Decline in Care Due to Obamacare

When frustrated Americans point to the failures of Obamacare, liberal operatives and journalists point to the increase in healthcare enrollments of poor people. What they don't tell you is that these new, low-income enrollees are placed on Medicaid and can't find a doctor who takes Medicaid patients.  They look for healthcare, but can't find it.

They also don't tell you that, except for the rich, everyone else is also suffering:

Gallup: Peak Number Of Americans Delaying Medical Care Over Costs

One in three Americans has put off seeking medical treatment in 2014 due to high costs, according to Gallup — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.

Thirty-three percent of Americans have delayed medical treatment for themselves or their families because of the costs they’d have to pay, according to the survey. Obamacare, of course, had promised that it would help make health care more affordable for everyone, but the number of people who can’t afford a trip to the doctor has actually risen three points since 2013, before most Obamacare provisions took effect.

The hardest-hit: the middle-class. Americans with an annual household income of between $30,000 and $75,000 began delaying medical care over costs more in 2014, up to 38 percent in 2014 from 33 percent last year; among households that earn above $75,000, 28 percent delayed care this year, compared to just 17 percent last year.

The lowest-income section, some of whom can take part in Medicaid and who are more likely to qualify for significant premium and cost-sharing subsidies on an Obamacare exchange, are less likely to delay care this year. Now, 35 percent of those who earn under $30,000 a year are putting off seeking medical care, down from 43 percent last year.

It’s a remarkable shift: after Obamacare’s redistribution of wealth, the middle class is actually delaying medical care due to high costs at a higher rate than the poorest section of the country, which is highly subsidized by taxpayers.

The growing problem could have serious consequences for the middle-class. Twice as many people (22 percent) have delayed treatment for serious illnesses than than for smaller problems (11 percent).

Part of the problem is an ongoing shift towards higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, while health insurance premiums continue to rise all the same. The trend, which existed to some extent before Obamacare, increased in intensity with the onset of the health-care law.

Another Lie About Ebola?

Another lie about ebola may be developing.  There is a large body of evidence that temperature-monitoring accomplishes nothing in preventing ebola-carriers from entering the USA and spreading the disease.  Indeed, neither Thomas Duncan nor Dr. Craig Spencer showed an abnormal temperature when they entered the country.

These scientific studies show that airport Ebola screenings are largely ineffective

Washington Post 11/3/14 (excerpt)

"The Department of Homeland Security last week imposed new travel restrictions for anyone arriving from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, requiring those passengers to come through one of five major U.S. airports in Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.

Those travelers now have to submit to temperature checks and questioning. But scientific studies published by the National Institutes of Health have shown that similar protocols were largely ineffective during an outbreak of Swine Flu in 2009, as Government Executive pointed out in an article last week.

Indeed, temperature checks didn’t work for Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died from Ebola this month after arriving in Dallas. Duncan did not have a fever when he landed in Texas on Sept. 28, and he said he had not been in contact with Ebola patients in his native country, although that later proved to be a false statement."

Political Correctness and Ebola

 I don't think I have ever been so angry as I was when the Director of the CDC admitted publicly that the real reason for no travel ban was to protect "the fledgling economies" of the ebola-affected, West African states - angry at him, angry at Obama, and especially angry at liberal friends who helped put this incompetent, dangerous fool, racist and liar into the White House.  Mexico can refuse the docking of a cruise ship that MIGHT contain an infected passenger, but citizens of the United States are denied the protection of a travel ban because of liberal commitment to "political correctness".

      

Incompetence Meets Mendacity in Obama Administration’s Ebola Response

Americans are shaken by government’s inability to function.

By Andrew C. McCarthy October 18, 2014 National Review

Ebola is causing such anxiety that even alarm over an outbreak of enterovirus D-68 — far more prevalent and linked to the deaths of at least four children — has been crowded out. Ditto news of the Islamic State’s rampage, a stock-price rollercoaster, and the impending midterm elections. Understandably, two concerns dominate the public discussion.

One is incompetence. Lulled into ever more dependence on government by the metastasis of regulation in what used to be the realm of private action, Americans are shaken by Washington’s inability to function. It is bungling elementary tasks. There is a sense of unraveling, a sense that officials are not merely out of their depth in addressing problems but incapable of spotting the problems in the first place — or, even worse, responsible for creating the very problems that then explode into crises.

Intimately related is the other concern: dishonesty. People expect politicians to spin and, at times, to out-and-out lie. I’ve been contending for a while now that our politics are no longer rational but tribal. Being right is secondary to being on the “right” side, as that side is perceived by the popular culture. That culture has largely tuned out the news and is swayed more by character assassination than by linear, fact-based argument. Official dishonesty is the natural result. When it is more important that “our side” wins than that the sensible thing be done, it is to be expected that the partisans, especially those in power, will say whatever they need to say to get through the news cycle. After all, fewer people than ever care about the news part of the news cycle; they care about the drama and their sympathies will be with their heroes — the fibs told to escape the latest jam are more admired for craftiness than condemned as breaches of trust.

Still, as we’ve previously observed, there is a breaking point. You can only abide politics as soap opera for so long because politics is actually about real life and real stakes. Reality cannot be scripted. Therefore, politics cannot forever be stage-managed as a “narrative” with “optics,” a daily show focused on how the lead character is affected by the latest crisis.

At a certain point, the reality of the crises hits us, and hits close to home. Am I threatened? Am I going to get sick? If I do get sick, am I going to have health coverage and the doctor I trust? Is the government doing its best to make sure I am not infected? Or shot? Or bombed? Or beheaded?

Where do we get the answers to these questions? From the government we’ve grown to depend on. And now the answers are so purposely, patently, and pervasively false, it suddenly seems as if nothing can be trusted — as if, even as our perils intensify, our government erects another house in its Potemkin village.

Of course you can keep your health coverage, and your doctor. And we’ll cover everyone while your premiums plummet. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is “decimated” and these Islamic State guys are just the jayvee team. In fact (fact?), they’re not even Islamic — although they may not be quite as “secular” as the Muslim Brotherhood. Just extremists. (Extreme about what? Don’t ask.) Jihad is just a “purification of the self” . . . or, at most, “workplace violence.” Benghazi? A spontaneous “protest” incited by a video. The president was not told it was a terrorist attack . . . except by the secretary of defense right after it started — long before he responded by . . . going to Vegas, where he promptly announced al-Qaeda was “on the path to defeat.” Still, rest assured that the State Department’s top priority is the safety of American personnel . . . although we did reduce security in Benghazi after our facility was bombed. And rest assured that the Justice Department would never ever let guns walk . . . except for the thousands its Fast and Furious program transferred to violent gangs — who’ve used them in who knows how many crimes, including the murder of a Border Patrol agent. Still, at least there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS, where citizens are harassed, evidence keeps disappearing, and the official at the center of it all takes the Fifth to avoid giving incriminating testimony. No matter. Just take heart that Ebola is not coming to the United States . . . um, well, if it does come there will be no outbreak . . . but, er, if there is an outbreak, we have careful protocols and health-care professionals fully trained to deal with it . . . and even if the protocols don’t work and the professionals don’t have adequate training, we’ll have a rigorous monitoring program for anyone who is exposed . . . or maybe a self-monitoring program for people who will isolate themselves . . . unless, of course, we tell them to go ahead and hop on a plane. Well, look, at least we can promise there won’t be a “serious” outbreak.

