Rachel Williams: Zoo's Great British Babe Search Winner 2013

Whoa!

This lady is freakin' worthy!

At Zoo Today, "Meet Rachel Williams, your winner of our Great British Babe search 2013!"

Leftist Democrat Martha Robertson Running Away from #ObamaCare in #NY23

We'll be seeing stories like this for the next 11 months.

At Legal Insurrection, "Dem House candidate runs from past single-payer support after Obamacare debacle."



Also at the NRCC, "Martha Robertson and the Democratic Socialists of America Sing for Single Payer!"

Yep. She's a "Democrat-Socialist."

But I thought that was a right-wing conspiracy, or something. Fail.

Hot Beth Williams!

What a lady.

Via Twitter.

The Man Who Used to Walk on Water

Brutal.

At the Economist, "How Barack Obama can get at least some of his credibility back."

AN AMERICAN president’s most important power is not the veto pen or the ability to launch missiles. It is the bully pulpit. When a president speaks, the world listens. That is why Barack Obama’s credibility matters. If people do not believe what he says, his power to shape events withers. And recent events have seriously shaken people’s belief in Mr Obama. At home, the chaos of his health reform has made it harder for him to get anything else done. Abroad, he is seen as weak and disengaged, to the frustration of America’s allies.

Continue reading.



Via Instapundit, "... not the Economist cover Obama wants to see."

JFK Single-Bullet Theory Probed Using Latest Forensics Technology

A CBS News story, at Guns.com, "Father-son duo use latest forensic tech to prove JFK single-bullet theory (VIDEO)."

The entire PBS Nova video is here, "Cold Case JFK."



It's very compelling, but see JFK Facts, "The single bullet theory and the perils of JFK denialism."

I'm a "denialist," I guess.

PREVIOUSLY: "Kennedy Assassination Trutherism."

Kennedy Assassination Trutherism

Fifty years ago today. And we're still dealing with Kennedy truthers.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Seeking the truth behind the tragedy of Kennedy's assassination":

Barb Junkkarinen emerges from the bedroom with the gift her husband and son gave her one Christmas.

It's a 1940 Italian-made rifle, like the one Lee Harvey Oswald fired from a sixth-floor window at the Texas School Book Depository, killing President Kennedy on an autumn afternoon in Dallas. He'd spirited the weapon into the building by disguising it as a curtain rod.

"This is how Oswald carried his package," she says, holding the butt of the rifle low, the way witnesses described. "He had it cupped in his hand, like this."

Junkkarinen's husband, Juha, and son, Jason, nod at the demonstration they've seen again and again. They help adjust the unloaded weapon just so. They point out there's also a scope and ammunition.

Over more than half her lifetime, Barb Junkkarinen has made a hobby of delving into rumors, theories and contradictory facts that swirl around a killing that continues to titillate — and divide — Americans on the 50th anniversary of the events of Nov. 22, 1963.

In the world of online Kennedy discussion groups, she learned "lurkers" tune in but never post; "fringies" attribute a political motive to every turn; false witnesses claim to have been places they haven't. Those who believe Oswald acted alone are "lone-nutters."

And people like Junkkarinen are CTs, for conspiracy theorists.

She has amassed a trove of artifacts: autopsy reports, investigation documents, shelves of books and photos, and a model of the Lincoln Continental limousine Kennedy rode in when he was shot in Dealey Plaza. There's also a life-sized plastic model of a human skull she uses to make detailed arguments about bullet entry and exit.

Inside her Portland-area home office, she avidly dissects the latest theories of the paranoid and the emotionally unstable.

They include those who believe Kennedy was first hit in the throat with a bullet made of ice; that a man in Dealey Plaza fatally wounded the president with a dart fired from an umbrella; and that J. Edgar Hoover attended a party the night before the assassination celebrating JFK's imminent demise.

Junkkarinen rejects those theories. She blames gangsters and spies.

Well, I'm a "lone-nutter."

Although, since Oswald was a communist, it's natural you'd get Democrats as the leading conspiracists. See, "Secretary of State John Kerry Has 'Doubts' Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone in Assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

And don't miss Gerald Posner's book, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.

Nuclear Option

At the Los Angeles Times, "Senate Democrats invoke 'nuclear option' on filibusters":

WASHINGTON — Democrats made a historic change to Senate rules Thursday, ending the minority party's ability to use filibusters to block most presidential nominations and, in the process, virtually guaranteeing that the rest of President Obama's term will be dominated by executive actions and court battles rather than legislation.

In changing the long-standing rules with a near party-line vote in the middle of the session, Democrats brushed aside a century of congressional tradition and further embittered relations between the parties on an already deadlocked Capitol Hill.

