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“We Aren’t the Problem, You Are!” Neil Cavuto Unleashes Hell On Obama

November 27, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Neil_CavutoWatch Neil Cavuto deliver some of the most blistering statements on Fox News. It was about time someone at Fox News commented on the offensive and biased statements that Barack Obama has made towards the news station.

Obama has taken jab after jab during his presidency, and continues to stay consistent regarding his disdain with the conservative party.

We have one thing to say. We aren’t the problem, Mr. President, you are! Watch the video:

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion

Liberal Richard Dreyfuss: ‘I Don’t Think The NRA Is a Villain’

November 25, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

dreyfussIt’s a rare occasion to see CNN host Piers Morgan sit silently for nearly two minutes. It’s also a rare occasion for him to allow a guest to praise the NRA uninterrupted on his program.

However, that’s exactly what happened when Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss spouted his theory about guns and gun ownership.

It was near the end of a lengthy interview, covering a wide range of topics like the actor’s new, non-profit Dreyfuss Initiative to teach civics and his struggles from being bi-polar, when the CNN host brought up his pet peeve: “The power of the NRA and the apparent intransigence of Washington to do anything about that.”

Dreyfuss, a perceived liberal, seemed to surprise Morgan when he suggested that the NRA — and not the U.S. government — should decide who can own guns and which guns should be in the hands of the American people.

Dreyfuss, who talked openly about impeaching President Bush in 2008, and in the past has almost exclusively given money to Democrat candidates, calls himself a “libo-conservo-middle-of-the-roado.” But, the actor doesn’t think the NRA is as awful as some make it out to be.

“First of all, I don’t think the NRA is a villain,” he said. “And I don’t think that the people against the NRA are villains. I believe that’s a problem with the press that started with an ‘us – them’ problem.”

After explaining his thoughts on the ambiguity of the Second Amendment, Dreyfuss offered a plan based on his understanding of the “original mandate of the NRA” — “to train responsible gun ownership.”

Dreyfus proposed, “They (the NRA) should train excellence in gun ownership. They should create the short list of the guns that are allowed at home. And every other gun they say is legal like – people killers and nuclear-tipped semi-automatics should be held in armories owned and controlled by the NRA, not the government.”

As Morgan remained silent, Dreyfuss offered a supporting analogy.

“Remember that this is a gun culture. It’s also a car culture,” he said. “And no one with any brains would let someone untrained get behind the wheel of a car.”

The actor wrapped up his proposition with a statement that is likely to raise eyebrows from many on the political left, declaring, “The NRA should be thought of, or think of themselves as heroes and take care of this problem.”

Morgan finally commented, “Pretty large stretch for some of us to look at people like Wayne LaPierre as heroes, but an interesting argument you put forward there.”

Dreyfus responded by letting Morgan know that it was not just some wild theory, but an idea he had already pitched to a former NRA president and after he asked her what she thought of his plan, she (probably Marion Hammer or Sandra Froman – the NRA’s two female presidents) reportedly told him, “What did I think? I did back flips, and I’m calling people.”

by Mike Opelka / The Blaze

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Religion

Enroll America: “We’re All Obama People”

November 24, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

0bamacare_Enroll America, the group leading efforts to enroll Americans in ObamaCare, is facing accusations again that it has violated its tax-exempt nonprofit status by engaging in partisan politics — following the release of a video in which a top official seems to brag about his political connections.

The complaint was filed Friday by the group with the IRS.

In the video, Christopher Tarango, a communications director for the group, says: “I’m doing Enroll America right now. But I’m also, I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m also helping out with HD 50, so that’s as partisan as it gets.

“There’s a lot of talent that got sucked into Organizing for Action. I mean, there’s a lot of talent that got sucked into Enroll America, but we are all Obama people.”

Tarango was referring to a Texas House race when he says “HD 50,” in the video, secretly record by Project Veritas in an Austin coffee shop on Nov. 8, according to Cause of Action.

Tarango also seems to be telling an actor posing as a Democratic political operative that he might be able to help in a deal to sell ObamaCare applicant information, after first rejecting the notion.

He suggests he knows a high-ranking company official “well enough that, to feel like if we had a few beers, this would not be the craziest conversation that he’s ever heard.”

Cause of Action — a self-described nonprofit, nonpartisan government accountability group — also wrote a letter Nov. 13 to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott asking him in part to evaluate whether entities such as Enroll America and Battleground Texas have violated the IRS code and his state’s laws.

enroll_americaThe letter followed at least one other video by the conservative group Project Veritas and called into question the validity of so-called “navigators” that help Americans sign up for ObamaCare.

“Despite its claims of serving the public good, it appears that Enroll America has abused its tax-exempt status by using donor contributions for political and other impermissible purposes,” the group said Friday.

Cause of Action also argues Tarango’s comments indicate Enroll is “engaging in political activity by coordinating with the pro-President Obama group Organizing for Action, a 501(c)(4) organization.

Battleground Texas is a 527 political action committee. The letter this week to the IRS suggests some people who helped get Obama elected in 2012 are now with that group.

This is the second IRS complaint filed by the Cause of  Action against Enroll American.

The group filed the first complaint in July, asking the IRS to investigate Enroll America’s tax status due to failing to operate for a charitable purpose.

The group purportedly collected $3.8 million in donations just in 2011.

This spring, House Republicans started a probe into Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius soliciting donations from companies her agency might regulate, to help sign up uninsured Americans for ObamaCare.

Sebelius asked charitable foundations, businesses executives, churches and doctors to donate money to Enroll America and other nonprofits that are helping to implement Obama’s health care overhaul.

The agency has said there is a special section within the Public Health Services Act that allows the secretary to solicit financial support for nonprofit organizations conducting public health work.

Published November 24, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Hunger Games, Catching Fire–Commentators Missing Point

November 23, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

hunger_games_cathing_fireI have read a number of articles discussing the most recent Hollywood installment of The Hunger Games — Catching Fire — and am astonished that they appear to entirely miss the point of the story.

A recent opinion article on FoxNews.com by Sandra Lee Dixon bemoans the violence against children depicted in the series, and this book in particular, sharing her opinion:

Supporters say the themes that arise are important for the national conversation: the world is not always nice, children need to learn about war and destruction, and artists can help us experience such things vicariously and discuss them. My take: there is more admirable literature that already addresses these themes.

