#Dodgers Lose to #Cardinals in 13 Innings as Mattingly's Moves Are Questioned

I feel bad for Don Mattingly. He went with an aggressive decision to pinch run Dee Gordon for clean-up slugger Adrian Gonzales in the 8th inning. Even my wife asked why Gonzales was leaving the game. The guy's a freakin' clutch of the ultimate clutch hitters. And Mattingly pulled him to get a RISP.

It might have turned out well had the Dodgers been able to score, but Gordon never made it to second (he was out on a fielder's choice and the Cards retired the side with a double play after that). And now folks are already looking to post season, at least I am, and the end of Mattingly's career as the Dodger's manager. It was an excruciating game. The Dodgers left so many men on base I was getting tired of watching. The game was almost five hours long and was the third longest in NLCS history.

In any case, here's Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times, "Did Don Mattingly's removal of Adrian Gonzalez take Dodgers out of it?":

ST. LOUIS — Nearly half-past midnight here, the fireworks blazed, the rock music blared, and the red-clad crowd roared.

All of which was surely nothing compared to the noises rattling around inside the Dodgers' psyche — and surely inside their embattled manager's head — after they watched a precious postseason win slip into a loss.

It was 13 agonizing innings. It was nearly five tense hours. Yet for the Dodgers, the National League Championship Series opener felt like forever after the Cardinals stole a 3-2 victory Friday night at Busch Stadium.

It was just one loss, but it seemed like much more. It was the defeat of a team whose starting pitcher, Zack Greinke, threw eight mostly brilliant innings, striking out 10. It was the defeat of a team that had one hit in 10 chances with runners in scoring position.

More than anything, though, it was the defeat of a team whose managerial decisions led it there.

Don Mattingly, whose curious moves led to the Dodgers' only loss in the division series against the Atlanta Braves, pulled another ugly rabbit out of his cap to become the main player in their second postseason loss. Mattingly made questionable late-inning moves during the regular season, but under the postseason spotlight, his moves have been magnified and the heat has been turned up considerably.

Friday night, the spotlight initially focused on the eighth inning, when Mattingly pulled Adrian Gonzalez, his most consistent postseason hitter, for Dee Gordon, a pinch-runner who was quickly wasted. It was a decision that came back to haunt the Dodgers again and again during a game in which Gonzalez's bat was sorely missed in several extra-inning situations.

Then, in the 13th inning, Mattingly let his best reliever, Kenley Jansen, sit in the bullpen while Chris Withrow, pitching his second inning, allowed a one-out single and walk. Jansen finally came into the game and promptly allowed a game-winning single to Carlos Beltran, whose line drive to right field rocked the house.

Even as the Cardinals were celebrating on the field, though, once again the focus was on the Dodgers dugout.

"If the rest of the series is like this game, it should be a pretty good one," Mattingly said.

Good for who?

The situation that initially bewitched Mattingly occurred in the eighth inning of a 2-2 game. Gonzalez, who came in batting .333 in this postseason, led off with a walk. The plodding first baseman was immediately replaced by speedy pinch-runner Gordon.

Mattingly was obviously betting that Gordon could score in that inning and the Dodgers eventually wouldn't miss Gonzalez's bat. It was a questionable bet under any circumstances — it was first-guessed here — but it would have been a much safer bet if Gonzalez had been on second base, the usual spot for such substitutions.

At first base, Gordon, unless he stole second, was vulnerable to a grounder. He didn't have a chance to steal second. On the third pitch, Yasiel Puig hit a grounder and forced Gordon at second base, and the switch was for nothing.

"Well, it's one of those [situations] that you've got to shoot your bullet when you get a chance," Mattingly said. "If we don't use him there and the next guy hits the ball in the gap and he doesn't score and we don't score there, we're going to say why didn't you use Dee? . . . You get a guy on in that inning, and you take a shot at scoring a run."

But the controversy was only beginning. The move plagued the Dodgers for the next hour...

Continued reading.

More here, "Dodgers' long, suffering Game 1 ends in bitter defeat to Cardinals."

