Like rats leaving a sinking ship

More senior White House staff are to leave in the next few months, adding to the high exit rate from President Barack Obama's administration.

Political analysts attribute the attrition rate to exhaustion, but Republican opponents blame disarray inside the White House, with an insular team responsible for too many policy failures.

The imminent departures include those of defence secretary Robert Gates, who has said he hopes to retire early next year, and Obama's senior White House adviser, David Axelrod, who is planning a return to his home town of Chicago early next year to concentrate on planning for Obama's 2012 re-election bid.

In a blog on the Politico website, Alvin Felzenberg, the presidential historian and author of The Leaders We Deserved, writes: "These departures are a reflection of Obama's leadership style. Why he has such a difficult time earning and retaining the loyalties of people outside his circle of intimates is anyone's guess."

Gibbs last month attributed the changes to 15-or 16-hour work days, seven days a week. Professor Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, agrees exhaustion is a factor but attributes the exodus to the scale of the problems the team has faced, especially over the economy.

"The exhaustion rate for this administration is more accelerated due to the problems they encountered in January 2009. There was no presidential 'honeymoon'," Baker said today. He added that some of them had been working intensively on economic policy in the six months before Obama took over.

"These are worn-out, depleted people who are not waiting for the fire alarm to be sounded before heading for the emergency exit," Baker said.

They're leaving because they're tired?

What a crock and what a bunch of non-sense.

We know exactly why they're leaving and it has nothing to do with exhaustion, though we can't quite put our hands on the term to describe it. Maybe you can help us out.

It's as if they're simply a bunch of incompetents bumbling around in a completely incompetent administration, governing, prioritizing and administering everything in a completely incompetent manner. They've all figured: "Shit, we're just a bunch of screw-ups and before this whole thing implodes on us and we're left holding the bag, we're getting out of Dodge."

Please let us know in the comment section if you think you know the word of which we are trying in vain to come up with. Thanks.

Another great moment in the history of the ruling class

Chris Miller nearly doubled his $3,500 stock investment in a renewable-energy firm in 2008. It was a perfectly legal bet, but he's no ordinary investor.

Mr. Miller is the top energy-policy adviser to Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped pass legislation that wound up benefiting the firm.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid's office, initially defended Mr. Miller's purchase of shares in the company, Energy Conversion Devices Inc. He said the aide had no influence over tax incentives for renewable-energy firms, and that other factors boosted the stock.

But on Sunday, Mr. Manley added: "Mr. Miller showed poor judgment and Senator Reid has made it very clear to Chris and all his staff that their actions must not only follow the law, but must meet the higher standards the public has a right to expect from elected officials and their staffs."

Mr. Miller isn't the only Congressional staffer making such stock bets. At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009.

Like ObamaCare, Congress has conveniently exempted themselves from the same insider trading laws they have subjected to the rest of us.

And dig this:

The aides identified by the Journal say they didn't profit by making trades based on any information gathered in the halls of Congress. Even if they had done so, it would be legal, because insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress.

Not only are they engaging in unethical, if not technically illegal, practices, they claim they are not actually profiting from it. Because nothing quite says "Congress" like "dishonest and completely incompetent as well".

The Wall St. Journal has the rest of the details of their investigation into what would put the rest of us behind bars were we to try any of these shenanigans, here.

No, really... guess what else ObamaCare doesn't do?

So, those of you who thought ObamaCare was a swell idea because it would bring down premiums may be in for a bit of a rude surprise.

Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama's healthcare overhaul across the finish line, but the new law does not give regulators the power to block similar increases in the future.

And now, with some major companies already moving to boost premiums and others poised to follow suit, millions of Americans may feel an unexpected jolt in the pocketbook.

Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases.

Many state governments -- which traditionally had responsibility for regulating insurance companies -- also do not have such authority. And several that do are now being sued by insurance companies.

"It is a very big loophole in health reform," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said. Feinstein and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) are pushing legislation to expand federal and state authority to prevent insurance companies from boosting rates excessively.

