Forced to put their existence up to a vote, over 70 of 408 public unions in Wisconsin have been rejected.
The Obamacare state exchanges are losing their directors.
So far, 25 percent of officials in charge of the 14 state-run exchanges, plus Washington D.C., have been replaced, according to Forbes, which compares the turnover rate to professional sports coaching rosters. “More are sure to come as enrollment performance remains poor,” according to Forbes. New Mexico, Massachusetts, Idaho, Washington DC, Nevada and Colorado are posting dismal enrollment numbers, all less than 10 percent of what was expected, the magazine noted.
Gee, I wonder why? Could it be that Obamacare is a turkey that no one wants to buy?
Freedom in the socialist paradise: Cuba is lifting the limit on the number of people allowed to buy a car.
The government has a monopoly on the sale of imported new and used vehicles, and has required any potential buyer to obtain a special card from the Transport Ministry authorizing the purchase of a car. The cards took months or years to obtain, creating a black market in cards in which holders would often sell them for more than the price of the car itself.
Don’t count your blessings, however. The change is only in place “of new regulations, which would be made public in coming days.”
The real legal issues surrounding the right to openly carry your pistol.
Cooke carefully tears apart the typical but nonsensical arguments of the left against open carry, but then discusses intelligently the problems. As he notes, “The open-carry question is a more complex one than some of its advocates like to admit.”
If only the conversation focused on these issues instead of the absurd fear-mongering of the left.
But we’re here to help you! 77% of the uninsured — the very people Obama and the Democrats claimed they were trying to get insured — don’t want Obamacare.
Repeal is still the number one favored option of voters:
A majority said they would vote to have the new healthcare law repealed, if they were able, and they wish it had never passed and the old system was still in place, according to the poll taken Dec. 14-16 of 1,027 registered voters across the country.
The Fox News poll was one of two polls published Wednesday that showed the growing unpopularity of the law. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll also showed that a majority disapprove of the new health care law, even the uninsured, who are supposed to benefit from the law.
Obviously all these people are wrong! Obamacare is “the law of the land”, as the Democrats were so fond of telling us in October as they shut the government down to protect it.
The end of free speech: The star of cable television’s highest rated show in history has been sacked because he dared criticize the homosexual lifestyle.
It does not matter whether one disagrees with him or not. He has the right to express these opinions, and should not be punished merely because they are not politically correct in today’s society.
A judge has blasted the Obama administration for attempting to keep non-classified materials secret and ordered their release.
From the judge:
The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight, to engage in what is in effect governance by ‘secret law.’
This is the second legal ruling this week that has ripped the Obama administration for its illegal willingness to abuse the law.
But hey, why is anyone objecting? Barbara Walters thought Obama would be the next messiah, so anything he wants to do should be okay with us!
2013: a bad year for liberty.
Thirteen insane projects funded by our federal government.
I especially like #5: “NASA spends $3 million looking for signs of intelligent life…in Congress.”
These idiotic programs, which certainly only scratch the surface of the wasteful and corrupt spending in Washington, prove once again that the most recent budget deal is a fraud, that there is no reason to support any increase in federal spending, that we probably could cut the budget in half and not notice anything.
Sadly, that budget deal appears about to pass the Senate.
The Obamacare contraceptive mandate is struck down again, and here are six reasons why.
At the heart of this mandate is the amazing contempt the Obama administration and the left has for religious belief:
In an astonishing display of anti-religious sentiment, the administration argued that forcing religious organizations to designate a third party to provide contraception coverage to their employees isn’t a big deal (legally: de minimis) because it’s “just a form” to fill out, “a purely administrative task.” The district court rightly found that whether a violation of religious freedom is small or large isn’t for the courts to decide. It would be too easy to simply sweep away deeply-held religious beliefs under the claim that government action is merely “de minimis” infringement of rights.
I am not religious, but I will defend to the death the right of a religious person to practice their religion freely, even when we disagree, as long as they don’t act to limit me in my beliefs. Apparently, Obama believes it is okay to trample on those beliefs if they happen to contradict things he believes in.
A campaign ad that says it bluntly: “You lied.”
It is… remarkable, the way that the Democrats were so bald-faced in that lie. It’s like they thought that the rules simply didn’t apply to them, or something. Apparently, the plan was to simply bull on through and expect nobody to call them on the fact that their entire policy position was based on things that everybody knew just weren’t so.
The Democrats must be called on these lies, strongly and often.
“If they kill us all, will you do something then?”
