President Shamwow (Sarah Palin Facebook)

President Obama flew in to Boston today to deliver another “ShamWow”-style infomercial for Obamacare, and it went about as well as his entourage’s snarled traffic debacle in Beantown.
As millions of Americans are being kicked off their desired insurance plans and seeing their premiums skyrocket, the President had a lot of 'splaining to do today. For starters we anticipated a Presidential apology for lying to Americans repeatedly when he promised things like, “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it.” Make no mistake, he knew he was lying when he said that. And make no further mistake, after five years of false Obama claims, no one should actually expect contrition on this administration’s part.
Bloomberg reports that in June of 2010, the administration knew millions would be kicked off existing healthcare plans due to Obamacare; but President Obama continued to knowingly deceive the American people with repeated claims that if we liked our current plan we could keep it.
So, finally busted, did the President apologize? Was remorse and sympathy shown for Americans who now can’t afford health insurance thanks to Obamacare? Nope. He instead informed us that Americans who receive cancellation notices have been on “substandard” plans supplied by “bad apple” insurers. That’s right. Obama didn’t lie to you when he said, “if you like your plan, you can keep it.” Why? Because, you sillies, you DIDN’T REALLY like the plan you chose for yourselves! No arguing. Barack Obama knows best and he’ll tell you whether you actually liked your insurance plan or not. If you’re an elderly bachelor, your old plan was clearly “substandard” because it didn’t offer maternity care. What’s that you say? You don’t need maternity care? Well, according to the President today, he says you do, and any insurance plan that doesn’t offer it is a “junk” plan provided by a “bad apple” insurer.
But don’t worry, the President also promised that only “rich” people making $250,000 or more will see their premium costs rise. This lie is so appalling and so easily debunked that the brazenness with which he made it is simply breathtaking. But who will hold him accountable for it? Media, you know I love you... so let me help you save your hide with the American public by suggesting you fact-check that.
Despite the Obamacare rollout disaster and the broken government website (which HHS Secretary Sebelius admitted is a “debacle” in her testimony before Congress today), the President gleefully highlighted the few people signing up for Obamacare as indicative of his socialized medicine’s “success.” He neglected to mention that the government is forcing Americans to sign up for his program or pay fines that will increase each year we fail to do so.
For sheer chutzpah, the President closed his speech by praising America’s “rugged individualism.” Because nothing says “rugged individualism” like heavy-handed big government forcing individuals to buy a product they don’t want and arrogantly telling them they didn’t really like the product they wisely chose for themselves and could afford.
Thanks for the infomercial, Mr. President. I don’t know anyone who wants your “ShamWow” product, but the IRS will make sure we call that toll free number or go online to order it right now…. well, just as soon as your impossibly broken $600 million website is fixed and your phones lines aren’t busy.
Happy with this, America? Make your voices heard. 2014 is just around the corner.
- Sarah Palin
P.S. Take a look at this article by Fox’s Eric Bolling:
http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/30/eric-bolling-why-healthcaregov-website-failure-mattersbig-time
As Eric asks, “If they can’t get a basic website up and running in three years… How on God’s green Earth are they going to administer health care to 300 million Americans? So, with billions upon billions of health related communications clearing through the government medicine portal annually, our very health will be hanging in the balance…Therefore, you must conclude: The Obama administration has our lives in their hands…Ask yourself… Do you trust President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Kathleen Sebelius and Jay Carney with your life? I certainly do not!”

The Obamacare Kluge (American Thinker)

October 26, 2013

 

By Greg Richards

"You didn't build that"

Well, now we know he didn't build it either!

The most significant thing about that remark when Obama made it was not its ignorance, nor its political posturing, but its disrespect.  Libs have no respect for the achievements of other people.  They cruise at 70,000 feet.  They think things come into existence by fiat.

"Let's have insurance."

"What's for lunch?"

One thing that Marx and Marxists have never understood is that behind every business is passion.  The grocer has a passion for grocery selling.  One reason we know this is because if he doesn't have that passion, he isn't in the business of selling groceries. He will have been pushed out of business by the other guy who stacks his fruit and/or sweeps his floors and/or offers better quality goods or lower prices.

