Conservative commentator Marc Thiessen accused President Obama of a “bold-faced lie” Monday after Fox News confirmed the White House knew as early as 2010 that over 10 million people would lose their current doctor under ObamaCare.
Megyn Kelly reported Monday on “The Kelly File” that an IRS regulation pushed by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 estimated that millions would be unable to keep their health insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act.
10/29/13 5:23 AM
Posted by Judson Phillips on October 22, 2013 at 7:18am in Tea Party Nation Forum
Thank Barack Obama?
Are we nuts?
There is one rule we should all live by. Never complain about incompetent opposition. They could get better.
Barack Obama has done something that we should be grateful for.
What is it?
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are the only Democrats to win reelection in the last sixty years. There are some comparisons between the two. Perhaps we should be grateful that Bill Clinton is not in the White House because Amnesty would be a done deal if he were.
One of the major differences between Clinton and Obama is that Clinton loved the political process. He would get in there, back slap, shake hands, cut deals and do what was necessary to push his programs through.
Obama is the world’s greatest narcissist. He believes he is above all of that. He proved that when he was first elected and the Republicans wanted compromise. His response was, “I won.”
In the recent debt-ceiling showdown, Obama refused to compromise. He knew the Republicans would cave and eventually they did.
But there were consequences to that.
Obama desperately wants Amnesty to pass. He knows that if it does pass, the Democrats will control American government in perpetuity, much as the Democrats control Chicago. He knows that if Amnesty is passed, it will forever change America from the land of liberty to just another mediocre nation saddled with the yoke of socialism.
Unfortunately for Obama, he needs the Republicans to pass Amnesty. Many of the crony capitalist Republicans don’t care that Obama basically spit in their faces on the debt ceiling deal. They want to work with him on Amnesty.
Why any Republican would support Amnesty right now is a mystery. It is suicide for the nation and suicide for the Republican Party.
But Obama’s narcissism has caught up with him.
At least one important Republican in the House of Representatives is now saying no to Amnesty.
Texas Congressman Ted Poe, who is the Vice Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is now saying he will not go along with any deal on immigration.
Why?
He cites Obama’s winner take all strategy.
Poe points out that Obama has a simply philosophy. Those who disagree with him must surrender. In Obama’s world, compromise is what the other side does. Barack Obama does not compromise. That is beneath him.
Poe isn’t the only one. Just a few days ago, Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador came out and said the obvious. He said that Obama wanted to use Amnesty to destroy the Republican Party.
Republicans in the House of Representatives seem to be finally seeing the light. Amnesty is a bad idea on general principles but with Barack Obama in the White House, it is a disaster.
As with everything else Obama does, it is not about policy or fairness. The goal is always political.
Obama wants Amnesty because he knows it will destroy the Republican Party. The fact that people like House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor either don’t get it or purposefully ignore that is just another reason why they must go.
America is stuck with Barack Obama for another three years. There is nothing we can do about that. We are not stuck with John Boehner and Eric Cantor for another three.
Let’s not complain about incompetent leadership on the other side. They could get better. Meanwhile, let’s work on getting competent leadership on the conservative side.
When they get better, America wins!
John Stossel | Oct 16, 2013
These days, being seen as a victim can be useful. You immediately claim the moral high ground. Some people want to help you. Lawyers and politicians brag that they force others to help you.
This turns some people into whiners with little sense of responsibility.
Joe Biden's niece was arrested recently for throwing a punch at a cop. The New York Post says she's addicted to alcohol and pills, but rather than take responsibility for her actions, she blamed them on the "pressure she faces" because her uncle is vice president.
Give me a break. America was founded by people who were the opposite of victims, by people with grit. Overcoming obstacles is the route to prosperity -- and happiness, too.
I had to overcome stuttering to work as a TV reporter. Had today's disability laws existed when I began work, would I have overcome my stuttering problem? Maybe not. I might have demanded my employer "accommodate" my disability by providing me a job that didn't demand being on-air.
Now that the laws exist, it's no coincidence that more Americans say they are disabled.
Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute writes that this is part of a disability-industrial complex : collusion between specialty law firms, doctors vouching for applicants with dubious claims and federal administrative law judges awarding benefits.
It changes the way people calculate their options.
Despite improved medical care and the workforce's dramatic shift from physical to mental labor, the number of Americans claiming disability keeps growing. You start to feel like a sucker if you're not one of them.
On my TV show, DeHaven said today even poor parents "try to get their kids on psychotropic medications in hopes of qualifying for a check that goes to Dad and Mom."
Since the 80s, there has been a 300 percent increase in disability claims for hard-to-prove illnesses like back pain, stress and other "non-exertional restrictions." Over the past two decades, the number of people receiving Social Security disability benefits grew from 4 million to 11 million.
"It's like any other government program," says DeHaven. "You start off with good intentions and then it becomes something that it was never supposed to be."
We all want to help the genuinely disabled, but a wide range of subjective ailments are affected by attitude. Labeling people victims, telling them they need help, teaches some to think like victims. Social scientists call that "learned helplessness."
Private charities are pretty good at separating real victims from malingerers. But government is not. Its one-size-fits-all rules encourage people to act like victims.
Whether people have real physical ailments or just see the economic deck stacked against them, the most damaging thing say to them is: Give up. You can't make it on your own. Wait for help.
Pessimism changes what we think is possible. It shrinks our horizons.
