.@MegynKelly is on fire!So now here's the opening blockbuster segment, via Gateway Pundit, "BREAKING: Congressional Democrats Give WH 72 Hours to Fix Obamacare Disaster (Video)."
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 13, 2013
In the days after HealthCare.gov went live, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough quietly dispatched Jeff Zients, a favorite West Wing fixer, to assess the operation and report back.Sheesh. That's clinical, almost like an autopsy.
When Zients did, President Barack Obama learned the project was in worse shape than suspected — riddled with coding problems, management issues and communication gaps, according to a senior administration official.
It was only then that Obama and his top aides realized the extent of what they didn’t know.
The story of how a technology-obsessed White House failed to head off a technological disaster may be as simple as it is mind-boggling to the law’s supporters. Senior White House officials claim they just never anticipated the magnitude of the problems that would unfold — there was concern, yes, but not an impending sense of doom.
The notion that Obama wasn’t clued in seems to defy logic, given the warning signs from both within the administration and outside of it, the importance of the law’s success to his presidency and his own understanding of the power of technology. But ever since the troubled launch, administration officials have tried to keep Obama as far as possible from the debacle, describing him as engaged in the implementation but unaware of the depth of the website issues.
The question of how much the White House knew will get a fuller, public airing Wednesday when technology officials in charge of the website testify before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The five-year-long dance between the Clintons and President Obama has always been an interesting show, but never more so than now as the runner-up in the 2008 Democratic presidential contest starts to maneuver in preparation for 2016. Hillary Clinton spent her four years as secretary of state playing the good soldier for the president, doing little of value but also (and unlike her spectacularly inept successor John Kerry) causing him little trouble. She exited the cabinet with a presidential love fest that had to annoy Vice President Joe Biden, her only likely rival for 2016. But now that she is safely out of the Washington maelstrom and embarked on a path that she hopes will see her return to the White House as president rather than first lady, her relationship with Obama has undergone a not-so-subtle change. That has allowed some of the old antagonism between her and, in particular, her husband and the man who beat her in 2008 to resurface.Continue reading.
That antagonism was on display today as Bill Clinton joined the growing chorus of critics of the ObamaCare rollout in an interview published in a web magazine. Speaking much as if he was one of the angry red-state Democrats who think the president’s lies about ObamaCare can sink their hopes of reelection next year, the 42nd president stuck a knife into the 44thpresident by saying the law should be changed to accommodate the demands of those who are losing their coverage despite the president’s promises to the contrary:
“I personally believe even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.”In doing so, the former unofficial “explainer in chief” for Obama has helped undermine the notion that the president’s signature health-care legislation can be kept intact. But he has also begun the process by which Hillary will begin to disassociate herself from an administration that is beginning to take on the odor of lame-duck failure.
There are growing calls in Germany not only to question Edward Snowden in connection with the ongoing NSA scandal, but also to offer him safe passage and asylum. Yet the heads of the two major political camps fear the wrath of the United States.More here.
Hans-Christian Ströbele, a lawyer and parliamentarian for Germany's Green Party, turned 74 this year. He has devoted more than 50 of those years to the political struggle for justice and for what is good in the world - or at least that's how he sees it. "Have you ever been on the wrong side of things?" Ströbele was asked in a recent television interview.
"Politically speaking?" he asked the interviewer, glancing at the ceiling. For two seconds, it seemed as if he had to consider the question, but he quickly regained his composure and emphatically replied: "No."
Now Ströbele is waging another political battle, probably the most noteworthy one of his life. Last Thursday, he went to Moscow and spent three hours speaking with Edward Snowden, the man whose revelations about the spying activities of the United States have both captivated the world for months and deeply changed its perceptions.
Ströbele, a lawmaker from the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg election district in Berlin, was the first politician in the world to meet with Snowden in his Moscow exile. Snowden's mission is now Ströbele's mission. He wants to bring the American whistleblower to Germany to testify before an investigative committee of the German parliament, the Bundestag, and in doing so provide him with a secured right of residence in Germany.