If you say so.

The shocking competence gap and the cavernous honesty gap — brought to you by the “most transparent administration in history” — make our heads spin as we careen from debacle to government-induced debacle. In the tumult, we can miss the main point: Why do we have a federal government?

Its purpose is to safeguard the American people and pursue our interests in the world, not to solve the world’s problems on our dime and, occasionally, by using us as laboratory mice. As free people, we can try to save the planet. The federal government, however, was not created to do it for us, much less to coerce us into implausible “humanitarian” schemes that always manage to line some crony’s pocket. National interest is our government’s only reliable compass, yet it has been discarded.

It is a short step to incompetence when you lose sight of what you are expected to be competent at accomplishing. It is an even shorter step to mendacity for a ruling class that is schooled to believe the country is fatally flawed and, thus, that the pursuit of our national interests is evil. It turns out that when real crises rivet their attention, the rubes still expect the government to protect and defend them. At that point, the government must either attend to those basic duties, or lie.
This government has made its choice.

 

The End of Columbus Day

Long ago I solved the mystery of why liberals supported such foolishness like open borders, political correctness, multiculturalism and the end of Columbus Day. I learned that their world view was that we citizens of the USA had such a wonderful country because we had stolen resources from all the rest of the world. It was up to liberals to right these wrongs by sharing our wealth, celebrating other cultures while destroying our own – and, in general, cutting us down to size. To be sure, there is a fair amount of self-hatred in their thinking, but they have some outdated facts on their side.

Like most developed countries, like Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there was a time when might made right, colonialism was God's work, and slavery (which still exists in some countries) was an accepted practice. We were more successful than most, but the problem is: those days are gone forever, and this is still a very dangerous world.

As I ponder the strange reactions by the Obama Administration to the dual crises of an ebola epidemic possibly developing in our country and the rise of ISIS, a powerful force dedicated to destroying America and all things smacking of enlightened western culture, I ask myself, “Is this liberal world view and self-hatred at work here also?”.

Are we supposed to share the sufferings of the third world because of our past sins? What other explanation is there for the nonsense being put forth as to why travel from the ebola-stricken countries has not been shut down? Why has the response to the threat from ISIS been so lame and so late? Is it from a view that they should be left to work things out – even at the expense of a future confrontation with an enemy of barbarian death-cultists armed with nuclear weapons?

Obama ISIS Plan Is Nonsense

 Washington’s Ruling Class Is Fooling Itself About The Islamic State

Angelo M. Codevilla The Federalist Sept 19, 2014

Washington's foolish approaches to the Islamic State will not destroy
 them or discourage others from following in their footsteps.

The American people’s reaction to Muslim thugs of the “Islamic State” ritually knifing off the heads of people who look like you and me boils down to “let’s destroy these bastards”—which is common sense. But our ruling class, from President Obama on the Left to The Wall Street Journal on the Right, take the public’s pressure to do this as another occasion for further indulging their longtime preferences, prejudices, and proclivities for half-measures in foreign affairs—the very things that have invited people from all over the planet to join hunting season on Americans.

This indulgence so overwhelms our ruling class’s perception of reality that the recipes put forth by its several wings, little different from one another, are identical in the one essential respect: none of them involve any plans which, if carried out, would destroy the Islamic State, kill large numbers of the cut-throats, and discourage others from following in their footsteps. Hence, like the George W. Bush’s “war on terror” and for the same reasons, this exercise of our ruling class’s wisdom in foreign affairs will decrease respect for us while invigorating our enemies.

The WSJ’s recommendations, like the Obama administration’s projected activities, are all about discrete measures—some air strikes, some arming of local forces, etc. But they abstract from the fundamental reality of any and all activities: He who wills any end must will the means to achieve it. As in Bush’s war, as is the custom in Washington nowadays, our ruling class’s several sectors decide what actions they feel comfortable undertaking about any given problem, while avoiding reasonable judgment about whether these actions will actually fix the problem. This is the very definition of irresponsibility. But they call it “strategy.”

Irresponsibly Avoiding Debate

Our Constitution prescribes that war happens subsequent to votes by elected representatives. By debate and vote, presumably they reconcile the war’s ends with the means to be employed. But to reconcile ends and means is to banish illusions and pretenses. Yet because these are what our ruling class lives by, leaders of both parties have joined to preclude such debates and votes. They granted congressional funding for the one part of Obama’s venture with regard to the IS that required it—arming some of the Sunni rebels against Syria’s Assad regime—while avoiding votes on what precisely that or any other part of the venture means. This is textbook irresponsibility.

To reconcile ends and means is to banish illusions and pretenses.

Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a Marine veteran, objected: “We need to crush ISIS and not work on arming more Islamic radicals. Just what would arming these people accomplish?” To prevent massive numbers of Republican congressmen from joining this common-sense question, the House Armed Services Committee’s bill requires the administration to  answer it in a report to Congress some time in the future, but not now. The fact that the administration and the leaders of both parties—the ruling class—did not make reasoned answers to the key questions the primary premise of their request suggests not so much that they are hiding these answers from others as much as that they themselves have not addressed the questions.

In the Senate, the ruling class avoided any vote at all by placing the money for arming the Sunni rebels into the Continuing Resolution for keeping the government open. This device, which reduces the senators’ choice to funding everything the the ruling class wants or “shutting down the government,” has become the principal way by which the ruling class dispenses with the Constitution.

Experience Says We’re Crazy

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)’s common-sense objection to arming the Sunni rebels might as well have been voiced by any ordinary citizen for all the effect it had: “Our past experience, after 13 years, everything that we have tried to do has not proven to be beneficial, not proven at all. So what makes you think it’s going to be different this time? What makes you think we can ask a group of Islamists to agree with Americans to fight another group of Islamists, as barbaric as they may be?”

The WSJ notwithstanding, while the ‘moderates’ will take U.S. money and arms, no amount of ‘vetting’ will or can cause them to fight the IS for us.

The answer is that our ruling class does not think, as much as it indulges its imagination and believes its own spin. A prime example of which is the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial of September 17. Never mind that the Islamic State’s Sunni subjects welcome the ritual beheaders who rule over them because these are Sunni as well. “The brutality,” writes the WSJ, “has created conditions similar to those that preceded the Sunni Awakening in Iraq in 2007—the revolt by ordinary Sunnis and their tribal leaders in Anbar province against al Qaeda.” This follows the Bush administration’s spin concerning the so-called “surge.” In fact however, Iraq’s Sunnis sought America’s protection in 2007 not against any other Sunnis but against the Shia death squads that had begun massacring them in large numbers.

