NSA Spying on Angela Merkel Since 2002

Look, friends spy on friends, although even Merkel's cell phone was bugged.

She's obviously not pleased, and just reelected to a third term, she's got some political capital, and she aims to spend some of that against President Dronekiller.

At the New York Times, "Amid New Storm in U.S.-Europe Relationship, a Call for Talks on Spying":

BERLIN — While President Obama has tried to soften the blow, this week’s disclosures about the extent of America’s spying on its European allies have added to a series of issues that have sharply eroded confidence in the United States’ leadership at a particularly difficult moment.

The sharp words from Germany, France and others this week are part of a broader set of frustrations over issues like the Syrian civil war, the danger posed to the global economy by Washington’s fiscal fights and the broader perception that President Obama himself — for all his promises to rebuild relations with allies after the presidency of George W. Bush — is an unreliable partner.

This American administration is “misreading and miscalculating the effects” of its deeds in a Europe that is less ready than it once was to heed the United States, said Annette Heuser, executive director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research organization in Washington.

Early on Friday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France emerged from a meeting of European leaders to call for talks with the United States on new rules for their intelligence relationship. A statement from the European leaders said a “lack of trust” could undermine trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation.

Earlier in the week the European Parliament had acted to suspend an agreement with the United States that allows it to track the finances of terrorist groups, citing suspicions that the United States authorities were tapping European citizens’ personal financial data.

The disclosures contained in the documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have crystallized a growing sense in Europe that post-Sept. 11 America has lost some of the values of privacy and accountability that have been the source of the world’s admiration for its version of democracy.

So fierce was the anger in Berlin over suspicions that American intelligence had tapped into Ms. Merkel’s cellphone that Elmar Brok of Germany, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a pillar of trans-Atlantic exchanges since 1984, spoke Friday of America’s security establishment as a creepy “state within a state.”

Since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”

And at the Verge, "US has been monitoring German chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002, report says."

And at London's Daily Mail, "German officials set to travel to the U.S. 'shortly' to discuss spying allegations and whether Angela Merkel's phone was monitored by the NSA," and "U.S. monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone since 2002."

"I’m just amused at how quickly after the implementation of #ObamaCare the whole 'death panel' thing was transformed from a paranoid fantasy of that yokel, Sarah Palin, to an obviously good idea that all thinking people support..."

Yeah, me too.

At Instapundit, "WALTER HUDSON: The Twisted Morality of “Death Panels:” Breaking down Slate’s rationalization for letting government pick who lives and who dies."

Katie Pavlich: #ObamaCare Website Could Top $1 Billion

She's one of the smartest commentators around.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Letter Demanding Delay of #ObamaCare Enrollment Deadline

That sound you're hearing is the crackup of the Obama-Democrat electoral coalition.

This is the beginning of the end of the 2014 Democrats.

And 2016 is just around the corner.

Make these f-kers eat it.

From the homepage of New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, "AS WEBSITE GLITCHES LINGER, SHAHEEN URGES WHITE HOUSE TO EXTEND OPEN ENROLLMENT FOR HEALTH EXCHANGES."

And boy, in no time did the Senate Democrat 2014 reelection caucus sign up to the plan, "SHAHEEN LEADS COALITION OF SENATORS TO CALL FOR OPEN ENROLLMENT EXTENSION":

As technical glitches persist, Senators urge HHS Secretary to push back health insurance exchange enrollment deadline

October 25, 2013

(Washington, DC) – As Americans continue to experience technical difficulties with federal and state health insurance enrollment, a coalition of U.S. Senators led by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is calling on Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to extend the open enrollment period to give Americans more time to obtain health insurance coverage.

“As long as these substantial technology glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans,” read the letter signed by Shaheen along with U.S. Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mark Udall (D-CO), Tom Udall (D-NM), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM).  “Our constituents are frustrated, and we fear that the longer the website is not functional, opportunities for people to log on, learn about their insurance choices, and enroll will be lost.”

The letter sent today reiterates Shaheen’s earlier call to extend open enrollment if the technological glitches persist with healthcare.gov.  An extended open enrollment deadline “will give consumers critical time in which to become familiar with the website and choose a plan that is best for them,” the Senators said.

Continue reading (via Memeorandum).

Make these f-kers eat it.

More at Big Government, "REPORT: SENATE DEMS UP FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2014 TO BACK DELAY OF OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT DEADLINE."

Rats Jumping the Sinking #ObamaCare Ship

At Jammie Wearing Fools, "Politico: Democrats’ United Front Cracks":

The great Democratic unity of 2013 held for five-and-a-half days.

For weeks leading up to the shutdown — and over the 16 days it dragged on — President Barack Obama did the unthinkable: he held every Democrat in the House and Senate together. There weren’t any defectors. There wasn’t even anyone running to reporters to question his strategy. The man who’d disappointed them so many times was suddenly exciting them, with his newly apparent backbone and successful resistance to Republicans. They were rushing to do whatever they could to stand by him, next to him, with him.

Like any fad, that’s gone the way of trucker hats and the macarena.

The problems with the Obamacare website have transformed the president from a man who seemed to have gotten a sudden infusion of political capital to a man who’s been pushed back on his heels. He was firm, and he was setting the agenda. Now he’s back to trying to beating back the latest frame Republicans have forced on him, inadvertently providing evidence to support the doubts they’ve been trying to sow from the beginning. He spent last week against the backdrop of a shutdown that made people appreciate all the things government can do for them. Now he has a website which shows how little it can.

Nobody was appreciative of what government can do for them. In fact, most people got along just fine. Now everyone realizes the government is trying to do way too much and want no part of it. So, Democrats, please run on a platform of more government and defending ObamaCare. That bloodbath of 2010 will seem tame by comparison come next November.

Previously: "Democrats Run for #ObamaCare Cover."

Image Credit: Moira Fitzgerald.

#ObamaCare Forcing Hundreds of Thousands Millions to Lose Health Insurance Coverage

From Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "CBS: ObamaCare forcing millions to lose their insurance."



Via Memeorandum.

Democrats Run for #ObamaCare Cover

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "After weeks of vowing they wouldn't cave on the president's signature legislation, some Democrats are doing just that":

Jeanne Shaheen doesn't sound like a Democrat who just won a government-shutdown "victory." Ms. Shaheen sounds like a Democrat who thinks she's going to lose her job.

The New Hampshire senator fundamentally altered the health-care fight on Tuesday with a letter to the White House demanding it both extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline and waive tax penalties for those unable to enroll. Within nanoseconds, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had endorsed her "common-sense idea." By Wednesday night, five Senate Democrats were on board, pushing for . . . what's that dirty GOP word? Oh, right. "Delay."

After 16 long days of vowing to Republicans that they would not cave in any way, shape or form on ObamaCare, Democrats spent their first post-shutdown week caving in every way, shape and form. With the GOP's antics now over, the only story now is the unrivaled disaster that is the president's health-care law.

Hundreds of thousands of health-insurance policies canceled. Companies dumping coverage and cutting employees' hours. Premiums skyrocketing. And a website that reprises the experience of a Commodore 64. As recently as May, Democratic consultants were advising members of Congress that their best ObamaCare strategy for 2014 was to "own" the law. Ms. Shaheen has now publicly advised the consultants where they can file that memo.

Continue reading (via Memeorandum).

Russell Brand for the Proletarian Revolution

Via R.S. McCain, "Celebrities Are the New Proletariat":

Russell Brand has international fame and a net worth of $15 million, and also used to bang Katy Perry. Nevertheless, in his own mind, he is one of the downtrodden toilers struggling to overthrow the greedy oppressive parasitical regime of bourgeois capitalism...

