One might have been tempted to think the Obama Administration had hit rock-bottom when they called Bowe Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers liars and “swift-boaters*” for disputing the Administration’s official line that Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction.” (Maybe with the Taliban.) That seemed to be as low they could go.

Then, somebody went and tossed them a shovel.

An administration spokesman (for the Department of Housing and Urban Development) took to Teh Twitters and called those soldiers (the ones that didn’t desert and collaborate with the Taliban)… “psychopaths.”

Name-calling has been the administration’s modus operandi for dealing with critics since Day 1. Curious as to why the president is keeping his college records secret? You’re a “birther.” Skeptical about the president’s Draconian environmental laws? You’re a “climate change denier.” And the perennial catchall for any critic of the president’s policies… “racist!”

Administration insiders apparently believe that criticism of the Bergdahl Affair has nothing to do with honest disagreement about the wisdom of turning loose five of the Taliban’s top generals for one deserter. They honestly believe it all springs from personal animosity toward the president. “[All criticism in the Bergdahl matter] Obama aides say, is in their minds a proxy for the hatred toward the president.”

How simplistic this all is. There are no genuine arguments, only personal animus. Therefore, there is no need to argue in support of policies; simple name-calling of your opponents is sufficient.

* “Swiftboat” – verb. When knowledgeable people reveal an unpleasant truth about a Democrat that contradicts the official party narrative.

Obama just quietly delayed the Individual Mandate.

Earlier, Obama told people who can’t afford the higher rates under Obamacare they should cancel their cable and cell phone. LOL. Remember when his cult believed he was going to pay for their gas and mortage?

2012: Barack Obama declares: “Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat.” He also said.

“I ended the war in Iraq, as I promised. We are transitioning out of Afghanistan. We have gone after the terrorists who actually attacked us 9/11 and decimated al Qaeda.”

“We said that we would go after al Qaeda, and they are on the run and bin Laden is dead.”

“That’s why, working with Joe Biden and our national security team, we’ve been able to decimate al Qaeda.”

“Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.”

“Today, al Qaeda is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more.”

2014: Al Qaeda controls more territory than ever in Middle East.

But, by all means, mainstream media, keep obsessing over that bridge thing.

That’s the gist of his speech.

There is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

It’s the usual Obama campaign speech (the only kind he gives, the man doesn’t do thoughtful), unnamed enemies (“a certain crowd”), strawman arguments (“the market will take care of everything”), mixed in with blatant falsehoods, (“we tried cutting taxes and reducing regulation, and it didn’t work”). It’s a candyfloss of lies, class warfare, and demagoguery but this is what Obamacrats actually believe.  In fact, his crowd of mindless drones lapped it up like an MSDNC panel of Melissa Harris-Perry clones.

And all of it has no more truth or substance than their rumor that Mitt Romney would outlaw tampons. But the low-information voters that have turned the USA into a statist Idiocracy lap it up.

Obama really believes this inanity too, and it drives his policies of massively increased regulation, tax increases, and welfare expansion.

Is President Obama ignorant of how the job market works, or does he cynically exploit the ignorance of his left-wing, “low information” voter base?

If economics has two consistent findings, they are:

1. Rent control messes up a city’s rental market, driving rents *up* (and rental quality down) over time.
2. Raising the minimum wage kills low-end jobs, the ones held by young and/or poor people.

You can prove (2) to yourself with a simple thought-experiment. Imagine we raised the federal minimum wage from its present $7.25/hour to, say, $25. Would McDonald’s or any other restaurant, large or small, be able to stay in business?

They might, if they adopt Applebee’s new “Waiter Terminator”.

The E La Carte Presto tablets – powered by Intel – will allow patrons to pay from their seats while also adding food and beverages to their existing orders…

The Presto tablets, which were developed at MIT, have been “ruggedized” to deal with the spills and rowdy children…

DineEquity said it might consider introducing the tablets at its IHOP restaurant chain as well. The company joins many others in the industry that have begun incorporating technology into the customer experience.

When government forces wages up, it forces businesses to kill jobs: either by the business dying, or by its replacing workers with technology (a.k.a. capital). The restaurant industry has technology waiting in the wings.

As if to defy that reality, last week Obama tweeted his base the following total falsehood:

Hence, my question. (more…)

DC – i.e., government employees – got richer compared to the rest of America. What also happened back then was a newly-Democrat Congress adding hundreds of billions to government spending, followed of course by President Obama and his 2009 “Porkulus”.

Via Zero Hedge, who suggests that Obama should maybe keep this in mind when he gives his speeches on inequality.

