Saturday, November 16, 2013

East. West.





Alec Baldwin: I didn’t know calling someone ‘c**ksucker’ is anti-gay



Baldwin decided to once again lash out at the paparazzi, shouting out either “cocksucking fag” (if you believe TMZ) or “cocksucking fathead” (if you believe Baldwin).

In Which @ABFalecbaldwin Finally Gets the Kind of Attention He Deserves - The Other McCain

Baldwin has been suspended from his MSNBC news show, and has issued a weird public statement via Huffington Post...

Alec Baldwin may be a misogynistic bully — but he’s pro-choice! He may scream hateful slurs — but he’s for “marriage equality”!

And our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can drone-strike terrorists while running a vast surveillance state, yet as long as he gives lip service to the “progressive” cause, nobody on the Left is supposed to notice these mind-boggling contradictions.

It appears that Sen. Kay Hagan, one of those Democrats who pretends to have common sense (i.e., conservative principles) so that she can get elected and then spend the first 2/3 of her term voting in lock-step with Democratic stalwarts like Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, is now in trouble in her home state of North Carolina.

Oh, Look: Another Red State Democratic Senator In Trouble - Brian Carey /Downtrend

She’s currently trailing every prospective Republican challenger. She was ahead of all of them by 12-17 points in September.

There's government-quality management for you: instead of trying to get to the bottom of Grant's dire status report, Chao instead sought to "refute" it.

OH, MY: It would appear administration officials Henry Chao and Marilyn Tavenner lied under oath to Congress - Doug Ross

...In emails from July, released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Obama administration officials write of unskilled developers and a series of missed deadlines. One email said the "entire build is in jeopardy." But when the administration's top people in charge of the implementation testified before the committee in the months leading up to the site launch, they said just the opposite — that they were ready...

• The only developer who was working on the payment pages for enrollment quit CGI without programming the 10 key user interface pieces of the transaction part. "Needless to say it is in jeopardy," wrote CMS' Jeffrey Grant....


In other words, Chao and Tavenner were well aware that all of the site's testing -- not just the penetration and other security tests -- all of the site's tests were in dire jeopardy.

Contempt of Congress, anyone?

BRANCO on 'HO-surance' ads

via conservativebyte.com

Will CNN'S “Crossfire” Drop Cutter Over Lies?

Sean Higgins, a senior writer for the Washington Examiner, points out that CNN’s Stephanie Cutter, who served as President Obama’s deputy campaign manager in 2012, had echoed Obama’s false claim that Obamacare would protect those people who wanted to keep their health insurance plans. - Cliff Kincaid/TREVOR LOUDON'S NEW ZEAL

Cutter was a member of Obama’s “truth team.”

On CNN’s “Crossfire,” Cutter, one of the liberal co-hosts, failed to come completely clean on the November 8 program: “…let’s talk about the President’s apology. He’s sorry because some Americans are losing their insurance plans, and their new plans are costing more. And he did promise that if you liked your plan, you can keep it, but the way the law has unfolded doesn’t live up to that promise. And admittedly I’ve used that line, too, and there’s no doubt the administration oversold it.”

Notice the use of the phrase, “the way the law has unfolded,” as if nobody anticipated this turn of events and that Obama is a victim, too. In terms of her own role in spreading these lies and making the false claim about keeping your health insurance, she said, “admittedly I’ve used that line, too…” and the claim was “oversold.”

She failed to admit she lied and did not apologize. This woman is a professional liar.

...The main problem with CNN’s new “Crossfire” has been the use of political partisans from the Obama administration or his election campaigns such as Cutter and Van Jones as “liberal” co-hosts. Cutter has now been caught lying for the administration and covering up. She ought to be booted from the show. Jones is a disgraced former communist and should never have been hired.

How can the channel justify retention of a political partisan who lied to the American people and refuses to apologize? By using a liar like Cutter, CNN is not contributing to an honest discussion of the issues, but enabling political partisans to poison the public debate.

...By the way, even the liberals at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) take offense to Cutter’s pro-Obama posturing, noting her continuing ties to the White House. FAIR notes, “…while the premise of the CNN show is that Cutter is ‘from the left,’ she still maintains working ties to the White House.” For example, she was “part of a PR strategy session on selling the White House’s Syria policy.”

FAIR says, “If Stephanie Cutter is consulting with the White House, and then going on TV to discuss the very same issues, she’s not representing the left—or her viewers. She’s representing the White House.”

“The beauty of Oprah was she didn’t play the race card in her career. She created a product everybody wanted to buy. President Obama created a mess that nobody wanted to own including himself.”

The Five Hits Oprah’s Race Remarks: Way More ‘Wackos’ on the Left Than the Right - Matt Wilstein/MEDIAITE

Beginning with Winfrey’s comments about the “disrespect” Obama received because he’s an African-American, Andrea Tantaros said, “I’d love to ask her this question. If somebody like President Obama was working at her company Harpo, and had done something the equivalent of Obamacare at Harpo, do we think for one second Oprah would keep him employed, white, black or anything?”

...“If disrespect means racism,” Greg Gutfeld chimed in, “then how can you explain George W. Bush? Who I think was the beneficiary of more disrespect than Obama ever encountered as president?”

[VIDEO] Oprah Winfrey tells BBC many Americans hate Obama because he’s BLACK - THE RIGHT SCOOP
Oprah: Racists Have to Die for Racism to End - Noel Sheppard/Newsbusters

Harvard Prof Ogletree Lashes Out at ‘Bigot’ Andrew Breitbart – Defends Oprah’s Racist Remarks (Video) - Gateway Pundit

The Moral Decline of Oprah - Victor Davis Hanson/National Review

Mark Levin: Oprah Winfrey has NO IDEA what it’s like to live in a country that is brutally racist - The Right Scoop

And she of all people, who has gained so much from this country and is living in the lap of luxury because of it, is now trashing the country.

The public and well publicized collapse of Obamacare presents a great opportunity to educate the culture as to the real and this instance glaringly obvious motive of the Left. It was not to help the poor as they lied to the public. It was to wrest control of one sixth of economy from the private sector and deliver it to the central planners

The tragic results were foreordained and are there for all to see. - Net Right Daily

The same is true of their other schemes regarding energy, finance and all elements of human activity. That point must be made. Obamacare is not an aberration it is the model.

Washington State to Obama: **** Off

(Thursday’s) presser was intended to make insurance companies the scapegoats for the Obama administration’s galactic incompetence. The bottom line is that it will be virtually impossible for insurance companies to recalculate rates, notify customers, etc., by the deadlines. This would permit Obama to say he did what he could but the evil insurance companies would not go along. - RedState

The last lie had hardly vanished from the ether when Washington State’s insurance commissioner announced that Washington’s insurers would be compelled to comply with the law:
Just hours after President Obama announced changes to his health care law to give insurance companies the option to keep offering consumers plans that would otherwise be canceled, Washington state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler says those changes will not be allowed in our state.

What Do You Think of Obamacare So Far?



