Category Archives: Barack Obama

The Big Dog Wags The Dog

In the course of the catalogue of Obaminations the president has inflicted on the country, the Big Dog has chosen to wag the dog at convenient times.

To ‘wag the dog’ means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. By doing so, the lesser-significant event is catapulted into the limelight, drowning proper attention to what was originally the more important issue.

(UsingEnglish.com)

The government has spent time and money barring Americans from accessing public places. At the same time, and during a government shutdown, Obama has given the go-ahead for a military operation in Libya and Somalia about which the targeted countries are unhappy.

The seizure in Tripoli of the alleged al-Qaida operative Abu Anas al-Liby prompted the Libyan government to issue an angry statement, questioning the US account that Liby had been detained with its full knowledge. The statement said: “As soon as it heard the reports, the Libyan government contacted the United States authorities to demand an explanation [for] the kidnapping of a Libyan citizen.”
US officials had briefed the media on Saturday that the mission had been conducted with the knowledge of the Libyan government, but on Sunday an official told the Guardian: “We consult regularly with the Libyan government on a range of issues. We do not get into the specifics of our communication.”

(The Guardian)

It’s hard to know what Americans think, if they do indeed think. Will Obama succeed in wooing a war-loving people, or have Americans wizened up to his ways?

The Glories of Hussein’s Proctology

Barack Obama, Government, Healthcare, Socialism

“The Glories of Hussein’s Proctology” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The message that greeted future Obamacare patients who logged on to Healthcare.gov was as follows: “Please wait. We have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience.”

Healthcare.gov is the deluxe version of Obamacare.

The interminable waits on Healthcare.gov are a harbinger of things to come under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This so-called “Health Insurance Marketplace” is using the good name of the marketplace in vain. A healthcare cauldron of Obama’s creation, government-run exchanges constitute a planned economy, not a market economy. As such, they will result in long lines precipitated by the inevitable inability of central planners to bring demand and supply into balance.

Like Canadian, Cuban and British nationalized healthcare, Obamacare’s motto will become, “We have boatloads of patients, too few doctors, supplies and equipment and not nearly enough of your money. Don’t like it? Go jump in the lake.”

Like me, you must know Obama-heads (doctors included) who shrugged off the idea that a further centralization of healthcare by Obama’s politburo of proctologists—a modest expansion totaling $2 trillion—would cost them anything at all. (Doctors for Obamacare ought to revel in the 140,000 added codes into which they’ll have to categorize care rendered. These include nine new codes for injuries sustained from the common macaw! You’re more likely to be felled by an Obama-guided drone than by that gentle hook bill.)

I’m already feeling the care. How about you?

Mitt Romney was not “lying” when he told stupid voters that the cost of their healthcare would rise under Obamacare by about $2000 to $3000 annually. Before Obamacare, this household enjoyed 100 percent coverage. Shortly after Obamacare became law, we were notified, like millions around the country, that healthcare experts were hard at work hammering out the details of how to continue caring for us under current conditions (and keep operating).

Our healthcare plan has since altered for the first time ever. The complete coverage we were previously afforded is now a high-deductible, cost-sharing plan with a health-savings account. It has already cost us over 2000 additional dollars in 2013.

Perhaps like Michelle Malkin, I too will lose my coverage. It is not impossible that even a mammoth like Microsoft, whose chairman trumpets Big Government at every turn, will see the benefits to the bottom line of dropping spouses like myself. In this case, Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute has more bad news. On the individual-market, “Obamacare will increase average … insurance premiums by 99% for men, 62% for Women.” Middle-class Americans Obamacare subsidies will not protect. They “face the double-whammy of higher insurance premiums, and higher taxes to pay for other people’s subsidies.” …

Read the complete column. “The Glories of Hussein’s Proctology” is now on WND.

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UPDATE III: HealthCare.gov : ‘Please Wait. We Have A Lot Of Visitors …’ (His Proctology)

Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Government, Healthcare, Political Economy, Socialism, Technology

The message that greeted future patients who logged on to HealthCare.gov was, “Please wait. we have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience.”

The message @ HealthCare.gov is a good metaphor for what will unfold under Obama Care: long lines precipitated by the inevitable inability of centrally planned exchanges to bring supply and demand into balance.

The Affordable Health Care Act’s motto will become, “Please wait, we have a lot of patients, and not enough of your money and everything else needed—doctors, supplies, equipment—to treat them.”

Obama, however, compared the inauguration of Obamacare—the website practically crashed, as will The Plan—to the bumpy “launch of iOS 7, the new mobile operating system released by Apple on September 18th.”

Obama was referencing a bug that came with the launch of iOS 7, the new mobile operating system released by Apple on September 18th. The bug allowed anyone to bypass an iPhone’s lockscreen and access their personal information and content. Apple released a patch for it a few days later.
“I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t,” Obama added. “That’s not how we do things in America. We don’t actively root for failure.” According to Obama, issues with the site have been caused by a heavy influx of new users and general launch bugs. Wait times on both the site and hotline have been longer than expected.

