Sucks to be a Democrat nowadays. Not so trendy and cool anymore! I have a clear conscience though....douches!

I'm back!!!

"Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black terrible..."

"...a bat! It's an omen! I shall become a bat!"

Would that Batman were real, and Obama would piss him off.

If that happened the media would instantly turn on Batman, pointing out that Bruce Wayne was one of the evil one per centers. They would spend months trying to get into Wayne Corp's tax records. Allegations would be made that Alfred was an illegal immigrant.

In fact, the only good thing that might come out of that would be when those idiot bitches on "the view," decide the invite the Joker on to explain how Batman violated civil his rights.

Obamacare covers babies too, despite a 'Post' report
via Fox News
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By Dan Goldberg 3:49 p.m. Dec. 2, 2013 26 follow this reporter

On Sunday morning, the New York Post published the story of Cornelius Kelly, who was dismayed to learn that the New York State health insurance plans could cover his wife and three older children, but that he would have to buy a separate plan for his 18-month-old daughter.

Fox News ran with the story on Monday morning, and had Kelly on to retell the tale. Within hours, the story had spread.

The problem is, Kelly appears to have been given some bad information. Family plans in New York cover the whole family. No baby has to wait until its second birthday to join a family plan, as the article described Kelly being told.

“It was 100 percent false,” said Bill Schwarz, a spokesman for the state's Department of Health. “Of course, everyone is covered in the family policy.”


Kelly, who in 2011 ran and lost on the Conservative Party line for a seat on the Suffolk County legislature, said he was told three times by different state representatives that his toddler would require a separate insurance plan, and that his daughter would have to turn 2 before she could be covered under a family plan.

The mixup appears to have been rooted in Kelly's application, which originally listed only three of his children even though he has four. When the clerical error was discovered, it was corrected, Schwarz said.
...

Overwhelming the federal government with mountains of new socialist spending, that is calculated to overwhelm and collapse the system.
Gee, where have I heard that before?

...

Medicare Part D: Republican Budget-Busting
By BRUCE BARTLETT
DESCRIPTION

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform — Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”

Ten years ago this week, Republicans enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state since the creation of Medicare in 1965 by adding a huge unfunded program providing coverage for prescription drugs to the Medicare program.
Today’s Economist

Perspectives from expert contributors.

For years, responsible critics had said it was a system flaw that Medicare did not pay for prescription drugs along with hospitalization and doctors’ visits. By 2003, strong bipartisan support existed for expanding Medicare to include prescription drugs.

Republicans were keen to make sure that the legislation enacted was theirs, because the Democrats were certain to include cost containment for drugs in their legislation. It was widely believed that if the federal government used its buying power to pressure drug companies to cut drug prices, the cost of providing drugs to Medicare recipients would be substantially reduced.

But forcing down drug prices would diminish the drug companies’ profits and Republicans were adamantly opposed to that. Consequently, despite their oft-repeated opposition to new entitlement programs, they got behind the new drug benefit, now known as Medicare Part D, and made sure there was no cost-containment provision.

George W. Bush strongly supported this effort. Looking ahead to a close re-election in 2004, he thought a new government giveaway to the elderly would increase his vote share among this group. According to exit polls, those over age 65 gave Mr. Bush only 47 percent of their vote in 2000, with 51 percent going to Al Gore.

From the beginning, Republicans decided to forgo dedicated financing for Part D. Except for trivial premiums paid by recipients, the entire cost would fall on taxpayers. Moreover, Republicans refused to raise the Medicare tax or cut spending to cover Part D. Hence, the deficit increased by virtually the entire cost of the program.

Through 2012, Medicare Part D added $318 billion to the national debt (see “General Revenue” on Page 111 in the 2013 Medicare trustees report). That same report projects that Medicare Part D will add $852 billion to the debt over the next 10 years.

An important precondition to enactment of the prescription drug benefit was that it not cost more than $400 billion over the first 10 years, a figure established in the budget resolution. Any figure higher than that would have been subject to a “point of order” by a single member of the House or Senate that would probably have derailed the legislation.

Thus it was a huge problem for Republicans when the chief actuary of the Medicare system, Richard S. Foster, concluded during the summer of 2003 that Part D would actually cost $530 billion over its first 10 years. But this fact was hidden from Congress and not revealed until it was reported by The New York Times on Jan. 30, 2004 — almost two months after the bill was signed into law.

Mr. Foster later discussed in detail the pressure exerted on him by Bush administration political appointees, in particular, Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In a 2004 article for a professional journal, Mr. Foster said:

Congressional activity on the legislation that became the Medicare modernization act got underway in May of 2003. In June, the then-administrator of C.M.S. ordered me to cease responding directly to congressional requests for actuarial assistance. Instead, I was directed to provide the responses to him for his review, approval and ultimate disposition. Following several vigorous discussions, the administrator made it clear that this was a direct order and that if I failed to follow it, “the consequences of insubordination are extremely severe.” I understood this statement to mean that I would be fired if I provided the requested information to Congress.

The inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services later determined that Mr. Scully’s action was inappropriate, but by then Part D was in law and he had left government to become a lobbyist for drug companies.

