The Worst President Ever – Tea Party Nation

The Worst President Ever – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

All through George W. Bush’s two terms, the Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and others claimed that they represented “a culture of corruption” and yet I cannot recall any significant examples, nor does a look back at those years reveal any scandals resulting from his administration’s governance. It was not perfect, but it was not corrupt.

This term, however, marked Barack Obama’s first term and now his second which is currently imploding from a confluence of scandals involving Benghazi-Gate, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Justice. Let’s not forget “Fast and Furious.”

The very first example of the changes that would mark his administration was the announcement of Obama’s “czars”, a shadowy group of advisors whose power to set and influence government policy without any congressional oversight appears to have transcended that of his cabinet members, many of whom would contribute to lengthening the recession he “inherited” as the result of the 2008 financial crisis while increasing the national debt and deficit to heights never before seen in the history of the nation.

What we have come to learn in his first term was that Obama had scant regard for the Constitution, the guiding instrument of governance. It was in his view an “imperfect” instrument and yet, with amendments, it has guided the nation to superpower status since its ratification in 1791, a process that took four years from the 1786 Annapolis Convention that called for a Constitutional Convention.

What we learned though in his first campaign and first term was that Obama lies about everything, starting with his personal life. What we have learned is that his answer to everything is to give another speech, hold another press conference, issue another executive order, and to dismiss any criticism as “a sideshow”, and to host a number of dinners to give the impression he is willing to work with Republicans in Congress. In truth, he rarely interacted even with Democrats in Congress.

In short, Obama has never addressed his duty to govern. He has instead maintained a non-stop process of campaigning and fund-raising. It did not work in 2010 when voters returned power to the Republicans in the House and now he is doing everything he can to regain Democrat control there in 2014.

His priority on September 11, 2012, the night in which he was informed of the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya, was to go to bed in order to get a good night’s sleep before flying off to Las Vegas for more fund-raising the next day, skipping his daily intelligence briefing. An American ambassador had been killed along with three other personnel, but it did not alter his schedule.

This is a President who spent his entire first term blaming his predecessor, George W. Bush, for every problem that crossed his desk and demanded his attention.

This is a President whose foreign policy in the Middle East failed to address events there while delegating responsibility to his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton who as of 2 AM the morning of September 12th knew that it was an orchestrated attack by al Qaeda. And then, in concert with the White House, told Americans that it was the result of a video and was a “spontaneous” event.

This is a President who has withdrawn U.S. troops from Iraq, a nation now wracked with daily bombings and has set in process the withdrawal from Afghanistan, a nation that will fall once again under the control of the Taliban. The alleged ally of America, Pakistan, now fears for its stability from the same threat. Both wars, the longest since the Vietnam War, were and remain unpopular, but both were intended to reduce the role of al Qaeda in the Middle East. That role has now expanded into the Syrian civil war and was manifest in Mali.

His response was to depend on isolated drone attacks in Yemen and elsewhere, and of course his authorization of the assassination of Osama bin Laden for which he took total credit despite the fact that the effort had begun in the Bush years.

In the years prior to Benghazi-Gate we have now learned that Obama was using the Internal Revenue Service to harass organizations associated with the Tea Party movement, that identified themselves as “patriots”, or had a pro-Israel agenda. In a similar fashion his Environmental Protection Agency was denying Freedom of Information inquires to organizations opposed to its policies while granting access to those who supported it.

In his first term, his Department of the Interior pursued policies that denied access to drilling for oil and natural gas on federally owned lands and while his Department of Energy wasted billions on “renewable energy” companies manufacturing solar panels no one wanted to purchase, going bankrupt one after another. At one point the President advocated using algae—pond scum—as a source of energy.

This is a President who promised his “stimulus” program would put Americans back to work and revive the economy.

This is a President who has continued to tell Americans that global warming is the greatest threat to the nation and the world despite a sixteen-year cooling cycle in progress.

The current scandals, derided as being “politicized” by Republicans, suggest that impeachable offenses have been authorized and committed by branches of the administration he leads. The current makeup of Congress in which the Senate is still controlled by Democrats suggests that impeachment would be difficult to pursue, but the 2014 midterm elections could and should change that.

The worst of his offenses is Obamacare, described by members of his own party as “a train wreck”, and a program to be administered by the IRS!

It is not hyperbole to say Barack Obama is the worst President in the history of the nation.

