In other words, the chess master didn’t even know what pieces he had on the board, which is usually not something we associate with chess masters. It’s something we associate with people who don’t even know how to play the game.

◼ Obama: The Myth of the Master Strategist. His poor maneuvering before and after the Obamacare rollout shows that he’s not three moves ahead. - Jonah Goldberg/National Review

...the fiction of Obama as a man three steps ahead has taken a terrible beating if you have eyes to see it. The budget cuts under the so-called sequester are the law of the land because Obama thought he was outthinking his opponents when he gave budget-cutters budget cuts. Now he’s stuck railing against his own idea. His allegedly revolutionary decision to turn his presidential campaign into a personal political organization independent from the Democratic party has turned out to be the most expensive way ever to generate smarmy and ineffectual e-mail spam. And, if you want to believe that Obama’s goal in Syria all along was to elevate Vladimir Putin and alienate all of our Middle East allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, and to make Bashar Assad our strategic partner while he finds more politically correct ways to slaughter his own people, well, that’s nice.

◼ EPIC FAIL: Now JIMMY CARTER is calling Obama an incompetent loser - Eric Owens/Daily Caller

It’s been a disastrous couple of weeks for President Barack Obama. His signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a slow-motion train wreck. His poll numbers have tanked.

Now, things have gotten so bad for Obama that former president Jimmy Carter has called President Obama incompetent in the family-friendly pages of Parade magazine.



◼ Barack Obama’s Narrative Illusions. - KLAVAN ON THE CULTURE via Instapundit

◼ John Kerry, Barack Obama, Dance of Delusion - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

The White House PR machine keeps trying to put lipstick on the ObamaCare pig.

◼ ...think about what this "nearly half" claim really means: Half of the population of young people singled out by the White House are in such a dire financial position -- earning less than $17,000/year -- that they qualify for welfare benefits reserved for the most impoverished Americans! Hardly cause to celebrate five years of Obama's economic leadership. = Peter Wilson/American Thinker

According to Whitehouse.gov, "there´s some great news from a Department of Health and Human Services report... Thanks to Obamacare, half of young adults between age 18 and 34 who are single and uninsured can get health coverage for $50/month or less." There are two problems with the claim. First, the actual percentage, according to HHS figures, of 18-34 year olds who qualify for the $50/month rate is not "half" but 2.9%. The numbers are 1.3 million out of 44.2 million. Secondly, the $50/month rate is not a market price but one that is subsidized by an expanded government entitlement....

The discrepancy between 46% and 2.9% is due to the limiting filters placed on the age 18-34 population. HHS counted only:

1.Those who are "Medicaid and Marketplace eligible."

MORE at the link.

◼ NJ College Students Lose Low Cost Coverage Thanks To ObamaCare Regs - Dan Riehl/'The Conversation'/Breitbart

Along with documenting the many technical failures of Obama´s so called signature website Healthcare.gov, this CBS New York item reports the Obama sticker shock many Garden State college students now face thanks to the increasingly misleadingly named Affordable Care Act.

◼ Obamacare woes frustrating Democrats´ 2014 prospects - Reuters

As if that matters, when weighed against the millions of people losing their jobs, their health insurance, and facing skyrocketing costs of living.

◼ Obamacare website to be down again for maintenance late Saturday - Reuters
◼ Winners and Losers: ObamaCare Exposes the ´Soylent Green Liberals´ - John Nolte/Breitbart

In the 1973 near-classic sci-fi film "Soylent Green," the year is 2022 and everything the left has always wished for has come to fruition. In this society, The Few control The Many, assisted suicide is all the rage, and The Many are reassured by their townhouse-living technocrat overlords that the bulldozers dispersing their free speech and the soylent green that feeds them is all… for the greater good.

Although there were many advance warnings, now that it is too late, America is learning that under ObamaCare there are losers -- millions of them -- and almost all among the working and middle class. Up to 20 million will lose the insurance President Obama reassured them they could keep, and as the cost of premiums and deductibles spike, they will find their health care choices limited. But the only reaction to this human carnage from America's "Soylent Green Liberals" is that it is all… for the greater good.

More Common Core Indoctrination: “The People Must Obey The Government’s Commands”

◼ Wow, indoctrination tied up as instruction on possessives. This is reportedly part of the Common Core lessons for third graders so it applies to all schools employing those standards. - WeaselZippers

So third graders are learning:
-it is the President’s job to make everything fair
-the people must obey the commands of government officials
-the individual’s wants are less important than the nation’s well-being.

◼ WZ Exclusive: Common Core Conference Handing Out Material On White Privilege - Weasel Zippers

MORE ON COMMON CORE:
◼ The Cookie Cutter Curriculum
◼ COLORADO 6TH GRADERS, PARENTS, REQUIRED TO TAKE “RIGHTY/LEFTY” SURVEY
◼ INAPPROPRIATE!! I am not explaining this to an 8 year old
◼ Common Core, the controversial set of education standards being pushed by many state governors and education leaders, is coming under fire for its selection of a book that’s on the suggested reading list for 11th graders (i.e. 16- and 17-year-olds). The book — a past selection of Oprah’s Book Club — has graphic sex scenes and descriptions... - The Blaze
◼ Jerry Brown to propose $1 billion for common core education standards
◼ ‘The Bluest Eye’ brings graphic depictions of rape, pedophilia to Common Core
◼ A Monstrous Story for a Monstrous Curriculum: The Ugly Heart of Common Core - Dana R. Casey/DC Clothesline
◼ Common Core’s Data Mining Trojan Horse

What is Common Core? Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama’s Federal School Curriculum
◼ Common Core GED textbook: "9/11 hijackers were poor Afghanis"
◼ The Common Core Agenda – Let’s Take It From the Top
◼ CFRW COMMON CORE RESOLUTION
◼ RE-CREATING AMERICA: Cultural Sensitivity in Wisconsin Schools
◼ This project would take personal information about each child, apart from any considerations of parental consent, and put it into a database being managed and monitored solely by the government agencies and private corporations that use it
◼ ‘Obama’s, Race to the Top Agenda’ – Selling Children Out For A Profit

The rest of us can fight back, though. Indiana and Utah already have popular rebellions in progress against the Common Core. If you want help with this fight in your area, contact ◼ the American Principles Project.

