“The deadlines for proposing financing have been missed two years in a row now, so to me that’s very disappointing. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that there is no financing plan,” Condon told Vermont Watchdog.

The cost of one year of Green Mountain Care is estimated to be anywhere from 1.6 to 2.2 billion dollars. This is equal to the entire tax revenue of the state of Vermont.

Sen. Bobby Starr, another Democrat who voted against Act 48, told Vermont Watchdog in January there’s “no way” single-payer can work without new taxes. Indeed, no lawmaker has introduced any bill that would finance single-payer health care without also raising taxes.

It’s foolish for Vermont to even entertain the thought of a single-payer system when its attempt at implementing an Obamacare exchange didn’t go so well. Green Mountain Care is way too expensive for the state, and raising taxes is going to make an already business-unfriendly state even worse.

…and The Daily Caller‘s Sarah Hurtubise, who’s published the results of a report which confirms what everyone not residing in the Progressive Bizarro World…or the Fairfax County Library system…already knew to be true:

Report: Premiums rising faster than eight years before Obamacare COMBINED

“…The individual market for health insurance has seen premiums rise by 39 percent since February 2013, eHealth reports. Without a subsidy, the average individual premium is now $274 a month. Families have been hit even harder with an average increase of 56 percent over the same period — average premiums are now $663 per family, over $426 last year.

Between 2005 and 2013, average premiums for individual plans increased 37 percent and average family premiums were upped 31 percent. So they have risen faster under Obamacare than in the previous eight years…“

Maybe that’s why, as Jonathan Tobin notes at Commentary Magazine, The Obamao keeps omitting one key fact from his sales pitch:

No Mention of Rising Costs in O’s ACA Blitz

While the administration’s less-than-stellar performance in recent foreign crises have called into question President Obama’s stature as a commander in chief, there’s never been any doubt about his zeal to play salesman in chief with regard to his signature health-care law. The president has been ubiquitous throughout the media, seizing any chance to promote ObamaCare enrollment. From the offbeat Between Two Ferns satire show to sports shows to mainstream entertainment like the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the president has shown no reticence about flogging the health-care law.

The marketing strategy is clear. Though many of those who would truly benefit from signing up for ObamaCare are older, the presidential appearances are geared toward young demographics. On all of these shows the president has touted the need for young and healthy persons to get health insurance. The message is seemingly noncontroversial, even anodyne in nature. But there are some things that he is leaving out of the sales pitch. One is that the whole point of trying to attract young people to ObamaCare is because the assumption is that most of them won’t actually need it. Their premiums are intended to pay for the services that will be doled out to the elderly, the sick, and those with pre-existing conditions. The other and even more important point that will be missing from the president’s exhortations is that the already above average cost of the premiums for the misnamed Affordable Care Act will be skyrocketing later this year.

We offer as an example our own recent experience at the hands of The Dear Misleader’s concerted effort to wreck the greatest health care system on the planet.

Due to the requirement for our stunningly-gorgeous-but-thankfully-infertile-wife to be provided free birth control and pregnancy coverage, our absolutely-adequate health insurance policy with Blue Cross/Blue Shield was cancelled.

As a result, our monthly premiums have doubled, our annual deductible has tripled and we now have an $11,000 annual out-of-pocket maximum which used to be…$0!!! This essentially puts us in the unenviable position of paying at LEAST $24,000 per year for the privilege of BC/BS providing us catastrophic health care coverage.

Forget about the phone call, how ’bout you give us our…

Not to mention our constitutional rights!

Soooo…to all those, including the educated but misguided idiots we know who voted this Marxist misdirector into office twice…

And don’t expect us to compound the pain by driving 4 hours round-trip to attend your daughter’s “couples” wedding shower.

Bitter? No. Filled with hate? No way. Torqued to the max? You bet!!!

Moving on, James Taranto details how the Dims are dealing with the impact of an increasingly unpopular and obnoxious overreach:

Take the Senate, Please

Rationalization season begins early.

Courtesy of Jim Gleaves, the MSM receiving the DNC’s latest Unaffordable Care Act talking points

Of late the Washington Post’s liberal blogger Greg Sargent has been working overtime to reassure Democrats that their political straits are nowhere near as dire as everyone has been saying. Thanks to President Obama, he’s no doubt been earning time and a half. But now he’s brought in a guest blogger, Paul Waldman, to offer a different kind of reassurance, in a post titled “Why Taking Over the Senate May Not Do Republicans Much Good.”

That’s right, the election is still 7½ months away, and Waldman is ready to concede (notwithstanding a disclaimer that “we should acknowledge that a Republican takeover of the upper house is anything but a sure thing”). He’s past denial and anger and into the bargaining stage.

Waldman’s central insight is that the president has the power to veto legislation. “Anything big and consequential on the Republican agenda would get vetoed,” he sagely observes:

And that would be just fine with Barack Obama. If he’s faced with both houses controlled by the opposition, there’s nothing he’d rather see than them fighting with each other and passing only unrealistic bills that he can veto without worrying about any backlash from the public.

