Incorrect Promises

The Obamacare Ten-Step Self-Help Program | National Review Online:

As we watch 1/6th of the economy implode under the malfeasance and incompetence that is BO, it is worthy to do a bit of slow-mo on the sleight of hand of the this combination 3-card monty swindle and healthcare demolition derby.

One thing this article, and nearly all I have read.completely leave out is that "if you like it you can keep it for ONE YEAR LONGER"!!! Although I see it before my eyes, I'm unable to really accept that Americans have gotten so short sighted that the new promise from a proven liar is even considered.

But BO has assistance in his subterfuge. In the tradition of "Fake but True" previously applied to the memos "proving" that W wasn't a great fighter pilot 30 years ago, and "White Hispanic" a new racial class containing only George Zimmerman, the NYTs has created  "incorrect promise"!

The split between lawmakers and the White House reflects the dilemma the president finds himself in as he seeks to follow through on last week’s acknowledgment about his incorrect promise on health care coverage. Hundreds of thousands of people have received cancellation notices from health insurance companies because their plans do not conform with minimum standards set by the new law.

Lie. How easy it was for the press to ascribe that word to W, Nixon and even Reagan, yet when BO is totally exposed, we get a new linguistic creation as opposed to the facts. 

The entire linked article is well worth the read, but item #1 is the clincher. When future generations marvel at the rapid decline, this is what killed the American experiment. On retirement, healthcare, and increasingly all aspects of life, responsible behavior is punished, irresponsible behavior is rewarded.

One is the idea of fairness, or rather everyone’s indebtedness to the state: those who budgeted for health care, either through individual plans, or obtained at work, got some sort of silent automatic benefit from the state, an advantage usually without much credit due to themselves. In contrast, those without insurance are all assumed to be victims of the system, who either were long ago dropped, or could not afford formal coverage, and were both without recourse to health care (such as walk-in clinics, emergency rooms, federal and state clinics), and were in that position due to someone else or nefarious forces beyond their control. Whiners who complain that their premiums go up are really the selfish who do not wish to pay “a little more” for their less fortunate brethren.

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Reality Bites, Early BOcare Edition

Obama in Bind Trying to Keep Health Law Vow - NYTimes.com:

Much like the only thing wrong with incest is the relatives part, the only thing wrong with Liberalism is reality.

Sure, it would be great if everyone could sit at home, get stoned, watch Oprah and live off a government check while the Chinese and future generations of immigrant and single mom raised kids covered the tab, but then reality intrudes.

So BO and the Democrats promised;  "We will force evil insurance companies to cover you even if you only show up AFTER you have been diagnosed with cancer ... and oh, yeah, will get the same rate as a Mormon marathon runner your age. Hell, EVERYONE, the chain smoking alcoholic single mother of 6 of the same age included will get the same rate, and it will be LOWER THAN TODAY!!! "

One would think that after listening to inane sales pitches of "$19.99 today only! Guaranteed not to rust, bust, collect dust, chip, crack or peel, or your money back" for year after year, there might be some skepticizm.

But no, the nation fell for the equivalent of the Nigerian Bank 10's of million dollar check and all you have to send is a few thousand!



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Tall People Reach Higher Shelves

Jumbo mortgages now carry cheaper rates than traditional loans - Nov. 12, 2013:

Wine costs less by the case. Government services cost less than private services ... eg Space Shuttle $450M per launch, Spaceship2 $150K.

And now this breathtaking article ... oh, and the little kicker

Jumbo loans have also gotten comparatively cheaper. As the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Fannie and Freddie, seeks to boost the two agencies' reserves against losses from mortgage defaults, it has raised fees and other costs for borrowers, according to Terry Francisco, a Bank of America spokesman.
Since Fannie and Freddie don't back jumbo mortgages, those fees don't apply and therefore aren't passed on to borrowers.

Things that make you go "duh".

From "Is" to "Period", Parsing With Democrats

Parsing Obama’s Promise | Power Line:

The last Democrat showed us the definition of "is". BO is showing us new nuance in the parsing of the english language relative to "period".

Remember when we heard "Bush lied" over and over? (and over and over and ...)

So W not finding WMD in Iraq when every western government and the UN was convinced he had it was a "lie", but it is very hard for the press label BO claiming not to know that 10's to over 100 million will lose their health insurance because of his signature program as even "misleading"??

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Penalizing Marriage Again

Decoding the Obamacare 'marriage penalty' - Nov. 7, 2013:

The particulars of this column are just a tiny example. State control and redistribution ALWAYS has to penalize marriage! It has been  known for thousands of years that marriage is the best way for men and women to live their lives and raise families. If you are a Christian, you know this because God said it. If you are an atheist, you could learn it through observation of income, both physical and mental health, wealth creation, etc.

