Healthcare.gov Likely to Miss Deadline

At WSJ, "Health Site Is Improving But Likely to Miss Saturday Deadline":

Despite recent progress at HealthCare.gov, a raft of problems will remain beyond the Obama administration's Saturday deadline to make the troubled federal insurance website work.

The news isn't all bad: Users say the site looks better, pages load faster, and more people are getting through to sign up for health plans.

But technical problems still affect HealthCare.gov's ability to verify users' identities and transmit accurate enrollment data to insurers, officials say. The data center that supports the site faces continuing challenges, and tools for processing payments to insurers haven't been built.

Technical staff in Washington have been racing up to the end-of-November deadline. In their last public pronouncement on the effort, three days before the deadline, officials said they had much to do to get the site into a condition where it functions smoothly for a majority of users.

The success of the White House's signature domestic initiative is riding on the technicians' ability to fix the site, as well as the rest of the federal technology supporting enrollment. Across the nation, that effort is being eyed hopefully by supporters of the law, since the site is the centerpiece of the effort to overhaul American health care and extend coverage to millions of people.

Those hopes were deflated by a series of blows for the administration right up until Nov. 30, and the site continued to experience outages, both planned and unplanned, in the week leading up to the deadline.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the administration was planning to change its Web-hosting provider from Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.62% subsidiary Terremark to Hewlett-Packard Co. in the spring, a complex transition that could introduce new challenges and take months; and the same day, the administration said it was shelving for a year any attempts to operate an online exchange for small businesses. On Wednesday, Verizon declined to comment on its clients.

Officials mixed optimism with caution. "November 30th does not represent a relaunch of HealthCare.gov," said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which operates the site. "It is not a magical date. There will be times after November 30th when the site, like any website, does not perform optimally."

He's such an asshole.

Still more at the link, if you're not running for the puke-hole.

Same President Who Didn't Have Time for Gettysburg Visits Immigration Activists

At American Glob.

Obama's such an asshole:

China Scrambles Warplanes in Conflict Over Disputed East China Sea Airspace

This is an amazingly tense situation down there in the South China Sea.

The U.S. reportedly sent a B-52 squadron over the disputed territory, and here's this at the Los Angeles Times, "China scrambles jets to track U.S., Japanese planes in disputed zone":

In an escalation of the standoff over islands in the East China Sea, the Chinese Defense Ministry said Friday that it had scrambled two fighter jets to identify U.S. and Japanese planes flying through claimed airspace without notice.

It was the latest ratcheting of tension in the week since Beijing proclaimed an air defense identification zone over disputed islands known as the Diaoyu in China and as the Senkakus in Japan, which also claims sovereignty.

The two fighter jets dispatched by Beijing on Friday tracked and identified two U.S. reconnaissance planes and 10 Japanese surveillance and combat aircraft, the official New China News Agency reported.

"The [Chinese] air force has realized its effective normal monitoring of targets in the zone," said air force spokesman Shen Jinke, portraying the response to the unannounced foreign flyovers as a routine defensive operation.

Beijing's Nov. 23 proclamation of a national air defense zone covering most of the East China Sea and overlapping with airspace claimed by Japan and South Korea has prompted warnings that the action risks provoking conflict or accidental collisions.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have said they will not comply with China's demand that all aircraft entering the proclaimed zone file flight plans with Chinese authorities beforehand. Washington and its allies have flown several sorties into the region over the last week to demonstrate their rejection of China's unilateral claim to the islands.

The foreign military and commercial flights through the claimed zone have been criticized by Beijing as provocations.

"China's air force is on high alert and will take measures to deal with diverse air threats to firmly protect the security of the country's airspace," Shen said.

Despite Beijing's posturing over the new zone, Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said it was "incorrect" to see the patrolling and identification of intruding aircraft as a prelude to China shooting down unannounced flights, Reuters news agency reported from Beijing.

A Pentagon spokesman in Washington, Army Col. Steve Warren, said in response to the Chinese air scramble Friday that "the U.S. will continue to partner with our allies and will operate in the area as normal." White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that the Chinese proclamation of a sovereign air zone over the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands was "unnecessarily inflammatory" and could have a "destabilizing impact on the region."

