Friday Free-For-All: Embracing the Suck

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Weasel Zippers: HHS Asks Insurance Companies To Ignore 3 Major Obamacare Rules…

On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was “strongly encouraging” insurers to help the department fix a raft of problems created by the rocky rollout of President Obama’s health care law.

Among the guidance the HHS announced:

— It is requiring insurers to accept payments until Dec. 31 for coverage starting on Jan. 1. It is also “urging” insurers to give individuals more time beyond that to pay for coverage. In other words, if somebody pays for coverage in the middle of January, HHS is asking insurers to retroactively make that person’s coverage effective as of Jan. 1. HHS is also asking insurers to cover individuals who offer a “down payment,” even if that payment only covers part of the first month’s premiums.

Griffin: 33 House Republicans Request Meeting with President Obama to Discuss Real Health Care Reform:

WASHINGTON – Congressman Tim Griffin (AR-02) issued the following statement after leading 33 other House Republicans in sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday requesting a meeting to discuss real health care reform alternatives to Obamacare:

“The failure of Obamacare means we must act now.  President Obama said recently, ‘If you’ve got good ideas, bring them to me.’ I hope he meant what he said and will meet with us.  It’s not too late for a fresh start so we can get real health care reform right.”

The letter states: “[I]t is a false choice to say that the [Affordable Care Act] is the only way to reform health care,” and points out that, in the current Congress, House Republicans have introduced more than 200 health care-related bills, which include patient-centered solutions like…

***

Rep. Griffin is a cosponsor of The American Health Care Reform Act (H.R. 3121), which would repeal and replace Obamacare.

Last month, Rep. Griffin introduced H.R. 3541, the House companion bill to Senator Marco Rubio’s S. 1726, the Obamacare Taxpayer Bailout Prevention Act.

Moe Lane: Washington State #obamacare exchange raids enrollees’ bank accounts.

Heck of a job there, Governor Jay Inslee (Democrat).  Heck of a job.

Shot, December 10, 2013 (all bolding mine):

Four of the states with their own exchanges – Connecticut, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Washington – have sites that have run especially smoothly, becoming models for states such as Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois and New Mexico that are planning to launch their own sites in 2014.

Chaser, December 10, 2013:

For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it’s causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.

Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative.

[snip]

The Bruners enrolled for insurance on the Washington Healthplanfinder website, last October. They say they selected the bill pay date to be December 24th. Instead the Washington Healthplanfinder drafted the 835 dollar premium Monday.

 

Weasel Zippers: Dumb: Celebrity Moonbats Tweet Their Support For Obamacare – Dumber: Using Canned Messages…

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NRO: The Left’s Coordinated Assault on Free Speech:

Last week the left-wing British newspaper theGuardianpublished a trove of funding proposals that were privately submitted to the State Policy Network (SPN) — a nonprofit group that coordinates state-level efforts to enact free-market reforms — by state-based think tanks. (One of the documents was a proposal from our institution, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, about reforming Medicaid to better serve low-income Texans.) The publication of the documents is not so much a piece of investigative reporting as it is a modern-day recurrence of 19th-century yellow journalism.

The Guardian justified its actions on the grounds that the public needs “full and fair access” to the conservative groups’ plans, “to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.” The clear implication is that the groups in question are nefarious beneficiaries of “dark money” from corporate interests seeking to control state politics.

But the real purpose of the Guardian’s hit piece is far more disturbing than any corporatist conspiracy theory: It is meant to undermine the freedoms of expression and association that all Americans enjoy under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. TheGuardian is well aware of these protections; they are why the paper has been able to publish many of the documents stolen by Edward Snowden. But for the activist Left, those freedoms shouldn’t extend to conservative and libertarian groups.

Truth Revolt: Unions Paid MSNBC’s Schultz $177,000 in 2012, $75,000 in 2013: MSNBC host often touts “blue collar workers” and unionized “teachers” on his show.

A Department of Labor search shows that not only is liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz paid for his TV show and radio show, but he is getting a hefty amount of money from labor unions. Schultz received at least $177,000 from labor unions in 2012; the average median income for an American family is around $44,000 a year.

This year alone the DOL shows Schultz has been paid $75,000 by the AFL-CIO; just yesterday AFL-CIO Richard Trumka appeared on The Ed Show. As we ring in the new year in just a couple of weeks we will keep track of how much union pay for play Schultz gets in 2014.

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Poor Richard’s News: Obama’s ATF is entrapping mentally disabled teens, giving pot to minors, & luring guns near schools:

President Obama’s Justice Department is running headlong into yet another scandal involving the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. With eerie echoes of Fast and Furious, ATF has been operating elaborate entrapment stings targeting teens in drug and firearm busts across the country.

The details of the operations are astounding, including ATF paying one mentally handicapped teen,  $150 to get a neck tattoo of a giant squid smoking a joint, the logo of a fake pot shop that ATF set up to entrap customers in Milwaukee.

from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Key, who is mentally disabled, was swayed.

He and his friend, Marquis Glover, liked Squid’s. It was their hangout. The 19-year-olds spent many afternoons there playing Xbox and chatting with the owner, “Squid,” and the store clerks.

So they took the money and got the ink etched on their necks, tentacles creeping down to their collarbones.

