Saturday, October 26, 2013

State Threatens To Seize Infant Who was Fed Goat’s Milk Instead of Approved GMO Soy Formula


A young mother in Maine is being threatened by the Department of Health and Human Services to have her infant child taken away and put into foster care. Her crime? Feeding him goat’s milk instead of commercial infant formula. - healthimpactnews.com

The young mother made a huge mistake, however. She told her pediatrician about the formula. The doctor turned her in to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which resulted in home visits, an overnight stay in the hospital, a directive to buy “approved” commercial infant formula (most of which contain GMOs and soy) and threats to remove the baby and place him into foster care.

The local mainstream media apparently is confused by this action, and has covered the story. WABI even interviewed another family doctor in the area who said: “I’ve got plenty of kids in my practice that have been given goat’s milk, for example, and they’re growing and developing fine.”

Indeed, goat’s milk is generally considered healthier, more easily digested, and less allergenic than cow’s milk. It has been fed to infants in traditional cultures for probably many thousands of years. So why the uproar and threats? The local media tried to interview the DHHS, but they refused, and instead referred them to government websites that stated goat’s milk was not suitable for infants.

“I’m trying to do the best for my child, and I’m getting in trouble for it,” Gellerson said at the protest that drew about 40 people, including nine who spoke at the event. (a rally Thursday at Cascade Park in Bangor to make a statement against DHHS)

Iowa GOP audience embraces Sen. Ted Cruz.


Conservative purist Ted Cruz addressed the concerns of any Iowa Republicans who reject him as too rigid, arguing he knows exactly how to unify the GOP and turn the country around. - Des Moines Register

The answer: “Restore historic economic growth.”

Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas who has visited the presidential testing grounds of Iowa three times in less than three months, told an audience of about 600 at the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Ronald Reagan fundraising dinner: “We need to come together.”

“And let me tell you, growth and principles are ideas that unify Republicans,” he said. “They are principles and ideals that unify the evangelical community, the liberty movement and the business community. Growth and freedom are principles that bring together Main Street and the tea party.”

...As Cruz took the stage, the audience greeted him with a 36-second standing ovation.

Mexico detains growing number of undocumented Cubans...

link - Miami Herald



◼ Rubio retreats: Comprehensive immigration bill wrong way to go...
Opposes Going to Conference... - Breitbart
Top Dem Negototiator: Obama should block all deportations if fails... - The Hill (warning: Video autoplay at the link)
Gutierrez: Paul Ryan 'My Ally' To Free Illegals... - Nation Of Change (Warning: Progressive Journalism)
Activists take immigration vigil to congressman's home... - AZ Family.com

Charles Krauthammer stopped by the Daily Show to promote his new book, “Things That Matter,” and his conversation with host Jon Stewart spilled well over the allotted time.

Comedy Central has made the full interaction available online, in three installments. It became clear viewers were in for a lively discussion when things began with this exchange: - HotAir




A Conversation with Charles Krauthammer - Conn Carroll/Townhall

Weekly Republican Address: Chairman Fred Upton



The problems with Obamacare are more than just website glitches. From broken promises to special waivers, House Republicans are actively conducting thoughtful oversight of this law, while at the same time crafting patient-centered solutions to improve healthcare for all Americans. We want to hear your stories, so if you are having difficulties as a result of Obamacare, please share your experience at www.gop.gov/YourStory

500,000 Californians Lose Health Policies

Those canceled policies will have to be replaced with Obamacare-approved insurance... - Wesley J. Smith/National Review
Half a milllion Californians could lose their health care under Obamacare next year - Debra J. Saunders/Token Conservative/SF Chronicle

This Kaiser Health News story has been reverberating across the Internet because it starts to put together the numbers of private health-plan insureds who are receiving cancellations. (This is a small group of Californians; a majority get their health care through employer plans, Medicare or MediCal....

On Forbes’ Avik Roy’s blog, Josh Archambault crunched the numbers and concluded, “More Americans in 3 States Have Had Their Insurance Canceled Under Obamacare than have filed an exchange account in all 50.”

...California Association of Health Plans president Pat Johnston told me that by law providers must cancel non-grandfathered individual policies. (It is my understanding some folks will lose their coverage at year’s end, others might be able to extend into 2014 through the end of a covered year.) This probably means premiums hikes for people who “not only were they healthy, they also probably were very savvy shoppers.” This is a small corner of the insurance market; others may well save money under the Affordable Care Act. But for the people kicked off their individual California plans, Johnston said, it may well be that ”if you’re outside that subsidy range, you’re on your own.”

Friday, October 25, 2013

Because it’s not really about Sandra Fluke’s birth control.

ObamaCare Doubles Premiums for Young Women - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page Magazine
Young Women O-Care Premiums To Increase 200%
Healthy young women will see their premiums rise by an average of almost 200 percent under Obamacare, with increases occurring in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a new study.
Young people are considered vital to the success of the Affordable Care Act, with the administration setting a goal of 2.7 million 18 to 35 year olds signing up by 2014. - Washington Free Beacon

UPDATED: 60 Minutes Takes on Benghazi



Benghazi, and the failure surrounding it, is likely to be the dead albatross around the neck of Hillary Clinton’s anticipated campaign to become the Democrat Presidential nominee. Her efforts to run from this stink are not likely to succeed. She lied to the American people and, more importantly, the families of those slain when she pushed the fable that the attacks were spawned by an anti-muslim video. They were not. - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

The truth will come out and it is a story that Hillary will not be able to escape.

UPDATED:

CBS 60 Minutes’ Lara Logan Apologizes for Erroneous Benghazi Survivor Report: ‘We Were Wrong’ - Mediaite 11/8/13

CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan admitted on Friday that a person who claimed to have been witness to the deadly September 11, 2012 attack on an American consulate in Benghazi and who served as the centerpiece of a recent report on that attack may have misled her.... Logan said that 60 Minutes will apologize and correct the record this coming Sunday night.

CBS in Damage Control Over Error-Filled Benghazi Report - TREVOR LOUDON/NEW ZEAL

Inside the '60 Minutes' Benghazi breakdown - Politico

Is Hillary's little Mother's Helper David Brock behind the scenes on this one? Heads up, 60 Minutes team. - Discussion at Lucianne

Benghazi Story Exposes CBS Corruption - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

For the moment, many on the left are celebrating the 60 Minutes debacle as a stake thru the heart of further investigations into Benghazi. But not so. Aaron Klein astutely notes that the document leaked by State Department sources to discredit Davies actually ends up discrediting the Obama Administration’s initial account about Benghazi...

"It's time to end all this arguing. Obama should take the Secret Service, go to Capitol Hill and shoot every Republican dead. Then he should call up the National Guard, round up every Tea Party member and put them in prison camps. Yeah I know people will whine about democracy, but sometimes you have to kill democracy to save it. We cannot tolerate two parties anymore. It's time for the Democrats to put their foot down. We only have one sane party, so there should only be one party. It works for China."

