The Socialist ObamaCare Takeover Of Health Care Is An Unmitigated Disaster. Just Ask Doctors.

I write this the night before the Supreme Court releases its decision on ObamaCare, obviously not knowing how the SCOTUS will rule.

Will the SCOTUS overturn the entire law?  I think so, in the sense that the Democrats who rammed the disgraceful takeover of our health care system could have placed a severability clause in it, but didn’t.  One of the Justices (Scalia, in my memory) famously asked just how on earth they could be expected to divide this 2,700 page monstrosity up if they were to decide to overturn part of it and keep part of it.

On the other hand, The Supreme Court seems to have a penchant for deciding as little as possible and ruling as narrowly as possible – which guarantees that the same issues will come before them again and again and again.  If you are a fan of the SCOTUS, you might argue that this is because they don’t want to involve the Court in important issues which ought to be decided by the elected branches.  But if that’s true, why bother to even take up these cases with decisions that decide almost nothing?  On the other hand, if you are a SCOTUS skeptic, you might well conclude that the Supreme Court never issues bold decisions so it can have job security.

The court issues so many narrow decisions that merely force them to issue subsequent narrow decisions on basically the same damn cases ad nauseam.

An example of this was the Arizona SB 1070 Law.  By keeping the major provision and overturning the other three, you ended up with a joke of a system in which the states get to demand immigration papers and the suspects get to refuse to show them their immigration papers.  Antonin Scalia’s frustration over the near-useless ruling which guarantees that immigration will remain a mess would have been funny if the situation wasn’t such a travesty.  His harshest remark may have been:

The President has said that the new program is “the right thing to do” in light of Congress’s failure to pass the Administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.

So, while I am believing the Court will issue a bold decision and overturn ObamaCare simply because it will create a genuine disaster if it overturns the mandate (the funding mechanism) but leaves the rest of the law that forces trillions in spending intact – or even worse, leaving the mandate intact and choosing some other details to quibble over – I recognize that such a decision is how the SCOTUS normally does business.

A new survey that just came out that demonstrates just what a turd this ObamaCare law is worth broadcasting from every rooftop.  If ObamaCare gets thrown out as unconstitutional, then we need to keep doing everything we can to expose just how breathtakingly evil this demonic law truly was in the face of the Democrat Party’s “The Supreme Court is only a valid entity if it rules the way we fascist liberals say it should” mantra (see more of that here from elected Democrats).  And what the heck.  Here’s still more.  And we need to expose it even MORE if any part of this beast is allowed to limp out of the Supreme Court (and if the SCOTUS doesn’t overturn it, figure on the same people who demonized the Court saying, “The highest court in the land has now spoken …”).

So take a look at the following two surveys:

Thanks Obamacare: 83% of Doctors Surveyed Say They May Quit
Kate Hicks
Web Editor, Townhall.com 06/14/12

The Doctor Patient Medical Association has released a new survey of about 700 doctors, and the results are bleak. Scary bleak. Among other dismal figures, Doctors’ Attitudes on the Future of Medicine: What’s Wrong, Who’s to Blame, and What Will Fix It found that 83% of respondents are contemplating leaving the industry if Obamacare is fully implemented, owing to its disastrous projected consequences. Indeed, they openly blame the healthcare law for their industry’s woes:

KEY FINDINGS
 90% say the medical system is on the WRONG TRACK
 83% say they are thinking about QUITTING
 61% say the system challenges their ETHICS
 85% say the patient-physician relationship is in a TAILSPIN
 65% say GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT is most to blame for current problems
 72% say individual insurance mandate will NOT result in improved access care
 49% say they will STOP accepting Medicaid patients
 74% say they will STOP ACCEPTING Medicare patients, or leave Medicare completely
 52% say they would rather treat some Medicaid/Medicare patient for FREE
 57% give the AMA a FAILING GRADE representing them
 1 out of 3 doctors is HESITANT to voice their opinion
 2 out of 3 say they are JUST SQUEAKING BY OR IN THE RED financially
 95% say private practice is losing out to CORPORATE MEDICINE
 80% say DOCTORS/MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS are most likely to help solve things
 70% say REDUCING GOVERNMENT would be single best fix.
 
If this isn’t an airtight argument for the repeal of Obamacare, nothing is. When the people providing the actual healthcare are thinking of getting out of the game, the system is clearly broken. Here’s hoping the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare this month.

The other survey gives us more information on just how rancid physicians think ObamaCare is.

Some screenshots I took from the survey:

And:

So other than the fact that doctors will have less control over medical decisions while government bureaucrats will have far MORE control, and other than the fact that it’s going to escalate the process of driving doctors out of medicine when we ALREADY HAVE A DOCTOR SHORTAGE, ObamaCare is hunky dory.

