Experts Proclamin Obamacare Will Be Impossible To Get Rid Of

By William Teach February 1, 2014 – 8:03 am

Some said slavery would be impossible to get rid of. Same with other laws. Yet, we got rid of them. The web headline reads “Repealing health care law would mean higher costs”, while the Android app one reads “Health law locked in, experts say”

(USA Today) Republicans may not agree with President Obama’s State of the Union call to drop the idea of repealing the Affordable Care Act, but health experts say the law has taken such hold that it may be impossible to get rid of it.

The consequences of repeal, health care officials and industry analysts say, go beyond the fact that 9 million people would suddenly lose their insurance or that anyone with a pre-existing condition would either lose insurance or pay much higher premiums.

All consumers would take a huge financial hit, because health care costs would continue to rise, and insurers would probably recoup their losses by charging higher premiums.

Getting beyond the 9 million number, which has been beaten up by many fact checkers, the article mentions many cost savings portions of Obamacare that, supposedly, if they are done away with consumers will see their costs rise dramatically!!!!!!, dramatically, I say. Yet, the article never mentions that extra-large size deductibles which come with Ocare plans. Many of the Republican “replace” plans include market based solutions that would address those issues. Of course, many of the supposed cost savings are linked more towards rationing and government subsidies. If you read the ones in the story, one comes away with the notion that if that’s all there is to it, it won’t be that hard to fix. One is

Increased competition through federal and state health exchanges, which allow consumers to make direct comparisons of health plan costs and benefits.

Some exchanges feature just one or two companies. And consumers do not get the full details until they’ve provided The Government with all their personal data. Otherwise, they just get a brief overview and the costs.

It will be tough to repeal and replace Ocare. Any legislation will have to incorporate many of the popular ideas, such as not being able to be dropped because a person gets sick. And the plan will have to create a slow walk over at least several years where people are moved from the government option plans to other plans, without massive economic disruptions…or not, consider the massive market and consumer disruptions caused by Ocare, such as the 6+ million who lost their plans, with potentially tens of millions more coming in 2014 to early 2015.

But, nothing can truly happen unless the Republicans win the White House in 2016, and have control of the Senate and House. However, if a Republican does win the White House, he or she has quite a bit of power to change a lot of Obamacare, regardless of Congressional control. The ACA gives the heads of multiple Executive Branch agencies enormous latitude to create rules, particularly the head of HHS. The contraception/sterilization/abortifacient “mandate”? It could be whacked with the stroke of a pen, because it is a rule. The definition of part time could be changed. A good chunk of the tax rules can be deep-sixed. Calorie counts on vending machines and menus? Other insurance requirements? Gone. Change the rule on Congressional reimbursement for Exchange plans.

A Republican president can also rescind all the exemptions for all groups, companies, and unions who received them, who, strangely, were also big supporters of the law.

It won’t be easy, since nothing can truly be done till 2017. Do you know what else was hard? Sending men to the moon. Creating a nationwide interstate system. Building massive skyscrapers. Crossing the country in horse drawn wagons. Doing away with slavery. It takes American will and know how. And we can replace Obamacare with ideas and legislation that works for all Americans. There shouldn’t be losers.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Harry Reid To Allow Votes On Changes To Obamacare

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 5:38 pm

Hey, I thought that It’s. The. Law? CNN’s Dana Bash provides a fawning, softball interview with Dingy Harry (as written by Dan Merica)

In a nod to vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2014, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that he will allow the Senate to vote on some Democratic proposals to change Obamacare.

In an exclusive interview with CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash, Reid said he is meeting with Democrats who have suggestions about altering Obamacare and hopes to bring their changes to the Senate floor for a vote.

“If there are things we can do to improve the bill, we should do it,” Reid told Bash during an interview in his office. “There’s a group of senators, 2014ers we call them, who are coming up with different proposals. I’m meeting with them some this week and individually.”

Reid would not specify certain changes he would make, telling Bash that while there are “five or six really substantive proposals,” one suggestion is to “lump them all together.”