And at the New York Times, "Beltran Lifts Cardinals Past Dodgers in a Taut Game 1."

A Crisis of the President's Own Making

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ:

For months now, the GOP has been held hostage by a faction of its party that deluded itself into believing President Obama might be rolled on his signature health-care law. Witness now an equally grand delusion on the Democratic side, one that President Obama nurtures at his peril.

According to Democrats, their steadfast refusal to negotiate on the government shutdown or the debt ceiling is rooted in a belief that now is the moment to "break" the GOP "fever." Democrats are furious that Republicans today use every Washington deadline to extract a spending concession—and insist they must be broken of that habit.

As New York Sen. Chuck Schumer put it on ABC's "This Week": If Democrats give in now to GOP demands, "it will lead to a future negotiation like that and a future one. If you go for this kind of hostage-taking once . . . it doesn't go away, it comes back worse and worse and worse."

Fact: The only thing that will make this "come back worse and worse" is a Democratic refusal to negotiate. Upon taking the House in 2010, Republicans made clear their top priority was getting the nation's spending and debt under control—a goal backed by the vast majority of the country—and they meant it. Time and again, they have asked the White House to work with them to reform the very entitlement programs that Mr. Obama has admitted are unsustainable and the primary drivers of debt.

Time and again, a spend-happy White House and Democrats have dug in, unwilling to buck liberal interest groups, refusing to touch Social Security or Medicare, mulishly granting only small spending concessions. Those were given only under duress, and only because the GOP threatened Armageddon in the 2011 debt-ceiling fight. Even then, the White House stubbornly refused to cede one dollar more than what was necessary to push another debt-ceiling round past the 2012 election.

So yes, Mr. Obama is facing another crisis—one of his own timing and making. And one that the White House and Democrats have understood was coming ever since 2011. And one that will be coming again—two weeks from now, six weeks from now, a year from now, three months after that—until such point as the White House does a significant deal, or the president's term ends. It is entirely the president's choice.

Water runs downhill. Republicans demand fiscal discipline. Whatever the near-term solution to this current impasse, the media and Democrats are deluded if they think the GOP will give up this issue. It is built into the Republican DNA; it is a baseline expectation of party voters. Republicans will continue to use whatever tools are available—government funding bills, debt-ceiling hikes, unrelated legislation—to force Democrats to cut, and they'll do it again and again.

Republicans have always been clear on their price for ending these dramas. House Speaker John Boehner even provided a formula: One dollar in debt ceiling increase for every dollar of decreased spending. Even a law professor can do the math on what it will cost to liberate the rest of his term.

Were the president to embrace these negotiations, he could do just that. With a big enough give on entitlement reform (one that goes well beyond the tinkering in the recent Obama budget), Republicans might be willing to raise the debt ceiling to the end of Obama presidency. They're open to fixing the sequester caps on sacred liberal programs. And free of the paralyzing budget fights, Mr. Obama could use the rest of his time in office for immigration reform, a focus on the economy, the building of a legacy.

Congressional liberals in particular are repelled by this idea—which is why so many are encouraging the "break the fever" baloney. Their biggest fear is that the White House will give any cover at all—much less big cover—to entitlement reform, and rob them of their favorite campaign issue.

But Mr. Obama doesn't face re-election. He faces three years of trying to govern. And while the White House might like to brag that it is "winning" this battle, that's a relative term.

Republicans have taken heat, but Mr. Obama's own approval ratings are down. His most vulnerable House members are being forced daily to take painful votes against crucial funding, which will be used against them in 2014. Another financial downturn will be remembered in the history books as President Obama's, not as some no-name GOP backbencher's.

More at that top link.

Now Is the Time to Delay #ObamaCare

From Peggy Noonan, at WSJ (via Google):

The Obama administration has an implementation problem. More than any administration of the modern era they know how to talk but have trouble doing. They give speeches about ObamaCare but when it's unveiled what the public sees is a Potemkin village designed by the noted architect Rube Goldberg. They speak ringingly about the case for action in Syria but can't build support in the U.S. foreign-policy community, in Congress, among the public. Recovery summer is always next summer. They have trouble implementing. Which, of course, is the most boring but crucial part of governing. It's not enough to talk, you must perform.