Guess who said it, and guess whom he was making his plea to.
We shall see: Paul Ryan says House Republicans are going to demand something in exchange for raising the debt ceiling again in February.
Though I’m glad he’s saying this, forgive me if I am skeptical. The Republican leadership in the House has proven itself weak and willing to back down all too often. For example, they have allowed the lie that they alone caused the government shutdown to become accepted as truth, merely by acting as if it were true. The result: they were unwilling to demand any concessions in the just completed budget negotiations, even though they had a strong hand and could have easily obtained concessions, especially on Obamacare.
Then there’s this: Ten quotes that explain why conservatives do not trust the Republican Party.
His conclusion is most pertinent:
Incidentally, the solution to all of this is not to leave the Republican Party. To the contrary, it’s to treat the Republican Party like a puppy that’s having difficulty with house training. When Republicans do the right thing, praise them, support them and do what you can to help them out. When they do the wrong thing, rub their noses in it. Attack Republicans who betray their principles relentlessly, primary them at every opportunity and take over the Republican Party so we can shove the politicians who won’t listen to us to the side. While we will never be able to build an entire party full of men like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul, we can make it miserable enough for bad actors that the go-along-to-get-along Republicans will conclude it’s better to work with us than face primaries and incessant attacks from their own side in the new media. Most people don’t realize it, but we have already started moving the Republican Party to the Right and the time will come when Republicans are just as afraid of their base as Democrats are of Planned Parenthood and the unions. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if we keep going after Republicans who sell us out, even the ones that are as hostile as John McCain, Peter King and Lindsey Graham will eventually have to get on board if they want to keep their jobs.
Leftwing news photographer reveals he is no news photographer, ashamed he broke a big story revealing the ugly side of his hero Obama.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful. Your job is to cover the news, to tell the public the real reality behind the propaganda politicians pump out, no matter what political party those politicians belong to. Instead, this guy wants everyone to look the other way in order to protect his political heroes on the left.
In other words, he ain’t a reporter, he’s a leftwing Democratic Party propagandist, disguised as reporter. Sadly, that description applies to almost all reporters today.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: As deadlines loom and the problems with the Obamacare website continue, the Obama administration has issued a number of illegal extensions to the law.
I hate the law, as any reader of this website knows. However, the law is the law. Obama and his bureaucratic minions don’t have the legal right to rewrite it at their pleasure, just because it doesn’t work. And they are discovering this, as increasingly insurance companies and state insurance boards are telling them that their so-called changes are invalid and cannot be obeyed.
It appears a growing number of Congressmen also agree: A resolution in the House demands Obama be brought to court for not faithfully executing the law.
Maybe not so stupid: It appears that Senate Republicans will filibuster the Ryan budget deal.
If the Republicans in the Senate can force some changes, to both the reduction in the sequester cuts over the next two years as well as the procedural change that ends the minority’s ability to block tax increases, then they will have accomplished something.
What I like about this is that they appear to be willing to fight, something Republicans all too often fail to do.
A survey of 400 chief financial officers finds that nearly half plan to cut back on employment because of Obamacare.
And there’s also this:
Besides altering the makeup of their workforces, companies said they also plan to change the health benefit packages offered to employees. “Two-thirds of companies will change health benefits in response to ACA,” reads the Fuqua/CFO Magazine report summary. Forty-four percent of CFOs said they are considering reducing health benefits for employees. Thirty-eight percent said that employees and retirees may be forced to contribute more to their health plans.
“The inadequacies of the ACA website have grabbed a lot of attention, even though many of those issues have been or can be fixed,” said John Graham, Duke Fuqua School of Business finance professor and director of the survey, in a press release. “Our survey points to a more detrimental and potentially long-lasting problem. An unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act will be a reduction in full-time employment growth in the United States,” the study says. [emphasis mine]
So, tell me again why the Republicans in Congress should not challenge the Democrats over Obamacare?
Pushback: A man arrested in Colorado City for legally open carrying his pistol has won $23K in a lawsuit against the city.
We need more people suing for these kinds of illegal actions by the police.
Good enough for the government: The Connecticut Obamacare website gave the wrong information for every single insurance plan it offered, and it took a month to fix the problem.
This example tells you how egregious the error was:
John Javaruski, a 62-year-old retired actuary from Farmington, said he received a letter dated Nov. 1 after he signed up for an Anthem plan with a $2,000 out-of-pocket maximum and zero deductible. According to the revised schedule of benefits attached to the letter, Javaruski’s plan jumped to $6,250 out of pocket and a $3,000 deductible.
