April, 2019, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: More and More Washington Corruption and Joe Biden Gets Creepy

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Congressional Democrats and liberals went nuts during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings, desperately wanting to believe that he was a sexual predator from long ago and was not fit to serve on the Supreme Court. They wanted to believe this based only on vague accusations that were all eventually proven to be lies or in a small set of accusation, were never proven.

It should be interesting to see how these same quick to act liberals will react as their leading candidate for President in 2020, Joe Biden, increasingly appears to be a serial fondler of not only woman but young girls, as reported by a recent Freedom Outpost article by Michael Snyder:

• Lucy Flores, a Democratic state politician started the Joe Biden sexual fondler rumors when she recounted an encounter with him years ago when he smelled her hair, touched her without permission, and did other nasty things to her body.
• Now Christian Science Monitor reported Linda Feldman has come forward with another accusation of sexual deviance.
• She was on site in Connecticut doing a story when, “We were at an outdoor event in Glastonbury, the sun blazing overhead, and I noticed the senators standing around chatting. I walked over and introduced myself. Senator Biden greeted me warmly – and then threw a sweaty arm over my shoulder, and gave me a squeeze. I cringed a little internally; I had never met Mr. Biden before. But I chalked the overly friendly gesture up to his personal style, and maybe a generational difference. I proceeded to interview the senators, but the thing I remember most vividly is Mr. Biden’s sweaty arm.”
• Gail Russell Chaddock a Congressional reporter, has come out and said, “Anybody who’s ever been around Joe Biden has been touched by him – literally.”
• Former Congressional aide, Amy Lappos, had a much more disturbing story about Biden as she related to the Hartford Courant: “It wasn’t sexual, but he did grab me by the head. He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth. I never filed a complaint, to be honest, because he was the vice president. I was a nobody. There’s absolutely a line of decency. There’s a line of respect. Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It’s not cultural. It’s not affection. It’s sexism or misogyny.”
• Even Vox, the severe left leaning Internet news website recently described Biden’s perverted behavior around women: “Biden’s been caught on camera embracing a female reporter from behind and gripping her above her waist, just below her bust. At a swearing-in ceremony for Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Biden put his hands on the shoulders of Stephanie Carter, Carter’s wife, and then leaned in and whispered into her ear. (He’s whispered into many women’s ears.) He’s also touched women’s faces and necks during other photo ops. Once at a swearing-in ceremony for a US senator, he held the upper arm of the senator’s preteen daughter, leaned down and whispered into her ear, as she became visibly uncomfortable. Then he kissed the side of her forehead, a gesture that made the girl flinch.”
• Democrat and liberal loving CNN, via Jake Tapper, also had a severe problem with Biden’s behavior: “I have to say, if any of the men around this table behaved this way at our places of work, we would get reprimanded, we would get potentially even fired. You are not allowed to touch women inappropriately. Again, it doesn’t matter if your intention is sexual or just friendly — you can’t massage a woman’s shoulders and sniff her hair and kiss the back of her head. That’s not appropriate.”

Come on folks, if even Vox and CNN are down on a famous liberal politician you know it must be really bad. These are not rumors like it was for Kavanaugh, there are plenty of video clips to prove that he actually is a nasty sexual fondler. Any other person in America would have either had his face slapped, reprimanded by his business, or arrested by the police. And yet, a career politician has gotten away with this disgusting behavior for decades and there are many on the left side of the political spectrum that actually think he would be a good President.

2) Ilhan Omar is a Muslim Congresswoman from Minnesota. She has made quite a name for herself and her anti-Semite, anti-Israel, anti-American statements over the years. This is obviously her First Amendment right, repugnant as they are to people like myself.

But her First Amendment rights do not protect her if she breaks the laws of the land that she may have actually done according to a Freedom Outpost article Daniel Greenfield on April 2, 2019:

• A criminal investigation is wrapping up back in her home state of Minnesota.
• It involves the misuse of campaign funds and the investigation came at the behest of another Minnesota politician, Steven Drazkowski.
• It is alleged that she improperly or unlawfully spent almost $6,000 of campaign funds for her own personal use, specifically she made payments to her divorce attorney and for her to travel to Boston and Estonia.
• She has previously violated state government ethics rules when she wrongfully took $2,500 in payment for speeches she gave at colleges that get state funding.
• According to the article: “A formal CFB investigation into the Omar committee’s use of campaign money to pay legal fees to her divorce attorney also remains ongoing. According to statements made to the CFB by attorney Carla Kjellberg, Omar's payment to Kjellberg’s law office was reimbursed for services that the Kjellberg firm initially paid for on behalf of the Omar Committee, which would be a violation of state law. Additionally, it appears that the reimbursed expenses may have been related to tax preparation and legal expenses related to immigration.”
• This alleged illegal behavior comes on top of some alleged family hanky panky: “Last year, Alpha News investigated the interesting background of Omar after Powerline Blog writer Scott Johnson indicated Omar may have engaged in marriage fraud. Omar, who publicly identified Ahmed Hirsi to be her husband, is currently married to Elmi – who through extensive investigation appears to be Omar’s brother.”