There is an odd sense with members of this administration that they think words are actions. Maybe that's why they tweet so much. Maybe they imagine Bashar Assad seeing their tweets and musing: "Ah, Samantha is upset—then I shall change my entire policy, in respect for her emotions!"

That gets us to the real story of last week, this week and the future, the one beyond the shutdown, the one that normal people are both fully aware of and fully understand, and that is the utter and catastrophic debut of ObamaCare. Even for those who expected problems, and that would be everyone who follows government, it has been a shock.

They had 3½ years to set it up! They knew exactly when it would be unveiled, on Oct. 1, 2013. On that date, they knew, millions could be expected to go online to see if they benefit.

What they got was the administration's version of Project ORCA, the Romney campaign's computerized voter-turnout system that crashed with such flair on Election Day.

Here is why the rollout is so damaging to ObamaCare: because everyone in America knows we spent four years arguing about the law, that it sucked all the oxygen from the room, that it commanded all focus, that it blocked out other opportunities and initiatives, and that it caused so many searing arguments—mandatory contraceptive and abortifacient coverage for religious organizations that oppose those things, fears about the sharing of private medical information, fears of rising costs and lost coverage. Throughout the struggle the American people must have thought: "OK, at the end it's gotta be worth it, it's got to give me at least some benefits to justify all this drama." And at the end they tried to log in, register and see their options, and found one big, frustrating, chaotic mess. As if for four years we all just wasted our time.

A quick summary of what didn't work. Those who went on federal and state exchanges reported malfunctions during login, constant error messages, inability to create new accounts, frozen screens, confusing instructions, endless wait times, help lines that put people on hold and then cut them off, lost passwords and user names.

After the administration floated the fiction that the problems were due to heavy usage, the Journal tracked down insurance and technology experts who said the real problems were inadequate coding and flaws in the architecture of the system.

There were no enrollments in Delaware in three days. North Carolina got one enrollee. In Kansas ObamaCare was unable to report a single enrollment. A senior Louisiana state official told me zero people enrolled the first day, eight the second. The founder of McAfee slammed the system's lack of security on Fox Business Network, calling it a hacker's happiest nocturnal fantasy. He predicted millions of identity thefts. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius—grilled, surprisingly, on "The Daily Show"—sounded like a blithering idiot as she failed to justify why, in the middle of the chaos, individuals cannot be granted a one-year delay, just as businesses have been.

More ominously, many of those who got into the system complained of sticker shock—high premiums, high deductibles.

Where does this leave us? Congressional Republicans and the White House may soon begin a series of conversations centering on the debt-ceiling fight. Good: May they turn into negotiations. Republicans are now talking about a grand bargain involving entitlement spending, perhaps tax issues. But they would make a mistake in dropping ObamaCare as an issue. A few weeks ago they mistakenly demanded defunding—a move to please their base. They will be tempted to abandon even the word ObamaCare now, but this is exactly when they should keep, as the center of their message and their intent, not defunding ObamaCare but delaying it. Do they really want to turn abrupt focus to elusive Medicare cuts just when it has become obvious to the American people that parts of ObamaCare (like the ability to enroll!) are unworkable?

The Republicans should press harder than ever to delay ObamaCare—to kick it back, allow the administration at least to create functioning websites, and improve what can be improved...

It needs to be killed, actually. But it might take a couple of elections to do that, but the day is coming.

Still more at that top Google link.

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Wins 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Malala Yousafzai should've won it, but the Nobel is a freakin' joke, so no matter.

At WaPo:

MOSCOW — The small Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was still getting used to its unaccustomed role at the center of world affairs, overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, when it won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

“The news of the Nobel Peace Prize was really overwhelming,” said Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of The Hague-based agency. “I see it as a great acknowledgement of a success story.”

Until minutes before the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee revealed its choice in Oslo, speculation had centered on Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban a year ago for defending education for girls. But just as it did last year when it selected the European Union,the committee took the world by surprise.