MRCTV traveled to the liberal bastion of Greenwich Village, New York where Dan Joseph took to the streets and asked leftists how they thought the Obamacare rollout was going so far.

None Dare Call It Fascism

Here is something that is odd. For the past six years President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have waged a relentless attack on the health insurance industry. - John C. Goodman/Townhall

In the most recent iteration, the president assures us he is not responsible for the wave of health insurance policy cancellations. The insurance companies are.

Okay, so where is the other side?

When is the last time you saw an insurance industry executive interviewed on a TV talk show, presenting the industry´s answer to all these attacks? You can´t remember seeing that? I can´t either.

Well what about the health insurance industry trade groups, the folks who are supposed to explain to Congress and the general public the industry's position? When is the last time you saw one of those representatives on TV? Can't remember? Nor can I.

...A free society requires the free flow of information. In any public policy dispute, if only one side is heard from, we are likely to get further and further away from the truth. The attackers will find there is no penalty for getting minor facts wrong or shading the truth. That will embolden them to make more serious errors, eventually resorting to downright lying. If the only entity providing any push back is the Washington Post fact checker, we are in real trouble. Roughly 99.99% of the population doesn't read the Washington Post. Read the rest, and the surprising conclusion, at the link.

It Begins: Major Newspapers in Reid’s and Obama’s Home States Call for Obamacare Repeal

The Chicago Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal want Obamacare repealed. - Bryan Preston/PJMedia

The voters who vaulted both Barack Obama and Harry Reid to power and national office are seeing what must be shocking headlines today. On Thursday, the president offered an apology and an unworkable and possibly illegal “fix” to his troubled healthcare law. Today, the Chicago Tribune has had enough and wants the president’s signature law repealed.

In an editorial titled ◼ “Stop Digging. Demolish Obamacare” or “Stop Digging. Start Over,” the Chicago Tribune rips into Obama’s signature law.
...Most of these tribespeople only wish their big problem was a slipshod Obamacare website. On Thursday, their plight grew more frightful. With even Democratic members of Congress storming the White House over the cancellations, Obama declared — by what legal authority is unclear — that he would overrule the law he signed in 2010 and allow insurers to extend those canceled policies for a year....
The Tribune concludes that Congress should repeal Obamacare: “Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that ‘we fumbled the rollout of this health care law’ would have been pleased to hear him add: So we’re admitting it. This law is a bust. We’re starting over.”

...The Tribune is joined ◼ by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Published in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state, the LVRV also calls for Obamacare, which Reid shepherded through the Senate on its way to passage, should be dismantled in an incisive editorial titled “Obamacare woes beg for repeal.”

It concludes:
The law is so deeply flawed, with so many components in direct conflict with one another, that tweaking just one part will accelerate its collapse.

The Obamacare debacle is just getting started — and it only gets worse from here. Repeal and replace.
FROM THE COMMENTS:
Shepard N7: As welcome a development as this is I can't help but be infuriated by it.

Everyone in the country politically to the right of Fidel Castro knew exactly what effect this law would have. And it's not like we kept it to ourselves, we've been screaming at the tops of our lungs for four years now. The only predictions we made that haven't come to pass are the ones where we actually UNDERESTIMATED the damage this horrible law would do.

And how did the media, led by papers like the Chicago Tribune, respond to our warnings? By accusing us of racism, deceit, stupidity and dishonsty. Now that this cluster***k stands revealed for what it is they want to pretend they weren't instrumental in foisting it on us in the first place. The hell with them. They should be run out of town on a rail along with the Democrats they so dutifully carried water for.


rbj: Who knew the Tribune and LVRJ were racist, tea-bagging, whacko-birds?

Friday, November 15, 2013

Upton vs. Landrieu

Upton Passes 261-157 (39 Dems Vote Yes, 4 Republicans Vote No) Credit where it's due: Boehner, Cantor, et al have played this very well. - Ace

These seem to be the differences between Upton and Landrieu: - Ace Of Spades
Upton provides only for a year-long ability to buy your old policy. Landrieu's bill says the policy must be offered until there are no longer any subscribers to the policy. Advantage: Landrieu

Landrieu's bill applies only to people who actually had the policy before October 1st. Upton is much more expansive: Upton says that if the policy is being offered to anyone, then new customers may buy into that policy as well. Landrieu thus seeks to limit the pool of people who can self-exempt from Obamacare, whereas Upton seeks to expand it. Advantage: Upton

Upton's bill says that insurance companies may offer the old plans. Landrieu says they must...more at the link
Analysis of the Landrieu and Upton Bills - Rush Limbaugh
Upping the Stakes: Include a State-by-State Opt Out Clause as Part of Upton or Landrieu - Ace Of Spades
Why not? Make Red State Democrats vote against the proposition that their own citizens should have the right to exit themselves from this disastrous law.
Oh, My: Rubio Wants to Repeal Obamacare's Pre-Planned Bailouts for Insurance Companies - Ace Of Spades
I guess when I said that Republicans have to make the insurance companies fear them more than they fear Obama, Republicans were already thinking along those lines.

Make the Democrats vote to affirm each and every egregious and unpopular part of this bill.

Make them own it, until they beg us to let them repeal it.


The White House has been trying to shift blame for cancellation letters for several weeks. According to Robert Laszewski, yesterday's presser proves all the previous statements to the effect that Obamacare was not to blame were false. - Breitbart
Megyn Kelly teed up Laszewski with a series of video clips of various White House surrogates suggesting the cancellation letters are a merely a business decision being made by insurance companies. But as Laszewski pointed out, that claim is completely undercut by the President's offer of a "fix."

"If the insurance companies didn't have to cancel people then why did the President give a press conference and announce that insurance companies don't have to cancel people?" Laszewski asked. "The administration just changed the rules so the insurance companies don't have to cancel people" he continued, adding "Well, I guess they had to before then, didn't they Megyn?"
Has Obama Invited the Supreme Court to Revisit His Obamacare Tax? - Ace Of Spades
It is well known that Chief Justice Roberts reversed his legal opinion on Obamacare, that it was unconstitutional, to offer a political opinion, that it was a tax and thus constitutional, in order to save the law. And he did this for political considerations, to preserve the public's good-will towards the Court and maintain its image of nonpartisanship.

...Obama has given him a pretext to write a new opinion. The Court would never simply reverse itself in a year.

But if the facts have sufficiently changed, and if Obama is interpreting his "tax" in a lawless way, claiming it only applies to groups which aren't becoming a political headache.... That gives Roberts the cover to say not "I was wrong" (which he won't say) but "I was right, and as I said previously this is a tax, and taxes must be levied even-handedly, and therefore this law must be struck for failure of the executive to apply it equally to all citizens."

A great tragedy is unfolding within Democratic ranks... In a Euripidean twist, it is Democrats, not Republicans, who are meting out potentially fatal blows to the project which had once represented their greatest hopes.

