Tails News Complaints topic

[Tails82]

Jen is in the 2009 cocoon and thinks none of this is happening.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/24/More-Americans-Losing-Insurance-Under-Obamacare-Than-Signing-Up

Obamacare Insurance Losses in Three States Exceed Signups in All of U.S.

Estimates for the total number set to lose their coverage vary from 14 million to 16 million.

washingtonexaminer.com/gop-threatens-subpoena-says-kathleen-sebelius-either-lied-or-was-ignorant-of-obamacare-woes/article/2537856

GOP threatens subpoena, says Kathleen Sebelius either lied or was ignorant of Obamacare woes

In a letter, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also threatened to subpoena Obamacare documents if Sebelius continues to stonewall their investigation.

"Your failure to provide Congress information that would shed additional light on these problems is a troubling indication that you are refusing to hold people accountable for this costly and failed enterprise," the members write to Secretary Sebelius. "While you have refused to provide information to Congress, you have been a frequent guest on numerous news and television comedy programs subsequent to October 1, 2013. It is unacceptable that you are providing information to numerous other outlets, but not to Congress."

"During the months prior to October 1, 2013, the Administration and many HHS officials assured the American people that the health insurance exchanges would be ready to successfully launch on October 1, 2013," the letter continues. "It is clear that you and other high-ranking HHS officials either provided false testimony to Congress or did not know how badly the development of the HealthCare.gov was proceeding. Either scenario, if accurate, is inexcusable and demands accountability from your department."

lol Obamacare is like one massive scandal program.

blog.heritage.org/2013/10/25/administration-caught-in-new-obamacare-dilemma/

Administration Caught in New Obamacare Dilemma

Remember sequestration? Those automatic budget cuts that went into effect when Congress failed to do real budgeting a couple of years ago? It’s hitting Obamacare now.

Both laws have been around for awhile, but the Obama Administration hasn’t done anything to prepare for their collision.

The cuts are hitting a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays for lower-income Americans with Obamacare coverage. An Obama official pledged there would be a plan before the Obamacare exchanges opened on October 1, but that didn’t happen.

So now what? Heritage expert Chris Jacobs writes in today’s Wall Street Journal:

"There are two possible outcomes. The first is that individuals who have managed to enroll in subsidized health insurance will find they’ve been misled about their copays and deductibles. Families who currently think their plan will charge a $20 copayment for doctor visits may instead face a $25 charge when the sequester kicks in. Individuals who now believe they face maximum out-of-pocket costs of $2,000 may end up paying hundreds more."

The other option? Stick the insurance companies with the cuts and tell them to deal with it. (That would be about $286 million through next September.)

Not a day passes when we are spared from another tale of Obamacare falling apart.

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-free-launch

This week, some of the law's staunchest supporters were ready to jump ship on the system's linchpin: the individual mandate. Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) all boarded the GOP's bandwagon to delay the ObamaCare penalties that threaten Americans who don't buy insurance by January 1.

Of course, logging on to the system -- let alone buying insurance -- has been next to impossible since the administration's launched its disaster of a website. With no real timetable for fixing the system's collapse, even Democrats agree that it's ridiculous to fine Americans who are victims of the government's own incompetence. Sen. Shaheen, who, like Pryor and Begich, will face voters next year, sent a blunt letter to the President asking the administration to "state clearly how the enforcement mechanism will work if people can't sign up in time."

Of all the Left's new converts, only Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) isn't running for reelection next year. Like conservatives, he backs the plan to push off the individual mandate until January 2015 at the earliest. On working with Republicans, Manchin told Bill O'Reilly, "We've been good about putting coalitions together," Manchin said. "We can do that." President Obama, meanwhile, seems more determined than ever to give the GOP the cold shoulder. At a Dems-only meeting on Wednesday, lawmakers dug in on their response to the crisis and insisted that HHS's tech team was making progress.

And as we're learning, with the surge in errors came a surge in spending. While contractors were on the Hill, Bloomberg showed how costly the mistakes have been -- not just to the administration's image, but to taxpayers. The rollout, which was projected to cost $394 million, skyrocketed past the $1 billion mark, with the bulk shelled out to contractors in the past six months.

blog.heritage.org/2013/10/25/obamacares-harshest-critics-look-at-what-these-liberals-are-saying/

Obamacare’s Harshest Critics? Look at What These Liberals Are Saying


Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) on his plan to delay the individual mandate:

"Affordable health care was never meant to be — if you’ve got insurance, now you’re going to have to buy insurance that’s more costly and not as good. That has to be fixed."

David Axelrod, a former White House adviser and strategist on Obama’s reelection campaign, said on MSNBC’s “The Last Word”:

"They need to be forthcoming with the public and report on a regular basis as to the progress that’s being made … This has been shrouded in a little bit of mystery. I don’t quite understand why that is … I also would be very, very tough on the people who are responsible to get those fixes done quickly … I’d be, as I’m sure they are, kicking a bunch of folks in the butt every day to make sure that what need to be done is being done."

Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said:

"These people want to run our health care system, and they want to be the grand organizers of what’s most important to most Americans over the age of 35 or 40. And yet they’re not telling us what’s going wrong with our system that they want to run?"

Ezra Klein, blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, said the website’s problems aren’t simply glitches:

"One of the Obama administration’s jobs, separate from all of the political stuff we talk about here, is to simply run things like this well, to run their signature legislative initiative well. … On that, so far, this has been a big failure."

Clay Johnson, who worked for Obama’s digital team in 2008, said:

"HealthCare.gov got this way not because of incompetence or sloppiness of an individual vendor, but because of a deeply engrained and malignant cancer that’s eating away at the federal government’s ability to provide effective online services"

Sam Stein, political reporter for the Huffington Post, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said:

"No one beta tested the site, which is almost criminal, when you think about it. The president was caught off-guard, which is really unfortunate and also really kind of messed up."

Arthur Delaney, a Huffington Post reporter, hoped the problems with HealthCare.gov were a joke:

"I keep expecting Obama to look at the camera and yell LIVE FROM NEW YORK IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!"

Mike Barnicle, an MSNBC contributor, said:

"They’re lying about it now. … They’re not depriving us of information, they are outright lying…about the numbers of who have enrolled, the numbers who have made the process complete, the numbers of people who have actually signed up, a couple others things. The larger point is they keep using the word, ‘unacceptable.’ This is not unacceptable, this is outrageous."

Mark Halperin, TIME’s editor-at-large and senior political analyst, said:

"The secrecy is unacceptable. It begins with not saying how many people have enrolled. I don’t understand why they can’t release that figure on a rolling basis. But in addition, you search in vain for answers to lots of questions. Tom Costello, lots of other reporters have asked them every day for basic information. When governments are in crisis, they withhold information, and sometimes they don’t tell the truth."

And when one liberal challenged another, he told us what we already know: Obamacare will be a complete disaster for liberalism.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303615304579155962427302786

Even House liberals have felt it necessary to reassure voters that they, too, are angry—though so far they are merely calling for scalps. "I'd like to see somebody lose their job over this. I think it's outrageous," complained New York Rep. Sean Maloney. "Somebody's got to man up here—get rid of these people," said Minnesota's Rick Nolan. This is presumably a call for a certain "somebody" to do something more than 1-800 commercials from the Rose Garden.

This Democratic freakout has been building for months, even if it was masked by the shutdown headlines and the way the media reported that event...In Arkansas, Mr. Pryor's home state, a poll conducted by the University of Arkansas from Oct. 10-17 found that 39% of likely voters blame Mr. Obama for the shutdown (only 27% blame congressional Republicans). Just 29% approve of Mr. Obama, and Mr. Pryor's disapproval ratings jumped 21 points in just a year, to 44%, from 21%.

More worrisome for the Democratic senator is a recent poll conducted by OnMessage for his GOP rival Tom Cotton. Only 33% of Arkansans support ObamaCare. The number drops to 28% for independent voters. Even one-third of Democrats in the state oppose the law.

The numbers aren't much better in Ms. Shaheen's New Hampshire, or in Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, West Virginia or Montana. The Democrats up for election in these states know that the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads isn't the Republican Party, but their own president's law.

www.politico.com/story/2013/10/dick-cheney-hillary-clinton-barack-obama-benghazi-syria-98833.html?hp=l12

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is criticizing the “incompetence” in handling foreign affairs by President Barack Obama’s administration, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Cheney said Thursday that the president’s handling of the situation in Syria damaged the country’s standing with its allies.

“I think the incompetence of this administration in the way they’ve handled these kinds of affairs, especially in the Middle East, is one of the worst aspects of this presidency,” Cheney said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Thursday. “If you’re a friend and ally of the United States in that part of the world tonight, you’d have to say what’s this guy all about? Can we count on anything he’s told us? … At the same time, our adversaries out there no longer fear us.”

Cheney said another failure of the administration was in Benghazi, Libya, and Clinton is avoiding responsibility for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission there.

“She clearly wasn’t hands on, and now she doesn’t want to be hands on. And she’s doing everything she can to avoid responsibility for what clearly fell into her bailiwick,” Cheney said. “I think the Benghazi thing is one of the great — it’s not just an embarrassment, it’s a tragedy, because we lost four people that night. And what I always recall is her testimony saying, ‘What difference does it make?’ And the fact of the matter is it makes a huge difference.”

www.truthrevolt.org/news/nyt-hires-columnist-who-believes-massive-zionist-organization-rules-america

NYT Hires Columnist Who Believes a 'Massive Zionist Organization Rules America'

[Tails82]

www.weeklystandard.com/articles/point-no-return_764703.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&utm_medium=referral

President Obama is facing the abyss. It’s that moment when a president’s plans are overwhelmed by his problems, and he’s relegated to playing defense for the rest of his White House term. Obama’s agenda already lingers near death. His poll numbers have slipped to new lows. His speeches are full of alibis and accusations.

Obama hasn’t reached the point of no return, but he’s close. His biggest problem is the collapse of Obamacare on its launching pad as the entire country watched. And there’s worse trouble ahead. More likely than not, Obamacare will be the dominant issue in the final three-plus years of his presidency. From that, there’s no recovery...with his presidency in peril, Obama seems unprepared to avert paralysis. The failed startup of Obamacare, its website a “joke” in the view of 60 percent of America in a Fox News poll, caught the president by surprise. He refused to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem, conceding only that healthcare.gov wasn’t working as “smoothly as it was supposed to.” Neither is his presidency.

True, Obamacare will be a campaign issue in the 2014 midterm elections and no doubt a significant factor in the presidential election two years later. But that’s not because Obamacare is merely a matter of politics. It’s because Obamacare is now the official health care system for 310 million people and represents one-sixth of the American economy.

And it’s a national embarrassment whose troubles are only beginning. Unpleasant shocks loom for a majority of Americans who tap into Obamacare exchanges. Those 40 years of age and younger will discover next year their insurance premiums are “a lot higher than they would pay in today’s market,” says health care expert James Capretta. That will create a furor.

So, too, some lower-middle-income and middle-class Americans will find their access to doctors is limited. Why? Because many of the country’s biggest and best hospitals and some doctors have not agreed to take on this category of patients. Also, patients will be forced to endure longer waits as a result of a doctor shortage. In 2015 and 2016, the popular Medicare Advantage program will shrink.

Low-income folks and those with preexisting conditions will prosper under Obamacare. But how will middle-income Americans feel when they learn they’re paying considerably more for the same insurance? Not happy, I suspect. Or those under 30 who chose a “catastrophic-only” policy with high deductibles? They won’t be thrilled when told they are ineligible for a subsidy, whatever their income.

The point is that as Obamacare is rolled out over the final years of this presidency, there will be numerous occasions when Obama’s promises about the new health insurance scheme are exposed as untrue. If these incidents don’t provoke a crisis, they’ll at least keep Obamacare from fading as a prominent and fiercely debated issue.

And the president will pay a price. He’ll be stuck on defense, unable to change the subject. His agenda won’t help. A $9 minimum wage, universal preschool, immigration reform, global warming legislation, more infrastructure spending, higher taxes—there’s nothing close to a national consensus in support of these liberal leftovers.

Had Obamacare been created as a private enterprise with Obama as CEO, it wouldn’t have lasted a week. Not only would the stumbling company have been put out of business, so would its incompetent CEO. And we’d all — well, most of us — be better off.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/27/Report-Over-Half-a-Million-Californians-to-Lose-Insurance-Under-Obamacare

Report: Over Half a Million Californians to Lose Insurance Under Obamacare

Those dropped from their current plans would then be required by law to purchase health insurance through Covered California, the state's Obamacare exchange, or else pay a penalty to the IRS of at least $95 or 1% of income, whichever is highest.

Update: The Los Angeles Times reports on Sunday that patients across California are struggling with the burden of higher insurance costs as a result of Obamacare, noting that "middle-income consumers face an estimated 30% rate increase, on average, in California due to several factors tied to the healthcare law."

Some, Chad Terhune writes, are venting their frustration at the law--and at President Obama:

"Still, many are frustrated at being forced to give up the plans they have now. They frequently cite assurances given by Obama that Americans could hold on to their health insurance despite the massive overhaul.

"'All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it,' said Deborah Cavallaro, a real estate agent in Westchester. 'I'm infuriated because I was lied to.'"

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/25/media_last_to_learn_obamacare_s_impact

Media Last to Learn Obamacare's Impact

I think there's all kinds of shock waiting to hit people. There are still true believers that believe this is gonna be the greatest. People believe Obama. They believe him when he said that it's gonna cost $2,500 a year less. They believe him when he told 'em they could keep their doctor and keep their plan if they like it. Nobody's gonna be able to do that unless they're willing to pay almost double for it, which is not really keeping your plan, is it? So as this continues to roll out and all kinds of people, low-information voters, others that are highly attuned, liberal Democrat partisans, the whole mix are gonna find what's happening here, and it's gonna be interesting to gauge the reaction.

CBS, Norah O'Donnell reported that this Obamacare rollout is not happening the way Obama explained it. Insurers are canceling coverage for hundreds of thousands of Americans because of Obamacare, forcing them to buy new policies despite Obama's promises to the contrary.

Now, the thing that amazes me is that it is journalists who are the last to figure all of this out. It is journalists who should have been the first to warn everybody that this day was coming, because we knew that it was. It's been on track, this is exactly what Obamacare is. All anyone had to do was read just some of what the law changed. All anyone had to do was then add whatever real-life experience you have to the government coming in and running something. What happens? Wild spending with no accountability takes place, drastic deficits occur, and great inefficiency. There's nothing new about that. That is the standard, day to day operation of a government-run entity, or any bureaucratic entity.

These journalists should have been the first to tell people what Obamacare would mean to them. They are now the last to figure all of this out. Why don't they ask why so many young and healthy people are going to Medicaid? Which is for the poor. Why are people doing that? They just sit here and they wring their hands over it. "Oh, no. So many people are going to Medicaid." They can't figure out, they do not understand the dynamics of life, apparently. You put a brick wall in front of somebody in an effort to stop their forward progress, and the left thinks that most people will just stop, whereas most people will find a way to climb the wall or get around it. And when that happens, they act surprised.