The Senate Republican minority, which will see its power dramatically curtailed, threatened reprisals and characterized the rule change as a political power grab, comparing it to Obama's push to pass the landmark Affordable Health Care act in 2010 without bipartisan support.

The decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to deploy the so-called nuclear option means Senate confirmations of presidential appointments — except for Supreme Court justices — will proceed by a simple majority vote. Previously, a 60-vote threshold had become the norm to avoid a filibuster by the minority party. The change does not affect filibusters on legislation.

Over the years, Democrats and Republican have used filibusters to block nominations, but the practice became much more common in recent years.

"I realize that neither party has been blameless for these tactics," Obama said Thursday in supporting the rule change. "They've developed over years, and it seems as if they've continually escalated. But today's pattern of obstruction — it just isn't normal. A majority of senators believe, as I believe, that enough is enough."

Only three Democrats — Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Carl Levin of Michigan — joined Republicans in the 48-52 vote...

Continue reading. The rest of the piece explains how the rule-chang passed and how the Obama White House expects to govern by executive fiat over the remainder of the term.

More at Memeorandum.

Che-Loving Kshama Sawant Exhorts Workers to Seize Boeing

Fits News has the report, "Seattle Socialist: Boeing Workers Should Rise Up."

Also at WND, "Socialist lawmaker urges workers to 'take over' Boeing."

She's a freakin' murder-loving communist, it turns out. At her election-night party headquarters, Che Guevara posters adorned the walls.



Che was a remorseless mass murderer. It's pretty sick he's held up as a icon by a top official in one of America's biggest cities, but it's no surprise. (See my previous Che blogging at the link.)

There's No Substitute for American Power — And Decency

From Walter Lohman, at the National Interest, "What Typhoon Haiyan Taught Us about China":

If the Asia Pacific region ever needed a reminder of the difference between a U.S.-led order and one shaped by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the respective reactions of the two to Typhoon Haiyan is a stark one. One nation sends its navy and Marines and pledges $20 million in assistance. The other sends $100,000 in government assistance until it folds to the hectoring of the international community and increases its contribution to a still-miserly $1.6 million.

American friends and allies in the region should seriously consider the implication of this comparison. It is not an aberration.

The U.S. has made mistakes over the years. Alliances with undemocratic regimes—whether Marcos in the Philippines or Suharto in Indonesia—were often necessary in winning the Cold War. In some cases, as in Taiwan or South Korea, our embrace was a critical factor in their eventual democratization. But certainly, there were occasions when we embraced autocrats longer and more fully than necessary.

It all seems so clear now. At the time, it was not. And operating in real time, we got the details wrong on occasion. The U.S., however, has always sought to exercise a basic decency in the conduct of its foreign policy. Its electorate demands it. And in the absence of a dominant, overarching strategic context like the Cold War, the judgment calls have only gotten easier...

Continue reading.

24 Grooms Seeing Their Brides for the First Time

This is cool, from BuzzFeed.

24 Grooms Blown Away By Their Beautiful Brides http://t.co/9kW8uyP5b7 pic.twitter.com/BpG9p8SoMB

— BuzzFeed Classics (@BuzzFeedClassic) November 21, 2013

#ObamaCare's Redistribution Scheme Exposed

One of the very best recent commentaries I've read.

From Holman Jenkins, Jr., at WSJ, "How the GOP Should Fix ObamaCare":

Let's understand: The stumbling block to fixing Mr. Obama's broken promise is Democrats clinging to the central redistributive scheme embedded in ObamaCare. There is no reconciling the two.

Americans are beginning to understand that the essence of the Affordable Care Act is that millions of people are being conscripted to buy overpriced insurance they would never choose for themselves in order to afford Mr. Obama monies to spend on the poor and those who are medically uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions. Both Mr. Obama and Republicans are blowing smoke in claiming that the damage done to the individual market by the forced cancellation of "substandard" plans (i.e., those that don't meet the purposes of ObamaCare) can somehow be reversed at this point. It can't be.

What can be done is Congress creating a new option in the form of a national health insurance charter under which insurers could design new low-cost policies free of mandated benefits imposed by ObamaCare and the 50 states that many of those losing their individual policies today surely would find attractive.

What's the first thing the new nationally chartered insurers would do? Rush out cheap, high-deductible policies, allaying some of the resentment that the ObamaCare mandate provokes among the young, healthy and footloose affluent.

These folks could buy the minimalist coverage that (for various reasons) makes sense for them. They wouldn't be forced to buy excessive coverage they don't need to subsidize the old and sick.

