Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this website!

Representative Lamar Smith (TX-21), here:

"Given the distressing testimony we heard at the Science Committee’s hearing about Healthcare.gov, there is only one reasonable course of action. Mr. President, take down this website."

Ritholtz doing The Mussolini

5 Million Get Insurance Canceled, Obama Claims Over 100 Million Sign-Ups In First Month!

The red diaper doper baby in chief strikes again, in a conference call to supporters, quoted here:

Boasting of his administration's skill in encouraging taxpayers to buy health insurance policies through public marketplaces, he claimed that 'in the first month alone, we've seen more than 100 million Americans already successfully enroll in the new insurance plans.' ...

It's likely Obama meant to initially take credit for 100,000 success stories, rather than 100 million. But his mangling of the statistics put him off-track by a factor of 1,000.

And even the smaller number relies on a flexible definition of what counts, and what doesn't, as an Obamacare subscriber.

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Off by a factor of 1,000, which pretty much sums up everything about the last 5 years.

This is what you get when you put the son of Cheech and Chong in charge of the country. You know, intercontinental railroads, military corpse-men and three proud words ("made in the USA"). 

Justin Amash Isn't A Conservative, Just An Ambitious Climber

People keep calling Rep. Justin Amash, Republican (MI-3), a conservative, but he isn't. What he mostly is is ambitious, like most politicians, despite what his own campaign website continues to say.

Conservatism is a tool in the hands of this tool peddler's son, which he has used to advance his career in elections but has set aside when it comes to votes on say abortion, energy and the budget where he has made the good the enemy of the perfect. This is surprising from someone who claims to be a moderate.

By his own admission to George Will last April, when the prospect of throwing his hat in the ring to vie for the seat of retiring Democrat Senator Carl Levin was still tantalizingly real, Justin Amash demonstrated that his conservatism is merely part of his calculated "mix of positions", not the center of who he is:

“Tell me how a Democrat is going to attack me on the social issues.” Republicans, however, might take up that task. Nevertheless, he thinks that he could win a Republican primary and that “my mix of positions is best for winning the general.”

“Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

Republicans take note.

Justin Amash doesn't moderate his positions for the sake of Republican votes, but for the sake of Democrat ones. But God help you if your positions as a Republican don't toe his libertarian line, then he won't budge an inch.

A clearer picture of the practical meaning of libertarianism you will hardly find: They are Democrats in disguise.

"The only way ObamaCare pain stops for Democrats is if they repeal it."

So says John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics, just now on the Larry Kudlow Radio Show.

The NY Sun Reminds Yellen Congress Regulates The Value Of Money, Not The Fed

The wimps in the Senate are rolled yet again, but The Sun shineth, here:

What needs to be confronted is the scandal of Federal Reserve independence. Where in the Constitution does it say that monetary policy is supposed — or permitted — to be independent of politics? If the Founders of America had wanted the monetary power to be given to a body independent of politics, they could have given it to the Army or the Navy or the Supreme Court. But they sat down in Philadelphia and gave the power to “coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin” to, in the Congress, the single most political institution in the entire constitutional system.

Vanguard's VTSMX Posts Record High Of 45.46 Yesterday, The 44th New High In 2013

This fund, Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index, has posted new all time highs in every month this year save June: one in January, six in February, six in March, three in April, NINE in May, six in July, two in August, two in September and six in October. They really bought in May and went away, but only for a month.

Yesterday's new high is the third in November.

Students of  log-periodic bubbles as described by Didier Sornette are paying close attention.

"Most Investors Will Hold All The Way Down"

John Hussman, here, last Tuesday:

'While we can make our case on the basis of fact, theory, data, history, and sometimes just basic arithmetic, what we can’t do – and haven’t done well – is to disabuse perceptions. Beliefs are what they are, and are only as malleable as the minds that hold them. Like the nearly religious belief in the technology bubble, the dot-com boom, the housing bubble, and countless other bubbles across history, people are going to believe what they believe here until reality catches up in the most unpleasant way. The resilience of the market late in a bubble is part of the reason investors keep holding and hoping all the way down. In this market cycle, as in all market cycles, few investors will be able to unload their holdings to the last of the greater fools just after the market’s peak. Instead, most investors will hold all the way down, because even the initial decline will provoke the question “how much lower could it go?” It has always been that way.'