Ströbele knows that granting Snowden the right to stay in Germany would create problems for German-American relations. The Americans have already submitted an extradition request, just in case Snowden ever sets foot on German soil. But Ströbele doesn't care. He sets his own priorities and, once again, he believes himself to be on the right side of history, notwithstanding Germany's trans-Atlantic partnership with the United States. "If the political will exists, as well as the courage, including the courage to stand up to presidents, then it's possible," Ströbele said after returning from Moscow.
Since revelations emerged two weeks ago that America's National Security Agency had long spied on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone communications, calls have been growing for whistleblower Edward Snowden to be offered political asylum in Germany.Well, he can't stay in Russia forever. He's still a man without a country. Interesting though is how much the German left digs the guy. Anything to stick it to Obama right in the eye.
When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.WTF?
If Amazon counted all the items sitting in my shopping cart as "paid" I'd be broke a long time ago.
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 12, 2013
The world has been captivated by the discovery of more than 1,400 works of art in a Munich apartment, among them many lost masterpieces stolen by the Nazis. The mystery surrounding the paintings reveals much about the great tragedies of the 20th century -- and Germany's attempt to grapple with its past.Talk about international intrigue.
Two men are on horseback, it's summer, the colors are radiant, the riders are deep in conversation, and one of the horses prances in the surf. It's a brief moment on a beach in Holland - but it is also a moment for eternity.
Max Liebermann's painting, "Two Riders on the Beach," is an Impressionist masterpiece. He painted it in 1901, and a Jewish sugar refiner from Breslau in Lower Silesia, now the Polish city of Wroclaw, owned it for more than 30 years -- until the Nazis confiscated the work. After that, it disappeared.
Two attorneys in Berlin have been searching for the Liebermann for the last five years. Lothar Fremy and Jörg Rosbach specialize in restitution cases. In the postwar period, they helped clients assert claims for expropriated property in eastern Germany. The lawful heirs of the Liebermann paintings are brothers, 88 and 92, who live in London and New York, respectively. The sugar refiner from Breslau was their great uncle. The painting is probably worth about €1 million ($1.34 million) today.
When Fremy and Rosbach switched on the television last Tuesday, they weren't expecting much. The public prosecutor's office in the Bavarian city of Augsburg was giving a press conference on a mysterious Munich art find, and it was being broadcast live. Yet what they saw on TV was the announcement of the largest discovery of lost art from the Nazi period since World War II. Eleven of the 1,406 art works that had been seized in Munich a year and a half ago were presented in the press conference. The Liebermann was one of the paintings.
NEWPORT, N.H.—Desperation drove Timothy Fazio, a former Marine, to turn up around midnight at a veterans' hospital near Boston. His post-traumatic stress disorder was causing flashbacks and blackouts. He had leapt from a balcony.Continue reading.
And he had overdosed, twice, on painkillers originally prescribed for a hand injury suffered in Iraq.
"I want detox," Mr. Fazio told doctors that night in 2008, his medical files say.
After a week of withdrawal, Mr. Fazio checked himself out of the Veterans Health Administration hospital—and was given 168 pills of the same opiumlike drug he was already addicted to, according to his files, which The Wall Street Journal has reviewed. The next day, the hospital gave him another 168 pills.
PTSD and painkillers are the twin pillars of a new mental-health crisis in America. Many of the more than two million Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer, as Mr. Fazio does, from a mixture of pain and PTSD. The VA treats many of them with powerful opioid painkillers for their pain. But opioids can be a combustible mix with mental illness because of a heightened addiction risk.
Effectively, some critics say, it amounts to treating mental illness with addictive narcotics.
A study by a VA researcher found that veterans with PTSD were nearly twice as likely to be prescribed opioids as those without mental-health problems. They were more likely to get multiple opioid painkillers and to get the highest doses. Veterans with PTSD were more than twice as likely to suffer bad outcomes like injuries and overdoses if they were prescribed opioid painkillers, the study found.