If this idea sounds familiar, it was proposed right here three years ago, after the 2010 elections in which Democrats lost the House due to public disquiet over ObamaCare.

Continue reading.

#ObamaCare Rollout is 'Lasting Mess' for Freaked-Out Democrats

Oh, this is harsh.

At the Hill, "Obama hits new low with Dems":

President Obama’s relationship with congressional Democrats has worsened to an unprecedented low, Democratic aides say.

They are letting it be known that House and Senate Democrats are increasingly frustrated, bitter and angry with the White House over ObamaCare’s botched rollout, and that the president’s mea culpa in a news conference last week failed to soothe any ill will.

Sources who attended a meeting of House chiefs of staff on Monday say the room was seething with anger over the immense damage being done to the Democratic Party and talk was of scrapping rollout events for the Affordable Care Act.
“Here we are, we’re supposed to be selling this to people, and it’s all screwed up,” one chief of staff ranted. “This either gets fixed or this could be the demise of the Democratic Party.

“It’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen it,” the aide said of the recent mood on Capitol Hill. “It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

Meanwhile, at a recent caucus meeting with Senate Democrats and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, one senator stood up and asked for a political point of contact at the White House.

“There’s been an increase in frustration because people feel like they are continuing to be blindsided,” said one Democrat who attended the caucus meeting, adding that there’s a “check-the-box” mentality at the White House in dealing with lawmakers.

Democrats around Capitol Hill say there are lots of people to blame for the debacle that has engulfed them. But increasingly the anger is directed at one person only: Obama.

“Is he even more unpopular than George W. Bush? I think that’s already happened,” said one Democratic chief of staff.

Senior administration officials say they understand the frustration and anger on the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue and they realize Democrats are the ones who continue to take a hit.

But the senior officials say the most important thing the White House can do right now is to get the implementation of the healthcare law right. The feeling in the West Wing corridors lately is that once the rollout is fixed, the public will see all the positives behind ObamaCare.

“The policy will take care of the politics,” one senior administration official said.

But not everyone agrees with that sentiment — particularly those Democrats in both chambers who are up for reelection in 2014.

“They’re freaking out, as they should be,” said one senior Senate Democratic aide, adding that the rollout continues to be “a lasting mess.”

It's so bad House Dems won't be seen with Obama on the campaign trail. Talk about toxic, man.

Still more bad news at the link.

A Gold-Plated Insurance Exchange for Members of Congress

Man, a lot of people are going to be steaming if this becomes a political hot potato (or, another political hot potato).

At NYT, "Perks Ease Way in Health Plans for Lawmakers":

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress like to boast that they will have the same health care enrollment experience as constituents struggling with the balky federal website, because the law they wrote forced lawmakers to get coverage from the new insurance exchanges.

That is true. As long as their constituents have access to “in-person support sessions” like the ones being conducted at the Capitol and congressional office buildings by the local exchange and four major insurers. Or can log on to a special Blue Cross and Blue Shield website for members of Congress and use a special toll-free telephone number — a “dedicated congressional health insurance plan assistance line.”

And then there is the fact that lawmakers have a larger menu of “gold plan” insurance choices than most of their constituents have back home.

While millions of Americans have been left to fend for themselves and go through the frustrating experience of trying to navigate the federal exchange, members of Congress and their aides have all sorts of assistance to help them sort through their options and enroll.

Lawmakers and the employees who work in their “official offices” will receive coverage next year through the small-business marketplace of the local insurance exchange, known as D.C. Health Link, which has staff members close at hand for guidance.

“D.C. Health Link set up shop right here in Congress,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate to the House from the nation’s capital.

Insurers routinely offer “member services” to enrollees. But on Capitol Hill, the phrase has special meaning, indicating concierge-type services for members of Congress.

If lawmakers have questions about Aetna plan benefits and provider networks, they can call a special phone number that provides “member services for members of Congress and staff.”

On the website run by the Obama administration for 36 states, it is notoriously difficult to see the prices, deductibles and other details of health plans.

It is much easier for members of Congress and their aides to see and compare their options on websites run by the Senate, the House and the local exchange.

Lawmakers can select from 112 options offered in the “gold tier” of the District of Columbia exchange, far more than are available to most of their constituents.

Aetna is offering eight plan options to members of Congress, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield is offering 16. Eight are available from Kaiser Permanente, and 80 are on sale from the UnitedHealth Group.

Lawmakers and their aides are not eligible for tax credit subsidies, but the government pays up to 75 percent of their premiums, contributing a maximum of $5,114 a year for individual coverage and $11,378 for family coverage. The government contribution is based on the same formula used for most other federal employees...

Yeah, it must be rough.

