Here are a few facts to bear in mind when we’re all regaled by the president about Obama’s ‘historic’ presidency at his State of the Union address:

1. The Number Of Americans That Have Joined The Food Stamp Program Since Obama Took Office: 19.4 Million.
2. The Number Of People Unemployed At The End Of Obama’s Fifth Year As President: 10.4 Million.
3. The Number Of People Working Part-Time That Would Like To Work Full-Time: 7.8 Million.
4. The Number Of People That Have Entered Poverty Since 2008: 6.7 Million.
5. Americans Who Received Cancellation Notices For Their Health Plans Due To ObamaCare After Obama Promised They Could Keep Their Plans In His 2010 State Of The Union Address: 5 Million.
6. The Number Of Americans Struggling With Long-Term Unemployment Of 27 Weeks Or Over: 3.9 Million.
7. The Increase In Americans Struggling With Long-Term Unemployment Since Obama Became President: 1.2 Million.
8. Construction Jobs (aka “Shovel-Ready Jobs”) Lost Since Obama Took Office: 721,000.
9. Manufacturing Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office: 528,000.
10. The Number Of People That Left The Labor Force In December: 347,000.
11. The Debt Per Capita For Americans At The End Of 2013: $54,688.
12. Average Student Debt For A College Graduate: $29,400
13. The Increase In Debt Per Capita For Americans Since Obama Took Office: $19,661
14. The Decline In Median House Hold Income Since Obama Became President: $3,827.
15. Increase In Family Health Care Premiums Under Obama, Despite His Claim That ObamaCare Would Reduce Premiums During His 2010 State Of The Union Address (Subsidies Being Irrelevant): $3,671.
16. The Last Time The Labor Force Participation Rate Was At Its Current level: 1978.
17. Increase In The Average Price Per Gallon Of Gas Since Obama Took Office: 79%.
18. The Percent Of Unemployed That Are 18-34 Year Olds: 46%.
19. Average Number Of Weeks Someone Will Be Unemployed: 37.
20. Poverty Rate In 2012 – An Increase From 13.2 Percent The Year Before Obama Became President: 15%.
21. The Number Of Times Obama Has Pivoted To The Economy: 14.
22. The Number of New Ideas Expected From Obama’s 2014 State Of The Union Address: 0.

These are just some of the “fun facts” that come via RNC research, and they are based on government and third-party figures.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack 0bama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world’s largest economy, direct the world’s most powerful military, execute the world’s most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining 0bama’s pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a “community organizer;” a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, less often did he vote “present”); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as 0bama’s “spiritual mentor;” a real-life, actual terrorist who served as 0bama’s colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: How on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: “To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. 0bama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were ‘a bit’ extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: 0bama was given a pass – held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.”

Podhoretz continues: “And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?”

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon – affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don’t care if these minority students fail; liberals aren’t around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin – that’s affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn’t racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to 0bama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama’s oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people – conservatives included – ought now to be deeply embarrassed.

The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that’s when he has his teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth – it’s all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track). But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office.

By Matt Patterson (Newsweek Columnist – Opinion Writer)

LOS ANGELES — In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds.

A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum.

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S.

Those people said that the application had been under review for roughly two years, and had at one point included a demand — which was not met — for enhanced access to the group’s security-protected website, which would have revealed member names. Tax experts said that an organization’s membership list is information that would not typically be required. The I.R.S. already had access to the site’s basic levels, a request it considers routine for applications for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

The actors Gary Sinise, right, and Jon Voight, left, are among the few whose affiliation with Friends of Abe is public knowledge.

Friends of Abe — the name refers to Abraham Lincoln — has strongly discouraged the naming of its members. That policy even prohibits the use of cameras at group events, to avoid the unwilling identification of all but a few associates — the actors Gary Sinise, Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer, or the writer-producer Lionel Chetwynd, for instance — who have spoken openly about their conservative political views.

The I.R.S. request comes in the face of a continuing congressional investigation into the agency’s reviews of political nonprofits, most of them conservative-leaning, which provoked outrage on the right and forced the departure last year of several high-ranking I.R.S. officials. But unlike most of those groups, which had sought I.R.S. approval for a mix of election campaigning and nonpartisan issue advocacy, Friends of Abe is seeking a far more restrictive tax status, known as 501(c)(3), that would let donors claim a tax deduction, but strictly prohibits any form of partisan activity.

The group is not currently designated tax-exempt, but it behaves as a nonprofit and has almost no formal structure, people briefed on the matter said. The I.R.S. review will determine whether Friends of Abe receives tax-exempt status that would provide legal footing similar to that of the People for the American Way Foundation, a progressive group fostered by the television producer Norman Lear and others. If not, Friends of Abe could resort to the courts, or it might simply operate as a nonprofit, but it would be unable to receive tax-deductible contributions.

Jeremy Boreing, executive director of Friends of Abe, declined on Wednesday to discuss details of the tax review, but said the group would continue regardless of outcome.

“Certainly, it’s been a long process,” he said.

“Friends of Abe has absolutely no political agenda,” he added. “It exists to create fellowship among like-minded individuals.”