For Democrats, Obamacare Unfolding Like a Greek Tragedy - Mediaite

...Passed along party lines by appealing to methods unbecoming of the democratic process, the president secured his signature achievement in 2010. It was all downhill from there. A scandalous number of waivers, carve-outs and bailouts later, the ACA went into effect in October amid the self-flagellating protests of Republicans. Defeated at last, the law’s opponents stepped aside. Without a distraction, the press and the public focused on the effects of the law itself. What they saw was grotesque....

Democrats are fully aware of how their “fixes” are potentially fatal for the most expansive liberal reform in generations. They do not care. The political threat is that grave.

...This is a tale of misfortune and woe so Shakespearean that only history’s greatest bards could have ever dreamed it. So many liberals sacrificed so much to bring this creation to life. As it has become clear that their creation is a monster, they are struggling against the increasingly inescapable realization that they may have to kill it in order to save themselves, and their party, from an age in the wilderness.

OBAMA ISN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO LIED - John Hinderaker/PowerLine

Sick and hateful: MSNBC's Martin Bashir takes Sarah Palin-bashing to obscene new extreme



Alec Baldwin must be wondering how he managed to get suspended from MSNBC for a gay slur while Martin Bashir manages to stay on the air while suggesting that someone defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth and urinate in her eyes. Apparently, that would be her punishment for daring to use slavery in an analogy. Really. - Twitchy



Sarah Palin said our children and their children will be enslaved to US debt when it finally comes due…in fact the word she used was ‘slavery’. Now we all know that slavery has more than one meaning and definitely and is completely understandable when used in that context. - The Right Scoop

I just have no words to effectively communicate what I think about Bashir because every time I think of one it just doesn’t go far enough. He’s just, quite frankly, the must repulsive broadcaster that MSNBC has and he doesn’t even deserve a job as a pundit of any kind after this kind of attack.



MARK LEVIN CONDEMNS WOMEN'S GROUPS' SILENCE ON MSNBC HOST ATTACKING PALIN - Tony Lee/Breitbart´s Big Journalism

"Hey tough guy. You like picking on women? You like picking on a mother and a grandmother?" Levin said to Bashir. "You strike me as not tough at all, if you get my drift."

...Levin said Palin was exactly right to compare the federal debt to slavery and nothing was offensive about it, since she was not making a comparison to chattel slavery.

Levin then said "his people," the "Jewish people," were slaves, and he did not for one minute think Palin's comparison was made to "diminish Jewish people or the early days of the nation."

Levin then called out women's group like the National Organization for Women (NOW) for "never" coming to the defense of conservative women like Palin.

Levin said these groups never defend conservative women from misogyny, even when it takes a turn towards the vile and filthy, because "they are not feminist groups. They are left-wing groups. They don't care about women. They care about left-wing women."

UnitedHealth Culls Doctors From Medicare Advantage Plans

Physicians in 10 States Notified; Insurer Cites 'Funding Pressure' From Federal Government - Wall St. Journal

UnitedHealth Group Inc., UNH +0.60% the nation's largest provider of privately managed Medicare Advantage plans, has dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks—spurring protest from lawmakers and physician groups and leaving many elderly patients unsure about whether they need to switch plans to keep seeing their doctors.

Doctors in at least 10 states have received termination letters, some citing "significant changes and pressures in the health-care environment." The notices also tell doctors they can appeal within 30 days. That means many physicians and patients won't know for sure who is in or out of UnitedHealth's Medicare Advantage networks before the open-enrollment period to switch Medicare plans ends on Dec. 7.

The White House seems to believe that they are allowed to shinny around any rule, as long as they wrote it. I’d argue that this is exactly backward: They have an especial duty to uphold the laws that they themselves constructed, because if they don’t, why should the rest of us go along?

Obamacare's Creative, Or Illegal, Rule-Making - Megan McArdle/Bloomberg

The statistics are SHOCKING but each number is an American who's suffering from Obama’s failed promise!


SHARE and TELL us your story here: ◼ LET US KNOW HOW OBAMACARE IS AFFECTING YOU - Republican National Committee

Ted Cruz told the truth; the President lied

So, When Does Ted Cruz Get His Apology? - Joel Pollak//Breitbart

What wouldn't Barack Obama give to be able to wind back the clock to late September and accept Ted Cruz's offer of a one-year delay--in exchange, say, for a promise not to block immigration reform? That would have been a trade worthy of Lyndon Johnson, who knew how to give a little to get what he wanted. It also would have saved Obama the hideous--and global--embarrassment of Obamacare's failure--for a while, anyway.

Maldonado names Suzette Martinez of Los Angeles to Post of State Volunteer Chair for 2014 Governor Campaign

"I'm excited by the volunteers who are coming aboard our campaign because a strong grassroots team is so important to victory. Suzette Martinez is an outstanding Republican volunteer organizer and I'm delighted to have her lead the Volunteer Leadership Team," said Maldonado.
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abelmaldonado.com

Polls: Young Voters Turn on Obama

Three horrific polls bombarded the president over the last week.

National surveys from ◼ Pew,Quinnipiac and ◼ Fox News uniformly showed the president's approval ratings dropping to 40 percent and below, with disapproval leaping into the mid-50s. Obamacare has also taken a public opinion beating, for obvious reasons. The latter two polls also showed substantial gains for Republicans on specific issues, as well as on the generic Congressional ballot. Obama lost ground across all demographics, including several core groups within his base, like women and Hispanics. But perhaps the most striking erosion of trust has come among voters under the age of 35. Millennials twice backed Obama overwhelmingly at the polls, and have been one of the least likely cohorts to abandon him on a host of topics -- through thick and thin. No more, it would seem.

Pew poll: Disapproval of Obama’s handling of health care soars to 59% among adults - Allahpundit/HotAir

Republican candidate for governor gives Heimlich maneuver at dinner


California Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly recently saved the life of a potential voter while out on the campaign trail. - Alex Pappas/Daily Caller
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electtimdonnelly.com

House votes to let Americans keep health plans; 39 Dems defy Obama


Nearly 40 House Democrats defied President Obama and helped the Republican majority pass a bill Friday that lets Americans keep, for one year, health plans that do not comply with Obamacare - Tom Howell Jr./Washington Times

The defections from 39 members of Mr. Obama’s party highlighted the pressure on Congress to help people who lost coverage because of the president’s signature law, as balky websites keep a veil over alternative plans and pressure mounts on the Democrat-led Senate to forge a remedy.

◼ Obama vows to veto...

House Now Voting On Upton Passes 261-157 (39 Dems Vote Yes, 4 Republicans Vote No) GOP Plays Hardball Smart Hardball In The House - DrewM/Ace Of Spades
39 Democrats Break With Obama to Pass Upton ´Fix´ - Mike Flynn/Breitbart´s Big Government
McDermott: I Haven’t Seen This Much Panic on the Floor Since 9/11 - Washington Free Beacon
House Dem on Obamacare: "I Don't Know How He F***ed This Up So Badly" - Guy Benson/Townhall

Pobody's Nerfect



Jon Stewart Annihilates Obama's Presser Yesterday - IJ Review
The Endless Debacle of ObamaCare - The Other McCain

No one can remember a policy disaster quite like this. Every day brings multiple new bad-news headlines.

