Politics, Religion, and Pseudo-Religious Politics

Politics, Religion, and Pseudo-Religious Politics

Along with politics, we speak and write about religion at our peril even though American politics and America’s religions are often inextricably intertwined, and they happen to be two of the most interesting subjects to argue about.




Constitutionally a secular nation, the United States nevertheless was founded on indisputable Judeo-Christian principles, principles rapidly eroding under the current administration.



Religion has been in the news a great deal during this general election year and not only in relation to Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith which has spawned vile, illiberal passions and attacks not seen since Roman Catholic Jack Kennedy ran for the presidency more than half a century ago.



For what they’re worth, celebrity religious conflicts have also been in the news recently.



Acting as if movie star divorces were unusual events, celeb-crazed media types have been all exercised over Katie Holmes startling announcement that she is dumping her hubby of 5 1/2 years, Tom Cruise, and taking their six year old daughter Suri with her.



Of course, there’s more to that story than just another Hollywood split.



Some mean-spirited people have hinted that Katie is divorcing Tommy because, as long rumored, the actor is a closet homosexual, a sexual aberration the actress should have noticed long before now–and before Suri.



Many others are pointing to Cruise’s membership in the quasi-religious, ultra-mysterious Church of Scientology and his Scientologist indoctination of Suri as the cause.



Like the late comedian Jimmy Durante used to say, ”Everyone wants to get into the act!” especially when the act involves religion.



Even eighty-five year old media mogul Rupert Murdoch weighed in on the breakup–on Twitter no less!



The multi-billionaire tweeted, “Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people” and Britain’s The Telegraph reported that Ms. Holmes is fearful of Scientologist spies stalking her since her announcement that she is divorcing her couch-jumping hubby. (http://tinyurl.com/72o73sn)



It all makes for great publicity, Hollywood’s life blood.



Publicity is also the life blood of politicians, some of whom resort to extremes when they’re running scared.



Desperate for campaign money to defeat Governor Romney, President Barack Obama has been running very scared and has set records for fund raisers and for shameless pleas for donor cash.



Apparently, that abject begging–plus acting like a carnival shill by selling overpriced mugs and tee shirts and $3. chances to dine with the First Couple at “his” White House–aren’t coming close to filling Obama’s campaign coffers so he has once again dispatched his lovely bride on the funding trail.



No slouch when it comes to begging or spouting off, the FLOTUS is evidently as desperate as the POTUS as she envisions life without extravagant vacations and being treated like an empress.


(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=26204.)

Obamacare, an Absolutely Monumental Fraud

Obamacare, an Absolutely Monumental Fraud

Fraudulent governmental initiatives and fraudulent private organizations all have one thing in common: They want the public to believe they are something they are not.




Case in point: Obamacare.



(The monumental frauds Facebook.com, Google.com, the Washington Post, and the United Nations, all of which are great fans of our president and all of which adhere to the misguided liberal principles of deception and distortion, will follow.)



Above all else, President Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat Party hoped Americans would fall for the lies and hype and believe the Affordable Care Act was eminently affordable and that people who already had medical insurance and who were averse to socialistic medicine would be “permitted” by their government to keep their coverage and their doctors.



As when Obama “absolutely” pledged that Obamacare would not impose any new taxes, both claims have proven to be frauds.



By the time Obamacare is fully implemented in 2018, it not only will be unaffordable to many people but 20 new or greatly-increased taxes will have been levied on Americans and millions of the currently-insured would be able, “permitted,” to retain their doctors only if government bureaucrats approve of their physicians and their course of treatment.



Of course, none of that applies to those bureaucrats, or congressmen, or other federal employees since the ACA exempts them–and millions of workers in protected unions and industries–from Obamacare’s onerous and largely unknown provisions.



When the United States Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled last week that Obama’s legacy issue was constitutional and is now indisputably the law of the land, SCOTUS neglected to incorporate very relevant Obamacare details in its controversial decision.



Never mind that passage of Obamacare had so consumed the president and the Democrat Party for almost two years while they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress that they were forced to pass the ACA by bribing and intimidating opponents.



Never mind that Obama and his Democrat Party ignored far more critical problems . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=26099.)

Considering Islam, Obamacare Ruling Is the Least of Our Problems

Considering Islam, Obamacare Ruling Is the Least of Our Problems

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ defection to the dark side on the issue of Obamacare was startling and incredibly disappointing.




Nevertheless, there are noteworthy positives associated with his decision to join the ranks of extreme Leftists on SCOTUS, one of whom should have recused herself had she possessed a shred of integrity, and opt to support a law that was foisted on the American people by the Democrat Party.



For one, Roberts’ vote demonstrated that an ardent conservative can sometimes stray from the consevative path, unlike liberals on the Court and elsewhere who would rather swallow their shoes than voice disagreements with leftist ideology.



For another, declaring Obamacare constitutional offered Mitt Romney the opportunity to gain millions of votes from the majority of Americans who believe the concept of British-style socialized medicine stinks.



