Are You Suffering from Obama Nausea?

I'm going to admit it. I stopped blogging for a short stint, because even I have grown tired of listening to this president. It's all become so predictable and tedious. A more naked emperor has never walked before us, at least not in my lifetime. In fact, I have become afflicted by a condition that is sure to affect more Americans in the coming years. I am suffering from Obama Nausea, which it turns out, can only be caused by Obama ad nauseam.

It's not just his policies anymore, although I deplore his policies. It's his hubris and arrogance, his refusal to change course for a less ideological path, to lecture those who disagree with him, and to endlessly campaign instead of govern. I can't stomach the way he champions himself while blaming others, or how he always reminds us how difficult his job is. I am exhausted from hearing the same promises over and over again, many of which are naive and all of which have been broken.

Barack Obama is not the one we've been waiting for. Unless you've been waiting for a thin-skinned narcissist quick who is completely incapable of seeing anyone else's point of view. Obama refuses to listen to the people, even in Massachusetts, where they voted for him by a whopping 26% only to elect a Republican senator this year. In other words, unless you host a cable show on MSNBC, this messiah is not for you.

How do you know you're suffering from Obama Nausea? Do his speech patterns, once considered fresh and articulate, suddenly sound tired and calculated? Would you rather listen to Joe Biden? Do you miss the stumbling, but more heartfelt words of George W. Bush because, hey, at least he wasn't talking down to you?

I became suspicious that I was suffering from Obama Nausea months ago, but it was the State of the Union address that confirmed my diagnosis. My ears can't take another false promise about banning earmarks. Then, of course, there's always the blaming of his predecessors. But the key phrase that really did me in this time was when he said:

"That's why I'm asking you to take another look at my health care bill."

Another look? Are you kidding me? This thing's been rejected and refuted by the American people more times than a John Travolta scientology movie. Contestants on American Idol don't get this many chances. If only Simon Cowell was there to tell him the truth. Let's face it. If you've lost as liberal a state as Massachusetts, you've lost the debate. But Barack keeps trying to tweak the sales pitch, as if we're not hearing him correctly. He just doesn't get it.

The mainstream media keeps telling us that any day now he's going to pivot, but the only thing he has switched so far is which side he uses to give us the razzle dazzle. Granted, I didn't vote for him, but even I hoped he would learn on the fly, adapt his positions, and prove he could govern a la Bill Clinton. Instead, he just keeps selling himself as if America is the problem and he's the solution. If that's what he really believes, then no wonder we're in trouble.

State of the Union speeches have historically been significant, because the public doesn't get a chance to hear the president lay out his agenda and articulate the challenges we face as a nation often. But this president is on TV more times a day than the weather forecast.

Barack Obama is more obsessed with his image than America's image, with his problems rather than the average American's problems. His problem is his ego, in which he's greater than the entire country. Too much more of this, and we're all going to be suffering from Obama Nausea.

Obama Makes JW's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" List

No surprise here. The president has brought the Chicago Way to Washington, with less transparency and more closed door meetings and secret deals than ever before. It's been a long, sad year of passing bad legislation by buying senators' and representatives' votes. On top of that, you have the Fauxbama attacking and demonizing private companies and investors, not to mention the watchdog media and conservative critics, while working to line the pockets of his Democratic firends and allies. The One has spent us into oblivion, growing corrupt government agencies while the private sector and small businesses suffer. He finished the year by vacationing in an expensive Hawaiian villa while 1 in 6 Americans is out of work.

Here's what Judicial Watch had to say about President Obama's "change":

President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President’s bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control -- through fiat and threats -- large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: “The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”

Nine of the ten spots were occupied by Democrats, including Senate Banking Chair Chris Dodd (D-Conn). But if you think Judical Watch is a partisan attack machine, think again. Last year 4 Republicans made the list.

Lost hope yet?

Ooooh Scary! President Tells Health Insurance Horror Stories

In President Obama's address to Congress last week, he called out all those who used scare tactics and misinformation to try and sway the debate on health care. Then he ignored his own advice and gave a speech that even the Associated Press said didn't stand up to the facts. On Saturday, in his weekly address to the nation, the president continued to try and scare up support by doing his best Freddy Krueger impression.

I’ve heard from Americans who can’t get health coverage; men and women who worry that one accident or illness could drive them into bankruptcy. And I’ve heard from Americans with insurance who thought that "the uninsured" always referred to someone else [ed. note: that's usually how it works] – but between skyrocketing costs and insurance company practices, they’re beginning to worry that they could find themselves uninsured too.