...As Joe Curl says, ◼ Obama will try to turn this around by blaming insurance companies and Republican opposition for the failure of his policy and, at some point, the liberal media will line up in lockstep to parrot the Democrat talking points. Yet all the White House spin and all the media sycophancy in the world cannot hide the abject failure of ObamaCare, and Democrats will pay the political price next November.

Befuddled Central Planner in Chief Discovers Complexity Of Real Life - Ed Driscoll/PJ Media

Obamacare, meet Hayek - James Pethokoukis/AEI (American Enterprise Institute)

And as AEI’s Joe Antos explains: “There is no question that many people will find themselves in a worse situation next year—paying much higher costs, less access to physicians and hospitals, and, in too many cases, without health insurance at all. The White House remembered there is an election coming up and ◼ put the next day of reckoning in 2015.”

What a mess.

TN Student Speaks Out About Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, and Educational Data



High School Senior Blows Away Central Planning Mentality Behind Common Core - Moonbattery

...parents throughout the state (Staten Island, NY) are preparing to keep their children home from school on Monday, in what´s being labeled as "National Common Core Protest Day." - Staten Island Advance

The grassroots movement is being fueled by a Facebook page created by an upstate mom, Janet Wilson. So far more than 3,600 people have clicked on the page saying they were going to take part in the protest. Parents have shared the event on Facebook pages across the country.

NY POST COVER: Obamacare is a total and unmitigated DISASTER


On Thursday, President Obama conducted the “Springtime for Hitler” of press conferences. He came out at noon and proceeded to blather his way through an hour of self-justifications and evasions and apologies and complaints. -
John Podhoretz/New York Post
Obama apology meant to save Democrats - Geoff Earle, Bureau Chief/New York Post
Obama changes insurance rules mid-game as providers rip mess - S.A. Miller/New York Post
◼ Even the NY Times Calls Disastrous Obamacare Rollout Obama’s “Katrina” - WeaselZippers
OBAMA’S STUMBLING BUMBLING FUMBLING NEWS CONFERENCE - David Harsanyi/Human Events

DRUDGE:
'FIX' COULD MAKE IT WORSE!
More Navigators Exposed in New Video...
GOP warns of 'constitutional crisis'...
NYT: 'Crisis of Confidence'...
PURDUM: FUMBLE?
Obama slams lobbyists, then hires one...
KRAUTHAMMER: Why Liberals Are Panicked - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post
Bachmann: I lost my insurance...
Obamacare advocate poised to become next surgeon general...



'Death Spiral' - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard



Krauthammer: Obama’s insurance “fix” just another example of him “rewriting a law unilaterally” - Erika Johnsen/HotAir

This is entirely lawless. Entirely. And the fact that nobody is talking about this. The executive executes the laws. As you say, this is another example of Obama rewriting a law unilaterally and nobody is complaining. The constitutional issue is out there. I think it’s rather embarrassing that on either side of the aisle it isn’t being raised.

"What makes this admission even worse is the fact that it was prompted not by the heartbreaking stories of millions of Americans, but by the private pleadings of a handful of endangered Democrats."

The 23 most revealing words Obama spoke - Andrew Malcolm/Investor's Business Daily

"...Sometimes people look at what’s taking place in Washington and they say, not enough is getting done that helps me with my life...."

Talk about a clueless fellow! Obama spends a lot of miles and money at $182,000 per flight hour on Air Force One to make speeches before supportive crowds that happen to coincide with Democrat Party fundraisers that night and the proximity of a good golf course the next morning.

Obama does a lot of talking. But does he ever listen? Really listen?

Because Obama's job approval is on the express Down-elevator passing through 39% not because he's not getting enough done in Washington. Many of us wish he'd play golf every day instead of plotting so much new federal over-reach.

No. Americans have become severely disgruntled with him precisely because Obama's Washington is trying to get way too much done affecting the lives of people who have the crazy notion that they're perfectly capable of selecting their own foods and health plans and doctors....

Why liberals are panicked about Obamacare - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post
The truth is such a glorious, glimmering, powerful thing. - Discussion at Lucianne

President Obama books yet another fundraiser as First Lady Michelle heads to Disney

The President — who is heading to both Pennsylvania and Ohio on Thursday — has traveled more than 20,000 miles to ask liberals to dig into their wallets for the Democratic Party. - NY Daily News

Obama has made 30 fundraising trips to either keynote events or visit wealthy donors since April...

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Rob Lowe Meet The Press Interview With David Gregory



In a Meet the Press interview with David Gregory, actor Rob Lowe expressed his support of less dependency on the government and more individual responsibility. - IJ Review

"We suspected this was happening, [but] it still makes me terribly sad. It makes me sad because I believe in America...The U.S. has to be better than this."

How Silicon Valley turned on President Obama - The Week

Google's executive chairman coached Obama's campaign team; executives from Craigslist, Napster, and Linkedin helped him fundraise; and when the dust settled, Obama had won nine counties in the liberal and tech-heavy Bay Area, scoring 84 percent of the vote in San Francisco. But a little over a year later, following explosive allegations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government is exploiting tech companies to spy on Americans, some members of Silicon Valley are taking a new perspective: "F--- these guys."

That's what Brandon Downey, a security engineer with Google, wrote late last month, upon learning that the NSA had broken into Google and Yahoo and was exploiting the data of millions of users, allegedly without the companies' knowledge. He added, "We suspected this was happening, [but] it still makes me terribly sad. It makes me sad because I believe in America...The U.S. has to be better than this."

NFRW Capitol Connection

Upcoming Campaign Schools

NFRW and the Commonwealth Republican Women's Club will host a campaign school in Alexandria, Virginia on Saturday, January 11, 2014 from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Alexandria campus of the Northern Virginia Community College. The fee is $75, which includes the training materials, coffee, and lunch. If you would like to register, ◼ click here.

NFRW will host a campaign school in Ventura County, California on Saturday, November 16th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Ventura County GOP headquarters. The fee is $65, and includes the training materials, coffee and lunch. If you would like to register, ◼ click here.

NFRW Meets With NRCC about Republican Women Running for Office Next Year

On Tuesday, November 14, NFRW President Rae Chornenky and NFRW President-Elect Kathy Brugger attended a meeting with other female GOP activists at the National Republican Congressional Committee to discuss Republican women running for Congress in next year's elections. In attendance were representatives from the Susan B. Anthony List, Maggie's List, Rep. Diane Black's office, Concerned Women for America, and Burning Glass Consulting, a new consulting firm started by Katie Packer Gage, Mitt Romney's deputy campaign manager in 2012.

The topic of the meeting involved how few Republican women choose to run for Congress relative to both the number of Republican men who choose to run and the number of Democratic women who choose to run. The meeting was a brain-storming session on how to help each other and increase the number of Republican women running for Congress.

NFRW

BLOODSPORT: The Health Insurance Industry Is Now Locked In A Death Struggle With The Democrat Party...

