporters found in their inboxes a friendly e-mail from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announcing “steps to ensure Americans signing up through the Marketplace have coverage and access to the care they need on January 1.” Basically, the “steps” involve muscling insurers to provide free or discounted care to those who have become uninsured because of the problems with healthcare.gov.

HHS threatens to throw non-complying plans off the exchanges

HHS assured reporters that it would be “urging issuers to give consumers additional time to pay their first month’s premium and still have coverage beginning January 1, 2014.” In other words, urging them to offer free care to those who haven’t paid. This is a problem because the government has yet to build the system that allows people who’ve signed up for plans to actually pay for them. “One client reports only 15 percent [of applicants] have paid so far,” Bob Laszewski told Charles Ornstein. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5 percent and 10 percent of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” said Kip Piper.

“What’s wrong with ‘urging’ insurers to offer free care?” you might ask. “That’s not the same as forcing them to offer free care.” Except that the government is using the full force of its regulatory powers, under Obamacare, to threaten insurers if they don’t comply. All you have to do is read the menacing language in the new regulations that HHS published this week [PDF], in which HHS says it may throw otherwise qualified health plans off of the exchanges next year if they don’t comply with the government’s “requests.”

...There are other services HHS is asking insurers to offer for free. The administration is “strongly encouraging insurers to treat out-of-network providers”—i.e., costly ones—“as in-network to ensure continuity of care” and to “refill prescriptions covered under previous plans during January.” But the issue of unpaid premiums looms largest.

It’s unconstitutional to force insurers to cover people for free

The administration could pay insurers to cover up for its mistakes. But that would lead to criticism—as it has in other instances—that the White House is lawlessly throwing taxpayer money at insurers to, well, cover up for its mistakes. So, instead, they’re asking insurers to pay for the mistakes.

But, of course, the cost of paying for those mistakes won’t end up being paid by insurers, but by consumers, in the form of higher premiums.

In theory, the Obama administration’s actions aren’t merely illegal—they’re unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

But it will be up to insurers to sue to protect their rights. Like battered wives, they are unlikely to do so. Companies like Aetna and Humana are so terrified that the administration will run them out of business that they are more likely to do what they’re told, and quietly pass the costs on to consumers. The chaos and recriminations have made insurers like UnitedHealth, who have largely stayed out of the exchanges, look smart.

In 2010, PolitiFact said that the claim that Obamacare was a “government takeover of health care” was its “lie of the year.” The Federal Register disagrees.

So as the long list of Obama administration scandals continues to expand -- seemingly every day -- what are the Republican leaders doing?

You guessed it: allowing Democrats to destroy the spending caps ("the sequester") that had been promised for 10 years... just two years ago.

Oh. And passing Amnesty for illegal immigrants.

It's time to vote out every fake Republican. Find out when your primary is and start working to support the most conservative candidate you can in your local race. It's time. November is coming.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money News.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

SURPRISE: Left-Wing Think Tank "Center for American Progress" Funded by Massive Corporations

You can read the headline like this: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, his hatchet-man John Podesta, and the rest of the Democrat Party are bought and paid for by the nation's biggest corporations.

Let me just say that these corporate executives are beyond stupid.

Are they not seeing what happens to companies -- like health insurers -- that collaborate with the federal government?


Inevitably, the government's insatiable appetite consumes them -- and these jamokes will be no different.

Ben Shapiro, of Breitbart and TruthRevolt, explains

On Friday, the Obama- and Clinton-allied Center for American Progress finally revealed its long-sought corporate donor list after heavy pressure arising from CAP’s quasi-lobbying history. That scrutiny ratcheted up following the announcement that CAP founder John Podesta would be formally joining the Obama administration. Both Politico and The New York Times called for the donor list to meet the public eye.

And so CAP handed over the list to the leftist Huffington Post. Incredibly, its 2013 donor list contains a myriad of massive corporations, including Apple Inc., AT&T, Bank of America, BMW of North America, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Discovery, GE, Facebook, Google, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, PG&E, the Motion Picture Association of America, Samsung, Time Warner Inc., T-Mobile, Toyota, Visa, Walmart and Wells Fargo.

The revelation that huge corporations have been footing the bill for the CAP shatters the myth that major corporations are right-wing repositories. In fact, it shows precisely the opposite: major American corporations including supposedly conservative ones like Walmart are largely in league with a massive government that supports massive subsidizing legislation. Crony capitalism is the order of the day, and it skews leftist – and impacts the donation patterns of America’s most profitable companies.