For yet another, mandating Obamacare once again outed President Barack Hussein Obama as a liar since the 5-4 split decesion essentially imposes a huge tax increase, a tax the president has repeatedly and emphatically vowed would never happen.



In any event, when Obama is thrown out of office in November and Republicans sweep House and Senate races, Obamacare will be methodically dismantled. Only the good features of the Unaffordable Care Act, such as elimination of lifetime dollar limits on policies and elimination of co-pays for preventive care, will be retained.



More importantly, the entire brouhaha over Obamacare and unduly stressing over a SCOTUS ruling may be moot and a foolish disregard for geopolitical realities–the dire threat to the nation posed by Islam and Muslim extremists intent not on merely destroying America’s health care system but on destroying America itself.



Among the president’s many other flaws is his ignorant obliviousness of the fundamental evil that is Islam. And that evil is not confined to Muslim countries. It is speading rapidly to the West, to America’s shores, and even to our military.



Read the story of British journalist Natasha Smith who, last year, was ecstatic over the glorious, popular upheaval of the Arab Spring. This spring Ms. Smith came face to face with the true nature of Islam in Cairo’s Tahir Square.



She described her not unprecedented experience (remember CBS New’s Lara Logan?) after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Corsi’s visit to Obama’s White House and his victory in Egypt’s presidential election.



Smith graphically wrote on her blog: “Men began to rip off my clothes. I was stripped naked. Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals.



“Hundreds of men pulled my limbs apart and threw me around. They were scratching and clenching my breasts and forcing their fingers inside me in every possible way. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=26055.)

Today's Updates: Dan Savage and Obamacare

Today's Updates: Dan Savage and Obamacare

The ancient Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times,” is a double-edged sword meaning both good wishes and a damning curse. We live in far more interesting times than any Chinese philosopher could possibly have envisioned and keeping up with our curses is daunting.




It’s virtually impossible in our 24/7/365 news world to keep abreast of everything going on. However, to keep readers updated on recent posts here, I’ll give it a a shot today with updates on recent items posted here regarding twisted heterophobe and a revelation on an historic charade. (More fascinating updates will follow.)



DAN SAVAGE. The aptly-named heterophobe who exploited an invite to address high school students on the hot-button issue of bullying when he quickly veered into an attack on the Bible, Christianity, and straight kids, is now saying he was misinterpreted.



Savage still maintains that “we can learn to ignore the bulls**t in the Bible about gay people” but is offended that anyone would misconstrue that and other vile remarks. As he twittered,xx “an attack on Christianity. Which is bullshhh . . . which is untrue” which is in itself bulls**t and a lie.”



Immediately following those “apologies,” Savage launched into a foul-mouthed tiradexx against the Pope and Catholic doctrine–in a chapel, yet!



In his almost inimitable fashion Savage ranted, “What the Pope is saying is that the only thing that stands between my [expletive deleted] and Brad Pitt’s mouth is a piece of paper . . . that once we’re all gay-married we’re going to go extinct in a generation because . . . we’re gonna forget which hole [expletive deleted] babies.” (http://bit.ly/KNndzl)



Dan Savage would be amusing were he not so pathetically vicious even as his fellow homosexuals attempt to imply they are normal. Normality implies some conformity with normal values, no?



Evidently, the Obama administration believes Savage and his associates are normal since they and other Democrats have warmly embraced Savage, so to speak. (http://bit.ly/JBdg53)



OBAMACARE. If killing Osama bin Laden is our president’s most significant foreign affairs achievement, passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, is surely his greatest, though disgraceful, domestic accomplishment.



By now, most Americans–75% of whom opposed its passage–are familiar with the shameful machinations Obama and his Democrat congress utilized to foist socialistic medicine on the United States two years ago. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=22974.)

Leaking SCOTUS, Sinking Obamacare

Leaking SCOTUS, Sinking Obamacare

(Late Tuesday, Judge Jerry Smith of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals demanded that the Department of Justice immediately produce a letter of explanation regarding the president’s recent criticism of the United State Supreme Court “stating specifically, and in detailed reference to those statements, what the authority is in the federal courts in this regard in terms of judicial review.” He added, “The letter needs to be at least three pages, single-spaced and it needs to be specific.” The demand was reported by Fox News and on ABC’s blog but nowhere else in the mainstream media.)

There’s only one rationale for President Barack Hussein Obama using the occasion of a visit by heads of state to try to intimidate the Supreme Court into deciding that Obamacare is constitutional: He got a tip that the Court will trash the Individual Mandate, if not the entire 2700 page mess that is the “Affordable Care Act.”

Canada’s Stephan Harper and Mexico’s Felipe Calderon attended a presser at the White House on Monday to discuss NAFTA, trade, security, etc. and were treated to an exhibition of Chicago-style bullying against the highest court in the land by their “constitutional scholar” host. It must have made them think Obama had gone off the deep end when he launched into a pre-emptive attack on SCOTUS’ authority and integrity.

The president’s salvo was replete with distortions and outright lies comparable to the distortions and lies that have surrounded the ACA ever since the law was first proposed and narrowly passed by a highly partisan Democrat Party.

