Happy Halloween

(A free month of AoSHQ Prime goes to the first person who can identify the cat lady atop the jack-o'-lantern)

Pop Quiz: How Many Children Have Ever Been Killed by Poisoned Halloween Candy?

Answer: None. (At least by strangers - there was one boy poisoned in 1974 by his own father as part of an insurance scam).

For nearly 30 years, University of Delaware sociologist Joel Best has been investigating allegations of strangers poisoning kids' Halloween candy. As of this writing, he hasn't identified a single confirmed example of a stranger murdering a child in this fashion.

Worst. Halloween Treat. Ever. (well except for that mythical poisoned candy I guess)

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:44 PM | Comments (796)
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• CBS's Cheryl Attkisson's Bombshell Obamacare Report From Last Night
  
• Book On 2012 Campaign Claims Obama Considered Dumping Biden
  
• White House Has No Contingency Plan If Website Not Fixed By November 30th
  
• Top Hospitals Opt Out Of Obamacare?
  
• Hundreds Of Thousands Of New Yorkers Losing Their Insurance
  
• Court Reinstates Most Of Texas's New Abortion Laws
  
• "Excuse Me, Govenor? There Is A Death Spiral At The Door And He Says You Invited Him Over."
  
• South Park's Take On Obamacare
  
• What Kind Of Conservative Will Marco Rubio Be Today?
  
• Broke California City Basically Held Together With Duct Tape
  
• The Obamacare Losers
  
• Christie's 2016 Strategy Emerges
  
• Iran Proven To Be Lying About Involvement In Syrian Civil War
  
• IRS Sent Tea Party Tax Documents To FEC
  
• Eurozone Unemployment At Record High
  
• Rachel Maddow Accused Of Plagiarism
  
• Germany Leads EU Reform Drive
  
• The New Star Wars Movie Is Already Running Into Problems
  
• Joel Osteen Deletes Unintentionally Hilarious Tweet
  
• America's New Sweetheart?
  
• Mouse Won't Give Up On Cracker (video)
  

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:15 AM | Comments (399)
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If you like your hospital and doctors, you can keep your hospital and doctor.

Except you can't.

Oh well! Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet!

Oh, and the Administration is, get this, still lying when it claims that only people in the individual market will be losing their insurance. In fact, more than half of all people in the employer markets will be losing their insurance, too. That's the mid-range estimate; it could be lower.

It could also be higher.

Mid-range estimate: 51% of employer-sponsored plans will get canceled

But CarneyÂ’s dismissal of the mediaÂ’s concerns was wrong, on several fronts. [This refers to Carney's, get this, false characterization of a Federal Register estimate as only concerning individual market policies. -- ace.] Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administrationÂ’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.

Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled....

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

The individual market insurance policyholders are the first victims of Obamacare.

But they will not be last.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (672)
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Frankly, I'm surprised it's not zero.

And I still expect it to have actually been zero -- because I'm sure that there were glitches on the back end, actually communicating with insurers.

But here is why our Secretive, Lying Nixonian President denied the American public information they have a right to -- because it exposed him as the incompetent he is, of course.

For 31 days now, the Obama administration has been telling us that Americans by the millions are visiting the new health insurance website, despite all its problems.

But no one in the administration has been willing to tell us how many policies have been purchased, and this may be the reason: CBS News has learned the number is very small.

Early enrollment figures are contained in notes from twice-a-day "war room" meetings convened within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services after the website failed on Oct. 1. They were turned over in response to a document request from the House Oversight Committee.

The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."

The next day was a huge day for them -- they got less than 250 enrollments.

In order to meet their goals, they have to enroll 39,000 people per day up to March 1st.

A lie? How dare you suggest such a thing.

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (257)
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Oh, right, the guy running against Romney and also trying to burn down the Republican Party.

Note: At the time, Harry Reid claimed he had an "impeccable source" for this smear. He also called him "extremely credible:"

“There is a controversy because the Republican presidential nominee, Governor Mitt Romney, refuses to release his tax returns. As I said before, I was told by an extremely credible source that Romney has not paid taxes for ten years.

"Impeccable source" meaning "Romney's opponent's dad."

