Happy Friday.

The Minnesota Obamacare exchange, which is seeing the full gamut of Obamacare website problems, had another little problem last month: its director took a vacation to Costa Rica right in the middle of the failed rollout. I suspect this vacation had been scheduled ("financial commitments were made") in some happier day when the exchange director thought everything was going to be hunky-dory after the October 1 launch. She's basically Sec. Sebelius on a smaller scale.

The White House is signaling its openness to letting Islamist groups join the Syrian rebel coalition. They have to promise to actually want peace, though. Oh, and "the Americans would like the Islamic Front groups to return U.S. vehicles, communications gear and other non-lethal equipment they seized last weekend from warehouses at the Syria-Turkey border." "Seized" is a more politic way of saying "stole," I think.

A UN team has determined that chemical weapons were used at least five times in Syria in attacks against . . . government soldiers and citizens.

Mike Huckabee has quit his radio show and is preparing to run for president again. My take: good. He can't win the primary, but he can suck up a lot of funding and support from fringe types, thus deterring and hamstringing other long-shot politicians considering a run.

Last night the House overwhelmingly voted to approve the Ryan-Murray budget deal, 332-94. The GOP breakdown was 169-62, easily satisfying the Hastert Rule. Speaker Boehner ends the year much stronger than he began it, and he's taken the possibility of shutdown in 2014 and 2015 off the table, assuming the Senate passes it today. We discuss this deal in depth on the podcast, which will be up later.

Here's a cover from a nice Mormon boy and some Canadian dude: more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:46 AM | Comments (445)
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Applying Broken Windows Theory to Liberal Intolerance

When forbearance wears thin towards constant liberal hate...

Usually, it's in a situation where the insult is just tossed into the flow of a conversation - almost always in a group setting where the perp feels emboldened - and then the conversation moves in other directions. The rude barb just becomes part of the landscape.

We've gone too long allowing a perjorative landscape.

It's why the most Senior Democrats feel free to call us the worst possible names and taunt us in a demeaning manner. They receive no pushback from our Senior politicians for the venom spewing from their mouths.  We've become The Grand Old Punching Bag Party.

Compare the rude, vicious terms from Obama and his spokespeople, and Senior Democrats such as Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi and others, with the gentlemanly behavior of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

There is plenty of push back and name-calling on both sides at lower levels and on the blogosphere, but it's qualitatively different when it comes from The White House and the Democratic Party House and Senate leadership.

When the leadership of the Republican Party does not push back against the leadership of the Democratic Party for the name-calling and taunts, it's an invitation to more attacks, and it sets a national tone.

We've become punching bags. At dinner and at the highest political levels.

We need to do what Rudy Giuliani did to graffiti artists and squeegee guys, apply broken windows theory:

Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

What if you weren't so polite? What if you pushed back against every casual insult and made everyone just as uncomfortable as yourself? What if you refuse to accept even the minor broken windows of intolerance and hate?

Ongoing Secret Probes and Raids on Conservatives Make Wisconsin Ground Zero in First Amendment War

There's a secret war being waged in Wisconsin, and the outcome could have national ramifications on free speech and the rule of law.

As first reported by Wisconsin Reporter in late October, a Democrat-led, secret probe now nearly two years in the making has targeted dozens of conservative organizations on the ground in the Badger State.

The so-called John Doe investigation, which one former Federal Elections Commission member said makes the "Alien and Sedition Act mild by comparison," has raised serious questions of partisanship and prosecutorial abuse.

A Nov. 18 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, headlined "Wisconsin Political Speech Raid," reported at least three homes had been raided, and more than 100 subpoenas had been handed out - including one that demands "all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation."

The number of liberal groups investigated: 0.

There's a word for using the apparatus of the state against your political enemies and it starts with an 'F'.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:09 PM | Comments (861)
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PolitiFact has flacked for Obamacare for three years. In 2010, I believe, they declared the statement that Obamacare represented a national takeover of health insurance their Lie of the Year.

