Well buddy when I die throw my body in the back And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac — Bruce Springsteen, “Cadillac Ranch” Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor’s office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. . . . Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees. — High-End Health Plans Scale Back to Avoid ‘Cadillac Tax’ – NYTimes.com You’re probably thinking: “So what? I don’t have a high-end health care plan. I’m a working stiff. Let the Wall Street fat cats pay their Cadillac tax.” Actually, because the plan cost that triggers the Cadillac tax is not indexed for inflation, Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimates that as many as 75 percent… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Barack Obama
Excerpts From President Obama’s Commencement Address at Morehouse College
My whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father wasn’t for my mother and me. I want to break that cycle — where a father’s not at home, where a father’s not helping to raise that son and daughter. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a better man. . . . Growing up, I made quite a few [bad choices] myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the right thing. We’ve got no time for excuses. In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil, many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did, all of them entering the global workforce alongside… Read more →
Steven Miller Out
“He’s a joker, he’s a smoker, he’s a midnight toker,” Obama added. Read more →
Willing to Try Anything
Best of the Web Today: Crunch Time – WSJ.com Read more →
Who Farted?
Mad Libs
President Barack Obama’s speeches have a familiar ring these days — no matter if it’s guns, immigration or the budget. Tout what he’s already done. Say the public’s in his corner. Demand Congress do something. Lament Washington dysfunction. Lay out his own plan. Avoid details. Urge voters to keep up the pressure. Warn it won’t be easy. Bask in the applause. It’s the fill-in-the-blank approach to selling a presidential agenda: same template, just adjusted for the topic. — President Obama’s fill-in-the-blank sales pitch – Carrie Budoff Brown – POLITICO.com Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Why Your Health Insurance Premium is Going Up
Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. — Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums – NYTimes.com That headline should not read “DESPITE new health law,” it should read “BECAUSE OF new health law.” But we were going to get things for free! We were promised better things at a lower cost! In my day, most of the citizens were farmers or merchants or tradesmen. They lived by their hands and their wits. They had horse sense and they knew when they were being sold a bill of goods. Of course, that was before television. Americans today are unfortunately rather stupid. Most of them don’t know anything about economics, science, history, government… Read more →
Berkeley Voters Leave Something to be Desired as Parents
According to a new survey, just over 10 percent of Berkeley High ninth and 11th graders reported carrying a weapon onto school property, while about 35 percent of 11th graders reported attending class drunk or high. If I had a kid at Berkeley High, I’d be moving out of town yesterday, but I’m reading in the Daily Californian that this news has been “met with surprise and joy from administrators,” the reason being that a similar survey two years ago reported about 17 percent of ninth graders and 16 percent of 11th graders carrying weapons onto campus, and 48 percent of 11th graders attending class drunk or high. Progress! “We’re very pleased with the survey results all around,” said Director of Student Services Susan Craig, “and at the same time we’re not at all complacent.” If by “pleased” she means “horrified,” I couldn’t agree more. In other news, Barack Obama… Read more →
No Surprises in Berkeley
Final election counts are in for Berkeley, CA, the most liberal city in America. Let’s start with the presidential election, where Mitt Romney was able to edge out Jill Stein for second place: Barack Obama, Democrat – 90.3% Mitt Romney, Republican – 4.6% Jill Stein, Green Party – 3.2% California ballot proposition results included: Proposition 30, a measure to increase state income tax rates for the wealthy – 90.7% Yes (passed statewide at 54.6%) Proposition 34, to abolish the death penalty in California – 86% Yes (lost statewide 52% to 48%) Proposition 37, requiring labeling of genetically engineered food – 92.4% Yes (lost statewide 52% to 48%) Read more →
The Audacity of 51%
“Maybe peace would have broken out with a different kind of White House, one less committed to waging a perpetual campaign–a White House that would see a 51-48 victory as a call to humility and compromise rather than an irrefutable mandate.” Yeah, well, shut up, you Republican losers. Obama won, which means a majority of Americans support his policies. Stop being obstructionist and get with the program. Oh wait, sorry. That quote wasn’t from a Republican but from a recently elected Democrat. It was referring not to Obama but to George W. Bush after the 2004 election. The author: Barack Obama, junior senator from Illinois. The book: The Audacity of Hope. — James Taranto, Best of the Web Today Read more →
