Final Review: End Of An Error, Part 4 - The Many Failures of The Obama Administration: Tabulating The Damage

As the Obama Presidency starts to wind down we thought it would be a good idea to do a final review of the Obama era. We took an initial swing at that topic back in October, 2016 with a series of seven posts starting on October 9, 2016 with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Not unexpectedly, the review across those seven posts captured the myriad of failures of this Presidency. Diplomatically, economically, fiscally, militarily, legally, Constitutionally, integrity-wise,and in many other ways, in my opinion, this has been the worst Presidency of my lifetime. If you are a liberal, please read the posts, all of which are extensively sourced, before going off the deep end without thinking. This Presidency has stunk.

We started out this week by using some fine reporting and research by Reason magazine to point out how hypocritical Obama has been relative to abusing military power and how his actions have helped create a so-called “Imperial Presidency” which 1) abuses the rule of law and Constitution and 2) is now being run for better or worse by Donald Trump.

Over the next few days we will looking at other folks' opinions on how well Obama did as President It will not likely to be pretty, as the previous seven posts referenced above have already proven.

1) Jeff Jacoby, writing for the Boston Globe on January 8, 2016, put together an article on Obama's failures called, “At Home and Abroad, Obama's Trail Of Disasters.” The full article can be accessed at: 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2017/01/08/home-and-abroad-obama-trail-disasters/YOaU1KuAT3hSHaGHkmGCeN/story.html?s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter

Highlights of his disaster findings from the Obama Presidency include the following disappointments:

• Two years into his term in 2010, voters handed Democrats, Obama's party, the biggest midterm Congressional election losses in 72 years.
• Although Obama was reelected in 2012, he got almost 4 million fewer votes than in 2008, the only President in history to see lesser margins in both the popular and electoral vote.
• In the next midterms elections in 2014, Obama’s Democrats lost more ground in Congress after Obama claimed that: “[My] policies are on the ballot — every single one of them.” 
• Since Obama was sworn into office in January 2009, about 1,100 Democrats across the country at all levels of government have been defeated, Republicans control both houses of Congress, Republicans hold 38 governor seats, and Republicans control 68 of the country's state legislative chambers.
• Although historically the deeper a recession, the stronger the recovery that follows, but the Obama economic recovery was the worst in seven decades.
• Annual GDP growth since the recession ended has averaged a feeble 2.1%, the puniest economic performance of any President since World War II. 
• His economic stimulus cost more than all previous Federal economic stimulus programs combined but it failed miserably to spur robust economic growth.
• During his “recovery,” more Americans fell below the poverty line while the number of Americans receiving food assistance soared despite the recovery.
• According to Pew Research, the percentage of adults aged 18 to 34 are living with their parents is at the highest levels since the Great Depression.
• The national debt almost doubled to $20 TRILLION under Obama.
• In 2008, as Obama was coming into his Presidency, 63% of Americans considered themselves middle class but that number has fallen to 51% seven years later.
• Obama made three basic Obama Care promises over and over: that the law would extend health insurance to the 47 million uninsured, that it would significantly reduce health insurance costs, and that Americans who had health plans or doctors they liked could keep them...he failed to keep any of the three.
• And those that do have Obama Care insurance policies are experiencing skyrocketing premium, deductible and co-pay increases, often making the following statement oh so true: The good news is that you now have health insurance coverage, the bad news is that your health insurance coverage is too expensive to use.
• Obama Care insurers are pulling out of the program because of bad financials, ObamaCare co-ops are mostly already dead or walking dead, and and competition for Obama Care policies in many parts of the country are non-existent or very small.
• By prematurely pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, against the advice of most of his military and civilian advisors, to make a political campaign claim, he created a power vacuum in the Middle East that made a horrible situation even worse.
• His diplomatic screwups regarding Syria, including his infamous and non-existent “red line” threat, gave Russia a diplomatic and military opening, leading to the ever increasing carnage of civilians in that country, a massive international refugee problem, and the rise of ISIS, the most ruthless and well financed terror organization ever.
• According to Mr. Jacoby: “Determined to conciliate America’s adversaries, the president indulged dictatorial regimes in Iran, Russia, and Cuba. They in turn exploited his passivity with multiple treacheries — seizing Crimea and destroying Aleppo (Russia), abducting American hostages for ransom and illicitly testing long-range missiles (Iran), and cracking down mercilessly on democratic dissidents (Cuba). The consequences have been stark: a Middle East awash in blood and bombs, US troops re-embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan, aggressive dictators ascendant, human rights and democracy in retreat, rivers of refugees destabilizing nations across three continents, the rise of neo-fascism in Europe, and the erosion of US credibility to its lowest level since the Carter years.”
• As a Presidential candidate, Obama promised to bridge the divisions across the country but according to Gallup polling, he turned out to be the most polarizing and divisive President ever.
• As a community leader, he never understood the nuances of leadership and compromise and inclusion, it was his way or the highway and the public humiliation and belittling of those that dared to disagree with him.
• Even left leaning, liberal loving Politico agreed with this assessment during the 2012 Presidential election: “Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.” 
• After two terms of the Obama administration, 60% of Americans polled do not feel that the country is on the right track.