What this is really about is giving vulnerable Senate Democrats, up for re-election in November, political cover. They’ll propose changes to Obamacare which are meant to look good to those voters who can go either way, and they’ll vote for these changes, but the changes will most likely fail in the Senate. Reid will stick some poison pills into the proposed legislation to make sure Republicans do not vote “yes” on the changes. The Dem Senators can go back to their states and say “hey, I tried, but those pesky Republicans blocked the legislation”, without mentioning that most of the other Dems voted “nay” nor the poison pills.

Asked if he believed Republicans would go along with Democratic-proposed changes to Obamacare, Reid said, “Republicans vote against everything. Of course they would vote against it.”

Again, that would be on purpose. Reid will make 100% sure that Republicans will not vote in favor. The compliant lapdog media will forget to highlight the poison pill, highlight the GOP as intransigent, and depict these vulnerable Dems, such as Kay Hagan, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, and Mark Begich, as “moderates”.

Read: Harry Reid To Allow Votes On Changes To Obamacare »

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil moo cow released horrid greenhouse gases causing terrible snow storms, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Right Wing News, with a post on stopping Boehner’s amnesty plan.

Read: If All You See… »

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Anonymous Republican Sees Racism In Immigration Opposition

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 11:14 am

Throwing out the “R” word is simply a way to attempt to shut down debate

(Buzzfeed) For more than a year House Republican leaders have insisted the chamber would act on new immigration laws. And for more than a year, Republicans have done virtually nothing on the issue — despite intense pressure from activists, business groups, and the nation’s changing demographics.

As noted, most American’s find fixing immigration to be second to last on a list of priorities.

And although there are a variety of reasons for inaction, one Republican lawmaker recently offered a frank acknowledgement that for many House Republicans, there’s one issue at play that’s not often discussed: race.

“Part of it, I think — and I hate to say this, because these are my people — but I hate to say it, but it’s racial,” said the Southern Republican lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you go to town halls people say things like, ‘These people have different cultural customs than we do.’ And that’s code for race.”

If this Republican doesn’t have the cajones to say it on the record, then he or she is a race-baiting coward.

Is there some racism/bigotry in not wanting to give 11-20 million  illegal aliens amnesty? A tiny, tiny bit. Let’s not forget that Democrats encoded racism and bigotry in their Party platforms, along with massive opposition to legal immigrants. Nowadays, they just patronize people along lines of race, nationality, religion, age, and sex.

Republican/Conservative opposition to amnesty and a “pathway to citizenship” is based on the rule of law. Why in the hell should we reward bad, and even lawless, behavior? Why should we cater to people who want to be in America but do not want to integrate, and often dislike America? This is not just illegals, but legals, as well.

Dan Riehl takes on the comments of, surprise, Lindsay Graham and John McCain, who soft-peddle the raaaaacism meme.

Byron York discusses the so-called “immigration triggers”, which will be about as weak as you would expect. The Lonely Conservative goes on to note that there is no reason for Republicans to trust Obama on immigration.

I’ve previously noted my plan, which creates a situation, for one, that would make illegals not want to come to the USA. The GOP plan would really say to illegals “sure, come in, we’ll hook you up in the future”.

Read: Anonymous Republican Sees Racism In Immigration Opposition »

Posted in GOP, Idiot GOPer's, Illegal Immigration | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Whew! Finally A Way To Talk To Polar-Vortexed Friends

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 10:33 am

And Grist is there to tell us how the freaking cold weather is all part of “climate change”, as they crosspost from Sightline Daily

How to talk to your polar-vortexed friends

Brrrr, it’s freezing. So much for global warming, huh?

We heard this kind of thing a lot during the early January cold snap when everyone was talking about the polar vortex (a.k.a. the jet stream) — along with claims far more outlandish and sensationalized. And we’re hearing it again this week as temps dropped and snow blanketed the East Coast. (snip)

So how do we tactfully clear up the misunderstandings and advance a productive conversation about climate change?

