Posts Tagged ‘ObamaCare’

LinkSwarm for October 30, 2015

Friday, October 30th, 2015

Right now Austin is enjoying our traditional “two weeks of flooding following three months of drought” fall. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • “In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him.”
  • Paul Ryan elected Speaker of the House. If Ryan decides to govern as an actual Republican, he could be a very effective Speaker…
  • The IRS has Stingray cell phone surveillance gear. Get ready for a whole new round of Tea Party audits…
  • Speaking of the IRS, the House of Representatives is justified in impeaching IRS chief John Koskinen.
  • At the most recent Republican Presidential debate, Sen. Marco Rubio said the H1-B visa program is badly in need of reform. One tiny problem: Sen. Rubio’s own H1-B bill doesn’t implement any of the reforms demanded by Presidential Candidate Rubio. “It does not require recruitment of American workers. It does not require employers to ‘pay more than you would pay someone else’…Rubio’s bill would provide Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his comrades ‘a huge increase in the supply of lower-cost foreign guest workers so they can undercut and replace American workers.'” Indeed, Rubio’s bill “would triple the number of H1-B foreign workers admitted.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Get ready for steep ObamaCare price hikes for 2016.
  • Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition is starting to come apart thanks to the refugee crisis.
  • Venezuela is selling gold to cover bond payments. (Hat tip: Commonsense and Wonder.)
  • Al-Shabaab Islamic militant group in Somalia pledge loyalty to the Islamic State.
  • The Islamic State schools ban: “math, music, philosophy, history, French and geography as incompatible with Islam.”
  • Not news: Journalist in Sweden gets stoned. News: The wrong kind of stoned.
  • Teacher’s hate Common Core. The only people that seem to love it are Washington bureaucrats and Jeb Bush…
  • Speaking of Jeb, He has not succeeded this year, and there is no particular reason to believe he will…Jeb just isn’t very good at this.”
  • “Even beyond the fact that Bush has spent almost a year and ended up among the statistical noise despite all of his organizational and financial advantages, this all but proved that he’s simply not a good enough candidate to run in the general election.”
  • Jeb Bush’s campaign also hasn’t knocked on any doors in Iowa.
  • Ben Carson’s campaign is working with other Republican Presidential campaigns to extract their debates from the liberal clutches of the MSM.”
  • How to fix the Republican debates: “First, cancel the rest of the debates. Instead, announce that the RNC will host the debates and pick the panel of questioners. Allow any news organization that wishes to broadcast it.”
  • A look at the Russian BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicle.
  • John Wiley Price trail delayed again.
  • Reminder: Most acts at SXSW don’t get paid.
  • Feminism is “a War Against Human Nature aimed at using the coercive power of government to bring about an androgynous ‘equality’ that ignores the actual differences between men and women. Feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilization as we know it — and feminists say so themselves.”
  • Salon’s pro-pedophile agenda:

  • How to stamp out Cultural Marxism in a single generation.
  • Flash is dying. Netcraft confirms it…
  • LinkSwarm for October 16, 2015

    Friday, October 16th, 2015

    Enjoy a complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, on me!

  • Kentucky ObamaCare exchange goes out of business, the fifth one to do so nationwide.
  • Or maybe the sixth, since Tennessee’s is pining for the fjords as well.
  • Why Hillary’s email scandal (still) matters: “Ignoring the fact that ordinary people are deciding that Hillary Clinton is an untrustworthy liar won’t actually make that issue go away for the Democrats.”
  • Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to work her special brand of magic at the DNC. “I’ve begun to deeply question whether she has the leadership skills to get us through the election. This is not just about how many debates we have. This is one of a series of long-running events in which the chair has not shown the political judgment that is needed.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Bernie Sanders supporters are shocked to find their pro-Sanders/anti-Hillary comments being deleted from CNN.
  • A majority of American Muslims want Sharia law, and 60% of young Muslims are more loyal to Islam than America.
  • You’re a Muslim scholar who lost to a Christian in debate. Do you: A.) Shrug, B. Practice, or C.) Kill the Christian?
  • Has the Obama Administration noticed that Iran’s parliament has actually rejected the text of his treaty? (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Obama withdraws last U.S. carrier group from the Middle East. Evidently even pretending to fight ISIS has just gotten too hard for him…
  • Why does does the town of Alvin, Texas (population 25,000) want to put it’s property holders on the hook for $1 billion to build the most expensive schools in the state?
  • Another anti-gay hate crime turns out to be a hoax. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Journalists continue their lazy, inaccurate reporting on #GamerGate.
  • LinkSwarm for October 9, 2015

    Friday, October 9th, 2015

    If you want to attend tomorrow’s blogshoot/meetup/tweetup, try to drop me a line (lawrenceperson at gmail dot com) so I’ll know how many will attend.