Well, there's a reason people are not going to Obamacare. They find out what it's gonna cost 'em and they go somewhere else. And in the process, they're undermining the very foundation of Obamacare, all of which was predictable. But our journalist community appears to be the last to be learning this.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304069604579155880933284314

The government assault on J.P Morgan Chase is an injustice for many reasons, but the case has now reached tragicomic heights with the bank's agreement on Friday to pay $5.1 billion for supposedly conning Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So the government-favored mortgage giants that did as much as anyone to foment the housing bubble and bust are now presented as victims.

Even the partisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, created by the 2009 Pelosi Congress and chaired by a former state Democratic Party chairman, didn't try to sell that line. As much as the Democratic majority on the panel wanted to absolve Washington of its role in creating the crisis, it had to give the two government-created mortgage monsters their due. The committee's report dubbed Fannie and Freddie the "kings of leverage" and described all of the ways they avoided oversight while relaxing underwriting standards and raising their bets on subprime mortgages.

The two companies, which profited from an implicit government guarantee, owned or guaranteed $5 trillion of mortgage assets. Sometimes they bought home loans and bundled them into securities for sale to other investors, and sometimes they bought securities that others had assembled. They were the biggest buyers of subprime bundles during the housing boom, and their lust for those bundles fed the subprime machines at Countrywide (later bought by Bank of America) and Washington Mutual (bought at federal request by J.P. Morgan).

The commission learned from John Kerr, an examiner with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), that Fannie was "the worst-run financial institution" he had seen in 30 years as a bank regulator. Austin Kelly, an official at FHFA's predecessor agency, said regulators couldn't trust Fannie's numbers because their "processes were a bowl of spaghetti."

And you should hear what people were saying inside these firms. Former Fannie Mae Chief Risk Officer Enrico Dallavecchia wrote in a 2007 email to the company's COO that Fannie "was not even close to having proper controls processes for credit, market and operational risk." He added that "people don't care about the [risk] function or they don't get it."

Over at Freddie, former CEO Richard Syron acknowledged in an interview with the commission that one of the reasons he fired longtime chief risk officer David Andrukonis in 2005 was that Mr. Andrukonis opposed relaxing Freddie's loan underwriting standards. According to civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, around the end of 2004 Mr. Syron rejected the advice of Freddie credit risk officers who had urged him to stop Freddie from guaranteeing so-called NINA loans, which required no verification of borrower income or assets.

Adding to the absurdity of the FHFA suit, even Fannie and Freddie don't claim they were innocent. The two companies have agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement in which they don't deny misleading investors about the size of their investments in subprime mortgages and liar loans.

The SEC is still suing former senior executives at both companies for securities fraud. The cases may not come to trial until 2015, which is convenient for the government as it pursues the Fan-and-Fred-as-victims case with Morgan and other banks. You never know what a trial might tell us about how the companies decided to buy mortgage-backed securities sold by banks.

The evidence against Fan and Fred is so voluminous we could go on listing it for days, but the feds want everyone to forget all that as they try to whitewash Washington's role in the panic. They present the duo as victims to extort $5 billion from Morgan, which never needed a bailout, to make up for the $188 billion taxpayer bailout that Fan and Fred required. Little Orphan Fannie is one more political disguise for the bandits of the Beltway.

Cruz news

www.politico.com/story/2013/10/ted-cruz-delivers-stemwinder-iowa-ronald-reagan-dinner-98883.html?hp=l14

DES MOINES, Iowa – Sen. Ted Cruz exhorted the party faithful at Iowa’s Reagan Dinner Friday to join a grassroots insurgency against the Washington establishment, in a speech at an event that was part fundraiser and part tea party rally.

Cruz (R-Texas), who has achieved newfound fame since the government shutdown, delivered a stemwinder in which he blamed Senate Republicans for not holding the line against Democrats over defunding Obamacare, bashed the Washington consulting class, Obamacare and the media, and called on attendees to join the movement by signing up for his email list.

“I’m convinced we’re facing a new paradigm in politics,” Cruz, who spoke for 45 minutes without notes or a teleprompter, told the crowd of about 600 people at the Iowa Events Center. “It is the rise of the grass roots … it has official Washington absolutely terrified.”

“This new paradigm has been beta-tested, unlike the Obamacare website,” Cruz said to applause. “It was beta-tested in 1980 with the Reagan Revolution and it pulled this country back form the brink.”

House Republicans were “a profile in courage [who] stood strong and listened to the American people,” Cruz said, adding that Democrats who voted to give themselves what he called a special exemption on Obamacare would see that move come back to haunt them in ads in the 2014 midterm.

[Chromeo]

“This new paradigm has been beta-tested, unlike the Obamacare website,” Cruz said to applause. “It was beta-tested in 1980 with the Reagan Revolution and it pulled this country back form the brink.”

House Republicans were “a profile in courage [who] stood strong and listened to the American people,”

should literally be sectioned under the mental health act

[Tails82]

www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-team-knew-many-would-not-be-able-keep-their-health-care-plans_764874.html

NBC News reports that it was no secret in the Obama administration that many folks would be losing their health care plans under Obamacare:

"President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

"Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a 'cancellation' letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience 'sticker shock.'

"Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, '40 to 67 percent' of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, 'the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.'"

blog.heritage.org/2013/10/28/more-obamacare-heartache-tally-rises-for-americans-losing-their-health-insurance/

The hype and dream are fizzling out with the Administration’s big promise on Obamacare—that every American who liked his or her health plan could keep it. According to a new tally, nearly 1.5 million customers in the individual insurance market have lost their current health plans.

They’re losing coverage that many of them liked, with one woman in Florida saying the new option under Obamacare would cost her more than 10 times what she currently pays in monthly premiums. David Hogberg breaks down the insurance cancellations to date at the National Center for Public Policy Research:

-800,000 in New Jersey.
-119,000 from Blue Shield in California.
-160,000 from Kaiser in California.
-300,000 in Florida.
-24,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-13,000 in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
-76,000 from CareFirst in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

That adds up to 1,492,000 cancellations. And that number is low as similar cancellation notices have gone out in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. We also know that Humana has cancelled policies in Maryland. Unfortunately, no numbers are available thus far in those cases.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/28/obamacare-sites-fail-to-rate-insurance-plans/

ObamaCare sites fail to rate insurance plans

The consumer ratings are called for in the Affordable Care Act...Federal and state officials, though, largely decided it would reflect poorly on the insurance exchanges if some companies were rated and others were not -- and have not yet published them.

The controversy arose last week in California, when Western Advantage and two other highly rated providers -- Kaiser Permanente and Sharp Health Care -- complained the state failed to post their ratings because of opposition from lower-rated plans.

It just wouldn't be "fair" to rate people right now, so the government declares them all "equal"

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/obamacare-better-never-than-late

ObamaCare: Better Never Than Late

Americans have heard a lot of excuses about why the ObamaCare website doesn't work, but Secretary Sebelius's latest takes the cake. In her desperation, the HHS chief tried to turn the tables on Republicans, suggesting that the "political atmosphere" was somehow to blame for the website's faulty infrastructure. "Frankly," she said during a stopover in Austin, "a political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could... was not an ideal atmosphere."

So now the political environment is responsible for HHS's sloppiness? Does Sebelius honestly think people will believe that contractors bungled three and a half years of web design because they were distracted by the Hill debate? She'd have more credibility saying the dog ate her website. Either HHS botched the system because it was misguided, misdirected, and mismanaged -- or the whole idea of taking over one-sixth of the nation's economy was just too big of a project for the Obama administration.

As House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa pointed out, "They had unlimited money, $600 million to implement just to do this part, and billions to do the other part. The President has been poorly served in the implementation of his own signature legislation. So if somebody doesn't leave and if there isn't a real restructuring ... then he's missing the point of Management 101..."

Unfortunately for some Democrats, who insisted the problems were getting better, the system is still proving them wrong. The same data hub that Sebelius praised as "a model of efficiency and security" on Saturday was anything but on Sunday after another rolling outage left users hanging. If you think this is bad, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) warned, just wait. "The real problems will be when it's time to schedule your grandmother's cancer surgery," he said.

No doubt Sunday's blackout will be another item of discussion on Wednesday, when the HHS Secretary finally takes the stand to answer House members' questions. And if Sebelius is banking on liberals coming to her defense, that prospect is growing dimmer by the day. At least 22 Democrats are looking for a life jacket in this sinking ship, as more join the GOP's effort to postpone the meat of the law -- the individual mandate. Ten senators, including Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), have joined the growing chorus of leaders who think Americans deserve the same relief that the administration gave to businesses. As one liberal consultant put it, if this mess isn't cleaned up, "We will own this problem for ever."

And the "problem" runs much deeper than the website to the system at large. Honestly, the White House should be grateful that the technical snags are distracting America from the real issues -- like the higher premiums, shrinking insurance pools, cancelled policies, skyrocketing deductibles, and on and on. "There's been a whole lot of emphasis on what's going on with the website, but there's been a lot less on the people who aren't going to get subsidies," said a Georgia insurance broker. "Their rates are going through the roof." Another broker told the AP she's been "inundated" with phone calls from people above the poverty line "asking her where they can get their ObamaCare health insurance for free."

What most Americans don't understand (and what the President refuses to explain) is that "while the law provides tax credits to help make insurance more affordable, middle-class consumers still will have to pay at least a portion of the cost to get coverage." Instead, they've bought into the Left's mirage of "free health care," leading to what brokers are calling "absolute ignorance and hysteria." So when Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appears on television insisting that Democrats can recover from this disaster and "win the House," she's probably in the minority in more ways than one.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/28/dems_doomed_the_country_with_stupidity

The president of the United States promised...over and over again that they get to keep their plan if they liked it and they get to keep their doctor, and they can't. And they're all learning this. He promised them over and over again their premiums are coming down $2,500, and they're not. And then the Democrat that wrote Ron Fournier this note that leads off with, "Democrat Party screwed," said, "We will own this problem forever."

"The Democratic consultant said none of this is news to him," he knew all about what Obamacare was gonna do, "but he wonders why," now listen to this. I'm gonna go nuts here. Listen to this. This is not an inside-the-Beltway conservative writing here. This is a senior Democrat consultant who wrote an e-mail to Ron Fournier. I'll just read to you what Fournier wrote. "The Democratic consultant said none of this is news to him, but he wonders why Obama wasn't honest with Americans." Good grief, folks!

So now a ranking Democrat consultant is rubbing his hands together, he's really worried. He thinks the Democrat Party is screwed, that they're gonna own this problem forever, that it can't be fixed, and he wonders why Obama wasn't honest with Americans. The task is larger than I thought, folks. The level, the amount, the shocking tonnage of sheer ignorance at what we think are the highest levels of government and politics is almost irreconcilable to me. This does not compute. How in the world a Democrat consultant wonders why Obama wasn't honest with people. Can I answer it for you?

Had he been honest with people about anything, nothing would have passed. Had he been honest about his stimulus, it wouldn't have happened. Had he been honest about what he intended for the job, the economy, he wouldn't have been elected. Had he been honest about what he intended in foreign policy, he wouldn't have been elected. Had he been honest about what's gonna happen to people's health care, he would not have been elected. What do you mean, you don't know why he lied to people?

Is it an extreme statement to say the Democrat Party has to lie in campaigns? The Democrat Party cannot be honest about its intentions. That's why we don't have a federal budget for four years, because the Democrat Party does not want to spell out their policy objectives. They don't want to spell out what they intend to do with tax increases, the size of government, health care, you name it. That's why we don't have a budget, pure and simple. A Democrat consultant wonders why Obama wasn't honest with Americans, and people on our side say it took 'em five weeks after the immaculation to figure out who they're dealing with here? Man, are we screwed. There's no other way to put it.

For five years we have been telling people the truth about it on this show and elsewhere. For five years! You know what? The problem is, these people own it. I have no sympathy for 'em, but the fact of the matter is they have doomed this country with their stupidity, with their blind loyalty and their stupid hatred of conservatives drummed up by a media that knows what it's doing...

They had every opportunity to learn the truth about this.

They had every chance to believe the truth.

And because of their own closed-minded bigotry, they chose to reject the truth when they heard it because they didn't think the people telling them the truth were good people. They thought the people telling them the truth were racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe conservative extremists. So they weren't gonna believe the truth. They believed the people lying to them, and they believed it all the way up until the moment of truth when they found out they'd been lied to. And even with all that, the concern now is not these people and the costs that they're going to experience.

Oh, no!

The concern in the media is, "How will this affect Obama and the Democrat Party, and what can we do to mitigate that?"

www.truthrevolt.org/news/nyt-inflate-currency

NYT: Inflate the Currency!

"There is growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising fast enough"

For years, the Fed has been inflating the amount of currency in circulation by buying bonds, but that has had little impact on the underlying growth essentials of the economy. The New York Times now says that the Fed should focus on inflating prices: “Rising prices help companies increase profits; rising wages help borrowers repay debts. Inflation also encourages people and businesses to borrow money and spend it more quickly.”

Inflation hurts the poor most, since they are often the last to feel its effects, long after prices have risen. Those with savings are also harmed by inflation. America’s dollar is only strong thanks to inflationary policies taken by other nations around the world; if America begins inflating its currency, America’s import-export balance will shift, but consumers in the United States will feel the pain...Many economists believe the inflationary policies of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke helped lead to the real estate bubble that burst in 2007, resulting in the great recession.

www.truthrevolt.org/news/benghazi-unarmed-security-ignored-warnings-no-backup

Benghazi: Unarmed Security, Ignored Warnings, No Backup

"The Americans who rushed to help that night went without asking for permission and the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya."

washingtonexaminer.com/obama-doubles-hurricane-sandy-fund-to-10b-to-help-fight-global-warming/article/2537995

Obama doubles Hurricane Sandy fund to $10b — to help fight global warming

The Housing and Urban Development Department, in setting another $5 billion aside, stipulated that each grant applicant “include climate change impacts” and factor in the potential for a global warming rise in sea levels.

This is like if there was a mass shooting and the government responded by saying they would spend a billion dollars to keep us safe from unicorns.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/10/28/Obama-ex-chief-of-staff-joins-CBS-news

The incestuous relationship between the mainstream media and the Obama White House continues unabated with the announcement today that Bill Daley, President Obama's former Chief of Staff, is joining CBS News as a contributor...Add this to the list along with Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod joining NBC News and the 15 to 19 and counting members of the media who have joined the Obama Administration.

[Tails82]

www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamacare-woes-move-beyond-website-99044.html?hp=t1

Obamacare woes move beyond website

Wasn’t this hearing supposed to be about a broken website?

Tuesday’s hearing about the fumbled Obamacare roll-out was all the proof we needed that the Republicans are serious about their talking point that the law’s problems go beyond the website. They’ve moved on to other things — cancelled individual insurance policies, privacy concerns, and possible nasty surprises for young adults who may not know they can’t get subsidies.

