MSNBC has apparently fired Alec Baldwin over his gay-baiting insults of a papparazzi.

Still on the payroll, as @benshapiro and others point out: Martin Bashir, who recently suggested truly vile things be done to Sarah Palin.

But Sarah Palin isn't a core demographic for MSNBC, so Game On.

Alec Baldwin is a horrible, horrible person. You knew that, I'm sure. But you probably wouldn't have guessed it would come to this:

“The decision has been made. He’s gone,” an insider at the cable channel told me. “The [parent company] Comcast guys have decided. Word is spreading through the building.”

BaldwinÂ’s dismissal was decided on partly because of his diva-like behavior toward co-workers, a source said.

Besides demanding a humidifier because he claimed the air at 30 Rock was too dry, Baldwin alienated staffers when he demanded a separate makeup room being used by a woman with cancer who is sensitive to hairspray.

When Baldwin was told he couldnÂ’t have his way, he allegedly bellowed at the top of his lungs, “I donÂ’t give a f - - k if she has cancer or not, I want that f - - king makeup room.”

Baldwin's career has been over for a while -- yes, he was okay on 30 Rock, but few watched that -- but this should be the final nail in the coffin.

I imagine Sylvester Stallone will try to get him for The Expendables 4 (if the third one makes money).

But Alec Baldwin was never really an action movie star. And it's going to be kind of hard to play a Tough Guy Action Hero when your two most famous quotes involve, first, calling your young daughter a "thoughtless little pig" because she didn't call you when you were expecting, and two, screaming things like this:

“I donÂ’t give a f - - k if she has cancer or not, I want that f - - king makeup room.”

Yeah, it's hard to really project the Action Hero persona when you're screaming about a make-up room and not caring about whether the woman using it has cancer or not.

You can't even credibly play a Tough Guy Action Villain, either. The guy who played Hans Gruber was never widely quoted as saying, "Get me some f---ing mascara STAT because I want my g--damn eyes to f---ing POP!!!"

Meanwhile, Obama also doesn't care if that woman has cancer or not.

[Debra] Fishericks is (a) fighting kidney cancer, (b) loves her soon-to-be-canceled employer-based coverage, (c) can't find an affordable policy on Obamacare's exchange that allows her to keep her doctors, and (d) tearfully frets that the new regime will be so punitive and expensive that she won't have enough money to visit her beloved grandchild. A genuine parade of horribles. Fishericks' experience shreds four core promises of Obamacare: She can't keep her plan, she can't keep her doctor, she can't afford the new options, and she falls beyond the administration's "five percent" deception. She's one of the millions who will lose their group coverage status over the next few years.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (321)
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There are four cases the Supreme Court will review. In two cases, including the Hobby Lobby challenge, a court found for the plaintiffs; in the other two, courts ruled, get this, that the federal government has the power, and here I quote directly from the decisions, "to do like, whatever, man."

As there's a split in how the Courts of Appeal have ruled, it requires the Supreme Court to harmonize the decisions.

Arguments probably would take place in late March with a decision expected in late June.

The key issue is whether profit-making corporations can assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act...

The administration wants the court to hear its appeal of the Denver-based federal appeals court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain that calls itself a "biblically founded business" and is closed on Sundays....

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said corporations can be protected by the 1993 law in the same manner as individuals, and "that the contraceptive-coverage requirement substantially burdens Hobby Lobby and Mardel's rights under" the law.

In its Supreme Court brief, the administration said the appeals court ruling was wrong and, if allowed to stand would make the law "a sword used to deny employees of for-profit commercial enterprises the benefits and protections of generally applicable laws."

In two other cases, courts ruled for the administration.

The Administration seems to define a conscience exception for the religiously-observant as a "sword."

All this stuff is about birth control, something that can be had for $100 per year, or less, of course. So the question is not about money or denying "benefits;" the benefits, tangibly speaking, are trivial.

It's about coercing one culture -- a traditionalist, religious one -- to accept the dominance of another culture -- "progressive," secularist.

Drew points out in an email that the instant case does not provide much opportunity to scale back Obamacare very much at all. At most, it seems, the Supreme Court would write a conscience exception into the law.

I have a wonderful fantasy, though. I've mentioned this fantasy before: The fantasy that the Supreme Court, looking at the wreckage of Obamacare, will seize upon an excuse to revisit the last Obamacare ruling. Not explicitly, mind you, but revisit it nonetheless.

