All this column is missing is a noose and white sheets.

Where is Casey Stengel when we need him? In 1962, as the manager of the brand new and determinedly hapless New York Mets — 40 wins, 120 losses — he looked up and down his bench one dismal day and wondered, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” That phrase kept coming at me recently as I watched the impressively inept performance of the Obama administration in both foreign and domestic policy. On a given day, this administration makes the ’62 Mets look good.

This is a surprise — at least to me. If Barack Obama has an image, it is of the infinitely cool, cerebral leader. The man can give a rousing speech, but he is, at heart, a planner and a plodder. Both of his presidential campaigns were exercises in micromanagement — digital all the way. Obama was the better candidate, but he had, by far, the better organization.

"If Barack Obama has an image..." Let's pause to consider the absurdity of that.

Where did this image come from? Did Obama have serious academic or business credentials? Did he have a long history as a hands-on, details-oriented problem-fixer?

No, none of these things. He was smart because he wore the Tribal Feathers of the self-styled intelligentsia, and the media praised him for his trouser creases.

Then they further decided that anyone who considered themselves part of the media's class -- the self-styled (but in fact not) intelligentsia -- must be super-competent at all things, because the media considers itself super-competent at all things, and has scarce little modesty about offering hard (but disguised) opinions on every aspect of policy, including in those areas in which they are painfully unqualified to offer much of an opinion at all.

Cohen then discusses Obama's wavering, weaving Syria non-policy, which I'll skip, and gets to ObamaCare:

The debacle of the Affordable Care Act’s Web site raised similar questions about confidence. This was supposed to be Obama’s Big Deal. The president has other accomplishments — navigating out of the Great Recession was no minor feat — but restoring the status quo does not get your face on Mount Rushmore. It takes achievement, a program — something new and wonderful. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to be it.

Something went wrong. People could not sign up. Why? Not sure. Who’s at fault? Apparently no one. An act of God. Something that could never have been foreseen. Another president might have had someone in the White House calling every day — no, twice a day — to make sure the program was going to work. But no, it was a shock to everyone, and when the White House rolled out its gigantic cake — maestro, some music please — no one jumped out.

Pathetic.

Obama's a Gen Xer (I think -- perhaps a late Baby Boomer) but he has the psychological profile of the worst of the Millennials, overconfident and underskilled, over-impressed with himself and under-achieving.

Related: The Wall Street Journal recounts President Me-Time's antagonistic relationship with hard work. The article includes a lot of golf.

I repeat Valerie Jarrett's would-be praise of Obama: "He's been bored as hell his own life." "He can't do the things ordinary people do."

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (286)
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This is from MorganR. and John Sexton.

Remember, the media did not report on this at all -- that the architect of the original ObamaCare plan bragged that his plan was not a "Trojan Horse" for single payer, because a Trojan Horse disguises what it is -- and his plan was obviously a move to single payer.

When MorganR. and John Sexton publicized this -- their scoop, but a few media outlets picked up on it, like, I think, the WSJ -- Joe Lieberman got spooked and demanded changes to the law to prevent it from forcing people into single payer.

Well, we see now that one element of those changes -- the much-vaunted "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" grandfather clause -- was immediately rendered a nullity by Obama's regulation-writers. Thus putting the plan back on the path to what it was always intended to be, a sneaky way to push everyone in Single Payer government health care.

Jacob Hacker is the most important speaker in this video, at 0:39. He wrote ObamaCare. He is "the father" of the public option. So when he says the public option was always conceived as a way of sneaking the country to accept a Medicaid Nation, while claiming that the private insurance system would be maintained, he knows whereof he speaks.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (244)
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They later re-inserted the censored material. But what would compel them to delete true information in the first place?

Fears for Barack Obama's political position, of course.

The news world, and the right blogosphere, from what I can tell, is still missing the story here.

The story is not that "Obama knew" that policies would be terminated. That's damning.

But what is hugely damning and very important going forward is not that Obama knew, but that Obama made this happen, and could unmake it with a phone call, but chooses not to.

The White House's pushback on this point demonstrates that they understand how important this part of Lisa Meyers' report is.

This also illustrates how politically compromised NBC News is -- that they would throw their reporter under the bus and redact her story even though it was 100% right. I imagine Lisa Meyers had to fight like a demon to get a true story reported by NBC.

Here's a cached version of the original, and here's that damning paragraph 3:

None of this [that is, cancellation of policies] should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Emphasis added.

This is not just about having knowledge that events beyond Obama's control would unfold -- this is about events directly at his control. Regulation-writers are executive employees, and as such, answer to the president and not Congress.

This means Obama has the actual power -- not the puffed up, falsely asserted unconstitutional power, but the genuine legal power -- to call this agency and tell them, "We sold this bill as permitting people to keep their insurance; please re-write the regulations in a way that will honor this promise."