UPDATE (from Dan):  Here’s something to chew on, Jeff, the difference between the governing class and Americans may be considerably greater than this graph suggests.  Bear in mind the vast differences in income in the District itself with many blighted areas in the North- and Southeast quadrants of the city.  And if incomes there would be pulling down the overall average, some folks living in Northwest (and the gentrified areas around Capitol Hill) would be earning far more than this graph suggests.

Current Yahoo! headine, Obama: Economic fairness ‘frayed’:

President Barack Obama prodded Congress to raise wages and secure the social safety net as he issued an overarching appeal Wednesday to correct inequalities that he said make it harder for a child in the United States to escape poverty. “That should offend all of us,” he declared. “We are a better country than this.”

Obama argued that the dream of upward economic mobility is breaking down and that the growing income gap is a “defining challenge of our time.”

“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” the president said…

This is an example of the Left’s classic tactic, “poison as food, poison as antidote”. First the Left creates/worsens problems with their dysfunctional policies; then they position themselves (or, even more dysfunctional left-wing policies) as the supposed solution.

In this case, President Obama’s own policies create/worsen the inequality he decries. As I’ve discussed in my “Recovery for the One Percent” series here, here, here and here.

For any lefties reading this, who need the reminder:

• Raising the minimum wage costs people jobs.
• Big Government denies opportunity to the working poor.
• High government spending hurts the economy and stops new businesses from being formed, as do high regulation and taxes.
• Quantitative Easing bails out (or subsidizes) the One Percent, at the expense of the poor and middle-class.

All policies increased, maintained or advocated by Your Obama.

To be clear, the problems didn’t start with Obama; but he has worsened them.

From Mona Charen’s new column:

Remember President Barack Obama’s mother? …The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed her disease was a “pre-existing condition” and refused to pay…In a debate with Sen. John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president’s mother, she discovered letters proving beyond doubt that Cigna never denied Stanley Ann Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan…

The White House did not deny Scott’s account, but shrugged it off…

The Dunham tale was meant to personify the hundreds of thousands — or millions — of Americans who were “dumped” by insurance companies when they became sick. This is an invented tale, and might have been rebutted by the insurance industry if they hadn’t gotten into bed with Obama in 2010 in return for millions of coerced new customers…

There’s more; RTWT.

Charen touches on a great point: The insurance companies are at fault, but not for the Left’s mythical reasons. The real fault is that Obamacare is based on coercion: forcing people to do business with the insurance companies, when people might choose not to. That is immoral. Obama was wrong to propose it, the Democrats were wrong to impose it, and the insurance companies were wrong to go along with it.

We know that the Obama administration lied to America during the 2012 election, about Benghazi. And about “If you like your plan you can keep it”, and many other matters, such as the fact that the IRS was helping to stifle Obama’s grass-roots opposition.

Now the New York Post alleges that the declining unemployment rate (announced in the last few weeks of the election) was faked.

It looks like lower-level employees did it; probably tough to blame it on Obama directly. But that touches on a classic ethical question. If the guy at the top is kept in a bubble by people who cheat and lie extensively on his behalf (and don’t usually tell him), is he culpable? At what point?

Also, how much election-year lying does it take to de-legitimize a Presidential election? (If, or since, he only won by giving people false information.) Did President Obama reach that point in 2012?

Via ZH.

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

– Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

Via The Other McCain.

A thief takes your car. You know each other, so the next day, he drives up – in your car – to apologize for the inconvenience he’s caused you. He doesn’t return your car; he drives off in it again.

Was his apology sincere? Of course not. Had he been sincere, he would give back your car. He just wanted to blunt your well-justified anger, which could inconvenience him in the future. He hoped to manipulate your good nature.

Have no fear, kids: President Obama is here to show us how it’s done.

President Obama said Thursday that he is “sorry” that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

Here are a few of the things Obama *didn’t* say, any of which would have made it a sincere apology:

• I admit Obamacare was a huge mistake, and I’ve asked Congress to repeal it.
• I admit Obamacare was a mistake, and I’m letting Republicans write the bill now to solve its huge flaws.
• To give people immediate relief, I’ve agreed to delay Obamacare by six months.
• I’m not delaying Obamacare; but, to give people immediate relief, I’ve signed an order that will re-grandfather all plans that existed as of Oct 1, 2013.

But he said none of them. His “apology” was geared to one purpose only: trying to gain a few points in opinion polls for Barack Hussein Obama.