That was a comment from Joe in NY on the New York Times website.

PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING: New York Times commenters urge Obama administration to kill Republican lawmakers - Doug Ross

I make light of their fascist instincts, but this is what passes for "informed commentary" over at The New York Times. Curiously enough, the Times seems to be okay with this sort of invective since these comments have been up for more than a day.

And it's not just the rabid kooks who read the Times. Unfortunately, this kind of fascistic behavior is becoming all too commonplace for the increasingly radicalized Democrat Party.

There’s just no escape from this many-tentacled Big Government terror!



CREEPY OBAMACARE UNCLE SAM RETURNS FOR HALLOWEEN - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

The president is not just more concerned than you, but he’s smarter than you are as well.

Obama the Avatar - Charles C. W. Cooke/National Review

Discussing the Obamacare disaster in the Rose Garden on Monday, President Obama led with a phrase to which we have become accustomed: “Nobody,” the president emoted, “is madder than me” about this mess.

Along with “let me be clear” and “make no mistake,” this is a favorite construction. Obama, you see, is more concerned for and correct about everything than everybody else at all times. “Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do,” he told WABC earlier this month; “nobody is more frustrated” than he about the IRS scandal; “no person,” the president affirmed during the election, “is more interested” in “seeing this economy growing strong.”

...Looking forward, those who prefer their presidents quiet and their republics modest might consider focusing their attentions not on replacing Rei Toei’s software and spinning up a new personality to replace the old one, but instead upon pulling the plug completely, and reminding the head of the executive branch that he is not the roaming repository of the country’s hopes and fears, but instead a servant there to do a particular job — no more, and no less.

CBS News: Obamacare's Entire Financial Model is In Danger of Collapsing

With so much of the media's attention fixated on Obamacare's technological meltdown, some important storylines have gone under-explored. CBS news, to its credit delved into one of them today, noting that of the people who have successfully obtained coverage under the new law, it appears that the vast majority of them are new Medicaid enrollees. And that poses a mortal threat to the entire structure of the law (Video at the link) - Guy Benson/TownHall

Those stats from Washington, Kentucky and New York are hugely problematic. The poor and sick are managing to sign up for Medicaid -- to the "surprise" of state officials -- but they aren't been offset by people who are actually purchasing care. Another crucial point: Medicaid was already in very poor fiscal and functional condition before Obamacare extended it massively. It's terribly underfunded; many doctors and hospitals refuse to accept new Medicaid patients due to the government's paltry reimbursement rates. Perhaps worst of all, Medicaid is catastrophically ineffective. Just because indigent individuals are enrolled in Medcaid coverage doesn't mean they actually receive quality care.

According to the most comprehensive study ever done on the program (which used Oregon's system as the basis for analysis) poor people enrolled in Medicaid have no better health outcomes than their uninsured counterparts. We're not just spending endless billions on a program that flat-out doesn't work, we're expanding it through Obamacare. This is why the president isn't being truthful when he claims that apart from the website, the underlying Obamacare product is "good" and working "really well." It's not. We touched on the issue of dropped coverage yesterday, another one of the law's glaring flaws and broken promises. CBS News is on that case, too - MORE at the link.

HHS Probably Can't Fix It by the End of November, and That's Probably Too Late Anyway - Jim Geraghty/National Review

Here’s the new promise:
“By the end of November, HealthCare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users,” Jeffrey Zients, President Obama’s appointee said Friday. “The HealthCare.gov site is fixable. It will take a lot of work, and there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed.”
Five weeks.

...CBS News:
“I think the damage was done,” Joseph Antos, a health policy expert from the American Enterprise Institute, told CBSNews.com. “It really does startle me — I never would have guessed two-and-a-half weeks ago we’d be where we are today.”

Antos contends the “tech surge” that the administration has deployed has until around mid-November to create a “tolerable” shopping experience for people before the website’s flaws take a true toll on enrollment.
NBC News:
The Obama White House has about a month — so until Thanksgiving — to find a solution before the system is negatively impacted.
Kaiser Health News:
They’ve got a few weeks. But if federal officials can’t get the new online insurance marketplace running smoothly by mid-November, the problems plaguing the three-week-old website could become a far bigger threat to the success of the health law, hampering enrollment and fueling opponents’ calls to delay implementation, say analysts.
The Obama administration is way, way, way up a river, with no paddle.

8,000 Washington State Obamacare applicants about to get a nasty surprise - conservativeintel.com

The big teaching moment for Republicans, conservatives and libertarians — that time you can finally whisper new ideas quietly in the ears of your liberal and progressive friends and relations — is here.

Alinsky Lessons for Republicans - Roger L. Simon/PJMedia

And it’s not just because Obamacare is an unbelievable fiasco that even has them stuttering on CBS and ABC. Everything is going haywire for the president. Absolutely everything.

But what, in the midst of this, can we all do actually to change things?

First of all, resist the obvious temptation to get up and scream at the top of your lungs:

“Obamacare! Benghazi! Fast and Furious! IRS scandal in the White House! Morsi, Erdogan, Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the Islamist maniacs! Iranian nukes! Bungling Assad and the Russians! Record black unemployment! Black on black murder epidemic! Six, going on seven, years of joblessness! Lowest labor participation rate since women joined the work force! Crony capitalism all over the place! Absurd environmental regulations! Keystone pipeline! Nuclear family vanishing! Single parents everywhere! Homeless in our streets! NSA spying on everyone in the universe! Bankrupt pension plans and escalating entitlements! Everything in hock to the Chinese! 17 trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight! He’s the worst president in history! The worst president imaginable!”

Did I leave anything out?

Oh, yes, the man is the biggest presidential liar of my lifetime, far bigger than Nixon and Clinton who lied out of self-protection. Obama lies, and constantly, about substance that affects the lives of the American people. He started it all by pledging during his first campaign his administration would be the most transparent in history. That was the mother of all whoppers. Since then it’s been all downhill.

Among his more recent — and most personally damaging — Pinocchios is the claim he made when selling Obamacare to the public that anyone who liked his or her health plan could keep it. What unconscionable baloney that proved to be. As of now health insurance cancellations are soaring above Obamacare enrollment rates. There will be tons more uninsured people come January.

But true as that may all be — and we certainly shouldn’t forget it — it’s all worth less than the proverbial hill of beans to our liberal/progressives friends. Scream at them and they will just stick their fingers in their ears and yell “Racist!” or something equally attractive....

The holiday season is fast upon us and friends and family will be getting together. In this radically divided country, feelings will be raw, as they have been for the last decade at least.

This is the time to lead your horse to water.

WHAT OBAMA HAS WROUGHT: CBS: Explosion in Medicaid Enrollments May ‘Threaten ENTIRE Structure’ of Obamacare





“According to a CBS investigation, in many of the 15 states that have their own health insurance exchanges, more people are enrolling in Medicaid than are actually buying private health insurance,” CBS News reporter Jan Crawford revealed. - Mediaite

“There is concern that if that trend continues, there will not be as many healthy people buying insurance for this system to work,” she continued.

