The Meltdown of A Narcissist President

One of the themes we revisit in this blog is the “politicians say the darndest things,” a play on words from an old Art Linkletter TV piece where he asked kids questions and they “said the darndest things.” Unfortunately, what comes out of our politicians mouths are often as funny and inane as what came out of the kids; mouths long ago. To revisit past posts to see the idiotic things our politicians have been saying, enter the search term “darndest things” in the search box above.

I mention this theme today because of a recent interview President Obama recently did with CNN. In it, he made the declaration that the country is so much better off since he became President. Specifically, he said he was most proud of “saving the American economy” and he is ”very confident that America is stronger, more prosperous, safer, and more influential today than it was when I took office.” Huh? Seems he,myself, and a lot of Americans have a different view of reality across every perspective he just mentioned.

Let’s examine each claim separately:

Saving The American Economy

Not quite sure what his definition of “saving the economy” but pretty sure it is different than mine. The recession in 2008 was not the first recession in the history of the country. In fact, we have had a bunch of them in just the past few decades.

In each case, no one had to “save the economy,” a recession is a natural adjustment to imbalances in the economy, the economy has always recovered. For him to think that it would not have recovered without him, that he had to “save it” somehow, is contrary to history, economic theory, and reality.

The real test of economic leadership is to determine how fast and how well the country comes out of a recession. In that view, his administration has done a terrible job:

• Economic growth during his administration after the economy came out of recession status has been at historical lows relative to past recoveries.
• Historic annual economic growth in this country has been over 3% a year but this administration has yet to get even one year over 3%.
• The economic growth after this recession was half as robust as the recovery coming out of the Reagan administration recession.
• There are still about 45 million Americans receiving Federal government food assistance every month, about 50% higher than when Obama took office and years after the recession ended.
• The labor force participation rate is lower than it has been in decades despite the recession having ended five years or so ago.
• The true unemployment rate is much higher than the official unemployment rate as the drop off in labor force participation has caused millions of Americans to stop looking for work as they became too discouraged to even try.
• Wage growth during this recovery has been stagnant if not negative, depending on how it is measured.
• Job creation has been deceptive during this administration since many of the newly created jobs were lower paying, temporary, and part time, all factors which deceptively lowered the official unemployment rate.
• By the time this administration is over, it is likely that the national debt will have grown by 100% or a whopping $10 TRILLION. A debt burden that large has made the country weaker, not stronger, as he asserts in the interview.

These anemic results have occurred despite a failed $800 billion economic stimulus package, trillions of fake dollars the Federal Reserve pumped into banks and other financial institutions, and an energy revolution that helped increase employment and put downward pressure on energy costs.

Using this criteria, I would have to say this administration was an economic failure, not a savior. its excessive and punitive regulations, thousands of new ones every year,m high taxation rates, record deficit spending, and crony capitalism helped create the weakest economic recovery in at least a hundred years. That is not saving anything.

America Is Safer

Not sure where he go this concept but:

• Our borders are not secure and Border Patrol reports are showing that not all people coming across our southern border are from Central and South America, many of the illegals are from countries with terrorist ties.
• We have been subjected to a number of terrorist attacks during this administration including the Boston bombing, the Fort Hood shootings, the Benghazi murders, and a number of other, less publicized attacks.
• The Chinese government recently told the U.S. government and the Obama administration that North Korea has upwards of twenty nuclear devices in its arsenal, far more than originally thought, and has the capability to build another twenty in the next year or so.
• North Korea also continues to develop long range missiles to deliver those nuclear weapons.
• Iran is likely to get closer to having nuclear weapons capability if the current structure of the Obama/Kerry preliminary agreement with Iran stays unchanged.
• If that Iranian agreement does go through to reality, then it is likely to set off a nuclear arms race with other Persian Gulf states, with news stories already circulating that rather than developing its own nuclear arsenal, Saudi Arabia has already put in a purchase order for nuclear weapons with Pakistan.
• Although the President assured us that we were leaving behind a “safe and secure” Iraq when he pulled U.S. troops out a few years ago, one third of the country is now under the control of ISIS, a terror organization that rose up during his administration, a terror organization he shunned by called it the “JV” of terror groups.
• ISIS now controls one third of Iraq, a large chunk of Syria, and is the wealthiest, most cut throat terror organization in the history of mankind which has made no secret how it plans to attack and try to destroy America and its citizens.
• After U.S.Special Forces killed a high ranking ISIS leader, ISIS has vowed to kill the President and its growing presence has led to the Pentagon putting all U.S.military bases INSIDE the U.S. on high security alert.