According to the same fantasy, conducting air strikes today against the IS in former Iraq and Syria would encourage its Sunni-Wahabi fighters to defect to the ranks of U.S.-supported “moderate” Sunnis. This neglects not only that the flow of fighters in the region has always gone only in one direction—away from the less pure and less brutal to the purer and most brutal Islamists. It also neglects the incommensurability of the two sets of fighters’ objectives. The “moderates” are mostly Syrians interested in governing Syria, while the Islamic State’s fighters are led by Saddam’s Iraqi cadre, have fighters from all over the world, and have pan-Islamic objectives. Joe Manchin is right. The WSJ notwithstanding, while the “moderates” will take U.S. money and arms, no amount of “vetting” will or can cause them to fight the IS for us.

While Obama limits himself to unexplained confidence that Sunni Arab states will join in fighting the IS, the Journal supposes to know why they have not done so yet, and why instead they have been helping the jihadis: because our aid to the right Sunnis in 2012 and 2013 was “microscopic and half hearted.” This was the aid being brokered by the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and cut off by mortar shells expertly aimed by we know not whom. But the WSJ knows who’s to blame for the Sunni Arabs’ failure to meet the ruling class’s expectations: “Some Conservatives.”

Get Your Heads Out of The Sand

Like the Bush administration, Obama and the Journal are grasping at what they imagine to be a vast reservoir of inherently moderate Sunni peoples and governments. Just show them how pro-Sunni America really is, and this vast moderate wave will submerge the terrorist threat to America. Thus the Journal writes that we dare not just make war on the IS that makes war on us. No. “Sunnis will not support the campaign against Islamic State if they think our air strikes are intended to help the regime in Damascus and its Shiite allies in Beirut and Tehran.” You see, the real game lies in making nice to Sunnis.

Believing in the saving power of a ‘moderate Sunni’ wave is as politically correct though patently silly as believing in global warming after years of record cold.

Obama has made clear that he envisages a very limited, tightly targeted air campaign against the IS. It goes without saying that this cannot possibly hurt it severely. But, were the U.S. government somehow to mount a serious air campaign, nevertheless the inescapable fact remains that the IS can be finished off only on the ground. But how? By whom? Obama stays away from the question. The Journal, however answers: “the Kurds, the parts of the Iraqi military that aren’t dominated by Iran’s militias, and the moderate Sunnis in Syria and Iraq.”

This is beyond dumb. Believing in the saving power of a “moderate Sunni” wave is as politically correct though patently silly as believing in global warming after years of record cold. All know that the Kurds will fight only for Kurdistan. The Iraqi army has proved beyond doubt that, as a fighting force, it exists only insofar as it is composed of Shiite militias. But our inward-looking, bipartisan ruling class refuses to deal with reality. War consists of massive killing that dispirits the survivors. Yet our ruling class refuses to consider how many of what categories of people will have to be killed in order to end this war with the peace we want. War does not tolerate solipsism.

Yet again, consensus within the ruling class is setting America on course to demonstrate impotence.  Its preferences, prejudices, and proclivities guarantee that the Islamic State and those among us whom it inspires will be a growing problem as months and years pass. Harsh consequences will follow until a political vehicle for the expression of the American people’s common sense comes into being.

Angelo M. Codevilla is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and the author of To Make And Keep Peace, Hoover Institution Press, 2014.

Extent of the US Betrayal of Israel, Part I

Few Americans are aware of the pressure the Obama administration is placing on Israel to, in effect, commit national suicide in its conflict with the terrorist regime in Gaza.  Since the US has, up until now, given Israel great support economically and with munitions and military hardware, we have considerable influence on that nation, the only one in the Middle East that stands for and practices western principles of universal human rights.

The following column by Caroline Glick, an Israeli, details the extent of our deceit.  The article is a long one, so I am presenting it in two parts. Go to the link to read it all, or see part II tomorrow.

Understanding the Israeli-Egyptian-Saudi Alliance

By Caroline Glick - August 23, 2014 RealClearPolitics

Hamas’s war with Israel is not a stand-alone event. It is happening in the context of the vast changes that are casting asunder old patterns of behavior and strategic understandings as actors in the region begin to reassess the threats they face.

Hamas was once funded by Saudi Arabia and enabled by Egypt. Now the regimes of these countries view it as part of a larger axis of Sunni jihad that threatens not only Israel, but them.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey, are the key members of this alliance structure. Without their support Hamas would have gone down with the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt last summer. As it stands, all view Hamas’s war with Israel as a means of reinstating the Brotherhood to power in that country.

To achieve a Hamas victory, Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood are using Western support for Hamas against Israel. If the US and the EU are able to coerce Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza, then the Western powers will hand the jihadist axis a strategic victory.

The implications of such a victory would be dire.

Hamas is ideologically indistinguishable from Islamic State. Like Islamic State, Hamas has developed mass slaughter and psychological terrorization as the primary tools in its military doctrine. If the US and the EU force Israel and Egypt to open Gaza’s borders, they will enable Hamas to achieve strategic and political stability in Gaza. As a consequence, a post-war Gaza will quickly become a local version of Islamic State-controlled Mosul.

In the first instance, such a development will render life in southern Israel too imperiled to sustain. The Western Negev, and perhaps Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod, will become uninhabitable.

Then there is Judea and Samaria. If, as the US demands, Israel allows Gaza to reconnect with Judea and Samaria, in short order Hamas will dominate the areas. Militarily, the transfer of even a few of the thousands of rocket-propelled grenades Hamas has in Gaza will imperil military forces and civilians alike.

IDF armored vehicles and armored civilian buses will be blown to smithereens.

Whereas operating from Gaza, Hamas needed the assistance of the Obama administration and the Federal Aviation Administration to shut down Ben-Gurion Airport, from Judea and Samaria, all Hamas would require are a couple of hand-held mortars.

Jordan will also be directly threatened.

From Egypt’s perspective, a Hamas victory in the war with Israel that connects Gaza to Sinai will strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic State and other allies. Such a development represents a critical threat to the regime.

And this brings us to Islamic State itself. It couldn’t have grown to its current monstrous proportions without the support of Qatar and Turkey.

Islamic State is obviously interested in expanding its conquests. Since it views itself as a state, its next move must be one that enables it to take over a national economy. The raid on Mosul’s central bank will not suffice to finance its operations for very long.

At this point, Islamic State wishes to avoid an all-out confrontation with Iran, so moving into southern Iraq is probably not in the cards. US forces in Kuwait, and the strength and unity of purpose of the Jordanian military, probably take both kingdoms off Islamic State’s chopping block for now.

This leaves Saudi Arabia, or parts of it, as a likely next target for Islamic State expansion.

Islamic State’s current operations in Lebanon, which threaten the Saudi-supported regime there, indicate that Lebanon, at a minimum, is also at grave risk.

