Obamacare and Big Lies

Tuesday, I was charitable toward Obama.  Yes, I do that on occasion.  I left the door open to the possibility he was not lying when he said on numerous occasions from 2009 to 2012 that if we like our health plans, we can keep them:

This means one of two things – Obama willfully told us a Big Lie about Obamacare supposedly letting us keep our health insurance plans, or he is so clueless and detached that he did not know what his own signature law and his own administration was doing.  If he was that clueless and really cares about the situation, he will soon come out and insist that Obamacare be administered so that his promise will be somehow, in a fashion, kept.

Well, yesterday we found out Obama’s response to insurance cancellations and other Obamacare problems – doubling down on Big Lies.  And that in turn lets us know he was lying in the first place.

I heard so many lies from Obama and Sebelius and allies yesterday, I cannot even pretend to be able to keep up with them.  But that is part of the Big Lie technique, to tell lies over and over until they become common “knowledge”.

One big whopper told by Obama himself is that what the insurance cancellations really were was transitioning people from inferior plans into better plans.  Lie.  And one repeated by Obama’s hacks.  David Frum’s (well deserved) experience is typical:

Now our protagonist has become “one of the hundreds of thousands of people whose insurance coverage was canceled for not complying with the terms of the Affordable Care Act,” the euphemism for ObamaCare. “As a result, not only will I pay more, but I have had to divert many otherwise useful hours to futzing around with websites and paperwork.”

Before ObamaCare, he paid $668 a month for a high-deductible plan. He actually managed to get through to his “state” exchange (he lives in the District of Columbia) and price a more or less comparable plan. It’s $865 a month, and the deductibles are higher, by $600 within the plan’s network and $1,200 without. By our calculations that means he will pay $2,364 more a year in premiums, and a total of $4,164 more if he maxes out on the deductibles.

In other words, higher premiums and higher deductibles.  (But, but Obama told us premiums would go down!)  That’s what most of those who are dealing with cancellations are facing.  And the cancellations are not the insurance companies’ fault as Obama and allies would have us think.  The cancellations are caused by Obamacare and the Obama Regime’s writing of the Obamacare regs as reported by (even) NBC.  And that can’t be blamed on Republicans either.  Yes, Democrats are doing that as well.

I could go on.  But again, that Obama and allies’ response to  health plan cancellations is to tell Big Lies pretty much proves that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” was a Big Lie in the first place.  And now, even the Washington Post’s fact checker agrees, with 4 Pinocchios no less.

But, of course, that Big Lie was necessary to pass Obamacare and re-elect Obama.

Joe Wilson was right.

Downfall XVI: Obama Administration Knew Millions Would Lose Their Health Insurance (says NBC!)

I never thought I would see a story like this from the likes of NBC News.  But now even liberals are catching on to what us radical terrorist racist bigoted extremist right-wing tea partiers have been telling you for years about Obamacare.

In short, the Obama Administration has known “for at least three years” that Obamacare would cause millions to lose their health insurance plans. Yet…

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

And millions losing their plans is not a bug, it’s a feature, courtesy of Obama and Obamacare:

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

This means one of two things – Obama willfully told us a Big Lie about Obamacare supposedly letting us keep our health insurance plans, or he is so clueless and detached that he did not know what his own signature law and his own administration was doing.  If he was that clueless and really cares about the situation, he will soon come out and insist that Obamacare be administered so that his promise will be somehow, in a fashion, kept.  If.

But, for now, the Big Lie technique is the modus operandi:

FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.
— Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) October 29, 2013

Which lie is already debunked, mocked, and derided as noted at the Ace of Spades:

This idea was getting resoundingly mocked last night on Twitter, even among lefty journos I know. The thing about lies is they have to be at least plausible. The only people buying this are people who know nothing about what Obamacare actually does; now that includes a lot of low-info voters . . . but not a lot of people covering the law.

And one reason I am including this post in my Downfall series is that it now appears even the “Mainstream” News Media – even NBC! – is getting tired of drinking and dispensing Obama’s kool-aid.  Instead of continually assisting Obama in his cover-ups and spin, they are beginning to commit actual journalism. Should that continue and increase, it will not be good for the future of the Obama Regime.

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Downfall is an ongoing series anticipating and tracking what I expect will be the self-destruction of Obama.

The first post may be found here.  The series may be found here.

Highland Park Presbyterian Votes to Leave PCUSA

Highland Park Presbyterian Church (HPPC) has voted to leave the mainline PCUSA by a 1337 to 170 margin.