People for the American Way, Mr. Lear’s group, stands as something of a liberal counterpart to Friends of Abe, though the organization is far larger, with an affiliate that spends millions of dollars a year on issue advocacy in Washington and beyond. But the entertainment industry has been crisscrossed by progressive groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, which maintains a tax-exempt educational adjunct under the 501(c)(3) provision, and includes the producer Laurie David and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio among its trustees. Another, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, is a nonprofit that supports marriage rights for gay people and counts the producer Bruce Cohen and the writer Dustin Lance Black among its founders.

In the request last week, tax officials combined broad questions about membership criteria and social events, according to the people briefed on the matter, with pointed queries about meetings with a Los Angeles mayoral candidate, Kevin James, and Republican politicians like Mr. Ryan, Mr. Cain and Rick Santorum.

Officials particularly wanted to know why a speech introducing Mr. Cain at a Friends of Abe event in November 2011 — when he was a presidential candidate — should not be regarded as potentially prohibited political campaign support.

While tax-exempt groups are permitted to invite candidates to speak at events, it is not uncommon for the I.R.S. to scrutinize such activities to determine whether they cross the line into partisan election activity. One issue is whether the organization invites all the qualified candidates.

“The I.R.S. would say that if you are inviting only conservative candidates, that’s a problem,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former director of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division. “But it’s never really been litigated.”

Ofer Lion, a lawyer representing Friends of Abe in its application for tax-exempt status, declined to comment.

Friends of Abe began about nine years ago as little more than an email chain linking conservative stars, filmmakers and other Hollywood figures who were generally reluctant to openly discuss their views. The name is a take on Friends of Bill, the circle of loyalists who have adhered to Bill Clinton over the years.

Mr. Sinise was a leading voice among those who in early 2005 gathered at Morton’s Steakhouse here for an informal dinner that members have since identified as the group’s closest approach to an actual founding moment.

As Friends of Abe grew, however, Mr. Sinise withdrew from active leadership, and Mr. Boreing, a film producer and director, took charge.

Membership has been defined mostly by access to a private website (there are no dues, but enhanced online access requires a small fee), and attendance at a growing number of events that have included meetings with political operatives like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz; politicians like Michele Bachmann and John Boehner; and media figures like Ann Coulter, Dennis Miller and Mark Levin.

The recent I.R.S. query did not mention the earlier request for access to the names of members, people briefed on the query said.

But a remaining question is whether at least some of the group’s politically oriented encounters will be interpreted as campaign activity, and weigh against its bid for tax exemption as a 501(c)(3) organization, devoted to educational or charitable work.

A spokesman for the I.R.S. on Wednesday said it was prohibited from commenting on specific taxpayer activity.

Tax officials and congressional overseers have been embroiled in a debate over the enforcement of rules that restrict campaign activity by tax-exempt groups since last year, when an I.R.S. official acknowledged that officers had improperly targeted Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. But most of those groups were seeking recognition as so-called 501(c)(4) groups, whose ability to conduct a limited amount of campaign activity is governed by a vague patchwork of rules and standards. In November, in an effort to make the process both more transparent and more rigorous, the I.R.S. announced that it would begin formulating new rules.

The conservative filmmaker behind a hit anti-Obama documentary was indicted Thursday night on charges he violated federal campaign laws, in what a close colleague is calling a “selective prosecution.”

Dinesh D’Souza, whose “2016: Obama’s America” is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time, will appear in U.S. District Court in New York Friday.

The indictment states the 52-year-old best-selling author and activist will be charged with one count of illegally donating to a Senate campaign and one count of causing false statements to be made to authorities in connection with the contributions.

FoxNews.com has confirmed that the donation in question was made to Republican Wendy Long, who lost a 2012 Senate bid against New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

D’Souza is accused of directing various donors to give contributions to Long’s campaign totaling $20,000, and then reimbursing them. Individuals are only allowed to donate a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate per election cycle.

“Trying to influence elections through bogus campaign contributions is a serious crime,” George Venizelos, the assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office said in a statement.  “Today, Mr. D’Souza finds himself on the wrong side of the law.”

DINESH D’SOUZA interviews Obama’s brother in Africa

D’Souza’s co-producer in “2016” Gerald Molen told FoxNews.com he believes D’Souza is being singled out by federal authorities.

The 2012 film examined President Obama’s past and early influences that may have shaped his political ideology and was a surprise hit, making over $33 million at the box office.

The duo is teaming up again for a new film “America,” which Molen said will be released on schedule in July 2014 regardless of what happens in the case.

“Neither the filmmakers nor the American public can allow this prosecution to deter us from the film’s release, and I am calling upon the American people to show their elected officials that this kind of selective prosecution will not stand, by joining us at the box office,” Molen said. “I look forward to my good friend Dinesh being vindicated for what appears to be nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

Molen, who won an Oscar as a co-producer for “Schindler’s List” said the charges against D’Souza deeply disappoint him, as D’Souza is a “great American.”

The indictment states the alleged illegal contributions came to light during the FBI’s routine examination of campaign contributions  filed with the FEC during the 2012 election year.

D’Souza faces a maximum of two years in prison for the illegal contributions charge and a maximum of five years in prison for the false statements charge.

The indictment was announced by Venizelos and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009.

A record high number of voters now oppose the 2010 Affordable Care Act and a record low number supports it, according to the latest Fox News poll.

In addition, a majority thinks the new law will increase their health care costs, while few think it will improve their quality of care.