Gee, and I always thought it was the Republican Party that was in bed with the "evil corporations".

Turns out that the lying leftists of the Democrat Party are secretly funded by those very same cronies.


Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America(Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.


Democrat Logic Comics, Episode #18

Yes, this really appears to be their argument.


More here.


14 Experts Predict Economic Catastrophe for 2014 and Beyond

Guest post by Michael Snyder

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next. But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous. The following are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in 2014 and beyond...

-Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead: "Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at the latest."

-Marc Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: "You have to say that we are again in a massive financial bubble in bonds, in equities, in [other] asset prices that have gone up dramatically."

-Gerald Celente: "Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get.

And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.

That’s our forecast.

We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out."

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

RUH ROH: Harvard Study Suggests Youth Are Shunning Obamacare; Fiscal Death Spiral Awaits

Guest post by Eric Boehm

Obamacare is striking out with young people — those healthy folks who are suppose to actually make it work.

Young people are perhaps the most important demographic to the success of the Affordable Care Act, but most Americans under 30 are opposed to the law. They particularly dislike the individual mandate that requires them to buy insurance or pay fines in form of higher taxes.

A new survey from Harvard University found a large majority of young Americans do not believe the law will save them money, do not believe it will improve their health and do not intend to sign up for insurance through the new exchanges.

If that’s all true – particularly the last part – it is very bad news for President Barack Obama’s signature policy achievement.

The Affordable Care Act hinges on getting young, mostly healthy people to sign up for insurance. That will help spread out the costs incurred by the older, more expensive enrollees who also will use the system.

This cost-pooling is central to the economics that underpin the law, and if young people decline to enroll, costs for everyone else could skyrocket.

The data from the survey demonstrates a striking rejection of the ACA by millennials under 30,” wrote John Pulice of the Harvard Political Review, which provided analysis of the survey.

The 2013 Harvard Public Opinion survey included interviews with 2,089 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. Interviews were conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11, and the poll has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.

The results show many young people are not buying the promises of Obamacare. A mere 17 percent of those polled believe their quality of health care will improve under the Affordable Care Act, while 44 say it will get worse.

But millennials’ views on health care costs are even bleaker.

Only 10 percent of those surveyed said the ACA will decrease their health care costs, with 50 percent saying it will increase their costs and 36 percent expecting their costs to stay the same, according to the Harvard poll.

Of those surveyed, only 20 percent said they plan to enroll in a health care plan through an exchange, while 47 percent said they would not enroll.

About those "devastating" cuts to the food stamp program...

Let's ignore the fact that we are told incessantly we're in an economic recovery, yet the food stamp program keeps exploding.

And let's ignore the fact that, by some estimates, more than half of the food stamp program is wasted on fraud and criminal activity.

Let's ignore the fact that you can buy food stamps on Craigslist and every social media site known to man (and some scientists have yet to discover). And let's ignore the notion that you can walk into liquor stores in some neighborhoods and pay with food stamps. No, let's put all of that aside.

As Mike Shedlock explains, the entire program is poised to crash, which makes the Democrats' bleating whines about draconian cuts all the more ludicrous. But, then again, that's why they're Democrats.

Please note that the alleged $40 billion in cuts is really only $4 billion in a close to $80 billion program. They arrive at $40 billion by multiplying $4 billion by 10 years ... The cuts then are $40 billion in an $800 billion program. And I actually doubt we will ever see those "cuts" in the first place.


  • SNAP benefits more than doubled between 2000 and 2007.
  • Between 2007 and 2013 snap benefits went up another 150%.
  • Trendline growth would have annual benefits at about $32.5 billion.
  • Instead benefits are more than double.
  • Liberals are whining about a 5% cut when a cut to the trendline would be a 50% cut


  • Participation is nearly double what it was in 2007.
  • Participation in 2013 is 275% of the 2001 total.

...Supposedly a 5% cut is draconian.

The Problem

  • Growth in the number of participants is on an unsustainable trend. 
  • Growth in benefits per person is also on an unsustainable trend.
  • Multiply the two together and you get the first chart.

As is typical with government programs, there is no incentive by the administrators to eliminate waste or fraud.  ... The more funding for food stamps, the bigger the salaries and staffs of the administrators.

I suggest that we need a way to provide necessary safety-net benefits while simultaneously providing an incentive to get off the program and get a job.

I repeat my proposal...