    Now the LinkSwarm:

  • ObamaCare co-ops are going bankrupt.
  • Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™ and an estimated 800% inflation rate, Venezuela is now the most expensive place to live in the world, at least going by the official exchange rate. “Depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela can either be one of the cheapest countries in the world, or the most expensive.”
  • Democrats last year: “All those gun-toting white racist redneck freaks from Jesusland will be lining up to vote for Hillary!” Pollsters this year: Not so much.
  • Hillary Clinton now totally opposes the very Tran-Pacific Partnership she helped negotiate.
  • “Let’s take Malcolm Turnbull at his word that it’s only “a very very small percentage of violent extremist individuals”. What is the actual percentage? In the aforementioned Malmo, where up to a thousand mostly young male “refugees” arrive each day, suppose the “very very small percentage” is two per cent. That’s 20 brand new “violent extremists” per day. During the Northern Irish “Troubles”, MI5 estimated that there were no more than a hundred active members of the IRA at any one time – that’s to say, people actively involved in shooting and killing. So Malmo is taking in the equivalent of the entire IRA every week.”
  • How spree killers get their weapons. Or, once again, the New York Times twists facts to fit the narrative.
  • Speaking of the Times, this is what happens when the professional editors and proof-readers edit and proofread professional writers.
  • Wendy Davis thinks the reason she lost is she didn’t talk about abortion enough. Sure, Wendy, that’s it. Go with that… (Hat tip: Perry vs. World).
  • The Nairobi mall attack revisited. If this report is to be believed, armed civilians actually contained the threat, then army and security forces showed up and promptly managed to start shooting each other.
  • “In zombie world, the man who relies on the government for his safety will be zombie chow in short order…In zombieland, there are three kinds of people: those who know how to use guns, those who learn how to use guns, and zombies.”
  • Remembering the Yom Kippur War.
  • ObamaCare: The Fail That Keeps Failing

    Monday, September 28th, 2015

    The opaque, dishonest nature by which ObamaCare was passed ensured that the full brunt of many provisions wouldn’t be felt before Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. While that stratagem worked for Obama, it also ensured that ObamaCare would turn into an unending supply of timebomb policies with unpleasant consequences which would continue to plague Democrats (and America) long after the bill’s passage.

    And those bombs continue continue to explode:

  • “The more time Americans have had to experience the health care reform legislation first-hand, the more obvious it has become that, like virtually all government-controlled social experiments, Obamacare’s waste of taxpayers’ money has grown to epic levels. And there’s no sign the poorly managed program is improving.”
  • ObamaCare deductibles are now rising seven times faster than inflation. “Premiums have risen nearly $5,000 since Obama promised to cut them.”
  • Even Democrat’s own direct-mail advertising admits that “fewer than half of all U.S. doctors accept Medicaid,” a direct consequence of ObamaCare’s “cost control” features while dumping millions more patients into Medicaid.
  • All of which explains why ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular with voters, with 52% viewing it unfavorably, and 36% very unfavorably.
  • All of which explains why American consumers are still staying away from ObamaCare in droves.
  • Despite all that, Hillary Clinton is vigorously defending ObamaCare. In fact, what Hillary is actually doing is propising ObamaCare 2.0:

    The solution is obvious: Reduce federal coverage mandates to reduce premiums and deductibles. Instead, Mrs. Clinton wants even more mandates that are guaranteed to make premiums and deductibles rise even higher.

    First, on Tuesday in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton released her plan to make prescription drugs more “affordable.” (Sound familiar?) She proposes capping patients’ monthly out-of-pocket prescription costs at $250. Making insurers pay more toward retail drug costs ensures those costs will be passed on to employers and policy holders through premium increases, forcing the young and healthy to further subsidize the old and the sick. And Mrs. Clinton wants to stick it to drug makers by prohibiting them from deducting the cost of advertising on their taxes (as other kinds of businesses can) and shortening their patents, which will give them shorter horizons to recover their sizable investments. Making it more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to do business will either increase the costs of drugs or prevent their development in the first place.