RTWT.

Wretched Joan Walsh Whines About How Everybody Hates Joan Walsh

She's vile.

And sorry if I'm all out of sympathy for this #p2 POS.

Turns out she's come under heavy fire on the left for her objectively stupid defense of the administration's #ObamaCare rollout debacle. And amazingly, it's juice-box hero Ezra Klein who comes out as the voice of reason in all of this. Clue to Joan: It's not "just a glitch" and giving it "more time" won't solve a thing. Ezra's right. ObamaCare's blown, down deep inside, to the "back end" and beyond. Frankly, it sucks donkey balls, and so does Joan Walsh, the dumb [four-letter word here].

Here's the filthy whiny weasel at Salon, "How I became the poster girl for liberal agitprop" (via Memeorandum):

That women are treated badly on Twitter is not breaking news. But the depth and scale of the personal cruelty and wanton misogyny weirdly confirmed the point I was trying to make in the original piece: The “unhinged right” is well-organized and dangerous, and a lot of people, including liberals, don’t seem to be taking that in completely. The election of our first black president unleashed primitive reactionary forces. Open expressions of racism and misogyny are now a form of political protest, and if you complain, you’re the oppressor. Uppity black people and uppity women especially must be put in their place.

The difference between my Twitter experience and that of my white, male liberal friends and critics reminded me once again how relatively insulated even many liberals are from the insanity. As a white person, I don’t always take it in fully myself. Every time I’m ready to blame President Obama for his political troubles, and yes, he deserves some blame, there’s a story like the one about Rep. Pete Sessions telling the president, to his face, “I can’t even stand to look at you.” (The White House is now saying this story is based on a misunderstanding. Stay tuned.) I can’t even stand to enumerate the ways in which this president has been insulted in ways unknown to white presidents, Sessions aside.

I know that good conscientious journalists, even some liberals, believe that when Democrats have such deadly enemies, they can’t afford to hand them weapons, and a badly designed ACA exchange website is a weapon. And I wish Bill Clinton had kept his pants up, too. But now Barack Obama, whose only known personal weakness involves Nicorette, is being treated even more viciously than Clinton. So you’ll excuse me if I argue that we ought to focus on the sickness that’s taken hold of the Republican Party, rather than the fact that our last two Democratic presidents haven’t been able to cure it.

Bitter partisanship has left this woman a hulking, steaming pile of radioactive filth. She just hates. No amount of Obama/Democrat failure will shake her from what is, for all intents and purposes, a psychotic obsession with the "evil" right. Shoot, the father of Trig-trutherism sounds positively subdued compared to the unhinged Salon hate-monger. See the Dish, "Epistemic Openness Watch":

I have faith in the judgment of Americans, and do not share the agitprop tendencies of Joan Walsh. What matters is the truth. What matters when things go wrong is transparency. What truly worries me is less the website’s failure than Obama’s defensive, secretive posture in response to it. Take the hit as hard as you can now. Explain the fail fully. And move relentlessly forward.

When You've Lost Jon Stewart ... You Know the #ObamaCare Rollout Was a Disaster ...

From Major Garrett, at National Journal, "The Biggest Joke of the Obama Presidency."

And watch Stewart hammer the administration at the link. (More here.)

Stop Watching Us

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation, FWIW.

Sen. Joe Manchin Seeks Delay of #ObamaCare Individual Mandate

I posted on this yesterday, "Democratic Unease Grows on Health Law."

Now here's Manchin on O'Reilly's show last night:



Also at Politico, "Red state Democrats propose changes to Obamacare."

Nick Gillespie: Obama's Like 'Hitler in the Bunker'

He takes it back, since Van Jones objects to the Hitler reference, but it's apt. I used the bunker analogy the other day. Where has this man been? He's the chief executive. He's in charge of his administration. The buck stop with him. And he's been completely out of it.

An excellent clip:



More at RCP, "Sebelius: Obama Did Not Know About Obamacare Website Glitches."

#ObamaCare Is in Deeper Trouble Than Obama Admits

From Jennifer Rubin, at WaPo. (Via Louise Mensch on Twitter.)

Los Angeles Bans Use of Bullhooks on Circus Elephants

The effect is to ban Ringling Bros. Circus from Los Angeles, a very bad move. The policy won't protect the animals but will harm the local economy. It's stupid PC run amok.

NBC Los Angeles reports.

And here's the letter to the editor from Stephen Payne, who is vice president for corporate communications at Feld Entertainment, Ringling Bros.' parent company:

Re "Of elephants and bullhooks," Editorial, Oct. 22

Every year since 1922, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey has performed for circus fans in Los Angeles. Elephants have always been an integral part of Ringling Bros., providing an up-close way for our audiences to experience these amazing animals in a way they can nowhere else.

Unfortunately, The Times appears to have simply accepted the representations of animal rights groups about how our elephants are trained. The "guide," referred to by the outdated term "bullhook" in the editorial, is an animal husbandry tool for working with elephants approved by experts, including the American Veterinary Medical Assn.

Our elephants are comfortable with the training methods and tools used at Ringling Bros., and, more important, many of those trained behaviors are vital for optimal husbandry and veterinary care.

Our elephants define Ringling Bros. for the nearly 100,000 people who come to see them at Staples Center each year. The L.A. City Council should not deny people the right to make the decision to attend and also threaten local jobs by passing this unnecessary and unfair ban on circuses in the city.

Stephen Payne
Vienna, Va.

More at LAist, "Los Angeles Just Basically Banned Circuses."

Network Anchors: Obamacare Rollout a ‘Debacle,’ ‘A Mess’ and ‘A Complete Disaster’

Via Free Beacon.

Bill O'Reilly Calls 'Em Like He Sees 'Em: Democrat Agenda Is 'Form of Communism'

This is Tuesday's talking points memo, and he nails it:

Democratic Unease Grows on Health Law

At the Wall Street Journal, "Lawmakers Cite Website Woes in Call for Delay in Penalties for the Uninsured":

The hard line Democrats have drawn against delaying a core element of the federal health law has begun to crack, as problems with the new federal insurance website prompted calls for President Barack Obama to delay penalties on people who don't carry health coverage.

Democratic leaders in Congress and Mr. Obama have defended the minimum penalty of $95 in 2014 as crucial to inducing uninsured Americans to sign up for coverage, and the party held firm against Republican calls to delay or eliminate the coverage requirement that provoked this month's partial government shutdown.

Late Wednesday, the Obama administration said it would establish what amounts to a six-week extension in the time people have to obtain insurance coverage before incurring a penalty, responding to what some have called a lack of clarity in the law over the deadline.

Some Democrats say the flawed rollout of the law could mean bigger changes are needed. Sen. Mark Begich (D., Alaska), who is up for re-election in 2014, said Wednesday that individuals shouldn't be penalized if technical issues with the HealthCare.gov website aren't resolved.

The signs of growing Democratic unease came as the White House acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the problems extend beyond sign-up logjams that kept thousands of people from being able to view insurance offerings online. Experts are working to "iron out the kinks" that have led insurers to receive flawed data, including duplicate enrollments and spouses reported as children, the White House said after a meeting among administration and insurance industry officials.

The debate over the botched launch will kick into higher gear Thursday at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. In their prepared testimony, contractors responsible for the federal insurance portal pointed fingers at each other and the administration.

Cheryl Campbell, a senior vice president at CGI Group Inc.'s CGI Federal unit, the lead contractor for the HealthCare.gov website that launched Oct. 1, blamed the bottlenecks on a system designed by another contractor, UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s Optum unit, which verifies users' identities.