...and only one of the two will survive. - Doug Ross

Understand this: the health insurance industry is very much to blame for Obamacare. The health insurance industry happily got naked and jumped into the sack with Obama on his health insurance scheme. They did so thinking that he would leave them a fat, sweaty wad of cash on the night table in the form of forcing everybody in the country to buy their products, and in the process he would make them something akin to a public utility with a pre-ordained profit margin.

Except something happened on the way to conjugal bliss...

Scapegoated insurers fire back at Obama over “administrative fix”: You’re not pinning this ObamaCare mess on us - Allahpundit/HotAir

Don’t cry for these people, needless to say. They helped make ObamaCare happen. They were only too happy to see healthy young adults forced into buying their product by a constitutionally dubious mandate and to gouge healthy middle-class people with the new, more expensive plans required by the exchanges. They wouldn’t have partnered with the White House if this wasn’t a payday for them. But now they’re screwed twice over: Not only are Democrats trying to make them the fall guy for the cancellations, they’re looking at their payday melting down into red ink if they take Obama’s “advice” and re-create the old risk pool. Oh well. No honor among thieves.

They’re not going to take it lying down.

California Republican leaders Endorse Elizabeth Emken for Congress

So pleased and honored to announce the endorsements of Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, Assemblyman Mike Morrell, Assemblyman Don Wagner and Assembly Republican Assistant Floor Leader Curt Hagman.

"Elizabeth is exactly the kind of woman we need in Washington fighting for California families," said Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen. "The federal government is strangling taxpayers, small businesses, and our health care system with regulations, mandates, and taxes. It has to stop if we are going to turn our economy around, and it will take a commonsense woman with experience like Elizabeth to get the job done."

Thank you to all these great California Republican leaders for their support! -e
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Obamacare Navigator Fraud Rampant, Not "Isolated Incident"



◼ Today Project Veritas released a second investigation exposing more Obamacare navigators counseling applicants to lie and cheat the health care system by erroneously reporting income status, health history, and more.

Critics said the first video was an isolated incident so we decided to visit with even more navigators funded by your American tax dollars. What we found was disturbing and showed a clear pattern of fraud through the Obamacare navigator program.

Obamacare navigators counseling undercover journalists saying,

To get a lower premium, I wouldn't include it ... that's my money."

"Don't put it on there."

"You don't have to claim it."

Second O’Keefe video exposes more Obamacare Navigator’s telling people to commit fraud - Joe Schoffstall/Capitol City Project

◼ *To see the full unedited Project Veritas video, click here. NORTH Texas Area Community Health Center Raw (Unedited) Footage
◼ o see the first video in their investigation, click here.

MSNBC Anchor: Obama Looked Like a ‘Wounded Man’



President Obama was half an hour late to his press conference, which was supposed to begin at 11:35 a.m. ET.

...when asked by National Journal’s Major Garrett why he had continued to pump the website just one week before launch, and whether he had been informed about the technical problems, President Obama claimed ignorance.... Obama then turned to blaming the insurance companies...

New Jersey Assn. of Health Underwriters, on the ‘Fix’: ‘This Is a New Insanity’ - David Steinberg/PJ Media

MSNBC Anchor: Obama Looked Like a ‘Wounded Man’ - Washington Free Beacon

Inadvertent truth! Obama: This ‘federal government’ thingie isn’t too good at stuff - Twitchy



‘Just NAILED’ him! CBS’ Major Garrett hammers Obama at press conference; Update: Video added - Twitchy

Isn't this the law of the land?
How can Barack Obama do this?



POLICY CANCELLATIONS: OBAMA WILL ALLOW OLD PLANS - Breitbart
Chuck Todd: These fixes are going to “undermine the whole premise of the law” - HotAir
'Fairy Tale' Continues as Obama Proposes Extralegal Obamacare Fix - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard
Now President Obama is taking Clinton's advice and trying to honor that commitment. In remarks today at the White House today, Obama said, "I completely get how upsetting this can be" lose insurance plans that I promised Americans would be able to keep. "To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear."

But there's a catch with president's proposed solution. The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare's eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use "enforcement discretion" to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they'll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans -- plans they technically can't sell under Obamacare.
Obama’s Humpty Dumpty fix: Health insurance market should put itself back together again - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion
Barack Obama just announced a “fix” for the private individual health insurance market broken by Obamacare.

After an estimated 5 million and growing policies were cancelled due to Obamacare, Obama said “never mind” and told insurance companies to just keep selling the cancelled policies.... Not only that, but Obamas is doing this unilaterally as an administrative matter, without changing the law. So much for Democrats objections to prior proposals from Republicans that Obamacare was “settled law.”





Obama's Cancellation "Fix": Violating the Law for a Short-Term Public Relations Move - Chris Jacobs/Heritage, The Foundry
The Constitutionality of the ObamaCare “Fix” - Eugene Kontorovich/The Volokh Conspiracy
The “fix” amounts to new legislation – but enacted without Congress. The President has no constitutional authority to rewrite statutes, especially in ways that impose new obligations on people, and that is what the fix seems to entail. And of course, this is not the first such extra-statutory suspension of key ObamaCare provisions.
Insurers are furious about the White House’s new Obamacare plan - Washington Post

__________________

THERE IS NO “FIX” FOR OBAMACARE - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

It’s time to be honest with the American people, and that simply will not happen, ever, while ObamaCare exists. Everything about it has been a lie, right up to the phony enrollment numbers released yesterday. End this now, and let freedom ring. Coercive Big Government tactics cannot fix a disaster created by Big Government, but we the people – entrepreneurs and the willing customers they pursue – can make things right. We deserve to regain a trust that never should have been taken from us.

President Obama to make statement on Affordable Care Act at 11:35 am ET

Chuck Todd: Obamacare Fixes ‘Undermine Whole Premise of the Law’ - Noah Rothman/Mediaite
CBO: Insurance Cancellations Just Beginning - John Nolte/Breitbart
Reid calls special ObamaCare meeting - The Hill
Dem Senator: Kill the ´Death Panel´ - Joel Pollak/Breitbart
Obamacare credibility going up in smoke: Our view USA Today
Facing Democratic Revolt, Obama Warms
to Congressional Health-Care Fix

Walls Close In Around Obama - Ben Shapiro/Breitbart
The big problem for President Obama is that he cannot endorse either the Udall bill or the Landrieu bill without cutting the heart out of his signature legislation. President Obama did not merely lie about a provision of Obamacare – he lied about the crux of Obamacare itself, which is the mandated redistribution of health insurance cost from the healthy (who will be booted from their current, cheaper plans) to the unhealthy (who will benefit from the forced enrollment of the healthy into the exchanges). Should Obama back off of his position, he will bankrupt Obamacare before it even begins.
The White House knows this...
Can't say he wasn't warned....and warned and warned. - Discussion at Lucianne
4 Things the White House Still Hasn’t Told Us About Obamacare - The Fiscal Timees
Let's see, might that be Bait and Switch? Three Card Monte? Flim Flamery and plain old fashioned theft? - Discussion at Lucianne
REID TO KEEP QUIET UNTIL RECEIVING WH ORDERS - Ben Shapiro/Breitbart

AMERICANS' PERSONAL DATA SHARED WITH CIA, IRS, OTHERS

U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books. - McClatchy

The case comes to light amid revelations that the NSA, in an effort to track foreign terrorists, has for years been stockpiling the data of the daily telephone and Internet communications of tens of millions of ordinary Americans. Though nowhere near as massive as the NSA programs, the polygraph (book) inquiry is another example of the federal government’s vast appetite for Americans’ personal information and the sweeping legal authority it wields in the name of national security.