The new poll finds 59 percent of voters oppose the health care law, up from 55 percent who opposed it six months ago (June 2013).  The increase in opposition comes from both independents and Democrats.

Nearly a third of Democrats — 30 percent — oppose the law, up from 22 percent in June.

Opposition among independents went from 53 percent to 64 percent today.

Overall, 36 percent of voters favor the new health care law.  That’s down from 40 percent in June and marks a new low.

Sixty-four percent of Democrats, 29 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans like the law.

Enrollment in the Obama health care exchanges began October 1 and the requirement to have qualifying coverage started January 1.

Some apparent reasons for opposition to the law include the fact that majorities think the new law will increase their taxes (63 percent), increase their insurance costs (62 percent) and increase the federal deficit (56 percent).

Meanwhile, just one voter in five thinks Obamacare will increase the quality of their health care (19 percent).  More than twice as many expect the quality of their care to get worse (39 percent) and another 37percent think it will stay the same.

By a 44-36 percent margin, voters think the quality of health care for all Americans will decrease rather than increase as a result of the new law.

Voters disapprove of the job President Obama is doing on health care by a 59-38 percent margin.

His highest rating on health care was 48 percent approval in September 2012, while his lowest was 36 percent in November 2013.

Some lawmakers are questioning the security of the health care exchanges and raise the possibility of identity theft for participants.  The new poll finds 60 percent of voters lack confidence in the website’s ability to keep their information private.  Thirty-seven percent are at least somewhat confident, including nine percent who are “very” confident.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,010 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from January 19-21, 2014.  The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

  By Dana Blanton / Published January 23, 2014 / FoxNews.com

Mark Levin opened his show today livid over Obama’s announcement that he will ignore the legislature and use his pen to write executive orders. He says the separation of powers are the key to our Republic and yet today Obama just announced that he would assume lawmaking powers via executive orders.

Mark Levin says what’s going on here is that we are witnessing a gradual, quiet coup:

He’s just announced that he is going to assume lawmaking powers. He does not recognize the majority in the House of Representatives. I don’t know how much more clearly he can say it. You know what this is folks? This is a gradual, quiet coup. That’s what is taking place. It’s gradual. It’s quiet, in the sense that it’s non-violent. But it’s a coup!

Listen to the entire segment below:

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.

“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'” Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. “I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.”

Ham’s account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The testimony, given under “Top Secret” clearance and only declassified this month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis travels at the top echelons of America’s national security apparatus, all the way up to the president.

Also among those whose secret testimony was declassified was Dempsey, the first person Ham briefed about Benghazi. Ham told lawmakers he considered it a fortuitous “happenstance” that he was able to rope Dempsey and Panetta into one meeting, so that, as Ham put it, “they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.” Ham also told lawmakers he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from their 30-minute session with President Obama on Sept. 11.

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., sitting in on the subcommittee’s hearing with Ham last June, reserved for himself an especially sensitive line of questioning: namely, whether senior Obama administration officials, in the very earliest stages of their knowledge of Benghazi, had any reason to believe that the assault grew spontaneously out of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video produced in America.

Numerous aides to the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly told the public in the weeks following the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that night — as Obama’s hotly contested bid for re-election was entering its final stretch — that there was no evidence the killings were the result of a premeditated terrorist attack, but rather were the result of a protest gone awry. Subsequent disclosures exposed the falsity of that narrative, and the Obama administration ultimately acknowledged that its early statements on Benghazi were untrue.

“In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” McKeon asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”

The transcript reads as follows:

WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”

HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”

WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”

HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”

Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that “there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi.” “Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?” asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack,” Panetta replied.

Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made clear they, too, knew immediately — from surveillance video and eyewitness accounts — that the incident was a terrorist attack. After providing the first substantive “tick-tock” of the events in Benghazi, during a background briefing conducted on the evening of Oct. 9, 2012, a reporter asked two top aides to then-Secretary Clinton: “What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”

“That is a question that you would have to ask others,” replied one of the senior officials. “That was not our conclusion.”

Ham’s declassified testimony further underscores that Obama’s earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for Benghazi.

The day after the attacks, which marked the first killing of an American ambassador in the line of duty since 1979, Obama strode to the Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to say: “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” As late as Sept. 24, during an appearance on the talk show “The View,” when asked directly by co-host Joy Behar if Benghazi had been “an act of terrorism,” the president hedged, saying: “Well, we’re still doing an investigation.”

The declassified transcripts show that beyond Ham, Panetta and Dempsey, other key officers and channels throughout the Pentagon and its combatant commands were similarly quick to label the incident a terrorist attack. In a classified session on July 31 of last year, Westrup raised the question with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region.

Bristol, who was traveling in Dakar, Senegal when the attack occurred, said he received a call from the Joint Operations Center alerting him to “a considerable event unfolding in Libya.” Bristol’s next call was to Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli. Gibson informed Bristol that Stevens was missing, and that “there was a fight going on” at the consulate compound.

WESTRUP: “So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -“

BRISTOL: “Yes, sir.”

WENSTRUP: “– on the United States?”

BRISTOL: “Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack.”

Staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee conducted nine classified sessions on the Benghazi attacks, and are close to issuing what they call an “interim” report on the affair. Fox News reported in October their preliminary conclusion that U.S. forces on the night of the Benghazi attacks were postured in such a way as to make military rescue or intervention impossible — a finding that buttresses the claims of Dempsey and other senior Pentagon officials.