“We are now in a situation in which we can do away with a whole category of weapons of mass destruction,” Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman, said. “Of course this is a very important message.”

On Aug. 21, a sarin gas attack in Syria killed more than 1,000 civilians, a reminder to the world of the horror chemical weapons visit on their victims. An estimated 100,000 people have died in the 21 / 2-year conflict.

OPCW inspectors were in Syria as part of a U.N. team at the time of the August chemical attack and subsequently investigated it, despite coming under sniper fire at one point. The team later produced a widely acclaimed report that documented the use of sarin in the attack and that indirectly implicated the Syrian government.

OPCW inspectors returned to Syria at the beginning of October. About two dozen inspectors are there, attempting to find and oversee the destruction of an estimated 1,000 tons of chemical weapons — in the middle of a civil war, accompanied by unarmed U.N. guards, with security entrusted to a Syrian government that doesn’t control the entire country.

Jagland said the committee hoped the prize would have implications beyond the Syrian conflict, including encouraging signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention such as the United States and Russia to step up destruction of their stockpiles.

“The crisis in Syria highlights the need to do away with these weapons,” he said. “This is about disarmament, which goes straight to the heart of Alfred Nobel’s will.”

"Mother Forced by #ObamaCare to Choose Between 'New Health Plan or Putting Food on the Table'"

Because Democrat compassion!

Via the Weekly Standard.

Bwahaha!! MSNBC's Phil Griffin Wants Fox News Investigated After Megyn Kelly Blows Out Rachel Maddow in Key Demographic

Rachel Maddow sucks goats balls, so actually Fox News should be having MSNBC investigated for attempting to cook the books on the debut night of Megyn Kelly's new show.

At Twitchy, "‘Funniest sh*t I’ve read all day’: MSNBC president wants FNC’s ratings investigated."

MSNBC President Wants 'Investigation' Into Fox News' 'Impossible' Ratings Gain http://t.co/nBTdcwU22e

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) October 11, 2013

MSNBC just freakin' sucks. Screw 'em.

NBC News Slams #ObamaCare Rollout as 'Public Relations Nightmare'

Look!

A real live news report with real live actual news on the disaster of the administration's signature Democrat clusterf-k.



Remember, we just had that CBS News report earlier this week completely eviscerating the administration's lies and incompetence.

AoSHQ picked up on that as well, "CBS' Jan Crawford: Obama Rollout 'Nothing Short of Disastrous'":

The left likes to flatter itself as thinking in terms of reason, facts, expertise, openness to doubt, and scorn of dogma and magical thinking.

Is this anywhere close to true?

When experts told the Obama Administration it was a fact the website was not ready, did they take seriously this advisement?

Nope! They simply said there was no cause for alarm; the strange gods of the left would just sort everything out.

Oddly enough, they didn't.

RTWT.

Here's That Spectacular Juan Uribe 8th Inning Homer Against #Braves in #NLDS

I couldn't believe it when Mattingly had Uribe bunt with Yasiel Puig at second base. Horrible play calling, but Uribe's a terrible bunter, so after failing twice to lay one down, he came back with the most dramatic home run I've seen all season. Talk about lol.

I was on Twitter and called it!

Yasiel Puig throws his hands in the air after arriving at 2nd base with a lead off double. #Dodgers

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 8, 2013

Uribe should be swinging away! #Dodgers

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

Let my Uribe swing! #Dodgers

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

I told you! Uribe! #Dodgers

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

Wow

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) October 8, 2013

.@Dodgers I tweeted this one minute before that #Uribe blast! https://t.co/GMmonq4tbE

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

Go #Dodgers !!!

— Jackie Johnson (@JackieJohnsonLA) October 8, 2013

That was one hella spectacular moment in #Dodgers baseball!