◼ Common core sparks war over words - Lyndsey Layton/Washington Post
◼ Heartland Daily Podcast: Stanley Kurtz on Obama’s Education Takeover (podcast) - Keely Drukala/Heartland
◼ Rotten to the Core: Obama’s War on Academic Standards (Part 1) - Michelle Malkin
◼ Rotten to the Core (Part 2): Readin’, Writin’ and Deconstructionism - Michelle Malkin◼ Rotten to the Core, (Part 3): Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt - Michelle Malkin
◼ Rotten to the Core (Part 4): The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database - Michelle Malkin
◼ Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket - Michelle Malkin
◼ Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available - Michelle Malkin
__________________

◼ STOPCOMMONCORE.COM

__________________

Appeals Court Rules That You Can´t Force Employers To Pay For Contraception

◼ Court slaps down ObamaCare religious ‘exception’ - New York Post Editorial

In her majority opinion, Judge Janice Rogers Brown took no prisoners. The mandate, she says, “trammels the right of free exercise.” She called the government’s justifications for its position “empty, reflexive and talismanic.” At another point, she invoked a Supreme Court case to suggest the flimsy nature of the government’s refusal to accommodate:

...The decision is a good step forward for religious freedom, a sound rebuke for the Obama administration — and yet another reminder of the overreach that explains why ObamaCare has become such an economic, political and constitutional liability.

◼ The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on a 2-1 vote in favor of Catholic brothers Francis and Philip Gilardi, owners of Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, who do not want to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion. - Reuters

The latest ruling brings to four the number of appeals courts to rule for employers, including preliminary decisions, while two others have ruled that the regulation must be complied with, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

What do you think of the New Yorker Magazine cover?

◼ Post your thoughts! - at GretaWire

[S]ince for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth.

◼ TODAY"S MUST READ: Obamacare: imagology meets reality? - Neoneocon
◼ The Atlantic Explains "If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep Your Plan" In One Simple Chart - Ace Of Spades
◼ REPORT: WH relies heavily on secret meetings with journalists... - Politico Via Drudge
◼ AP editors: Staged propaganda photos... - Robby Soave/Daily Caller

The AP has only been permitted to photograph the president alone in the Oval Office on two occasions–both in his first term–and has never been allowed to photograph the president with his staff in the office. The AP generally receives access when foreign leaders are visiting, but at other times the White House relies on its own photographers to take pictures and distribute them to the press.

◼ Liberal entitlement-state dream is crumbling - Larry Kudlow/CNBC

May I ask this question? Why is it that Americans don't have the freedom to choose their own health insurance? I just don't get it. Why must the liberal nanny state make decisions for us? We can make them ourselves, thank you very much. It's like choosing a car, buying a home or investing in a stock. We can handle it.

So why must the government tell me and everyone else what we can and cannot buy?

FALL BACK: Change your clocks on Saturday, Vote on Tuesday

Daylight Saving Time (United States) 2013
began at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 10
and ends at 2:00 AM on Sunday, November 3

◼ Here's why we get an extra hour of sleep and an earlier sunset this weekend. - National Geographic
◼ 5 Weird Effects of Daylight Saving Time - Yahoo News

Mother Jones Shocker: 'New Poll Shows Democratic Incumbents in Big Trouble'

◼ Wow! A liberal publication taking a Democratic poll and finding bad news for...Democrats? ...I don't imagine you'll be hearing THAT on MSNBC any time soon. - Noel Sheppard/Newsbusters

This isn't good news for Democrats. It's true that attitudes toward the Republican Party have taken a bigger hit than attitudes toward the Democratic Party, but attitudes toward actual incumbents are exactly the opposite. And in elections, that's what matters.

◼ Breaking News at CNN: Senate Democrats Voted to Kill Other Health Plans -- Three Years Ago - Anthony Hill/NewsBusters
◼ Democrats Can Run But Can’t Hide From Vote to Force Americans Off Their Health Care Plans - Gateway Pundit

Obama officials in 2010 knew that up to 93 million Americans would be unable to keep their health insurance plans under Obamacare. That means roughly one of three Americans will lose their insurance thanks to Obamacare.

Hillary running away from Obama?

◼ link

The Clintons’ critiques in recent days have been explicitly aimed at congressional Republicans, who helped spur a 16-day government shutdown and potential debt default in October. But their remarks also seem to contain an implicit rebuke of President Obama’s failure to change Washington as he pledged when first running for the White House.

The arguments suggest a way that Hillary Clinton could attempt to run in 2016 as an agent of change — potentially putting her at odds with the two-term Democrat she would be seeking to replace.

If so, then this should be filed in the Someone Left The Irony On Department. The Clintons are hardly known for their soft-pedal tactics in politics, and Hillary especially has been seen as a hard partisan. She coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” to describe how her honest husband was being hounded by his opponents, until the Clintons had to admit that Bill wasn’t being all that honest in the first place. As Secretary of State, she may best be remembered for yelling What difference at this point does it make? at a Republican Senator for interrogating her over the State Department’s lies about the al-Qaeda attack on Benghazi.

Let’s step away from the irony for the moment. Can Hillary distance herself from Obama? It’s possible, but it would be a difficult task. The only executive experience Hillary has comes from her time as Secretary of State under Obama — and she has few accomplishments to her credit for those four years anyway.

And then when you find your policy canceled, your premium raised and your deductible outrageously increased, you’ve learned the real meaning of “free” in the liberal lexicon: something paid for by your neighbor — best, by subterfuge.

◼ Obamacare laid bare - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post

Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

...So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn’t even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. That’s a lot of people. That’s a pretty big lie....

It’s not as if the Obamacare plan-dropping is an obscure regulation. It’s at the heart of Obama’s idea of federally regulated and standardized national health insurance.

Still, how could he imagine getting away with a claim sure to be exposed as factually false?

The same way he maintained for two weeks that false narrative about Benghazi. He figured he’d get away with it.

And he did. Simple formula: Delay, stonewall and wait for a supine and protective press to turn spectacularly incurious.



◼ God, Lies, and Obama - Roger L. Simon/PJM TODAY'S MUST READ

Americans are far from strangers to presidential lying. Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon excelled at it. Both, however, were liars of what we could call self-defense. They were guys that got caught — Clinton with his serial infidelities and Nixon covering up a break-in for an election he had already won by a landslide.

Both men too were cowards. They took the easy, and probably most self-destructive, way out — lying.

Barack Obama is another matter. His lies are not mainly for self-defense (although Benghazi has elements of that). They are lies of ideological volition. He lies to get his way. And he does it so well, with so much seeming earnestness — as in his umpteen (and continuing!) pronouncements that no one would lose their health insurance or personal physician from Obamacare, when, it’s now clear, he knew all the while this was utterly false — that his behavior appears almost sociopathic.