By the end of the three-hour hearing by the House Ways and Means Committee, the bungled HealthCare.gov website wasn’t the star of the show anymore. It was more like one of those bit players who says a few lines and then walks off.

That could have been good news for the Obama administration if they’d been able to change the subject too. But as much as Marilyn Tavenner, who runs the Medicare agency that’s implementing the law, tried to talk up the law’s other benefits, the Republicans’ focus on cancellations and price hikes made it impossible for her to get any traction— and so did her own non-answers to pointed questions.

By far, the biggest focus of the hearing was the cancellation letters people with individual health insurance are getting from their insurers — as customers are told that their old individual insurance doesn’t meet Obamacare coverage standards, so they have to buy new insurance that can be far more expensive.

Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) asked Tavenner how the website is verifying that young adults under age 26 don’t have access to a parents’ plan — because if they can stay on that plan, they wouldn’t qualify for subsidies if they enroll in an Obamacare plan.

If those young adults aren’t warned, Ryan said, they could face a nasty surprise at tax time when they find that they didn’t qualify for the subsidies and have to pay them back.

“This is what I mean when I say rude awakenings,” Ryan said.

And Sam Johnson (R-Texas) raised privacy concerns with the website, citing an unlikely source — Mother Jones — that recently ran an article headlined, “How HealthCare.gov Could Be Hacked.”

If the committee Democrats were upset by the website’s failures, you could hardly tell from their questions...Some Democrats didn’t even ask Tavenner a question — they just used their time to make speeches and score points against the Republicans.

www.politico.com/story/2013/10/obamas-in-the-dark-defense-98994.html?hp=l18

Obama's 'in-the-dark' defense

President Barack Obama is briefed each day on a wide range of domestic and international issues, yet when it comes to major controversies, his administration’s response is often the same: the president didn’t know.

The most recent appearance of the tendency came Sunday, as the Wall Street Journal reported that Obama was unaware of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of foreign leaders until earlier this year. The story came on the heels of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s claim that the president didn’t learn of the problems with HealthCare.gov until after the site’s Oct. 1 launch.

The White House hasn’t confirmed the Journal’s report, and press secretary Jay Carney was reluctant to engage Monday on whether the president has knowingly been left uninformed on key issues. Pressed by a reporter who noted that some Republicans have been critical of Obama for claiming advance ignorance, Carney eventually dismissed the question. “Republican critics say a lot of things,” he said.

Indeed, the Republican National Committee on Monday called Obama the “bystander president.”

“Obama didn’t know,” spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said in an email sent to reporters soon after Carney’s exchange. “Last week, Obama wasn’t told how bad the ObamaCare website glitches were. Today, he didn’t know about the NSA spying on the German chancellor. Will he ever take responsibility for — let alone become aware of — how he’s running his government?

Even if it is excusable for Obama to be out-of-the-loop on certain issues, Fleischer said that with the Obama White House, “‘the president didn’t know’ is starting to wear a little thin because there have been too many in a row.”

“It’s almost as of the staff thinks it’s a good answer, which makes me think the president thinks it’s a good answer,” he added.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/28/obama_doesn_t_know_jack

Obama Doesn't Know Jack

We're now looking here at what is the ultimate destruction of what was the best health care system in the world, and what was the greatest economy of the world. And we've got people who now say, "I didn't know," and you did know. You had a chance to know. You didn't avail yourself of the opportunity. You're running around, you're calling everybody else closed-minded, you're calling everybody else an extremist bigot, and you revel in ignorance because it is you who are closed-minded. The truth was easy to learn about who Obama is, and about what Obamacare was intended to be. So if you'll pardon me, I think I'm sensing a pattern here, folks.

I've got a montage of all these media people saying Obama didn't know about NSA spying. Obama didn't know. He didn't know about the IRS. He didn't know about Fast and Furious. He didn't know that Obamacare's website was gonna be a bust. He didn't know anything. And that's the excuse? I just saw Gloria Borger on CNN, "Obama didn't know." As though that's something to be proud of? That is a legitimate excuse? The president didn't know that the NSA was spying on foreign leaders, and you want us to give him a pass because he's that out of touch and detached that he didn't know, when the fact of the matter is they're lying to us again. BS, he didn't know. How stupid do they think we are?

Obama doesn't know anything about Benghazi. He doesn't know anything about Fast and Furious. He didn't know anything about Syria. He didn't know anything about Obamacare. Didn't know anything about the NSA. He didn't know anything about Solyndra. He didn't know anything about how the stimulus was gonna go wrong. He didn't know diddly-squat. Congress had no idea that it would be this bad. They didn't know. The conservative talking heads in Washington, they didn't know for five weeks how bad it was gonna be. The political consultants, Republicans and Democrats, they didn't know. Nobody had any idea.

Nobody in Washington has any idea about anything...At least CNN's asking the right question. "If Obama didn't know the NSA was spying on Merkel, why not?" But it's such a crock anyway to believe that Obama didn't know. Have you ever thought about the way they cover for this guy? He didn't know...

And we're supposed to take great comfort in that?

And that's supposed to be an attaboy?

"Well, you can't blame Obama! The NSA says he didn't know." Why the hell not? That's a legitimate use of the NSA? They're spying on us, for crying out loud! Unbelievable. "He didn't know." But it's the Limbaugh Theorem. He didn't know about Obamacare. He didn't know about this; he didn't know about that. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know! "Yeah, he's a great guy. He doesn't know anything. Ha-ha. Well, we love Obama, and he doesn't know jack."

This just... Do these people have the slightest idea how they sound? "Hey, Obama didn't know! He didn't know! He didn't know!" Really? President of the United States didn't know? You think that's a way to gain respect for the guy, "He didn't know"? Their objective is to keep him out of trouble. That's all they care a whit about.

[Tails82]

"Romney's fault"

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/30/embarrassment-obamacare-troubles-draw-romney-into-political-fray/

Mitt Romney had an unmistakable message for President Obama on Wednesday: Don’t drag me into this.

Obama, in accounting for the troubled launch of ObamaCare, cited the Massachusetts health care law's slow start in an effort to keep expectations low. Romney, as governor, signed that law in 2006.

But Romney, who as the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee ran in part on repealing ObamaCare, emerged from his post-election private life to counter the White House message.

“In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country,” he tweeted. “Beyond that, had President Obama actually learned the lessons of Massachusetts health care, millions of Americans would not lose the insurance they were promised they could keep, millions more would not see their premiums skyrocket, and the installation of the program would not have been a frustrating embarrassment.

“Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally.”

Former Romney adviser Cindy Gillespie, who played a lead role in developing the Massachusetts law, also told Fox News she sees no parallels between the two rollouts...Gillespie said that, to ensure a smooth rollout, they purposefully did not launch a massive IT system without phasing or piloting.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579163541180312658

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...this month's mass cancellation wave has been the President's political goal since 2008.

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 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.

Once customers are herded into the exchanges, HHS has the power to further standardize benefits, further limit choices by barring certain insurers from selling through selective contracting, and generally police the insurers to behave like the government franchises they now are. The state-run exchanges in Vermont and the District of Columbia have already barred individual coverage outside their exchanges.

None of this is an accident. It is the deliberate result of the liberal demand that everyone have essentially the same coverage and that government must dictate what that coverage is and how much it costs. Such political control is the central nervous system of the Affordable Care Act, and it is why so many people can't keep the insurance they like.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/30/Sebelius-The-website-never-crashed

Sebelius: 'The Website Never Crashed.'

While Sebelius was testifying, the healthcare.gov website was down.

Sebelius also told the committee that President Barack Obama's promise that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" had been kept and that individual plans are canceled by insurance companies "year in, year out." She said that people could "absolutely" keep their insurance plans if they had not changed. She did not acknowledge that many of those plans had changed because Obamacare required changes in those plans.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/30/why_doesn_t_the_dictator_fix_it

Why Doesn't the Dictator Fix It?

Now, here's my question. If Obama is gonna go out now and play dictator, let's realize he could play dictator in any direction he wants to go. If he has the power to deny you your grandfathered plan, the one you liked and the one you were told you could keep, and if Obama didn't know all of this was going on and he didn't know all of these problems with the website, and if Obama really cares about being truthful and honest with you, then maybe Obama can play dictator and re-grandfather your plan. If he can play dictator and take it away from you, then he can play dictator and fix it, I assume.

If he's gonna play dictator, if he's gonna pretend the law is subject to his whims, then let's all realize that he'd have the power to restore millions of health insurance policies by waiving that's new Obamacare regulations, which is forcing insurance companies to cancel policies. I mean, let's be real here. The president of the United States has this health care plan, and it's supposed to be the best thing under the sun. Your premium's gonna go down $2,500, and you're gonna keep your plan. Everybody's gonna be insured; everybody's gonna get treatment. It's gonna be cheaper. It's a panacea. It's utopia, but it's not turning out that way.

Well, he loves you, he has compassion for you, cares about the little guy. Why doesn't he get mad at all these people being canceled and go in there and fix it? If he can play dictator and take things away, why can't he play dictator and give 'em back? Why doesn't he fix it? He knows people are being canceled in the hundreds of thousands. Why doesn't he fix it, if he really cares about you? He told us if Congress didn't give him everything he wanted he would simply do it himself. Obama has said, again, folks -- and we've played the sound bite -- "Well, if Congress won't do it, I'll just go in, I'll take care of it myself." So he's willing to play dictator.

Now, he's destroying the health care industry, he's destroying the health insurance industry, but he didn't know that that was happening. Now that he's learned that was happening, why would he want to do that? He'd go in and fix it now. And the coal industry, he didn't know what was happening in the coal industry because of his regulation, but now that he's learned how bad it is for the coal industry, he could go in there and play dictator the other way and fix that, couldn't he?

I mean, if he can waive regulations negatively affecting health insurance policies, I mean, he can do that as easily as he waived other parts of Obamacare. Why can't he go in there and fix it, when it's so broken? If he can do one, he can do the other. Why does he choose not to fix it? Why does he choose not to make it better for you? Why does he choose to leave you uninsured? Why is he apparently not bothered by hundreds of thousands of people being canceled? Why is he not bothered by all these increases in premiums and deductibles? Why is he not bothered by it? "Well, he didn't know."

Surely he didn't mean for this to happen, right? Surely he didn't mean for hundreds of thousands of people to lose their insurance, and when he learned that that was happening, "Oh, my God," he's so hurt and embarrassed and had to be mad at somebody, heads should be rolling and he should reinstate your canceled policy. But he doesn't, does he? I wonder why?

Environmentalism is a joke as usual:

www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/30/bankrupt-solar-panel-firm-took-stimulus-money-left-toxic-mess-says-report/

A Colorado-based solar company that got hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees before going belly-up didn't just empty taxpayers' wallets - it left behind a toxic mess of carcinogens, broken glass and contaminated water, according to a new report.

The Abound Solar plant, which got $400 million in federal loan guarantees in 2010, when the Obama administration sought to use stimulus funds to promote green energy, filed for bankruptcy two years later. Now its Longmont, Colo., facility sits unoccupied, its 37,000 square feet littered with hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water. The Northern Colorado Business Report estimates it will cost up to $3.7 million to clean and repair the building so it can again be leased.

“As lawyers, regulators, bankruptcy officials and the landlord spar over the case, the building lies in disrepair, too contaminated to lease,” the report stated.

The owner of the property tried to force a bankruptcy trustee to clean the facility, but the report said it would "place humans at imminent and significant health risk." One of the hazards is the presence of cadmium, a cancer-causing agent that is used to produce the film on the solar panels, the report said.

While the loan guarantees exposed taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars, the federal government lost a total of $70 million backing the failed company. Unsold inventory which should have been used to offset those losses, including 2,000 solar panels, mysteriously disappeared, according to the National Legal and Policy Center.

"If a coal, oil or gas company pulled something like that the EPA would send out SWAT teams and the U.S. Marshals to track down the offenders, bankrupt or not," the center said in a report of its own.

President Obama touted Abound in a July 3, 2010 announcement of a $2 billion “investment” in green energy projects.

"The second company is Abound Solar Manufacturing, which will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs," Obama said. "A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what’s now an empty Chrysler factory. When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year."

But less than two years later, the company laid off half of its 400 workers, and then, in the summer of 2012, filed for bankruptcy. It became the third clean-energy company to seek bankruptcy protection after receiving a loan from the Energy Department under the economic stimulus law. California solar panel maker Solyndra and Beacon Power, a Massachusetts energy-storage firm, also declared bankruptcy. Solyndra received a $528 million federal loan, while Beacon Power got a $43 million loan guarantee.

While solar energy is touted as clean, The Associated Press reported that many panel makers are grappling with a hazardous waste problem. Fueled partly by billions in government incentives, the industry is creating millions of solar panels each year and, in the process, millions of pounds of toxic sludge and contaminated water.

To dispose of the material, the companies must transport it by truck or rail far from their own plants to waste facilities hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of miles away.

The fossil fuels used to transport that waste, experts say, is not typically considered in calculating solar's carbon footprint, giving scientists and consumers who use the measurement to gauge a product's impact on global warming the impression that solar is cleaner than it is.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579165650383659112

One of President Obama's steadfast second-term priorities is his regulatory "climate action plan." If the point is to reduce carbon emissions, the evidence suggests he'd accomplish more counting on capitalism.

The federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week, to too little media fanfare, that U.S. energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions declined 3.8% in 2012, bringing C02 emissions to their lowest level since 1994. The only year since 1990 with a steeper decline was 2009 amid an economic recession. The 2012 decline occurred even as the economy grew 2.8%.

The EIA reports that the boom in natural-gas production "substantially reduced the carbon intensity of electricity generation in 2012." The switch to natural gas, mainly from coal, was so substantial that the resulting CO2-emissions decreases offset what was an "overall decline" last year in renewable power generation.

If you're scoring at home, this means that the innovation of the private oil and gas industry in extracting natural gas from oil shale has done more to reduce CO2 emissions than have all of the Obama Administration's subsidies, mandates and crony-capitalist schemes for renewable energy.

washingtonexaminer.com/top-veterans-affairs-official-takes-the-fifth-refuses-to-explain-spending/article/2538201

Top Veterans Affairs official takes the Fifth, refuses to explain reckless conference spending...Sepulveda did so even when asked routine questions, including whether he is still employed at VA and whether he is drawing a federal pension.

The committee spent more than a year investigating the conferences held in July and August 2011 in Orlando, which cost taxpayers about $6.1 million.

The VA inspector general documented as much as $762,000 in wasteful spending and other abuses by agency personnel involved in planning the conferences in a report issued in October 2012...In what amounted to a “spending binge,” conference planners squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars while treating themselves to pampering at taxpayers’ expense.

Planning of the conferences was so poorly done that VA still cannot produce a firm accounting of the costs, according to the committee report.

VA conference planners made scouting visits to Dallas, Nashville and Orlando, which they treated more as vacations than work trips. They improperly accepted gifts from hotels under consideration as conference sites, including meals, spa treatments, show tickets and limousine and helicopter rides. Some also took advantage of massages, manicures and pedicures at the hotel spa during the conferences.