OBAMACARE INSURANCE LOSSES IN THREE STATES EXCEED SIGNUPS IN ALL OF U.S. - Frances Martel/Breitbart



Now Democrats know what's in Obamacare - Chicago Tribune Editorial

Democrats are breaking ranks. And, predictably, there's a rising cry to fire people who are responsible for the mess, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Somebody's got to man up here, get rid of these people," said Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., who didn't name names but characterized the president's response to the rollout as "weak." "There are people like myself who supported the Affordable Care Act, but I'm not oblivious to the fact that this layout has done harm and damage to the brand," he said.

The brand? Obamacare's got all the appeal of MySpace, Friendster or BlackBerry now.

The world has come to one key conclusion–Obama cannot be trusted.

Obama’s Incompetence Endangers America - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

It was no mere coincidence that the Washington Post published a piece co-authored by Bob Woodward, exposing Top Secret details of US drone strikes in Pakistan.

Leaking this information was a deliberate attempt to put the Pakistani Foreign Minister on the defensive. It was a shot from someone on the Obama team at the Pakistani Government to put them on notice that any an every aspect of their secret cooperation with the United States would be exposed if they dared to be too public in their criticism of the Obama Administration.

And all of this comes against the backdrop of a senior NSC staffer being outed and fired for his secret tweeting about the inside baseball of the Obama national security team. This news gives more credibility to the Ulstermann Reports, which have circulated the web over the last five years. In fact, makes me wonder if this guy was in fact Ulstermann. The key revelation from the Jofi tweets concerns Benghazi. He correctly notes that Hillary Clinton carried out a massive cover up of that unmitigated disaster.

These developments are more than juicy grist for comedians and political wonks. It represents a serious decline in American influence, prestige and power in some critical areas of the world.

Atlantic hurricane season quietest in 45 years, experts say

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season looks set to go down as a big washout, marking the first time in 45 years that the strongest storm to form was just a minor Category 1 hurricane. - Reuters/Yahoo

There could still be a late surprise in the June 1-November 30 season, since the cyclone that mushroomed into Superstorm Sandy was just revving up at this time last year.

But so far, at least, it has been one of the weakest seasons since modern record-keeping began about half a century ago, U.S. weather experts say. Apart from Tropical Storm Andrea, which soaked Florida after moving ashore in the Panhandle in June, none of this year's cyclones has made a U.S. landfall.

New Study: ’2013 ranks as one of the least extreme U.S. weather years ever’– Many bad weather events at ‘historically low levels’ - Climate Depot

'Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.'

Tornadoes: 'lowest total in several decades'

Number of wildfires: 'On pace to be the lowest it has been in the past ten years'

Extreme Heat: The number of 100 degree days may 'turn out to be the lowest in about 100 years of records'

Hurricanes: 'We are currently in the longest period (8 years) since the Civil War Era without a major hurricane strike in the US (i.e., category 3, 4 or 5)' ( last major hurricane to strike the US was Hurricane Wilma in 2005)

Chilling Daily Caller Exclusive: Feds confiscate investigative reporter’s confidential files during raid

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. - Alex Pappas/Daily Caller

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was found guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms.

But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said.

Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter.

“They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”

...Hudson said she wants to let her sources know that they may have been exposed.

“Part of the reason I’m coming forward with this is I’m scared to contact them,” she said. “I’m terrified to contact them… I’ve got to let these guys know somehow.”

Police State: Feds Raid Investigative Reporter @AudreyHudson, Seize Notes - The Other McCain
Federal Agents Seize Story Notes from Investigative Reporter’s Home - Bryan Preston/PJMedia
Chilling: Reporter's confidential notes seized in firearms raid by Feds - Rick Moran/American Thinker

There is a war on journalists being waged by government. It doesn't matter if they're liberal or conservative, only that what they publish displeases someone in Washington.

This from a CNN reporter:
On Wednesday morning, CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello made a rather stunning, if cryptic, revelation. In discussing the firing of national security official Jofi Joseph, Costello agreed with panelist Jason Johnson that the Obama administration can be thin-skinned, and said that "President Obama's people can be quite nasty. They don't like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they're not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job."

Johnson's reaction to the firing was that "we had to see more of the tweets. It's kind of inappropriate, so I can understand him being fired. But the Obama administration is very thin-skinned." (HT/ Ed lasky)
Journalists in Chicago routinely put up with this sort of thing from Democratic politicians. It goes with the territory. It shouldn't shock us, then, that these tactics have migrated to Washington with President Obama.

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action - Guy Taylor/Washington Times
The warrant, obtained by the Times, offered no specific permission to seize reporting notes or files.

The Washington Times said Friday it is preparing legal action to fight what it called an unwarranted intrusion on the First Amendment....

David W. Fischer, a private attorney contacted by the couple, says that the raid is a potential violation of Mrs. Hudson’s constitutional rights.

“Obviously, the warrant is about a gun, nothing about reporters notes,” he said. “It would be a blatant constitutional violation to take that stuff if the search warrant didn’t specifically say so.”

“This is a situation where they picked very specifically through her stuff and took documents that the Coast Guard, or the Department of Homeland Security, would be very interested in,” he added.

The raid could constitute illegal search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment — and the fact that the materials were related to her work as a reporter could First Amendment freedom of the press protections.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

What Happened to All of Obama's Technology Czars?

Why does the White House need a private-sector "tech surge" to repair its wretched Obamacare website failures? - Michelle Malkin/TownHall

Oh – Apparently The White House Was The Source For Dick Durbin’s “Top House Republican” Smear

This is an update to yesterday’s story about Little Dick Durbin’s October 20 spurious Facebook post that has had tongues wagging in Washington, this week. Durbin wrote, “in a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you.’” - Nice Deb

Yesterday, the White House flatly denied that it happened, while Dick Durbin stood by his story.... So Harry Reid was spreading lies, again, and the White House is covering his behind by saying it was a “miscommunication.” As if something like that can be miscommunicated.

White House gave false “can’t stand to look at you” meme to Harry Reid, who gave it to Durbin, who went public - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

It gets more interesting.

It turns out that Dick Durbin wasn’t “lying” if by lying you mean saying something he knew to be untrue. It was curious why Durbin would not name names. Now we know. He would have had to name Harry Reid as his source.

The White House gave the line to Harry Reid, who read it to the Democratic Senate caucus, one of whose members — Durbin — went public with it. The story still was false, and the White House is claiming a “miscommunication.”

- - - The comments at the link are interesting.