In other words, to Obama these are not really lies, because he has no values, religious or otherwise, that make them so. This is more than just the prototypical Marxist ends justifying the means, but I will come back to it in a moment. First, it’s worth noting that sociopathic lies — or lies that even tend toward the sociopathic — can be immensely destructive to humanity. In the not-so-distant past, and in the present as well, they have created situations of extraordinary violence and mayhem....

Guest Blogger in the LA Times: We Young Urban Voters Supported Obamacare, But No One Told Us We'd Be The Ones Paying For It

◼ Obamacare: Catastrophic policy coverage at comprehensive policy prices. Because that's Better Insurance, somehow. - Ace Of Spades

Oh you get free birth control pills or something.

Wow, these are the most expensive free birth control pills I've ever seen.

This is hitting a lot of Republicans right now-- small business owners, independent contractors. People who understand they have to make their costs each month or they don't eat.

But it is interesting to note it's going to hit a lot of liberal freelance magazine writers and such -- people who write articles for a living.

Obama would love to ignore the Republican victims of his policies, but can he ignore the progressive chattering classes, too?

◼ And... An LA Times reporter tries to debunk his own paper's story about an individual having to pay more for insurance and...fails. - Ace Of Spades

One estimate says 129 million people aren't going to be able to keep the health care plan they have.

Heritage estimates 1.5 million people have already lost their policy.

◼ Debunking the Debunkers: Yes, Obamacare Rate Shock is Real - Conn Carroll/Townhall

Liberal Halloween

◼ N.D. woman (named Cheryl) to hand out "fat letters" to obese kids during Halloween - CBS News

..."You (sic) child is, in my opinion, moderately obese and should not be consuming sugar treats to the extent of some children this Halloween season," the letter reads. "My hope is that you will step up as an adult and ration candy this Halloween and not allow your child to continue these unhealthy eating habits."

Cheryl explained that she just wanted to send a message to the parents that their children had weight issues....

Some California and Massachusetts schools have also been accused of sending "fat letters" home with students. These notes include scores of a child's mass index (BMI), a height-to-weight ratio that is used by medical professionals to designate if a person is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. Other letters directly address if a child is overweight and obese, and include recommendations on how to help the child lose weight.

The practice has been discontinued in Mass. because of fears that the letters may cause self-esteem and bullying issues.

Frightful poll sends Dems screaming

◼ Those “junk” health plans - Neoneocon
◼ If that's not bad enough: Another deadline looms… - Neoneocon

“What genius came up with that timetable?” asked one key Democrat, who declined to be quoted by name because he is involved in private White House talks.

◼ Frightful poll sends Dems screaming - FOX

Scary stuff - It was a dire WSJ/NBC News poll that drove Republicans to the exits on the partial federal shutdown three weeks ago. Now it’s the Democrats turn for a fright. The president’s tanking poll numbers and the surge in concern over the beleaguered ObamaCare rollout will push more moderate Democrats to conclude that their best path is away from the president and his law. Shutdowns are temporary. ObamaCare is forever.

Look how different this model looked before the photo shoot, and the photoshopping:

Afghan women will suffer if the Taliban returns to power

◼ When the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is completed next year, what will happen to Afghan women? - Cal Thomas/Washington Examiner (AP: Image source)

Will a resurgent Taliban return them to wearing burqas, withdraw them from schools and force them to live behind painted glass in their homes, permitting them to leave the house only when accompanied by a blood relative?

..The United States has invested billions of dollars and the lives of nearly 2,100 service members in Afghanistan.

To allow Afghan women to be forced to return to subservience to a male-dominated religious fundamentalism would mean they died in vain.

This should not be an issue limited to a feminist organization. It should be something about which all Americans must care.

Google “help for Afghan women” and contribute to an organization with which you are comfortable. We owe it to those who have died and were wounded. It can be our continuing gift, not only to Afghan women, but to all of humanity.

◼ In the US: Homeland Security Senior Advisor: America is an Islamic country - The Right Scoop

"Don't do this to me."

◼ Five little words that say it all about Obamacare - Mark Tapscott/Washington Examiner

The reality is that Obamacare is government by decree of the ruler, not government by consent of the governed: You will do as we say, not as you choose....

There is abundance evidence that he knew or should have known, but whether Obama said it purposely isn't as important as what he left out of the promise: "If you like your present health plan, you can keep it if we say you can."

Five little words

The reason Obama didn't include those five little words is because he and his advisors knew doing so would have doomed Obamacare from the start.

Tell most Americans they must do something and their instinctive reaction is to resist. That's what consent of the governed is all about — we choose for ourselves, the government doesn't choose for us.

Since its passage, Obamacare has never enjoyed majority support from the American public. However inadvertently, Sebelius captured in those five little words what most Americans think about Obamacare: Don't do this to me.

Privacy is a conservative cause

◼ Some of the leading Republican presidential prospects are taking a hatchet to the Obama administration over the scandal. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced a bill to rein in the National Security Agency’s sweeping powers, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently knocked President Obama for allowing an “unprecedented and intrusive surveillance system” to take hold, eroding Americans’ privacy rights. - Politico

Remy: Healthcare Mash

Hey, hands off my candy!

◼ This Classic Halloween Video Could Be the Best Redistribution Lesson Ever - IJ Review

Happy Halloween

◼ In California, Halloween Isn’t about Neighborhoods - Fox&Hounds

"So far, no one," says the Obamacare navigator. "Thus far everybody has taken a look at the rates and they've walked out the door. There's sticker shock. They just can't afford it."

◼ Obamacare Navigator Hasn't Signed Up Anyone Because It's Too Expensive - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard

◼ THEY LIED TO CONGRESS, AGAIN: After Three Days, HHS Knew Less Than 250 People Nationwide Had Signed Up for Obamacare - Director Blue

The website launched on a Tuesday... at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."

By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to "approximately 100." By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect "248 enrollments" nationwide.

DHHS Used Healthcare.gov to Collect Voter Registration Information

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) spoke on the House floor about the troubling fact that the U.S. DHHS is currently using Healthcare.gov to collect voter registration information

◼ DRAINING THE SWAMP: Top 40 Troubling Listings from the Obamacare Navigator/Assister Security Nightmare (UPDATED) - David Steinberg/PJMedia

UPDATE: Rep. Louie Gohmert read this PJ Media report on the House floor today. Heard about those two or three bad apples? Here’s 40 more. Remember, Healthcare.gov admits using the honor system for certification

NBC poll: Women souring on ObamaCare

◼ link - Domenico Montanaro Deputy Political Editor, NBC News

...Americans called it a bad idea by a 47-37 percent margin – a shift from 43-38 percent earlier this month. But among women, a group President Barack Obama won by 11 points in 2012, just 38 percent think it’s a good idea, while 45 percent do not. That’s down from early October, when most women said the law was a good idea by a 41-39 percent margin.