  • Prohibit food stamp purchases of potato chips, snacks, soft drinks, candy, pizza, frozen foods of any kind except juice.
  • Limit food stamp users to generic (store brand vs. name brand) dried beans, rice, peanut butter, pasta, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, frozen (not bottled) juice, canned vegetables, canned soup, soda crackers, poultry, ground beef, bread, cheese,
    powdered milk, eggs, margarine, and general baking goods (flour, sugar, spices).
  • Calculate a healthy diet based on current prices, number in the family, ages of recipients, and base food stamps allotments on that diet.
  • In the interest of health and cleanliness, expand the food stamp program to include generic soap and laundry products.

My proposal will not only lower the cost of the food stamp program, the resultant healthier diets would lower Medicaid and Medicare costs as well.

Moreover, my proposal would give people a strong incentive to get off the food stamp program without intrusive, costly big-brother ideas like drug-testing which cannot possibly work...

Let me put this in terms even progressives can understand: either the economy is recovering, in which case we can slash food stamps... or we're still in the Obama Depression.

Which is it, dimwits?


Charts: Tim Wallace. Related: How we lost the "War on Poverty".

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

37 Reasons the Media is Lying to You About a "Recovery"

Guest post by Michael Snyder

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it." Sadly, that appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream media are taking with the U.S. economy.

They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over." But is that actually the truth? As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.

And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy.

Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37 reasons why "the economic recovery of 2013" is a giant lie...

#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last recession...

#3 The employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.

#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006. Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

Friday, December 06, 2013

Unemployment Propaganda Buzzkill: Labor-Force Shrunk to Generational Low for November

Well, the new unemployment numbers were released today and the Beltway and Wall Street chattering classes are pretty darn excited. Giddy, even.

Here's Reuters, for instance:


In fact, the numbers are truly awful.

Serious analysts -- like Rick Manning at The Hill -- delved into the facts behind the propaganda.

The headlines read that the unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest point since Obama took office. This is a case where a headline can be 100 percent true and completely wrong in its implications.

If the unemployment rate drop from 7.3 percent down to 7 percent is actually meaningful, the Federal Reserve should immediately end its bond-buying program, called "quantitative easing." One can assume that the economy is rapidly heating up, and we should all be concerned about inflationary risks created by more monetary pumping. When coupled with the net 750,000 new hires reported by the Labor Department over the past three months, the economy must be on fire.

However, the same report that shows the unemployment rate drop is disastrous when comparing data for the past three months.

The Labor Force Participation Rate dropped by 0.2 percentage points in that two-month period, meaning 666,400 fewer people were in the labor force in November than in September, roughly the equivalent of an entire congressional district.


The number of employed people is almost as grim. If you are to believe the unemployment report, only 83,000 more people were employed in November than in September.

The unemployment rate did not drop because of people getting jobs, but instead due to another massive labor drop-out. If this sounds familiar, it is because our nation has seen a staggering drop in the labor participation rate over the past five years.

Since Obama took office, the number of people eligible to work in the labor force has risen by nearly 12 million.

But the actual number of new people working in the labor force since Obama assumed the presidency? A ridiculous one million.

Note the column I've highlighted above. November's labor force participation rate is the lowest in a generation for that particular month.

The employment situation has not been this grim since -- wait for it -- Jimmy Carter was president.

Ah, these Democrats. They're for the little people, don'tcha know?

Hey: I've got an idea! Let's force businesses to pay a higher minimum wage! That ought to help!


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Thursday, December 05, 2013

OBAMA IS RIGHT: We Must Eradicate This Horrific Income Inequality Now!

I had the thought earlier, but GayPatriot beat me to it, his story even making the top headline at BadBlue.

As Barack Obama rails against "income inequality" (read: free market capitalism) and "trickle-down economics" (read: free market capitalism), it's worth remembering this simple fact.

Obama has been president for coming up on six years. Every one of his many promises: hope, change, shovel-ready, Stimulus, cash-for-clunkers, green energy, Solyndra, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, keeping your health care plan, keeping your doctor... every single one has been a disaster. Every single one of his Utopian fantasies has increased misery, poverty, and malaise.

And who has benefited the most from his policies? The federal bureaucracy and Democrat apparatchiks around the Beltway:

DC – i.e., government employees – got richer compared to the rest of America. What also happened back then was a newly-Democrat Congress adding hundreds of billions to government spending, followed of course by President Obama and his 2009 “Porkulus”.

Via Zero Hedge, who suggests that Obama should maybe keep this in mind when he gives his speeches on inequality.


Insofar as it applies to D.C. first, I agree with Obama. Income inequality must be addressed. Let's start with the ruling class in D.C. by slashing every non-defense discretionary agency by 50 percent. For starters.