Then there is Iran. Iran is not a member of the Sunni jihadist axis. But when it comes to Israel and the non-jihadist regimes, it has cooperated with it.

Iran has funded, trained and armed Hamas for the past decade. It views Hamas’s war with Israel in the same light as it viewed its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah’s war with Israel eight years ago.

Both in Iraq and Syria, Iran and Islamic State have shown little interest in making one another their primary target. Turkey and Qatar have often served as Iran’s supporters in the Sunni world.

This is the context in which Israel is fighting its war with Hamas. And due to this context, two interrelated strategically significant events have occurred since the war began.

The first relates to the US.

The Obama administration’s decision to side with the members of the jihadist axis against Israel by adopting their demand to open Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt has served as the final nail in the coffin of America’s strategic credibility among its traditional regional allies.

As the US has stood with Hamas, it has also maintained its pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran. The US’s position in these talks is to enable the mullocracy to follow North Korea’s path to a nuclear arsenal. The non-jihadist Sunni states share Israel’s conviction that they cannot survive a nuclear armed Iran.

Finally, President Barack Obama’s refusal to date to take offensive action to destroy Islamic State in Iraq and Syria demonstrates to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states that under Obama, the US would rather allow Islamic State to expand into their territory and destroy them than return US military forces to Iraq.

In other words, Obama’s pro-Hamas-, pro-Iran- and pro-Muslim Brotherhood-axis policies, along with his refusal to date to take effective action in Iraq and Syria to obliterate Islamic State, have convinced the US’s traditional allies that for the next two-and-a-half years, not only can they not rely on the US, they cannot discount the possibility of the US taking actions that harm them.

It is in the face of the US’s shift of allegiances under Obama that the non-jihadist Sunni regimes have begun to reevaluate their ties to Israel. Until the Obama presidency, the Saudis and Egyptians felt secure in their alliance with the US. Consequently, they never felt it necessary or even desirable to consider Israel as a strategic partner.

Under the US’s strategic protection, the traditional Sunni regimes had the luxury of maintaining their support for Palestinian terrorists and rejecting the notion of strategic cooperation with Israel, whether against Iran, al-Qaida or any other common foe.

So sequestered by the US, Israel became convinced that the only way it could enjoy any benefit from its shared strategic interests with its neighbors was by first bowing to the US’s long-held obsession with strengthening the PLO. This has involved surrendering land, political legitimacy and money to the terror group still committed to Israel’s destruction.

The war with Hamas has changed all of this.

Current State of Obamacare Issues

So many disasters are occurring both at home and in the outside world (Ferguson, IRS, Illegals swamping the border, Muslim terrorism and butchery, Jihadist advances throughout the Middle East, ebola); the issues associated with Obamacare have been swept off the front page.

This is a report listing the current state of those issues, which still need to be exploited by Republicans in the election this year.

1. Big premium hikes are slated for 2015. Because the country erupted in outrage over the millions of policies cancelled under Obamacare, which made a lie of the president’s vow, “If you like your insurance you can keep it,” the White House reversed course and allowed people to maintain existing coverage. As a result, the Obamacare exchanges were starved of the healthier people needed to pay for the sick and poor previously without insurance. Insurers are now planning to raise premiums.

According to PwC Health Research Institute, the average premium increase request for 2105 in North Carolina is 10.8 percent; in Iowa the hike is 11.5 percent. Many in Louisiana are looking at almost a 20 percent increase, and in Arkansas nearly 12 percent. That’s big, unpleasant news for Democrats.

2. Critics claim the Obama administration is fudging the ACA enrollment numbers. The White House trumpeted that 8 million Americans had signed up for Obamacare, but that total has been shrinking. Aetna, one of the program’s biggest players, reports that of their 720,000 enrollees, only about 600,000 are paying for their coverage, a number they expect will drop to about 500,000 by year-end. Other insurers indicate fall-off as well.

3. People are angry about the narrower choices of doctors and hospitals available to them.  In New Hampshire, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield was the sole insurer participating in the marketplace; it eliminated 10 of the state’s 26 hospitals from its network. According to Politico, such is the uproar about shrinking choices that “since the beginning of 2013, more than 70 bills have been introduced in 22 states to clarify the network rules, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.” In California, more than one group has sued Anthem Blue Cross, charging that the insurer misrepresented the scope of its doctor network
.
Related: Up to 300,000 Could Lose Obamacare on Federal Exchange
4. The ACA was constructed incompetently. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled illegal the federal subsidies paid to Obamacare enrollees in states that have not set up their own exchanges -- a stark reminder of how badly the healthcare bill was implemented. This and other unintended consequences are excellent arguments for significantly overhauling the ACA – an undertaking that might be possible under a Republican Senate but that has little or no hope otherwise.

5. Obamacare highlights the president’s imperial tendencies. Mr. Obama has single-handedly changed the ACA some 24 times, delaying important provisions such as the employer and individual mandates. The president has rigged the rollout of the ACA to political advantage, putting off the most painful aspects of the bill and front-loading the goodies. Republicans should remind voters we have yet to encounter, for instance, the 40 percent Cadillac tax, which has been pushed back until 2018, but which is expected to raise as much as $214 billion by 2023.

6. Obamacare undermines job creation. The ACA has been the most important of a number of White House policies that have discouraged job creation at a time when the country is struggling to put people back to work. At last tally, there were 92 million adult Americans who are not working (like stay-at-home moms), are unemployed, retired or disabled. The workforce participation rate is at a decades-long low. This is unsustainable, and Obamacare is not helping. Companies have limited their hiring and also the number of hours their employers work because of the bill and have faced increased uncertainty. Meanwhile, because of the ACA, Americans no longer need to work to get health benefits – maybe a good thing for individuals, but not for a country whose safety net must be funded by an ever-greater workforce.

In short, there’s still meat on the bones of the Obamacare carcass; Republicans running for office should get out their knives and forks.

Ben Stein on President Obama

Ben Stein is a very decent and talented man who usually gets things right and writes about them brilliantly.

Ben Stein's Diary

Moral Decency in Disintegration

A President who at heart hates America.

By Ben Stein – 8.16.14

Friday
A trip up to the charming town of Sandpoint. It went well except that our flight from SEA to Spokane was postponed for an hour. We took an earlier flight but then my wife’s luggage was not in Spokane. We had to wait two hours for that. We passed the time at a fine local Spokane restaurant called the Rusty Moose. Good food, good service.

We sat at the bar and next to us were two soldiers. One of them was quiet. The other was talkative. He wanted to know if I thought there was much of a future for civilization.

“We Americans come from the Enlightenment,” he said. “But how many other countries have the values of respect for law, respect for human dignity, respect for the individual that we have?”

“Maybe Israel and the UK,” I said.

“Right,” said the soldier. “That was my count, too.”

This is a conversation I have been having often. People just come up to me and ask me if I think civilization has a future, if I think human decency has a future.