The agency rewarded those who helped plan the wasteful conferences with more than $43,000 in cash bonuses and time off.

When word of the extravagance of the conferences began to leak out in the press, VA officials attempted to hide photos taken at extracurricular activities.

At one point, a conference planner contacted the Washington Redskins to find out if the team’s cheerleaders would make an appearance at a kick-off event to raise interest among employees. The pre-conference pep rallies were considered by Sepulveda to be his “signature” event, according to the committee report.

The IG concluded Sepulveda made a false statement when he claimed he had not seen the "Patton" videos prior to the July 2011 conference. A referral was made to the Department of Justice, which declined prosecution.

Of course.

[Tails82]

So yeah these get lengthy but I can't resist a good Obamacare takedown piece.

Laharls' unnecessary closure and division has unwittingly split my topics between Before Obamacare and After Obamacare. When asked about the end of our freedoms, some may point to earlier or later than this spot in history, but I expect many will point their fingers at this unconstitutional government takeover.

washingtonexaminer.com/irs-lois-lerner-gave-confidential-tea-party-tax-info-to-fec-violating-law/article/2538263

IRS' Lois Lerner gave confidential Tea Party tax info to FEC, violating law

The Internal Revenue Service shared highly confidential tax information of several Tea Party groups in the IRS scandal with the Federal Election Commission, a clear violation of federal law, according to newly obtained emails.

“These extensive emails and other materials provide a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies: the IRS and FEC,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And there is the very real question as to whether these documents evidence a crime.”

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/crock-of-ages-sebelius-plays-ignorant-on-abortion-funds

If the White House told insurance execs to "keep quiet" about ObamaCare, they certainly listened when it came to abortion coverage. Yesterday, even the boss of the entire system, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, managed a surprised expression when Congressman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked her why the agency was hiding coverage details from pro-lifers. Without skipping a beat, the HHS chief insisted she didn't know what she so clearly knew in 2009, which is that ObamaCare is the biggest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion in U.S. history.

"I can't tell you what I don't know firmly right now," Sebelius said. "... I will get that information." Are we really supposed to believe that one of the most zealous abortion supporters in the Obama administration doesn't know which plans cover the procedure she's spent so much of her career advocating? That a woman who fought for late-term abortions in Kansas (and threw a Governor's mansion party for the criminal performing them) would be in the dark after three years about whether the network she oversees is covering her pet cause? Give me a break.

...

Only under the Obama administration would the law protect the criminal and punish the innocent. Unfortunately, that's been the effect of one of the most explosive IRS abuse cases in years. For months, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has tried to find the IRS agent responsible for leaking their confidential donor list to their biggest political opponent, the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Turns out, the agency knows who did it -- but because of a loophole in the law, they don't have to reveal it. That's right -- the same part of the IRS code that outlaws the crime this person committed also protects his identity. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), who vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal, followed the paper trail all the way to this person and said he's astounded the government is being handcuffed from holding him accountable.

"What makes the situation even worse," Camp told National Review Online, is that the law, intended to protect taxpayers, is being used as a shield for those that perpetrate wrongdoing." And in NOM's case, the damage has been widespread and devastating. Once HRC slipped the information to the press, the documents were plastered all over the internet, triggering a massive intimidation campaign. Because the tax information included donors' names and addresses, businessmen and women who supported marriage became targets of harassment and boycotts -- or worse, vandalism and physical assault.

And it wasn't just 2007's donors who were affected, but potential donors as well. "A number of donors are concerned about their names being disclosed," NOM Chairman John Eastman explained. "...[O]ur donors tell us, 'We are fearful of giving money to you to help support the cause that we believe in because our business and our family are at risk.'"

It will take the Justice Department's involvement to hold the guilty accountable. And based on the Obama DOJ's pattern of lawlessness, I don't think many people are holding their breath.

washingtonexaminer.com/you-can-keep-your-health-plan-if-obama-likes-it/article/2538150

Joe Wilson didn’t know how right he was.

When the South Carolina congressman blurted, “You lie!” at President Obama’s health care speech to Congress in September 2009, Wilson could have been summarizing the president’s entire approach to passing and implementing Obamacare.

Most famously, Obama promised, again and again, “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period.”

Obama knew when he said this -- the dozen times he said this -- that it was false. NBC reported that the administration understood the law would lead to cancellation of about half of the insurance plans on the individual market (that is, plans people get outside of their employers). Although Obamacare allowed some existing plans to be “grandfathered” and avoid the law's requirements, the administration tailored the grandfathering rules very narrowly, maximizing the number of disallowed plans.

Again, this was deliberate...stealth redistribution. A central aim of the law was forcing those with more basic plans to buy more comprehensive plans and thus subsidize people who wanted or needed comprehensive coverage.

Beyond “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” Obamacare was passed and implemented through a series of falsehoods.

Obama pushed the bill by pretending he was fighting against the special interests. When the Senate passed the bill in late 2009, Obama thanked them for “standing up to the special interests.” This bill was supported by the largest single-industry lobby group in the country - the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America -- as well as the hospital lobby and the doctor lobby.

In a July 2009 Rose Garden speech, Obama specifically scolded the drug industry, which hurt the feelings of top drug lobbyists who were supporting the law. The White House afterwards assured these lobbyists that the mention was “an error” attributed to “a young speechwriter.”

The administration and its surrogates relied almost solely on misinformation to defend the law's contraception mandate. The Obama campaign claimed that opponents of the mandate were trying to give employers the right to prohibit their employees from getting contraception. Obama surrogate Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it was an “issue of whether or not to allow birth control.” This was a constant dishonest refrain of the Obama campaign.

Obama also claimed his bill would check the explosion in health care spending. The week the bill passed, the President humbly declared, “And everybody who's looked at it says that every single good idea to bend the cost curve and start actually reducing health care costs are in this bill.”

After signing the law, Obama continued to pretend it didn’t include any tax hikes for lower- and middle-class Americans. This was false. The bill curbed the use of tax-favored health savings accounts, shrunk the deductions for out-of-pocket health care costs, and created the individual mandate tax, the tanning tax and others.

The bill’s sleight of hand includes hidden taxes on ordinary Americans, like a new tax on health insurers. Given that insurers enjoy a captive audience (thanks to the individual mandate) and that other provisions in the law determine their profit margins, this tax will be mostly or fully passed along to customers in forms of higher premiums. So Obama has more money to spend, and taxpayers have no clue.

Honest Obamacare defenders say the president shouldn't have promised to let Americans keep their insurance when he really meant that if Obama likes your health care plan, you can keep it.

“Vast swathes of policy are based on the correct presumption that people don't know what's best for them,” Barro wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, defending this approach.

But this paternalistic mindset, so honestly expressed by of one of Obama’s favorite writers, can also explain why the Obama administration was so willing to mislead on Obamacare: If people don’t know what’s best for them, there’s no reason to deal with them honestly.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/10/31/obama_sinks_to_new_low_in_nbc_wsj_poll

[Obama] went to Boston yesterday, and he started ripping into bare-bones plans in the insurance companies and so forth.

You talk about people getting canceled and the insurance companies canceling people and the regime trying to blame it on the insurance companies, not Obamacare? You look at all of the new things that the regime, that Obamacare is requiring insurance companies to cover, things that they used to not have to cover -- medical devices, contraception, all kinds of crazy things that insurance companies have to cover now because of Obamacare mandates.

Naturally premiums are going up. They're not coming down. Obama's out there ripping into bare-bones policies, ripping into the insurance companies, because it's the only thing he can do. When the anti-Obamacare sentiment rises, that's all he can do is try to slough the thing off on the insurance companies. Bare bones is exactly what the kind of policy the free market would make available to people who don't think they're gonna get sick, who don't think they're gonna get a terminal disease.

Like the Millennials. A bare-bones policy is exactly the kind of thing they would buy in a free market, and it has been taken away from 'em because they're being soaked in order to get money to pay for the uninsured and the elderly and all that. Yet Obama went out and trashed these bare-bones insurance plans in his speech in Boston. This is another thing. He went into Boston and tied up traffic and caused the mess. He got heckled.

This was the day that the Red Sox could win the World Series in Boston for the first time since 1918. That's all anybody cared about in Boston, and yet he went in there yesterday, which was really a bad PR move. It made no sense whatsoever. Then while he's there, he starts trashing these bare-bones insurance plans. He said they were offered by "bad apple insurers." But I remember when we were all told that the purpose of Obamacare was to make insurance affordable for those without insurance.

One of the ways you do that is offer bare-bones plans.

You try to entice the young and the healthy into buying insurance, and one of the things, as I say, they're gonna want to buy is the cheapest policy they can get because they're not thinking of getting a terminal disease at 25 or 30, and they're not thinking of needing that kind of insurance. So it has been removed because Obama wants to soak those people. So it's Obama who's caused the bare-bones policies to vanish. Now he's out there ripping the insurance companies...It just senseless. So much of it is senseless.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/31/900-000-California-Insurance-Cancellations-Worse-than-Conservatives-Thought

900,000 Californians to Lose Insurance: Worse than Conservatives Thought

lol at this reporter for not getting it:

washingtonexaminer.com/americans-keep-moving-to-states-with-low-taxes-and-housing-costs/article/2538200

Where are Americans moving, and why? Timothy Noah, writing in the Washington Monthly, professes to be puzzled. He points out that people have been moving out of states with high per capita incomes -- Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland -- to states with lower income levels.

“Why are Americans by and large moving away from economic opportunity rather than toward it?” he asks.

wtf I don't understand why nobody likes my massively restrictive utopia!?

Actually, it's not puzzling at all. The movement from high-tax, high-housing-cost states to low-tax, low-housing-cost states has been going on for more than 40 years...Between 1970 and 2010 the population of New York state increased from 18 million to 19 million. In that same period, the population of Texas increased from 11 million to 25 million.

The picture is even starker if you look at major metro areas. The New York metropolitan area, including counties in New Jersey and Connecticut, increased from 17.8 million in 1970 to 19.2 million in 2010 — up 8 percent. During that time the nation grew 52 percent.

In the same period, the four big metro areas in Texas — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin — grew from 6 million to 15.6 million, a 160 percent increase.

Texas’s low-tax, light-regulation policies have produced a highly diversified economy that from 2002 to 2011 created nearly one-third of the nation’s highest-paying jobs. In those years, its number of upper- and middle-income jobs grew 24 percent.

Liberals like Noah often decry income inequality. But the states with the most unequal incomes and highest poverty levels these days are California and New York. That’s what happens when high taxes and housing costs squeeze out the middle class.

As Noah notes, “Few working-class people earn enough money to live anywhere near San Francisco.”

www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/31/pentagon-training-manual-white-males-have-unfair-advantages/

Pentagon training manual: white males have unfair advantages

A controversial 600-plus page manual used by the military to train its Equal Opportunity officers teaches that "healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian" men hold an unfair advantage over other races, and warns in great detail about a so-called "White Male Club."

The Equal Opportunity Advisor Student Guide is the textbook used during a three month DEOMI course taught at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida...The 637-page manual covers a wide range of issues from racism and religious diversity to cultural awareness, extremism and white privilege.

I obtained a copy of the manual from an Equal Opportunity officer who was disturbed by the course content and furious over the DEOMI’s reliance on the Southern Poverty Law Center for information on “extremist” groups...DEOMI instructors were also responsible for briefings at bases around the country that falsely labeled evangelical Christians, Catholics and a number of high-profile Christian ministries as domestic hate groups.

The subject of white privilege emerged in a 20-page section titled, “Power and Privilege.”

“Whites are the empowered group,” the manual declares. “White males represent the haves as compared to the have-nots.”

The military document advises personnel to “assume racism is everywhere, every day” and “notice code words for race.” They are also instructed to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism.”

“Assume racism is everywhere, everyday...One of the privileges of being white is not having to see or deal with racism all the time,” the manual states. “We have to learn to see the effect that racism has.”

The military manual goes into great detail about a so-called “White Male Club.”

“In spite of slave insurrections, civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the women’s suffrage movement leading to the 19th amendment, the civil rights movement, urban rebellions and the contemporary feminist movement, the club persists,” the document states.

DEOMI states that “full access to the resources of the club still escape the vision of equitable distribution.”

“Today some white people may use the tactic of denial when they say, ‘It’s a level playing field; this is a land of equal opportunity,’” the manual reads. “Some white people may be counterattacking today by saying political correctness rules the universities or they want special status.”

They said some of the ways whites may claim to be victims include saying things like, “I have it just as bad as anyone else,” “They’re taking away our jobs,” or “White people are under attack.”

The military concludes the section by urging students to “understand and learn from the history of whiteness and racism” and “support the leadership of people of color.”

West said the DEOMI manual reminded him of a similar program inflicted on the military by President Clinton.

“They came down with a new training requirement called, ‘Consideration of Others Training,’” he said. “The soldiers were supposed to sit around and go through vignettes and talk about their feelings.”

I truly wish the Pentagon and the DEOMI would return my telephone calls. I’d like to know how teaching soldiers, airmen and sailors about white privilege and fomenting racial division helps them protect our nation from the enemy.

washingtonexaminer.com/interior-chief-sally-jewell-says-obama-will-go-around-congress-on-national-monuments/article/2538305

Interior chief Sally Jewell says Obama will go around Congress on national monuments

More land to barricade!

www.weeklystandard.com/articles/down-and-out-vermont_764688.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&utm_medium=referral

Libs push drugs, state develops drug problems. Didn't see that coming, said no one ever.

Cruz news:

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/10/30/New-Yorker-film-critic

New Yorker Film Critic on Cruz: 'Large Ears...Straight Nose with a Fleshy Tip'

On Wednesday, The New Yorker printed a piece from film critic David Denby on Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Written about any Democrat, the piece surely would have been spiked for offensive quasi-racism.

Cruz has large ears; a straight nose with a fleshy tip, which shines in camera lights when he talks to reporters; straight black hair slicked back from his forehead like flattened licorice; thin lips; a long jaw with another knob of flesh at the base, also shiny in the lights…If, as Orwell said, everyone has the face he deserves at fifty, Cruz, who is only forty-two, has got a serious head start.

washingtonexaminer.com/ted-cruz-criticizes-doj-for-arguing-international-treaty-can-trump-the-constitution/article/2538205

Ted Cruz criticizes DOJ for arguing international treaty can trump the Constitution

Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution...That is a dangerous argument, according to Cruz.

"The Constitution created a limited federal government with only specific enumerated powers," Cruz told the Washington Examiner prior to giving a speech on the issue today at the Heritage Foundation.

"The Supreme Court should not interpret the treaty power in a manner that undermines this bedrock protection of individual liberty,”

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www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/01/internal-notes-indicate-only-6-people-signed-up-for-obamacare-on-first-day/?intcmp=latestnews

Internal notes indicate only 6 people signed up for ObamaCare on first day

Health care industry consultant Robert Laszewski told Kelly the numbers are not surprising, saying "clearly the White House does not want insurance companies talking about what's going [on] here."