Figures. Obamacare’s Hispanic Website Features Asians – Not Hispanics

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS ON CALLS FOR HER TO STEP DOWN OVER OBAMACARE: ‘I DON’T WORK FOR’ THE PEOPLE CALLING FOR ME TO RESIGN



KATHLEEN SEBELIUS DOES NOT WORK FOR YOU - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

What a perfect distillation of the clueless arrogance and irresponsibility of this Administration! The imperial bureaucracy serves the King alone. They view themselves as opponents of both the American citizen and their elected representatives. It doesn’t matter how badly ObamaCare fails, or how much time people are wasting in fruitless battle with its software, or how many of us receive those dreaded insurance cancellation notices in the mail. This is an exercise of force. We are often told “democracy” had its last chance to stop the disaster in November 2012. It’s too late to complain about the false promises too many people believed back then.

“This is a defining moment for the House Republicans. They must decide who they represent: certain activist CEOs lobbying Congress, or the national interest and the millions of Americans struggling to get by in this low job, low wage economy.”

In a Thursday statement in response to President Barack Obama’s push for amnesty for America’s at least 11 million illegal aliens, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said that now is a time for House Republicans to show their unity for measures that result in good economic policies and show that America is a nation of laws. - Breitbart

Afterburner with Bill Whittle: The Cookie Cutter Curriculum

USA Today has published a frightening story this evening that suggests Iranian centrifuges are so numerous and so technologically able that it would take no more than a month for the country to go nuclear once it decides to do so.

Countdown to the Iranian Bomb? - John Podhoretz/Commentary Magazine

Remember that the president has said on numerous occasions that Iran cannot be allowed to get the bomb.

You might say it’s a real red line for him.

Cantor calls Iran report 'extremely alarming,' military force should be considered - The Hill

"The report that Iran may be a month away from possessing enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb is extremely alarming,” he said in a release. “Whether a month or a year, Iran's determined march toward possessing nuclear weapons is a direct and grave threat to the United States and our allies.”
Cantor warned a strike on Iran should be considered.

...In response to the report, Israel has issued a warning.
"We have made it crystal clear — in all possible forums, that Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror," Danny Danon, Israel's deputy defense minister, told USA TODAY.
Meanwhile, Obama administration officials have said Iran is probably a year away from having enough uranium to make a bomb.

A meeting is scheduled for world leaders in Geneva next month to discuss the path forward on Iran’s nuclear program.

Scapegoating Republicans for Obamacare's failures is an exercise in denial



link - Washington Examiner Editorial

Try as they might, these Democrats cannot escape reality. As Commentary columnist Pete Wehner put it: “The president desperately wishes he could share the blame for what has gone wrong. Except that every Republican in Congress opposed the Affordable Care Act. This is Barack Obama's signature achievement; he and his party are joined at the hip to it. They are as inseparable as salt and water in the ocean.”

Obamacare Operator Fired After Taking Call From Hannity



On the top of Thursday's broadcast of his radio show, Sean Hannity revealed Erling Davis, the Obamacare operator he called early in his Monday show, got fired. - Real Clear Politics

Hannity quizzed her on how well the law is being received by applicants and she revealed no one liked it. Hannity had Davis on his show today and revealed he will give her a year's salary of $26,000 and help her find a new job.

DRUDGE:
THE HEARINGS: Health care site contractor gives testimony...
'Even I couldn't log on'...
HHS predicted 28 minute sign up...
Dem slams hearing as 'monkey court'...
Dummy data file on Healthcare.gov includes Star Wars, Transformers characters...
CAREFIRST to Drop 76,000 Customers...
Cancellation notices soar above enrollment rates...
Senate Dems To Back Delay...
LIMBAUGH: OPT-OUT PENALTY CAN'T BE ENFORCED -- UNLESS YOU GET TAX REFUND!
OBAMACARE OPERATOR FIRED AFTER TAKING CALL FROM HANNITY...

4 Ways Obamacare’s Disaster Is Worse than the Sinking of the Titanic

The implementation of Obamacare is on course to be remembered as one of the worst public policy disasters of all time. Though it was billed as a law that would decrease everyone’s insurance premiums by as much as $2500 per year, it is driving prices up, will drive taxes up, and forces Americans to buy a product as the price of being an American. - Bryan Preston/PJMedia

Poll: 60 percent call Obamacare rollout “a joke,” Obama approval dips again - Guy Benson/HotAir's Green Room

(1) By a two-to-one margin (60/31), Americans say Obamacare’s implementation has been “a joke,” as opposed to it’s “going fine.” According to a recent CBS News survey, just 12 percent of the public says the launch has gone “well.”

(2) By a similar margin (59/31), Americans say the Obama administration is doing more to deepen the partisan divide in Washington, rather than bridge it. Hope and change, baby.

(3) Confirming a slew of other polls, it appears that the shutdown showdown actually boosted Obamacare’s overall perception. Slightly. A majority (51/41) would still prefer to “get rid of” the new law rather than keep it, but that’s down slightly from (53/40) in July. Independents support trashing the law by a 30-point margin.

(4) A strong plurality (49/38) of Americans believe that administration officials responsible for the failed launch should be fired. Fully 92 percent support the principle behind the so-called “Vitter Amendment” (which would have stripped away Washington’s sweetheart Obamacare carve-out). House Republican leaders were preparing to make this item their final shutdown/debt ceiling “ask,” but the rank-and-file crumbled, handing Democrats a lay-up win. If the GOP had stuck together, they could have dared Obama to follow through on his veto threat. Would the president have kept the government shut down and risked technical default for the sole purpose of protecting wildly unpopular Beltway exceptions?

More at the link.

CNN’s Carol Costello: Obama’s People Can Be "Nasty," Will "Threaten Your Job"



Note that her two guests agree with her. - Greg Hengler/TownHall

States Can Nullify Obamacare


On Rush Limbaugh’s Thursday program, George Mason University professor Walter E. Williams outlined the case that states can nullify Obamacare, citing Thomas Jefferson’s 1789 Kentucky Resolution, which was a claim that the U. S. Constitution is a compact among the several states, and any power not delegated to the U.S. government is void. - obamacare.net, the truth, the lies

“I think the American citizens ought to press their state governors and legislatures just to nullify the law — just to plain nullify it and say, ‘The citizens of such-and-such-a state don’t have to obey Obamacare because it’s unconstitutional, regardless of what the Supreme Court says,’” Williams said.

Williams cited Marbury v. Madison, which said “all laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void” to further the case for nullification from the states.

Nullification is a doctrine introduced in the infancy of the United States and was what some have suggested led to the Civil War. As far as the legal precedent of nullification and how it led to the Civil War, Williams said he doubted the repercussions would as serious as they were in 1861.

“I think two things are different this time,” he said. “First, most Americans are against Obamacare. And secondly, I don’t believe — and you call me up and tell me if I’m wrong about this — I don’t believe that you could find a United States soldier who would follow a presidential order to descend on a state to round up or shoot fellow Americans because they refuse to follow a congressional order to buy health insurance.”