How to sum up all of these failures? Mr. Jacoby does it nicely: “Obama’s accession in 2008 as the nation’s first elected black president was an achievement that even Republicans and conservatives could cheer. It marked a moment of hope and transformation; it genuinely did change America for the better. It was also the high point of Obama’s presidency. What followed, alas, was eight long years of disenchantment and incompetence. Our world today is more dangerous, our country more divided, our national mood more toxic.”

2) The previous topic took up a lot of space so just one more summary of Obama’s Presidency for today. The following link goes to an MRCTV web page where a Ms. Brittany Hughes goes through a lot of the material we discussed above and previously this week but puts some cold logic and compassion to the wreckage that is this Presidency. More reviews tomorrow.

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/reality-check-goodbye-obama-and-good-riddance?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0RZMFpXVXdNemszWTJReiIsInQiOiJNajc3T3FURTg0MFVZQlNkNm5hNUxBWkZTNGF1UEczNWdPZkN1ZEpwdEp0a1BiVXJyTHZuRzk2dEUzNjJMVU1WaTNjUGJ4bXh3RitXMmtqUHJhYWM0RHVzT09zckRjcUZcLzNSWlY4cGx4dDZBQTN0NmJvbmtlOFlIV3YrdnNIZUcifQ%3D%3D

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It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

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October, 2015,Part 1, I Am A Global Warming Doubter and A Believer In Science: CERN Is Doubter, A Nobel Winner is A Doubter and More

Every month we have enough material to return to a continuing theme in this blog, namely that “I am a global warming doubter AND a believer in science.” This became of interest because of people like Al Gore who fanatically and verbosely claimed that you had to be an idiot to not believe in manmade global warming. It has been my life belief that anyone that is that loud and that obnoxious is hiding something, that rather than argue facts and reality it is better to beat down and insult anyone who disagrees.

As we have dove into the whole issue of manmade global warming, or its new rebranded title of climate change, we found that Al Gore and people like him were guilty of a number of things:

• Ignoring science and realities that did not support their opinions and positions.
• Rather than have an adult conversation about climate, these types of advocates like Gore sank to the level of insulting those who dared look at ALL science by calling them a variety of names including racists, homophobes, terrorists, flat earth believers, and other slanderous names.
• Continuing to insist that politicians step up their intrusions into our lives with higher taxes, more regulations, and more control on our freedoms and standards of living based on a shaky theory at best.

To see the past posts and the multitude of evidence that we have compiled that showed it is perfectly okay to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, enter the phrase "global warming doubter” in the search box above or go through the monthly historical post listed on the right side of this page.

Thus, let’s see the latest facts and science that prove you can be a global warming doubter and a believer in science, regardless of what Al Gore proclaims.

1) Global warming advocates like Obama and Gore always like to boast that the science is settled, that 97% of climate scientists agree that mankind is causing global warming and climate change, and that you are a moron to believe any differently. But we have identified and verified dozens and possibly hundreds of scientists and experts that believe just the opposite, that mankind is having a minimal impact on the climate and that manmade global warming is really a myth.

Today, let’s add another expert to the global warming doubter side. Dr. David Evans is an electrical engineer from Australia with multiple advanced degrees in mathematics. At one timer he was a mathematic climate modeller for the Australian government’s Greenhouse Office. It is his contention, based on his experiences and education, that while the underlying physics used in developing global warming and climate change models is correct, that underlying physics has been incorrectly applied in the mathematical models.