The bill was pushed through the Senate on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009, 60–39, with every Democrat voting in favor and every Republican voting against, and passed the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, 219–212, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting nay.

Based on the president’s Monday bullying, you would think Obamacare had passed in a landslide vote and that the American people loved the legislation when the precise opposite is the truth.

As Obama said, “Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

“Confident?” Not bloody likely or he would have kept his mouth shut! ”Unprecedented?” SCOTUS overturns unconstitutional laws every session! “Strong majority?” The bill squeaked through the House and passed in the Senate only because Senate Democrats marched in lock-step with Obama after heavy-handed cajoling and bribery!

Obama went on to another major distortion, alleging that conservatives had been arguing for years over the “unelected” Supreme Court’s judicial activism, i.e., making rather than interpreting laws. In the Obamacare matter, SCOTUS is doing just that–interpreting, not making law.

In a tone remniscent of the Chicago politics . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=20605.)

The Jurists Are Out On Obamacare

The Jurists Are Out On Obamacare

Speculation is ripe on how the United States Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010, the ultimate title of what most Americans know as Obamacare.

Signed by President Barack Hussein Obama on June 25th, 2010 after extensive late-night machinations, bribes, and add-ons, the bill was originally titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by the Democrat Senate. It was apparently changed in view of the fact there were few patient protections in the 2700 page monstrosity.

Obamacare is not affordable by either patients or the nation but they had to call it something palatable. It’s not known whether any Dems ever read it before they passed it.

Anyway, nine individuals–six men and three women, (six Roman Catholics, three Jews, no Protestants)–are now empowered to secretly decide the fate of a law which applies to almost everyone in a nation of 313,274,338 souls, comprised of 51% protestants, 25% Catholics, 1.7% Mormons, 1.2% Jews, and 21% of other persuasions including Muslims and atheists.

Without suggesting that either the personal faith or gender of the justices will dictate their decision, the religion of the justices is cited here in light of the legislation’s already-obvious impact on religious beliefs of Catholics and other Christians and the widespread discussion of a presidential candidate’s religion for the first time since 1960.

Gender is relevant because the statistical reality is that far more women seek health care than do men and the new law will directly impact the practice of abortion in the country.

Not all of us are affected by Obamacare, however. It won’t be fully implemented until 2014, by design, long after this year’s election. Millions of “exemptions” have been doled out to favored special interests groups, labor unions etc., which didn’t like the legislation anymore than the rest of us but had the political pull to opt out.

Federal government employees, including the president, his family, and Congress, are also exempted, a fact which says a great deal about Obamacare, none of it good. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=20091.)

Who Needs Death Panels When We Have Bioethicists?

Who Needs Death Panels When We Have Bioethicists?

The topic of death panels–essentially, Obamacare bureaucrats deciding whether an individual should live or not–has died down somewhat but there’s a new buzz buzzing which could make them redundant.

President Barack Hussein Obama and his minions refused to concede that Obamacare incorporated death panels, just as they denied abortion services would be a feature of the new health care law, and Sarah Palin and others were lambasted and ridiculed for suggesting those ideas.

Now, two bioethicists–scholars who study and propound on contemporary scientific and medical ethical controversies, are advocating theories which are even more outrageous than death panels: harvesting the organs of living but seriously disabled human beings.

Nothing is surprising anymore in America’s thriving culture of death.

In an article titled, “What Makes Killing Wrong?” in the January 2012 edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics, bioethicists Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G. Miller posit that death is morally indistinguishable from total disability and thus it is not immoral to use the disabled as organ farms. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12997.)

Cancer Sucks!

Cancer Sucks!

Saying “Cancer sucks!” is no great revelation to those stricken with that insidious disease or to family members and friends of the afflicted but it truly does suck.

One of the worst things about cancer–aside from the obvious–are the long-extant rumors that cures are available and that researchers and pharmaceutical companies prefer to conceal them since continuing the quest for cures and supplying over-priced drugs are such lucrative enterprises.

It’s the old, “If we can put men on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer?” question, a good and valid question best refuted by the facts that everyone from scientists to pharma execs–to Joe Blow and his family–are and can become victims of the BIG C.

Back when I was a kid during the Dark Ages of the 1950′s, we didn’t hear much about cancer. Most often we heard only shocked statements like, “They opened him up and it was all over his insides so they just closed him up,” and “he” soon died. No commentary on treatments, no praise of cures, not even miraculous interventions.

“He” or ”She” just died.

Today, things are different, very different, thanks mainly to the medical free enterprise system in which doctors and medical scientists haven’t been burdened, until lately, with government restrictions and inhibitions, free to develop innovative treatments, procedures, remedies, and cures.

I won’t vouch for an attack of conscience on the parts of cancer researchers or execs at Big Pharm but cancer treatments, ameliorative procedures, and successful cures are now widely available and effective. They’re not 100%guaranteed, but what is?

Come full implementation of Obamacare in 2014 when America fully commits to the model for our health care, Britain’s National Health Service, which picks and chooses who should live and who should die and save some money because hospital beds and doctors–and interest in preserving life–are in short supply, medical advances may come to a screeching halt.