I blame Mr. Obama and his wicked clique for this. Despite an enormous edge in wealth, military might, and moral power, the United States has abandoned the field to the terrorists and bullies and killers and enslavers of women.

A few days ago, Mr. Obama said we were going to save the Yazidis trapped in the middle of ISIS control. He did almost nothing. Today, ISIS murdered roughly 100 Yazidis because they would not convert to Islam (the religion of peace). In retaliation, Mr Obama sent two drones to blow up two ISIS pickup trucks. This is just great. The U.S. spends roughly $620 billion per year on defense. With a genocide looming, Mr. Obama can muster up the strength to send out two drones to destroy two pickup trucks.

This is pitiful. Beyond pitiful. In this incident, we can see that Barack Obama is just too paralyzed by his hatred of America and European civilization to bestir himself to help that civilization’s values. Obama is another Angry Black Man, better covered up than most, but not a fan of American values of compassion and caring. He is too angry to be compassionate or empathetic. He has to worry about himself and Michelle.

That means no helping the poor Nigerians against Boko Haram rapists. No helping of any kind in Arab Africa, which has been led by Arab Spring into a deep hell of violence and lawlessness. No helping the Ukrainians as they struggle against their violent neighbor. It means contempt for the only country in the world with its existence at stake every day — Israel — which is still the most civilized country in the world east of Anglia.

Mr. Obama sides with the killers and the fanatics almost every time by not helping the victims of these people.

The result? The world is aflame and Mr. Obama is playing golf and the flames get higher. The uber-genius Mark Steyn wrote about America Alone. It’s worse than that. It’s America alone with a man who in his heart hates America the way his Kenyan father hated the British (a theory I learned about from the very smart Dinesh D’Souza).

As the crazies of the world circle around, our leader walks away from responsibility, plays golf with plutocrats on Martha’s Vineyard, and gets some satisfaction in seeing moral decency in disintegration worldwide.

This is a terrifying time. I’m glad I am in Sandpoint, where I feel safe even if I am not.

Copyright 2013, The American Spectator. All rights reserved.

Another Instance of Obama's Duplicity on Israel

A new Wall Street Journal report reveals that President Barack Obama's administration blocked a shipment of missiles to Israel in late July and tightened additional weapons shipment procedures to Israel, revealing increasing tensions between the two governments.

The U.S. decision to tighten arms transfers to Israel comes as the UK threatens similar actions. On Tuesday, the British government announced the suspension of 12 arms export licenses to Israel if fighting resumed in Gaza.

The Wednesday night report cites officials in the Obama administration who say Israel had requested a large number of Hellfire missiles directly through military-to-military channels, for which no additional administration approvals are required. An initial batch of the missiles was about to be shipped, according to sources in Israel and the U.S. Congress.

At that point, the administration stepped in and put the transfer on hold. Top White House officials instructed various U.S. military agencies to consult with the U.S. State Department before approving any additional arms requests from Israel.

The decision to clamp down on future transfers was the equivalent of "the United States saying 'the buck stops here. Wait a second. …It's not OK anymore,'" said one official. 

An Israeli defense official confirmed the reports, saying, "The U.S. delayed a shipment of Hellfire missiles to the Israeli air force" in the face of “national tension" with Israel.

Obama has not been on the same page as Israel in terms of Israel’s operation in Gaza, making various attempts to press Israel into accepting a truce with Hamas, even under terms unpalatable to the Israeli government.

After one instance where America allegedly pressured Israel into a ceasefire that was violated within 90 minutes by a Hamas attack which killed several Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told the administration "not to ever second guess me again."

According to U.S. officials cited in The Wall Street Journal report, a Wednesday night phone call between Obama and Netanyahu was "particularly combative."

A turning point appeared to be Israel’s July 30 IDF strike on terrorists adjacent to a UN school, which the U.S. slammed as “disgraceful.”

In response, the IDF confirmed it targeted Islamic Jihad terrorists in the vicinity of the school and provided video evidence that Hamas had fired rockets from inside schools.

The U.S. administration has since required White House and State Department approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel, officials say.

Instead of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case is now subject to review, slowing the approval process--and signaling to Israel that military assistance once taken for granted is now under closer scrutiny.

Reaction from HotAir:

If the standard review process was followed, then why was the White House “caught off guard”? Isn’t it incumbent on the Obama administration to know how the sale and transfer process works?  Israel had conducted a ground war — much to the chagrin of Obama and his “policymakers” — for a few weeks. Why wouldn’t anyone have expected Israel to replenish its supplies? Surely there are a few people who may have at least watched Patton if not studied Clausewitz in this administration. Resupply is a basic function for any army at war.

Surprise in this case springs from willful ignorance, as Jeff Dunetz notes. On Morning Joe today, Jim Miklaszewski told Joe Scarborough that the stockpiles in Israel are routinely tapped for resupply, and that the Pentagon knew all about it at the time — even discussing it openly with the press when the transfer occurred. Miklaszewski scoffed at the notion that the White House would have been caught off-guard about it unless they wanted some plausible deniability.

I AGREE

American Army to Revert to 1940 Size

I suppose it should not surprise me that our corrupt mass media would be so silent about the plan that President Obama and Secretary of Defense Hagel have hatched to reduce our armed forces to their lowest level since before World War II. I think this plan is reckless and greatly endangers our security at a time that the world is falling apart.  Is this the culmination of Obama's grand plan?  Will our soldiers also train with wooden, fake rifles as in 1940?

New York Times (excerpt)

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.

The proposal, released on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.

Officials who saw an early draft of the announcement acknowledge that budget cuts will impose greater risk on the armed forces if they are again ordered to carry out two large-scale military actions at the same time: Success would take longer, they say, and there would be a larger number of casualties. Officials also say that a smaller military could invite adventurism by adversaries.

“You have to always keep your institution prepared, but you can’t carry a large land-war Defense Department when there is no large land war,” a senior Pentagon official said.

Outlines of some of the budget initiatives, which are subject to congressional approval, have surfaced, an indication that even in advance of its release the budget is certain to come under political attack.

For example, some members of Congress, given advance notice of plans to retire air wings, have vowed legislative action to block the move, and the National Guard Association, an advocacy group for those part-time military personnel, is circulating talking points urging Congress to reject anticipated cuts. State governors are certain to weigh in, as well. And defense-industry officials and members of Congress in those port communities can be expected to oppose any initiatives to slow Navy shipbuilding.

Even so, officials said that despite budget reductions, the military would have the money to remain the most capable in the world and that Mr. Hagel’s proposals have the endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Money saved by reducing the number of personnel, they said, would assure that those remaining in uniform would be well trained and supplied with the best weaponry.

The new American way of war will be underscored in Mr. Hagel’s budget, which protects money for Special Operations forces and cyberwarfare. And in an indication of the priority given to overseas military presence that does not require a land force, the proposal will — at least for one year — maintain the current number of aircraft carriers at 11.