“This is increasingly happening – data is being collected by the federal government for one use and then being entirely repurposed for other uses and shared,” said Fred Cate, an Indiana University-Bloomington law professor who specializes in information privacy and national security. “Yet there is no constitutional protection for sharing data within the government.”

Without a trace: A family's search for their daughter: Young Wisconsin woman disappeared in Eureka five years ago today


Can you help: Anyone with information regarding this case can email Anita Walters at awalters53@msn.com or call her at 608-576-2718 or 608-764-5850. - Colleen Chalmers/For The Times-Standard

"Looks like DEMOCRATIC State Senators Calderon, DeLeon and Steinberg are all implicated in dirty politics. Calderon in this accusation is saying Sacramento politicos are also dirty and was asked to wear a wire. Friends….Hollywood could not have written a spicier story. Grab your popcorn….more twists to come."

Lashing back at federal officials and Senate colleagues, state Sen. Ron Calderon contended in a federal filing late Wednesday that authorities leaked an FBI affidavit alleging that he took $88,000 in bribes after Calderon refused to participate in a sting operation targeting Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Sen. Kevin de León - Sacramento Bee via ◼ linkTom Del Beccaro via ◼ linkLuis Alvarado

Calderon alleges federal prosecutors attempted to convict him in the press through an orchestrated campaign of "illegal disinformation."

He said in the filing that critical facts regarding the federal government's activities were omitted or misrepresented, including that Steinberg and de León were "main targets of the investigation, for which Sen. Calderon was requested to be the FBI's informant...."

THE LIBERTARIAN ERA?

I had no idea there was an actual movement of thinking people who want to honor the principles of the Founders — liberty and limited government. It took me a long time to wake up. - John Stossel/Human Events

Now more Americans have woken up, say Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie, editors of Reason magazine.

“Poll after poll show you that Americans are much more fiscally conservative than their elected representatives,” says Welch. “A majority of Americans thinks that we should balance the budget. Seventy-five percent think that we should not raise the debt ceiling … Growing majorities — especially young people — are more socially tolerant. They think that we should legalize marijuana … they’re in favor of gay marriage.”

Gillespie argues that some of the change comes from people seeing how the private sector offers us more options that we like, while government fails.

“The 21st century has been a demonstration project of how Republicans and conservatives screw things up, under the Bush years, and now we have the Obama version — the liberal Democrat version of screwing everything up … you go to Amazon.com, you have a good experience and you get all sorts of interesting stuff. When you go to a government website, not so much.”

It changes minds, they argue, when people see this is a strong pattern, not just the result of isolated mistakes unique to Obamacare or another specific government project.

100K Enrollees, 5 Million Cancellations...



CNN: Obamacare Enrollment Numbers 'Complete Disaster' - Weekly Standard

"Healthcare.gov has been a complete disaster for the administration," said Borger. "It's clear they've been lowballing what to expect, and I'm not quite sure they lowballed it enough."

On Wednesday, the White House's Chief Technology Officer said he would not consider an item in his online shopping cart on Amazon.com to be "a sale." - Tony Lee/Breitbart

This week, the Obama administration, though, said it would count healthcare plans put in online shopping carts as "enrollments" in its tally of the number of "enrollees" in Obamacare....

OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT NUMBERS BRUTALLY LOW - Ben Shapiro/Breitbart
HealthCare.gov has performed even worse than expected. - Sam Baker/National Journal
IN CALIFORNIA: 1 MILLION LOSE IT! Obama's Big Lie destroying his credibility... - Conservative Outfitters
Historically black college says regs forced them to cancel student health plans... - campusreform
COULTER: TO SPEAK TO A NIGERIAN PRINCE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH CARE, PRESS '1' NOW... - Ann Coulter
White House tries to salvage Obamacare, Dems in distress...
PELOSI: Fix to come today!
100K Enrollees, 5 Million Cancellations...
Pelosi claims nearly 5X more signed up than numbers show - capitolcityproject
A study of small businesses found that many are cutting full-time workers or worker hours to comply with Obamacare. Franchises are making the biggest cuts.e - Christian Science Monitor
Top 10 Most Responsible - Mike Flynn/Breitbart
Vulnerable politicians: RUN - The Hill

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

BOYFIGHT II: The Rise of McGuire!!!


When we last checked in with next year’s state senate race, it was Chris L. versus Eric L. for the title of Second District’s Sassiest Candidate. - Hank Sims/Lost Coast Outpost (image source)

...despite Chris Lehman’s early shock-and-awe charm offensive — he stepped out early with an endorsement from Senate Majority Leader Darryl Steinberg — he has been unable to corral the totality of the North Coast Democratic political machine. Rep. Jared “The Silver Fox” Huffman recently threw down for McGuire, as has Rep. Mike Thompson and former Rep. Lynn Woolsey.

The leaked poll obtained by the P-D, and the responses thereto, give a hint of the boyfight to come. Novato City Councilman Eric Lucan is slagged off as a sure loser. Arcata’s Chris Lehman is taunted as a Sacramento insider and a sleazy moneyboy. Overall, the poll shows McGuire currently standing with 30 percent of the vote, Lehmann with four and Lucan with three, though rival camps say the questions were leading and slanted and unfair....

Meet Your Next State Senator: Chris Lehman Announces, Basically Already Wins Bid to Succeed Noreen Evans - Hank Sims/Lost Coast Outpost
BOYFIGHT! Novato Mayor Pro-Tem Announces Challenge to Arcata’s Chris Lehman Vis a Vis the State Senate - Hank Sims/Lost Coast Outpost
Former WWE Superstar Gabe “Tyler Reks” Tuft Would Like to Be Your Next State Senator - Hank Sims/Lost Coast Outpost

MOTHER: My Son Was Shot Outside Eureka High and No One Much Cared

Kim Avila-Mullins, a Eureka resident and mother of the student most seriously injured by a pellet gun shooter outside Eureka last week, wrote this story about what happened to her son and her family and asked (Lost Coast Outpost) to share it. - Hank Sims/Lost Coast Outpost

...This is NEVER a call any parent should EVER receive. Here is what happened.