Well, maybe not so hunky dory.  There’s a lot more crap wrong with this ObamaCare turd:

For Physicians, Obamacare a Net Negative
Posted on 15 June 2012 by jmorris
By Jeremy Morris, Associate Editor, US Daily Review.

Jackson & Coker, a division of Jackson Healthcare and leader in permanent and locum tenens physician staffing for over 30 years, endorsed the results of a new survey by its parent company that finds that a “D” is the mean grade physicians give the health law, despite its primary intention to reduce the cost of healthcare and provide coverage for the uninsured. Physicians who said they were very knowledgeable about the law were even more negative.

The survey was conducted online from May 25 to June 4, 2012. Invitations for the survey were emailed to physicians who had been placed by Jackson Healthcare staffing companies and those who had not. Respondents were self-selected, with 2,694 physicians completing the survey. (The error range for this survey at the 95-percent confidence level is +/- 1.9 percent.)

In addition, the survey shows 68 percent of American physicians disagree that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “Obamacare,” will have a positive impact on physician/patient relationship.

Only 12 percent of physicians said the law provides needed healthcare reform. A majority of physicians said the ACA would not improve healthcare’s quality, rising costs or patients’ control over their own health care. They also said it would worsen the amount of control physicians have over their practice decisions.

The only positive rating physicians gave the ACA was related to access. Fifty-four percent of respondents said the new law will increase patients’ access to care. The health law is estimated to drive 13 million new Medicaid enrollees beginning in 2014.

“Physician opinions are important since they are a primary driver of healthcare decisions and costs,” said Richard L. Jackson, chairman and CEO of Jackson Healthcare, a national healthcare staffing company. “Overall, they believe the law does not meet its intended objectives, negatively impacts the patient-physician relationship and hinders their ability to control the treatment of their patients.”

One important provision in the law set to take effect next year is the Independent Payment Advisory Board charged with finding savings in Medicare. Sixty-four percent of physicians said it would have a negative impact on patient care.

Among other key survey findings:

• 70 percent said ACA would not stem rising healthcare costs.
• 66 percent said ACA would give physicians less control over their practice decisions.
• 61 percent said ACA would not improve the quality of healthcare.
• 55 percent said Congress should scrap ACA and start over.
• 49 percent said ACA would give patients less control over their healthcare.
• 35 percent said it did nothing to reform healthcare.
• 31 percent said ACA didn’t go far enough and a single-payer system is needed.
• 22 percent said ACA went too far and impedes a physician’s ability to practice medicine.

“Improving the quality of patient care and managing rising healthcare costs are undoubtedly the two biggest issues facing physician practices today, and this survey certainly indicates the new health law is doing little to address these key challenges,” said Tony Stajduhar, president of the Permanent Recruitment Division, Jackson & Coker. “With a shortage of physicians already projected in the coming years, especially among permanent physicians, we need to actively engage this key group in discussions regarding healthcare reform that will bring about impactful changes in our current healthcare system―in turn, positively influencing recruitment and retention within this profession.”

To view the survey or learn more click here.

According to a statement, “Jackson & Coker believes that all hospitals, clinics, physician practices, and patients should have access to a physician whether for a day, a lifetime, or any of life’s changes in between. For over three decades, Jackson & Coker has been uniting physicians and hospitals to ensure that all patients’ needs are met by providing physicians for as little as a day and as long as a lifetime. The firm specializes in doctor opportunities for physicians at any stage of their professional career. Headquartered in metro Atlanta, the physician recruitment firm has earned a reputation for placing exceptionally qualified candidates in commercial and government practice opportunities. Recruiters work in two divisions of the company: Permanent Placement, which places providers in over 40 medical specialties in permanent placement jobs, and locum tenens, a staffing model that recruits medical providers (physicians and CRNAs) for temporary vacancies. Jackson & Coker’s in-house client credentialing specialists perform comprehensive credentialing services that adhere to the highest industry standards, with a dedicated individual for each specialty team.”

The “Obama Akbar!” liberals who most support ObamaCare frankly don’t care if it is evil and will kill people by medical neglect.  In fact, the worse it is, and the more people die because of ObamaCare, the better – because that would lead to the next step in liberal’s most cherished dreams of a state-controlled society.  Because the sad, pathetic, tragic fact of the matter is that the bigger and more intrusive government becomes and the more wildly said government fails, the more essential still bigger and still more intrusive government becomes.  If a small, limited government that conservatives yearn for has a crisis, most people aren’t gravely impacted.  If you have the sort of giant government bureaucracy that liberals dream of and it has a crisis, people will suffer by the hundreds of millions.  If we had a catastrophic collapse of the government – and believe me, one is coming SOON – you can rest assured that millions of frightened, hungry people would demand the government step in and help them – which is precisely what liberals want.  The system crashes, liberals seize power, and they never look back.  And it won’t even MATTER that they were the ones who created the collapse in the first place.  We’ve already seen this story before.

