93,000,000 May Lose Healthcare

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,”
Up until now all the attention has been focused on the 12 million in the individual market. Jay Carney dismisses this number as insignificant and Obama actually ridiculed the policy holders who had their plans cancelled with his "let them go shop" speech in Boston. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013. Forbes computes that as many as 93 million Americans will lose the insurance plans that they liked and were promised they could keep. How will 93 million angry voters react in the 2014 mid term election? One can see why the the rollout of Obamacare was set to follow Obama's re-election but Congressional Democrats had better get used to the idea of martyrdom. It is my opinion that Obama and the Democrats intended to wreck the insurance industry. The loss of 93 million policy premiums may cripple some of the smaller firms but it's better that having a portfolio of chronically ill policy holders. Had not Republicans captured and held the House this would have probably played out like the worst of TARP and the GM bailouts with the government in control of the healthcare industry. As it is now there will be a steady stream of reports of cancelled insurance plans from now until election day. And it will get worse. If the younger, healthier population does not buy into this fraud, and it seems it is not, insurance rates will accelerate as the rates reflect the actuarial realities of a sickly insurance pool and just prior to election day policy holders will face sticker shock for the second time in two years.

6 people enrolled in Obamacare Oct. 1

  So you may be wondering why the CMS administrator Tavener being grilled by the House was smiling a sly Mona Lisa smile when asked how many people enrolled in Obamacare.
  Well, now we know.
  As of 10/2, 6 people--that is SIX PEOPLE--had enrolled in Obamacare.
  Total.
  Nationally.
  Delaware signed up 1 by October 16.
  Arkansas had signed up 7 and that revolutionarily progressive state of Wisconsin had signed up a whopping total of 50. That's FIFTY.
  This probably explains why Medicaid enrollments are soaring.
   I predicted we'd be watching a progressive crackup of arrogance and overreaching grabbing of personal liberties. So here we go.
  But wow.
  This new info is quite--uh--unbelievable.
  Except that we know what this president is capable of.
 

Oregon Ducks Obamacare

"I think we're in really good shape here in Oregon. Do we have some problems? Yes. Are we concerned? Of course. But I believe we'll come through this very well," says Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.
What do you imagine really bad shape looks like? 
The news account actually says of the governor, "He acknowledged there are technical problems with the website." Technical problems you bet! Oregon has yet to enroll a single person in Obamacare which, I suppose, from from some points of view is laudable but that wasn't its stated goal. The website is more challenged than healthcare.gov as the governor is hoping to have CoverOregon up and running by December 1, leaving applicants a full 15 days to avoid violating the individual mandate. So far 22 people have filled out paper applications.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that about 150,000 Oregonians enrolled in individual health care plans will see their plans canceled by the end of the year because the plans don't measure up to Obamacare standards. As far as death panels are concerned Oregon is ahead of the curve. It is the only state in the union to have a two year waiting period on transplants for previously uninsured people but that bit of forward thinking and cost saving may be negated by Obamacare.
No train wreak here!

Tom Ridge and his and his lack of civility and statesmanship

Speaking at a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans’ Spirit of Lincoln dinner former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge demonstrated why more Americans identify with the Tea Party than RINO Republicans as pointed in the previous post.

“Sometimes we [Republicans] just come across as too damned self-righteous, and I’m sorry, that’s just not the 21st-century political party GOP that I think we need to govern America,” Ridge said.
“Many Americans are outraged by the moralistic attacks on the gay and lesbian community from some within our party,” Ridge continued, lambasting what he called “the narcissists and ideologues within our party” who promote an “offensive and exclusionary view,” as well as an “unacceptable rigidity and self-righteousness on social issues.”
As Ridge attacked the pro-life and pro-family community, he simultaneously lamented a “lack of civility and statesmanship” in the political arena.
Pro-life activists, Ridge said, “forget about separation of church and state” and participate in activities that are “consistent with what a church may propose but should not necessarily be at the epicenter of governing.”
“God-fearing” people, Ridge continued, could also support abortion and homosexuality. Those who opposed abortion and same-sex marriage, he said, “should be more concerned about their own relationship with God.”

A “lack of civility and statesmanship”? Where was Governor Ridge when a White House National Security Staffer called Sarah Palin's family "white Trash"? Where was Governor Ridge when Ann Romney's multiple sclerosis became a theme for late night comedy? Where was Governor Ridge when, as the chief executive of the Keystone state, he allowed Kermit Gosnell to perform mayhem on the unborn without one single inspection of his abortion mill? His dereliction of duty and disregard for his oath of office was so egregious that the grand jury that indicted Gosnell felt compelled to mention the governor's failure to uphold the law.

Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did, not even after Karnamaya Mongar’s death. In the end, Gosnell was only
caught by accident, when police raided his offices to seize evidence of his illegal prescription selling. Once law enforcement agents went in, they couldn't help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses. That is why the complete regulatory collapse that occurred here is so inexcusable. It should have taken only one look.

The first line of defense was the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The department’s job is to audit hospitals and outpatient medical facilities, like Gosnell’s, to make sure that they follow the rules and provide safe care. The department had contact with the Women’s Medical Society dating back to 1979, when it first issued approval to open an abortion clinic. It did not conduct another site review until 1989, ten years later. Numerous violations were already apparent, but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them. Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected. But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.

The fact, that as governor, Ridge ran his state worse than a third world county, at least in the estimation of the grand, jury speaks to his concept "statesmanship". Countless innocent women and unborn children paid a very high price for his cheap hypocrisy.

Obama is upside down in latest NBC/WSJ poll

The government shutdown and the disastrous Obamacare rollout have driven Obama's numbers to a new low in the NBC/WSJ poll. Only 42% of respondents, approve of the job he is doing as opposed to 51% who disapprove. Not only does the public not much like the job he is doing it doesn't much like him either. For the first time in this poll, Obama’s personal ratings are upside-down, with 41 percent viewing him a favorable light and 45 percent viewing him negatively. The poll of 800 adults-not registered voters-was conducted from October 25 to October 28, meaning that the impact of millions of Americans losing their health insurance and Obama's frequent lies that they would not is not factored in to the results. His approval rating of 42% represents a 5 point slip since the last poll.
Yes, he came through the shutdown better than House Republican but not overwhelmingly so. Interestingly the Tea Party Republicans in Congress came through the battle better than the generic House RINO's and not much worse for wear than the exalted leader himself. If the last NBC/WSJ poll was a wake up call for the Tea Party this poll should be a wake up call for everyone else.


In a Rasmussen Poll of likely voters 42 % think the Obama’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country. But just as many again, 42% say their views come closest to those of the average Tea Party member instead. Thirty-four percent (34%) now believe their personal views are closest to those of the average member of Congress when it comes to the major issues of the day. But slightly more (36%) say their views are closest to those of the average member of the Tea Party.

Chris Matthews suddenly hears about Benghazi

OMG did Obama lose Chris Matthews? I guess after 5 years that thrill up the leg thing feels like a urinary tract infection. In any Matthews went off the MSNBC reservation in a big way. After a year of ignoring the Benghazi raid Matthews suddenly went ballistic.

“My interest is on facts, and the questions I have about this are what was the State Department’s role in real-time, not beforehand, but at the time of the attack in defending the lives of their people, especially the U.S. ambassador, who was a friend, a friend of the Secretary of State’s, Hillary Clinton? What was their actions, what was the tick-tock? What did they do when they got the warning of the attack?”

Time’s Jay Newton-Small questioned whether, considering help was so far away, it could have arrived in time but Matthews was having none of that.

