The Unaffordable Care Act was passed based on per capita health care costs of $7,825 under the Bush Administration. Obamacare promised to save us money. So far, per capita health care has cost $8,054 in $2009, $8,299 in 2010, $8,553 in 2011, $8,845 in 2012, $9,146 in 2013, and it is expected to come in at $9,458 in 2014 and $9,800 in 2015, all under the Obama Administration.
Lib’ruls who can’t do math promised that when government runs this market your premiums would decrease. Mr. Obama promised a $2,500 a year drop.
How’d that work out for you?
And now the Unaffordable Care Act’s bait and switch has left consumers scrambling in 2016. Again.
At the end of each year, we tot up the people who died and I wonder if, years from now, if there will be any people of accomplishment whom we mourn. This year, we lost:
NASA’s Alberto Behar.
Batmobile creator George Barris
Civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs
Physicist Val Fitch
Medical researcher Alfred Gilman
Activist and Nearly an Astronaut Jane Hart
American chemist Richard Heck
Mathematician John Nash
Actress Maureen O’Hara
Marine aviator Frank Petersen
So what noteworthy, prize-winning event or invention or legislation happened this year?
It became illegal to pose for a selfie with a tiger in New York.
The Far Green got the largest city in the U.S. to ban polystyrene foam simply because the Far Green is determined to cut down our forests. Want to save the environment? Political “science” isn’t real. Study real science.
We caught Mr. Obama in 1,157 lies, starting with his first State of the Union and most recently with “I will give up vacations” which he did again this week.
!@#$%^Comcast earned its name, at least as far as “Asshole Brown,” “Super Bitch” Bauer, and “Bitch Dog” Govan are concerned. The company’s CEO, Brian “Dummy Whore” Roberts, approved.
A federal judge ruled that Boardwalk Pizza here in the Keys didn’t infringe on the Garden State Parkway’s trademark, basically ruling the Parkway’s lawsuit half-baked.
Miami-Dade Animal Services removed 42 Chihuahuas from a Miami-Dade home. There was no abuse; Animal Services cited “uncontrolled breeding.”
A 61-year old postal carrier managed to land his flying bicycle on the Capitol lawn.
The Marathon, Florida, Home Depot has ice scrapers for sale in the heart of the Florida Keys.
Texas A&M Professor Irwin Horwitz called his Strategic Management students “a disgrace to the school” for cheating and other academic dishonor. Then he flunked every last one of them. Results of today’s search of Texas A&M Faculty for Mr. Horwitz: “No matches found.”
We discovered that the same people in the First World who would fire Mr. Horwitz believe they can change the climate but not one of them could make it rain in California to end the drought there.
People nearly went on strike to return to the hyperinflation of the go-go 80s. A huge swath of American lib’ruls are too young to remember those extraordinary days of 15-21% mortgage interest.
Having learned how by stealing General Motors from stockholders like thee and me, Mr. Obama did the same to the coal industry: he broke it and handed it to George Soros.
Vermont’s plans for a statewide amnesty day made the news. “Drivers!” Billy Mays might have shouted, “get your suspended license reinstated for the low, low cost of just $20 per ticket.” It was a one day only deal! Until the next time.
Vermont Health Connect went offline for another software upgrade. The website went dark so the latest, newest, greatest, most perfect software could be uploaded. Again.
City residents in Plattsburgh NY learned that they will be fined if they don’t clear the snow off their own property.
Fortunately it pretty much hasn’t snowed in Plattsburgh NY or North Puffin since last spring.
We had the best pope and the worst politicians. I predickted that the 2016 general election would be Trump v. Sanders.
There was some light in 2015.
“Stephen Hawking dead”: After the Brief History of Time author was killed by an Internet death hoax, we found that he is, fortunately, still very much alive.
je suis Charlie came to life around the world after an horrific religious murder in Paris.
NASA found evidence of water on Mars.
Astronomers discovered “Fat Jupiter” which got kicked out of the solar system, twin planets that could host life, and a host of other findings about our galactic neighbors.
UNC researchers discovered “Q-carbon,” a new phase of carbon that makes it possible to create a diamond at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.
Scientists discovered 211 new species in the Eastern Himalayas.
3D-Printing moved into medicine to make a sternum and ribs for a cancer patient and prosthetic limbs for pets.
Nest Labs opened a new engineering center inside Google’s Kirkland campus to “enable other people to do it.”
Welcome back! Blue Origin test-launched its New Shepard rocket to the edge of space and then brought it home land in Texas. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at Cape Canaveral with a payload of eleven satellites. The rocket returned to land upright.
It is hard, after decades of tying shoelaces the same way day-after-day to learn a new trick but it can be done.
The suburban town of Bethlehem, New York had a “Merry Christmas” sign and a “Happy Hanukkah” sign removed from the busiest intersection in town.
Hello?
Grinches in the town named for the birthplace of Jesus banned religious holiday signs so they “wouldn’t violate any laws or distract drivers.”
I so wish we could find three wise men and a camel. Heck, I’d settle for a smart camel.
Every radio station has defaulted to Christmas music. I’m surprised we haven’t lost that, too. I don’t particularly like Christmas music but my radio has an off switch. I don’t have to listen to it if I don’t want to.
I was raised in a family that was Quaker on one side, Presbyterian on the other. I may not be as organized now as I was when I reached the age of accountability and joined the Presbyterian church but I am still a Christian. And, of course, a WASP.
You don’t have to be either.
Tomorrow is the day Christians celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the meaning of Christianity. It was a pretty big day before the stock exchange took it over.
It doesn’t mean Do unto all the other religions, then cut out. Unless you are a Member of Congress.
Here’s the thing. If you offer food to the monks on Vesak, Buddha’s Birthday, I will honor your commitment to the poor. If you celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, I will honor with you the victory of Lord Ram over the demon-king Ravana. If you fast during Ramadan when the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad, I will honor your patience and humility. If you celebrate the most solemn and important of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I will honor your atonement and repentance. If you light the candles of Kwanzaa, I will help you honor your heritage. And if you are a lib’rul atheist, I will not proselytize.
That maybe the most important message.
Not one American soldier in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Honduras, Indian Ocean, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, or the United States has forced any man, woman, or child to convert to Christianity at the point of a gun again this year.
You don’t have to be a Buddhist, a Hindu, Islamic, a Jew, a Kwanzaan celebrant, or an atheist. It is time, on this Christian holy day, to let Christians be Christians.
My right to impose my own beliefs stops at my property line (or the end of my nose when I’m out in public). The Bethlehem, NY, grinches’ right to idiocy should stop at pretty much the same place. It is time to stop accepting that “politically correct” credo and start honoring the true message of Christmas.
Scythian philosopher Anacharsis wrote in the 6th century BCE, “Wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.”
Peace.
This column originally appeared on Christmas Day, 2008. It required very little updating.
