House Democrats to Obama: Fix the Cancelation Problem Or Face Full Scale Rebellion
— Ace

A civil war has broken in a political party out between its most ideological and most pragmatic factions.

But it's the other party. At a closed door meeting between House Democrats and White House officials...

At WednesdayÂ’s raucous caucus meeting, Democrats blasted the White House for failing to come up with a way to ensure that President Barack ObamaÂ’s if-you-like-it-you-can-keep-it promise about health insurance plans will be fulfilled.

Behind the posturing is a real fear amongst Democrats that the GOP will be able to expand the political map in 2014, putting once-safe seats into play....

Collectively, the House Democrats issued a stern warning to the administration officials: Fix it or face a full-scale rebellion.

White House aides contend that there’s little to worry about. For all the clamor, they argue, Democrats on Capitol Hill haven’t yet joined “repeal and replace” Republicans in trying to dismantle the law.

"Yet" is a very interesting word.

Read the article in full. It's pure schadenfreude.

One of the more interesting things is that this anxiety is not limited to swing-district Democrats. Pelosi loyalists from safe Democratic districts are also rebelling.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), like Doyle a member of PelosiÂ’s inner circle, complained about White House efforts to portray insurance cancellation notices as affecting just a small percentage of the population.

“You say it’s only 5 percent,” Eshoo told [White House aides] Simas and Hatch, “but it is much more than 5 percent in my district.”

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (328)
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Kristen Powers: I'm Fuming That the Administration Keeps Claiming My Policy Was Canceled Becasue It Was "Substandard;" It Wasn't. It Was Canceled to Force Me to Subsidize Other People.
— Ace

@johnekdahl noted that Powers was "destroying" Obama on the cancellations on Bret Baier's show.

Indeed, she was. There are three elements that made her criticism powerful:

1. This isn't hypothetical. She's an actual victim. She's not talking about other people losing her coverage, but herself. Furthermore, as she knows her own now-canceled policy, she can tick off what it covered -- which was everything on Obama's list -- and state, authoritatively, that the new policies offered to her offer nothing new... except double the premium.

2. Unlike most partisan Democrats in the media, she did not resort to euphemism. She laid it out: Her policy is only more expensive now because of the forced subsidy to other people.

3. She's a Democrat -- not one of those Republicans who, we know, always lie about everything, or are stupid, and so lie inadvertently, because their brains are so stunted and lizard-like.

My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans,” Powers told Bret Baier. “There is nothing to support what they’re saying.”

“I have talked to about how I’m losing my health insurance,” she continued. “If I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan.”

“All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan,” Powers lamented. “All of the things they have listed — there’s no explanation for doubling my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that.”

David Frum echoes her, but I really liked the case Kristen Powers made.

Video the link. I especially recommend watching the Powers clip. And maybe emailing around. (Edited: I removed the auto-playing video.)

We must not rest until Obama and his Palace Guard Media have been compelled to confess the central truth of Obamacare: It was always going to cost you a lot more. That was the whole point. This is not an accident; this is not "poor implementation of the law."

This was the entire goal. As they knew the American public would not support this goal, they simply lied to them about it -- and the Media carried their water on the lie.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (398)
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C-O-L-L-A-P-S-E: Q Poll Shows Tied Generic Ballot
— CAC

On top of finding President Obama at his lowest point in his Presidency, Quinnipiac released a stunner of a poll this morning showing the Democrats' 9-point edge touted as blowback against the shutdown in October has collapsed to a 39-39 tie on congressional vote preference. With ten Democrat-held Senate seats at least somewhat competitive, that number resonates: most of these seats are in red to purple states, where that same figure almost certainly skews a few more points rightwards.

Beyond the generic question, Q has countered the NBC poll showing Chris Christie actually leading Hillary Clinton by a point, winning independents by 16 points, losing Hispanics by 7, moderates by 5, and trailing her among black voters 77%-12%.

Interestingly, Rand Paul trails Clinton among Hispanics by only 10, 41%-51% and black voters 10%-83%, both higher than Romney or McCain's final take, trailing Clinton by 9 points overall thanks to 20 point gaps among moderates and women.

It's just one firm so far, but with the Democrats visibly panicking, perhaps a little optimism for the GOP is called for.

Until, you know. Stupid Party stupids its way out of a half-dozen wins.