“I’m going to ask you something,”shrieked Matthew in his usually shrill voice. “If that was your brother or father in there, would you say that’s an acceptable response? ‘Oh, it’s probably over by now, it’s no good to send anybody.’ Or would you say, ‘I don’t care if it’s over or not, I’m going to collect the bodies if nothing else. I’m going to get there and show I cared.’ That’s what I’d do.

CBS; 2 million will lose insurance under Obamacare

The adoring media has long overlooked Obama's penchant for prevarication but very recently it seems to be having a come to Jesus moment. When CBS reports that it has confirmed that 2 million Americans have lost the health insurance owing to Obamacare notwithstanding presidential assurances to the contrary that is noteworthy. As we move to the 2014 mid terms congressmen from the bluest of blue district are reflecting upon the wisdom of voting on unread legislation. CBS's figure may be at the low end of the scale. One estimate predicts 16 million will be forced to find new insurance coverage. It would be bad enough if the loss of insurance was evenly distributed across the country but it is more apt to be concentrated in some states more than others. In those states voter outrage is apt to do mayhem to congressional careers.

It's Time to Neuter the NSA

I suspect Edward Snowden's biggest challenge these days is keeping a straight face. Slowly and reluctantly the Washington political class has put aside the personal attacks on him and in spite of themselves have directed their attention to the rat's nest of unchecked surveillance he uncovered. Early on, the Washington insiders suddenly seemed out of their depth as they woefully misjudged the public's reaction to the fact that were being spied upon. Many of these pols and pundits had formed their opinions and infatuations of the intelligence community during the cold war. They regarded the NSA as benevolent entity, that, like a spirited horse or playful puppy could get out of hand from time to time but with proper handling could be a positive force for national security, drug interdiction, and tax collection. Congressman Justin Amash and Rand Paul who were both young men when the Berlin Wall was demolished are not enthralled by the nation's ability to vacuum up huge quantities of data on its citizens and view the NSA in a less sanguine aura. They see it as the lap dog of the modern police state.
The latest revelations concerning the NSA's surveillance of American allies including the tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal cell phone elicited the same ho-hum, "boys will be boys" response not just from the Obama administration and its vassals in the media but from Washington conservatives whom I usually trust to be informed. "Everybody does it. We just do it better. I would be concerned if we were not doing it." There is a very finite limit to my patience and what little trust I still had of these pundits following the domestic spying revelations has turned to contempt for their thinking on this matter. After all, it took Rand Paul to point out that there might be something wrong with giving the intelligence community, in this instance the CIA, the discretion to assassinate American citizens using unmanned drones. We never heard any criticism of this police state tactic from the sagacious panelists who grace the Sunday talk shows.
Yes, in a hostile world spying is a necessary evil but listening to the confidential and personal calls of a head of state that is allied to this country borders on the prurient. The German Chancellor has every right to be livid as do the allied European heads of state whose populations have been subjected to the same collections of metadata that outraged American citizens.
As my partner rightly points out Obama seems to pride himself on being the least informed person on the planet Yes, the Presidents wakes up in a new world everyday boasts Jay Carney. He's almost oblivious to knowledge. I'll concede the point that the President knows very little but on this matter the German publication Bild states that even Obama's ignorance has its limits and he was informed in 2010 that the NSA had compromised Merkel's secure phone. From the Daily Mail;

‘Obama did not stop the action at that time but allowed it to continue,’ said an intelligence official familiar with the NSA operation against Merkel image on Sunday.
'Obama did not stop the action but rather furthered it,' said the Bild informant.
'The reason for the action?' said Bild. 'Obama wanted to know exactly who this woman was.'

Or maybe he wanted to know what kind of beer she and hubby drank with their brats.
Far from being a non story this events may present one of the biggest challenges for an already challenged administration. By denying any knowledge of the Merkel spying the White House inadvertently raised a troublesome question. Congress had not been privy to this information, and if the White House was not, just who was running the foreign surveillance program? Miffed at being left out of the loop and maybe wondering if the Obama White House was spying on her, Senator Dianne Feinstein may be about to let her sense of duty get in the way of her partisanship.

The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support,' said Feinstein.
'But as far as I’m concerned, Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing. To that end, the committee will initiate a major review into all intelligence collection programs.'

She continued;

'it is clear to me that certain surveillance activities have been in effect for more than a decade and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was not satisfactorily informed. Therefore our oversight needs to be strengthened and increased.'

Exactly how far DiFi is willing to go or how mean she can be when she feels slighted is of course unknown but what is known is that not every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee is a big NSA fan particularly Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. Marco Rubio also sits on that committee and he may want to try to refurbish his once solid reputation for being an anti establishment reformer. Who knows? Even Indiana's silent Senator Dan Coats may want to establish some credibility with the folks back home. For the most part I'm pretty skeptical that the Washington establishment will find the courage to do what needs to be done but any restraint on the NSA would be a blessing for the country.

Obama "didn't know" Merkel's phone was tapped

  What did he know and when did he know it?
  Those are always the questions when a president's administration gets caught doing something illegal, untoward or politically uncomfortable.
  In this administration, one wonders when the public will get tired of hearing the excuse, "Obama didn't know__________."
  First we are to believe that Captain Courageous famously ordered Seal Team 6 in to kill bin Laden; indeed, it was upon this cornerstone that Obama claimed competence and a right to be re-elected. 
  How many times did we hear him and his acolytes boast at the DNC convention, " Blah blah blah and Osama bin Laden is dead!" as if he personally flew in the helicopter to descend, hero-like, onto bin Laden's compound and grabbed the notorious criminal.
  Later his best buddy Reggie Love was to inform the public that Obama and he had instead tucked themselves far away from the madding crowd to play cards because Captain Courageous was afraid to watch what was happening. (Thus the famous photo in which Hillary has her hand over her mouth and Obama looks pasted in, his tiny head above a golf jacket shrunk down below the men around him. 
  Now we are facing the debacle that is Obamacare and, once again, we are hearing the "Obama didn't know" meme.
  Obama was never told that the website wasn't tested; he didn't know it was going to bomb. After all, they only had 3 1/2 years to build the website and if they'd had FIVE years, it would've worked.
  Today the "Obama didn't know" item is that he had no idea the NSA was bugging Angela Merkel's phone; this information is released to the gullible American public in light of weeks and weeks of unrest and dissatisfaction with Obama's lack of confidence. 
  A Google search of "Obama didn't know" returns over 300 million.(Interestingly one of the very last items is an Africa Today article that dates back to 2004 with the headline "Kenyan born Obama all set for U.S. Senate) 
  Here are some of the most frequently searched headlines:

obama didn't know about bin laden raid
obama didn't know the mic was on
obama didn't know about petraeus
obama didn't know national debt

obama didn't know he lost debate
obama didn't know the microphone was on
obama didn't know his mic was on
obama didn't know how many states

    Now that 60 minutes has actually reported on Benghazi, maybe some truths about Obama's pernicious administrating will emerge.
  How do you deny that he is either incompetent or malicious?
  I have come to believe that he is both.
  It's becoming increasingly difficult for the Obamabots to deny.

AP to Obama spokesman: Nobody believes you

  Breitbart has video of an AP reporter actually questioning the most obnoxious Obama employee evah, Marie Harf.
  He confronts her, saying it's apparent YOU believe what you're saying but nobody in the world is buying the Obama shtick anymore.
  One look at the Drudge Report headlines the last few days affirms what the AP reporter has suddenly noticed.

Israel Warning on Iran bomb
Iran announces 34 new nuke sites
FT: USA is Superpower at Risk of Slippage
Confidence in Dollar Shaken
USA Considers No-Spy Deal with Allies
21 Nations Line Up Behind UN Effort to Stop NSA

  This is an autoplay video which won't embed but you can watch it here over at Breitbart.