Thanks to @benk84.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (202)
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And then will Barack Obama veto his own promise?

Johnson's bill, which will be introduced on Wednesday, could put Democrats in a tough spot. Asked Tuesday to explain the news that millions of Americans were losing their insurance policies, contrary to the president's promise, Senate Democrats responded with a mixture of denials, evasions, and historical revisionism. Nearly all refused to say if they opposed Johnson's bill.

Jon Tester just flat-out denied people were losing their insurance:

One senator was not willing to cede the point that many Americans would be losing their current health insurance plans. When asked if those folks who like their plans should be able to keep it, Jon Tester, Democrat from Montana, responded, “I think your premise is wrong.”

What was wrong with the premise? “You said millions of people lost their health care,” Tester responded.

What about news reports saying as much?

“They’re wrong,” Tester said.

So here's the thing: Obama can't permit this, because his plan always relied on f***ing over millions of people. That is central to his plan.

Just like we've been saying for five years.

Apologies if this has already been posted.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (163)
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Lot of that goin' 'round, huh?

IÂ’m a healthy 34-year-old with a taxable income hovering right around the Obamacare subsidy level who, for the last several years, has purchased a relatively inexpensive catastrophic health insurance plan from Blue Shield....

Last month, however, I received a letter from my insurance company informing me that my plan was “no longer available” due to “new requirements for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.” [M]y monthly premium is going to rise by nearly 43% to $214 a month.

My old plan was as bare-bones as they came, so I assumed that even though the new plan would cost more, my coverage would improve under Obamacare, at least marginally.

It did not.

Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, IÂ’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.

Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didnÂ’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, weÂ’d be the ones paying for it.

Obamacare: Catastrophic policy coverage at comprehensive policy prices. Because that's Better Insurance, somehow.

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?

Below, a Fun Halloween Prank, and/or a Visual Metaphor for Obamacare:
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (378)
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First, some quotes. Josh Barro, a minor writer for a minor webzine, was recently declared one of Obama's favorite thinkers because he always praises Obama. So here's Josh Barrow on the wonders of elitism, rule by a self-declared elite:

"Vast swathes of policy are based on the correct presumption that people don't know what's best for them. Nothing new."

When this was challenged as elitist, Barrow was actually flattered. Why, of course he's an elitist. He is elite. After all, he's a minor writer for a minor webzine.

"I'm baffled when people call me an "elitist" and think I will take that as an insult."

He then prattled on a bit longer about the wonders of the New Elite:

"Elitist technocrats are also the ones making you buy pasteurized milk and buy cars with seat belts."

"I can't figure out if the people acting outraged at me about this are stupid or disingenuous. Or both. Probably both."

Now, here's another quote, from a very high-ranking member of the elite that is now controlling one fifth of the US economy. From John Ekdahl's earlier post:

"Neither he or I are technology geeks and we assumed it was up and ready to run," he told HLN.

...

When asked why it will still take a month for the the glitches to be fixed, [the card-carrying member of the Media/Governmental New Elite] didn't have an answer.

"I don't know the technical reasons," he said. "I don't know, I wish I could tell you. that's why I became a lawyer."

That, of course, is certified member of the New Elite, Vice President Joe Biden, expressing bafflement at how one of these web-cites could fail. Heck, they're so easy to use when you're shopping on Amazon for Matlock DVD sets.

Which brings us to Matt Lewis' take on what I'll call Self Esteem Progressivism.

For those looking to draw grander conclusions, this is a teachable moment. The hubris necessary for this kind of vast undertaking — impacting nearly 20 percent of the economy! — is patently unconservative. And I don’t need to trot out some fire-breathing or controversial conservative to demonstrate why this sort of chutzpah is a fundamental affront to basic conservative philosophy.

As I’ve noted before, my favorite definition of conservatism comes from David Brooks, who defined it thusly: “The essence of conservatism — from Burke to Hayek — is epistemological modesty — an awareness of how little we can know about ourselves, and how little we can plan. Because life is so complicated."

Liberalism operates under a fatal conceit that is fundamentally immodest. The ObamaCare rollout is a prime example of why such hubris is dangerous and costly.