"The Harrisburg Patriot and Union" Newspaper Was Right The First Time About The Gettysburg Addresses

Stories here and here:

"But the Secretary of State is a man of note. He it was who first fulminated the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict; and on the battle field and burial ground of Gettysburg he did not hesitate to re-open the bleeding wound, and proclaim anew the fearful doctrine that we are fighting all these bloody  battles, which have drenched our land in gore, to upset the Constitution, emancipate the negro and bind the white man in the chains of despotism."

-- Tuesday November 24, 1863

CHRONICLES' Roman Catholic Tom Fleming Goes All-In For Obedience To The Tyranny

When you hitch your wagon to the grandmothers of Bolshevism, you always end up in the ditch:

Not content with telling wives to obey husbands, slave to obey masters, subjects to obey the rulers, Paul makes obedience a general rule: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.  For there is no power but of God: the powers that are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive unto themselves damnation."  So much for the right of revolution, civil disobedience, and, I might add, the myth of the Underground Railroad. ... In everyday political terms, then, we have to perform our duties as subjects or citizens.  "Render therefore to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; [TAX RESISTERS NEED NOT APPLY], custom to whom custom [SORRY, PAUL IS NO FREE-TRADER], fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.  By the way, the word for honor is good old Greek word time, that implies that different men have a worth or price that must be paid in terms of respect.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

None of that good ole' Protestant "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" stuff for Tom Fleming, no siree.

It's nice to see that after all these years our disagreements about politics always end up being theological at their root.

Conservatives take note. The Roman Catholics now in control of most of the conservative movement are the reason America grows less and less free than it used to be. They will do nothing but continue to bow, but patriots will stand with the father of their country and refuse to kneel. 

Insurance Canceled By ObamaCare? Send A Copy Of The Letter To MyCancellation.com.

Hundreds already have.

Codepink Rips Drone War Architect Jeh Johnson, New Head Of Homeland Security

Story here.

ObamaCare: Gun To The Head Charity Designed To Shrink The Middle Class

The income redistributionist m/o of ObamaCare, which will execute the middle class, not the upper class, dawns on a New York Times op-ed writer, here, from which this excerpt about how she lost her plan, got a much more restrictive one in its place, and had to pay an extra $5,400 for it:

“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem. I vented about the call and wrote that the president should be protecting the middle class, not making our lives substantially harder. For extra sympathy, I may have thrown in the fact that I’m a single mom. (O.K., I did.) ...

[President Obama] keeps apologizing while maintaining that it’s for the good of the country, a vast improvement “over all.”

And the “over all” might agree. But the self-employed middle class is being sacrificed at the altar of politically correct rhetoric, with nobody helping to ensure our health, fiscal or otherwise, because it’s trendy to cheer for the underdog. Embracing the noble cause is all very well — as long as yours isn’t the “fortunate” family that loses its access to comprehensive, affordable health care while the rest of the nation gets it.

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When it comes to spreading the wealth around, they mean the middle class' wealth, not the wealth of the rich.

Obama Job Approval At Real Clear Politics Hits A New Low Today

The previous low, shown on the graph, was 42.1. Today Obama falls to 42.0 in Real Clear Politic's composite data.

Whitehouse.gov still lies tonight about keeping your health insurance

You didn't build that, Obama did.

Obama Built That 2.0

Liars gonna lie

"Obama denies he made a promise that was videotaped two dozen times."

Feckless Obama Does Nothing About The Now 5.75 Year Long Employment Recession

Unemployment has ticked up to 7.3% in October as another 720,000 people bailed out of the labor force. 

An astounding 91.5 million could be in the labor force but are not. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, over 12 million people have left it, 11.7 million of which left it AFTER the recession ended in June 2009. 

You have to go back to 1979 to get a labor force participation rate as low as 62.9 like we have today. At 58.3 the civilian employment population ratio was last this bad back in 1983.

Job growth increased again to average 190,000 added per month in the last year as up-revisions to previous monthly reports were taken into account. At this rate it would take over five years to put everyone who left the labor force back into it, assuming you didn't also have to accommodate all the new entrees into the labor force from population growth. Many of those who left will simply never re-enter because they will reach retirement eligibility before they'll find a job.