That is the creation of value.  Politicians don't understand this because politics is basically a scam - the longest floating crap game in history.  All politicians promise things they either cannot do, or have no intention of doing.  The only reason politics lasts is that it is a monopoly -- someone must fill those positions.

What politicians can do is to skim the cream off society.  Socialism results in roughly 10% of the population living off the other 90%.  That was the ratio of Communist Party members in the Soviet Union to non-members.  It is a rough rule of thumb that works for Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist China and so forth.

Because any economy is built on the discovery of information as Hayek put it and on the subjectivity of value as the late-19^th century economists Jevons, Walras and Menger determined, a centrally-planned economy slowly winds down because the central planners have no incentive to discover new information as it upsets both their sloth and their power, and the value preferences of the public are not expressed because decisions are made by the top 10%.  We have actually been warned of the path we are on now by Putin and he should know.

The Obamacare Website will be fixed at some point.  Anybody familiar with writing software suspects that the most efficient solution will be to junk the current system and start over unless the documentation on what has been done so far is enormously greater than we have any reason to expect.  You don't bring in a team from Google or Amazon or Priceline or any of the myriad names we all know to plow through the current rat's nest of coding.  You bring them in to block out the functions and write code to that architecture.

Look at what we were told about Obamacare.

There would be Exchanges.  I never knew what these were going to be, but I assumed that these were some of those "shovel-ready jobs" that have not appeared over the last five years.  I assumed that we were going to see the construction of 50 Greek Revival temples with peaked roofs and big columns in front with men in colored jackets running back and forth inside with pieces of paper in their hands, shouting at each other.  And that somehow one would go through some portal in one of those buildings and come out insured.

When we finally got down to cases, it turned out that Exchanges were...a website!  The "exchanging" going on in Exchanges was people exchanging their money for goods.  Hmmmmm.....haven't we been doing that since Abraham was strolling through the streets of Ur of the Chaldees?  Or before?  So, just to reboot, what the guvmint meant by "setting up insurance Exchanges in each state" was "having a website to buy insurance."

Oh.  OK.  And since it was online, we are going to be able to compare features and prices.

Oh.  Sort of like Expedia, or Priceline.

But, the Obamacare Exchanges, now the Obamacare Website, was not an ordinary website.  It is going to interact with...DATABASES.

Oh.

You mean, like Oracle, or SQL Server, or DB2.  One hopes that the designers of the Obamacare Website are aware that Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, is one of the richest men in the world because the Oracle database is one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world.

Let's just review.  The Obamacare Exchanges are a website that accesses databases and supports transactions.

But obviously, we still aren't with the program.  Because users aren't just purchasing health insurance, they have to qualify to purchase a specific policy.  So, that explains it.  Cutting edge.  Where no man has gone before.

But...wait.  Are we talking about a MyAccount page?  Like iTunes?  Or Amazon?

The Obamacare MyAccount page is a bit longer than the Amazon one because Obamacare wants to know the sexual orientation of your last five sex partners; whether you are a Republican or Democrat (trust me, if they are not asking it now, they will soon), whether you take the skin off chicken, and if you use sun block.  So, there are more forms to fill in.  Myself, I'm assuming that after I do this once, Chrome Autofill will handle it from there on.

Now, about these Navigators.  Has anybody else read Frank Herbert's superb sci fi novel Dune?  The Navigators there are mutants who can fold space and power spaceships across the galaxy.  I assume the idea is the same here, except that what they are powering will be the political orientation of Obamacare Website users.

How is that going to work?  Do you ask for a Navigator?  Or does one come unbidden?  I think there are some of us who are going to be uncomfortable to hear the doorbell wring and find Richard Trumka standing outside.  I myself plan to have a few Democratic Party cards printed up and kept in a bowl next to the Halloween candy for emergencies.

The architects of Obamacare seem to be unaware of something called Customer Service. Since the dawn of the digital revolution a generation ago, products have been designed to be self-explanatory.  Instruction manuals are the butts of jokes.  Do you need a Navigator for Google, which puts the learning of the world at your fingertips?  Do you need a Navigator to download Crosby Stills and Nash from iTunes (I know, my age is showing)?