It would be months before the young men learned the whole thing was a setup. The guys running Squid’s were actually undercover ATF agents conducting a sting to get guns away from criminals and drugs off the street.

The two teenagers didn’t find out that their new tattoos were advertisements for a phony pot shop until they were booked into jail by the Federal investigators.

The details of the entrapment operations get even worse.

Human Events: THE OBAMA-CASTRO HANDSHAKE, A CONFIRMATION:

In executive order after executive order, President Obama abolished President Bush’s travel and remittance restrictions to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom and opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba today is estimated at $4 billion a year. While a proud Soviet satrapy Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. In brief, almost every year since Obama took office more cash has been flowing from the U.S. to Cuba than used to flow there from the Soviets at the height of their Cuba-sponsorship.

In brief, there was an excellent reason for the smile on Raul Castro’s face as he shook hands with president Obama.

Oh, I know, I know you keep reading about how its “high time” we “normalize” our relations with Cuba. So here’s a few more items meticulously “overlooked” by the media:

In 1957 (when Cuba was a “U.S. economic colony” we’re constantly told by the media, though U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 per cent the island’s GNP) the U.S. exported $347.5 million worth of goods to Cuba.

In 2012 (when Cuba was being “strangled by a U.S. economic blockade” we’re constantly told by the media) the U.S. exported $457.3 million to Cuba. In fact for every one of the past 8 years the “Cuba-embargoing” U.S. has exported more goods to Cuba than it did in 1957.

In 1957 (when Cuba was a “playground for U.S. tourists” we’re constantly told by the media) 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S. We all saw this in Godfather II, liberals’ top educational source on pre-Castro Cuba, right?  Does that last quip come across as hyperbolic?

WHD: Sorry Democracy; Obama Brings in Two True Believers:

President Obama’s decision to haul John Podesta and Phil Schiliro into the White House is bad news for the Republic. Because Obama is clearly finished with the messiness of democracy, and he intends to rule as much as possible from the White House.

Podesta will take over the job of presidential counselor Pete Rouse, while Schiliro is in charge of the White House Obamacare effort. Both will only be around for 2014, a political year when little is expected to happen on Capitol Hill. But clearly, much will be going on in the White House.

I’ve known and watched Podesta and Schiliro for many years. They are partisan, true-believing liberal democrats. They are relentless and efficient. They have worked with Republicans – and are respected by many of them for their skill and forthrightness – but their passion is leftist policymaking.

Red Nation Rising: #ImpeachObamaRama Viral in Retail Stores:

impeach obama

How do these things start?  Here’s how: an idea is born and people execute!

A Single Tweet… Shared!

Several weeks ago, someone shared a picture of items in a retail store rearranged to spell out “Impeach Obama” with the Red Nation Rising social community by using the hashtag #RedNationRising on Twitter.  That picture was then posted with some text — sharing the idea — on our Red Nation Rising Facebook Community Page.

A friendly “boots-on-the-ground” activist group with 70,000 members on Facebook called Overpasses For America saw our post, picked up the picture and is all over it!

Voila!  “Impeach Obama-Rama” was born.

December 14th and December 21st

Since that initial tweet last month, people have been shopping at retail stores such as Michael’s Crafts, Kohl’s, Home Depot, and Hobby Lobby and others to rearrange items spelling out anti-Obama messages.  There are National Events planned for December 14 and December 21.

Walid Shoebat: Report: Hillary Clinton tied to Terrorism:

Another complaint has reportedly been filed with Egypt’s Attorney General, Hisham Barakat. According to multiple Arabic sources (Al Wafd and Vetogate among them), this one is said to allege that the wife of ousted President Mohammed Mursi not only admitted in an interview with Turkey’s Anatolia news agency that she sought to excite domestic insurrections to overthrow Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi but that she collaborated with Hillary Clinton.
Mehwar TV Channel has posted a video of a news report, via Almesryoon, given by Nasr Qaffas, who relays the details of Mahmoud’s interview with Anatolia. Key excerpts of the report translated by Walid Shoebat, beneath the video below…
My Latest at The Conversation: 
I was hoping last week’s judiciary hearing on the president’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law was the first step by Republicans to finally do something about Obama’s lawlessness.
Remember the Obama Commemorative Victory Plate of 2008 “honoring the election of the 44th president – America’s first African American Commander in Chief?” Who can forget the voice-over saying, “his confident smile and his kind eyes are an inspiration to us all…”
Wednesday, radio talk show host Sara Marie Brenner interviewed Bill Elliott, the cancer patient who gained notoriety when he appeared on Fox News with Megyn Kelly after his insurance was cancelled. Elliott, you may remember, later received notification of his audit from the IRS on the same day C. Steven Tucker, the man who helped him get his insurance back, received his. After reaching out to SC Governor Nikki Haley, a SC congressman and a Democratic US Senator from North Carolina, he was able to get his IRS “audit” terminated.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius got a little heated, this morning, when a Republican congressman got frustrated with the HHS Secretary’s obfuscations.
The president’s approval rating has taken a nosedive in recent weeks due to the rocky start of his “signature achievement”. America has not been sufficiently thankful to him for his herculean efforts on their behalf.


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