Ask the millions of Americans who are still unemployed more than four years since his first inauguration.

Ask the millions of new graduates from colleges and universities who cannot find jobs commensurate with their degrees.

Ask the millions of Americans unable to retire due to the agonizingly slow recovery of the economy.

And ask the mainstream media, after years of ignoring his failures have suddenly awakened to the seizure of Associated Press phone records after acting as mere stenographers for his daily “talking points.”.

The question is how long before he is either impeached or forced to resign as the dream of “hope and change” has turned to hopelessness and the change has become the “transformation” of America from the greatest economy the world has ever known to a debtor nation disrespected by allies and enemies alike.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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The President as Sergeant Schultz – Tea Party Nation

The President as Sergeant Schultz – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

How is it that, time and again, the most powerful man on the planet doesn’t seem to have a clue what is happening in his own government? Famed for never accepting blame for anything, the more I see President Obama these days, the more I am reminded of Sergeant Hans Schultz of the TV sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes”, that ran from 1965 to 1971.

The wonderful Hans Banner the actor who played the prisoner of war guard left an indelible legacy with his repeated denials, “I know nothing. I hear nothing, and I see nothing”; often all three at the same time to avoid being implicated in Col. Robert E. Hogan’s manipulation of Werner Klemperer’s Col. Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant of Luftwaffe Stalag 13.

Obama’s way of dealing with everything has been to talk it to death and he has been responding to questions from the press, claiming that the accusations are all “a sideshow” or that “there’s no there, there.” It is not working. In the case of Benghazi-Gate, his lies are so blatant that it has gone from an embarrassment to a full-fledged cover-up.

Similarly, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, has relied on claiming ignorance and putting distance between himself and his Department of Justice’s increasing list of scandals, from Fast and Furious that earned him a citation for contempt of Congress in June 2012 for his lack of candor. His latest “I know nothing” testimony regarding the DOJ’s seizure of the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters makes one wonder why the President continues to retain him in office or, for that matter, why he isn’t in jail for stonewalling about Fast and Furious, an ATF gun-running scheme that got a border patrol and ICE agent killed.

Those of us who follow the President closely know that he has been lying consistently before and since being elected–twice. His two “memoirs” have been picked apart by reporters who have written their own books on the subject. It would appear that Obama picked up the habit of lying early on in life as the son of a Kenyan who had abandoned his mother, the step-son of an Indonesian whom his mother also divorced, and a man who remarkably was a friend or associate of a long list of shady characters you might more likely find in a detective novel.

He dismissed his close friendship with former 60s Weatherman terrorist, Bill Ayers, as someone who lived in his Chicago neighborhood. He had to throw his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, under the bus when it became known he said many bad things about America over the course of the many years Obama was a member of his church. The man who conducted Obama’s wedding and christened his children said of 9/11, “the chickens have come home to roost” as if it was America’s fault it was attacked.

Even so, this is small potatoes compared to the way the many “renewable energy” companies received billions in government loans and rapidly went bankrupt. It turned out that many of the many of the men who created those companies where major “bundlers” and contributors to his 2009 presidential campaign. Of the most famous bankruptcy, Solyndra, Obama said, “That was not our program, per se. Congress-Democrats and Republicans—put together a loan guarantee program…” Maybe so, but we have not seen such a program lose so much money in such a short time, betting on solar and wind power projects. The taxpayers got stuck with the bill. The number of actual “green” jobs ended up costing over a million dollars each to create.

Of his failed “stimulus” package, Obama said “Apparently there weren’t as many shovel ready jobs as we thought.” Before spending millions to allegedly revive the economy, you are supposed to know such things.

If not Benghazi-Gate, than the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitution education groups could provide the fulcrum to bring down Obama’s presidency. Despite his denials of knowledge about the program within the IRS to harass and deny these groups non-profit status, vital to raise donations and funding, and the firing of the IRS commissioner, this is a scandal with which ordinary taxpayers can identify, fearful of audits. Imagine now as the realization sinks in that it is the IRS that will be administering Obamacare!

Up to now Obama could count on the mainstream media to ignore much of the blunders, failures and lies that characterized his first term, but the scandals coalescing as his second term begins have a weight that includes the growing unhappiness of the White House press corps who are tired of being lied to or having to listen to press secretary Jay Carney speak to them as if they were a bunch of witless clowns.