Posted by: CAC at 08:55 AM | Comments (252)
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White House Officials Spin Politico Reporter, Pushing Two Contradictory Facts: The President Was Totally Engaged on Healthcare.gov and a Dilligent Manager, But Knew Absolutely Nothing About It At All
— Ace

Note they need these two things to be true to get Obama off the hook. They can't just say "He didn't know nothin' at all." After all, he's the President, and this is his signature achievement (and I use that word advisedly).

So they push the idea that yes, He Didn't Know Nothin' At All, but then, insanely, also push the idea that he was Totally On Top Of Everything, Serious You Guys, He Was Always Asking Questions.

The article claims Obama was always asking the right questions-- the right, probing, insightful questions. The problem is, the article strongly implies, is that the President was lied to at every single turn.

And yet no one's been fired.

Before quoting the article, I wanted to cite the reporter's previous work in spinning on behalf of Obamacare. Here is Carrie Budoff Brown explaining away Obamacare's failings, including Obama Gigantic Lie, told 36 times on the campaign trail.

Enjoy a Thesaurus Tour through all the euphemisms for "lie:"

President Barack ObamaÂ’s soundbites are coming back to bite him.

As he attempted to sell a complex health care reform plan to skeptical voters during the 2008 campaign and his first year in office, Obama boiled down the benefits to a series of pithy promises:

If you like your existing insurance, you can keep it. Shopping for a plan would be as easy as buying a plane ticket on Expedia. Annual premiums would drop by $2,500 for the typical family.

The simplicity of those messages are now running up against the reality of implementing the most far-reaching health care overhaul in 50 years.

For every positive statistic about the law, thereÂ’s a horror story that calls into question the broad promises of Obamacare and gives Republicans something else to criticize. ItÂ’s forced the White House into yet another frustrating round of Whac-A-Mole, beating back one negative development only to find several more right behind it.

The latest controversy about the upheaval in the individual market shows that — long after problems with HealthCare.gov are fixed — there will still be an endless stream of bad-news anecdotes to compete with the administration’s charts, figures and feel-good tales about how the law is working for millions of Americans.

“The Obama administration has certainly tried to remind people of the long-term policy goals and to take the long view,” said Sabrina Corlette, project director at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University. “But in this environment and 24-7 news cycle, it is really hard not to get caught up in the anecdote of the day.”

Five million anecdotes of the day have had their insurance cancelled by Obamacare, despite his "pithy promises."

Now comes Carrie Budoff Brown's Crowning Moment of Spin By Understatement:

Some of the highest-profile challenges are the White HouseÂ’s own making. Obama made sweeping generalizations that can be contradicted by individual experiences.

Some verbal assurances may be contradicted by actual facts; i.e., "were lies."

Not everybody will see the deep savings that he promised during the 2008 campaign. A large percentage of people who buy their own insurance wonÂ’t be able to keep the exact same policy. The website hasnÂ’t been nearly as breezy as predicted.

So that's Carrie Budoff Brown's previous yeoman work spinning for Obama. It's little wonder that when they had a new bucket of bullshit to smear on the American public's faces, they called her.

In an article most of the rest of the liberal media is flagging as a "Must Read," Budoff Brown expresses some skepticism about Administration claims, but not all that much, as she relays the claim that Obama was a diligent micromanager and yet knew barely anything at all about Healthcare.gov.

In the days after HealthCare.gov went live, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough quietly dispatched Jeff Zients, a favorite West Wing fixer, to assess the operation and report back.

When Zients did, President Barack Obama learned the project was in worse shape than suspected — riddled with coding problems, management issues and communication gaps, according to a senior administration official.

It was only then that Obama and his top aides realized the extent of what they didnÂ’t know.

So far, so good-- Obama didn't know what he didn't know about Obamacare. (We have to build the website to see what's in it.)

But soon we'll be reassured that, despite being totally ignorant of anything, Obama was totes asking all the right questions, because he's An Genius.

The story of how a technology-obsessed White House failed to head off a technological disaster may be as simple as it is mind-boggling to the law’s supporters. Senior White House officials claim they just never anticipated the magnitude of the problems that would unfold — there was concern, yes, but not an impending sense of doom.

The notion that Obama wasnÂ’t clued in seems to defy logic, given the warning signs from both within the administration and outside it, the importance of the lawÂ’s success to his presidency and his own understanding of the power of technology.

