Obamacare: The Obama regime will force insurance companies to provide “free” birth control
Nancy Pelosi once famously quipped that the Obamacare law had to be passed so that we could find out what is actually in it, and today we learned that the Obama regime is going to force all insurance companies to pay for birth control without any copays.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with insurance companies providing payments for birth control–and in fact according to the article I linked above, most companies do cover birth control although there is usually a copay required–but what I do have a problem with is the federal government telling these private insurers that they must provide payment for birth control, and I have a problem with the federal government demanding that these plans require no copay.
This is something that should be left up to the private insurance agencies; people can choose whether or not to join a plan based on what that plan offers to them, this is a basic tenet of a free market system. If an insurer loses enough customers over the issue of birth control–or any other issue for that matter–whether chosing not to provide birth control coverage, or requiring a copay that too many people feel is too high, the insurer will make the correction based on what the free market dictates.
But the Obama regime has decided that on this issue the insurance companies can no longer enjoy the benefits of the free market system and because of this we can expect the costs of insurance to rise because the insurance companies are not going to absorb the extra cost–they will pass it on to the consumers.
Although the new women’s preventive services will be free of any additional charge to patients, somebody will have to pay. The cost will be spread among other people with health insurance, resulting in slightly higher premiums
Slightly higher premiums, but that is just for this one issue. How many other added costs due to government intrusion will also be absorbed by the American people driving the cost of healthcare even higher? The official name for Obamacare is “The Affordable Care Act” We were sold a bill of goods and in that bill of goods we were promised that Obamacare would help to make more affordable healthcare available to more people, but as we can see in this one example the Obamacare law is going to have the opposite effect.
Harry Reid’s debt ceiling plan appears dead; do the Democrats want the United States to default?
A fierce battle of chicken is now underway in the Congress over the debt ceiling; this battle is taking place between establishment House Republicans and the Tea Party, Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate, and between warring factions of Democrats in the Senate. But to listen to Barack Obama you would be led to believe that the sole party responsible for this stalemate is House Republicans, with no blame laid at the feet of Senate Democrats who are unwilling to bend to the demands of the House Republicans.
It is being reported that Harry Reid’s debt ceiling legislation is dead; 43 House Republicans sent Harry Reid a letter which all but affirmed his plan would be DOA once it got to the House for a vote, and Harry Reid is struggling to get the 60 votes he needs to move the bill forward in the Senate.
Last night John Boehner managed to pass a second bill to raise the debt ceiling, and like the first one, the Senate killed the bill by a vote of 59-41. This is what Jay Carney had to say after the news came out:
Now that yet another political exercise is behind us, with time dwindling, leaders need to start working together immediately to reach a compromise that avoids default and lays the basis for balanced deficit reduction
The House proposal was just a “political exercise” which needed to be brushed aside so the real work could begin? With this behind us Jay Carney says time is running out and a compromise must be reached by the two sides working together immediately. Wouldn’t debate on the House bill have provided the best and quickest opportunity to “compromise” in a reconciliation process? The House has made two efforts and now the future of the debt ceiling debate is solely on Harry Reid and his proposal that nobody has actually seen.
This was an interesting week “behind the scenes” here at America’s Watchtower: First, America’s Watchtower was linked in a post which was cross posted on Noisy Room, Trevor Loudon, and Gulag Bound; this brought in some extra and always welcome traffic. But later in the week, as I was checking out my referrers, I noticed a few hits coming from Media Matters so naturally I had to check it out. Why would America’s Watchtower be linked at Media Matters?
Imagine my surprise when I learned in this post that America’s Watchtower (not specifically mentioned by name, but right there in the link) was a pro-militia website, because that is not how I would ever characterize this blog. Pro-military? Yes, as one can tell by my sidebar images; two of these images are meant as a tribute to all of those who serve or have served in the military and also those that have given the ultimate sacrifice so that we may remain free, while the other images are of two WWII heroes. Pro-second amendment? Absolutely.