Henninger: Obama's Credibility Is Melting

Here and abroad, Obama's partners are concluding they cannot trust him. - Wall St. Journal

Bluntly, Mr. Obama's partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don't trust him. Whether it's the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they've all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world's important business doesn't get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum.

...Voters don't normally accord politicians unworldly levels of belief, but it has been Barack Obama's gift to transform mere support into victorious credulousness. Now that is crumbling, at great cost. If here and abroad, politicians, the public and the press conclude that Mr. Obama can't play it straight, his second-term accomplishments will lie only in doing business with the world's most cynical, untrustworthy partners. The American people are the ones who will end up on the short end of those deals.

CNN Segment Explains Why Media's Ignoring ObamaCare Victims:

Wednesday night on CNN's "Erin Burnett Out Front," Burnett did something I have seen no one in the media do since the official October 1 launch of ObamaCare, and the very real fallout that has occurred since. - John Nolte/Breitbart

...Finally someone in the media acknowledged this catastrophe and demanded an answer from a top Democrat.

But as you will see in the clip below, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has no good answer for President Obama breaking his promise and throwing a grenade into the lives of 20 million families. These two minutes of clarity make Waxman, Obama, and ObamaCare look awful -- which is why the media are working together to make sure this injustice does not become part of the ObamaCare narrative:

300,000 to Lose Health Coverage in Florida, 279,000 in California - Newsmax Obamacare requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 "essential" benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care.... According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare, the Weekly Standard reported. The individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people, but because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent, about 85 percent of those are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. Critics say insurers may be "doing this as an opportunity to push their populations into the exchange and purge their systems" of policyholders they no longer want, Jerry Flanagan, a lawyer with Consumer Watchdog in California, told Kaiser Health News. ◼ Democrats Delusional on Obamacare, Republicans Missing the Boat - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

What happens when healthcare evolves from a privilege to a right

According to the President, his goal is to make health care more than just a privilege — he wants it to be a right for all. - Red Alert Politics

...But the right to health care opens up Pandora’s box in terms of what the government does and does not need to provide to its citizens....

“If health care is a constitutional right, then everything associated with good health would fall into the civil rights category. So your entire environment, house, food, clothing, transportation, mental health would all have to be paid for by the state if you could not afford it,” O’Reilly said during his “Talking Points Memo” segment. “That’s a form of communism because no country could afford those payments without seizing the assets of everybody else. It’s impossible.”

America is a long way from communism, but O’Reilly raises an important point. If health care becomes a fundamental right granted by the U.S. government, what’s next?

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Campaigner in Chief: Obama heading out on yet another campaign fundraising spree

Between Friday and the end of November, Obama will appear at seven fundraisers — three each for House and Senate Democrats and one for the DNC. The DNC fundraiser and two of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee events have not been previously reported. - Politico

Obama’s month of fundraising will begin Friday when he is set to headline a dinner and reception in New York City on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the first of three DCCC-related fundraisers the president is scheduled to appear at within the next month. He will also appear with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) on Oct. 30 outside Boston and on Nov. 24 in a Seattle suburb.

Obama pledged to take part in 14 fundraising events for House and Senate Democrats in 2013, but has appeared at just five so far. He will have done 10 House and Senate fundraisers by Thanksgiving.

EXTORTION: 6 MIND-BLOWING REVELATIONS: How Eric Holder and Barack Obama Perverted the 2012 Election Using the DOJ



Author Peter Schweizer describes some of the more outrageous revelations in his new book Extortion: - Doug Ross

2. THE TOP FIVE POSITIONS AT DOJ BEGINNING WITH ERIC HOLDER WERE ALL CAMPAIGN BUNDLERS FOR THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN.

1. [Obama] FUND-RAISERS [were] RAISING MONEY TO PUT [Obama] INTO POWER WHO [are] NOW MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT WHO THEY'RE GOING TO PROSECUTE AND WHO THEY'RE NOT GOING TO PROSECUTE... THIS [is a] MELDING OF THE DOJ AND THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN.

Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, available at Amazon.

Extortion: How Obama’s “Squeegee Man” Eric Holder Punishes Obama’s Political Enemies (Video) - Nice Deb

Author Peter Schweizer was on Hannity, Tuesday night to talk about his explosive new book Extortion.

He talked about the mind-blowing corruption and political extortion that is rampant in DC, these days on both sides of the aisle but noting that it comes from the top. He compared the Regime to “the squeegee man that used to be in NYC – - they’d walk up to your car and say I want to clean your windshield – they’ve got a cloth in one hand and a brick in the other, and you’ve got to pay them or the brick’s coming through the windshield”….

He said that’s a huge problem at the DOJ. “Eric Holder is the basically the Squeegee guy holding the brick. There are companies that are being told that they are subject to DOJ investigation, criminal and civil, and then these companies are solicited for political donations to the Obama Campaign (in 2012) and now to political committees and there is statistical evidence in the book that literally, you cut your chance of going to jail in half if you make a contribution.”

ObamaCare 2016: Happy Yet?

The website problems were finally solved. But the doctor shortage is a nightmare.

Three years after the disastrous launch of the Affordable Care Act, most of the website troubles finally have been ironed out. People are now able to log on to the government's ACA website and to most of the state health-insurance exchanges. The public has grudgingly come to accept higher insurance premiums, new taxes and increases in part-time workers who were formerly full-time. But Americans are irate anyway—because now they're seeing the health-care law's destructive effect on the fundamental nature of the way their care is delivered.

Even before the ACA's launch in 2013, many physicians—seeing the changes in their profession that lay ahead—had begun talking their children out of going to medical school. After the launch, compensation fell, while nothing in the ACA stopped lawsuits and malpractice premiums from rising. Doctors must now see many more patients each day to meet expenses, all while dealing with the mountains of paperwork mandated by the health-care law.

The forecast shortage of doctors has become a real problem. It started in 2014 when the ACA cut $716 billion from Medicare to accommodate 30 million newly "insured" people through an expansion of Medicaid. More important, the predicted shortage of 42,000 primary-care physicians and that of specialists (such as heart surgeons) was vastly underestimated. It didn't take into account the ACA's effect on doctors retiring early, refusing new patients or going into concierge medicine. These estimates also ignored the millions of immigrants who would be seeking a physician after having been granted legal status.

It is surprising that the doctor shortage was not better anticipated...

Report: White House to delay Obamacare individual mandate; ‘Does this mean we went through a shutdown for nothing?’

If it’s true that the Obama administration will seek to delay the implementation of the individual mandate by as much as six weeks, will some pro-Obamacare Dems accuse the White House of terror tactics? - Twitchy

Bombshell: Federal judge suddenly green-lights lawsuit that could stop Obamacare in its tracks

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law. - David Martosko/Daily Mail

The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.

The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.

Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.

But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers.

Discussion at Lucianne

Economy

Current Spending Pace Puts Debt on Track to Reach $22 Trillion by Feb '14... - ETF
Just imagine an undisciplined out-of-control spender whose credit limit has just been extended. In other words, they can continue overspending without any accountability. That “they” is the U.S. government.