In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to respond to the Chinese action "in a calm and resolute manner" and in consultation with the United States and other allies, NHK television reported. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party drafted a resolution Friday denouncing the Chinese move to assert authority over the region as "a serious challenge to the international community" that is unacceptable and should be immediately retracted, NHK said.

More at the Japan Times, "China's Aggressive Provocation":

Although Beijing said that the establishment of the ADIZ is not aimed at any country, it is clearly targeting Japan and its creation will increase regional tensions. Expressing a “deep concern” over China’s move, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that Washington regards it “as a destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region” and that it “increases the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculations.” He also made it clear that Article V of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which obliges the U.S. to defend Japan if it is attacked by a third country, applies to the Senkaku Islands. Beijing should not underestimate just how seriously Washington regards the latest development.

Oh, I don't know. America's allies used to count on the U.S. in tough times. But under this administration, not so much. Either way, Chinese assertiveness is not likely to cool off any time soon. The Obama White House has signaled to the international community that it's not going to bend over backwards in enforcing America's formerly vital national security interests. For now, B-52 flights provide a bit of distraction from events back home. And obviously, the Democrats can use all the distraction they can get right now.

How #ObamaCare Raises Prices and Limits Medical Choices

Another essential analysis, at the Wall Street Journal, "ObamaCare's Plans Are Worse":

Liberals justify [ObamaCare's] coercive cross-subsidies as necessary to finance coverage for the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions. But government usually helps the less fortunate honestly by raising taxes to fund programs. In summer 2009, Senate Democrats put out such a bill, and the $1.6 trillion sticker shock led them to hide the transfers by forcing people to buy overpriced products.

This political mugging is especially unfair to the people whose plans on the current individual market are being taken away. The majority of these consumers are self-employed or small-business owners. They're middle class, rarely affluent. They took responsibility for their care without government aid, and unlike people in the job-based system, they paid with after-tax dollars.

Now they're being punished for the crime of not subsidizing ObamaCare, even though the individual market was never as dysfunctional or high cost as liberals claim. In 2012, average U.S. individual premiums were $190, ranging from a low of $123 in North Dakota to a high of $385 in Massachusetts. Average premiums for family plans fell that year by 0.5% to $412.

Those numbers come from the 13,000 different policies from 180 insurers sold on eHealthInsurance.com, the online shopping brokerage that works. (Technological wonders never cease.) Individuals can make the trade-offs between costs and benefits for themselves. This wide variety is proof that humans don't all want or need the same thing. If they did, there would be no need for a market and government could satisfy everybody.

That is precisely what the Obama health planners believe they can do. Regulators mandated a very rich level of "essential" health benefits that all plans in the individual market must cover, regardless of cost. This year eHealth reported that its data show individual premiums must be 47% higher than the old average to fund the new categories in the individual market.

RTWT.

And then check, FWIW, Nobel Prize-winning socialist Paul Krugman, "Obamacare's Secret Success" (at Memeorandum).

Krugman's "secret success" is the claim that ObamaCare is "secretly" lowering national healthcare expenditures.

The problem, of course, is that it is doing no such thing. See the detailed analysis from Charles Blahous, for the Manhattan Institute, "NO GROUNDS FOR CLAIM THAT OBAMACARE LOWERS HEALTHCARE COSTS."

Black Friday Death Counts?

So stores opened up on Thanksgiving and now America's in an existential national crisis, or something.

At Twitchy, "‘This is bleak’: Existence of ‘Black Friday Death Count’ website a sign of the times?"

And check the "death count" website.

Frankly, it's the American way. Stores open earlier in a retail arms race. Shoppers flood the malls looking for bargains. If there's a backlash against it, it's only on the radical left. Shoot, the media eats this stuff up themselves. They need drama on an otherwise slow news weekend to boost corporate ad sales. What can you do?

Depraved Leftitsts Escalate Assault on Thanksgiving

It's bad every year, but with Black Friday sales starting earlier than ever, leftists have gotten especially vicious in their attacks on this traditional holiday.