CGI. What's in a name?

CGI Federal is one of those important sounding names. It conjures up images of well built young men in trench coats flashing their badges, while looking resolute and in control.

"We're federal agents from the CGI, ma'am. Nothing to be concerned about. We just need to ask you a few questions."
"The CGI! Oh my God! You mean the Clinton Global Initiative?" God! What have I done?"
"Not that CGI ma'am."
"Then it must be the Common Gateway Interface. Of course. The tinted windows on your SUV are a dead give-away. But I don't know anything about gateway drugs and I scrapped my Gateway 2000 computer in 1999 to dodge the Y 2K catastrophe."

Actually CGI Federal is the US offshoot of the Canadian registered CGI Group. The CGI Group has the unique distinction of being fired by not only the government of Canada but by the Province of Ontario. One supposes that when competent Kate Sebilius was browsing through the yellow pages to find someone to build an awesome new website for Obamacare she didn't exercise due diligences by checking them out on Angie's List, Consumer Reports, or the Better Business Bureau. Maybe she reasoned that since cgi is a standard method used to generate dynamic content on web pages and web applications the name said it all. Actually the origin of the name is French Canadian, Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Then again, maybe Kate is a Francophile and thought of Chanel, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent and reasoned building an interactive website would be child's play for the same great people who gave the world the lobster dress. In any event, she screwed up.
Mark Steyn details CGI's failures in one of his always great posts at NRO. Their most famous, or rather infamous, government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. Liberal governments always know clever ways make costly programs sound cheap. In this case every long gun in Canada would be registered for the out of pocket expense of only $2 million dollars. Registration fees would generate $117 million and CGI would build the the registry for $119 million. The rosy projection was off by a factor of a thousand. Before the Harper government euthanized it, the program cost Canadian taxpayers $2 billion and the cost per registered firearm had grown from the estimated $4.60 to $300. Worse yet Canada’s auditor general reported that the database often omitted important information such as names, addresses, and types of firearm. CGI was hired by Ontario to build a database for diabetes. That's just one disease in one province. After spending $46 million Ontario scrapped the project.
The Daily Caller reports that the senior vice president of CGI Federal, Toni Townes is a Princeton classmate of Michelle Obama. That hardly proves anything untoward and it is reassuring that Michelle has classmates from Princeton who remember her unlike Barack who has no classmates who remember him from Columbia.CGI's history of incompetence perfectly qualifies it for a leadership role in the Obama administration.

Obamacare's “Interesting, academically, but not very useful.” website

“Interesting, academically, but not very useful.” Those are the words of John McAfee, founder of McAfee anti-virus software and the subject is the Obamacare website. McAfee contends that healthcare.gov is running a denial of service attack against itself. A typical denial of service attacked is perpetrated when thousands of "bots" are surreptitiously deployed on computers throughout the internet (even your own). At the appointed time they begin "pinging" the targeted server. The server must answer each "ping" with its internet address. As thousands of bots ping hundreds of times a minute the server can only reply to the pings, not allowing any other functions to occur. Eventually the server shuts down.

Now the HHS promises that healthcare.gov will be up and running by the end of November, two month into the rollout. That maybe too optimistic. It may never be ready. Don't think of this as like rebuilding an engine or framing a garage. It's more like working a Rubik's Cube. Each change to the software has the potential to create another glitch. Software tech Bruce Webster makes this observation;

The reason for that thinking is that on a small scale, this is what often happens with a program — it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and then you fix that one last bug, and boom! it works. (Ask any Computer Science undergrad, such as my daughter Crystal.) The problem with large, complex software is that each bug you fix usually just uncovers some number of new bugs that you weren’t encountering before. (This is also the problem with performance improvement on large systems: when you discover and fix the worst performance bottleneck, you merely uncover the next performance bottleneck.)
But wait! It gets worse! It is well- and long-known in software engineering circles that any change to a program’s source code runs a measurable and not-insignificant risk of introducing new bugs (or re-introducing old ones). This is why thorough regression testing — in effect, re-running all your existing test scripts again after each code change — is so important, particularly in the late stages of system development. Without rigorous regression testing (and source code change control, limiting who can make changes to code and when they are allowed into the system), you can in effect be chasing your tail for months without achieving a stable acceptable system.

He continues; Which is exactly why I see so many large IT projects that never stabilize — lots of work is done, lots of bugs are fixed, and yet it never gets any closer to being able to go live.
One doubts if Obama will let the damn thing drag out until the 2014 elections and any decision is going to be deemed too early, "give 'em a chance" or too late "told ya so". He may be setting his party up for repeat of 2010 only much worse. One thing is certain. The media has forgotten all about the shutdown and liberal Democrats have filled in for Tea Party Republicans, calling for a delay of the individual mandate. Don't they known it's the law of the land, passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court?

South Central LA Tea Party demands apology from Alan Grayson

I didn't know there was a South Central L.A. Tea Party but there indeed is. It's was started by Jesse Lee Peterson, who is the Founder and President of BOND Action. Patterson also hosts the Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show (“Uniting the Races with Truth Instead of Dividing Them with Lies”).

The South Central L.A. Tea Party motto is “Power to the People!” It is open to patriotic American men and women of all races.
Black Americans have been taught to identify with Africa, not America, and have been brainwashed by corrupt leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, and the NAACP. These false leaders have deliberately kept the races divided, encouraging black Americans to become dependent on government programs in order to use them for their own personal gain.
The South Central L.A. Tea Party is a black-led organization that loves and supports America--the greatest nation in recorded history. Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. dreamed that one day black Americans would be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin, and we are stepping forward to be judged by that character.

The group has take extreme exception to Congressman Alan Grayson's fundraising email featuring a burning cross to spell "Tea Party," and comments comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan. Peterson said:

Rep. Alan Grayson has managed to insult both the Tea Party and sensible Black Americans with his outrageous and callous remarks. I grew up on a plantation near Montgomery, Alabama during Jim Crow and witnessed real racism. Klansmen murdered my great-grandfather. For Alan Grayson to cavalierly compare law-abiding Tea Party people to a violent and racist organization like the Ku-Klux-Klan is offensive and minimizes the suffering of Black Americans.

“Alan Grayson is playing on the worst fears of Blacks in an attempt to continue the brainwashing tactics of the Democratic Party. He knows that for more than 160 years it has been the Democrats who have used the Ku-Klux-Klan, Jim Crow, and failing liberal policies to keep many blacks on the liberal Democrat’s plantation.
 

More enroll in Medicaid than buy insurance

Once again I repeat my contention that the real glitches are in the law rather than the website. The 15 states that run their own enrollments find a disturbing trend. More people are enrolling in Medicaid than are buying health insurance. If that trend continues, there will not be enough healthy people buying insurance for the system to work.

Thanks, John Kasich. It takes guts to buy into a crash. 

Politician: it's all good! Obamacare's a success!

  Orwellian?
  There has to be some element of truth for today's political leaders to be considered Orwellian.
  Instead we have some absolute liars who are completely naked in front of the world and can't seem to feel any breezes up their hind ends cooling their private parts.
  Thus we come to the sad situation of Henry Nostrilamus Waxman, who is claiming that Obamacare has already proven to be a great success. Waxman's supposition is based on such facts as free birth control, pushed by Sandra Fluke, the Obama operative who was attending Georgetown where she was paying at least $75,000 a year in tuition but couldn't afford to buy birth control.
  All the "goodies" of Obamacare are built into the front end, thereby making it more enticing to the public and pushing the cost back after the next election.