While their investigation continues, staffers say they still want to question Panetta directly. But the former defense secretary, now retired, has resisted such calls for additional testimony.

“He is in the president’s Cabinet,” said Rep. Martha Roby R-Ala., chair of the panel that collected the testimony, of Panetta. “The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what’s going on, and I honestly think that that’s why you have seen — beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans’ lives — is that  the American people feel misled.”

“Leon Panetta should have spoken up,” agreed Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and now a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have.”

Neither Panetta’s office nor the White House responded to Fox News’ requests for comment.

By James Rosen

On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia slammed President Barack Obama’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution during oral arguments over Recess appointments.

The case, National Labor Relations Board vs. Noel Canning, is over whether the president acted legally when he made a series of temporary appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was not conducting business  but still gavelling in and out every day.

Clause three of the Constitution’s section on presidential powers states that, “The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.”

At issue is if the president acted in poor faith by saying the Senate was not in session. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that the Constitution is ambiguous on the subject.

“It’s been assumed to be ambiguous by self-interested presidents,” Scalia replied. After Scalia’s retort, the court room was filled with “oohs” and laughter, Talking Points Memo reports.

Since the National Labor Relations Board conflict, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has broken centuries of tradition by allowing Senate approval for appointments by majority vote, thereby making the case less consequential to Senate procedure.

But if the Supreme Court rules against the White House, the board’s executive actions will no longer be valid.

By Christopher Bedford

With media attention focused on Chris Christie and Bridgegate, it was easy to miss a more important Washington story last week. The other shoe dropped on the Obama presidency.

Still battered at home by the ObamaCare debacle and the permanently sluggish economy, the last thing the White House wanted was bad news on foreign policy. But that’s exactly what it got, and then some, thanks to the shockingly scathing book by Robert Gates.

The former defense secretary offers the most devastating critique to come from an Obama insider. He paints the president as estranged from the very Afghan military surge he ordered and suspicious of and hostile toward top leaders of the armed forces.

Gates is especially critical of Vice President Joe Biden, writing that he has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign-policy and national-security issue over the past four decades.”

He blames Biden and others for leading Obama to believe that military leaders were giving the president “the bum’s rush” in seeking more troops in Afghanistan in 2009, according to excerpts.

“Suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me,” Gates writes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton also comes off as a craven politician, with Gates saying he witnessed Clinton confess to Obama that she opposed the 2007 Iraq surge because she thought it would help her 2008 presidential campaign.

The book, set for release this week, carries extra sting because Gates is a widely respected team player who served presidents from both parties. The former head of the CIA, he led the Pentagon under George W. Bush and Obama.

His status as a kind of one-man blue-ribbon panel makes it impossible to refute his charges. The result is that the existing image of Obama as incompetent on domestic policies is now twinned with one of incompetence abroad. And those views are rapidly hardening into fixed conventional wisdom.

The implications are enormous for the three years left in his term. “It makes him even more of a lame duck,” says Ed Rollins, a GOP wise man . He says Obama, whose approval number is stuck at about 40 percent, won’t be welcome to campaign for most Democrats during this year’s election.

“Most will say, ‘Thanks but no thanks, just send the money,’ ” Rollins adds.

And Obama’s lack of commitment to the war on terror is something our enemies already figured out and are exploiting.

Longtime al Qaeda expert Peter Bergen pulls together disturbing developments previously reported only in piecemeal fashion. “From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East,” Bergen writes for CNN, and adds, “Al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.”

Others note that borders are being erased as terror groups carve out safe havens in several countries. Even The New York Times took a rare break from its propaganda approach to Obama, seeing a “power vacuum” and “a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds.”

It later added a frightening note, reporting that intelligence officials say Syrian Islamists are trying to recruit Americans to carry out terror attacks here.

This “parade of horribles” largely reflects a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia for Muslim supremacy that is spreading because Obama has abdicated global leadership. Adding a nuclear-armed Iran to the dangerous mix is a terrifying prospect to many in the region.

But not to worry, the administration is on the case. Secretary of State John Kerry paid his 10th visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in a frantic, and relatively pointless, effort to get a peace treaty.

And President Obama returned from his 17-day, $4 million vacation in Hawaii and promptly denounced income inequality. On Friday, the Justice Department said it would recognize gay marriage in Utah, even though the state doesn’t.

And the band played on.

By Michael Goodwin

WASHINGTON –  Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in his upcoming memoir, has harsh words for President Obama’s leadership style and commitment to the Afghanistan war, accusing the president of losing faith in his own strategy.

“For him, it’s all about getting out,” he wrote.

The tone of Gates’ book is a break from Washington decorum, in which former Cabinet members rarely level tough judgments against sitting presidents.

Gates writes that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his.”

The book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” is scheduled for a Jan. 14 release by the Knopf DoubleDay Publishing Group. Excerpts, confirmed by Fox News, were first reported by The Washington Post and New York Times.

The 70-year-old Gates writes that Obama appeared to doubt his own strategy in Afghanistan to the point of being “outright convinced it would fail.”

Obama deployed 30,000 more troops to stabilize Afghanistan before starting to remove soldiers in mid-2011, after months of tense discussion with Gates and other top advisers.

Gates said he never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, “only his support for their mission.”