Lie of the Year, they said. While today we witness, every single day, new edicts issued from the Pontiff of the State about what insurers may not or must do. Not based on law, even. Just based on Obama's political needs in any particular day.

After previously declaring Obama's statement that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" to be True (they said "half true," but only because the insurance companies were not required to keep the promise that Obama made; Obama's promise was good, they reasoned, but he had no power to compel insurers to abide by it), they finally now reverse themselves.

Sort of.

For four of the past five years, PolitiFactÂ’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.

Yes, PolitiFact has deemed most criticisms of Obamacare to be lies. Including the criticism that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" was a dishonest promise. They claimed that you could keep your plan under Obamacare.

And yet here we are, now calling that the Lie of the Year.

ObamaÂ’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the lawÂ’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.

Um, no. PolitiFact said Obamacare guaranteed people could keep their policies. The only wiggle room was that insurers did not have to continue offering those policies. But if they were offered, PolitiFact assured us that Obamacare guaranteed people could keep them.

PolitiFact never bothered to check if Obamacare actually permitted them to be continued to be offered. In fact, Obamacare, and especially the regulations promulgated in furtherance of it, made many (most) such policies illegal.

This was the deliberate choice of Obama. He runs the HHS. He is Sebelius' boss. He chose to do this, and PolitiFact is still representing it as "something that just happened, and Obama just didn't adjust his rhetoric to changing events."

Obama, as the Chief Executive, is ultimately the author of HHS regulations. To this very day, he could instruct HHS to write new regulations permitting all the old policies to be be offered.

He won't. Because he always intended to screw current insurance-holders over. That's what you do when you redistribute wealth.

He did build this. He did made that happen.

Now, back to PolitiFact, making excuses for why Obama lied:

Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.

The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The presidentÂ’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.

It's also been a real hit to PolitiFact's credibility. What a fucking joke.

Tidbit: When I write posts, I look for something pithy to use as the link-language. Like if I'm writing that Obama's a douche, I'll write:

How big of a douche is Obama?

This big.

So "This big" is the linking language.

Anyway, when I was writing this post, I began writing it, as is my wont, without reading it. I only saw the headline that PolitiFact's Lie of the Year was IYLYPYCKP. (I'm tired of writing out "If you like your plan...").

I need some link language for linking the post. I wrote something like "PolitiFact now declares IYLYPYCKYP Lie of the Year," and needed some link language for the link.

So I wrote "Sort of."

Why? Because I guessed they only sort of admitted this was the lie of the year, based on all their previous shilling for Obamacare, and based upon their claiming IYLYPYCKYP was True, and never retracting that rating.

But I didn't yet know if they had done a "sort of" job. I figured if I was wrong, I'd rewrite it as "Even PolitiFact, which usually shills so hard for Obama...."

Of course I didn't have to. Within one minute of reading their tendentious "analysis" -- analysis that claims that Republicans lodged false attacks on Obamacare, such as you not being able to keep your policy, which forced Obama to guarantee you would keep your policy, even though, actually, you couldn't keep your policy at all so these weren't false attacks -- I saw they had in fact done a "sort of" admission that Obama had lied.

Or at least that his promise was "wrong," as PolitiFact writes.

You know, a "wrong promise." That's completely normal English right there. It's not as if PolitiFact is writing in non-standard English to avoid using the typical words we use to describe a "wrong promise."

Update [JohnE.]:

Flashback, PolitiFact October 7th, 2008 (via @verumserum):

"No. 1, let me just repeat, if you've got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it," Obama said. "All I'm going to do is help you to lower the premiums on it. You'll still have choice of doctor."

...

It remains to be seen whether Obama's plan will actually be able to achieve the cost savings it promises for the health care system. But people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama's plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (385)
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On the podcast over the past few weeks, we've been talking about what happens on January 1st, when people start showing up in emergency rooms due to car accidents or sudden medical crises, and discover they're not actually covered, either because they couldn't sign up at all, or didn't get the check to the insurer in time, or thought, erroneously, that health care was "free."