The broadest measure of unemployment included 11.3 million out of work, 8.1 million working part-time for economic reasons (peak was in excess of 9.2 million), and 2.3 million marginally attached to the workforce, or 21.7 million total.

CalculatedRiskBlog's famous graph of this longest and deepest employment recession in the post-war now extends the streak to 69 months, or 5.75 years.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be found here.

GDP For Q3 2013 At 2.8% Annualized In The First Estimate, Released Today

click to enlarge

The report in pdf from the Bureau of Economic Analysis may be found here.

The average report of GDP in 2013 now stands at 2.13% (1.1%, 2.5% and 2.8%), while growth measured in the 3rd quarter on an annualized basis is running at 2.8%.

Assuming GDP in the third and fourth quarters finishes sufficiently strongly enough to lift the year to a growth rate of 2.8% overall when next year's final estimate of GDP for Q4 2013 is complete, Obama's five year record will be an average report of 1.4%, still the lowest in the post-war behind George W. Bush's 2.1%.

But that assumption may be too rosy.

The GDP range for 2013 projected by the Federal Reserve in its June report is just 2.3% to 2.6%, so it remains very possible that 2013 GDP will finish the year at something less than the current 2.8%, especially as the ObamaCare Tax, in the form of higher health insurance premiums and other taxes, whacks the only people with the spending money in this economy.

Kathleen Sebelius Does The Mussolini During Senate Testimony

Bill Kristol Says Cuccinelli Ran Better In Virginia Than Romney

This morning on the Laura Ingraham Show.

He's right.

Romney lost to Obama in Virginia by 149,000 votes, less than 4% of the total cast, with just 60,000 votes going to third party candidates, not enough to have made a difference.

But Cuccinelli lost to the Democrat in Virginia by 55,000 votes, only 2.5% of the total cast, with 146,000 votes going to the Libertarian, more than enough to have made the difference.

As a social and economic conservative, Cuccinelli more vividly drew the distinction between himself and liberalism's fellow travelers, including those in the Republican Establishment who turned their backs on Cuccinelli after September, as did also Chris Christie, who couldn't find the time to stump for a fellow Republican in a close race in a nearby state.

But there Christie was, protesting his conservatism on election day, here:

The GOP governor, who's seriously considering a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, also distanced himself from his moderate label.

"I'm a conservative," Christie said. "I've governed as a conservative in this state, and I think that's led to some people disagreeing with me in our state, because it's generally a left-of-center, blue state."

Cuccinelli was the real deal. Chris Christie is not. 

Libertarians Spoil Another One For Republicans In Virginia Gubernatorial Race

click to enlarge

When are Republicans going to wake up and get rid of their fifth column?

The 5.5% spread between the Democrat and the Republican represents just 55,000 votes and only 38% of the total garnered by the Libertarian whom Ron Paul basically denounced at the last minute.

But if Ron Paul really meant it, wouldn't he have said so a little earlier?

More here.

What If Obama's Insurance Policy Got Canceled?

Hm.

Vanguard's VTSMX Now The World's Biggest Mutual Fund, Edging Out PIMCO Total Return

From the story here:

For the year, the Pimco Total Return Fund has had outflows of about $33.2 billion. The fund, which is managed by Pimco co-founder and co-chief investment officer Bill Gross, is still the world's largest bond fund [at $248 billion], Morningstar said.

The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index now holds the title of world's largest mutual fund with $251.1 billion, according to Morningstar.

Federal Reserve GDP Projections For 2013 From June 2011, 2012, 2013

In June 2011 the Fed's forecast for 2013 GDP was for between 3.5% and 4.2%.

In June 2012 the forecast was reduced to between  2.2% and 2.8%.

And in June 2013 the forecast has narrowed to between 2.3% and 2.6%.

Quarters one and two in 2013 have reported annualized GDP at 1.1% and 2.5% respectively.

Quarter three reports on Thursday for the first time, delayed from late October due to the government shutdown.

The comprehensive revision of GDP going back decades which came out this last summer reported average annual real GDP at 3.3% between 1929 and 2012, and at 3.4% from 1959 to 2002.

Current GDP of 2.5% is therefore running about 24% below the long term trend.

