Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Obamacare had the worst debut since the Titanic. The website was non-functional for weeks, the back-end still isn't fully built out, whole states have had minimal numbers of people signing up, countless Americans have been cut back from full-time work to part-time, millions lost their insurance, and Obama has been illegally changing the law every other day like some sort of banana republic dictator. In other words, Obamacare has been a rolling train wreck that has shown Barack Obama's promises about the law to be nothing but lies while proving the conservatives who said the Affordable Care Act was a disaster 100% right.

Now, here's the really scary thing: as you're about to see, the worst is yet to come.

1) Skyrocketing Insurance Prices: You think your insurance is expensive now? Well, just wait, because Obamacare is going to send the cost of medical care shooting into the sky like a rocket out of a trampoline factory. How could it be otherwise? People are now forced to buy more insurance than they need. Are you an 60 year old woman? Sorry, but Barack Obama still thinks you need maternity care and that costs more money. Moreover, it costs a lot of money to pay for the new regulations and massive federal bureaucracy that has been put in place for the law. After all, somebody has to pay the salary of the IRS agents who'll now be harassing you about your medical bills. Furthermore, that alcoholic junky who needs a liver transplant and round the clock care after he got high on meth and slammed his head into a cement wall? He's paying the same rate as you are now, which means both of you pay a lot more. Guess who got the better of that deal? Hint: If you're reading this, there's about a 99.9% chance it's not you.

2) Insurance Company Bailouts: While Democrats were telling the Occupy Wall Street crowd to support Obamacare in order to stick it to the insurance companies, Obama was actually giving those same companies the sweetheart deal of a lifetime behind the scenes. In return for supporting Obamacare, they got to charge more, Obama promised to use the IRS to force more Americans to sign up for their services, and best of all, he promised them a bailout if something goes wrong. In other words, if they don't make a killing off of all the new customers Obama is forcing to buy their service, Obama will make up the difference with your tax dollars. So now that Obamacare looks like a money loser for the insurance companies, Democrats are preparing to pay off the insurance companies directly with your tax dollars. How did we end up in a world where the same liberals who incessantly complain about fatcat insurance companies are now demanding that we give them billions of dollars because they made bad business decisions?

3) The Employer Mandate: There's a reason Barack Obama delayed the employer mandate and will probably delay it again next year. Depending on the estimates you believe, somewhere between 25-80 million Americans are going to lose the health insurance they have through their employer once it goes into effect. Now you're probably saying, "Holy 'if you like your plan, you can keep it,’ Batman, that's horrible,” but to liberals, that's ultimately a feature of the plan, not a bug. The more people who lose their health care, the more people who will want to sign up for the Obamacare exchanges and the more likely it is that the law is to be viable long term. Ultimately, Barack Obama is fine with lying to the American people; he just doesn't want them to find out they were deceived right before an election.

4) Doctor Shortages: According to a survey done by the Doctor Patient Medical Association, 83% of doctors, "have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law." Some of them are going to quit while others will merely cut back their hours or refuse to see new patients. Whatever the case may be, it means that even if you have health care, it may be difficult to find a doctor to treat you. If and when you do, you're going to find doctors who have even less time to spend per patient, nurses doing tasks doctors used to handle, foreign doctors with inferior training who've been brought in to fill the gap, and dramatically increased waits for surgeries. There will be people who would get surgery for painful, but non-life threatening injuries within a week today who will spend months waiting in agony down the road. If there were any justice, they would all be people who voted for Obama, but unfortunately the rest of us will have to pay the same excruciating price for their gullibility.

5) Death Panels: Liberals have moved from claiming that death panels don't exist to admitting that they're built into the law and saying that they're a good thing. As Time Magazine's senior political analyst Mark Halperin admitted, "It's built into the plan. It's not like a guess or like a judgment. That's going to be part of how costs are controlled." So, yes, there are going to be Americans who die because it's cheaper than spending the money needed to save them. What was it Barack Obama said again? Oh, yes, "Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller." The scary thing about that is unelected bureaucrats who are indifferent to whether you live or die -- not you or your doctor-- will be the ones deciding whether an expensive treatment makes you "better off."
Anyone who has still not yet understood the utter cynicism of the Obama administration in general, and Attorney General Eric Holder in particular, should look at the Justice Department's latest interventions in education.