A loophole? That's what you call one leg of the three-legged ObamaCare stool (universal coverage, coverage for pre-existing conditions, and bending down the cost curve) getting sawed in two? A loophole?

First, Congress forgot to cover children with pre-existing conditions (the health insurance companies were later shamed into providing coverage).

Then, they forgot to cover young adults under their parent's health insurance plans (later, fixed with the Reconciliation bill).

And just yesterday, news broke that they somehow forgot to exempt themselves from ObamaCare.

And now, they kind of forgot to shore up that whole rising premium thing. It's the big sombrero of legislative incompetence.

How much further proof does one need that no one, repeat, no one bothered reading this bill?

But as for actually giving the feds some regulatory teeth in which to clamp down on those greedy insurance companies, fear not, congressional help is on the way.

On Capitol Hill, Feinstein said she was looking at ways to move her premium regulation bill forward, perhaps by attaching it to other legislation with bipartisan support.

Linking it to something like troop spending is always a favorite of ours.

If you are scoring at home, then: We had the original ObamaCare bill signed into law back on March 20th. Then you had the Reconciliation bill that was supposed to fix everything that was screwed up and disagreeable about the original O-Care bill. Now, because they couldn't get the cost control thing right, there will be yet another healthcare-related bill.

ObamaCare: As Nancy Pelosi promised, it will be the gift we keep finding more and more about now that it has passed.

Ooops...

Dear Santa, we didn't ask for too much for Christmas last year and if this turns out to be true, we won't ask for jack-squat this December.



When one doesn't even bother to read the bill, can one be blamed for gooning up even the most self-serving aspects of that legislation? Turns out that Congress, which had every intention of exempting themselves from the Obamacare public health exchanges of the unwashed masses, may have shot themselves in the foot due to a "drafting error" in the crafting of the legislation.

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members.

For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

Please try to contain your child-like giggling, there's more.

The law promises that people can keep coverage they like, largely unchanged. For members of Congress and their aides, the federal employees health program offers much to like. But, the report says, the men and women who wrote the law may find that the guarantee of stability does not apply to them.

“It is unclear whether members of Congress and Congressional staff who are currently participating in F.E.H.B.P. may be able to retain this coverage,” the research service said in an 8,100-word memorandum.

Operational pause: If the people who allegedly wrote this bill cannot even game themselves out of Obamacare, what does that say about all the "unintended consequences" and general wretchedness of Obamacare for the rest of us?

Resume insane cackling.

The provision governing members of Congress can be traced to the Senate Finance Committee. When the panel was working on the legislation last September, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, proposed an amendment to require that elected federal officials and all federal employees buy coverage through an exchange, “rather than using the traditional Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.”

A scaled-back version of the amendment, applying to members of Congress and their aides, was accepted in the committee without objection.

And then, in all the hoopla of git'er done and the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase and the pharmaceutical and union buy-offs, they just kind of forgot about that unfortunate provision from last
Fall. Seriously, who has time for any rear guard action when one is selling one's soul for a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation?

If we had to shut down this blog tomorrow, nothing would be more appropriate than a final post that demonstrated not only the rapaciousness but the complete incompetence of the jackals that fashioned Obamacare... for the benefit of us all, of course.

H/T: Hot Air

Rally around the flag, boys!

Village idiot, Bill Maher, thinks the rhetoric of radio and television “entertainer” Glenn Beck is increasing “the chance for people to take horrible action” against President Obama. Like, not voting for him 4 years from now?

Meanwhile the hatred and fury Congress has whipped up to distract the public from their own incompetence has resulted in this:

The Connecticut Working Families Party this weekend has organized a bus store that will make stops at Wilton, Connecticut, AIG office as well as the security-patrolled homes of AIG execs who are fearing for their lives.

"We're going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do," said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. "I know there's a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what's happened. We're not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy."

No, the fomenting has been accomplished already, Mr. Green. You lunatics are merely the result.

We can’t say how proud we are to have a body of elected representatives who have shifted blame for a mess they signed off on and which is now resulting in harassment and death threats. Makes us proud Americans.