The irony of this is that back in 1991, that congregation split practically down the middle over whether to stay in the PCUSA.  Those determined to leave formed Park Cities Presbyterian Church.  So today’s Highland Park Presbyterian are the descendants (spiritually at least) of those who decided to stay behind in the mainline Presbyterian Church.

Yet even they have had enough and are now leaving the PCUSA.  Needless to say, that says volumes about how far gone is the mainline Presbyterian Church.

(By the way, I find this particularly interesting as I irregularly attended HPPC as a child.)

GAFCON Bishops Endorse Boundary Crossing

Without dissent, the bishops at GAFCON have just approved the following resolution:

To affirm and endorse the position of the Primates Council in providing oversight in cases where Provinces and Dioceses compromise biblical faith, including the affirmation of a duly discerned call to ministry. This may involve ordination and consecration if the situation requires.

Yes.  Boundary crossing.  Horrors!  (Hmm, maybe I should scare libchurchers this Halloween by going out as a boundary crosser.)

And I heartily approve and am glad to see this was passed with no dissent.  This is in the spirit of Athanasius, who did not recognize the legitimacy of Arian bishops and ordained orthodox clergy to witness in their territories.

Apostate bishops are no bishops.  Their unfaithfulness should and does forfeit their bishoprics.  And the unfortunate in their dioceses should have orthodox shepherds appointed over them to guide them and protect them from heretical wolves.

ACNA BCP: The Summary of the Law

Now I will nitpick make further comments on the working ACNA Book of Common Prayer.  (You will recall that I began by commending its revised treatment of the filioque.)  Again, downloads of the new BCP may be found here.

In looking at the Holy Eucharist, the first thing that stood out to me was . . . an article, in the Summary of the Law which reads as follows:

Jesus said: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

Leaving aside, at least for now, the issue of modern language, “a second” struck me as odd.  Now I looked and did notice that good Bible translations differ on whether to render Jesus’ words “the second” or “a second.”  I’m no Greek scholar, but I suspect that is because the original Greek implies articles more than spells them out as in English.  But “a second” is a legitimate translation.

But the traditional Book of Common Prayer renders it “the second,” and I think that much preferable.  The context of Jesus words clearly indicates he was not talking about merely a second commandment in numerical order or a commandment among several secondary commandments.  He was stating that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the second most important commandment.  “The second” better reflects that than “a second”.

Plus “the second commandment” parallels and sounds better paired with “the great and first commandment”.  And the sound and structure of liturgical language should always be a consideration if a secondary one.

I was not privy to the discussions behind the working ACNA BCP, but I see little good reason to depart from the traditional BCP rendering, “the second commandment.”

White House Knew Obamacare Website was NOT Ready

More keeps coming out about the Obama Regime knowing the Obamacare website was not ready.  And Obama’s line yesterday that heavy traffic was the problem? LIE.

From the Washington Post of all people (with emphasis mine):

Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.

Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.

And that in spite of informed pleas not so to do:

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency in charge of running the health insurance exchange in 36 states, invited about 10 insurers to give advice and help test the Web site.

About a month before the exchange opened, this testing group urged agency officials not to launch it nationwide because it was still riddled with problems, according to an insurance IT executive who was close to the rollout.

It is *Anglican Understatement Alert* not good that the Obama Administration had three years to get the web site ready and failed.  But what is outrageous is that they knew it was not ready, yet went ahead anyway and gave us a prolonged Shutdown in order to push out this pile.  House Republicans compromised and passed a bill opening the federal government in return for a one year delay in the Obamacare individual mandate.  We now see all too well that delay was needed.  But Obama and the Democrats said no anyway and prolonged the Shutdown and risked going past the debt ceiling deadline.

So Obama shut down in order to cram down our throats an unready Obamacare.

And then he lies about it to boot.  Now even some in the snooze media are waking up:

Mark Halperin, the “Game Change” coauthor and a regular on [Morning Joe], called the rollout “unacceptable” and added that “the secrecy is unacceptable,” accusing the administration of withholding information about how many people have signed up.

His fellow panelist, liberal commentator Mike Barnicle, ratcheted up from there: “They’re lying about it now,” he said. “They’re not depriving us of information, they are outright lying.” The former Boston Globe columnist called the administration’s conduct “unacceptable.”

Yes, lib’ruls and I do agree on occasion.  That this is just a “glitch” or two is just Obama spin.  And that is putting it nicely.

ACNA Restores the Filioque

Back in June, I expressed concern about the draft ACNA Book of Common Prayer reducing the filioque of the Nicene Creed to a footnote.  I noted that greater unity with our Orthodox friends motivated the draft but that I thought it a step too far that would harm overall Christian unity more than help it as unhappiness at the time was indicating.  I instead advocated retaining the filioque but in parentheses. 