As a result, he has gone back into the underlying models' logic, corrected two errors that existed in the mathematical forecasting process, and has found that the climate’s sensitivity and reaction to extra carbon being put into the atmosphere is much lower than previously touted. So much lower that he estimates that the UN”s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change has over-estimated global warming over the years by as much as a factor of ten: “Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

Another scientist, another expert who using science and higher education says that mankind’s impact on temperatures and climate change has been grossly overestimated and thus, overhyped, by people like Obama and Gore. Two things here:

1. I am not saying Dr. Evans is right but shouldn’t experts like him get a fair chance to present both his credentials and findings and not be ignored for not automatically endorsing something that many liberal politicians want us to blindly accept?
2. Some critics might say that his views do not count since he is not a climate scientist, he is an electrical engineer with some math degrees? To which I would answer in three parts: first, not being a climate scientist might be a good thing since he might take a view from a whole different point of perspective that a climate scientist would never consider. Second, if he is not qualified than using Bill Nye The Science Guy to support manmade global warming theories is also off limits since he is really not a science guy, I believe his education is in engineering. And finally, Gore and Obama are lawyers so thewy are not nearly as qualified as Dr. Evans.

In any case, an educated person who is heavily involved in global warmng history and modelling now tells us that those models are wrong, making it more realistic for those of us who are global warming doubters to be secure in our beliefs.

2) Hans von Spakovsky writing for the Heritage Foundation, recently discussed some really scary and ridiculous stuff coming out of a group of 20 professors from across the country. According to these 20 professors, if your are a global warming doubter, if you are skeptical about the impact mankind is having on the planet, then the Federal government should arrest you and prosecute you under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. 

Yes, having an opinion now in America is grounds for going to jail because according to these professors, you have: “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”

As background, RICO is a Federal law from 1970 as part of the Organized Crime Control Act that is supposed to be used as a tool to go after organized crime, including dangerous drug cartels and Mafia operations. Yes, daring to have an informed opinion that differs from the opinion of these 20 people is grounds to classify you as a mobster or member of a violent drug cartel. No First Amendment rights for you, straight to jail.

How crazy, ridiculous, and dangerous have people in the Al Gore camp become? And how hypocritical. Two of the signees of the letter comes from the University of Washington whose mission statement says that the university wants: “an environment for objectivity and imaginative inquiry and for the original scholarship and research that ensure the production of new knowledge in the free exchange of facts, theories, and ideas.” I guess they forgot to add the part of putting you in Federal prison if your facts, theories, and ideas to not match up with theirs.

If this asinine idea ever took hold, consider the following scenario that could happen. Several years ago, world renowned scientists at the world renowned CERN Institute in Switzerland conducted valid scientific experiments where they conclusively proved that solar activity was responsible for global warming cycles and trends and not mankind. Thus, under the wacky idea proposed by these 20 scientists, the dozens and dozens of scientists from seventeen countries who proved that mankind is not causing global warming would all be prosecuted under the RICO act. 

Excerpts for the February 1, 2012 post that we wrote on their findings include the following:

This past summer, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) conducted just such an experiment. Before going into their findings, let's talk a little about CERN. 

It is my understanding that CERN is comprised of some of the top physics scientists in the world. I could find no source that disparaged any work that CERN scientists had previously done. CERN is the organizations that is primarily responsible for the development of the World Wide Web and it built the multi billion dollar Large Hadron Collider in Europe. It is affiliated with 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities in 60 countries. I do not think there is any doubt that CERN is the epitome of scientific research.

Back in the summer, CERN scientists conducted experiments where they actually modeled global warming conditions in a lab environment where they "built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the earth's atmosphere."(Source: European Union Times, September 3, 2011).

The experiments they conducted were carried out by 17 European and American institutes and 63 CERN scientists. Their findings were then written up and published in the highly acclaimed scientific publication/journal, Nature.

Their findings and conclusions: the sun's cosmic rays and their role in cloud formation, rather than man made emissions, are responsible for the earth's warming temperatures. Wow, real scientists working at a prestigious research facility using scientific means concludes that global warming is not caused by anything man is doing.

But under this letter’s proposal, the CERN scientists would go to jail for daring to present an alternative scientific theory to manmade global warming.