The Washington elite against the rest of us. Republicans should be ashamed they're getting special treatment, but at least they didn't vote for the monstrosity. They can at least partially redeem themselves by getting that clusterf-k repealed. ASAP.

Still more at that top link.

#ObamaCare Forced Mom Into Medicaid

Now this is just downright sad.

From Nicole Hopkins, at WSJ:

My mother is not one to seek attention by complaining, so her recent woeful Facebook post caught my eye: "The poor get poorer." It diverged from the more customary stream of inspirational quotes, recipes and snapshots from her tiny cottage in Pierce County, Wash.

The post continued: "I just received a notice: 'In order to comply with the new healthcare law, your current health plan will be discontinued on December 31, 2013.' Currently my premium is $276 and it is a stretch for me to cover. The new plan . . . are you ready . . . projected new rate $415.20. Now I can't afford health insurance."

The unaffordable ObamaCare-compliant plan that her insurer offered in a Sept. 26 letter is not what makes my mother's story noteworthy. Countless individually insured Americans have received such letters; many are seeing more radical increases in premiums and deductibles.

But most of these people are still being offered the chance to choose what health-care insurance they will receive, or to opt out before they are automatically enrolled in a state program. Not so my mother, Charlene Hopkins, as I soon discovered when I called after seeing her Facebook post.

Since she couldn't afford the new plan offered by her insurer, she told me she was eager to explore her new choices under the Affordable Care Act. Washington Healthplanfinder is one of the better health-exchange sites, and she was actually able to log on. She entered her personal and financial data. With efficiency uncommon to the ObamaCare process, the site quickly presented her with a health-care option.

That is not a typo: There was just one option—at the very affordable monthly rate of zero. The exchange had determined that my mother was not eligible to choose to pay for a plan, and so she was slated immediately for Medicaid. She couldn't believe it was true and held off completing the application.

"How has it come to this?" she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. "How have I fallen this far?"

In 2011, she had to give up her real-estate license; as a newer agent, she did not stand to earn enough in the tough market to justify the fees to renew. She has since managed to eke out a living as a substitute para-educator in the Central Kitsap School District. "I'm not on the couch, watching TV," she said. "I'm out trying to find more work every day."

Unable to secure employer-sponsored health care, she had, until this fall, chosen to pay $276 a month for bare-bones catastrophic coverage. "I think that we should be able to take care of ourselves and to earn enough money to pay for basics, and health insurance is one of them," she told me. For two years she had paid out of pocket for that plan, but now she is being told that the plan isn't good enough for her.

The Sept. 26 letter from my mother's insurer promised that the more expensive plan "conforms with the new health care law"—by covering maternity needs, newborn wellness and pediatric dental care. My mother asked: "Do I need maternity care at 52?" In addition to requiring her to pay an extra $1,677 annually, the plan would have increased her deductible by $1,500.

But she had at least been presented with an option that she could turn down, unlike on the state exchange...

Continue reading.

Leftists will say they're making the woman better off. But she liked her plan, because it preserved her dignity. ObamaCare robbed her of it. We're all caught in the maw of the vicious Democrat healthcare tyranny. Only complete repeal --- and the utter decimation of the menacing Democrat Party --- will begin to turn things around, and restore some dignity.

Dems Calling for #ObamaCare Repeal?

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg, "Wishful Thinking Can't Hold Obamacare Together":

The Obamacare story is as much a political story, and a media story, as it is a policy story. If people think that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act won’t work, then it probably won’t; the politicians will start passing “fixes” that undermine the functionality of its interlocking parts, and companies and consumers will abandon the fledgling markets. If people think that Obamacare will work -- well, it might not work anyway, because the real world does not always deliver rhetorically pleasing symmetry. But it certainly has a much better shot.

Of note, then, is one development you saw over the weekend: People are starting to talk about repeal. In early October, most people -- including me -- would have ranked this as wishful Republican thinking, along the lines of “repeal the Fed.” But the weekend brought us the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar suggesting that Democrats might begin calling for repeal if things don’t get better soon...

Lots more at the link.

New AFP Ads Target Democrats on #ObamaCare

From Americans for Prosperity.



Make those f-kers eat it.

Dream Angels Holiday 2013

These babes are wild.



And it's just over three weeks now until the fashion show. Lovely.

Deep Danger for Democrats in 2014

From Stan Veuger, at the National Interest, "Obamacare Reforms Could Doom Dems in 2014":

Things aren’t exactly looking up for President Obama these days. The rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s central feature, the exchanges where people without employer-provided health insurance are meant to purchase plans, has been disastrous, marked by IT problems and astonishingly low enrollment numbers. The President’s promise that “If you like your plan, you can keep it” has been shown to be knowingly false. The number of people losing coverage is so far rapidly outpacing the number of people gaining coverage. And the administration’s haphazard fixes may only be worsening the situation, promising even deeper political trouble down the road.

