Leftists Splintered Over #ObamaCare

From Charles Cooke, at National Review, "New Republic Editor: Obamacare ‘Is a Threat to Liberalism’."

I posted on this as well, "Sinking #ObamaCare Will Take Entire Cesspool of Radical Progressivism Down With It."

Iran Nuclear Deal Furthers Obama Goal of Destruction of Israel

From Caroline Glick, at RCP, "The Goal of Obama's Foreign Policy":

Over the past year, Obama has engaged in systematically weakening Israel’s position both regionally and in Washington. Regionally, the US has forced Israel into talks with the Palestinians that are engineered to weaken Israel strategically and diplomatically. The US has delegitimized Israel’s legal rights to sovereignty and self-defense, while effectively justifying Palestinian terrorism as a legitimate response to Israeli actions – which themselves were perfectly legal. So, too, the US has given a green light to the EU’s illegal, discriminatory economic war against Israel.

Beyond that, the Obama administration has significantly expanded the prospect of war between Israel and Syria by leaking Israeli strikes against Syrian targets that posed a threat to Israel’s security.

The US has also weakened Israel’s capacity to take steps short of war to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons possessing state by leaking key components of Israel’s covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program.

In the US, the Obama administration has targeted Israel’s American supporters. This has been advanced, first and foremost, by actively weakening AIPA C. As Lee Smith explained in Tablet, the administration has taken three key steps to neutralize AIPA C as an effective force in Washington.

It has supported J Street and so legitimized anti-Israel policymaking.

Obama appointed outspoken critics of the US-Israel alliance to key positions in his national security team. First and foremost in this arena was his appointment of Chuck Hagel to serve as defense secretary.

Finally, Obama discredited AIPA C, painting it as an unthinking warmonger by forcing the group to lobby Congress to support his helter-skelter rush to war against Syria. The coup de grace was Obama’s sudden abandonment of his plans to bomb Syria, which left AIPA C high and dry, looking like an anti-Semitic caricature of itself.

The culmination of this long process of delegitimizing Israel as a warmongering, ungrateful ally and its supporters as turncoats who are forcing the US to endanger itself for the benefit of the Jewish state was the administration’s hysterical campaign against Israel and its supporters in the lead-up to Saturday’s signing ceremony in Geneva. Everyone, from the White House to Kerry, accused Israel and its supporters of trying to force the US to fight an unnecessary war.

When we consider Obama’s decision to wait for a year to sign the deal that enables Iran to become a nuclear power in the context of his main activities over the past year, we understand his foreign policy.

His goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It isn’t even to facilitate a rapprochement between America and Iran. The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is to weaken the State of Israel.

All the pathetic shills defending the administration's craven Iran diplomacy are simply enabling Israel's obliteration.

The Desolate Wilderness

At the Wall Street Journal, "This classic editorial has appeared annually since 1961."

Democrat Denial About #ObamaCare's Midterm Repercussions in 2014

Yes, I can see why Democrats are starting to freak over their party leadership's ObamaCare denial.

Here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz from last week, "Wasserman Schultz: 'You're Darn Right' We'll Run on Obamacare."

And now here's this at Politco, "Democrats worry leaders in denial on Obamacare":

Democratic leaders claim the bungled launch of Obamacare is just the latest news sensation — a media-stirred tempest that looks in the heat of the moment like it could upend the midterm election, but ends up fizzling well before voters head to the polls.

Some party strategists say they’re in denial.

And that perceived gap between party spin and facts on the ground is fueling worries that the White House and Democratic higher-ups aren’t taking the possible electoral blowback seriously enough or doing enough to shield their candidates. Democratic contenders in the toughest races are distinctly less convinced that Obamacare will fade as an election-year issue — and they can’t afford to just cross their fingers that things get ironed out or that Republicans revert to political hara-kiri.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a forum hosted by BuzzFeed recently that the rollout won’t “hurt us in 2014,” adding that “we’re proud” of the law. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a recent appearance on CNN, went so far as to assert that Obamacare would be “an advantage” for Democratic candidates next year.

“Democrats will run on the Affordable Care Act and win,” she has also told reporters.

The White House, meanwhile, has come across as equally dismissive of Obamacare’s consequences for 2014.

“The fact is that [the president] is focused on delivering the access to quality and affordable health insurance to the American people that the Affordable Care Act promises. He’s not concerned about the politics of that,” White House press secretary Jay Carney recently said.