No.  For two reasons.  On sites like Amazon and iTunes to name just two, calling Customer Service is like getting therapy.  The nicest people answer any time day or night and will stay with you until your problem is solved.  My only disappointment is that the Amazon person asks at the end "Is there anything else I can help you with?" and I respond with "What is the meaning of life?" She says, "Greg, (my name is on the screen in front of her) Jeff has a team on that, but we don't have the answer yet."

And I am sure my experience is mirrored by approximately 1 billion people to date.  So far, Amazon has not sent any Navigators to my front door.  I am not quite sure why Obamacare needs to send them unless it is to get that signature on the Democratic Party roster and to be told when I am going to be picked up to go to vote in the next election.

Also, if by chance there is not a Customer Service department for my problem, then I go on Google, put my query into the Search Bar and...I get several responses that answer my question.  Having a Navigator come out to the house has a John Henry competing with the steam hammer feel to it.

So what do we have here?  A kluge (soft "g" for those of you not familiar with the term), which means a hopelessly mal-designed piece of technology.

But the reason we have this kluge is the salient point.  We have it because the people in charge of this project are disrespectful of both the achievement of producers and the autonomy of customers.  They want to be in control and are indifferent to the actual operation of the system.

And...just wait until some Lois Lerner is in charge of your health care rather than your insurance, and is there to check your Obamacare page to see if you are worthy when you show up at the ER with a sick child in your arms.

That is what 1776 was about in the first place.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/10/the_obamacare_kluge.html at October 26, 2013 - 08:35:26 AM CDT

The NOKIA 1020 41 MP Camera Masquerading as a Phone (Courtesy National Geographic)

The Most Egregious Case of Illegal Campaign Contributions Ever

What happened with the gas plants here in Ontario is the clear front runner!  A small handful of senior members of the Liberal Party of Ontario got together and hatched a plan to manipulate enough voters to win much needed seats.  The fact that almost a billion dollars of taxpayer money had to change hands was deemed to be acceptable to this handful of LPO elites.

Well, now that we know this is exactly what happened, we need redress.  We know that this tiny elite was responsible because Ms.Wynne formally apologized.

We are not vindictive.  We don’t need revenge.  All we need is our money back and friends will be friends. 

The LPO MUST begin the repayment of the taxpayers money immediately.  I recommend that they start with a large cheque to show good faith.  After that they should agree to a schedule of payments which includes a reasonable rate of interest on the remaining balance.  The actual amounts should be keyed to the income from all sources to the LPO.  I would propose an annual percentage at the current combined provincial and federal tax rates which would probably be something north of 40 percent of annual gross revenue.  I chose this because that is how they treat all of us.

When it is repaid in full, we will forgive them! 

What To Do About the Gas Plants

 

The people of Ontario were robbed by a tiny cabal in charge of The Liberal Party of Ontario (note: not the Government of Ontario).  The amount has been determined to be approximately $1,100,000,000.  We don’t need to try or jail anyone.  We are magnanimous.  We forgive people who wrong us.  It would take forever and cost a fortune in legal fees to pursue individuals who were complicit.

There is a simple inexpensive alternative.  We should demand restitution for the LPO.  They can assess their members individually.  It is the only fair way.  We know they are responsible because Kathleen Wynne APOLOGISED.

To make sure that the restitution is made, it will probably be necessary to garnishee the receipts of the LPO until the debt is fully paid.       

When The Bleeding Heart Becomes The Iron Fist

Original Here

Dave Carter · October 5, 2013 at 5:33pm

Whatever the perceived shortcomings of Ted Cruz and his hardy band of stalwarts, they've performed a remarkable public service by highlighting the fate that awaits all who rub wrongly the translucently thin skin of King Barack the Petulant. The Spartans may have had their shields, Native Americans their tomahawks and arrows, the Samurai may have wielded his sword with all the deadly grace of a tiger in mid-attack, but pound for pound, nothing comes close to the audacious stupidity of "Barrycades" and people in pointy little Smokey the Bear hats, poised to protect America's monuments from law-abiding citizens.

