Ron Fournier is getting weary of defending an incompetent law.

Why I'm Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare

Incompetence, politics, and delays frustrate advocates of health care reform.

It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.

For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees than spelled out in the law.

Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy.

The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—"If you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan." And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.

Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multi-million-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.

Read the whole thing. Now Kirsten Powers agrees: "Amen, Brother." more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (517)
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Wendy Davis apparently just realized that she's running for Governor of Texas and not New York.

Davis, a Fort Worth senator and the likely Democratic nominee for governor, told The Dallas Morning NewsÂ’ editorial board that less than one-half of 1 percent of Texas abortions occur after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Most of those were in cases where fetal abnormalities were evident or there were grave risks to the health of the woman.

“I would line up with most people in Texas who would prefer that that’s not something that happens outside of those two arenas,” Davis said.

But the Democrat said the stateÂ’s new abortion law didnÂ’t give priority to women in those circumstances. The law allows for exceptions for fetal abnormalities and a threat to the womanÂ’s life, but Davis said those didnÂ’t go far enough.

“My concern, even in the way the 20-week ban was written in this particular bill, was that it didn’t give enough deference between a woman and her doctor making this difficult decision, and instead tried to legislatively define what it was,” Davis said.

So to sum up, the woman who made her name, such as it is, filibustering the bill that prevents abortion after 20 weeks now supports the concept?

Ok, first of all, no she doesn't. I'm sure her doctor/patient exception or whatever she'll call it will be big enough to drive Kermit Gosnel's clinic slaughterhouse through.

But...the people who support her and made her a folk hero don't want any restrictions on abortions. More than that they don't want any sort of negative connotation associated with abortion. Having the latest poster girl for their holy cause even insinuate that it could be restricted or that the pro-life crowd should be catered to will be quite the blow.

Meanwhile, Charlie Crist emails to say, "Damn, this is some shameless pandering, huh?".

Marco Rubio follows up with, "Wendy, you're supposed to wait until after the election to flip. Oh right, you will flip back if you're elected. Ok, I get that."

Seriously, it's nice to see Democrats have to deal with this for once. It doesn't matter since she won't even come close to winning but the "even Wendy Davis says abortions after 20 weeks should be restricted" will be a fun talking point.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:29 AM | Comments (406)
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• Republican Wins San Diego Mayor Special Election
  
• Goldberg: The Outsiders Race
  
• Another Leftist Mass Protest That Draws More Media Than Protestors
  
• Illinois Partners With The Onion To Sell Obamacare
  
• Two States Where Only Half Of Obamacare Enrollees Paid Their Premiums
  
• Make That Three
  
• The Marlboro Mandate
  
• Lawless Mayor Is Going To Be Lawless
  
• "Alex" Tokeville Has Some Choice Words For President Obama
  
• If You Didn't Like Curling Before, You Should Now
  
• Republicans Expanding Field In The Senate
  
• Lake Superior Expected To Freeze Over Completely
  
• Liberalism: A Perpetual State Of Childhood
  
• The Devastating Effects Of Income Inequality
  
• Or As We At Ace Of Spades Call It, Shopping
  

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:05 AM | Comments (321)
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Happy Wednesday.

Charles C.W. Cooke has a must-read on Obama's lawlessness. Sen. Mike Lee has a related item at the Weekly Standard asking, "If Obama is so lawless, why is no one suing him?" Lee is correct, so far as he goes, but he doesn't discuss the possibility (a long-shot, but not that long of one given President Obama's continuing unilateral amendment of the ACA) of congressional standing left open by Raines v. Byrd, as I briefly mentioned last year. We just need to find a member of Congress whose vote for Obamacare is being frustrated by Obama's refusal to enforce it as enacted. Yeah, okay. I said it's a long-shot.

Admiral McRaven says special ops will have working "Iron Man" suits by 2018. Given that it's "a collaborative effort involving 56 corporations, 16 government agencies, 13 universities, and 10 national laboratories," I suspect 2028 is closer to the mark.

The Idaho Supreme Court ruled that gay spouses may adopt their spouses' children, even though gay marriage isn't lawful in Idaho. The state high court noted that the Idaho adoption statute provides that "any adult person" may adopt, not "any adult married person," as one judge had interpreted it to exclude a gay spouse who had married her wife in California.

I was celebrating several Blue on Blue events yesterday as a nice change from sighing over the perpetual circular firing squad on our side. The intraparty strife on the left is spreading: NARAL, a pro-abortion organization, is publicly opposing one of Obama's district court nominees. The group joins several black organizations and the Congressional Black Caucus in opposing the nominee. So far the White House isn't having it: "JarrettÂ’s answer" to the group's pleas "was a terse, 'No.'"

Gov. Christie's office is pushing back hard against hacktastic NYTimes reporter.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:59 AM | Comments (447)
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Obamacare Is Just Another Word For Laws We Ignore Together

Out: Written laws and stuff. In: ObamaCareocracy.