This should be a hoot

Start with the basics: Pollution from coal, oil, and gas is throwing the climate out of whack. We’re seeing extremes like drought, floods, heat waves — and even cold. Arctic warming may weaken the jet stream, causing cold air to wander farther south.

At which point any Warmist should be asked whether they have made sure they use no oil, coal, or gas in their lives. Expect quite a bit of hemming and hawing and equivocations and deflections.

Focus on trends: A single event does not a pattern make. Think of climate as personality and weather as mood. Global average temperatures are rising. While it may be unseasonably cold in North America, it’s unusually mild in Alaska and blazing hot in Australia. And the last decade was the hottest on record. Over time, the climate’s personality is shifting and it’s already making the weather moodier.

If only Warmists would remember the same thing as they blame every storm on “climate change”.

Say why it matters and what we can do: As always, it’s important to find common ground by explaining why it matters (this is where you talk about our responsibility to our kids) and balancing the bad news with reason for hope (this is where you talk about solutions that are ready to go). We shouldn’t let naysayers, or politics, or oil and coal profits stand in our way.

If it’s “for the kids”, why won’t Warmists make their own lives “carbon neutral”? Why are all their solutions based on far left Progressive dogma?

Read: Whew! Finally A Way To Talk To Polar-Vortexed Friends »

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Obama’s Executive Action Power Play

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 8:12 am

During the 2014 SOTU Obama formalized his plan to essentially ignore the duly elected Legislative Branch and act through Executive Orders. This is very much what he has been doing for the entirety of his time in the presidential office, excepting for a few big pieces of legislation, like Obamacare and the failed Stimulus. He often side-stepped Congress even during his first two years, when both the Senate and House were controlled by Democrats.

(Politico) In an FDA office building in suburban Maryland, the bureaucrats gather over coffee to draft rules meant to squeeze the trans fat out of snack foods.

Four blocks from the White House, in an EPA conference room: more bureaucrats, more meetings, more drafting of rules, these aimed at forcing industrialists to spend billions cutting carbon to fend off global warming.

Congress? Who needs Congress?

Americans heard President Barack Obama declare this week that he intends to bypass the gridlocked Hill to get things done on his own. What they didn’t hear: just how far he’s actually pushing his executive authority.

An in-depth examination of the administration’s actions and plans, agency by agency, regulation by regulation, reveals an executive power play that’s broad and bold — and intensely ambitious. Far more than he let on in the State of the Union, the president has marshaled the tools of his office to advance policies, many unabashedly liberal, that push deep into everyday life for tens of millions of Americans.

That should give everyone, including Democrats/Obama supporters a case of the willys. What you have is a Chief Executive run amok, ignoring the Constitutional checks and balances. It should also concern people that Congress has given up so much of their duly constituted power to the Chief Executive. Consider Obamacare: despite being a 2000+ (legislatively) document, its specificity only went so far, and gave vast amounts of rule making authority to the President and his department heads, particularly the head of HHS. The contraception mandate? That came from rule making. It’s not in the text of the ACA.

He wants to change how power plants operate. And what we buy for lunch. How we travel to work. And how our kids learn math. How our gasoline is formulated. How we light our aquariums. (snip)

And it’s not Congress, but the executive branch, that’s on the verge of making Hershey’s reformulate its Reese’s Pieces. (Out, out, trans fat!) (snip)

Whether American guns can be sold abroad. How smokeless tobacco can be marketed. Which nonprofits can stage get-out-the-vote drives. What constitutes a single serving of potato chips.

And, perhaps, just how salty those chips should be.

So much of rule making is being driven by a micro-managing White House, rather than originating in the Federal agencies. These are rules that directly affect US citizens, and can affect our freedom, our choice, and our cost of living. These are the actions of a dictator-lite, someone who is drunk with power.

Not all of the executives actions are necessarily bad, nor intrusive. Many are done with the input of industry. But, then, if the White House comes calling, industry is going to tend to listen under duress.