But that blog post also contained another example of a world wide famous scientists who would go to jail under this letter’s proposal:

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby, Ivar Giaever, a Nobel laureate, recently quit as a fellow of the American Physical Society over the Society's unequivocal position that man made global warming is "incontrovertible" and his personal position that no "scientific assertion is so sacred that it cannot be contested."

Yeah, let’s throw a Nobel Laureate in jail for daring to disagree.

Note: Both of these examples and others about being a global warming doubter can be read at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-global-warming-doubter-and.html

While the letter is stupid, the concept is dangerous. When we act to use government force to suppress the ideas of others then we are marching down the road of George Orwell’s Big Brother where there is only one truth and that truth is controlled, often brutally, by the political class and the oppressive government functions it operates. Certainly not a scientific approach, is it?

That will do it for today but stayed tuned over the next few days where we continue to update the concept that it is sane and rational to be a global warming doubter and a believer in science.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
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February, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care, Part 3: State Health Exchanges Imploding, Revolution Abrewing, and Nancy Pelosi's False Hopes

This is our third post this month in what has turned out to be a monthly review of the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. This is shaping up as the worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Washington political class. It has failed in so many ways that it is almost impossible to keep up with the ongoing failures as they crop up. The first review this month can be viewed at the following link:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/02/february-2014-unfolding-disaster-of.html

For a good thorough review of all the other failures, please access the following site:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/01/janaury-2014-unfolding-disaster-that-is.html

Detailed findings and research that support the conclusion of failures in this site can be viewed by going through the past month’s Obama Care posts, which have been running mid-month every month since last August.

Today starts another day of failures:

1) We have extensively reviewed the many failures of the Federal health exchange website that the Federal Heath and Human Services organization has been running, or trying to run, since late last year. Slow turnaround times, identity theft, criminals hired as navigators, incorrect information, etc. have been just a few of the many problems and disasters of the Federal website for Obama Care.

But some of the state operated Obama Care health exchange websites apparently are having some serious problems also. The health exchange websites in Oregon, Maryland, and Massachusetts have been such dismal failures in different ways that they are all coming under scrutiny and review for both for functional failures and for escalating and obscene costs, costs that American taxpayers are funding. This story and the details below come from recent reporting done by The Hill reporters.

In Oregon:

• Federal government Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee formally requested that the Government Accountability Office do a detailed review of the $304 million in Federal funds the state government in Oregon received to fund its exchange.
• So far, this has not been a good investment or a well managed project since the Oregon exchange has yet to enroll one person online, despite the infusion of over $300 million Federal taxpayer dollars.
• Not a single enrollee online. Almost seems like you have to try to be this bad in order to be this incompetent.
• In the face of this unmitigated disaster, the state’s governor, John Kitzhaber remains upbeat: "Already more than 225,000 Oregonians have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage, including more than 35,000 in private insurance plans."
• I guess he can afford to be upbeat since most of the $300 million spent for nothing by his state employees did not come from Oregon residents, it came from the rest of the country so no problem that it fell flat on its face.
• Also, while he may be excited by the paper enrollment numbers, what he really meant to say is that 190,000 Oregonians enrolled in Medicaid while ONLY 35,000 enrolled in private insurance programs. 
• This is a mix of customers that will destroy the Obama Care business case and financials since those hundreds of thousands Medicaid enrollees will be a net loss to the business case while the only tens of thousands of private insurance enrollees will not pay in enough via premiums to offset the free riders who signed up for Medicaid

In Maryland:

• Maryland's Obama Care health exchange is so bad state officials have been trying to decide whether to dump the state-run website and direct Maryland residents to the Federal health care exchange, HealthCare.gov. 
• This is like telling people to get off of the Hindenburg and get aboard the Titanic, given how bad the Federal website has been for Obama Care’s performance.
• House Republican lawmakers also want an investigation into this state exchange disaster, given that Maryland also got a large chunk of taxpayer money to build a website that the state may now junk for nothing in return on the taxpayer investment: "By the end of the year, over $100 million federal dollars will have been spent on a project that should have cost much less, and doesn't work," Congressmen Andy Harris of Maryland and Jack Kingston of Georgia, an accusation included in a letter they to Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson. "As a result of the fact that Maryland appears willing to continue to waste tens of millions of more federal dollars, we ask that the investigation start immediately."
• As with what happened with the Federal Obama Care website, there are accusations flying relative to the Maryland exchange website that state lawmakers and state government administration officials ignored warnings from auditors that the Maryland site was critically flawed and not ready for primetime at the time it was to be launched, a decision that resulted in more Federal taxpayer money being wasted for no reason at all.
• Besides an investigation, the Congressmen also took the additional and much needed step to see if Health and Human Services could actually recoup some of the Federal funds from the state of Maryland since the funds never accomplished what they were supposed to do.

