Obama's approval plummets with this fellow and millions of others http://t.co/kUMAeXmTl6 #TCOT pic.twitter.com/76AV9sC0Lx
— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) October 31, 2013
The most breathless claim in his speech, I thought, was the lie that only those making $250,000 per year or more are being "asked to pay a little more."RELATED: At LAT, "Obama: GOP critics of Obamacare should follow Romney example."
This is a lie. Anyone making over $48,000 or so will get the doubled or tripled premiums (and often doubled deductibles to boot!) and no subsidies.
Jonah Goldberg wrote earlier of Obama's Big Lie.
I would say I'm shocked, but that would be a lie. I think I am too emotionally deadened to Obama's constant lies to even have a reaction. I'm just numb.
Fool for the City - Foghat 3:29 PMThe Black Crowes were on a bit earlier, at 2:00, when I was heading out for coffee after classes. I'll leave you with that, as is my preference:
White Room - Cream 3:24 PM
Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith 3:20 PM
Love Her Madly - The Doors 3:11 PM
867-5309 / Jenny - Tommy Tutone 3:07 PM
It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - R.E.M. 02:56 PM
Deception: In the face of millions of cancellation notices, Democrats want to downplay the president's "keep your health plan" pledge as standard political hyperbole. It was, in fact, a calculated lie that got ObamaCare enacted.More at the link.
To understand why, let's freshen up on a little health care reform history.
Back in 1994, when Bill Clinton was pushing his own version of "comprehensive health reform," the insurance industry launched its infamous "Harry and Louise" ads to deliver a simple message: The Clinton plan would force families to give up their own health plans.
In one of these, the middle-class couple pours over a pile of documents at the kitchen table, while a narrator intones about how "things are changing, and not all for the better," and how "the government may force us to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats."
"Louise" then complains that "having choices we don't like is no choice at all," and the ad concludes with the couple saying, "They choose, and we lose."
The campaign was devastating. Even though Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, Clinton's bill never made it out of congressional committees.
So when President Obama decided to take another stab at health care, he was determined to avoid that pitfall. He endlessly promised in the most emphatic way possible that under his plan, Harry and Louise would have nothing to worry about.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," the president said at a July 2009 rally in New Jersey. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
Later he said that "When I say 'If you have your plan and you like it,' ... what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform."
He promised this after the law passed, and throughout the 2012 election campaign.
Of course, Obama knew it wasn't true when he said it. He just couldn't admit it if he wanted to convince enough Democrats to vote for the bill.
And now that millions of people are finding out that ObamaCare is, in fact, forcing them to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats, Democrats and the liberal press are desperate to explain Obama's promises away.
President Barack Obama’s approval rating has declined to an all-time low as public frustration with Washington and pessimism about the nation’s direction continue to grow, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.More at the link.
Just 42 percent approve of the president’s job performance, which is down five points from earlier this month. By comparison, 51 percent disapprove of his job in office -- tied for his all-time high.
The NBC/WSJ pollsters argue that no single reason explains Obama’s lower poll standing. Rather, they attribute it to the accumulation of setbacks since the summer -- allegations of spying by the National Security Agency, the debate over Syria’s chemical weapons, the government shutdown and now intense scrutiny over the problems associated with the health care law’s federal website and its overall implementation.
A majority of Americans – 52 percent – believe the health care law needs either a major overhaul or to be completely eliminated, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.More at Memeorandum.
Forty-four percent think it either needs minor modifications or that it’s working well as is.
The Obama administration maintains that the health insurance exchange website can be fixed, but acknowledges major problems.
“In these early weeks, access to Healthcare.gov has been a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday in testimony on Capitol Hill.
President Barack Obama addresses the issues facing healthcare.gov Wednesday during a speech at Boston's Faneuil Hall.
The number of respondents who said the law was a good or bad idea was relatively unchanged from earlier this month. But support for the law has slipped with one key group – women, who traditionally rank health care as a higher priority than men, and who are seen as an important plank in selling the law.
Americans called it a bad idea by a 47-37 percent margin – a shift from 43-38 percent earlier this month. But among women, a group President Barack Obama won by 11 points in 2012, just 38 percent think it’s a good idea, while 45 percent do not. That’s down from early October, when most women said the law was a good idea by a 41-39 percent margin.
An agitated President Obama has expressed frustration to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the faulty ObamaCare enrollment website.She needs to be fired, the damned hack.
A visibly annoyed Obama behind closed doors has made clear to Sebelius that it’s her responsibility to fix what has become an unwanted second-term blunder, according to senior administration officials.
White House officials say the strong words from Obama don’t mean Sebelius is necessarily in the doghouse but that she’s responsible for fixing the problem.
In the words of one senior administration official, “She’s in a tough spot. She’s on the hook.”
Democrats at least are consistent. Back in 1993, during the fight over HillaryCare, Mrs. Clinton explained Democratic reasoning to then-House GOP Leader Denny Hastert. If Americans are allowed too much discretion over how they spend their health-care dollars, Mrs. Clinton said, "We just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won't get the care for their children and themselves that they need . . .RTWT.