But when left wingers use the word “militia” it usually does not mean the same thing as it does when the term is used in the Constitution. When a website like Media Matters refers to a person or a website as being “pro-militia” what they are actually saying is that person is an anti-government right wing extremist who supports the violent overthrow of the federal government, and is actively preparing for that endgame; and while I will oppose the Obama regime with every ounce of my being, I have never–and will never–advocate violence to achieve this goal because I still believe in the system and I still believe in the American people. I seek a revolution at the ballot box, not on the battlefield.
I suppose the image of the Gadsden flag flying in my sidebar helps to promote the image of America’s Watchtower that Media Matters so desperately wanted to see, but Media Matters is a website which describes themselves thusly:
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media
And the post in which they linked to this blog was entitled “Fox Fails To Fact Check Operation Castaway” so the irony in the fact that Media Matters didn’t even bother to check out this blog before they falsely made the claim that America’s Watchtower was a “pro-militia” website is not lost on this author. They based their idea of what this blog was about on a few images and not on the content of America’s Watchtower.
Perhaps Media Matters could benefit from a little fact checking of their own before they make an attempt to mischaracterize the content of another blogger in the future.
Gunrunner: Darrell Issa requests White House documents
Amid a new report which stated that Operation Gunrunner provided “a significant upgrade to the cartels’ ability to inflict serious damage and casualties on their enemies,” came the revelation that at least one person in the White House knew about the deadly program as early as 2010. During the hearings on Gunrunner last Tuesday Bill Newell–a director in the ATF–testified that he personally told Kevin O’Reilly about Operation Gunrunner because O’Reilly was seeking information related specifically to the botched operation in order to present them in a speech in Mexico last year.
Kevin O’Reilly was Barack Obama’s White house National Security Director for North America and he wanted information on this deadly operation because he was preparing to head on a trip to Mexico, at the request of the president we can safely assume, to discuss steps the United States was taking in the prevention firearms trafficking. He was headed on official business, he represents the United States, he works in the White House, and he was looking for information about a top secret program that nobody supposedly knew about? Who told him about the operation in the first place? We know it occurred before he asked Bill Newell about the details because he specifically asked Newell for details about Gunrunner.
Are we really supposed to believe that as he prepared to give a speech in Mexico in which specific details of Gunrunner were to be revealed that he never mentioned this to Barack Obama? Maybe Kevin O’Reilly didn’t mention Gunrunner–or details about the effects of Gunrunner–to the president; maybe it was the president who told Kevin O’Reilly to seek out Bill Newell in the first place because he already knew about the failed operation, and did from the beginning.
To paraphrase Barack Obama’s characterization of Debbie Wasserman Schultz; the “charming” woman with the “dazzling smile” (why NOW didn’t find these comments sexist and degrading I am not sure) has made a few headlines today when she declared that the Republicans were looking to impose a dictatorship through fear by trying to “spark panic and chaos” over the possibility of not raising the debt ceiling.
I find these comments interesting because for all of the vitriol coming from the left about compromise, it is the left which killed the only plan that has been voted on to this point. The House passed “cut, cap, and balance” but Barack Obama promised to veto this bill sight unseen and Harry Reid held a vote in the Senate on tabling the legislation without even having a debate on the bill. It seems to me that if the left were serious about compromise they would have at least sent the “cut, cap, and balance” bill to the floor of the Senate for debate where they could have made changes to it before holding a reconciliation in an attempt to find common ground. But Harry Reid wanted nothing to do with reconciliation or compromise.
The Gunrunner investigation is slowly creeping towards Barack Obama with the news today that a manager in the ATF shared information with Barack Obama’s White House National Security Director for North America–Kevin O’Reilly–in 2010. The ATF agent in question here is Bill Newell and he is friends with Kevin O’Reilly, so when O’Reilly asked him about gunrunner he complied. He also told Kevin O’Reilly not to tell anyone where he got the Gunrunner information from.