@johnekdahl ventured a guess: Maybe Obama would just create New Law once again and demand that insurers deem the uninsured to be insured.

It seemed to only be on the outermost fringes of the possible... and yet, as the Day of Catastrophe and Crisis approaches, the Administration seems to be thinking more and more about the Unthinkable Solution.

During the Obamacare rollout, stories have spread about millions of Americans losing their current health insurance coverage, preferred doctors and hospitals as plans restrict networks to comply with the law, and losing their prescription drug coverage.

On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was “strongly encouraging” insurers to help the department fix a raft of problems created by the rocky rollout of President Obama’s health care law.

Among the guidance the HHS announced:

— It is requiring insurers to accept payments until Dec. 31 for coverage starting on Jan. 1.

That's absurd and illegal. They need time to actually have the check clear the bank to actually be paid. But Obama has spoken, and it shall be so.

It is also “urging” insurers to give individuals more time beyond that to pay for coverage.

If you want insurance to begin January 1st, you can pay, like, whenever.

In other words, if somebody pays for coverage in the middle of January, HHS is asking insurers to retroactively make that person's coverage effective as of Jan. 1. HHS is also asking insurers to cover individuals who offer a "down payment," even if that payment only covers part of the first month's premiums.

They go further-- after having imposed "skinny network" coverage on America, the HHS is now "strongly encouraging" (again) insurers to pay for doctors outside of the network. That is, pay for non-network doctors.

So that people don't realize (at least at first) that they will not be keeping their doctor at all.

On a conference call, an HHS spokeswoman emphasized: “We are just proposing it as an option and we’re encouraging issuers. There is no requirement.”

Translation: HHS has a huge mess on its hands and it hopes that by getting ahead of this news, it can foist the blame for the problems on insurers.

This is all very close to simply ordering insurers to "deem" that everyone is insured, as John speculated. It seems that way to Phillip Klein, anyway:

AllahPundit notes that many insurers are complying with the "strong encouragement" of the government shakedown artists, and are creating a special grace period for payment, until early January. Some states are ordering grace periods until January 7, 8, or even 15.

ThatÂ’ll avert lapses in coverage for people who see the doctor early next month, not realizing that their first payment was already due by New YearÂ’s Eve. Remember, though, according to one expert who spoke to Charles Ornstein about this, insurers can probably expect only half of their customers to have paid up by the December 31st deadline. Even if another 25 percent manage to make payment during the grace period, youÂ’re still looking at thousands of people whose coverage will lapse in January. ThatÂ’s a political disaster for HHS in the making. Uncle Sam will have to do something about it. But what?

Deem everyone covered. What else can he do?

Only about half of the people "covered" by Obamacare will have paid by January 1st -- this is largely Obama's fault, of course, because how the hell could they have bought insurance with a non-functioning site?

And there's still more work to be done -- all those fragged 834s will have to be corrected and reconciled by human intervention before tens of thousands of other people are even noted in an insurers' client list.

And Obama won't want to take the political hit for that. So just deem everyone covered.

Just like that. Just make a pronouncement. Just create law by kingly edict.

We are approaching the nation's Monarchical Moment.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (303)
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The continuing PR push by the Health Insurance Salesman-in-Chief is providing some hilarity today.

First, behold the product of the left's 50-year experiment in improving our public schools:

Obamerica 2013: It's like Idiocracy, but with social media.

So it only made sense for Ted Cruz to come along and tell President Selfie to stop spraying Brawndo on everyone's health insurance.

But it has electrolytes, dammit! ...

Posted by: andy at 04:13 PM | Comments (296)
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Comically Evasive Mouthpiece Jay Carney attempted to claim that it was perfectly normal to claim an event was "private," and thus no press was permitted, and yet also send a White House propaganda photographer there to take pictures to be distributed publicly via social media and OFA emails.