If there is one thing that people all across the ideological spectrum should be able to agree on, it is that better education is desperately needed by black youngsters, especially in the ghettoes. For most, it is their one chance for a better life.

Among the few bright spots in a generally dismal picture of the education of black students are those successful charter schools or voucher schools to which many black parents try to get their children admitted. Some of these schools have not only reached but exceeded national norms, even when located in neighborhoods where the regular public schools lag far behind.

Where admission to these schools is by a lottery, the cheers and tears that follow announcements of who has been admitted -- and, by implication, who will be forced to continue in the regular public schools -- tell the story better than words can.

When the state of Louisiana decided to greatly expand the number of schools available to students by parental choice, rather than by the rigidities of the usual public school system, Attorney General Holder's Justice Department objected on grounds that this was at cross-purposes with the federal government's racial integration goals for the schools.

In short, Louisiana's attempt to improve the education of children is subordinated by Holder to the federal government's attempt to mix and match black and white students.

If we have learned nothing else after decades of socially divisive and educationally futile racial busing, it should be obvious that seating black kids next to white kids is neither necessary nor sufficient to get them a better education.

The truly despicable intervention by Attorney General Holder is his warning to schools against discipline policies that result in a higher proportion of minority students than white students being punished.

This racial body count method of determining whether there is discrimination by the schools might make sense if we were certain that there could be no differences in behavior that would explain the differences in punishment. But does any sane adult really believe that there cannot be any difference between the behavior of black boys and Asian girls, for example?

There is a lot of make-believe when it comes to racial issues, whether out of squeamishness, political correctness or expediency. There is also a lot of deliberate racial polarization, and attempts to promote a sense of grievance and fear among black voters, in order to keep their votes in the Democrats' column.

What makes this playing politics with school discipline so unconscionable is that a lack of discipline is one of the crushing handicaps in many ghetto schools. If 10 percent of the students in a classroom are disruptive, disrespectful and violent, the chances of teaching the other 90 percent effectively are very low.

Yet, in the words of the New York Times, "The Obama administration speaks out against zero tolerance discipline." It quotes Attorney General Holder and says that he was "on the mark" when he said that a "routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal's office, not in a police precinct."

In other words, Eric Holder, sitting in Washington, knows better than the thousands of people who run public schools across the country what kinds of sanctions are necessary to preserve some semblance of order in the classrooms, so that hoodlums do not make the education of their classmates impossible.

Like the New York Times, Attorney General Holder has made this an issue of "The Civil Rights of Children." More important, the implied threat of federal lawsuits based on racial body count among students who have been disciplined means that hoodlums in the classroom seem to have a friend in Washington.

But even the hoodlums can end up worse off, if lax discipline in the school lets them continue on in a way of life that usually ends up inside prison walls. Nevertheless, if all this means black votes for the Democrats, that may well be the bottom line for Holder and the Obama administration.

Capitulation: White House admits that new agreement permits Iran to continue advanced nuclear research