Tough to believe we are safer when domestic terror attacks are increasing, the number of nations with nuclear arms is increasing, the ability to deliver those nuclear weapons to their targets a long way away is increasing, and the most vicious and richest terrorist organization of our time has us in its sights. Again, the President and most of America seem to have varying definitions of what “secure” means.

America Is More Influential

• Russia and Putin do not appear to take this administration seriously, having marched into the Ukraine and taken over large parts of that country without fear of retribution from the U.S. and the rest of the world.
• When the Obama administration decided to hold a summit meeting recently which focused on six Persian Gulf states, the top leader in four of those states decided not to attend, sending lower level government representatives even though the meeting was focused on their needs and concerns, a severe diplomatic slap in the face of the President.
• If anything, the whole Middle East is more unstable than before this Presidential administration took over, indicating it was at least as bad as previous administrations in trying to get any peace framework established. 
• Russia and China have grown closer together and bypassing the U.S. in economic and military ties, signing long term agreements to ship Russian raw energy materials to China and engaging in joint military exercises in the Mediterranean. 
• The U.S. has no influence in bring peace to civil wars around the world including Syria and Libya which have become more breeding grounds for terrorism.

When military aggression is taken without fear of consequences, when small countries say no thanks to a Presidential offer to a summit meeting, when the Middle East continues to seethe, when civil wars continue to rage, and when powerful countries bypass the U.S. to form alliances with each other, claiming that America is more influential than before this administration came into power is either an ironic joke or self delusion.

I think most Americans would disagree with the President and his self appraisal of his administration’s job rating. He did not “save the economy.” In fact, his economic policy actions probably led to a longer recession and definitely led to a weaker recovery than anyone can remember.

America is not more secure. With unsealed borders, wealthy and vicious terror organizations aiming for us, and nuclear weapons possession growing quickly, as former head of the Department Of Homeland Security Tom Ridge recently observed, America is probably more vulnerable to attack than at any time since the 9-11 attacks.

America is not more influential. As a popular saying goes, as the Obama administration has wore on, our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us. 

Does the President really believe what he is saying, given the preponderance of evidence and reality that rebuts his position on accomplishments? I am totally unqualified to give a physiological assessment but here is what I think is going on. 

As a narcissist, this President is having trouble reconciling the reality of the world with his vision of himself that he can do no wrong. He needs reassurances that he can never be wrong, he is too smart, too wise to be wrong and thus he has to convince himself that the world is not as it is but how he perceives it through his narcissistic filter. 

I think this view also lines up with the content of interviews he has given over the past week or so. In those interviews, he has blamed Fox News and top Congressional Republicans for the ills of the world and the bad views of his administration’s accomplishments or lack of accomplishments. 

He has recently indicted all Christians for not doing enough to help the poor, despite the fact that thousands of Christian charities, hospitals, and other organizations help millions of poor people every minute of every day. You see, it cannot be his fault, he is too perfect to be at fault. Its those biased news reporters at Fox, its those ignorant Republicans in Congress, its those selfish Christians that keep everything for themselves that are to blame.

Thus, I think what we are seeing is the meltdown of a President and a Presidential administration. Its actions have been ineffective or counterproductive. Obama’s time in the spotlight is shrinking every day and he and his legacy have little to show for his six and a half years in power. The economy has limped along, his biggest legislative action, Obama Care, is a failure along so many parameters, our foreign policy is in tatters, and Americans fear for their future safety, both financial and physical.