Barack Obama and his fellow Obamians have used the unsettling image of “pulling the plug on grandma” as a tool to reduce protestors of Obamacare to the level of uninformed absurdists at the same time they know full well that not only will grandma’s plug be yanked but her hospital bed will be vacated before she is cold to make way for the next victim.

The best bet for grannie and anyone else afflicted with serious illnesses is to find cures for as many afflictions as possible before Obamacare kicks in and effectively says, Don’t bother.

Toward the end of curing one of the most pervasive and pernicious forms of cancer is to Think Pink Rocks.

Think Pink Rocks is a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness of the necessity for early and genetic testing for breast cancer research and funding breast cancer screening, treatment, and research.

New York City’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Research Center, the American Cancer Society, The H.O.P.E. Project, and other worthy charities have partnered with and benefitted from TPR’s various activities.

Those activities have included a Designer Clothes Charity Drive, a concert at the Mizner Amphitheater in Boca Raton, and an anticipated large sponsorship for the upcoming NYC Half Marathon, the NYC Half 2012, on March 18th.

This year, all proceeds from TPR’s NYC Half 2012 will be donated to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for breast cancer research.

See the Think Pink Rocks website here http://www.thinkpinkrocks.com/ and consider donating much-needed contributions in any amount for a very worthwhile cause.

The United States Supreme Court will soon decide whether Obamacare is constitutional. By supporting Think Pink Rocks, Americans can decide whether TPR continues to help cancer victims.

Consequences, Intended and Not

Consequences, Intended and Not

Planning is usually a prudent thing to do and, usually, the planning pans out. Sometimes, though, especially when the planning is done by politicians, unintended consequences of misbegotten schemes make you wonder where the pols’ heads are.

Communist regimes are big on planning. Five Year Plans to re-vamp its economy were always a big favorite with the old U.S.S.R. commissars and always resulted in big failures.

One of the few sad remnants of Communism, North Korea, also has little luck when it comes to economics although it is spectacular in staging funerals. The recent obsequies for its late dictator Kim Jong-il were no exception.

North Korea demonstrated its expertise in not only planning its Supreme Leader’s funeral but in its consequences for hapless North Koreans who didn’t cry enough.

As an informant reported, within days of Kim Jong-il’s death, “The authorities are handing down at least six months in a labour-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organised gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine.”

So much for Communism, so much for the dictatorship of the proletariat where the proles are forced to grieve for a bloody tyrant.

More relevant to Americans are interesting intended and unintended consequences in the U.S.

Last month, the FBI released a report indicating that violent crime in the U.S. fell 6.4 percent in the first half of 2011 and property crimes fell by 3.7 as contrasted with the same time 2010 time period.

That was the unexpected good news.

The bad news–for liberals who seek to disarm law-abiding citizens–is that the increasing number of armed law-abiding citizens in the country no doubt accounted in large part for the drop in crime.

As proven in Florida and elsewhere, criminals are far less inclined to maim, murder, and break into homes and businesses when their prospective victims are prepared to blow them away.

The intent of gun laws is to inhibit the unrestricted ownership of guns, the true consequence of which is to concentrate guns in the hands of criminals while denying honest Americans the right to defend themselves. The joke on liberals is that the latter stocking up on weapons to defend themselves serves as a deterrent against the former.

In a related issue, a presumed unintended consequence of excessive liberality has led to excessive violence.

A federal court judge decided last year that allegedly non-violent California prisoners were uncomfortable in their crowded facilities. He didn’t comment on the discomfort felt by their victims but did order California to give more space to the perpetrators. Strapped California had no money to build more prisons and chose instead to release thousands of convicted and accused “non-violent” offenders into society.

According to La Puente Mayor John Solis, his city and others are suffering the consequences of the judge’s beneficence. Solis reports that ”Sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide” since the release of the reprobates.

He blames “prison realignment,” a euphemism for loosing barbarians in a state where gun laws are strictly enforced and a resultant explosion of barbarity.
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12104.)

Obamacare Rationing Has Arrived: Live, or Die, with It

Obamacare Rationing Has Arrived: Live, or Die, with It

It isn’t being called rationing since the president repeatedly pledged that would never happen under Obamacare but, pledge as they might, the Obamians are already busily engaged in restricting Americans’ access to medical testing and treatment, aka rationing.

And, don’t dare even whisper the term “death panels.” Sarah Palin and others were widely ridiculed by the administration for suggesting their existence since, we were promised, Obamacare would never incorporate such a ghastly feature. Instead, they’re called ”ethics panels.”

Years before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in 2014, measures are being taken nationwide to cut costs and limit access to medical procedures which for decades were considered prudent and necessary for diagnosis and treatment of potentially life-threatening illnesses and diseases.

It’s the old trick of boiling a frog adapted to medicine.

Those interested in boiling frogs know you should never throw the little amphibians into pots of boiling water since they tend to jump out and spoil the fun. Likewise, politicians know they can’t literally throw grannie under a bus, pull the plug on gramp’s respirator, or assign a cancer patient to a death panel since grannie, gramps, and the cancer patient are liable to kick them where it hurts.