Polls, however, suggest Democrats should be worried. A CBS News poll released Wednesday showed Obama with a 37 percent approval rating, his lowest figure ever in that survey. Another all-time low in the poll: approval of Obamacare, which stood at 31 percent.

Republicans are placing their chips on Obamacare as their defining 2014 issue and putting their money where their mouths are. The Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity has launched a $4 million TV ad offensive targeting House and Senate Democrats on the health care law. As much as they might be tempted, those on the receiving end can’t easily flee from the law because many or most of them voted for it.

“We’re trying to deny what everyone knows is happening,” said one Democratic pollster who is a veteran of competitive congressional races. “Anybody who is halfway intelligent knows this is a big … problem for us. It’s impossible not to see. We can try to hide our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not a problem, but it is.”

A Culture in Ruins

You gotta read this piece, from Victor Davis Hanson:

Why would a culture that canonizes a Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, or Lady Gaga have the discrimination to determine whether their chief executive tells the truth or lies? Obamacare is a great program in a way that West, Cyrus, and Gaga are great artists, in a way that more iPads will mean more geniuses.

Obama in Complete Electoral Freak-Out Mode: Issues Regs to Crush Conservative 501c Groups

The IRS targeting scandal was just the beginning.

The Obama White House will crush conservative interest group opposition if it's the last thing it does.

At the New York Times, "New Rules Would Rein In Nonprofits’ Political Role":

The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to curb political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, with potentially major ramifications for some of the biggest and most secretive spenders in American politics.

New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would clarify both how the I.R.S. defines political activity and how much nonprofits are allowed to spend on it. The proposal covers not just television advertising, but bread-and-butter political work like candidate forums and get-out-the-vote drives.

Long demanded by government watchdogs and Democrats who say the flow of money through tax-exempt groups is corrupting the political system, the changes would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity by nonprofits.

The move follows years of legal and regulatory shifts, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, that have steadily loosened the rules governing political spending, particularly by those with the biggest bank accounts: corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

But the proposal also thrusts the I.R.S. into what is sure to be a polarizing regulatory battle, with some Republicans immediately criticizing the proposal on Tuesday as an attack on free speech and a ploy to undermine congressional investigations into the agency’s handling of applications from Tea Party groups.

“Before rushing forward with new rules, especially ones that appear to make it harder to engage in public debate, I would hope Treasury would let all the facts come out first,” said Representative David Camp of Michigan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Political spending by tax-exempt groups — from Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, to the League of Conservation Voters — skyrocketed to more than $300 million in 2012 from less than $5.2 million in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Much of the money has been funneled through chains of interlinked nonprofit groups, making it even harder to determine the original source.

And unlike political parties and “super PACs,” political nonprofits are permitted to keep the names of donors confidential, making them the vehicle of choice for deep-pocketed donors seeking to influence campaigns in secret.

The new rules would not prohibit political activity by nonprofits. But by seeking to establish clearer limits for campaign-related spending by groups claiming tax exemption, the I.R.S. proposal could have an enormous impact on some of the biggest groups, forcing them to either limit their election spending or register as openly political organizations, such as super PACs.

A spokesman for Crossroads declined to comment, as did officials at other political nonprofits.

It's a blatant attempt to shut down the Koch brothers' advocacy groups and Crossroads, to say nothing of folks like Sheldon Adelson and the like.

This push just reeks of total panic. Pathetic desperation. And it won't work. Money in politics is like water in a stream. Once something blocks the flow, the stream finds another way to keep rolling down.

Election 2014 can't come too soon. I'm loving this.

NBC Nightly News: Large Employers Slash Health Coverage Ahead of #ObamaCare 'Cadillac Tax'

Employees at large firms are seeing their out-of-pocket expenses skyrocket.

Mary Katharine Ham reports, at Hot Air, "Large employers cite upcoming Obamacare Cadillac tax for reduced benefits":

See? There’s something in this law for everyone, just not exactly the way they said.

But take heart, America. Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News is on it, sending investigative reporters to look into the “fine print” of Obamacare. Isn’t that something that would have been more useful four years ago?