In Massachusetts:

• Their state level Obama Care health exchange is also having serious problems with the entire Obama Care operation in Massachusetts having the lowest Obama Care enrollment results in the nation.
• Apparently the stress of failure is getting to the executives running this dismal state operation since The Boston Globe reported last week that the Massachusetts exchange director, Jean Yang, was reduced to tears during a board meeting that focused on the problems the agency was facing. 
• The Massachusetts operation is currently trying to work through 50,000 paper applications. 
• "These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead they're doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector," Yang said, according to The Globe

Three different states, three different embarrassing disasters, one single overarching problem, namely Obama Care. Again, how incompetent can these operations and executives be? On the surface it appears like they are trying to screw up the works despite having had three years and hundreds of millions of dollars to get ready for the roll out. Nothing works, nobody is held accountable and Americans suffer.

And the most serious problem has probably not yet hit. If these three states are all like Massachusetts and are each working through tens of thousands of paper applications because of their website disasters, many people out there somewhere in America think they have health insurance today. 

But in reality, their application for health insurance has not been processed yet. It is 45,000 from the top of the list. And that person, that 45,000th person is going to get deathly ill, find out the hard way they do not have Obama Care insurance, and the results could be fatal. That is the real disaster…in addition to squandering billions of dollars and years of prep time for nothing.

2) The Capitalism Institute recently provided an update of how many states around the country are fighting the implementation of Obama Care within their state borders:

• South Carolina is on track to become the first state that bans Obama Care altogether. 
• Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma have introduced and/or passed similar legislation with more states to come. 
• Multiple legal scholars and Constitution experts agree that states do, in fact, have the right to ignore Obama Care‘s tenets and provisions. 
• Many of the country’s top doctors and hospitals are opting out of the legislation. 
• This includes well over 70% of doctors in California.

Which raises a very interesting scenario: if enough states ignore Obama Care, if enough top doctors ignore Obama Care, if enough top hospitals ignore Obama Care and given the lack luster enrollee results among Americans, especially younger ones, does Obama Care even continue to exist? Never have a I seen such a horrid piece of legislation that citizens and states are willing to buck the dictates from the Federal government and basically go on with life like Washington does not exist. 

And that is a true measure of how bad this law is. 

3) We will close today’s review of Obama Care disasters with a little nostalgia. Back in 2010, my favorite politician of all time, Nancy Pelosi (and I say that with the deepest sarcasm possible) enlightened us by telling us how wonderful Obama Care was going to be: “It’s about jobs…It will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. And this legislation is about innovation, it’s about prevention, it’s about wellness."

Fact check:

• It has not created a net gain in jobs, it has been a job killer. We have previously chronicled how over 300 entities have already cut jobs, cut hours, and cut hiring as a result of the legislation.
• Employers are scared to death of what Obama Care will do their profitability and survivability so they are keeping a lid on their fixed costs such as salary and not investing in their businesses or themselves or hiring more people. 
• The Obama administration rarely sees monthly job creation at levels above 150,000, never mind 400,000 immediately and 4 million in total.
• We have seen zero innovation from this law. In fact, its bungling of the website development, despite over $600 million and three years lead time, would be the furthest thing imaginable away from innovation.
• There is very little in the legislation with regards to prevention and wellness, it is primarily about wealth redistribution from the younger generation to the older generation in order to pay for the whole process. If there are positive aspect of prevention and wellness within the bill, how come Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are not upfront touting those benefits?
• And even if those aspects exist, there are no good to anyone if Obama Care policies continue to be so expensive since no one can afford them and thus, cannot avail themselves of what little wellness and prevention there is.

Her words from her mouth back in 2010 can be seen at the following link:

http://www.therightnews.net/flashback-nancy-pelosi-claims-obamacare-will-create-4-million-jobs-400000-almost-immediately/

Lies, deception or ignorance? You decide. But we all now know that the color of the sky in her world when she uttered these words is certainly different then the storm clouds in our skies today, all because of Obama Care.

More bad news tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w