We in the media keep an eye out for people who are victimized. Sometimes that's a valuable service. But it often means looking for victims when they really aren't there. This makes reporters feel like heroes -- noble sentries protecting the powerless.
Even the newly crowned Miss America, Nina Davuluri, who sure seems like a winner by conventional standards, was portrayed as a victim in many news stories. Since she's the first Miss America of Indian descent, some trolls on Twitter made racist remarks.
But skeptical writer Gavin McInnes did a little digging. He found those racist Twitter users were almost certainly just irresponsible little kids. One of the media's most quoted tweets, "You look like a terrorist," was sent by a Twitter user with zerofollowers.
If millions of people are familiar with that remark now -- and some Americans grow up a little bit more frightened that they will be victimized -- it will be largely because media hyped racism rather than because of the handful of racists themselves.
America is full of success stories. But if we obsess over stories about victimhood, that is what we'll get.
Guards at federal prisons are not being paid during the government shutdown, but still have to show up to work, while inmates continue to receive checks for the work they do at the facility.
Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.
The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.
A soldier who attended the briefing contacted me and sent me a photograph of a slide show presentation that listed AFA as a domestic hate group. Under the AFA headline is a photograph of Westboro Baptist Church preacher Fred Phelps holding a sign reading “No special law for f***.”
American Family Association has absolutely no affiliation with the controversial church group known for picketing the funerals of American service members.
“I had to show Americans what our soldiers are now being taught,” said the soldier who asked not to be identified. “I couldn’t just let this one pass.”
The soldier said a chaplain interrupted the briefing and challenged the instructor’s assertion that AFA is a hate group.
“The instructor said AFA could be considered a hate group because they don’t like gays,” the soldier told me. “The slide was talking about how AFA refers to gays as sinners and heathens and derogatory terms.”
The soldier, who is an evangelical Christian, said the chaplain defended the Christian ministry.
“He kept asking the instructor, ‘Are you sure about that, son? Are you sure about that?’” he said, recalling the back and forth.
Later in the briefing, the soldiers were reportedly told that they could face punishment for participating in organizations that are considered hate groups.
That considered, the soldier contacted me because he is a financial contributor to the AFA ministry.
“I donate to AFA as often as I can,” he said. “Am I going to be punished? I listen to American Family Radio all day. If they hear it on my radio, will I be faced with a Uniformed Code of Military Justice charge?”
The soldier said he was “completely taken back by this blatant attack not only on the AFA but Christians and our beliefs.”
It’s not the first time the Army has accused conservative Christian groups of being domestic hate groups.
Earlier this year, I exposed Army briefings that classified evangelical Christians and Catholics as examples of religious extremism.
Another briefing told officers to pay close attention to troops who supported groups like AFA and the Family Research Council.
One officer said the two Christian ministries did not “share our Army Values.”
“When we see behaviors that are inconsistent with Army Values – don’t just walk by – do the right thing and address the concern before it becomes a problem,” the officer wrote in an email to his subordinates.
At the time the military assured me those briefings were isolated incidents and did not reflect official Army policy.
If that’s true, how do they explain what happened at Camp Shelby?
I contacted the Pentagon for an answer but they referred me to Army public affairs. And so far – they haven’t returned my calls.
And their claim that the classifications are “isolated” is not washing with AFA.
“The American Family Association has received numerous accounts of military installations as well as law enforcement agencies using a list compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which wrongfully identifies and defames AFA,” reads a statement they sent me.
Bryan Fischer hosts a talk show on American Family Radio. He called the Army’s allegations “libelous, slanderous and blatantly false.”
“This mischaracterization of AFA is reprehensible and inexcusable,” he told me. “We have many military members who are a part of the AFA network who know these accusations are a tissue of lies.”
Fischer said their views on gay marriage and homosexuality are not hate – it’s simply a disagreement.
“If our military wasn’t headed by a commander-in-chief who is hostile to Christian faith, these allegations would be laughed off every military base in the world,” he said.
Hiram Sasser, of the Liberty Institute, told me the Army’s briefing is a smear.
He recalled what President Obama said last year when Muslim extremists attacked our diplomatic outpost in Libya.
“Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths,” President Obama said. “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”
Sasser said he wished the president and the Army would treat the American Family Association with the same deference and respect they show those who mean to harm us.
“Why must the Army under this administration continue to attack Americans of faith and smear them?” Sasser wondered.
I fear the answer to that question.
Because it appears the Obama administration is separating the military from the American people – and planting seeds of doubt about Christians and some of our nation’s most prominent Christian ministries.
Posted by Judson Phillips on October 12, 2013 at 7:18am in Tea Party Nation Forum
To the Tea Party and the Conservative movement:
As the sun rises over Washington DC today, in the brisk Autumn breeze, the Republican Party’s freshly laundered white flag of surrender flies again.
The Republican leadership, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and many of the other usual suspects are busy working out a deal which amounts to little more than the unconditional surrender of the Republican Party to Barack Obama.
While the GOP was allegedly fighting this shutdown over a year delay in the implementation of Obamacare, they will not get that in the final deal. In fact, the GOP will get nothing. Obamacare will be fully funded. The Debt Ceiling will be raised. Spending will increase. It will be business is usual in Washington.
While the GOP leadership is unwilling to fight Barack Obama and the Democrats, fighting conservatives is another matter.