Welcome to liberal utopia, where barriers are not erected against terrorists or illegal aliens on our nation's borders, but rather against citizens, and where wheelchair-bound veterans enroute to honor their comrades face tighter security than terrorists enroute to murder a US Ambassador.  This is where up is down, wrong is right, illegality is celebrated as progress, and where Constitutionalism is derided as racist.  No longer relegated to the fever swamps of academic fancy, utopia has acquired real estate and made known its demands.

"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…" the First Lady warned us, and she wasn't just whistling Alinsky either.  Under King Barack's Reign of Error, your life is no longer your own, for you are now commanded to enter into private contracts by virtue of your simple existence on the planet.  Why?  Because our Sovereign and his fellow travelers are compassionate, of course.  Their hearts bleed for you,…almost as much as your pocketbook will bleed for them.

If you suffered the fate of MSNBC's anchorwoman, you were lucky.  Mara Schiavocampo found the Obamacare website impenetrable, throwing in the towel on live television after 35 minutes and saying, "If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience would be exhausted."  Unhappily, it isn't just the citizen's patience that is being exhausted, as Eric Levy of Seattle, Washington discovered.

Eric, who felt his previous insurance was too costly, managed to access Washington Health Benefit Exchange, where he was confronted with the fiction of the President's sales pitch that insurance would become more affordable.  "It's another $500 a month that you have to think about how you're going to pay for," said Eric, adding, "The real thing that jumped out at me is all of a sudden I'm required to have maternity coverage." 

Even in our enlightened age of trans-gendered confusion, one has to grant that the odds of Eric getting knocked up are pretty slim, but Obamacare is a collective baby with an insatiable appetite for our money on one end and little sense of responsibility at the other. 

From the Obamacare Facebook page, we read still more reviews on the efforts of our benevolent masters:

The information is not very complete as I don't see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does give an actual price as to the "Premium."  It is VERY SCARY!!  For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2,500 deductible.  We are both 32 years old.  When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.87 a month!!!!  So compare my old plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% coverage for $945 a month.  This is only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!

Or:

I am so disappointed.  These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles.  No one can afford this!

What happened to the Yes We Can chorus?  Then there's the single mother of two who works full time and says she earns 75 percent less than the poverty level:

Are you [expletive] kidding me????  Where the HELL am I supposed to get $3,000 more a year to pay for this "bronze" health insurance plan!?!???  And I DO NOT EVEN WANT INSURANCE to begin with!!  This is frightening.

Not to worry, Ma'am, because in utopia, it's the intention that counts.  You've only to see the obvious empathy in Barack Obama's eyes, which is especially visible in the morning when he's freshly rested from a vacation at Martha's Vineyard.  He must care after all, otherwise he wouldn't punish so severely those who resist his tender advances on their "lives as usual," to use Mrs. Obama's ominous phraseology.

Please note that when the people's representatives actually represent their constituents, the majority of whom want nothing to do with the  wretched and wretchedly mis-named Affordable Care Act, it is the people who must be punished.  Can you believe that men who conquered Nazi Germany's barricades on the beach at Normandy 69 years ago actually faced barricades from their own damned government?   Can you believe that Vietnam vets, many of whom were rebuked for their service, were removed from their memorial by the police? Do the men and women who are ordered to move against law abiding veterans have no soul? 

The federal government has shut down some 17 times previously, and at no time were these memorials closed.  Is our Sovereign so besotted with power, has his impudent leftism so robbed him of reason that he fails to understand what is so obvious:  That in barricading Americans from memorials and icons that stand as testimony to an exceptional culture founded precisely on liberty from oppressive government, he perfectly validates the arguments of the right? 

As one member on Ricochet commented, this is no longer about Ted Cruz.  It's no longer about the animadversions of establishment Republicans who have only to see their political shadow before becoming alarmed and settling in for six more months of concessions to the statist.  This is about an arrangement the President and his party mean to consummate with the American people; an illusory promise to take care of us in exchange for our abject obedience and subservience.   But as the examples cited above show, it is only the subservience that is achieved.