Remember, regulations are supposed to add details to the spirit of the law. They are not supposed to change the meaning of the law. Obama's regulations -- written at his behest, or at least with his connivance -- change the meaning of the law to render the "grandfathered policy" provision a nullity.

Via Politico, the White House began pushing back against this story. Not because it was untrue, but because it was politically lethal.

NBC News’s investigative team reported Monday that up to three quarters of the 14 million Americans who buy insurance on the individual market can expect their coverage to be canceled by next year because of the law’s minimum coverage requirements. NBC said that the administration has known since July 2010 that at least 40 to 67 percent of customers would not be able to keep their policies, even though President Barack Obama said before the law passed — and repeated in 2012 — that if you like your plan, you can keep it.

The White House says not so.

On Twitter, Dan Pfeiffer called it a “misleading” story.

“FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans,” Valerie Jarrett wrote.
To be sure, many consumers will lose their insurance plans in 2014.

How directly thatÂ’s related to the law can be debated.

No it can't be debated, Politico. The White House is taking the position that even a minor escalation in policy premium -- something that always happens, given the constant inflation in health care insurance costs -- constitutes a "new policy" which is then not grandfathered.

This is absurd. A regulation could easily be written that any escalation in premium equal to less than the rate of health care inflation + 1% will be considered the same policy and thus grandfathered. They are deliberately writing the regulations to disqualify the maximum number of policies, because they want to force the maximum number of people into the exchanges, which are, effectively, high-risk pools, and need a lot of healthy bodies to have any shot at solvency.

And any policy that is cancelled can then have its rates forcibly jacked up by ObamaCare, in order to subsidize others.

After this pushback, NBC deleted paragraph 3 without noting why they had done so.

Now, after what I imagine was a furious bout of lobbying by Lisa Meyer, NBC has restored paragraph 3 (or at least close enough to the original). The new story does indeed recapitulate Meyers' reporting:

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Emphasis added again. And to emphasize yet again, those employees writing regulations for HHS do so at Obama's discretion.

But why was it deleted in the first place? Why did NBC decide to trust the Obama Administration on this -- obviously a party that stinks of self-interest and potential deceit -- over its own reporter, who got it right?

I really want to stress this to everybody, because no one seems to get this yet:

These regulations, being a creature of the Executive branch, can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time. We don't need a law for this (though one would be useful, to force Obama to do the right thing).

Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.

That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.

So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.

And even at this late date, he could still choose to honor his promise.

But he won't, because he can't -- he always intended to take people's insurance away from them. Always. And he's not going to undo, short of a veto-proof act of Congress.

Obama would like to tell the American people that he must do this, or that he didn't do it at all. That the law requires it (it doesn't), that he can't instruct his employees to give a more generous reading of the law in their regulations (he can), that his hands are tied (they're not), that it's the GOP's fault (what?) or perhaps a fall-guy's like Kathleen Sebelius.

But Sebelius, the HHS, and all executive employees answer to Barack Obama. He is in fact their boss.

They are executing his will.

So there is one man, and one man only, responsible for deliberately lying to the American people and intentionally breaking a promise solemnly swore a dozen times: Barack Obama.

And he is the one man who can undo all of this and honor his promise with a mere phone call.

We must push to encourage the GOP to make an issue of this, so that the media will, possibly, bother to ask Barack Obama why he doesn't just instruct the HHS to honor the promise he made to the American people.

A promise important enough to make a dozen times is also a promise important enough to keep.

Obviously Obama does not agree. And he should be forced to explain why.

Thanks for all this to RD, who alerted me to NBC's sneaky partisan edits last night.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (372)
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Some highlights from the day...

Tom Coburn reportedly called Harry Reid "An absolute asshole".

Fact check says: True.

Steny Hoyer says it wasn't a lie to say "if you like your policy you can keep it" but they could have been more precise because they knew it was a lie. Because...Democrats.

One of the biggest spending Republicans in the Senate is getting a challenge from the right. That's via Sean Davis who is a good follow on Twitter.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:44 AM | Comments (131)
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A good old fashioned ass-whoopin rant about the dishonesty of liberal pundits when it came to selling ObamaCare.

Bottom line, don't make a maniac out of Jonah Goldberg.

Indeed, what is so infuriating to many of us is that is that now that itÂ’s the law of the land, ObamaCare supporters act as if all of the lies were no big deal and no serious person believed them anyway. But as anyone can tell you, if Obama had been honest about the trade-offs in his signature piece of legislation, it would never have become his signature piece of legislation. So please, donÂ’t tell me the lies donÂ’t matter.