In Mr. Fazio's case, between 2008 and 2011 the VA prescribed him more than 3,600 pills containing oxycodone, a narcotic painkiller from the same family as heroin and morphine, his records show. He overdosed a total of six times.
"I was always a tough kid, but I feel like this has been the toughest fight of my life," Mr. Fazio said in March, after a spell of homelessness that saw him sleeping in an ATM lobby. "I don't know if I'm going to win it."
The VA declined to comment on Mr. Fazio's treatment and said it would review his records. It said it follows uniform guidelines and procedures for veterans' pain care, adding that those are being reinforced with further training of doctors and patients in safe opioid use. "The Veterans Health Administration has worked aggressively to promote the safe and effective use of opioid therapy for veterans," it said.
The number of vets with both PTSD and pain isn't known. But some 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans under VA care have PTSD, VA figures show, and more than half suffer chronic pain.
.@RSMcCain Via @PRHouseworth, the tech surge is coming to fix #ObamaCare! pic.twitter.com/8GTRlKHgaG
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 12, 2013
Labor leaders and businesses are closely watching a Supreme Court case to be argued this Wednesday that involves a popular strategy used by unions to successfully organize hundreds of thousands of workers.More at that top link.
That strategy — widely deployed by the Service Employees International Union and the Unite Here hotel workers union — involves pressuring an employer into signing a so-called neutrality agreement in which the employer promises not to oppose a unionization drive. By some estimates, more than half of the recent successful unionization campaigns involve such agreements, which sometimes allow union organizers onto company property to talk with workers.
Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor law at Harvard Law School, said the case before the Supreme Court was potentially “the most significant labor case in a generation.”
Professor Sachs said that if the court ruled against labor, it could significantly hobble efforts by private sector unions to organize workers. He added that the other big labor case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this session could have a significant impact on public sector unions. In that case, a home-care worker has asked the court to rule that the state of Illinois violated her First Amendment rights by requiring her to pay “fair share” fees, much like dues, to a union she did not support.
In the case being argued on Wednesday, Unite Here Local 355 vs. Mulhall, an employee of Mardi Gras Gaming in Florida sued Unite Here, asserting that its neutrality agreement with the company was illegal. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in his favor, finding that the agreement was a “thing of value” that federal labor law bars employers from giving to any union or union official.
Mardi Gras Gaming agreed to recognize a card-check procedure, not to speak out on the issue of unionization, and to hand over a list of unionizable employees to the union. In return, the union agreed not to strike and to help pass a ballot measure allowing slot machine gambling. Employees who oppose unionization like Martin Mulhall, who filed suit to block the agreement, had no seat at the table.It's extortion alright. The union goons are breathing down their necks.
The Cato Institute legal team argues that these perks absolutely are “things of value,” noting:
We argue that, not only are Mardi Gras’s concessions clearly “things of value,” they are the types of exchanges that the Taft-Hartley Act was specifically passed to prohibit. The union exchanged a promise of “peace” from strikes and boycotts for concessions from the casino that compromised Mr. Mulhall’s right to dissent from unionization. The “exchange” was little better than extortion.
Yes, we need to have the conversation about where the Republican party is going. People like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz (and others) are making compelling arguments. But should that mean losing the path we’re all on, the one that leads to beating back the forces of the Left who despise us and everything we have built together as Americans? Should that fall victim to our squabbles? Not on Veterans Day, not any day. While we’re infighting about whether someone’s speaking the conservative message exactly the way we’d like them to, we’re losing the #War.RTWT.
There have been bad presidents -- see Jimmy Carter. Yet has there ever been a president as staggeringly incompetent as Barack Obama? Really, can there be any other explanation for his performance as president than the man is, well...a moron?Continue reading.