From barricading memorials to the closing of a private inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway, from threatening Catholic military chaplains with arrest should they celebrate mass on Sunday to taking care of back pay for federal workers at the expense of everyone else, the bleeding heart has become, as it inevitably will, an iron fist.  Here and there resistance is bubbling to the surface, with Governor Walker in Wisconsin defying federal orders to close seven state-owned forests and recreation areas, and private citizens rallying to escort veterans to and from their memorials. 

What began as an effort to reverse a draconian law that even now exacts a high toll in terms of jobs lost and skyrocketing premiums, has become a contest of wills in which a President instructs his apparatchiks to inflict as much pain on the citizenry as possible.  Chiefly instructive in all this is the salient reality that any person capable of wielding the instrumentalities of the state in a despotic manner in the present, will prove equally capable in the future when he controls your health care.

Shutdown: The Audacity of Bureaucrats

 

By C. Edmund Wright

What the heck is on in the mind of someone who thinks the very oceans must be closed if they are not there to administer proper enjoyment of it? This week, it's a pertinent question.

Part of the answer is that many bureaucrats are people who, deep down inside, know they can't achieve anything and/or are afraid to try. This is why they become bureaucrats in the first place.  Why else would they agree to work in a cubicle each day, in a job with a very low ceiling, tasked with torturing the very businesses and taxpayers who support their pathetic vocation? Consider: bureaucrats -- and for this purpose I include the foot soldiers they dispatch to carry out their mischief -- are much like low level referees.  They are given authority over people who are actually more accomplished than they are in a certain endeavor simply because of that cubicle, a PC, and books of regulations -- or perhaps some absurd badge on a cheap blue shirt and a government-issued sedan or pickup truck. It's their equivalent of the striped shirt and whistle.

Yes, I know, if you have a bureaucratic mindset, or are related to someone who has, you are horrified that I am generalizing.

Yes, I am. But it's okay to generalize when one is upfront about it. Naturally I am not talking about every single bureaucrat, but I assert that it's true of the majority, and, moreover, definitely symptomatic of how all government bureaucracies as a whole impact the rest of us, even if some good angels are part of these cubicle folk.  Besides, after the past week of absurd closures and attempted closures as a result of the so-called shutdown, where many thousands of dutiful bureaucrats carried out what amount to near-criminal acts ordered by an obviously petulant and peeved administration, the mountain of evidence is in my favor.

Oh, I've heard the sentiment on radio, cable and message boards that most government employees are good people just doing their jobs, and yet, I must ask -- is this majority of good bureaucrats holed up somewhere with all of the hypothetical moderate Muslims?  Are they waiting to rapture themselves at some point in the future, validating these fanciful claims that they really are the majority?

Like the idea of a moderate Muslim majority, the notion of good bureaucrats is perhaps a fiction conjured up by well-meaning people who just can't deal with the reality that there are indeed groups of people who are maybe not so good, or who are forced by peer pressure or function to act badly or look the other way.  Bureaucracies, by their very structure and function, reward adherence to rule and obedience to authority. This naturally perverts the once pure public servant into a nefarious drone simply "carrying out orders" -- orders which all too often lead to someone else losing some liberty or property.

Is it possible that you can't remain a good person and become a thriving government drone? Ask Lois Lerner. She's been a very bad person while becoming a very prosperous tool of the monolith, now reportedly due a six figure pension in the wake of taking the Fifth Amendment.

To wit, to be a successful government bureaucrat this past week, you would have had to play your part in closing down parks, lakes, monuments and sporting events that are frankly none of your damned business. Whether your job was ordering Barry-Cades, procuring orange warning paint, police tape, or stapling notices to fences, trees and so on, you had to choose between being a good bureaucrat or a good citizen.  This is not an exaggeration. Never the twain shall meet -- at least, not this past week.

Seriously, I invite you to think about how sick one has to be to go along with this charade.  At a minimum, one would have to be a frightened puppy of a person to play along, fearing that outside of your beloved little taxpayer-provided cubicle, there is no future for you.  At worst, some were obviously taking pleasure in doing their part to maximize pain on other American citizens, some of whom stormed the beaches of Normandy and climbed the cliffs of Point du Hoc.