Over all, Mr. Hagel’s proposal, the officials said, is designed to allow the American military to fulfill President Obama’s national security directives: to defend American territory and the nation’s interests overseas and to deter aggression — and to win decisively if again ordered to war.

“We’re still going to have a very significant-sized Army,” the official said. “But it’s going to be agile. It will be capable. It will be modern. It will be trained.”

Mr. Hagel’s plan would most significantly reshape America’s land forces — active-duty soldiers as well as those in the National Guard and Reserve.

The Army, which took on the brunt of the fighting and the casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, already was scheduled to drop to 490,000 troops from a post-9/11 peak of 570,000. Under Mr. Hagel’s proposals, the Army would drop over the coming years to between 440,000 and 450,000.

That would be the smallest United States Army since 1940. For years, and especially during the Cold War, the Pentagon argued that it needed a military large enough to fight two wars simultaneously — say, in Europe and Asia. In more recent budget and strategy documents, the military has been ordered to be prepared to decisively win one conflict while holding off an adversary’s aspirations in a second until sufficient forces could be mobilized and redeployed to win there." New York Times

Obama's Hatred of Israel

The look on both their faces says it all.

 

President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011.

 By Jay Bergman
Providence Journal August 1, 2014



Obama's Israel Actions Merit Impeachment

NEW BRITAIN, Conn.

President Obama’s demand for an unconditional and immediate cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, which would leave the latter with the wherewithal to murder Israeli civilians in the future, is just the most recent example of what can only be considered a conscious and deliberate policy to weaken and to undermine the security of the only Jewish state in the world.

From denying Israel the “bunker-buster” bombs it needs to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, to infantile snubs of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president of the United States has shown an unswerving, consistent and relentless hostility to Israel that is not only harmful to Israel but to America as well.

Theological fanatics like Hamas will not be kindly disposed to the United States, much less deterred from continuing their genocidal war against Israel, by Obama’s ongoing appeasement, which has been justified and explained away by the president’s ridiculous claim, first made in his speech in Cairo in 2009, to understand Islam because he lived as a youth in a Muslim country, Indonesia.

Every public and semi-public admonishment of Israel, whether by President Obama or by his loquacious secretary of state, John Kerry, only encourages those who seek Israel’s destruction to persist in their evil design: Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and, by seeking to flood Israel with “refugees” too young to have been alive when Israel was created in 1948, the Palestinian Authority.

One may disagree about the reason for the president’s attitude. The most plausible is not that he is secretly Muslim, but rather that he loathes Israel because he loathes America, that for Obama the former is an integral appendage of the latter, no less racist and discriminatory at home and just as imperialist and expansionist abroad. Ironically, the Iranians show they also believe in this connection by building intercontinental missiles to fire at “The Big Satan” (the United States) once “The Little Satan” (Israel) is destroyed.

In light of the multiple dangers Israel faces, even as it is currently dealing, at great cost in human life, with an enemy that seeks the destruction not only of Israel but, as its founding charter makes clear, of all Jews, it is time for American Jews to recognize that the current occupant of the White House means real and lasting harm to the state of the Jewish people and thus to the Jewish people themselves.

If American Jews who support Obama’s positions on domestic issues such as abortion and immigration consider these issues more important than Israel’s survival, then they should continue to support his presidency. But for American Jews who both as Jews and as Americans consider Israel’s survival the foremost moral imperative of our time, and who believe that without Israel Judaism itself will suffer demographic extinction and that America would be even more tempting a target for Muslim terrorists than it was before 9/11, their obligation is clear and inescapable: to do everything they can to pressure President Obama to cease his relentless hostility to Israel and, if that does not work, to seek his removal from office. Impeachment and conviction do not require the commission of crimes. Dereliction of duty is sufficient.

The foreign policy Obama has pursued, of punishing America’s allies, not just Israel but other pro-Western democracies such as Poland and the Czech Republic, and of appeasing America’s enemies, not just Muslim theocracies but also thuggish dictatorships such as Putin’s Russia, is clear evidence of presidential negligence, of failing to do everything necessary to protect the American people. If this is not an impeachable offense, one is hard pressed to say what is.

Jay Bergman is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, in New Britain, Conn.

Best Editorial Ever

A long time ago, I got tired of “anti-Obama” all the time, even though I despise the man. I even stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh because of that. However, this anti-Obama editorial is well worth reading, and the voters who put him in office are going to have much to answer for.

At stake in Ukraine: 1914 with nukes

By Glen Meakem May 20, 2014 Providence Journal

Unrest continues to grow in Ukraine, particularly in light of this month’s vote by two eastern regions that overwhelmingly passed referendums in favor of self-rule.

Government buildings continue to fall to Russian nationalists and clashes between separatists and Ukrainian military forces are increasingly violent. Russia held a May Day parade in Moscow for the first time since 1991 — the final year of the Soviet Union. Over 100,000 Russians used the occasion to gather in Red Square and applaud the annexation of Crimea, Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s expansionist policies.

European powers and the United States have done little to curb this new Russian aggression.

In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister John Major, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma signed the Budapest memorandum, which pledged the nations to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The treaty helped persuade Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear stockpile. At the time of the Soviet breakup, Ukraine had 1,800 nuclear weapons. In exchange for giving up their nukes, the U.S. pledged to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the years since, Ukraine has been a U.S. ally, even sending soldiers under NATO command in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now, the fact that Vladimir Putin has grabbed Crimea and is infiltrating eastern Ukraine begs two questions. First, do treaties signed and commitments made by the U.S. mean anything? Second, if they don’t, what does this mean for the rest of the world?

By abandoning our security arrangement with Ukraine, we are creating a huge incentive for countries around the world to stockpile nuclear weapons, thus increasing the probability of nuclear conflict somewhere.

One hundred years ago, no one thought war was imminent. As Newt Gingrich writes at CNN.com, World War I “came as an enormous shock, in retrospect almost like the Titanic hitting an iceberg. In the end, it shattered Europe, cost tens of millions of lives, bankrupted countries and changed forever those who survived the horrors.”

One hundred years later, an aggressive Russia possesses thousands of nuclear weapons and is motivated by a renewed imperialism that threatens peace in Eastern Europe.

So why is Russia acting with such overt aggression? Under President Obama, we have been in retreat from the world. His policies have included a quick withdrawal from Iraq and an unwise draw-down of forces in Afghanistan. He is shrinking our Navy — we currently have fewer than 100 ships deployed. He is shrinking our Army to its smallest size since before World War II. Obama has let foes cross red lines in Syria and kill our U.S. ambassador to Libya — both with no apparent consequences. And, in addition to reneging on our security agreement with Ukraine, he has reneged on our agreement to deploy missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.

If Americans choose to continue down Obama’s path of weakness and retreat, we must accept an increasingly dangerous and unstable world. Just look at the growing dangers in Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, the Baltic States and the South China Sea, to name just a few.