We don’t need the overt violence and the panicked faces of the characters for a coming of age story to teach us to say no to excesses of wealth and power.

Sandra entirely misses the point of the story. It is not to promote a national dialog on violence or the evils of concentrated wealth, or even their destructive influences on society’s children.

Indeed, societies and nations where widespread violence exists are horrible places for all humanity, and especially heinous for children. The nationalization of violence is especially prominent where totalitarian governments control–exactly as depicted in The Hunger Games.

In this story, the democratic republic of the United States of America has been usurped by a totalitarian regime–one which controls every aspect of American’s lives: the economy, health care, food distribution, labor, production, etc.  Does any of this sound familiar? At some point in the story’s past, the government took over total control, dictating where citizens could live, what they could produce, what they could eat, and what activities they could engage in.  Anything familiar yet? There is no way to fight against the government, because all weapons have been taken from the citizens, and only the government can have them.  Anything? How about this–friends of the regime share its power and control of the masses, and have access to the wealth created by the citizens through over-taxation and confiscation of their property.

The bottom line is that the Hunger Games is an accurate portrayal of a controlling totalitarian government and its elite ruling class in our own future if we continue on the path we were currently pursuing. The only question is this: will we rise up and overthrow tyrants as they are in the process of usurping our constitutional form of government, or will we wait until it is too late and the struggle is nearly impossible–as it is in The Hunger Games?

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

ObamaCare Enrollment Delay a Ploy to Hide Higher Premiums

November 23, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Budget_Battle_obamaRepublican lawmakers are pushing back hard against the Obama administration’s decision to delay next year’s open enrollment season for health coverage under ObamaCare until after the 2014 midterm elections.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday it would allow consumers to start signing up for coverage under ObamaCare on Nov. 15, 2014, a month later than originally scheduled. The change does not affect those trying to enroll this year.

Congressional Republicans accused the administration of shifting the dates for political reasons, to hide a spike in 2015 premiums, though information may already be available about 2015 premiums before the elections on Nov. 4.

“That means that if premiums go through the roof in the first year of ObamaCare, no one will know about it until after the election,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. “This is clearly a cynical political move by the Obama administration to use extra-regulatory, by any means necessary tools to keep this program afloat and hide key information from voters.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., accused the White House of moving next year’s open enrollment date to shield Democrats up for reelection next year who supported the law.

“The only American consumers this change will help are Democratic politicians who voted for Obamacare, because it delays disclosure of some of the law’s most insidious effects until after the election,” Alexander said in a statement.

He said he plans to introduce legislation that would require insurers to provide Americans with “proper notice” of premium increases before open enrollment period on the exchanges starts.

The administration says the change is to allow insurers more time to prepare and submit premiums.

“This change is good news for consumers, who will have more time to learn about plans before enrolling and an open enrollment period that’s a week longer,” an HHS official told Fox News.

This year, 17 states and Washington, D.C., posted the data publicly ahead of the administration. “We’ll definitely start seeing some premiums earlier from state insurance departments,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

However, there is one possible way that Democrats could benefit politically. If lighting strikes twice and the website sputters again during the next open enrollment season, that second act would not take place until after the voting is done.

Separately, the administration also announced a small schedule change in this year’s open enrollment season, pushing that deadline to Dec. 23. The administration has rebuffed calls to delay or extend the current enrollment period beyond March 31, 2014.

Published November 23, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

50+ Million Health Plans to be Canceled Under ObamaCare

November 20, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

ObamacareA new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking time bomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancellations next fall — right before the mid-term elections.

The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader.

An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the administration anticipates half to two-thirds of small businesses would have policies canceled or be compelled to send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. They predict up to 100 million small and large business policies could be canceled next year.

“The impact I’m mostly worried about is on small young, entrepreneurial firms that will suddenly face much higher health insurance premiums if they want to offer health insurance to their employees,” said AEI resident scholar Stan Veuger. “I think for a lot of other businesses … they can just send their employees to the exchanges or offer them a fixed subsidy every month to buy health insurance themselves.”

Under the health care law, businesses with fewer than 50 workers do not have to provide health coverage. But if they do, the policies will still have to meet the benefit standards set by ObamaCare.

As reported by AEI’s Scott Gottlieb, some businesses got around this by renewing their policies before the end of 2013. But the relief is temporary, and they are expected to have to offer in-compliance plans for 2015. According to Gottlieb, that means beginning in October 2014 the cancellation notices will start to go out.

Then, businesses will have to either find a new plan — which could be considerably more expensive — or send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges.

For workers, their experience could mirror that of the 5 million or so on the individual market who already received cancellation notices because their plans did not meet new standards under the Affordable Care Act.

President Obama announced last week that insurance companies could offer out-of-compliance plans for another year. But that only means the cancellation notices will resume late next year.

The business community has already been hit with another side effect from ObamaCare. Because the law will require businesses with more than 50 full-time workers to offer health coverage, there are reports that companies are shifting employees to part-time status to avoid hitting the threshold.

Though the administration describes these accounts as anecdotal — and has already delayed the employer mandate by a year — studies suggest otherwise.

The International Franchise Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have studied the impact and say the president’s health care law has resulted in higher costs and fewer full-time positions.

A survey showed 31 percent of franchise businesses, and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses, have already reduced worker hours. It also showed 27 percent of franchise businesses, and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses, have replaced full-time workers with part-time employees.

Published November 20, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

ObamaCare ‘Success’ Dropped Under ObamaCare

November 20, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

obama_Jessica_SanfordOn October 21st, President Barack Obama touted Jessica Sanford as a success story of ObamaCare. Unfortunately for Obama, Jessica Sanford was dropped from her HealthCare plan and will receive no tax credits.

In one of his famous photo-ops in the Rose Garden with an array of touted beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act behind him, President Obama read a letter from Jessica Sanford of Federal Way, Wash., to explain why the Affordable Care Act, with all its rollout flaws, was still needed.

The letter told a sad tale of a grateful single mom with a son with ADHD.

But now, like so many of ObamaCare’s false promises and outright lies, the safe and secure future which Sanford thought she had found and which the president boasted of has crumbled into dust.