Now NBC’s found out that large companies— add ‘em to the small companies and individual market plans—are also reducing benefits, raising co-pays and deductibles to cope with Obamacare’s new costs. So, if you have a catastrophic plan in the individual market, you’re losing the plan you may have liked for the privilege of paying more. If you had a middle-of-the-road individual market plan you liked, you’re losing that plan for the privilege of paying more often for fewer benefits. If you had a decent plan at a small employer, you’re likely to get dumped into the exchanges as mandate-heavy health care plans get too expensive for small businesses to afford. If you have a plan you like at a medium-sized employer, you’re likely to get dumped into the exchanges next year when the employer mandate kicks in, and your costs are already rising or benefits are going down. If you’re at a large employer with a very nice health insurance plan, sorry, you’re now going to have reduced benefits to avoid the “Cadillac” tax.

For 75 million Americans who get their insurance through large companies, the Affordable Care Act is a mixed bag. Experts tell NBC News the new healthcare law is only slightly increasing premiums next year, but causing some companies with the most generous plans to reduce their employees’ benefits.

Aaron Baker, 36, his wife Billie and their two young children are covered under a generous health insurance plan offered by the private Midwestern university where he’s worked for 10 years. When they opened their benefits notice this year, they were pleased to see their $385 premium is only up by four dollars next year. However, they were shocked to discover that instead of covering the first dollar they spend with no deductible, the Baker’s plan now includes a $1,000 deductible and a $2,500 out of pocket maximum. They also will still have small co-pays for services.

According to the enrollment notice, the changes are “to relieve future health plan trend pressure and to put the university in a position to avoid the excise tax that becomes effective in 2018.” The 40 percent excise tax—often called the “Cadillac tax”— is part of Obamacare and is levied on the most generous health plans. It’s designed to bring down overall health costs by making companies and workers more cost-conscious. The thinking is that if consumers have to pay more expenses themselves, through higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, they’ll avoid unnecessary or overly costly procedures. And that is supposed to make care more affordable for everyone.

Billie Baker doesn’t think much of that concept. “I think that saying that your insurance is too good so we’re going to give you a penalty,” she said, “is sort of outrageous to me.”

Continue reading.

And here's my previous entry, "CBS 'This Morning': Millions to Lose Employer-Based Coverage Under #ObamaCare."

CBS 'This Morning': Millions to Lose Employer-Based Coverage Under #ObamaCare

I know Fox News has been all over the thrashing of employer-based coverage under ClusterCare, but even the leftist press is picking up on the story.

At CBS News, "Some small businesses cancelling health insurance plans for employees":

The Obama administration is promising the federal health care website, HealthCare.gov, will run smoothly by the end of this weekend. However, with that self-imposed deadline approaching, CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson learned some of those who get their insurance through work are losing their coverage.

Attkisson said on “CBS This Morning” that she learned that the government had earlier estimated that millions of workers would be dropped from their employee insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and for some it's already happening.

Continue reading.

And here's today's report at Fox, "Almost 80 million with employer health care plans could have coverage canceled, experts predict" (via Memeorandum).

Reader's Guide to the Coming #ObamaCare Traumas

At WSJ, "Manias, Panics and ObamaCare Crashes":

Our guess is that President Obama will try to power through all of this the way he always has: Blame others, stretch or break the law to plug the holes, squeeze insurers and try to keep Democrats from breaking ranks before the 2014 election. Perhaps it will work. But if the disruption spreads, and complaints multiply, don't be surprised if Democrats force the White House to reopen the law.

RTWT at the link.

Ace of Spades' Talking Points for Talking With Your Obnoxious Progressive Family Members About Obamacare This Thanksgiving

Heh.

It's good, at AoSHQ:

5. Remember when you gleefully, giddily declared the end of the Republican Party and a new era of Proud Progressive dominance? Yeah, the current political Big Story is whether or not Obamacare will wind up discrediting progressivism for just an election cycle or two, or as much as a generation. It looks like you were wrong about that.

RTWT at the link.

Sinking #ObamaCare Will Take Entire Cesspool of Radical Progressivism Down With It

From Franklin Foer, at the New Republic, "Obamacare's Threat to Liberalism."

I love how Foer refers to Obama's Democrat successor as a "her."

Hmm, who could that be?

Oh My! Just 40% Say Obama 'Can Manage the Government Effectively'

Man, the hits are like wallops now.

The raw numbers are at CNN's new poll.