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

Juan Uribe: only player in MLB history to hit a go-ahead HR in the 8th inning or later of 2 series-deciding postseason games

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) October 8, 2013

Instant recap: Juan Uribe 8th inning HR sends the Dodgers to the NLCS for the 1st time since 2009. http://t.co/Ot46ORNc0s

— Dodgers Nation (@DodgersNation) October 8, 2013

Stopped. The. Chop.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 8, 2013

A great night for Los Angeles. @Alyssa_Milano #Dodgers

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

#Dodgers defeat #Braves, 4-3, to advance to #NLCS. http://t.co/yuv4deKYuJ

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 8, 2013

And now here's this, at the Los Angeles Times, "Don Mattingly finds that nothing answers critics like a home run":

ST. LOUIS — As Don Mattingly watched the home run that might have changed his life, he paused a few seconds to ponder the absurdity of it all.

"Playoffs are so stupid, aren't they?" Mattingly remembers thinking. "Just crazy."

Stupidity and craziness that could determine Mattingly's future with the Dodgers.

The Dodgers manager hasn't said whether he has received assurances about his job status beyond these playoffs. Dodgers management hasn't said whether it will exercise the team option on his contract for next season.

Team President Stan Kasten has been silent on the matter, which means Mattingly's fate could be tied to how the Dodgers perform in the National League Championship Series — and a result that could be decided by something as random as a two-strike home run by Juan Uribe.

If not for Uribe's home run in Game 4 of the division series, the Dodgers could have been playing the Braves again Wednesday in a winner-take-all fifth game. A loss in Game 5 could have sent Mattingly back to his Indiana farm and in search of a new job.

Uribe's home run illustrated how a manager's fortunes and reputation can suddenly change.

The Dodgers were down, 3-2, when Uribe came to the plate with Yasiel Puig on second base and no outs in the eighth inning. Mattingly signaled for a sacrifice bunt, a decision he immediately second-guessed when Uribe fouled off his first two attempts.

"Why am I bunting him?" Mattingly recalls thinking.

Never mind that Uribe doesn't bunt well. Mattingly had been criticized for bunting too much and probably would have faced more second-guessing had Puig not scored, regardless of whether Uribe successfully moved him to third base.

As the baseball gods would have it, Uribe connected on a 2-2 pitch by David Carpenter to reverse the deficit. Whatever questions Mattingly would have faced about asking Uribe to bunt disappeared into the stands with the ball.

So did questions about the Dodgers' decision to start Clayton Kershaw that day on three days' rest for the first time in his major league career.

The widespread perception was that the decision on Kershaw was Mattingly's. The manager was the highest-ranking team official to publicly talk about it before the outcome of the game was known. Kasten distanced himself from the move as much as he could, saying he had nothing to do with lineup decisions. General Manager Ned Colletti wouldn't meet with reporters face to face.

Because the Dodgers won, the decision to start became the right one and evidence that Mattingly's bold style of managing could pay dividends. With Zack Greinke in line to start Game 1 of the NLCS and Kershaw available to start Game 2, the move figures to have no lingering drawbacks.

Continue reading.

Christian Adamek, 15, Kills Himself After 'Facing Expulsion and Being Put on Sex Offender Registry' for Streaking at High School Football Game

I literally can't believe it.

We had streakers all the time when I was in high school.

At Engineering Evil, "Boy, 15, kills himself after ‘facing expulsion and being put on sex offender registry’ for STREAKING at high school football game."

This is an abomination. RT @jpodhoretz: Oh my God. http://t.co/tQA7MgLqLX

— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) October 11, 2013

Fabulous Stacey Poole

She's one of my new favorites.

A lovely woman, on Twitter here.

Check out the wonderful @StaceyPoole1 from Portugal! pic.twitter.com/xecmyhZvcU
— Damien Morley (@damienmorley) October 5, 2013

Dr. Ben Carson: #ObamaCare Worst Thing Since Slavery

At the Hill, "Ben Carson: ObamaCare, slavery both 'evil'."

And at the Blaze, "WHO JUST COMPARED OBAMACARE TO AMERICAN SLAVERY AND SOVIET COMMUNISM?"

Here's the full speech:

Sara Malakul Lane

At FHM.

5 things you need to know about Sara Malakul Lane, this month's Would Wife - http://t.co/SCKRIs1Yx7 pic.twitter.com/j8gUo5gpAF
— FHM UK (@FHM) October 11, 2013

Photos here, "Sara Malakul Lane – FHM Thailand September 2013."