Anti-Semite, anti-Israel, hateful towards America, alleged campaign fund activities, and marrying your brother to get around immigration laws and rules. She is turning out to be the entire package of despicable political behavior.

3) We have previously talked about some of the insanity and despicable behavior of Congress people but a recent article from the Daily Caller reviewed how politicians in D.C. rigged the system and ethics processes to protect their despicable and corrupt behavior:

• According to the theme of the article: “Congress has designed its bureaucracy to protect incumbents, shielding them from punishment for misconduct and cloaking the institution’s dirty laundry in secrecy. Even members of opposite parties do not go after each other for ethics issues, part of a truce to avoid mutually assured destruction.”
• In 2018 we found out that the House of Representatives maintained a taxpayer funded slush fund to conceal sexual misconduct and bad behavior by Congressional members and their staff.
• Long term Detroit Congressman John Dingell was forced to resign from Congress in 2017 when his sexual misconduct became known but only after decades of such behavior.
• On 2015 he had fired a staffer for not succumbing to his sexual advances but after she filed a complaint, the House Office of Compliance paid her $27,000 in hush money to go away.
• Over the past 20 years the Office Of Compliance has paid out $1 million in taxpayer funds to cover up Congressional sexual misconduct.
• These payments always had to be approved by sitting members of Congress.
• The Office paid out a whopping $220,000 to end allegations of sexual harassment against Congressman Alcee Hastings.
• But the $1 million is probably an underestimate since in some cases Congressional members to pay off people without going through the Office of Compliance.
• They would have an employee who threatened to fire a complaint resign but still kept them secretly on the payroll so that they were still drawing a salary without having to do the job they had.
• They actually had a Congressional lawyer advice members on how to do this: “In fact, the statistics were missing a massive portion of the settlements because Congress’s own human resources lawyer was helping members seemingly break the House’s rules to pay settlements in a way that avoided a paper trail. The lawyer, the House Employment Counsel, advised members that they could pay off would-be whistleblowers by having them resign but continue to sign paychecks for nonexistent work, rather than having the Office of Compliance make a one-time payment from the special settlement fund.”
• For example, a formal report came out that alleged that Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty allowed her chief of staff to resign but still draw his salary after he allegedly punched and threatened a female staff member.
• She admitted to the fraud but said a House lawyer said she could do it.
• According to Daniel Schuman of the Demand Progress group: “Democrats don’t file ethics complaints against Republicans and vice versa because you don’t want the tables turned. They used to call it a Cold War detente: You don’t nuke the Russians and they don’t nuke you.”
• And when the House Ethics Committee investigates itself, it usually takes years and years to complete an investigation in the hope that the Congressional member leaves Congress.
• Even when Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accepted a $56,000 personal cash gift from a company in 2017, a clear House ethics violation, nothing was done about it.

It’s the foxes guarding the hen house. Unbelievable corruption that is rarely rooted out and only when sunlight is accidentally shined on the offenders. Be it long established, long serving Congress people like Dingell and Wasserman Schultz or newbies like Omar, we continue to be under served by greedy, shallow, and deceptive folks in Washington and elsewhere and the insanity shows no signs of receding.

More insanity to follow.

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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2018, Part 10, Political Class Insanity: Wanting To Change The Constitution, An Inane Choice For President, and More Nastiness From Ocasio-Cortez

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Obviously, one of the great things about America and freedom is the U.S. Constitution. It is a brilliant document that has provided freedom for untold millions of Americans over the centuries. It has withstood politicians’ countless attempts to destroy it for their own benefit, desire for control, and power seeking. 

And yet, politicians continue to try to undermine it and weaken it today in order to satisfy their short term bias, greed, and desire for power, as Tim Brown pointed out in a recent article on the Freedom Outpost website:

• In a recent interview, California Democrat Ted Lieu publicly stated that he wants to restrict and regulate the bedrock of our country and our freedoms, the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
• Specifically, "However, I would love to be able to regulate the content of speech. The First Amendment prevents me from doing so, and that's simply a function of the First Amendment, but I think over the long run, it's better the government does not regulate the content of speech."
• He would also like to regulate Fox News, destroying freedom of the press in addition to freedom of speech.

Now, he goes onto say such regulations would not be a good thing in the long run. But why is a duly elected member of Congress, who has vowed to uphold the Constitution even thinking such stuff, fantasizing about restricting our freedom? If anything, if he was true to his oath, true to the Constitution, and true to freedom, he should be finding ways of protecting free speech and freedom of the press,not publicly wishing they would go away, at least for the short term.

Freedom usually does not die in a flash. It ebbs away slowing, eaten away by little incremental steps that politicians like Lieu take and crave for so that one morning you look back and you realize that we are not as free as we thought we were or should be because these types of people think they know best and want to the power to show us they know best. 

If the choice ever came down to the Jefferson, Madison, Washington, et al vs. Lieu when it comes to brains and the love of freedom, it is no contest. Lieu is just a small gnat in the history of freedom while the Founding Fathers were epic and legendary when it comes to freedom.

