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Obama Blames Bush for Iran Nukes

December 4, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

obama-iranBefore he paused to allow reporters to ask questions about the nuclear deal with Iran that he had just announced in Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to anticipate one line of criticism about the accord — that it effectively cedes to the Islamic regime the right to enrich uranium, despite half a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions declaring the activity illegal. And he moved, preemptively, to address it.

“In 2003, when the Iranians made an offer to the former administration with respect to their nuclear program, there were 164 centrifuges,” Kerry said in a news conference held in the early hours of Nov. 24. “That offer was not taken. Subsequently, sanctions came in, and today there are 19,000 centrifuges and growing.”

In essence, the secretary of State was suggesting the staggering number of centrifuges that Iran now has effectively forced the hand of the P5+1 negotiators at the talks, making the placement of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program the only realistic prospect the negotiators could pursue. Kerry also suggested that had only President George W. Bush done the right thing a decade ago, the United States and its allies in the P5+1 — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — wouldn’t have found themselves in such a precarious negotiating posture.

Yet a Fox News review of reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and analyses prepared by leading research institutions — including the Arms Control Association, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Federation of American Scientists — shows that the vast majority of Iran’s enrichment capability came online during the Obama administration.

It is known that by late 2007, Iran possessed about 3,000 centrifuges. Over the course of Bush’s final 12 to 15 months in the White House, it can be assumed safely that Iran added to, but probably did not fully double, the number of centrifuges it had installed. A fair estimate would accordingly place the number of the spinning machines that Iran had on hand at the beginning of 2009 at 5,000.

This would mean that roughly 25 percent of the regime’s current total of centrifuges had been installed when the Bush-Cheney era ended. Put another way: Roughly 74 percent of the centrifuges Iran now has on hand were installed since the Obama-Biden team assumed office. Analysts say 10,000 of the total are actively enriching uranium to low levels, inconsistent with nuclear weapons production but well suited to the task should a decision be made to pursue that goal.

Yet in a series of interviews he gave before leaving Geneva, Kerry expanded on his theme, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos: “In 2003, Iran made an offer to the Bush administration that they would, in fact, do major things with respect to their program. They had 164 centrifuges. Nobody took that [deal] — nothing has happened. Therefore, here we are in 2013 — they have 19,000 centrifuges and they’re closer to a weapon. You cannot sit there and pretend that you’re just going to get the thing you want while they continue to move towards the program that they’ve been chasing….You can’t always start where you want to wind up.”

Kerry’s concise history of the Iranian nuclear program, which encompassed only the years 2003 and 2013, naturally omitted quite a lot. Determining exactly when the regime crossed a given technical threshold can be difficult, given the opacity of the government and the complex of commercial, military, and scientific institutions that have contributed to the program over the last two decades. The secretary plans to testify before Congress on Iran, for the first time since the deal was announced, in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Dec. 10 — an opportunity to provide more clarity.

A spokesman for Kerry professed ignorance of the exact numbers involved. “We have not questioned the fact that Iran has made progress on enrichment and on developing a nuclear weapon,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Dec. 2. “That’s one of the reasons why we stepped up sanctions over the past couple of years.”

But when confronted with the notion that at least 70 percent of the expansion in Iran’s centrifuge program took place on President Obama’s watch, Psaki countered: “I think what we’re focused on at this point is the fact that we’re now at a point where we are halting and rolling back the progress of their program and we’re working towards a comprehensive agreement to bring an end to it.”

by James Rosen, Foxnews.com

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

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

Obama Hails Iran Nuclear Deal as Netanyahu Slams ‘Historic Mistake’

November 24, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

obama-iranIran and six world powers reached a deal early Sunday that would halt parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for what was described by the Obama administration as “modest relief” from international sanctions.

Obama, speaking from the White House while Secretary of State John Kerry helped ink the agreement in Geneva, called it a “first step toward a comprehensive solution.”

The deal, while historic, is a six-month agreement. Republican senators in Washington warned shortly after the terms were announced that western powers were giving up too much in exchange for too little, in hopes of a longer-term deal. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said it would give a leading sponsor of terror “billions of dollars in exchange for cosmetic concessions.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said that the agreement “makes a nuclear Iran more, not less, likely,” and called the deal “a blow to our allies in the region who are already concerned about America’s commitment to their security and it sends the wrong message to the Iranian people, who continue to suffer under the repressive rule of their leaders who have only their own self-preservation in mind.”

But Obama insisted the sanctions relief is reversible if Iran doesn’t live up to its end of the bargain.

“The broader architecture of sanctions will remain in place and we will continue to enforce them vigorously,” said Obama, who urged Congress not to pass new sanctions against Iran in light of the agreement, saying “doing so would derail this promising first step, alienate us from our allies, and risk unraveling the coalition that enabled our sanctions to be enforced in the first place.”