My fantasy is that they are looking for any plausible contrivance by which to invalidate the law.

Gabe will say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

What would that contrivance look like? All I can imagine is something like this (and I do realize this is a stretch):

The law of Obamacare is incomplete and offensive to the Constitution in that it requires, according to Obama, constant modifications by unilateral executive action. The law, then, is not really a law, but, as Charles C.W. Cooke termed it, an "Enabling Act" that effectively delegates an enormous amount of legislative power to the executive -- which is forbidden. Minor things can be delegated to the executive (the Court has blessed the regulatory state, in which Congress passes laws, but the executive writes the actual regulations giving specificity to those commands and forbiddances), but this limited blessing of an already constitutionally-shaky state of affairs cannot be stretched and extended infinitely.

It cannot be extended to an executive power to rewrite the explicit text of the law.

So that's my fantasy-- that the Supreme Court will use this challenge to begin asking if Obamacare is actually a "law" or an impermissible "enabling act" which serves to transfer an unconstitutional amount of legislative power from Congress to the President.

How would they do that? Well, they wouldn't even have to strike the law down. They could say: The Administration and Congress have until January 1, 2015 to cover all these questions by actual law (that is, they have until that date to rewrite Obamacare such that it conforms to the standards of an actual law) or else the law will be stricken.

I do know this is a fantasy. I know Gabe is right when he says (or will say) I'm a dreamer. And I think it's sort of irresponsible to suggest fantasy as analysis.

However: I do think the Supreme Court -- especially John "It's a Tax" Roberts -- is feeling some buyer's remorse. And the Supreme Court is, get this, a political institution.

If Roberts blessed Obamacare to make the Court popular (which was one of his reasons, Jan Crawford reported: to preserve the popularity and authority of hte court), then towards what outcome would that motivation lead him now?

Oh Right: dananjcon writes:

Remember, ACA has no severability clause. If anything is unconstitutional, they 'may' strike the entire act.

I forgot.

Corrected: Gabe tells me there are four cases that need to be harmonized here, and they split 2 for plaintiffs, 2 for government. I have corrected (I had written there were three cases, 1 found in favor of plaintiffs, 2 in favor of government).

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (254)
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Another thing @benk84 had in the news dump (but sometimes BenK has everything in the news dump), but also worth highlighting.

You will not be surprised to hear that Healthcare.gov will not be fixed by December 1.

You will also not be surprised to hear that the Administration is, get this, spinning failure as success.

CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said errors that persist past this weekend would be "intermittent" and, in line with a promise made by the White House, would not affect the vast majority of the site's users.

But Bataille acknowledged that some people would still experience "periods of suboptimal performance" by the system due to either heavy traffic or technical issues that are still being addressed.

"The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will work much better than it did in October," Bataille said.

The comments came after the White House said the repair effort is "on track" to meet the Saturday deadline thanks to steady technical improvements.

Spokesman Josh Earnest said the site remains a "work in progress" but touted metrics showing that its error rate and page load times are now far below where they started.

The Administration's spin here is exactly the same as its spin on the economy -- hey, it's awful, but we've made tiny little Green Shoots improvements! It's "poised" to be fixed!

Obama has succeeded, mostly, in changing the bar for success, for his incompetent presidency only, from "actual success" to "tryin' real hard."

And Obama's is tryin' real hard-- to hide the system's inadequacy from the public. He's now putting out the word that people shouldn't come to the system all in a rush (which would overwhelm what little capacity it has) but should come slowly, over a period of days or weeks.

And he's putting out that word quietly, just to his allies, so that they can get the message out to potential users, so that his Administration itself doesn't have to make a public statement that the system will break down if it has more than 17 users logging in at a time (or whatever).

In other words, he's, get this, not being honest and candid with the public about his Administration's performance.

The Obama administration is quietly asking health care advocacy groups not to send a flood of consumers to HealthCare.gov next week, pushing instead for a more phased approach that won't overwhelm the website that the administration has pledged would be fully functional by Dec. 1.

The message is being communicated in private meetings, including one held Monday, a senior administration official told TPM. Groups like Enroll America and Planned Parenthood, which are among the leading organizations that are helping people sign up for coverage under Obamacare, are some of those to be targeted.

