It's not enough to buy a free-range organic turkey for Thanksgiving.

Now doing big business: "heritage turkeys."

Heritage turkeys are like heirloom tomatoes -- closer to the naturally-occurring exemplar of the breed that really existed in the world, before men began breeding them for specific traits (and thereby turning them into nearly a different species).

“It’s a draw in that people are looking to get back to the roots of how things were done hundreds of years ago before things were changed,” said Valerie Lafferty, the co-owner of Springfield Farms.

Interesting. I'm not going to knock it. But it's a new thing I just heard of, and I'm temperamentally inclined against new things I just heard of.

Then again, this isn't a new thing. This is in fact a very old thing, which I approve of. So I'm confused.

Now about the price: I know a guy who's looking to buy a heritage turkey, and apparently the price of such a bird big enough to feed his family is going to be around $200.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (344)
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Senator Deeds is in critical condition after the knife attack.

Let me just note the obvious: A man with a mind to kill does not need a gun to do so. There are many lethal weapons to be had.

Meanwhile, the husband of former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- she of brief notoriety during the 2000 Florida recount -- has been found dead, also due to suicide.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (174)
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Oopsie.

Video below. If you don't want to watch the video, the Weekly Standard has transcripted most of it at the link above.

Oh, and remember when Obama embraced the term "Obamacare," and said that when Obamacare started working, opponents wouldn't call it "Obamacare" any longer?

Well, guess who's not calling it "Obamacare" any longer?

Politico reports:

President Barack Obama and loyal Democrats once embraced the term Obamacare to sell the American people on health care reform.

Not anymore.

With the president’s approval ratings at record lows, a broken website and Obama under fire for his pledge that people could keep their plans, the “Affordable Care Act” has returned.

The president didn’t say “Obamacare” once during his nearly hourlong news conference last week, while he referred to the “Affordable Care Act” a dozen times. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi went so far as to correct David Gregory on “Meet the Press” Sunday on the proper terminology. And White House talking points distributed to Democrats and obtained by POLITICO repeatedly refer to the Affordable Care Act in suggested sound bites, not Obamacare.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 06:50 AM | Comments (359)
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Wow.

As The One informed his speechwriters, he can write speeches better than they could. Apparently this rule applies even to The Great Emancipator.

Now, actually, there are multiple versions of the Gettysburg Addresss, one of which does not contain the "under God" reference.

Why Obama chose a less well-known version than a more well-known one is anyone's guess.

But of course the reason is, as Bill Maher says, that he's an atheist, and wants to signal that to his fellows, and doesn't like all this religion googly-moogly. Oh, he'll claim to be a believer to get the votes of believers, but no, the guy doesn't believe in God.

And yeah, Bill Maher's right about that.

As you probably know, Obama is not attending the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg address. (Corrected: I originally wrote it was the anniversary of Gettysburg, and that wasn't a typo. That was a genuinely ignorant mistake.)

You know, that silly thing.

Ron Fournier asked an Obama henchman why the president was skipping out on a commemoration of the battle that turned the tide in the war against slavery, and got, get this, a snarky, sneering answer in return:

That's a senior Obama adviser tossing out that snarky reply to a legitimate question from a reporter.

They really just don't think the Peons should question their wisdom.

And what is Obama actually doing?

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (366)
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The economy has been "greatly improved" too. You know, all those jobs saved, created, or funded.

The Obama administration is lowering the bar again on the problem-plagued ObamaCare website, saying that it will be “greatly improved” by month’s end -- not fixed.

“The consumer experience … will be greatly improved for the vast majority of users by November 30,” Henry Chao, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ deputy chief information officer, will tell House investigators on Tuesday, according to written testimony obtained by Fox News.

ChaoÂ’s testimony, 11 days before the fix deadline, appears to be the most recent case of the administration attempting to lower expectations, or at least prepare Americans for more problems when attempting to enter the site to purchase insurance policies that begin coverage January 1.