Justin Amash Is Consistently Pro-Life . . . Except For The First Three Days Of It

When Amash was asked about the appropriate time frame limit [to] abortion rights, he said, “I think that where we have it now is not correct. It should be closer to the point of conception, and whether it’s instantly or the first three days, I think that’s more sensible. That’s what I think would be correct.” (March 2013, here)

To Representative Justin Amash, Abortion Is OK Only When You're Just A Little Bit Pregnant

Sometimes you can't hide it when you gotta go.

Seen here (source here):

When Amash was asked about the appropriate time frame limit [to] abortion rights, he said, “I think that where we have it now is not correct. It should be closer to the point of conception, and whether it’s instantly or the first three days, I think that’s more sensible. That’s what I think would be correct.”

So much for libertarian consistency, the hobgoblin of little minds.

Like most libertarians, the schizophrenia gives way either as you mature, or when you're thinking about running for Senate in a liberal state, revealing the beating heart of a liberal underneath.

The phenomenon works in reverse, too: John McCain ran as a conservative in Arizona to keep his Senate seat ("President Obama is on a left-wing crusade to bankrupt America"), and then promptly went right back to being the turd in the Republican punchbowl.

When We Said Both America And China Had Fascist Economies, It Didn't Make News Like Tom Easton Made Wednesday

2nd generation type 094 missile boats can now threaten US

OK, call us early (here and here).

Tom Easton, American Finance editor for The Economist, here:

... [H]e declared that he had recently moved to the U.S. from China, but “didn’t leave a state-run economy. ... Everyone talks about how all-pervasive the Chinese economy and government is inside of it,” he says. The Chinese government “directs capital, controls the banking system and the ‘highlands’ of important industries. I’m still in China when I came back to America.”

--------------------------------------------

The next war will be like the last war, a clash between iterations of socialism, but there won't be a more or less free market economy around afterwards, as there was last time, to pick up the pieces.

The Number Of Wage Earners Is In The 5th Year Of Depression, Still 1.95 Million Fewer In 2012 Than In 2007

The jobs depression is now 5.67 years in length.

The number of wage earners counted by the Social Security Administration reached a peak in 2007 at 155.57 million, and the long-awaited number for 2012 is just out here in the last couple of days: 153.63 million.

2012 marks the fifth consecutive year we have fallen under the 2007 record high for the number of employees earning income subject to Social Security taxation.

The 2012 figure is just under the 2006 figure of 153.85 million wage earners, so you might say things were closer to 2005 levels in 2012 than to 2006.

Bank Failure Wednesday

Bank of Jackson County, Graceville, Florida, is bank failure number 23 in 2013, costing the FDIC $5.1 million.

FDIC insured institutions now number 6,940.

Obama Lied About His Own Mother's Insurance History, So Why Be Surprised He's Lied To You?

Byron York, back in 2011, here:

Dunham unquestionably had health coverage. "Ann's compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment," [Janny] Scott writes. "Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month." ... the story Obama told, Scott writes, was "abbreviated" -- the abbreviation was to leave out the fact that Ann Dunham had health insurance that paid for her treatment. "Though he often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition," Scott writes, "it appears from her correspondence that she was only denied disability coverage."

Former Rep. Barney Frank's Favorite Guaranteed Benefit In Obamacare

Free mammograms, even for "men"!

The Anger Will Spread: 80 Million Won't Be Able To Keep Their Employer-Based Insurance, Either

The hubbub over the loss of health insurance coverage in the individual market, affecting some 13 million, will grow into quite a wail when 80 million additional people lose their employer-based healthcare plans, which is why Obama delayed the employer mandate, dummy. Better to let the country get used to the idea by screwing the few, the proud, the responsible, you know, the ranks where the Tea Party comes from, first. But the rest of you are going to get it in the shorts later, no question about it.

From Avik Roy at Forbes, here:

Obamacare’s disruption of the existing health insurance market—a disruption codified in law, and known to the administration—is only just beginning. And it’s far broader than recent media coverage has implied. ...

60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market [80 million of 156 million Americans] plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) [13 million of 25 million Americans] amounts to 93 million Americans.

President Obama’s famous promise that “you could keep your plan” was not some naïve error or accident. He, and his allies, knew that previous Democratic attempts at health reform had failed because Americans were happy with the coverage they had, and opposed efforts to change the existing system. ...

Obamacare forces insurers to offer services that most Americans don’t need, don’t want, and won’t use, for a higher price. 

You can keep your insurance, healthcare.gov hasn't crashed, and . . .

