Obama Zombies: How the Obama Machine Brainwashed My Generation (16 page)

Interestingly, the
Times
, which editorializes with the belief that man is in fact warming the plant, still felt compelled to call out Al Gore and Barack Obama for sensationalizing the threat of global warming. On February 25, 2009, the paper ran a story with the headline "In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall." As they pointed out, Gore was forced to remove a slide from his presentation that correlated global warming to a sharp spike in "fires, floods and other calamities around the world," after the research group Gore quoted said he had misrepresented the data. The
Times
explained that "while climate scientists foresee more intense droughts and storms, there is still uncertainty, and significant disagreement, over whether recent patterns can be attributed to global warming."
⁵²

When the
New York Times
is scolding you as an eco-exaggerator, you
know
you have problems.

So let's get to the basics. Is carbon dioxide a pollutant that is causing the earth's temperature to rise?

I'm gonna go with no.

Here's why: Try this experiment. Breathe in the air that you exhale. Now, let me know if you faint, feel nauseous, or as if you're about to die. After all, we human beings
exhale
carbon dioxide, for crying out loud! Perhaps Barack Obama forgot, but carbon dioxide is essential for life. Plants and crops depend on it. Some farmers even
deliberately generate increased levels of CO
2
to bulk up food production.
⁵³
More "pollution," anyone?

In any event, there's no need to become apoplectic over CO
2
. Geologist Dudley J. Hughes published a paper for the Heartland Institute pointing out that rising carbon dioxide levels are nothing to worry about, since it comprises less than 1 percent of the atmosphere. Nitrogen and oxygen, by contrast, cover about 99 percent. Hughes gives us a workable analogy to understand how absurd it is to say that CO
2
has any meaningful effect in our vast atmosphere. "For simplicity, let us picture a football stadium with about 10,000 people in the stands. Assume each person represents a small volume of one type of gas. . . . Carbon dioxide is represented as only about 4 parts in 10,000, the smallest volume of any major atmospheric gas."
⁵⁴

Basically, our world doesn't have a thermostat that liberals can toy with. Our climate is always changing, from the Medieval Warming Period to the Little Ice Age, which followed that. There is no such thing as a global mean temperature. Besides, the infinitesimal "warming" that certain parts of the world are experiencing--over the past hundred-plus years--is nothing to write home to Mom about and is a far cry from saying kids in Jamaica are going to burst into flames one of these days.

But the Jamaican kid can relax. In fact, let's buy him a sweater, because we may be experiencing global cooling now. In 2008, outlets that track global temperatures worldwide released data showing that the earth faced cooling cycles large enough to negate the warming documented over the past hundred years.
⁵⁵
Baghdad, for instance, experienced snowfall for the very first time.

Which is it, Obama Zombies? Warming or cooling? I've got to know! You see, folks, meteorologist Obama can't predict the weather tomorrow, but he can predict a global climate catastrophe? Even Al
Gore's most ardent believers have come to realize this fact, which is why now they prefer the term
climate change
to
global warming
. It's more vague that way.

Not only is 1934 the hottest year on record, but five of the ten warmest years transpired before World War II--well before we started pumping globs of CO
2
into the atmosphere.
⁵⁶
So what was causing global warming in 1934?

Interestingly, environmentalists can't even make up their minds on whether to abandon fossil fuels for the much-hyped biofuels. One activist group is urging the British government to halt rules that require a percentage of transportation energy to consist of "green" fuels. According to Friends of the Earth, cutting down forests to plant and harvest crops for biodiesel purposes has the unintended consequence of generating an extra 1.3 million tons of CO
2
.
⁵⁷
Similarly, one study by professors at the University of California-Davis found that it could be more eco-friendly to drive an SUV than to take a train. Oil, gas, and coal, for instance, are used to produce electricity to power and build trains as well as the building of transportation infrastructure. When all is said and done, sticking with your SUV may actually be better for the environment.
⁵⁸
Recycling may absolve you of inner guilt, but the process of cleaning and cataloging materials requires using an abundance of--gasp--energy.
⁵⁹
Funny how that works, eh? And let's not forget about those second rounds of trucks that bulldoze through neighborhoods like tanks to pick up our color-coded recycling bins. The emission that comes out of those bad boys is no joke.

Move past the idea that mild warming in the earth's temperature is catastrophic (especially while we're cooling down now) and go find whatever mode of transportation you want. Recycle if it makes you feel better. Adopt a glacier. Befriend sheets of ice. Plaster your
walls with cow dung. Choose to buy doofy-looking hybrids. It's called freedom. But please spare the rest of us the self-important chest thumping about how you're saving the environment. And above all, don't tread on our God-given freedoms. You do have the right to be duped by the "scientific" shell game, but you also have the right to think for yourself and not act like a Zombie.

IN THE END
, I actually agree with Obama on one key point: global warming will affect my generation. But what we need protection from is not the warming (now cooling), but rather an authoritarian cult of blind followers who will attempt to remake our lives for the worse. Liberals like to speak of leaving their kids a better planet than what was given to them. If Obama Zombies don't wake up from their slumber, we will be paying for B.H.O.'s climate schemes, not only in higher taxes but also in less output as a nation; in lighter, less safe vehicles; in less innovation; and most importantly, in a loss of freedom.

Republicans, in many ways, have only themselves to blame for the plight we face. John McCain was a worthless candidate, in particular on the subject of climate change. His efforts to reach out to young voters amounted to little more than an embrace of the cockamamie eco-hype while cobbling together his own stack of government-run solutions.