Two of the Kings of the RINO Establishment, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu and former Mississippi Governor and RNC Chair Haley Barbour are attacking the Tea Party. The RINOs are even recruiting candidates to run against Tea Party Congressmen such as Steve King in Iowa and Justin Amash in Michigan. These candidates are so-called “pro-business” candidates. They should be called, “pro-big business” candidates, as they are simply supporters of the crony capitalism that infects DC.
Sununu and Barbour are two of the Republican geniuses that thought President McCain and President Romney were good ideas. Under their leadership, the GOP was slaughtered in 2006 and 2008. By 2008, the GOP was on the political endangered species list and was only saved in 2010 by the Tea Party.
If the RINO establishment is more interested in fighting conservatives than fighting Barack Obama and the Democrats, so be it.
Ted Cruz has more stab wounds in the back from the likes of Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsay Graham than Julius Caesar had on the floor of the Roman Senate when he was assassinated.
If the Republican Establishment wants to play a scorched earth game with conservatives, bring it on. To paraphrase the classic line from “Star Wars,” “You have failed us for the last time.”
If the Republican Party will not support conservative principles and will not support conservative candidates, it is time for the Tea Party and the conservative movement to create our own political identity and if necessary our own political party.
There are still good conservatives out there running as Republicans and we should support them as conservatives, not as Republicans.
In Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain are all running for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General respectively. They deserve the support of conservatives. In New Jersey, Steve Lonegan who is running for the Senate seat, who is being supported by our good friends over at the Conservative Campaign, deserves the support of conservatives.
But for much of the nation, it is a different story. In South Carolina and Tennessee, conservatives are challenging RINOs Lindsay Graham and Lamar Alexander. If the challengers win, they deserve our support. If Graham and Alexander survive their primaries, conservatives should either vote third party or stay home.
The Republican establishment shrieks, that means a Democrat will win. That is the problem the Republican Party has had over the last twenty years. Their unique selling point has been we are the lesser of two evils. Well, they are half right and the point they are right about is not their size.
RINOs like Lindsay Graham, Lamar Alexander, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John McCain all like to talk about how conservative they are.
They are not conservatives. They are the co-dependent enablers of the welfare state. In fact, let me be politically correct for once and call them by name, undocumented Democrats.
It is time for the Tea Party and the Conservative movement to move away from the GOP. It is not a conservative party.
In 2009, those of us who helped organize the Tea Party movement all had the same opinion that forming the Tea Party as a new political party was not what we wanted to do. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.
But as with many mistakes, they cannot be undone but they can be corrected.
It is an open secret in Washington that the Republican Establishment despises its base.
It’s time to see how well the GOP functions without a base.
Guy Benson | Oct 11, 2013
The Obama administration will rely onemotional anecdotes and incomplete data to help defend their signature law -- once its websites are fixed and people can actually enroll, that is. Critics will counter with reams of statistics proving that Obamacare violates its core promises. While empirical evidence is indispensable, it's also critical to showcase real people who are being actively harmed by the law. Meet this young, disabled motherfrom Allentown, Pennsylvania:
Heartbreaking. Obamacare will force this woman, her husband and their five-year-old son to choose between obtaining coverage and putting food on the table. The law's "affordable" premiums will hike the family's bills by hundreds of dollars compared to their current plan. They can't afford the change, so a desperate decision awaits. This is why so many Americans have forcefully opposed Obamacare for so long. It's not about "hating" the president. It's not about racial animus. It's not about protecting the rich. It has nothing to do with any of the red herrings proponents toss out to sully and impugn opponents' motives. The truth is that this law hurts people, breaks virtually all of the major promises upon which it was sold, and is simply unaffordable to a federal government that's already facing a long-term debt crisis. HHS Secretary Sebelius, who told Americans this week that Obamacare's exchanges are "simple and user-friendly," was confronted with a potent dose of reality in Pittsburgh yesterday; the administration is now reportedly considering dismantling andrebuilding elements of the foundering online portals. These failures are so glaring that the media can't even try to gloss over them. CBS News ripped the Obamacare launch as "nothing short of disastrous" earlier in the week, and now NBC News is piling on:
“If it weren’t for the shutdown dominating the news, we admittedly would be hearing and covering a lot more about how things are going for these new health care exchanges, which were rolled out ten days ago,” Williams said. “Millions of uninsured Americans are being encouraged to go to healthcare.gov to sign up for coverage but it’s been a very rocky start.” ... “By most accounts the website has been a complete mess, locking up, crashing and kicking off potential customers,” Costello said. “Of the 260 people who tried to sign up at this Miami clinic in the first week, only a single person got through.One, from 260 attempts,” applications counselor Cristina Marrero said, laughing.
I'll leave you with a tip of the cap to Mary Katharine Ham. Check out herdetailed prediction from November 2012: "This is a giant tech undertaking which will need to serve many localities with different needs, link existing technologies and personnel with a new, giant federal hub, and somehow make sure all of them work together to smoothly to guide consumers who have no idea what to expect in subsidies or services through a brand new web portal for health insurance. They have less than a year to accomplish this. It seems there has been no pilot program, no training, and no beta testing. This thing is ORCA on steroids." So right it hurts.
John C. Goodman | Oct 12, 2013
"If you like your health insurance you can keep it," Barack Obama promised the voters on many occasions.
About 20,000 part-time employees of Home Depot recently found out how false that promise is. The company announced that it is ending its health insurance coverage for its employees and sending them to the new health insurance exchanges.
They will be joined by employees of McDonald's, Disney, CVS Caremark, Staples, Blockbuster, and many others.