    Then, on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton said she wants to expand the “free” services mandated under Obamacare to include three doctor visits per year, on top of preventive care such as vaccines and screenings. When Democrats were selling Obamacare to taxpayers, they said fully covered preventive care would help reduce overall health care spending by giving Americans an incentive to take better care of themselves and not avoid seeking care because of cost concerns. But the law of supply and demand can’t be suspended by Congress; increasing demand for health care increases costs. Now Mrs. Clinton wants sick care to be fully covered as well, which will — wait for it — increase demand for a limited supply of doctors and providers, and increase costs through higher premiums and deductibles. She also wants to deny insurers the ability to charge higher out-of-network costs for hospital care when those very networks help insurers keep costs down.

    And there’s plenty more time for more ObamaCare-fueled rate and deductible explosions between now and the 2016 election…

    LinkSwarm for July 31, 2015

    Friday, July 31st, 2015

    Another month down! here’s one final LinkSwarm to finish off July:

  • “Donations to the Clinton Foundation by Swiss bank UBS increased tenfold after Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS early in her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report.” What are the odds?
  • Hillary way, way, way underwater in swing states. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • Lot of Democrats listed among indicted congress critters. And the Kay Baily Hutchison indictment was bogus.
  • “Nineteen sixty-eight was the year normal Americans saw the Democrats for what they were, and that’s the danger for them in 2016 too – that normal Americans will be reminded about what a circus of welfare-chiseling, race-obsessed, work-averse, baby-shredding freaks the Democrat party is.”
  • Iran says it can ban U.S. arms inspections at will. Wow, that Iran deal just keeps getting better… (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Speaking of that Iran deal, the Obama Administration is hiding documents from the public, even though they’re not classified.
  • And the International Atomic Energy Agency refuses to testify to the Senate on Iran, even in a classified setting. Golly, it’s almost like they’re trying to hide something… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Michael Totten on Hanoi’s Capitalist Revolution. I dare say that Hanoi more capitalist (and hopeful) than Detroit these days…
  • Medicare/Medicaid: Driving us into bankruptcy for half a century.
  • And Social Security could be broke in 12 years.
  • Another day, another American murdered by an illegal alien.
  • More guns, less crime. (Hat tip: Adam Baldwin’s Twitter feed.)
  • “The fact is that there is no point in arguing with liberal gun-control advocates because their argument is never in good faith….The liberal anti-gun narrative is not aimed at creating the best public policy but at disarming citizens the liberal elite looks down upon – and for whom weapons represent their last-ditch ability to respond to liberal overreach.”
  • “Anti-bullying” school seminar is turned into gay sex demonstration.
  • Brazil joins the league of the boned.
  • The mystery of China’s capital outflows.
  • Dice to sell Slashdot. They managed to take a thriving community and managed to drive much of it away with a combination of poor UI design (Beta, anyone) and pro-social justice warrior posts.
  • How #GamerGate shattered shattered Gawker’s myth of invincibility. Turns out that insulting your readers on behalf of social justice warriors isn’t a sustainable business model. Who knew?
  • Even before the hack, Ashley Madison was a complete scam. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • LinkSwarm for July 20, 2015

    Monday, July 20th, 2015

    46 years ago today, America walked on the moon. Or perhaps I should say “Nixon walked on the moon” in the same sense that “Obama got Bin Laden.”

    Some links:

  • Rotherham councilors suppressed the Muslim child rape scandal because Muslims vote Labour. (Hat tip Jihad Watch.)
  • Islamic State sets up stronghold in Bosnia. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • One of the architects of ObamaCare is now a health insurance lobbyist.
  • Mark Steyn says the Iran deal is far worse than Munich.
  • Former Labour minister, newspaper founder fired for column defending free speech of columnist critical of Islam.
  • Judge Hanen is pissed at the Obama Administration illegally defying his ruling on their unconstitutional illegal alien amnesty.
  • Rick Perry proposes hitting sanctuary cities in their pocketbooks.
  • Pension payments to Chicago public union employees have become so high that today all the property taxes paid by the households of Chicago go exclusively to pensions.
  • Minimum wage goes up, prices go up by the same amount. What are the odds?
  • The Nine Rings of Climate Scientist Hell.
  • Keith Olbermann fired. Yet again. Maybe because ESPN is feeling the pinch.
  • “if you have permission from the property owner, it is art. If you don’t, it is vandalism.”
  • Speaking of walking on the moon, there’s a whole lot of spaceflight items up for auction.
  • The myth of the “Southern Strategy.”
  • “Political correctness is a euphemism for exclusivity and closed-mindedness.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Governor Greg Abbot raises $8.3 million, bringing his war chest up to $17.8 million. Keep in mind that Abbott is three years away from any election campaign…
  • Adultery website Ashley Madison hacked, and “37 million clients” could be blackmailed. (I’m guessing that’s more like 15 million male clients and 22 million fake female profiles.) Golly, who could have possibly seen that coming? Except, of course, everyone who’s ever worked in the computer industry…
  • There’s a Jack Kemp Foundation.
  • Here’s a blog devoted to news about Ted Cruz.
  • Maybe this headline from Buzzfeed is what caused Gawker to pull the trigger on detonating the entire bottom-of-the-barrel containment field…
  • The documentary Roar may be the most insane (and dangerous to the cast) movie ever filmed.
  • LinkSwarm for June 26, 2015