Indeed, this might help unravel the mystery for Sargent. Republicans (or at least a great, great many of them) know that this law glided to passage with tracks greased with b.s. And not just about the ability to keep your plan and lowered premiums, but endless balderdash about extending life-expectancy, bending the cost curve, etc. When they pointed out that what the president was saying was flatly untrue, even impossible, they were called fools or racists. The liberal wonks who knew — or should have known — just how much b.s. was involved in the sales job, nevertheless kept their canons fixed on opponents of the law. And so did the “objective” journalists. I remember when the Supreme Court okayed ObamaCare, NPR’s healthcare correspondent Julie Rovner said the only losers were the states that didn’t sign on to the Medicaid expansion and the insurance company executives who wanted a stiffer penalty under the mandate. And that was it. Really, no other losers? None?

Just read and enjoy.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:33 AM | Comments (320)
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Gabe linked the National Review piece by Ramesh Ponurru and Rich Lowery in the morning headline post. Basically it's the same piece we've seen dozens of times in the last month or two...grassroots conservatives need to focus less on "purity", stop being so strident and let the adults run things.

It is a politics of perpetual intra-Republican denunciation. It focuses its fire on other conservatives as much as on liberals. It takes more satisfaction in a complete loss on supposed principle than in a partial victory, let alone in the mere avoidance of worse outcomes. It has only one tactic — raise the stakes, hope to lower the boom — and treats any prudential disagreement with that tactic as a betrayal. Adherents of this brand of conservative politics are investing considerable time, energy, and money in it, locking themselves in unending intra-party battle.

As I've written more than once, the GOP has earned the distrust of conservatives and needs to accept the reality that they are going to be held to their rhetoric from now on.

In retrospect, it was pretty clear that electing Republicans was simply the first step in the process. Holding them to their word and keeping them on the straight and narrow was going to be a near full time job.

This concern about Republican betrayal of conservative promises and positions is no mere paranoia. Republican control of the House, the White House and the Senate (precariously at times) had not produced conservative results. In fact thanks to No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and bloated domestic spending in areas like Agriculture and Transportation, conservatives had begun their rebellion during the Bush years. Remember Pork Busters?

The biggest issue I have with Ponurru and Lowery article (and the rather common argument it recycles) is that the conservative base is bad at winning elections and fights battles it can't win. This seems an odd critique to me given the "tea party" wing of the GOP not only wasn't responsible for the losses of 2006, 2008 and 2012 but was actually the driving force behind the one major electoral success the GOP has had recently...taking back the House in 2010 after the "establishment" lost it 4 years prior.

Have there been setbacks in Senate races? Yes. Have some "tea party" favorites been disasters? Obviously. But let's not pretend that "establishment" candidates haven't lost races either. Connie Mack in Florida, Pete Hoekstra in Michigan (not only wasn't he a "tea party" guy he ran an ad that was worse than Christine O'Donnell's notorious "I'm Not A Witch" ad), Denny Rehberg in Montana, George Allen in Virginia, and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin all were "establishment" picks and all lost.

And had the "establishment" had its way Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz wouldn't be in the Senate. Nor would Marco Rubio or Pat Toomey (mixed though they have been).

At the presidential level, no one can say with a straight face that John McCain and Mitt Romney were "tea party" darlings. How'd they work out for everyone? Granted the "tea party" couldn't produce a reasonable alternative in 2012 but that doesn't absolve the "establishment" from failing to produce a candidate that actually was "electable".

Something that gets left out of the already tired "those crazy defunder types are killing the GOP and conservatism" is the actual governing accomplishments of the "tea party" types.Were it not for those crazy conservatives Manchin-Toomey gun control would have passed the Senate and amnesty probably would have passed the House.

We keep hearing how the only thing the GOP can do with "1/2 of 1/3 of the government" is to stop bad things from happening. Well, the group responsible from keeping those bad things from happening wasn't a GOP leadership that was running scared on both issues but rather it was those wacky "tea party" types who stood firm and won.

The main shot against the "tea party"/"defunder" wing is that the recent partial government shutdown was a disaster for the GOP. Well, there's actually ZERO evidence of that at this point (Spare me the "but the polls" stuff).

If you think politics is a minute to minute to thing you can make a case the GOP "lost" the shutdown. I'd argue the reality is these things are part of a longer narrative. In isolation the shutdown might have been bad for the GOP but given the on-going meltdown of ObamaCare, it's very likely that taking a firm (but poorly organized) stand against it for 2 weeks will help the GOP in the long run. Only time will tell.

I'd score the shutdown a draw at best but even if you count it as a loss that still makes those crazy "tea party" types 2-1 this year. That's a far better record than the GOP "establishment" has run up lately.