How big is healthcare.gov?

There is some confusion about the size of the healthcare.gov website. Yesterday in a post I used the number 5 million as the number of lines of code that must be rewritten and did not bother to check what percentage of the program that entailed. If the new York Times is correct the number 5 million represents only 1% of the total size of the program. As this number has drifted through tech community it has elicited more WTF's than explanations. In fact no one can explain it other than the theory that CGI Federal loaded up the program with old legacy code from old systems. This goes a long way toward explaining the cost of the site which is reported as anywhere from $200 to $500 million. There's a lot that can be said for cost plus, no bid, government contracts as they have made many contractors exceedingly wealthy but his sort of spending is more suited to the Stimulus bill where nobody gave a damn where the money went. My gut instinct is the New York Times is wrong. 500 million lines of code for $500 million sounds cheap unless they were using undocumented farm laborers which might explain the glitches. The size certainly raises questions about the hardware necessary to to run such a monstrosity. One would think it would have to be run on multiple servers.

The root of much of the outrage germane to healthcare.gov is the inability of anyone outside of HHS to know anything with certainty. The constant stonewalling is antagonizing the media and Congress alike. The whole world knows the NSA tapped Angela Merkel's cell phone yet no one knows the size, cost or expected completion date of healthcare.gov.

16 million Americans will have their health insurance cancelled

I have maintained that at the end of the enrollment period there will be fewer people insured than before it began. There will be more people on Medicaid if that can be counted as a success. According to Bob Laszewski, a frequently cited health insurance expert, some 16 million Americans are now getting notices that their policies will be cancelled. Some of these people will go to exchanges and get the shock of their live when they see the premium prices and many will be priced out of the market.

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014. These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases. But unless they live in Washington state, Nevada, Colorado, and Kentucky, they can't now get on an exchange site to see their plan options, new prices, and provider directories so they can make an informed decision before they lose their coverage.

It's not all speculation. See this NY Post editorial blaming Obamacare for 800,000 New Jersey residents loosing their coverage. "If you like your health insurance you can keep it."

Delay the individual mandate. Then what?

Julius Breyer was a Hungarian Grandmaster who often saw more with his one eye than his opponents saw with two. In a Hungarian tournament his opponent, Von Balla, announced mate in three moves. Breyer simply gave him a bored stare. Von Balla then examined the board and announced mate in four. Breyer said not a word. Von Balla again looked at the board and after several minutes resigned.
One can draw several morals from this story but the one I choose to draw is that in some cases wanting to win at any cost can blind one to impending defeat. We have always maintained that Obamacare was unworkable but we really never believed it. We saw it as the end game toward perpetual government control and the almost total diminution of individual freedom. It could be all of that but Obamacare as it is incomprehensibly written is not the law that can get that job done. The technical failures of healthcare.gov have compressed the urgency to bring Obamacare forward and for the first time forced all concerned to look at its blatant flaws.
Let's look at the individual mandate. From a policy point of view, the penalty is way too low to force compliance. Ninety-five dollars for non compliance is almost like a dollar and cost, cost suspended fine for a DUI. Who gives a damn? Practically speaking the penalty (in this case a tax according to John Roberts) should be 5 or 6 times higher if one expects the young and the restless to sit down and do the mind numbing grunt work of buying a policy online. There is talk among Democrats following their exclusive briefing by HHS bureaucrat, Mike Hash, of delaying the individual mandate if all the king's men can't get the website up and running. That's grand and two writers at Bloomberg in a post entitled Saving Obamacare Without Congress plot out how Kate Sebilius can finagle the law to delay the mandate through hardship exemptions. Aside from the fact that there are plenty of districts courts that would do that for her should she attempt to impose the penalty with the website still down it does not solve the problem. The problem is people who really need health insurance will find a way to buy it and those who don't need it won't buy it. Having an insurance pool in which only the sick tread water will disrupt the insurance market. Because of community rating and the no pre-existing condition clause insurance companies may not charge the true cost of a policy. They must over charge the young and healthy but the young and healthy won't go near them. There were plenty of insurance companies who chose not to enter the exchanges. Others priced their policies to be noncompetitive. The insurance industry is aware of a potential death spiral and while a few may take a haircut the majority will not and there will be fewer choices on the exchanges next year should it draw out that long.
There is only one instance in the popular media of a young, single, male buying insurance on the exchanges. He is an Obamabot from Florida. Everyone else the administration has trotted out has a pre-existing condition or is literally falling down sick.
If the Democrats controlled Congress you can bet there would be plenty of talk about raising the penalty for noncompliance with the individual mandate. Hell, some would want to make it a capital offence. As it is Obama is stuck with the law that is written. He can ignore the law only so much. He can grant concessions and waivers but any attempt to tighten control will be met with opposition in Congress and the courts. Suddenly the voters are awakening to the fact that their insurance rates are going through the roof and they may not be able to keep the insurance and doctors they like. As the 2014 elections near Democratic Congressmen will hear loud and clear from everyone whose insurance rates went up and little from those who now have affordable insurance by virtue of government subsidies. The healthcare.gov glitches only mask the flaws in the law. It's not checkmate. It soon will be time to resign the game.

Obama's refusal to negotiate reveals politicization of health care

  So let me get this straight.
  Barack "I will not negotiate with Republicans" Obama was too busy, um, negotiating with Republicans to know why and how his Obamacare website was complete trash.
  The flamers over at TPM celebrated repeatedly the fact that Obama refused to negotiate, either on increasing the debt limit to an astronomical number or on the details of Obamacare. 
  "Don't! Don't negotiate," that foul bunch cried.
   But not to worry. Their Prince was too busy with his golf game to make sure the trashed website was going to actually work.
  If you weren't convinced before the IRS persecution of Tea Parties and National Park Service persecution of veterans that this bunch will use any means possible to "punish their enemies" including every aspect of the government, are you convinced now that they'll use the health care system to "punish their enemies"?
  The nightmare scenario is possible.
  Say you're a registered Republican or Independent.
  You need treatment. Let's say you're a senior citizen.
  You supplicate the health care system for treatment through the ACORN "navigators," whose computer system finally works.
  She looks at your voting records. (Remember saying you'd like to register when you filled out the health care application?)
  She sees you're a Republican or Independent.
  "Um, no," she says. "You're not eligible for that particular treatment."
  Why? you ask, alarmed because, after all, it is your life.
  "Well," she says, "I can't give you that information. All I can say is that it's not Obama's fault. 
  He doesn't know any of this, just as Sebelius said days after the initial launch of the Obamacare website."
  Let's just quote Barack Hussein Obama again. 
  Note that the preferred behavior is to punish enemies and reward friends, just as Obama contributors were given the contract to build the Obamacare website, even though their reputation was one of incompetence.

"If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies, and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us' -- if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election -- then I think it's going to be harder. And that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd."

  To claim that Obama knew absolutely nothing about the website's disastrous launch only after he saw it on the news is absolutely, positively absurd.
  How incompetent do you have to be to not know? 
  Now it becomes clear that the reason Obama would not negotiate with Republicans is that it would look like he caved. IOW, compromised by halting the launch of Obamacare, which would have benefited the Democrat party more than Republicans, it turns out.
  Will no one in this administration ever take responsibility for their actions?
  I think we all know the answer to that.

