Behind Every GOP Governor Cooperating With Obamacare Is An Industry Lobby Profiting From Obamacare

Another GOP governor has pledged to go ahead with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and once again, industry was standing right there with him. AP reports on West Virginia:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia will expand Medicaid as called for by the federal health care overhaul, through a plan unveiled Thursday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin that would extend coverage to an estimated 91,500 uninsured low-income residents….

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., joined Tomblin for Thursday’s announcement at Charleston’s St. Francis Hospital along with chief executives of several hospital systems. Expanding Medicaid is expected to help the state’s hospitals, which face a scheduled in federal reimbursement payments, by providing coverage to thousands of residents now treated at hospitals without compensation as charity care. The financial analysis cites studies estimating the annual savings to hospitals at $20 million to $30 million.

The same thing is happening in Ohio and Missouri. In Idaho, the GOP governor and legislature decided to build an Obamacare exchange thanks to industry pressure.

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’2016: Obama’s America’ Mailed To Every Member Of Congress

Disgraced former college president and conservative pseudointellectual Dinesh D’Souza would very much like to be relevant again:

While President Barack Obama was finishing up the State of the Union address during a nationally televised speech Tuesday night, hundreds of copies of a DVD featuring an interview with his impoverished half-brother were being mailed to senators, congressmen, the governors of all 50 states and the nine Supreme Court justices.

One copy of the movie, 2016: Obama’s America, also was mailed to the president at his White House address and another went to Vice President Joe Biden. The film tries to make the point that Obama’s agenda is bad for America and that the rationale for his policies stems from a hard-left ideology that was instilled in him by the example set by his absentee father.

2016: Obama’s America is the second best-performing political documentary of all time. But just because it drew a paranoid sector of the electorate to the box office doesn’t mean it’s an effective political advocacy tool. Congress already has a terrifying number of members who believe that President Obama is a socialist whose birthplace remains in question, and who probably aren’t going to make time to watch a movie that reaffirms their convictions. And I doubt that Nancy Pelosi is going to settle in for movie night with some popcorn and end the evening shaken, dash her oversized pearl necklaces to the floor, and hustle off to brunch with Michele Bachmann to discuss how they can work together. In both cases, no matter what members of Congress (and Joe Biden) think of the president and his ideological motivations, the fact remains that Barack Obama was reelected. That he is president and has the power to push for legislation and make executive orders and decisions is a fact, and not something that you can wish away.

Besides, if you’re going to entertain Congress with insane conspiracy theories about President Obama, the actual documentary to watch is Dreams From My Real Father. A truly uproarious piece of cinema, the movie uses old pin-up photos to argue that Obama’s actual father is the left labor activist, publisher, and deeply pretentious poet Frank Marshall Davis, and suggests that Obama had a nose job so he’d look less like his real father. The movie never explains why it would have been better for Stanley Ann Dunham to have become pregnant by a Kenyan PhD candidate than a semi-wacky American. But its self-seriousness is at least really, really funny. And it’s a truly delightful illustration of how deranged Obama’s made people. This movement isn’t just about deligitimizing his claim to the presidency. It’s about running permanently down rabbit holes.

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Since September, America Has Lost One Government Job For Every Five Private Sector Jobs Created

The public sector lost another 13,000 jobs in December, bringing the post-recession job loss total for federal, state, and local governments to more than 600,000. Those job losses — many of which have hit teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials — have had a devastating impact on the economic recovery. If public sector job creation had kept its pre-recession pace, the unemployment rate would be a full point lower.

Government job losses began to slow earlier this year, but in the last three months, the public sector has shed another 89,000 jobs. And as Demos’ David Callahan noted in a blog post today, that means the public sector has lost one job for every five private sector jobs created in that time:

But here’s a statistic that jumped out at me: 89,000 public sector workers lost their jobs in October, November, and December—with most of those losses, 66,000, occurring in October.