Optum group executive vice president Andrew Slavitt, in turn, said in his prepared testimony that a decision to disable anonymous shopping drove traffic to its system that was higher than "if consumers could 'window shop' anonymously." The administration has since reversed its decision to make people first register before shopping.

At least two more congressional hearings are scheduled next week, including one where Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is expected to be grilled.

The penalty for failure to carry insurance is at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. Insurers say individuals—particularly younger, healthier people—must be coaxed to buy insurance so that carriers aren't left with a risk pool of predominantly older and sicker people.

Massive finger-pointing.

And clearly, this so-called six-week delay for sign-up is a trial balloon launched in case the White House decides to delay the individual mandate --- which by now, obviously, is the least Demo-Rats could do to save some face from this utter political and policy debacle.

In any case, more at the click through.

Also at the Hill, "Manchin: Delay ObamaCare mandate."

And at AP, "Frustrated Dems lament damage from website bugs" (via Memeorandum.)

'The Conservative Mind'

Reading it now.

Here's the Amazon link, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot.

I tweeted this to Robert Stacy McCain the other day, but he's been too busy with the Kimberlin psychos.

.@RSMcCain Reading Russell Kirk, "The Conservative Mind." pic.twitter.com/Vm620Kq9DU
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 16, 2013

Budget Discord Simmers on the Left

Democrats aren't serious about reducing the national debt, and they never will be.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Some Liberal Groups, Lawmakers Worry About Cuts to Social Security, Other Entitlements":

Cracks are showing in the Democratic coalition as the next round of budget talks gets under way, hurting the chances for progress toward a broad deal that changes the tax code and significantly narrows future deficits.

While Republicans are still smarting over nasty infighting they engaged in during the debt-ceiling fight and 16-day government shutdown, Democrats have stayed united. This helped them beat back Republican demands to undo or scale back President Barack Obama's 2010 health law as a condition for ending the showdown.

But with eyes now turning toward a newly formed budget committee, some liberal lawmakers and groups are worried that Democrats will negotiate cuts to Social Security benefits and other entitlement programs. The president's budget blueprint, which was released in April, proposed slowing the growth of Social Security spending by using a new measure of inflation—an idea that drew a rebuke from some lawmakers and liberal groups.

"The president is about to run into a major base problem if he tries to do this," said Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, referring to using the new formula, the chained consumer-price index, to determine benefits. "My advice to him is: Don't do it."

Well, when has O ever worried about the base?

And frankly, President Obumbler's not serious about entitlement reform. We'll be over $20 trillion in debt when he leaves office, and perhaps much more.

"#ObamaCare's Exchanges Are Still Broken...

...and Obama's Speech Shouldn't Give Anyone Confidence They'll Work Soon," says Peter Suderman, at Reason.

#ObamaCare Raising Premiums, Hurting Middle, Lower Class

It's just one nightmare headline after another.

At Free Beacon.

Karmel Allison, Pregnant Diabetic, Nearly Collapsed During President's Interminable Speech on #ObamaCare Debacle

It's bad enough that the woman nearly fainted, but she's pregnant and diabetic.

If you were watching live you recognized immediately how extremely dangerous this was (she almost lost consciousness at the end of Obama's pathetically long address). Frightening. The president personally subjected Ms. Allison to this, the cold-hearted bastard. He's literally despicable. He should be ashamed for using this woman as a throwaway propaganda ornament. A pregnant diabetic! Democrats will stop at nothing to ram the ObamaCare monstrosity down the throats of the American people. Nothing. For partisan optics they'd risk the life of a diabetic woman and her unborn child! Inhuman and depraved. But then again, these are far-left regressive fanatics. Nothing is beyond the pale for these ghouls.

Here's the dramatic screencap at London's Daily Mail.



More at the Washington Times, "Caution: Obamacare may cause fainting."

And at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "San Diego woman nearly collapses on stage with president."

Corrupt Bastards Club

From Sarah Palin, at Big Government, "D.C.'S 'CORRUPT BASTARDS CLUB'":

It can be argued that Obamacare isn’t full socialized medicine… yet. Right now it is a sort of corporatism, which is the collusion of big government with big business. With Obamacare, the government has taken over an industry that comprises a sixth of our economy, radically changed the way it operates, and is mandating that we purchase the services of that industry. This is unprecedented. It’s radical.

For those Obama voters who are now flummoxed by the rise in their health care premiums, let me explain why they went up. Obamacare has changed the very nature of insurance, which is a hedge against a future possibility. A 27-year-old marathon runner is much less likely to suffer a major illness than a 57-year-old obese chain smoker with a pickled liver. But Obamacare has ruled that there be no adjusted costs for pre-existing conditions, which means we threw out the actuarial data and everyone is now required to pay more to cover those who are more likely to be sick. But now average Americans – especially those healthy 20somethings who probably don’t even want to buy insurance – can’t afford to pay for Obamacare.

Obamacare in its current corporatist form isn’t meant to last. It’s meant to push us towards full socialized medicine with a single-payer system. How do I know this? Simple. Let’s compare Obamacare with the Canadian single-payer system.

With Obamacare we have crappier health care (fewer choices, fewer doctors, and an IPAB rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats, aka the ol' “death panel” that has been admitted to existing in Obamacare), but it is very expensive for the individual American. For instance, you’ll find that the so-called Bronze Plans are just as expensive as the Platinum Plans when you factor in the $5,000-$10,000 deductible in addition to the monthly payments you’ll shell out. And those Americans who aren’t being pushed onto the Obamacare exchanges are still seeing their insurance premiums skyrocket as the industry shifts onto consumers the cost of not factoring in various conditions.

Now let’s look at what Canadians have. I dare say our good neighbor to your north, and my east, has even worse health care coverage, but at least it’s “free” for the individual.

Americans, if you’re faced with a 300% increase (or even a 65% increase like my family) in your health care premiums for crappier coverage, doesn’t “free” socialized medicine all of a sudden sound appealing?

And that’s how Americans will be led down the primrose path to a single-payer system. People will be frustrated, worn out, and broke under this new government burden. Many will end up concluding they’ll settle for – then demand – full socialized medicine because they’ll see how the unworkable Obamacare will break our health care system (where, presently, no one is turned away from emergency rooms and we have many public and private safety nets for people in need), along with busting our personal bank accounts. The cry will go out, “Can’t you just put us all in a sort of Medicaid-like system? It’ll be much less confusing than these awful exchange websites and a lot less expensive!” As things stand, many who are getting slammed by Obamacare will inevitably settle for less out of necessity. And that’s the left’s declared plan: a single-payer system. They said it. I didn't.

An awesome piece.

RTWT.

Obama Lamely Rebuffs Criticism of Healthcare Debacle in Desperate Rose Garden Address (VIDEO)

It's embarrassing.

He's desperate.

Obama's obviously just emerged from a bunker on the White House grounds, because not a word he utters reflects the realities on the ground for the majority of Americans who're now convinced that the problems go way beyond a chintzy website with stolen code.

See Byron York, "At the White House: Obamacare success stories that aren't":

In the days since the problems with the Obamacare website became too large to ignore, defenders of the administration cited the many people they said have already benefited from the new exchanges, as well as from the law as a whole. Presumably, the White House had many success stories to choose from in deciding who would stand behind the president at Monday's event. But some of the successes they chose don't seem to be successes at all.

RTWT.

And again, listen to the clip. Obama's like a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman, desperate and hawking a shitty product. But he's not worth an ounce of your pity. He made his bed, the asshole.