You have to boil them gradually and use euphemisms as you do it.

Rationing began in earnest earlier this year when the FDA withdrew approval of Genentech’s highly-effective but expensive breast cancer drug Avastin on the basis that it had ”a marginal effect on tumor growth in breast cancer and in light of Avastin’s severe side effects, the risks outweigh the limited benefit.”

The FDA didn’t directly address that opinion to the thousands of women whose lives have been extended by that “limited benefit” and who scoff at the alleged side effects and risks.

Life, for frogs and human beings, supersedes both the pleasures of boiling water and side effects despite cost savings.

As for mammograms, women only think they should get them annually but that’s another misconception according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, USPTF, which seems to have been assembled by the Department of Health and Human Services less for the purpose of preventing than for rationing.

The task force of 16 “independent experts” concluded in November, 2009 that it makes no sense for women to either perform breast self-exams or get routine mammograms before reaching the age of 50. Possibly saving your life is purposeless, and it costs money.

After the flak hit the fan and women adopted the frog approach to boiling water, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebellius backtracked and insisted the “experts” were merely recommending, not establishing policy or determining coverage–and Republicans were absolute cads for suggesting otherwise.

Chalk one up for the women-folk.

Again only recommending, in October, 2011, the same task force reported that “Prostate-specific antigen–based screening results in small or no reduction in prostate cancer–specific mortality” despite findings by true independent studies showing such screenings reduce death rates by up to 90%.

Following that money-saving recommendation, the nation’s largest urology group jumped all over the USPTF . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=10765.)

The Decline and Fall of Barack Hussein Obama

The Decline and Fall of Barack Hussein Obama

At the risk of wishful thinking and of putting the kibosh on the wish by articulating it, signs are everywhere that President Barack Hussein Obama is on the way out.

Putting aside the facts that an obscure two-year United States senator whose administrative experience was nil, whose chief claim to fame was serving as a political hack organizing communities in Chicago, whose past was filled with unsavory associations, and no reasonable person considered him qualified to hold the most powerful position on the planet in the first place, the handwriting has been all over the White House walls indicating that come January, 2013 Obama will be viewing those walls from the outside.

In anticipation of his departure and to save face, the president expressed his feelings on joining the unemployment rolls he has done nothing to reduce and which his policies have virtually chiseled in stone, Obama has said he may very well be a one-termer.

From his mouth to God’s and Allah’s ears.

In view of Obama’s actions and inactions from the beginning of his presidency and most recently, all signs point to both his realization he had no rational expectation to have won the office in 2008 and that, since he did win, he and his family would milk it for all it was worth and that he would try to inflict as much of his leftist-socialist ideology on the nation in four years as he possibly could.

In the true beginning there was the Word. In Obama’s beginning, there was subterfuge and the only transparency has been an obvious inclination to drain every last ounce of advantage, every extravagant vacation, every party and golf outing, every campaign tour he could at taxpayer expense.

He preached transparency, and there was none. He promised to be different and he was diiferent but worse. He committed to change, and the changes he has accomplished are changes only the most devout leftists believe have been beneficial.

Obama and his Democrat Congress foisted on the American people the most unpopular health legislation in history, Obamacare, passed with no regard for the consequences to the well-being of the vast majority, as if those consequences didn’t matter, and they didn’t.

IOwntheWorld.com listed many of the ugly truths about this president that didn’t seem to matter to his worshipful mainstream media, truths and revelations which would have ended most candidates’ presumptions to lead the Free World.

Some would have ruled him out to govern Uzbekistan based on his bizarre appointments of tax cheats, left wing extremists, avowed Marxists, homosexual activists, and inept former convicts, based on his foreign policies that embittered allies, based on domestic policies that included failure to defend our borders, based on a background more suitable for a committed subversive than for a president.

Still, what this president and his administration have done lately even more strongly reinforce the view that Obama is resigned to surrendering not only the perks of his office but his ability to utilize that office to satisfy his handlers’ demands for change they believe in and desperately crave. (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=8367.)

To Recuse or not to Recuse?

To Recuse or not to Recuse

At long last, the Supreme Court of the United States has officially announced that it will review the constitutionality of President Barack Hussein signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

More specifically, SCOTUS will decide the merits of a lawsuit brought by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business that contends Congress exceeded its power by imposing an annual penalty of $95 or 1% of gross income, whichever is greater, on individuals who do not secure insurance by 2014. The penalty is scheduled to rise to $695, or 2.5%, by 2016 with a family limit of $2,085.

The limit was indeed benevolent of Democrats who rammed the PPACA through Congress with no assistance from Republicans and now it would be fair of them to insist that Obama’s Justice Elena Kagan recuse herself from the case.

Rare on the SCOTUS level, recusals refer to situations in which a judge or prosecutor is removed or voluntarily steps down from a legal case, most often when the judge or prosecutor has a conflict of interest.