A lot of these employers have mini med plans with limited coverage. McDonald's, for example, has a plan that limits health insurance benefit to $2,000 but gives employees the option to pay a higher premium and get $3,000 or $4,000 of coverage. At Home Depot, the coverage reaches $5,000. The state of Tennessee, under TennCare, used mini med plans with a $25,000 annual cap on benefits.
Mini med plans typically have no deductible. They usually charge a modest copayment for physician visits and drugs. But if a McDonald's employee goes into a hospital, the co-insurance rate is 30% and the plan's benefit cap will probably be blown right through after the first 30 minutes of admission.
These plans are being abolished under ObamaCare and if the employees end up in one of the new health insurance exchanges they will get subsidized insurance that will look very different. For one thing, the premium the employee pays will double and for many it will more than double. Then they will face, say, a $1,500 deductible for individual coverage. Surprisingly, if the employee goes into a hospital he faces a 20% copayment (comparable to the mini med plans!), but the total out of pocket exposure is limited to $2,250.
Now, which of these plans is better? For the orthodox health policy community, this isn't even a serious question. That's because they live in neighborhoods and associate with people who would never even consider buying mini med coverage. And, remember, imposing one's worldview on others is 90% of what liberalism is all about.
But would you be surprised to learn that there are many people who would find the mini med plan more attractive?
Let's begin by asking why anyone wants insurance. In every other field, the answer is obvious. Insurance protects assets. Life insurance protects the value of human capital. Fire and casualty insurance protects homes, cars and other structures. People are willing to pay a premium to transfer the risk of a financial catastrophe to others. The same should be true in health care as well. Health insurance is a way of protecting one's financial resources against the expense of a catastrophic illness.
But if you don't own a house, you have no need for homeowners insurance. If you don't own a car, you have no need for auto casualty insurance. Similarly, if you have no assets at all (other than your human capital) why would you want health insurance?
For low and moderate income households, the reason why mini med plans are attractive seems to be this: People living paycheck to paycheck have trouble maintaining a reserve for unexpected medical expenses. So as an alternative to personal savings and higher wages, they appear to be willing to take less in take home pay in return for a modest amount of health insurance.
Okay, all that is rational. But what would be irrational is to buy a health insurance plan with an unlimited benefit ? one that, say, is able to pay a $1 million medical bill. Why would you buy a million dollars' worth of coverage, if you don't have a million dollars of assets to protect?
In the modern era, a perverse idea seems to have dominated the health policy community. The idea is that the purpose of health insurance is not to protect assets. It is to provide access to health care.
That might make some sense if it were really true. But the fact is that we have made it extremely easy in this country to obtain health insurance after you get sick. More than 90% of all the people with health insurance are in a plan that cannot deny them admission because of a health condition. For the elderly and the poor, it's 100%. In saying what I am about to say, let me preface by saying that I am aware that there are many very, very bad studies claiming that health insurance saves lives, improves health, etc. But when serious scholars have looked at this question, the reasons to think that health insurance affects mortality or health status are few. If health insurance affects health at all, the effect is marginal.
So, back to the original question. If you are making say, $15, $20 or $25 an hour, the ObamaCare plan is unlikely to look very attractive. Yes, it provides catastrophic insurance, which the mini med plan does not. But if you have a catastrophic medical event without ObamaCare insurance, odds are that you will be able to rely on the social safety net ? uncompensated care or even Medicaid. And if that doesn't work, odds are that you or a member of your family will be able to sign up for an employer plan that pays full expenses.
People with modest incomes are going to need help from others if they have a catastrophic medical event. What's the best way of getting help? Is it by obtaining subsidized health insurance with high deductibles and high out-of-pocket payments? Or is it through obtaining help to pay medical bills after the event occurs?
Ironically, the very people that ObamaCare is designed to help may be the ones most hurt by its enactment.
But I am open to the possibility that I am wrong. So let's entertain a market test. Instead of abolishing mini med plans, let people choose between those plans and ObamaCare's mandated benefits. Let's give people what they want.
October 11, 2013
'Duck Dynasty' Star: Name of Jesus Too Hot for Television
Posted by Staff
In today’s television world, anything goes. We’ve seen shows about everything from sewage treatment, meat slaughtering, trash collection, and prostitution houses. Yet for all the unvarnished look at life that “reality” shows bring to viewers, there is one thing that is apparently too hot for television: praying to Jesus.
According to Phil Robertson, star of A&E’s mega-hit series “Duck Dynasty,” the producers of the cable program deliberately removed his and other family members’ references to Jesus in prayer.
Robertson revealed the censorship in an interview with small Christian sporting magazine called Sports Spectrum over a year ago. He also revealed that the editors of the show would insert fake beeps in the audio tracks to make it look like Robertson and his family were using profanities when, in fact, they were not.
“These people [the viewers] thought there was some profanity when there was zero,” he disclosed.
Nicole Bailey | Oct 10, 2013
California Governor Jerry Brown has been on a signing spree, and the new laws are quite controversial. Some have pointed out that the Right's reaction has been "surprisingly muted" - but it might be that conservatives cannot decide where to begin on the shocking new legislation. Three of the most insane laws going into effect in California are:
Although its supporters have good intentions, the new law allowing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants is dangerous.
By passing the law in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at any level of government, California is blatantly challenging the U.S. Constitution. Under the full faith and credit clause, a citizen can take a Virginia state driver's license and drive through or even move to another state with no problem. California is indirectly forcing other states to accept illegal immigrants' driver's licenses.