Among white women, results are even worse. Three weeks ago, they thought it was a bad idea by a 46-36 percent margin. Now a majority say so, at 52-32 percent....

A remarkable 83 percent said they have seen or read at least some of the news coverage about problems people have reported with the site.... Nearly six-in-10 said they have seen or read a lot about it.

That raises the stakes for the outcome of the law and Obama’s legacy, given the law is the president’s signature legislative achievement.

That means the president, whose approval rating hit an all-time low in this poll of 42 percent, missed a big opportunity to prove the law can work.

“The true damage of the rollout is this was supposed to be a period where the law would gain acceptance, and it has not,” Hart said.

◼ Krauthammer: If Obamacare truly self-destructs, it will set back American liberalism for a decade at least… - The Right Scoop
◼ Poll: Obama approval at all-time low - Politico

Jon Stewart: President Obama NEVER knows what’s going on

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

◼ The host said it was “concerning” that the President didn’t know what was going on with the Affordable Care Act. But Stewart cut the President some slack, since he apparently isn’t kept informed about a lot, including spying the United States had been doing on foreign leaders for at least five years. - Jon Stewart

Top Democrat says those aren't 'cancellation notices,' they're 'transitions' into Obamacare

◼ Insurance companies aren't sending out cancellation letters, they're helping people "transition" into Obamacare, according to a top Democrat. - Joel Gehrke/Washington Examiner @joelmentum

They're not "death panels," they're "lifestage transition navigators." http://t.co/VYDUVPwjCn

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 29, 2013

◼ Sources: White House told insurance execs to keep quiet on Obamacare - CNN

...Multiple sources declined to speak publicly about the push back because they fear retribution.

But Bob Laszewski, who heads a consulting firm for big insurance companies, did talk on the record.

"The White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet," he said....

Teacher Living In $400,000 Home Gets Obamacare Subsidies?

◼ Today the White House and the Twitter #GetCovered campaign have unveiled a new poster touting “Gregg F” as the newest Obamacare success story. It claims it lowered his rates to just $32/month. - WeaselZippers

So what does Gregg spend all his money on as a teacher? Apparently donating to political stuff …

◼ Despicable Obama: Lost that coverage you liked? ‘Just shop around!’ - Twitchy

◼ How Big of A Damn Liar is Obama? - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

This clueless man-child, the son of an unstable single mother, genuinely does not understand what average folks are facing. They cannot find “Affordable” Health Care. Most are facing higher deductibles, higher premiums and less accessibility to care.

Heck of a job Barack.

ELLMERS TO SEBELIUS: WHY MUST MEN BUY MATERNITY COVERAGE UNDER OBAMACARE?

◼ Sebelius tried to squirm away--as she had done with many other questioners, but Ellmers was on her "A" game. - Joel Pollak//Breitbart

◼ Five Things We Learned from Today’s Obamacare Hearing - Bryan Preston/PJMedia

Same thing Americans are saying about Obamacare RT @igorvolsky: Sebelius overheard on open mic: "don't do this to me.”

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 30, 2013

Forget health care, I want insurance coverage for catastrophic government.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 30, 2013

Hey fellas! Now that we're finally covered, let's all go down to the OBGYN and get our free pap smears! #CelebrateNationalMensPapSmearDay

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 29, 2013

◼ Trainwreck: Kathleen Sebelius' Top Ten Testimony Fails - Guy Benson/Townhall

Tens of millions of parents now realize the message of victimhood and disempowerment President Obama and his administration are promulgating

◼ How to immunize our kids against Obama’s victim mentality - Dr. Keith Ablow/FOX

It seems tragic to admit it is time to tell our children that the person elected to lead the free world is urging them toward less free will, but denying that reality would be to compound the tragedy.

Directly explaining what is happening will insulate our kids, in some measure, from the worst of what could happen -- the subtle, chronic, steady erosion of their belief in themselves.

A Lie From Day One

◼ Believing in this president is proving to be a health hazard. - Betsy McCaughey/American Spectator
◼ Betsy McCaughey, the absolute expert on Obamacare
receives the Joe Wilson Total Vindication award. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ Obama Under Attack as Americans lose prior health plans - Reuters

Accusations that the pledge was misleading are potentially a deeper threat to Obama than the website glitches that have plagued Healthcare.gov since its October 1 launch and allowed only a trickle of people to sign up on new federal insurance exchanges.

Obama has downplayed the problems with the website, saying it's like a cash register not working, and has stressed that the underlying product of the 2010 Affordable Care Act is "actually really good".

But critics of Obamacare have seized on the hundreds of thousands of Americans due to lose their current plans because they fail to include essential benefits required by the law, and are asking whether Obama misrepresented the law.

◼ Mere bickering compared to fury of World Series fans when he clogs Boston traffic today. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ Report: Contractor warned administration about Obamacare site problems - Daily Caller
◼ The blazing, neck-snapping chutzpah to
deny any of this is staggering. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ Did Jarrett And Michelle Pick Incompetent Website Firm? - IBD
◼ Something else not to tell Obama. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ Can We Finally Stop Pretending? - Jeffrey T. Brown/American Thinker

Every day, it seems, more people who have been screaming their hatred for those who predicted all we see coming true are admitting what we have known all along. The president is incapable of telling a truth, and what conservatives have been predicting for three years about ObamaCare has been entirely correct.

◼ The political lynching of conservatives for the last five years has been an unmitigated lie. - Discussion at Lucianne
◼ Obamacare: Fewer options for many - CNN

BRAD THOR: OBAMA, MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIED ABOUT OBAMACARE, NEITHER CAN BE TRUSTED

The president, the Democrats, and the "mainstream" media ALL lied about #Obamacare. None of them can be trusted re: anything ever again.

— Brad Thor (@BradThor) October 29, 2013

◼ BRAD THOR: OBAMA, MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIED ABOUT OBAMACARE, NEITHER CAN BE TRUSTED.Thor is holding Obama and his party's feet to the fire on the subject, but he's also taking the media to task for not doing its collective duty. - Breitbart



◼ [WATCH] A promise the President could not (did not, had no intention of) keep: “If you like your insurance, you can keep it” - Red Alert Politics

Obamacare litigation redux

◼ {On October 23rd} we filed our opening brief on appeal in Sissel v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. - PLF

...the procedural safeguards the Constitution imposes on Congress’s ability to levy destructive taxes on the people are absolutely crucial. Now that the Supreme Court has made clear that Obamacare’s “shared responsibility payment” is a tax, it is time for the Court of Appeals to confront the question that the Supreme Court did not address—whether Obamacare has a fatal flaw.