. . . blackwhite.

"The Mechanism That Ended The Crisis"

John Hussman, here:

Rather, the crisis ended – and in hindsight, ended precisely – on March 16, 2009, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board abandoned mark-to-market rules, in response to Congressional pressure by the House Committee on Financial Services on March 12, 2009. The decision by the FASB gave banks “substantial discretion” in the values that they assigned to assets. With that discretion, banks could use cash-flow models (“mark-to-model”) or other methods (“mark-to-unicorn”). ... The misattribution of cause and effect in 2009 created the Grand Superstition of our time – the belief that Federal Reserve policy was responsible for ending the financial crisis and sending the stock market higher. By 2010, this narrative was so fully accepted that the Fed’s announcement of further “quantitative easing” was met by equally great enthusiasm by investors.

The People Who Most Need ObamaCare

The people who most need ObamaCare are the designers of it, who will now be able to (and should) get their heads examined under it for making sure people who are almost 60 pay four times the cost of their old plans and get maternity coverage and pediatric dental care in the bargain.

So-Called Conservative Supporters Of Illegal Alien Amnesty To Meet Tonight In DC

Bloomberg has the story, here, naming the following so-called conservatives and right of center groups in attendance to launch a lobbying bomb on Washington for an illegal immigration amnesty bill from the Senate which is dead in the US House:

US Chamber of Commerce

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson

News Corp's Rupert Murdoch

Southern Baptist Convention

American Conservative Union

Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist.

You have met the enemy, and it ain't us.

NBC News Suddenly Discovers Obama Has Known For Three Years He's Been Lying

NBC isn't fooling anybody who's been paying attention to its long record of shilling for Obama, but now that he's safely in place for his second term what are people going to do about bad news for the president, impeach him? NBC has already moved on to 2016. 

For what it's worth, from the top:

[M]illions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” ...

[T]he administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.” 

--------------------------------------------

"Tea Party" never comes up in this story. That's who's being targeted in the individual market under ObamaCare, the responsibles who buy their own coverage. Just think of it as IRS intimidation, but in a different form.

Article The First, The Never-Adopted First Amendment, Sought To Increase Federal Representation Naturally

Your Congressman doesn't even know your name? Maybe there aren't enough of them, which is to say he or she represents too many people to represent you, so that we have representation without representation.

The first first amendment, Article I., sought to prevent this:

"After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred representatives, nor less than one representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than two hundred representatives, nor more than one representative for every fifty thousand persons."

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Ratified by many states but never adopted, the constitution ended up with different, open-ended language, which a later act of the Congress of the United States interfered with in the 1920s, fixing representation instead of letting it continue to grow with population:

"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand . . .."

On this language we should have 10,490 representatives, not a fixed 435 (one for every seven hundred twenty-three Thousand at present). But on the language of Article the First, we might have had only 6,294 representatives.

The anti-federalists, however, who insisted on a bill of rights, couldn't imagine such numbers to be at all adequate to represent the people, and some of them called for one for every fifteen Thousand, which would have meant an astounding 20,979 federal representatives today.

Contrast such levels of representation with actual total representation in state legislatures in the US today (as of March 2013): 5,411, which represents a ratio of one for every fifty-eight Thousand. Clearly state government representation today, taken overall, most clearly approximates the levels of representation called for by the un-adopted Article the First for federal representation.

That said, residents of New Hampshire, with 400 representatives, are the best represented in the nation, at a ratio of one for every 3,302!

And Californians are among the worst represented with just 80 representatives to the state legislature, a ratio of one for every 475,518.

Libertarian Freaks In Virginia Hate Cuccinelli's Social Conservatism, Funded By Former Cato Institute President

Tim Carney reports, here:

Purple PAC, a political action committee headed by Libertarian Ed Crane, former president of the Cato Institute, announced Oct. 25 it would spend $300,000 to back Sarvis. And many Beltway politicos with libertarian leanings are backing Sarvis and expressing disgust for Cuccinelli.

Why are libertarians working so hard against Cuccinelli, who is probably the most libertarian statewide official in Virginia in recent history?

I suspect identity politics plays a role.

I asked Sarvis why a libertarian should oppose Cuccinelli, and the first words out of his mouth were “social issues.” Crane’s only critique of Cuccinelli when announcing the $300,000 buy for Sarvis: “Ken Cuccinelli is a socially intolerant, hard-right conservative with little respect for civil liberties.”

