He Who Controls The Information Controls The World

After a few back and forth emails with editors and staff of the Dallas Morning News over the last couple weeks regarding two different topics, I have come to the conclusion the only way America can survive is for moderate conservatives and independents to become more involved in owning the primary sources of information.  That means buying major media networks.  We already know all but Fox are controlled by liberals, but we may not truly understand how pervasive throughout the industry the extreme far left's control is.  Apparently most editors and columnists seem to swallow the Obamacrat bullshit hook, line and sinker.  Instead of people like the Koch Brothers lavishing campaign contributions on conservative candidates, the money might be better spent buying up controlling interests in influential newspapers and television networks.

One big problem with the media is that they typically phrase the headlines and soundbites in favorable terms for the Democrats, when reading the details reveals more problematic and unfavorable interpretations.  Unfortunately many people don't read the details, and the broadcast media often doesn't mention them.  Even the Wall Street Journal is not immune from this misleading habit.

For example, today's WSJ (4/15/14, page A3) has a headline that reads "Narrower Deficit Now Seen for 2014".  Reading the details tells us the CBO lowered forecasts for the 2014 deficit due to reductions in military spending (a really bad idea) and falling future cost projections associated with ObamaCare.  But the details also mention the deficit is expected to begin rising again in 2016 and continue growing for years due to rising health care costs, and the ratio of government debt to GDP is already at the historically high level of 74% and continuing ever upward.  By the way, the headline for the same story in the Dallas Morning News was "Deficit shrinking - for now", at least a bit more honest.

Another headline for the same day on page A4  of the WSJ reads "Health Premiums: Slower Rise Seen", one of the reasons for the narrower deficit mentioned in the paragraph above.  The headline for the same story in the DMN (4/15/15, page 7A) was a similarly misleading "CBO: Cost of health insurance subsidies to drop".  Of course the details tell us that the CBO still expects insurance premiums to continue rising over the next decade, they are just starting out lower than expected.  Furthermore, premiums are only one aspect of the cost of health care to Americans.  Premiums may be less than expected, but they are still higher than they were for individuals who do not receive government subsidies.  Even more important, deductibles are higher than under old plans so the total cost of health care will be going up even faster for individuals whose insurance does not pay anything until they cover the deductibles. 

In addition, experience with ObamaCare over the next several years is more than likely to indicate that the number of people under the age of 30 who sign up will be less than expected, which will drive premiums up at an even faster rate.  On top of all that, the CBO projects that 31 million people will still be uninsured in the US in 2024 when the point of the whole thing was to make sure everyone was covered.  Obviously the newspapers and television news reporters need somebody with a little more integrity writing the headlines and the soundbites.

More Hogwash From Napoleon

Barack Obama has built his presidency on racial warfare (blacks and browns against whites), class warfare (non-taxpayers against taxpayers), and gender warfare (women and LGBT's versus men).  Of course that is a generalization.  There are crossovers among the groups.  But looking at the statistics of party preference profiles it could easily be argued that Obama's war is against white married men over the age of 30 who have jobs or are retired.  In other words, the folks who were primarily responsible for building the world's dominant economic engine of prosperity and the defenders of freedom of the last hundred years.

This year the Democrats major theme for the fall elections is the demand for equal pay for women.  No one disagrees with that premise if all things are equal.  But it is interesting they have chosen this theme since income discrimination for reasons of race or gender has been illegal in America since the Equal Pay Act of 1963.  If the argument has any basis in fact then why don't they go after the violators of the law rather than propagandize the issue?  Could it be because this is another bogus issue the Democrats are promoting to buy votes from the freeloaders, the uneducated and the clueless?

The primary fallacy of their argument is that they compare apples to oranges.  Equal pay can only realistically be measured if two people are doing exactly the same job, have been doing it for the same length of time, putting in the same number of hours, and achieving equal results.  The surveys don't come even close to measuring that.

The useless and irrelevant surveys conclude that on average women are paid 79% of what men make.  But the fact is that historically women have worked fewer hours than men and have taken more time off from their careers.  Furthermore, women have traditionally worked in lower paying occupations.  All of that is certainly rapidly changing, but won't show up in the statistics overnight.  However, it won't take long.  57% of college students today are female, and women under the age of 30 in metropolitan areas already make more money than men.  The revolution is well underway.  That is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.  It is just recognition of reality.

Women are now CEO's of such Fortune 500 companies as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, PepsiCo, DuPont, Campbell Soup, Xerox, Yahoo and more.  They are also becoming more involved in politics as the number of women elected to office has grown substantially at the state and local levels as well as nationally.  Anyone actually involved in private enterprise already knows that more and more women are taking the top jobs and earning the big bucks.  Of course no one in the Obama regime may be aware of that since none of them spent any time in the private sector.  If they are aware, then the Democrats are again attempting to lie their way into office by focusing on issues that no longer exist.  If that's the case, some things never change.

Unchallenged Bullshit

The outrageous audacity of Barack Obama never ceases to amaze.  Yesterday he held a news conference pompously declaring victory in the Health Care War by claiming 7.1 million people have signed up for ObamaCare as of March 31.  Did anyone notice yesterday was April Fool's Day?

Of course Obama doesn't disclose how many of those folks had to sign up because they lost their previous coverage because of ObamaCare.  Never mind that Mr. Obama promised that would not happen.  Those folks are most likely now paying substantially higher medical costs, which Mr. Obama also promised wouldn't happen.  Many people who were newly eligible for Medicare due to the new rules switched from previous policies and have been counted in the sign-up for ObamaCare.  It will also be interesting to see how many who signed up actually pay for it once they see the price.

Even when not necessarily lying, Obama seriously bends the truth.  The only credible measurement of ObamaCare's success is to find out the increase in the number of Americans now covered by health insurance that weren't prior to ObamaCare.  I would suspect that number is considerably less.  In fact, I bet that number is closer to zero than 7.1 million.

Given Barack Obama's actions to date in his presidency of routinely spitting on the graves of our founding fathers and his presidential predecessors, one can't help but wonder how long we have until he changes the Declaration of Independence to the Declaration of Dependence.