"And given what was released tonight, the news that so very few people are signing up, you can see why," he continued. "If four weeks ago the enrollment numbers were public it would look very bad. I can tell you based upon the information that I continue to get this trickle of enrollment that you're reporting on for the first three days has really continued for the first month."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/11/01/richard_nixon_resigned_over_a_lie_nowhere_near_as_big_as_obamacare

Richard Nixon Resigned Over a Lie Nowhere Near as Big as Obamacare

"Obama Officials In 2010: 93 Million Americans Will Be Unable To Keep Their Health Plans Under Obamacare." This is a giant See, I Told You So. As Biden would say or John Kerry, this is a big F-ing deal. They've been saying this would happen all along, but what this does, folks, it confirms that the regime also knew that this would happen. Obamacare's disruption of the existing health insurance market is only just beginning and it's far broader than recent media coverage has implied, and we now know that the regime knew this all along. It turns out that in a report, obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, regime officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market because that's what was intended.

In other words Obama and the Democrats have been telling us that employer plans would never be affected at all by Obamacare. And it was a huge lie. The administration has known it was a lie since 2010, maybe earlier. That's when it was put in the Federal Register, which, the Federal Register, think of it as the federal government's diary. It's a compendium of what happens in the federal government. "Lisa Myers and Hanna Rappleye of NBC News, unearthed the aforementioned commentary in the Federal Register, and cited 'four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act' as saying that '50 to 75 percent' of people who buy coverage on their own are likely to receive cancellation notices due to Obamacare."

It's a purposeful, deceitful, fraudulent law. I think Obama's lie about keeping your insurance may be the biggest lie ever told by a sitting president. This is not an error. It was not a mistake. This was a calculated, purposeful lie -- and the mainstream media carried his water on this until just last week. And now? Now they're claiming that they knew it was a lie all along! Isn't it funny how they never told us, though? But now they say, "We kinda knew this."

In fact, they viciously attacked anybody who dared to question Obama's claims! They viciously tried to destroy anybody who was trying to tell people that Obama was lying through his teeth about this. In fact, I think the way the media has covered Obamacare from the start has been one of the worst examples of modern day journalism in my lifetime. It's an example of why we do need a free press, instead of a news media that's just the PR firm of the Democrat Party.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304073204579171762226617546

When Fraud Is Legal

Under socialism, there's no such thing as consumer protection.

Suppose BHO Insurance Co. decides it wants to corner its state's market in automobile coverage. It begins an aggressive ad campaign offering a too-good-to-be-true deal: Sign up with us, and we'll give you better coverage at lower premiums. We're so sure you'll love our deal that if you like the terms of your existing policy, you'll be able to keep them--GUARANTEED!

The ad campaign, with the company's charismatic president acting as pitchman, is a smashing success. The competing companies lose so much business that they declare bankruptcy or are acquired by BHO. But BHO's policies are more expensive, and they include "comprehensive" coverage most customers neither need nor want. Take it or leave it, the company says, reneging on its guarantee in the knowledge that state law requires cars to be insured before they can be driven on public streets.

You'd call that a bait-and-switch. The legal term is fraud.

Perhaps the president-pitchman could escape criminal charges by claiming he was just a figurehead--that subordinates developed and executed the fraud without his knowledge. But certainly the company would face at least civil liability, and its president could be held responsible for negligence.

It seems to us that morally speaking, ObamaCare is the rough equivalent of our fictional scenario. The most salient difference is a way in which ObamaCare is worse than BHO Insurance Co.: The ObamaCare fraud was conducted irrespective of the volition of the "customers." Obama and his compatriots were able to carry out their scam merely by twisting arms in Congress's back rooms.

Legally, however, the two scenarios are entirely different. Whereas BHO Insurance Co.'s scam is against the law; ObamaCare is the law. Thus there is no evident legal recourse for those who were injured by Obama's fraudulent promise...The regulation of commerce is a necessary and vital governmental function. Consumers and honest businesses need protection from unscrupulous market participants. That is nearly impossible when an industry is owned, or effectively controlled, by the government. To socialize an industry is to put it in a position to regulate itself. It legalizes fraud by recasting it as mere "political lies."

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/its-the-enda-the-world-as-we-know-it

Life hasn't exactly been rosy for the business community under this administration. First, the President's policies kept the economy in the tank. Then he strangled the financial and energy sectors by passing a health care law that's trampling employers' freedom and crushing their bottom lines. Now, as if those burdens weren't enough, the President's party wants to tell companies how they should run their business, who they should hire, and what they can and can't believe.

It's all part of the agenda called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, an innocuous-sounding, but republic-altering piece of legislation that has the power to fundamentally destroy Americans' First Amendment rights. Under this bill, the same community that said it wanted to keep the government out of its bedroom would be bringing their bedroom to work -- where employers would be forced to reward workers based on their sexual preferences.

Through ENDA (which FRC has blocked for a decade), businesses would be ordered to make hiring, firing, and promotion decisions -- not based on a person's qualifications -- but on their sexual expression. Homosexuals, cross-dressers, and transgendered workers would automatically qualify for special treatment that other workers would not.

Christians (and people who follow most major religions) would be silenced and forced underground, while homosexuals and transgenders turn the business world into their strongest political platform.

A lot of squishy Republicans think they fix the problem with a religious liberty amendment to ENDA. But as we've seen with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which the courts have shot full of holes), it will take a legislative firewall -- not an amendment -- to protect faithful Americans.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/01/cash-for-clunkers-program-falls-short-goals-to-help-economy-environment/

The Cash for Clunkers program that was pitched to the public as a big boost for the economy and the environment turned out to be nothing more than a lemon, according to a new study released by the Brookings Institution.

In fact, the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) known as Cash for Clunkers, did little to help the environment and was “far more expensive per job created than alternative fiscal stimulus programs,” according to new research led by Ted Gayer and Emily Parker of Brookings.

The plan, which was the brainchild of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, was championed as one that would stimulate the economy, create jobs and reduce emissions. But ultimately, all of those lofty goals fell short of expectations.

Experts argue that the small gains made in efficiency would be offset by the energy costs put into manufacturing a new car...While the study found that the $2.85 billion program provided a short-term bump in vehicle sales, the program only provided a small boost in employment which the government watchdog group says could have been done easily through other fiscal stimulus programs like reducing employers’ and employees’ payroll taxes.

www.truthrevolt.org/news/sharpton-blames-non-senator-palin-blocking-obama-nominees

Sharpton Blames Non-Senator Palin for Blocking Obama Nominees

...Despite the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin is not serving in the House or Senate

"Resist we much!"

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washingtonexaminer.com/fed-appeal-panel-says-citizens-united-might-end-obamacares-hhs-mandate/article/2538368

Fed Appeal Panel says Citizens United might end Obamacare's HHS mandate

The Gilardis own Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics in Ohio and are devout Catholics. They argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects them from having to comply with the mandate, promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Writing for the U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals majority, Judge Janice Rogers Brown said the Obamacare birth control mandate put the Gilardis in an impossible position to provide health coverage for their 400 employees.

“They can either abide by the sacred tenets of their faith, pay a penalty of over $14 million, and cripple the companies they have spent a lifetime building, or they become complicit in a grave moral wrong,” Brown wrote.

Brown also contemplated the possibility that Citizens United might relieve the Gilardis of having to comply with the HHS mandate.

"There is an appeal to this simple reasoning; after all, the free-exercise and free-speech rights are enshrined in the same constitutional provision, separated only by a semicolon," the decision further noted.

"Perhaps [the Gilardi's] constitutional arithmetic -- Citizens United plus the Free Exercise Clause equals a corporate free exercise right - will ultimately prevail," the decision held, without rendering judgement on that particular argument.

Citizens United, famously, established as a matter of constitutional law that corporations, like individuals, enjoy free speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.

"If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech," Justice Anthony Kennedy, long-regarded as the swing vote on the Supreme Court, wrote in the 2010 Citizens United opinion.

"If the anti-distortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it would permit government to ban political speech simply because the speaker is an association that has taken on the corporate form . . ."

The Justice Department, in defending the HHS mandate, effectively argued that people like the Gilardis, when in their capacity as business owners, do not enjoy their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion because they have taken on the corporate form.

"If you interpret corporations of the kind they were considering in Citizens United, 501c3s, then clearly they can make religious-based claims because all churches are 501c3s.”

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/01/Leftwing-activists-Obama-s-ATF-attempt-to-reframe-Fast-and-Furious-as-gun-law-problem

Left-Wing Activists Try to Use Fast & Furious to Push Gun Control

Rush Limbaugh predicted this years ago and said "don't doubt me." It's one of the few things I did doubt initially. Oh well, personal improvement.

As a result of Fast and Furious, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and about 300 Mexican nationals have been murdered with the weapons the ATF allowed to “walk” into Mexico. Many of the weapons have still not been recovered years later. The congressional investigation that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has shown that ATF willingly allowed—and helped facilitate—cartel-affiliated smugglers in their efforts to purchase firearms in the United States and then traffic them into Mexico.

Despite having enough evidence and laws already on the books to arrest and prosecute those so-called “straw purchasers,” documents and congressional testimony shows that ATF agents were ordered to allow the straw purchases to continue without making arrests. Even Holder, who has since been held in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress on a bipartisan basis for his failure to comply with Issa’s subpoenas for more documents, has admitted that the tactics employed in Fast and Furious were wrong.

In response to left-wing groups now trying to use Fast and Furious to promote gun control efforts, Gosar ripped CAP for not attempting to hold Holder accountable for his actions in Fast and Furious and the subsequent congressional investigation. "It sounds like the agenda of this forum, and the personal agenda of some of its organizers, was to talk about the need for stricter gun laws,” Gosar told Breitbart News. “Where has the Center for American Progress been in the fight to hold Attorney General Holder responsible for his role in Fast and Furious and the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and U.S. Border Patrol Agent Terry?"

“These groups want to have it both ways; call for tougher penalties for gun crimes then turn a blind eye to the gun crimes committed under Holder's watch,” Gosar added. “Justice is blind to the partisan agenda of these gun grabbing groups. The victims' families deserve better.”

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579169480315956614

JFK and the Seeds of Disaster in Vietnam

A U.S.-backed coup marked the triumph of politics over policy.

Fifty years ago Friday was the most important day of the Vietnam War, when South Vietnamese generals staged a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem at the behest of the United States. By wrecking the South Vietnamese government, the coup—and Diem's assassination soon after—set in motion the events that brought U.S. combat forces into Vietnam in 1965 and kept them there for seven years. Some of the mistakes and misdeeds that led to that day bear a disturbing similarity to current events.

The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, had pushed the generals into the coup in defiance of orders from President Kennedy, who declined to rein him in. Why did JFK demur? Because he put partisan politics ahead of the national interest. Kennedy had appointed Lodge, a Republican and likely contender for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination, to the Saigon post in the hope that he would be ensnared in a protracted conflict with no prospects of immediate victory, which could prevent him from campaigning or damage him as a candidate. When Lodge sought to foment the coup, the president shied from firing him because Lodge could then have accused Kennedy of playing politics with the ambassadorship.

Presidential subordination of U.S. foreign policy to partisan politics has occurred all too frequently in recent years. Journalists such as Bob Woodward and former Obama administration officials such as Vali Nasr have shown that partisan operatives within the current U.S. administration have dictated national security policy based on approval ratings rather than the national interest. The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the abbreviation of the Afghan surge and the rapid downsizing of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan rank among the most baleful consequences of this politicization.

Lodge and the journalists he relied on for information—particularly David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan —believed that replacing Diem with a more liberal regime would placate critics and bolster the war effort. Lodge dismissed the advice of knowledgeable Americans, such as his predecessor, Frederick Nolting, who emphasized Diem's strengths and warned that liberalization would play into the enemy's hands.

A nationalist respected even by his communist enemies, Diem had managed to hold together a fractious nation and had turned the war around in 1962 by empowering a rising generation of dynamic leaders. In South Vietnam as in most countries with an authoritarian political culture, liberalization signaled weakness and encouraged subversion.

After Diem's death, anti-government protests intensified. Ultimately, the government used far more force to suppress these protesters than Diem ever had. The leaders of the 1963 coup proved much less competent than the man they replaced. They squabbled and purged many of the government's best leaders because of past loyalties to Diem.

Vietnamese Communist leaders hailed the coup as a "gift," telling the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett that "the Americans have done something that we haven't been able to do for nine years and that was get rid of Diem." The ineffectiveness of the government that replaced Diem led to the fall of successive South Vietnamese governments, stimulating the North Vietnamese offensive that compelled the U.S. to intervene on the ground.

[Tails82]

washingtonexaminer.com/mitt-romney-cites-obamas-fundamental-dishonesty-on-health-care/article/2538382

Mitt Romney: Obama's 'fundamental dishonesty' on health care has put his second term in peril

Romney took issue with the president's repeated promise over the past three years that "if you like your health insurance, you can keep it," a promise that has proven to be false.

"The key, I think, that has really undermined the president's credibility in the hearts of the American people," Romney said, "is that he went out, as a centerpiece of his campaign and as a centerpiece of Obamacare over the last several years, saying time and time again that fundamental to his plan was the right people would have to keep their insurance plan, and he knew that was not the case."

"Obamacare barely made it through Washington, as you know," said Romney. "There’s no question in my mind that, had the president been truthful and told the American people that millions would lose their insurance and millions more would see their premiums skyrocket ... there would have been such a hue and cry against it, it would not have passed.”

Romney also noted that health insurance in Massachusetts "is more expensive than anywhere in the country," and predicted that "You’re going to see as a result of Obamacare costs going up dramatically across the country.”

blog.heritage.org/2013/11/02/exclusive-healthcare-gov-users-warn-of-security-risk-breach-of-privacy/

HealthCare.gov Users Warn of Security Risk, Breach of Privacy

Justin Hadley logged on to HealthCare.gov to evaluate his insurance options after his health plan was canceled. What he discovered was an apparent security flaw that disclosed eligibility letters addressed to individuals from another state.

After multiple attempts to access the problem-plagued website, Hadley finally made it past the registration page Thursday. That’s when he was greeted with downloadable letters about eligibility — for two people in South Carolina...One of the letters was addressed to Thomas Dougall, a lawyer from Elgin, SC.

Hadley reached out to Dougall on Friday to notify him of the breach. Dougall, who spoke to Heritage this evening, said he was evaluating health care options in early October. Dougall said he was able to register on HealthCare.gov, but decided not to sign up for insurance.

“The plans they offered were grossly expensive and didn’t provide the level of care I have now,” he said.

After learning of the privacy breach, Dougall spent Friday evening trying to contact representatives from HealthCare.gov to no avail; he spent an hour waiting on the telephone and an online chat session was unhelpful. He also wrote to Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Tim Scott (R-SC), along with Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC).

“I want my personal information off of that website,” Dougall said.

Last week, the Associated Press disclosed a government memo revealing the “high” security risk for HealthCare.gov. Those concerns surfaced at Wednesday’s hearing with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who claimed the system was secure.