"The money has to go to the federal government because the federal government will spend that money better."
Not only was it deliberate ObamaCare policy to make sure plans millions of Americans like would no longer be available, forcing them to buy more coverage than they want or need. NBC reports that the White House—as Mr. Obama was promising Americans they could keep their current plans—was estimating at least seven million people would not be allowed to keep their current plans.
In drafting rules to put ObamaCare into effect, the Health and Human Services department under Kathleen Sebelius tightened the grandfathering eligibility to make sure even more people would be forced to switch to the excessively costly policies that Mr. Obama wants them to buy. Mr. Obama says he cares about your incentive to get preventive care or tests that you may not get if they don't appear to involve a free lunch.
But the truth is, he wants you to pay for coverage you'll never use (mental-health services, cancer wigs, fertility treatments, Viagra) so the money can be spent on somebody else.
My god. Elderly losing their doctors on @MegynKelly. #FoxNews
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 29, 2013
She didn't know she'd have to pay for it? Well, she does. And so do you. pic.twitter.com/dNBhSElb9e
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) October 23, 2013
For all of the Affordable Care Act's technical problems, at least one part is working on schedule. The law is systematically dismantling the individual insurance market, as its architects intended from the start.Yep. The Democrats are destroying the private market. That was the plan all along. Healthcare is the road to socialism, although Obama and his regressive allies couldn't sell the policy that way. They had to lie to the American people. The POS legislation would've never passed otherwise.
The millions of Americans who are receiving termination notices because their current coverage does not conform to Health and Human Services Department rules may not realize this is by design. Maybe they trusted President Obama's repeated falsehood that people who liked their health plans could keep them. But Americans should understand that this month's mass cancellation wave has been the President's political goal since 2008. Liberals believe they must destroy the market in order to save it.
***
Until this month, consumers who weren't insured through their jobs were allowed to buy insurance that provides the best value based on their own needs. One of every 10 private policies is sold through the individual market, covering about 7% of the U.S. population under age 65.
Some states have ruined this market through regulation and price controls, and in others costs can be high. But the individual market works well for millions of people, who can choose from many plans—from Cadillac coverage to cheaper protection against catastrophic illness.
The political problem for the White House is that these choices are a threat to ObamaCare. If too many people keep these policies instead of joining the government exchanges, ObamaCare could fail. HHS has thus reviewed the decisions of people in the individual market and found them wanting. HHS believes as a matter of political philosophy that everyone should have the same kind of insurance, and in the name of equity it wrote rules dictating the benefits that all plans must cover and how they must be financed.
In most cases these mandates are more comprehensive and thus more expensive than the status quo, but the ObamaCare refugees aren't merely facing higher costs. The plans they want and are willing to pay for have been intentionally outlawed. Ponder that one.
Liberals claim the new insurance should cost more because it's better, at least as defined by liberal paternalism. But the real reason they want policies to cost more is to drive as many people as possible out of this market and into the subsidized ObamaCare exchanges.
The exchanges need these customers to finance ObamaCare's balance sheet and stabilize its risk pools. On the exchanges, individuals earning more than $46,000 or a family of four above $94,000 don't qualify for subsidies and must buy overpriced insurance. If these middle-class ObamaCare losers can be forced into the exchanges, they become financiers of the new pay-as-you-go entitlement.
The political press corps is reporting this as a shocking discovery, and we suppose it is if you believed Mr. Obama's promises. NBC News even reports as a "scoop" that the White House knew all along that millions would lose their policies. But HHS's trail of purpose has been there for anyone willing to look.
The text of the Affordable Care Act said that none of its language "shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage" that existed as of March 23, 2010, or the date the law was enacted. But as early as June 2010 HHS published a regulation reinterpreting this "Preservation of Right to Maintain Existing Coverage" to obviate that promise.
Even minor policy changes, such as increasing a copay by as little as $5, means that a plan cannot be renewed without rewriting it to obey all of ObamaCare's regulations. In HHS's "regulatory impact analysis" published in the Federal Register, the department estimated that between 40% and 67% wouldn't qualify as a permitted plan, and this was the point—to prevent such policies "from being bought and sold as a commodity in commercial transactions." HHS knew that lightly regulated policies might be popular, especially compared to the restricted choices in the exchanges.
The two most controversial and commented-on umpire calls of the season came in the first inning of Game 1 and on the final play of Game 3. In an unprecedented move, the five umpires not involved on the play converged to correct a call on a force play at second base. The crew decided to break tradition and make right a call they knew should be reversed. The obstruction call at the end of Game 3 was a perfect example of third base umpire, and one of my personal favorites, Jim Joyce showing instincts and knowledge of the rules simultaneously. The umpire who was overruled in Game 1, Dana DeMuth, instantly followed through on Joyce's obstruction notification and correctly ruled the runner safe at the plate. The play was ruled correctly and just so happened to be on the final play of a World Series game.RTWT.