First the administration delayed the employer mandate, which, now starting in 2015, will force employers with more than fifty quasi-full-time employees to provide health insurance or pay a new tax. The administration’s decision to delay the mandate, welcome as it may have been to businesses that gained an additional year to deal with the new regulations and obligations they will face, will almost surely lead to political damage at a very unhelpful time. Right before the 2014 midterm elections, about half of all employer plans would have to be canceled or replaced. This would show an immense number of Americans, more than ten times as many as those who are now receiving individual-market cancellation notices, that the administration’s promises that you can keep your doctor were false, and it will show them this in a direct, personal manner. It seems unlikely that congressional Democrats would be willing to deal with the political fallout from such unpleasant news right before facing reelection.

Having delayed the employer mandate, the administration then had to deal with the individual mandate, and the exchanges on which individuals were supposed to purchase health insurance policies to comply with it. All was working wonderfully well in the President’s mind until October 1, when the glory of Kayak, the beauty of Amazon Prime, and the convenience of Uber would converge, creating Healthcare.gov, a website that would win the Internet instantly and put Facebook and Google to shame. That didn’t happen, and after initially downplaying the problems with the infrastructure sustaining the exchanges the administration announced that it had finally found a shovel-ready project: by December 1, the website should be working for 4 out of every 5 people looking for health insurance—a pretty high bar, given how things have gone so far. The problem, of course, is that millions of people will now have only a two-week window to ensure that they have health insurance starting on January 1. And quite a few of those people will find that the prices and policies available to them are not particularly wonderful, especially those who had individual coverage already.

Ah yes, the people who had managed to navigate the individual market before the exchanges came into being! A lot of their plans got canceled. After attempts to spin their loss as a victory for Western civilization failed, President Obama saw himself forced to introduce yet another potentially damaging fix. During an impromptu press conference, he announced that in his infinite benevolence he would give insurance companies the chance to uncancel canceled insurance policies. This was certainly not planned for, and involves the following risk: if relatively healthy people choose to stay on their preexisting plans, and relatively unhealthy people join the exchanges, insurers will have to deal with a much costlier group of people buying new ACA-approved policies. And that will inevitably lead to rising premiums and significant sticker shock… again, right before the 2014 elections.

Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: iOWNTHEWORLD.

Time to Ditch #ObamaCare and Move On

From Liz Peek, at Fiscal Times, "Time to Ditch Obamacare — a Plan to Rob Taxpayers":

Where do we go from here? With 57 percent of Americans now opposing the Affordable Care Act according to an ABC/Washington Post Poll, and with a steady drip of bad news likely to further undermine the president’s signature law – is it time for Obama and the Democrats to admit failure and throw the law out? Maybe.

If Republicans campaign on overturning Obamacare and win the Senate in 2014 – not an impossibility – it is conceivable that the bill could be jettisoned. It won’t be easy, since President Obama has promised to veto the measure. However, with the bill being hacked to bits by a White House frantic to salvage some vestige the deal, arguing its merits becomes even tougher, and tossing it overboard may become easier.

Continue reading.

Here Comes the Second Wave of #ObamaCare Cancellations

At Fox News, "Second Wave of Health Plan Cancellations Looms":

A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking time bomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancellations next fall -- right before the mid-term elections.

The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader.

An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the administration anticipates half to two-thirds of small businesses would have policies canceled or be compelled to send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. They predict up to 100 million small and large business policies could be canceled next year.

"The impact I'm mostly worried about is on small young, entrepreneurial firms that will suddenly face much higher health insurance premiums if they want to offer health insurance to their employees," said AEI resident scholar Stan Veuger. "I think for a lot of other businesses ... they can just send their employees to the exchanges or offer them a fixed subsidy every month to buy health insurance themselves."

Under the health care law, businesses with fewer than 50 workers do not have to provide health coverage. But if they do, the policies will still have to meet the benefit standards set by ObamaCare.

As reported by AEI's Scott Gottlieb, some businesses got around this by renewing their policies before the end of 2013. But the relief is temporary, and they are expected to have to offer in-compliance plans for 2015. According to Gottlieb, that means beginning in October 2014 the cancellation notices will start to go out.

Then, businesses will have to either find a new plan -- which could be considerably more expensive -- or send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges.

Following the links takes us to Forbes, "Thousands Of Small Businesses Will Also Start Losing Their Current Health Policies Under Obamacare. Here's Why."