Cuccinelli is undoubtedly conservative. He’s an observant Catholic with seven children and a home-schooling wife. He’s a hero to the pro-life cause and an opponent of gay marriage.

Healthcare.gov is down in Michigan tonight if you want to apply for coverage online

Looks like ObamaCare is still experiencing delays different from the ones the president has imposed on his own law.

Deb Saunders Helpfully Assembles The Blame-Republicans-For-ObamaCare Charges Made By Democrats

Here, concluding:

Now, I won't deny that two decades ago, some conservative think tank swell came up with the term "individual mandate" -- which allowed other wonks to try to pin the tail on the elephant. But if liberals have to fish for a 1989 Heritage Foundation policy paper that had no Republican support in 2008, 2009 or 2012 to establish Republican paternity for the Affordable Care Act, that tells you one thing: They think Obamacare won't work.

----------------------

That's right. If it works it's a Democrat idea.

Robert B. Reichhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-a Pretends ObamaCare Was Rammed Through On A Completely Partisan Vote In 2010 . . . By Republicans

Robert B. Reich pals around with conservative sell-out

In HuffPo, here, where he makes a great case for blaming Republicans for the idea of ObamaCare in the first place, but fails to mention the inconvenient truth that not a single Republican voted for it and that it was Democrats who rammed it down our throats on a completely partisan vote under the extreme circumstances of procedure in the Congress:

There's a deep irony to all this. Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway.

LA Times Floats ObamaCare Weasel Word Excuse: We Only Meant SOME Could Keep Their Insurance

Here:

Still, many are frustrated at being forced to give up the plans they have now. They frequently cite assurances given by Obama that Americans could hold on to their health insurance despite the massive overhaul.

"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it," said Deborah Cavallaro, a real estate agent in Westchester. "I'm infuriated because I was lied to."

Supporters of the healthcare law say Obama was referring to people who are insured through their employers or through government programs such as Medicare. Still, they acknowledge the confusion and anger from individual policyholders who are being forced to change.

-------------------------------------------------------

The fact is, the 40 million who have private insurance acquired either individually or through their own small businesses are being thrown under the bus first for political reasons. They are not an afterthought, but the key target.

To really understand why, however, one must realize that the oft-stated goal of providing health insurance through ObamaCare to benefit the 30 million uninsured is just a smokescreen, as if sacrificing the one group for the other roughly represents a fair trade. The reality is that ObamaCare is specifically designed to benefit women, a key fact about the law which shows its political meaning in the context of what the Democrats name the Republican war on women and doesn't get enough attention even among conservative opponents of the law.

Employer plans will have to conform to ObamaCare guidelines later, it is true. But since they represent a much larger constituency, Obama has unilaterally and unlawfully delayed key provisions of his own law which affect them in an attempt to phase in the draconian changes to health insurance slowly until after it's too late. The last thing Obama wanted as the poorly crafted law took effect was everyone up in arms at once. Better to boil the frogs slowly, and start with the most important opposition first, which is the Tea Party, which has been the most sensitive group to Obama-inspired federal interventions in American life, beginning with opposition to the mortgage forgiveness schemes in February 2009 which gave birth to the Tea Party and culminating in mobilization efforts to oppose health insurance reform schemes in the House and Senate late that same year. When ObamaCare became a fait accompli in March 2010, all the energy went in to retributive political action, which reached its crescendo with the history-making Republican take-over of the US House in November 2010.

Since then the effete who still constitute the majority in the Republican Party have done nothing to challenge the incremental imperial assaults of the president against the powers reserved to the Congress by the constitution. Looking back at them all now, one might even say that Obama's many transgressions against the separation of powers were all calculated to inure the people to the fact of them in order to smooth the way for more of the same when he needed it the most with respect to ObamaCare. Some older Republicans like Larry Kudlow, instinctively if not self-consciously, have recoiled from this, laughably calling for all provisions of ObamaCare to take effect as scheduled in the law, in the hope that the political consequences would be so profound that Republicans would win in 2014 and be able with large majorities to overturn a presidential veto of a law scrapping ObamaCare.