Also, "Remarks by the President on the Affordable Care Act."

BONUS: See Andrew Kaczynski, "Flashback: Obama Told People They Could Keep Their Health Care Plan" (at Memeorandum).

LAUSD Segregates Hispanic Students by English Proficiency

Parents are mad about this, with good reason.

And you know Spanish-speaking kids will be warehoused away, deprived of better learning opportunities.

At the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. Unified's English learner action upsets parents, teachers":

Luis Gaytan, the 5-year-old son of Mexican immigrants who speak Spanish at home, was so terrified by kindergarten that he would barely talk — prompting classmates to tease that he didn't have a tongue.

In the last two months, at Granada Elementary Community Charter, Luis has gained a growing command of the language in a class of students with a mixed range of English ability. His father, Jorge, is convinced that his son is learning English more quickly because he hears it every day from more-advanced classmates.

But Luis — and thousands of other Los Angeles Unified students — is being moved into new classes with those at a similar language level under an order that has sparked a storm of protest. In recent weeks, a group of southeast L.A. principals have mounted a rare challenge to district policy, teachers have flooded their union office with complaints, and parents have launched protest rallies and petition drives urging L.A. Unified to postpone the class reorganizations until next year.

"Kids with little or no English are going to be segregated and told they're not good enough for the mainstream," said Cindy Aranda-Lechuga, a Granada mother of a kindergartner who gathered 162 parent signatures seeking a postponement and spoke against the policy at an L.A. Board of Education meeting last week. "Kids learn from their peers, and they're not going to be able to do that anymore."

Marking the latest chapter in California's fierce language wars, the furor over class placements for those learning English raises the controversial question of which is more effective: separating students by fluency level or including them in diverse classes. Critics are also upset that the change is coming two months into the school year, after students have bonded with classmates and teachers have developed classroom lessons and routines. Opponents blame the district and local schools for the disruption.

Continue reading.

LAUSD just sucks.

You're looking at modern day Jim Crow for Hispanic families. And the district is run by big Democrat-backed union thugs. But hey, "hope and change," don'tcha know?!!

Surfboards or Bodysurfers? Who Owns the Wedge?

Well, it's a public beach, technically. But bodysurfers want surfboards banned at the Newport Beach Wedge.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Surfers, bodysurfers battle over Newport Beach's iconic Wedge":

An old surfing battle is resurfacing in Newport Beach.

A city panel, the Blackball Working Group, will take the first step toward a possible review of surfing regulations at a public meeting Monday night. This has set off murmurings among surfers over one particular place: the Wedge.

A storied spot at the end of the Balboa Peninsula, where the west harbor jetty extends from shore, the Wedge has set the stage for world-famous waves that have brought thrills to generations of surfers and spectators.

Here, on occasion, large swells send surf crashing into the jetty. These waves bounce back toward the ocean, where they may meet, in a wedge shape, another oncoming swell. This creates massive walls of water reaching 20 to 30 feet — a dream for surfers — that break close to the shore.

The question is: Who can lay claim to the Wedge?

For roughly two decades, bodysurfers have held claim to set times during summer months when only they can ride the break. They say they need the part-time ban because it is unsafe for them to try to compete with other surfers.

On a popular morning at the Wedge, people might be spotted on surfboards, bodyboards and skim boards or even clinging to a plastic fast-food tray. But current regulations require that they get out of the water by 10 a.m.

For a bodysurfer to ride among them would be like asking a bicyclist to assume position in a lane on a highway, they say.

Bodysurfers shirk any flotation device, wearing only wetsuits and flippers. This makes them slower and the last to catch waves. Those with boards pose a threat because they may collide with bodysurfers or lose their boards, which may then go flying.

The City Council recognized these safety concerns in 1985, allowing bodysurfers some piece of mind by banning boards when the blackball flag, a yellow flag with a black dot, was displayed from June 15 through Sept. 10.

In 1993, the council extended the ban to May 1 through Oct. 31. At that time, a hardened group of bodysurfers called the Wedge Crew, or Wedge Preservation Society, collected 80 signatures calling for a full ban on boards. A counter group called Save the Wedge collected 700 names in opposition.

Now a new petition is circulating. Nearly 1,500 people this week signed an online petition that calls for an end to time restraints at the Wedge, according to Times Community News.

"I figured I might as well put something together so that people could have a way to voice their own opinions," said Aaron Peluso, who created the petition and owns a skimboard company. "I've been hoping it would have happened a decade ago."

More at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Huge Waves at the Wedge in Newport Beach."

We’re Not Retreating – We’re Advancing in a Different Direction

From Star Parker, at Right Wing News:

A number of years ago I was between flights on a business trip and was sitting in an airport restaurant having lunch. It was right after the 2008 presidential election and I knew that the election of America’s first black president, a man of the hard left, would make my job bringing a conservative message to black communities much more challenging and difficult.

As I ate my sandwich I glanced at the wall and saw a sign with a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. It said, “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.”

I was immediately energized by this quote from the old general. It was exactly what I needed at the moment. It totally captured my state of mind. Perhaps my mission needed a change in tactics but certainly there was no change in commitment and objectives.

There is no smooth sailing in any tough mission. Setbacks are always part of the game. But if you are committed and right, setbacks are opportunities to re-group and improve.

Those who think that the current deal to temporarily fund the government and open the door to yet even more government borrowing amounts to some kind of defeat for Tea Party Republicans need to think again.

The Tea Party is in for the long haul. One skirmish may be lost but the war continues.

A recent Gallup poll shows 18 percent of Americans satisfied with the way the country is being governed. For a little perspective, this stood at 26 percent in mid- 1973 in the midst of the Watergate scandal that wound up in the resignation of the president of the United States.

Early in 2009, shortly after President Obama was elected, 56 percent expressed satisfaction with our government. It’s just been downhill since then...

Continue reading.

Yeah, it's a long haul, especially when you've got to battle the leftists media the whole way. Here's CNN's new poll out today, for example, "GOP, Boehner take shutdown hit in new CNN poll" (via Memeorandum).

Obama's OMB Director Can't Confirm That Health Exchanges Will Be Up-and-Running by December

The entire ObamaCare facade will come crashing down if these dolt's can't get the stupid exchanges going by the end of the year.

From Erika Johnsen, at Hot Air, "OMB director: Er, no, I can’t gaurantee that HealthCare.gov will be running smoothly by mid-December."

Obama to Speak Monday on #ObamaCare Rollout Debacle

At the Hill, "ObamaCare enrollees to join president in Rose Garden (Video)."

Also, at the Wall Street Journal, "‘Tech Surge’ Planned to Fix Obamacare Exchanges," and Moe Lane, "White House bringing in “*Top* Men” to ‘fix’ #Obamacare exchanges."



IMAGE CREDIT: 90 Miles From Tyranny, "The Cynical Tactics Of The Great Deceiver..."

#Rule5 Sunday Roundup

At the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Rubycon."

More at Daley Gator, "Daley Gator DaleyBabe: Marlina Moreno."

And from Bob Belevedere, "Rule 5 Saturday: Amber Campisi."

Soylent has "Morning Coffee."

At Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See…… is a tiny home that would be perfect for Everyone Else, as long as they aren’t pulled by fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist."

Proof Positive has "Friday Night Babe: Sarah Rafferty!"

And at Randy’s Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart - Sandra Brec."

At Odie's, "I'm In Trouble ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

More from Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

And at Egotastic!, "Alessandra Ambrosio and Camilla Bell Headline the Cleavage Goodness at Beverly Hills Gala."

At EBL, "Rocky Horror High School."