Jessica-SanfordAs the Washington State Wire reports, the Washington state exchange and enrollment website, like its national cousin, had problems. It had told Sanford originally she and her child would get a whopping tax credit that would reduce her total premium to $169 a month for an ObamaCare “gold” plan.

Then she got letters from the state telling her — just like so many others who have had their plans canceled after being told they could keep them — what she had been promised was not true.

Four days after President Obama made his address, the state health exchange publicly revealed a grievous error — its tax-credit calculations were all wrong.

Washington state had been submitting monthly income information to the federal data hub when it was expecting yearly data. Oops!

“It was a huge disappointment… I just felt really embarrassed that, you know, he had quoted my story and then come to find that the Washington Healthplan Finder, the website here in our state, had grossly miscalculated, or they’re having a problem figuring their tax credits. So at least for right now I’m not going to be getting insurance.” – Jessica Sanford

So everyone who bought a subsidized health insurance policy through the Washington state exchange prior to Oct. 23 was being quoted too low a rate.

Sanford, 48, doesn’t make a lot — a little less than $50,000 a year as a freelance court reporter.

But Washington state reported her income as $4,166, which the feds took as her annual salary. It was that, er, “glitch” that allowed Sanford to qualify for a discount of $452 a month. It was that good news that prompted her to write a thank-you note to the president.

Brokers had been informing the state for three weeks that the calculations were screwy but the state, like the proverbial Department of Motor Vehicles, was slow to respond. When it informed Sanford of the mistake, knocking her tax credit down to $110 a month, she went back to her broker and signed up for a “silver” plan with higher deductibles and co-pays.

Investors.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Obama and Obamacare Support Hit All Time Low In New Polls

November 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

File photo of U.S. President Obama speaking about continuing government shutdown during White House news conference in WashingtonPublic opposition to the health care overhaul and disappointment in President Obama’s job performance are hitting all-time highs, with new polls showing the botched rollout of the law has seriously damaged confidence in the administration.

A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday showed Obama’s job approval rating at a meager 42 percent — and his disapproval rating at 55 percent, the worst of his five years in office.

That figure matches the disapproval rating he received in a recent Fox News poll.

The latest surveys show how much the launch of the health law has damaged the president’s image and the public’s faith in his administration.

The Post-ABC poll showed opposition to ObamaCare has hit an all-time high, with 57 percent opposing the law. The public was roughly evenly divided a month ago.

And 63 percent disapprove of the president’s handling of the law’s rollout. In the recent Fox News poll, that figure was 61 percent.

The plummeting figures are traced in part to self-identified independents losing patience with the president.

pelossi_obamacareThe president is at least trying to keep his own supporters on board. In a conference call with Obama loyalists Monday night — hosted by campaign arm Organizing for Action — Obama urged supporters to keep fighting with him.  He defended the overall aim of the health law, despite the problems with rolling it out.

“Effectively, in a month, you’ve already got half a million Americans who will likely have the security of health care for the first time, in some cases in their lives, as soon as January 1. And that is life-changing,” Obama said.

The Post-ABC poll of 1,006 adults was conducted Nov. 14-17. It had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

In another problematic study for the administration, Gallup on Tuesday reported that 56 percent of Americans say it is not the federal government’s job to ensure health care coverage.

The poll showed an abrupt reversal on that question from just a few years ago — in 2006, 69 percent said it was the government’s responsibility to ensure health coverage.

Published November 19, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Obamacare Will Be Repealed Well In Advance Of The 2014 Elections

November 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

repeal-obamacarePrediction: even if HealthCare.gov is fixed by the end of the month (unlikely), Obamacare is going to be repealed well in advance of next year’s election.  And if the website continues to fail, the push for repeal—from endangered Democrats—will occur very rapidly.  The website is a sideshow: the real action is the number of people and businesses who are losing their health plans or having to pay a lot more.  Fixing the website will only delay the inevitable.

It is important to remember why it was so important for Obama to promise repeatedly that “if you like your health insurance/doctor, you can keep your health insurance/doctor.”  Cast your mind back to the ignominious collapse of Hillarycare in 1994.  Hillarycare came out of the box in September 1993 to high public support according to the early polls.  This was not a surprise.  Opinion polls for decades have shown a large majority of Americans support the general idea of universal health coverage.  But Hillarycare came apart as the bureaucratic details came out, the most important one being that you couldn’t be sure you’d be able to keep your doctors or select specialists of your choice.  The Clintons refused to consider a compromise, but even with large Democratic Senate and House majorities the bill was so dead it was never brought up for a vote.

Remember “Harry and Louise”?  Obama did, which is why he portrayed Obamacare as simply expanding coverage to the uninsured, and improving coverage for the underinsured while leaving the already insured undisturbed.  But the redistributive arithmetic of Obamacare’s architecture could never add up, which is what the bureaucrats knew early on—as early as 2010 according to many documents that have leaked.  The wonder is that Obama’s political team didn’t see this coming and prepare a pre-emptive strategy for dealing with the inevitable exposure of the duplicity at the heart of Obamacare’s logic.  Now that people are losing their insurance and finding that they may not be able to keep their doctor after all, Obamacare has become the domestic policy equivalent of the Iraq War: a protracted fiasco that is proving fatal to a president’s credibility and approval rating.  The only thing missing is calling in FEMA to help fix this Category-5 political disaster.

obamacare-cardSenate Democrats endangered for re-election will lead the charge for repeal perhaps as soon as January, after they get an earful over the Christmas break.  They’ll call it “reform,” and clothe it in calls for delaying the individual mandate and allowing people and businesses to keep their existing health insurance policies.  But it is probably too late to go back in many cases.  With the political damage guaranteed to continue, the momentum toward repeal will be unstoppable.  Democrats will not want to face the voters next November with the albatross of Obamacare.

The politics of the repeal effort will be a game theorist’s dream.  Tea Party Republicans will resist “reforms” to Obamacare in favor of complete repeal.  Democrats will try to turn the tables and set up Republicans as obstacles to reform, hoping to inoculate themselves prospectively from mayhem at the polls next November. The House might want to insist that the Senate go first; after all, it was the Senate version of the bill that the House had to swallow after Scott Brown’s election in January 2010.  The House can rightly insist that the Senate needs to clean up the mess they made.  Obama may well give Capitol Hill Democrats a pass on a repeal vote, and veto any bill that emerges.  He’ll never face the voters again.