Obamacare and the Death of Liberalism

◼ Bob Tyrrell was right. - Jeffrey Lord/American Spectator

...Tyrrell investigated “the decline and impending death of the American Liberal movement in the United States today.” And said of President Obama that he was a “Stealth Fascist” who was “the pallbearer for American Liberalism.”

Notably, the last chapter of the book was titled: President Barack Obama, Liberalism’s Pallbearer....

Today the entire Great Leap Forward in American health care as envisioned by the liberal “yokels back at academe, drunk on their higher knowledge of ‘how-to’ studies” is a disaster collapsing in on itself faster than a Florida sinkhole.

All at once, the reality of the collective consequences of liberalism is glaringly in the spotlight — making Tyrrell’s point with an uncanny precision.

The worship of Big Government? The laughably arrogant “we-know-what’s-best-for-you” sense of moral and intellectual superiority? These “smart” people can’t even run a website. The eternal liberal dependence on class warfare and racism? Yes indeed, the party of slavery, segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, racial quotas and illegal immigration never blinked at the shameful firing of an Obamacare operator — a black single mom — for the “crime” of answering Sean Hannity’s questions honestly....

In his book, Tyrrell cited this from Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who was writing in National Review Online on July 4, 2011:

Here in the United States, we await the imposition of ObamaCare, despite the fact that the public does not want it, the nation cannot afford it, politicians regret it, and companies seek exemption from it. Our current pace of $1.6 trillion annual deficits, for all the talk of Keynesian gymnastics, is unsustainable — and even acknowledged as such by those who are most responsible for the latest round of fiscal irresponsibility. As we near fifty million Americans on food stamps, another year of 9-plus percent unemployment , and the third $1 trillion-plus budget deficit, even statists are beginning to see that statism does not work.

Marco Calls For Delay On Individual Mandate

◼ Rubio: Delay Obamacare mandate until computer problems are fixed - Marco Rubio/Tampa Bay Times

It's unfair and unacceptable that Obamacare's web developers are getting more time to deliver a functional website, while the American people are being denied an extension that would help them avoid tax penalties and an IRS problem.

While I believe Obamacare needs to be fully repealed and replaced, common sense dictates that our people have some short-term relief and protection now.

This is why I am introducing legislation to delay the individual mandate to buy insurance until the Obamacare exchange websites and all its enrollment processes have been fixed and are certified to be fully functional. Once that certification takes place, Americans will have an additional six months before being subject to taxes and penalties of the individual mandate.

Is this the new normal? Obama’s politics of oppression and lawlessness

◼ As pundits and politicians dissect the carnage of ObamaCare, a serious question demands an honest answer: At what point did the president know his plan to nationalize one-sixth of the national economy was not ready for the October 1 launch? - L. Brent Bozell III/FOX

If, as he pleads with every controversy swirling around his administration, he did not know, his incompetency demands his removal from office.

But it is inconceivable that Barack Obama would not know the status of his signature legislation, his very legacy.

He knew, and he had a duty to his country to delay the launch, as so many had called him to do.

But this is a man who does not understand civility. He did the opposite.

He allowed a partial shutdown of the federal government in order to harm the credibility of his Republican critics.

Worse, his administration deliberately harmed American citizens in what can only be described as a rampant abuse of power.

...Breitbart’s John Nolte has compiled ◼ a stunning list of 47 outrageous ways the Obama administration used the government shutdown to inflict pain on Americans.

...The unnecessary suffering inflicted on America's citizenry by this administration, using the power of the federal government as a weapon is politics at its worst. And, as with the shutdown abuses, no one ever knows who gave the order, or why. This administration won’t accept an ounce of responsibility for its abuses.

I believe it screams for an investigation....

WATCH SEBELIUS HEARING NOW -

◼ LIVESTREAMING go to http://www.gretawire.com

◼ WEBSITE CRASHES AS SEBELIUS SPEAKS - Breitbart (warning video autoplay)
◼ Deathwatch! Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will testify before congress about the problems facing HealthCare.gov. Here's a preview of what may be in store. (video) - Washington Post

◼ The thuggery of Obamacare Czarina Kathleen Sebelius - Michelle Malkin

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare’s Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies.

Three years ago, when insurers and other companies had the audacity to expose Obamacare’s damage to their customers and workers, Sebelius brought out her brass knuckles. Remember? As I reported at the time, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates because of the new mandate’s costs. Obama singled out the company in a “60 Minutes” interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem “justify” its rate hikes to the federal government.

A private company trying to survive in the marketplace was forced to “explain” itself to federal bureaucrats and career politicians who have never run a business (successful or otherwise) in their lives. Sebelius went even further....

Caught with their pants down on the Obamacare website abomination and unable to stifle the cries of millions of Americans who are unable to keep the plans and doctors they like, Sebelius and her corrupt company are now blaming insurers, contractors and customers for the Obama administration’s ideological mess. In short: They lied, but for your own good. Culture of Corruption 101.

◼ Panel tells Sebelius to bring ´real numbers´ on enrollees next time - UPI
◼ Sebelius and the Arrogance of Power - Jonathan S. Tobin/Commentary Magazine

Doctors resisting ObamaCare

◼ New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals. - New York Post

A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.

Another 33 percent say they’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers.

Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.

“This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate,” said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. “There’s a lot of resistance. Doctors don’t know what they’re going to get paid.”

Three out of four doctors who are participating in the program said they “had to participate” because of existing contractual obligations with an insurer or medical provider, not because they wanted to.

Only one in four “affirmatively” chose to sign up for the exchanges.

Nearly eight in 10 — 77 percent — said they had not been given a fee schedule to show much they’ll get paid if they sign up.

How the Obama Administration Made Sure People Couldn’t Keep Their Plans

◼ Brutal: The “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” compilation clip - HotAir

The clip is brutal enough in isolation, but the fact that it’s the normally sympathetic New York magazine that’s dropping it on O makes me think he’s even more vulnerable on the Big Lie than we all thought. They didn’t go looking to hit him this hard, I’m sure; they simply couldn’t resist an opportunity this easy. Which also explains why lefties are straining hard not to call what he said a “lie.”