In an essay Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal apparently to promote the book, Gates also writes that Obama’s “fundamental problem in Afghanistan was that his political and philosophical preferences for winding down the U.S. role conflicted with his own pro-war public rhetoric … the nearly unanimous recommendations of his senior civilian and military advisers at the departments of State and Defense, and the realities on the ground.”

Gates, a carryover from the Bush administration who worked for every president since Nixon, except Clinton, said that underneath his notoriously calm exterior he was frequently “seething” because he felt Obama and his team had neither trust nor confidence in him.

Despite his criticism of Obama, Gates writes about the commander in chief’s primary Afghanistan polices: “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.”

And he writes approvingly about Obama in several other passages, calling him “a man of personal integrity.”

He admits to having “a few issues” with George W. Bush and essentially wrote approvingly of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he described as being “smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world.”

However, Gates, who also worked at the CIA and National Security Council, is largely critical of Vice President Joe Biden, accusing him of “poisoning the well” for military leadership.

At the White House, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in response to the book, “The president welcomes differences of view among his national security team, which broaden his options and enhance our policies.

“The president disagrees with Secretary Gates’ assessment — from his leadership on the Balkans in the Senate, to his efforts to end the war in Iraq, Joe Biden has been one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America’s leadership in the world.”

An Open Letter to the Obama Administration and American Citizens:

My family’s journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys’ ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us.

On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kid’s college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month – how in the world could this help the economy too?

Throughout the month of October we read everything we could on what our plan would cover, and tried to get the information we needed about the ACA. I was also blown away when I realized that my son’s medical care, he has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), would cost us so much more out of pocket than it was currently costing us. My son has to go to his doctor every other month for his care. If we need to see a therapist we do that monthly, so you see on top of the premiums there are other out of pocket cost we have to factor in. He is also on medication that he takes daily. His medicine is a life saver for him and helps him function like a normal seven year old, without it he can’t focus, his grades slip and his mind literally goes back to the mind of a three or four year old. When he was first put on his medicine his reading went up 20 points and he went from writing one to two sentences to paragraphs, all in the course of a week. He is a straight A student and very bright, but without the proper medical care that could slip away from him. Under our new plan for 2014 we would need to pay a $55.00 co-pay, and then it would be covered at 80 percent once we reached his deductible, which would be $2,000 individual $4,000 family. Out of pocket max numbers are $6,350 individual and $12,700 family. All of this is enough to make anyone’s head spin. We were then forced to look at other options as none of this was affordable for our family.

I started to dig deeper into healthcare.gov. I was hearing all the horror stories through the news about the subpar website. I was reading right off their healthcare.gov Facebook page about other people’s terrible experiences trying to get coverage. Then the government announces that they are going to be working on the site and making it a better experience as well as making it more secure. They had already had three years to make this happen but they said would need the month of November to get it running right. So I waited patiently for them to get the site running so I could see if we would qualify for the subsidy and continue our health insurance through that route.

December 6, 2013 I went to healthcare.gov and started our application. The process took me over two hours to complete. Once it was completed it came back with our results. The results were that my husband and I qualified. That my three year old qualified for All Kids and that my seven year old did not qualify for anything through the exchange (ACA). I was so confused, how could a seven year old not qualify for a subsidy? I was also confused on why they wanted me to enroll one of my children in All Kids? So, I called the number they provided to speak to a representative. I was on hold for 20 minutes when a woman answered and offered to help me with the results. She told me that it is coming back that my seven year old son did not qualify and the only thing I could do was to file an appeal. I asked her a few more questions about how this could have happened, and I was told “she does not know and that all I can do is file an appeal”. She was reading her responses to me right off of a chart that I am sure they are given. So, I ended my conversation with her and proceeded to try to wrap my head around what was happening.

I decided to call back, this time I waited 15 minutes and spoke to a very nice gentleman who seemed to have an understanding for how the system was working. He looked up the results and said “this can’t be right, let’s start over and do an application over the phone”. So again I went through the application process. The results came back the exact same, we all qualified for something except my seven year old son. The gentleman could not understand how this could be happening and assured me it had to be a “glitch” in the system. He placed me on hold so he could speak with his supervisor on how to fix this error. I waited several minutes and when he came back he said “there was nothing more they could do tonight”. He said “we are sending your application to two different departments and that one of the departments would get back to me through a phone call with a fix to this problem”. He also told me “it could take 2-5 days but that I would receive a phone call when they had closed my case”.

So I waited until Tuesday December 10, 2013, which was day four and called them back. I was then told it would be 2-5 business days and if I had not heard from them at that time to call back. So that is what I did, I waited till 9:00 pm on that Friday December 13, 2013 with no phone call. I called Sunday December 15th, 2013 and spoke with my 3rd supervisor who told me “they were very sorry that I had not received a phone call and they were messaging the two departments to give me a call the following day”. He also said to go ahead and file with All Kids in my state because even though they send that information to them, they have no idea when they will receive it. So Monday I went and applied for All Kids for my children, it was a similar application to the healthcare.gov site. I called them to verify that they received my application and was told they cannot access it till sometime in January. They said once they could access it that they would be in touch and if the kids qualified the coverage would retro act to January 1, 2014. So that was a little bit of good news.