“You accepted a risk on behalf of every user … that put their personal financial information at risk,” Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) told Sebelius. “Amazon would never do this. ProFlowers would never do this. Kayak would never do this. This is completely an unacceptable level of security.”

Heritage cyber-security expert Steven Bucci, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, said users of HealthCare.gov are leaving their personal information unsecured.

“Once it goes out over the system, it is vulnerable,” Bucci said. “There appears to have been a singular lack of concern for security. The site needs to receive and transmit sensitive personal information, yet it has less than state of the art security.”

“Functionality and security have to be the hallmark of programs like this one,” Bucci said. “The site has failed on both counts and has further weakened the confidence of the American people.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina informed Hadley that his current plan is no longer available and offered to auto-enroll him in a new health insurance plan. But that option would increase his monthly premiums by 92 percent and double his deductible. Hadley said he doesn’t qualify for any subsidies and won’t continue the process on HealthCare.gov because of the privacy breach.

“If I have their information, then who else has my information now?” Hadley worried.

“Justin’s story demonstrates how Obamacare’s flaws go well beyond a bungled website,” Jacobs said. “From canceled coverage to skyrocketing premiums to the federal government’s failing to protect Americans’ personal data, the damage Obamacare has inflicted is becoming more and more clear each day.”

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/01/American-Psychiatric-Association-Reclassifies-Pedophilia

American Psychiatric Association Reclassifies Pedophilia, Backtracks

The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) decision to once again reclassify pedophilia has led to further concerns that the professional organization is attempting to legitimize the disorder, paving the way for its defense and the recommendation of removal of age-of-consent laws.

In a press release Friday, Liberty Counsel...observed that in its newly published Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), APA “changed the classification of pedophilia from a ‘disorder’ to a ‘sexual orientation,’ but, following the public outcry, APA released a statement that it was a mistake.”

APA, Liberty Counsel noted, now states “sexual orientation” is an error and should read instead, “sexual interest.”

“The DSM-5 has been under consideration for ten years. It is hard to accept that its publication was a mistake or an error. It is more likely that the public outcry prompted the APA’s recent press statement,” said Liberty Counsel.

Staver said, “The APA has lost credibility with this recent blunder over the classification for pedophilia. The APA has become co-opted by a political agenda.”

“The implications of reclassifying natural law, whether it be for same-sex marriage or adult-children relationships, are far-reaching,” he concluded.

Interestingly, APA has also been severely criticized by Allen Frances, M.D., the psychiatrist who supervised the publication of DSM-IV. Though Frances may have himself contributed to the classification “controversies,” his primary criticism of DSM-5 has been that it creates even more mental health disorder categories, and, consequently, an environment in which an increased number of human behaviors are open to the potential of being declared deviant.

“It is a sure sign of excess that 25% of us reportedly qualify for a mental disorder and that 20% are on psychiatric medication,” Frances wrote in June. “Unless checked, DSM-5 will open the floodgates and may turn current diagnostic inflation into future hyperinflation.”

Frances argued that such diagnostic constructs “also medicalize undesirable sexual behavior and thereby provide a psychiatric excuse helpful to those who are attempting to evade personal responsibility.”

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/30/holmes-two-souls-of-obamas-foreign-policy/

One of the most puzzling things about President Obama’s foreign policy is his inconsistency. He’ll draw red lines in Syria and threaten military strikes, then call off the strikes and convene diplomatic conferences. If he’s not killing terrorists with drones, he’s bringing them to New York for civilian trial. He’ll bypass the United Nations Security Council to take military action against Syria, but demand its approval before bombing Libya.

There’s an ad hoc quality to Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. Some think he’s clever and likes to keep everyone off balance. Others attribute it to inexperience. Still others blame it on the distractions of his domestic agenda.

There’s probably truth in all these explanations. But let me suggest another partial explanation that runs a little deeper: The president is deeply conflicted about the purposes of American power. He zigzags between opposite poles because he can’t make up his mind which side is right.

Mr. Obama comes from a school of thought I call the “new liberal internationalism.” Arising with the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War, it came to dominate both the faculty lounges of America’s universities and the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Its main tenet was that America had sinned; in prosecuting the Cold War, it had become an aggressive, imperialistic power. As a result, many of the world’s problems could be laid at the doorstep of American power itself.

Evidence of this world view was rife in Mr. Obama’s early days on the international stage. Witness his famous “apology” speech in Cairo and his refusal to back the Iranian demonstrators for fear of ruining negotiations with the ayatollahs. You can almost see the college professor in the newly elected Mr. Obama, gleeful at the prospect of finally being able to “speak truth to power.”

But there was a problem. Now power was in his hands. And the daily intelligence briefings of threats to America were at his fingertips. The burdens of power, and the responsibility of American lives, now lay squarely on his desk. The erstwhile student radical had no choice but to realize that America’s enemies want to kill us not because we provoke them, but because they actually hate us.

Hence the profound ambivalence: The contradiction between promising to close Guantanamo but actually further militarizing President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism with drone attacks. The talk of peace and diplomacy, yet taking America to the brink of war over Syria.

It’s hard to know which Barack Obama will show up in a crisis: The one beholden to McGovern or a clone of Mr. Bush.

Even today, the old dovish side of the new liberal internationalism is far from dead. It is alive and well in the eager embrace of new negotiations with the Iranians. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Mr. Kerry is pursuing the same old “give peace a chance” diplomacy as secretary of state that has failed with the Iranians time and time and time again.

The “two souls” in Mr. Obama’s breast reflect the bipolarity of the new liberal internationalism. It knows America must still lead, but is unsure of how. It acknowledges the need for power, but feels conflicted and even guilty about exercising it.

This is no way for a great country’s leader to act. Maybe someday the president will manage to overcome the world view of his youth. But until he does, the country will likely be whipsawed between the president’s distrust of and obligation to the country he leads.

www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/11/03/kanye-west-wears-confederate-flag-jacket-says-it-my-flag/

The Confederate flag: a symbol of racism for some, but a fashion choice for Kanye West.

The rapper was spotted Saturday wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flag after being criticized for featuring it on merchandise for his current “Yeezus” concert tour, People reports.

When's the liberal boycott?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0V-wFbvE8

Senator Mike Lee gets a 10 minute Ovation

[Tails82]

Best health care system in the world is being destroyed.

www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/11/04/Report-At-Least-3-5-Million-People-Have-Received-Health-Insurance-Cancellation-Notices

At Least 3.5 Million People Have Received Health Insurance Cancellation Notices

Associated Press reported the finding, and caveated the number by adding that data is unavailable in half the states..."We feel like we're being punished for doing the right thing," said Ian Hodges of Lancaster, PA who just received a cancellation notice.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579177811453111326

How Low Can They Go? The White House attacks a cancer patient.

washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-new-talking-point-is-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-you-shouldnt/article/2538474

Obama's new talking point is: 'If you like your health care plan, you shouldn't'

This is a fundamentally flawed political messaging strategy...All Obama and his allies are doing by making this argument is insulting individuals who took time and effort to research their health insurance plans.

Imagine you're a mother who chose an insurance policy that you felt best met your families needs, and then you're told by Obama that the plan that you picked out for your family is garbage.

It's just a really tone-deaf argument that lacks empathy.

3094313-the-poor progressives

washingtonexaminer.com/obamacare-protects-insurers-from-competition/article/2538469

Obamacare protects insurers from competition

Big hospitals are getting bigger while small healthcare practices are going out of business. Drug-company lobbying is helping to kill more affordable insurance plans while enriching drug companies.

And insurers, who don't like the price controls and many of the regulations of Obamacare, at least get protection from competition. That's what Scott Gottlieb at AEI (where I am a visiting fellow) argued at an event today. AEI's Natalie Scholl put it this way in a memo on the event:

"By capping the medical loss ratio, you guarantee that only the incumbent players are in the marketplace. New insurers can’t launch without losing a lot of money in the initial years."

www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/11/04/jackie-mason-obama-liar

Jackie Mason isn't afraid to call President Barack Obama a liar for falsely promising Americans could keep their existing health care insurance under his "signature" health care reform.

The veteran comic did just that during a recent radio interview, going so far as to say Obama must be mentally unstable to spin such yarns on a regular basis.

"If this is a president of a country, how come he’s the only one in America who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on here?“

"Never did I expect a guy like this, the head of a country, to blatantly lie to your face, and then not only lie to your face, then lie about the fact that he never lied. Then lie again about the next lie he told. There used to be a time when you would worship the president, even if you didn’t like him. You knew he told the truth because he’s the president of a country. Now, he’s the only guy in America who would have the nerve to lie this much."

Mason added that if Obama wasn't the president he could be in jail or a sanitarium for his own safety based on his lies.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/11/04/quick_hits_page

UK Independent: 3 Million Can't Pay Electric Bills

RUSH: I've got a story in the Stack here today from the UK Independent: "Long, Cold Winter for Three Million Who Can't Pay Their Energy Bills -- Fears that 200 people a day could die as temperatures fall and prices rise." This is the UK Independent, and what this story is about, they're years ahead of us over there.

They have implemented carbon taxes. They have made gasoline and other forms of natural energy sky-high. They've gone in for all these windmills and solar stuff, and they can't produce enough energy anymore. They've attacked coal. They've done everything they could over there. They have a carbon tax. They have done everything they can to limit the use of fossil fuels. As such, the cost of energy has skyrocketed, and there are three million Britons who cannot pay their energy bills now. That is what will happen here if this isn't stopped.

What would Obama say about that if that were happening here? "Well, that's just a tiny percentage of the population," just like he's saying about the 15 million, and it's many more than that, who now can't get health insurance. That's just a tiny portion of the population.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/03/Civil-Rights-Leaders-React-to-VA-Dem-Lt-Gov-Candidate-Refusing-to-Shake-Opponent-s-Hand

Civil Rights Leaders React to VA Dem Lt. Governor Candidate Refusing to Shake Opponent's Hand

National civil rights leaders reacted to Democratic candidate for Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam refusing on camera to shake hands with his Republican opponent—right after confirming that he wants to massively expand government healthcare and not denying allegations that he thinks traditional Christians have no right to act according to their traditional-marriage views.

Virginia’s top Democratic candidates Terry McAuliffe (running for governor) and Northam have portrayed themselves as pragmatic centrists who are happy to reach across the aisle. But this video shows Northam won’t even reach across his chair.

When's the liberal boycott?

www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/11/04/Belgium-Considering-Euthanasia-Law-For-Kids

Belgium Considering Euthanasia Law For Kids

At what point do liberals stop killing people? Is there a point? This is how Hitler started.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579177843100832368

The Supreme Court hears its most consequential case so far this term on Tuesday, and the question boils down to this: Can the federal government use a treaty with foreign nations to vitiate police powers that the Constitution reserves for the 50 states?

In Bond v. U.S., Carol Bond of Lansdale, Pennsylvania concedes that she spread a toxic chemical she had obtained from her employer on the car and mailbox of a friend who had an affair with her husband. The chemical did minimal harm despite her clear intent to do so. But federal prosecutors intervened in what would normally be a state criminal case to charge Mrs. Bond with violating the chemical-weapons convention that the Senate ratified in 1997.

Yes, you read that right. Mrs. Bond was convicted of waging chemical warfare—unlike Syria's Bashar Assad, who has been charged with nothing. The treaty may not get its man overseas, but it did get Mrs. Bond.

She is now challenging her conviction on grounds that the chemical treaty's 1998 implementing legislation cannot rewrite the U.S. Constitution. The case offers the Justices a chance to uphold federalism against Washington's misuse of the treaty power. If prosecutors can charge Mrs. Bond with violating a chemical-warfare treaty, then they can use any treaty to usurp state powers. For example, why not use Nafta's rules on trucks to prosecute highway violations?

Without limits from the Supreme Court, the treaty power is a dagger aimed at the heart of federalism.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/04/NJ-couple-sues-Christie-over-gay-therapy-ban

NJ Couple Sues Christie over Gay 'Therapy' Ban

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303482504579177651057373802

Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia?

Climate-change alarmists warn us about coming food shortages. They said the same in 1968.

Warming is becoming a major problem. "A change in our climate," writes one deservedly famous American naturalist, "is taking place very sensibly." Snowfall, he notes, has become "less frequent and less deep." Rivers that once "seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now."

And it's having an especially worrisome effect on the food supply: "This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits."

That isn't a leaked excerpt from the latest report of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it may as well be...The New York Times NYT +0.07% then splashed the news on its front page Saturday. It's another tale of warming woe:

"With or without adaptation," the report warns, "climate change will reduce median yields by 0 to 2% per decade for the rest of the century, as compared to a baseline without climate change. These projected impacts will occur in the context of rising crop demand, projected to increase by 14% per decade until 2050."

If this has a familiar ring, it's because it harks back to the neo-Malthusian forecasts of the 1960s and '70s, when we were supposed to believe that population growth would outstrip food production. This gave us such titles as "Famine 1975!", a 1967 best seller by the brothers William and Paul Paddock, along with Paul Ehrlich's vastly influential "The Population Bomb," a book that began with the words, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."

In case you're wondering what happened with that battle to feed humanity, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has some useful figures on its website. In 1968, the year Mr. Ehrlich's book first appeared, Asia produced 46,321,114 tons of maize and 439,579,934 of cereals. By 2011, the respective figures had risen to 270,316,205, up 484%, and 1,289,633,254, up 193%.

It's the same story nearly everywhere else one looks. In Africa, maize production was up 247% between 1968 and 2011, while production of so-called primary vegetables has risen 319%; in South America, it's 308% and 199%. Meanwhile, the world's population rose to just under seven billion from about 3.7 billion, an increase of about 90%. It is predicted to rise by another 33% by 2050.

What does hurt people is bad public policy. Exhibit A is the U.S. ethanol mandate—justified in part as a response to global warming—which diverted the corn crop to fuel production and sent global food prices soaring in 2008. Exhibit B is the cult of organic farming and knee-jerk opposition to GMOs, which risk depriving farmers in poor countries of high-yield, nutrient-rich crops. Exhibit C was the effort to ban DDT without adequate substitutes to stop the spread of malaria, which kills nearly 900,000 people, mostly children, in sub-Saharan Africa alone with each passing year. The list goes on and on.

Environmentalists tend to have conveniently short memories, especially when it comes to their own mistakes. They would do better to learn from history. Just take the quote about the warming climate with which this column began. It's from "Notes on the State of Virginia" by Thomas Jefferson, published in 1785.

[Deleted]

Nov 5, 2013 2:47:11 GMT -5 Tails82 said:

Best health care system in the world is being destroyed.

For a second there you had me worried for the other guys, but naw, just a complete misunderstanding of the global situation on health care.

www.globalissues.org/article/774/health-care-around-the-world#Healthcareinwealthycountries

[Tails82]

Of course libs define health care as bad, they don't like anything about this country.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/05/obamacare-price-hikes-hit-red-states-hardest/

ObamaCare price hikes hit 'red states' hardest...In red states, premiums for 27-year-olds rose an average of 78% on ObamaCare exchanges, whereas in "blue states" that voted for Obama, premiums rose a smaller 50%.