Reviews of calls via instant replay will be expanded next year. Although technology will aid these judges in the calls they make, my hope is they still umpire with the courage and feel for the game they have shown.
The White House is racing to rebuild confidence in a new health-care system that has so far fallen short of President Barack Obama's promises, as the mounting uproar threatens to overwhelm his second-term agenda.He needs to swallow this flaming pile of crap. And he needs to like it, the dick.
Just two weeks ago, Mr. Obama seemed to prevail in a face-off with congressional Republicans over the federal shutdown and was seeking to shift the public focus to an immigration overhaul, one of his top priorities.
A new controversy over the president’s health-care law is threatening to overshadow the messy launch of its Web site:Continue reading.
Notices are going out to hundreds of thousands of Americans informing them that their health insurance polices are being canceled as of Dec. 31.
The notices appear to contradict President Obama’s promise that despite the changes resulting from the law, Americans can keep their health insurance if they like it. Republicans have seized on the cancellations as evidence that the law is flawed and the president has been less than forthright in describing its impact.
“The real problem is that people weren’t told the truth,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Tuesday on “CBS This Morning.” “You can remember, they were told that they would be able to keep their policies if they liked them. Now you hear hundreds of thousands of people across the country being told they couldn’t.”
Administration officials say the canceled insurance will be replaced by better policies. But the new line of attack comes as the administration continues to grapple with its problem-plagued Web site, HealthCare.gov.
On Tuesday, the administration official directly responsible for the rollout of the Web site apologized, promising at a congressional hearing to fix problems that have prevented many consumers from signing up for coverage under the health law. Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also defended her agency’s management of the project and blamed some of the setbacks on the main contractor, Fairfax-based CGI Federal.
If the accusations of broken promises stick, they could ultimately be more damaging than the glitchy Web site. Although some people are signing up and benefiting from federal subsidies to buy private insurance, the number is unknown because the administration has not revealed enrollment figures.
Meanwhile, insurance companies have sent hundreds of thousands of termination notices in recent months to previously insured Americans, telling them that their health insurance plans are changing to meet the requirements of the health-care law. Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning Jan. 1 insurers must offer renewal policies that cover a core group of essential health benefits, such as maternity care and prescription drug coverage. Policies that don’t offers such benefits can’t be sold after this year.
As a result, many insurers are discontinuing policies that do not comply with these new standards. If insurers discontinue a policy, they are required to give the policyholder 90 days’ notice and offer the option of enrolling in an alternative policy.
While Republicans are insisting that the president misled the public about the effects of the law, others who are sympathetic to the administration said the seeming contradiction shows the difference between political talking points intended to sell a controversial law and the intricacies of the health policies that underlie it.
Teachable moment: Be very skeptical when anyone associated with this WH asserts anything as FACT. They lie breezily & without remorse.
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 29, 2013
“It’s a fundamental, structural issue. They needed a great start. You could have had glitches later. You needed to get people pouring into the system, because the sick are pouring into the exchanges; for the first time they can get covered when they couldn’t before. Now you need young, healthy people to balance out the risks and to actually keep it affordable. Without those whose consumers, it’s not affordable anyway.”
LOL! Martin Longman (@BooMan23) loves him some #ObamaCare #Fail! Yeah, dude, it's gonna "lower premiums." Bwahaha!!
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 27, 2013
Hey tweeps, Martin Longman, a.k.a. @BooMan23, is an #ObamaCare troofer, lol! "It's a temporary glitch, man." Bwahaha! http://t.co/Enw1ieBJKy
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 27, 2013
President Obama has faced a persistent challenge in office. The advocate of big, bold actions to address large and seemingly intractable problems, he has struggled to convince the public that government is equipped to carry out such transformational changes.More at the link.
The rollout of the Affordable Care Act has highlighted that challenge, and the administration’s response has no doubt set the president back. He and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were slow to acknowledge the scope of the problems with HealthCare.gov, and overall the administration has hardly lived up to its pledge to be the most transparent in history.
Administration officials insist that the health-care law is sound, even if the Web site has proved a nightmare to navigate. But the questions raised by the botched rollout go beyond whether the Web site Obama touted so positively is merely plagued with technological glitches or is flawed in more fundamental ways. The whole episode points to the broader debate that the president has yet to win about the role of government.
When he was reelected last November, Obama and his advisers took the results as a mandate to continue or even accelerate the kinds of changes he had started during his first term. Democrats looked at the coalition that gave Obama a second term and saw the makings of a new progressive era after decades of conservative ascendancy.
But exit polls underscored the degree to which he had lost ground on the core debate about the government’s role. After four years of Obama as president, voters showed a smaller appetite for government to do things than they had when he was first elected.
On Election Day 2012, just 43 percent of those who voted said they wanted government to do more to solve problems, while 51 percent said government was doing too many things that were better left to the private sector or individuals. Four years earlier, in November 2008, the exit polls showed just the opposite: 51 percent said they wanted government to do more, while 43 percent said it should do less.