This could be nothing more than a person who had a secret that he simply couldn’t keep and decided he could tell his friend about it; it is possible that Kevin O’Reilly was curious about what his friend was up to and when he asked he was told about Gunrunner, and it is possible that all of this happened with Barack Obama’s knowledge. But….. Read more…
My email to Barack Obama
While perusing the blogosphere this morning I came across a video posted at Bunkerville that I found to be quite interesting; it is a video of JFK espousing the need for tax cuts during a recession. Here is the video:
This is a position that Barack Obama agreed with when he broke his campaign promise and extended the Bush tax cuts declaring, “the last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession.”
A stunning reversal when you consider that while running for president he claimed that the Bush tax cuts were partially responsible for the recession:
Last night, during his speech, Barack Obama made it clear that he supports raising taxes while this recession is ongoing. It is clear that Barack Obama is a little confused; he simply doesn’t understand economics so he says whatever he feels his audience at that particular moment in time wants to hear. Because Barack Obama doesn’t understand economics I thought that it was quite possible that he has never heard JFK’s position on tax cuts, so I sent him a very short, but polite email this morning in the hopes of educating him.
Here is the contents of that email:
Last night during your speech on the debt ceiling you quoted President Reagan, while mentioning Presidents Clinton and George HW Bush, but for some strange reason you neglected to mention JFK. So I thought I would provide you with a video link to a speech JFK gave in 1963. You might find it interesting and informative.
I included the link to the JFK video posted above. As of yet I have not even received a confirmation that email was received and I am not expecting to receive a reply, but it I do you all will be the first to know.
Barack Obama rails against President Bush’s “expensive prescription drug program,” but what about Obamacare?
I don’t intend to spend too much time on this, but thought I would touch upon one aspect of Barack Obama’s speech from last night on the debt ceiling debate that I found a little interesting. No, I am not talking about his asinine statement that because there was less money coming into the government’s coffers that the government was forced to spend more money.
I found this statement to be one of the more interesting things he had to say last night:
For the last decade, we’ve spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card [emphasis mine]
Barack Obama accused the Bush administration of pissing away the government surplus, and specifically mentioned the prescription drug program as an example of the government foolishly spending money. While I may not agree with President Bush’s out of control spending, or the expansion of Medicare through the prescription drug program, one would think that a leftist such as Barack Obama would support the expansion of an entitlement program such as this. But apparently a government entitlement is only a good thing when it is created by a Democrat, why else would he oppose making more people eligible for a government program?
But while he called President Bush’s prescription drug program an “expensive prescription drug program” he doesn’t seem to have a problem with an expensive government healthcare program which will cost trillions of dollars that he endorsed–Obamacare.
It turns out that at a cost of $60 billion a year the Bush prescription drug program is coming in at almost half of the projected cost, yet this is considered an expensive program according to Barack Obama, while the trillion dollar Obamacare law is not even worth mentioning.
At this point all I am asking for out of this president is a little honesty and a little consistency, but alas it seems as if even this is asking a little too much from our Dear Leader.
On Monday the Obama regime released a report entitled “Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime,” and in this report he stated:
We must also stop the illicit flow from the United States of weapons and criminal proceeds that empower TOC networks
“I reiterated that the United States accepts our shared responsibility for the drug violence,” Obama said at the time. “So to combat the southbound flow of guns and money, we are screening all southbound rail cargo, seizing many more guns bound for Mexico, and we are putting more gunrunners behind bars
Whew, that is a relief, I’m glad the Obama regime is going to get to the bottom of this problem! The Obama regime is going to track cargo heading out across the Mexican border and put gunrunners behind bars. This is great news for America, but it does not bode well for the most prolific gunrunner in the United States–Eric Holder. Who is it that would be responsible for handing Eric Holder his arrest warrant?
In all seriousness though: can you believe the audacity of Dear Leader? The Obama regime manufactured this crisis in the first place by selling weapons to Mexican drug lords, and then he turns around and accepts blame for the role that he claims American citizens are playing in the drug violence, while knowing that his regime–and not the American people–is more responsible than anyone else for allowing and permitting these weapons to fall into the hands of murderous thugs.
I guess he can afford to be this audacious because he knows the Ministry of Propaganda–otherwise known as the mainstream media–is going to provide him with the cover he needs to avoid the growing Gunrunner scandal.
America's Watchtower 