RELATED:

• Young people Just Say No to Obamacare. As well they should; it rips them off.
• By driving doctors to retire and squeezing out small practices, Obamacare is increasing the doctor shortage.
• Even The New Republic admits that Obamacare kicks people off of good plans, pushing them into worse plans with higher costs and less doctor access.
• Even the Washington Post agrees that people’s cancellations should not be blamed on the insurance companies.
• Obama was lying about Obamacare’s impacts on people as recently as Sep. 26, 2013.

Well covered on Ace and HotAir, but I can’t let this pass without note.

Recently on November 4, President Obama said:

If you had one of these plans before the ACA came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was, you could keep it *if* it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.

The emphasis is Obama’s, in his delivery; here is the clip.

The rules/mandates/costs of the ACA are such that it is nearly impossible for any plan to not be changed by it. But Obama has an even greater problem: what he said in the past, dozens if not hundreds of times in public speeches, had no “If…” qualifier and was much more like this example (from 2009, quoted previously):

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, *period*. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, *period*. No one will take it away, *no matter what*.

Emphasis was probably also in Obama’s original delivery, but just to keep things easy, let’s say that I’ve added it.

So, let’s see. First Obama lied about whether people could keep their plans under Obamacare. (And he lied about most people seeing cost reductions – rather than the reality of cost increases – and about much more.) And now, Obama is lying about his lies (claiming he had always said something different).

Lies require intent to deceive; otherwise they are only mistakes. Obama has lied, because (1) the White House knew people would lose their plans at least as far back as 2010, and (2) unless Obama is mentally incompetent, he must know today that he didn’t put in those “If…” qualifiers when he was out stumping for Obamacare.

Will the Left swallow Obama’s new lie? Probably, along the lines of Orwell’s _1984_, where the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialism) believe The Party’s newly-invented claim to have raised the chocolate ration when they’d actually cut it (page 51 of the old Signet paperback).

But the Left is not America. Will America swallow it?

RELATED: Obama’s approval rating is a point lower than Bush’s was at this same time in their presidencies (1st week of November in their fifth years).

And if you want a glimpse into America’s future under nationalized health, here it is: Venezuela’s health care system is collapsing.

Via HotAir.

My thoughts: Glad to see Romney in decent form and telling it like it is.

Your thoughts?

A pithy, logical column from Kyle Smith. Key ideas:

Bulls–t is airy, meaningless drivel, the stuff that campaigns are made of. Or it’s a misleading oversimplification with hidden qualifiers. Not only do we forgive bulls–t, we like it…

This week was something new…

Some 10 million Americans are going to lose their health insurance as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act. [But] On June 15, 2009, Obama said, in one of hundreds of similar statements, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

This wasn’t just bulls–t. This was a lie…

What Obama said wasn’t true and that’s all there is to it. To the American public, he is a different man…Obama has rebranded himself as a liar…He will carry this new label to his grave.

UPDATE (well, more a REMINDER): Per NBC News, the Obama administration knew at least as early as 2010 that 67% to 80% of Americans who buy health coverage themselves would not be allowed to keep their plans. And that doesn’t count Americans who are losing their employer-sponsored plans, job hours or jobs because their employers simply can’t afford Obamacare’s pricey coverage mandates.

The administration lies about its pricey coverage mandates now, via Orwellian language. It claims to have made insurance companies “offer more benefits” (NBC’s phrasing). What it has really done is deny companies the ability to tailor plans to consumers’ needs, and deny the consumer the opportunity to buy a plan that is affordably tailored.

UPDATES via The Economic Collapse blog:

• A partial (but still lengthy) list of employers who have cut work hours or jobs, because of Obamacare.
• According to CBS, Americans losing their health plans due to Obamacare far outnumber Americans who have signed up for Obamacare.
• Doctors don’t like Obamacare; in New York, fully 77% of doctors either know they’ll be refusing Obamacare patients, or are undecided.

UPDATE: Even Anderson Cooper wore his ‘concerned face’ last week on hearing that the Obama administration has told insurance companies to stay quiet about what is really going on.

Via HotAir, just a reminder: “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

In Minnesota alone, at least 140,000 can’t keep their plan.

UPDATE: Fine columns on all this from Mark Steyn, Larry Kudlow, Charles Krauthammer.

UPDATE: From The Burning Platform (via ZH):

I haven’t had time to blog lately (and guess the others haven’t either), but this can’t pass without comment: As reported by the intrepid Sharyl Atkisson of CBS, in its first 24 hours, Obamacare had 4.7 million unique visitors and…six enrollments.

Within a few more days, they had…a few hundred enrollments. That’s why they haven’t been telling us the enrollment numbers. They need 7 million by March 1 (for some reason), and aren’t going to come close.