◼ Obama didn't just "know" he wouldn't be able to keep his promise; he actively worked, through his inferior officers, to break that promise himself. For your homework, via Ace, go read ◼ this Patrick Brennan post at the Corner that explains how Obama’s own HHS deputies made the law even more aggressive than it was designed to be in terms of forcing plan cancellations....

The president, the Democrats, and the "mainstream" media ALL lied about #Obamacare. None of them can be trusted re: anything ever again.

— Brad Thor (@BradThor) October 29, 2013

◼ BRAD THOR: OBAMA, MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIED ABOUT OBAMACARE, NEITHER CAN BE TRUSTED. - Breitbart

Obamacare Contains Racial Preferences and Discrimination

◼ Obamacare contains many racial preferences. But that fact has drawn remarkably little attention, even though the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded back in 2009 that the healthcare bill was racially discriminatory, in two ways. - Hans Bader/Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

First, Obamacare is filled with “sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants” and give “preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships.”

Second, as an African-American member of the Commission noted, it “creates separate and unequal operating standards for long-term care facilities that serve racial and ethnic minorities.”

◼ Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race - Katie McHugh/Daily Caller

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under Obamacare — if you both belong to the same race.

Obamacare’s spectacular flop of a rollout distracts from its crude calculus that encourages the allocation of healthcare resources along racial lines and a doctor-patient system splintered into ethnicities.

While the 2010 Patient Protecion and Affordable Care Act’s language on diversity sounds innocuous, a review of the frankly separatist thinking of the law’s ardent supporters indicates Obamacare is aiming for a health care system that puts political correctness above the struggle against illness and death....

“There is… evidence that race concordance — defined as shared racial or ethnic identities between clinicians and patients — is related to patient reports of satisfaction, participatory decision making, timeliness of treatment, and trust in the health system,” the report reads. In other words, fixing the broken U.S. healthcare system means assigning Hispanic doctors to Hispanic patients, African American doctors to African American patients, Creole doctors to Creole patients, and so on.

To accomplish this, the CAP report explains, Obamacare pours taxpayer dollars into affirmative-action candidates whose judgment will lead them to make life-or-death decisions. Ultimately, these taxpayer-funded grants would provide scholarships and loan forgiveness for minorities so they could provide healthcare services exclusively to their own race or ethnicity....

Like so many there who heard Obama promise to cut the red tape and then saw he walk away without cutting any red tape

◼ Sandy victim: I wish Obama was gone tomorrow because he lied to us… - The Right Scoop

Morning Joe montage shows White House denying knowledge of various scandals

◼ We now have irrefutable proof that President Obama is a distant relative to Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes. They both know NOTHING. - Allen West

Endorse Elizabeth Emken for U.S. Congress

"You Endorse" is up! The most important endorsement is yours. To endorse "e" for Congress, ◼ Click here. Your endorsement will appear on the rolling scroll on the home page of the website. Thank you for your support! -e

Elizabeth Emken is a candidate for California's 7th Congressional district, currently held by freshman Democrat Ami Bera. As California's U.S.Senate nominee in 2012, Elizabeth earned over 4.7 milllion votes, more than any other Republican Senate Candidate in the country. ◼ LEARN MORE.

Your share of the national debt is now $1.1 million

◼ Each Taxpayer Has Federal-Debt Liability of $1.1 Million... - Rare
◼ Keep spending! Senate Democrats call for automatic debt limit hikes... - AP

Three incumbents, two challengers face off in Northern Humboldt school board race

◼ Beyond the Scandal - Kaci Poor/The Journal

Voter enthusiasm for school board elections is typically pretty low — unless your board happens to have a raging plagiarism scandal. Such is the case in the Northern Humboldt Union High School District, where board members have spent the past four months dealing with fallout from fellow trustee Dan Johnson's plagiarized speech at Arcata High School's graduation ceremony. The incident has led to contentious board meetings, accusations of Brown Act violations and, on Sept. 10, a 3-1 board vote asking for Johnson's resignation, which he has refused to give.

The storyline adds drama to the Nov. 5 election. Will voters prove sympathetic to embattled incumbents Dana Silvernale, Mike Pigg and Colleen Toste? Or will they opt for a clean slate with challengers Brian Lovell and Mark Suchanek?
__________________
Election Day is November 5th.

CBS: Insurers backing out of the ObamaCare exchange markets

◼ TPM reports that insurers are telling Congress that a delay of the individual mandate will make the price shocks worse in 2015: - HotAir
◼ Insurers Tell Congress: Beware Rate Shock If Obamacare Enrollment Extended - TPM (image source)

As AHIP put it in a separate statement issued after the senators' Friday letter, an extension "could have a destabilizing effect on insurance markets, resulting in higher premiums and coverage disruptions for individuals and families."

"Moreover, if these vital enrollment incentives were to change, the premiums health plans filed for next year would have to increase to account for fewer young and healthy people signing up for coverage. Extending the open enrollment period could also cause significant uncertainly and instability in 2015 premium rates as health plans would have to start submitting premiums to regulators before knowing who is enrolled in their insurance plans."

I'm ObamaCare

◼ RNC UNVEILS NEW WEB SERIES “I’M OBAMACARE”

NBC News has weird technical issues with its bombshell Obamacare article

◼ NBC’s article then re-appeared with several portions missing: - Twitchy

@FilmLadd 6th sentence of orig deleted starting w "None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. "

— Charlie Johnson (@SemperBanU) October 29, 2013

At the time of this writing, those paragraphs are back up.

NBC is blaming the problems on “issues” with its “publishing tool.”

In Pakistan: 13 yr old girl crawls out of grave after being raped, buried alive

◼ The men took the young girl to an isolated place and raped her and then buried her alive as they believed she died during the brutal attack. - New York Post

Child rape remains a problem in Pakistan where local activist group Sahil said cultural myths persist such as HIV positive men believing they can be cured through sex with a virgin.

"People are furious," said a senior intelligence official who would not be identified discussing classified information. "This is officially the White House cutting off the intelligence community."

◼ White House OKd spying on allies, U.S. intelligence officials say - LA Times

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies....

"With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies — including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany — let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"Unless the United States is engaged in hostilities against a country or there is an emergency need for this type of surveillance, I do not believe the United States should be collecting phone calls or emails of friendly presidents and prime ministers," she said in a statement.

Feinstein said the Intelligence Committee had not been told of "certain surveillance activities" for more than a decade, and she said she would initiate a major review of the NSA operation. She added that the White House had informed her that "collection on our allies will not continue," although other officials said most U.S. surveillance overseas would not be affected....