It is sad to watch a person look past or deny his failures to grope for successes that do not exist while simultaneously blaming others for those same failures. Unfortunately, his sadness pales in comparison to the hardships and dangers he has placed this country in all the while trampling our freedoms and Constitutional rights in the process.

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:

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Obama Care: Still Constitutional and Still A Major Disaster: Part 1 - Root Causes Of High Health Care Costs and The Gutting Of Medicare

We have not talked about Obama Care for a while, our review of the latest slime, sleaze, morality, and corruption of American political class taking up five of our recent posts. However, that does not mean the bad news of Obama Care has not continued to come to the surface. While it may be Constitutional, it is still a disaster along every dimension imaginable: costs, problem solutions, freedom, and fiscal irresponsibility.

But before reviewing the latest, let's review the basic problems we have discussed way too many times in this blog:

1) Obama Care never identified or addressed the primary root causes of our nation's escalating health care costs:

• Americans eat too much and Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food - These two interrelated causes have many underlying drivers, not the least of which is Federal government farm subsidies. These subsidies have incented American farmers to grow way too much corn, corn that ends up as cheap but unhealthy corn fructose which ends up in just about everything Americans eat.
• Americans smoke too much - This problem is exacerbated by the Federal government, with the American taxpayer paying and incenting tobacco farmers over $190 million a year in Federal subsidies to grow more tobacco which ends up killing more Americans.
• Americans do not get enough exercise - Americans exercise so little that a recent article in the August 17, 2012 issue of The Week magazine discussed a global study which found that Americans "ranked among the most physically lazy countries in the world," with 40% of American adults rarely engaging in any physical activity or exercise.
• Americans are getting older - Rather than mobilizing resources to aggressively go after new cures and treatments for aging diseases, e.g. cancer, dementia, etc., Obama Care instead just introduces a massive new Federal bureaucracy and taxation system without a focus on disease eradication.
• The legislation contains none of the previously successful medical tort reform that some states have already shown to reduce health care costs, an omission due to the fabulous lobbying efforts of the ABA.
• The legislation does nothing to break down the state line barriers that inhibit insurance company competition across state lines.
• The legislation never "followed the money." In other words, when we go into for a simple medical test that takes only a handful of minutes to perform, e.g. a blood test, but end up paying hundreds of dollars for the simple test, Obama Care never took the time to understand where these outrageous amounts of money flow, who benefits from the outrageous fees, understand how much of these fees are reasonable and unreasonable, and how to control the flow.

2) The legislation does little to curtail current wasteful spending of existing massive Federal government health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which easily lose well over $100 billion a year to waste, inefficiencies, and outright criminal fraud.

3) The legislation will not contain health care costs, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that the gross cost of the legislation is almost double what was estimated just a few years ago, the head actuary of Medicare and Medicaid recently estimating that Obama Care will add more than $300 billion to the national debt in the first ten years, and the one sub-program that was supposed to be a positive contributor to the legislation's financials, the CLASS program, has already been shut down for being ineffective.

4) The legislation is written so poorly that companies have already set plans in motion to curtail hiring, change full time employees to part time employees, and cancel existing company health care plans in order to dodge the taxes, regulations, and burdens imposed on them by the legislation. This legislation and the ensuing actions by companies are likely a primary driver to our continuing high unemployment rate.

We could go on with other examples of idiocy and fiscal dangers that we have already discussed in this blog but you get the idea. When you do not address the root causes of any problem, your chance of actually resolving the problem is almost nil. This is the case with Obama Care.

This is a horrible piece of legislation. And the depths of the dangers just keep bubbling to the surface.

- One of the supposed selling points of Obama Care and the main reason we were supposed to pass it was that the legislation would provide for health care insurance for EVERY American once it was fully implemented. However, a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report says that under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, 30 million non-elderly Americans will remain without health insurance in 2022, ten years from now.