One reporter insists that the Obama Administration is less transparent than the Bush Administration. Her colleagues seem to agree with her claim.

Carney's claim is that the Internet-- the "transformation" of the news by the Internet -- has forced Obama to engage in deception and propaganda.

No, Jay. It's merely allowed him to do so. And this White House has seized that opportunity with relish.

He goes on to claim that Obama only does this in order to provide "free" pictures to the public -- he doesn't want to force people to buy newspapers, you see.

He doesn't explain why both White House and press photographers can be present at "private" events, so that there will be both a free picture and a picture people have to pay for (by buying a newspaper).

There's a logical reason why he doesn't explain this: It's because he's lying.

Check the video at Mediaite. Worth watching.

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (171)
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Smart diplomacy.

This sounds like a funny story. It's not, quite: Hackers successfully breached dozens of computers (and maybe more than dozens).

The level of damage has not been figured out yet -- and this all happened in 2011.

The suspected culprit? China.

These are our "Best and Brightest" -- or at least they always tell us so.

It should be noted that Carla Bruni took her clothes off a lot when she was younger, so Naked Carla Bruni pictures should not be considered some Holy Grail of Nudity. These people could have just Binged for pictures.

But instead they clicked on a sketchy attachment, and got hacked.

Nude pictures of former French first lady Carla Bruni were used to break in to the computer systems of dozens of diplomats, it emerged today.

The shocking security breach was first discovered at the G20 summit in Paris in February 2011 and may be ongoing.

‘To see naked pictures of Carla Bruni click here’ said a message sent to those attending, who included finance ministers and central bank representatives.

...

This prompted many to open an attachment which turned out to be a ‘Trojan Horse’ with an embedded virus, although all recipients could see were the X-rated photographs.

Once accessed, it infected the computers of senior officials as well as forwarding the offensive email on to others.

‘Almost everybody who received the email took the bait,’ said a government source in Paris, saying that this included representatives from the Czech Republic, Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia.

...

The so-called phishing attacks are thought to have originated in China and were aimed at extracting information.

The attacks are still being investigated, and nobody is yet sure what information was extracted.

America is thought to have been the main target of the scam.

The arrogance of our non-elite elites is a serious danger to Western democracy and security.

Draw and Strike considers this danger, suggesting Obamacare is the bonfire of the progressive New Class' vanities.

Not that they've noticed. They still think they're doin' just fine.

HOW OBAMACARE DESTROYS
SELF-ANOINTED ELITES
ILLUSION OF COMPETENCY

The biggest damage from the developing ObamaCare trainwreck is to the carefully crafted illusion that progressives have worked so hard to create for the past several decades: that Big Government self-anointed elites in Washington DC are competent super-managers of sterling character who can be trusted with an ever-increasing amount of power and control over the lives of citizens.

The Washington Post obtained a memo that detailed the White House in-fighting over how ObamaCare should be implemented. The memo goes over the struggle within the administration between what it dubs 'the economics team', who argued for bringing in private sector specialists with experience at start ups and complex problem solving of the magnitude that the ACA called for, and the 'political team' who wanted fast implementation by it's own in-house political staffers who fully believed they were up to the job.

...

When the political team won the debate, many members of the economics team, such as Larry Summers and Christina Roemer, jumped ship to avoid the looming disaster they saw coming. Recent developments have shown their decision was prescient. The political team that thought itself supremely competent to launch something of the size and scope of the ACA despite having had no such prior experience has now been exposed as totally inadequate.

As the scope of the abject failures involved in ObamaCare's implementation mount, even the die-hard Old media completely in the tank as propaganda arms of the DNC have to shake their head in bewilderment at how they are going to spin a disaster this obvious.

Thanks to Andy, @theh2.

By the way, to spare you the trouble of searching: If you really want to see Carla Bruni naked, click here.

I'm good like that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (246)
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