Marriage is an adaptive positive behavior, so under the laws of liberalism/statism/collectivism it MUST be penalized in order to achieve "equality". Since marriage is a net benefit, in order to "equalize" the married with the unmarried, you MUST penalize the married. That is the essence of "redistribution" -- penalize successful / adaptive behavior, reward behavior that is not successful.

When a liberal/statist/collectivist sees "success" they immediately think "redistribute" ... which is implemented as penalize, tax, prohibit, regulate, etc. It is a knee-jerk non-negotiable reaction. The effect of redistribution is like spreading out a fire ... the fire goes out. Redistribution is PRECISELY penalizing success! Whatever behaviors are successful MUST be penalized in order to achieve equality of result! How else would you do it?

Why do they think this way? Because they have a vision of the world as perfect, but it requires the removal of most all the behaviors that have proved adaptive to build the western civilization we see today. Religion, truth, morality, self-control, liberty ... all must go. To attempt to thwart their actions is evil in their eyes because it denies their perfect world -- heaven on earth.

At their core they believe in a way even stronger than an Arab flying a plane into the WTC that man is good and that left to his "natural state", each short human life can be "heaven on earth", and there is NOTHING else of worth than that short life of sensual enjoyment! While the specifics of their view of this utopia are very foggy, they KNOW that it is good, and they KNOW that it requires the removal of all of the things that can be tied back to God / religion / existing civilization /tradition/ etc.

This dichotomy is as old as Adam. Is there a "better way" outside of the law and gospel given in the Bible?  Liberals believe that there certainly is, and so things like marriage have to be penalized, re-defined, weakened and finally destroyed so that all may be finally "equal". We will not reach their state of perfection until all are "equal" in our corporeal  existence.

I too believe there is an ultimate state in the physical world of equality -- death. Death of people, death of nations, death of civilizations and eventual death of the entire physical universe. I however believe there is an ultimate spiritual reality that is greater.

Mat 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." 



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In Praise of Income Inequality

Opinion: The most unequal place in America - CNN.com:

I grew up "lower middle class" and ended up "high middle or lower "rich"".  I've seen friends and relatives make the same transition and I've seen some go the other way. It is pretty easy to go from up to down ... I would not be at all surprised to see it happen to me. A bit of government confiscation, a stock market crash, sickness, etc. It always has and always be a lot easier to lose it than to make it.

The only perfectly "equal" place is one where everyone by law has ZERO. The old USSR came close. Of course the top 5% or so were MUCH more equal than the rest -- the Politburo the party chiefs, etc. ... but heh, they were "servants of the people" wink wink.

The other option is where America is fast heading ... and most third world nations already are. The vast bulk of the people lose their will to work and lose any sense that they could ever "get ahead" ... as what is encouraged by this article and the BO administration and my family as a youth. "The system is rigged, you don't have a chance, you have to have connections, it is all the big guys, etc".

Once the idea of upward mobility is destroyed, the culture becomes one of envy. "We need to take more of what the other guy has". So those that have been successful and those that have not given up on work hide out ... their assets are in metals, guns, land, equipment, offshore, etc. The net productivity of the financial and capability assets of the people drops precipitously and even worse, because the successful are hiding out, the models that prove that success is possible are at least nearly invisible.

The higher the standard of living possible the greater the income inequality! Guys worth 10's of billions really skew it, as do many people in the 10's of millions range.

It is interesting to note the "dream" of the person in this column. Not a newer trailer that didn't leak, not a car newer than her Taurus, but a giant home with servant quarters where she did no work at all! Unrealistic dreams are just one more way to fail to face reality and make better decisions day by day.

The article is founded on the absolute lie that somehow the folks that are wealthier are causing her to be poorer. The OPPOSITE is true ... go to other nations with far less wealthy, and the Taurus, the trailer with the leak goes away and she lives without power, toilet and clean water.

BUT they have lower income inequality!!!

Lovely, income equality or inequality is NOT a "basic good" ... in fact, it is essentially NOISE ... their are great countries with more income equality and there are great countries with less! By and large, more liberty means a higher standard of overall living, greater wealth of the nation AND greater income inequality.

Less liberty, lower general standard of living (compared to what would have been had with more liberty), less wealthy, and less inequality.

Give me Liberty and Income Inequality!

I loved the joke that went around about running a Democrat Home on Halloween ... take 1/2 the candy from the kids that came to the door and take it to kids that were too lazy to go out and trick or treat!


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I'm Adopted

Lutheran Hour Ministries :: Daily Devotions:

One can sign up to get these every day. For some of us geeky modern Christians, it is a good way to make sure that there is at least a tiny bit of something spiritual in our day, even sitting on a loading tractor in IA.