WASHINGTON — The implicit promise of Barack Obama’s presidency, delivered during the 2008 campaign and again repeatedly since then, was that government would not face a debacle like the recent malfunction of the technology behind the president’s new health care marketplaces.Continue reading.
In his biggest and most important speeches, the president often talks with passion about a “smarter, more effective government.” He has called on Congress to embrace and pay for a “21st century government that’s open and competent.” And he has vowed to work to “rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government.”
But in the pursuit of that lofty goal, Mr. Obama faces determined opposition from conservatives who view government as the problem, not the solution. And to succeed, he must win over an increasingly skeptical public whose trust in government has eroded over decades. A survey last week by the Pew Research Center found that just 19 percent of Americans trust government to do what is right just about always or most of the time.
The breakdown of the federal HealthCare.gov Web site could emerge as a test of Mr. Obama’s philosophy, with potentially serious implications for an agenda that relies heavily on the belief in a can-do bureaucracy. Michael Dimock, the Pew center’s director, said that the longer the problems persist, the more they could bolster what he called the “almost American value that government is inefficient.”
“There is a lingering kind of effect,” he said. “It matters not only because the public may have an inherent skepticism. It puts the ball on the tee for your critics and the late-night comics.”
WASHINGTON— If computer glitches are not enough of a problem, President Obama's healthcare law also has a legal glitch that critics say could cause it to unravel in more than half the nation.This is excellent no matter what happens. Chances are good the ObamaCare monstrosity could wind back up at the Supreme Court --- and next time, perhaps John Roberts won't be in such a generous mood.
The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost. To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state."
But 36 states have decided against opening exchanges for now. Although the law permits the federal government to open exchanges instead, it does not say tax credits may be given to those who buy insurance through a federally run exchange.
Apparently no one noticed this when the long and complicated bill worked its way through the House and Senate. Last year, however, the Internal Revenue Service tried to remedy it by putting out a regulation that redefined "exchange" to include a "federally facilitated exchange." This is "consistent with the language, purpose and structure … of the act as a whole," the Treasury Department said.
But critics of the law have seized on the glitch. They have filed four lawsuits that urge judges to rule the Obama administration must abide by the strict wording of the law, even if doing so dismantles it in nearly two-thirds of the states. And the Obama administration has no hope of repairing the glitch by legislation as long as the Republicans control the House.
This week, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, a President Clinton appointee, refused the administration's request to dismiss the suit. Instead, he said the challengers had put forward a substantial claim, and he promised to issue a written ruling.
"This is a problem," said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University. "This case could have legs," although "it was never the intent of Congress to establish federal exchanges that can't do anything. They were supposed to have exactly the same powers."
Michael Carvin, the Washington lawyer leading the challenge, says the wording of the law is what counts. "This is a question of whether you believe in the rule of law. And the language here is as clear as it could possibly be," he said.
Do you really think Obama cares if what he does is legal? Let me clear this up for you, he does not give a damn! He wants what he wants, and if it means doing by means that are unconstitutional he will not hesitate to do so! He has so demonstrated over and over again! He sees himself as an entitled, king like entity! HOW DARE ANYONE QUESTION HIM OR ANY DIRECTIVE THAT COMES FROM HIM! In actuality he is a "despot"!!
Their debut album entered the chart this month at No. 6. In England the record sold more copies than the latest by Justin Timberlake. Reviews have been nearly uniformly ecstatic, as has praise from fellow artists such as Katy Perry and Mumford & Sons.More at the link.
To the uninitiated, Haim's success might resemble the overnight variety.
But the L.A. group — built around a trio of sisters — played its first show in 2007. Before that, the siblings performed in a band with their parents, doing Beatles and Prince covers at school functions and church fairs.
"It was fun to do," said bassist Este Haim, 27, "and it seemed normal to us."
PHOTOS: Haim brings 'Days Are Gone' to the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood
As a pop sensation, though, Haim is anything but the norm. The band — which also includes singer-guitarist Danielle, 24, and guitarist-keyboardist Alana, 21 — has an appealingly ungroomed look and a lived-in sound that forgoes the super-polished dance beats of Top 40 radio.
Sitting backstage at L.A.'s Fonda Theatre on a recent afternoon, the women were dressed in dark vintage clothes, their long hair hanging loose over their shoulders — more Joni Mitchell than Miley Cyrus. They were discussing their not-so-distant days growing up in the San Fernando Valley, including Este's job at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.
"Alana would be at the mall with her friends, and she'd come by and I'd give them free French fries and soup," said the bassist, who worked at the Cheesecake Factory in the shopping center. "Then her friends started coming separately — they cut out the middleman."
"They didn't need me anymore," Alana agreed with a laugh. "Way harsh."