Thomas Jefferson’s Election 2012 Wrapup: Tired of the Bulls**t
My fellow Americans — The first headline I saw this morning was Obama Victory Speech Urges Unity in Facing Challenges. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s an ad run by President Obama in Ohio in the closing days of the campaign: A few days ago, it was Us vs. Them, whoever you imagine Us and Them to be. Now it’s Obama Urges Unity. “Not one of us” is an ugly sentiment in itself, but coming from a man who not long ago promised us Hope and Change and Inclusiveness, it betrays a complete absence of character. Four years ago, I said what I thought I needed to say to get elected, and I’m doing the same thing now, even though what I’m saying now is the exact opposite of what I said then. Obama has been nothing if not divisive. On class and income, he speaks contemptuously of “millionaires”… Read more →
Presidential Endorsements
Ross Perot endorses Mitt Romney. Honey Boo Boo endorses Obama. Read more →
Following the Debate on Twitter
Typical Romney supporter: “Five million jobs doesn’t even keep up woth [sic] our population growth.”–Romney. Obama’s solution: free contraceptives! #2012 Typical Obama supporter: IF ROMNEY GETS ELECTED AND TAKES AWAY MY FOOD STAMPS IMA SEND SOMEONE TO MURDER HIS ASS Read more →
The Real Obama
What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like [Chris] Matthews and [Andrew] Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan. — James Taranto Read more →
“Creating Jobs” and Other Fallacies
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being. — Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1792) My fellow Americans — I’m hearing in the pre-debate analysis that voters are looking for the candidate who’ll help them have a better life. Speaking as someone who was there at the beginning, I can tell you that helping you have a better life was not America’s original value proposition. Everyone was welcome to come here and try to make… Read more →
Randy Newman: “I’m Dreaming”
Randy Newman has a new song and video out — “I’m Dreaming” — about a voter who casts his ballot solely based on skin color. I listened to it . . . it’s great, like every other Newman song I can think of, but didn’t this train leave the station in 2008? We already have a black president. (Yes, his mother was white, but “mixed-race” doesn’t get you 12 percent of the electorate.) Will some people not vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes. Will some people only vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes. As Geraldine Ferraro said in 2008, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.” Naturally, she was denounced as a racist by the… Read more →
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.” Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t. If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t. The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince! There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff… Read more →
The Obama Bounce Fades
And through it all, there is no presidential leadership. He’s too busy raising money to run ads so he can tell us what a great leader he is. Everywhere we see, in ruins, Obama’s plans for our country. His foreign policy has encouraged revolutions that have brought our worst enemies to power in the Middle East . . . His education reforms have no teeth and he sits by passively as they are challenged by his own local teachers union. Credit much of the quick end to his bounce to Romney’s ads which, right off the bat after the Democratic Convention closed, rapped Obama for trying to convince us that we are better off than we were four years ago. Obama’s campaign essentially poses the question: What will you believe — your own eyes or my speeches? — Dick Morris Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on “You Didn’t Build That”
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being. — Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1792) My fellow Americans — You see how my friend Tom Paine, 220 years ago, perfectly anticipated — and rejected — your President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” quote. Oh yes, we were aware of the “progressive” philosophy — that everything good comes from government — even then and we wanted no part of it. By the way, I notice that… Read more →
Bill Clinton at the DNC: Good Lawyer, Guilty Client
I’ve always said if I were ever in trouble and if I were guilty, especially if I were guilty, I would want Bill Clinton there to defend me. Nobody does it better. He’s the most talented politician I ever covered and the most charming man I’ve ever met. And no one in my view can mount an argument more effectively than he can. — Brit Hume Read more →