The fact that Mr. Foster’s estimate and another from the Congressional Budget Office were well above the actual cost of Medicare Part D over the first 10 years is irrelevant. The point is that the legislation was thought to cost $400 billion in 2003. An estimate of $530 billion from the Medicare actuary would have killed the legislation or possibly forced Republicans to accept cost-containment measures opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

But that is not the end of Republican manipulation to get the prescription drug giveaway enacted. When the legislation came up for a final vote in the House of Representatives at 3 a.m. on Nov. 22, 2003, it failed after a standard 15-minute vote, with 194 for and 209 against.

Rather than accept defeat, Republican leaders simply kept the vote open while they twisted arms to get opponents to switch their votes. By 4 a.m., the legislation was still losing, 216 yeas to 218 nays, according to an excellent report in The Hill. Finally, at 5:52 a.m., the vote closed, with Republicans eking out a 220-to-215 victory.

The record indicates that the following Republicans switched their votes from nay to yea: Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, Trent Franks of Arizona, C.L. Otter of Idaho and Calvin Dooley of California. Two Democrats, Jim Marshall and David Scott, both of Georgia, also switched from nay to yea (see Page H12296 in The Congressional Record).

The record also shows that such “deficit hawks” as the current House speaker, John Boehner of Ohio; the current House majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia; and the current House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, voted for Medicare Part D all the way. Although out of Congress, the former speaker, Newt Gingrich, wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 20, 2003, urging all Republicans to vote yes.

Tom DeLay of Texas, then House majority leader, was later criticized by the House ethics committee for bringing undue pressure on Representative Nick Smith of Michigan to switch his vote, which he did not. Mr. DeLay later told a conservative news service that those who voted against Medicare Part D took “the easy way out.”

Three days later, the Senate joined the House in supporting the legislation, which passed by a vote of 54 to 44, with 42 Republicans voting yea and 9 nay. Among those voting yea were such staunch conservatives as Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

When Senator Hatch was later asked why Republicans did not provide Medicare Part D with proper financing, he said, “We didn’t have the votes to pay for it.”

But at least President Bush achieved his goal. According to exit polls, he increased his share of the over-65 vote to 52 percent in 2004.

By that do you mean the Soviet genocide of Ukranians in the 1930's?

I don't think the Ukranians had much choice in the matter. And the whole world knew it was happening, widely reported, and did nothing to stop it. Just like Czechoslavokia in the same period.

Correction: There is an organized effort BY OBAMA to lie and intimidate others !

The evidence is overwhelming. The Obama secret police are out in force, to slander all opposition, and otherwise intimidate them into silence.

And the beauty is, despite the Obama smear machine, opposition --both spontaneous grassroots opposition, as well as separate organized GOP opposition-- is increasing.
It is having effect, *NOT* because it's a lie, but precisely because the opposition to Obama is true and legitimate in its concerns.

Obama is the one who is lying, who says he isn't trying to destroy private heathcare. When in fact he said "If I had my choice, I'd prefer to set up a single payer system." [i.e., socialized medicine]
And that while he is allowing private healthcare to remain in existence, he anticipates that his state-run healthcare system will take "ten, fifteen, maybe 20 years" to snap the spine of private healthcare and private health insurance, and that advocates of a completely state-run system should just "be patient".
In light of these comments, straight from Obama's mouth and videotaped, readily available on Youtube, who is the liar, M E M ?

So when Bush, Boehner, & Cantor expanded medicare and didn't pay for it (or actually anything), this was ok how? Is there any standard besides republican=good, democrat=bad?

So you saw Bush, Cantor & Boehner working Cloward-Piven move and just didn't say it?

Labor union officials say Obama betrayed them in health-care rollout: Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the Affordable Care Act has subjected union health plans to new taxes and mandates while not allowing them to share in the subsidies that have gone to private insurance companies competing on the newly created exchanges.

Yeah, a week later the Obama propaganda machine is still trying to contain the damage from that CBO report.

It allows somebody to choose to maybe retire early or work less hours if they want to.

Note I only described what it actually did and you labelled it as a good thing. I would agree considering there's plenty of people unemployed and wanting those jobs.

www.nationalreview.com

ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber said that lack of transparency was a major part of getting ObamaCare passed, and that it was written in such a way as to take advantage of "the stupidity of the American voter."

Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during ObamaCare’s design, also made clear during a panel quietly captured on video that the individual mandate, which was only upheld by the Supreme Court because it was a tax, was not actually a tax.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

[The video was from an Oct. 17, 2013 event hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.]

The larger question is why Obama is so able to lie unchallenged, rather than why Joe Wilson called him on it.
The media have abdicated their responsibility to expose the truth.

But Obama boldly lies on national television, saying that he didn't plan to include healthcare coverage for illegals, despite that he touted numbers of 47 million uninsured (a number that could not be reached without including illegals).
AFTER Obama was exposed for trying to slip through coverage for illegals. And after his speech last night before both houses of Congress, Obama and his people --without explanation-- suddenly revised their numbers nationally of "Uninsured Americans" down to 30 million. (i.e., the actual number of uninsured, after subtracting illegals from the equation).

Ann Coulter also pointed out today that Republicans had pushed to ban public healthcare funds being amended to include illegals, and Democrats rejected it. Clearly leaving the door open, if the bill is passed in any form.

So... exposure of Obama's lie would be far less without Wilson's "uncivility".

I think a civil servant's job is to tell the American people the truth. In this example, Joe Wilson did that, by giving high exposure to Obama's lie.