And from Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "CNN poll shows Obama personal qualities sliding underwater:

We are starting to see a broad polling trend for Barack Obama, and it should have the White House worried — but maybe Obama’s fellow Democrats in Congress even more. The latest CNN poll confirms what the Washington Post/ABC poll first noticed, and what the CBS poll corroborated — Obama’s approval decline involves more than just his performance. The Americans public is souring on Obama as a person and as a brand, and that spells real trouble for his agenda...

Continue reading.

Worst. President. Ever.

I've been saying that for a long time. The rest of the country is just now catching up with me.

Obama Heckler is Illegal Alien

Anderson Cooper tweets.

>@JimAcostaCNN reports heckler at Pres #Obama event is an undocumented immigrant. #AC360

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) November 26, 2013

#ObamaCare Will Not Cut Healthcare Costs

From Thomas Miller and Abby McCloskey, at WSJ, "The Next ObamaCare Mirage":

Supporters of President Obama are working overtime to backtrack from his promise that "If you like your health-care insurance, you can keep it. Period." While the president has conceded that this statement was inaccurate, the administration doesn't seem to have learned its lesson. The damage control plan is to spread another falsehood about the Affordable Care Act.

The claim this time is that the health-care "cost curve is bending, and the ACA is a significant part of the reason." That was what David Cutler —an influential Harvard economist and senior health-care adviser in Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign—wrote in a Washington Post WPO -0.71%  op-ed on Nov. 10.

The president jumped on this theme in his press conference on Nov. 14. "I'm not going to walk away from something that has helped the cost of health care grow at its slowest rate in 50 years," he said. On Wednesday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report claiming that "the ACA is contributing to the recent slow growth in health care prices and spending."

These assertions border on nonsense....

In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama promised that his health-care reform plan would save a typical family $2,500 in annual premiums by the end of his first term. This was Mr. Cutler's prediction, and it was based on projected rapid returns from larger federal investments in health-information technology, new reinsurance subsidies for high-cost workers, and savings on administrative costs for health insurance.

Those cost savings haven't materialized. Mr. Cutler maintains they will, mostly through other untested reforms, and the White House Council of Economic Advisers report points to potential savings from fledgling Accountable Care Organizations, lower Medicare reimbursements, value-based payments and hospital readmission penalties. To be sure, some of these programs have and may result in small savings, but they had little effect on savings claimed from 2010 to 2013. For example, even the president's Council of Economic Advisers hedges that some of the claimed savings from reduced hospital readmission rates "may not be entirely attributable to the ACA payment incentives."

CMS actuaries find that any positive effects of the ObamaCare delivery system experiments on the cost of health care "remain highly speculative." When they compare their September 2013 projections with earlier estimates in April 2010, these actuaries find that the law would increase national health spending higher than previously expected by an additional $27 billion in 2019 alone.

To argue that the Affordable Care Act has been and will be a key driver of slower health-care spending is irreconcilable with the most basic facts about such spending over the last decade, as well as with the judgment of the executive branch's own team of actuaries responsible for health-care accounting and future projections.

Magical communist gnomes were supposed to make this work, or something.

Donna Brazile's Hackiest #ObamaCare Hack Tweet

Man, just in time.

I needed a good laugh after work today, and Donna Brazile's got the goods.

At Twitchy, "‘Lunatic!’ Bless Donna Brazile’s heart: Hackiest Obamacare hack tweet in all of hackdom?"

No @donnabrazile, "The Biggest Problem With Obamacare’s Rollout" is that a deeply flawed law is working exactly as it was designed to.

— Lilac Sunday (@LilacSundayBlog) November 25, 2013

Gun Possession Sentences Put Three-Strikes Law Back in Court

Well, I voted against the measure.

At LAT, "Rulings on jail terms inconsistent after changes to three-strikes law":

After nearly two decades behind bars, Mark Anthony White saw a chance for freedom last year when California voters softened the state's tough three-strikes law.

Within weeks of the election, White asked a judge to reduce his 25-years-to-life sentence under the ballot measure, which allows most inmates serving life terms for relatively minor third strikes to seek more lenient sentences.

White would have walked free if his request had been granted. But a San Diego County judge refused to reduce White's sentence. The judge ruled that the 54-year-old prisoner's last crime, being a felon in possession of a firearm, made him ineligible for a lighter punishment.