Fair enough -- she's suggesting skepticism.

But now she embraces the Administration spin:

But ever since the troubled launch, administration officials have tried to keep Obama as far as possible from the debacle, describing him as engaged in the implementation but unaware of the depth of the website issues.

...

ObamaÂ’s main line to the people working most directly on the project were his monthly meetings with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services director Marilyn Tavenner and other top officials, including White House chief technology officer Todd Park, who will testify Wednesday. They met more frequently in the weeks before the launch, and Obama pressed for unvarnished assessments, but the White House didnÂ’t receive signals that a website fiasco was looming, aides said.

This is inserted to rebut the suggestion (mostly from liberal quarters) that Obama is in such a bubble, protected from bad news by Yes Men aides, that he never quite gets the truth.

So here are his courtiers to reassure the reliable Ms. Budoff Brown that Obama demanded the "unvarnished" truth.

But they didn't give it to him.

And yet he hasn't fired anyone.

Except for the one guy, Tony Trenkle, who actually did try to get the Unvarnished Truth out!

Go figure that the rest of the minions won't give him that Unvarnished Truth.

He tried to convey that his staff needed to bring problems to his attention before they spun out of control. Obama even told them that unless they got HealthCare.gov right, nothing else mattered. The response he got, aides said, was that it would work.

Obama heroically gave obvious orders and his employees ignored him.

So he's like a powerful president, right? Even his direct employees blow him off.

In the final weeks, White House aides often heard of flare-ups but they would quickly receive explanations for how the problem was resolved. They didnÂ’t feel knowledgeable enough about IT issues to determine whether the solution was adequate, aides said.

Mm-hm. You know what they could have done? Asked a lot of people in the White House to try to sign up for Obamacare via the website and checked to see if the thing actually worked, by actually trying to see if the thing actually worked.

Now, as you can see, CMS is being thrown under the bus here; Obama is not only claiming they own this failure, but that they lied to his face about the coming failure, thus keeping Our Resident Genius from solving all the problems with his Wondrous Brain.

But CMS, apparently, has got the word that they're supposed to take their underbus-throwing and shut up:

A CMS spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.

Now remember, Obama is essentially claiming Sebelius and Tavenner hid the website's problems from him, despite his Fully Engaged Attempt to Probe at the Unvarnished Truth.

This makes the following paragraph difficult to understand:

Since the launch, Obama has increased the frequency of his meetings with Sebelius, Tavenner and other HHS officials, sometimes calling them to the White House twice a week for briefings. He gets a report every night that details the latest progress on the site overhaul.

Oh he's getting a report every night from the people he's (by implication) claiming lied to him all the way through this and refused him the "unvarnished" truth.

Wonderful. I'm sure these new reports are totes unvarnished.

By the way, the Administration has seriously moved the goalposts on the fixes for Healthcare.gov. Previously, they vowed it would be working by November 30th; now their "pithy promises" and "representations that may be contradicted by individual experiences" are more... nuanced.

“Our goal is to have that website functioning effectively for the vast majority of Americans by the end of this month,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.

Ah. It will work for the "vast majority," now.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (342)
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Should The GOP Be Trying To Pass Any ObamaCare Fix Or Remediation?
— DrewM

On Friday the House will take up a bill sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (yes, he's Kate's uncle) that purports to let people who have health insurance polices keep them regardless of the ACA and HHS regulations. I say "purports" because it's unclear that the damage done by ObmaCare can be undone in time to prevent people from losing coverage on January 1st.

The question is, should the GOP try and do this at the risk of either "saving" ObamaCare or being seen as equally culpable in its failures. To date, the GOP has stayed mostly on the sidelines, keeping their fingerprints off the debacle (they helped pass a minor tweak in the original 1099 reporting requirements in the bill)?

Conn Carroll argues that Upton's, "Keep Your Health Plan" bill has a major flaw...it makes the same promise Obama did and is just as unlikely to be able to deliver on it.

But unlike the competing Senate bill, sponsored Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the Upton bill does not force insurance companies to offer the old plans. It only allows them to do so.

This, as Capretta points out, would take pressure off Obamcare and Democrats, and move it to evil insurance companies who are refusing to let people keep their insurance.

Why on earth would Republicans want to bail Democrats out on Obamacare by supplying them with a villain to scapegoat?