“After discovering that the President broke his promise that Americans can definitely keep their coverage, many red state Americans are now finding out that their rates will soar under ObamaCare. This... proves once again that the President’s health care law picks winners and losers across the country,"...Health policy experts say the reason red states got hit hardest is that they had fewer regulations to begin with.

"Think about it this way, what does ObamaCare do? ObamaCare imposes a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme upon the insurance market. So if you're in a lightly regulated state today, all of a sudden it's going from a lightly regulated system to a heavily regulated system, and that drives up a lot of the costs," Avik Roy, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who specializes in health policy, told FoxNews.com.

The increased regulations in question include requirements that insurers provide things like preventative care and contraceptives, which ObamaCare will now require in all states.

and which Jen says is not happening

"Red states are subsidizing the blue states' Medicaid expansion... What you have is a lot of the wealthier states, a lot of the bluer states, are expanding Medicaid. And the federal government has promised to pay 90 cents of every dollar to expand Medicaid to include childless adults," the staffer told FoxNews.com.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303936904579179974072632600

The idea that Republicans have "sabotaged" ObamaCare is ludicrous on its face. Sabotage entails destroying or damaging something by subverting it--by stealthily undermining it from within. Republican opposition to ObamaCare has been neither stealthy nor "within." Every Republican member of Congress has opposed ObamaCare consistently, openly and honorably.

The Goldstein-Eilperin piece is well worth reading in its entirety, but the bottom line is that "the project was hampered by the White House's political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law--sensitivity so intense that the president's aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition."

I'd call that a cover-up. Barry had to be keeped in president, you know?

Then, hoping (vainly, it appears) that "more [states] would become willing after the 2012 election," the White House ordered the technical work held up: " 'The dynamic was you'd have [CMS's leaders] going to the White House saying, "We've got to get this process going," ' one former official recalled. 'There would be pushback from the White House.' " Election Day 2012 was one year ago tomorrow, or less than 11 months before the ObamaCare website would have to go live.

"Meanwhile, the White House also slowed down important regulations that had been drafted within CMS months earlier, appearing to wait until just after Obama's reelection," Goldstein and Eilperin report. Rules governing mandated benefits and calculations of premiums weren't proposed until Thanksgiving and didn't become final until February. A former Medicare chief actuary describes the delay as "a singularly bad decision" taken "for short-term political gain."

Things got so bad that two months ago today, when "White House officials visited CMS for a final demonstration" of the website, "some staff members worried that it would fail right in front of the president's aides."...This is in part a story of political incompetence and hubris. Obama and his allies in Congress were unable to win a single Republican vote--and it doesn't seem to have occurred to them that a monstrously complicated law enacted by a slender partisan minority might prove especially difficult to implement. As Obama himself admitted yesterday in a rare truthful statement: "Now, let's face it, a lot of us didn't realize that passing the law was the easy part."

That's what America gets for electing a president with charisma but no known skills apart (arguably) from delivering speeches.

Community idiot. But he's black so, free pass.

The exposure of ObamaCare as a massive consumer fraud--and of Obama as the Bernie Madoff of politics--is well under way. The realization of ObamaCare's economic inviability is beginning to become clear. The Wall Street Journal, which reports that "early buyers of health coverage on the nation's troubled new websites are older than expected," meaning there aren't enough young suckers willing to bear the expense of their elders' price-controlled premiums. Actually, some of us have been expecting just that.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/11/05/the_biggest_presidential_lie_in_my_lifetime

The Biggest Presidential Lie in My Lifetime

SPOILER: Click to show

RUSH: It's pathological. With Clinton it was (Clinton impression), "I never had sex with that woman, not a single time, never, and I never asked anybody to lie." And that then became a controversy over the definition of "is." Remember that? Depends on what "is" is. This is pathological. Obama is now saying he didn't say what he said. Obama is now trying, by the way, if I can do this, he's trying to implement the Limbaugh Theorem.

This is the latest example of the very thing the Limbaugh Theorem described: The president pretending to fight against the snake oil that he created. The president pretending to be opposed to the very thing he created...People are flabbergasted out there over this. "The president is trying to reinvent the history of his you-can-keep-it promise on health care." This is just incredible.

Don't forget the news of last week and two weeks ago. The White House knew, remember, Lisa Myers, NBC News, uncovered this. They knew that Obama was gonna go out to lie. They put it on the teleprompter, they knew, and they made a calculated decision that it was better to lie about it to get the thing passed and then deal with the aftermath, which is what they're doing now. They also knew, and it was in the Federal Register, 93 million Americans were gonna lose their policies. Ninety-three million Americans could not keep their insurance.

Ninety-three million Americans could not keep their doctor. They knew this. This was in the media last week and the week before. It was known that Obama was telling a falsehood, and it was a calculated plan to do just that. They thought that his goodwill that he had built up with his fans would sustain him through this and that he'd be able to handle the aftermath in typical Obama fashion: deny it, and then claim he didn't know it, and that he's looking out for you -- i.e, the Limbaugh Theorem. But the media is having a tough time. I guess there's even a limit for them.

These are lies. They are calculated purposeful lies. And this is really, really bad. This may be -- and I'm not exaggerating and I'm not trying to do anything for effect here. This may be the biggest presidential lie in our lifetimes. I don't know about things that happened when I wasn't alive, previous presidents, so I'm not gonna say that it's the biggest lie ever, but it certainly probably is the biggest presidential lie in my lifetime, and he knows it.

the Democrat Party has spent all of these years ratcheting this up and telling people and warning people they could go bankrupt, they're one paycheck away from bankruptcy if they get sick. They've done such a great job of scaring people and creating a crisis out of poor health...the Democrat Party has made this the most important thing in many people's lives. There are people who literally go through near panic each and every day over the fact they might get sick or their kids might get in a car wreck or something's gonna happen to bankrupt them, because the Democrats have told 'em that's what's gonna happen. The Democrats have told people, "You're one accident, you're one illness away from being bankrupt, and that's why we gotta do the reform! That's why we gotta do Obamacare."

Now it's Obamacare that's going to bankrupt people.

"He had to lie 'cause the public's too stupid to realize how good Obamacare is for us!" That's one theme out there. "He had to lie! He had to lie 'cause the public, low-information crowd, they're too stupid to see how good this is for everybody. He had to lie about it, in order to get it passed. He had to lie because if he told the truth the Republicans would have used the truth against him. We can't have that!"

OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really like that plan, what we said was, "You could keep it if it hasn't changed since the law's passed." So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you're grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we're saying is they've gotta change it to a higher standard.

RUSH: So the "I," "me," "my" president, all of a sudden now this becomes, "What 'we' said, what 'we' are saying." There is none of this, "What I said was, and what I told you, and what I did, and when I did it, and when I said." No, there's none of that. Now it's "we." Now it's some boobs that are gonna get canned for doing this. Now it's a mysterious "we."

Ron Fournier was just devastated by this. He writes in his piece today, " Watch the video of Obama reinventing history with the "what-we-said-was" construction. Notice how he is looking at notes. Remarkably, this was not an off-the-cuff remark; it was written, reviewed and approved by senior White House officials, then recited by the president." It was, he writes, "An orchestrated deceit."...All of those were on the prompter. None of those statements were off the cuff. They were all written. It has all been an orchestrated deceit -- and that, friends, is the entire Democrat Party.

Remember, now, folks, this lie is about one of the most personal things to people. It was a lie that benefited Barack Obama only. It was a lie for the express purpose of getting Barack Obama elected. It was a lie intended to deceive people into supporting this disaster of a health care reform plan -- and it is a disaster. It's an absolute nightmare. People are learning this. It is near criminal.

All of this was known and could have been widely publicized prior to the vote on this. All of this was known. It was known that Obama was lying when he said you could keep your plan, because the law itself contradicted that -- and there were many of us that were shouting as loud as we could about it. The people just couldn't get their arms around the fact that good old Obama would lie to 'em.

But he did.

He lied for his own gain.

He lied about the most personal aspect of people's lives.

He deceived them all for his gain, all for his party's gain.

The only people that benefit from this are the Democrat Party. They're the only people that benefit, and how do they benefit? They now control one-sixth of the US economy that they didn't have under their control, and they now control the way people live, because every aspect of living has a health care cost component to it that they can deny treatment for unless you snap to and live the way they want you to live.

There was no way you were gonna keep your plan from the beginning, and they knew it. They knew that 93 million Americans were gonna lose their plans and the relationship with their doctor. They lied about it. They knew they were lying about it...What President Obama has done here is just full out destroy the public trust. What he has done here is among the most outrageous acts a president can commit against his own nation. And that's why I say this is unparalleled.

www.politico.com/story/2013/11/trey-gowdy-obamacare-president-obama-99373.html?hp=r3

Rep. Trey Gowdy says President Barack Obama’s latest comments about his health care law could earn him another Nobel Prize — for fiction.

Gowdy hit the president on changing his language on whether people would be able to keep their insurance plans under Obamacare, after host Megyn Kelly made reference to remarks Obama made Monday regarding existing coverage.

The South Carolina Republican also criticized the president for not admitting he made a mistake for saying repeatedly for years that everyone could keep their plans if they wanted to.

“Instead of saying, ‘We made a mistake,’ even, ‘We made an intentional misstatement, we need you to forgive us,’ the response is to evade and to answer questions falsely and then the worst of all is to assume the American people are stupid enough to believe the explanation that he came up with today,” Gowdy said.

blog.heritage.org/2013/11/05/exclusive-marilyn-tavenner-did-not-speak-truth-under-oath-says-victim-of-security-breach/

Marilyn Tavenner Did Not Speak Truth Under Oath, Says Victim of Security Breach

A top Obama administration official came under fire Tuesday after her congressional testimony conflicted with the account of a man at the center of the HealthCare.gov security breach.

Marilyn Tavenner, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, promised a Senate committee that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had reached out to Tom Dougall, the South Carolina man whose private information was exposed on Healthcare.gov.

That’s not true, said Dougall, who spoke to Heritage following Tavenner’s testimony.

At a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this morning, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) told Tavenner about Dougall’s experience and asked her why no one from HHS has contacted Dougall...When Scott offered to give Tavenner all of Dougall’s contact information, she said she didn’t need it and confirmed again that HHS had already reached out. Tavenner even told Scott “we have disagreement there” on whether Dougall had been reached.

After Tavenner’s testimony, Dougall emailed Heritage:

"I have not had any contact with DHHS despite my efforts to contact them. They have had my contact information since yesterday at the latest. I’m sorry but her statement is not true."

The man who downloaded Dougall’s private information, Justin Hadley of North Carolina, told us he has been contacted by HHS, which directed him to a HealthCare.gov phone hotline for help...he remains unsatisfied with the government’s response.

www.politico.com/story/2013/11/reince-priebus-president-obama-99365.html?hp=r6

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus ripped President Barack Obama for creating a “culture of hatred” in which Democrats are likening the GOP to the Ku Klux Klan.

“It’s the culture that the president’s cultivated here. A culture of dishonesty, a culture of hatred,” Priebus said Monday on Fox News’s “Hannity.”

“I think he should take ownership over this divisive culture that he has created,” Priebus added. “Look, it’s the Democratic Party that has the shameful history. It’s not the Republican Party, and I think it’s about time that we also as Republicans start recapturing the real history of the Republican Party and not let these guys rewrite the history of equality, freedom and opportunity, which is what the party is about.”

Priebus criticized Democrats for not condemning such rhetoric. “No Democrat is out there in any sort of organized fashion denouncing this,” the RNC chairman said.

www.truthrevolt.org/news/nyt-force-religious-employers-hire-gays-lesbians-bisexuals-transgenders

NYT: Force Religious Employers to Hire Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgenders

"The Employment Nondiscrimination Act, however, has a significant flaw — a terribly broad religious exemption."

The federal government’s attempt to cram anti-religious values down the throats of religious believers continues apace, boosted by the intolerance of the Times editorial board, which sees itself as the great moral authority dictating ethics to benighted traditional religious believers.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/05/Dem-Robo-Calls-Claim-Cuccinelli-Supports-ObamaCare-And-Abortion

Claims that Virginia Democrats are purposefully misrepresenting the positions held by Republican candidate for governor Ken Cuccinelli have made one of the ugliest political campaigns even worse.

A Virginia Republican delegate, Scott Lingamfelter, said that he received a robocall on Sunday night claiming that Cuccinelli supports ObamaCare and taxpayer funding of abortions. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the calls are believed to be an attempt to depress conservative voter turnout and to use pressure to boost voter turnout among Democrats in the final days of the race.

In an update on its report of the story, LifeNews indicated that Cuccinelli himself has commented on the robocalls via an email sent out to his supporters:

"We have the most energized group of grassroots supporters I’ve ever seen in all of my years in office. Our momentum and excitement is contagious – Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats see that – and they’re nervous. So nervous in fact, that they’ve turned to desperate, outright lies to try to sway my hardworking and dedicated supporters.

"Of course we all know the truth – that I was the first Attorney General in the country to sue the federal government over Obamacare. I’ve been busy fighting back against Obamacare for years, and what has Terry McAuliffe done? He said it didn’t go far enough.

"Terry even stood by President Obama’s side yesterday and celebrated Obamacare after news broke that the President lied to Americans, and millions lost their health insurance."

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/05/Exclusive-Libertarian-PAC-Admits-We-Probably-Wouldn-t-Have-Spent-11-000-on-Sarvis-Without-Democratic-Donor

With the help of a rich Democrat donor, libertarians split votes hoping GOP will lose. But they're totally not libs.

washingtonexaminer.com/poll-shock-for-first-time-majority-want-their-own-congressman-fired/article/2538502

For first time, majority want their own congressman fired

Typically voters caught up in a “throw the bums out” mood have excluded their House member. But the highly-anticipated George Washington University Battleground Poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and Republican pollster Ed Goeas, found that they want to replace their member too, by a sizable margin of 58 percent to 26 percent.

Independents have an even dimmer view of their House representative, with 69 percent wanting somebody new in the 2014 elections.

Disgust with Washington is driving the push for a new crew in Washington. “The inability to solve problems in Washington, typically a nagging but distant concern for voters, has become so pronounced that Americans now say it is more important to address than every other issue, including jobs and the economy--a first in Battleground history,” said Lake.

Goeas, noting that 73 percent believe the nation is on the “wrong track,” said “this is the worst political environment we have seen in a long while.”

Lake said Democrats could be the winners if the current mood turns into a “wave” election, reinstalling House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in the House speaker’s chair...Goeas, however, said the GOP doesn’t have to worry much, even though Republican voters are frustrated with their party. He cited Battleground Poll results showing that the public believes the GOP would do a better job on several issues. And, he added, there are few GOP House seats in contention.