2) Readers of this blog know that we now consider soon to be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be both a walking, talking gaffe machine and also a very dangerous and hateful person, who has already threatened to illegally abuse Congressional power because someone simply said something negative about her online. She is an economic major who does not know the simple definition of unemployment, she is an elected Congresswoman who does not know what the three branches of government are, who does not know how to read a Pentagon accounting report, the idiocy list goes on and on.

And we recently found out what a small, disrespectful person she is relative to at least one Marine veteran:

• This twenty something, former bartender has not served a day in office but recently labeled a former four star, career marine general a coward.
• That is what she called former Trump chief of staff, John Kelly, a coward.
• Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out that Kelly should apologize to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson when he called her an “empty barrel” for disclosing the contents of Trump’s phone call with a Gold Star family.

This little twit insults a career military man for something as trivial as this. Pathetic leadership.

3) While Ted Lieu fantasizes about eliminating the First Amendment via regulation, a former Congressman is taking a different approach to dismantling the Constitution:

• Former Congressman John Dingell would like to see both the Senate and the Electoral College eliminated.
• The Senate and Electoral College were brilliant government processes that were put in place to protect the rights of all Americans and especially the rights of Americans living in smaller, less populated states from having their rights overwhelmed by larger, more populated states,
• They are both brilliant check and balance devices to keep government and the politicians that operate government under control.
• It is funny that Dingell never called for their elimination when election results went Democrats’ way and the Democrat had a Senate majority, also quite hypocritical. 
• The system of government put forth in the Constitution tried to ensure that no political party or bloc of citizens ever had total control of government 

.The Liberty Planet website summed up how un-American and hypocritical Democrats are: “Unfortunately, Democrats and their liberal activists no longer seem to care about what is best for everyone in the country. Weirdly, they didn’t seem to care about these things when they were in power, but they develop strangely anti-government feelings when they’re not. In the end, Rep. John Dingell’s calls are hardly the most surprising thing to come out of a Democrat’s mouth.”

4) Let’s finish this month’s extensive political class insanity, idiocy, and dangers with a situation that combines the gaffes and ignorance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with insanity of some nobodys wanting to change the Constitution to satisfy a short term political hissy fit. The Vox website, an extreme left wing, liberal website recently published this craziness: “The constitutional prohibition on people under the age of 35 serving as president is just one of these weird lacuna that was handed down to us from the 18th century but that nobody would seriously propose creating today if not for status quo bias. Realistically, most people that young would simply have a hard time winning an election. But if you can pull it off, you should be allowed. And I kind of think she should run for president.

One good sign that AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] should run for president is that she has a nickname — AOC.”

What a great idea! Let’s take someone whose most recent professional experience was as a bartender and who has no political, Washington, economic, foreign affairs, or business acumen and experience and give her the chance to become President because...she has a cool nickname. 

This is a woman who has an economic degree but has no idea how to compute the unemployment rate. This is a an elected official but does not know the very basic structure of government. This is an adult that cannot do simple math when it comes to a simple report on Pentagon budgeting. Yeah, she would be great as President.

That will do it for this month’s insanity. The Clintons legal problems mount, Democrats and liberals want to change the Constitution for no good reason, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to amuse and scare with her inexperience, power grabs and idiotic statements, and a whole bunch of other insanity that both amuses us and endangers our freedoms and futures. More insanity sure to ensue by next month.

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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

March, 2017, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Vox Asks The Wrong Question, Obama Care Trolls and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

1) The liberal, leftist news site, Vox, recently asked its readers to submit success stories related to Obama Care. Vox, along with its head honcho Ezra klein, has been a big fan of Obama Care in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington and the disasters it has caused or made worse: ever rising premium and deductible costs, depressed economic growth, higher taxes, doctor shortages, millions of Americans losing access to their preferred doctors, hospitals, and current insurance policies, increasing identity theft via Obama Care data systems, increases to the national debt, etc.

But undeterred, Vox tried to find positive testimonials on how great Obama Care was. And that idea fell flat on its face when it was overwhelmed with negative stories of how Obama Care ruined or negatively changed their lives, with some of their stories and comments listed below:

• Cost of my insurance skyrocketed, so I registered Republican and voted for Trump.
• lost my doctor & plan. My Aunt's plan is up 48% and she needs the insurance because of her kidney prob. Family can't afford it!
• the hospital I work for is freezing raises because insufficient reimbursement for services rendered. The ACA needs to go.
• My son's business/employment closed and he was unable to find a full time job because NO business would allow over 30 hrs/ week.
• my insurance policy went from $998/yr to over $1240/yr or over $14K/yr. I could buy a new car every year for that much $$
• Due to unaffordable #Obamacare premiums I'm selling my house next month & moving in with family. It's destroyed my dreams.

Keep in mind that people reading the Vox website, and who likely responded to the Vox Obama Care story request, are likely liberals and Democrats who probably had high opinions of Obama. 

Thus, if Democrats and liberals are so down on Obama Care you can imagine how down the rest of the country is on it. Which brings up that old adage: never ask a question that you may not want the answer to. Vox, the place that loves Obama and loves Obama Care, found out this truth the hard way.