On a positive note, these turbo charged Barney Fifes are finding out that their Park Service badges and yellow tape garnered absolutely no respect.

Chances are, most government minions are somewhere in the middle -- just numbly going along with a mindset that actually accepts the fabrication that they are needed. Perhaps the sheer insanity of closing down venues that do not require government assistance never dawned on them. Seriously, do people really need government help in launching a boat, visiting an outdoor memorial, hiking a trail or looking into a canyon? The very idea is insulting to the point of being offensive.  And certainly Navy's football team, financed with privately derived revenue, is not helped by a butt-insky-Alinsky administration threatening to cost them a few million dollars by cancelling their game against Air Force.

Only a mind-numbed government robot would comply with orders spending more money in the name of saving money -- and doing so to close down private ventures. Closing down private ventures is what government does when it's not shutdown, too, of course.

And yet, all of these ridiculous actions were taken or attempted this past week.  And they were carried out by many tens of thousands of bureaucrats who would no doubt claim that they were just "doing (their) job."  Well, perhaps they were. Which begs a few questions like:  wouldn't the country be better off without your job in the first place? And what kind of a parasitic mindset does it take to perform your job? And are you proud of yourself?

Which begs a few more questions of us, like: how long will we stand for this? Will more Americans finally wake to the fact that our country is being stolen in broad daylight by a bureaucratic class we are paying to destroy us? Will we have the courage to address this with friends, neighbors and relatives who are part of this destructive army? Will the feckless Republican leadership recognize a winning issue when it stares them in the face?

In reality, it doesn't matter if the first few questions to the government hirelings are ever answered. But if we don't answer the last few correctly, the grandest of all larcenies will continue unabated.

The Cold Hard Facts of Obama's Economy (American Thinker)

 

By Chad Stafko

There's an old adage, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story."

That could be the battle cry within the Obama administration when it comes to Obama's work on the economy through his five plus years as president. But a close and objective look at the facts shows that the Obama-led and Obama-owned economy tells one and only one story -- FAILURE.

Let's begin on the labor front, where the numbers are atrocious. While the monthly unemployment rate is the headline-grabbing number so many flock to, it is far from the best gauge of labor market strength.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 7.3%. Obama backers will point to the fact... again let's look at the facts, and rightfully say that the unemployment rate has steadily fallen from its peak of 10% in October 2009 and has remained below 8% since August 2012. These are indeed facts, but they mask the underlying and quite troubling data.

Understand that the unemployment rate is a rather simplistic calculation. The numerator is composed of the number of people unemployed and who have looked for work in the past four weeks. That number is then divided by the total number of individuals in the labor force.

Simple math tells us that this figure can decline in a number of ways. The natural inclination for many is to assume that the unemployment percentage is dropping because the numerator, again measured by the total number of unemployed people actively seeking work, is declining due to these folks having found work. Not so, however.

The reason the number has been declining is that the denominator, which is composed of the total labor force in America, continues to fall. In fact, the overall labor force declined by 312,000 in August, which is the most recent data available. That means 312,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force in August. In other words, they gave up looking for a job.

The far more accurate and factual representation of the labor market is the labor force participation rate. It paints a far purer picture. This rate is simply the percent of the population who are either working or actively looking for work. In other words, these individuals are engaged in the labor market.

Here's the cold hard facts in that regard. The labor force participation rate fell to 63.2% in August, its lowest level since 1978. Think about that for a moment and let it sink in. We have the lowest percent of people participating in the labor market in 35 years. Note also that this rate is has continued to decline since the recession supposedly ended in June 2009.

So, here we are five and a half years into the Obama presidency and we have the lowest percent of Americans working since 1978. That is an undeniable fact.

There is even more evidence pointing towards the atrocity that is the Obama-led and owned U.S. labor market. According to a report released September 30th by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, only about half of adults in their late 20s -- let me emphasize late 20s -- were working full-time as of 2012. That figure was derived from official U.S. census data.

Let's put that in perspective. These are adults, if they went in the military, who would be halfway or more towards the minimum service time for retirement, yet half of these adults don't even have a full-time job.