Well, the working ACNA BCP has been released.  And I am glad to see the revised BCP does just that.  Kudos to those overseeing the process for this wise decision.

The ACNA BCP is now a working document subject to input and revision.  So I intend to do my part and look it over and comment.  I may post some comments here.

Obama Wants You to Ignore Me

Obama wants you “to stop focusing” on humble bloggers such as yours truly.

Just letting you know.

Blogs, particularly right-of-center blogs, have a history of holding tyrants and their kept “news” organs accountable.  That is why tyrants do not like them.

Downfall XV: Obamacare

For not a little time, I’ve wanted to include Obamacare in my Downfall series as I have long thought it could be a big factor in Obama’s coming loss of power.  But I’ve procrastinated due to lack of time and energy and to it being a large subject.  And now as Obamacare is already imploding, I wished I would have gone ahead and posted so I’d look more prophetic!  But better late than never…

The disastrous “Obamafail” of a start to Obamacare will prove to be only part of the problem with this law.  The biggest problem is and will be all the millions of Americans who are finding their insurance policies cancelled and/or their premiums skyrocketing.  Twitchy has been posting samples of that.

The tidalwave of anger from cancelled and UNaffordable policies will only be made worse when people, in spite of the best efforts of Obama’s kept “news” media to ignore it, become aware of the corruption and willful mismanagement in Obamacare.  When people become aware that the Obama Administration has appointed IRS crooks to run it.  When people become aware that the joke of a Healthcare.gov web site was not competitively bid and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.  When people become aware that the White House was warned repeatedly by allies that Obamacare was not ready, but that Obama shut down the government instead of agreeing to a reasonable and needful delay.  And no telling what else will come out.

Not to mention that at no time has Obamacare had the support of a majority of the American people.  We did not want it, but Obama and his Democrats crammed it down our throats anyway, accompanied by lies and false promises, e. g. “If you like your health care coverage you can keep it.”  Republicans need to remind people of that again and again and again in 2014.

And time does not permit me to go into how Obamacare hurts employment by being a disincentive for employers to hire full time workers.

I could go on (as forbearing readers know), but I think Obamacare will be the biggest factor in the Downfall of the Obama Regime.  Americans have been very tolerant towards Obama, too much so.  Anger and frustration with Obamacare could be the tidalwave that washes that tolerance away.  It will thereby increase the downward political drag of all the other heretofore overlooked enormities of the Obama Administration.

And if I’m wrong? (And I very well know I could be.)  Ugg, let’s not go there for now.  I do fear for my country.

Since Democrats and Obama’s kept "news" media have succeeded in part in demonizing Republicans and the tea party, the politics of the 2014 elections are murky*, yes.  Nevertheless, do not be surprised if, thanks to Obamacare, 2014 makes 2010 look like, well, a small tea party.

(*Or is it? A tea party candidate just did reasonably well . . . in New Jersey.)

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Downfall is an ongoing series anticipating and tracking what I expect will be the self-destruction of Obama.

The first post may be found here.  The series may be found here.

Again, This Was OBAMA’S Shutdown

When I suggested that “Obama is trying the pull that old trick of tyrants – to create and/or use a crisis to crush opponents and to increase one’s own power,” some may have thought I was being “hyper-partisan” or violating Godwin’s Law or something.

The problem is I have been proven *right again*.  Provoking a crisis to crush the GOP and gain more power has been Obama’s strategy all along.  And now there is pretty much a smoking gun to that effect:

“It was during one of those nightly sessions that Jarrett devised the no-negotiating strategy that Obama has employed in his fight with the GOP over the government shutdown,” Klein said, citing sources within the administration….

 “She convinced the president that a government shutdown and default offered a great opportunity to demonize the Republicans and help the Democrats win back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2014 .

. . Valerie also came with the idea of using the words `hostage’, and `ransom,’ and `terrorists’ against the Republicans,’” Klein said.

Jarrett, who like the Obamas hails from Chicago, has deep ties to the president, First Lady Michelle and the extended family.

Thus the House was stonewalled by Obama and Senate Democrats even when they voted to (re)open the government eleven times.  Because crushing those eeevil Republicans was more important than sensible governance.

Oh, and something else lost in the confusion as this whole sordid episode seems to be winding down – Obama yesterday threatened a veto of a debt ceiling increase if it took away the special healthcare treatment of Congress, their staffers, and White House officials.  “Obamacare for thee, but not for we” was that important to him! 