    Friday, June 26th, 2015

    The problem with doing a LinkSwarm is there’s just no end to links! I suppose I could post each and every one as I find it, but then I’d be be traveling in the wake of Instapundit, without his indefatigable will. (Or, this week, his army of star assistants.)

    Anyway, these are from the last few weeks:

  • Nothing says “religion of peace” quite like crucifying children for breaking a Ramadan fast.
  • Speaking of Ramadan, Muslims kicked it off in the now-traditional manner: Blowing up the mosques of other Muslims. (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
  • ObamaCare has fallen short of its enrollment target, hiked insurance premiums, failed to cut down on ER visits, and flopped in its attempt to improve hospitals’ bottom line.
  • ObamaCare is sputtering.
  • Hawaii kills its ObamaCare exchange.
  • China’s dredging on Mischief Reef has united the rest of Asia against it.
  • China tries debt swap financing for the Ghost Cities.
  • “Barack Obama has been the most successful person in history when it comes to electing Republicans to Congress.”
  • Donating to a tsunami victim charity? Don’t forget that Bill Clinton gets his cut.
  • Bill and Hillary and The King of Gay Porn.
  • Not just Bill and Hillary: Even Clinton underlings got Arab money while working for the government.
  • 20 revelations about the U.S. and Israel from Obama’s ex-Israeli ambassador’s new book.
  • Americans prefer not to live where the law-abiding are disarmed.
  • Obama’s plans to muzzle gun-related speech.
  • Ted Cruz introduces legislation to eliminate Obama’s illegal alien amnesty slush fund.
  • “What we’re dealing with is a mayor who is universally acknowledged to be bumbling and incompetent.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • LOL.
  • The Huffington Post: Hell on earth. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • You too can enjoy and spread “white privilege” to your children, no matter your color!
  • The “pecking disorder” among Social justice Warriors.
  • “He ain’t do no wrong — he just shot a cop.”
  • Remember that ultra-irritating piece on life on the Upper East Side? Not so fast.
  • Ouch.
  • Heh.
  • Don’t order the Chong Chin Chicken at Asia Cafe.
  • LinkSwarm for June 5, 2015

    Friday, June 5th, 2015

    Another Friday, another LinkSwarm!

  • Democrats believe illegal aliens should be allowed to vote. “The Obama Administration has lost faith in the electorate and has decided to appoint a new one.” (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)
  • The ObamaCare death spiral is still coming.
  • Doctors leaving practice due to federal mandates. “EHR is health care’s Solyndra.”
  • Vermont: A funny thing happened on the way to Socialized Medicine.
  • “If there’s a more renewable resource than Clinton lies, I’m hard pressed to think what it might be.”
  • Hillary’s event ticket sales: Not setting the world on fire. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • Democrats panicking over Hillary’s sleaze contemplate breaking the glass case around Michael Bloomberg.
  • And speaking of old rich white male Democrats, Lincoln Chafee joins the Presidential race, comes out against drone strikes, for the metric system and belt onions.
  • Minneapolis teacher takes middle school students on field trip to sex shop. Bonus: “Gaia Democratic School”
  • America: There’s an App for that. Cuba: There’s a line for that.
  • Another day, another Islamist suicide bombing killing 10 in Nigeria. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Professional pro-Putin Internet troll now suing her former masters.
  • France insists those damn elected representatives can’t be let anywhere near their precious global warming treaty.
  • Planned Parenthood goes ballistic over OTC birth control. It’s all about the Benjamins…
  • Consultants advise college applicants how to appear less Asian.
  • Did you know there’s a national egg shortage on?
  • LinkSwarm for May 29, 2015