This wouldn’t be the first time that a health care entitlement was repealed.  The same thing happened in the late 1980s with catastrophic coverage for seniors.  Because seniors were made to pay for their benefits under that scheme, the uproar forced Congress to repeal the measure barely a year after it went into effect.  Obamacare looks to be on the same political trajectory, and for the same reason.  Obamacare represents the crisis of big government; the limits of administrative government have finally been breached.  For the first time ever, some polls are showing a majority of Americans doubting the goal of universal health coverage.

The hazard of the moment is that a compromise “reform” that drops the mandate and attempts to restore the insurance status quo ante could leave us with an unfunded expansion of Medicaid and a badly disrupted private insurance market.  Republicans should avoid both the political traps and a new fiscal time bomb by being ready with a serious replacement policy, based on the premium support tax credit ideas that John McCain advocated (poorly) in 2008.  While anxious liberals are in dismay, they should recognize that Obamacare may well have achieved its chief purpose of making universal or at least greatly expanded health coverage a fixture of American social policy.  The cost to liberalism may prove fatal, however.

Steven Hayward, Contributor, Forbes

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

150th Anniversary of Gettysburg Address

November 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

abraham_lincolnThousands gathered Tuesday to ponder what the Gettysburg Address has meant to the nation on the Civil War battlefield where President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech that symbolized his presidency and the sacrifices made by Union and Confederate forces.

Civil War historian James McPherson and U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell were scheduled to speak to mark the 150th anniversary of the speech. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett also will deliver remarks.

“Lincoln’s timeless words embodied and galvanized us as a nation,” Congressman Scott Perry, R-Pa., said at the event. “Everything we’ve achieved since that time…was born out of sacrifice of the soldiers that fought here and the patriots that followed through their footsteps without history.”

The event comes near the end of a momentous year for the park, city and college that share the name Gettysburg, as hundreds of thousands of visitors took part in historical re-enactments and ceremonies.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — first delivered here nearly five months after the major battle that left tens of thousands of men wounded, dead or missing — will be read by a re-enactor to mark the anniversary. The ceremony included a wreath-laying at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. There also will be a graveside salute to U.S. Colored Troops at noon, and a tree planting ceremony in the afternoon.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is to swear in 16 new American citizens and join Corbett a luncheon in honor of a high school girl who won a contest with her essay about the importance the Gettysburg Address, park officials said.

Some visitors are honoring the speech as well as the men who fought in the battle. Tom Stack, 54, of Wilmington, Del., has an ancestor who fought and died at Gettysburg while serving with the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Regiment.

“It was an incredible time, with incredible individuals, on both sides, really,” Stack said Monday.

Lincoln_gettysburg_addressThe short oration, which begins, “Four score and seven years ago,” was intended to mark the dedication of the cemetery at the site of the pivotal battle. But it also came as Lincoln’s own reasons for fighting the Civil War were evolving. He spoke of how democracy itself rested upon “the proposition that all men are created equal,” a profound and politically risky statement for the time. Slavery and the doctrine of states’ rights would not hold in the “more perfect union” of Lincoln’s vision.

It was not immediately recognized as a towering literary achievement. Just last week, The Patriot-News in nearby Harrisburg retracted a dismissive editorial about the speech published by its Civil War-era predecessor, The Harrisburg Patriot & Union. The newspaper now says it regrets the error of not seeing its “momentous importance, timeless eloquence and lasting significance.”

The ideals expressed in the speech also weren’t necessarily a reflection of reality. Only a few years after the war, a separate cemetery for black Civil War veterans was created in Gettysburg because they were “denied burial in the National Cemetery because of segregation policies,” according to a historical marker placed in 2003.

The free Dedication Day event is held annually at Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Last year’s commemoration drew some 9,000 people.

President Barack Obama declined an invitation. Park officials say Rutherford B. Hayes is the last sitting president to attend a Nov. 19 event in Gettysburg.

There are several related events at the park this week, including the “Gettysburg Address Gallery” at the park museum and visitor center. The exhibit includes pages with signatures of individuals who attended the 1863 Dedication Ceremony in Gettysburg and a letter and signed pardon from Lincoln.

The annual Remembrance Day Parade in Gettysburg will be held Saturday, featuring Union and Confederate re-enactors who will lay wreaths at the portions of the battlefield their units defended.

An estimated 235,000 people came to Gettysburg this year on or around the battle’s anniversary in July.

The National Park Service is streaming Tuesday’s ceremony live to 90,000 colleges, schools, libraries and museums nationwide.

Published November 19, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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White House, HHS Knew About ObamaCare Website in March

November 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

ObamacareThe Obama administration was warned as early as March about potential risks with the implementation of HealthCare.gov, according to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Monday night.

Key administration officials at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services received briefings this past spring from McKinsey & Co., a private consulting firm that reviewed more than 200 documents and conducted interviews with HHS staff to identify potential problems before the Oct. 1 rollout.

A report prepared by McKinsey in late March discussed several issues that could hamper the implementation of ObamaCare, including insufficient testing and evolving requirements. The report also warned that the program relied too heavily on outside contractors.

In one page of the presentation, the company specifically warned about a “failure to resolve post-launch issues rapidly” — a scenario that ended up playing out last month. The company cautioned that a “compressed testing window and volume uncertainty,” coupled with the fact that response teams were not yet in place, would drag out the process of fixing problems after launch.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Medicare Chief Marilyn Tavenner, and Gary Cohen, a Medicare and Medicaid oversight official, attended a briefing on the firm’s analysis on April 4, a Capitol Hill source said. Sebelius then testified at an oversight committee hearing two weeks after being briefed on the McKinsey report that the implementation of ObamaCare was on track, according to the Hill source.

Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, called into question the administration’s assurances, arguing that the report suggests the administration was aware the implementation was in trouble months before the fall rollout.

“Despite assurances from Secretary Sebelius, Marilyn Tavenner, and Gary Cohen that ‘all was well’ and ‘on track’ with the launch of the Affordable Care Act, we now have documents dating back to April that call into question what they told us,” Murphy said.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz acknowledged late Monday that red flags were raised as the website was being developed and recommendations were taken up by a development team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“But nobody anticipated the size and scope of the problems we experienced once the site launched. Since that time, experts have been working night and day to get it functioning – and that is where our focus is, and should be, right now,” Schultz told Fox News in a statement.

