Obama throws Jonathan Gruber under the bus in 2014 after stealing liberally from his ideas in 2006

Twitchy is all over it, with video of Obama proudly naming Jon Gruber as one of the academics from whom he has "stolen ideas liberally". Jon Gruber is now just "some adviser who never worked on our staff".

J. Bradford DeLong says Jonathan Gruber is a pioneering intellectual and empiricist

UC Berkeley Professor DeLong served under Summers at Treasury

Seen here:

"[P]eople like ... Jon Gruber ... are not ideologues. They are not only at the top of the profession. These are pioneers in the fields of public finance and health services research who in many ways provided the intellectual groundwork and the empirical research on which current health policy debate is based."

Jonathan Gruber was paid to develop RomneyCare in Massachusetts!

#ilovedarrenwilson

There's the poverty level, and then there's "the working poor": United Way releases ALICE data

Key to ALICE calculations is assessing when more than a third of income goes to rent/housing, which usually happens when a good job goes away and is replaced by a lower-paying one, making the mortgage or the rent suddenly unaffordable. Rents have risen and become less affordable at the same time as the housing market has recovered from the 2011 lows. In the summer it was reported here that 52% of Americans have had trouble in the last three years covering either the rent or the mortgage. 

The Florida data is discussed here, where fully 45% of the households are in rough shape:

While 15 percent of Florida households are below the poverty level, another 30 percent are financially insecure — a figure that also applies to Sarasota and Manatee counties — based on a new measurement developed by the United Way. ... Florida's large number of financially fragile households is rooted in a number of economic trends, including housing affordability and other cost-of-living concerns. But the main driver is the dearth of middle-class jobs.

The Connecticut data is discussed here, where 35% of the households are struggling:

In Connecticut, the new report said, 10 percent of all households fall under the poverty level, and 25 percent are between the poverty level and the ALICE [asset-limited, income-constrained, employed] threshold. ... Similar ALICE reports have been done in a limited number of other states by their United Way organizations. Northern New Jersey was the first to shine a light on the ALICE population, and this year, for the first time, Connecticut, California, Florida, Indiana and Michigan United Ways have commissioned their own studies. Connecticut has the lowest proportion of residents below the federal poverty level and the lowest combined total in the ALICE category and below the poverty line of any of the states.

How to kneel before your rulers

h/t Theo

Not as sick as I am

Jonathan Gruber exposed in a sixth video, touting how he deliberately designed ObamaCare to mislead

Jake Tapper for CNN here:

In previously posted but only recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an "exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter," taking advantage of voters' "stupidity" to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.

The issue at hand in this sixth video is known as the "Cadillac tax," which was represented as a tax on employers' expensive health insurance plans. While employers do not currently have to pay taxes on health insurance plans they provide employees, starting in 2018, companies that provide health insurance that costs more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family will have to pay a 40 percent tax. ...

"It turns out politically it's really hard to get rid of," Gruber said. "And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it's a tax on people who hold those insurance plans." ...

The second way was have the tax kick in "late, starting in 2018. But by starting it late, we were able to tie the cap for Cadillac Tax to CPI, not medical inflation," Gruber said. CPI is the consumer price index, which is lower than medical inflation.

Gruber explains that by drafting the bill this way, they were able to pass something that would initially only impact some employer plans though it would eventually hit almost every employer plan. And by that time, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the money that repealing the tax will take from the treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.

Republican Senator-elect Cory Gardner of Colorado is a total moron

"I support immigration reform, making sure that we start where American people want to it start, border security. Build a strong smart guest worker program because that has to be part and parcel of border security. But to simply say no, I believe is unacceptable. Just to say no to everything is unacceptable. That's the message that American people sent on Tuesday night."

-- quoted here

Reminds me of the now-defunct Senator Scott Brown, lately of Massachusetts and not-so-lately of New Hampshire, who also said No to the Republican leadership shortly after taking Senator Ted Kennedy's seat in the US Senate. That worked out great, didn't it, Senator Elizabeth Warren?

Hm. Just what is it that it is acceptable to say No to, Mr. Gardner?

"You shall have no other gods before me?"

"You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth?"

"You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name?"

"You shall not murder?"

"You shall not commit adultery?"

"You shall not steal?"

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor?"

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house?"

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor?"

Liberals have been sick for 100 years

Jonathan Gruber has made millions off ObamaCare, from HHS and the states, while mocking the people for their stupidity

WaPo here.

Evidently the American people are so poor under Obama that . . .

. . . they can't even pay attention.