Liberals on the other hand worry that if Upton's bill becomes law it will kill the whole notion of the exchanges and take the entire system with it.

Nicholas Bagley, a professor of health law at the University of Michigan, pointed out that those who currently have policies on the individual market tend to be healthier than most -- if not, they'd probably be priced out or locked out due to a preexisting condition. "If those relatively healthy people can keep their current plans outside the exchanges, they won't enter the same risk pool as everyone else on the exchanges," he said. "That means the exchanges will have a higher proportion of unhealthy people shopping for insurance than anticipated."

"In the long run, that will drive up the cost of insurance on the exchanges," Bagley said. "In the short run, it could mean that the prices at which insurers are selling their plans are too low to cover the medical costs of those who enroll. Because the adoption of the Upton bill would wreak havoc with their actuarial models, insurers are likely to resist its adoption."

There's the rub...getting people out of the individual market and into the exchanges was a necessary part of the plan. It's why Obama had Health and Human Services write the rules to get as many people made ineligible for grandfathering in the first place, they need them to subsidize the poor and sick who are getting covered.

The bottom line is this is a political move masquerading as policy. The GOP has to be seen doing something. That's just reality. Millions of people who played by the rules are losing their insurance and quite possibly their doctors as well. It's simply not an option for a political party to say, "Wow, that sucks for you. Should have voted for us, huh?". Campaigns are about generating future support, not punishing voters for past lack of support.

The upside is that the GOP is doing this in a way that panders completely to the people who just, "want something done" but is also a poison pill to the Democrats. Obama doesn't want to "fix" what isn't a bug in the system but from his point of view, a necessary feature.

The risk in all of this is that the Democrats say "yes". I have my doubts that the Senate will take up the Landrieu bill let alone pass Upton's. And the odds of Obama signing any of them are zero (he never has to face voters and he cares more about his plan than some random Democrats).

Could this all go south and wind up with the GOP sharing blame for Obama's failure? Theoretically, yes. But doing nothing isn't risk free either. Lacking any attempt to help people who were lied to, voters are more likely to say "a pox upon both of you". On balance it seems trying to do something that won't actually happened seems to me to help spotlight the damage the Democrats have done.

Added: To be clear, personally I'd prefer full repeal or Let it Burn. I'm just looking at this from a real world political point of view. As I've written before, the interests of conservatives and the GOP have diverged.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:15 AM | Comments (322)
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Wednesday Morning News Dump
— Pixy Misa

• California Telling An Insurer That It Has To Delay Its Plan Cancellation
  
• WH: Pass This Iran Deal Or We Might Have To Go To War
  
• Obvious: Obamacare Website Won't Work By The End Of November
  
• Face Of Obamacare Emerges
  
• Goldberg: Watch Out, Your Character Is Showing
  
• Is Chris Christie A Good Governor?
  
• Aniother US City Mulls Bankruptcy
  
• O'Keefe Gets Results
  
• One Million Lose Insurance In California
  
• How Do These People Call Themselves Reporters?
  
• Tea Party Must Learn From Mistakes
  
• Web MD Profiting From Obamacare
  
• Wall Street Feasts On Blue Model Failures
  
• Russia To Deploy Long Range Attack Drone By 2016
  
• Richard Cohen Doesn't Get The Warm Response He Hoped For
  
• The Word Bully Has Lost All Meaning
  
• NFL Logos As European Soccer Badges
  
• Etymologies Of State Names
  
• This Will Make You Smile
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:39 AM | Comments (267)
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Rob Ford bobbleheads create tulip bulb type craze
— Purple Avenger

$350 current bid price on a Rob Ford crackhead/bobblehead

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:28 AM | Comments (57)
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Top Headline Comments 11-13-13
— Gabriel Malor

Happy Wednesday.

Another day, another story about gullible liberal voters who are "miffed" to discover what Obamacare is really all about. "If you guessed that she got no response from any of those elected officials, you win a box of cough drops."

Poll: only 19 percent think that healthcare will improve in the next year because of Obamacare. 43 percent say it will get worse, with 33 percent saying no difference.

Surprise, surprise, the Obama White House is already preparing the press for the obvious and inevitable: the Healthcare.gov website will not be ready by 11/30.

Top Cuccinelli and McAuliffe aids continue to talk about what just happened in Virginia.

6 of the 14 new states on the UN Human Rights Commission have a history of human rights abuses.