Also at Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "Some Saturday Notes with Hot Chicks and Metal," and "Pretty Girls on a Thursday, Random Hotness Edition."

Plus, at 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Girls With Guns." And, "Graphic Art: Women With Weapons." 

Check Wine, Women, and Politics as well, "Saturday Sweeties."

At Animal Magnetism, "Rule Five Friday News."

See also, the Hostages, "Big Boob Friday."

And at a View From the Beach, "Rule 5 Saturday - Mischa Barton Back From the Brink."

And In a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has the "Friday Pinups."

More at Postal Dogs, "Taylor Momsen's new song better than you might think."

Good Stuff has "Elvira and Karen Nyberg."

See Dana Pico, "Rule 5 Blogging: Back in the US of A!"

And from Yankee Phil, "Real Sarah vs. Photoshopped."

And from Subject to Change, "Solid Gold."

More at Knuckledraggin', "Your Good Morning Girl."

Drop you links in the comments if I've missed your Rule 5 entry!

Mainstream Democrats Now Openly Call for Arrests of Political Opponents

From Doug Ross, "THINKING OF SITTING THINGS OUT IN 2014? Consider That Mainstream Democrats Now Openly Call for Arrests of Political Opponents":

For those of you as disgusted as I am with GOP leaders, consider the ramifications of sitting out the midterms. Should Nancy Pelosi regain the Speakership, well, in six words, they'll be coming for your guns. That's a guarantee.

For the first time in American history, mainstream Democrats are openly calling for the arrests of their political opponents. Yes, the hard left Democrat Party's tactics come straight out of the playbooks of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Pol Pot, and Mugabe.

They will be coming for anyone who expresses dissent against their Marxist policies, but before they do, they'll be coming for your guns.

Continue reading.

More from Byron York, "Left demands: Charge Ted Cruz with sedition."

And the Kos Kiddies are on the case, "No Republicans you didn't win, people want to try you for sedition."

Turncoat Senate Republicans Staged 'Intervention' to Stop Ted Cruz on #ObamaCare Defunding

My admiration for this man is growing daily and exponentially.

I listened to the entire Ted Cruz interview with CNN's Dana Bash. The Right Scoop has the full video, "FULL INTERVIEW: Ted Cruz tells CNN’s Dana Bash he isn’t giving up fight to stop ObamaCare."

Click on Right Scoop and scroll to 9:45 minutes. CNN's Bash presses Cruz on GOP divisions over the defunding strategy. She says that Senate Republicans told her that their luncheons with Senator Cruz were so angry and intense it was "like an intervention." Here's the passage from CNN's transcript:

CRUZ: No. What I'm choosing sides with is the American people. And what I think the focus should be is on Obamacare. Is it working? You know what's striking? In the last two months in the course of this debate over Obamacare, Democrats aren't defending Obamacare. They're not saying, hey, these things working great. They're not saying, hey, it's not killing job.

They're not saying, hey, it's not forcing people into part time work. It's not driving up health insurance premiums. It's not taken away people's health care. And the reason is you can't defend it. On the merits, I mean, there's a reason, Dana, the unions are jumping ship. They're saying let us out, it's not working. There's a reason Democratic senators went to the president and said we want a special exemption for members of Congress because it's not working.

And so, I understand you want to draw me into the back and forth with other Republican senators and that's fun to cover. I'm not interested in playing that game. Do you know what many of the elected officials in Washington are most upset about is that their constituents were calling and holding them accountable.

I can't tell you how many of my colleagues have expressed outrage to me that my constituents are calling me. Dana, we work for our constituents. That's our job.

BASH: But the reason they're frustrated, the constituents, they're calling them is because senators have said this to me, because they thought you were selling them snake oil. It was never going to happen.

CRUZ: You know, they can insure we can't win this fight by going on television constantly and attacking everyone who's standing up to win this fight. That made certain we couldn't win.

BASH: Let's chill down on what some of your colleagues seem to be most upset about. First of all, you referred to the fact that your colleagues were yelling at you red faced about their constituents calling. There were a lot of very animated private lunches with you and your colleagues, correct?

CRUZ: Look, I'm not interested in focusing on the disagreements between politicians in Washington –

BASH: Let me just ask you about this, because one of your colleagues told me it was like an intervention, that there were so many of your colleagues saying, you know, why are you doing this? And really angry at you. And I'm just wondering even on a human level, they told me that you really didn't flinch.

On a human level, that's got to bother you, to be sitting in an institution like the Senate and having your, not Democrats, fellow Republicans, so angry at you.

CRUZ: Dana, not remotely.

BASH: Why?

CRUZ: Because the people I work for are the women and men you just saw. I work for 26 million Texans. That's my job to fight for them. I don't work for the party bosses in Washington. I work for the people of Texas, and I fight for them. The reason people are frustrated all over country is that far too many people get elected and they think they're there to be part of the club.

You know what was very interesting about some of those closed door discussions? What I said in those closed door sessions, I would have said the exact same thing if CNN's camera were sitting in the room. What I say privately to my colleagues is the same thing I say publicly. And you know what's interesting?

Virtually, every person in that room that was criticizing what Mike Lee and I were doing would have said very different things if the camera was in this room, because what they're telling their constituents is very different from what they're saying behind closed doors.

BASH: Do you think Mitch McConnell has been a good leader?

CRUZ: I think Senate Republicans should have united. Senate Republicans should have united and supported House Republicans. The one hypothetical that I really think is worth thinking about is how would this have played differently if when the House stood up and led Senate Republicans had marched into battle side-by-side and said we are united and saying we should fund government.

But we should not fund Obamacare. Now, one of the things that might have played out differently, one of the most revealing exchanges and an exchange you were a part of when you asked Harry Reid about the funding for NIH. When the government was shut down, the House passed 14 bills to fund vital government priorities. The Democrats objected to all of them. They sat on Harry Reid's desk. He wouldn't allow a vote. Every one of them was a clean bill. So you had a bill to fund the veteran's administration.

You have to think about this for a minute, breaking it down.

When friends or family "stage an intervention" it's because a loved one is sick. The classic example is the alcoholic whose family life is being destroyed by drink and family members want to confront their loved one's denial and disease with "caring and compassion." Or perhaps it's a family member who's got a gambling addiction. A loved one's entire life revolves around going to casinos to the point that all of life's other priorities are rationalized away for the sake of generating the thill of the slots or the roulette wheel. Out of concern for the health of their loved one, family members organize an intervention to help the addict cope with the devastating consequences of their problem.

In both cases, the "intervention" is staged to help someone who's sick, someone with the disease of alcoholism or the clinically irrational addiction of gaming.

And now here we have Senate Republicans holding luncheons with the Texas Senator to literally hound and harass him on his "hopeless" ObamaCare defunding agenda. These meetings, according to "Senate colleagues," were confrontational and angry.

And Ted Cruz "didn't flinch." He didn't cave to the pressure from his craven and yellow-bellied establishment GOP pols. He resisted Senate Republicans' calls for "collegiality" in abandoning his crusade to protect the American people against the ObamaCare monstrosity.

Ted Cruz is not sick. He doesn't need an intervention to save him from pathologically diseased behavior. It's the Republican establishment that's sick. The establishment GOP has joined forces with the JournoList media to demonize the one person speaking the concerns of everyday Americans. Ted Cruz has gone to Washington to represent the interests of his constituents. He's doing the people's work. And members of his own party want him destroyed!

They're "really angry at you," Bash says to Cruz. And he doesn't flinch!