Justice Kagan clearly has a major conflict of interest in determining the constitutionality of the PPACA and should recuse herself from deliberations and a decision on the matter, or be forcibly removed from the bench and be seated in the court along with other known proponents of Obamacare.

Those scenarios, however, are as likely as Democrats admitting that seizure by the federal government of Americans’ health care and one-sixth of the national economy was a screwball, socialistic idea in the first place.

Kagan’s job prior to being confirmed to the Supreme Court was service as Obama’s Solicitor General in which position she was charged with representing the Executive Branch in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and acting as the chief courtroom lawyer for the government, preparing legal briefs and making oral arguments in that court.

At Kagan’s 2010 confirmation hearings, she dodged key questions and swore she played no part in crafting government responses to anticipated lawsuits contesting the legality of the newly-passed Obamacare legislation, swearing under oath that she merely ”attended a meeting where the cases were discussed, but that she wasn’t involved in the government’s filings.” (http://tiny.cc/p2njk)

If you believe that whopper, the Brooklyn Bridge is unavailable but I can make you a very good deal on the Queensboro.

In a just-released email exchange between the Solicitor General and Justice Department attorney Lawrence Tribe, they discussed the pending legislation and in one Elena exclaimed, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”

What’s even more amazing is that Solicitor General Kagan was able to dissociate herself . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5968.)

Obamacare's Selective Waivers and Exemptions

Obamacare's Selective Waivers and Exemptions

There are hundreds, thousands, of problems with the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, hundreds of millions of problems, in fact, depending on America’s population at the moment.

Passed on Christmas Eve, 2009 by the Democrat Senate and by Democrats in the House on March 21, 2010 with zero Republican support in either body and signed by President Barack Hussein Obama two days later, Obamacare, as it has unaffectionately become known, was acclaimed by Vice President Joe Biden as “a big f*cking deal.”

With or without the asterisk Biden didn’t use, it was “a big f*cking deal,” and more.

Assuming the Supreme Court decrees PPACA constitutional, when it is fully implemented by 2014, Obamacare will be an even bigger deal as its tentacles reach into the lives of millions of Americans, into their homes, businessess, doctors, and hospitals with government bureaucrats sometimes literally making life or death decisions for most of us.

That’s the bad news. The good news for many is that Obamacare will have little if any impact on their lives or deaths.

Those lucking out? Democrat loyalists, principally labor unions but also certain health care providers and other entities who supported the passage of PPACA. They have been generously rewarded for their unwavering support with waivers, meaning they could maintain their own health plans and not be subject to the vagaries of Obamacare.

Understandably, the Obama administration has sought to minimize publicity surrounding those payoffs, totalling almost 1400 at last count.

The DailyCaller.com reported in June that the waiver-spigot was scheduled to be turned off by the Department of Health and Human Services as of September 22nd and speculated that low-key Friday afternoon announcement was intended to squelch the waiver controversy and protests against their inequities.

Based on how this administration operates, the waiver spigot is probably still dripping.

Unfortunately, political payoffs, aka bribery, have been a facet of politics since ancient Greek and Roman pols granted favors or slipped a few coppers into the grubby hands of commoners. With Obamacare waivers, Obamians greatly expanded and refined the corruption.

However, in the case of one particular group, bribes weren’t necessary. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5790.)

Obamacare and Abortion, the NHS and Catastrophe

Obamacare and Abortion, the NHS and Catastrophe

In touting what eventually came to be called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare, President Barack Hussein Obama pledged that the measure patterned after Britain’s National Health Service, the NHS, contained no provisions for federal government funding of abortions.

He lied, just as he lied when he tied Obamacare to Romneycare–coincidentally after Mitt Romney became a serious threat to his re-election next year.

The question of the constitutionality of the PPACA, the same law which then-Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi infamously said Congress had to be pass “so you can find out what’s in it,” will be taken up in the current session of the Supreme Court.

With four confirmed liberals in his corner, including a ringer–Associate Justice Elena Kagan who was deeply involved in creating a defense of Obamacare as his Solicitor General and who so far has refused to recuse herself in the matter–Obama must be fairly confident in the PPACA being upheld as constitutional.

Until today, it was doubtful government lawyers would push for a separate ruling on Obamacare’s CLASS feature, the long-term insurance proposal which was effectively scrapped on Friday by HHS Secretary Sebellius due to doubts as to its fiscally solvency. CLASS was revived on Monday when the president revealed he was still committed to it.

Aside from the question of whether this administration knows what it’s doing, the long-term solvency and the sanity of the entire 2,409 page PPACA monstrosity have been as dubious from the outset, as dubious as the merits of our democratic republican government seizing control of one-sixth of the national economy and establishing itself as the arbiter of life and death.

Nancy Pelosi may still be in love with the president’s legacy issue but few others are confident in his pledges especially regarding abortion and even fewer comprehend the weird rationale of using the crumbling, antiquated NHS as the Obamacare model.

In what must have been a stinging no-confidence vote, 15 members of the Democrat Party joined 236 Republicans in the House last week to pass the Protect Life Act to amend the PPACA. The legislation would prohibit expenditure of any funds for abortion and would hold harmless health care providers who refuse to provide abortion services on moral grounds.