Thus, if the CBO is to be believed, and Obama, Pelosi, et al relied on the original CBO analysis to force through Obama Care, then a primary tenet and objective of Obama Care, all Americans will be covered by health care insurance, will go largely unfilled. The CBO's analysis estimated that there are currently 53 million Americans without health care insurance. By leaving 30 million people uninsured when the legislation is fully rolled out, the legislation will have missed this target by over 50%. Pitiful.

And it probably will not even hit this low coverage result. As we have reported many times in this blog, American companies have publicly announced that they will seriously consider dropping their existing health care insurance policies they currently fund for their employees and retirees under Obama Care. Why? Obama Care makes it a better business decision and financial decision to pay a smaller Obama Care fine for not having employee health insurance coverage than to continue their existing programs, an action that will likely result in millions and millions of more Americans not having health care insurance.

- Not only is Obama Care likely to screw up the health care coverage that tens of millions of Americans get from their employers, but it is also likely to really devastate Medicare. The Wall Street Journal reported on this gutting of Medicare under the Obama Care legislation two years ago:

 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575437311393854940.html

Their article focused on the findings of Richard Foster who was the head actuary of Medicare at that time, a person who probably knew more about the numbers driving Medicare than anyone else anywhere. Mr. Foster's findings and analyses led to the following conclusions:

• Medicare payment rates for doctors and hospitals serving elderly Americans will be cut by 30% over the next three years under Obama Care
• By 2019 Medicare, payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. 
• At the end of the 75-year forecast window for the Medicare, Medicare payment rates will be one-third of what will be paid by private insurance, and only half of what is paid by Medicaid.
• Obama Care chops $818 billion out of  Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) over the next ten years.
• Combining these cuts with cuts to Medicare Part B brings the total cuts to $1.05 trillion over the first 10 years and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 years.
• Mr. Foster's analysis also concludes that 50% of senior Americans with Medicare Advantage will lose their plan because of these cuts.
• These cuts do not include unforeseen cuts that Obama Care's 15 member "death panel"of unelected bureaucrats might impose in the future to keep costs under control

No one argues that Medicare and Medicaid costs need to be gotten under control. But funding Obama Care with arbitrary cuts to Medicare does not eliminate the cost issue, it just moves the costs elsewhere within the Federal bureaucracy. All it does it make medical care for America's elderly more difficult to provide and find without solving any of the underlying root causes of the problem to begin with.

- While the Wall Street Journal article is a little dated, a new CBO analysis and report from late July is not. It reinforces these findings from the Journal article, updating them for current estimates but reaching the same conclusions, namely that Obama Care arbitrarily guts Medicare funding according to the following budget cuts:

•A $260 billion payment cut for hospital services.

•A $39 billion payment cut for skilled nursing services.

•A $17 billion payment cut for hospice services.

•A $66 billion payment cut for home health services.

•A $33 billion payment cut for all other services.

•A $156 billion cut in payment rates in Medicare Advantage.

•$56 billion in cuts for disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments.

•$114 billion in other provisions pertaining to Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.

Note: CBO report details are available at:

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43471-hr6079.pdf


Different year, different analysis, same conclusion. The Heritage Foundation, pulling information from the 2012 Medicare Trustees report concluded: "The impact of these cuts will be detrimental to seniors’ access to care. The Medicare trustees 2012 report concludes that these lower Medicare payment rates will cause an estimated 15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies to operate at a loss by 2019, 25 percent to operate at a loss in 2030, and 40 percent by 2050. Operating at a loss means these facilities are likely to cut back their services to Medicare patients or close their doors, making it more difficult for seniors to access these services."

Boy, it just keeps getting worse. Didn't anybody in Congress or the White House consult with the Medicare and Medicaid experts to find out ahead of time what Obama Care would do the the health care of senior Americans from the experts who would know best? Obviously not.

Yes, Obama Care is Constitutional. But it is also a disaster that does not address the root causes of our escalating health care costs, will leave tens of millions of Americans uninsured, will add to our skyrocketing national debt, and will likely deprive funding to existing health care programs that serve our senior citizens. And worst of all, we have more bad news to report int tomorrow's post, the nightmare continues.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/