They could instead be theoretically college-educated with six or seven years of experience, yet half are jobless.

Stick with the young adults for a moment and suppose you're one of them and fortunate enough to have a full-time job. What about your earnings? Are you making a good living within the Obama economy?

The answer, again based upon facts, is an emphatic "No."

That same Georgetown University study showed that young adults working are now 30 years of age before they earn $42,000 per year. Back in 1980, it took you only to the age of 26 to earn that much money per year.

Stay with me on the earnings front and consider these figures. As of 2012, the median U.S. household inflation-adjusted income was $51,017. That figure has dropped every year during Obama's tenure as president... every single year. Also, it is at its lowest level since 1995. What that means is we're earning no more than a typical household was in 1995, almost 20 years ago. Again, ignore the noise from the Oval Office, these are the facts.

Even the poorest of the poor have had it worse under Obama. Last year 15% of Americans were considered to be living in poverty with little sign of improvement, a theme characterizing the poor throughout the Obama presidency. That percentage equates to some 46.5 million Americans.

But what about the business community? How have they fared in the Obama-led and Obama-owned economy? Not well, to say the least.

Through September 2013, corporations have announced 387,384 job cuts. Over the first nine months of 2012, 386,000 job reductions were announced by corporations. So, some simple math tells us that equates to zero improvement in the corporate job market year-over-year. Again, those are the facts.

We've seen some of these massive job cut announcements in business headlines throughout the year. For example, Cisco Systems announced it would cut 4,000 employees and IBM laid off an undisclosed number of employees across the company, with some estimating that figure to be between 6,000-8,000.

Not to be outdone, the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, one of the largest employers in the state of Ohio, recently stated that it plans to offer early retirement to some 3,000 workers. Those reductions appear to have been due to ObamaCare, as Clinic spokesperson Eileen Sheil, stated that the cuts were due to the fact that "Hospital systems have to become much more efficient to make health care affordable to patients in the future."

All of these negative aspects of the Obama economy, from joblessness to poor-paying jobs to outright poverty, has resulted in challenging times for Americans. In fact, according to an Associated Press report from this summer, a whopping four out of five Americans are struggling to make ends meet financially. For some that may be hard to fathom... 80% of Americans are having issues meeting their financial obligations.

How can anyone therefore possibly believe that President Obama has been an economic success with a large majority of the American population financially struggling?

Whether you think of economic progress by the number of Americans employed, or their level of earnings, or whether the poor are escaping poverty, the cold hard facts reveal that the Obama-led and owned economy has been and remains a disaster.

Chad Stafko is a writer and political consultant living in the Midwest. He can be reached at stafko@msn.com

Death Panels and the WWII Veterans (American Thinker)

 

By Jeannie DeAngelis

Ever since the threat of government-run health care became a reality and ObamaCare was signed into law in 2010, clear-thinking Americans have been worried about how the legislation would ultimately affect the elderly and infirm.  Now we know.

Sarah Palin called them "death panels" and was mocked for suggesting that when the federal government ran out of money, health care would be rationed, and the elderly, the infirm, and the chronically ill would be the first to be denied.

America ignored it when Obama told Jane Q Publick, aka Jane Sturm, that he would deny her 105-year-old mother, a woman with a joy for life, a pacemaker.  It wasn't Sarah Palin, but Barack Obama who said that at a certain point, based on their age, old people would be better off with a painkiller.

No American wants to believe that in order to cut down on costs, bureaucrats, never mind the president of the United States, would purposely allow some of us to die.

But for those who observe President Obama's actions and refuse to compartmentalize his comments, it's been abundantly clear that this is a man who lacks respect for the sanctity of life -- anyone's life.

After all, if a person approves of the unfettered slaughter of defenseless unborn babies and also enthusiastically funds the brutal procedure to end their lives, doesn't it make sense that such a person is capable of just about anything?

That's why it's no surprise that the president recently inflicted abuse on elderly WWII heroes who congregated in Washington, D.C. to visit a memorial erected in honor of their service.