From Jihad Watch / Posted by Robert Spencer

Thumbnail image for Rouhani2.jpg

The Iranians are gleeful -- understandably. They chant "Death to America" and Obama gives them whatever they want. "Iran Permitted to Continue Advanced Nuclear Research," from the Washington Free Beacon, January 13:
Iran will be permitted to continue advanced research and development work on its nuclear program under the interim nuclear deal reached over the weekend, according to senior Obama administration officials. 
Nuclear talks were reported to have broken down late last year over the issue of whether Iran would be permitted to continue critical research and development in the nuclear arena.
The White House confirmed on Monday that Iran would be permitted to continue developing advanced nuclear centrifuges that will enable it to more quickly enrich uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon.
Asked by a reporter on a conference call if the deal stops “Iran from designing new types of centrifuges,” a senior administration official admitted that the deal does not prohibit this activity.
“Well, designing is not, all I would say is the, what you would do with a piece of paper and designing, that’s not the sort of thing that the Joint Plan of Action—the Joint Plan of Action talks about research and development, R&D, and it mainly talks about what was going—practices at the Natanz power facility, which is the facility that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has access to and where we have reporting on,” the official said.
“So what’s the practical effect of this R&D [research and development] clarification that you labored over so hard? What does it preclude them from doing?” the reporter asked.
“It—I mean, their commitment is to continue their current enrichment R&D practices, and those are the practices that are laid out in the November Director General’s report,” said one of two senior administration officials on the press briefing. “This—that’s been documented, and that’s what they were—that’s what they will continue to do.”
Reuters reported last week that nuclear talks temporarily fell apart over the issue of centrifuge research, which had been one of the principal sticking points in the deal.
Iran says that Western nations have given it the go ahead to continue with “the installation of new generation centrifuges.”
“The [use of] new generation of centrifuges for research purposes was the most important remaining issue in the talks between Iran and the G5+1 in recent months,” chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Monday, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.
“At last, the Group 5+1 accepted yesterday that Iran’s operating new generation of centrifuges for research does not run counter to the Geneva agreement,”Boroujerdi said.
IRS Off the Hook: No Criminal Charges Over Tea Party Targeting

The FBI is not planning to file criminal charges involving the Internal Revenue Service's extra scrutiny of the Tea Party and other conservative groups, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing law enforcement officials.

The newspaper quoted officials as saying that investigators probing the IRS actions, which unleashed a political furor in Washington, did not uncover the type of political bias or "enemy hunting" that would constitute a criminal violation. The evidence showed a mismanaged agency enforcing rules it did not understand on applications for tax exemptions, the Journal reported.

The case is still under investigation, but criminal charges were unlikely unless unexpected evidence emerged, officials familiar with the probe told the paper.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment when queried by Reuters.

If there are no criminal charges as expected, the FBI is likely to see a backlash from already skeptical conservative groups which had raised the idea that the administration would not police itself.

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa last week questioned whether a prosecutor handling the case for the Justice Department could remain impartial when he donated to the Obama campaign.

And just last week, The Washington Times reported that some conservative groups were only just being contacted  by the IRS, raising the question of just how thorough an investigation the FBI conducted.

Cleta Mitchell, another attorney representing some of the targeted groups, said last week her clients have not heard from investigators.

"Normally, don't you first interview the victims?" Mitchell said. "I mean, I've watched enough cop shows over the years. You interview the victims. You don't interview the perp."

FBI Director James Comey told reporters last week when asked about the IRS probe, "It's an investigation that we're still working, and that's an important one for us." He declined to comment on whether the FBI believed a crime had been committed.

In May, a senior IRS executive made an unexpected public apology at a legal conference for what she described as improper scrutiny by the agency of conservative political groups.

The apology set off weeks of investigation and controversy, culminating in findings that Tea Party-linked political groups applying for tax-exempt status had been subjected to extra review and delay by employees at an IRS Cincinnati field office.

Republican lawmakers attacked President Barack Obama's administration over the issue, accusing the agency of political bias.

Obama asked then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller to resign in the days after the disclosure, and the FBI opened an investigation.
It's Bowe Tuesday...again.  
 Hey Obama...stop catering to the enemy 
and bring Bowe home NOW!

Maybe this time the SCOTUS will get it right... but I'm NOT holding my breath 
By: Diane Sori

While the Supreme Court has refused to consider the case brought by the state of Arizona challenging the 9th Circuit Court's ruling that abortions can take place after 20 weeks gestation, arguments made on behalf of Noel Canning...an Oregon-based soft drink bottling and distribution company...who was facing National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and local Teamsters union sanctions... have been accepted and are in the process of being heard by the High Court relating to the issue of Obama crossing the boundaries of executive power in regards to recess presidential appointments.