Let's face it, we all know them. They are the people who either started out with money, or have spent a lifetime failing up. Despite a distinct lack of accomplishment, personal or professionally, they believe they are the smartest person in every room. They cannot utter a sentence that does not include "I," "me," and "my," and they never stop speaking. To quote Alice Roosevelt, they are "the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening."
They seem to Forrest Gump their way through life, with one undeserved success after another.
Does this remind you of anyone?
Have you ever noticed how many of these "really smart" people there are in government? It's a magnet for morons, and it seems every damn one of them is portrayed by the media as a genius in his own right. Yet, they never seem to be able to do anything but make things worse, and usually much worse.
These are America's morons and Barry is their leader.
Obama has strange tastes. His favorite show is Homeland. He's proud to tell people this, and don't get me wrong, I like the show myself -- as a work of fiction. Then again, I'm not the President of the United States of America. In that case, the bar should be set higher.
A president who brags about liking a show where one of the lead characters assassinated the Vice President of the United States is not one to be taken seriously as president, or as anything.
One more time for emphasis, the President of the United States willingly tells people his favorite show is one in which the Vice President was assassinated.
What is this guy, a moron?
The answer is yes, he is a moron, and worse, he is the most dangerous of morons, one who doesn't think he is a moron.
Don't get me wrong, this is not an anti-moron screed. In my life, I have had more than 2,000 people work for me. Morons have their place. A good manager reads an employee and his skill set and uses that person to the maximum of his abilities. A moron can contribute. A moron can be an effective employee -- I've had many of them.
Yet when he is delusional and lacks self-awareness, he often has the 'I can do anything' syndrome and ends up thinking he can be President of the United States, while believing he's got game like Lebron and is smarter than all his advisors.
A dangerous moron, at times, can self-limit the damage done, by lightening the workload. Having surprisingly risen past his level of competence, he naturally thinks he is actually so great, he doesn't have to work hard. So...he doesn't. Instead he plays golf, and throws parties, and gives speeches, and looks longingly at his reflection in the mirror.
Narcissus was convinced no one was prettier than Narcissus. And Barry is convinced no one smarter than Barry.
A moron can be productive -- providing he knows his limitations and can use what God has given him within those limitations. A dangerous moron, however, is all arrogance and bluster, always convinced that every one of his incompetent actions and the inevitable results, are actually brilliant successes and if not, somebody else's fault. Dangerous morons hate to admit they were wrong. They are also incapable of feeling shame or guilt.
Dirty Harry Callahan said: "A man's got to know his limitations." And Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair. Well...Barack Obama is the iconic "empty suit," which, by definition is the most dangerous of morons...
People covered their faces with towels and scarves against the stench of death Monday, clogging the typhoon-ravaged roads of the hardest hit part of the Philippines in a traffic jam of desperation.Continue reading.
Headed into one center of devastation were Filipinos frantic to find loved ones, or help, or both; fleeing in the other direction were battered and fearful survivors of the howling winds and raging waves of supertyphoon Haiyan.
As the death toll surged and food and water became scarce three days after the storm, tens of thousands of refugees struggled to find their way to aid. With the return of cellphone signals and as rescuers cut their way toward isolated communities on Monday, the depth of the loss of lives became clearer. The government put the death count at 1,744—and it was expected to rise much further. Thousands remained missing.
On the streets of Tacloban, capital of the shattered province of Leyte, stiffened animal carcasses and human bodies were a common sight, some out in the open, others partly covered by tarps or sheet metal.
The road to Tacloban's airport was jammed with people trying to get out as limited commercial service restarted. At the same time, the road into town was also snarled by motorbikes and cars—even as humanitarian workers warned that both food and water were rapidly running out.
New York’s health exchange slogan is “Today’s the Day.” Minnesota has enlisted Paul Bunyan. Oregon held a music contest, and California stresses the “peace of mind” that will come with insurance.Cost effectiveness? Heaven forfend we can't have that!
The state and federal health insurance exchanges are using all manner of humor and happy talk to sell the Affordable Care Act’s products. But the one part of the new system that they are not quick to trumpet is the financial penalty that Americans will face if they fail to buy insurance.