Update, 6/28/12: Well I was wrong – and very right.  SCOTUS issued one of its quibbling decisions in which it played around with the regime’s draconian Medicaid threats against the states while asserting that the mandate was a tax even though Obama and the Democrat Party swore up one side and down the other that it was NOT a tax.  But overall, as long as you play bait-and-switch and arbitrarily declare what Obama and Congress said was not a tax to be a tax, it’s “constitutional.”  All the Supreme Court had to do to not be “activist” in Democrat demagoguery was to rewrite the clear intent of the law to use the Commerce Clause rather than Congress’ taxing powers.  Which of course is pretty damned activist, isn’t it?

It is also the largest tax of the American middle class in the history of the Republic.

Obama is now a documented liar on his pledge to the middle class:

BARACK OBAMA: And I can make a firm pledge: under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase – not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

Obama promised it over and over:

But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people:  if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.  I repeat: not one single dime.

And:

I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

And in interviews with former Democrat spin doctors turned mainstream media “journalsits” Obama responded to questions:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

Here’s more of the exchange with Stephanopoulos in which we can now saw with complete factual certainty that Barack Obama lied to the American people:

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

But Obama lied to you.  It IS a tax increase.  It is a supermassive tax increase, in fact.  And now the middle class is burdened with the largest tax increase in American history and it won’t be single dimes, but lots and lots of dollars, that Americans will find themselves paying.  Like everything this cynical, dishonest president does, it will be sneaky: it won’t be all that much in year one beginning AFTER the election in 2013, but it will be more in year two and quite a bit more in year three.

You just wait and see how much you are going to pay for this monstrosity as it increasingly starts to blow up as it gets implemented.

There is already a $17 TRILLION funding gap in this monstrosity.  And you aint seen nothin’ yet.  Not only the absolute number but even the rate of those without insurance has INCREASED since ObamaCare was passed.  And ObamaCare has raised the cost of medicine; the average family is paying over $2,000 more in health insurance premiums in a number of states since ObamaCare was passed.  And that was EXACTLY what was predicted as compared to what would have happened HAD OBAMACARE NOT EXISTED, according to the CBO.  But now we’re finding that health premiums are increasing by as much as 1,112 percent.  And the Supreme Court decision today will likely cause this escalating cost spike to shoot at an even higher trajectory into the stratosphere.

Let me put this into the context of the Star Wars fight of good versus totalitarian big government-gone insane evil: “Help me, Mitty Won Romnobi.  You’re my only hope.”

Please use your presidential lightsaber to slice this Death Panel to pieces before it’s too late.

Obama Wants To Tax Everyone Just For Driving. By The Mile.

We all know that rich people are bad by definition according to the tenets of liberalism.

What also needs to be realized is that people who drive – no matter how poor they are or how much they need to drive – are also bad people by the same tenets of liberalism.

And bad people should be punished.

Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile
By Pete Kasperowicz – 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

The proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a “study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.”

The department seemed to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public-relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

The draft bill says the “study framework” for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.

The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs and “user acceptance.” The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.

The new office would be funded a total of $300 million through fiscal 2017 for the project.

This story was updated at 10:17 a.m.

The obvious reason liberals give for thinking that people who drive are bad is environmentalism.  If you drive, you are guilty of helping to murder the planet.  And – as the utterly looney-leftist United Nations wants you to understand – the planet should have more rights than you.

What the left doesn’t say is that the above is a pretense, not their real reason (although it clearly is the primary reason for the useful idiots who make up much of the environmentalist movement).  The real reason is control: the left wants to have near total control of how you live your life.  And the freedom to drive where you want to is a major obstacle to the type of control the left wants.

To quote one Democrat John Dingell regarding socialized health care –

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

– is pretty much to quote them all on pretty much anything.  What they really want is “to control the people.”

Right now, you can buy a car, fill it with gas, and drive wherever you want to go.  That’s just wrong to Democrats.  You shouldn’t be able to do that.  You should have to travel the way they want you to travel.  To the extent you should even be allowed to drive at all, you should only be able to drive the type of vehicle THEY want you to drive.  And there should be a tracking device so they can track where you’ve been.  And, of course, ultimately, you shouldn’t BE allowed to drive.  It’s too much freedom.  You should have to use public transportation.

It’s really not an accusation; it is simply a FACT that fascist Democrats want to take away your freedom, take away your car, monitor where you’ve been by installing tracking equipment and tax you into extinction.

And the easiest way for totalitarians – I mean liberals – to do that is to make gas so expensive that the unwashed masses simply can’t afford it.  Which goes along with making the sacred “green” cars too expensive for most families to be able to afford.

So you’ve got Obama on the record telling a journalist that he doesn’t care if the price of gas goes way up; he just doesn’t want it to happen too quickly and make us angry.

You’ve got the man Obama handpicked for his energy secretary on the record saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  When of course gas prices in Europe are easily double ours in Amerca.