The entire establishment is attacking Ted Cruz as this crazed Frankenstein of the tea party. And he doesn't flinch. He's being flayed by the Obama-alled press as a "tea party deadender" out to normalize "the new crazy" in American politics.

But who's crazy? Seriously?

We now have a budget deal that's eliminated any caps on borrowing until 2014, and Democrats will push to make the removal of those borrowing limits permanent. We blew past $17 trillion within hours of the announcement of the budget deal. And there's no end in sight. And who's crazy? We have a national healthcare debacle in which insurance premiums are skyrocketing around the country, with 45 states documenting surges in insurance rates. American healthcare is crashing down the path to single-payer. And who's crazy?

Republicans fear losses in upcoming elections. Senate Republicans especially fear that Democrats could win a filibuster-proof majority, and individual senators are angling, at all costs, to keep their seats. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be next year's poster boy for the Senate GOP's Obama-shoe-shine coterie.

But the one constant on display through all this craven partisan protection will be Senator Ted Cruz's courage and commitment. He's committed to the values that have made this country great and prosperous --- and he's got the crosshairs firmly affixed between his shoulders for it. But his analysis is the correct one: We simply need more members of Congress committed to the limited government agenda, members who are willing to leverage their institutional power to stop this healthcare train wreck dead in its tracks. There's gonna be a reckoning on ObamaCare soon enough. It's simply not working and it won't be fixed in time for people to get enrolled. The White House is going to be forced to delay the law, and when it does it will be heroes like Ted Cruz who are vindicated.

UPDATE: Linked at Blazing Cat Fur. Thanks!

Maria Bartiromo on #ObamaCare: 'We Are Becoming Something of a Part-Time Employment Country...'

Via Gateway Pundit:

Young Intellectuals Resurrect Marxism

I found this Michelle Goldberg piece pretty interesting, "A Generation of Intellectuals Shaped by 2008 Crash Rescues Marx From History’s Dustbin." (Via Maggie's Farm.)

Actually, though, I think the piece --- and this movement to dig up Marx --- underestimates how thoroughly leftist thought today is marinated in Marxist class-struggle epistemology. The central hurdle for an resurrection of Marxism is the historically problematic case of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. So we see in the Goldberg piece that it's apparently possible for new Marxists to be anti-capitalist and anti-Stalinist simultaneously. This isn't a new position, of course, as the piece mentions. Folks pushing a politics of a "new left" have always had to grapple with the totalitarian legacy of the Soviet Union. But since the left's longings for utopia never end, the program of collective amnesia toward socialism Stalinist crimes can only deepen. It's fundamentally a monstrous program of collective lies, because to deny the genocidal evil of Soviet communism is to mount an enormous project of Orwellian deception. This is the fatal flaw of all leftist ideological programs.

Skulls From the Caucasus Spark Debate on Origins of Early Human Ancestors

This is cool.

At LAT, "Scientists rethink humans' family tree," and "A new family portrait."

Candice Swanepoel Meets the Royal Fantasy Bra

Well, the show's coming up in December!

#RedSox Head to World Series With Spectacular Come-From-Behind Victory Over #Tigers — #ALCS

Well, after the Dodgers' elimination yesterday, it goes without saying that I'm pleased with Boston's win tonight.

At NBC Sports, "Shane Victorino's grand slam puts the Red Sox back on top in the seventh inning of Game 6."

Started from the bottom now the @RedSox are going to the #WorldSeries: http://t.co/wKI5ta5VEm pic.twitter.com/asfTllyXtV

— MLB (@MLB) October 20, 2013

BOSTON WINS THE PENNANT. It’ll be Red Sox-Cardinals in the World Series. Game 1, Wed. night at Fenway Park. pic.twitter.com/pMuEeWKQIp

— BuzzFeed Sports (@BuzzFeedSports) October 20, 2013

It's Simple Math: People Will Pay More Under #ObamaCare

Anyone who can do math understands that ObamaCare's a total disaster. Our freedoms are being taken away.

From Dave Ramsey's program a couple of weeks back, via Heritage, "Dave Ramsey Says People Will Pay More for Obamacare — It’s Simple Math."

Kelly Brook 2014 Calendar (PHOTOS)

Wow.

She's still hot as ever.

At Egotastic!, "Kelly Brook 2014 Calendar Preview Forecasts a Future Year of Hotness," and at Hollywood Celebrity News, "Enjoy the complete Kelly Brook 2014 calendar."

'12 Years a Slave'

Unlike the professor interviewed by Jake Tapper at the clip, I don't think we need to have a new national debate over slavery. On the other hand, a new movie bringing the reality of that horrid institution to new generations is an awesome thing. I was thinking of going to catch this flick today, but it's in limited release, now playing up in L.A. Maybe next weekend it'll be playing in the O.C., or soon thereafter.

In any case, Kenneth Turan reviewed it yesterday, "Review: '12 Years a Slave' impressive, and hard to watch."



Some trailers here, "12 YEARS A SLAVE: 'What'd You Say to Pats?'" and "12 YEARS A SLAVE: 'Where You From, Platt?'" (And more at the Fox Searchlight YouTube page.)

Maybe I'll try and catch it tomorrow?

Obama Completely Ignores #ObamaCare Rollout Disaster in White House Weekly Address

He's such an asshole.

A loser and partisan asshole --- and the country's worse off for it.

At Weasel Zippers, "Obama’s Weekly Address Shockingly Makes No Mention of Obamacare…"

U.S. Debt Levels Surge After GOP Caves to Democrat Budget Deal

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Debt Jumps to $17.076 Trillion":

Well, that didn’t take long. Congress’s deal to suspend the government’s borrowing limit on Wednesday night led to a sharp spike in total U.S. debt on Thursday. This is largely because the Treasury Department had been using emergency steps to prevent the debt from increasing since mid-May. Total government debt had hovered at close to $16.7 trillion for around five months.

Actually, right now we don't even have a debt ceiling. Things can just keep spiraling out of control.

More at iOWNTHEWORLD, "U.S. debt jumps a record $328 billion — tops $17 trillion for first time."

Bill O'Reilly Slams 'Scandalous #ObamaCare Rollout 'Disaster'

A great talking points memo. O'Reilly hits the administration on Benghazi stonewalling as well.



PREVIOUSLY: "The #ObamaCare Omertà."

Emily Yoffe: Rape More Likely for College Women Who Drink (VIDEO)

Sounds like common sense, right?

Well, the idiot left went into meltdown mode with a "blame the victim" smear campaign against Ms. Yoffe, who's a columnist at the left-wing Slate website.

I saw this first at Instapundit, "SEXUAL ASSAULT PREVENTION ADVICE FROM EMILY YOFFE: College Women: Stop Getting Drunk: It’s closely associated with sexual assault. And yet we’re reluctant to tell women to stop doing it":

Of course, the men are often drunk, too. But when a drunk woman couples with a drunk man, the drunk man is somehow still responsible, while the woman is a victim, because she’s drunk. “Educating students about rape, teaching them that by definition a very drunk woman can’t consent to sex, is crucial.” Double standard much?

Well, yeah. Leftist ideology is all hypocrisy and double-standards.

Also at iOWNTHEWORLD, "The Kneejerk Idiotic Non-Thinking Irritatingly Stupefying Left."

And see the "stupefying left" in action, at Lawyers, Girls and Rape, "The Sexual Assault of Women Isn’t a Problem of Women Drinking." (Almost five hundred comments of pure stupefying regressive outrage.)



More preening feminist stupidity from Katie McDonough, at the communist webzine Salon, "Sorry, Emily Yoffe: Blaming assault on women’s drinking is wrong, dangerous and tired."