2) Sam Dorman, writing for the Associated Press, in an article that appeared on the Political Insider website on February 27, 2017, reported that: “Obamacare may have received a massive amount of support on social media because many of its online defenders were paid professionals, according to digital expert Matthew Brown:”

• In an interview with journalist, Sharyl Attkisson (one of the few journalists that I believe has any integrity based on her prior history of standing up for the truth in the face of Obama administration opposition), Brown reviewed the leaked government emails that discussed “"creating an army of fake social media profiles" and using "tricks to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas."
• Brown did a statistical sampling of over 200,000 Facebook postings, all of which defended Obama Care.He found that 60% of those 200,000 Facebook posts, 120,000, came from just 100 profiles, leading him to believe that those Facebook “users” were being paid to post supporting comments for Obama Care.
• Brown called these fake posters, "Digital activists are paid employees; their purpose is to attack anyone who's posting something contrary to the view of the page owner wants expressed." 

So it looks like Obama Care supporters and/or the Obama administration were using “fake news” tactics via fake social media posts and attacks before the term “fake news” came into being. Which is sad since if you cannot pass legislation that can stand on its own merits and you need to construct an elaborate spying machine online to combat the realities and disasters of that legislation, then maybe that legislation really does stink.

3) We have often pointed out that while the Obama Care legislation was a couple of thousands pages long, the resulting government regulations that came out of it were many, many times more, adding to a government regulation overload that is overwhelming many industries including medicine and health care. The Charles Hughes Smith blog recently published a chart from the Physicians For A National Health program that showed how those usually unnecessary and burdensome regulations were negatively affecting the health care industry:

The blog draws the following common sense conclusion: “Add layer after layer after layer of new complex regulations to the practice of medicine, and soon enough you need millions of paper-pushing employees to monitor compliance, enforce compliance, pursue administrative and criminal charges of non-compliance, file claims and counterclaims, defend the innocent from false accusations, write hundreds of pages of new regulations, and so on….But the system is now so onerous and out of control that the practice of medicine now requires far more attorneys and compliance-regulatory-paper-pushers than it does doctors and nurses.”

And the more time, money and resources spent on government regulations compliance and paperwork means less resources spent on actual health care which creates doctor and nurse shortages (supply) which in the world of economic drives up prices and costs to handle the demand for healthcare services. And Obama Care was the king when it comes to regulations overload.

4) Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, writing for the I Have The Truth website on February 15, 2017, did report on some good news as it relates to Obama Care, something that we very rarely have the honor or stating. Under the Obama administration, the IRS would refuse to accept your Federal income tax return unless you reported on it which health insurance coverage you had the previous year, if any. This is important since the Obama Care legislation required to you carry and pay for health insurance or pay an ever escalating Federal government fine.

Under the previous rules, the IRS would not even accept your return if that information was not on the return, causing you to deal with the IRS prior to fulfilling your legal obligation to file your tax return. This delay, besides being stressful, opened you up to additional IRS sanctions and fines since it could cause you to miss the legal filing deadline.

According to Ms. Monroe-Hamilton: “The Obamacare mandate required that Americans either be covered by health insurance or they had to pay a tax penalty. Well, the IRS quietly altered their rules this month for the submission of tax forms, making reporting of health insurance coverage “optional.” They still say they may follow up if you don’t check that little box, but they don’t say what would trigger that. I sincerely doubt they will ever bother tracking down people over it. Which means the Obamacare mandate is pretty much dead at least at the IRS. Glory freaking hallelujah! The IRS will no longer reject your tax forms if you don’t fill out that portion that indicates whether or not you have health insurance...Now the mandatory disclosure is voluntary and that will be a relief to millions of Americans. Returns that no longer state whether you have coverage or not, will not be automatically rejected by the IRS now.”

The IRS confirms the reporting: “Processing silent returns means that taxpayer returns are not systematically rejected, allowing them to be processed and minimizing burden on taxpayers, including those expecting a refund.” 

This is great news on two fronts. It obviously makes filing taxes less stressful, less dangerous from a legal perspective, and easier. But in the bigger picture, it is another hole in the wall of Obama Care whose mandatory insurance tenet and the resulting fine if you did not get health insurance was critical to the hoped for success of the entire legislation. Removing that requirement to some degree is welcome news for freedom and for those that want the Obama Care death spiral to continue.

Tomorrow we will wrap up this month's review of Obama Care’s unfolding disasters by reviewing actual Americans’ horrible experiences with this bad, bad piece of legislation, experiences that humanize what havoc Obama Care has wrought on everyday Americans.