"We want to make sure that those who are reaching consumers at scale know that this isn't like you flip the switch and everyone can come back on the first day," the official said.

The plan would serve two purposes. First, it would lighten the load on HealthCare.gov next week, the first after the administration's self-imposed Dec. 1 deadline to get it fully functioning. Limiting the number of people who are coming to the site should help prevent any embarrassing outages. And second, preventing outages would ensure that people who are returning to the site after being frustrated by its early problems will have a better experience.

The plan serves a third purpose: Sparing the Administration from having to tell the American people the truth, and hiding yet another failure from public view.

I guess the leftist propaganda outfit Talking Points Memo forgot to mention that one.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (306)
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Had this in the link dump, but it is worth another look.

Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could find their coverage canceled because they are not compliant with ObamaCare, several experts predicted.

Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason.

Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute said that in addition to the individual cancellations, “at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well.” There are approximately 157 million employer health care policy holders.

Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute added, “the administration estimated that approximately 78 million Americans with employer sponsored insurance would lose their existing coverage due to the Affordable Care Act.”

Remember that part in bold. Next fall you'll hear the White House and Democrats claim they didn't know. The White House is claiming only five percent of Americans are affected by the Individual Mandate. That may be true today, but wait until next year when employers begin rescinding their health insurance coverage and dumping employees on the exchange.

It's already happening with small businesses. (autoplay video).

Be sure to bring this up at your Thanksgiving meal.
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:14 AM | Comments (276)
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• WH Letting People Know Healthcare.gov Won't Be Perfect On Dec 1
  
• Almost 80 Million With Employer Coverage Could Lose Their Plans
  
• Cooke: The American Idol Electorate
  
• Possible Stocking Stuffer
  
• 53% Say Obama Isn't Honest
  
• Rand Paul's Urban Agenda
  
• NBC: Large Employers Cutting Benefits Due To Obamacare's Looming Cadillac Tax
  
• Who Will Treat Those New Medicaid Patients?
  
• About Half Of Kids With Single Moms Live In Poverty
  
• Dems Fear Obamacare Will Cost Them The Senate
  
• Obama Has Bibi Just Where He Wants Him: Isolated
  
• Leno: If You Like Your Uranium, You Can Keep Your Uranium
  
• Newsroom Protests Against WH Spread
  
• Slate Doesn't Buy Into This Whole Knockout Game
  
• Price Of Chicken Reaches An All-Time High
  
• Bret Stephens: Worse That Munich
  
• Half Of New HIV Cases In Greece From 2009-2001 Self-Inflicted To Get Benefits
  
• 10,000 Year Old House Found Outside Jerusalem
  
• Family Claims They Did Leave A Tip And Not A Note For Gay Waitress (video)
  
• The Time This Kid Realized He Was Waving A Turkey Leg
  
• This Made Me Laugh
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:06 AM | Comments (283)
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About that Obamacare cost-curve bending: The GovernmentÂ’s Own Actuaries Think Obamacare Is Raising, Not Lowering, Costs

No, really: Miller and McCloskey: The Next ObamaCare Mirage
The new line is that the health-care law will save money. That's also not true.

Another Healthcare.gov shoe drops: ID Verification Lagging on Health Care Website. Related: People are really uploading images of their drivers licenses to this insecure POS? I'm sure that'll work out great.

How it's done: NR's Kevin Williamson smacks the hell out of a litany of progressive talking points.

Have a great day, Serious You Guys.

*Programming Note* We want your comments, questions, advice, jokes, japes, and jackfoolery for this weeks' podcast. This is a holiday-week opportunity only, so if you're really dying to get something out of the cobs, this is your moment. Send your question/comment/request for advice/whatever to andy+asktheblog AT aoshq DOT com, and, provided it's not utter lunacy, there's a good chance we'll read it and either answer it or (more likely) mock it on the podcast. You know you want to.

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Posted by: andy at 02:35 AM | Comments (185)
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I know everyone is getting tired of all the JFK assassination rehashing but let's just get a few facts out there to counteract all the liberal ongoing retconning before we move it.

John F Kennedy Was Killed by a Communist

Look, guys.  Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK.  Oswald was a Communist.  Not a small c, "all we are saying is give peace a chance and let's support Negro civil rights" kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union.  And when that didn't work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro.  He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him.