The soldiers were part of Honor Flight, a program that gifts WWII veterans with an expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to view the WWII Memorial.

Allegedly because of the shutdown, 80- and 90-year-old veterans were refused admittance to the site.  Now we come to find out that much like what is suspected in the "Fast and Furious," Benghazi, and IRS scandals, the White House had direct involvement.

To keep the aged soldiers from entering the public space, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) rightly pointed out, "some idiot in government sent goons out there to set up barricades."

Could it be that Obama is that contemptuous of men to whom our nation owes enormous gratitude for buying our freedom with their blood?

That must be the case, because the same individual strongly suspected of issuing a "stand down" directive for Benghazi felt that it was a priority to send guards to the memorial to threaten to arrest old WWII soldiers, some of whom arrived in wheelchairs.

All this is important to note, reason being that if Barack Obama can treat the Greatest Generation in such a disrespectful manner, and dismiss their value to this nation by sending a goon squad to put up physical barriers to prevent entry into their memorial, it's probable that this incident is indicative of how older Americans will be treated when it comes to accessing government-controlled health care.

Seeing America's finest staring from afar at a monument built to honor their sacrifices and watching them be prohibited from enjoying what freedom promises every American citizen makes the prospect of Obama-controlled health care even more chilling.

What we witnessed on the day ObamaCare was rolled out, with senior citizens being held at arm's length by the bureaucratic arm of an overbearing government, a vindictive president, and a band of bootlicking public employees, should send shudders down the spine of every American able to comprehend reality.

For those who didn't think it was possible, Barack Obama disallowing WWII veterans' entry into a public park should be viewed as a moment of clarity for the entire nation.

Let's not forget: the Obama administration's antipathy toward patriots was already evidenced when it objected to adding FDR's D-Day prayer the WWII Memorial shrine.

For the rest of us, in a free country, elderly soldiers being forced to storm their own memorial could be a glimpse into a future where a man with no compassion or scruples will have zero compunction barring these and many other American citizens from entering doctors' offices, hospitals, operating rooms, and pharmacies.

In other words, consider what America has witnessed with the veterans an unofficial ObamaCare-denial test flight.

At the WWII Memorial, the inscription at the foot of every flagpole reads: "Americans came to liberate, not to conquer, to restore freedom and to end tyranny."

Little did the brave Americans who stormed the beaches at Normandy know that one day they'd be fighting for their lives thanks to a different kind of tyranny -- right here at home.

Jeannie hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.

Are Guns the Problem?

FrontPage Magazine ^ | October 1, 2013 | Walter Williams

Posted on Tuesday, October 01, 2013 8:17:17 AM by SJackson

Every time there’s a shooting tragedy, there are more calls for gun control. Let’s examine a few historical facts. By 1910, the National Rifle Association had succeeded in establishing 73 NRA-affiliated high-school rifle clubs. The 1911 second edition of the Boy Scout Handbook made qualification in NRA’s junior marksmanship program a prerequisite for obtaining a BSA merit badge in marksmanship. In 1918, the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. established its own Winchester Junior Rifle Corps. The program grew to 135,000 members by 1925. In New York City, gun clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. With so many guns in the hands of youngsters, did we see today’s level of youth violence?

What about gun availability? Catalogs and magazines from the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s were full of gun advertisements directed to children and parents. For example, “What Every Parent Should Know When a Boy or Girl Wants a Gun” was published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The 1902 Sears mail-order catalog had 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun. Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns.

Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why — at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements — was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted? Guns are guns. If they were capable of behavior, as some people seem to suggest, they should have been doing then what they’re doing now.

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not just laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society, not restraints on inanimate objects.

These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody’s watching. In other words, it’s morality that is society’s first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.

Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We’ve been taught not to be judgmental, that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another. More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and progressives. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws are needed to regulate behavior.

What’s worse is that instead of trying to return to what worked, progressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws. Then there’s progressive mindlessness “cures,” such as “zero tolerance” for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting “bang bang,” drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart. This kind of unadulterated lunacy — which focuses on an inanimate object such as a gun instead of on morality, self-discipline and character — will continue to produce disappointing results.

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