Large-scale layoffs of government workers continue across the United States. Such layoffs undermine local economies and stymie the recovery. For every five workers who were hired in the past three months, one was laid off by government.

Government job losses have come as a result of crunched budgets at the state and local levels, where a vast majority of the losses have occurred. They’ve been exacerbated by spending cuts at the federal level. Efforts to alleviate those losses through stimulus measures like the American Jobs Act, which would have provided aid to states and localities to rehire teachers and public safety officials, were repeatedly blocked by the GOP.

That has terrible consequences for the overall economic recovery. Fewer government workers means fewer workers overall, which means that less money is being spent throughout the economy. A study from the Economic Policy Institute, in fact, found that the shrinking public sector has cost the overall economy at least 750,000 private sector jobs.

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Narcissist in Chief Adds Himself to Every Presidential Biography (Except Ford)

Many have called President Obama’s election historic, and rightly so. His presidency however, is another matter entirely. It’s historic in a lot of senses be it his record breaking debt accumulation & spending or his being the first president to have a rainbow halo placed on his head. But compared to the historic achievements of other presidents that did things like ending slavery or saving the planet, he falls woefully short.

Unless you ask him.

Via Commentary Magazine:

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford). Here are a few examples:

On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.In a 1946 letter to the National Urban League, President Truman wrote that the government has “an obligation to see that the civil rights of every citizen are fully and equally protected.” He ended racial segregation in civil service and the armed forces in 1948. Today the Obama administration continues to strive toward upholding the civil rights of its citizens, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, allowing people of all sexual orientations to serve openly in our armed forces.President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare signed (sic) into law in 1965—providing millions of elderly healthcare stability. President Obama’s historic health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, strengthens Medicare, offers eligible seniors a range of preventive services with no cost-sharing, and provides discounts on drugs when in the coverage gap known as the “donut hole.”On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.
In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

A hashtag game erupted on twitter using #ObamaInHistory as the launchpad to mock the incredible leaps in egotism that this administration has taken.

Some choice favorites cultivated by Twitchy:

Go to twitchy to see the rest.

It is hard to imagine a president more egomaniacal than Bill Clinton. Truly Barack Obama is an historic figure in that sense.

Follow @BenHowe

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Every Man Has a God

It is the start of Holy Week. Two Thousand years ago, Christ entered Jerusalem on his way to Calvary.

As we start the week, our nation finds itself in an interesting position. Unlike our cousins in Europe, we remain a church going nation with a majority who believe in God, or at least claim to. At the same time, it has become trendy to demagogue the Church.

ABC runs a show called “Good Christian Bitches” and the President of the United States declares war on faith trying to force secular beliefs into sectarian Christian faith.

We are still a mostly religious nation, but it has become cool to reject Christ or even to come out as an atheist. Atheists are routinely feted by our celebrity culture, appear on news shows mouthing off on the topics of the day, and are heralded as courageous for rejecting several thousand years of considered thought while mocking that considered thought as mythology.

The stupid are always the wise in this world.

Let’s start this week with one particular thought that so many of the so called wise will reject as stupid, but which is absolute fact.

Every man, woman, and child in this world has a god. Even atheists have gods. It may not be the actual risen Lord, but everyone has a god.

People need gods. It may be a job. It may be a drug. It may be family. It may be a hobby. Each person’s god may be different and it may even be yourself. But everyone puts their faith in something and it becomes their god whether they believe it or not.

In this day and age, many secularists have converted creation itself into their god and they worship God’s creation in place of God himself.

Where do you give your time, your talent, and your treasure? Where is your focus?

Where ever that might be, it most likely is your god.

This week, fix your focus, your time, your talent, and your treasure on Calvary. There the real God was nailed to a cross against his will, was crucified, died, and was buried. What some ridicule and mock as outmoded myth set off, three days later, the most significant event all of human history — one that shaped the world in a way no other before or after could.

As you start your Monday and focus on work, family, friends, holidays, and travel, keep some perspective about you. There are bigger things at work around us and one bigger than all of us at work for us.

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