That gets to the bottom line of this, "the conservative base is killing the GOP" nonsense...The Republican Party has been a miserable failure at the federal level for the better part of a decade (longer really but let's be charitable). It's not like a baseball manager taking out his ace who is throwing a perfect game through 8 innings to bring in some high school kid to pitch the 9th. The GOP is more like a washed up, soft tossing lefty who has walked a bunch of guys and given up a few homer runs. The "tea party" is like a hard throwing rookie who has come into the game and while he's thrown a few balls and maybe even a wild pitch, he's also gotten a few outs and kept the team in the game.

We know what we get when we let the GOP "establishment" run things and quite frankly if you're a conservative, it's nothing you want. I'm willing to live with the growing pains of the conservative grassroots. Yes, there have been mistakes that need to be corrected and learned from but let's not ignore the very real wins either.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:19 AM | Comments (495)
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• Obama Admin Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance
  
• WH Blog Claims Obamacare Allows Those Who Want To Keep Their Insurance To Do So
  
• Taranto: You've Come A Long Way Elska
  
• New York Doctors Aren't Taking Too Kindly To The ACA
  
• Cooke: The Single Payer Fantasy
  
• WH And State Department Signed Off On Spying On Allies
  
• VDH: Is Obama Still President?
  
• Losing Your Healthcare Plan Was Baked Into The Obamacare Regs
  
• The British Are Having Costly Healthcare IT Problems Of Their Own
  
• Lileks: Born Under A Bad Site
  
• Has Your Healthcare Plan Been Cancelled?
  
• Don't Like Data? Just Call It Anecdotal And Ignore It
  
• It Is Probably Time To Reassess Our Relationship With Turkey
  
• Obama Knew Millions Would Lose Coverage And The Media Did Nothing
  
• Lou Reed's Stand For Israel
  
• A Lucid Moment From Chris Matthews
  
• Obama To Campaign For Terry McAuliffe
  
• Insurers Tell Congress: Beware Of Rate Shock If Enrollment Is Extended
  
• Trailer For New X-Men Movie (video)
  
• Surfer Takes On Massive 100ft Wave
  

Has anyone seen my baseball?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:31 AM | Comments (176)
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Oy.

Has this been linked? Ramesh Ponurru and Rich Lowery have some advice for the GOP. It's long, but worth it. The short version is: hey, dummies, you're nothing if you can't win elections.

The White House started pushing a rather stupid talking point yesterday that Obamacare isn't responsible for people losing their insurance plans, rather it's insurance companies who are pushing people off their plans (to comply with Obamacare). This idea was getting resoundingly mocked last night on Twitter, even among lefty journos I know. The thing about lies is they have to be at least plausible. The only people buying this are people who know nothing about what Obamacare actually does; now that includes a lot of low-info voters (see MKH's final bit at the link there), but not a lot of people covering the law.

I don't think I've ever agreed with anything NY Times' David Carr has written before, but this piece slaughtering Gawker is excellent. Gawker, Jezebel, Perez Hilton -- I can't stand any of those gossip sites and I wish people (okay, we're talking about women and gays, mostly) would stop keeping them in business. Ugh.

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (434)
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I guess that would put the likes of JFK and FDR somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.

...Although calling Obama a "socialist" sounds daft to our ears (he's a pretty right wing social democrat), it is exactly how many conservatives see him...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:29 PM | Comments (60)
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Below is Dave's combination MNF and World Series thread.

I continue seeing Red all around me. As with this Democratic congressional staffer who's now no fan of ObamaCare.

Guess why.

Well, the Democratic Congressman she served lost his job due to ObamaCare backlash. She now buys her insurance on the individual market.

Can you guess what happened to her rate?

For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.”

When Klinkhamer lost her congressional job, she had to buy an individual policy on the open market.

Three years ago, it was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Each year it went up a little to, as of Sept. 1, $291 with a $3,500 deductible. Then, a few weeks ago, she got a letter.

“Blue Cross,” she said, “stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible.”

Did Obama even know? I really don't think he bothers to read.

I saw a quote by Valerie Jarrett, recently. The quote itself is old, from 2010.

“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Ordinary people read detailed reports and take an interest in their own jobs. Obama, at least according to Jarrett's puffery, has always felt that to be beneath him.

Why would he suddenly change simply because he's president?

Answer: He wouldn't.

I do not believe that smart people remain bored for long. They may be bored in a particular situation, but they will find things that interest them. Active minds seek stimulation.

If it's true that Obama's been "bored all his life," I'd suggest that's because he's not terribly smart or curious. And not very hard working at all. Hard work, I think it's fair to say, "bores" him, because hard work is frustrating.

We all know where Obama is at his most Alive, and it's not reading reports or writing speeches or analyzing policy. It's having a speech put in front of him on TelePrompters and reading it for deliriously cultish fans.

That seems to be the only thing capable of holding any of his interest.

Posted by: Ace at 05:10 PM | Comments (328)
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