But, this is not the world of 1914. It is the world of 2014 and the nuclear bazaar is just beginning for many smaller, increasingly insecure nations, from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines. And don’t forget the growing Islamic terror organizations that are just dying to get their hands on some nukes. In Obama’s world, any number of security lapses or miscalculations could lead to devastating nuclear conflicts — nuclear 1914.

Americans can still decide to lead and live up to the responsibility of being the global superpower. We can embrace our heritage and history as the country that saved the world from German expansionism in World War I, Nazism and the Imperial Japanese in World War II, and the Soviet Empire during the Cold War. We can be the steady, powerful, good actor that makes smaller allies feel secure and keeps potential enemies in check.

But if we want to have a strong military, we can’t continue to let spending mushroom with tens of millions of working-age Americans living lives of dependence on welfare, Obamacare, disability and a myriad of other taxpayer-funded programs. We must stand up to our growing entitlement culture. For America to be strong and the world to be safe, the vast, vast majority of individual Americans must choose to work hard and not be dependent.

Glen Meakem is the founder and CEO of Forever.com and was previously founder and CEO of FreeMarkets. A former Army Reserve officer, he is a veteran of the Gulf War and a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

VA Today, Obamacare Tomorrow

This describes the future of medical care in the USA if Obamacare is not stopped:

How VA hospitals are a government-run disaster

By Michael D. Tanner

May 16, 2014 New York Post

The news is shocking: Patients dying on the waiting list for government-provided healthcare. But this is not a report from Canada or the British National Health Service. It’s right here in America, in the health system administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The problems first surfaced in Phoenix, where the wait to receive care at VA facilities had grown so long that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor. As many as 40 veterans reportedly died because they couldn’t get the care they needed. VA administrators tried to cover up the problems by establishing secret waiting lists and falsifying reports.

The scandal has now spread to other veteran facilities. VA employees at an outpatient clinic in Fort Collins, Colo., falsified appointment records to hide the fact that as many as 6,300 veterans treated at the outpatient clinic waited months to be seen for treatment. In Wyoming, whistleblowers have accused officials of manipulating records to hide wait times.

VA officers in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, have been accused of similar efforts to hide long waits. And in Pittsburgh, VA officials are accused of covering up the death of several patients after the water in a VA hospital became infected with bacteria. The officials reportedly tried to hide the information not only from patients and superiors, but even from hospital staff.

Earlier this month, the American Legion called for Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki to resign. No doubt Gen. Shinseki was asleep at the switch. But the problem goes well beyond an incompetent cabinet secretary or a few corrupt local bureaucrats.

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has long touted the VA system as the epitome of government-run healthcare. “Exhibit A for the advantages of government provision [of healthcare] is the veterans administration, which runs its own hospitals and clinics, and provides some of the best-quality healthcare in America at far lower cost than the private sector,” Krugman claims.

And he is right . . . at least about the VA being exhibit A for government healthcare.

Like all single-payer health systems around the world, the VA controls costs by imposing a “global budget” — a limit to how much it can spend on care. Thus year-to-year funding varies according to the whims of Congress, not according to what consumers want or are willing to spend.

With tens of thousands of wounded soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the demand for care is rising dramatically. Enrollment in VA services has increased by 13% from 2007 to 2012. Despite a 76% increase in expenditures ($24 billion) over that period, the program still suffers from chronic budget problems. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would require as much as a 75% increase in inflation-adjusted funding for the VA to treat all veterans.

When resources can’t meet demand in a given year, the VA does what other single-payer systems do: It rations.









Even accessing the system can be a major problem. Currently, the case-processing backlog exceeds 344,000 claims. Although the VA says it has a policy of processing claims within 125 days, it actually takes an average of 160 days for a veteran to gain access to his health benefits. Moreover, the VA itself estimates that it has at least a 9% error rate in processing claims. Outside groups claim the error rate is much higher.

Appealing a VA decision can be an even more arduous process. A veteran who takes an appeal through all available administrative steps faces an average wait of 1,598 days, according to VA figures for 2013.

Moreover, because funding decisions are determined through the political process rather than by patient preference, the money is often misallocated. VA hospitals with low utilization rates are built or kept open not out of need, but because they reside in the districts of powerful congressional committee leaders. At the same time, other hospitals without political clout are overflowing.

The same issues beset other government-run health-care programs.

Take Medicaid. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Medicaid recipients were six times more likely to be denied an appointment than people with private insurance. And according to a second study, when they do get an appointment, they wait an average of 42 days to see a doctor, twice as long as the privately insured.

In fact, Medicaid may not even be better than being uninsured altogether. The Oregon Health Insurance Exchange study, the first randomized controlled study of Medicaid outcomes, recently concluded that “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical-health outcomes.”

Even Medicare, by far the most popular government-run healthcare program, has problems with access and quality. Studies have long shown that there is little correlation between Medicare spending and healthy outcomes. In fact, some of the regions where Medicare spends the most per patient have the poorest results.

As Harvard economists Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra point out, higher Medicare spending “is not merely uncorrelated with the quality of care provided” but “negatively correlated with the use of effective care.”

Moreover, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice have found that one “unintended consequence of [Medicare’s] administered pricing systems has been to make some hospital services extraordinarily lucrative and others unprofitable. As a result, some services are more available (and others less available) than they would be in a competitive market . . . which may or may not reflect consumers’ needs and preferences.”

As the federal government takes over more and more of the healthcare system, there should be a lesson for us. Simply promising more healthcare does not mean delivering more healthcare. And government healthcare systems have a very poor record of delivering what they promise.

Michael D. Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

What If McCain Had Won?

Like most Americans I greatly admire Senator McCain personally.  However, I have not been a big supporter of many of his political views and moves.  Nevertheless, though, the thought struck me: what if he had won in 2008 instead of Obama?

For one thing, the TARP bailout, which rescued the financial system that was crashing, would still have gone through, because it was approved by President Bush in October, 2008.  President Obama likes to take credit for it, but it was in place before he became president.  The Stimulus bill, which is considered an enormously expensive failure, (the shovel-ready jobs did not exist according to Obama himself) would not have happened.  There probably would have been some sort of stimulus, but not one aimed at saving government jobs.

First – Iraq and the Middle East.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the whole course of events in the Middle East would have been different because McCain would have left a large force of combat troops as a peace-keeping force in Iraq.  This would have saved Iraq from all the terrorism and bloodshed it has experienced, and would have had a calming influence in Syria, Egypt and Libya.

Second – Israel and Iran.

Obama has made little attempt to disguise his hatred for Israel, and this has had a profound effect not only on our relations with Israel, but on any joint venture to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  McCain would also have responded with encouragement and active support when Iranians took to the streets demanding freedom.  If you recall, Obama was silent, and a defining moment was lost to history.

Third – Obamacare.