If U.S. spying on key foreign leaders was news to the White House, current and former officials said, then White House officials have not been reading their briefing books.

"People are furious," said a senior intelligence official who would not be identified discussing classified information. "This is officially the White House cutting off the intelligence community."

◼ The White House response on Monday to the expanding disclosures of American spying on foreign leaders, their governments and millions of their citizens was a pathetic mix of unsatisfying assurances about reviews under way, platitudes about the need for security in an insecure age, and the odd defense that the president didn’t know that American spies had tapped the German chancellor’s cellphone for 10 years. - New York Times Editorial Board

How did Barack Obama become the most anti-civil liberties president in history — to almost complete silence?

◼ Questions Rarely Asked—and Never Answered - Victor Davis Hanson/PJMedia

Beware of Beautifully Misnamed Laws

◼ Who would oppose “affordable care” and “farm security”? - Victor Davis Hanson/National Review

Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not.

These euphemisms usually win temporary public support. After all, who wants to be against anything “affordable”? But on examination, such idealistically named legislation usually turns out to be aimed at special interests and the opposite of what voters were promised....

Then, three years later and with two elections out of the way, the tab for all the perks suddenly came due. The law turns out neither to protect patients from rate hikes nor to make health care affordable. In fact, the administration promises of 2009–10 are becoming the nightmare of 2013....

Beware of Congress bearing the gifts of beautifully misnamed laws.

“Content from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, discussion boards, video and image sharing sites will be maintained by the Contractor and kept up-to-date in a timely manner and made available for query by Government,” the contract said.

◼ Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior - Washington Free Beacon

He Lied. NBC NEWS: OBAMA ADMIN. KNEW MILLIONS WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS, PROMISED IT ANYWAY - UPDATED!!

UPDATED: ◼ Earlier today NBC Investigative journalists released a report where they claimed the Obama administration knew Americans would lose their insurance due to Obamacare back in 2010. Drudge linked to the article. But suddenly the story is gone… Vanished....

UPDATED AGAIN: NBC source on why the ObamaCare story vanished:"There was a problem with our publishing tool, but the story is back online under a new URL."

NBC News Deletes Huge Obamacare Story, Stealth Edits, Breaks Drudge Link http://t.co/SccfyrjHH5 via @BreitbartNews

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 29, 2013

NEW from ST: Highly critical NBC story on #Obamacare disappears, then mysteriously reappears http://t.co/XGEWpNyddN #fb

— Stacey 'ST' Matthews (@sistertoldjah) October 29, 2013

So hey, @NBCInvestigates, did @vj44 or @LisaMyers cut that paragraph from the Obamacare expose? pic.twitter.com/9LT3L8tK6y

— Film Ladd (@FilmLadd) October 29, 2013

So they left that, but they removed the paraphrase explanation that HHS had written the regs that way. Beats me.

— David Freddoso (@freddoso) October 29, 2013

◼ W.H. rejects NBC Obamacare report - Politico

“FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans,” Valerie Jarrett wrote.

◼ NBC Deletes Article Exposing Obama Admin …Reposts Edited Version - WeaselZippers UPDATE: 12:56am EST – There are edits to the new version

◼ The Obama administration has known for at least three years that millions of Americans would not be able to keep their current health care plans, despite repeated promises to the contrary made by President Barack Obama, NBC News reports, citing sources “deeply involved” in Obamacare. - Jason Howerton/The Blaze

◼ Investigation reveals Obama knowingly lied about the most important Obamacare promise. - IJ Review

BREAKING investigation reveals that the Obama administration knew that as many as 80 percent of Americans that buy their own insurance would receive cancellation notices and despite that Democrats and the President himself insisted if you like your plan you can keep it.

◼ REPORT: OBAMA KNEW HE WAS LYING ON KEEPING YOUR INSURANCE - Ben Shapiro/Breitbart

Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates has been a supporter of Obamacare, but stated, “This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either.”

...Despite the fact that the Obama administration clearly knew – by law and regulation – that a huge number of Americans would be forced from their preferred insurance, the media largely covered up for the administration during the election cycle. PolitiFact, for example, maintained that Obama’s promise that you could keep your insurance was “half-true,” despite all evidence to the contrary. On Monday, PolitiFact stood by that statement in an explanation to TruthRevolt.org, despite the White House’s admission that it was lying originally.

◼ Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance - NBC News <<-- GONE. Vanished. President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years. Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” ◼ MSNBC Contributor Tells Hugh Hewitt Obama Deliberately Lied About Obamacare - Mediaite

MSNBC contributor and Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page joined conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday and admitted that when President Obama said Americans would be able to keep their plans if they like them, he was fully aware he was lying and exaggerating about it.

Drudge:
White House Admits: Some Will Lose Health Plans...
Website Still Promising You Can Keep Your Insurance If You Like It...
Nearly 1.5 million cancellations so far...
Alaska Suspends Enrollments After Signing Up 3 People...
Administration grants six-week extension...
Churches to Help Parishioners Enroll...

ObamaScare: It's Coming

◼ Ted Cruz releases new SCARY video: “Obamascare: IT’S COMING!” - The Right Scoop

Democratic Consultant with "Strong" Ties to the White House: The "Dem Party is F***ed"

◼ link
◼ “Dem Party is F****d.” That was the subject line of an email sent to me Sunday by a senior Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill. The body of the email contained a link to this Los Angeles Times story about Obamacare “sticker shock:” - Ron Fournier/National Journal

◼ The Democratic consultant said none of this is news to him, but he wonders why Obama wasn’t honest with Americans. He predicted surprise and outrage over higher costs and lesser coverage. “We will own this problem forever,” the Democrat wrote. - HotAir

◼ Discussion at Ace Of Spades

ObamaCare Is Wreaking Havoc In the Individual Health Care Markets, Where It Currently Applies. What Happens When It Begins Applying to Employer Coverage As Well?

◼ We should be talking about What Happens Next. And critics of ObamaCare have some good authority to speak about What Happens Next, given that they already predicted What Already Happened. - Ace Of Spades

Rude Awakening: Californians 'Shocked' by Premium Increases, Dropped Coverage

◼ Many people assumed Barack Obama and company were telling them the truth about his law, and that Republicans were lying. The scales are finally falling from their eyes, but rather late in the game. - Guy Benson/TownHall

Many people assumed Barack Obama and company were telling them the truth about his law, and that Republicans were lying. The scales are finally falling from their eyes, but rather late in the game. The San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders says she's seen evidence that at least half-a-million Californians will be booted off their current plans in the next year, and that conservative estimate could grow higher. (Remember that the so-called employer mandate has been pushed back until 2015, which may have simply delayed another round of coverage dumping). On Friday we linked to a CBS News report detailing why Obamacare's disproportionate influx of new Medicaid recipients is threatening to crash the entire law's financial model.