Seeing more acutely the threat to their very existence, however, the Tea Party has wanted the funds to ObamaCare cut off NOW. But neither camp has exerted enough influence among Republicans as a whole even as Obama methodically racked up that impressive record of tyrannical offenses against Congressional prerogatives, from the Libyan intervention without Congressional consultation to recess appointments when Congress wasn't in recess. In the face of all that the most contemptible members of the Republican establishment like David Frum instead have gone to war against these voices within their own party, in effect helping Democrats turn up the heat on the frog pot.

In political terms, ObamaCare is a key element in the larger class war being phased in first on the constituency which primarily makes up the Tea Party, the independent-minded traditionalist Americans who fend for themselves and support themselves without help from the nanny state or from a nanny employer, people who are more likely to start businesses, get married, and pay their own way and raise their own children. In a word, what has historically been the Republican base. All the rhetoric from Democrats over the period has been aimed at the these people by design, for a political reason, in order to freeze, personalize, and polarize them, painting them in the most horrific terms as the party of violence (January 2011 Giffords shooting), racism (March 2010 protests in DC), and terrorism (government shutdown in October 2013), among other things. As usual, the complete opposite of what they are, in keeping with what we used to call liberal projection syndrome and which still shows up in inaptly named government programs like the Affordable Care Act, which will not be affordable, will provide insurance but not care, and which was passed more as a partisan assault than a traditional act of Congress.

Health insurance reform under ObamaCare, by contrast, primarily benefits women as a class, whose health care costs are by nature higher and constitute the most obvious first inequality which shows up under health insurance. ObamaCare seeks to alienate women further from their natural condition by simply decreeing that this reality no longer exists. ObamaCare first and foremost puts their premiums on an equal footing with men's, craftily supplanting men as providers of health coverage to their wives through their employer plans and masking the costs women would otherwise have to absorb by themselves if they were paying for them. And then ObamaCare does much more, paying for their maternity care, and without coverage caps, their mammograms, their birth control and abortions, their lactation services and breast pumps, and letting baby mamas everywhere keep their kids on their plans until they reach the age of 26 (their kids reach 26, not the baby mamas). In effect ObamaCare seeks to solidify women as a natural Democrat Party constituency as dependent on the Democrats who provided it as the poor are who support them now because of massively expanded social welfare transfer payments.

If ever there was a public program designed to drive a stake through the heart of the traditional family, ObamaCare is it. That's why it is striking first at the people most likely in our society to take responsibility for themselves and where the idea of the traditional family is strongest. And to the extent that many within the Republican Party sympathize more with the transformational idealisms of female equality than with the realistic conceptions taught by history and nature explains better than anything why we are where we are.

The political party the Tea Party decided to support, unfortunately, hasn't proved itself worthy of them. There's still a little time left for Republicans to prove otherwise, but it is fast running out.

Average Hourly Earnings Up For Everyone 7% Since ObamaCare Passed

If ObamaCare has been cutting earnings for the workforce in sectors which have witnessed a trend toward part time work, it's not showing up overall. Average hourly earnings for all employees are up 7% since March 2010, when the bill was rammed down our throats in a completely partisan vote. The sectors impacted, like retail and fast food, simply aren't big enough to drag down the overall picture.

Average Weekly Hours For Everyone Up 1.5% Since ObamaCare Passed

If ObamaCare has been cutting hours for the workforce in sectors, it's not showing up overall. Average weekly hours for all employees are up 1.5% since March 2010, when the bill was rammed down our throats in a completely partisan vote. The sectors impacted, like retail and fast food, simply aren't big enough to drag down the overall picture.

Looks Like A Libertarian Is About To Spoil Another Race For The Republicans

In the Virginia race for governor the Libertarian's support is the margin of difference between Cuccinelli and McAuliffe.

Moochelle's 1985 Princeton Classmate An Executive At Firm Which Designed Failed Healthcare.gov

From the story here:

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

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Of four bids submitted, only the one from the firm of Moochelle's classmate was considered by the Obama regime.

Foreclosed New Jersey Homeowners Staying In Their Homes Rent-Free For YEARS!

From the story here:

"Its happening all over new jersey with Hudson & Cape May ranking the highest, 80% of people remaining in the home for years during foreclosure."

Kathleen Sebelius Should Forget About Resigning, She Should Be Fired: She Thinks She Doesn't Work For Us!