If you like your technical glitches, you can keep your technical glitches. Period. End of story.

Meanwhile, it turns out the White House was specifically warned in March that the website was in bad shape and was likely not to function by the rollout date. This is important, because Seblius and Tavenner claimed otherwise when questioned about the website's progress by a congressional committee:

Sebelius and Tavenner provided testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee well after that briefing. ECC has oversight over HHS, and had pressed Sebelius and Tavenner on the progress of the ObamaCare infrastructure, but had received nothing but sunny assessments on the programÂ’s development.

A government's institutional character is set by the President. The government largely adopts his personality -- and his pathologies.

In Obama's case, this means a predilection for secrecy, contempt for the normal processes of democratic government, a refusal to acknowledge "bad news," and a strong preference for lies over truth.

Note in the last case this government lies even when the truth would serve them better. Doubtless, Obama would be in better shape now had his lieutenants confessed that the website was in bad shape, and hence prepared the public for "glitches." And, perhaps, if they had sought a delay, rather than fighting like wolverines to avoid one.

But a man habituated to lying about everything does not just lie when it serves his interest, no more than an alcoholic can drink only when thirsty. The first, second, last impulse of this paranoid, insecure Administration is to lie, to lie about small things and grand, to lie cunningly and to lie stupidly. To lie, and lie, and lie some more, and dare people to call them liars.

Oh: Obama went on the Internet to explain away Obamacare's problems to his most intense partisan supporters.

Might have worked, too. Except yet another website glitch resulted in the feed running with no audio for many viewers.

The event on Monday was intended to offer Mr. ObamaÂ’s most ardent supporters a chance to hear directly from him. It was the latest conference call to be hosted by Organizing for Action, the nonprofit group that grew out of the presidentÂ’s 2012 campaign organization.

...

“I am confident that by the end of this month, [Healthcare.gov is] going to be functioning for the vast majority of folks,” Mr. Obama said. “Despite all the noise out there, despite all the criticism, despite all the setbacks, I’ve never lost faith in our ability to get this done.”

But many people who logged in said they could not hear anything, with the website reporting “connection failure” over and over again. It was unclear how many people could listen to the call. An official with the group gave a New York Times reporter, who also could not hear anything on the website, a telephone number to call and listen in.

At the same time, a chat board on the website began filling up with messages:

“I can’t hear any audio?”

“Is everyone getting the ‘reconnecting’ message?”

“I did refresh twice — still no sound.”

“WHERES THE SOUND YO?”

One supporter pleaded, “Don’t tell me there are troubles with this live event like there were with the Obamacare website!!!!!”

They gave out low-tech phone solutions to people to work around a crashing website? Perfect.

Posted by: Ace at 05:50 AM | Comments (278)
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Have a nice big cup of schadenfreude for breakfast. It's good for you and it tastes great!

Opposition to the new health-care law also hit a record high in the survey, with 57 percent saying they oppose the presidentÂ’s most significant domestic initiative. Forty-six percent say they are strongly against it. Just a month ago, as the enrollment period was beginning, the public was almost evenly divided in its assessments of the law.

...

With all the controversy surrounding the implementation of the law, Americans are evenly divided on whether the Affordable Care Act can be fixed.

Responses to that question differ dramatically depending on party identification, with Democrats overwhelmingly confident that the legislation can be made to work and Republicans overwhelmingly pessimistic about its viability. A majority of independents say it cannot be made to work.

...
On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points.

4 in 10 people say they are less likely to support a candidate who is in favor of ObamaCare while only 2 in 10 says a candidate's support of it makes them more likely to vote for that candidate.

And on and on and on.

But here's the fun one. I don't buy it as the literal truth but...

Asked who they would vote for if they could have a mulligan on the 2012 election, 49% say Romney, 45% Obama in ABC/WashPost poll

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) November 19, 2013

Posted by: DrewM at 04:04 AM | Comments (324)
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Happy Tuesday.