CMS pushed back against the release of the report late Monday, stating that the agency has “continually evaluated progress” and has taken steps to mitigate risks and address concerns with the ObamaCare website rollout.

“The review was completed six months before the beginning of open enrollment, was in line with industry best practices, and was followed by concrete action to address potential risks—as was intended,” the agency said in a statement.

Published November 19, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

DC Insurance Commissioner Fired For Criticizing President’s ObamaCare Fix

November 17, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

William_White_ObamacareThe District of Columbia’s insurance commissioner says he was fired after questioning President Obama’s plan to fix ObamaCare and saying the city might not follow his suggestions.

Commissioner William White told The Washington Post on Saturday that he was called into Mayor Vincent Gray’s office the prior day and told the Democratic mayor “wants to go in a different direction.”

The president said Thursday that the millions of insurance plans scheduled to be canceled next year to comply with ObamaCare regulations could be extended for a year, after he told Americans prior to the law’s passage that they could keep their existing plans.

However, White and other insurance commissioners across the country have questioned the president’s proposed solution because it could create a mess in the marketplace.

Some of the top reasons for the commissioners’ objections are: policy prices are already locked in to comply with changes in ObamaCare; an extension could conflict with state-level laws to comply with the law and younger Americans needed to join the federal exchange to keep down costs will wait to enroll.

White told the newspaper that the deputy mayor who asked him to leave didn’t say the request was about his remarks.

City officials have not commented on the situation, saying they cannot discuss personnel issues. However, a city official suggested to The Post, on the condition anonymity, that White posted the statement on the city’s website before getting it approved.

The District and 16 states run their own health-care exchange, compared to the 36 states that have instead chosen to let residents shop and purchase insurance on the federal exchange.

“The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate,” White said Thursday in a statement.

He also agrees with a National Association of Insurance Commissioners statement that said Obama’s order “threatens to undermine the new market, and may lead to higher premiums and market disruptions in 2014 and beyond.”

Published November 17, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Duck Dynasty’-backed Candidate Wins Louisiana Congressional Election

November 17, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

duck-dyanstyVance McAllister, a political newcomer with the backing of the popular “Duck Dynasty” TV family, was elected as Louisiana’s newest member of Congress Saturday night.

According to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website, McAllister led establishment candidate Neil Riser 59.7 percent to 40.3 percent — a difference of over 17,500 votes — with 976 of a possible 981 precincts reporting.

McAllister advanced to this weekend’s election to face off against Riser after an October contest with more than a dozen other candidates from both political parties — in what is known as a “jungle primary.”

The seat in Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District was left open when GOP Rep. Rodney Alexander resigned this summer to take a Cabinet post in GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration.

The largely rural district along the Mississippi River delta is dotted with farmland and plagued by poverty. The 5th District covers all or part of 24 parishes, from northeast and central Louisiana into southeastern parishes bordering Mississippi.

Louisiana_raceIn last month’s election, Riser finished ahead of McAllister, taking 33 percent of the vote compared to 18 percent. But neither got the 50 percent needed to be declared the outright winner.

Many GOP races since 2010 have in some form been a Tea Party-vs.-establishment candidate showdown.

However, Riser doubled as both the establishment candidate and Tea Party favorite, promoting his experience but promising strident opposition to President Obama.

McAllister, meanwhile, embraced his outsider status, complete with an endorsement from his close friend Phil Robertson, the patriarch of television’s hit series “Duck Dynasty.” McAllister ran as the more measured pragmatist, criticizing Washington gridlock and hyper-partisanship, particularly on Obama’s health care law.

“Plain and simple, this was Riser’s election to lose. Riser was the favorite going into the evening. He had the dollars. He had the endorsement of the Republican establishment. He had a strong showing in the primary. Yet, he lost it,” Joshua Stockley, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, told the Associated Press.

An ally of Jindal, Riser had his campaign up and running almost immediately after Alexander announced his resignation in September. The timing prompted cries of favoritism, though Jindal, Alexander and Riser deny any collusion.

Riser touted his decades-long experience as a businessman in the funeral industry while arguing his insider experience has led to significant legislative accomplishments such as helping get a state constitutional amendment passed that strengthened gun rights.

“I see a very clear distinction in the fact that I’ve made the votes,” Riser said. “These aren’t just talking points for me.”

He was endorsed by the Tea Party of Louisiana and FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-aligned national political action group.

Conservative activists said it’s McAllister, who’s never held public office and noted during the campaign that he’d never even visited Washington, that they worry would be the go-along-to-get-along congressman who isn’t conservative enough.

McAllister, who spent at least $800,000 of his own money on his campaign, according to the Federal Election Comission, countered eagerly with his newcomer status.

“I am not part of the establishment; I’m just part of the district,” he said.

When Robertson endorsed his friend, he explained that McAllister has “the least political experience.”

Despite that profile, McAllister didn’t push the “blow the whole place up” mantra that some GOP primary candidates have offered in similar conservative enclaves around the country.

While he is critical of the atmosphere in Washington, he doesn’t blame it exclusively on Obama. He also points a finger at House Republicans’ 40-plus votes to repeal Obama’s health insurance overhaul.

“I will vote to repeal it if there’s a vote right now today,” he said in a recent debate.

“But the truth of the matter is you stand on a platform and pander for votes on something that can’t be repealed,” he told Riser.

McAllister says Republicans should show the president respect and that the best course on health care is to work on improving Obama’s signature law since he was re-elected and Democrats still control the Senate.

Both candidates described themselves as conservatives – opposing abortion, favoring strong gun rights and criticizing Obama’s policies generally. Both criticize the levels of federal spending and debt.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of difference in the policy, per se, because we’re both true conservatives both fiscally and socially,” McAllister said.

McAllister will take office in time to vote on the next round of budget resolutions in January and, almost certainly, a vote soon after on whether to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. Those votes were set up by an October deal to end a partial government shutdown driven by GOP opposition to the health care law.