To Republicans, however, he’s gone quite far enough.

They’ve called the president’s tactics abusive and arrogant, a brazen end run around the checks and balances built into the Constitution.

“This president’s use of executive power in areas where he has failed to build a necessary consensus for legislative action has been unprecedented,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “This disregard for the rule of law and lack of transparency sets a dangerous precedent.”

Part of the problem is Obama’s “leadership” style. In some big cases, he makes a speech, pushes a subject, then just expects Someone Else to do the work to get it passed in Congress. Yet, he often doesn’t bother reaching out to Congress, not even his own Party. He barely has talks with Republicans, mostly just immediately deeming them obstructionists and denigrating them. Why would he expect any cooperation when he acts in a hyper-partisan manner? He never learned the trick of reaching across the aisle. He barely had any comrades amongst Senate Democrats, much less any links to Congressional Republicans during his brief time in the US Senate.

Another part is that he is lazy. He doesn’t want to take the time to do the necessary work of the Office Of The President. Followed by that he seems to enjoy being a dictator-lite.

In his first term, his administration enacted 246 regulations classified as “economically significant,” meaning they carry an economic impact of more than $100 million. That’s considerably more than either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton enacted in either of their terms. The Obama administration has added another 54 economically significant regulations so far in his second term. Many are connected to the health care law or Dodd-Frank.

The Heritage Foundation slices the data another way. It looks at how many regulations are “prescriptive,” meaning they impose mandates on the private sector. Its tally: 131 “prescriptive” rules issued during Obama’s first term — and 31 added last year. By comparison, Bush issued 52 prescriptive rules during his first term, said Diane Katz, a research fellow at the foundation.

All these regulations and rules and executive actions affect real people, often in negative ways. Now that he has declared that he is unfettered during his last 3 years in office, expect more of this. Make sure to read the whole article at Politico. It’s an excellent bit of journalism by Stephanie Simon, the kind of article typically only done while a Republican is in office.

Read: Obama’s Executive Action Power Play »

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Koch Brothers To Harry Reid: Comments Are “Beneath The Office He Holds”

By William Teach January 31, 2014 – 7:42 am

Are other Republicans paying attention, particularly elected ones?

(Politico) The Koch brothers are firing back at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his broadside on their political activities, with a spokesman calling Reid’s comments “beneath the office he holds.”

After Reid on Thursday accused the billionaires Charles and David Koch of trying to “buy the country,” a top aide for the brothers said Reid’s remarks were simply the latest efforts by Democrats “to try to intimidate and silence their political opponents.”

“Senator Reid falsely accused the Kochs of trying to ‘buy the country’ because they have exercised their First Amendment rights of free speech and free association,” said Koch Companies Public Sector President Philip Ellender. “Sen. Reid’s divisive remarks were not only disrespectful and beneath the office he holds, they were indicative of what lengths he and his Democratic allies will go to eliminate and silence their political opposition.”

I’ve been saying and writing this about elected Democrats for a long time. Particularly Mr. Obama. It’s a shame that Congressional Republicans haven’t come out and said the same thing. Democrats are continuously attempting to shut down debate, and constantly demonizing and denigrating private citizens who hold a different political view. While this many not violate the text of the 1st Amendment (Congress shall pass no law…), it by golly violates the spirit.

Too often Democrats use loaded words and phrase, accusing opponents of sexism, racism, a “war on women”, Islamophobia, etc, to attempt to silence opponents. Reid has denigrated private citizens many times. He’s specifically targeted Rush Limbaugh on the Senate floor. Obama is always denigrating political opponents. This is all way below the the office they hold. Boehner, McConnell, Cruze, Paul, etc, should take to the House and Senate floors and take Democrats on over their blatant attacks on private citizens.

Nor will the Kock brothers be intimidated. The aid continued on to say that they will continue their exercise of their Free Speech rights to “advocate for their fundamental beliefs in individual liberty, limited government, and promotion of policies that help people improve their lives.”