Any private company that did this bad a job would go out of business very quickly. This is the government however, which means they stay in charge and you are required “to embrace the suck.”
Homeland Security has finally fired their black racist who had called for the mass murder of whites.
It only took four months.
What is wrong with this? A Michigan teachers union is trying to win a $10,000 severance payment for a child molester.
This is the same case in which several teachers had written letters of support for the molester.
Good enough for government: The Washington state Obamacare website is down, but it still has been able to mistakenly take money from people’s bank accounts.
How to beat a photo-enforced traffic ticket.
“Please pray for me… I am losing my insurance.”
And then there’s this: A man with a critically ill son gives up on healthcare.gov “after nearly three months, three failed applications, and ‘maybe 50 or 100’ calls to exchange’s hotline.”
Yup, this sums it up nicely.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has now accomplished the astonishing task of pushing House Republicans substantially to the left of the Senate GOP. His budget deal, announced Tuesday night, was achieved by shutting conservative Senate Republicans out of negotiations, by resorting to the old trick of spending now while claiming savings later, by ignoring a symbolically important budgetary red line, and by treating as Democratic “concessions” things to which even Democratic budgeteers already had agreed.
The chess equivalent of Ryan’s deal would be trading a castle for a mere pawn. No wonder conservatives are feeling rooked.
The absurdity of this deal is highlighted especially by the ongoing disaster of Obamacare. The Republicans have a very strong negotiating hand right now. They could have actually demanded a repeal of Obamacare in budget talks and thus pushed the Democrats into a corner for which there really is no escape. What would the Democrats do, shut the government down again so that more people could lose their health insurance?
Instead, Ryan behaved as if the Democrats have a Royal Flush and he only had a pair of twos. The stupid party strikes again!
Trying to hide the disaster that is Obamacare.
Most of Washington seems to have bought the White House claim that the 36 federal exchanges are finally working, and glory, glory, hallelujah. But if that’s really true, then what explains the ongoing secrecy and evasion?
On Wednesday the Health and Human Services Department continued its Victorian-era strip tease and allowed a glimpse into the Affordable Care Act’s “enrollment” for November. Out of respect for a free press, reporters ought to boycott these releases because they’re so selective that they reveal little about real enrollment.
Then there’s this:
In other nondisclosure news, the House Oversight Committee turned up letters Wednesday showing that [the Obama administration] ordered the private contractors partly responsible for the Healthcare.gov fiasco not to cooperate with congressional investigations or hand over documents.
Meanwhile, Obamacare has so far resulted in more than 4 million people having lost their health insurance, a number that includes those whom the Obama administration claim have at least selected an Obamacare plan.
As the writer above said, glory, glory, hallelujah!
The stupid party: The Ryan budget deal includes a provision that limits the ability of the Senate minority to block tax increases.
The bill includes language from the Senate Democrats’ budget that voids senators’ ability to raise a budget “point of order” against replacing the sequester cuts with tax increases. The process is quite complicated, but in practice it grants Harry Reid the authority to send tax increases to the House with a bare majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold that would be required under a point of order.
In other words, another example of a Republican getting hosed in negotiations.
Though I have read several conservative reports about this deal that outline some of its positive benefits, on the whole it appears to be another defeat for the right.
This detailed look at the budget deal suggests it isn’t as much of a surrender as first implied.
I have to admit this analysis leaves me more hopeful, especially with this point:
That the Democrats would accept a deal like this is a pretty striking indication of how the Republican House has changed the conversation on the spending front since 2010. Think of it this way: In their first budget after re-taking the majority—the FY 2012 Ryan budget, passed in 2011—the House Republicans wanted discretionary spending to be $1.039 trillion in 2014 and $1.047 trillion in 2015. These budgets were of course described by the Democrats and the political press (but I repeat myself) as some reversion to humanity’s barbaric past. Yet this proposed deal with the Democrats would put discretionary spending at $1.012 trillion in 2014 and $1.014 trillion in 2015—in both cases below that first House Republican budget.
Check out the graph at the link. It does illustrate bluntly that the Republicans are beginning to force the budget curve downward, if slowly. It also suggests that should they win big majorities in both Houses of Congress next November they will be posed to finally push for some real reductions in the size of the federal government, as they will have the votes in Congress and will be doing it with the strong endorsement of the voters.
The people speak: The refusal of 70% of California doctors to participate in Obamacare appears to be spontaneous, without leadership from any professional or political organization.