Ted Cruz Heckled at Values Voters Summit

How do these goons even get into these events?

Pathetic inhuman Democrat zombies.

At National Journal, "Ted Cruz Takes On the 'Obama' Hecklers":

The Texas senator wasn't able to give a cogent speech because of outbursts of protesters. But the crowd loved it.

Also at the Blaze, "TED CRUZ WAS HECKLED REPEATEDLY AT THE VALUES VOTER SUMMIT — HERE’S HOW HE TURNED THE TABLES ON HIS HATERS."

Added: There's a Memeorandum thread.

Non-Essential? White House Knew of Veterans Death-Benefits Lapse Before Shutdown

We should be expect massive public outrage nationwide.

Indeed, Democrat negatives are surging at this very moment. This administration --- this president --- is truly depraved.

At U.S. News, "Pentagon warned of cuts to military death benefits days before shutdown."



PREVIOUSLY: "Depraved: Obama's Shameful Death-Benefit Theater."

Obama Running for the Exits in Afghanistan

Again, a truly depraved man.

At the Washington Post, "In Afghanistan, U.S. losing patience as deadline for long-term deal nears":

When Obama called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" the US had to win, did you think he was serious? http://t.co/Qz4VjuY4ec
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) October 11, 2013

During a testy video conference in June, President Obama drew a line in the sand for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If there was no agreement by Oct. 31 on the terms for keeping a residual U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Obama warned him, the United States would withdraw all of its troops at the end of 2014.

With that deadline less than three weeks away and deep rifts persisting, the White House appears increasingly willing to abandon plans for a long-term, costly partnership with Afghanistan. Despite the Pentagon’s pleas for patience, much of the rest of the administration is fed up with Karzai and sees Afghanistan as a fading priority amid far more ominous threats elsewhere in the world.

Right. A "fading priority." This was the "good war" that Obama campaigned for in 2007, as the most antiwar presidential candidate in the Democrat-Treason Party.

But RTWT.

A terrible president. Worst. President. Ever.

Added: From Max Boot, "Heading for the Exits in Afghanistan."

Depraved: Obama's Shameful Death-Benefit Theater

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "President Obama's shameful death-benefit theater":

The Obama administration insisted Tuesday it had no choice but to withhold death benefits to relatives of 1st Lt. Jennifer Moreno, a 25-year-old soldier born and raised in San Diego, and four other soldiers killed since the partial government shutdown began Oct. 1.

This is ridiculous and perverse. President Barack Obama has used an expansive — and some legal scholars believe extreme — interpretation of his powers to unilaterally rewrite key provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, the sweeping 2002 measure that drastically reshaped federal education policies. In similar fashion, the president has unilaterally rewritten key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, his sweeping 2010 measure that is drastically reshaping federal public health policies. His administration has also essentially rewritten federal laws governing illegal immigration and penalties for drug possession.

Just this month, the federal government has authorized the spending of billions of dollars since the partial shutdown began without explicit congressional approval. Contrary to the Obama administration’s representations, there are not hard, definitive rules governing how the executive branch must act during these budget fights. That is reflected in the amazingly arbitrary ways that the federal government has shuttered some services and agencies but not others — often with the barely hidden goal of making people suffer to build pressure on House Republicans to give in to the White House. For one of hundreds of examples, the Armed Forces Network serving U.S. military personnel abroad still shows news — but it has stopped showing NFL games, blaming the shutdown.

This is obnoxious enough. In denying death benefits to the relatives of fallen U.S. soldiers, however, the Obama administration has broken new ground in its budget theater. This decision is accurately described as depraved.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that the president was prepared to act unilaterally to resolve the problem. But Carney also insisted the denial of death benefits was House Republicans’ fault. Those claims are not mutually sustainable.

Soon afterward, the White House announced that the Fisher House Foundation — a private organization that helps veterans in need — would provide the death benefits and be reimbursed after the partial shutdown. At about the same time Wednesday, the House voted unanimously to authorize paying survivor benefits. Thankfully, this problem is going to be solved, one way or the other.

