CNN White-Noise News Conceals ‘Massive, Fraudulent,’ Indictable, Obama Scheme

Barack Obama, Ethics, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

The thing that’s on every American’s mind—breaking news about the consequences of Obama’s devastating (developing) lies to their medical and financial well being—CNN has been concealing with the following white-noise news stories:

* A state senator’s stabbing
* George Zimmerman’s ongoing antics.
* JFK.
* The Jonestown massacre’s 30th anniversary.
* Ted Turner (“who,” you ask) turns 75, and CNN profiles him for hours on end.

National Review and Powerline have filled in the gap in reportage magnificently. In “Obama’s ‘5 Percent’ Con Job,” Andrew C. McCarthy expounds on the developing impeachable offenses of O:

… Unable to deny that millions of Americans have lost the coverage he vowed they could keep, Obama and other Democrats are now peddling what we might call the “5 percent” con job. The president asserts that these victims, whom he feels so terribly about, nevertheless constitute a tiny, insignificant minority in the greater scheme of things (“scheme” is used advisedly). They are limited, he maintains, to consumers in the individual health-insurance market, as opposed to the vastly greater number of Americans who get insurance through their employers. According to Obama, these individual-market consumers whose policies are being canceled make up only 5 percent of all health-insurance consumers.
Even this 5 percent figure is a deception. As Avik Roy points out, the individual market actually accounts for 8 percent of health-insurance consumers. Obama can’t help himself: He even minimizes his minimizations. So, if Obama were telling the truth in rationalizing that his broken promises affect only consumers in the individual-insurance market, we’d still be talking about up to 25 million Americans. While the president shrugs these victims off, 25 million exceeds the number of Americans who do not have health insurance because of poverty or preexisting conditions (as opposed to those who could, but choose not to, purchase insurance). Of course, far from cavalierly shrugging off that smaller number of people, Obama and Democrats used them to justify nationalizing a sixth of the U.S. economy. …

But that’s not the half of it. Obama’s claim that unwelcome cancellations are confined to the individual-insurance market is another brazen lie. In the weekend column, I link to the excellent work of Powerline’s John Hinderaker, who has demonstrated that, for over three years, the Obama administration’s internal estimates have shown that most Americans who are covered by “employer plans” will also lose their coverage under Obamacare. Mind you, 156 million Americans get health coverage through their jobs.
John cites the Federal Register, dated June 17, 2010, beginning at page 34,552 (Vol. 75, No. 116). It includes a chart that outlines the Obama administration’s projections. The chart indicates that somewhere between 39 and 69 percent of employer plans would lose their “grandfather” protection by 2013. In fact, for small-business employers, the high-end estimate is a staggering 80 percent (and even on the low end, it’s just a shade under half — 49 percent).
That is to say: During all these years, while Obama was repeatedly assuring Americans, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan,” he actually expected as many as seven out of every ten Americans covered by employer plans to lose their coverage. For small business, he expected at least one out of every two Americans, or as many as four out of every five, to lose their coverage. …

… October 17, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services, represented by the Obama Justice Department, submitted a brief to the federal district court in Washington, opposing Priests for Life’s summary judgment motion. On page 27 of its brief, the Justice Department makes the following remarkable assertion:
The [ACA’s] grandfathering provision’s incremental transition does not undermine the government’s interests in a significant way. [Citing, among other sources, the Federal Register.] Even under the grandfathering provision, it is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on. Defendants have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end of 2013.
HHS and the Justice Department cite the same section of the Federal Register referred to by John Hinderaker, as well as an annual survey on “Employer Health Benefits” compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2012.
So, while the president has been telling us that, under the vaunted grandfathering provision, all Americans who like their health-insurance plans will be able to keep them, “period,” his administration has been representing in federal court that most health plans would lose their “grandfather status” by the end of this year. Not just the “5 percent” of individual-market consumers, but close to all consumers — including well over 100 million American workers who get coverage through their jobs — have been expected by the president swiftly to “transition to the requirements under the [Obamacare] regulations.” That is, their health-insurance plans would be eliminated. They would be forced into Obamacare-compliant plans, with all the prohibitive price hikes and coercive mandates that “transition” portends. …

MSNBC at least broaches the topic of healthcare today, but not to break the aforementioned news.

‘Metaphysical Racism’

Pseudo-intellectualism, Race, Racism, South-Africa

BY DAN ROODT

Sipho Hlongwane had to reach all the way to Slovenia (a little volkstaat that violently revolted against the nation-building of the old Yugoslavia) to discover the term “postmodern racism” in a tract by Slavoj Zizek (Living in postmodern racism, www.bdlive.co.za, November 11). I remember more than 10 years ago Claudia Braude introduced us to “subliminal racism”, which let her label all media in South Africa racist.

No doubt South Africa harbours a large variety of “racisms”: postmodern, subliminal, imagined, symbolic, public, private, and so on. Like the patient on Sigmund Freud’s couch, the country is in search of a “cure”, which could be either a rugby quota or another huge dose of black economic empowerment. Like a manic depressive, the Democratic Alliance seems to be vacillating on how racist South Africa really is, hence its recent volte face on more draconian affirmative action.

