Reflections On A Monday


I’m down in the Sacramento Valley as I write this post, at my wife’s house in Ghetto Centrale. Today is to be the warmest day of the week, perhaps into the 80s. It’s certainly filled with blue skies outside as contrasted to the miraculous and wondrous thunderstorm I encountered up at my cabin Tuesday night of last week.

The night skies were, then, split with the millisecond forks of white-hot lightning, illuminating the living room entirely. The thunder would gap for seconds then, minutes later, the bed-rattling booms seemed as directly over my cabin. As opposed to some thunderstorms this one lasted for a good hour or more. I love thunderstorms; the rain cascaded off my roof in sheets onto the deck.
There’s another thunderstorm coming just 22 days from now.
One that will affect the entire nation and not just my, literally, little neck of the woods.
There are rumors, terrible rumors floating about in DC that the national media, “in the tank” for Leftists and Demorats — their own kind, you see — refuse to cover, editorialize upon or even speak about covertly outside of their own newsrooms. And that is:
A great deal of the Demorats in DC are concerned that Mr Obama simply isn’t listening to them. He refuses to see that his philosophy is slaughtering the chances of any hope of a Demorat win in these remaining 22 days. They are concerned that he is incapable of compromise, incapable of learning from history and incapable of true political ingenuity or brilliance.
In essence: himself incapable of change.
People speak and write of the political brilliance of Obama. Comparatively speaking, Mr Obama is but a mere petulant child in contrast with William Jefferson Clinton, who was wise enough to know when to re-craft himself and his policies in such a way that he is still held as a Demorat ideal.
Mr Obama may be brilliant but he is an arrogant ideologue and a dunce. After all of his higher education, what has he actually learned? I submit: very little. He still does not see, purposely, reality.
Therefore, I conclude, he is quite incapable of changing his own path of political destruction or the path of destruction on which he has placed this nation.
Investors Business Daily says that, at our current rate, the US won’t recover its lost jobs until the year 2020. Another complete decade of misery and stagnation.
The jobless rate has been at or above 9.5 percent for a year and two months, the longest stretch since the Great Depression.
More senior staff including defence secretary Robert Gates, and senior advisor David Axelrod, leave their ObamaJobs at the White House.
An excellent summation of Mr Obama here.
November, here we come.
BZ

Obama Lies — Then Adjusts, Then Adjusts:

No one can forget promises made regarding ObakaKare. Here is a video reminder:

Concurrently, Demorats and Leftists pushed for complete Single Payer (government-paid) healthcare plans. Some hedged their bets; most made their interests publicly known.

First, Mr Obama lies: you can keep what you wish when you wish. A massive lie.

Then: no you can’t. ObakaKare will sooner or later mandate your adherence to Der Plan.

Recently — but wait; there are now exceptions:

McDonald’s, 29 other firms get health care coverage waivers

Updated 3h 10m ago | Comments 1,552 | Recommend 80 E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this
By Drew Armstrong, Bloomberg Business News
Nearly a million workers won’t get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers.

Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald’s (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won’t be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers in late September so workers with such plans wouldn’t lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop health insurance altogether.

Without waivers, companies would have had to provide a minimum of $750,000 in coverage next year, increasing to $1.25 million in 2012, $2 million in 2013 and unlimited in 2014.

“The big political issue here is the president promised no one would lose the coverage they’ve got,” says Robert Laszewski, chief executive officer of consulting company Health Policy and Strategy Associates. “Here we are a month before the election, and these companies represent 1 million people who would lose the coverage they’ve got.”

The United Agricultural Benefit Trust, the California-based cooperative that offers coverage to farm workers, was allowed to exempt 17,347 people. San Diego-based Jack in the Box’s waiver is for 1,130 workers, while McDonald’s asked to excuse 115,000.

The plans will be exempt from rules intended to keep people from having to pay for all their care once they reach a preset coverage cap. McDonald’s, which offers the programs as a way to cover part-time employees, told the Obama administration it might re-evaluate the plans unless it got a waiver.

McDonald’s and Jack in the Box didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

So what is it?

Mandates or exemptions?

Guess you can suss that out for yourself.

BZ

Obama: Worst On Race Relations


Whenever I make a post about race, I can assume it will be a post that acquires a minimal smattering of comments. A few, perhaps; three or four.

Because I submit that the bulk of Americans are predominantly uncomfortable about race. I further submit: this goes to guilt.

Rasmussen Reports indicate:

Voters Are Much Less Optimistic About Black-White Relations

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 36% of voters now say relations between blacks and whites are getting better. That’s down from 62% in July of last year at the height of the controversy involving a black Harvard professor and a white policeman. That number had fallen only slightly to 55% in April of this year.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

African-Americans are much more pessimistic than whites. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of whites think black-white race relations are getting better, but just 13% of blacks agree.

Confidence in the nation’s course among African-Americans soared after Barack Obama’s election. But then several prominent Democrats, perhaps most notably former President Jimmy Carter, suggested that opposition to the president’s health care plan was motivated in part by racism. Only 12% of all voters agreed in September of last year, but among blacks, 27% felt that way and 48% were undecided.

Facts are what they are.

Polls are what they are.

BZ