    Friday, May 29th, 2015

    I didn’t get flooded out, but for a while on Memorial Day, I finally had that defensive moat around my house I’d always dreamed of…

  • U.S. economy shrinks in first quarter. (Hat tip: Instapundit, who adds, of course, “unexpectedly!”)
  • Get ready for still more ObamaCare sticker shock.
  • Let he who has never created a shell company to skirt disclosure laws cast the first stone at the Clintons…
  • The Clinton Foundation took money from FIFA, the recently indicated world soccer organization.
  • “Does the Media Hold Anyone to a Lower Ethical Standard than the Clintons?” Save rock stars in the 1970s and Obama 2008—2013, I’d say no…
  • Speaking of rock stars from the 1970s, Ted Nugent has some realistic and pungent advice for the graduating class of 2015:
    1. Life is not fair. Get used to it.
    2. Social justice is a commie scam. Read the drivel of Saul Alinsky and fight it with all you’ve got.
    3. Nobody owes you jacksquat. You will either earn your own way, or feel like a helpless leech. There is no middle ground.

    And there’s more where that came from…

  • Why didn’t the Obama Administration order airstrikes against ISIS columns before they took Ramadi?
  • What Right Wing Nutjob said “We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people” in December of 2011? That would be Barack Obama.
  • Why the left launched an attack on geek culture: “The group that expected to define taste and culture by virtue of their previous oppression found themselves instead being forced to make less money and cater to the tastes of a group that not only never sought out the bleeding edge of coolness, but never cared about the concept to begin with.”
  • Dutch tend American WWII graves. “Each grave has been adopted by a Dutch or, in some cases, Belgian or German family, as well as local schools, companies and military organizations. More than 100 people are on a waiting list to become caretakers.” Damn these rains, all this mold pollen is really doing a number on my eyes… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Bernie Sanders, S&M fantasy pervert.
  • Woman comes to the sudden revelation that she’s being a shrew. “He’s a good man who does a lot for me, and doesn’t deserve to be harassed over little things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.” (Hat tip: Milo Yiannopoulos’ Twitter feed.)
  • Pictures from the Austin flood.
  • Pctures from the Houston flood.
  • LinkSwarm for May 22, 2015

    Friday, May 22nd, 2015

    Welcome to the beginning of the long Memorial Day weekend! Here in Texas, we’re going to celebrate the long weekend by building arks and gathering up two of every animal.

  • “Islamic State seizes Syria’s last border crossing with Iraq.” (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Obama’s toothless Iran deal is pushing the Saudis to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan.
  • Saudi convicted of keeping a sex slave refuses to attend a mandatory sex offender course, because Islam.
  • “If the Obama Administration loses [the King vs. Burwell ObamaCare case] in the Supreme Court, the political pain will fall almost exclusively on the President and his Party.”
  • Evidently Bill de Blasio has mistaken himself for Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
  • Coming soon: homebrew heroin.
  • Ted Cruz is the only republican arrogant enough to be President. (Though I have some disagreements with Spengler’s subsidiary foreign policy points.)
  • Democratic pollster Pat Caddell: Obama is more corrupt than Nixon. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media’s Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies.”
  • The Stephanopoulos lies: worse than you think.
  • A good many of those Ferguson protestors were paid to protest. And now many say their paymasters refuse to cough up the dough. It’s sleazebags all the way down.
  • Slashdot post: Look at all this STEM sexism! Slashdot comments: Your link is garbage and you should stop talking out of your ass.
  • It’s another one of those New York Times pieces that seem designed to make you hate both rich Manhattanites and the writer equally, about how terribly, terribly isolating it is to be a rich woman on the Upper East Side. (File under: “Three people in New York make a trend.”)
  • By way of partial counterpoint (and, in some ways, almost equally annoying), here’s dating advice for Uptown divorcees from a few years ago. “Our biggest challenge, time and again, is matching up middle-aged divorcées in the ‘pre-realist’ stage, who have not realized that they have a choice of sex, money or companionship —but not necessarily all three in the same package.”
  • Good: List of speed-traps to avoid in Texas. Bad: Slideshow.
  • Police chief in small Texas town get’s drunk and starts hitting on another policeman’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. Beatdown ensues.
  • Dogs are Awesome.