---

AoSHQ Weekly Podcast: [ RSS] [iTunes] [Download Latest Episode]
Now on Stitcher

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:44 AM | Comments (288)
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Overnight Open Thread (11-12-2013) - Capitalist Running Dog Edition
— Maetenloch

Quote of the Day

If you listen to artists, writers, academics and journalists, you would think that thousands of them operate in a radical underground. They say the right things. They 'speak truth to power', 'transgress boundaries', and all the rest of it. But you will have noticed that they are careful only to challenge religions that won't hurt them (Christianity) and governments that won't arrest them (democracies).

And here is where the Great Revolution begins:

Yes, that's right, the revolution starts here - in some Third World sweatshop!

But, alas, not in the way that Leftists have traditionally fantasized about: the bloody uprising, the cowed elite, the self-appointed and strangely middle-class functionaries of the proletarian dictatorship coldly dispensing "justice."

The workers are busy. They have orders to fill, and there won't be a "revolution" unless the young Western leftists get their silly masks to give them a sense of fake camaraderie and being part of the night.

Today most 'radicals' on the left are merely engaged in dissident role-playing along with a bit of revolutionary cosplay and puppetry.

Useful Term of the Day: Caplanization

Caplanization is the process by which the proponents of a particular policy (in this case unrestricted immigration) argue for it in such a manner than virtually all reasonable people are attracted to the opposite position.

more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:28 PM | Comments (562)
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Obamacare cratered the highly educated demographic.
— Purple Avenger

Earlier, Ace pointed out that the millennials are falling by the wayside now.

I've been digging into the specifics of the recent Gallup. Obama is losing his Centurions -- the stalwarts of progressiveism, and indoctrinators of the young.

Obama CRATERED 10 points in the past month among one specific demographic that has supported him all along -- people with graduate degrees. (this link is a spreadsheet)

Now he's underwater with them too at 47%.

He's been briefly underwater with this demographic before a couple of times, but only one week blips during particularly bad news cycles. This time its different. There was a sustained 5 week decline leading to this 47% figure. This is the first sustained five week decline he's had with this demographic. Ever. Its ummm...unprecedented. Perhaps even...unexpected.

The last foray into this territory for Obama with this demographic was during the hugely unpopular Libya bombing campaign. If he doesn't bounce on the next Gallup with the influencers and indoctrinators, that could be very bad for him. People talk on campuses, if they start talking thought crime type things, the 2014 elections could turn ugly for democrats.

The general long term trend has been a slow erosion in this demographic as well . He started over 70% with them peaking at 73% a couple of weeks after taking office (original "stimulus" signing time-frame).

Its looking like the usually reliable college professor and high end professionals demographic finally cracked under the weight of Obamacare realities. Discussion in a faculty lounges and corporate break rooms must be pretty "spirited" these days.

With that interesting result in hand, consider this piece at The New Republic pimping Elizabeth Warren as the one who can knock off Ms. Inevitable in the 2016 primaries.

...three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee...

...as central as this debate is to the identity of the party, Democrats wonÂ’t openly litigate it until theyÂ’re forced to ponder life after Obama...

... In addition to being strongly identified with the partyÂ’s populist wing, any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given DemocratsÂ’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person. Her name is Elizabeth Warren...

There's a problem here though. Warren has pimped Obamacare saying she "knows it works".If Obamacare continues on its path to becoming about as popular as ebola by 2016, and continues being so toxic it alienates even the progressive leaning highly educated class, where can Warren stand that doesn't make her vulnerable to being painted as an Obama 3rd term the way McStain was painted as a GWB 3rd term?

Hillary OTOH can claim, with some believability even, that "she learned" from the early 90's Hillarycare debacle. There's distance there. Decades of distance. People can credibly say they've shifted positions over a span of decades. Grown more mature, thoughtful, considered, etc. But here's Warren, of a comparable age to Hillary, who's only viable play is to make the same "metamorphosis", but over scant years rather than decades...and sell that to people recently burned bad by Obamacare.

I dunno, it just seems a bridge too far to me. Maybe Hillary blows it and gives it to Warren and Warren somehow overcomes the Obamacare taint, she is after all "of the body" and projects more faux sincerity than Obama ever did, but I remain skeptical at this point. Warren's resume is about as thin as Obama's was regarding actual executive experience.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:21 PM | Comments (418)
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