5 Videos to "Promote" Obamacare

The Obama administration is touting a youth  video contest to promote Obamacare.  I'm not considered a youth anymore, but I'm on the "old" end of the Milennial generation. I figure that means I can make a submission or two to "promote" Obamacare. Close enough, right? Heck, if Karl Rove can do it, so can I. The only problem is--I cannot decide which part of Obamacare to "promote".  I have five ideas:

1. The more people find out about Obamacare, the more they dislike it. It's almost as if the Obama administration is trying to make fetch happen:

 

 2. Despite the Obama administration's claims, insurance premiums are going up in many states--including higher premiums for young people. It's kind of like an expensive financial trampoline for your budget!:


 3. Those fun death panels that youth will eventually have to face (if Medicare is not bankrupt by then). It is kind of like the your very own board of Count Rugens and his "machine":

 

 4. Hey,with the Obamacare navigators, you are at risk for identity theft, which of course, is all kinds of fun:

 

 5. Finally, you might, just might get to keep your doctor:



  Crossposted here and here.

President Obama Unveils New Apple iPAB at Press Conference

In a Friday afternoon press conference, President Obama unveiled the new Apple iPAB--a device with the ability to ration healthcare for Medicare patients.

"Older Americans are using technology more and more frequently", the President said, " this new new device will allow for healthcare to be more efficient by allowing patients to know whether or not they will be able to receive treatment before they even leave the house".

Some major components of his healthcare plan have or potential will be delayed, including business mandates and some information technology based aspects of the law. However, other parts of the law he has chosen to implement more quickly. The new Apple iPAB was introduced through a new executive order from the President.

With this executive order, rather than appointing member to the Independent Payment Advisory Board to be confirmed by the Senate, the President has ordered that this board be replaced by Siri.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stated in a press release that seniors will simply have to ask Siri, "will Medicare cover my blood pressure medication?". Using already collected personal data from the NSA and IRS, Siri will be able to quickly determine whether or not a patient will be rationed whatever particular medication or procedure they have queried. This is will save patients the hassle of having to go the doctor, which, subsequently will help reduce carbon emissions from travel.

Vice President Joe Biden has been tasked with Beta testing the new iPAB and has run into some minor issues after he shot the iPAB with a shotgun after he consistently mistyped his passcode. " God love, Siri. You know what they say, 'an apple a day--an iPAB-- keeps the doctor away'. Barack and I want to make sure that's true".

Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin has denounced the iPAB as a digital death panel that continues to give too much power to the federal government and rations care.

Note: This is simply satire. Please read it as such.

 Crossposted here and here.

Real Warnings and Revelations on Obama's "Phony" Scandal

On Thursday, CNN reported that nearly three dozen CIA agents were on the ground during the attacks at the Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012. Additionally, the Obama administration is subjecting many of these individuals to very frequent polygraph tests (and changing Benghazi survivors' names). These revelations beg two questions. One--why is the Obama administration subjecting agents to what Jake Tapper's source is calling an "unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out" if this is simply a phony scandal? Of course, that is a rhetorical question. Second--why were so many CIA agents in Benghazi at the time?

On Thursday night, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf indicated that the CIA was moving guns in Benghazi, per Breitbart News:

 “We’re getting calls from people who are close to people who were [in Benghazi at the time] that they were moving guns. So where are the guns?” asked Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Wolf also wonders what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi on that night. Stevens and three others were killed over the course of the attacks. 

“Are they in a warehouse somewhere? Some people say they moved on to Turkey and then from Turkey to Syria," Wolf told Breitbart News on Thursday. "Did they fall into the hands of some of the Jihadis?" 

"Nobody knows, so I think there are so many questions from the failure to respond to where the guns went,” he stated. 

Wolf is currently attempting to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack by launching a discharge petition from committee. He needs 218 signatures to take the issue to a vote on the floor.

In January, Senator Rand Paul asked then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if guns were being run to Turkey from Libya, which she did not answer, but deferred to the CIA (see the 2:17 mark):

 

 About that same time, the CIA denied that guns were being run from Libya through Turkey to Syria.

To look at this more completely, we must take a step back. It was an absolute failure of security to not have more protection at a consulate in an Islamist country on a date with such significance as September 11th, especially with the threats and violence that had already occurred in Libya in the previous months. Remember too that in August 2011, Gaddafi was overthrown. A dictator was defeated, and a country in a volatile region of the world was even more unstable. When that happened, Governor Palin warned (emphasis added):

Finally, we must make sure that terrorist groups don’t try to co-opt the revolution, as Al Qaeda is trying to do in Syria. We should continue to use our intelligence assets to monitor the situation in Libya to ensure that potentially dangerous weapons are secured, and that terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda don’t gain a foothold in Libya.