If the sisters seemed nostalgic, perhaps it was because they were home for the first time in months. Haim — the name rhymes with "lime" — has been on the road in the United States and Europe for the better part of 2013. (The group is rounded out by an unrelated drummer, Dash Hutton.) Last week the band's tour stopped in L.A. for a sold-out concert at the Fonda that served as a kind of hometown celebration of its hit debut, "Days Are Gone."
Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don't like what they see http://t.co/4xHJBAUJKC
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 27, 2013
BERLIN — While President Obama has tried to soften the blow, this week’s disclosures about the extent of America’s spying on its European allies have added to a series of issues that have sharply eroded confidence in the United States’ leadership at a particularly difficult moment.And at the Verge, "US has been monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002, report says."
The sharp words from Germany, France and others this week are part of a broader set of frustrations over issues like the Syrian civil war, the danger posed to the global economy by Washington’s fiscal fights and the broader perception that President Obama himself — for all his promises to rebuild relations with allies after the presidency of George W. Bush — is an unreliable partner.
This American administration is “misreading and miscalculating the effects” of its deeds in a Europe that is less ready than it once was to heed the United States, said Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research organization in Washington.
Early on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France emerged from a meeting of European leaders to call for talks with the United States on new rules for their intelligence relationship. A statement from the European leaders said a “lack of trust” could undermine trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation.
Earlier in the week the European Parliament had acted to suspend an agreement with the United States that allows it to track the finances of terrorist groups, citing suspicions that the United States authorities were tapping European citizens’ personal financial data.
The disclosures contained in the documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have crystallized a growing sense in Europe that post-Sept. 11 America has lost some of the values of privacy and accountability that have been the source of the world’s admiration for its version of democracy.
So fierce was the anger in Berlin over suspicions that American intelligence had tapped into Ms. Merkel’s cellphone that Elmar Brok of Germany, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a pillar of trans-Atlantic exchanges since 1984, spoke Friday of America’s security establishment as a creepy “state within a state.”
Since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”
As technical glitches persist, Senators urge HHS Secretary to push back health insurance exchange enrollment deadlineContinue reading (via Memeorandum).
October 25, 2013
(Washington, DC) – As Americans continue to experience technical difficulties with federal and state health insurance enrollment, a coalition of U.S. Senators led by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is calling on Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to extend the open enrollment period to give Americans more time to obtain health insurance coverage.
“As long as these substantial technology glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans,” read the letter signed by Shaheen along with U.S. Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mark Udall (D-CO), Tom Udall (D-NM), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM). “Our constituents are frustrated, and we fear that the longer the website is not functional, opportunities for people to log on, learn about their insurance choices, and enroll will be lost.”
The letter sent today reiterates Shaheen’s earlier call to extend open enrollment if the technological glitches persist with healthcare.gov. An extended open enrollment deadline “will give consumers critical time in which to become familiar with the website and choose a plan that is best for them,” the Senators said.
The great Democratic unity of 2013 held for five-and-a-half days.Nobody was appreciative of what government can do for them. In fact, most people got along just fine. Now everyone realizes the government is trying to do way too much and want no part of it. So, Democrats, please run on a platform of more government and defending ObamaCare. That bloodbath of 2010 will seem tame by comparison come next November.
For weeks leading up to the shutdown — and over the 16 days it dragged on — President Barack Obama did the unthinkable: he held every Democrat in the House and Senate together. There weren’t any defectors. There wasn’t even anyone running to reporters to question his strategy. The man who’d disappointed them so many times was suddenly exciting them, with his newly apparent backbone and successful resistance to Republicans. They were rushing to do whatever they could to stand by him, next to him, with him.
Like any fad, that’s gone the way of trucker hats and the macarena.
The problems with the Obamacare website have transformed the president from a man who seemed to have gotten a sudden infusion of political capital to a man who’s been pushed back on his heels. He was firm, and he was setting the agenda. Now he’s back to trying to beating back the latest frame Republicans have forced on him, inadvertently providing evidence to support the doubts they’ve been trying to sow from the beginning. He spent last week against the backdrop of a shutdown that made people appreciate all the things government can do for them. Now he has a website which shows how little it can.
Jeanne Shaheen doesn't sound like a Democrat who just won a government-shutdown "victory." Ms. Shaheen sounds like a Democrat who thinks she's going to lose her job.Continue reading (via Memeorandum).
The New Hampshire senator fundamentally altered the health-care fight on Tuesday with a letter to the White House demanding it both extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline and waive tax penalties for those unable to enroll. Within nanoseconds, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had endorsed her "common-sense idea." By Wednesday night, five Senate Democrats were on board, pushing for . . . what's that dirty GOP word? Oh, right. "Delay."
After 16 long days of vowing to Republicans that they would not cave in any way, shape or form on ObamaCare, Democrats spent their first post-shutdown week caving in every way, shape and form. With the GOP's antics now over, the only story now is the unrivaled disaster that is the president's health-care law.