Under the terms of the agreement, which concluded days of negotiations in Geneva, Iran committed to halt enrichment above a 5 percent threshold and dismantle the technical connections required to enrich uranium above that threshold.

Iran is also required to neutralize its stockpile of near 20 percent enriched uranium, and halt progress on its enrichment capacity. In return, the six world powers (the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia), have agreed to not impose any new sanctions, suspend sanctions on certain sectors of Iran’s economy, and potentially unfreeze $4.2 billion in revenue from oil sales if Iran meets other conditions.

A White House statement also said Iran’s nuclear program will be subject to “increased transparency and intrusive monitoring.”

Speaking from the White House late Saturday night, Obama said that the terms of the deal were “substantial limitations which will help prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Simply put, they cut off Iran’s most likely paths to a bomb.”

However, Obama warned that sanctions relief was dependent on Iran living up to its end of the agreement, saying, “In these negotiations, nothing will be agreed to until everything is agreed to. The burden is on Iran to prove to the world that its nuclear program will be for exclusively peaceful purposes.”

Iran President Hassan Rouhani endorsed the agreement in a nationally broadcast speech Sunday, saying the accord recognizes Iran’s “nuclear rights” even if that precise language was kept from the final document because of Western resistance.

“No matter what interpretations are given, Iran’s right to enrichment has been recognized,” said Rouhani, who later posed with family members of nuclear scientists killed in slayings in recent years that Iran has blamed on Israel and allies.

Saying “trust is a two-way street,” Rouhani insisted that talks on a comprehensive agreement should start immediately.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led his country’s delegation, called on both sides to see the agreement as an “opportunity to end an unnecessary crisis and open new horizons.”

But reaction in Israel was strongly negative. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu called the deal “a historic mistake” in remarks to his cabinet Sunday. Earlier in the day, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, said the deal was based on “Iranian deception and self-delusion.”

The deal came after the personal intervention by Kerry and other foreign ministers whose presence had raised hopes for a breakthrough.

“The purpose of this is simple,” said Kerry, who spoke early Sunday morning, Geneva time.  “Requiring Iran to prove the peaceful nature of its nuclear program and prove it does not have a nuclear weapon.

“It will make our partners in the region safe. It will make Israel safer.”

“Agreement in Geneva,” Kerry had tweeted. “First step makes world safer. More work now.”

The deal marks a milestone between the two countries, which broke diplomatic ties 34 years ago when Iran’s Islamic revolution climaxed in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Since then, relations between the two countries had been frigid to hostile.

Although the deal lowered tensions between the two countries, friction points remain — notably Iran’s support of the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. The United States also has said Iran supports terrorism throughout the region and commits widespread human rights violations.

Since it was revealed in 2003, Iran’s enrichment program has grown from a few dozen enriching centrifuges to more than 18,000 installed and more than 10,000 operating. The machines have produced tons of low-enriched uranium, which can be turned into weapons grade material.

Iran also has stockpiled almost 440 pounds of higher-enriched uranium in a form that can be converted more quickly to fissile warhead material than the low-enriched uranium. Its supply is nearly enough for one bomb.

Published November 24, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

Supreme Court: Texas Abortion Restrictions Are Constitutional

November 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Abortion_RestrictionsThe U.S. Supreme Court has declined to block controversial Texas abortion restrictions that have been called some of the strictest in the country and have led a dozen abortion clinics in the state to stop performing the procedure.

The court by a 5-4 vote denied a request by Planned Parenthood to block a ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, allowing key parts of the Texas abortion law to stay in effect while the lawsuit challenging the restrictions moves forward.

The four liberal justices who voted in favor of the request said they would have overturned the appeals court’s Oct. 31 ruling that allowed the law to take effect.

In its 20-page ruling, the panel of appeals court judges acknowledged that the law’s provision  requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital “may increase the cost of accessing an abortion provider and decrease the number of physicians available to perform abortions.”

However, the panel said that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that having “the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate” a law that serves a valid purpose, “one not designed to strike at the right itself.”  The provision has led at least 12 clinics in the state to stop performing abortions since the ruling.

A spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday said the office is “pleased” with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“These are commonsense – and perfectly constitutional – regulations that further the state’s interest in protecting the health and safety of Texas women,” Lauren Bean said.

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry also said he was happy with the court’s decision.

“This is good news both for the unborn and for the women of Texas, who are now better protected from shoddy abortion providers operating in dangerous conditions,” Perry said.

The appeals court panel left in place a portion of a previous judge’s order that prevents the state from enforcing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocol for abortion-inducing drugs in cases where the woman is between 50 and 63 days into her pregnancy. Doctors testifying before the court had said such women would be harmed if the protocol were enforced.

The appeals court’s order is temporary until it can hold a complete hearing, likely in January.