And you’ve got Obama doing everything he can to keep America from being able to drill for its own oil.

Meanwhile, Obama’s response to shockingly high gas prices has been to demonize oil companies and decry their profits.  When what’s funny about that is that 1) oil companies make about 7 cents per gallon in profit, versus Obama’s government which makes about 44 cents in “profit” per gallon (with state governments gouging for even more “profit”).  And 2) by taking away tax breaks that ALL U.S. companies get, what Obama is really demanding is that Americans pay even MORE for their gasoline – because ALL TAXES ON CORPORATIONS SIMPLY GET PASSED ON TO CUSTOMERS IN THE FORM OF HIGHER PRICES.

Obama is not only basically saying, “Screw you, America!”  He’s saying that Americans are simply too stupid to even understand that they are getting screwed.

Mubarak Not Only Dictator Who Wants To Control Internet (Btw, Our Dictator’s Name Is Barack Too)

Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is a dictator – that’s right, Vice President Biden, I said “dictator” – who just exercised his dictatorial control by shutting down the internet in Egypt.  From The Wall Street Journal:

In the face of mounting political unrest, Egypt took the unprecedented step of severing all Internet connections and shutting down its cellphone services—with the cooperation of international firms.

Egyptian authorities asked mobile operators to “turn down the network totally,” said Vittorio Colao, chief executive of U.K.-based Vodafone Group PLC, which owns 55% of Egypt’s largest carrier, Vodafone Egypt.

Mr. Colao, speaking Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said the request was legitimate under Egyptian law, but he hoped the government would reverse course soon. […]

Other countries attempting to undermine or contain political uprisings in recent years—from Myanmar in 2007 to Iran and China in 2009—have also clamped down on Internet access and cellphone use.

But Egypt’s crackdown appears unique in both scale and synchronization, particularly for a country with such an advanced infrastructure with so many providers, according to Internet security experts.

“What’s shocking about this is that they didn’t just take down a certain domain name or block a website—they took the whole Internet down,” said Mr. Cowie.

Yes, Hosni Mubarak and the thugs in Myanmar are DICTATORS.  And dictators love to control and suppress information.

But don’t forget our dictator, whose name also happens to be Barack.  He wants to be a dictator, too:

Senate Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet
Published August 28, 2009
FOXNews.com

A Senate bill would offer President Obama emergency control of the Internet and may give him a “kill switch” to shut down online traffic by seizing private networks — a move cybersecurity experts worry will choke off industry and civil liberties.

Details of a revamped version of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 emerged late Thursday, months after an initial version authored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., was blasted in Silicon Valley as dangerous government intrusion.

“In the original bill they empowered the president to essentially turn off the Internet in the case of a ‘cyber-emergency,’ which they didn’t define,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which represents the telecommunications industry.

“We think it’s a very bad idea … to put in legislation,” he told FOXNews.com.

Clinton said the new version of the bill that surfaced this week is improved from its first draft, but troubling language that was removed was replaced by vague language that could still offer the same powers to the president in case of an emergency.

“The current language is so unclear that we can’t be confident that the changes have actually been made,” he said.

The new legislation allows the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and make a plan to respond to the danger, according to an excerpt published online — a broad license that rights experts worry would give the president “amorphous powers” over private users.

But, hey, it gets even worse in the new and improved version being taken up by the Democrat-controlled Senate this year: now Obama can shut down the internet any vaguely-worded time Obama thinks its necessary without judges having any say-so in the matter:

According to a report Monday at CNET News, the bill will be back on the Senate agenda in the new year. But a revision introduced into the bill in December would exempt the law from judicial oversight. According to critics, this change would open the law to politically-motivated abuse by any administration, no matter how narrowly the law is interpreted.

“The country we’re seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court,” Steve DelBianco, director of the NetChoice coalition, which represents online companies such as eBay and Yahoo, told CNET. “Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure.”

“Judicial review is our main concern,” he added. “A designation of critical information infrastructure brings with it huge obligations for upgrades and compliance.”

Under the proposed law, the Department of Homeland Security would draw up a list of Internet “critical infrastructure” it deems vital to the proper functioning of the web and US economy. The president would then be granted the power to order some part of that critical infrastructure to be shut down, in case of a “national cyberemergency.”

While the bill does lay down what constitutes “critical infrastructure,” critics say it’s not clear what constitutes a “national cyberemergency.” Nor is it clear what other powers the president may exert, aside from shutting down parts of the web.

Many people have the unfortunate tendency to fail to see just how quintessentially fascist this president, his party and the cozy liberal media-industrial news complex which undergird that political party truly are.  It wasn’t all that long ago that Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer compared conservative political speech to porn that should be regulated.  Democrats have been calling for some version of a “Fairness Doctrine” regulating and controlling (and even subsidizing leftwing journalists) political speech for years and years.  And the Tucson, Arizona shooting in which Democrats and the mainstream media immediately combined to demonize conservative speech – notwithstanding that conservatives had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the shooting – simply reinforces the mortal danger that free speech is in from the left these days.