If racism had to end tomorrow, most of our academics would find themselves without jobs, not to mention politicians! So South Africa is married to metaphysical racism forever. Even in those “end times” referred to by Zizek, there will always be racism. Even if the dollar is replaced by Bitcoin and peak oil takes us back to ploughing with oxen, racism will survive as both an explanation of the modern world’s origins and its remaining inequalities.

American Craig Bodeker made a beautiful, minimalistic, black-and-white (in the cinematographic sense) documentary called “A Conversation About Race.” He interviewed people of all races on the streets of Denver, Colorado, asking them whether they thought “racism” was still a big problem in the U S. Of course, everybody thought so. Many of the subjects stated: “Racism is everywhere.”

Few people had any direct experience of racism, but they discerned it in other people’s body language, in their use of euphemisms or being patronised by others. One black man “who dates interracially”, as he described it, was complimented on being “a good dancer” in a club by a white man. He thought it was a racist comment as the man would not have complimented a white man in the same way. So the compliment, like the insult, may be construed as racism.

It seems that racism is the real motor of history, as opposed to Karl Marx’s class struggle or Friedrich Nietzsche’s will to power.

It follows that, like sin, metaphysical racism is insurmountable. It permeates our lives and contaminates our discourse. The radioactive cloud recently released from Pelindaba was much less of a danger than racism, which must explain why almost no one took any notice of it, while every day we agonise about racism.

(Also published as letter in Business Day.)

*****

DAN ROODT, Ph.D., is a noted Afrikaner activist, author, literary critic and director of PRAAG (which features my weekly column). He is the author of the polemical essay, “The Scourge of the ANC”.

UPDATED: JFK’s America (Not Yet A Police State)

America, Democrats, English, History, Homeland Security, Pop-Culture

On Friday, November 22, it will be 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. CNN has used the upcoming commemoration to avoid covering Obamacare, filling every spare moment of the last week or so with documentary footage of the 1963 events. (The Jonestown massacre’s 30th anniversary was also put to the same use by the nitwork.)

The footage shows an America that is so much more united in mannerisms, grief; better spoken, more refined, reserved, and appropriately attired. It is an endearing and innocent America that is revealed in these records. What was so bad about that bourgeoisie society? Not much when compared to today’s America.

JFK and his stunning wife were rather conservative individuals. Jacky was certainly very proper. She also despised Martin Luther King and Linden Johnson.

Jacqueline Kennedy, as revealed from audio recordings of her historic 1964 conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., held a low opinion of Martin Luther King. America’s most engaging first lady called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.”

“His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband ordered the wiretaps on King. Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.”

Stark too is the contrast between this erudite, educated, exquisite Renaissance woman and Michelle Obama, our current, generally disgruntled First Lady.

UPDATE: (11/18): Not Yet A Police State. In light of the police state that the USA has become, it is quite illuminating to see a different America reflected in CNN’s documentary about the JFK assassination. Reporters form scrums around the individuals they follow. Streets are not cordoned off in deference to power. Like the press, “commoners” have access to the politicians who serve them. And so it should be.

Liz Cheney: Like Father, Like Daughter

Ann Coulter, Family, Homosexuality, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Republicans

Liz Cheney is a snake like her father, Dick, whom Fox News continues to dust off periodically and present as a voice of wisdom. Even though she hangs out with her gay sister and sister’s partner and expresses support for the couple in private, the opportunistic Liz—who is running for office—disses her sister’s life in public:

It’s a good thing Mary Cheney can’t vote in Wyoming.

After an appearance on Fox News Sunday in which Wyoming Senate candidate Liz Cheney said she and her married gay sister “just disagree” on the subject of marriage equality, Mary Cheney posted a sharp rebuke to her Facebook page. “Liz – this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree, you’re just wrong – and on the wrong side of history,” she wrote.

Mary Cheney’s wife, Heather Poe, also took to Facebook to sound off. “Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children, and when Mary and I got married in 2012 – she didn’t hesitate to tell us how happy she was for us. To have her say she doesn’t support our right to marry is offensive to say the least.”

Their comments came after Liz Cheney, who is struggling in the polls against Rebublican [sic] incumbent Senator Mike Enzi, tried to explain to host Chris Wallace that her support of a State Department policy that grants benefits to same sex couples is not inconsistent with her broader opposition to allowing those couples to get married.

Ann Coulter had some fighting words for Liz (in defending the indefensible: the GOP):

“The problem is we have hucksters, shysters, people ripping off the Republican Party for their own self-aggrandizement, for their own egos, to make money,” Coulter said on Fox News’s “Hannity.”

“I would put Todd Akin, Newt Gingrich, Liz Cheney, Mark Sanford all in the same boat, and the consultants who persuaded Linda McMahon and John Raese to run,” she added.

Republicans just can’t stop mentioning issues that win them no support from most Americans. Most people think that a person’s sexual life is his or her business. What’s wrong with saying, “I have very many positions on policy, gay marriage is not one of them.” It’s hardly a make-or-break matter. Or simply echo this paleolibertarianism position:

In furtherance of liberty, Uncle Sam’s purview must be curtailed, not expanded. On this score, let our gay friends and family members lead the way. Let them solemnize their commitment in contract and through church, synagogue and mosque (that will be the day!). Once interesting and iconoclastic, gays have become colossal bores who crave nothing more than the state’s seal of approval. Go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy and private property were the object of gay anger and activism.

*Image credit