Look who's stupid now: Neither Rush Limbaugh nor his caller remember the chronology and politics of ObamaCare

It's been only four years and already the basic facts are forgotten.

The Supreme Court didn't even take the ObamaCare case until a year after the 2010 elections, in November of 2011, and ruled the mandate a constitutional tax on June 28, 2012. The Court had simply nothing to do with the 2010 landslide victory of the Republicans, but neither Rush's caller nor Rush remember that.

From today's transcript here:

CALLER:  Yes, Rush.  Thank you so much for taking my call.  I really appreciate it, and if you don't mind me taking the liberty, I'd like to give a shout out to James Marshall Timberlake, he's my first grandson born November 2nd.  But I thank you.  The reason I called is that I believe there's an American who has been vilified who really is a hero concerning Obamacare, and that is Chief Justice John Roberts.  Had he done what all of us expected him to do to find it unconstitutional, you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2010; you would not have had the Republican landslide in 2014; you would not be talking about Jonathan Gruber today. ...

RUSH:  I want to know where it started that the way we win is to have liberalism implemented so that everybody can learn how rotten it is.  When did that start?  "John Roberts did a great thing by letting this thing be proclaimed constitutional.  That way we've exposed these people for who they really are."  We didn't need this!  If Roberts had found this thing unconstitutional the 2010 elections would have been the same because Obama would have stayed the same.  He would have found a way to get this done some other way.  He wouldn't have just taken his chips and gone home and cried about it.

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Add two to Jonathan Gruber's pile of stupid American voters.

Rush Limbaugh keeps trying to expunge Heritage Foundation's guilt for ObamaCare mandate

In the first hour today, after which the first caller of the day almost hit the third rail when he pointed out that Jonathan Gruber may have his "stupid voters" but Rush Limbaugh has his "low information voters".

Nevermind the two leading Republican candidates for president in October 2011 agreed they got the idea from Heritage (transcript here).

ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.

GINGRICH: That’s not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.

GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.

ROMNEY: And you never supported them?

GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I’m just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn’t true.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?

GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.

ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?

ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That’s what I’m saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.

GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.

ROMNEY: OK.

So far ObamaCare's Jonathan Gruber from MIT has called us stupid "off the cuff" THREE TIMES, but you forget he wrote the (comic) book

From the story here revealing there are now at least three episodes of Jonathan Gruber defending work-arounds to hide the truth from the easily gulled masses, meaning his opinion of the people is anything but "off the cuff":

After the first tape surfaced -- prompting Republican outrage -- Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret. On Tuesday, he said: "I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments."

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As I recall, not a single Republican in either chamber in 2010 was stupid enough to vote for ObamaCare, but every Democrat was.

Nevertheless liberal condescension was palpable from the beginning, and Gruber actually memorialized it with his comic book about ObamaCare early in 2012. The American people reelected Obama anyway, which must in Gruber's mind vindicate his low estimation of the people's intelligence to this day.

Well . . .

You were warned.

Alibrabra: Miss Big Tits is going to cost you a lot more than that other chick

Seen here:

Alibaba came across a curious trend: women who bought larger bra sizes also tended to spend more . . .. Dividing intimate-apparel shoppers into four categories of spending power, analysts at the e-commerce giant found that 65% of women of cup size B fell into the “low” spend category, while those of a size C or higher mostly fit into the “middle” or higher group.

The problem is that the long-term eventually shows up

Seen here.

Chicoms call Obamao (conveniently absent on Veterans' Day) an "idler"

Reported here:

"We made this meeting so luxurious, with singing and dancing, but see Obama, stepping out of his car chewing gum like an idler," wrote Yin Hong, a professor of journalism at Beijing's Tsinghua University, on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo micro-blog service. Twitter, like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, is banned in China, whose censors fear such services could aid political protest.

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. . . idler or bungler or both he is willing . . .

Cesium 134 has made it to within 100 miles of Eureka, California

Reported here:

The group found traces of cesium-134, a radioactive element released by the [Fukushima] power plant [in 2011], 100 miles off the coast of Eureka, California. The amount of radioactive chemicals in the water is still below levels that are harmful to humans and is 1,000 times below limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution predicts contaminant levels could increase over the next two to three years.

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Expect hysterical warnings from the nothinkums.

Bloomberg puts 6 million aged 25-54 still missing in employment action

Here:

So far, the faster pace of job creation hasn't coaxed enough people back into the labor force. As of October, the seasonally unadjusted participation rate for people age 25 to 54 stood at 81.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier but about 6 million people below the 10-year pre-recession average of 83.5 percent.