Sorry, Barack. We want to keep our homes at whatever temperatures we choose. We want to drive whatever we decide. We want to eat whatever we damn well please. And we reject you and your liberal machine's attempt to create a perennial voting bloc of young people scared out of their minds that they are ruining the planet.

How to Destroy the Greatest Health-Care System the World Has Ever Known

You've heard it before: there are 46 million people in America without health insurance.

It's an outrage!

It's immoral!

It's unjust!

It's an abomination!

It's . . . a freaking lie!

Let's do the thing Obama Zombies hate the most: look at the actual facts.

The 46 million figure they spew forth with brainless obeisance is, in fact, a complete hoax, even by Obama's own admission. But that oft-cited figure is just one of the many reasons the liberal
machine was so successful in conning so many members of my generation to swallow Obama's prescription for socialized medicine.

Let's break down the numbers using the Congressional Budget Office statistics:

• Nine million of the uninsured are
  not
  citizens of the United States.
  ¹
  
• Twelve million are already eligible for government assistance but for some reason have been too busy to sign up for free goodies.
  ²
  
• Seventeen million of the uninsured have household incomes above $50,000.
  ³
  

Pause and think about that last number for a minute. Seventeen million individuals who are being touted as the "uninsured" make more than $50,000.

How's that mythical 46 million number looking about now? Let's recap: We started off with 46 million, then we subtracted 9 million foreign nationals and illegals. Then we deducted the 12 million who are already eligible for some type of government assistance but haven't claimed it. From there we subtracted the 17 million who are banking more than $50,000, but choose not to purchase insurance because it's their God-given right to do whatever they darn well please with their money.

Where'd that 46 million figure vanish? In reality, the figure drops to around 5 percent--out of a population of 300 million people--who actually
may
slip through the cracks. And our health care is the envy of the world.

Still, affordability is a serious and important concern, and it's a concern that conservatives care about far more than liberals. So what is the conservative solution for rising health-care costs? Free markets and
real
competition.

The problem is that a free market where consumers and providers freely partake of each other's services does not exist. Governments work hand in glove with providers, such as chiropractors and drug-abuse counselors, to arrange a package of services (read: mandates) that we are forced to buy--it's corporatism at its ugliest. Every special industry lobbies for its crack at the mandate. It's money in their pocket, after all.

Obama is just like any leftist politician--he gives lip service to taking on special interests but in reality supports policies that are a lobbyist's dream, because they allow the special interests to get subsidized by the government. Obama officials have met privately with health-care executives and drug companies, a brazen violation of his campaign promise to have all negotiations of bills broadcast on C-SPAN for all to see. Of course the mainstream media haven't grilled Obama on this campaign promise. It took a blogger to uncover the truth.
⁴
But why broadcast for all to see a policy debate that only involves the takeover of a $2 trillion health-care system? That's peanuts to a liberal! I mean, it is only your money. Why should the White House negotiate in public when it can do so in secret, cutting deals with lobbyists
⁵
and pharmaceutical companies
⁶
behind the scenes?

Hope and change, people!

When it comes to mandates, it boils down to this: If you want to visit a chiropractor, great. Pay for it out of pocket!

But let's laser in on the kind of government intervention that stifles care and drives up cost. Take my own home state of New York. It is one of three states that have both "community rating" and "guar
anteed issue." In a nutshell,
community rating
obliges insurance companies to charge everyone the same rate regardless of their age or health status. Young people get screwed by this formula: We're stuck paying higher prices to help subsidize the premiums of older Americans.
Guaranteed issue
means that insurers must "cover anyone at any time," usually at the same rate.

It's no surprise, then, that the states that pile on mandate after mandate and impose community ratings, thereby giving everyone nearly uniform premiums, are the states that have the highest annual insurance premiums. In New York, for instance, insurance is "roughly two to three times higher than the national average," and neighboring New Jersey has premiums for individuals bucking $5,000.
⁷
The result is that young New Yorkers pay through the nose.

It is government intrusion into health care that is screwing everything up in the first place. Rather than let people choose what they want covered, some government bureaucrat from on high lays down the law of the land. Such diktats are wholly at odds with a free society.

Now, to be fair, Barack Obama does have a point about "insurance security." If you lose your job, chances are you will lose your medical insurance. For most of the country, and for most young people, insurance is directly tied to employment. It's one of those benefits we're offered for employment, but it's also a government-created system that has turned out to be woefully inadequate for the twenty-first century. Young people are more fluid in the job market. We hop around. We're not like our parents or their parents, who worked at one company building up seniority and benefits over the course of their careers.

Employer-based health care started during World War II when the government imposed strict wage and price controls on American businesses. The result, among other things, was a shortage of people
in the workforce. Entrepreneurs did what entrepreneurs do best: they devised a plan to attract skilled workers despite the government's onerous regulations. That plan was to pay for a worker's and his family's medical care. It was a hit. Repressed salaries were made up with "fringe" benefits. Congress eventually passed legislation that allowed those benefits to be tax-exempt, a response to IRS rules requiring that medical coverage be counted as salary and therefore subject to taxation.
⁸

The implications are broad. Most individuals now rely on their employers for their health insurance. The trouble is that a system like ours punishes people who don't have employer-based health care and must therefore instead buy insurance privately. The reason this is problematic is that government-sanctioned mandates have driven up the costs of privately purchased insurance. And unlike large companies that buy insurance packages in bulk quantities (thus resulting in cheaper costs), small business owners can't band together with others to buy lower-premium insurance. Worse, those without employer-based health care must use after-tax income to purchase insurance, whereas employer-based coverage gets a huge tax break. It's inequitable.