"[Obamacare makes it] 'likely insurance companies will raise premiums on everybody, given the mandate, to deal with the number of pre-existing conditions that come into the fold.'

WE ONLY HEAR ABOUT THIS FROM REGULAR NEWS WEBSITES *** N O W ***, AFTER THE ELECTION?? Of course, we do. That way, you see, Obama gets re-elected because people are still ignorant of the truth.

"And once the law actually goes into effect it's the pre-existing conditions provision that has the potential to do a lot of damage to the consumer, according to Funtleyder. He says it is 'likely insurance companies will raise premiums on everybody, given the mandate, to deal with the number of pre-existing conditions that come into the fold.' And that is one of the many key criticisms of the plan: little to no direct cost-control.

"As it stands, the bill has only one such feature; the Independent Payment Advisory Board, otherwise called by its acronym 'IPAB' or more commonly the death panel. This provision puts 15 [unelected, hand-picked] bureaucrats in charge of deciding where to cut costs and funding for certain health care services. Funtleyder says it's widely disliked on both sides of the political aisle, making it a reasonable assumption that the death panel could be repealed. If that happens, he argues there will be no mechanism at all to control costs."

So we're damned if we do, damned if we don't.

"In short, Americans are about to get a large tax rate hike on small businesses, which will inhibit their ability to hire, expand and survive. Add to that the growing threat to businesses from Obamacare, which is rapidly accelerating a shift to part-time workforces from full-time ones, and the full extent of the looming disaster for lower-income workers becomes clearer. And for all this pain, there will be no corresponding reduction to the federal deficit.

"Obama has talked about taking 'a balanced approach' to the deficit, and he criticizes Republicans for their unwillingness to accept tax increases in exchange for spending cuts. But GOP skepticism toward such deals is well-grounded. Whenever these deals are struck, the spending cuts are inevitably undone and the tax increases go into effect. The Republican skeptics are now being vindicated in real time."

"He won no mandate for a new major agenda—indeed, he hardly bothered to ask for one, except for raising taxes on the wealthy. The aim of his campaign was to retain the keys to the presidential office, at virtually any cost.

He succeeded by hanging on. Obama made history in 2012 almost as much as he did in 2008. For the first time, an incumbent won re-election to a second term while receiving a smaller share of the vote than in his first term... It is a stretch to see a robust majority coalition in 50.4% of the population, especially in the case of electing an incumbent president who had all the advantages of his office, who faced no competition for the nomination, and who had four years to build a formidable organization."