On state exchange websites, mention of the penalty is typically tucked away under “frequently asked questions,” if it appears at all. Television and print ads usually skip the issue, and operators of exchange telephone banks are instructed to discuss it only if asked. The federal website, now infamous for its glitches, mentions the penalty but also calls it a fee, or an Individual Shared Responsibility Payment.
The euphemisms and avoidance of any discussion of the penalty are no accident, both supporters and critics of the law say. While the mandate for all Americans to buy health insurance — with a penalty if they do not — was the linchpin of the Supreme Court decision upholding the law, and is considered the key to its success, poll after poll has found that it is also the least popular part of the program.
State exchange operators say that they are not trying to hide the penalty, but that their market research has taught them that, at least in the initial phase, consumers will be more receptive to soothing messages and appeals to their sense of collective responsibility than to threats of punishment.
“We feel that the carrot is better than the stick,” said Larry Hicks, a spokesman for Covered California. “This is a new endeavor. We want people to come in and test our wares.”
But there is also the dirty little secret of the penalty: It is a bit of a chimera, because the federal government cannot use its usual tools like fines, liens or criminal prosecutions to punish people who do not pay it. The penalty is supposed to be reported and paid with the income tax returns of those who do not buy insurance, but the government has not said how it will collect from those who owe it but do not pay it, though the law allows it to deduct from any income tax refunds.
“It might be that they want to be positive,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the conservative Cato Institute. “But it’s also the case that an informed customer is not their best customer.”
And for many healthy middle-class people, a side-by-side comparison might suggest that it would be more cost-effective to pay the penalty than to buy insurance.
Do not blame President Obama for the fact private insurance companies are using the ACA as an excuse to change your policies and increase your premiums.And no surprise, but Martin Longman jumped on the socialist bandwagon, attacking Ms. Gottlieb as a liar, "Another ObamaCare Liar."
Blame 3 Senators (Nelson, D-NE; Lieberman, I-CT; and Landrieu, D-LA). President Obama wanted a public option in the bill, but those 3 Senators announced they would not vote for cloture if the bill contained public option. Without a vote for cloture, Harry Reid had to bring a bill to the floor without a public option. They sided with big insurance (who were afraid of government competition) and against the people.
If there were a public option, people could choose it instead of paying what private insurance companies charge. Consider education, people can send their children to free public schools or pay tuition to send their children to private schools. In the case of the ACA, there is no choice. Everybody must purchase private insurance. This is great for the bottom line of private insurance companies; but not so great for the people.
Ironically, my former Senator, Cornhusker Kickback Ben Nelson, lives in a state that requires that all power generation be public (there are no private electric companies in Nebraska). We have some of the lowest electric rates in the country because power is socialized in Nebraska (the people own the means of electricity generation).
Give me public insurance (e.g., Medicaid and Medicare) any day. The ACA doesn't even give the public the option of buying public insurance.
We never thought we'd say this, but thank heaven for French foreign-policy exceptionalism. At least for the time being, François Hollande's Socialist government has saved the West from a deal that would all but guarantee that Iran becomes a nuclear power.RTWT.
While the negotiating details still aren't fully known, the French made clear Saturday that they objected to a nuclear agreement that British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama were all too eager to sign. These two leaders remind no one, least of all the Iranians, of Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. That left the French to protect against a historic security blunder, with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declaring in an interview with French radio that while France still hopes for an agreement with Tehran, it won't accept a "sucker's deal."
And that's exactly what seems to have been on the table as part of a "first-step agreement" good for six months as the parties negotiated a final deal. Tehran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium, continue manufacturing centrifuges, and continue building a plutonium reactor near the city of Arak. Iran would also get immediate sanctions relief and the unfreezing of as much as $50 billion in oil revenues—no small deliverance for a regime whose annual oil revenues barely topped $95 billion in 2011.
In return the West would get Iranian promises.