It was a three- or four-scandal night for the Obama Administration. Starting with the worst, NYPost has a columnist who found a guy who says that the Census Bureau "faked" the jobs report in September 2012 to benefit Obama's reelection campaign.

Just as Sen. Gillibrand told "This Week" that "we all knew" that Obama's keep-your-plan talk was a lie, the DOJ apparently also knew that a majority of group health plans would no longer be grandfathered by the end of 2013.

A risk assessment completed for HHS in the spring predicted many of the Obamacare website problems, including the call center bottle-neck and the nonfunctional website.

Obama hosted a conference call with OFA last night, but their website failed for many users, reporting "connection failure" and not playing Obama's audio even for those who managed to connect. Awwwwkwaaaaard.

This column by a "seething" Obama supporter who has just realized what a cock-up Obamacare has become discusses the problems with trying to sign up for the exchanges.

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:45 AM | Comments (148)
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So Who Shot JFK?

Was it Dallas, that well-known city of hate?  Yes, said the NYT back then as well as today in James McAuley's recent article, "The City With a Death Wish in Its Eye." Even Stephen King concurs.

"For 50 years, Dallas has done its best to avoid coming to terms with the one event that made it famous: the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963," writes James McAuley in today's New York Times. He goes on to describe JFK-era Dallas as a right-wing "city of hate."

Was it you and me?  Yes, say the Rolling Stones.

Was it a sad little local commie Russian defector?  Nyet, says Marina Oswald who still lives in Texas and claims that Lee Harvey is innocent.

Was it this guy?     Eh. That seems rather unlikely. His alibi was rock-solid and he was also an FBI informant during that time.

Was it the ladies of Dallas high society and Carol Burnett, Julie Andrews to a lesser extent?  Yes, says James McAuley, doubling down on his Dallas-done-it theory.

Well I guess it will always remain a giant mystery although I'm intrigued by this Carol Burnett/Dallas Ladies Garden Society theory.

And when you think about it, they would have had the means, motive, and perfect opportunity to pull off an assassination. With easy access to costumes, firearms and the levers of power in Dallas, it would be simple for them to sweet talk their way through security without even a hint of suspicion. So when they casually mentioned that after tea they were going out to view some wildflowers and do a little target shooting, who in Texas would have given it a second thought?

Conclusion: It's a bad idea to mess with Texas but for god sakes do not ever cross the DLGS. They play for keeps.

Also Sonny Bunch points out that The Kennedy Assassination Drove the Left Utterly Insane.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:14 PM | Comments (543)
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Wow.

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.
Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

I can't quote the whole thing, but the gist of it is this: Census requires workers get a 90% reportage rate. That is, that they report back on the employment circumstances of 90% of the citizens they're supposed to contact.

This number is unreasonably high.

When Buckmon couldn't reach the 90% level, he says -- he admits -- his higher ups told him to just make up the employment information of whatever number of people he needed to get to 90%.

And, this insider says, this wasn't just one guy: Others were doing this.

And the Census Bureau of course never alerted Labor, even after it was made aware of this.

Holy shit.

I should say that we don't know the scale of this. Was this just a few people? Were the number of falsified reports so small as to not impact the mainline number?

We don't know, of course.

But here's the thing:

Obama will not appoint a Special Prosecutor to look into this. He will, per his habit, assign the matter to his trusted flacks to bury.

Trust us, they say.

via @drewmtips

Update: Obama moved the Census Bureau into the White House chain of command, under Rahm Emmanuel, just three weeks into his first term.

It was apparently very high on his priority list.

Utah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.

"This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans "before its too late."

"It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political," Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.

Thanks to @johnekdahl. P-Shop by @slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 04:53 PM | Comments (319)
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New England Patriots at Carolina Panthers, 8:30pm EST.

I am kinda tired of driving home in the dark. I don't know why it bugs me more going home in the dark than going to work in the dark.

Random observation regarding daylight savings time and winter I suppose.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:01 PM | Comments (39)
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