(HuffPo)

What an Ass With Ears (although Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld also failed to zero-in on why the comparison was so stupid, saying instead that the one item was a neat product that everybody wanted; the other not so much).

Nobody is forced by law to purchase or subsidize an iPhone or an iPad, or any other product produced by Apple.

UPDATED: Glenn Beck and his very funny team went to Healthcare.gov to see what gives. Not much:

When Glenn attempted to access the site, he was promptly greeted with the Internet equivalent of a “hold button.”

“I’m here, and I don’t know if you can get a shot of this… but I just went to Healthcare.gov and I’m on this exciting page right now: ‘Health insurance marketplace, please wait. We have a lot of visitors on our site right now and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the login page. Thanks for your patience.’”

Below is a screenshot of the message:

“The government is the only business that has actually come up with a ‘hold’ button on the Internet,” Glenn said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve got a hold button. Hope you don’t have anything really wrong with you. So I’m just waiting now. They have a lot of visitors on their site right now and they’re working to make your experience better.”

“We appreciate your patience. You are Number 477,326 in line,” Pat quipped. “Please continue to wait, as you will be taken in the order in which you arrived. Thank you for your patience.”
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After being completely kicked off the site and told to “try again later,” Glenn finally reached the log-in page on Healthcare.gov.

“I just got a login. Oh my goodness. I refreshed. I tried again later, and it just… ‘New to healthcare.gov? Create an account. Log in.’ I think, well, I am new to healthcare.gov. So I should create accounts.”

Stu, meanwhile, was not quite as lucky.

“I was trying to log in as well. I just got a new message,” Stu said. “Would you like me to share it with you because it’s important for your healthcare. It’s ‘???.ee.shared.header.learn???’ followed by ‘ffeee.shared.header.getinsurance???’. That’s what came up on the screen when I refreshed. That is good. I feel healthier already.”

Pat was somehow able to avoid the ‘question mark, question mark, question mark’ error, but his experience was not anymore pleasant. “Now, this says ‘Get ready for the Marketplace.’ I’m at that page. It’s asking me a question, and I fit into none of these categories,” Pat lamented. “‘Do you want information on any of the following situations? This will help us provide material about coverage options.’ ‘Dependent under 18:’ No. ‘Self?employed:’ No. ‘Low?income coverage options:’ No. ‘Disability:’ No. ‘Pregnancy:’ No. ‘Veteran:’ No. ‘American Indian or Alaskan native:’ No. ‘Preexisting conditions covered’ and so there’s either yes or no, and those are the only options. I can’t click anywhere except ‘go back.’”

“Hold on. We’re trying to make your healthcare experience even better. Stand by,” Glenn joked. “Question mark, question mark, question mark.”

Very funny.

UPDATE II: “Worse Is the New Normal” by Mark Steyn:

So, as in banking and housing and college tuition and so many other areas of endeavor, Washington is engaging in a kind of under-the-counter nationalization, in which the husk of a nominally private industry is conscripted to enforce government rules — and ruthlessly so …

UPDATE III: “100 Unintended Consequences of Obamacare,” Trader Joe’s is at #80:

Even though it has previously provided health-care coverage for its part-time employees, an uncommon practice in the industry, next year Trader Joe’s will give employees who work less than 30 hours a week $500 to purchase a plan in the upcoming Obamacare exchanges. With federal subsidies and possible earnings from other employment, the company said, workers can find coverage that will be just as good. One employee described her soon-to-be lost coverage as “one of the best parts about the job,” and her reaction to hearing it would be dumped was “pure panic, followed quickly by anger.”

I’ve been paying higher deductibles and co-pays and know full well why this has come about. There is no free lunch. Perhaps, like Michelle Malkin, I too will lose my healthcare coverage. Nevertheless, I feel nothing but glee at any discomfort experienced by those who voted for Obama and lectured us about the glories of his proctology.

UPDATED: The Debt Default Ruse (Obama Banana)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Media

The threat of a default on the debt is a political ploy and an extension of a crook’s book keeping. (The crook is the government.)

Failure to raise the debt limit would not necessarily precipitate a default by the United States–not unless the politicians orchestrate such a default, which they invariably do.

The U.S. government has debt obligations and other expenditures. It raises sufficient revenue from We The suckers to discharge its obligations.

The federal government raises trillions of dollars in tax revenue each year, though there are many different kinds of taxes. Some taxes fund specific government programs, while other taxes fund the government in general. … Total federal tax revenues in fiscal year 2014 are projected to be $3 trillion.

(National Priorities Project)

As PAT TOOMEY pointed out 2 years back, when the same “debate” was being rehashed, “If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will still have more than enough money to fully service our debt.”

UPDATE (9/30): OBAMA BANANA. There once was an African “leader” by the name of Canaan Banana. Truly. He was far and away a better man than Obama. Just free associating.

Here is Mark Steyn on Obama Banana’s attitude to debt:

This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.