My son and 5 other friends decided to walk to a store on their lunch break. This was my son’s first time ever walking to this store. My son buys Cheetos and an iced tea, and they walk back to school. While walking down L Street toward Del Norte, my son is shot in the chest. He feels as though he is hit with a hammer in the chest and stumbles backward. He looks down to see his shirt soaked in blood. More shots are fired. Everyone runs, in a frenzy, screaming “We are being shot at.” One child runs back to help my son, since my son is out of breath and is unable to run. More shots whizz by their heads. Shots are hitting the ground. Another boy is shot in the spine at a much further distance. They stop when they feel as though they are out of range and grab their phone to call 911, but realize shots are still being fired.... (Read the whole story at the link)

“It’s ugly,” said one Democratic source in the meeting. “There’s no way Obama and Pelosi will let their legacy go down in flames. I just wouldn’t want to be from a swing district right now. Or anything that closely resembles one.”


Tensions escalate between Democrats, White House - Politico

If they stand with the White House on Friday’s vote, they face the worst of all possible worlds: Campaign ads pointing out that they not only backed Obama’s broken promise but also opposed legislation to fix it. The White House has two days, they warned, to come up with an alternative way to ensure Americans aren’t thrown off their health plans. The president has vowed to find an administrative fix—rather than a legislative one—but that has proved difficult so far.

Crisis: Reid calls “special meeting” of Senate Democrats on ObamaCare

Agenda item one: Are they really going to cover their asses politically by passing Mary Landrieu’s bill knowing that it’ll increase the damage to ObamaCare? - Allahpundit/HotAir

Agenda item two: How long before the Healthcare.gov Chernobyl is finally contained? Administration sources keep reassuring the media that November 30th is still the target date, but Sebelius told people listening to today’s HHS conference call that they might want to consider enrolling directly on individual insurance companies’ websites instead. (You’d lose your subsidy if you do that, but something like 41 percent of people whose plans have been dropped aren’t eligible for subsidies anyway.) Jim Moran went so far as to say, “They are not going to meet the November 30th deadline, I would bet anything on that. If I had a farm I’d bet the farm on that.” (Another Democrat who spoke to BuzzFeed for the story at the last link described the meeting with White House aides this morning as “incredibly tense.”)

...I’ll leave you with this, from health-industry expert Bob Laszewski: “The audacity of this administration to continue telling people to keep going back to the website and the call center when they knew full well that only 25 people per day per state were making it thorough the gauntlet that is Healthcare.gov is startling. This program is in grave danger of collapsing if the administration cannot dramatically grow the size of the risk pool and attract healthy people to it.”

Angry House Dems demand ObamaCare fix from White House aides in “heated” meeting; Update: “It’s ugly” - Allahpundit/HotAir

Here’s your early-afternoon reminder that these people are either (a) imbeciles who didn’t understand when they voted for O-Care that mass cancellations were part of the plan or (b) lying schmucks who understood it full well but who are too gutless to take the heat now that it’s happening.

Did somebody here order the schadenfreude?



Obama's Toxic Approvals: 46% Believe He 'Knowingly Deceived' Public on ObamaCare - IJ Review

"...the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later"



Sen. Rand Paul Reveals—Barack Obama Wrote Regulation To Cancel Your Insurance, And Every Democrat Voted For It! - GOP, The Daily Dose via ◼ Before It's News

“I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later. So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you COULDN’T BE CANCELLED, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. EVERY DEMOCRAT VOTED TO KEEP THE RULE THAT CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE.”

Group behind ‘hosurance’ Obamacare ads attacked Limbaugh, state senator for ‘sexism’



“OMG, he’s hot!” reads the ad copy. “Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control.” - Daily Caller

ProgressNow Colorado, which is highlighting horny women on the prowl for men who are “easy to get” in the “got insurance” ad campaign, attacked radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh last March for calling one of the major advocates for free birth control, Sandra Fluke, a “slut.”... - Daily Caller


Do you got ‘Ho-surance’? ‘Brosurance’ creators branch out, set their sights on lady parts [pics] - Twitchy







Ads Hide Obamacare Truth: It's Generational Theft - Nick Gillespie/TIME

...But there's a deeper issue that the new "Got Insurance?" campaign ignores completely: Why should young and relatively poor people be forced to sign up for insurance that charges them above-market rates to subsidize rates for old and relatively wealthy people?

In this sense, Obamacare is simply the latest instance of generational theft being perpetrated against younger Americans. It's a feature and not a bug of the President's signature health care law that insurance premiums for those under 30 are likely to increase significantly to allow premiums for older Americans to fall. Indeed, the whole plan hinges on getting 2.7 million whippersnappers out of a total of 7 million enrollees to sign up in the individual market during the first year. If too many older and sicker folks flood the market, the system will crash even faster than the HealthCare.gov website.

The ad campaign, which plays off the popular "Got Milk?" ads, is not the work of the Obama Administration. It is the brainchild of two nonprofits, ProgressNow Colorado Education and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative....

The Truth about Navigators CAUGHT ON TAPE: Obamacare Navigators Counsel Applicants to "Lie"



James O’Keefe reveals corruption at the heart of the president’s signature program. - John Fund/National Review

“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator advises an investigator for O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, who tells the worker he sometimes smokes. “Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell ’em.”

...O’Keefe’s cameras then visit Enroll America, a nationwide nonprofit group that has launched a multi-state grassroots campaign to help millions of Americans sign up for health coverage. Daniel Clayton of Enroll America says the group is “purely nonprofit. It’s not partisan, non-political.” But when Brian Pendleton of Enroll America is introduced at a speaking engagement, Enroll America is described as “the official group for the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”

...The law’s problems are coming from more sides than a pentadecagon. But one of the most serious things undermining its credibility is the Obama administraion’s seemingly complete indifference to corruption within one of the key groups tasked with its implementation. We’ll have to see just how much worse it gets.

One navigator fired, three suspended... - FOX DFW

Are #ObamaCare Navigators Teaming With Battleground Texas To Turn The Lone Star State Blue? - LaborUnionReport/RedState

No, your information is not safe under ObamaCare…at least not in Texas.

Earlier this year, a left-wing group of organizers and operatives formed a group called Battleground Texas.

Headed by a former field director of Obama for America, Battleground Texas’ sole aim is to turn Texas from a so-called “red state” to another California–that is, almost singularly controlled by liberal Democrats....

Now, however, a video released by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas over the last few days has revealed that Battleground Texas may actually be gathering data on ObamaCare enrollees from one of the groups enlisted to enroll ObamaCare enrollees.

According to O’Keefe’s video, Enroll America, a “501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to maximize the number of uninsured Americans who enroll in health coverage made available by the Affordable Care Act” is sharing data with Battleground Texas.

Clarence Landry, an organizer with Enroll America, Texas, is seen on the video talking about working with, and cross-pollinating the same data with Battleground Texas.

A moment later, a woman named Adrian Bell [sic], a field director with Battleground Texas explains that Battleground Texas is a “Democratic organization.”

Paid Propaganda: WebMD pockets millions from feds to promote Obamacare

WebMD says the contract is entirely separate from the company’s news operation, which has published both positive and critical articles about the health care law. - Jim McElhatton/Washington Times

Two months before enrollment began in the Obamacare exchanges, the administration’s top health care official heaped praise on WebMD for launching an online resource to help Americans navigate the complex law.