Oswald was a member of pretty much every Communist organization that existed in the early 60's or was at least inquiring whether they had a newsletter.

He also attempted to persuade a friend to join the youth auxiliary of the Communist Party. He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, the Daily Worker, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA - correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

He was a proletariat-loving friend-of-Marx Commie with a capital C. Period. Full stop.

Oswald Wasn't Really From Dallas

Oswald was a drifter. He only spent a few years in Dallas in elementary school and a few weeks again just before the assassination. So much for the city-of-hate made him do it theory.

As for the influence of Dallas on Oswald, he had only lived there (or in nearby Fort Worth) for the years from first to sixth grade, spending the bulk of his youth in New Orleans, with a two-year stay in New York (the Bronx, to be specific) and then back to New Orleans: "By the age of 17, he had resided at 22 different locations and attended 12 different schools."

Oswald had dropped out of school and joined the Marines, then defected to the USSR and lived there for nearly three years. He came back to Dallas because he had family there, attempted to kill General Walker about ten months later, almost immediately moved back to New Orleans for about five months, and then tried to get to Cuba through Mexico, and only returned to Dallas in early October 1963.

Oswald Wanted to Kill for Communism

And be a martyr for the cause if necessary.

Before disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military.. In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government-," and then ominously added for emphasis, "Any American." Although his letter was routinely intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed, no discernible attention was paid to the threat contained in it.

Oswald told his wife he planned to hijack an airliner to Havana, suggesting, as the summer progressed, that he might even earn a position in Castro's government. On September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro himself warned that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders. they themselves will not be safe."

About 12 years ago I visited the Sixth Floor museum in Dallas and in one room they had a detailed timeline of Oswald's activities in the months, week, and day before the assassination. And after reading the entire thing my thoughts were the following:

1. This was not a man with a well thought-out plan.
2. This was a man who was absolutely determined to kill someone.
3. Lee Harvey Oswald was guilty as hell and barely even attempted to cover his tracks.

P.S. And Robert Kennedy was killed by a Palestinian terrorist.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:43 PM | Comments (356)
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49ers at the Redskins.

The NFC East will not acquit itself this evening year.

ALSO: On the remake of Roadhouse, Ron White's thoughts regarding the original...

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:00 PM | Comments (56)
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I don't know if people actually like Roadhouse or if it's just some kind of Nostalgic Ironic Pretend-Liking. I suspect the latter.

It's a piece of crap movie. I cannot imagine why anyone would even consider remaking it. It would be like choosing some trivial wrestling movie from 1938 -- yeah, they used to make movies about wrestling, that was a thing -- to remake.

Apparently, literally all movies and tv shows with the slightest amount of name recognition will be remade/rebooted.

I honestly don't know what the cut-off is, here. If Roadhouse is now a property ripe for exploitation, based upon the 400 people who liked Roadhouse, then what movie or TV wouldn't they remake?

Man from Atlantis? Manimal? Momma's Family? My Two Dads? Silver Spoons: The Movie?

What about BJ and the 7 Lady Truckers?

Obviously every successful movie will be remade. I'm sure a Top Gun sequel will be made the moment Hollywood decides we're in a time of peace so they may safely make a movie that shows the military in a good light.

But they're not making movies that didn't make a particularly large amount of money, and which were not good movies, and which people didn't really like very much.

Roadhouse? Roadhouse?

That's just obnoxious.

Here's the movie I hope they remake next. I don't think Competitive Underground Arm-Wrestling really got a fair shake, and I think Over the Top was very underrated.

Thanks to @benk84.

Update: Weird Science, the remake, is a go.

Posted by: Ace at 03:12 PM | Comments (566)
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Yes... and all of this was knowable, and reportable, four years ago as well, but it only recently became fashionable to tell the American people the truth about Obamacare.

And that point only came when people could see with their own eyes it was a disaster and a lie-- only at that point did the media begin confessing the obvious.

Halperin's right -- this is all in the law. It's right there. You can read it.

As you could have four years ago.

As the media, particularly, could have four years ago.

Skip to 4:27, where Malzberg asks Halperin if he knew Obama was lying through his teeth for four years. He once again that Mitt Romney's 2012 candidacy caused the press to not ask difficult questions about Obamacare in 2010.

The death panels comments comes at 8:17. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (188)
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