FOD 2013.12.16

Writing these FOD posts has become ridiculously easy. There's so many flusterclucks to choose from it has become an embarrassment of riches. Unlike other aspects of the holiday season, today we're going to limit ourselves to three (I wish I'd followed that guideline Saturday night at a neighborhood Christmas party...).

Anyway, our first selection comes from the "So what else is new?" category.

White House delayed enacting rules ahead of 2012 election to avoid controversy

The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Some agency officials were instructed to hold off submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to ensure that they would not be issued before voters went to the polls, the current and former officials said.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and that such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials told The Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama’s top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his reelection.

The number and scope of delays under Obama went well beyond those of his predecessors...

It's a pattern that is being repeated anew, with provisions of obamacare being delayed until after the 2014 elections in a transparent effort to hide flaws in the legislation from voters - transparent, that is, to everyone except his allies in the media.

The Obama administration said (Nov. 27) it is delaying another part of the president’s new health care law, saying that the online portal for small businesses to shop for plans through the federal health exchanges won’t be ready for another year.

Republican critics of the law already are comparing the pre-holiday announcement to the White House’s decision July 2 to delay for one year the employer mandate requiring larger companies to offer insurance.

The administration has shifted multiple deadlines of late, notably allowing consumers to sign up for coverage until Dec. 23 — instead of Dec. 15 — to gain coverage in time for January.

It also pushed back the start of individual enrollment for 2014 from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, or after the midterm elections.

Perhaps the most enduring image of barry's bungled obamacare roll-out is his infamous Lie of the Year: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." There are, however, equally memorable quotes from the liar-in-chief that indicate he is either a bigger liar than we think (hard to believe) or a bigger idiot than we think (also hard to believe). Consider, for example, these statements:

“...we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

He's just now finding that out? Isn't he the guy in charge of those agencies? Why hasn't he fixed them?

“...what we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.”

It wasn't that way before obamacare.

Those blinding revelations came, of course, after he crammed down our throats "a law designed to force millions of Americans to shop for new health plans via the maze of untried, untested, insecure, unreliable online exchanges.” And it continues a pattern of obliviousness that runs throughout his time in office.

... a long list that includes Obama’s rueful admission that there really are no shovel-ready jobs. That one came after having passed his monstrous $830 billion stimulus on the argument that the weakened economy would be “jump-started” by a massive infusion of shovel-ready jobs. Now known to be fictional.

...With alarming regularity, he professes obliviousness to the workings of his own government. He claims, for example, to have known nothing about the IRS targeting scandal, the AP phone records scandal, the NSA tapping of Angela Merkel. And had not a clue that the centerpiece of his signature legislative achievement — the online Obamacare exchange, three years in the making — would fail catastrophically upon launch. Or that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose their private health plans.

And let's not forget the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi.

Liar or idiot? In either case, in the real world people who fail this spectacularly are held accountable. In today's America, they get reelected.

There is, however, one thing barry is very sure of. If it's Christmas time, it's also time to go on vacation.

President Obama and his family will leave Washington Dec. 20 for a 17-day holiday vacation in Hawaii.

The White House announced Friday that the Obamas will depart next week after what is expected to be a light work schedule for the president in Washington.

The president and his family traditionally spend their Christmas break in a rented home on Oahu with spectacular ocean views.

While the rest of us stay home and work to pay for our new 'affordable'' healthcare insurance...