A year after state voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, judges around the state are handing down conflicting decisions on whether prisoners given life terms for gun possession can qualify for shorter sentences.

The ballot measure specifically excluded prisoners whose third strikes were either violent or serious, or who during the commission of their last crime were armed with a firearm or deadly weapon.

Whether someone convicted of simply possessing a firearm was in fact armed during the commission of a crime is a more complicated legal question than it might appear. The answer could mean the difference between freedom and life in prison for more than 280 third-strikers across the state. In Los Angeles County, about 120 prisoners are waiting for the legal wrangling over the issue to be resolved.

White has appealed the decision denying his request for a shorter sentence, and his case appears to be the first in which an appeals court could address the issue head on...

The f-ker should be behind bars. The three-strikes law was good law. You know idiot leftists got on the ballot last year, and good, decent and innocent people are the ones who'll pay the price as crime skyrockets.

More at that top link.

Time Magazine: Obama's Signature 'Broken Promise'

ClusterCare's on the cover of Time Magazine this week, with Americans being reminded (quite prominently) of the administration's signature broken promise, from supermarkets to doctors' offices and airports to mailboxes. A harsh cover story no doubt prefiguring many more to come.

See, "Obama's Race for the Cure":

A good President needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights. But humility doesn't come naturally to those who decide they are qualified to run the free world. So the sign that the Obama presidency had reached a turning point came not when his poll numbers sank or his allies shuddered or the commentariat went hunting for the right degree of debacle to compare to the rollout of Obamacare.

It happened when he started apologizing. In triplicate. For not knowing what was going on in his own Administration. For failing to prevent his signature achievement from detonating in prime time. For not telling the whole truth when he promised people that Obamacare would not touch them without permission: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."

Obama's supporters can decry a "feeding frenzy," but this is a critical moment for a President whose agenda for a second term amounted to little more than being not as lame as the other guy. The HealthCare.gov website may or may not get fixed on deadline, the senior staff may be booted and rebooted, but it is already too late to avoid a pageant of media scrutiny, Republican merriment, a rebuke even from Bill Clinton and a host of existential questions: Can this policy be saved? What is left of Obama's second term if it is consumed by fixing an unpopular policy from the first? How could a White House appear so confident and incompetent at the same time?

Forget Black Friday: Major Retaliers to Open at 8:00pm on Thanksgiving

Target's upping its shopping Blitzkrieg to 8:00pm.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Black Friday keeps growing: Target, Toys R Us to open on Thanksgiving":

At this rate, shoppers hoping to get in on "Black Friday" deals will have to eat their turkey for lunch, as both Target and Toys R Us announced plans to open Thanksgiving evening.

In its earliest opening ever, Target said it will welcome bargain hunters at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 28, joining a veritable stampede of retailers, including Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Staples.

Target said most stores will stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday and also will stay open for at least 14 hours on Christmas Eve and 15 hours the day after Christmas.

As for the employees running the holiday shift, Target said it “works closely with its team members to understand scheduling preferences” and pays such workers time and a half.

In an ultracompetitive holiday season that can account for 40% of a retailer’s annual revenue, some chains aren’t even waiting out Thanksgiving dinner.

Toys R Us said Monday that shoppers can come in starting at 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. the next day. Best Buy said last week that most of its stores will be operational at 6 p.m. on the holiday. Kmart’s 41-hour Black Friday marathon will start at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving morning.

More at that top link.

Plus, "Black Friday slide: Macy's to open 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving."

Nigella Lawson Tweets!

I had just posted yesterday on the reply from Greta Van Susteren, and then what do you know?

Nigella gives me a shout out.

Season 2 @TheTasteABC starts 2nd Jan 8pm @AmPowerBlog: .@Nigella_Lawson When you coming back on 'The Taste' in the states, Nigella?!!”

— Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) November 23, 2013

Previous Nigella blogging is here.

Bwhahaha!! New York Times: 'Redistribution of Wealth Has Always Been a Central Feature' of #ObamaCare

The despicable Dems thought they could pull a fast one on the American people, but they underestimated the scope and scale of the bloodshed the law's wreaking on insurance markets and consumers.

Click through at Ron Fournier's tweet.

Obamacare = Redistribution of wealth. Fact, not opinion. Time for WH to own it, not spin it. http://t.co/ZKajKp3HWM #aca @JohnJHarwood

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) November 24, 2013