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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2017, Part 5, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Disasters, The Failure Of Government Healthcare In England and More

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will focus on some of these root causes to show how they are the main drivers of our high healthcare costs, causes that Obama Care never addressed and which still stay unresolved:

1) We often talk about the high level numbers and results of Obama Care. How premiums and deductibles have increased dramatically over the years for Obama Care policies. How millions of people lost access to their preferred doctors, policies, and hospitals. How 18 out of 23 Obama Care co-ops have already gone bankrupt with more to follow. But consider the personal agony and stress below the high level numbers that Obama Care has caused a typical American:

• James Rogers, writing for the Heritage Foundation on February 17, 2017, documented the harrowing Obama Care trip of Kim Quade.
• Ms. Quade left her job as a school speech pathologist after 17 years to work solo, knowing that she would have to replace her school provided health insurance with an individual health insurance policy.
• She did her research and found a plan that suited her particular needs for $188 a month with a $5,000 deductible and health savings account, terms she could afford.
• She liked the concept of a health savings plan since it empowered her to take care of herself: “It was something that I was able to take care of on my own and I was happy about it. It’s the way I was raised: You take care of yourself.” 
• By 2015, her monthly premium cost had more than doubled to $188 (despite Obama’s promise that Americans could see an up to $2,500 annual reduction in their health insurance premiums).
• But despite the whopping increase in premiums, she kept the policy since she liked the doctor network that it covered.
• But shortly after the doubling of the premiums, they went up another $200 a month, at which point she switched to an Obama Care policy.
• She ended up getting a policy with monthly premiums of $773 a month which was reduced to $333 after Federal subsidies, cheaper but still much more expensive than her original policy of $188 a month.
• And that original policy covered flu shots and physicals, which her Obama Care policy did not, and after a bout with pneumonia, her Obama Care policy paid out only $50 towards the cost of two x-rays.
• And now she has to go back out into the market again since the original Obama Care policy she took on is no longer available as insurance companies have left the area she lives in outside of Kansas City.

High costs, lower quality, fewer choices, higher turnover, that is how Obama Care played out for a regular American who just wanted some affordable health insurance coverage.

2) Michael Tanner, writing for the National Review recently, pointed out that the average cost of prescription drugs rose 11% last year and are expected to rise at least that much in 2017. So much for Obama Care reducing healthcare costs in the country. It has not worked for insurance premiums and insurance deductibles, and apparently it has not worked to stem the tide of ever rising drug costs.

3) Obama Care, along with Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, have proven how poorly government performs when given health care responsibilities. Medicare and Medicaid are hurtling towards fiscal insolvency and the Veterans Administration’s inability to serve our veterans’ healthcare needs is an ongoing scandal. But some people still think that giving government even more control over our healthcare needs is a good idea, often pointing to other countries that have total government control over their citizens’ health care needs.

One of those countries is England but according to the Foundation For Economic Education, for those in England, where government controls all aspects of one’s health care needs, it is not a good idea:

• In the United States, the age-adjusted breast cancer 5-year survival rate is 88.9%, compared with just 81.1% in England.
• The United States leads the world on the equivalent stat for prostate cancer (97.2%) vs. 83.2% in England.
• Lung cancer: 18.7% in the United States vs. 9.6% in England; bowel cancer: 64.2% vs. 56.1%.
• U.S. survival rates are also better for leukemia, ovarian cancer, stomach cancer, and liver cancer.
• The age- and sex-standardized 30-day mortality rate for ischaemic stroke is just 3.6% in the United States vs. 9.2% in England; for haemorrhagic stroke, the figures are 22% vs. 26.5%.

Thus, real data shows us that giving the Federal government more control of our health care needs, going even beyond Obama Care, would not be healthy for us. Just ask the English folks, those have not died prematurely already vs. what would have happened in the U.S. 

The Foundation quoted a line from The Guardian newspaper summary of a Commonwealth Fund Report where the report found that England’s health system was “the best in the world” with “the only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive.” In other words, the operation was a success even though the patient died. Obama Care is dying, replacing it with a program that is even more like Obama Care would be fatal to so many Americans.

4) Vox considers itself a new age news operation but it really is nothing more than a liberal, Democratic Party, left leaning cheerleading organization. Several years ago, Ezra Klein, the founder of Vox, put out an article that tried, and failed, to show how successful Obama Care was despite the reality of the legislation’s failing numbers.

But having not learned from that failure, it recently tweeted out a request to its readers to send Vox success stories as it related to Obama Care. Unfortunately, it kind of blew up in its face as Obama Care policyholders shared their failures relative to Obama Care, not their successes with Obama Care:

Mccahill told Vox: my family premium went from $789 a month w/1k ded. to $1929 w/8k ded. In 3 years. We also lost several key doctors.

Adam Prenger told Vox: I have given several thousands of dollars to a company and a service that I have never used.

ClemsonGrl told Vox: the hospital I work for is freezing raises because insufficient reimbursement for services rendered. The ACA needs to go.

Alexis In NH told Vox: We lost our insurance and I became a Republican as a result. 

Never ask a question you do not want the answer to or you have not wired the right answer in advance.

More real life stories tomorrow relative to the unfolding disasters that is Obama Care.

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.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

January, 2016, Part 1, By The Numbers: Losing The War On Terror, Losing the War On Drugs, and Feeling Down In 2016

This is the first post this month in our continuing theme of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

And there will be a lot of smoke to cut through in the next few posts. Always believe the numbers before you believe our politicians, numbers do not lie but politicians do.