It isn't just that life is complicated-- though it is. What is going on here is that a cadre of people who have a very narrow skill-set -- primarily law or some public policy degree which featured very little math, and that math was Math for Liberal Arts -- have decided that they can comprehend the workings of everyone else's job in America, simply because they went to a Good School.

Well, actually, most of them didn't go to a Good School (by which I mean a truly elite school like Harvard or Princeton); most of them went to lesser schools. But they have Harvard grads in their social circle, so they now count themselves as part of the club.

They do not know what they don't know.

They believe they are masters of the universe, but in fact are masters of almost nothing at all, not even the narrow range of material they studied before immediately going into a career of government work or government agitation.

They believe themselves to be transcendentally hypercompetent, a delusion that they are permitted to cling to only because they've never been in positions of actual responsibility where their decisions will result in well-defined failure or well-defined success.

Obama is of course the apotheosis of this type. He not just their high priest, but their demi-god, a half-god born upon the earth.

But they are all just like him-- sky-high on personal estimation of their capabilities, and yet scandalously short on actual accomplishments.

And these are the people who presume that they can run the world for us, and do our jobs better than us.

They can't. And I didn't even need to see Healthcare.gov crash and burn in Icarus-colored flames to know it.

How did I know that their self-esteem greatly outpaced their level of competency?

Simple: Because I've met them.

Update: Mama Winger passes along more wisdom from C.S. Lewis:

If upon consideration, one can find no faults on oneÂ’s own side, then cry for mercy; for this must be a most dangerous delusion.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (364)
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Frank Pallone, Parselmouth Propagandist: "I'm from the government, and I'm here alienate you."

"...as the excuses get more ludicrous," Piers Morgan, of all people, sums up. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (295)
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Oh, he's libertarian enough as regards the standard policy preferences of the Democratic Mandarin Class.

But as Charles C. W. Cooke notes, that doesn't make one a libertarian. You'd expect a libertarian to also speak up in favor of some limits of government power over the individual in areas apart from sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

But not this Robert Sarvis character:

In a recent Reason interview, Sarvis explained that he was “not into the whole Austrian type, strongly libertarian economics,” preferring “more mainstream economics” instead. The candidate expanded on this during an oddly defensive interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, in which he seemed put off not so much by “strongly libertarian economics” as by libertarian economics per se. As governor, Sarvis told Todd, he would be hesitant to cut taxes, unsure as to how he might “reduce spending,” and open to indulging the largest piece of federal social policy since 1965 by expanding Virginia’s Medicaid program. I am generally a critic of the tendency of small-government types to try to purge their ranks of those deemed sufficiently impure, but I must confess that this interview left even me wondering whether Sarvis is in need of a dictionary.

Worse yet was Sarvis’s rambling interview with the Virginia Prosperity Project, in which the candidate expressed his enthusiasm for increasing gas levies, and for establishing a “vehicle-miles-driven tax.” It strikes me that it is almost impossible to square such a measure with any remotely coherent “libertarian” position on that most sacred of rights: privacy. Virginia’s mooted VMT plan requires the installation of government GPS systems in private cars — an astonishingly invasive proposal. Even if this isn’t what Sarvis has in mind, the fact remains that there is simply no way of determining how far an individual has driven without the government’s checking. On Twitter, an amusing fellow with a username not fit for print in this column responded to this idea by contending: “I’m no extremist, but if you put a black box in my vehicle and tax me per mile I will burn down everything you’ve ever loved.” What sort of “libertarian” doesn’t feel this way?

So this is quite something, isn't it? He's not even a real Libertarian drawing votes away from a more libertarian conservative (as Charles C.W. Cooke finds Cuccinelli to be); he's simply a flat-out big-spending, big-government, abortion-absolutist progressive, and yet still he's drawing votes away.

I guess this is why Ron Paul is intervening -- to let actual Libertarians know that the nominal Libertarian in the race is not libertarian at all, and that the conservative candidate actually is libertarian.

Via @rdbrewer4.

Update: Sarvis disputed Charles Cooke's portrait of him and explained himself in an interview. He claims he actually is libertarian on economic issues, but for some reason couldn't express them during TV interviews, or didn't have the time to do so.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (176)
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