The arrogant bitch, quoted here:

“My goal is to actually get the website up and running,” she told reporters. “The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don’t work for and who do not want this program to work in the first place. I have had frequent conversations with the president and I have committed to him that my role is to get the program up and running and we will do just that.”

Obama, healthcare Liar In Chief in 2009: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are involuntarily losing their healthcare plans as we speak and being forced to sign up for ObamaCare on a website which doesn't work.

From the story here:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare’s requirements.

The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.

Insurance carrier Florida Blue sent out 300,000 cancellation notices, or 80 percent of the entire state’s individual coverage policies, Kaiser Health News reports. California’s Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans — half of its insurance plans in the state — while Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone.

The Obama Regime Shut Out Private Online Healthcare Brokers For Over 3 Years

The Obama regime shut out help from private online health insurance brokerage firms for over three years, and it wasn't until July 31 that it finally relented and entered into partnerships with private online health insurance brokerages like ehealthinsurance.com, which routinely handles online traffic in a range up to 20 million, to facilitate ObamaCare's online presence.

CNBC reported the breakthrough here and the story was widely disseminated at the time.

But USA Today here featured a story earlier that month which highlighted the frustration of such brokerages over the way the regime had shut them out until the very last minute, when it was already way too late:

So far, none of the government exchanges being run by the federal government, individual states, or federal-state partnerships has given ehealthinsurance.com and other for-profit Web markets the green light to enroll uninsured individuals under the Affordable Care Act's subsidized coverage scheme.

"I'm just totally mystified, puzzled, flummoxed as to why the administration isn't using somebody like me to help," said eHealth CEO Gary Lauer, whose company is a leading industry player among a dozen or more Web-based markets that have sought to partner with various government exchanges.

Lauer noted that he had been an enthusiastic supporter of the new health law championed by President Barack Obama. But the stone-walling, foot-dragging and other inexplicable hurdles that he says his company has faced in offering subsidized insurance under that law has made him increasingly skeptical of the plan. ...

But Lauer and others think the delay on allowing participation by Web marketplaces may be a canary-in-the-coalmine indication of overall problems with the exchanges being ready for business by October.

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No one in America should have been surprised to see the rollout of Healthcare.gov fail spectacularly like it did when it made its appearance at the beginning of this month.

Hypocrite Hillary Tells Heckler The Future Doesn't Include Yelling

Here, even though her past sure did, and even her very recent past.

2013:

"We have to be willing to come together as citizens to focus on the kind of future we want, which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking with one another," Clinton said in response to the heckler to huge applause from the audience.

2003: 

HILLARY 2003 (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, "WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!"

Early 2013:

What difference does it make?!

Doyle McManus Discovers That The Middle Class Is Becoming The Underclass

Here in the Los Angeles Times article "Poof Goes The Middle Class", in which the liberal Doyle McManus relies on a libertarian prognosis for the future where efficiency and economy is all:

. . . middle-class American jobs being eliminated by automation and outsourcing, downward pressure on wages for all but the most skilled, growing inequality between the wealthy and everyone else, and elected officials who don't seem capable of slowing those trends, let alone stopping them. … If people have decent low-cost housing, food and healthcare, they might even be happier in a middle-classless future, [libertarian economist Tyler Cowen] speculates.

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In other words, an impoverished, stratified society based on free trade which Marx welcomed because it would finally lead to the social revolution of the many have-nots against the few haves after eliminating the rung on the ladder between them, the middle class:

"Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative, whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities and renders the contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie more acute. In a word, the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense do I vote for Free Trade."

-- Karl Marx, 1847

Funny how contemporary libertarianism is completely oblivious to its role in this preparation for revolution and the impetus given to it under America's first Marxist president, while liberalism lies prostrate before it asking, New ideas, anyone?

Libertarians don't just spoil elections for Republicans in favor of Democrats, they ruin conservative republics on behalf of communism no less than liberals do.

Chinese Bad Bank Debt Write-Offs Explode 188% Year Over Year

From the story here:

China's five major banks have written off 22.1 billion yuan ($3.65 billion) of debt in the first six months of the year that couldn't be collected, compared to 7.65 billion yuan a year earlier, according to the news agency [Bloomberg]. The report added that the move is more than likely a cleaning-up process ahead of what may be a fresh wave of defaults in the world's second-largest economy.