Fast Feud

In a speech that many are calling the best he has given in the last several days, Barack Obama begged people to ignore Obamacare's utter failure and the destruction of the healthcare system.

Well, that wasn't the direct topic of his speech - but distraction from Obamacare is clearly the real motivation behind the president's newfound desire to focus his final three years in office on the great  "fundamental threat" to American prosperity: income inequality.

It seems that in this great nation, there are still people who are earning more than other people - despite the president's best efforts to assure that nobody can earn anything at all.  And in fact, income inequality has done nothing but grow because of this president's fiscal policies - with the rich getting richer, and the middle class grasping at part time jobs because there are no other jobs to be had.

Which is why the same president whose signature legislation slashed employee hours and cost them their health insurance is now pushing for a higher minimum wage, so that people can enjoy self-respect and support entire families by flipping burgers.
 
Not that there's anything wrong with flipping burgers, waiting tables, or being a sales clerk; quite the contrary - those are great starter jobs. But wages need to be based on an employee's value to an employer - not on the employee's fiscal needs. Otherwise, the highest paid part time employees would be those who have unsupported children, unaffordable cars, and overdrawn credit card accounts. The best money would go to those making the worst decisions.

But the president made a point of saying that support for a higher minimum wage (as well as an extension of "emergency" unemployment benefits) "benefit all of us, because we don't know when we might have a run of bad luck."

Only it's not a run of bad luck that is forcing people into poorly-paying part time jobs. It's a run of bad governance.

Boxing Day

We'll admit it: reviewing news stories for inclusion in today's Hope n' Change failed to ignite our editorial passions, although did remind us why we're increasingly muttering obscenities to ourselves and exhibiting odd facial tics.

Just look at the crummy news stories we had to pick from:

Obama gave yet another speech about how great Obamacare is, surrounded by handpicked meat props who claim that they've seen benefits from the healthcare fiasco (although last time Barry did this, the majority of people claiming such benefits were lying through their teeth, and only expected good results eventually).  The president did not offer equal time on the stage for any of the countless people (including cancer-stricken children) who have lost their insurance.

Meanwhile, Detroit is officially bankrupt owing to a long history of government officials making promises which were never funded and couldn't possibly be kept. Sound familiar? And didn't a current president brag about having saved Detroit prior to the last election?

In other news, Barry's drunk-driving Uncle Omar has been given permission to stay in the United States, despite the fact that he arrived here from Kenya on a short-term student visa in 1963 and hasn't exactly been doing post-graduate research for the past 50 years. The White House claims that Barack Obama has never met his uncle, although Uncle Omar claims that Barry lived with him for 3 weeks while attending Harvard Law School. When it comes down to choosing who's lying - the president or an aging liquor store clerk - we're choosing to believe Uncle Omar.
 
Obama's Aunt Zeituni, best known for being a long-term illegal immigrant on the public dole, remains in the United States too. Which isn't news, but we just like writing the words "Aunt Zeituni." Say it out loud! It's fun! Zeituni!

What else? In the interest of transparency and a willingness to answer the really tough questions, the White House has arranged for the president to be interviewed by MSNBC's worshipful Chris "Tingling Leg" Matthews, which we expect to play out a lot like the old joke about the lonely traveling salesman who gets romantic with a milking machine that "don't shut off till it gets 3 quarts." Only as far as we can tell, Chris Matthews' will keep sucking forever.

Also under consideration was a news story about Obama's website, "Organizing for Action," sending out emails encouraging followers to throw get-togethers with their friends to commemorate the horrific mass killings at Newtown. The website even offers to send planning ideas "to help make your event a success!" Seriously, the blood of innocents is like mother's milk to this loathsome president and his cult of followers.

All of which (and more, Heaven help us) is why Hope n' Change just feels like putting its head in a box today and letting the world go by.  But that would be cowardly and, more importantly, the box we had in mind isn't empty yet.

It's currently full of cheap wine. And, by the time you read this, we will be too.

Half Vast

Despite the fact that the White House has giddily announced "Mission Accomplished" on repair of the Healthcare.gov website, two significant problems remain. The first is that the website really doesn't work very reliably yet, and the second is that when it does work, people are going into cardiac arrest when they discover preposterously high premiums and deductibles which make their new, government-mandated "affordable" healthcare plans unaffordable.

Both the Wall Street Journal and CNN tried to sign up through the new, improved "Healthcare.gov 2.0" - and both failed miserably. Which is probably just as well, because insurers are now reporting that when the website actually does collect information for an application, it frequently distorts and corrupts the information when sending it to the insurer...if it sends the information at all. 

Frankly, Hope n' Change wishes that the website would finally get fixed just so people would stop concentrating on it and look at the real impending disaster of Obamacare.

It's like being critical of the gangplank instead of the Titanic.

BONUS: Naughty or Nice?

To kick off the Christmas season, here's a very special video message to Barack Obama from Santa Claus! Feel free to share it with others!