In addition, because the document requirements would be less strict for illegal immigrants (by definition without secure documentation) this law poses a national security threat. The Federation for Immigration Reform has more on how this and similar laws can and have been abused by terrorists.
Feminists are celebrating a law allowing nurses and midwives to administer first-trimester abortions as a major victory for expanding abortion access to low-income women and promoting first-trimester abortions more generally. (Advocates of the legislation argue that first-trimester abortions are "safer and more affordable." The life of an unborn human being must not factor into the calculation.)
The fact that a law passed that completely rejects the traditional family - even in California - is telling about American society. The rationale seems to follow an 'anything goes' mentality (emphasis mine):
Of course those who will be most affected by the legislation, children, will have no say in the matter until it is too late for their own upbringing.The measure, authored by a Democratic state senator, was aimed at upgrading the law to reflect supposed modern changes in the family structure.
For instance, same-sex couples who use a member of the opposite sex to produce, would fall under this category.
As Rush Limbaugh said, "This is the kind of thing that we used to be mocked for saying could happen someday."
Posted by Daniel John Sobieski on October 9, 2013 at 6:06pm
The Shutdown: Federal closure threatens to bar priests not on active duty from conducting services on military installations or from ministering on base, and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.
The latest Obama shutdown shame is the news that, until it's over, none of the families of those killed in Afghanistan can expect to receive the $100,000 death gratuity promised to reach them within 24 to 36 hours.
Grieving families also cannot expect the military to cover all the usual costs of family travel to meet their loved ones at Dover Air Force Base where they return home for burial in American-flag-draped coffins.
Catholic soldiers killed in battle might not even have a priest available to give the last rites of their church as even the religious freedoms they fought to protect are sacrificed by a petulant president who has the power to set priorities with the stroke of an executive order pen but refuses to do so.
As the Daily Caller reports, the Rev. Ray Leonard, a Catholic priest who serves a Georgia military base, was not allowed to celebrate Mass at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay this weekend. "Shutdown: No Catholic service till further notice," a sign posted on the chapel door said.
Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Republican, released the details of Leonard's experience after meeting with the priest on Tuesday.
"My parishioners were upset," said Leonard, who is contracted with the Defense Department to minister on the base. "They were angry and dismayed. They couldn't believe that in America they'd be denied access to Mass by the government."
Maybe in Stalin's Russia the government would shut down religious services, but not here. Except it is happening here as priests and other religious ministers under contract to the government — all willing to do it for free — have been told by the Obama administration that they cannot set foot on government property or they will be arrested.
John Hawkins | Oct 10, 2013
1) The Death Panel will now decide if your treatment is too expensive.
2) Yeah, right! There's a better chance Democrats would go after veterans or kids with cancer than do that!
3) We'll get to the bottom of this scandal in no time now that the Obama Administration is investigating itself!
4) Sure, it's dangerous being in this embassy, but the Obama Administration is handling security; so we have nothing to worry about.
5) Come on, you really think liberals are going to be offended by that?
6) As long as Lindsey Graham doesn't cave, Republicans have got this one in the bag!
7) So, I lost my job. No big deal! In this economy, I'll have a new one in no time!
8) That shouldn't be a problem as long as you can trust the government to do the right thing.
9) Guess what? Your company is unionizing!
10) The only way that could happen would be if Obama has been lying to us all along.
11) You really think the park service would be that vindictive?
12) As long as Obama doesn't behave like a bratty little child who's going to hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way, everything will work out fine.
13) Come on! The only way we could get in trouble for writing something like that would be if the government was reading our emails.
14) Even Obama wouldn't blame Bush for that, would he?
15) Good news! The Al-Qaeda rebels Obama backed in Syria won and took over the country! They're sending America a "special surprise" as a thank you for all of our support!
16) No, you couldn't have heard gunshots. We're in a gun-free zone!
17) There's no way anyone would call me a racist just because of that, is there?
18) We have to pass it so you can find out what's in it.
19) This crime is as good as solved now that Eric Holder is on the case!
20) The only way that check will stop coming is if the government goes bankrupt!
Ann Coulter | Oct 09, 2013
In the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people.
Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates.
Contrary to Obama's promises, it turns out: You can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your insurance -- you can't even keep your job. In other words, it's a typical government program, but this one wrecks your health care.
Also, the president did raise taxes on the middle class in defiance of his well-worn campaign promise not to. Indeed, Obamacare is the largest tax hike in U.S. history.
Among the other changes effected by this law are:
-- Obamacare will allow insurers to charge 50 percent higher premiums for smokers, but prohibits insurers from increasing premiums for those with HIV/AIDS.
-- Nationally, Obamacare will increase men's individual insurance premiums by an average of 99 percent and women's by 62 percent. In North Carolina, for example, individual insurance premiums will triple for women and quadruple for men.
-- Health plans valued at $27,500 or more for a family of four will be taxed at a rate of 40 percent.
-- No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare.
-- A 62-year-old man earning $46,000 a year is entitled to a $7,836 government tax credit to buy health insurance. But if he earns an extra $22 in income, he loses the entire $7,836 credit. He will have more take-home pay by earning $46,000 than if he earns $55,000. (If he's lucky, he already works for one of the companies forced by Obamacare to reduce employees' hours!)
-- Merely to be eligible for millions of dollars in grants from the federal government under Obamacare, education and training programs are required to meet racial, ethnic, gender, linguistic and sexual orientation quotas. That's going to make health care MUCH better!