And from Ms. Yoffe, "Emily Yoffe Responds to Her Critics."

The #ObamaCare Omertà

A devastating editorial at the Wall Street Journal, "Sebelius on the Run" (via Memeorandum):

The Affordable Care Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn't in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department's incompetence.

The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.

Continue reading.

Also at Power Line, "ADVENTURES IN OBAMACARE."

BuzzFeed Goes Viral

The viral-content website is itself looking to go viral.

At LAT, "BuzzFeed aims to up its viral-video volume with L.A. office":

Jonah Peretti, founder and chief executive of the wildly popular website BuzzFeed, is trying to choose his favorite online video.

"'Drunk vs. Stoned' was pretty fun," he finally says, singling out a BuzzFeed video in which a staffer tests whether it's easier to function on alcohol or on marijuana by getting really drunk and, on a different night, getting really baked. The three-minute video, featuring side-by-side comparisons of dancing, ball catching, drawing and Lego building, has scored more than 3.1 million views since its debut two months ago.

BuzzFeed itself is riding high these days. "Drunk vs. Stoned" was just the latest monster hit in its arsenal of viral social content, which altogether attracted record traffic of 85 million unique visitors in August, three times the number it had a year earlier. By this time next year, Peretti predicts, BuzzFeed will be one of the world's most visited websites.

Peretti and BuzzFeed's staff members, self-described Internet nerds, have an uncanny ability to predict what will blow up online. The Manhattan company measures success not by page views but by shareability — the number of people who like a post enough to pass it on to their friends via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media channels.

"We would rather someone get to a post because a friend suggested it to them," said Doree Shafrir, BuzzFeed's executive editor. "No one wants to share something crappy, because then they look like idiots. We're very cognizant of that."

Launched in 2006, BuzzFeed is dominated by lighthearted, frothy fare: the funniest cat GIFs of the week, scandalous Miley Cyrus photos, 19 Reasons Why Pants Are the Enemy.

But Peretti, who also co-founded the Huffington Post, is determined to turn BuzzFeed into more than just a site known for funny lists and has been vocal about his ambitious plans to grow the company into an all-around media juggernaut for the mobile social age.

To do so, the 39-year-old hired Ben Smith from Politico to be BuzzFeed's editor in chief, beefed up the site's hard news coverage and invested in long-form journalism. To reach international readers, BuzzFeed on Monday announced that it would add Spanish, French and Portuguese versions of the site.

His latest push: A major video initiative that has brought BuzzFeed, naturally, to Los Angeles, where it has converted a former beauty supply store on Beverly Boulevard into a bureau largely devoted to conceiving and producing viral videos. It also leased a smaller production facility a couple of miles away in Hollywood.

"Video was a huge missing piece," Peretti said during a recent visit to L.A., where he discussed his plans while shuffling a stack of yellow stickers printed with "omg," "lol" and "cute." "We wanted to do for video what we did with other kinds of content."

They're too leftist for me, but I frequently enjoy their content.

More at that top link.

Texas Backs Ted Cruz

We need more like him in Congress, lots more.

At the New York Times, "Texans Stick With Cruz Despite Defeat in Washington":

HOUSTON — Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the face of the angry right, has been criticized, lambasted and lampooned for putting the nation through a 16-day government shutdown and the prospect of a financial default.

Bloomberg Businessweek put him on its cover as a mad hatter who defines how “crazy is the new normal.” Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from New York, has said Republican leaders need to go after Mr. Cruz and accused him of bringing the country “to the edge of ruin.”

In Texas, it is a different story.

Drivers speeding down a busy highway about 70 miles outside Houston have been greeted with two blunt messages that Bruce Labay put up at his oil field services business. One declared that Mr. Labay was tired of softhearted Republicans, though he used a more colorful adjective. The other read, “We Need More Republicans Like Ted Cruz.”

Mr. Labay, 55, made his signs by sticking 1,200 plastic foam cups, one by one, into the loops of his chain-link fence, a 90-minute project that filled much of the fencing around BL Oilfield Services in the town of El Campo.

“I was proud of him,” Mr. Labay said of the state’s junior senator. “I was proud he was a Texan. I wish they would have held firm, and we’d still be shut down.”

Home states and districts are usually loyal to their senators and representatives in times of political crisis. But the continued support for Mr. Cruz among Texas Republicans illustrates something larger: the cultural and political divide that continues to widen between a red state that President Obama lost by nearly 16 points in the 2012 election and the blue or even purple parts of the country where Mr. Cruz’s tone and tactics have caused outrage and consternation.

“Texas is not America,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political consultant in Austin and the former spokesman for Mr. Cruz’s Republican predecessor in the Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchison. “It’s in America, but it’s not America. National polls don’t mean anything. Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. There are no Peter Kings in Texas.”

Continue reading.

I posted on the Bloomberg cover here, "The Crazy 'Deadender' Tea Party."

Added: From Twitchy, "‘Take down Ted Cruz’: Capitol Police investigate threat against Senator; Haters add fuel to fire."

You know, that's not some isolated incident. The leftist press is fueling some Jacobinism. And leftist eliminationism is accelerating. For example, "MoveOn hosts petition calling for arrest of Boehner, Cantor for sedition."

#ObamaCare Disaster Deepens as Insurers Get Wrong Data

At WSJ, "Health Website Woes Widen as Insurers Get Wrong Data: New Errors Indicate Technological Problems Extend Issues Already Identified":

Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified.

Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska said it had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Medical Mutual of Ohio said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.

The flaws could do lasting damage to the law if customers are deterred from signing up or mistakenly believe they have obtained coverage.

"The longer this takes to resolve…the harder it will be to get people to [come back and] sign up," said Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Mark Bertolini. "It's not off to a great start," he said, though he believes the marketplaces are "here to stay."

The new troubles for the Affordable Care Act arrive as Washington's attention is expected to sharply shift toward scrutiny of the site's rocky rollout, whose problems had been overshadowed by a two-week brawl over the government shutdown and debt ceiling.

Pressure is rising on the Obama administration to fix the problems. A number of Republicans have urged Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to resign. Prominent Democrats, including House Ways and Means ranking member Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.), have called for fixes to be accelerated. The White House has said it has full confidence in Ms. Sebelius.

HHS, which is running all or part of the marketplaces in 36 states, has repeatedly declined to answer specific questions about its handling of the rollout, including specific glitches, enrollment figures, or its plans to fix the problems.


"We know that people are enrolling in coverage and the system works. As individual problems are raised by insurers, we work aggressively to address them," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Thursday.

Health-department officials have pressured insurers to refrain from commenting publicly about the problems, according to executives at four health plans, who asked not to be named. The HHS declined to comment.

In prolonging the battles over the budget and debt ceiling, "all Republicans did was give [President Obama] great cover for the complete screw-up on the opening of the exchanges," said Gail Wilensky, a Medicare director in the administration of George H.W. Bush and UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH +0.28%  board member.

But the persistence of the technological problems could force a steeper political price for the Obama administration as Republican lawmakers redirect their focus. The GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee announced Thursday night it would hold a hearing next week on the rollout of the law and called on HHS to "voluntarily" make officials available after the secretary's staff said she couldn't come. Ms Peters, the HHS spokeswoman, said the department intended to be "responsive" to the request.

More at the click through.

And from Yuval Levin, at National Review, "Assessing the Exchanges." And at the Weekly Standard, "Obamacare Website Violates Licensing Agreement for Copyrighted Software."

#ObamaCare: More Than a Glitch

Via John Hawkins on Twitter.