Two Toledo Tea Party events re: SCHOOLS

From The Toledo Tea Party:

Common Core Standards

Saturday, Oct 26, 2013
3 – 5 pm

Maumee Public Library
501 River Road
Maumee, OH 43537
RSVP HERE
**************************************************************
TPS Board Candidate Forum

Tuesday, Oct 29, 2013

6 - 8 pm

South Branch Library
1736 Broadway St.
Toledo, OH 43609
RSVP HERE

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Our mailing address is: Toledo Tea Party P.O. Box 9413 Toledo, OH 43697

The website stinks: now make the argument

  I have a (former) friend who mocked a solicitation phone call she received during the Ted Cruz stand down. "They're complaining about those phony death panels again. Geez. There's no such thing but they can't seem to figure it out!" she gruffed.
  I pointed out to her that her Leftist heroes Paul Krugman and Robert Reich advocate for death panels unelected government panels who get to decide what "services" to provide. Considering Leftists cut half the Medicare budget,GEEZ, I wonder who'll be the first to not receive medical treatment.
  Strangely, my (former) friend went silent when I pointed out that her heroes want her dead.
  (I can only imagine a few years on the future. 
  You know those softly informative government PSAs that tell you to be ready.gov? 
  or Could I have lupus.gov? 
  Do you know how much your mailman mail person cares about you, especially since the Post Office is broke and hanging on to jobs no matter how much it costs you, the taxpayer?
  In the future of my mind, I can hear the peaceful music, see the soft focus lens on the elderly face and the calming voice intoning:

"Now it's time to make that final decision, we're here to help. Make the appointment for your last injection at a government Death Panel Final Decision Clinic now. We're always here to help! and save money by killing you rather than treating your cold because there are too many baby boomers and nobody has jobs anymore so we have to figure new way to save money.)

  Now a writer at Slate points out that Canada has death panels-and that's a good thing.
  You see how quickly the discussion moves from "Sarah Palin is nuts there's no such thing as a death panel" to "Meh. We knew that all along but were willing to crucify her to avoid telling you the truth that we just really want you to Die! Die Quickly!"
  But no worries.
  Slate assures us that only "wise community members"--maybe the unpleasant ones like my (former) friend, will most likely make the decision about who gets to live or die:

Yet, the question remains: Who decides? Remember that, outside of Ontario, the resolution of these end-of-life disputes is generally reserved for judges. Ontario has simply replaced them with experts and wise community members. That’s a lead other jurisdictions should consider following when families’ emotions and doctors’ judgments collide.

Perhaps it is easier for Canadians to trust government-appointed panels, rather than judges, with decisions like these. For reasons that arguably go back to our respective foundings, Canadians tend to have more faith in our government and our bureaucratic processes than Americans do in theirs.

  Today's WSJ has another somber evaluation of what Obamacare aka The Unaffordable Care Act. It's a pretty depressing and realistic take by a doctor on what's down the road for all of us with regard to health care.
  Don't read it if you're easily depressed.
  Now, we have to deduce at this point, that Republicans are really, really stupid when it comes to tactics and strategy. The establishment Republicans care most about staying in office, yielding themselves the perks of office, including really good health care.
  Why they can't make the case that Ted Cruz was right is beyond me.
  Now that Leftists have confessed that the Unaffordable Care Act is just a "small government program" that is transforming 1/6 of the American economy and its disastrous effects are out there, we can actually do something about this mess.
  Personally I think it's absolutely great that the political motivations of health care decisions are being exposed.
  After all, if Obama and his robots will let a nightmare of a website go online just because they didn't want to appear to be letting Republicans have a win regardless what a nightmare it is and how bad it is for the public, we can really make the argument.

HHS asks insurers not to release exchange data

The Obama administration is hell bent on not letting the public know how bad enrollment at healthcare.gov is going. HHS will not comment on the numbers and Jay Carney refers all questions relative to Obamacare to HHS. Now it has asked one insurance company not to reveal it sales numbers which is 14. Fourteen for the entire state of North Dakota! HHS had projected an enrollment of 11,000 but with 11.5% of the enrollment gone it has achieved less than 0.1% of its goal.

FARGO – The Obama administration asked North Dakota’s largest health insurer not to publicize how many people have signed up for health insurance through a new online exchange, a company official says. During a Monday forum in Fargo for people interested in signing up for coverage via the exchange, James Nichol of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota told the crowd his company received the request from the federal government earlier Monday. Nichol is a consumer sales manager for the company. Still, a spokeswoman from Blue Cross Blue Shield says about 14 North Dakotans have signed up for coverage since the federal exchange went live Oct. 1. That brings total statewide enrollment to 20 – less than one a day. Spokeswoman Andrea Dinneen said Tuesday that while Blue Cross generally does not release its internal sales numbers, it has in this case because the problematic rollout of the federal health care exchange is a “unique situation.” Dinneen said she didn’t have any information about the directive that Nichol referenced Monday night.

Read more.
In the spirit of bipartisanship HHS will brief Congress-Democrats only on the lack of progress of the President's stellar signature legislation.
Mike Hash, who directs the Office of Health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, will brief House Democrats Wednesday about implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The closed-door session, which will start at 8:50 a.m., marks the first time the administration will have briefed members of Congress on the online enrollment system since its troubled rollout on Oct. 1.
Presumably only Democrats need to know what the hell is going on in government. Don't expect Secretary Sebilius to have an easy time when she appears before Congress.
Read more.
Update: Obamacare enrollment in North Dakota has surged to 16.

iPhone? Did you mean Windows 95, Mr. President?

Is Obama making the wrong comparison? While he compares healthcare.gov to the iPhone and iPad, both sophisticated pieces of hardware with robust operating systems, a more apt comparison may be to Windows 95 and Microsoft never did get it right. I migrated to IBM's Warp and then to Linux before going back to Microsoft with the event of Windows NT 4. Reports that 5 million lines of code may have to be rewritten means that, if true, it would mean rewriting one third of Windows 95 which contained 15 million lines of code. One would think healthcare.gov could have at least offered a copy of Freecell to pass the time while the system is stalled out.
Considering the testiness which Jay Carney and others in the administration display when asked about their iteration of Windows 95 one senses that the trouble runs deep. I would make it about even money that the individual mandate will be postponed. One can almost hear mother Robinson intone, "I told Barack he should listen to that Cruz fella. He's smart. But no-o he wanted to shut down the government. Now he is doing exactly what Cruz wanted and he looks like a fool."
From Kaiser Health News;

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state.  Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.

The news from the White House yesterday was that 476,000 people had created accounts on healthcare.gov. They may or may not buy a policy but 460,000 people in Florida and California have lost their insurance and that is certain. Last month, United Parcel Service told workers it would no longer provide health care for 15,000 spouses who can get benefits through their own employer. IBM terminated coverage for 110,000 retirees. Caterpillar and DuPont also have moved Medicare-age retirees onto the Extend exchange. As did Delta Airlines and General Electric. "If you like your health insurance you can keep it"
Come March 31, with or without the individual mandate, there will be fewer people insured than before the rollout of Windows 95 redux.

Chris McDaniel Endorsed by The Club for Growth in Mississippi Primary

It didn't take long for Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel to get traction in his primary bid against Senator Thad Cochran who may retire to save himself the embarrassment of being turned out. The Club for Growth has endorsed him and is running the this ad. Aside from being a state senator McDaniel had another life. He is the former host of The Right Side Radio Show in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It became nationally syndicated in 2006 . The show was broadcast nationwide on ABC Radio. The show returned to local stations upon his leaving the show.
This is one of those primaries where no matter who wins there is little danger of losing the seat.