-- Obamacare is turning America into a part-time nation. According to a recent report by economist John Lott, 97 percent of all jobs added to the economy so far this year have been part-time jobs. Ninety-seven percent!
-- Obamacare is such a disaster that the people who wrote it refuse to live under it themselves. That's right, Congress won a waiver from Obamacare.
Responding to the people's will, House Republicans first voted to fund all of government -- except Obamacare. Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it.
Then the Republicans voted to fully fund the government, but merely delay the implementation of Obamacare for one year. Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it.
Finally, the Republicans voted to fully fund the government, but added a requirement that everyone live under Obamacare. No more special waivers for Congress and their staff, and no waivers for big business without the same waivers for individuals.
Obama refused to negotiate and Senate Democrats refused to pass it. So as you can see, Republicans are the big holdup here.
A longtime Democratic operative, Karen Finney, explained the Democrats' intransigence on MSNBC to a delighted Joan Walsh (aka the most easily fooled person on TV) by comparing House Republicans to a teenager trying to borrow his mother's car. "No, I'm not negotiating!" Mother says. "It's MY CAR!"
This wasn't a stupid slip of the tongue that other Democrats quickly rejected. Finney had used the exact same metaphor to a panel of highly agreeable MSNBC guests the day before. (MSNBC books no other kind of guest.)
The left thinks the government is their car and the people's representatives are obstreperous teenagers trying to borrow the government. Which belongs to Democrats.
That's not how the Constitution views the House of Representatives. To the contrary, the House is considered most reflective of the people's will because its members are elected every two years.
As a matter of fact, the Republicans who mistakenly assume they have something to do with running the government represent most of the people who pay taxes to run it. So it's more like a teenager who is making the car payments, maintaining the car insurance and taking responsibility for registering the car being told: "It's not your car."
But the Democrats refuse to even negotiate. It's their government -- and if you Republicans think you're going out dressed like that, you've got another thing coming! Needless to say, they absolutely will not consider the Republicans' demand that Democrats merely live under Obamacare themselves.
Instead, Democrats say "the Koch brothers" are behind the effort to defund Obamacare.
They say Republicans are trying to "burn the whole house down" (Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz); "have lost their minds" (Sen. Harry Reid); are trying to negotiate "with a bomb strapped to their chest" (senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer); are "legislative arsonists" (Rep. Nancy Pelosi); and are engaging in "blatant extortion" (White House press secretary Jay Carney).
The MSNBC crowd calls Republicans "arsonists" every 15 minutes. They ought to check with fellow MSNBC host Al Sharpton. He knows his arsonists! In 1995, Sharpton whipped up a mob outside the Jewish-owned Freddy's Fashion Mart with an anti-Semitic speech. Sometime later, a member of the mob torched the store, killing seven Hispanic employees.
Every single Democrat in the country uses the exact same talking point: We "refuse to negotiate with a gun being held to our head."
Which means the Democrats will not negotiate at all -- not now, not ever. House Republicans have already passed three-dozen bills defunding, or otherwise modifying, Obamacare. Senate Democrats and liberal commentators had a good laugh at Republicans for passing them.
Now they're paying attention!
If you are in the minority of Americans not already unalterably opposed to Obamacare, keep in mind that the only reason the government is shut down right now is that Democrats refuse to fund the government if they are required to live under Obamacare.
That's how good it is!
Posted on October 6, 2013 by Yoani-Sánchez
http://generacionyen.wordpress.com/
When I was in high school two of the many words used as insults shocked me. One of them was “self-sufficient.” Its stigma came from the mea culpa processes to join the Young Communists Union, where the candidates criticized themselves for not behaving — always — as part of a collective. Another pejorative terms was “conscious” or “aware,” which in that context referred to someone too intellectual, too devoted to books, too engaged in learning. The good students were labeled “super-conscious” and the natural leaders who emerged in each group also felt the taint of self-sufficiency. Better not to excel, not to overexert yourself… these disqualifiers seemed to warn us.
Worshiping individual mediocrity generates mediocre societies. Vilifying the talented and entrepreneurial hinders the development of a nation. Professional capital is not constructed only with titles, degrees and post-graduate degrees, but with the need that arises from a population that reveres knowledge. It is also imperative that intelligence is not something to be hidden, almost with embarrassment or shame. We are all potential scientists and discoverers, in need of an environment where our capabilities find respect. A country of scientists should be able to show off its laboratories and vaccines; but also ensure that ordinary people can patent their achievements and be rewarded — materially and spiritually — for their ingenuity.
There may be many university graduates in Cuba, but as long as these people do not find true social and legal recognition and salaries commensurate with their work, we can hardly call ourselves a nation of science. It’s sad that more statues are raised and more plazas dedicated to people who have wielded machetes or weapons, than to those who have saved lives with their microscopes and syringes. The prodigious milligram* of knowledge needs an environment where it can multiply. That fertile soil that carries the seed of education, the irrigation to imagine a better life through scientific discovery and the essential fertilizer of freedom.
* “An ant censured for the subtlety of its loads and its frequent distractions, found one morning, on straying once again from the road, a prodigious milligram. Without stopping to think about the consequences of the discovery, it took the milligram and put it on its back. Happily it discovered that it was the perfect load just for her. The ideal weight of that object gave her body a strange energy: like the weight of their wings on the bodies of birds.” (Taken from “The Prodigious Milligram,” Juan José Arreola, Complete Works, Mexico, Alfaguara, 1997)
** Thanks to Universal Thinking Forum for provoking this reflection … and much more.
An elderly Nevada couple is living at their ice cream shop after being told they can't go to their house until the federal government shutdown ends.