It is said that “the fish stinks from the head” and what we are witnessing is an administration whose corrupt political practices have seeped deep into the government agencies for which Obama is responsible.

It is still too soon to know which scandal or combination of scandals will bring down his presidency, but it will only take a few more eye-witnesses and whistle-blowers to turn Obama into the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain and pulling the levers to fool Dorothy and her pals or, in our case, those of us who still believe laws should be obeyed and power should not be abused.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Endgame – Tea Party Nation

Endgame – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

We are rapidly approached the endgame in American politics. 

 

The endgame is the place the liberals want us to be.    There is only one thing stopping them from hitting the endgame point.

 What is it?

 Republican control of the House of Representatives.

 What is their endgame point?

 It is socialism. It is the end of freedom and liberty. 

 The left is engaged in the strategy known as Cloward-Piven.  It is named after two Marxist professors who wanted to bring down the government first in New York City and then eventually in America.

 The strategy is simple.  Overwhelm the system with demands that it cannot meet.  Then the system will collapse.

 We are seeing that today.  From America’s overwhelming debt, to amnesty, to Obamacare, the left is trying to create so many demands on America’s economic system that it will collapse.

 There is one last hurdle they have to overcome to get there.

 That is Republican control of the House of Representatives. 

 As this year opened, one of the biggest topics of conversation in DC was whether Harry Reid, the bordello child from Nevada and erstwhile majority leader for the Party of Treason in the Senate would change the rules to abolish the filibuster. 

 Looking back on it now, it seems obvious he would not do it. 

 Why?

 Because it would have been a meaningless point. 

 Harry Reid can get the Party of Treason to pass as many bills as it wants but as long as the Republicans control the House, most of those bills would be DOA.

 But what happens if the Party of Treason gains control of the House again in 2014?

 Then you can count on Harry Reid eliminating the filibuster so that a simple majority vote gets bills passed in the Senate.

 This of course assumes that the Party of Treason maintains control of the Senate.  At this point, things look good for the Republicans to take control of the Senate.  However, in 2010 and 2012 things also looked good.  Never underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to blow an election.

 If the Party of Treason takes control of the House, Reid will abolish the filibuster in the Senate by rule change and then you will see the all out, final assault on liberty.

 Liberals openly talk about the need to limit freedom and liberty.

 Melissa Harris Perry is a left wing nut job on MSNBC, the official channel of the Party of Treason.  She caused controversy with comments recently about how children should not be raised by their parents but by a collective community.

 Now she has doubled down on her comments.  In a promo airing on the Channel of Treason, she says:

 “This isn’t about me wanting to take your kids, and this isn’t even about whether children are property. This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years.”

 Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao would have loved her.  After all, they impinged on the individual freedom of life and liberty to advance a “common good.”

 If the Party of Treason ends up controlling the House and the Senate after the 2014 elections, we will see the impinging of individual freedom for the advancement of the “common good.”

 Freedom of speech and religion will be gone.  The Second Amendment will be gone.  The 7^th Amendment will be at best curtailed if not eliminated.  The 10^th Amendment will simply be a museum piece and state boundaries will be little more than lines on a map. 

 We will no longer be the United States of America but the United State of America, with a tyrannical, massive central government.

 This is what our founding fathers feared. 

 This is the end game for liberals.

 The 2014 election comes down to one simple point.  Either real Americans win the election or we all lose our freedom so the left can advance their “common good.”

 But as we know about liberals, their ideas never benefit the common people nor are they good.

 

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is finally admitting that the Affordable Care Act isn’t actually that affordable. Think tanks have been warning for years about the expensive cost of ObamaCare and many have already seen their health insurance premiums rise as a result of its implementation yet, the administration has denied the bill will actually increase costs for consumers until now.

Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday.

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage.

The secretary’s remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous. She noted that the law requires plans to provide better benefits and treat all customers equally regardless of their medical claims.

“These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she said. “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”

Most people who have “skimpy plans” have them because they either a) don’t need a fancy health insurance plan b) can’t afford a health insurance plan. Forcing consumers into plans they don’t need or can’t afford is counter productive. Not to mention, Sebelius argues consumers will see a “much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.” Better benefits? Does she mean better benefits of having fewer doctors?

Most physicians have a pessimistic outlook on the future of medicine, citing eroding autonomy and falling income, a survey of more than 600 doctors found.

Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years, a survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found. That perception is uniform across age, gender, and specialty, it said.

Another 55 percent of surveyed doctors believe others will scale back hours because of the way medicine is changing, but the survey didn’t elaborate greatly on how it was changing. Three-quarters think the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, although that is an increase from the 2011 survey result of 69 percent.

“Physicians recognize ‘the new normal’ will necessitate major changes in the profession that require them to practice in different settings as part of a larger organization that uses technologies and team-based models for consumer (patient) care,” the survey’s findings stated.

About two-thirds of the survey responders said they believe physicians and hospitals will become more integrated in coming years. In the last 2 years, 31 percent moved into a larger practice, results found. Nearly eight in 10 believe midlevel providers will play a larger role in directing primary care.

Or how about the better benefits of fewer life saving medical devices thanks to the innovation and job killing medical device tax in ObamaCare?

Biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the “unforeseen” costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development.

The Obama administration is no longer trying to lie about ObamaCare, instead they’re simply trying to justify the lies by making everyone feel better about the so-called benefits ObamaCare will offer at a much higher price.

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Rangel: ‘Millions of kids’ being shot down by assault rifles – Washington Times

Rangel: ‘Millions of kids’ being shot down by assault rifles – Washington Times.

By Jessica Chasmar – The Washington Times

New York Rep. Charlie Rangel appeared on MSNBC this morning to opine about the assault weapons ban getting dropped from the Senate gun-control bill.

He made a few claims about politics as usual and the power money can have in this type of a case, but his most noteworthy comment was about his knowledge on crime statistics.

“I’m ashamed to admit it but its politics and its money, The NRA has taken this position, there is no reason, there is no foundation. There is no hunter that needs automatic military weapons to enjoy the culture of going hunting,” the Democrat told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing.

“We’re talking about millions of kids dying — being shot down by assault weapons,” he continued. “Were talking about handguns easier in the inner cities, to get these guns in the inner cities, than to get computers. This is not just a political issue, it’s a moral issue…”

The FBI’s 2011 data says only 323 people were killed by rifles, compared to 728 people who were killed by hands, fists, feet etc. Handguns are much more likely to be used in a homicide with 6,220 killed nationwide in 2011.

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Americans will Curse Obama for Obamacare – Tea Party Nation

Americans will Curse Obama for Obamacare – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Following the sequester debacle in which Obama and his cohorts were swiftly found to be lying through their teeth, his polling numbers have begun to fall and, folks you ain’t seen nothing yet.

As the realities and costs of the Affordable Healthcare Act—Obamacare—kick in, when he leaves office, he will be remembered for inflicting pain and suffering on Americans.

As the various aspects of Obamacare become active, the impact on everyone will reduce their income and increase their costs. In retrospect it will be seen as the largest poison pill any President or political party ever swallowed. Recall that Obamacare was passed December 24, 2009, Christmas Eve, by a straight Democrat party vote, none of whom had even read the legislation.

The House passed the bill with a vote of 219 to 212 on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it. At 2,000-plus pages, it has now been joined by thousands of pages more to implement it. It is a regulatory nightmare.

In January, the author of “Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis”, John C. Goodman, wrote of Obamacare’s impact on your tax bill. “You will join other Americans in paying more than $500 billion in nineteen new types of taxes and fees over the next decade to fund health reform. Some of the new taxes will be indirect and will be passed on to you in the form of higher prices, higher premiums, or lower wages.”

As Americans address paying their 2012 income taxes, here are some of the new taxes that will afflict some or all of them at some point.

# A tax on medical devices. This will cover “everything from surgical instruments and bedpans to wheelchairs and crutches. Even pacemakers and artificial hips and knees are taxes.” If Obamacare is not repealed, it will rake in $20 billion over the next decade.

# A tax on health insurance. Beginning in 2014, there will be a $60 billion tax on health insurance that will be felt in higher premiums. A typical family of four will have to spend nearly $1,000 a year.

# A tax on drugs. If you think prescription drugs are expensive now, some drug makers have already begun to raise prices.

# A tax on medical savings accounts. You will no longer be able to use these tax-free accounts to purchase over-the-counter drugs, forcing people to purchase drugs such as Claritin, aspirin or Advil at a cost that is 30% higher for a middle-class family. Contributions to such accounts will be capped at $2,500.