So here we are December 22, 2013, the day before the December 23rd deadline to sign up through the Health Insurance Marketplace’s Exchange. I decide I will call one last time to see what they can tell me about coverage, since I never received a phone call after my last conversation with a supervisor. I waited on hold for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I asked to speak with a supervisor and I was transferred. The supervisor pulled my file and was talking to me when she must have accidentally pressed a button and we got disconnected. I thought for sure she would call me back. That is one of the first things they ask for is your phone number. I did not receive a call back, so I call back and have to be placed on hold again to speak to someone. I waited another hour and a half before I get connected with a supervisor. She pulls up my file and tells me “there is nothing they can do and I have to wait the 90 days they have to contact me through the appeals process”. The supervisor tells me “that this whole time I have been told wrong by numerous people and that I should have been called back but that the two departments could do nothing for me”. I just have to wait the 90 days. I asked her, “so yet again an error, due to no fault of my own, has occurred all these times I have been calling and speaking with people and no one can really do anything”? She said “yes that is correct, I am sorry you have been told something different but that is all I can tell you”.

I have never been treated so poorly by any insurance company in my whole life. I have never experienced such terrible customer service in all my years on this earth. I can’t imagine how long a company would last in this country if they followed the same protocol as the ACA/Health Insurance Marketplace does. Most companies can fix a glitch in their systems pretty easily, or can connect you to someone who can. Not the ACA/ Health Insurance Marketplace, you spend all that time on hold to just be told, so sorry but you have to wait for someone to get back to you in a 90 day time span.

What is the most sickening thing to me is that we have been forced into the Health Insurance Marketplace’s Exchange. We wanted to continue our coverage through BSBC and pay as we always had been. But, we found out that option would not be affordable under the new Act, which is how we were forced into the Exchange. Furthermore, not only were we forced into the Exchange, but then forced again to submit an application to ALL Kids for our children. I just don’t understand how we go from being hard working middle class family who provides everything for our family to where we are today. I feel like everything that my husband and I have worked hard for is for nothing. I pray each night that we will get something resolved with our “glitch” in the system so our children will have health insurance coverage in January and by the time I have to purchase my son’s $400 a month ADHD medicine.

I really don’t know how our government can allow this to be taking place. What if something happens and one of my boys breaks an arm, or God forbid something worse? They don’t have insurance, so I guess we will then be paying the hospital monthly if that happens. We are almost completely debit free currently and now all I see is very large medical bills in our future until the government can fix the issues with the ACA/Exchange. I would really like them to rename the Affordable Care Act, because from where I am sitting it is anything but affordable or caring for my family.

Sincerely,
Karri Kinder

We who have known something more than out of control spending, debt, unemployment, poverty, government regulation and political correctness saw a different America than most Americans today have seen.

This once-great nation was founded on principles of individual liberty, honor, and being responsible for one’s own family. These were principles taught long ago by the Lord of all humanity, and venerated in all of our teaching for the first 100 years–which coincides with the explosive growth of the American economic system. Everything grew exponentially during that initial time, and nothing could possibly derail the steady progress of our nation, except a menace that began to overtake the earth in the late Nineteenth Century–socialism.

Socialists pandered to the upwardly-mobile working class to gain a power base, promising people rewards for which they had not risked their own labors or capital. Socialism swept through the Soviet Union, then across China, and socialist leaders ordered the murders of millions of “rich,” who in China happened to be anyone with more than 1 acre of land, so that their property could be redistributed. In fact, most of that property was merely seized and kept under the control of the socialist ruling class. No one gained anything more than they had before–except for the leaders.

The family unit, which had been a necessary component of the American nation’s rise from obscurity to global greatness, and indeed, under those principles this nation became great, was seen as an enemy to the spread of socialism. The family unit reminds people of their spiritual nature, and makes family members rely on one another. This is abhorrent to socialists, because the state must be one’s only family, and one’s only god. Indeed, Obama’s socialistic government propaganda teaches American women to be like their “Julia” character, who depends on her husband, the government, for everything she needs, from cradle to grave.

Because Americans were reaping the tremendous rewards of liberty and capitalism for the first 100 years (capitalism is liberty’s economic engine), it was  impossible for socialists to make significant inroads in the US. However, in the early 1900s they began to find weaknesses in America’s working class, and began to infiltrate labor, then government. Their plan was simple–exploit the weak and the ignorant–by creating a sub-class of American citizens and by taking over the education system and media outlets.

Progressives, as they called themselves, fought civil rights for America’s blacks, forcing the newly liberated (by Republicans) citizens into long-term poverty. When Republicans tried to force through voting and other civil rights for blacks and other minorities, it wasn’t until Progressives adopted them as poster children for vastly expanded government spending that they went along with these Republican ideals, now claiming that they were the ones who had fought for civil rights. That promised liberty was never realized, however, because Progressives immediately used the underclass they had created to begin pulling the entire capitalist nation down with the Great Society they  launched in 1964.

It is now the end of 2013 and in a very short time we have seen our country go from wealth to poverty, from morality to immorality, from Christian to agnostic; and what do we have to show for these ‘progressive’ inroads? As we said at the outset, we have an ignorant nation with no understanding of where we came from or how we got to be the greatest nation in the world. Our teachers and journalists have re-educated our children and rewritten our history to the point that the man on the street believes the KKK was made up of Republicans, no one has to pay for gifts given by a generous government,  and guns should be banned because they are abused at times.