1) The Week magazine did a wonderful 2015 year end review in its December 25, 2015 issue. It compiled a series of survey statistics from a number of different reputable sources to capture the mood of the country. Unfortunately, as the numbers show, the mood of the country, seven years into the Obama Presidency, is not good:

• 69% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, the most pessimistic level since 2011.
• 72% believe America is not as great as it used to be.
• 59% believe the economy is doing poorly.
• 47% of those polled stated their family is scraping by in day to day living.
• 19% of those polled said they cannot afford some basic living expenses.
• 61% believe the American dream is broken and only the wealthiest can get ahead.
• 56% believe that today’s children will grow up to be worse off than their parents.
• Only 40% of those polled think that the U.S. is the greatest nation on earth.
• 54% of those polled do not like the way Obama has handled the economy and 59% think he has done a bad job handling foreign relations, two of the biggest responsibilities of a President.
• 50% do not like the way Supreme Court’s recent actions and decisions have gone.
• 86% do not have a favorable view of Congress.
• 55% of those polled think that “ordinary Americans” could do a better job than the current political class now in office.
• 50% of Pennsylvanians would rather be represented by world famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil than current members of Congress.
• 83% of Americans fear there will be a large scale terrorist attack within the country in the near future.
• 60% believe that terrorists are living in their home towns now.
• 45% of Americans fear that the Federal government could seize control of some states.
• 56% believe that Islam is not compatible with traditional American values, up from 47% in 2011.

Not a good way to start a new year: fearful for our lives, struggling economically, having little faith in government institutions, and high levels of disdain and very low regard for today’s politicians including Obama and members of Congress. A dismal picture as painted by these numbers. So much for “hope and change,” the hope has been dashed and the change looks like it has all been on the negative side of the ledger.

2) Our multi-decade, trillion dollar failed “war on drugs” is always a treasure trove of depressing numbers. Such was the case from the reporting of the Washington Post that was summarized by The Week magazine in their December 25, 2015 issue. According to the Post, heroin deaths were up 28% in 2014, the last year for which data is available. Fatal deaths from prescription medicines were up 16%. 47,055 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2014, 10,574 from heroin and 18,893 from prescription medications. 

Deaths from drug overdoses is up at least 50% in the past ten years, depending on how you measure overdoses. Far more people now die annually in this country from drug overdoses than guns and motor vehicle accidents. 

Einstein was said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Given that Nixon declared “war on drugs” over four decades ago and the numbers continue to show higher and higher levels of drug usage and deaths, maybe it is time to try something different than what the American political class has been doing since the 1970s.

3) Obama has told us that 1) ISIS is the JV team of terrorists, 2) the threat from ISIS is contained, and 3) there is no short term, credible terrorist threat from ISIS within our country's borders. In each case he was dramatically wrong:

• ISIS has turned into the most ruthless, well funded, and heinous terror group of all time.
• Just after Obama said ISIS was contained, the terror group launched a successful, multi-pronged terror attack in Paris that killed over a hundred people and wounded hundreds more.
• Right after Obama said there was not short term threat, two ISIS inspired terrorists killed and wounded dozens of Americans in California.

To these out-of-touch musings of Obama we add the following numbers:

• According to a Vox.com article that was summarized in the December 25, 2015 issue of The Week magazine, the number of foreign fighters traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS has more than doubled in the past 18 months.
• There are now between 27,000 and 31,000 foreign fighters from 81 countries fighting for ISIS.
• There are almost 5,000 foreign fighters in ISIS from Russia and former Soviet republics.

The numbers do not lie, Obama’s leadership is losing the battle against ISIS.

4) But it is not just the raw number of recruits that prove we are losing ground against ISIS and terrorism. Consider the recent opinion poll results courtesy of CNN:

• According to the CNN/ORC poll, more Americans “are more likely to say that terrorists are winning the war against the United States than they have been at any point since the September 11 attacks.” 
• 74% are not satisfied and not happy how the war on terrorism is going with only 3% saying they are satisfied on how the anti-terror effort is going.
• 60% disapprove of the way Obama’s been handling the issue of terrorism.
• 52% disapprove of Obama’s overall job performance overall. 
• 40% of those polled say the terrorists are winning, which is 17 points above the previous high of 23% reached way back in August 2005. 
• Only 18% say that the U.S. and its allies have the upper hand in the war on terror.
• This is 10 points worse than the previous low that was attained way back in January, 2007.
• Even a majority of Democrats, 59%, are not happy on how Obama has handled the war on terror.
• Only about half of those polled feel that this administration can protect them from future acts of terrorism.
• 45% are very or somewhat worried that they or someone in their family will become a victim of terrorism.

So what do the numbers tell us today:

• As a new year dawns, the country is depressed, disappointed and fearful.
• The war on drugs continues to be a losing proposition.
• ISIS recruiting is still going strong.
• Americans think that Obama has failed them and the country in the war on terror, a feeling that exists across political party lines.

The numbers are not good….regardless of how Obama and the rest of Washington tries to spin them, ignore them, or lie about them. More numbers tomorrow, if you can stand it.