As much as it is pro-life legislation, the Protect Life Act is a no-trust measure. It merely re-inforces Obama’s hollow promise which was as trustworthy as his multiple other pledges. Notwithstanding statistics showing 67% of Americans oppose abortion funding, the pro-abortion Democrat Senate will surely kill it or, should Senate Democrats have an unlikely attack of conscience, Obama will certainly veto it.

It was anticipated that the most pro-abortion president in America’s history would continue his killing ways and, as bizarre as it was, developing Obamacare based on Britain’s socialized medical program fits tidily with the NHS in that respect: The NHS goes out of its way to make abortion available to all comers, consciences be damned.

The National Health Service is flawed in so many ways that it makes one wonder whether the president chose it to emulate as some sort of macabre joke on America. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5733.)

Obamacare, the Stealth Abomination

Obamacare, the Stealth Abomination

A Democrat friend, (yes, I do have a few of them), said to me yesterday, “Well, I’ll at least be able to keep my own insurance when Obamacare kicks in, right?”

Her question demonstrated what is one of the slickest aspects of the intentionally-mislabeled Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 which few in Congress read before voting on it and passing it: Few Americans outside Congress know what’s in it, either.

The very questionable constitutionality of the PPACA will, hopefully, soon be settled by the United States Supreme Court. The issues on SCOTUS’ docket include but are not limited to whether our federal government can legally–forget morally–order citizens to purchase health insurance or be subjected to financial penalties.

Constitutionality aside, assuming Associate Justice Elena Kagan fails to recuse herself in the proceedings and the Court decides in favor of President Barack Hussein’s signature statute designed to seize control over one-sixth of the nation’s economy, another issue becomes almost as significant, my friend’s and millions of others’ ignorance of PPACA’s provisions.

Justice Kagan has as little integrity as the president and despite having labored on behalf of Obamacare during her employment as Solicitor General is unlikely to choose honor over Democrat loyalty by recusing herself.

To bolster her anticipated non-recusal and the unethical Obama administration, Democrats launched a smokescreen pre-emptive attack on the financial ethics of the lone African-American (conservative) member of the Supremes, Clarence Thomas, but that’s a whole other story.

Back to my friend.

She’s not a stupid person, despite being a Democrat . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5621.)

Ominous News on Our Doorstep, on Our Horizon

Ominous News on Our Doorstep, on Our Horizon

There was a time in America in the not very distant past when things were very different.

Just a few decades ago, we were respected in the international community, rarely loved, sometimes hated, but usually respected. There was a time when America had a secure border which defined us as a nation, when we felt free to voice our opinions without being condemned as bigots, when government functioned in the interests of the governed, a time when we were a free and sovereign nation not subject to the vagaries and enmities of the 191 other countries in the United Nations.

That time and those times are long past and not solely because of a single political party or one politician, although our current president has far outdone the others, busily undermining not only our economy but everything the United States of America has stood for, starting with our status as a country worthy of respect.

Last Thursday we saw a vivid example of international disrespect that would never have occurred in the past: A contingent of of Mexico’s Secretaria de Seguridad Publica federal police force perpetrated an incursion onto American soil not seen since the insolence of Santa Anna during the Mexican War.

Santa Anna was crushed in the battle of San Jacinto but last week Mexican forces showed their contempt for that American victory and for the American nation.

An El Paso witness reported that Mexican police fired at American hunters on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande and other Mexicans followed that attack “with automatic weapons into the U.S. side . . . stole hunters’ chairs and drove back into Mexico.”

Our authorities are investigating the incident but aside from the theft of a few chairs, will they investigate the temerity of Mexicans invading our nation? Not likely, since we have already granted carte blanche to them and everyone else to violate our borders, thumb their noses at the United States–and steal our chairs.

Almost worse, some Americans are now so terrified of political incorrectness that they have sacrificed lives on the PC altar.

Former-Democrat, now Independent, always-liberal Connecticut’s Senator Joe Lieberman has offered the very valid opinion that had it not been for fear of being labeled prejudiced Muslim Major Nidal Hasan wouldn’t have been able to kill and maim innocent people at Fort Hood in 2009. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5347.)

HR4646: The Damned Democrat 1% Solution for What Ails Us

HR4646: The Damned Democrat 1% Solution for What Ails Us

. . . Well, those Dems are at it again with HR4646. Compounding their deceit and since they were unable to pass it in 2009, it will be shelved until after the 2012 election, assuming they win.

When first proposed, then-Speaker Pelosi said of HR4646, “I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit” and would have a “really minimal impact on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs.”

From the perspective of the multimillionaire Pelosi family, the 1% tax/fee might be really minimal. From the perspective of real Americans, the impact would be really significant.

Even liberal-leaning Snopes.com expressed outrage in its article, “The One Percent Solution,” subtitled, “The Transaction Tax WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??” (Snopes’ emphasis) . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5094)

Jeremiah Wright and Elana Kagan--"Progressives"

Jeremiah Wright and Elena Kagan--"Progressives"

. . . Rev. Wright is anything except slow. He knows well how to stir up his mostly-black audiences: Castigate the white man, not for purposes of instigating hatred of whites, mind you. He simply tries to educate African-Americans in the finer points of history, which he ably accomplished last week in a speech to the First African Baptist Church in Savannah.