There would not be a program called Obamacare to destroy the American healthcare and Medicare systems if McCain had won.  This program was sneaked through the Senate without a single Republican vote, and most of its enrollees are people who lost their previous healthcare insurance due to Obamacare regulations.  I hope the irony of this has not been lost on the voters – particularly since the government- mandated insurance plans are abysmal compared to the plans that were cancelled.

Fourth – Russia.

Does anyone doubt that McCain would have honored Bush’s program to place missile-defense shields in the Czech Republic and in Poland?  Does anyone think that Putin would have invaded the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine if the shields and the troops to guard them had been in place?

Fifth – the economy.

The so-called recovery from recession has been the weakest in recent history, with hundreds of thousands of new regulations and Obamacare requirements and uncertainties, unfathomable executive decisions (i.e. the attempt to stop Boeing  from building a new plant and the sabotaging of the Keystone pipeline) holding down business growth and hiring – especially small business where most new growth occurs.  None of this would have happened had McCain been elected.

There is much grist for the mill.  I have not even mentioned serious scandals like: unconstitutional acts, Fast and Furious, IRS harassment and persecution, Benghazi, Solyndra, treatment of Chrysler bondholders, racial mongering, class warfare, etc. etc. etc.

President Obama is the most dangerous man ever to appear in national politics.  I only hope for the sake of my grandchildren that most of his plans and policies can be reversed once we are rid of him.

Dr. Carson and the IRS

Dr. Carson, “We live in a Gestapo age”.

It’s nothing new that the extreme left-wing tries to harass, intimidate and even destroy anyone who opposes them by speaking out.  It has happened in every communist and socialist government that rose up and then failed.  What’s new is that we now have a president who uses the tools and agencies of government to stifle dissent, and by his own actions and statements, encourages others to do whatever they have to – to eliminate politically incorrect speech.

The latest example of this was the successful effort of the left to force the resignation of Mozilla’s CEO because he made a donation in 2008 in support of traditional marriage.

Using the IRS for political oppression

By SHERMAN FREDERICK  February 16, 2014  L. V.REVIEW-JOURNAL

Last February, the National Prayer Breakfast invited the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Ben Carson, to speak.

The master of ceremonies said Carson was invited to speak for three reasons: 1. “He loves Jesus.” 2. “He has a compelling life story.” 3. “He is a distinguished man of science and healing.”

He added: “We hope he can help us sort some things out.”

Brother, Dr. Carson did just that, but probably not the way anyone anticipated — especially the president of the United States, who sat at the head table.

Dr. Carson that day delivered a stem-winder, a faith-based speech that, while not what I’d call a head-on partisan address, amounted to a principled rebuttal of President Barack Obama’s policies. It was, no doubt, an uncomfortable 27 minutes for the president.

Carson’s commentary was delivered in an affable style. A black man raised in abject poverty who become a learned man of science, he blistered the paint off how America is devolving into a state of intolerance, welfare, educational slavery and fiscal irresponsibility.

He started innocently enough, with a joke about a successful businessman who always struggled to find gifts for his mother on Mother’s Day.

Finally, he found a pair of exotic birds trained to talk and dance. He had them delivered.

He called to ask her how she liked the birds.

She said: “They was good.”

“Oh no, tell me you didn’t eat those birds,” he said. “They could talk and dance, and they cost $5,000 apiece.”

To which his mother replied: “Well, they should have said somethin’.”

That launched Carson into a string of observations on the principles of free speech.

In today’s America, the politically correct speech police are out in force, he said.

“PC is dangerous,” Dr. Carson told President Obama and the National Prayer Breakfast crowd that morning. “Because, you see, one of the founding principles is freedom of thought and freedom of expression. And, it muffles people. It puts a muzzle on them. And at the same time keeps people from discussing important issues while the fabric of this society is being changed. And we cannot fall for that trick. And what we need to do is start talking about things. Talking about things that are important.”

At the conclusion of the speech, Carson became a national story. Liberal writers raised an eyebrow at what they perceived to be an ill-timed dressing-down of the president. Conservatives, meanwhile, called his message refreshing, a message the country needed to hear.

No one can say whether the president really heard Dr. Carson’s message. But someone in government did, because in June, guess who visited Dr. Carson? The Internal Revenue Service. Carson had never been audited before his speech. Suddenly the tax agency was looking at his real estate holdings.

“I’ve been quite, I would say, astonished at the level of hostility that I have encountered,” Carson said.

“The IRS has investigated me. They said, ‘I want to look at your real estate holdings.’ There was nothing there. ‘Well, let’s expand to an entire [year], everything.’ There was nothing there. ‘Let’s do another year.’ Finally, after a few months, they went away. But they’ve come after my family, they’ve come after my friends, they’ve come after associates.”

And Dr. Carson isn’t the only conservative American under strangely timed IRS scrutiny.

Dr. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, wrote a letter to the president accusing the IRS of unfairly targeting his nonprofit groups.

Christine O’Donnell, the former tea party U.S. Senate candidate from Delaware, says she was audited and that some of her personal tax information was breached.

Former Nevada GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden ran against Harry Reid in 2010. She lost in the Republican primary — and then found herself visited by the IRS.

Even as I was in the process of writing this, a friend forwarded me an email from a man in North Carolina who says that he and his cousin hosted an event for Mitt Romney, and soon thereafter found themselves scrutinized by the IRS.

All of this is anecdotal, of course. But it is beginning to add up, and at a certain point, men and women of good will in both parties must wake up and pay attention to these red flags.

It’s either an unbelievable string of coincidences or our government is, in fact, using the color of law to silence political enemies.

Two things lead me to suspect the latter.

First, Dr. Carson’s story rings true. The timing is so direct, the cause to investigate so suspicious.

Second, in a recent interview with Fox News, President Obama was asked about the allegations that the IRS targeted tea party groups for scrutiny regarding their applications for tax-exempt status.

The investigation is ongoing. From what is known publicly, there is zero doubt that conservative groups were targeted. The only question is how far up the political ladder it went. To compound things, the Justice Department assigned to the case an investigator who just happens to be a big fan of the president. She’s a maxed-out political contributor to President Obama’s campaign.

That in itself is unwise and outrageous. But the point at hand is that the investigation is not complete.

Yet the president tells Fox News that there is not a “smidgen” of evidence of wrongdoing.

How can he know that, unless he has some unholy control over the probe? And how then does he explain his own IRS supervisor taking the Fifth before a congressional hearing?

If there is no “smidgen” of wrongdoing, no one would need to exercise their right against self-incrimination, correct?

It doesn’t add up.

The IRS, of course, isn’t saying a thing about all this.

Let us not forget that these IRS suspicions do not come out of nowhere.

The inspector general issued a report in May that said the IRS “used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status.” Yet the president says there’s not a “smidgen” of evidence. And a few Democrats in Congress want an investigation of the inspector general, not the IRS. Can we get any more like the book “1984”?

Carson likens his treatment to the Gestapo. And it may be.

But one thing is for certain: Something’s going on.

And if you don’t want to be cooked and eaten, you better say somethin’.