And, of course, he knew that, no matter how unreasonable he was, his news media would spin it as the Republican’s fault anyway, just has they have all along.

Facts are annoying things, especially to Obama and allies.  That’s why you will not hear much of the above from Obama’s kept “news” media.

Obamacare Website Corruption

Last week, I had the temerity to suggest there is corruption behind the failure of the Obamacare website.

Well, I am *right again*.

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

Again, somebody should see which Obama supporters are behind CGI.  There is no rational reason other than pure graft that such an important and expensive project should not be subject to competitive bidding. 

The corrupt non-competitive reward of the Obamacare site project has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.  It should be a scandal – a big scandal.

Regime Sponsors Protests Against Opposition #ThirdWorld

This is not worthy of America, but it sure is Obamerican.  Obama’s Brownshirts Organizing for America will protest the Tea Party today.  Yes, the Regime will sponsor protests against its chief opposition.  How third world.

(Apologies to those third world nations that have higher standards than that.)

By the way, have you noticed how the Obama Regime, the Republican establishment, and the “mainstream” news media have united to attack Tea Partiers?  When you are the chief real opposition to tyranny, those in charge of tyranny, those who want to be in charge of tyranny, and those who support tyranny will attack you.  That is exactly what we are seeing now.

$634,320,919?

The Obamacare roll out and its site, healthcare.gov (I’m not linking it; it has enough problems), is a disaster mocked by geeks.  But at least somebody is getting their money’s worth. . . . It’s just not us taxpayers:

But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.

The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal. [Actually, CGI may have gotten just over half of that sum with others getting the rest, but you get the picture. – ed.] The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.

Possibly up to $634,320,919 . . . For a really crappy website – your taxdollars at work under the Obama Administration.

Heck, you could throw $10K into a room of teenage nerds and do better.

And, yes, I agree with the Instapundit:

Somebody look up the folks at CGI Federal, which got the money, and see what their connections to the Administration are. . . .

I don’t know what would be worse, that the Obama Regime is that incompetent . . . or that corrupt.

White House Was Warned Repeatedly of Obamacare Disaster

And before you think it was just those eeevil Republicans who warned Obama that the Obamacare exchanges were not ready, Democrat allies warned the White House, along with insurers and state health care officials.

But Obama went ahead with the now disastrous Obamacare exchange roll-out anyway.

And Republicans offered him a face-saving out.  He could have bought some time, avoided the Shutdown and debt limit impasse if he only agreed to delay the implementation of Obamacare for a year.  It would have been smart politics and sensible policy.  It would have been the right thing to do given that the exchanges clearly were not ready.

But Obama went ahead with the Obamacare exchange roll-out anyway.

And it is a head scratcher.  Is he that spiteful and determined to create a crisis he hopes will backfire on Republicans?  Even at the obvious risk that it would backfire on him?

That Obama refused to take the sensible out of agreeing to an Obamacare delay when he knew (or at least should have known) the exchanges were not ready confirms to me that Obama is trying the pull that old trick of tyrants – to create and/or use a crisis to crush opponents and to increase one’s own power.

But is it working?

Myers-Briggs, the Fad That Won’t Die

Years ago – heck, decades – and more than once, I was given the Myers-Briggs personality test in church settings.  I always found the results interesting – hey, I find myself interesting.  However, I did not find the results particularly useful or insightful.  I did not fit well into any of the stereotypical personality types of the test.  All the test really told me is that I am a complex person hard to pigeonhole.  But I could have told you that without wasting time on the test.

So now I am heartened to see Wharton prof Adam Grant agrees that Myers-Briggs is not that useful.  But I am not heartened to see this test is still popular.  It is still taken by 2.5 million people a year? Die, useless fad, die!

Grant well sums up the problem with Myers-Briggs and its popularity – “four letters don't do justice to anyone's identity.”

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Hat tip to Dr. Robert Munday.

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Housekeeping: I just now noticed that I neglected to publish valid comments from back in June.  I get so many spam comments that these must have gotten overlooked.  Still, I regret this error and apologize, especially to the commenters in question.

“This Tyranny” and Reminders about Anger

If there was ever a time for anger in America, it is now.  For what should be a Constitutional government has been usurped by a tyrant so obnoxious that he would evict the elderly from their homes, Barrycade citizens and veterans from even viewing their memorials and more, much more.

Further I am convinced this is a time for non-violent civil disobedience.  I am heartened to see good gumption like the man who tossed Barrycades from Badlands viewpoints, and WW2 veterans who went through Barrycades blocking their war memorials.  May such simple acts of courage and resistance multiply.