Goeas also said that Republicans benefit from an enthusiasm gap with 71 percent of GOP voters eater to vote in 2014 compared by 64 percent of Democrats.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/04/Holder-might-prosecute-Zimmerman

Holder: We Might Still Prosecute Zimmerman

Despite the complete failure of both local and federal law enforcement to find any evidence whatsoever of George Zimmerman’s supposed racism ending in the death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012 in Florida, the Obama administration continues to threaten prosecution against Zimmerman. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that despite Zimmerman’s acquittal in his second-degree murder trial, the Department of Justice was still considering whether to bring civil rights charges against Zimmerman. “I'm not sure exactly how much longer that will take, but we will get to a point where we are able to make a determination,” he said.

Democrats really want to send an innocent Hispanic man to jail. But don't think they're being racist against Hispanics. They only hate the white part of him.

[Chromeo]

www.salon.com/2013/11/06/wall_street_slumlords_outrageous_new_scheme_how_they_could_wreck_economy_again/

murder wall streeters. I mean that sincerely.

[Tails82]

So people want to make money. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, make sure liberals aren't in charge to promise bailouts with other peoples' money. Barack Obama is currently pursuing the same exact policies that sunk our economy, the same measures he voted for every time he had the chance.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/sebelius-back-in-hot-seat-on-capitol-hill-over-rocky-rollout-obamacare/

Felons could have been hired as ObamaCare 'navigators,' Sebelius tells Senate panel

The tax-cheating abortion-backer probably just called up her friends.

On the panel is Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was one of the architects of the 2010 law.

Until now, Baucus has been a very vocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act, but even he has had his share of doubt in recent days over the HealthCare.gov site.

Specifically, Baucus has a problem with security testing of the site that could potentially expose millions of Americans to cyberfraud or identity theft.

Documents have surfaced that seem to indicate Obama administration officials cut corners on security testing...The last time Sebelius testified before a House committee, she fell on the sword, personally apologizing for the failures.

“Hold me accountable for the debacle,” she said. “I’m responsible.”

But, like Holder, expect this rotten barnacle to cling to the administrative Titanic for the foreseeable future.

Speak of the devil:

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/06/Congressman-We-re-going-to-try-to-impeach-Eric-Holder-over-Fast-and-Furious

Congressman: We're Going to Try to Impeach Eric Holder over Fast & Furious

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579181924168682210

The Worst Is Yet to Come

"It has been disappointing to hear members of the administration say they didn't see problems coming," Baucus told Sebelius today. "We heard multiple times that everything was on track. We now know that was not the case." In April Baucus famously told Sebelius "he saw 'a huge train wreck coming down,' " a statement that proved to be an outrageous slander against train wrecks.

There is every reason to doubt the exchange can be made functional in the next 24 days. One reason is that much of the coverage and commentary tends to minimize the seriousness of the challenge by describing the nonfunctional system as a "website." What's not working isn't just the website--the online user interface--but the complicated system that lies behind it. To say HHS needs to fix the "website" is like saying your car needs repairs to its steering wheel and accelerator when in fact the whole engine is junk.

One immediate consequence of ObamaCare has been to multiply the ranks of the imminently uninsured. In addition to most of those who do not have insurance now, they include the millions of victims of the most massive consumer fraud in American history, Barack Obama's fraudulent promise that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it." For them, time is running out.

In the likely event that Sebelius's Nov. 30 pledge turns out to be just another vaporware promise, the number of uninsured Americans will start rising on Jan. 1 as the fraud victims' policies begin to expire. Assessment of the mandate tax against those people--and against those who are currently uninsured and unable to comply with the mandate because of the administration's technical incompetence--would be difficult to justify either politically or legally.

But we are fast approaching the point where the question of the mandate is a tangential one. Among those who are left without coverage by the ObamaCare fraud and debacle, some will become seriously ill or injured, and others will be unable to get care for pre-existing conditions. At that point ObamaCare will be not just a technical, political and economic disaster but a humanitarian one as well.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/obama-meets-with-senate-democrats-anxious-over-health-care-law/

Obama meets with Senate Democrats anxious over health care law

A Democratic source told Fox News’ Ed Henry that some of the senators in the room floated a delay of up to one year in the law’s implementation – an idea the president rejected.

The meeting could suggest that momentum is building for Democrats to force changes to the law. A letter circulated in late October among Democratic senators urged the Obama administration to delay enforcement of the health care law’s individual mandate, a recommendation supported by senators Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Mark Begich, D-Alaska, and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., all of whom were present at Wednesday’s meeting.

Also present at the meeting were Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Coons, D-Del., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Al Franken, D-Minn., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Mark Udall, D-Colo., Tom Udall, D-Ariz., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Michael Bennett, D-Colo.

Only five Democratic senators who are up for re-election next year did not attend the meeting. Four of those senators – Max Baucus, D-Mont., Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D. – are retiring...

A few weeks ago the Chromesian media called the Tea Party all sorts of names for wanting to do this. Are Democrat senators planning a terrorist coup?

www.ncregister.com/daily-news/families-face-moral-dilemmas-with-obamacare/

Families Face Moral Dilemmas With Obamacare

The disastrous rollout of President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), has challenged the president’s famous promise: “If you like your plan, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”...according to Catholic and other Christian critics, Obamacare appears also to say that if a person likes his morals, he can’t keep those either.

Scott Griswold, a Catholic insurance agent in South Carolina, said health insurance has been part of his insurance business for more than two decades. But the ACA’s mandates have made him decide that his conscience won’t allow him to sell health policies in the future.

“I’m going to continue to take care of the folks I’ve sold policies to in the past, but, morally, I just can’t sell coverage for birth control, abortifacients, morning-after pills and sterilizations,” he said.

New insurance plans under the ACA must include these services as an “essential health benefit,” free of charge to the consumer. These services, mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services, are the core of U.S. Catholics’ legal battles with the federal government...Griswold’s dilemma is emblematic of the moral discernment that many Catholics are facing, especially those trying to buy individual health-coverage policies through state or federal health exchanges.

As people shop on the exchanges, it is an open question as to whether the policies they can apply for are going to cover abortion. People who purchase a plan covering elective abortion must also pay an abortion surcharge.

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., highlighted in an Oct. 30 Capitol Hill hearing featuring HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the federal exchange does not show which plans do or do not cover abortion.

Catholic-run small businesses that purchase insurance for their employees through the federal and state health exchanges may also run into a similar dilemma.

“Eventually, we will probably have something on the exchange called ‘employee choice,’ where the employee will be able to choose his own plans within a certain level chosen by the employer...So if the exchange determines that they are going to utilize employee choice, then the employee could choose an abortion-covering plan, and the employer would have to pay toward that.”

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chairman of the bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, has been pushing a bill that would inform consumers up front whether the plans they are looking at cover abortion or not. The Abortion Insurance Disclosure Act would require insurance companies to disclose whether they cover abortion on advertising and marketing materials.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, urged Congress to pass the law in a letter, pointing out that the HHS mandate creates enormous obstacles, saying that “not only may pro-life people have a very limited choice of health plans that do not violate their consciences — but the law makes it all but impossible for them to find out which plans they are.”

“This should be a point of agreement between lawmakers who consider themselves both ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice,’” he said. “Any claim of ‘choice’ is empty if the law conceals the facts needed to make that choice.”

blog.heritage.org/2013/11/06/victim-of-security-breach-it-took-a-congressional-hearing-to-get-governments-attention/

Security Breach Victim: It Took 5 Days and a Congressional Hearing to Get Government’s Attention

"According to HealthCare.gov, I’m the only person in America that this has happened to. I find that hard to believe. But more importantly, I don’t know who else besides Justin in North Carolina has my information. There are just no assurances. … HHS finally admitted to me that my information wasn’t secure. We have seen all these stories that the system is not secure, so I have no faith in that system anymore."

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/06/Sarah-Palin-knew-a-death-panel-when-she-saw-one

Sarah Palin Knew a Death Panel When She Saw One

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

President Obama and his blind supporters who were busy not reading the bill howled in protest, calling Palin an irresponsible liar unworthy of the public political stage.

The media's alleged keeper of the truth PolitiFact declared the assertion the "Lie of the Year."

Now comes cancer survivor Edie Littlefield Sundby.

The ravages of Obamacare have not even set in yet and already she has been given what quite possibly will amount to a death sentence.

Dan Pfeiffer, who apparently has no soul, does have a Twitter account. He used it to dismiss Edie Sundby's concerns about Obamacare and instead blamed the cancellation of her policy on her longtime insurance company -- a company that has shelled out $1.2 million to keep Sundby alive.

"United Healthcare dropped her coverage because they've struggled to compete in California's individual health care market for years and didn't want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby," according to Pfeiffer's Tweet.

In other words: Sorry, Edie, but this is competition and if you fall behind, you die.

"That inferior care keeping you alive really sucked, enjoy nothing!"

So Jen, your response was to oppose the superior American health care system that was working for millions of citizens and had high satisfaction ratings (go figure when people are able to get the plans they want). Your implied message was hope and change for the sake of hope and change. Would you mind telling me how Obamacare makes things better for the millions it takes insurance away from? How does it improve the health care system for people who lose control of their private information, as it falls into the hands of random people, fraudsters, or the average government-funded navigators who by the way could be run by felons? How does Obamacare improve quality by shooting up premiums and refusing to provide conscience protections, making health care plans unaffordable and unconscionable to many Americans? Maybe you can tell us why everyone from Obama's stooges in Congress to the unions to his other various supporters love it so much they want exemptions and special waivers from The One's train wreck of a bill? Or maybe, I dunno, you can grow up and stop insulting our intelligence with your ridiculous, long-debunked 2009 talking points and proven lies.

washingtonexaminer.com/health-and-human-services-quietly-giving-unions-obamacare-fix/article/2538621

Health and Human Services quietly giving unions Obamacare fix

The Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a final rule last week that includes an intention to exempt some union insurance plans from a substantial new tax known as the reinsurance fee.

As part of Obamacare, the tax was supposed to be levied against all insurance plans to share the risk for insurers taking on the sickest patients next year.

But unions, which were among the strongest supporters of the Affordable Care Act when it passed in 2010, had pressed the administration for changes to the law, arguing that the measure is harmful to insurance plans accessed by more than 15 million union members and would raise costs.

“It's outrageous that the Obama administration is ignoring the plain language of the law he insisted on to deliver another bailout to the union bosses,” said Fred Wszolek, spokesman of the Workforce Fairness Institute. “Either follow the law and tax every insurance plan, or repeal the whole thing, but there's no legal basis for another expensive favor for big labor.”

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303936904579175611438302596

When ObamaCare is under attack, its defenders retreat to several well-worn claims. Among them is a provision that compels insurance companies to allow parents to keep their "children" ages of 21 to 26 on their family policies.

Yet this part of the Affordable Care Act was not engineered in response to any noticeable interest group. Instead, political considerations are responsible for the provision—which is an unnecessary and a deceptive ripoff of the "young healthies."

The first consideration is that young adults facing chronic unemployment—thanks to government policies that have retarded economic growth—commonly return to their parents' home. Understanding that this is what the economic "new normal" looks like, the Obama administration sought to avoid a potential political storm by providing a benefit normally connected to holding a job for one of its most reliable support groups.

ObamaCare's financing won't work unless "young healthies" (or their parents) pay through the nose for coverage under parental plans or via the individual mandate. The 18-26 age group is the lowest user of care, the least costly to cover and the most profitable of all health-insurance coverage. Yet the group faces extraordinarily high ObamaCare rates.

A Manhattan Institute analysis of Health and Human Services numbers notes that a 27-year-old male will pay 99% higher premiums under ObamaCare than he would under previously prevailing market rates...Young men and women who pay a fine instead of buying coverage are not making an irrational choice. They know how little care they need and use. They also may be beginning to understand that the high cost of their plans reflects the redistribution of their wealth to older people and a bunch of mandated services that don't make sense for them.

Election things

SPOILER: Click to show

www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/how-the-gop-blue-it-in-virginia

Late last night, politicos clacked away at their computers, performing their own postmortems on a race that proved to be more unpredictable than anyone expected. Double-digit leads, the ObamaCare effect, gender gaps -- they all managed to turn the media's foregone conclusions about Democrats' invincibility on their head.

Despite his deadbeat party, lackluster fundraising, a third-party candidate (funded, it turns out, by Obama loyalists!), and a constant barrage of lies, Ken Cuccinelli finished last night's race only three points behind liberal Terry McAuliffe. He won over Independents (47-38%), outperformed expectations on women (41-52%, while handily winning among married women 51-42%), and swept the 53% of voters opposed to ObamaCare (by a whopping 81%).

By late Tuesday night, the candidate who enjoyed a double-digit lead heading into the election -- McAuliffe -- didn't even win a majority of the vote. That's not, as the media would have you believe, the result of a flawed candidate in Cuccinelli -- but a flawed campaign. Unfortunately for Virginia conservatives, Ken's biggest opponent was never Terry McAuliffe. It was his own party. While the Democrat watched millions stream in from outside groups, the state's biggest GOP donors walked away from Cuccinelli -- and took their money with them.

Outspent an estimated 10:1, Ken had neither the cash flow nor the infrastructure to beat back the Left's constant drubbing (Democrats ran more than 5,600 spots on the abortion issue alone!). Even when McAuliffe hitched his campaign to a reviled law like ObamaCare (which even the President refused to mention on the stump), Democrats rallied around their own. And what did the Republican Establishment do? It starved their candidate, who happened to be one of the most prominent leaders in the legal fight against ObamaCare. That kind of reckless abandonment is inexcusable for a party that claims its first priority is repealing the policy that Ken Cuccinelli took to the Supreme Court.

when push comes to shove, NRO's Jonah Goldberg explains, it's the grassroots who come out on the losing end. "For all the talk about how the base needs to cooperate with the Establishment more, it's worth remembering that the base almost always does its part on Election Day. It's the Establishment that is less reliable in returning the favor."

-outspent
-still wins independents
-still wins women
-still wins the youth vote

Third parties are once again, useless

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/06/Christie-Wins-60-Of-Vote-After-Vetoing-Planned-Parenthood-Funding-Five-Times

Christie Wins 60% of Vote After Vetoing Planned Parenthood Funding Five Times...Christie decisively won a second term, with 56 percent of women, 45 percent of Hispanics, and 21 percent of black voters backing him. He defeated Democrat Barbara Buono, a female, pro-abortion candidate who, supposedly, is just the right kind of candidate Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Emily’s List said would win.

www.truthrevolt.org/news/hard-numbers-media-forced-compare-obama-tobush

Hard Numbers: Media Forced to Compare Obama to...Bush

Yahoo News’ Erica Pfeiffer presents the hard reality that five years into the presidency, the American people disapprove of Obama as much as they did Bush. In fact, a little more.

"When President Obama first ran for the White House in 2008, it was with the promise to turn the page on the presidency of George W. Bush. But for all their political differences, it turns out the American public pretty much view the two men in the same light, according to new polling data...In fact, Bush comes out one point ahead, 40 percent to [39] percent, respectively."

The grim findings come from the most recent Gallup poll, which, as it did for Bush, shows a steady decline for Obama since his reelection. If this Bush-like trend continues for the president, 2016 might be a bad, bad year for Democrats. Regardless, by year five the One has proven to be just another polling statistic.