In the eternal sense, being adopted is far better than being a naturally born child of earthy parents!

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The GLOBAL Wealth Confiscation Plan!, MUST READ!!

The International Monetary Fund Lays The Groundwork For Global Wealth Confiscation - Forbes:

That this is not front page news in nearly every global media outlet should be a VERY strong lesson of exactly how Russia, Germany and China slipped into tyranny.

Note three takeaways. First, IMF economists know there are not enough rich people to fund today’s governments even if 100 percent of the assets of the 1 percent were expropriated. That means that all households with positive net wealth—everyone with retirement savings or home equity—would have their assets plundered under the IMF’s formulation.

Second, such a repudiation of private property will not pay off Western governments’ debts or fund budgets going forward. It will merely “restore debt sustainability,” allowing free-spending sovereigns to keep tapping the bond markets until the next crisis comes along—for which stronger measures will be required, of course.

Third, should politicians fail to muster the courage to engage in this kind of wholesale robbery, the only alternative scenario the IMF posits is public debt repudiation and hyperinflation. Structural reform proposals for the Ponzi-scheme entitlement programs that are bankrupting us are nowhere to be seen.

Got that??? The ONLY listed alternatives were confiscation of assets from EVERYONE with positive net worth, AND the ONLY alternatives where hyperinflation and debt repudiation!!! (so much for the "safety" of holding government bonds!!

This is the IMF being reported on in Forbes folks. This is not some gold bug newsletter.

BTW, it you did or can make it to 55 prior to leaving the employer that you built your 401K with, it strongly appears that it is completely open withdrawal at current tax rates right off the bat ... no penalties, no "5 substantially equal payments".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2012/05/09/did-you-know-you-can-access-your-401k-penalty-free-at-age-55/

The last quote from the report in the linked article is very much worth reading to the bottom for!

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But I Thought They Hated Us BEFORE BO?

Merkel: US spying has shattered allies' trust - Businessweek:

I could have SWORN that it was W that the Europeans hated, and that when BO was elected they were ECSTATIC! In fact, I seem to remember he won a NOBEL PEACE PRIZE just for getting elected!

Wazup wid dis? Did they forget that he is THE ONE??? I mean, God is omnipresent and can hear their calls. I thought they felt that his Supreme Odiferousness, BO was similar in nature???

In my view he is The ZERO ... but then being "off by one" is a common programmer problem, and it appears that B ZEROCARE may well be a good example of A LOT of programming errors!

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Rudeness, Progressive, Authoritarian

Sources: Word of alleged rude GOP comment came from WH deputy chief of staff – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs:

Wow, someone in Washington was RUDE! oops ... guess really not, false alarm! If someone was imagined to have ween "rude" to W? The nice thing is that we don't really have to wonder do we? While I was out looking a bit for specific quotes, I ran into this.

From Salon no less!

As this post demonstrates, long before Barack Obama achieved any significance on the political scene, I considered blind leader loyalty one of the worst toxins in our political culture: it’s the very antithesis of what a healthy political system requires (and what a healthy mind would produce). One of the reasons I’ve written so much about the complete reversal of progressives on these issues (from pretending to be horrified by them when done under Bush to tolerating them or even supporting them when done by Obama) is precisely because it’s so remarkable to see these authoritarian follower traits manifest so vibrantly in the very same political movement — sophisticated, independent-minded, reality-based progressives — that believes it is above that, and that only primitive conservatives are plagued by such follower-mindlessness.

The problem here is that "progressives" believe they are "smarter" because they belong to the dominant elite political party / class. "Authoritarian follower traits". Note how insidious ... the pour soul writing that column sees the danger, but doesn't understand that left is CONTROL and right is CHAOS. He still buys the formulation that the left created at WWII with "grand theft label" as they usurped "liberal" for their own use and labelled the far left control National Socialist (Nazi) Hitler government "right wing". A travesty of Orwellian naming!

When our labels no longer attach to the concepts that formed them ... eg. "liberal" root "LIBerty!" becomes detached from it's root and used in place of "statism, totalitarianism, authoritarian", is it any wonder that the Sheeple become confused? 

The quote from Thomas Paine that was added to that column is right on: 

UPDATE II [Thurs.]: Here is what Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, had to say about all of this: 

[I]t is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
As is true for so many things, Paine grasped the crux of the matter and expressed it as well as it can be expressed.

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23 down, 13 Up Verizon Tether

$30 a month Verizon 2GB data plan, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0, Acer Chromebook sitting out 5mi W of Humbolt IA in a tractor ... 23MB down, 13MB up. Not too shabby!