Reporter Sharyl Attkisson has also confirmed why Democrats' attempts to pin the blame on GOP 'obstructionism' is a fairly tale: ◼ The administration deliberately postponed key steps in the process to protect the president's re-election effort.



◼ Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don't like what they see. - LA Times

Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.

Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don't qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.

"It doesn't seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else," said Harris, who is three months pregnant. "This increase is simply not affordable."

..."All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it," said Deborah Cavallaro, a real estate agent in Westchester. "I'm infuriated because I was lied to."

Supporters of the healthcare law say Obama was referring to people who are insured through their employers or through government programs such as Medicare. Still, they acknowledge the confusion and anger from individual policyholders who are being forced to change.

Cavallaro received her cancellation notice from Anthem Blue Cross this month. The company said a comparable Bronze plan would cost her 65% more, or $484 a month. She doubts she'll qualify for much in premium subsidies, if any. Regardless, she resents losing the ability to pick and choose the benefits she wants to pay for.

"I just won't have health insurance because I can't pay this increase," she said.

Most Americans are required to have health coverage starting next year or pay a fine of $95 per adult or 1% of their income, whichever is greater. The fines increase over time.

New Video From Hollywood To Obama Surveillance State: 'Stop Watching Us'

◼ The video begins with the leaker of the “Pentagon Papers,” Daniel Ellsberg, and continues in a prolonged narration with each successive person in the frame building on the argument: Ordinary Americans are being surveilled at a level unprecedented in U.S. history. - IJ Review

One can only imagine what must be going through the collective minds of Hollywood as they continue to watch the unfolding of the Obama presidency.

Incidentally, while some may argue that the reference to an “Obama” surveillance state is a partisan shot, consider the facts:

- When in history has the IRS been caught and/or accused of conducting a witch hunt based solely on the political persuasion of the organizations being harassed?
- When in history has the Justice Department singled out news organizations and individual reporters without warrant or probable cause?
- When in history has the NSA been caught and/or accused of tapping into text messages, phone calls, emails and social website communications of everyday Americans – with no suspicion of crime or wrong-doing on the part of those being surveilled?
- The answer to all of the above questions is “never.”

As John Cusack – with whom I seldom agree – correctly observed, the threat to our civil liberties has never been greater.

◼ #StopWatchingUs

StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across the political spectrum. Join the movement at ◼ https://rally.stopwatching.us. This video harnesses the voices of celebrities, activists, legal experts, and other prominent figures in speaking out against mass surveillance by the NSA. Please share widely to help us spread the message that we will not stand for the dragnet surveillance of our communications.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit civil liberties law and advocacy center that has been fighting the NSA's unconstitutional spying for years. Learn more at ◼ https://eff.org.

What exactly does our president do for a living? What’re we paying him for?

◼ He was in the White House for an entire term and many months more without knowing what his biggest intelligence agency was doing to thirty-five of the most important people on Earth? - Roger L. Simon/PJ Media

◼ Obama in May: I found out Friday that the IRS was targeting conservatives - HotAir

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

◼ Obama didn't know of spying on Merkel, others: WSJ - Market Watch

When I read Sunday evening in the Wall Street Journal that Barack Obama was “unaware” until last summer that the U. S. spied on thirty-five world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, I was frankly stupefied. (Well, maybe not entirely stupefied, but at least semi-stunned.)

No wonder Obamacare and practically everything else from foreign policy to energy policy is an unmitigated mess. This president and his administration have taken hands-off leadership and leading from behind to unprecedented levels....

◼ Sebelius: Obama Did Not Know About Obamacare Website Glitches - US News & World report
◼ What didn't Obama know and when didn't he know it? - Rick Moran/American Thinker

It must give the White House a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that no one in the mainstream press is going to call them out for this blatant lie. Or question how it is that the White House was told repeatedly as far back as March that there were monumental technical problems with the website and no one bothered to tell the boss.

1. Benghazi. The president was unaware of Ambassador Stevens' desperate requests for additional security despite his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton being intimately involved in the decision to turn those requests down.
2. IRS. The first he heard of his IRS targeting conservatives was from news reports the day the story broke - despite the White House counsel being briefed on the problem two weeks prior to that.
3. The Petraeus affair. The president claimed he knew nothing of the investigation into his CIA chief until after the election despite his Attorney General ordering the FBI to conduct the probe.
4. Obamacare. The president claims he never knew of problems with the computer system until after the rollout despite insurance companies, outside IT contractors, and his own team warning of catastrophe.
Do we see a pattern developing here? Barack Obama is the most spectacularly uninformed president in history. Or, he's a baldfaced liar. Every potentially embarrassing scandal finds our president totally in the dark, betrayed by incompetent (or criminal) aides and advisors. How can it be his fault if he didn't know?
A funny thing about the president's ignorance; no aide or advisor has ever been fired for incompetently keeping Obama out of the loop. Even if we're inclined to believe his bedtime stories about not knowing what's going on in his own administration, that singular fact shows an appalling lack of leadership.

◼ Obama becomes President Absent-On-Campaign as Obamacare, economy and foreign policy sink - Red Alert Politics

Obama’s departure Friday from the White House illustrates his focus on electoral and ideological gains for progressives, rather than on economic and practical gains for actual Americans.

◼ Insp. Clouseau's White House: Obama was also unaware of phone taps on foreign leaders - IBD
...over recent months the Obama administration has developed a peculiar pattern of behavior... Obama himself and unidentified aides using news leaks have boasted of the president's ignorance of things that an ordinary person outside the Oval Office bubble would think a chief executive should know.

That's the kind of dodge favored by those whose father never taught them to take responsibility for their actions.

Last week HHS Secy Kathleen Sebelius told CNN straight-up that the nation's leader whose name is synonymous with his signature healthcare legislation, had no idea at all for days that there were some problems launching, running, updating and using the ObamaCare website.

Apparently Sebelius didn't think the failed site-testing and crashes merited a presidential heads-up, even though her boss had been tirelessly touting the site's guaranteed efficacy for months. Or maybe Valerie Jarrett just forgot to pay the White House cable news bill.
__________________
Obama didn't know about Fast & Furious, supposedly, either.