I, like a fellow Republican, have a dream. One in which morality and reality retake their rightful place at the head of the Christmas table. Where the Lord Jesus Christ is our only Sovereign, and those whom we elect are public servants who diligently toil to uphold our Constitution and protect and defend it from all enemies, foreign and domestic. My dream is that our children will learn nobility through selflessness, instead of what they learn from these self-centered, self-serving socialists who have infiltrated our fair nation and brought it to the brink of total bankruptcy–economic and moral.

My wish for Christmas is that my fellow Americans, brothers and sisters of every race, color and creed, will look back to see where we came from and how we got here, and join me in restoring this nation to its former glory–before the socialists took it over and prepared it for final destruction.

Surely, an enemy hath done this. He who has an ear, let him hear.

PUBLIUS

Have you heard the joke about the family of duck hunters that took down an entire billion-dollar TV network?

It’s no joke. A&E just stepped in duck poop. They made the biggest mistake in the history of Hollywood – they showed us how leftists in Hollywood (and D.C.) really think.

And America said, “DUCK YOU!”

That has to make tyrants and control freaks like Obama, Hollywood, and the leftist thought police scared to death.

Something amazing is happening in America. An awakening. More people showed support for the star of “Duck Dynasty” in 24 hours than signed up for Obamacare in its first few months. Which means at this point in time, Americans are starting to come to the conclusion we’d be better off with a duck hunter in the White House than Obama. Heck, we couldn’t possibly do any worse.

In other words, the tables have turned and middle America is waking up from the shock, disarray, intimidation and distractions of the Obama years. It’s amazing to even say it out loud, but middle America, conservatives, and…gulp…Christians are coming out of the closet.

A duck hunter has inspired us.

What they are saying out loud is, “We have rights too. We deserve free speech too. We’ve had enough of your oppression and intolerance towards our values and beliefs- and we’re NOT going to take it anymore.”

This Nov. 7, 2013 file photo shows Phil Robertson, the Duck Commander, holding the 1 millionth duck call assembled for 2013 at company’s warehouse in West Monroe, La. (AP Photo, The News-Star/Margaret Croft)

A&E claims the “indefinite suspension” (ie firing) of Phil Robertson is about “branding.” What they are insinuating is they couldn’t possibly allow a close-minded, Neanderthal gay basher to remain as the face of their billion dollar brand.

Well guess what? The new brand for A&E is “the Christian-hating, Bible-bashing, intolerant TV network.”

Sorry, but that brand won’t sell. The brand of intolerance towards Christians, in a nation still dominated by Christians who actually believe in God, guns and the Bible, is not a viable brand. In other words, the tables have turned and A&E is “DUCKED.”

Let me first explain my background. I’m a lifelong Republican conservative. My heroes are Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater. I’m a leading conservative commentator and bestselling conservative author of “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide.”

Yet I’ve always differed from my fellow conservatives on one issue – gay rights. Like my hero Barry Goldwater, I have no problem with gays. Goldwater is the father of the modern day conservative movement, yet he too was pro-gay rights. He once said of gays in the military, “I don’t care if they’re straight, I only care if they shoot straight.”

Ronald Reagan was also open-minded towards gays, as a result of a lifetime spent in Hollywood in the acting business. I’ve always been pro-gay rights. I believe what people do in their private bedrooms is none of government’s business.

But this isn’t a gay rights issue. The firing of Phil Robertson, star of “Duck Dynasty” is a free speech issue. It’s symbolic of the biased, one-sided way the media and leftist elites treat free speech. People have every right to express opinions considered “progressive” or “politically correct” nowadays. But the same rules don’t apply to salt-of-the-earth, apple-pie, middle Americans who believe in God, country, guns, and yes, the Bible.

You mean Christians and conservatives don’t have the right to free speech just like Hollywood leftists?  You mean Christians or conservatives don’t have the right to express their views in the workplace, without fearing for their jobs?

Phil Robertson only expressed his personal opinions. Those opinions are shared by millions of Christians not only in America, but across the globe. Agree or disagree, he had every right to express that opinion, without losing his job. I may disagree with the exact words he chose, but I stand arm-in-arm with Phil to support his right to say it.

Oh by the way, Phil is a reality TV star. His success and popularity is based on his opinions. A&E fired a reality star for having controversial opinions? Are you kidding me? I suggest A&E executives need to visit a psychiatrist’s couch.

The Duck Dynasty scandal is about intolerance. But the intolerance is on part of Hollywood and A&E. The star of a reality show is allowed to have opinions. If you don’t like them, you have no right to ban them. That’s tyrant’s behavior. That’s McCarthyism. That’s the attitude of police states we find in countries run by tyrants like Stalin, or Fidel Castro, or Huge Chavez, or the old East Germany. Is this what America has become under Obama?

I don’t have to agree with Phil Robertson to stand behind him. I support free speech. If it can happen to Phil, it can happen to anyone of us. I’m a TV and radio personality. I have opinions. I won’t change them, or back down. If you don’t like them, change the channel. That’s called FREEDOM.

Defenders of A&E and Hollywood claim this is about “branding.” They say a private business (like A&E) has the right to decide it’s brand and fire anyone hurting its brand.

That would be true if this was a fair two-way street. I too support private property rights for business owners (like me) to run our businesses anyway we want. Only the CEO should decide who works for his company, not government.