It’s been almost a week since Congress reached a temporary deal to suspend the U.S. government’s debt ceiling and the Treasury department has already wasted no time by adding another $375 billion in new debt.

Suspension of a cap on U.S. debt, which was previously fixed at $16.69 trillion, means the Treasury department, headed by Jack Lew, can effectively spend whatever amount of money it needs or wants.

How much debt can the U.S. government rack up by the next debt ceiling deadline on Feb. 7, 2014? At the current spending pace of $375 billion per week, U.S. public debt would reach $22.70 trillion.
CENSUS: 49% of Americans Receive Gov't Benefits... - CNS
REPORT: U.S. Spent $3.7 Trillion on Welfare Over Last 5 Years... - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard
Administration fights to keep food stamp payments secret... - Josh Gerstein/Politico
South Dakota's Argus Leader newspaper urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to reverse a ruling blocking the newspaper from receiving data on how much the federal government pays to stores that redeeem food stamp benefits.

"The Argus is not asking for the invoices. They’re asking for the payment information. All we’re really doing is asking: how does the government spend its money in this instance?" Arneson told the three-judge panel sitting in St. Paul, Minn. "Because of the way FOIA is intended to be applied, we’re entitled to the benefit of the doubt. If there’s doubt here, the Argus is entitled to that benefit."

Millions of Americans Losing Health Plans...

While the Affordable Care Act was making its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, President Obama famously promised the American people over and over again that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. - John McCormack/Weekly Standard

According to health policy expert Bob Laszewski, roughly 16 million Americans will lose their current plans because of Obamacare:
The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.

These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.
Obama’s War On America Continues: Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois Sends Out Cancellation Notices - Gateway Pundit

Drudge:
Healthcare.gov Refers Users to Uncertified Navigators and Assisters...
Launch spawns over 700 cyber-squatters...
Feds instruct BLUE CROSS/BLUE SHIELD not to reveal sign-up numbers...
Gov't invokes 'privacy' to shield public employees while snooping on rest...
CBSNEWS: Website Underestimates Cost of Insurance...
'Alpha teams' formed to address problems...
Millions of Americans Losing Health Plans...
Senate Dems Up For Re-Election To Back Mandate Delay...

With His Premiums More Than Doubling, This Dad Would “Rather File Bankruptcy” Than Deal with Obamacare


Ben Neptun and his wife Charla are “furious” their family’s health insurance premium will be raised from $419 to $899 per month because of Obamacare. - Heritage.org

The Neptun family buys their insurance directly from Blue Cross Blue Shield and spends about $2,000 a year on health care for the family, not including the monthly premium. So when Ben received a letter from Blue Cross explaining health insurance rates were increasing to comply with the new Obamacare regulations, he was angry. The new regulations in Obamacare force healthy families like his to “spend a boatload for nothing,” he explained.

Don't fire Kathleen Sebelius; her boss is the problem

Sebelius says she won't be signing up - CNS
Pressure is mounting in some quarters for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be made the sacrificial lamb for the abysmal failure of Healthcare.gov. - Mark Tapscott/Washington Examiner

There were more than sufficient grounds to terminate Sebelius during Obama's first term, not the least of which was her extorting contributions to promote Obamacare from the same health insurance providers HHS regulates under the program.

But Sebelius is not the major reason for the Obamacare website's epic flop from its first minute of operation on Oct. 1. The person who should be fired sits in the Oval Office.



All The President’s Bad News Gatekeepers - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

Obama knew nothing. Again.

Kathleen Sebelius is insistent that no one told Obama prior to October 1 that testing and evaluation had indicated healthcare.gov likely would fail.

Not even as a government “shutdown” was looming over the issue of delaying the individual mandate for a year? Even though an inoperable healthcare.gov website would justify the Republican position? Even though a failure of the website would be a major embarrassment?

Hating Government Is the New Hate Crime

The real race of racism isn’t skin color or genes. It’s government. If you hate government, you’re a racist. - Daniel Greenfield/Front Page Magazine

But there’s no such thing as anti-government racism or anti-government hate crimes.

Not only isn’t hating Washington a crime, it’s practically a citizenship test. Despising the entire mess of politicians, aides, bureaucrats, lobbyists, union bosses and bartenders who make the government go round is the one bigotry that everyone can agree on.

The only way for government to get its own hate crime is by dressing up in blackface. Every time Chris Matthews cries “Racism,” he’s dressing up government in blackface. That’s what the selection of Obama was really about. It made race equivalent to government.

Chris Matthews’ government minstrel act is McRacism. Like other McRacist psychoracialists, he plumbs the depths of his own psychotic psyche to explain why government haters are racists to manufacture a cheap and offensive government substitute for racism that protects the abuses of career politicians and bureaucrats by teaching them to wear blackface and shout about racism.

McRacism is a blackface routine that makes hating government into the ultimate hate crime.

Paranoia on the Left over Tea Party and debt ceiling - Washington Examiner Editorial

No group of political activists has been more intensely criticized than the Tea Party by the Washington political establishment and its allies in the traditional media. In recent days, thousands of left-wing zealots even signed petitions on Moveon.org and Daily Kos demanding that “Teapublicans” like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas be arrested and prosecuted for “sedition.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also applied the sedition label to the Tea Partiers, and Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen made an epithetic case for the prosecution: "A lot of those members are rabid, they're sophomoric — literally, they're second term in Congress — they've never worked in politics before. Really, you've got to think, we take an oath to protect this country from 'all enemies, foreign and domestic,' and these are the domestic enemies."...

So who is crazier: Tea Party conservatives who are at least trying to force the Washington establishment to act, or their critics demanding higher credit limit for a spendthrift government and jail for “domestic enemies”?

Local biologist charged with embezzlement: Federal prosecutors charge Ron LeValley in Yurok forestry fraud case

Mad River Biologists founder Ron LeValley is due to make his initial appearance in federal court later this month. Prosecutors filed a single charge against him, alleging that he conspired with former Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond to steal almost $1 million from the tribe through a complex scheme of false and inflated invoices and payments for work that was never performed. - Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard

Iowan Finally Buys Health Care Through Obamacare Site After 100+ Tries

{Edward Voss, a computer programmer,} said he didn’t know whether or not he had actually enrolled in a plan until CoOportunity Health, one of Iowa’s two carriers in the exchange, called him on Friday to congratulate him for being its first enrolled customer. - Andrew Johnson/National Review

DRUDGE:



VIDEO: Actual chat session with HEALTHCARE.GOV... - YouTube
Man Spends 4.5 Hours on Phone But Still Can't Sign Up...
Spanish website completely down...
HHS Finds TWO Enrollees for Ads... - Washington Free Beacon

...A second HHS video features Daniel McNaughton, who was the only person able to sign up for health insurance during Obamacare’s first week, according to the Orlando Sentinel....According to his Facebook page, McNaughton is a member of “Lee County Florida for Obama,” and he “likes” the Department of Health and Human Services, and Healthcare.gov. He also worked as a Legislative Intern to Democratic State Senator Dave Aronberg in Florida, according to his Linkedin page....