The Obama administration is now giving medium-sized employers an extra year - until 2016 - before they must offer health insurance to their full-time workers. This directly contradicts the text of the law. Good for those employers; bad for the rule of law.

I don't want to sound like a troglodyte, but the president, as head of the executive branch of the federal government is constitutionally obligated to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," not implement laws in an expedient manner, or a more prudent manner, or even in a way that he believes is more moral or a helpful for people struggling to find affordable health care. This is why we write bills down and debate them prior to passage. Or, at least, it used to be.

ObamaCare - It's the ultimate wildcard of a law. Which allows the President to do anything. Or nothing. Whatever his whims and needs at the moment dictate. Sorta like the commerce clause except far more powerful since everything - including just keeping yourself alive - falls under its domain.

From Slublog:

And this:

The Time When Andrew Breitbart Commented Here

In classic Andrew-style:

62 I was on with Bashir once. It was a lovely experience. He read straight from Media Matters prepared script that day, and I called it out. His attempt to portray me as a racist consisted of trying to associate me with a racist email forwarded by an obscure Orange County, California elected official. As I excoriated said obscure elected official in no uncertain terms, Bashir refused to accept it. He then went through another grotesque set of Media Matters planted racism by non association innuendo. I wholly expected this moment. And it was weirdly fun. There is a daily direct connection between the unions that pay for Media Matters PR work and the content that goes up at MSNBC. It is government funded and subsidized propaganda. It is crony capitalism at it's worse. But if we were to eliminate it we would be depriving ourselves of so much 'Resist We Much' found comedy. So the question remains what to do about the MSNBC problem? I say we let them be!

Posted by: Andrew 'I Want Ace's Commenters!' Breitbart at September 29, 2011 02:03 PM (6uTN2)

Which makes this poster both literally and figuratively true. Rest in peace, Andrew.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 07:01 PM | Comments (533)
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Also testifying was one of [Cleta] MitchellÂ’s clients, Catherine Engelbrecht, owner of a small Texas manufacturing firm who organized two non-profits, one of them True the Vote.

In running a business for two decades, she had never been investigated by the federal government. But since the beginning of her political activism in 2010, “my private business, my nonprofit organizations, and family have been subjected to more than 15 instances of audit or inquiry by federal agencies.” Those include the IRS, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms, and the FBI.

I guess the administration wants us to believe that is all coincidence.

...

Conservatives are outraged that the mainstream media and many civil rights groups swallow hook, line and sinker the White House position that the IRS is a “phony scandal.”

It is unimaginable that IRS special scrutiny of liberal groups during a Republican administration would be written off as bureaucratic bungling.

To many conservatives, Obama’s assertion of “not even a smidgen of corruption” sounds a lot like another White House’s claim that Watergate was “a third-rate burglary.”

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 PM | Comments (345)
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No limits.

We knew, previously, that many in Congress considered the fight against the debt-limit hike to be "theater."

Still, a “clean” debt-limit hike — one with no strings attached — has not been ruled out, and Boehner reiterated his desire to avoid a federal default.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) agreed. “It’s theater,” he said, commenting on the latest flurry of stories about possible GOP plans. “It’s going to end up being clean anyway. I don’t see anything they can put on the table that I would support as some sort of trade-off.”

Settling on a strategy that can win 200-plus GOP votes is BoehnerÂ’s chief goal, according to his aides. His whip team will fan out through the House this week to get a better sense of whether members are coalescing around a particular option. Months after the poll-sinking government shutdown and months before the midterm elections, Boehner is looking to keep the Republican drama to a minimum.

“Listen, I don’t do the vote counting,” Boehner told reporters when asked about House GOP dynamics. “The goal here is to increase the debt ceiling. Nobody wants to default on our debt. But while we’re doing this, we’ve got to do something” on jobs or the economy.

I remarked last week or the one before that I'm personally not enraged by this. We're getting beaten; we don't have the cards.

There is a bit of "theater," however, in the Republicans votes on this. As AllahPundit notes, the Republicans voting for the debt ceiling hike are either leadership, or blue-state Representatives who have to answer to blue-state constituents, or people who are, conveniently, about to retire.

And I guess I could be mad about that too, but that gets close to being angry to find some politics going on in politics.

I suppose I just think, at this point, there are more important things to be alarmed about.

Posted by: Ace at 02:39 PM | Comments (576)
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After Filthy Filner bounced out, and a primary whittled down the contenders, the race today between Republican Kevin Faulconer and Democrat David Alvarez leaves us with the most exciting West Coast race until Election Day. Live result pie chart below (note there is a 2-3 minute delay on updates on the pie chart sometimes, so you can see the updated chart directly here)

The 2012 election, which saw the disgraced Filner defeating Republican Carl DeMaio 52.5-47.5 featured a Presidential electorate, so it will be interesting to see if the Republicans manage to win out with an off-year race.

The Decision Desk has it's own twitter you can follow for this and all 2014 races here. more...