The million man shakedown

The public has long given up on anything approaching competence from the present administration but one would think Obama, Sebelius et al would at least try to maintain a facade of honesty on a program that depend so dearly on the public trust, namely Obamacare. How badly was the money for the healthcare.gov website misspent? FMS Software developer Luke Chung finds the cost stunning at the going rate of $200 per hour. If the site cost was $200 million and many estimates are twice that, it represents 1 million man hours or about 5000 man years. Let's put that in perspective. It takes about 30 man hours of labor to assemble the typical American made automobile. One million man hours would translate into 33,333 automobiles which is about 3 times the number of Chevy Volts sold in 2012.
 


The more one looks at Obamacare the worse it looks.

Shamwow POTUS **SAVES FAINTING WOMAN*** again

  I'll be honest.
  I can barely watch the man who purports to be president of all these states anymore. 
  His strutting, the intensely staccato speech, the confused stammering, the sincere blinky vacant eyes, the tensely wound curve of the shoulders and then the lecture.
  Why you're wrong if you disagree with him.
  Why he's having trouble being patient with you.
  Why everything you think was hatched in a bad place while his communist parents gave him the true values that explain and underpin America.
  Why you've fallen short of his expectations.
  Why you haven't accepted government largesse as the others have.
  Why are you fighting him? 
  The problem is that he lies. Not just once or twice, but repeatedly. As I said in this post, I used to think the Obama Way (aka Cloward Piven) was Orwellian.
  For example, the Obama Way is to do something he knows is naughty, then claim you (the opposition) are guilty of what he just did.
  The best example of this is the bullying campaign upon which Obama people have embarked. Have there ever been bigger and more powerful government bullies than these people? And if you dare ask a question or support a different opinion, you are subject to IRS abuse, being abandoned in a firefight or stuck in jail for the "crime" of producing a scapegoat video.
  So when an event like yesterday's fainting woman episode happens, I'm skeptical that it's real.
  I mean seriously. How many times has this happened, where someone in Obama the Healer's audience passes out because of heat/hysteria/adoration/illness?
  A Google search with the terms "Obama woman faints" returned 188,000 entries. It seems that every time Obama needs a boost from the Bots somebody dramatically faints for him as he concernedly projects healing.
  This latest one is pretty, pretty odd.
  You can see the greasy haired woman behind him bob and weave; no one standing next to her seems to notice. At all.
  Yet Obama presciently turns around dramatically just as she starts to fall. (To say he has eyes in the back of his head increases the creepiness.)
  The phony promotion of the Obamacare website is exemplified by the fact that only 3 of the people in the personal props he has behind him at the news conference had actually enrolled; one said it took 7 hours on the phone.
  Then the phone number Obama handed out "1-800-F1UCK-YO"-turned out to not work; when it did, the operators said, "Hey! I don't know why you're calling me! Check out the website!"
  Hannity even talked to someone who said no one really likes this.
  Now we're treated to the sight of Sebelius slinking from her house, speechless, to skitter into her chauffeur driven government issued SUV.
  You know. Just like any criminal.
  So yeah. The idea that this woman actually was starting to faint and was saved by Barack-eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head Obama is to me unlikely and, like most of the staging around Obama, not real.
  Just sayin.'

Obamacare ads-so bad they're not even Orwellian

  Fortunately I was not near a television yesterday when Mr. Stompey Foot came on to toot the advantages of his health care debacle, seemingly unaware of the nightmare/mess/horror/catastrophe/fiasco/blight/ this health care program is.
  And this is just the beginning. We can't wait to see what hackers do with the information floating around on that misbegotten Obama-inspired train wreck.
  It's all phony. So phony that it's difficult to believe that anything this guy says is anywhere close to reality.
  Here's an example of what a delusional Orwellian place this people live in, a video published by HHS that sings the praises of what the ACA will do for you. It's easy to navigate! It's cheap! I was so worried what I was going to do until the government aka Obama swooped in to save me!!
  These qualities are, of course, not characteristic of the Obamacare at all.
  Remember this? The dreamy loving days when Obamabots were embracing the term "Obamacare" because it so exemplifies exactly who Obama and his bots are? So caring that they want to control every aspect of your life so you get what you deserve? Especially if you're a conservative?

Check out Twitchy

  But perhaps I'm errant by declaring that these people are capable of being Orwellian, which would at least require enough subtlety to confuse people as to what is real and what is not.
  From its disastrous debut we've all been shocked! shocked that the government could have failed this dramatically, this immediately and this, well, much.
  We're not confused at all. 
  (I have noticed we're hearing it called the Affordable Care Act ACA more often than Obamacare these days.
  Heh.)

For a good time call Mary

Looking for affordable, competitive & private healthcare coverage? More info is just a phone call away: 1-800-318-2596 #GetCovered
— Senator Landrieu (@SenLandrieu) October 21, 2013

The Senator is a real marketing wizard. I would have to rate this tweet as the most desperate and asinine sales ploy in the history of modern capitalism.

Damn your principles. Show me your donor list

We have heard enough talk about increased partisanship and gerrymandered districts that are too safe to allow pragmatism. In 2010 the Republican Party took 63 seats from districts that were either neutral or gerrymandered with a Democratic advantage. After the states were redistricted in all probability there are 63 neutral or Republican leaning districts that suddenly pose a threat to representative government. Left untouched, for the most part, are the racially gerrymandered districts that keep doctrinaire and uninformed legislators such as Sheila Jackson Lee and Hank Johnson in office because the Black Congressional Caucus should be doctrinaire but the Tea Party may not.
Let's try it another way. The Democrats and RINO Republicans are beholden to the K Street lobbyists and the Tea Party is not. They are paid in campaign funds to pursue and further the interests of the business community. Their "principles" are primarily political survival and "reaching across the aisle" to make common cause with the opposition for the betterment of their corporate donors. They are the antithesis of responsible government. When we hear that Republican donors are upset with this or that we should assume that the bankers who underwrite Senator Corker's career are upset. From 2009 to date Corker has raised $2,379,980 from PAC's primarily from the insurance and financial communities. I chose Senator Corker as an example because I don't like him but his fund raising typifies most members of Congress who are not part of the Tea Party.
The Tea Party has smashed K Street's monopoly on Republican fundraising. The Club for Growth only has money for candidates who meet its rigorous ideological tests and it pours millions into independent expenditures against less favored Republicans and Democrats. Add to that the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by Jim DeMint in 2009 and other smaller groups which only donate to candidates who espouse small government, low taxes, and individual freedom and ideas prevail over special interests.
It is an inconvenient truth that Ted Cruz and Rand Paul got to the senate by beating the disciples of K Street. David Dewhurst, Cruz's primary opponent got more than $ 500,000 from business PAC's, which was 33 times what Cruz got, and Republican lobbyists hosted a fundraiser for him at the Capitol Hill townhouse of Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta. Club for Growth was there for Cruz, donating $2.5 million. Rand Paul's primary opponent, Trey Grayson raised half a million dollars from business PAC's, including Obamacare backers like Pfizer and the American Hospital Association, bailout beneficiaries like the American Bankers Association and the Managed Funds Association. Paul tapped into his father's organization and raised $435,000 in a single day. He also got $105,000 from the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund kicked in $36,685.
Is it any wonder Tea Party Republicans are less pragmatic than the RINO breed? They don't need the money.
“I don't think there's a way for Wall Street to punish the 25 to 50 hardcore House Republicans,” one Wall Street lobbyist told Politico in the first couple days of the shutdown. Referring to an anti-establishment libertarian freshman congressman, the lobbyist said, “I don't think Justin Amash cares if Bank of America gives to him or not.”
How about that!