Seems to us it would be a bit of a come-down for the guy who wanted to “fundamentally transform” America to find himself reduced to spending his last two years doing nothing but vetoing bills.

Although it does present a task which at last lies within his skill set. Unfortunately, though a number of Dimocratic seats are in fact vulnerable…

…the GOP’s greatest weakness lies with its leadership…

…or lack thereof!

Finally, since we’re on the subject of abject lack of leadership, the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens opines on…

How Obama ‘Gets Things Done’

We need a president who rarely thinks and never speaks about how he looks in jeans.

Maybe Barack Obama should have given Zach Galifianakis an off-ramp, like the one he keeps trying to offer Vladimir Putin. Those were some pretty barbed lines the president unloaded on the comic actor last week in their semi-parodic “Between Two Ferns” interview.

In case you’re wondering why I’m writing about this—well, I am too. A Malaysian jetliner has vanished into thin air, while Russia has completed its seizure of Crimea and may yet invade other parts of Ukraine. Serious stuff, you might say. But the big story of last week as far as the president is concerned is his appearance alongside the star of “The Hangover” movies, the guy who last year smoked a joint live on the Bill Maher show.

“Zach actually was pretty nervous,” Mr. Obama later told Ryan Seacrest, the”American Idol” impresario, in a radio interview. “His whole character is to go after the guest and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys and thinking, ‘I wonder what happens here if I cross a line?’

“But we had a great time.”

Incidentally, I quote these lines from the Us Weekly report of the Seacrest interview. Us magazine is where I go for my political news these days. The online article also had a link to a photo gallery of Mr. Obama hanging out with various celebrities, like Justin Bieber. “What’s up, my dude!” the Canadian teen star says to the president of the United States. “What’s up, Biebs!” the president of the United States answers back.

In fairness, this was before Biebs’s Miami DUI. In fairness, also, the president does important work. Just the other day, he was photographed standing by his Oval Office desk, casually dressed in jeans, speaking to Vladimir Putin on the phone. The president had been savaged by Sarah Palin “as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”

Retorted Mr. Obama: “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans.” The sole exception, he added, “was one episode like four years ago in which I was wearing some loose jeans, mainly because I was out on the pitcher’s mound and I didn’t want to feel confined while I was pitching.”

Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. President. (Is it any wonder Putin’s eating this putz’s lunch?!?)

In the meantime, Mr. Obama is imposing the sanctions he had previously threatened on Russia in the event Mr. Putin went ahead with his Black Sea conquests. “These are by far the most comprehensive sanctions applied to Russia since the end of the Cold War—far and away so,” crowed one administration official to reporters.

By which the White House means a total of seven Russians and four Ukrainians. The sanctions were so light that one of the intended targets, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, instantly spat back his contempt in a tweet: “Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Or maybe you didn’t think of that?”

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t: Even now the unanswered question about Mr. Obama’s personality is whether his insouciance is a mask for ideology, ignorance, or simple indifference. (We’ll go with ideology and ignorance, as none but the ignorant can ever have his ideology!) When the president goes before the cameras to announce tough sanctions, and the sanctions are not only not tough but laughably weak, what’s going through his head?

Should he be wearing loose jeans more often so he can feel less confined geopolitically?

Alternatively, the president might consider rearranging his work schedule. Last year came the news that Mr. Obama was unaware of the problems plaguing his health-care website until after its rollout and that he never once had a private meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius between July 2010 and November 2013. How does something like that happen?

An answer of sorts comes in an article by Sean Blanda on “How Barack Obama Gets Things Done” on the 99U website. The president, Mr. Blanda reports, wakes up at seven o’clock. He works out 45 minutes a day every day, not including his regular basketball games. He watches a lot of “SportsCenter.” Dinner each night with his family. To limit “decision fatigue,” he likes to set policy via memos where he can check the box on “agree,” “disagree,” or “let’s discuss.”

What do I take away from all this?

The obvious: A cavalier foreign policy by an inattentive president that elicits the contempt of the people it intends to punish ultimately encourages their aggression as well.

The less obvious: We need a fat president. Or at least one who rarely thinks and never speaks about how he looks in jeans. And one who doesn’t spend his day testing his wits against a Hollywood stoner or bantering with Ryan Seacrest while a European ally is being pummeled by Russia. And one who would rather spend his time working than working out, even if it means putting on a few pounds. And one who can pitch from the mound and reach home plate. However confined.

Barack Obama is probably the coolest president this country will ever have. But with Vladimir Putin trying to step on the West’s throat, I’ll take President Mom Jeans any day.

Or just President Mom!

Meanwhile, while America burns…

White House: ‘Real Treat’ for Michelle Obama to Take Her Mom and Daughters to China

Yeah…no sh*t! So whooda ever thunk press coverage would be banned!