Wednesday, December 04, 2013

NEWS FLASH: Poll proves that Democrats are completely disconnected from reality, but I repeat myself

Maybe it's all the acid they dropped in the sixties.

The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren't working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats.

On issue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey...

They are, by and large, Pollyanna-ish about the economy, they can see no evil when it comes to Obama or ObamaCare, and they are extremists when it comes to the size and role of the federal government... To get a sense of just how out to lunch Democrats are these days, consider:

The economy is barely moving after four years of Obama's "recovery," there are millions who've given up looking for work, household incomes are down and poverty is up.

Not surprisingly, 64% of the public says the country is headed in the wrong direction — 71% of independents say this. But those who identify themselves as Democrats are positively upbeat. Two-thirds, in fact, are perfectly satisfied with the country's direction.

Nor are Democrats willing to entertain any doubts about Obama. Overall, his approval rating is just 40% — just 31% of independents give him a thumbs-up. But a ridiculously high 80% of Democrats like the job Obama's doing.

While some believe that liberalism is a mental disorder, I feel differently.

Modern liberalism is a religious cult, a primitive and fanatical faith in the primacy of the state.

No matter the lessons of thousands of years of human history, of countless experiences with logic, reason, law, economics, and philosophy, the modern liberal doesn't care.

He or she has blind faith.

When reality intrudes on their delusions, as it does daily -- most recently in the case of the Obamacare debacle -- they look for scapegoats and devils. Never will they turn introspective. Never will they examine the scorecard for their myriad, paradasiacal programs. Never will they review the human toll of their social experiments. Never will they examine the endgame of their fanaticism, which always resembles inner-city Chicago, Detroit or Washington, D.C.

For to do so would be to cast away their idols. It would be to reject their false prophets. It would be to dismiss their own radicalism.

And this the radical left cannot do.


Hat tips: TPNN and BadBlue Real-Time News.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

OH, MY: Obama Approval Hits Thirties for First Time Ever in RCP Poll

Just wait until 90 to 120 million more people lost their insurance plans and doctors next year.

I have an idea about that, but first check out RCP's polling:


Moe Lane explains the reality behind the numbers:

...Barack Obama has dipped below an average 40% job approval rating on RCP.  That more or less means that any policy-making that the Democrats want to do next year will likely not feature the President’s ‘help;’ and, of course, that Barack Obama will have plenty of time to practice his golf swing during the summer and fall of 2014.  Only… the Democrats would prefer that he do that in states that do not have a Democratic Senator up for re-election, OK?

Now, I’m not saying that the Democrats are panicking.  What they are doing right now is quietly checking to make sure that their second and third lines of defense are adequately stocked and supplied.  You know.  Just in case...

George Will predicted that next year "all hell's going to break loose" when employers start dumping their employees into government plans because of Obamacare's restrictions.

So here's my idea.

Every employer in America should plan to celebrate October 1st, 2014 as National "I Lost My Health Insurance" Day:


The president has unlawfully delayed, waived, and otherwise rewritten vast portions of the Obamacare bill. Just think what would have happened if this year's Healthcare.gov rollout had occurred before the 2012 presidential election.

Employers: don't let the Democrats hide their colossal failures until after the midterms.

Urge your employer to celebrate October 1st, 2014 as National "I Lost My Health Insurance" Day. It's time to put Democrat politicians where they belong: back in the private sector, trying to earn an honest living.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Monday, December 02, 2013

SURELY YOU JEST: President Obama Now Lying About Massive, Fraud-Riddled Food Stamp Program

Guest post by Adam Tobias

MADISON, Wis. — President Barack Obama seems to be stretching the truth — again.

But his latest round of deceit doesn’t involve people being told they can keep their health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.

This time the commander in chief is stretching the truth about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which faces about $39 billion in cuts under a bill passed last month by House Republicans.

Obama, who is touting the taxpayer-funded program as a fiscal engine that helps boost the economy, claims in a report released this week that SNAP participation and spending will fall significantly as America recovers from tough financial times.

If only that were true.

Since Obama signed into law the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided close to $45.2 billion in additional SNAP benefits over four years, the national unemployment rate has dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.3 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

From 2009 to 2012, the country’s gross domestic product increased from $13.9 trillion to $15.6 trillion and the national average wage index also jumped from $40,711 to $44,321.

Yet the number of people who take advantage of SNAP and the money allocated for the program continue to skyrocket every year.