All of the above are as fascist as they think they can get away with.  And they keep pushing the envelope toward more fascist big government totalitarianism.

Liberals and progressives want power.  And then they want more power.  And then they want more.  And more.

Frankly, they want to amass enough power so that, as Barack Obama himself put it:

“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends…“

They want to control people’s lives so that they can be the sole determiners of who wins and who loses.  They want to amass enough power so that they are invulnerable to the will of the people.

As Democrat John Dingell put it:

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Obama wants dictatorial power so that he can become a better dictator.  And the only thing that is stopping him is a Constitution that Democrats constantly undermine and a finicky entity called “the people.”  Democrats have already reinterpreted the Constitution into meaninglessness, and the will of the people?

It’s not going so well for him now, but we’re only one election away from tyranny.

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Obama Confronts Tea Party About Big Government Spending With Hollow Rhetoric

The New York Simes ran a story titled, “Obama Offers Advice, and a Challenge, to Tea Partiers.”

At the CNBC town-hall-style meeting, President Obama offered a little advice for members of the Tea Party movement who argue that the federal government has grown too big and powerful.

The president said that sentiment was rooted in history, and called it a “noble tradition of being healthily skeptical of government. That’s in our DNA. … That’s a good thing.”

But he critiqued the Tea Party candidates, saying they were failing to identify actual cuts in government services that they were willing to accept to force such changes in spending.

Their message is, he said: “We’re going to control government spending. We’re going to propose $4 trillion in additional tax cuts and somehow magically this is all going to work.”

Mr. Obama said he had the following question for Tea Party candidates: Would you cut veterans benefits? Would you cut resources for Social Security and Medicare? What taxes are you willing to see go up?

“The challenge for the Tea Party movement is to identify what exactly would you do,” he said.

Two things wrong with Obama’s “challenge”:

1) I thought we had a president.  I guess we don’t, which is why Democrats have to keep blaming Bush for everything.  I mean, isn’t Obama sort of responsible for his massive deficits?  Shouldn’t maybe Obama take a look at his spending, rather than demanding that his critics fix all the problems he’s supposed to be fixing?

Maybe Obama should just resign from office, so someone else can deal with the disaster, since he clearly has no ideas as to what to do.

2) Obama asks, “Would you cut veterans benefits? Would you cut resources for Social Security and Medicare? What taxes are you willing to see go up?”  As if people are blaming him for enacting veterans benefits, Social Security, and Medicare.  That’s just the kind of empty, sounds-smart-if-you’re-really-stupid rhetoric I’ve come to expect from my demagogue-in-chief.

How about if Obama had asked, “Would you cut my $3.27 trillion stimulus porker? Would you cut resources for my ObamaCare boondoggle (see also here)?  Which one of MY out-of-control spending packages would you like to cut?”

And, of course, the answer, in terms of the Tea Party movement “identifying what exactly would you do,” would be to say:

“WE’D START OUT BY UNDOING EVERYTHING YOU DID, AND THEN CONTINUE BY DOING EVERYTHING THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF YOU!!!”

If Obama were halfway honest, rather than the disingenuous liar he has proven himself to be, he’d ask about what we would do about HIS socialist welfare spending, rather than FDR’s and LBJ’s.

For the record:

In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

For the record:

[F]rom the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.

Mr. Obama’s spending plan approved by Congress last February calls for doubling the national debt in five years and nearly tripling it in 10.

For the record:

President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. […]

Gross, who runs the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in his June outlook report that “the debt super cycle trend” suggests U.S. economic growth won’t be enough to support the borrowings “if real interest rates were ever to go up instead of down.”

For the record:

Serious consequences associated with deficit spending have long seemed like far-off problems, but they are now likely to hit the country with considerable force within the next several years.

One is servicing the debt itself. Most people don’t pay much attention to the interest payments the federal government makes every year. They haven’t had to. Debt service has been manageable, thanks to low interest rates and consistent economic growth.

But, according to the Congressional Budget Office, annual debt payments — currently about $200 billion — are set to skyrocket. CBO estimates that interest payments on the federal debt will total $916 billion by the year 2020.

“Interest rates are going to rise and at the same time, we’re going to have a substantial increase in the size of the debt,” says Roberton Williams, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “We’ll be paying five times as much in dollar terms by 2020 than we did last year.”

Think of what our lives will be like as we have to pay off the equivalent of Obama’s massive 2009 stimulus plans every single year.

And Obama weasels out of his overwhelming role of imploding our country by pointing to policies that were enacted generations ago?  He tacitly argues that any support for Social Security and Medicare means that people somehow MUST therefore support his asinine stimulus and his ObamaCare boondoggle?