Joyce Spencer, 77, and her 80-year-old husband, Ralph, own their home, but it sits on federal property near Lake Mead.
She says a park ranger came by last week and told them they had 24 hours to vacate their home.
The park service says the couple can go to their home to retrieve belongings, but cannot stay overnight.
Michelle Malkin | Oct 02, 2013
Welcome to ObamaWreck! Americans nationwide spent Tuesday struggling with the much-hyped "Affordable Care Act" health insurance exchanges. Server meltdowns, error messages and security glitches plagued the federal and state government websites as open enrollment began. But when taxpayers discover exactly who will be navigating them through the bureaucratic maze, they may be glad they didn't get through.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and counselors, who are now propagandizing and recruiting Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges. As I warned in May, the Nanny State navigator corps is a serious threat to Americans' privacy. Background checks and training requirements are minimal to nonexistent. A history of fraud is no barrier to entry.
Case in point: the seedy nonprofit Seedco. This community-organizing group snagged lucrative multimillion-dollar navigator contracts in Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee and New York. The New York Post reports this week that the outfit "is partnering with dozens of agencies, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Food Bank for New York City and the Chinese American Planning Council, in each of (the Big Apple's) five boroughs." They'll have access to potential enrollees' income levels, birthdates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and intensely personal medical information.
Given the enormous responsibility to handle sensitive data in a careful, neutral manner, combined with the overwhelming pressure to boost Obamacare enrollments, you'd think the feds would only choose navigators with the most impeccable records. Yet, less than a year ago, Seedco agreed to settle a civil fraud lawsuit "for faking at least 1,400 of 6,500 job placements under a $22.2 million federally funded contract with the city."
Seedco's corrupt behavior went far beyond defrauding taxpayers through abuse of New York City programs, federal Labor Department funding and federal stimulus dollars. Seedco (which stands for "Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation") tried to destroy and defame whistleblowing official Bill Harper, who discovered and reported the rampant falsification of data.
First, Seedco denied the charges; next, they trashed Harper's reputation in the pages of The New York Times. Only after the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan brought suit did the organization acknowledge systemic, repeated wrongdoing. Seedco forked over a $1.7 million settlement in December 2012. Mere months later, they were racking up federal Obamacare navigator work.
The feds and Seedco assure us that new management is in place. They rearranged some deck chairs, created a new "compliance program" and hired an independent reviewer. But an ethos of by-any-means-necessary book-cooking and a culture of intimidating whistleblowers don't disappear overnight. Seedco shredded documents for three years to phony up their job placement statistics; city government overseers knew about it. The Nonprofit Quarterly noted that Seedco's fraud was "kind of breathtaking" in its "creativity and illegal audacity," including:
--"Taking credit for a job candidate's prior employment as job placements;
--Reporting job placements when the job candidates remained unemployed;
--Falsifying dates of job placements;
--Using other Seedco programs to collect information on clients in order to falsely report job placements; and
--Reporting job placements for people who were not Seedco clients and had not been placed in their jobs by Seedco."
The feds detailed how Seedco managers would instruct clerical workers to troll Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com for resumes and then "report the employment of individuals sourced from those downloaded resumes as job placements." Other employees exploited their relationships with businesses to "gather information from the businesses' current employees. Seedco then used that information to falsely report that employment as a job placement obtained for the candidate by Seedco, although the individuals had no prior relationship with Seedco and had not been recruited into the job by Seedco."
This entire government-nonprofit alliance rests on dragooning as many people as possible into government programs, including food stamps, CHIP (the federal Children's Health Insurance Program) and now Obamacare. One of Seedco's officials actually said the fraud case "made us a stronger organization." Yes, they actually sold their deliberate number-fudging as an asset instead of a liability. And four states swallowed the pitch whole. The spirit of fraud-stained ACORN and its Nanny State progeny lives.
So, buyers, beware: Obamacare security "glitches" are not just a bug. They're a feature.
Carol Platt Liebau | Oct 01, 2013
Ah, shut-down politics. New White House petulance, same as the old White House petulance.
During the sequester, recall the ways the Obama administration explicitly tried to inflict maximum pain on the American people in order to "prove" that the relatively modest cuts to government spending were cataclysmic.
Today, the administration tried the same kind of scurrilous tricks -- but to their shame, they actually sought to punish elderly and disabled World War II veterans for the Democrats' intransigence and refusal to negotiate. As Guy mentioned below, World War II veterans who had come to Washington to visit the memorial to the war they fought ignored the barricades that had been erected by the administration for the duration of the shut-down.
But according to an exclusive at The Daily Caller, the Obama administration actually knew in advance that these veterans were going to be visiting the World War II memorial and refused to make any accommodation for them, despite a request from a congressman.
Keep in mind that these are old men, some of whom are in poor health. They were flown to DC by a non-profit, Honor Flight, to visit the memorial. Note also that, being an open-air memorial -- and as such generally accessible to the public 24/7 -- it requires more work (and hence greater expenditure of government money) to block it off than to leave it alone.
The entire episode is entirely emblematic of the Obama administration's faux frugality, political posturing, and contempt for Americans on so many levels.