What ultimately has happened? Essentially the very thing Governor Palin warned against. While Governor Palin was likely referring to securing Gaddafi's stockpiles of weapons, arms still ultimately transferred to dangerous hands.  Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on Benghazi consulate, and weapons were being run (and continue to be transferred through other countries), likely to Syria, to arm Al Qaeda linked rebels.

The President has often touted that bin Laden is dead and that al Qaeda is decimated.  He has cheered the death of Gaddafi. While these three things help rid the world of evil, only two of them are true. Al Qaeda seems to still be very much active. On Friday, the State Department issued worldwide travel warnings for the entire month of August because of al Qaeda threats. US Embassies are closed this Sunday (President Obama's birthday) throughout the world including places like Iraq and Egypt.If a terror network was truly decimated, there would be no need to take caution over their threats.

It is phony reasoning to suggest that the death of two evil men means the death of an entire network of evil. It is phony leadership to not heed real warnings of the potential for evil and to intimidate those who were survivors of such evil by subjecting them to polygraph tests in an attempt to silence them. The only ones who should be subjected to such tests are those who claim the death of four brave Americans is solely a "phony scandal".

 Crossposted here and here.

Phony Scandals Are the Product of the Triumvirate of Hypocrisy

On Friday, Governor Palin hammered President Obama for characterizing his lapses of leadership, his administration's corruption, and his neglect of the Constitution  as merely "phony scandals":

 

 On her "redneck whiteboard", Governor Palin noted several real scandals of the Obama White House: 1) IRS targeting of Tea Party groups 2) Benghazi 3) Accessing Fox News journalist, James Rosen's email 4) NSA spying 5) Holder's perjury 6) Fast and Furious 7) Obamacare lies...and the list continues. Governor Palin is the perfect person to distinguish between real and phone scandals. When she took the reins as Governor, she did so on the heels of a massive vote buying scandal that indicted members of the Alaska legislature and Governor Murkowski's staff. Prior to that, she had called out the real scandal of the head of the Alaska GOP, Randy Ruedrich, doing party business on state time. She recognizes scandal because she has often had to clean it up.

 When it comes to Governor Palin herself, the media, the Left, and establishment Republicans have all tried to spin faux scandals as legitimate scandals and have tried to turn lies and half truths into scandals. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the media claimed that Palin, as mayor, tried to ban books before they were even written. Some in the media, and people like Andrew Sullivan to this day, questioned that she was the mother of her son, Trig. The Left once tried to claim that  during Palin's childhood, the Heath family, received socialized medicine in Canada (before Canada even had universal health care).  At one point in 2010, the media tried to turn the language in her speaking contracts into a giant scandal over, gasp, bottles of water and bendable straws. The media and the Left have searched her emails looking for scandal only to find that she was a hard working dedicated governor. Recently, the media, the Left and the Establishment GOP have all tried to paint her as a consultant-laden, hypocritical politico because she dared to have her PAC spend money on things like postage.   The list could go on and on of examples of phony scandals drudged up by the triumvirate of hypocrisy--of the media, the Left, and the Establishment GOP.

If the Obama administration is trying to find phony scandal, look no further than all the garbage that has been thrown at Governor Palin over the years. Real scandal lies in the fact that the American people have been the targets of intense, gratuitous IRS scrutiny, that the 4th amendment has been desecrated by the NSA, and that four brave, patriotic men died in Benghazi because of a lack of true leadership. Those are real scandals, and it is an insult to the American people to assume we are in capable of recognizing the truth about the lies of the Obama administration.

H/T to "Woot6" for the inspiration for this post.

Crossposted here and here. 

How Violations of Privacy and Broad Brush Strokes Diminish Human Dignity

Between the seemingly daily revelation of the federal (and even local) government's violations of Americans' privacy and the media and political reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict, the constant disregard for the human dignity has become tiresome.

Over the past couple months, we have learned that the federal government is collecting metadata on our phone calls (e.g. who we've called and how long we talked with them) and that local police departments are able to take photos of our licence plates, sometimes keeping such photos (and a snapshot of our location at a given time) indefinitely. Obamacare includes numerous ways in which the IRS will collect information regarding not only our income, but our health insurance, and often share this with other agencies. Immigration reform proposals have included national biometric databases, and gun control proposals have included changes to HIPAA regulations to allow doctors to disclose mental health information about patients.  Common core educational policy includes massive data tracking of American children.

The federal government collects all of this data on our lives (often "accidentally" disclosing it) often without our consent. Essentially, we become naked before the government, in an informational sense-- our private data laid bare. This diminishes human dignity...and our liberty. The government knows (or has in place the potential to know) the intricate details of our comings and goings, and this makes us less free. It also means that the government knows our uniqueness, but only in the terms of categorical or continuous variables in some massive database that would put Karl Rove to shame.