3) When Obama says, “What taxes are you willing to see go up?” he is relying on a fundamental fallacy of liberal progressivism, namely that ever higher tax rates collect ever higher tax revenue.  I debunked this error of thinking in an article entitled, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.”

At the ultimate level, the progressive myth clearly breaks down: just make the income tax rate 100% on everyone, and see how long it takes for everybody in the country to quit their jobs.  To put it in a nutshell, when the income and capital tax rate is kept low (certainly not at zero, but low), there is more incentive for people to work, and invest, and risk their time and their capital, with the result that the economy grows.  And then the tax revenues actually increase, because taxes are collected from a much larger base.

And more people have jobs, too.

Fortunately, one gets the point that the American people are either not even bothering to listen to Obama anymore, or else they’ve finally seen through his nonsense.  Even DEMOCRATS are tuning Obama out in droves now.

Health Care Fascism

Americans will soon be forced by their government to give their money to private companies unless the American people massively rise up as one and shout them into backing down.

William Briggs had this to say regarding how unconstitutional, unAmerican, dishonest, and incompetent the Democrats’ plan is:

The new health care tax–which isn’t yet honestly called a tax, but a “program”—will almost certainly pass the Senate. Part of this “program” is said to be an “individual mandate”, which will require, via the full majesty of the law, that individuals purchase health insurance, even if they do not want it.

That is, you will be forced by implied gunpoint to fork over your money to a private company. You can well imagine these companies’ new customer service messages. Listen carefully, for our options have recently changed: Press 1 for “Hahahahahahaha”!

This, incidentally, leads to our definition of mandate: comply, or be jailed, where you will be forced to comply.

The Los Angeles Times (D), was concerned that citizens would be confused about this mandate. It published a “Healthcare Q & A“, to explain to its readers why more of their money should be taken from them. Like all good Q & A’s, it is in the form of bullets.

• “Why require everyone to buy insurance?” The truth is that the new government entitlement, like all entitlements before it, is a beast that must gorge on fresh money to survive. It needs to be fed often and copiously. The LAT’s confusing answer said that some people don’t have insurance, and that those who do will be “helping pay the costs of those without it.” This explanation would have been fine if the word helping was omitted.
• “What benefit do I get from being required to buy insurance?” Probably less back pain: your wallet will be significantly lightened, thus relieving stress and strain. You also get to see a few companies, presumably those that have given generously to the reelection campaigns of certain politicians, receive our mandated largess. Surely they will spend our money wisely. The LAT says, “you will get coverage”.
• “How can insurers afford to cover so many people who have expensive illnesses? Will my premium go up?” Excellent question. They cannot, so, yes, premiums must rise. The LAT said, “Gee, would ya look at the time?”
• “Since young people don’t cost the system much, would they be allowed to buy less expensive plans?” No. They should be allowed not to buy and only pay for services as needed. Even the LAT had to admit that if that dangerous idea “were carried too far, however, it would defeat the purpose of an insurance plan.” The government’s plan, that is.

Inexplicably, the LAT’s Q & A stopped there. They forgot the most important questions.

• If everybody is forced to buy insurance, it isn’t really insurance anymore, is it? No, it isn’t. Insurance is a bet between two parties, no different than a wager on a football game. It’s like buying a lottery ticket you hope won’t win. If everybody is forced to pay into a pool, whose monies will be used to fund health care expenses, then that is a tax.
• People are a lot healthier now than twenty years ago, and people twenty years ago were a lot healthier than people forty years ago, and so on. So why is everybody calling our current state a “crisis”? Three things have gone wrong: politicians lie, exaggerates or are ill informed, the press lies, exaggerates or is ill informed, and the bulk of the public eats it up, cowers in fear or is ill informed.
• After the Democrats pass the health care tax, what can I do? Grip your ankles, baby. It’ll be just like going to the doctor to have a “digital” exam, only this time without the Vaseline. Another option is to donate to the DNC and then form your own insurance company.

Update Reid invents new super-super majority:

The bill sets up a supermajority threshold of 67 votes to bring accountability to IMAB decisions, and the rule on being in or out of order can get waived at 60 votes. However, as this battle shows, even getting to 60 is almost an impossibility, let alone 67. Clearly Reid wants to put accountability out of reach with these radical propositions.

As to that last, you see a United States Senator attempting to – in blatantly unconstitutional fashion – dictate the actions and limit the behavior of a future Congress.  That’s “dictate,” as in “dictator.”

As to forcing Americans to purchase insurance, even the left says this insane move to force people to buy insurance from private companies is both stupid and immoral.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean recently said:

“This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG,” former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told “Good Morning America’s” George Stephanopoulos today. “A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works.

“This is an insurance company’s dream, this bill,” Dean continued. “This is the Washington scramble, and I think it’s ill-advised.”

Mind you, these very same liberals would have been cheering if Americans were being forced to buy the exact same kind of insurance from the government. It’s not that they are opposed to people being forced to make purchases that they don’t want to make.  After all, that would make them classical liberals rather than the liberal fascists that they are.  Rather, they are simply revealing how profoundly they hate private businesses rather than state ownership of the means of production.