Terry Jeffrey | Oct 02, 2013
Beginning now, with the opening of government-run health-insurance exchanges, President Barack Obama will be prohibiting American Catholics from practicing their faith in the way they live their daily lives.
This is an act of tyranny. Yet, many Americans in positions of public authority and influence have greeted it with silence and inaction.
I do not use the word tyranny lightly here. Obama is abusing his power as president to unilaterally impose on Catholics -- and millions of other Americans who share the Catholic moral view on certain matters -- a regulation that forces them to act against their moral convictions and the teachings of their faith.
He has declared war on their souls.
The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are intrinsically immoral and Catholics cannot be involved in them.
Last year, President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation, under Obamacare, requiring that almost all health care plans in the United States must provide coverage, without any fees or co-pay, for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
Obama was boasting about this regulation last week.
At no time has he offered to exempt from it those individual Americans whom he has put in the position of needing to choose between obeying his bureaucratic mandate and the teachings of their faith.
Since Obama's administration first issued this regulation, America's Catholic bishops have forcefully and unambiguously declared it an "unjust law."
"A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law," says the Catholic Catechism, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas. "Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence."
Yes, Obama's sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is "a kind of violence."
"If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience," says the Catholic Catechism. "In such a case, 'authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse.'"
Yes, Obama's sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is a "shameful abuse."
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, succinctly explained the evil of Obama's regulation in a letter he asked Catholic chaplains to read to U.S. troops attending Mass in January 2012.
Obama's regulation, Archbishop Broglio said, "strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith."
"It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle," the archbishop told the troops.
"We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law," he said.
Many other bishops said these exact words in letters to their own dioceses: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."
In June 2012, the U.S. Catholic bishops unanimously endorsed a statement declaring the regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" and "a violation of personal civil rights."
This year, when the Obama administration released a draft of the final version of the regulation, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent formal comments to HHS.
"In short," said the bishops, "the administration continues to propose: (a) an unjust and unlawful mandate," that offers "(b) no exemption or 'accommodation' at all for most stakeholders in the health insurance process, such as individual employees and for profit employers."
Last week, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore wrote a letter to all members of Congress.
"We are writing once again, as chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, on an increasingly grave concern to our Church and many others: Preserving religious freedom and the right of conscience for all who take part in our health care system," the bishops said.
"A particular threat is the administration's mandate for covering contraception, sterilization and related education and counseling as 'preventive services for enrollees and their minor daughters," said the bishops. "The mandate includes drugs and devices that can act against human life after fertilization, implicating our moral teaching on abortion as well as contraception."
"Nor should individual Catholics or others be told they cannot legally purchase or provide health coverage unless they violate their conscience," said the bishops.
The bishops have endorsed legislation -- the Health Care Conscience Rights Act -- that says no Obamacare regulation can force an employer, insurer or individual to buy or provide coverage for an item to which they have a moral or religious objection.
"As Congress considers a continuing resolution and debt ceiling bill in the days to come," the bishops said, "we reaffirm the vital importance of incorporating the policy of this bill into such 'must-pass' legislation."
The CR the House passed on Sunday did include language that would have created the conscience protection the bishops sought -- at least through Jan. 1, 2015. But when the Senate rejected that CR, the Republican leadership stripped the conscience-protection language from the version of the CR the House passed Monday.
Now neither party in either the House or Senate is seeking to protect the freedom of conscience from Obama's tyrannical regulation.
Starting now, on Obama's presumed unilateral authority, American Catholics will be prohibited from practicing their faith in the way they live their daily lives.
Sens. Feinstein and Schumer are planning to lead a federal blog-burning via a "media shield bill" which has just passed committee. Sen. Schumer is actually stating that the goal is to "[balance] the need for national security with that of a free press".
Currently shield laws exist at the state level as a means of protecting journalists legally per journalism's duty to report information to the general public. However, this federal non-"shield law" subjects every non-Mainstream Media 1.0 outlet to the mercy of Attorney General Eric Holder. Anything which Eric Hitler does not like can be shut down on demand.
The original language of the bill only applied to individuals who work for a company. Complaints by Matt Drudge led to an exemption in the event that primary sources are not released "without authorization". In other words, all media in America will be forced to be biased in some way, and there will be no way to prove who is right.
When we were in school writing our papers, we learned that we should always rely on primary sources rather than secondary ones. No more. Obama's nationwide "Common Core" will eliminate "the book report" and "the current events essay" as we know it, fulfilling the Marxist dream of direct management of all schools by a centralized Department of Education. This falls in line perfectly with the "memo" model of journalism most often associated with Fox News - direct management of information itself by the federal government.
Why do powerful people support control of information and suppression of information they do not like? The truth is, they do not. Censorship is not rooted in control, it is rooted in fear. Whether it be the MAFIAA's fear of an over-saturated deflationary free market in entertainment, the Surveillance State's fear of being caught in heinous criminal activity against their own citizens a la Saddam Hussein, or the neocon/liberal fear of small-government politicians and a pro-liberty press, censorship is based entirely on fear. Even the Religious Right's argument for censoring sex, violence, and the seven dirty words is based on the fear that their children will grow into immorality.
And the establishment should fear. The book-burning dictators of the 20th century did not outlast liberty, and neither will the blog-burning dictators of the 21st. All tyrannical governments ultimately destroy themselves, and liberty is again restored. Information may be suppressed, but information cannot be shut down, and will not be shut down. Tyranny is temporary. The only way is liberty.