Riser said he opposes efforts to raise the debt ceiling, saying spending should be cut instead. McAllister wasn’t so absolute. He conceded he’d be willing to raise the debt ceiling if the increase was coupled with federal spending cuts and a long-term deficit reduction plan.

Published November 17, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Religion

Thus Spake Obama – Incompetence of Our Neo-Monarchy

November 16, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

obama_scandalsIt is a condition of my admission to this great land that I am not allowed to foment the overthrow of the United States government. Oh, I signed it airily enough, but you’d be surprised, as the years go by, how often the urge to foment starts to rise in one’s gullet. Fortunately, at least as far as constitutional government goes, the president of the United States is doing a grand job of overthrowing it all by himself.

On Thursday, he passed a new law at a press conference. George III never did that. But, having ordered America’s insurance companies to comply with Obamacare, the president announced that he is now ordering them not to comply with Obamacare. The legislative branch (as it’s still quaintly known) passed a law purporting to grandfather your existing health plan. The regulatory bureaucracy then interpreted the law so as to un-grandfather your health plan. So His Most Excellent Majesty has commanded that your health plan be de-un-grandfathered. That seems likely to work. The insurance industry had three years to prepare for the introduction of Obamacare. Now the King has given them six weeks to de-introduce Obamacare.

“I wonder if he has the legal authority to do this,” mused former Vermont governor Howard Dean. But he’s obviously some kind of right-wing wacko. Later that day, anxious to help him out, Congress offered to “pass” a “law” allowing people to keep their health plans. The same president who had unilaterally commanded that people be allowed to keep their health plans indignantly threatened to veto any such law to that effect: It only counts if he does it — geddit? As his court eunuchs at the Associated Press obligingly put it: “Obama Will Allow Old Plans.” It’s Barry’s world; we just live in it.The reason for the benign Sovereign’s exercise of the Royal Prerogative is that millions of his subjects — or “folks,” as he prefers to call us, no fewer than 27 times during his press conference — have had their lives upended by Obamacare. Your traditional hard-core statist, surveying the mountain of human wreckage he has wrought, usually says, “Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” But Obama is the first to order that his omelet be unscrambled and the eggs put back in their original shells. Is this even doable? No. That’s the point. When it doesn’t work, he’ll be able to give another press conference blaming the insurance companies, or the state commissioners, or George W. Bush . . .

The most telling line, the one that encapsulates the gulf between the boundless fantasies of the faculty-lounge utopian and the messiness of reality, was this: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” Gee, thanks for sharing, genius. Maybe you should have thought of that before you governmentalized one-sixth of the economy. By “we,” the president means “I.” Out here in the ruder provinces of his decrepit realm, we “folks” are well aware of how complicated insurance is. What isn’t complicated in the Sultanate of Sclerosis? But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these words ever passed her lips, but certainly no one ever accused her of saying, “If you like your cake, you can keep your cake,” and then having to walk it back with “What we’re also discovering is that cake is complicated to buy.” That contribution to the annals of monarchical unworldliness had to await the reign of Queen Barry Antoinette, whose powdered wig seems to have slipped over his eyes.

Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronounced the day after his election, he’s “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Well, apart from his signature health-care policy. That’s a mystery to him. “I was not informed directly that the website would not be working,” he told us. The buck stops with something called “the executive branch,” which is apparently nothing to do with him. As evidence that he was entirely out of the loop, he offered this:

Had I been I informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, “Boy, this is going to be great.” You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, “This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,” a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.

Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of hands.

Michael Beschloss is right: This is what it means to be smart in a neo-monarchical America. Obama spake, and it shall be so. And, if it turns out not to be so, why pick on him? He talks a good Royal Proclamation; why get hung up on details?

Until October 1, Obama had never done anything — not run a gas station, or a doughnut stand — other than let himself be wafted onward and upward to the next do-nothing gig. Even in his first term, he didn’t really do: Starting with the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus, he ran a money-no-object government that was all money and no objects; he spent and spent, and left no trace. Some things he massively expanded (food stamps, Social Security disability) and other things he massively diminished (effective foreign policy), but all were, so to speak, preexisting conditions. Obamacare is the first thing Obama has actually done, and, if you’re the person it’s being done to, it’s not pretty.

The president promised to “fundamentally transform” America. Certainly, other men have succeeded in transforming settled, free societies: Pierre Trudeau did in Canada four decades ago, and so, in post-war Britain, did the less charismatic Clement Attlee. And, if you subscribe to their particular philosophy, their transformations were effected very efficiently. But Obama is an incompetent, so “fundamentally transformed” is a euphemism for “wrecked beyond repair.” As a socialist, he makes a good socialite.

But on he staggers, with a wave of his scepter, delaying this, staying that, exempting the other, according to his regal whim and internal polling. The omniscient beneficent Sovereign will now graciously “allow” us “folks” to keep all those junk plans from bad-apple insurers. Yet even the wisest King cannot reign forever, and what will happen decades down the road were someone less benign — perhaps even (shudder) a Republican — to ascend the throne and wield these mighty powers?

Hey, relax: If you like your constitution, you can keep your constitution. Period. And your existing amendments. Well, most of them — except for the junk ones . . .

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Why Liberals Are Panicking

November 15, 2013 By Editor 2 Comments

Charles_KrauthammerThe future of entitlement-state progressivism hinges on Obamacare.

So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.

Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats against Obamacare. Within hours, that rebellion went loudly public. By Thursday, President Obama had been forced into a rearguard holding action, asking insurers to grant a one-year extension of current plans.

“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.” –Former President Bill Clinton, November 12

The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority considers him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring, and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state, and create yet new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the last half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.

As the only socially transformational legislation in modern American history to be enacted on a straight party-line vote, Obamacare is wholly owned by the Democrats. Its unraveling would catastrophically undermine their underlying ideology of ever-expansive central government providing cradle-to-grave care for an ever-grateful citizenry.

For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.

It begins with the bungled rollout. If Washington can’t even do the website — the literal portal to this brave new world — how does it propose to regulate the vast ecosystem of American medicine? Second, arrogance. Five million freely chosen, freely purchased, freely renewed health-care plans are summarily canceled. Why? Because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by the experts in Washington.

For all his news-conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. That’s the very definition of paternalism.

Lastly, deception. The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama. This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.