Hundreds of thousands of health-insurance policies canceled. Companies dumping coverage and cutting employees' hours. Premiums skyrocketing. And a website that reprises the experience of a Commodore 64. As recently as May, Democratic consultants were advising members of Congress that their best ObamaCare strategy for 2014 was to "own" the law. Ms. Shaheen has now publicly advised the consultants where they can file that memo.
Russell Brand has international fame and a net worth of $15 million, and also used to bang Katy Perry. Nevertheless, in his own mind, he is one of the downtrodden toilers struggling to overthrow the greedy oppressive parasitical regime of bourgeois capitalism...RTWT.
That women are treated badly on Twitter is not breaking news. But the depth and scale of the personal cruelty and wanton misogyny weirdly confirmed the point I was trying to make in the original piece: The “unhinged right” is well-organized and dangerous, and a lot of people, including liberals, don’t seem to be taking that in completely. The election of our first black president unleashed primitive reactionary forces. Open expressions of racism and misogyny are now a form of political protest, and if you complain, you’re the oppressor. Uppity black people and uppity women especially must be put in their place.Bitter partisanship has left this woman a hulking, steaming pile of radioactive filth. She just hates. No amount of Obama/Democrat failure will shake her from what is, for all intents and purposes, a psychotic obsession with the "evil" right. Shoot, the father of Trig-trutherism sounds positively subdued compared to the unhinged Salon hate-monger. See the Dish, "Epistemic Openness Watch":
The difference between my Twitter experience and that of my white, male liberal friends and critics reminded me once again how relatively insulated even many liberals are from the insanity. As a white person, I don’t always take it in fully myself. Every time I’m ready to blame President Obama for his political troubles, and yes, he deserves some blame, there’s a story like the one about Rep. Pete Sessions telling the president, to his face, “I can’t even stand to look at you.” (The White House is now saying this story is based on a misunderstanding. Stay tuned.) I can’t even stand to enumerate the ways in which this president has been insulted in ways unknown to white presidents, Sessions aside.
I know that good conscientious journalists, even some liberals, believe that when Democrats have such deadly enemies, they can’t afford to hand them weapons, and a badly designed ACA exchange website is a weapon. And I wish Bill Clinton had kept his pants up, too. But now Barack Obama, whose only known personal weakness involves Nicorette, is being treated even more viciously than Clinton. So you’ll excuse me if I argue that we ought to focus on the sickness that’s taken hold of the Republican Party, rather than the fact that our last two Democratic presidents haven’t been able to cure it.
I have faith in the judgment of Americans, and do not share the agitprop tendencies of Joan Walsh. What matters is the truth. What matters when things go wrong is transparency. What truly worries me is less the website’s failure than Obama’s defensive, secretive posture in response to it. Take the hit as hard as you can now. Explain the fail fully. And move relentlessly forward.
Re "Of elephants and bullhooks," Editorial, Oct. 22More at LAist, "Los Angeles Just Basically Banned Circuses."
Every year since 1922, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey has performed for circus fans in Los Angeles. Elephants have always been an integral part of Ringling Bros., providing an up-close way for our audiences to experience these amazing animals in a way they can nowhere else.
Unfortunately, The Times appears to have simply accepted the representations of animal rights groups about how our elephants are trained. The "guide," referred to by the outdated term "bullhook" in the editorial, is an animal husbandry tool for working with elephants approved by experts, including the American Veterinary Medical Assn.
Our elephants are comfortable with the training methods and tools used at Ringling Bros., and, more important, many of those trained behaviors are vital for optimal husbandry and veterinary care.
Our elephants define Ringling Bros. for the nearly 100,000 people who come to see them at Staples Center each year. The L.A. City Council should not deny people the right to make the decision to attend and also threaten local jobs by passing this unnecessary and unfair ban on circuses in the city.
Stephen Payne
Vienna, Va.
The hard line Democrats have drawn against delaying a core element of the federal health law has begun to crack, as problems with the new federal insurance website prompted calls for President Barack Obama to delay penalties on people who don't carry health coverage.Massive finger-pointing.
Democratic leaders in Congress and Mr. Obama have defended the minimum penalty of $95 in 2014 as crucial to inducing uninsured Americans to sign up for coverage, and the party held firm against Republican calls to delay or eliminate the coverage requirement that provoked this month's partial government shutdown.
Late Wednesday, the Obama administration said it would establish what amounts to a six-week extension in the time people have to obtain insurance coverage before incurring a penalty, responding to what some have called a lack of clarity in the law over the deadline.
Some Democrats say the flawed rollout of the law could mean bigger changes are needed. Sen. Mark Begich (D., Alaska), who is up for re-election in 2014, said Wednesday that individuals shouldn't be penalized if technical issues with the HealthCare.gov website aren't resolved.
The signs of growing Democratic unease came as the White House acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the problems extend beyond sign-up logjams that kept thousands of people from being able to view insurance offerings online. Experts are working to "iron out the kinks" that have led insurers to receive flawed data, including duplicate enrollments and spouses reported as children, the White House said after a meeting among administration and insurance industry officials.