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Part 4: Why Gay Marriage And The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind The Curtain

Over the past three days we have been discussing a theme that goes as follows: “Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind the Curtain.” The purpose of the posts was to do a reality check in that even though the issues of gay marriage and the Confederate flag are hot and “trending” this week, they are minor nits on a fly’s butt compared to the three other issues we discussed in those blog posts:

1. Monday we discussed the writings of Gary Hart, a former liberal U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate and his correct conclusions that we are being overrun by the most corrupt political class of all time and the lobbyists that drive their corruptness.
2. Two days ago, we discussed the fact that when the whole economy and financial viability of the U.S., collapses due to political class overspending and fiscal insanity, whether or not one has a new type of marriage license or a flag will be totally insignificant in the economic downfall of the country.
3. Yesterday we discussed a whole range of issues that will affect most Americans, not just a small percentage like gay marriage and the flag.

Today, in our final post under this theme, we will review an outstanding piece of journalism from the www.vox.com website, an article that paints a picture and probability of World War III, starting in the Baltic states, that is terrifying.

But before we do that, I am going to run the explanatory paragraphs we used the past three days to set up the reason why we find “Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind the Curtain.”

********************

Later this week we will post our monthly series of political class insanity posts. Every month we gather and discussed the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and corruption of the American political class. Unfortunately for us, over the years we have been doing this feature, every month we have needed more and more time just to cover one month’s worth of insanity.

Before we do that for July’s insanity, let’s look at some bigger picture issues that dwarf the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, stupid quotes, and overall inept performance of the American class. Yes, it is important to point out how wasteful spending goes on in Washington, how government and political class programs never efficiently or effectively implement their goals, how stupid our politicians often sound when they open their mouths.

But the two topics we will discuss yesterday and today dwarf these issues. In fact, the top two social and political issues being hotly debated these days are also nits relative to the two overarching issues we will be discussing this week. It really does not matter what you think about gay marriage and the Supreme Court’s recent decision on it. It really does not matter what you think about the Confederate flag and what it stands for. 

Talking about them in the context of the bigger issues is a total waste of time since both issues pale in comparison to the two bigger issues. The gay and lesbian community consists of less than 5% of the nation’s population. Confederate flag supporters are probably comparable in numbers, small minorities in the country. 

But unless we address the major issue of political corruption in Washington (yesterday’s topic) and the unrelenting build up of the national debt (today’s issue) and the wasteful spending that goes with it, then who can get married and who can fly a flag of their choice will become totally, totally irrelevant in our near future since these two bigger issues affect EVERY American, not just a small minority of them.

Yesterday’s post is based on the writings of liberal former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart. He is the author of 21 books and the following quotes come from his recent book, “The Republic Of Conscience.” While I have pulled out only a subset of quotes from his book that was discussed in a recent Time magazine article, I encourage everyone to go to that online Time article at:

http://time.com/3937860/gary-hart-america-corruption/

Mr. Hart eloquently and precisely points out how our democratic processes have been thoroughly corrupted by the American political class and the media, lobbyists, and organized political entities that feast on those processes and American tax dollars and freedoms. We have discussed this corruption of the democratic processes before,both in this blog and our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”

*****************************

Today we will focus on a wonderful piece of journalism from the website, www.vox.com. Upfront, let me tell you that I am not a big fan of most of Vox’s work. They are like the MSNBC of the Internet, strictly Obama and very liberal fan wavers. However, Max Fisher in his June 29, 2015 article, “How World War III Became Possible - A Nuclear Conflict With Russia Is Likelier Than You Think," is well written, thoroughly researched and scary as hell. I would suggest that those interested in the future of America and the human race read the entire article at:

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war

Below we will contain some highlights of his findings, using the original sub-topics he used in the entire article.

Introduction

- "Moscow is convinced the West is bent on isolating, subjugating, or outright destroying Russia. One in three Russians now believe the US may invade. Western nations worry, with reason, that Russia could use the threat of war, or provoke an actual conflict, to fracture NATO and its commitment to defend Eastern Europe. This would break the status quo order that has peacefully unified Europe under Western leadership, and kept out Russian influence, for 25 years.”

- "If you take a walk around Washington or a Western European capital today, there is no feeling of looming catastrophe. The threats are too complex, with many moving pieces and overlapping layers of risk adding up to a larger danger that is less obvious. People can be forgiven for not seeing the cloud hanging over them, for feeling that all is well — even as in Eastern Europe they are digging in for war. But this complacency is itself part of the problem, making the threat more difficult to foresee, to manage, or, potentially, to avert.”

- "There is a growing chorus of political analysts, arms control experts, and government officials who are sounding the alarm, trying to call the world's attention to its drift toward disaster. The prospect of a major war, even a nuclear war, in Europe has become thinkable, they warn, even plausible.”

I. The warnings: "War is not something that's impossible anymore"

- "A question that was absolutely impossible a couple of years ago, whether there might be a war, a real war, is back," Fyodor Lukyanov, head of an influential Russian think tank. "People ask it. The perception is that somebody would try to undermine Russia as a country that opposes the United States, and then we will need to defend ourselves by military means. Such fears, vague but existential, are everywhere in Moscow. Even liberal opposition leaders I met with, pro-Western types who oppose Putin, expressed fears that the US posed an imminent threat to Russia's security."