Think Progress is particularly depraved, with it's disgusting attacks on businesses open today. See, "Your Shopping Guide to Stores That Won’t Ruin Their Workers’ Thanksgivings." Also, "‘Save Thanksgiving’: Shoppers Pressure Malls to Stay Closed On Turkey Day."

These progressive pukes disgust me. I tweeted out some thoughts earlier:

People like to shop on Thanksgiving. Leftists attacking "corporate greed" can just GTFO. Move to Russia, scumbags.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 29, 2013

I worked on #Thanksgiving when I was in college. I was happy to have a job. And no one forced me to go to work. Suck it leftists. GTFO.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 29, 2013

Plus, Twitchy rounds up some of the other vile leftist attacks on Thanksgiving today. See, "Cher refuses to celebrate Thanksgiving, calls it ‘beginning of a great crime’."

Also, "MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow says Thanksgiving is really all about the genocide."

More at Truth Revolt, "MSNBC's Ronan Farrow Calls Thanksgiving a Celebration of Genocide."

But see Michael Medved, "Reject the Lie of White 'Genocide' Against Native Americans." And Guenter Lewy, "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?"

Defiant Promiscuous Homosexuality: Surge in Barebacking Threatens Resurgence of AIDS Epidemic

This is what it's all about.

This is what the left's depraved homosexual agenda is all about, destroying decency and tradition, breaking down hetero-normative discourses of hierarchical oppression.

The left's rimstation radicals are bringing back AIDS for the masses, but hey, don't judge, or you'll be attacked by the regressive-left's thought police as "homophobic."

At the New York Times, "Rise in Unprotected Sex by Gay Men Spurs H.I.V. Fears":

Federal health officials are reporting a sharp increase in unprotected sex among gay American men, a development that makes it harder to fight the AIDS epidemic.

The same trend has recently been documented among gay men in Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Australia, heightening concerns among public health officials worldwide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of men who told federal health investigators that they had had unprotected anal sex in the last year rose nearly 20 percent from 2005 to 2011. In the 2011 survey, unprotected sex was more than twice as common among men who said they did not know whether they were infected with H.I.V.

Being tested even once for H.I.V. is associated with men taking fewer risks, whether the test is positive or negative, health experts say. But the most recent survey found that a third of the men interviewed had not been tested in the past year.

The findings are worrying because “unprotected anal intercourse is in a league of its own as far as risk is concerned,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the disease centers, said on Wednesday as the figures were released.

The data, published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, do not explain why unprotected sex has risen so rapidly, but a leading hypothesis, Dr. Frieden said, is that more men are “sero-sorting” — that is, those who are uninfected (“H.I.V. seronegative” on lab reports) try to sleep only with other men who are uninfected, or who hope they are, or who merely promise they are.

“The problem with sero-sorting is that it’s really easy to get it wrong,” Dr. Frieden said. “When one-third of men aren’t even tested in the last year and a tenth of those who thought they were negative were actually positive, you don’t want to risk your life on a guess.”

Other hypotheses, say Dr. Frieden and Dr. Jonathan Mermin, the disease centers’ director of H.I.V. prevention, are that many young men have never known anyone dying of AIDS and so do not fear it, or that they believe that they can easily stay on antiretroviral drugs for life.

Two leading independent AIDS researchers agreed only partly with those explanations.

“Young guys are less worried,” said Alex Carballo-Diéguez, a researcher at the H.I.V. Center of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University who has studied gay men’s behavior since the 1980s. “H.I.V. has become a chronic disease, and everyone knows some behaviors are bad for you, like smoking and trans fats. But in the moment of excitement, they’re going to do what they enjoy.”

Look, the real explanation here is that homosexuals have always said f-u to the norms of monogamy and prudence. This was the revolutionary barebacking promiscuity of the gay liberation era, and it's never gone away, despite the mainstream media's whitewashing of death-wish regressivism. Again, this is what leftists are all about. Forget values, decency, and cleanliness. Just screw the hierarchies of oppression with bareback licentiousness and death.

RELATED: "Paris Hilton Apologizes for Slamming Homosexual Men as Disgusting Pervs Probably Infected With AIDS."

