Congress The Only Children Who Get Recess

At a time when most grade school kids no longer get recess, Congress is about to take its August recess even though much of their work (e.g. healthcare reform and the budget) remain unfinished. How appropriate that the only children in America guaranteed recess are our elected officials! Sad. Very sad!

Democrat High Fives All Around for Meaningless ACA Enrollment Number

There is an old military saying, "When you are up to your ass in alligators, it's easy to forget that the original mission was to drain the swamp." For the Affordable Healthcare Act this seems very apropos. The liberals won't remind you but the original goal of healthcare reform was to insure the alleged 40 million Americans who didn't have health insurance. Now for a little math: 7.1 million divided by 40 million is 17.8%. Would most reasonable people consider this success? This is just one of the many ACA "alligators". Even if one believes the number provided by the Obama Administration, there is no way to draw any real conclusions from the enrollment number reported Monday following the end of the first open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) but that didn't stop the President and his fellow Democrats from crowing and doing a victory dance at a press conference. Funny how Mr. Obama didn't take any questions from the media - as if they would have asked any tough ones. In order for the number to have any meaning, we need to know the details. How many of the 7.1 million didn't previously have health insurance and how many of that number had to replace the insurance that they had and were happy with but lost because the new law 'declared' it inferior? Well the Administration won't tell us. There are many reports that millions of Americas were in this situation. Rand, the highly respected think tank, has determined that 6.3 million Americans lost their insurance due to the ACA. That would mean that only about 900,000 of the 7.1 million are actually newly insured. And how many of those who had to replace their insurance now have higher premiums and higher deductibles? Uh, well we don't know. How many of the supposed newly insured have actually paid their first premium? Again, we don't know but can one really be consider enrolled if you haven't paid? What about the percentage of the 7.1 million enrollees are having their new insurance subsidized by the government or how many people have been added to the Medicaid rolls? Again, no answers are forthcoming. Why not? When you have a program that encompasses one sixth of the U.S. economy, it is essential to set up a mechanism to accurately assess its effectiveness. You need metrics and getting those metrics would have been easy to get, if they had only asked these questions on the website but they didn't? Why? The answer is because they didn't want to know. This is precisely why conservatives hate big government programs like this. One would have to be ignorant, profoundly stupid or an ideological zealot to believe that the enrollment figure is any indication of success at all. If you are among the believers, you now have the facts, so you are down to two choices. So which one are you?

"If" is the New "Period"

Before I get started on explaining the title of this post, I'd like to clarify some terms and provide examples.

A mistake is when you say something you believe is true but that turns out not to be. Example: George W. Bush and WMDs in Iraq. I'm not saying that invading Iraq was a good idea, especially in hindsight, but I'm saying it was a mistake. Everyone believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction including the U.N., the CIA, the NSA, the British intelligence services, the Germans, etc. There is no evidence whatsoever that Bush knew beforehand that there were no WMDs. Therefore, he didn't lie; it was a mistake.

A lie is when you say something you know to be untrue to deceive someone. Examples: When Bill Clinton claimed he never had sex with Monica Lewinsky, splitting hairs over the meaning of sex not withstanding, he knew he had and therefore what he said was a lie. When Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Susan Rice et al, claimed that the attack in Benghazi that killed the American Ambassador and three other Americans was the result of some YouTube video that no one had seen, they knew that wasn't the case yet they repeated it over and over again. That was also a lie - pure and simple. I know Obama apologists would like the public to believe otherwise, but the fact is they lied.

On the other hand, when George H.W. Bush said, "Read my lips, no new taxes." and then raised taxes, that was a broken promise not a lie unless someone can provide proof that he confided to someone that he intended to raise taxes after he was elected in spite of his pledge.

When the Obama Administration calls Major Nidal Hasan's murderous rampage at Fort Hood "workplace violence", well that is just plain delusional.

Now for the explanation of the title. When Barack Obama claimed over and over and over again, "If you like your current plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor - period." he and his advisors were lying. The media has discovered that the Administration knew full well that this wasn't going to be the case. There are emails and memos documenting this. Since this has come to light, the President and his mouthpiece, Jay Carney, have tried to spin this as, "What we said was, ‘You could keep it [your plan] if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.'" So unless "If" is the new "period", this too is a lie and what a whooper of a lie it is!

Should Have Used GoDaddy

First impressions are important and I think it is safe to say that www.healthcare.gov blew it. Whether or not you are a fan of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the roll out of the government health insurance exchange website certainly gives one reason for concern. So far, America's initial contact with the system via the website has been an unmitigated disaster. The ability to use the site has been very frustrating even to the numerous liberal TV journalists who have tried to access the system on air! In interviews yesterday and today, John McAfee, the founder of McAfee, Inc (the big software security company) said, "The site is hacker's wet dream!" He went on to predict that thousands of Americans may have their identities stolen due to security vulnerabilities in the www.healthcare.gov website. Another interview I heard with a software designer, said the site appears to be poorly designed, badly implemented, and apparently not tested prior to launch. In fairness, the government only had 3 years to have the site built. All this for the incredibly low price of only $394 million according to this morning's Washington Post. Maybe they should have just used GoDaddy.com?

If Obamacare is so good...

If Obamacare is so good, why:

    Did the president delay implementing it - oh but only the employer mandate - the average "Joe
    Smo" has to buy health insurance which in most cases has gone way up in price;

    Is everyone is calling it a "train wreck" even Democrat members of the House and Senate;

    Did members of Congress quietly exempted themselves and their staffers before going on August
    recess;

   Did presidents of 3 of the largest unions - the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the United
   Food and Commercial Workers International Union and UNITE-HERE, a union representing hotel,
   airport, food service, gaming, and textile workers - write President Obama a letter urging him to
   delay implementing it;

  Does the non-partisan CBO (the Congressional Budget Office) continue to estimate the cost of the
  program will skyrocket, and

  Did they have to change the wording on the official Affordable Healthcare Act website from "if you
  like your current doctor, you can keep your current doctor" to "if you like your current doctor, you 
  may be able to keep your current doctor." and "if you like your current healthcare plan, you can
  keep your current healthcare plan" to "if you like your current healthcare plan, you may be able to
  keep your current healthcare plan".

If this is only a train wreck, America will be very lucky!