McNaughton is one of the few Floridians who have successfully signed up for Obamacare. The Miami Herald calls enrollees “urban legends.”

Feds instruct BLUE CROSS/BLUE SHIELD not to reveal sign-up numbers... - INFORUM

Still, a spokeswoman from Blue Cross Blue Shield says about 14 North Dakotans have signed up for coverage since the federal exchange went live Oct. 1. That brings total statewide enrollment to 20 – less than one a day.

In a bombshell revelation, a consumer sales manager for North Dakota’s largest health insurer said Monday that the Obama Administration asked Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota to hide how many people registered for health insurance through an online exchange that just went up. - William Bigelow/Breitbart

What could there be to hide?

Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties with US over response to conflict in Syria

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years. - Reuters via Daily Mail

'The shift away from the U.S. is a major one,' the source close to Saudi policy said. 'Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.'

...The growing breach between the United States and Saudi Arabia was also on display in Washington, where another senior Saudi prince criticized Obama's Middle East policies, accusing him of 'dithering' on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

300,000 LOSE HEALTH PLANS IN FLORIDA v. OBAMA'S 13 (REALLY 3) But WAIT! there's MORE!

Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes - Kaiser Health News









Still not sold on President ShamWow’s Obamacare pitch? #ButWaitTheresMore - Twitchy

RECORD 90,609,000 AMERICANS NOT IN LABOR FORCE...
Employment among women hits 24-year low...
Economy 'stalling'...

Hitler’s reaction to the Obamacare exchanges



The hilarious video was created by the American Enterprise Institute’s Steve Hayward and mimics other popular “Hitler’s Reaction” videos made using a scene from the film “Downfall.” But in this particular clip, Hitler has just learned what a monumental failure the roll out of Obamacare’s much-anticipated exchanges has been. And boy is he mad. - Red Alert Politics

Baltimore Ravens were paid tax dollars to promote "Obamacare"



Super Bowl Champs Get $130,000 to Promote Obamacare - Judicial Watch

The deal was secured on September 9 between the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL) and Maryland health officials. The White House has tried recruiting professional sports leagues—especially the NFL and the National Basketball Association (NBA)—to help promote the president’s healthcare law but they have declined....

But Maryland officials evidently appealed directly to the home team, announcing in early September that the Ravens would help market the state’s Obamacare exchange known as Maryland Health Connection. Both parties refused to offer specifics when the deal was initiated and Judicial Watch filed a Maryland Public Information Act request for details.

In a “Sponsorship Agreement” between the Maryland Health Connection and the Ravens, the state will pay the Super Bowl champs $130,000 to push Obamacare on television, radio, the team’s official website, its newsletter and in social media. This includes the Ravens Report Show on cable TV and a number of pre and post-game radio segments as well as Facebook and Twitter plugs.

FOIA Documents - Judicial Watch

Super Bowl champ Baltimore Ravens getting paid $130,000 to promote Obamacare - Paul Bedard/Washington Examiner

Despite a decision by the NFL to ignore the administration's pleas to promote Obamacare, the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens have decided to go all in -- in exchange for a $130,000 contract, according to documents unearthed by a public watchdog group.

Carney Ducks Obamacare Questions, Walks Out of Press Briefing



Spokesman for “Most transparent administration in history” can’t answer basic Obamacare questions - ATR

White House spokesman Jay Carney today abruptly walked out of the briefing room after struggling to answer questions related to Obamacare. As he walks out, frustrated reporters can be heard asking questions, including:

“Have White House officials watched anyone without insurance go through the website, trying to help the situation?”

“Couldn’t we have a [HHS] rep just come to the press briefing?”

“In a move out of Orwell or the Soviet Union, television shows are being asked to include propaganda about ObamaCare,” Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post:

DoublePlusBarry: Is there ObamaCare ‘Propaganda’ on Our Favorite Shows? - Ed Driscoll/PJMedia
In a move out of Orwell or the Soviet Union, television shows are being asked to include propaganda about ObamaCare - Kyle Smith/New York Post

Jon Stewart Delivers Blistering Takedown of Obamacare Rollout: (Warning: Some strong language):



JON STEWART’S SCATHING OBAMACARE CRITIQUE IS AS RUTHLESSLY HONEST AS IT IS FUNNY - The Blaze

How Jon Stewart became President Obama’s biggest problem - Chris Cillizza/Washington Post

Stewart dedicated the entire first 10 minutes of his show — three full segments — on Monday to slashing hits on the Web site and the president’s handling of the problems. He compared Obama to “Gil”, the hapless salesman from “The Simpsons”, showed “Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver stuck in a computer after trying to sign up for Obamacare and expressed amazement that even the calculator on the healthcare.gov Web site doesn’t work. (And, remember, Stewart was heavily critical of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during an appearance on his show earlier this month.)

The Republican Party is still playing this game by Washington rules while Obama is playing it by Chicago rules where the only rule is to do whatever you can get away with for as long as the people let you.

Obama isn’t just challenging a few laws, he is challenging whether the government has any hard limits that can’t be overcome by asserting popular will or the force of history. And the Republican Party is not only unable to answer his challenge, but is unable to even understand that it is being made. - Daniel Greenfield/Sultan Knish

The Tea Party instinctively understood Obama’s uncompromising political grammar. As do men like Ted Cruz. While the Republican Party looks for a compromise, they understand that it’s impossible.

This is a test of wills. Agendas are asserted. Law doesn’t matter. Passion does.

Most people don’t understand the inner workings of government. What they know is that they are unhappy with the state of the country and looking for someone to fight for a better life for them.

Instead of stepping up to the challenge, the Republican Party has become consumed with the illusory center. It is afraid of alienating anyone and so it appeals to no one. It engages in half-measures that do more damage than doing nothing would. It commits halfway to every policy and is hated by everyone....

Obama can only be beaten with sustained opposition. Innate to his plans is the assumption that his enemies will give up and let him have his victory. When they don’t, he begins making mistakes.

It Begins.

SLATE: Canada has Death Panels - And that is good thing... - Slate via Drudge

Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

...In Canada, with our single-payer health care system, Rasouli’s situation has a very public bottom line: Should taxpayers foot the bill for his family’s indefinite goodbye?

...Modern medicine increasingly allows us to extend life indefinitely, and so the question is no longer whether we can “play God,” but when, how, and who should do so. When humanity demands haste, and justice demands expert knowledge, Ontario’s death panels offer a solution—whatever Sarah Palin says.

Freedom Works

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Mentioned on Rush

The Definitive Guide to How Obamacare is Destroying American Lives



On Sunday night, I wrote a short post soliciting stories from my readers about how Obamacare has already immediately impacted their lives. I asked that all of these emails be directed to ObamacareMakesMeSick@Yahoo.com. I expected a response; I didn’t expect it to be quite so overwhelming.