No need to apologize. Obviously, she was right all along.

Black Friday Bust? How Retailers Concoct 'Bargains' for the Holidays and Beyond

The Wall Street Journal reports, "The Dirty Secret of Black Friday 'Discounts'":

When shoppers head out in search of Black Friday bargains this week, they won't just be going to the mall, they'll be witnessing retail theater.

Stores will be pulling out the stops on deep discounts aimed at drawing customers into stores. But retail-industry veterans acknowledge that, in many cases, those bargains will be a carefully engineered illusion.

The common assumption is that retailers stock up on goods and then mark down the ones that don't sell, taking a hit to their profits. But that isn't typically how it plays out. Instead, big retailers work backward with their suppliers to set starting prices that, after all the markdowns, will yield the profit margins they want.

The red cardigan sweater with the ruffled neck on sale for more than 40% off at $39.99 was never meant to sell at its $68 starting price. It was designed with the discount built in.

Buyers don't seem to mind. What they are after, especially in such a lackluster economy, is the feeling they got a deal. Retailers like J.C. Penney Co. JCP +7.69% who try to get out of the game get punished.

"I don't even get excited unless it's 40% off," said Lourdes Torress, a 44-year-old technical designer, as she browsed the sale racks at Macy's Inc.'s flagship store in New York on a recent afternoon.

The manufactured nature of most discounts raises questions about the wisdom of standing in line for the promotional frenzy that kicks off the holiday shopping season. It also explains how retailers have been able to ramp up the bargains without giving away the store.

The number of deals offered by 31 major department store and apparel retailers increased 63% between 2009 to 2012, and the average discount jumped to 36% from 25%, according to Savings.com, a website that tracks online coupons.

Over the same period, the gross margins of the same retailers—the difference between what they paid for goods and the price at which they sold them—were flat at 27.9%, according to FactSet. The holidays barely made a dent, with margins dipping to 27.8% in the fourth quarter of 2012 from 28% in the third quarter of that year.

"A lot of the discount is already priced into the product. That's why you see much more stable margins," said Liz Dunn, an analyst with Macquarie Equities Research.

Retailers including Best Buy Co. BBY -0.03%  , Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.31%  and Macy's are warning this will be an unusually competitive holiday season and that all the deals could hurt margins. That can happen when chains have to fight hard for sales or get stuck with excess inventory and have to take heavier-than-planned markdowns. Stores also field loss leaders, true bargains that pinch profits but are aimed at getting customers into their stores. Most deals, however, are planned to be profitable by setting list prices well above where goods are actually expected to sell.

Retailers could run into legal trouble if they never try to sell goods at their starting price. Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with the practice. Companies can be pretty frank about how things work.

Actually, my wife and I are checking out the retail advertisement leaflets in the newspaper, and there's some killer deals if you're a savvy shopper. Michael's is offering a Black Friday discount of 30 percent across the entire store, which includes already marked-down sale items with discounts of 50 percent and more.

In any case, if you're not going out for big weekend shopping, you can always shop through Amazon.com.

Thanksgiving Roundup

Lots of great postings at Maggie's Farm.

See, "Weds. morning links."

Also, "'A day of public thanksgiving and prayer'," and "Giving thanks for the invisible hand, the kaleidoscopic energy and productivity of the free market, and no turkey czar."

And from Maggie's we head to Pirate's, who provides the lovely lady at left. Plus, "If All You See…(Turkey Day Edition)."

Now from Daley Gator, who posts some reciprocal linkage, "And the push for full blown Socialized Medicine commences." Plus, "Girl getting bullied over her afro told to cut her hair or leave school by sorry admins."

At AoSHQ, "Thanksgiving Day Footballs," and "Margaret Carlson: Is the President's Intellect Finally Engaged By the Catastrophe of Obamacare?"

Also from Mandy Nagy, at Legal Insurrection, "How not to fry a turkey for Thanksgiving."

And at Egotastic!, "Staci Noblett Chest Thumps Sabine Jemeljanova in a Thanksgiving Edition Battle of the Boobtastic."