But this is not the way the rules currently work in America. Because if any private business said “I won’t serve a customer because of his race or sexual orientation”- would that decision be allowed by government?

If a businessman, in his own private business, decided to fire any employee that supports gay marriage, would that decision be allowed? If a CEO fired employees because they were atheist, would that decision be allowed? If a CEO fired a woman because she was an outspoken supporter of abortion, would that decision stand?

How about if a CEO concerned about his brand said, “You’re fired because your outspoken support of gay rights is killing my business”- would that decision be allowed?

More specifically, how about a TV network firing the star of a reality TV show because they made remarks in an interview supporting abortion or gay marriage or stem cell research. Would government, courts, or Hollywood accept that decision? Leftists and gay rights organizations would beg government to intervene. And we’d see $100 million class action lawsuits galore.

So it’s a lie to say that private businesses have a right to fire who they want. The law is only used to protect leftist and “progressive” views. This was never about “branding.” It was about the shock and horror when people who drink Obama-Kool-Aid realized that their biggest TV star actually believes in something they don’t. They had to rush to silence him.

Why? Because Obama, Hollywood and the leftists are petrified of free thought. They keep their modern day Tammany Hall going through intimidation. They cannot afford to allow conservative or Christian values to be affirmed by a pop culture celebrity- for fear it might start a trend. It might stir up the masses. It might encourage conservatives to speak out. It might embolden Christians to quote the Bible without fear. Hollywood cannot allow that. Americans might actually be inspired to fight back. Someone might escape the thought-police plantation.

A duck hunter may have just lit the spark that started a revolution. Phil Robertson just went from TV phenomenon to American hero. Americans are now unchained. We are free to speak our minds. Here’s what we have to say to control freak tyrants like Obama the Hollywood elite thought police.

“DUCK YOU!”

By Wayne Allyn Root, The Blaze

With the Dec. 23 deadline looming for signing up for health insurance under ObamaCare, consumers rushing to purchase new coverage may be in for a rude shock if they focus principally on finding the least expensive premiums, according to experts.

That’s because many people buying coverage on the federal exchanges either to replace old policies or to obtain coverage for the first time could get hit with deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs much higher than is typical in employer-sponsored health plans.

Perhaps more importantly, they may find themselves excluded from some of the best hospitals in the country and their affiliated doctors.

Deductible Sticker Shock

Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow for Project HOPE and the Medicare director for the first Bush Administration, said on Monday that consumers should be as mindful of deductibles and the hospitals and doctors in network as the monthly premium costs in shopping around.

“What you’re buying is not just the benefits specified in the law but whom you will have access to in getting the service delivered,” she said in an interview. Many of the policies being offered on the federal and state exchanges carry annual deductibles that often top $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a couple, according to The New York Times.

“Right now, most of the focus has been on the cost of the monthly premium and occasionally people have remembered to . . .look at what the deductible and the co-insurance is, because that is as important as the premium,” she added. “Whether a hospital is in or out of network is really the third piece: don’t forget to look at what you’re buying.”

Like most insurance policies, the lower the premium the higher the deductible. For example, in El Paso, Tex., for a couple both age 35, one of the cheapest plans on the federal exchange, offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has a premium of less than $300 a month but an annual deductible of more than $12,000, according to the Times. In the case of a 45-year-old couple purchasing insurance on the federal exchange in Saginaw, Mich., a policy with a premium of $515 a month carries a deductible of $10,000 a year.

Some of the Best Hospitals Are Off Limits
Americans purchasing health insurance on the federal and state exchanges may be in for an even bigger shock when they discover some of the best hospitals in the country out of reach, even when those hospitals were previously available to them under their personal policies. That’s because most of the top hospitals in the country will accept insurance from only one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

Obamacare regulations and government subsidies are likely to make insurance more affordable for millions of Americans, as President Obama and senior aides have repeatedly boasted. But many insurers have responded to Obamacare caps on premiums by offering top-tier hospitals and physicians far less money for services rendered. And they’re responding by strictly limiting the number of policies they will accept.

Watchdog.org  recently looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014 – contacting each hospital to determine their contracts and policies. The government watchdog group found that many of the best hospitals in the country were simply opting out of Obamacare – much to the detriment of people in search of the best or most specialized health care.

Both Ohio and California have a dozen insurance companies on their exchanges, yet two of the states’ premier hospitals — Cleveland Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center — have only one company in their respective networks.

A few, such as top rated Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, are mandated under state law to accept all insurance companies. Other than that, the hospital with the largest number of insurance companies is University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland with just four. Fully 11 of the 18 hospitals had just one or two carriers, according to Watchdog.org.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new health care exchanges in New York, Texas and California will not offer patients access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centers, according to the Financial Times.

“We shouldn’t be surprised by this,” Wilensky said. “There was a lot of pressure that exchanges placed on insurance plans to keep premiums low, and the benefits are specified in law for each of the four levels of health care plans. If the benefits are specified and the premiums are pressed low – sometimes lower than the insurance companies thought was appropriate, a major way to try to accommodate that financial pressure is to limit the number of physicians and hospitals.”

“And by limiting the number of physicians and hospitals, you may get those that you include to accept a lower reimbursement,” she added.

Consumers have until Dec. 23 to enroll in new health insurance under Obamacare to qualify for coverage beginning Jan. 1. However, open enrollment will continue through the end of March.