Over the last 24 hours, my inbox has been flooded with hundreds of emails. What you’ll read in this post represents a portion of them.
- Matt Walsh

(H)ere are the tales of many, many, many real Americans. Share this with your friends. Every time some Statist nincompoop extols the virtues of Obamacare; every time they insist that the “Affordable Care Act” has done nothing but “help” low and middle income families; every time they babble incoherently about how Obamacare isn’t “perfect” but it’s still “better” than what we had before — show them this. Challenge them to read what is happening out there. This isn’t abstract. It isn’t academic. It isn’t a matter of ideology. It isn’t even an issue of constitutionality (although it’s that, also). This is about people. People with kids, and bills, and health problems. This is about people who can no longer afford their health coverage, their mortgages, their lifesaving medication. This is about doctors and nurses leaving medicine behind, driven away by destructive bureaucratic interference. This is about moms and dads losing their jobs so that their employers can compensate for the financial burden of Obamacare. This is about people without insurance because of Obamacare, now being fined for not having insurance because of Obamacare. This is about business owners driven to the edge of bankruptcy. This is real. We heard a lot of fantasies about what Obamacare was “supposed” to accomplish, now it’s time to talk about what it’s actually doing.

So when they say you are “heartless” for opposing Obamacare, show them why it’s heartless to support it.

Sure, the President, the media, Hollywood and the DC elite have touted some “success stories.” But they are few and far between — and they come at a cost. This is that cost. For every person thanking his lucky stars for this new healthcare entitlement, thousands of low and middle income families are suffering.

Is that fair? Is that compassionate? Is that moral?

Monday, October 21, 2013

The “unacceptable” speech is a staple of the Obama presidency. Through gritted teeth, the president acknowledges something he’d rather not, usually something his administration has screwed up royally—Benghazi, the IRS scandal, or the push for intervention in Syria. He detaches himself from the situation and all responsibility for what he’s acknowledging while offering a stern lecture for those who caused the problem...

Obama has declared Healthcare.gov problems unacceptable. Problem solved. - HotAir

...In his “unacceptable” speech on the rolling calamity of Obamacare’s launch, the president didn’t even evince the minute and a half of anger he generally musters for such a speech, until he got to the part about Republicans, but that’s a part of every single speech. This is his legacy! From his point of view, someone (maybe the same person always preventing him from being clear?) is ruining his signature achievement, and we got a surreal campaign speech instead of any real reckoning with the problems before him....

Obama thinks when he says things, they just happen. There’s no small part of his entire candidacy and presidency founded on a sort of magical thinking. His presence would fix Washington even as he did nothing to fix it and exacerbated many of its worst features. His words would heal our divides and probably the ocean. It’s not surprising that his signature law would be animated by a lot of the same. He said “Travelocity for health care,” didn’t he?

He said Benghazi’s perpetrators would be brought to justice, didn’t he? He said the IRS acted inappropriately, didn’t he? Problem solved....

In the meantime, all of the people who’ve been calling us liars for three years will now be insistent that we stop talking about Obamacare’s problems and become part of the solution, man. If they’d stopped blindly believing in the power of big government to do big things a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, they might have actually heard some of our criticisms and been able to correct the problem. But they opted for “Attack Watch.”

The Next Step: Four Ways to Fight Obamacare

The always excellent Michael Cannon of Cato has a post over at Forbes with advice for the free-market movement about what to do next in the fight against Obamacare. He suggests that, rather than fight among themselves about whether or not the Cruz-Lee strategy was good or bad, they should focus on the following four things: - Veronique de Rugy/National Review
Stop the Medicaid expansion in the states.
Get states, employers, and citizens to challenge the IRS’s illegal Obamacare taxes.
Educate states about how to block the IRS’s illegal taxes legislatively.
Urge House investigators to subpoena all materials related to the IRS’s illegal taxes.
His whole piece is a must-read (also follow all of his links for more information on each point).

The last three points are very important.

Save The Knives For ObamaCare: Four Ways To Actually Defund The ACA - Michael F. Cannon/Forbes

...ObamaCare justifies drastic measures. Opponents spent political capital taking a principled stand against a law whose roll-out has been a two-week-long train wreck. Even die-hard supporters like Ezra Klein have called it a “disaster.” Former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs has said heads should roll, and nobody knows whether the administration can get its act together before the health insurance “Exchanges” crater. If it can’t, the defund strategy will make all ObamaCare opponents appear prescient....

A good test of whether defunders or detractors are more committed to stopping ObamaCare will be which side is the first to put away the knives and get to work.

President Obama has dug himself a hole, and instead of climbing out by suspending Obamacare as Ted Cruz tried to get him to do, instead he seems to have brought an excavator into the hole with him

Obamacare phone number crashes shortly after Obama tells Americans to use it to enroll - Thomas Lifson/AMERICAN THINKER

Just a suggestion: next time we hire a Chief Executive, let’s try to make sure he or she has at least a discernible record of life experience outside of mau-mauing the flak catchers or dreaming of his or her f**king father. - Protein Wisdom

Obama Panics, Throws Bodies At Obamacare Disaster - AJ Strata

There is a rule of thumb in SW projects, which becomes a scientific law of physics when it is applied to large SW projects for the government. President Obama is about to repeat a huge mistake made by HHS/CMS on the Obamacare Website leading up to its disastrous debut.
Obama is going to throw a lot of bodies at a huge problem – and make matters ten times worse...

The problems must be enormous., This proves the in-house CMS team that pretended to be the system integrator is still in over their head, and this will takes months to fix now that they had to bring outsiders. [Hint: the best place to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it is to find all those disillusioned experts who left or were pushed out for being 'too pessimistic' prior to the debut - they were right you know]

This is all desperation by the administration. It is not the first time this stunt has been tried, but the result is ALWAYS the same. More delays. Bringing in an army of outsiders just added weeks and weeks to Obamacare fixes. The rule of thumb is called Brook’s Law:
Brooks’s law is a principle in software development which says that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”.
This has now become Extreme Amateur Hour

STUDY: Families living in poverty up in 49 states...

15% of youth out of school, work... - AP

...49 states have seen an increase in the number of families living in poverty and 45 states have seen household median incomes fall in the last year. The dour report underscores the challenges young adults face now and foretell challenges they are likely to face as they get older.

ObamaCare Website Troubles Are Just The Beginning - Investor's Business Daily
100 School Districts Cut Work Hours, Blame ObamaCare - Investor's Business Daily
ObamaCare Employer Mandate: A List Of Cuts To Work Hours, Jobs - Investor's Business Daily

In the interest of an informed debate, we've compiled a list of job actions with strong proof that ObamaCare's employer mandate is behind cuts to work hours or staffing levels. As of Oct. 17, our ObamaCare scorecard included 351 employers.