But the outrage should remain. On Wednesday, CNN reported that on Sept. 27, days before the shutdown began, the Pentagon was already telling reporters it planned to suspend death benefits.

So for two weeks, the Obama administration has been anticipating this nightmare would come to pass — and did nothing to pre-empt it.

Obama loves inflicting as much pain as possible on innocent bystanders for political gain. He is truly depraved. And personally reviled by legions of patriotic Americans. 2016 can't come to soon.

Continue reading.

#ObamaCare Winners at Losers (From the San Jose Mercury News)

I read this piece when it first became available last week, but then it went viral over the weekend.

See Tracy Seipel, "Obamacare's winners and losers in Bay Area":

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

"Welcome to the club," said Robert Laszewksi, a prominent health care consultant and president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Virginia.

For years, the nation has been embroiled in the political rhetoric of "Obamacare," but this past week the reality of the new law sank in as millions of Americans had their first good look at how the 3 1/2-year-old legislation will affect their pocketbooks.

This much quickly became clear:

As state- and federal-run health insurance exchanges debuted across the country offering a range of prices for different tiers of insurance coverage, the new online marketplaces -- which represent the centerpiece of Obamacare -- could greatly benefit more than 40 million Americans who now lack coverage. But an additional 16 million -- who buy individual health insurance policies on the open market -- are finding out that their plans may not comply with the new law, which requires 10 essential benefits such as maternity care, mental health care and prescription drug coverage.

In California, 1.9 million people buy plans on the open market, according to officials with Covered California, the state's new health insurance exchange. And many of them are steaming mad.

"There's going to be a number of people surprised" by their bills, said Jonathan Wu, a co-founder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website. "The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that's true across the country"....

Even those who don't qualify for the tax subsidies could see their rates drop because Obamacare doesn't allow insurers to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and cancer, he said.

People like Marilynn Gray-Raine.

The 64-year-old Danville artist, who survived breast cancer, has purchased health insurance for herself for decades. She watched her Anthem Blue Cross monthly premiums rise from $317 in 2005 to $1,298 in 2013. But she found out last week from the Covered California site that her payments will drop to about $795 a month.

But people with no pre-existing conditions like Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher, and Waschura, a 52-year-old self-employed engineer, are making up the difference.

"I was laughing at Boehner -- until the mail came today," Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.

"I really don't like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family's pocket each year, that's otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy."

Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level -- the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn't realize they would rise so much.

"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."

And ICYMI, be sure to watch the CBS News report from yesterday, "CBS News Issues Devastating Report on #ObamaCare Failure: System Needs 'Heart Transplant'."

The Next Breeding Ground for Global Jihad

From Reuel Marc Gerecht, at WSJ (via Google):

When President Obama declared that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad must "step aside" two years ago, many believed that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. intervened on behalf of the rebels battling the regime. Now that seems increasingly out of the question. The growing power of hard-core Islamic radicals among the rebels has made the White House, and many in Congress, look upon the Syrian opposition with little enthusiasm. Instead, Washington focuses on the charade of trying to relieve Assad of his chemical weapons, as if that will have any effect on the civil war.

America ignores the rebels at its peril. Yet on the left and right, anti-interventionists argue against American airstrikes, or any serious military aid, because such assistance would abet al Qaeda-linked jihadists. Perhaps what these anti-interventionists don't realize is that the president and Congress may have already done their part to create the most deadly Islamic movement since the Taliban merged with al Qaeda in the 1990s.

Social order in the Muslim world depends, as it so often does elsewhere, on older men keeping younger men in check. In Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban's medieval mores—a zealously crude form of village Pashtun ethics—gained the high ground because older men and their moderating social structures had been obliterated over three decades by Afghan communists, Soviets and civil war.