# A tax on becoming ill. Today’s tax law allows you to deduct medical expenses up to 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Obamacare increases this to 10%, making your future deductions smaller. It became effective this year for people under 65 years of age and goes into effect in 2017 for those 65 and older. Obama will be out of office by then. He won’t care even if you do.

# Additional taxes. The Medicare payroll tax will increase by almost one-third for some people, rising from 2.9% today to 3.8& on wages over $200,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a couple. An additional 3.8% Medical payroll tax will be levied on investment income (capital gains, interest, and dividend income) at some income levels. The “rich” will pay more, but in effect this impacts most of the middle class.

Benjamin Domenech, Managing Editor of Heartland Institute’s Health Care News, recently reported that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that “Obamacare is going to be more expensive than the Obama administration thought, disrupt the marketplace more than they thought, and be tougher to implement than they thought.”

Recalling that Hillary Clinton was put in charge of similar healthcare changes during her husband’s administration where the effort failed, if she were elected in 2016, you can be sure she would retain Obamacare. It can be repealed only if Republicans control both houses of Congress, so the midterm elections in 2014 are critical.

Domenech reported that the CBO has concluded that the insurance exchanges that are part of Obamacare and are supposed to be up and running by next January will cost more than $1 trillion through 2022, a dramatic increase over the original budget forecast of $814 billion. Incredible disruptive, more employees will be dropped from their existing plans and fewer uninsured people will get coverage. With somewhere between 23 and 26 million Americans already out of work, millions more will join their ranks as companies cut their payrolls.

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Obamacare will add $6.2 billion to the federal deficit. Recall that in September 2009 Obama promised that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, “This is how a country goes broke.”

For these and a host of other reasons, people will curse Barack Obama as the full impact of his signature piece of legislation, his primary means of “transforming America” begins to affect Americans, some of whom will either be denied or be unable to afford medical treatment. They will die.

Obama has already transformed America from the world’s superpower to a debtor nation whose credit rating has been lowered, whose national defense capabilities have been reduced, and whose governance is guided by the absurd belief that humans cause and control the climate.

Barack Obama has four more years to work his will and future historians will conclude that Americans twice elected a President who hates them and their nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Wannabe Dictator – Tea Party Nation

Wannabe Dictator – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

When President Obama said, “I’m not a dictator” on the day the sequester was activated, March 1st, he should have finished the sentence, “but I intend to be one.”

Obama has never treated the office of the presidency as his predecessors did. They knew it was a temporary job, based on one term or two. They understood it was political in that they were expected to work with both parties and that involved compromise. Obama has shown no desire to compromise on anything and routinely has changed the terms of various agreements in order to negate them.

In politics, especially at that level, a man’s word is his bond and Obama’s word is dirt. He cannot be trusted. This may account for Speaker of the House John Boehner’s barely concealed contempt for the President. It does not help when virtually all the Democrats join in the festival of lies that passes for political dialogue these days or their rote repetition by a supine media, though this is beginning to decrease as even their adoration diminishes.

On taking office in 2009, Obama created a shadow government of “czars” answerable only to him. His cabinet choices have implemented policies that led to the first reduction of the nation’s credit rating, reductions in access to the nation’s vast oil reserves on federally controlled land, and social engineering within the military including women in combat roles.

Obama has no real interest in the “give and take” of politics. Bypassing Congress at every opportunity, his favored form of “rule” is the executive order. Current executive orders grant Obama total power over every aspect of life in America in the event of an emergency or attack.

Where does one start with this President? Like all wannabe dictators, Obama has made it clear even when he was campaigning in 2008 that he is anti-gun ownership and, after the Newtown shootings, he issued 23 gun control executive orders. Ensuring that citizens have no means to protect themselves or pose a threat to a regime, dictators take guns away.

On July 2, 2008, speaking in Boulder, Colorado, Obama advocated a “Civilian National Security Force” that would be “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded as the U.S. Military.”

Alarms are rising about the unprecedented purchase of ammunition of the Department of Homeland Security. An astonishing 1.6 billion bullets are stockpiled, mainly 40 caliber and 9 millimeter. News of the purchase of 2,700 light-armored tanks suggests that the Obama federal government anticipates an armed rebellion by the citizenry.

Writing in Investors Daily, Andrew Malcolm noted that is enough “to shoot every American about five times, including illegal immigrants.” Other government departments, including Social Security, are reportedly being armed in a similar fashion.

Nationalizing all power in the central government, Obama’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, did that for the nation’s healthcare system, requiring everyone to purchase insurance or pay a fine if they do not. Though patently unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled that ACA was “a tax” and permitted it to go forward. Government bureaucrats will now decide who gets medical care and how much.

Obama has consistently rid the top ranks of the U.S. military of any generals who are seen to oppose or disagree with his policies and politics. The heaviest budget cuts have affected the Department of Defense, increasing the vulnerability of America to attack and restricting its ability to project power globally.

The power to tax is also the power to impoverish Americans and Obama has never ceased to demand increased taxes while refusing to offset government funding with reductions in government spending. Americans have seen their personal wealth diminished due to his economic policies. Millions remain unemployed.

Obama has never accepted blame for any of his policies such as the multi-billion, failed “stimulus.” Instead he spent his first term blaming former President George W. Bush and as his second term begins, he is blaming Republicans who control the House of Representatives, but have seen their economic and other measures defeated or ignored in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

If the nation survives Obama’s second term without martial law or its equivalent, historians will look back on him as the worst President to have ever held that office.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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The Speech No One Heard – Tea Party Nation

The Speech No One Heard – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

On Tuesday, March 5, Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, offered some remarks on the Senate floor that were largely, if not completely, ignored by the mainstream media. They were a stark warning about a dysfunctional government led by a President who is already in full campaign mode for the 2014 midterm elections.

“Back in November,” said McConnell, “the American people sent a divided government to Washington. I know this is not the outcome President Obama had hoped for. I know he wanted complete control of Washington, just like he had the first two years of his presidency.”

Citing the President’s goal of a Democrat controlled House, in addition to the Senate in 2014, McConnell cited the rebooting of his political organization, the provoking of “manufactured crisis with Congress, engineering show votes in the Senate, and traveling around the country to campaign relentlessly against his opponents.” That’s a nice way of saying that the President and the Democrat Party have embarked on the deliberate demonization of Republicans.

McConnell cited the implementation of the Sequester as opposed to any response to the nation’s financial crisis, noting that Republicans and all Americans “find ourselves in a situation where more than 1,400 days have passed since Senate Democrats have passed a budget” and the fact that “House Republicans have passed budgets that seriously address the transcendent challenge of our time, putting runaway Washington spending and debt on a sustainable path so we can create jobs and grow the economy.”

Families have to have a budget, but as far as the Obama administration is concerned, the nation does not. McConnell pointed out that “The President has been late submitting his own budget outline nearly every single year. He’s already missed this year’s deadline by more than a month.”

“The budget blueprint he sent us last year,” said McConnell, “”was so roundly ridiculed for its fiscal gimmickry and its massive tax hikes that, when it come to a vote in the Senate, his own party joined Republicans in voting it down 99 to O.”

“The President has to figure out how to govern with the situation he’s got, not the one he wishes had. That’s what being President is all about.”

McConnell went on to urge the President and the Senate to join in “actually solving problems” by legislating the way “we’re supposed to around here, with transparency, with public input, and with sufficient time to develop sound policy.”

“I know Washington Democrats’ most important priority right now is getting Nancy Pelosi her old job back in 2014. But that’s not what Americans want—and that’s why Washington has become so dysfunctional.”

McConnell speaks with the authority of his position in the Senate, but he also speaks in a low-key, often bland way, about the serious problems facing the nation. In the House his counterpart, John Boehner, the Speaker, has reached a point of such frustration that he speaks publicly in short angry bursts. Neither command either the media’s nor the public’s attention.

“The public,” said McConnell, expects the Congress and the White House “to address the most serious challenges facing our country. The public is tired of the manufactured crisis, the poll-tested gimmicks, and the endless campaigning—they expect and deserve better.”

I would not swap jobs with McConnell. Not only does his counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, lie in the same fashion as the President, but McConnell knows that at least four million Republicans stayed home and did not vote in the 2012 election. The House is a fractious place at best for either party.

Meanwhile the problems facing the nation continue to mount. By way of illustrating this, on Obama’s watch the nation’s Standard and Poor’s credit rating went from AAA, the highest, to AA+, the first such reduction in the history of the nation.