The Reality of Hopelessness

Barack Obama’s Era of Hopelessness | Power Line:

BO's 2nd autobiography was titled "The Audacity of Hope". Only certifiable narcissists write TWO autobiographies prior to age 50, but maybe our next potentate will have written even more than that ... Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had extremely high opinions of themselves as well.

So the Age of Obama has brought the percentage who think America’s best days are still ahead down from 45% to 31%, while the number who think our best days are gone has risen from 37% to 52%. Great work, Barry. This is your true legacy: hopelessness.

The MSM is WILD about negative polls when a Republican is in the WH ... when W was in we seemed to get the "right track / wrong track" and "W's poll numbers fall", etc with great regularity.

So people think that the US has very little future. Duh! We are over 17T in debt, have over 60T in unfunded liabilities. Our economy is anemic, our people have no sense that productive work is positive, and our population is just a bunch of drug addled aging geezers.

Bend over and kiss your "B(ack) Orifice" goodbye!


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The Illusion of No Limits

There's no actual debt ceiling right now | The Daily Caller:

There is no debt limit between now and February. BO can borrow and send money to his cronies with abandon.

The idea of "no limits" is a fundamental difference in human thinking. The conservative / constrained / "tragic" vision / world view is that man dies, man is limited and not perfectible, "progress" often isn't, and "new and improved" often isn't.

The liberal / unconstrained / utopian vision / world view is that man is infinitely perfectible. All problems, even death will be solved as time moves on through infinite "progress".

If you read this blog regularly, you are very likely "constrained". All Christians are constrained, because they believe that man is fallen and needs a savior as well as that God's laws are eternal so are "curbs" to mans greed, sloth, lust, covetousness, hubris, etc

 I cover the EXCELLENT book "A Conflict of Visions" on this subject by Sowell here.

It is also covered in significant scientific detail in "The Righteous Mind".

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Settled Politics

A Teachable Moment - NYTimes.com:

 "This means that the still-ongoing intra-conservative debate over the shutdown’s wisdom is not, I’m sorry, the kind of case where reasonable people can differ on the merits and have good-faith arguments and ultimately agree to disagree. There was no argument for the shutdown itself that a person unblindered by political fantasies should be obliged to respect, no plausible alternative world in which it could have led to any outcome besides self-inflicted political damage followed by legislative defeat, and no epitaph that should be written for its instigators’ planning and execution except: “These guys deserved to lose.”"

Got that? Since this is NOT the kind of thing where "reasonable people" can have another viewpoint, it is like Global Warming. You MUST agree with our position or you are by definition INSANE (the more direct statement of "not reasonable")! It is only because of the current good graces of our ever benevolent left wing that even though we are 100% surveilled, they don't in fact lock up the insane opposition?

Having a budget worked though both houses and signed by the president? Insane!

Having checks and balances where people that vote in the opposite party into the House assuming that the House has "the power of the purse"? INSANE ... bring the King a clean resolution so he can spend as he sees fit. He need not deign to negotiate with the lowly House!

Running trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see? REASONABLE ... why anyone would have to be insane to think otherwise!

Converting 1/4 of the US economy to a government directed system that is cronyized in the true "Chicago Way" with graft, exceptions, subsidies, etc for political friends, and mandates, penalties and fees for political enemies on a purely executive whim basis. VERY REASONABLE! Why this law passed by one vote in the Senate because it was part of the "budget" ... which was never passed. Get over it, it is INSANE to question the power of his supreme odiferousness BO!

Ah yes, the one must get their mind right!


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Your Spirit or Your Body?

Finally! The Republican Fever Is Broken - The Daily Beast:

There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises—the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy—in which the villain, Bane, taunts the Caped Crusader before crippling him. “I was wondering what would break first,” he says, “your spirit, or your body!”

The left is feeling really good, they are identifying with Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises". Short of Lucifer himself, a pretty good pick for those intent on gaining all power and destroying those that dare to think for themselves.

"It's a complete capitulation by the Republicans". Oh joy of joys.

We don't need no stinkin budget, we can spend spend spend with impunity forever! They are fools to ever challenge our great BO! Let him reign as potentate forever. Let us grind the idiocy of "checks and balances" under our boots!

The parallel with "The Dark Knight Rises" is a little eerie ... Bane complains that nobody respected him until he put on a mask and became violent. Similarly, the Democrat party slow march to total control and wiping out those with other views really kicked into high gear when BO decided to ignore the constitution on budgets, use  IRS to do his bidding and put everyone under surveillance "just in case".

Will  the "Dark Knight" of the spirit of conservatism rise again? My view is that it is not likely until at least a couple generations of destruction have passed.

She is right, the forces of Bane are triumphant! Maybe I've got the "B" in BO wrong? Excuse me while I fail to cheer. It is kind of cool, BO being "the spirit" of the body.

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