Posted by: CAC at 06:50 PM | Comments (63)
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The third video here with the exchange between Sen. McCain and Obama nominee George Tsunis just has to be seen to be believed.

MR. TSUNIS: Thank you, Senator. It's a very seminal question. Generally Norway has, and is very proud of, being a very open, transparent, democratic parliamentary government. One of the by- products of being such an open society and placing such a value on free speech is that you get some fringe elements that have a microphone, that spew their hatred. And although I will tell you Norway has been very quick to denounce them, we're going to continue to work with Norway to make sure --
SEN. MCCAIN: The government has denounced them? The coalition government -- they're part of the coalition of the government.
MR. TSUNIS: Well, I would say -- you know, what? I stand -- I stand corrected.
SEN. MCCAIN: I seriously --
MR. TSUNIS: The -- I stand corrected and would like to leave my answer at they are -- it's a very, very open society and that most Norwegians -- the overwhelming amount of Norwegians and the overwhelming amount of people in parliament don't feel the same way.
SEN. MCCAIN: I have no more questions for this incredibly, highly qualified group of nominees.

I say there's a 70% chance this guy gets confirmed.

Also check out the video of Obama bundler and Jim Messina BFF Noah Mamet, who Obama nominated for posting to Argentina. His confirmation is presently being held up by Democrats who are mad that Mamet leveraged his clients' (that is Democratic donors) money to buy an ambassadorship, knocking several of them out of the running for the plum assignments.

“There was a feeling of, ‘Wait a minute. It’s my money he’s getting that with,’” said one California-based fundraiser of Mamet’s ambassador role.

Today, Buzzfeed's Ruby Cramer found out it was Democratic Sen. Menendez who put the hold on Mamet's confirmation. Ah, Blue on Blue, how I've missed you. Nice to see a little Democratic infighting for a change, no?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:28 PM | Comments (291)
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The transformation of America continues apace.

News organizations often disagree about what Americans need to know. MSNBC, for example, apparently believes that traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., is the crisis of our time. Fox News, on the other hand, chooses to cover the September 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi more heavily than other networks. The American people, for their part, disagree about what they want to watch.

But everyone should agree on this: The government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.

Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission, where I am a commissioner, does not agree. Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of "critical information" such as the "environment" and "economic opportunities," that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their "news philosophy" and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

The FCC also wants to wade into office politics. One question for reporters is: "Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?" Follow-up questions ask for specifics about how editorial discretion is exercised, as well as the reasoning behind the decisions.

Participation in the Critical Information Needs study is voluntary—in theory. Unlike the opinion surveys that Americans see on a daily basis and either answer or not, as they wish, the FCC's queries may be hard for the broadcasters to ignore. They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.

The giveaway here is the FCC's focus on "underserved communities," which means minority communities, and, as minorities are largely Democratic voters and as the Democratic Party aggressively courts the minority vote with its rhetoric and policy proposals, this indicates that the inquiry will not be into MSNBC's bias, but into, for example, Fox's news judgment to treat the Trayvon Martin shooting with a skeptical eye.

Thus, erroneous left-leaning reportage on the Trayvon Martin shooting (such as claiming, in a major report, that Zimmerman called Martin a "c**n" on his 911 call; or NBC's deliberately editing Zimmerman into saying "he looks black" without prompting) or will not be a subject of inquiry, but FoxNews' decision to cover both claims and counterclaims will be the subject of inquiry.

Any corporation -- and any person, actually -- will usually opt for the path of least resistance. It's easier and safer to do the thing that government and society approve of-- you know you face no heat for saying the politically-correct, government-approved thing.

The FCC's rule seeks to make a progressive tilt in news bias not only "safe" as a matter of social mores and general industry bias towards the left, but also safe as regards the law.

This becomes ever-more frightening. This Administration simply does not seem to recognize any principle or ethical limits on what it can do as far as advancing the leftist cause.

I understand that leftists, of course, have the right to agitate politically for their preferred policies. I do not deny that.

But we are witnessing here the government -- the government! -- actively seeking to create a hostile and frightening legal environment for anyone who disagrees with the leftist cause.

They are basically putting people on notice that there is a "right" way to report the news, and a "wrong" way, and the right way will let you keep your broadcasting license, and the wrong way might just lose it for you.

This is so breathtakingly unconstitutional I don't know quite what to say. I understand that it is my duty as an American to accept when I've lost an election, to accept when the democratic processes return a result I disfavor.

But am I now required to further accept that, per government mandate, the leftist position on any policy question is to be officially favored?

The left pushes for an unbreachable wall between Church and State. But here they are pushing for a very porous and very low wall between State Power and Leftist Politics.

Shoe on the other foot: If President Romney directed the FCC to investigate whether this is a leftist bias in news reportage, with possible consequences for refusing to take part in a "voluntary" study, what would the left say then?

They would object. They would be right to object.

And yet here we are, as usual, with one rule for the left, and another one for anyone who disagrees with the left. Two legs good, four legs better.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (469)
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