Healthcare.gov Omits Attribution, Violates GPL Licence Agreement

Imagine the surprise at British software developer Spry Media to find its code in healthcare.gov 's website. Since the code has a GPL licence it is not a copyright violation but developers consider it to be unethical to rip off on another's code without attribution. It is a violation of the licensing agreement. Comparisons of comments within the DataTables script by SpryMedia and the Healthcare.gov have turned up multiple instances of exact comments, so the government's work is clearly based on SpryMedia's. But why remove the code attribution? Most likely this is a simple error done at the programming level but it invites the suspicion that HHS paid what is approaching half a billion dollars for copy and paste code. SpryMedia is less than pleased to be associated with such a colossal failure but has yet to receive an explanation let alone an apology.

Presidential whining makes my ears bleed

  It's almost like I am having an allergic reaction to politics these days; the source of the allergy is a particularly nasty ragweed named Barack Obama.
  All the little dust mites, poison ivies and nematodes that circulate in the ragweed's universe have come crashing in on my world, causing my metaphorical skin to blister and my poor fevered brain to bubble.
  Honestly.
  I was working around the house the other day, listening to the calming baritone of WJR's Frank Beckmann; my ears pricked when a nasal, scolding voice interrupted dear old Frank, whining about bullies, bloggers and community activists who transgress the bounds of decency.
  What, I think. Frank's letting a guest complain about Obama, who's the biggest bully running a scam of a community group named ACORN Obama for America Obama for Action.
  Then as my ears started bleeding, I realized the whining condescending voice WAS Obama, who was up to his usual business of bragging that he had won to people who had also won elections from their constituents.
  Fortunately when you're listening to the radio, you don't have to look at Barack Hussen Obama's smug mug as he digs the knife deeper into the backs of his "enemies": defined, "enemies" are the taxpayers and legislators and even justices who do not agree with the pompous popinjay named Barack Obama.
  I wonder what his childhood was like; I'm figuring, unlike my childhood, he got everything he wanted, was petted like a favored snooty cat who couldn't bother to return the affection. I mean, raised by indulgent communist grandparents who were afraid of black people (according to their grandson) had to be a trip, right?
  Yes, following politics these past two week was pretty close to unbearable.
  And now the gloating begins, leading with Pelosi's wide eyed vacant hand clapping admiration for the once errant naughty conservatives.
  So, yeah, that was just great having to listen to Barack Hussein Obama lecture all of us like he effing knows what he's doing, other than the destruction of America, which is obviously his intent.
  I'm thinking lots of prayers need to fly upward these days.
  I'm also thinking that maybe the only thing that will save us (other than divine intervention in which I entirely believe) is the fact that so many other countries are in just as bad shape as us.
  To drive us toward the seventeen trillion dollar debt hole is unconscionable, and by 2016 we'll be closer to 20 trillion.
  Soooo that's not so far away, kiddies, and I"m likin' Governor Perry's new campaign and advocacy group  . The long knives are out for it already with accusations of lack of transparency and "dark money" being funneled through so I figure it must be a good deal.
  And, hey, it's not like we're not used to a lack of transparency these days.
  Know what I mean?

'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Tea Partiers comprehend science better than most

They know more about literature too. Here is the original post by Yale law professor Dan Kahan. He is working on something called the Cultural Cognitive Project. Personally I consider this type statistical analysis, although scientific, the sort of thing one would expect when grant money flows too freely. Yes, it may be accurate but a .05 correlation is akin to a 1 point shift in a political poll. It's hardcore trivia.
Had the finding been the opposite it's a safe bet that it would have made the evening news on all 3 networks. As it was it was begrudgingly cited by Politco. The study uses the responses of a random 2000 person sample. Kahan asked his sample a list of questions that is suppose to measure scientific comprehension. He found that, on average, people who leaned liberal were more science literate than those who leaned conservative. Except when he compared those who self identified with the Tea Party which was about 19% of his sample.
I really must admire his candor. Up until his silly study the professor's perception of the Tea Party had been derived from liberal sources.

The dataset happened to have an item in it that asked respondents if they considered themselves "part of the Tea Party movement." Nineteen percent said yes.
It turns out that there is about as strong a correlation between scores on the science comprehension scale and identifying with the Tea Party as there is between scores on the science comprehension scale and Conservrepub.
Except that it has the opposite sign: that is, identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively (r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure:

I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.
But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).
I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.
 

Boehner 100% stronger

Congressman Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina who voted for the shutdown has nothing but praise for Speaker Boehner. According to Mulvaney Boehner is not weaker but "100% stronger".

“No one blames him for this. We didn’t have the votes. We did not have the votes yesterday,” Mulvaney said. “I supported the compromise that the speaker offered yesterday, so did really good conservatives, myself, Jim Jordan, Raul Labrador, Justin Amash. We supported that compromise. We could not get him the votes. That was our failure. We did not deliver the votes in the House. It wasn’t the speaker’s fault.”

Maybe I'll have to upgrade my opinion of Boehner. If he's good enough for Jimmy Jordan and Justin Amash I suppose he will have to be good enough for me.
What is troubling in all of this is the moderates such as Peter King who rather than organize people of his own persuasion to counter the Tea Party faction elected instead to run crying to the media. Not all Republicans come from safe districts and periodically they are called upon to take a tough vote and it is understandable if they vote their district rather than their principles but weasels like King have no principles to compromise. Does this guy really think anyone other than someone in his district will vote for him for president?

Will Jeb Hensarling be the next Speaker?

If as rumored John Boehner does allow a House vote on the Senate package to end the shutdown without a majority support from Republicans that will end his Speakership. Most probably he could hold on until after the 2014 elections but restive Republicans could force him out immediately especially if we have seen his best fight. As to the question who will be the next Speaker, Congressman Jeb Hensarling of Texas would seem to be at the top of anybody's list. Unlike, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan who supported it he vehemently opposed the TARP bailout. Unlike Boehner he enjoys the confidence of the largest faction in the party, the Tea Party.
Coming from Texas, the Financial Services chairman would have a big natural advantage in a speaker’s race. Texas currently has 24 votes in the GOP caucus, including some who have considerable support in the Tea Party. Being good enough for Louie Gohmert, Ted Poe, Kevin Brady, or Joe Barton would say a lot for his credibility.

Hensarling began his political career working for Senator Phil Gramm. He served as the Senator's state director and in 1990 he ran his re-election campaign, then moved to Washington to serve as executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by Gramm. He was elected to the House in 2002. In 2009 DMagazine, a Dallas publication called him the Gop's Most Powerful Nobody. He is 56 years old and has two children.

A few kind words for Kate

I've long thought that Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and Kathleen Sebilius were the Obama version of Charlie's Angels, three tough mind women who would gladly go to hell for the commander-in-chief. Hillary and Janet have left the administration to pursue other goals leaving only sister Kate to prop up the facade of competence in an administration that measures success by the number of people on public assistance. Now, the pride of the Queen City is beginning to hear subtle hints that she should leave. Former White House spokesman, the ever truthful and candid Robert Gibbs says that heads should roll over the “excruciatingly embarrassing” debut of healthcare.gov. That was for public consumption but one must wonder if privately well placed Democrats both in Congress and the administration might be suggesting to Kitty Gilligan to check out the fabulous prices Amazon.com has on hari kari knives.

In fairness to the secretary it should be pointed out that there have been far fewer complaints about the Obamacare website now that people have quit going there. Yeah, no one goes there anymore; it's too crowded. Supposedly sloppily written code is to blame for the less than auspicious rollout. Ironically this criticism comes from the same people who wrote the incoherent law. Sure Obamacare is a mess but grading on the curve Sebilius is the Obama administration's valedictorian. Unlike Biden we have never questioned her sobriety. Unlike Holder she has never been caught in perjury. Unlike Panetta she has never inadvertently divulged state secrets. No one under her authority has been killed in the line of duty, unlike her sisters' Benghazi and Fast and Furious debacles. Hey this girl is top shelf!