At This Ain't Hell, "Thanksgiving feel good story," and "More ObamaCare 'Goodness'."

More at Right Wing News, "Communist Party urges members to protect Obamacare by crying 'Racism!'" (What a surprise!)

Now at Protein Wisdom, "'And So It Begins: New York Sending Out Gun Confiscation Notices'."

Check out Stormbringer as well, "IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY - Today is an extra special Thanksgiving Day here at Firebase TigerLily and its all because of something that happened twenty years ago."

And from Ed Driscoll, "‘As God is My Witness, I Thought Obamacare Could Fly’."

At Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "This Crazy Week, Undaunted Edition," and "California High Speed Rail Screeches to a Halt."

And at Knuckledraggin' My Life Away, "Your Good Morning Girl."

More from Drunken Stepfather, "ROSE MCGOWAN IS NAKED IN SOME STUDENT FILM SHIT OF THE DAY."

At 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Girls With Guns."

And from First Street Journal, "Happy Thanksgiving..."

Still more from Diogenes' Middle Finger, "I Wish You All a Happy Thanksgiving."

Check out iOWNTHEWORLD, "Custom Crafted Michelle Obama Toilet."

Now hilariously at the Other McCain, "Happy #FreeKate Thanksgiving: Lesbian Cheerleader Spends Holiday in Jail."

And from the Mad Jewess, "Have a Swell Thanksgiving Day & Weekend."

And finally, at Camp of the Saints, "Thanksgiving 2013 A.D."

Now, if I missed your blog, just drop your links in the comments and I'll get you linked up at the next roundup. Have a great day!

How to Spend Thanksgiving Alone

I don't think I've ever spent Thanksgiving alone, although there've been times I was lonely.

I worked construction the day after Thanksgiving one year. My boss made me do drywall sanding and preparation. I don't think anyone else was on the job, but he had me out there doing prep. That's when I had my own apartment, and my mom was remarried. I wasn't going to my dad's in Fresno. I was lonely sometimes back then.

I'm not so lonely these days, which is good.

In any case, at GQ, "The GQ Guide to Spending Thanksgiving Alone":

Can't afford a plane ticket home this year? Busy working? Parents dead? FEAR NOT. Just because you're cocooned in debilitating isolation this Turkey Day doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself. Here's how to make the most of every single solitary hour.

Read it at the link.

The Real Fix for #ObamaCare

Why, the full-blown government takeover of healthcare.

Single-payer "Medicare-for-all," via communist RoseAnn DeMoro, at the far-left Guardian UK, "The real fix for Obamacare's flaws: Medicare for all":

Website delays – the most unwelcome news for computer acolytes since the tech boom crashed – are not the biggest problem with the ACA, as will become increasingly apparent long after the signup headaches are a distant memory.

What prompted the ACA was a rapidly escalating healthcare nightmare, seen in 50 million uninsured, medical bills plunging millions into un-payable debt or bankruptcy, long delays in access to care, and record numbers skipping needed treatment due to cost.

The main culprit was our profit-focused system, with rising profiteering by a massive health care industry, and an increasing number of employers dropping coverage or just dumping more costs onto workers.

The ACA tackles some of the most egregious inequities: lack of access for many of the working poor who will now be eligible for Medicaid or subsidies to offset some of their costs for buying private insurance through the exchanges, a crackdown on several especially notorious insurance abuses, and encouragement of preventive care.

But the law actually further entrenches the insurance-based system through the requirement that uncovered individuals buy private insurance. It's also chock full of loopholes.

Some consumers who have made it through the website labyrinth have found confusing choices among plans which vary widely in both premium and out of pocket costs even with the subsidies, a pass through of public funds to the private insurers.

The minimum benefits are also somewhat illusory. Insurance companies have decades of experience at gaming the system and warehouses full of experts to design ways to limit coverage options.

The ACA allows insurers to cherry pick healthier enrollees by the way benefit packages are designed, and as a Washington Post article noted on 21 November, consumers are discovering insurers are restricting their choice of doctors and excluding many top ranked hospitals from their approved "network".

The wide disparity between the healthcare you need, what your policy will cover, and what the insurer will actually pay for remains.