- "One can hear eerie echoes of the events a century ago that produced the catastrophe known as World War I," Harvard professor and longtime Pentagon adviser Graham Allison wrote in a May cover story for the National Interest, co-authored with Russia analyst Dimitri Simes. 

- Their article, "Russia and America: Stumbling To War," warned that an unwanted, full-scale conflict between the US and Russia was increasingly plausible.

- Seems Europeans are more aware of these realities than Americans:

• A Swedish military security official stated in March that there are Russian intelligence operations already going on in Sweden.
• In May, the defense minister of Finland sent letters to 900,000 Finns, one sixth of the total population, telling them to prepare to be drafted in case of a “crisis situation.”
• Lithuania has already instituted a military draft.
• Poland has already identified a specific general who will take over as military commander in case a war breaks out.
• In April, NATO and other Western officials gathered in Estonia, a former Soviet republic and NATO member on Russia's border that Western analysts most worry could become ground zero for a major war with Russia, one that might include a limited Russian nuclear strike in Europe.

II. The gamble: Putin's plan to make Russia great again

- According to Mr. Fisher, the root cause of all this anxiety is Russia’s Putin: “That problem is this: Putin's Russia is weak. It can no longer stand toe to toe with the US. It no longer has Europe divided in a stalemate; rather, it sees the continent as dominated by an ever-encroaching anti-Russian alliance. In the Russian view, the country's weakness leaves it at imminent risk, vulnerable to a hostile West bent on subjugating or outright destroying Russia as it did to Iraq and Libya.”

- This paranoia is driven by Putin’s domestic problems of civil unrest, hard economic times, and a repressive regime.

- Thus, to divert attention from these failings he looks for someone outside of Russia to blame for that country’s problems.

- Mr. Fisher: “Unable to cross America's red lines, Putin is doing his best to muddy them — and, to deter the Americans, muddying his own. Turning otherwise routine diplomatic and military incidents into games of high-stakes chicken favors Russia, he believes, as the West will ultimately yield to his superior will.”

- RAND's F. Stephen Larrabee wrote in one of his urgent warning pieces: "The Russia that the United States faces today is more assertive and more unpredictable — and thus, in many ways, more dangerous — than the Russia that the United States confronted during the latter part of the Cold War."

- Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard University's school of government and one of America's most respected international relations scholars, compared the current situation to the conditions that set off World War I: "Russia seems doomed to continue its decline — an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West. States in decline — think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 — tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous."

III. The drift: How the unthinkable became possible

- Mr. Fisher: “During the Cold War, the comparably matched Western and Soviet blocs prepared for war but also made sure that war never came. They locked Europe in a tense but stable balance of power; that balance is gone. They set clear red lines and vowed to defend them at all costs. Today, those red lines are murky and ill-defined. Neither side is sure where they lie or what really happens if they are crossed. No one can say for sure what would trigger war.”

- “That is why, analysts will tell you, today's tensions bear far more similarity to the period before World War I: an unstable power balance, belligerence over peripheral conflicts, entangling military commitments, disputes over the future of the European order, and dangerous uncertainty about what actions will and will not force the other party into conflict.”

- However, the wild card difference between today and the conditions before World War is the presence of nuclear weapons, weapons that could cause substantial damage to everything that the Europeans armies one hundred years ago could never accomplish: "It’s not just a difference in rhetoric. It’s a whole different world," Bruce G. Blair, a nuclear weapons scholar at Princeton, told the Wall Street Journal. He called Putin's decisions more dangerous than those of any Soviet leader since 1962. "There’s a low nuclear threshold now that didn’t exist during the Cold War."

- The article points out that even limited use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with Russia would make use of bombs that were significantly more powerful than the World War II bombs, bombs that would kill up to a billion people as a result of a “decade of winter,” causing massive crop failures.

We are going to stop our discussion of the article here and just include the sub-topics that Mr. Fisher covers. We cannot do justice to the fine piece of journalism he has here so we strongly recommend you read his entire analysis at the link above.

IV. How it would happen: The Baltics scenario

V. How it would happen: A plot to break NATO

VI. How it would happen: The fog of hybrid war

VII. How it would happen: The Ukraine scenario

VIII. The nuclear dangers: The red line is closer than you think

IX. The nuclear dangers: How Putin is pushing us back to the brink

X. The nuclear dangers: An atomic gun to the world's head

XI. The nuclear dangers: Does Putin believe nuclear war can be "won"?

XII. The nuclear dangers: End games

Let us leave today’s topic with the following quote: "You just can't have this kind of [nuclear] war," Eisenhower said in 1957. "There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets."

This concludes our four part series that discussed the reality that there are a lot more important topics, issues, and crises to talk about than gay marriage, which is now settled by the Supreme Court, and the Confederate flag. Because a new piece of marriage license paper or a piece of cloth are nits compared to the financial collapse of the country, the total and thorough corruption of Washington, a much higher than expected potential of nuclear war with Russia in Europe and a myriad of other things we have discussed this week.

Because really, a flag and a piece of paper really kind of mean nothing when we cannot find “enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”

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.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w