Addressing a “Youth Explosion” conference, the reverend repeatedly called whites liars to the delighted assemblage who hooted and howled in approbation as he recounted the history of white lies, not little white lies either. See and hear Rev. Wright trace the history of white liars lying about everyone from Columbus to Osama bin Laden . . .

The House members contend that Kagan in her previous role as Obama’s Solicitor General Kagan “actively participated with her Obama Administration colleagues in formulating a defense of PPACA” and offer documents just obtained from the Justice Department as proof.

Said documents had to be pried loose from the DoJ via a Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, request by CNSNews.com. Not unexpectedly, a very uncooperative DoJ is now seeking to block release of any additional information.

After all, freedom and dissemination of information . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4960)

Obamacare Outed

Obamacare Outed

If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound? Of course it does! However, if a news event breaks and no one reports it, is it still news? If it happens and the MSM doesn’t report it but radical news organizations such as Fox News do, does the event constitute news? Of course not!

That’s a thought to remember as Obamacare rolls on to its inevitable full implementation in 2014, even though it has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. That was news-y enough to get cursory coverage by the MSM since it was beyond ignoring but then the powers that govern what the masses see, hear, and read shelved that factoid so it doesn’t count.

When it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and acts like a duck, it’s pretty safe to say it isn’t a swan. Likewise, when a federal program looks like a lemon, smells like a lemon, and tastes like a lemon, it’s almost certain to be a lemon and nothing proposed in Washington since Prohibition is more lemony in every way than Obamacare.

One entertaining use of that lemon this week was President Obama’s affixing it to the neck of Mitt Romney as what Tony Soprano termed “an albacore” and most people would call an albatross, a smelly sea bird foreshadowing doom when it’s dead and draped around one’s neck. In this case, it spells doom for Romney’s yet-unannounced candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2012.

Romney, relecting a clear disdain for both the intelligence and memory of the American electorate, last week guilefully proclaimed that the first thing he would do on assuming the office of the presidency–a heady assumption, indeed!–would be to dismantle Obamacare. The president promptly and deftly thanked the former Massachusetts’ governor for his able “assist” in passing Obamacare by virtue of his model, the equally-repugnant “Romneycare” in the Bay State.

You really have to watch out for those invited albatrosses, or albacores, Mitt! Maybe, like your dad, George, did in 1964 when he turned up his nose at conservative Barry Goldwater and said he would go fishing instead of voting for the Republican nominee you, too, might consider doing likewise on November 6, 2012. You could catch an albacore.

Were entertainment the chief attraction of Obamacare, Americans could almost enjoy it as farce but most of what the Patient Federal Care and Protection Act of 2010 (PPACA) entails is far from farcical. Skillfully timed to fully impact Americans only after they have already voted next year with an additional two years built in to capitalize on their short term memory deficiencies, the 2,309 page PPACA will revolutionize America’s health care system beyond imagining, and beyond reasoning.

What will most immediately surprise most Americans is not seeing their medical care go the way of another Obamacare model, Britain’s bankrupt National Health Service, though that is as certain as death and taxes. What will shock and dismay will be the costs imposed, another item ignored or minimized by the MSM which makes it non-news except to those who will pay through the nose.

A primary reason for those costs . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4526)

Crazy and Crazier

Crazy and Crazier

The word “crazy” may be one of those pejorative but vivid descriptions such as “stupid,” “queer,” and “idiot” which are verboten by the PC Police but for which the English language cries out as needed and proper. There are, of course, levels of crazy and applying the word does involve a degree of subjectivity but some situations and people can be described in no better way.

Take Massachusetts and its health care insurance reform of 2006. Proposed by then-Governor Mitt Romney, a presumptive Republican presidential candidate in 2012, the program is a semi-disaster much like Britain’s venerable, bankrupt National Health Service. Yet both systems were used as models for Obamacare.

The latest medical news from the Bay State is foreboding.

In the midst of a nationwide physician shortage which is expected to grow worse after Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014 as fearful doctors leave the profession or take early retirement, Massachusetts is leading the way and foreshadowing the medical futures of most Americans. We must say most because the Democrat congress that enacted the Obamacare monstrosity and hundreds of unions and favored institutions are exempted from its strictures.

Meanwhile, up in Romneyland, where the former governor exploded health care demands with so-called universal coverage, “by cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days:” http://bit.ly/lJJZtK

As that report by Fox News concludes, ”Promising universal health coverage is easy. But what does universal coverage mean if you can’t actually see a doctor?” Good point, Fox! Is it any wonder Obama hates them? They tell the truth.

Demonstrating that craziness is not confined to the Bay State and D.C., the IFC, a branch of the World Bank, both of which are largely funded by American taxpayers, approved “a $26 million loan to build a luxury hotel in Ghana . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4284)