UPDATE: More complaints about Obamacare’s high cost, along the lines of “Most…are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. We just didn’t realize that…we’d be the ones paying for it.”

Evidently, tens of millions of young people have been so mis-educated that they thought Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy would be paying for it. Or perhaps the Federal Reserve?

UPDATE: For South Park fans.

UPDATES:

• From The Federalist, The Obamacare Losers: “A 27-year-old in Austin, for example, could have bought a catastrophic plan for $59 a month before the ACA. On the exchange, the cheapest catastrophic plan is $153 a month.”
• America’s top hospitals don’t want Obamacare patients.
• In New York and New Jersey alone, hundreds of thousands lose their insurance due to Obamacare.
• Even left-wing media admit that Obama must have lied knowingly about how Obamacare would affect people.

UPDATE: Democrats, you will recall, created and passed Obamacare in a hideously divisive and arrogant fashion: shutting the GOP out of the legislative process; ridiculing critics’ predictions (that are now all coming true); implying that political opponents are racists, terrorists, etc.; railroading Obamacare through Congress on a mix of party-line votes, lies, and legislative twists that were even more constitutionally suspect than usual; and generally misbehaving in a manner to all-but-ensure a bad program with years of continuing opposition.

Via Ace, now Politico brings us the new lefty meme: that the opposition to Obamacare, which would be considered normal for American democracy in any other political era, is a GOP “conspiracy” that has “sabotaged” Obamacare. Welcome to the Brave New World.

MSNBC Contributor Tells Hugh Hewitt Obama Deliberately Lied About Obamacare (Via Instapundit)

Wonder what Mr. Page said about George W. Bush’s alleged dishonesty

First, the facts.

• October 16: U.S. national debt is $16,747,370,534,090.62.
• Then they raise the debt ceiling.
• October 18, at 3pm: U.S. debt is at $17,075,590,107,963.57.

That’s a $300+ billion increase, in two days. It’ll continue (albeit, at a slower pace). It moves the U.S. mathematically closer to its coming default, and the added interest will cost taxpayers (especially if interest rates rise in the future).

Now, here’s what Obama said during the shutdown. October 3:

I want to spend a little time on this. It’s something called raising the debt ceiling. And it’s got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, I don’t know, I don’t think we should raise our debt ceiling, because it sounds like we’re raising our debt. But that’s not what this is about.

It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime…it’s not something that raises our debt.

Or, October 8:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt.

‘Nuff said.

In recent days, I’ve ridiculed President Obama’s claim that not giving him a debt ceiling increase would somehow force him to default on U.S. debt payments. (Since current revenues cover the minimum debt service many times over, making any debt default the president’s choice.)

But over the longer term, U.S. default is inevitable – if we keep raising the debt ceiling.

If you’ve ever seen a bankruptcy, you know that the path to default is to take on ever more debt – to supposedly “pay your bills”, in Obama’s expression – as you fail to cut your spending down to what you can afford.

By raising the debt ceiling so that Obama can borrow even more, America comes closer to default. NOT raising the debt ceiling – that is, giving up the deficit habit now, and running immediate balanced budgets – would postpone or prevent America’s coming default.

Some may answer “Ah, but letting Obama borrow more will keep things smooth and buy time to fix our other problems.” All I can say is: People told me that in early 2009, some six trillion dollars ago (of U.S. debt). Bullhockey. It’s how an alcoholic or drug addict thinks: tomorrow is always the day to officially clean up; never today.

Under present leadership, a U.S. default is inevitable. The only question is what form it will take.

• Less likely: We could yet have an ‘honest default’, where we admit that we can’t repay our creditors and we negotiate cutbacks to our debt – and to our spending.
• More likely: We will have a ‘dishonest default’ where we borrow, spend and print money until the dollar is confetti, and we never officially default, but we pay our creditors in dollars that buy far less than the dollars they loaned us (or were promised).

Either way, it’s a default (our debt is no good; our creditors don’t get what they were promised). And it’s the road we’re on. “Thanks, Obama!”

More details:

• Niall Ferguson on why “the fiscal position of the federal government is in fact much worse today than is commonly realized”.
• Jim Grant on America’s past defaults – honest and dishonest – and the one that’s coming.
• Seeing the inevitable, China has called for the dollar to be overthrown (removed) as the world’s banking reserve currency. Read about it in the IB Times, the New York Times (which twists the facts to blame the Tea Party, natch) or the LA Times.

UPDATE: Obama has just called on America to stop listening to ‘the bloggers’, by a strange coincidence!