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Bummer: “Climate Change” Making Vulnerable Penguins More Vulnerable

By William Teach January 30, 2014 – 3:58 pm

This is the Scary Story Of The Day. Lots of Leftist news outlets have jumped all over it as a way of scaring people about how bad living a modern lifestyle is, and penguins, and especially penguin chicks, are quite a bit more visually friendly than a polar bear hunting and killing seals in a spray of blood

(NY Times) Life has never been easy for just-hatched Magellanic penguins, but climate change is making it worse, according to a decades-long study of the largest breeding colony of the birds.

The chicks are already vulnerable to predation and starvation. Now, the study at Punta Tombo, Argentina, found that intense storms and warmer temperatures are increasingly taking a toll.

“Rainfall is killing a lot of penguins, and so is heat,” said P. Dee Boersma, a University of Washington scientist and lead author of the study. “And those are two new causes.”

What you’re supposed to take away from the Times’ article, and all the others, is that Mankind is increasingly killing the penguin chicks through our use of fossil fuels, hairspray, taking a shower longer than 2 minutes, using more than 2 sheets of toilet paper, having an ice maker in our fridge, refusing to keep our in-home heating at 60F or below, and not giving Government more and more of our hard earned money and more of our freedom.

The paper itself never Blames Mankind, yet one has to wonder about the constant inclusion of the non-scientific and totally political phrase “climate change”. The climate always changes. How did the chicks do when the atmosphere was much cooler, such as during the Little Ice Age and Dark Ages? Or during the last glacial? Or how about during the previous warm periods during the Holocene, many of which were much warmer than today? Know what happens? Life adapts. That’s a major component of Darwinism, which Warmists seem to be throwing overboard in the rush to use “climate change” for political purposes.

Furthermore, the paper mentions “climate models” going out to the end of the century. Yet, the vast majority of climate models have so far failed. But, hey, photos of cute penguin chicks, and dead penguin chicks, is designed to tug at the heartstrings and get them to “spread awareness”.

And there’s lots more at Watts Up With That? noting all the statistics and computer models and wishful thinking.

Read: Bummer: “Climate Change” Making Vulnerable Penguins More Vulnerable »

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Apparently, Now The Mountains Are Eating The Warming

By William Teach January 30, 2014 – 1:10 pm

Here’s yet another excuse as to why the Earth is refusing to warm in a statistically significant manner, causing the vast majority of climate models from the Believers to fail

(Climate Central) U.S. scientists have measured the rate at which mountains make the raw material for molehills – and found that if the climate is rainy enough, soil gets made at an astonishing speed. And in the course of this natural conversion of rock to fertile farmland and forest loam, carbon is naturally removed from the atmosphere.

Isaac Larsen of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues from California and New Zealand took a closer look at rates of weathering on the western slopes of the Southern Alps in New Zealand. They report in Science that, according to their measurements, rock is being transformed into soil more than twice as fast as previously believed. (snip)

The research matters because – once again – it throws new light on one of the dark regions of the climate machine: how carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, at what rate, and where it goes and where it all ends up.

So,let’s see

Climate Depot Analysis: ‘There have been at least seven separate explanations for the standstill in global warming’ – 1) Low Solar Activity; 2) Oceans Ate Warming; 3) Chinese Coal Use; 4) Montreal Protocol; 5) Readjusted past temps to claim ‘pause’ never existed 6) Volcanoes 7) Decline in Water Vapor

Now we add “rain falling on mountains”.

Read: Apparently, Now The Mountains Are Eating The Warming »

Posted in Global Warming, New Climate Deniers | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 30, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful plants taking carbon pollution out of the atmosphere, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Sister Toldjah, with a post wondering if Obamacare’s pro-choice record will doom Kay Hagan.

This post was meant for two days ago, but I guess I hit “save draft” instead of “schedule post”, so, here’s a second post from ST, on Obama being toxic to Dem Senators.

Read: If All You See… »

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