While the surveillance state and a "big brother" government seek to know the unique details of our lives, the paternalism of such ideology also seeks to paint us with broad brush strokes of generalities. When a horrific shooting occurs in Aurora, Colorado or Newtown, Connecticut or when a  FBI investigation or trial verdict violates preconceptions, the President calls for soul searching. In doing so he paints Americans with a broad brush--all Americans have the meditations in our heart to kill or to act in a racist manner.  We're a nation of cowards, according to Eric Holder. Somehow the government that seeks the unique details of our lives, also paints us as violent and racist across the board--even while they rightfully call out those who paint African Americans with broad brush strokes. This violates our dignity. We are not seen as unique individuals judged by the content of character through our words and actions. We are prejudged as needing to soul search because of the actions of others, not ourselves.

Again, the government seeks to become god. However, the true God both knows the number of hairs on our heads ( Matthew 10:30), and He does so without having to keep a massive database. He has discerned the words on our lips before we speak them (Psalm 139:4).  He knows the motivations of our hearts. The true "prism" is not a data mining surveillance government surveillance program, nor the "soul searching" prism through which the President often patronizing instructs us to view the world. The true prism by which we must see those around us is by through the prism of everyone being created in the image of God. This is the only way to ensure we are treating others with the dignity they deserve. God is the only one who truly knows such intricate details of our lives, and He is the only one who knows our motivations.

Crossposted here and here.

President Obama Touts Reverse ATM Plan to Create Jobs and Smarter Government

Today, President Obama gave a speech to tout his new plan for smarter government. Part of this plan includes opening up government data and use technology to create jobs.

President Obama stated, " ATMs have proven to be a form of technology that has taken away the jobs of hard-working Americans. Let me be clear, under our plan, we will create a reverse ATM system that creates jobs and provides more government data, increased transparency, and stronger revenues. After all, the government is something we all belong to. The American people's data are the government's data".

The Obama administration has touted itself as being the most transparent administration in America's history. They hope that their reverse ATM system will provide an easier way to transfer funds and information from the American people to their government in addition to creating jobs. The Obama administration has recently proven that it can be transparent with Americans' credit card account information and social security numbers. This is the kind of transparency that they have been seeking and hope that the development of the reverse ATM will provide high tech jobs and even more efficient ways to collect information.

The Obama administration is hoping to tap Jon Corzine to lead this initiative. Corzine was recently absolved of criminal wrongdoing in the disappearance of more than a billion dollars of clients' investments, yet has been currently under review from the CFTC. Such a record makes him a perfect fit for the Obama administration. *Please note: This is only satire.* Crossposted here.

The Non-Percent: America's Working Class of "John Does";Updated

Our nation's political messaging has often been one of dichotomy--splitting America in half to pit us against each other. Both political parties are guilty of engaging in this kind of talk. Some Democrats in recent years have discussed America in context of the 1% (the wealthiest Americans) versus the 99% (the rest of us), essentially trying to capitalize on the pitting the nation's proverbial "haves" versus "have-nots". Meanwhile, some Republicans have seen things in the context of the 53% of Americans who pay federal income taxes versus the 47% of those who do not, in essence trying to dichotomize Americans as either productive or lazy. The truth is not every "one percenter" is greedy, nor is every ninety-nine percenter selfless. Not every fifty-three percenter has a strong work ethic, nor is every forty-seven percenter lazy.  In reality, the dichotomy (and the disconnect too) comes between the permanent political class and the American people--primarily the working class. The working class primarily would fall into the 99% or the 53%. These individuals are self-sufficient enough to not be dependent upon the government, but not wealthy enough to be of importance to most politicians seeking campaign donors.

Too often, the working class are political pawns for union bosses and Democrats and frequently only discussed in the context of the "small business owner" for the pro-business (but infrequently pro-market) Republicans. There are rare politicians, however, who recognize that the working class are not political pawns, nor are they a class of citizens the government needs to do something for. They are a class of citizens that the government needs to stop doing something to! Tony Lee and Stephen Bannon co-wrote a great piece at Breitbart yesterday highlighting Governor Palin's ability to connect to the working class and how the Senate immigration bill has been a slap in the face to the working class:

"Meanwhile, the upper middle classes in coastal cocoons enjoy the aristocratic privileges of having plenty of cheap household help, while having enough wealth not to worry about the social costs of illegal immigration in terms of higher taxes or the problems in public education, law enforcement, and entitlements," Hanson wrote. "No wonder our elites wink and nod at the supposed realities in the current immigration bill, while selling fantasies to the majority of skeptical Americans." 