Healthcare.gov traffic off 88% from first day

Actually they don't have a lot of visitors anymore. According to the Washington Post visits to healthcare.gov declined 88% from October 1 to October 13. The nonpartisan research firm Millward Brown Digital has permission to track traffic on the site. Of the 9.4 million visitors who visited the site in the first week only 36,000 were enrolled in an insurance plan. To reach its goal of 7 million by March 1 the site must average 38,888 per day. It didn't make that the first week. As I have written, the real glitches are in the law not the website.

Congress shouldn't default on its campaign promises

I suppose this is good theater but we've seen this play several times and it not like The Sound of Music that could be viewed 6 times. The dour looking television anchors, the video clips of grim faced House and Senate leaders, and angry an impatient President have limited entertainment value. One hopes that those who got elected to Congress by running against the TARP bailout can find the courage and the rectitude that their predecessors lacked and just say no to increasing the debt limit without concrete numbers that reduce the deficit starting the day after their votes. In 2010 the public was promised that if Republicans won the House they would cut $100 billion from the current budget. That did not happen. In 2011 Republicans ensured small spending cuts by virtue of the sequester. In spite of that victory deficits are predicted begin growing again in 2 years.
Not one Republican got elected to Congress in 2010 by promising to tinker with Social Security and the Consumer Price Index. Not one Republican got elected by promising to moderate his principles to win favor with the opposition. Not one Republican was sent to Washington to achieve some go to hell grand bargain that postpones the day of reckoning several years longer. Yes, the so called "adults in the room" or "cooler heads" who want to spend the country into oblivion will curse, editorial writers will fume and the President will think of dirtier tricks to play on the long suffering, American public but history will ask why Congress did not have the courage to discharge its constitutional duties.
There is no reason in fact to believe that any spending by this administration will conform its intended and legally mandated purpose. In Obamacare alone there are three flagrant violations; the employer mandate, income verification, and subsidies to Congress and staff that violate the letter of the law. Immigration laws are not enforced. Criminal investigations into IRS malfeasance are not pursued. Giving more money too this administration will not make the nation better off. One simply does not give money to people who have proven themselves untrustworthy.
To the argument that Congress must raise the debt limit so the country can pay its bills. Bunk. The President has signed only a few appropriations bill dealing with military pay and a few other small items. He has no discretionary spending beyond that until a CR is passed. Pull the spending bills that have not been passed and rewrite them to fit incoming revenue. Eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor and trim the remaining budgets to fit revenue projections.
Unreasonable? Hardly. The lack of tax revenue is the result of a slow growing economy that has been fettered by regulation to the point of paralysis. It is willful economic sabotage. If the administration had elected not to impede economic progress the situation would not be so dire. The administration has had 3 years to enact the recommendations of the Simpson Bowles Committee yet it did nothing.
The obligations of Congress extend well beyond pleasing a corrupt media and a vainglorious president. Man up!

The budget fight has been good for the Tea Party

If we are to believe popular punditry the House conservatives have done irreparable harm to the Republican brand. There may be some truth in that but a quick look at a few polls finds that they sure haven't hurt the Tea Party brand in red states. Firebrand Congressman Joe Cotton of Arkansas trails Senator Mark Pryor by 3 points 45% to 42 %. Considering that Cotton has never run for statewide office and lacks name recognition in much of the state I like his chances against an incumbent who can't get to 50% in the polls.

Bill Cassidy, a physician and professor of medicine at LSU has been at the front of the fight to defund Obamacare. Even with the bad hair he trails Senator Mary Landrieu by 2-46% to 44%. Like Cotton he has never run for statewide office and suffer the same lack of name recognition.

Looking at a conventional Republic whose has stood with her party, Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia leads her opponent, Natalie Tennant 51 % to 34 %. I like her chances.

Tomorrow in a special election so special it had to be held on Wednesday Republican unknown Steve Lonegan may well surprise many by running a close race in deep blue New Jersey against Cory Booker who has been almost a daily fixture on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Who campaigned for Lonegan? Sarah Palin and Mark Levin.

Americans happily violate Obama policy

  Buzzfeed has a hilarious rundown of pictures of citizens violating the Emperor's demands that we not visit our country's memorials.
  Rock on, America! 
  Insane Tourists Blatantly Defying The U.S. Government’s Demands

Not fit to lead

  This is the problem we face in a nutshell. Now that Obama has "won" his second election, not only do we learn why, Obama has revealed that he will do anything--ANYTHING--to get what he wants.
  His true face is revealed.

Cory Booker's pants are on fire

  One of the most spectacular crackups appears to be going on in New Jersey as the formerly admirable Cory Booker explodes off the political scene.
  Although it's difficult to know what's really going on in the political world if you only go by polls, witness the bad polling Republicans are getting for holding out in DC against the spendthrift Leftists in the White House. (Pollers don't seem to get the fact that mainstream Republicans are polling badly because everyone hates the establishment Republicans more than even Leftists.)
  I must confess I've admired Cory Booker because he seemed friendly, gregarious and he almost dissed Obama once. Well, he did until Obama got his hands around his neck. But then there were also lots of stories about him in the press saving old ladies from the fire next door.
  Turns out those stories are lies.
  (Well, that modus operandi fits perfectly today's Leftists.)
  Anyway, to be honest, I don't have much hope that Steven Lonegan will beat Cory Booker but it's pretty amazing that he's pulled within a few points in the polls.
  There's actually resentment in the black community for what they call a "fake mayor" who never lived in the neighborhood he claimed he did.
  In fact, neighbors claim Booker lives in New York.
  Other neighbors guffaw at the prospect of Booker's saving an old lady from a fire. Their theory is that she was on his payroll. The Daily Caller has done an excellent job covering Booker's flame-out:

“I don’t believe he went in there,” Dock told The Daily Caller.  I don’t believe he saved her. I don’t believe he put her over his back and brought her out. First of all, the hallway is too narrow for both of them to fit through that hallway so I don’t believe none of that.”
Dock told The Daily Caller Hodge reacted by “laughing” when Dock confronted her about the holes in her story.

“Laughing every time when we had the conversation about the fire and how it happened she just chuckled, which leads me to believe that none of it is true,” Dock said. “I said to her ‘Zina do not go on Oprah and allow him to continue with this lie.’”

  Booker is accused of other lies. In fact, there is a host of stories about Booker's alter ego who does all these nasty things that the real Cory Booker apparently has never done since the mainstream media hasn't covered it so it must not be true.
  I'm sad to say that I haven't had much hope for the black community's awareness of what Leftists are doing to their lives so the prospect of Booker actually losing has seemed quite dim to me.
  But who knows.
  Considering that not one but four black pastors in Harlem have risen up to protest against Al Sharpton I guess anything's possible. 
  Even MSNBC's notes that Booker's "stumbling" to the finish line even with an 8-1 fundraising advantage. Polls suggest he still has a 10 point lead, but considering his district was previously held by Frank Lautenberg, it's notable that Lonegan has been able to get that close.
  Who knows.
  God, I guess. 
UPDATE: How could I forget to mention that Booker has a Weiner problem?  And that he's been accused of enriching himself at the taxpayers' expense. Gee, that's another new one. 
  But American Thinker thinks he can win:

He has narrowed Booker's lead so much that ACORN's Project Vote has now entered the race, threatening to sue the state for not being activist enough in registering Democrat voters. When this kind of thing happens, you know they are scared.