Urban culture—the core of Islamic civilization—was wiped out. The elites of the country's primary ethnic groups, who had been based in the bustling, literate, Persian-speaking culture of Kabul, went into exile or became brutal warriors. Heartless men bred by battle embraced Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born Sunni militant. Bin Laden's vision of jihad against the United States easily melded into the Taliban's localized jihad against Ahmad Shah Masoud, the Sunni Tajik commander who formed the Northern Alliance and kept the Taliban from conquering all of Afghanistan.

To be sure, Syrian Sunni culture is vastly more cosmopolitan and urbanized than Afghan Sunni culture. Syria is where Arab Bedouins first became polished men of arts and letters and transformed Byzantine architecture into a Muslim motif that defined Islamic elegance for centuries. But the shocking satellite photos of a constantly bombarded Aleppo, the center of Sunni Syria since the 10th century, ought to warn us how quickly society can be transformed—no matter how sophisticated.

Though Arab Syrian nationalism is more solid now than when it was born 90 years ago, it isn't nearly as deep as Syrians' Muslim identity. And in times of tumult in the Middle East, Islam—and the ancient divide between Sunnis and Shiites—comes to the fore. Shatter Syria into fragments, and radical Islamists who appeal to a higher calling, just as they did in Afghanistan, are guaranteed to attract young men who yearn for a mission beyond their destroyed towns and villages. There may be as many as 1,000 Sunni rebel groups scattered across Syria, stocked with such fighters.

The Taliban played on tribal sentiments while always appealing to a post-tribal, Muslim conception of state. The Islamist fighters in Syria appear to be following the Taliban's playbook. Loyalty among these men isn't ultimately based on family, tribe, town or even country, but on the supremely fraternal act of holy war.

We don't know what the recuperative power is for Sunni Syrian society. We do know that whatever the power is now, it will be much reduced in six months. If Assad's manpower reserves can hold out for another year and a half or two years, Syrian Sunni society could be beyond help.

In such a Hobbesian world, radical Sunni groups that promise "stability"—of security, home and private property—could win over a popular base that would be very difficult to dislodge. This was how the Taliban were initially welcomed into Pashtun towns that were shellshocked by war...

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eMarketer Report: Americans Spend More Time on Smartphones, Computers, Tablets Than Television

This is interesting.

At WSJ, "In Digital Era, What Does 'Watching TV' Even Mean? Study Suggests More Time Spent on Smartphones, Computers, Tablets Than Television":

We spend a full five hours and 16 minutes a day in front of a screen, and that's without even turning on a television.

So says a statistic from eMarketer, a research firm that focuses on digital media and marketing. It says that for the first time we are devoting more attention each day to smartphones, computers and tablets. All of which points to a big question: What counts as TV-watching today?

We are actually watching more television programming, just from a growing range of devices and platforms, say digital and television executives, as well as academics and statisticians. Traditional TV or cable-network fare is now available online, via streaming services like Netflix or for sale to be watched on mobile phones and tablets.

The report says that adults are watching their televisions slightly less—with a daily intake of four hours and 31 minutes this year, seven minutes less than in 2012.

The increase in mobile devices and the multitasking they allow, plus the trend toward watching TV shows on devices other than televisions, is driving the changes measured in the report, says Clark Fredricksen, a spokesman for eMarketer. The study, which came out in August, is conducted twice annually.

The company says its numbers reflect raw data and studies of consumer media behavior from sources such as companies that measure TV ratings and online traffic, social networking platforms, gadget retailers, software manufacturers and government records.

Although Americans are gravitating toward digital platforms and social networks, "in many cases, what's popular comes from the large entertainment companies," says James Webster, a professor who studies audience measurement and behavior at Northwestern University. He points to a recent video that looks homemade and shows a woman failing badly at the twerking dance move.

After the video exploded on YouTube—it has been viewed more than 13 million times—ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel announced that his team had produced the short.

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CBS News Issues Devastating Report on #ObamaCare Failure: System Needs 'Heart Transplant'

Jan Crawford reported this morning.

Twitchy has it linked up, "The system worked? Check out the Obamacare website’s ridiculous definition of ‘success’ [pics]."

Database programmer on Obamacare website: "It's not even ready for beta testing for my book." http://t.co/DJU5NakhQC

— Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) October 9, 2013

And here's the video: