It's come to this.

Reporters with the Society of American Business Editors and Writers received "training" on how to cover Obamacare's rollout from a policy expert who works with President Obama's former health information technology adviser.

The Commonwealth Fund's Sara Collins claimed during the training that healthcare.gov's chronic dysfunctionality does not signify "deeper issues" with the law.

"I don't think it signifies deeper problems, I think it is a website issue," Collins told SABEW during the Oct. 28 training seminar.

Her optimistic take on the law's difficulties is unsurprising since she works for an organization led by David Blumenthal, who was President Obama's national coordinator for health information technology from 2009 to 2011.

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (361)
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• Hey Guys, Obama Was The First To Admit His Unhappiness With The Website
  
• There Probably Isn't Time To Mitigate The Obamacare Debacle
  
• CMA's Mock Obamacare Website
  
• House Plans 'Keep Your Health Plan' Vote Next Week
  
• Obama Doing The Only Thing He's Good At, Going Back On The Campaign Trail
  
• Chrstie's Persona Will Play Well In The Rest Of America
  
• The Simply Question That Will Determine Obamacare's Fate
  
• Biden, DWS Call The Wrong Guy To Congratulate Him On Being Elected Mayor Of Boston
  
• JFK Still Dead, Baby Boomers Still Self Absorbed
  
• Mystery Shrouds Plans For Release Of Obamacare Data
  
• Is There Anything More Useless Than A Sports Writer?
  
• Is DWS Reading Off A Teleprompter In Interviews
  
• Pick One: Marriage Culture Or Government Culture
  
• Papa John Was Right About The 29 Hour Work Week
  
• 250,000 Colorado Healthcare Plans Cancelled
  
• Obama Will Be Remembered As The President Who Lost The Middle East
  
• Idiot Father Tries To Teach Kid A Lesson And Gets Him Killed
  
• Couple Considers Divorce To Save Money On Obamacare
  
• Chicago Fan Steals Hockey Player's Helmet
  
• Traffic Stop Leads To A Whole Lot Of Anal Probing
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:36 AM | Comments (335)
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Happy Thursday.

Country music superstars Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood were the opening act at the Country Music Awards last night, where they mocked the hell out of the Obamacare website with a parody, "Obamacare by Morning." Video at that last link.

CBS News notes that Obama's new line that folks with employer-provided insurance will see no changes from Obamacare is just another lie.

Delaware, which got $13 million in federal taxpayer money to set up its Obamacare exchange website has enrolled just 4 people.

ABC News has highlights from the Obamacare war room memos for the first month it was live.

[ RSS]

[iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:39 AM | Comments (435)
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Occam's Razor

"Plurality should not be posited without necessity."

"It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer"

Uhlmann's Razor

"When stupidity is a sufficient explanation, there's no need to have recourse to any other."

Jokes Are No Laughing Matter Comrade

The "five rules of survival in Socialism" are instructional.  "1. Do not think. 2. If you must think, do not speak. 3. If you think and speak, refrain from writing. 4. If you must think, speak and write, then do not sign charters. 5. In case you think, speak up, write and sign, then do not be surprised by what happens to you.

The "seven wonders of Communism" makes a point about the economy. Accordingly, in Communism, 1. All had work. 2. Even though all had a job, no one did anything.  3. Even if none of us has done anything useful, the "State Plan" was filled above 100%. 4. Although the "Plan" has been "over fulfilled", you could not buy anything. 5. Even if nothing was offered for sale, everybody had all he needed. 6. Even if everybody had everything he needed, all were stealing. 7. Although everybody was stealing, nothing was ever discovered to be missing.

At the Yalta Conference, Churchill finds Stalin and his KGB boss Beria in an intensive conversation. "What are you discussing? - We will kill 30 million Poles and a mailman. - Why the mailman?" Stalin turns to Beria "I have told you that all they will care for is the mailman?"

Guns & Ammo Editor Fired Over 2A Editorial

And the overall editor fires himself.

[UPDATE -- Anal probe guy was billed $6,000 for the probing procedures.]

