The Obamacare Ten-Step Self-Help Program

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner

As all the still underappreciated contours of Obamacare become known, and as those who hold employer-provided plans will soon discover their existing “scams” also do not pass ACA muster, the public will begin to understand that Obamacare is another redistributive zero-sum plan to transfer wealth from one segment of the less-deserving population to another more deserving.

Like most other Obama policies, there are the usual footprints and assumptions that accompany the too-clever-by-half redistribution.  Continue reading “The Obamacare Ten-Step Self-Help Program”

Obama’s Credibility Gap

The former hope-and-change president no longer gets a pass.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his “credibility gap” — the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam.

800px-Barack_Obama_in_the_Oval_Office,_April_2010“Modified limited hangout” and “inoperative” were infamous euphemisms that Nixon-administration officials used to mask lies about the Watergate scandal. After a while, few believed any of the initial Reagan-administration disavowals that it was not trading “arms for hostages” in the Iran–Contra scandal.

George H. W. Bush thundered during his campaign that voters should “read my lips: no new taxes,” only to agree later to raise them. Bill Clinton’s infamous assertion that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” was followed by proof that he did just that with Monica Lewinsky.

The George W. Bush administration warned the nation about stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and never quite recovered its credibility after the WMD were not found. No one believed Bush when he told incompetent FEMA deputy director Michael Brown that in the midst of the Katrina mess he was doing a “heck of a job.” Continue reading “Obama’s Credibility Gap”

For Obama, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

Rasmussen reported last Friday that 52% of likely voters approve of Obama’s job performance. This number is both astonishing and depressing. The avalanche of Obama’s failures both domestic and foreign should have buried this presidency months ago. Yet despite the slow-motion implosion of Obamacare now catching the attention of even the court-journalists of the mainstream media, millions of American voters still think one of the worst presidents in modern history is doing a good job.Photo Credit:  U.S. Embassy New Delhi via Flickr

In any other administration, even without Obamacare, the litany of scandal and bungling would have politically crippled not just Obama but the Democrats as well. The murderous gunrunning of the Fast and Furious debacle, Attorney General Eric Holder turning the Justice Department into the Democrats’ Luca Brasi, the out-of-control EPA waging its economy-killing war on carbon, the National Labor Relations Board unleashed to browbeat business and revive a moribund labor movement, the SEC shaking down banks for billions, the IRS targeting political opponents, the trillion-dollar “stimulus” spent to achieve the worst economic recovery in history, the trillions more borrowed and created out of thin air to finance entitlement spending and payoffs to political cronies––and that’s just domestic policy.

Add the outrageous incompetence and indifference that got 4 Americans murdered in Benghazi, the subsequent lies and cover-up for political advantage, the waste of American money, toil, and blood in Iraq by the precipitate withdrawal of our forces, the likely reprise of that malfeasance in Afghanistan, the alienation of allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, the cozying up to the genocidal Muslim Brotherhood, the appeasement of the equally genocidal mullahs in Iran, the groveling to a rampaging Russia, the whole Syria “red line” humiliation over chemical weapons––any one of these foreign and domestic fiascos would have inflicted serious political damage if we weren’t living in the alternative political universe in which we suddenly found ourselves on January 20, 2009. Continue reading “For Obama, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure”

Questions Rarely Asked–and Never Answered

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media 

It Can’t Happen Here?

What does it take to warn Americans about unchecked pension growth, socialized medicine, vast increases in Photo Credit: Lester Public Library via Flickrentitlements, higher taxes, and steady expansion of government? In other words, what is it about DetroitItaly, or Greece that we do not understand?

In the last five years, the Obama administration has raised taxes on the top income rates, implemented Obamacare, added millions to the disability and food stamp roles, grown the size of the federal work force, run up the national debt, and vastly expanded the money supply, along with insuring near zero interest rates. Are there any historical examples where these redistributive efforts have brought long-term tranquility and prosperity?

To put it another way, does anyone ask basic questions about human nature anymore? If one gives more incentives to obtain government support while unemployed, why would not fewer people be working? If the food stamp, unemployment, and disability rolls are markedly up, and if it is almost impossible to verify that recipients are also not working for unreported cash wages (we hear mostly of government efforts to add more to these programs, rather than to audit those already on them), why would one seek a “regular” job that would lose such subsidies and make all one’s income reportable? (We know two basic truths about the IRS in the age of Obama: first, it goes after political opponents in partisan fashion, and second, it gives away billions of dollars in federal income tax rebate credits to those who did not deserve them.) Continue reading “Questions Rarely Asked–and Never Answered”

ObamaCare and the Techocratic Abyss

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

The continuing disaster of the Obamacare website, like the law itself, illustrates one of the biggest bad ideas of the Progressive movement, one that reflects a central assumption of modernity: that new knowledge is now available that will allow an elite of technicians to order society more justly and efficiently, and eliminate the tragic realities of existence. Progressives bought into this idea wholesale, and ever since have wanted to expand the scope and reach of the state in order to empower those technocrats so they can lead Americans into a world of justice, equality, prosperity, and universal happiness. The metastasizing federal government now bankrupting the country is the creation of this dubious proposition. Continue reading “ObamaCare and the Techocratic Abyss”

Murdered Christian Children: The Price of Obama’s Pro-Brotherhood Jihad

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com 

Who is more deserving of punishment by the United States?  Millions of Egyptians, for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood?  Or the Muslim Brotherhood, for habitually terrorizing and murdering Christians, among many other crimes? Continue reading “Murdered Christian Children: The Price of Obama’s Pro-Brotherhood Jihad”

‘Unacceptable’

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner 

President Obama announced that the messy rollout of Obamacare is “unacceptable.” Like “game-changer” used in conjunction to threats in Syria and Iran, “unacceptable” does not necessarily mean something will stop. Instead, we should understand the president’s definition of “unacceptable” in its narrowest meaning of “unpleasant” rather than more expansively as an assertion that something will not continue to occur. Continue reading “‘Unacceptable’”

Where Now?

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner 

The government gridlock is, to use now politically incorrect metaphors, only one lost battle in a long campaign, and we are now back to the original proposition of watching the administration try to implement Obamacare. We know the president does exceedingly well when he can campaign against the forces of darkness, but when attention, even for a moment, turns to his own efforts — Obamacare; the stimulus; Solyndra; cash for clunkers, Benghazi; the AP, IRS, and NSA scandals; gun control; Syria, etc. — as it will now for a few weeks until the next psychodramatic “war” against someone, he flounders. Continue reading “Where Now?”

Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine 

Barack Obama’s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He’s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama’s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive––not a vague “progressive,” the elastic moniker liberals started using when the word “liberal” became politically toxic. Continue reading “Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism”

Obama as Chaos

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media 

Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama’s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute. Continue reading “Obama as Chaos”