Peyton Manning Still Tops in Indianapolis

At USA Today, "Emotions run high in Indianapolis before Manning return":

INDIANAPOLIS -- Kill the fatted calf. The all-pro-digal son returns.

OK, Peyton Manning is no prodigal. The 12-time Pro Bowl pick didn't choose to leave Indianapolis, and he didn't squander his money, as in the parable. In fact, he helped raise so much money for a children's hospital here that it's named for him.

But the calf half of the metaphor is apt. The phrase comes from biblical times, and it means to break out the very best for the most special of special occasions — in this case, as in that one, the return home of a favorite son.

Manning, who was released by the Indianapolis Colts in March 2012 amid uncertainty over his surgically repaired neck, isn't back for good, of course. No. 18 plies his trade in a new home now, for the Denver Broncos. This season, at 37, he is on pace for the best year any NFL quarterback has ever had.

And Sunday night on NBC, when the 6-0 Broncos play the 4-2 Colts in the Dome that Peyton Built, the good people of Indianapolis will offer one last roar for the greatest athlete in their city's history, before they go back to rooting for the guy they hope will be even better someday.

The Crazy 'Deadender' Tea Party

Even Business Week's attacking grassroots conservatives with the "cray cray" smear.

See "The Tea Party's Pyrrhic Victory" (via Tyler Durden).

Shutdown Showdown Is Win for the Tea Party

Scottie Nell Hughes' comments are particularly interesting, but also the segment includes excerpts from Sarah Palin's interview with Megyn Kelly yesterday, and also Brit Hume's rant from earlier this week.

Excellent commentary:

Dana Loesch Rips #ObamaCare as 'Biggest Bait-and-Swith I've Ever Seen'

Since Social Security, lol.

A great segment.

Democrats cannot defend this law. This Steve McMahon dude gets his ass handed to him.

Erick Erickson Nails the Analysis of Post-Shutdown Conservative Politics

I don't post Erickson often (he's a jerk, if you ask me), but he's an extremely talented analyst, and I really like this piece.

At Red State, "Advancing. Ever Advancing":

The establishment has given conservatives a brilliant opportunity to advance against them and then against the Democrats. As Obamacare now goes into full swing, conservatives can show that they tried to stop it while Mitch McConnell and so many others sat and watched from a cozy booth the Capitol Hill Club leaving the fighting to others while they did everything possible to undermine the fight.

As more Americans watch Obamacare fail them through the Republican primary season, conservatives will be able to put the focus on Republicans who funded Obamacare instead of fighting it. Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress will find their names on ballots in 2014. They cannot hide or escape fate.

Conservatives must advance — ever advancing against the Republicans who have folded in the fight against Obamacare. We will not win all the fights. But Ted Cruz and Mike Lee show we do not have to win them all. We just need reinforcements.

RTWT.

Backlash After Kim Kardashian Posts Skeezy Side-Boob Selfie to Instagram

Man, that woman must be hurtin' bad.

Now a mom and she's posting photos of herself practically nude to Instagram? Jonesin' to get back in the media limelight? Hey, that's the culture these days. Nude gets the page views.

At London's Daily Mail, "'Put on some mom jeans!': Now Kim Kardashian receives BIG online backlash over 'inappropriate' swimsuit selfie... four months after becoming a new mother."

Number of Visitors to Disastrous #ObamaCare Website Crashes

Visitor counts are crashing just like ObamaCare's crashing.

At the New Counter-Culture, "VISITS TO OBAMACARE EXCHANGE SITE PLUMMET."

#ObamaCare's Black Box

At WSJ, "Why the exchanges are worse than even the critics imagined":

The White House set low expectations for the Affordable Care Act's October 1 debut, so anything remotely competent should have seemed like a success. But three weeks on, the catastrophe that is Healthcare.gov and the 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government is an insult to the "glitches" President Obama said were inevitable.

This isn't some coding error, or even the Health and Human Service Department's usual incompetence. The failures that have all but disabled ObamaCare are the result of deliberate political choices, which HHS and the White House are compounding with secrecy and stonewalling.

***

The health industry and low-level Administration officials warned that the exchanges were badly off schedule and not stress-tested despite three years to prepare and more than a half-billion dollars in funding. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her planners swore they'd be ready while impugning critics and even withholding documents from the HHS inspector general for a routine performance audit this summer.

Yet the launch has been worse even than critics predicted. The rare users who weren't locked out experienced crashes, delays and error messages. Mrs. Sebelius initially claimed this was merely servers crashing under unexpectedly high demand. She called it "a great problem to have."

Now that traffic has abated, HHS concedes there were built-in information technology and structural defects. Some of Healthcare.gov's automatic operations mimic hacker denial-of-service attacks meant to disable a site. These can be fixed, though press reports suggest they're due to a programming rush because HHS delayed key regulations and IT specifications until after the election to avoid Republican criticism.

Then instead of rolling out the program in stages or delaying it as HHS has so many other parts of the law, the department simply dumped a bad product on the public to meet a self-created deadline.

Other failures have the same political character. Consumers must set up a complex account with sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers before they are allowed to browse health plans. The government wants to show consumers only their net out-of-pocket premiums minus subsidies, not the true underlying cost of insurance. That's because those all-in quotes are so much higher than what's available on the individual market.

HHS continues to claim that the exchanges are all about competition—they're even trying to rebrand them as "marketplaces." But real marketplaces are transparent and let consumers know what they get for what price. ObamaCare's exchanges are intended to obscure price and service options.

HHS still refuses to disclose how much taxpayers shelled out for this exchange lemon. The money came from several ObamaCare, general HHS and Medicare accounts and flowed to more than 50 outside vendors, with several no-bid contracts awarded outside the normal procurement process.

Mrs. Sebelius also refuses to reveal basic data about ObamaCare enrollment even as she brags about the millions of people who have supposedly visited Healthcare.gov. Information that would allow outsiders to evaluate the exchanges includes how many people have applied and qualified for coverage so far, what types of health plans they're selecting and what their health risks are.

Continue reading.

The genuinely surprising thing is that public opinion hasn't crashed on this yet. The true measure of public support, of course, will be the congressional elections next year. It's not going to go well for the Dems. Of course, the president couldn't give a f-k. He's not on the ballot, and he's laughing at the socialist monstrosity he's sloughed off on a sheepish electorate.

Congress Sends Obama Bill to End Shutdown

At WaPo:

Sixteen days after a federal shutdown began and one day before the United States would have exhausted its ability to borrow money, Congress approved a bill to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. President Obama has promised to sign the legislation immediately, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be back at work Thursday.

“Now that the bill has passed the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, the President plans to sign it tonight and employees should expect to return to work in the morning,” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement late Wednesday night. Burwell directed employees to check news outlets and OPM’s Web site for further updates.

By a vote of 81 to 18, the Senate sent the 35-page bill to the House of Representatives, where it was approved 285-144 just a little over two hours later. All 198 Democrats present in the House voted yes, and 87 Republicans voted yes as well. All 144 no votes were Republicans.

“We fought the good fight; we just didn’t win,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview with conservative radio host Bill Cunningham.

At the White House, Obama hailed the Senate’s deal. “Once this agreement arrives on my desk I will sign it immediately and we will begin reopening the government immediately, and we can begin to lift this cloud of uncertainty and unease from our businesses and the and the American people.”

Obama said he hopes to move forward on other domestic priorities, including immigration reform and the farm bill. “We could get all these things done if everybody comes together in a spirit of ‘how can we move this country forward’ and put the last three weeks behind us.”

More at that top link.

Senate Passes Debt Deal

At WaPo, "Senate passes bipartisan bill to raise debt limit, end government shutdown."