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:40 PM | Comments (600)
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Is the President... mentally sound?

According to two former officials, CMS staff members struggled at “multiple meetings” during the spring of 2011 to persuade White House officials for permission to publish diagrams known as “concepts of operation,” which they believed were necessary to show states what a federal exchange would look like. The two officials said the White House was reluctant because the diagrams were complex, and they feared that the Republicans might reprise a tactic from the 1990s of then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who mockingly brandished intricate charts created by a task force led by first lady Hillary Clinton.

In the end, one of the former officials said, the White House quashed the diagrams, telling CMS, instead, to praise early work on those state exchanges that matched the hidden federal thinking.

Posted by: Ace at 05:57 PM | Comments (314)
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Okay, this one I did not expect. This is a real shock.

I knew Obama was seizing people's health insurance to distribute it to the less well-off.

But I did expect him to manage one thing: To manage to bring down the premiums for those with pre-existing conditions. After all, if we're making those who are healthy pay more than they had, naturally, the unhealthy should pay less, right?

Wrong.

Jim Angle on FoxNews just did a story on a couple in a state's High Risk Pool whose premium just went from $813 per month... to $950 per month. With higher deductibles.

In addition, when they went on the Heathcare.gov website to check the rates, website told them the cost would be half what it actually would be.

The website continues to lowball your "estimate," because people will think their premiums will be lower than they will be. Until the site starts working, and people get their real premiums, this scam can continue.

But when it actually does start working...

As Angle reports, the very people who Obamacare is supposedly designed to help, will actually also be paying more.

Given this full-spectrum disaster, Senate Democrats were reportedly "spicy" (Bret Baier's quote of a Democrat's description) in a closed-door secret (of course) meeting with the Lord of Catastrophes today.

And Open Blog. I'm tired. And I want some pizza.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:41 PM | Comments (242)
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This is abuse.

ey asked him to step out of the car and then searched his vehicle (without his consent). Another officer brought in a drug dog which reacted (a relatively worthless indication of anything -- drug dogs can easily be "alerted" by their controlling officers) to the driver's seat. (Eckert's lawyer calls into question this dog's training, presenting documents that claim to show it hadn't received the proper field training and recertification. See exhibits listed under docket item 27.) Then the officer "observed" that Eckert was standing "erect with his legs together" and his "buttocks clenched." This was all the justification the Deming police needed to subject Eckert to the following horrific chain of events at a hospital in neighboring Silver City
.
1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

At no time did Eckert give his consent to these searches.

Read the whole thing. The cops did get a warrant, but that was itself extremely shaky. I can't quote any more. Just read it.

A warrant to insert things into a man's anus, multiple times, based on a drug dog's alert.

All this. All this, over suspected narcotics, and an over-eager, under-trained dog.

In addition, an X-ray -- already invasive-- showed no drugs hidden in his body.

So why did they continue? What the hell kind of drugs are invisible to x-rays?

And what the hell kind of Major Crime did they think they'd find at the end of this Extreme Body Search? It's one thing if you think a murderer has concealed a murder weapon in his ass -- that's serious.

But a mere suspicion of drugs, and you go through all this? Multiple insertions into his anus, multiple forced enemas?

For what? At the end of the day, what the hell are you expecting to find? A few ounces of Invisible To X-Ray Coke?

This seems like torturing a man for the crime of Pissing Off A Cop.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:11 PM | Comments (246)
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Priorities. Obama is "signalling" that he'll spare the unions their $63 per year per policy tax.

He'll revisit the regulations to push that favor through for valued members of his coalition.

But compare his solicitousness to his union friends with his indifference to that couple whose story was recounted below. They had been paying $6,600 in year in premiums -- and now will have to pay more than $15,000 per year. So they're being hit with a nearly $9000 per year hidden tax.

$9000 more per year in a hidden tax the couple was lied to about. That doesn't require any action by Team Obama.

But the unions being hit with $63 per year in an announced tax that everyone understood was a tax? That requires the rewriting of the law some more.