The debate over the botched launch will kick into higher gear Thursday at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. In their prepared testimony, contractors responsible for the federal insurance portal pointed fingers at each other and the administration.
Cheryl Campbell, a senior vice president at CGI Group Inc.'s CGI Federal unit, the lead contractor for the HealthCare.gov website that launched Oct. 1, blamed the bottlenecks on a system designed by another contractor, UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s Optum unit, which verifies users' identities.
Optum group executive vice president Andrew Slavitt, in turn, said in his prepared testimony that a decision to disable anonymous shopping drove traffic to its system that was higher than "if consumers could 'window shop' anonymously." The administration has since reversed its decision to make people first register before shopping.
At least two more congressional hearings are scheduled next week, including one where Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is expected to be grilled.
The penalty for failure to carry insurance is at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. Insurers say individuals—particularly younger, healthier people—must be coaxed to buy insurance so that carriers aren't left with a risk pool of predominantly older and sicker people.
.@RSMcCain Reading Russell Kirk, "The Conservative Mind." pic.twitter.com/Vm620Kq9DU
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 16, 2013
Cracks are showing in the Democratic coalition as the next round of budget talks gets under way, hurting the chances for progress toward a broad deal that changes the tax code and significantly narrows future deficits.Well, when has O ever worried about the base?
While Republicans are still smarting over nasty infighting they engaged in during the debt-ceiling fight and 16-day government shutdown, Democrats have stayed united. This helped them beat back Republican demands to undo or scale back President Barack Obama's 2010 health law as a condition for ending the showdown.
But with eyes now turning toward a newly formed budget committee, some liberal lawmakers and groups are worried that Democrats will negotiate cuts to Social Security benefits and other entitlement programs. The president's budget blueprint, which was released in April, proposed slowing the growth of Social Security spending by using a new measure of inflation—an idea that drew a rebuke from some lawmakers and liberal groups.
"The president is about to run into a major base problem if he tries to do this," said Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, referring to using the new formula, the chained consumer-price index, to determine benefits. "My advice to him is: Don't do it."
It can be argued that Obamacare isn’t full socialized medicine… yet. Right now it is a sort of corporatism, which is the collusion of big government with big business. With Obamacare, the government has taken over an industry that comprises a sixth of our economy, radically changed the way it operates, and is mandating that we purchase the services of that industry. This is unprecedented. It’s radical.An awesome piece.
For those Obama voters who are now flummoxed by the rise in their health care premiums, let me explain why they went up. Obamacare has changed the very nature of insurance, which is a hedge against a future possibility. A 27-year-old marathon runner is much less likely to suffer a major illness than a 57-year-old obese chain smoker with a pickled liver. But Obamacare has ruled that there be no adjusted costs for pre-existing conditions, which means we threw out the actuarial data and everyone is now required to pay more to cover those who are more likely to be sick. But now average Americans – especially those healthy 20somethings who probably don’t even want to buy insurance – can’t afford to pay for Obamacare.
Obamacare in its current corporatist form isn’t meant to last. It’s meant to push us towards full socialized medicine with a single-payer system. How do I know this? Simple. Let’s compare Obamacare with the Canadian single-payer system.
With Obamacare we have crappier health care (fewer choices, fewer doctors, and an IPAB rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats, aka the ol' “death panel” that has been admitted to existing in Obamacare), but it is very expensive for the individual American. For instance, you’ll find that the so-called Bronze Plans are just as expensive as the Platinum Plans when you factor in the $5,000-$10,000 deductible in addition to the monthly payments you’ll shell out. And those Americans who aren’t being pushed onto the Obamacare exchanges are still seeing their insurance premiums skyrocket as the industry shifts onto consumers the cost of not factoring in various conditions.
Now let’s look at what Canadians have. I dare say our good neighbor to your north, and my east, has even worse health care coverage, but at least it’s “free” for the individual.
Americans, if you’re faced with a 300% increase (or even a 65% increase like my family) in your health care premiums for crappier coverage, doesn’t “free” socialized medicine all of a sudden sound appealing?
And that’s how Americans will be led down the primrose path to a single-payer system. People will be frustrated, worn out, and broke under this new government burden. Many will end up concluding they’ll settle for – then demand – full socialized medicine because they’ll see how the unworkable Obamacare will break our health care system (where, presently, no one is turned away from emergency rooms and we have many public and private safety nets for people in need), along with busting our personal bank accounts. The cry will go out, “Can’t you just put us all in a sort of Medicaid-like system? It’ll be much less confusing than these awful exchange websites and a lot less expensive!” As things stand, many who are getting slammed by Obamacare will inevitably settle for less out of necessity. And that’s the left’s declared plan: a single-payer system. They said it. I didn't.
In the days since the problems with the Obamacare website became too large to ignore, defenders of the administration cited the many people they said have already benefited from the new exchanges, as well as from the law as a whole. Presumably, the White House had many success stories to choose from in deciding who would stand behind the president at Monday's event. But some of the successes they chose don't seem to be successes at all.RTWT.