The price of regular gas when Obama was elected was $2.75 and is now $3.73. The number of people that were on food stamps has risen from 26 million to 47 million. Obama has added six trillion to the national debt and it grows by the hour.

By any measurement one applies, the nation is sliding toward another financial crisis and Mitch McConnell’s efforts in the Senate continue to go largely unreported.

Is anyone listening?

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Every Horrid Thing You Need to Know About How Healthcare is Paid For Today – Tea Party Nation

Every Horrid Thing You Need to Know About How Healthcare is Paid For Today – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

“Despite more than sixty years of government efforts—representing the work of both political parties—we are moving further and further away from what we want. Prices are higher, more people are excluded from needed care, more excess treatments are performed, and more people die from preventable errors. Why?”

Why, indeed! Having had the Affordable Care Act (ACA) forced on us by a Democrat-controlled Congress—some of whom had to be bribed for their vote—Americans are beginning to learn that the cost of healthcare is going to increase, people will be laid off, have their hours reduced, or simply not hired at all as the result of this horrid new law.

A February 25 Rasmussen poll revealed that “Most voters still believe that President Obama’s national health law will cost more than official estimates and expect it to drive up the cost of health care in America.” They’re right!

David Goldhill has performed a national service with his new book, “Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father and How to Fix It.” ($25.95, Alfred A. Knopf) Goldhill is the president and chief executive officer of GSN, which operates a U.S. cable television network seen in more than 75 million homes and is one of the world’s largest digital games companies. He came to the issues of healthcare in the wake of his father’s death.

“Although his death was a deeply personal and unique tragedy for me and my family, my dad was merely one of a hundred thousand Americans who died that year as the result of infections picked up in hospitals. A hundred thousand preventable deaths! That’s more than double the annual number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number murdered, twenty 9/11s. Each and every year!”

“All of the actors in health care want to serve patients well, but understandably most respond rationally to the backward economic incentives baked into the system,” writes Goldhill. “At the heart of these perverse incentives is insurance. Unlike with everything else in the economy we rely on insurance as the sole means of paying for everything in health care—from the most routine to the most urgent.”

Noting that “Our massive and failing Medicare and Medicaid programs are already unsustainable and unfixable”, a fact known to anyone paying any attention, Goldhill gets to the heart of Obamacare, whose “central thrust is for ever more insurance to pay for health care.” The result is that “the underlying insurance-based structure of our health care system drives excess treatment, cost inflation, and medical errors.”

There are many myths about healthcare that have become embedded in our society. Goldhill notes that “The factors that most predict your health are your wealth, education, and lifestyle—not your access to health care.” This might seem self-evident, but we live in a nation where we are constantly hectored regarding our lifestyle choices; what and how much we eat, whether we exercise sufficiently, and endless articles suggesting that diseases and illness is predicated, not on our genetic liabilities (if you come from a family with a history of heart disease or cancer), but on the literal invention of new ailments driven by pharmaceutical innovations to “cure” them.

“The ACA (Obamacare) is fundamentally a health insurance bill, not a real piece of health care reform legislation, focusing as it does on the wrapper of insurance rather than on the complex and dysfunctional system inside.”

To understand where we are today, we need to understand that so-called health insurance is “a payment mechanism for health care”, not the health care itself. It influences that nature of the actual healthcare being provided. Moreover, “The U.S. health insurance companies employ over a half a million workers. That’s one worker for every two doctors. The administrative cost of managing our system of health care payments alne is almost $1,000 per American household. For most Americans, their annual share of this administrative cost exceeds the amount of actual health care they use in a typical year.”

“It is estimated that over the next decade the ACA will cost the government at least $1 trillion and the uninsured themselves the same amount,” says Goldhill. It’s worth keeping in mind at this point that the U.S. is $16 trillion in debt already and Medicare is widely understood to be underfunded; in part because $716 billion was taken from it to fund the imposition of ACA on the nation.

“In any given year, the most costly five percent of people account for more than fifty percent of health-care costs, and the top ten percent of people account for seventy percent of costs.” In effect this means that insurance is the mechanism “for moving funds from the many well to the few ill.” As a result, Medicare and the insurance companies become “surrogates” who “negotiate prices and preapprove procedures” and “they increasingly determine your choice of doctors.”

Goldhill notes that “there are plenty of government aid programs—food stamps, welfare, Social Security—in which the government doesn’t determine how we will spend its money, must less the prices of goods and services and from whom we can buy them.”