The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance, and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.

Perhaps it won’t go down. Perhaps the web portal hums beautifully on November 30. Perhaps they’ll find a way to restore the canceled policies without wrecking the financial underpinning of the exchanges.

Perhaps. The more likely scenario, however, is that Obamacare does fail. It either fails politically, renounced by a wide consensus that includes a growing number of Democrats. Or it succumbs to the financial complications (the insurance “death spiral”) of the very amendments desperately tacked on to save it.

If it does fail, the effect will be historic. Obamacare will take down with it more than Mary Landrieu and Co. It will discredit Obama’s new liberalism for years to come.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2013 the Washington Post Writers Group

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Obama Offers a Patch for the Titanic

November 14, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

File photo of U.S. President Obama speaking about continuing government shutdown during White House news conference in WashingtonFollowing a horrific roll-out performance for his namesake landmark legislation, President Obama approached the nation with his tail between his legs today suggesting an administrative fix to the millions of Americans who have lost their health care coverage due to the mandates of the Affordable Care Act–Obamacare.

Indeed, since its inception conservatives have been howling that the Act is ill-conceived, and have been warning the nation that such a sweeping takeover of a major sector of the American economy by an incompetent federal government will lead to widespread disaster.

These warnings have been rebuked by leftists in the Democratic party, and by their mainstream media outlets as unwarranted and hyperbole.

Now, with only 106,000 signups in the first six weeks of the roll-out, most of which appear to be for MediCaid, a POS website that appears to be the result of giving the $Billion contract to a personal friend of the White House, and millions of citizens losing their healthcare coverage, the president acknowledges, “I completely get how upsetting this could be for many Americans.”

White House officials said they will quickly send a letter to state insurance commissioners specifying that current plans sold to existing customers will not be considered out of compliance with the health care law in 2014.

Obamacare is a poorly planned strategy for taking over the American healthcare system, and millions are being dropped because their plans fail to live up to Obamacare standards–that’s the White House spin on it anyway.  The reality is, for example, couples in their 60s are being canceled because their insurance does not include pre-natal coverage.  In other words, in classic socialistic fashion, Obamacare prescribes a one-size-fits-all policy (consider the very limited car and color choice of communist countries), exactly the opposite of the capitalistic approach, which tailors plans to fit the specific needs and budgets of consumers.

Obama’s ‘fix’ merely buys a little time for millions of Americans in danger of being dropped by their provider. Notwithstanding the fiasco, the president said today, “I am confident that by the time we look back on this next year, people are going to say, ‘this is working out well.’” We disagree.

House Speaker John Boehner called ObamaCare a “rolling calamity that has to be stopped,” although he refused to stop the legislation from receiving funding for implementation when the going got a little tough in the capital.

Barack Husein Obama is a liar, and he has been caught in his lies about Obamacare, among other things.  Even members of his own party who were anxious to force a European-styled socialist medical system on Americans are now distancing themselves from the increasingly unpopular president and his signature socialistic legislation.  The grand failure of the most significant leap to the left in many decades exposes the folly of socialism in a way that the left has diligently sought to cover up since their push for socialism began a century ago.

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Obama Offers ‘Administrative Fix’ for ObamaCare

November 14, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

OBAMA-unemploymentWASHINGTON –  President Obama announced Thursday he would offer an administrative “fix” to a provision in the Affordable Care Act — or ObamaCare — that forces millions of Americans to lose their existing health coverage by directing insurance companies to allow affected policy holders to renew their old coverage.

The president said states and insurers can extend current policies canceled under health law for a year.

“I completely get how upsetting this could be for many Americans,” Obama said.

White House officials say a letter going out to state insurance commissioners will specify that current plans sold to existing customers will not be considered out of compliance with the health care law in 2014.

A rash of canceled policies — primarily for people in the individual insurance market, whose plans are now considered sub-optimal under the new health care law’s coverage standards — have prompted public outrage toward Obama and broken promises.

It’s uncertain how the president’s “fix” will affect House Democrats who have been calling for a legislative solution — as the Republicans are offering.

While the administration is granting new flexibility, it remains to be seen if state regulators and insurance companies will exercise the option.

“It won’t solve every problem for every person but it will solve a lot of them,” Obama said.

Obama’s announcement comes as pressure mounts by members of his own party to fix multiple problems associated with his landmark health care law.

House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday he was “highly skeptical” the Obama administration would be able to fix the problems with ObamaCare administratively, like the president suggested.

Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, has called ObamaCare, a “rolling calamity that has to be stopped.”

“This is going to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world,” Boehner said moments before the president spoke.

Earlier Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., foreshadowed the president’s announcement. Pelosi has publicly been one of the strongest supporters of ObamaCare.

White House officials are scheduled to meet with the House and Senate Democratic caucuses Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill. They are expected to meet and strategize over patches to the law.

Published November 14, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Sen. Paul—Barack Obama Wrote Regulation To Cancel Your Insurance, And Every Democrat Voted For It

November 13, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

rand-paulSenator Rand Paul spoke at a luncheon in Charleston, South Carolina on Monday, Veterans’ Day, and pointed out that President Barack Obama himself wrote the regulation to cancel the health insurance of millions of Americans, and every member of his party voted for it.

“I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation WRITTEN BY PRESIDENT OBAMA, three months later. So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you COULDN’T BE CANCELLED, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. EVERY DEMOCRAT VOTED TO KEEP THE RULE THAT CANCELS YOUR INSURANCE.”

PUBLIUS

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Gender, Religion

The Truth About Obamacare Navigators

November 11, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Navigators Help Floridians Sign Up For New Health Care MarketplaceJames O’Keefe reveals corruption at the heart of the president’s signature program.

James O’Keefe, the guerrilla videographer who helped bring down ACORN (the “community organizing” group that Barack Obama worked for as a lawyer and trainer) and got NPR’s president fired, is back.

This time, his undercover investigators focused on Obamacare’s “navigators,” the nearly 50,000 people who, in the words of the Department of Health and Human Services, “will serve as an in-person resource for Americans who want additional assistance in shopping for and enrolling in plans” on the Obamacare exchanges (at least when they’re finally working). The total value of grants doled out for nonprofits and community organizations to hire navigators has topped $67 million nationwide, and some of the money is going to a group run by ACORN’s highly controversial founder.