Luis Gaytan, the 5-year-old son of Mexican immigrants who speak Spanish at home, was so terrified by kindergarten that he would barely talk — prompting classmates to tease that he didn't have a tongue.Continue reading.
In the last two months, at Granada Elementary Community Charter, Luis has gained a growing command of the language in a class of students with a mixed range of English ability. His father, Jorge, is convinced that his son is learning English more quickly because he hears it every day from more-advanced classmates.
But Luis — and thousands of other Los Angeles Unified students — is being moved into new classes with those at a similar language level under an order that has sparked a storm of protest. In recent weeks, a group of southeast L.A. principals have mounted a rare challenge to district policy, teachers have flooded their union office with complaints, and parents have launched protest rallies and petition drives urging L.A. Unified to postpone the class reorganizations until next year.
"Kids with little or no English are going to be segregated and told they're not good enough for the mainstream," said Cindy Aranda-Lechuga, a Granada mother of a kindergartner who gathered 162 parent signatures seeking a postponement and spoke against the policy at an L.A. Board of Education meeting last week. "Kids learn from their peers, and they're not going to be able to do that anymore."
Marking the latest chapter in California's fierce language wars, the furor over class placements for those learning English raises the controversial question of which is more effective: separating students by fluency level or including them in diverse classes. Critics are also upset that the change is coming two months into the school year, after students have bonded with classmates and teachers have developed classroom lessons and routines. Opponents blame the district and local schools for the disruption.
An old surfing battle is resurfacing in Newport Beach.More at the link.
A city panel, the Blackball Working Group, will take the first step toward a possible review of surfing regulations at a public meeting Monday night. This has set off murmurings among surfers over one particular place: the Wedge.
A storied spot at the end of the Balboa Peninsula, where the west harbor jetty extends from shore, the Wedge has set the stage for world-famous waves that have brought thrills to generations of surfers and spectators.
Here, on occasion, large swells send surf crashing into the jetty. These waves bounce back toward the ocean, where they may meet, in a wedge shape, another oncoming swell. This creates massive walls of water reaching 20 to 30 feet — a dream for surfers — that break close to the shore.
The question is: Who can lay claim to the Wedge?
For roughly two decades, bodysurfers have held claim to set times during summer months when only they can ride the break. They say they need the part-time ban because it is unsafe for them to try to compete with other surfers.
On a popular morning at the Wedge, people might be spotted on surfboards, bodyboards and skim boards or even clinging to a plastic fast-food tray. But current regulations require that they get out of the water by 10 a.m.
For a bodysurfer to ride among them would be like asking a bicyclist to assume position in a lane on a highway, they say.
Bodysurfers shirk any flotation device, wearing only wetsuits and flippers. This makes them slower and the last to catch waves. Those with boards pose a threat because they may collide with bodysurfers or lose their boards, which may then go flying.
The City Council recognized these safety concerns in 1985, allowing bodysurfers some piece of mind by banning boards when the blackball flag, a yellow flag with a black dot, was displayed from June 15 through Sept. 10.
In 1993, the council extended the ban to May 1 through Oct. 31. At that time, a hardened group of bodysurfers called the Wedge Crew, or Wedge Preservation Society, collected 80 signatures calling for a full ban on boards. A counter group called Save the Wedge collected 700 names in opposition.
Now a new petition is circulating. Nearly 1,500 people this week signed an online petition that calls for an end to time restraints at the Wedge, according to Times Community News.
"I figured I might as well put something together so that people could have a way to voice their own opinions," said Aaron Peluso, who created the petition and owns a skimboard company. "I've been hoping it would have happened a decade ago."
A number of years ago I was between flights on a business trip and was sitting in an airport restaurant having lunch. It was right after the 2008 presidential election and I knew that the election of America’s first black president, a man of the hard left, would make my job bringing a conservative message to black communities much more challenging and difficult.Continue reading.
As I ate my sandwich I glanced at the wall and saw a sign with a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. It said, “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.”
I was immediately energized by this quote from the old general. It was exactly what I needed at the moment. It totally captured my state of mind. Perhaps my mission needed a change in tactics but certainly there was no change in commitment and objectives.
There is no smooth sailing in any tough mission. Setbacks are always part of the game. But if you are committed and right, setbacks are opportunities to re-group and improve.
Those who think that the current deal to temporarily fund the government and open the door to yet even more government borrowing amounts to some kind of defeat for Tea Party Republicans need to think again.
The Tea Party is in for the long haul. One skirmish may be lost but the war continues.
A recent Gallup poll shows 18 percent of Americans satisfied with the way the country is being governed. For a little perspective, this stood at 26 percent in mid- 1973 in the midst of the Watergate scandal that wound up in the resignation of the president of the United States.
Early in 2009, shortly after President Obama was elected, 56 percent expressed satisfaction with our government. It’s just been downhill since then...