But at least, both the right and the left are in agreement: the Democrats’ bill is a terrible and immoral idea.

That explains why the private insurance companies saw their stocks go up massively – hitting a 52-week high – on Friday as this plan was announced.  The first article I found is entitled, “Insurance company stocks “on fire” – they’re winning, we’re losing.”

Obama and Democrats have been falsely and maliciously demonizing private insurance companies for months.  We particularly saw that in Obama’s vicious attacks against Humana.  One blogger correctly saw the bottom line and said, “I hope you can see the writing on the wall here. The Obama administration wants to control private industry. They want to control their profits and they want to control what private industry can and cannot say.”  And now we see that the administration was using all that demagoguery and demonization to create the conditions for an offer that the insurance companies couldn’t refuse.

Let me put this development into context by first providing a definition:

Sheldon Richman (of the Foundation for Economic Education) provides the distinction in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics in his entry on “Fascism”:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

What we are seeing here is raw, naked fascism.

The insurance companies were first clubbed into submission, then offered something of a carrot in exchange for their compliance.  And the result is that they are doing exactly what the administration wants – and as long as they toe the Obama line, they’ll even be rewarded for doing what the administration wants.

We used to be governed by a Constitution in which this sort of thing would have been anathema.  Not anymore.  The Democrats running the country now could care less about the Constitution.

When Nancy Pelosi was asked where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance, Nancy Pelosi said: “Are You Serious?  Are you SERIOUS?” The Speaker of the House of Representatives couldn’t be bothered by such a question simply because she couldn’t care less.  Diane Feinstein took much the same view – and revealed what a threat to the Constitution these Democrats and their despicable health care bill truly is.

CNS News pointed out this little factoid:

In 1994, when the Clinton administration attempted to push a health care reform plan through a Democratic Congress that also mandated every American buy health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the government had never ordered Americans to buy anything.

“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States,” the CBO analysis said. “An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

This is an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power.

Now we get to the term “Tea Party.”  Our founding fathers literally started a war when they were forced to pay what was actually a quite modest tax without representation.

We used to be a people who stood up and fought when our freedoms were challenged.   But over the last century, we have had piles on top of piles of unconstitutional “laws” that did precisely that.

Now we are being forced to pay massive taxes without any Constitutional authority, and clearly without the support of the people (see here and here).

Our founding fathers would have gone to war to stop this tyranny.

What will we do?  Allow this fiasco to pass?  Passively purchase our “insurance” and hope the price doesn’t keep going up higher and higher while our medical care sinks lower and lower?  Sit by and allow our parents and family members to die do to medical neglect from rationing?

Helen Thomas Shows It’s Official: Barack Obama, Fascist

Take a gander at the definition of fascism, and ask yourself how many parts of it Barack Obama has already implemented:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

Barack Obama has seized control of the auto industry, in spite of the fact that Americans overwhelmingly thought it was a bad idea (with 59% disapproving).  He has taken Bush measures to control the banks in order to control the scope of the financial crisis to an entirely new levels.  And Obama additionally recently seized “unprecedented powers” over Wall Street:

The plan clearly grants the central bank unprecedented new powers to conduct comprehensive examinations of almost any U.S. financial company, as well as any of that company’s foreign affiliates.  It would also give the central bank oversight of any commercial company that owns a banking charter known as an industrial loan company, according to The Journal.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, Obama has now appointed some twenty czars – who are answerable only to him – in a move that is unprecedented in American history.  Reuters said, “Name a top issue and President Barack Obama has probably got a “czar” responsible for tackling it“).  Even longest-serving Senate Democrat Robert Byrd says that “President Obama’s ‘czar strategy’ is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution.”

So as a matter of definition and fact, it is entirely appropriate to call Barack Obama “a fascist.”  And fascist leaders have never have paid such trivial matters as a “Constitution” much mind.  And this leading of America into fascism by the left shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

The only thing that anyone could argue was lacking in labeling Barack Obama as “a fascist” has been Obama’s contrived persona as presented in the media.

But that’s been blown away as well.

It’s somewhat surprising who would blow that mask away, but the fact that 40-year liberal White House Press Correspondent Helen Thomas would be the one to do it shows how obviously and how blatantly the Obama administration has sought to manipulate the media in full fascist fashion.

First of all, Helen Thomas has called herself a liberal, as an interview with CBC demonstrates:

Helen Thomas: I’m a liberal, I was born a liberal, I’ll be one ’til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

CBC Interviewer: Well, you know, it’s interesting because I’m sure that if somebody from the right was sitting here they would say… if you ask the question what should a reporter be they will say, “Oh, I don’t know, How about objective?”