Far less reported is what registered nurses increasingly see – financial incentives within the ACA for hospitals to prematurely push patients out of hospitals to cheaper, less regulated settings or back to their homes. It also encourages shifting more care delivery from nurses and doctors to robots and other technology that undermines individual patient care, and that may work no better than the dysfunctional ACA websites.

Is there an alternative? Most other developed nations have discovered it, a single-payer or national healthcare system.

 More at the link. (And don't miss the comments, where conservatives hilariously trolled the thread.)

I checked out this lady, Ms. DeMoro. She's the executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, a political action group for National Nurses United and the AFL-CIO. In other words, she's a communist. She's got an interview with far-left propagandist Bill Moyers, available at the NNU homepage. And quoted here, "What Do Real Socialists Say About Obama’s Health Care “Reform”?"

PHOTO CREDIT: Zombie, "SF Protesters to Obama: Please Be a Dictator!"

Embattled White House Delays #ObamaCare Enrollment for Small Businesses

Holiday weekend news dump.

Politico reports, "Small business Obamacare online enrollment delayed a year":

The Obama administration today announced a one year delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal Obamacare exchanges, another high-profile setback for HealthCare.gov.

It’s the second delay for online small business enrollment, which the administration had said would begin this month.

The White House is trying to get the troubled enrollment website on track for individuals and families seeking coverage, which is a higher priority. It set this Saturday, Nov. 30, as a target date for getting HealthCare.gov working for the “vast majority” of users.

The delay of the small business exchanges comes as little surprise, as the administration had said earlier this week it would offer alternative ways for small businesses to enroll. Still, it undercuts the White House message that it’s beginning to turn around the disastrous rollout of the health care law.

The administration is focused on its goal of signing up 7 million through Obamacare exchanges through the individual marketplaces. That doesn’t count on small business enrollment, which is why Obamacare critics and advocates say the small-business exchanges, known as SHOP, are further down on the administration’s priority list.

The announcement just before Thanksgiving is the latest in a series of delays and miscalculations for the president’s signature domestic legislation. On July 2 — also just before a holiday —it delayed the employer mandate for a year. Small businesses with fewer than 50 workers are exempt from the requirement to cover them, and the exchanges are supposed to give more options to those that choose to offer coverage.

House Speaker John Boehner said the delay is more proof that the law should be repealed or delayed.

“The president bit off more than he can chew with this health care law, and small businesses are now forced to bear the consequences,” he said in a statement.

Continue reading.

Also at Jammie Wearing Fools, "Thanksgiving News Dump: Obama to Announce Yearlong Delay of Online Enrollment for Small Businesses." And Hot Air, "Holiday news dump: WH to delay online ObamaCare exchange for small businesses for one year."

Increasingly Leftist Colleges Abandon Greats and Teach Garbage

At IBD, "Colleges Substitute Western Greats With Gender Studies":

Parents pay a fortune to send their kids to big-name colleges, and they expect strong scholarship in return. More and more, what they're getting ranges from drivel to leftist indoctrination.

Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald shocked a New York City audience at the 2013 Wriston Lecture this month with some examples of what leftist academics have done to the American college curriculum.

"Until 2011," she noted, "students majoring in English at UCLA had been required to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton — the cornerstones of English literature.

"Following a revolt of the junior faculty, however, during which it was announced that Shakespeare was part of the 'empire,' UCLA junked these individual author requirements and replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a course each in gender, race, ethnicity, disability or sexuality studies, imperial, transnational or post-colonial studies, and critical theory."

As Mac Donald put it, "In other words, the UCLA faculty was now officially indifferent as to whether an English major had ever read a word of Milton, Chaucer or Shakespeare, but was determined to expose students, according to the course catalogue, to 'alternative rubrics of gender, sexuality, race and class.'"

More at the link.

It's bad all over, but UCLA's extra special, with all that "micro-agression" racism, or whatever. See College Insurrection, "UCLA Prof accused of racist “micro-aggression” for correcting student grammar."

Also at Inside Higher Ed, "In-Class Sit-In."

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."