The kicker is that “health insurers can achieve long term profit growth only if the amount of money spent on health care increases!

Goldhill concludes that “Overall, the surrogates have done a miserable job of regulating the system’s quality, safety, and price.”

That is where we are today and it will get worse in the future. And our lives depend on the present system.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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The War on Women – Tea Party Nation

The War on Women – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

There are actually two wars on women going on right now.  One is a faux war, created by the media.  The other is a very real war.  But since the left launches the second war on women, don’t expect to hear much about it from the drive-by media.

 What is this second war on women that no one is talking about and why should we conservatives be talking about it, regardless of whether we are male or female?

 Joe Salazar is a Colorado Democrat.  Perhaps that is the same thing as saying he is a complete sexist, raging idiot.

 Colorado was considering a bill that would forbid concealed carry permit holders from carrying their weapons on the grounds of colleges and universities.

 Salazar said that women really didn’t need guns to protect themselves if they were afraid.  After all, they might not get raped.   Or they might go off and just start shooting people for no good reason because, well who knows why.

 Women of Colorado rejoice!  Don’t worry your pretty little heads about making decisions about your self-defense because you have sexist pigs like Joe Salazar to make those decisions for you!

 Salazar is not the only idiot in Colorado.  The University of Colorado is like almost every other college and university in the nation.  Liberals control it and of course they don’t like guns.

 So what is a woman supposed to do if she is stalked or threatened by a rapist?  These bright lights think a whistle is a great defense.    Forget bringing a knife to a gunfight, these dim bulbs want you to bring a little piece of plastic to a gunfight.  Is it any wonder why American students at all levels constantly fail when compared to foreign students?

 Our children and young adults are being taught by morons.

 Conservatives learn from not only their mistakes but also other people’s mistakes.  We learned that banning guns in certain areas like college campuses does not make them safer.  It only makes it easier for criminals. 

 If a criminal is going to come on campus to rape a woman do you think he is really going to worry about another law that prohibits him from carrying a gun?  No, he is going to be jumping up, giving Joe Salazar high fives, thanking him for making the campus a target rich zone and an area where he can prey on victims without fear of running into someone who is armed and can fight back.

 Conservatives must fight these stupid laws but we also must realize something else.  Self-defense is our personal responsibility.

 Unfortunately for real Americans, we are facing the increasing reality that the left is stripping our 2nd Amendment rights from us.  Perhaps even worse, the Supreme Court is becoming less than friendly for conservatives.    Cases like District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the gun control laws of the District of Columbia.  Heller was a 5-4 decision. 

 After the way Chief Justice John Roberts folded like a cheap black robe, there is no way any of us should feel comfortable that the Supreme Court will protect our 2^nd Amendment Rights.

 The battle for the 2^nd Amendment is a battle we cannot lose.  The 2^nd Amendment is not about personal protection.  It is about preserving liberty and stopping government tyranny.

 If you live in a jurisdiction that has repealed the 2^nd Amendment, you need to think about alternatives for self-defense if you cannot carry a gun.

 Martial arts is one of those alternatives you should think about.  Martial arts has a couple of benefits.  The first is it is physical fitness.     We have to deal with the fact Obamacare is not going to be repealed.  The Republicans have made no serious effort to repeal Obamacare.  They have not even tried an incremental approach to repeal. 

 The best way to fight Obamacare and avoid the death panels that will be there, regardless of what the Obama Regime says, is to be on offense.  So much disease is preventable.  If you smoke, stop smoking.  If you are overweight, change your diet and lose weight.  Get out and exercise.

 What do you do if you cannot carry your gun with you?  Are you just going to be another victim?

 Martial arts, particularly those that started in Asia were started as a response to a population that was disarmed.  If the population could not fight with weapons, they had to find another way to fight back. 

 Today there are a number of very effective martial arts that will teach you how to defend yourself.  You do not have to be a teenager to take these martial arts.  Some of them emphasize the ability to fight back without being in fantastic shape.

 Combat Hapkido is one of them.  Being a small person is actually a benefit in this martial art. 

 We must fight for our rights.  But we have lost too many of those fights.  We have too many low information voters that have put Barack Obama back in office. 

 While we must fight for the best, we must also prepare for the worst.  Unfortunately for America, right now under Obama’s America, we are living in the worst of times.

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