Barack Obama had a much publicized “town hall” which turns out to have been very “tightly controlled,” with a tightly controlled audience and a tightly controlled list of White-House-approved questions.  Barack Obama wants to keep the real tought questions – such as who will pay for the massive government health care, how much will it cost, and will any bureaucrat ever be allowed to get between a patient and his/her physician and make decisions based on statistics rather than medical needs, just to name a few – out of the spotlight.  And so he has an event that is falsely presented as an open forum, but in actuality being controlled by the White House for propaganda purposes.

And Helen Thomas, to her credit, came unglued as White House Press Secretary Gibbs cheerfully presented the false face of propaganda as though nothing was amiss:

Gibbs: “… But, again, let’s–How about we do this?  I promise we will interrupt the AP’s tradition of asking the first question.  I will let you [Chip Reid] ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted in Annandale—“

Chip Reid: “I’m perfectly happy to—”

Helen Thomas: “That’s not his point.  The point is the control–”

Reid: “Exactly.”

Thomas: “We have never had that in the White House.  And we have had some, but not– This White House.”

Gibbs: “Yes, I was going to say, I’ll let you amend her question.”

Thomas: “I’m amazed.  I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and—”

Gibbs: “Helen, you haven’t even heard the questions.”

Reid: “It doesn’t matter.  It’s the process.”

Thomas: “You have left open—”

Reid: “Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.”

Thomas: “It’s shocking.  It’s really shocking.”

Gibbs: “Chip, let’s have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting.  How about that?”

Reid: “Okay.”

Gibbs: “I think—“

Thomas: “No, no, no, we’re having it now–”

Gibbs: “Well, I’d be happy to have it now.”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern.”

Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern.  It isn’t the question—”

Gibbs: “What’s a pattern?”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern of controlling the press.”

Gibbs: “How so?  Is there any evidence currently going on that I’m controlling the press–poorly, I might add.”

Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”

Gibbs: “How so?”

Reid: “Well, and controlling the public—”

Thomas: “How so?  By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on.  That is shocking.”

Gibbs: “We had this discussion ad nauseam and—”

Thomas: “Of course you would, because you don’t have any answers.”

This event follows a situation in which Barack Obama called upon a Huffington Post “reporter” to ask an obviously pre-screened question about Iran that generated a lot of media controversy.  Reporters were legitimately outraged over an unprecedented situation in which an American president gets to pre-screen questions at a supposed official White House press conference.

This follows ABC “teaming up” with President Obama in what amounted to a free hour-long “infomercial” to allow Obama to sell his health care agenda.  If that isn’t disturbing enough, ABC refused to allow paid ads that were critical of the presidents health care agenda during that infomercial.  This wasn’t a question of apparent bias suggesting an unhealthy White House-media relationship; it was in-your-face obvious bias proving an unhealthy White House-media relationship.

Helen Thomas has been a White House correspondent for more than forty years.  And she has been a doctrinaire liberal who clearly would tend to see things from the perspective of the administration in power.  It should be beyond disturbing to you that such a journalist would say, “We have never had that in the White House.”  That she would say, This is really shocking.”  And it should frighten you that she is “amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency” even as they reveal themselves to be the most manipulating and controlling administration in history.  It’s not just about self-righteous hypocrisy; it goes to Nixonian levels of deceit and lust for power.

An attempt by a president to control the press is bad enough; it’s terrifying when that same president has already grabbed unprecedented control over so many other things.

And it gets downright creepy when you consider that this president who is now trying to control the press has actually recieved the most favorable press coverage of any president (nearly TWICE as much favorable coverage as Bush recieved during the same period even while Bush was virtually as “popular” as Obama was).  It makes one wonder: what psychological defect, what pathological need to control, would need to exercise so much control?

This is no small matter.  We now have a president who seized more power than any president in American history – FDR included.  And we now have a Congress that is dominated by the same party as the president, and now posessing a filibuster-proof majority.  For the media to be in bed (to allude to a joke Obama made about NBC anchor Brian Williams) with the president is beyond dangerous – especially with our economy in such a fragile state.

Democracy is doomed in a nation that allows propaganda to dominate – as America is clearly doing.  Because in a democracy, people are expected to vote their will, and they cannot vote their own will when their opinion is being shaped and controlled by propaganda.

Update, July 3: As further proof that what I am arguing is true, take something that happened just yesterday, following the publication of this article.

The leftist Washington Post cancelled a “salon” event in the wake of an uproar over the sheer raving inappropriateness of such an event.  The Newspaper planned to sell access to reporters and Obama administration officials to lobbyist for sums of up to $250,000.   A quote from the Politico article breaking the story:

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The newspaper has an incredibly flimsy excuse for this selling of its credibility, but the entire fiasco merely amounts to yet another of the complete abandonment of journalistic ethics and integrity of the mainstream media.

This is a blurring of the White House and the press that is intended to sell policy to the public.  It is dangerous.  It is facsist.