Last Friday, a panelist on Fox News's Hannity's panel of black conservatives, which included Sirius XM Patriot's David Webb and Breitbart's Sonnie Johnson, emphasized that the Senate's immigration bill would have a "detrimental impact" on black Americans. 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), one of the most critical opponents of the immigration bill, noted that the bill would hurt working class Hispanics in addition to all working class Americans and the "poorest among us." Sessions noted that according to the CBO report, the bill would have a devastating impact on wages of Americans looking for job security, and it would raise the unemployment rate while only solving 25% of the illegal immigration problem. He posited that between 30 million and 50 million workers will be added to the labor force in the next ten years, completely destroying the possibility of upward mobility of working class Americans of all backgrounds. Yet, Republican senators like Murkowski (R-AK), Rubio (R-FL), Ayotte (R-NH), McCain (R-AZ), and Graham (R-SC) voted for the final bill. "Why would any Member of Congress want to vote for a bill at a time of high unemployment, falling wages?" Sessions asked on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday. 

[...] 

For Republicans to win back the majority and the presidency, they need to win the so-called Reagan Democrats and a new generation of working class minorities who will have to become Reagan Democrats 2.0. They need to win over the father who got laid off from his manufacturing job and has a child who did everything society said to do--go to college, get a degree, find a decent-paying job in the technology industry--and now may meet the same fate his father did when the labor market is flooded with an influx of cheap immigrant labor brought to do jobs Americans supposedly do not want to do. 

These Americans that the immigration bill most adversely impacts make up the backbone of this country and see in Washington a permanent political class who are against them and think they "can't cut it." They see in Palin, though, someone who fights for them because she simply "gets" it--and them.

Governor Palin linked the above mentioned piece on her Facebook page, commenting in part:

Once again, I’ll point out the obvious to you: it was the loss of working class voters in swing states that cost us the 2012 election, not the Hispanic vote. Legal immigrants respect the rule of law and can see how self-centered a politician must be to fill this amnesty bill with favors, earmarks, and crony capitalists’ pork, and call it good. You disrespect Hispanics with your assumption that they desire ignoring the rule of law. 

Folks like me are barely hanging on to our enlistment papers in any political party – and it’s precisely because flip-flopping political actions like amnesty force us to ask how much more bull from both the elephants in the Republican Party and the jackasses in the Democrat Party we have to swallow before these political machines totally abandon the average commonsense hardworking American. Now we turn to watch the House. If they bless this new “bi-partisan” hyper-partisan devastating plan for amnesty, we’ll know that both private political parties have finally turned their backs on us. It will then be time to show our parties’ hierarchies what we think of being members of either one of these out-of-touch, arrogant, and dysfunctional political machines.

The immigration bill does negatively impact the working class, but the political connected will benefit. Although he ultimately voted for the bill, Democratic Senator Leahy would boost corporate cronyism. Big GOP donors ultimately want "comprehensive immigration reform" to pass as well. What will the House GOP do? Will they cave to political pressure in order to receive the needed money for their next re-election--their own constituents be damned?

The immigration bill is not the only way that the working class is being passed over for the sake of the political connected class. Look no further than the next divisive issue de jour--climate change. Earlier this week, President Obama gave a speech touting his next "green" push. This push was gleefully described by an Obma adviser as a needed "war on coal". The war on coal has already started, however. In President Obama's home state of Illinois, in the blue collar town of Decatur, nearly 500 Caterpillar workers were laid off this past Spring. Caterpillar is the world's largest maker of mining equipment, and with decreased coal mining, less mining equipment needs to be manufactured. Meanwhile, President Obama is promising $8 billion more in green energy loan guarantees in his new climate change plan. Past is often prologue,and in  the 2009 stimulus package, 80% of Department of Energy loans went to companies with connections to Obama donors. It would surprise no one if this new round of loan guarantees again go to the political connected. Suffice it say, yet again, the working class gets a pink slip while the permanent political class get "green slips".

The working class are not simply a voting bloc, however. They are the backbone of our country and the essence of Americana's John Does. As so well voiced in "John Doe's" speech in Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe" (H/T to this great Rebecca Mansour piece from 2009):

We are the meek who are supposed to inherit the earth. You’ll find us everywhere. We raise the crops; we dig the mines, work the factories, keep the books, fly the planes and drive the buses. And when a cop yells: "Stand back there, you!" He means us, the John Does!

America's John and Jane Does are the hope of the earth. The permanent political class would do well to recognize them not as a group to be placate or to be pandered to, but instead as the very people who made America what it is today and who make it what it could be tomorrow, if the permanent political class does not transform America into something unrecognizable.

  Crossposted here and here.

 Updated: Please read this wonderful post by Gary Jackson with a great reference to "Meet John Doe".