The events of O’Keefe’s video of a Texas navigator site run by the National Urban League are a familiar sight to viewers of his past efforts exposing Medicaid and voter fraud. Government-paid workers supposedly trained to uphold the law advise clients on how to lie on government forms, evade legal requirements, and ignore proper procedures.

“You lie because your premiums will be higher,” one navigator advises an investigator for O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, who tells the worker he sometimes smokes. “Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell ’em.”

The investigator then poses as a low-income worker at a university who has unreported cash income on the side, worrying about how that might affect his premium subsidies. That’s no problem for a navigator, who says, “Don’t get yourself in trouble by declaring it now.”

“Yeah, it didn’t happen,” another navigator says. One more chimes in: “Never report it.”

Records show that the National Urban League was paid $376,000 by the federal government for its Obamacare outreach in Texas.

O’Keefe’s cameras then visit Enroll America, a nationwide nonprofit group that has launched a multi-state grassroots campaign to help millions of Americans sign up for health coverage. Daniel Clayton of Enroll America says the group is “purely nonprofit. It’s not partisan, non-political.” But when Brian Pendleton of Enroll America is introduced at a speaking engagement, Enroll America is described as “the official group for the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”

Enroll America, O’Keefe reports, appears to be sharing data and working directly with an explicitly political group called Battleground Texas, activities that he notes “are prohibited unless certain conditions are met.” Adrian Bell, the regional field director for Battleground Texas, proudly notes the group was “started by President Obama’s national field director” and is “dedicated to turning Texas blue.”

By John Fund

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Entitlement, Ethics, Foreign, Gender, Religion, Sci-Tech

Lee Harvey Oswald and the John F. Kennedy Assassination

November 11, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

lee-harvey-oswald-2Within hours of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, most Americans were familiar with the name Lee Harvey Oswald. Certain images of him — posing with a rifle, recoiling from Jack Ruby’s gun — have been ingrained in the nation’s memory. Yet to this day, he remains an enigma. Some of the questions and answers about him:

___

Q: Did Oswald kill Kennedy? Did he act alone?

A: The Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone, firing three shots from a window in his Dallas workplace, the Texas School Book Depository. Many Americans have questioned this conclusion. In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations ended its own inquiry by finding that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

___

Q: What was Oswald’s childhood like?

A: Unstable. By the time he turned 17 and joined the Marines, he’d lived at more than 20 different addresses and attended a dozen schools. He was born in New Orleans on Oct. 18, 1939, two months after his father died of a heart attack, spent time in an orphanage as a 3-year-old, and moved with his family to Dallas in 1944. He and his mother moved in 1952 to New York City, where he had run-ins with truant officers and underwent psychiatric observation. Two years later, they moved back to New Orleans.

__

Lee-Oswald-MarineQ: How did he fare in the Marines?

A: Erratically. In early phases of his service at U.S. bases, he got good performance evaluations and qualified as a sharpshooter after marksmanship training. But he was court-martialed twice while stationed in Japan, first after wounding himself with an unauthorized pistol and later after a bar fight. He tried to teach himself Russian, and — at the height of the Cold War — would occasionally speak favorably of Marxism and the Soviet Union.

___

Q: Did he try to defect to Russia?

A: Yes. He obtained an early discharge from the Marines, and in 1959 he traveled to Finland and boarded a train to Moscow. Soon after arrival, he told his guide he wanted to defect. Russian authorities initially rebuffed him (he slit his wrist in response) but eventually allowed him to stay and sent him to the city of Minsk to work at an electronics factory. In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacology student. They married within six weeks and had a child in February 1962. That May, after expressing weariness with life in Russia, Oswald and his wife applied at the American Embassy in Moscow for documents enabling her to immigrate to the U.S. They settled in Dallas that fall.

___

Q: Wasn’t Oswald linked to another assassination plot?

A: On April 10, 1963, a gunman fired a rifle through a window of the Dallas home of Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, a fervent anti-communist and segregationist who resigned from the Army after being reprimanded for giving troops right-wing propaganda. Walker, working at a desk in his home, was slightly injured by fragments. The Warren Commission later concluded Oswald was the gunman.

___

Q: What’s the Cuban connection in Oswald’s life?

A: In late April 1963, just days after the attack on Walker, Oswald went to New Orleans and spent the summer there. He printed and distributed leaflets in support of Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, and got into a street fight with anti-Castro demonstrators. Yet the leaflets bore an address of a local anti-Castro operation connected to a former FBI agent. That September, Oswald took a bus to Mexico City and visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in an unsuccessful effort to get clearance to travel to Russia via Cuba.

___

Q: How was Oswald arrested on Nov. 22?

A: The Warren Commission said Oswald left the book depository moments after shots were fired from the sixth floor, returned by bus and cab to his rooming house, then ventured out again — soon encountering a Dallas police officer who stopped him based on descriptions of the assassination suspect. According to the commission, Oswald fatally shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit with a handgun, then fled into a nearby movie theater, where he was soon arrested.

___

Q: What was playing that day at the Texas Theatre?

A: A double bill of “War is Hell” and “Cry of Battle.”

___

jack_rubyQ: Who was Jack Ruby?

A: Ruby was a Dallas nightclub owner well acquainted with many police officers. As Oswald was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail on Nov. 24, Ruby shot him in the chest from close range. Oswald was rushed unconscious to Parkland Memorial Hospital — where doctors had tried to save Kennedy’s life two days earlier — and died there at 1:07 p.m. Ruby was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He appealed and was granted a new trial, but died of lung cancer before a trial date was set. Ruby said he was angered by Kennedy’s assassination and wanted to spare Jacqueline Kennedy the ordeal of a trial for Oswald. Skeptics, noting that Ruby had some connections with underworld figures, have suggested his shooting of Oswald was part of a broader conspiracy.

___

Q: Did the Warren Commission specify a motive for Oswald killing Kennedy?

A: No. Oswald “was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment,” the report said. “He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it.”

By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 11/11/13

Filed Under: All Stories, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Foreign

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Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation

Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation

Real Estate Wealth Strategies During High Inflation is a comprehensive guide on navigating the real estate market, offering strategies and insights for successful investing, during high inflation and interest rates.

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