The restrictions gained notoriety when Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis launched a nearly 13-hour filibuster against them in June.

The law also bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and beginning in October 2014 requires doctors to perform all abortions in surgical facilities.

During the trial, officials for one chain of abortion clinics testified that they’ve tried to obtain admitting privileges for their doctors at 32 hospitals, but so far only 15 accepted applications and none have announced a decision.

Many hospitals with religious affiliations will not allow abortion doctors to work there, while others fear protests if they provide privileges.

Many have requirements that doctors live within a certain radius of the facility, or perform a minimum number of surgeries a year that must be performed in a hospital.

Published November 19, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Shannon Bream and The Associated Press contributed to this report

Filed Under: All Stories, Elections, Ethics, 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

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

44 Dead in Airliner Crash

November 17, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Tatarstan_Airlines_CrashMOSCOW –  Russian news reports say a passenger airliner has crashed while landing in the city of Kazan and all 44 people aboard are believed to have been killed.

The reports said the Boeing 737 belonging to Tatarstan Airlines crashed about 7:20 p.m. local time (1520 GMT) on Sunday. There were no immediate indications of what may have caused the crash.

Kazan is about 450 miles east of Moscow.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a local representative of the Emergencies Ministry, Irina Rossius, as saying preliminary information indicated 44 people were aboard and all had died.

The flight originated in Moscow.

Published November 17, 2013 / Associated Press

Filed Under: All Stories, Foreign, Sci-Tech

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

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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

ABC’s Amy Robach Discovers Cancer After On-air Mammogram

November 11, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

cancer-amy-robachABC News reporter Amy Robach didn’t want to get a mammogram, but it ended up saving her life.

Robach has revealed that after submitting to the procedure live on the air for “Good Morning America’s” Pink Day, she was found to have breast cancer and will now undergo a bilateral mastectomy.

“The doctors told me bluntly: ‘That mammogram just saved your life,’ she wrote in an essay on ABCNews.com.

You don’t have to fear breast cancer

Robach said she had never before had a mammogram and had actually put off having the procedure before a producer asked her to do it for the show. “You’re 40, the age women should start getting mammograms,” Robach said the producer told her. “Would you even consider it?”

Foods every breast cancer survivor should know about

The reporter said “GMA” colleague Robin Roberts urged her to do it, telling her, “You know, Amy, if one life is saved, it’s worth it.” After having the testing done on air October 1, Robach said she was informed by doctors that she had the disease. Now she is grateful for being encouraged to do it and hopes her story helps other women.

Photos: Chronicle of a mastectomy

“I was also told this, for every person who has cancer, at least 15 lives are saved because people around them become vigilant,” Robach wrote. “They go to their doctors, they get checked.”

“I can only hope my story will do the same and inspire every woman who hears it to get a mammogram, to take a self exam. No excuses. It is the difference between life and death.”

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

Filed Under: All Stories, Gender, Sci-Tech

Evidence of Widespread Voter Fraud Found in Virginia Governor’s Race

November 9, 2013 By Editor 85 Comments

mcauliffeRichmond, VA–Merely hours after the close of a bitter and divisive Governor’s race in Virginia that saw Democrat Terry McAuliffe pull out a win over Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, irregularities in voting data have emerged.  According to mainstream media outlets McAuliffe supposedly defeated Cuccinelli in a razor-thin 47-46 percent victory to become the next Governor of the great state of Virginia.

Immediately following the announcement, Cuccinelli’s office opened a full investigation into the legitimacy of the vote and quickly turned up surprising results.  In 13 districts, multiple instances of intimidation at the polls were reported.  Large black men wearing traditional Black Panther garb were reported lingering around polling places approaching older voters asking questions about who they intended on voting for.  In Loudoun and Fairfax counties (traditional Democratic strongholds), election officials withheld submitting voter data in order to get an idea of whether to count absentee ballots or not.  In an audit of the voter registration information, it quickly became apparent that MULTIPLE votes were cast by people who were either deceased or had long ago moved out of the district.

According to exit polling Cuccinelli won the race by big margins reaching a high percent of the key voting blocks of women, Latinos and Blacks.

Cuccinelli was a target of large amounts of out of state financing as the Democrats set out to make the race be a referendum against the Tea Party movement.  McAuliffe got a late boost from Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Joe Biden, who campaigned hard for the Democrat.

Even in defeat Cuccinelli reminded voters that the election was in fact a referendum against President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  “Despite being outspent by an unprecedented $15 million,” he said, ”this race came down to the wire because of Obamacare. That message will go out across America tonight.”

Sources within Cuccinelli’s office have warned that “this is not over” and that Ken will be challenging the results of the election in court.

No such irregularities have been discovered in New Jersey where Republican candidate Chris Christie was re-elected in a landslide victory.

By Chase Logan

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