By the way, Dave Carter’s “When the Bleeding Heart Becomes the Iron Fist” is an excellent summary of where we are now as a nation.

But there is a problem with anger, even righteous anger. 

Us men (and women) do not handle anger well.  Even our righteous anger too easily becomes very unrighteous and harmful.  It’s not for nothing that St. James warned, “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20)

I know that all too well from my own experience.  But I’ve also received two timely and needful reminders over the weekend.

The Epistle Lesson yesterday (the 19^th Sunday after Trinity) from Ephesians 4 admonishes “Be angry and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath; neither giver place to the devil.”  St. Paul acknowledges there are times to “be angry,” but when those times come we must be careful to “sin not.” For either through prolonged anger eating us (and/or those around us) up or through our fallen nature and Satan using what may have begun as righteous anger and twisting it into evil, it is difficult for us to keep our righteous anger righteous.  And our nature is such that anger often goads us into committing hateful and harmful sin.

(By the way, I taught this passage to my Sunday School.  Yes, I confessed as I did so.)

This morning, my readings in the Psalms came to Psalm 37, which begins in Coverdale’s translation, “Fret not thyself because of the ungodly”.  Verse 8 elaborates, “Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.”  And prolonged anger about evil, particularly the evil of tyranny, can indeed so easily lure us into committing evil ourselves.

And tyrants have a history of using that tendency to further increase their power.  A most infamous example is the Nazis’ use of the Reichstag Fire to push through the Enabling Act.

So, while standing up against tyranny, we are to trust in the Lord as Psalm 37 repeatedly and warmly exhorts.  Instead of fretting and being eaten up by anger, we are to remember that He has the final say and will make things right in the end.  And He can and will make things right far better than any rash angry lashing out on our part.

The beginning of Coverdale’s Psalm 57 has become particularly meaningful to me in that respect:

Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee;

And under the shadow of thy wings shall be my refuge, until this tyranny be overpast.

Who Shut Down the Government?

Thomas Sowell, of whom I’ve been a fan since I was a youngun, cuts through the Democrat news media B. S. (Sorry for the redundancy there.) as few seem willing to do.

There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going -- except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record. . . .

The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he wants a "clean" bill from the House of Representatives, and some in the media keep repeating the word "clean" like a mantra. But what is unclean about not giving Harry Reid everything he wants?

Thus the Democrats in the Senate all voted no on funding the government and willfully bought about the shutdown.  And they have rejected numerous efforts since by Republicans to reopen the government, including bills to fund veterans benefits, the national parks, NIH, the District of Columbia, and more.

Whatever your view of the shutdown and of Obamacare, those are indeed the facts.

Downfall XIV: Obama Craves Your Unhappiness

Yes, my headline may seem slightly over the top.  But to what other conclusion should we come when his regime uses a fed funding impasse as a pretext to shut down various popular sites that receive little to no federal funding?

In fact, his blocking off places, such as the WW2 Memorial, costs a lot more than just leaving them be.  The WW2 Memorial normally is not staffed at all, but the Obama Administration sent more people to close and barricade it than it sent to guard the Benghazi Consulate.  Priorities, you know.  Besides that, the Memorial is funded “almost entirely by private contributions” anyway.  So closing it down over an impasse on federal funds is entirely unnecessary and has at least the appearance of sheer vindictiveness.

The Obama Regime has closed and barricaded other privately funded sites, such as the Claude Moore Memorial Farm.  The Regime was even going to postpone the Air Force-Navy football game until someone no doubt *ahem* informed him that is it money-making and already fully funded and that also with mostly private funds (and that postponing it would cost untold money).   

The barricading is going on overseas as well as the regime has closed Omaha Beach.  I wonder what the French think of that?

The Lincoln Memorial is closed, too.  It is among the closures that have not occurred in the past numerous government shutdowns.

So what is the difference this time?  It is hard to see any other conclusion but that Obama wants this shutdown to be as noxious as possible.  Obama craves your unhappiness in hopes it will hurt Republicans.  He so craves the power he would have if Democrats retake the House in 2014 that he is gambling with your access to your national sites.

And he’s played such petty games before during the Sequestration fight.

But if his gamble backfires, if he himself trips over the barricades he has put up, if the public rejects anti-conservative news media spin and instead turns on him as it ought, this nasty episode may only hasten his deserved and overdue Downfall.

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Downfall is an ongoing series anticipating and tracking what I expect will be the self-destruction of Obama.

The first post may be found here.  The series may be found here.