In other words, be afraid, the scary insurance companies are out to get you! Even though state regulations require unnecessary coverage, restrict competition, and prevent insurance companies from offering a wide array of plans. Adding more government involvement to the process will only add more problems to the status quo; forcing private insurance companies to raise premiums or go out of business. Less than one-half of one percent of those with health insurance ever get dropped, yet that's a fear the president continues to exploit. The two horror stories Obama cited during his speech to Congress were as exaggerated as Al Gore's claim that he was rocked to sleep by a union song that wasn't written until he was twenty-seven. This article by Scott Harrington in the Wall Street Journal has more details behind Obama's tall tales. But our Frightenener-in-Chief went on:

It’s an anxiety that’s keeping more and more Americans awake at night. Over the last twelve months, nearly six million more Americans lost their health coverage – that’s 17,000 men and women every single day. We’re not just talking about Americans in poverty, either – we’re talking about middle-class Americans. In other words, it can happen to anyone.

It used to be 14,000 a day. Guess that wasn't scary enough. Notice the loaded language. People are anxious, they can't sleep at night, it could happen to the best insured among you, aren't you afraid of those evil insurance companies yet? It's become clear the president can't sell his reforms unless he has a straw man or a bad guy. Obama wants you to trust the government that bankrupted medicare, medicaid, social security, and cash for clunkers more than you trust your neighbors, co-workers, doctors, and the businesses in your community. Even if he has to make stuff up. He doesn't want you to trust anyone that works to make a profit. This is what socialism does to societies - divides them, creates mistrust, and forces people to act in their own self-interest rather than reach out to their neighbors. The government gains an advantage by convincing us not to trust each other.

As for the 6 million Americans Obama claims lost their health insurance coverage - that's a made-up figure. It's simply the number of lost jobs over the past year, and half of those people lost their jobs after Obama passed his "stimulus bill" that was supposed to save the economy. So the president is trying to blame the insurance companies for his failed economic policies. He is inferring that these people were dropped from insurance plans for no reason or because premiums became unaffordable, outright lies. These people were laid off so they lost their insurance. But even that may not be the case, because many Americans have COBRA or purchase their insurance individually.

President Obama still wasn't done painting a bleak, apocalyptic future without his reforms:

And based on a brand-new report from the Treasury Department, we can expect that about half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next ten years. If you’re under the age of 21 today, chances are more than half that you’ll find yourself uninsured at some point in that time. And more than one-third of Americans will go without coverage for longer than one year.

As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Here, the president manipulates the data in order to fit his agenda. Notice he uses the arbitrary time frame of ten years. Why? Because more than half of Americans change jobs at least once every ten years. What the first statistic really says is that half of all Americans, because they get health insurance through their employers, will experience temporary periods of being uninsured due to quitting jobs, being laid off, or voluntarily taking time off between jobs. These periods usually run between a few weeks to a few months. You could also say that half of all Americans will have to search for a new home during the next ten years. So what? That doesn't make them homeless.

The worst part is the president knows he's fudging the numbers, otherwise why point out the third statistic at all? If only one-third of Americans will go without coverage for more than a year, that verifies that the one-half statistic he just quoted was bogus. A good portion of the people he claimed would lose their health insurance will only be without it for a short period of time. There is no need for the government to help them, because they are helping themselves just fine under the current system, thank you.

And enough of this "roughly one-third" nonsense. Can we get an actual percentage? How many of them are illegal aliens? How many of these people found coverage after a year? The number we really need to know is how many legal citizens are permanently uninsured, not by choice, but because they can't afford it. That's a number that has been estimated between 12 million and 30 million legal residents, depending on who you ask. President Obama quoted the figure of 30 million during his last address to Congress. Let's be generous and give him that number. In a country of over 300 million people, that only adds up to 10% of the population without health insurance.

I'm no calculus major, and even I know that's way less than one-third. Talk about fuzzy math. But hey, whatever it takes to scare the American people into handing control of their health care over to supersize government, right?

Pretty soon, Obama will have to open a haunted house full of all the health care providers that are supposed to frighten us. Doctors who take out your tonsils or amputate your leg for the payola, greedy health insurance companies who dare to make a profit, and all the people who must be racist for opposing his reforms. Scary monsters, every one of them.