The consumer health care site had the occasional nice thing to say about Obamacare, too. In one article, it predicted doctors might pick up more patients and crowed in an article titled “7 Surprising Things About the Affordable Care Act” that many consumers already had received insurance refunds under the law.

But what neither Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius nor WebMD mentioned at the time was that the company, which millions of Americans regularly read for health news, also stood to earn millions of dollars from a federal contract to teach doctors about Obamacare.

The contract documents, reviewed by The Washington Times, reward WebMD handsomely. For instance, the fee schedule offers dozens of products, including:
• As much as $126,826 for a single 5,000-word review article on scientific advances in a clinical topic.
• Up to $68,916 for a four-minute video from an opinion specialist.
• More than $140,000 for an eight-question online quiz.

The saga of the photo started innocuously enough. Seeking free family photographs, Adriana emailed a contact at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for the Affordable Care Act's rollout, about having photos of her and her family taken in exchange for allowing the photos to be used to market the new health care law. She was never paid.


She learned over the summer that her photo would be on healthcare.gov's main page, but she didn't realize it would become so closely associated with the problems of the glitchy website. - Good Morning America

"I mean, I don't know why people should hate me because it's just a photo. I didn't design the website. I didn't make it fail, so I don't think they should have any reasons to hate me," Adriana told ABC News.

Speculation swirled that Adriana might not be a legal resident of the United States, and therefore not even eligible for the health care exchanges. Adriana said she is a wife and mother who lives in Maryland with her 21-month-old son and husband of six and a half years. Her husband is a U.S. citizen, as is his her son. Adriana, who is Colombian, said she has lived legally in the U.S. for more than six years, is currently a permanent resident and is applying for citizenship.

Though she is eligible for healthcare through the ACA, Adriana says she hasn't signed up for it, and is neither in favor nor against it.

...She said that while she knew her photo would be used on the healthcare.gov website, she was stunned at the negative reception.

"Like I said it was shocking. It was upsetting. It was sad. We were having a hard day when we read all this," she said. "And in a way, I'm glad that my son is not old enough to understand, because you know whatever happens to you, it hurts them too."

About two weeks ago, her photo was removed from the site and replaced by several icons. "That was a relief," she said.

"They took the picture down. I wanted the picture down, and they wanted the picture down. I don't think anybody wanted to focus on the picture."

...A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said that Adriana's photo was removed because "Healthcare.gov is a dynamic website," not because she requested it.

“Obamacare Girl” Identified - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Valerie Jarrett Lowers Bar for Obamcare Fix – Media Silent


While answering softball questions from New York Times Washington Bureau Chief David Leonhardt about the Obamacare rollout debacle, Jarrett said the administration was now “…looking towards the end of the month to see substantial progress”

Not fixed. Just a nebulous goal of ‘substantial progress.’

The NY Times report on the interview ignored Jarrett on the website not being fixed by November 30....

Also, the Washington Post article tonight on the likelihood of the Obamacare website not being fixed by Obama’s promised deadline doesn’t mention Jarrett’s statement.

1 MILLION HAVE INSURANCE CANCELLED IN CALIFORNIA


Calif. Insurance Commissioner: More Than 1M Californians Having Insurance Cancelled Due To ACA - CBS Sacramento

More than 1 million cancellation notices have been sent to Californians as the Affordable Care Act begins allowing individuals to buy insurance through exchanges, Jones said. The federal law requires policies to offer minimum levels of coverage, forcing companies to terminate many existing plans.

Feinstein joins push to keep health plans... - Politico

OBAMACARE KILLS A MILLION INSURANCE PLANS IN CALIFORNIA; FEINSTEIN BAILS - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

...Well, it’s really a pity you didn’t read the Affordable Care Act before your party used a disgusting series of backroom deals and kickbacks to force it into law, isn’t it Senator Feinstein? Your Party’s official line the day before yesterday was that none of this was happening, and those 30,000 people yelling at your office were just red herrings. Yesterday you were saying we should have known this was coming all along. You shut down the government to protect ObamaCare from repeal and reform efforts led by people who understood ObamaCare far better than anyone in your Party, and fought desperately to prevent it....

Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat from Oregon, said that President Obama was "grossly misleading" on Obamacare - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard

NFRW Political Briefing,

National Republican Congressional Committee's Project Grow

The NFRW met today with members of the National Republican Congressional Committee and other interested organizations as the NRCC laid out details of its "Project Grow," intended to recruit and support female candidates running for Congress and to engage women voters.

Interesting statistics were shared regarding the women's vote in the country and female candidate numbers. While Republicans garnered the majority of votes of married women and Caucasian women in the 2012 election cycle, they lost most of the minority women and young women voting block. It is important to note that 8 out of 10 voting women have children and are focused on issues involving children and family.

Of the 1,101 GOP candidates in the last election cycle, only 109 were women. While 58 of the 200 Congressional Democrats are women, only 19 of the 231 Republicans in Congress are women. More of an effort needs to exist to help women candidates get to the next level. Project grow intends to increase female voter engagement and recruit mentors for female candidates who step forward. It has been found that women really do need to be asked to run for office and time and energy need to be invested to recruit more women to run.

Results from previous elections show that money was the biggest factor in female candidate losses to males. Most big Republican donors are males and men seem less likely to write out a 'max-donation' check to a woman than to a man. In addition, female donors do not seem to give 'max-out' donations as frequently as do men.

Relationships are also an impediment to recruiting women to run for office. More voters in general seem to know men who run for office for longer periods of time than they know women who run for office for long periods of time. This longer term familiarity makes male candidates more attractive to voters.

When it comes to messaging, it has been found that Republican women do not accomplish positive messaging as easily as their opponents. We need to tell women how bad Democrats are for them coupled with the positive message that we do care about them and how our policies help women.

Project Grow has identified 14 women running in Congressional primaries across the country. Training in effective messaging, engaging the women's vote and fundraising, among other campaign training elements, are being made available to these female candidates as they are made available to all GOP primary candidates.

Negotiations on Iran's Nuclear Arms

The Obama administration is pressing Senate Democrats to hold off on new economic sanctions against Iran in an effort to succeed in diplomatic efforts. Republicans, however, say apparent details of a proposed nuclear deal with Iran and the failure thus far to secure an agreement show that tougher sanctions are necessary to force Iran into abandoning its nuclear program.

The GOP push for new sanctions and the fact that talks seem to have stalled puts Democrats in a tricky position. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said on ABC's "This Week" that "to be very honest with you, I think the possibility of moving ahead with new sanctions ... is possible." While Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Kerry convinced another Senate Committee to hold back on new sanctions earlier this month, skepticism about delaying sanctions is coming from Democratic leaders in the Senate such as Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).

Pressure against further delay is coming from Israel where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the emerging framework of the agreement. French officials also reportedly objected to Iran's continuing actions. And the French have pointed to a report last week which states Iran is already seeing the easing of certain sanctions because Obama's Treasury Department slowed the designation of sanction violators in June.