But the big question is will Chief Justice John Roberts be the deciding vote once again...this should be interesting as he owes us big time for his mother of an ObamaCare screw-up.

Seriously though, the man who claims he and only he gets to decide what constitutes when Congress is in session is now facing our nation's highest court over the Republican claimed...and rightly so...illegal abuse of power when he tried to usurp even more power for himself by appointing three pro-union members... Richard Griffin Jr., Sharon Block, and Terence F. Flynn...to the National Labor Relations Board on January 4, 2012, which in turn resulted in the Noel Canning case being filed.

At the heart of this matter is Obama's claim that the Senate Republicans' refusal to allow votes for nominees to the NLRB and to his new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau led him to make the temporary recess appointments, but NO excuse justifies Obama's abuse of power that is in violation of the Constitution. And while abusing what are his granted powers is NOTHING new for Barack HUSSEIN Obama, this is the first time in our country's history that a standoff between the White House and congressional Republicans...a political stalemate if you will...has reached the Supreme Court. And so now the Court will hear oral arguments and rule on the meaning of the very Constitutional provision that gives the president permission to make temporary appointments to positions that normally require Senate confirmation. But...and this is critical...those appointments must be made when the Senate is in recess, yet the day before the appointments were made Congress had technically begun the second session of the 112th Congress making what Obama did unconstitutional.

And that is the sticking point for when Obama made these appointments the Senate was NOT in recess even though his narcissistic self considered and ruled them to be. But the fact is that the Senate was still holding 'pro forma' sessions every three days, and during 'pro-forma' sessions (when the upper chamber is briefly called to order and then adjourned) NO formal business is to be conducted, and 'supposed' Constitutional professor Barack HUSSEIN Obama should have known that.

Briefly, a 'pro-forma' session fulfills the obligation under the Constitution "that neither chamber can adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other." And as the Senate was indeed still in session NO recess appointments should have been made...period. And while Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the president, the power to "on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses or either of them," this power is only to be used during emergencies and appointments to the National Labor Relations Board is NO emergency NO matter how Obama tries to claim it is...and the justices know this...at least if they are unbiased and Constitution abiding they do.

This past January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, along with two other federal appeals courts, ruled that the Labor Board appointments were indeed “constitutionally infirm” because they were NOT made during “the recess of the Senate,” nor had a required vacancy occurred within that same time period...something that Obama chose to ignore. So as per this ruling it's made clear that Obama overstepped his executive power bounds by declaring the Senate in recess, then making three appointments that are technically illegal because NO vacancy had occurred. And he needs to answer for this as the president swears an oath to ''uphold and defend the Constitution" NOT to change it at will so he can stack the deck with his left leaning liberal buddies.

And there's a lot on the line here because the justices have the power to either give credence to or stop the president's recess made appointments. And if they rule against Obama...as they should if they follow the letter of the law...hundreds of NLRB decisions made over the past two years could now be rendered null and void as arguments made by attorneys with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce...who will argue on behalf of Noel Canning...will show that the NLRB operated without a quorum for well over a year, thus causing mass confusion for both employers and employees...and that is the very case and position that allowed for the charge that Obama overstepped his bounds to reach the Supreme Court.

In fact, as of last week, there were 108 pending cases in federal appeals courts challenging decisions made by the NLRB since Obama's illegal appointments were made. And there are another 35 pending cases challenging decisions made during the tenure of a previously made 2010 Obama recess appointee

And in a surprising statement, Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointment said, “It really is the Senate’s job to determine whether they’re in recess or whether they’re not.” Could this be an inkling that maybe the Supreme Court will for once side with the Republicans...we can only hope.

So, if the justices uphold the lower court ruling, it would make it nearly impossible for a sitting president to use the recess power, and under such a ruling future presidential nominees could be blocked indefinitely when the president's party does NOT control the Senate. But when we have a president like Barack HUSSEIN Obama that would serve this country and 'We the People' well.