So what's going on here? Simple: Obama knows that most people who buy from the individual market are freelancers or small business owners -- and hence are likely Republicans.

Union members, obviously, are largely Democrats.

Obama has shellacked middle class individual policy holders precisely because they're (mostly) not in his coalition, but boy is he afraid to impose a $63 a year tax -- that's like five pizzas, in case you're wondering -- on members of his coalition.

How can this stand?

Now even though Obama intended to hit Republicans, he has hit some blue liberal Democrats as well; thus Pro Publica bothering to look into that couple's tale of woe. They're liberals; of course they wouldn't lie.

(AlextheChick makes a great point in noting that the media casually dismisses all conservative-leaning people as liars; but they immediately start looking into a leftists' tale of woe.)

And Obama's going to just keep on lying, of course. Why is a $63 tax unacceptable but a $9000 hidden, dishonest tax completely acceptable and indeed necessary?

I wouldn't wait for the media to ask. This is deadly, toxic stuff, pure out in the open piracy, stealing from citizens outside Obama's core supporters to give to his loyal minions. This is Banana Republic stuff.

This is looting.

Obama is the President who bequeathed America our new Looter Economy.

It's Thunderdome. It's Road Warrior. It's government-sanctioned piracy -- it's privateering, siccing some citizens on others, giving First Tier Citizens permission to loot the Second Tier Citizens.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:14 PM | Comments (449)
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Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on MSNBC's Jansing & Co. Chris Jansing brought up Obama's "keep your plan" pledge, pointing out it has upset a lot of people who felt misled. She played video of Marco Rubio criticizing the president for not keeping his word.

Wasserman Schultz said Rubio has zero credibility and that--and this is where it gets weird--Americans "were not misled." Except she said "mizled." It looked like she had her big conclusion written into the teleprompter and that "at the end of the day" was the signal she was starting to read it.

It's funny; it's kind of dumb, but most importantly, if true, MSNBC is allowing select interviewees to prepare their answers and read them on the air. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 03:15 PM | Comments (421)
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The other day USAToday ran an editorial in which they blamed Obama slightly for his dishonesty on keeping your plan, but then claimed his new lie, that only "bad apple" insurance was being cancelled, was true, so who cares?

I attempted to shame them on Twitter into actually, get this, fact-checking a claim that Obama, A Serial Liar From Day One, was making.

Of course they didn't. And probably won't.

But, courtesy of Hot Air, Pro Publica has looked into it.

Their conclusion? Yes, people who had good coverage -- comprehensive coverage with no loopholes -- are having their insurance cancelled and are being re-offered basically the same insurance, but with double the rates and higher other out-of-pocket costs.

Read the article. The representative for Kaiser Permanente is relatively upfront about what's going on, though he employs vague language to express it. The relatively healthy were "winners" in the old system, and the uninsurably sick were the "losers;" the new law makes the losers the winners and the winners the losers.

Not exactly what Obama promised everyone when he declared he'd make health insurance work better for everybody, huh?

I have no idea what the press will do with this. It's not just that Obama lied 36 times, then lied about lying; it's that everything he now says is, get this, More Lies.

Can the press report this? Can the Obama-loving media really bring itself to report that their Beloved is simply lying about every single aspect of his signature program?

One could make a case, I suppose, for the Redistributive Justice of shellacking the Middle Class with greatly increased premiums (a government mandated hidden tax) in order to help the poor and sick.

But Obama did not make that case. That case would have been tricky, so he simply lied to the public about what Obamacare was.

And he continues doing so until this very day.

And the media, such as USAToday, continues to repeat and reaffirm his new lies, that only cut-rate insurance is being cancelled, and the only reason for the doubling of premiums is that "better insurance" is now in the offing.

No.

Better insurance is indeed being offered -- but to someone else entirely.

You fucked up, America. You trusted him.

BTW: I am temporarily without my usual computer so I'm using this old beater. And I only have the Open Blogger password. So I'll be using this for most of the day.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:24 PM | Comments (282)
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