USA Today Reporter: Healthcare.gov May Need to Be Completely Overhauled

The Morning Joe panel interviewed USA Today reporter Kelly Kennedy about her damning article on the healthcare.gov Monday morning.

Kennedy said experts contend the glitches are the result of the Obamacare website being built on 10 year-old technology that may need to be completely overhauled.

Host Joe Scarborough ribbed his liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski, noting the irony that the firm hired by the U.S. to launch the Obamacare website was fired by the province of Ontario in Canada:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow, Mika. I mean, so what we’re talking here Mika — the Canadians fired a Canadian firm that the United States hired to run the biggest governmental launch in a generation. Huh.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You know, it’s interesting –

KATY KAY: Speechless.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Everybody missed that. They were so busy — I don’t know. I guess they were looking somewhere else. I don’t know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah whatever.

Via: WFB

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Private Charities Stepped Up While Government Was Shut Down

Over the past two weeks, much media coverage has been devoted to the politicians in Washington, while far less time was spent discussing the ramifications the shutdown had on the lives of furloughed federal workers. The people who work for non-essential segments of the federal government are working to put food on the table and take care of their kids like any other individuals working in the private sector. So while it’s easy to chuckle and point out that life went mostly unchanged in the partial shutdown, there were people immediately affected by it.

In an ideal situation, there would be enough private sector jobs to absorb the number of people employed in the unnecessary parts of federal government. It’s tempting to look at an index of government positions and cross out all of the extraneous agencies and departments. However, while the economy isn’t all bad, it’s pretty plain that there are simply not enough available jobs for this to be feasible.

Furloughed federal workers will receive retroactive pay, but not until the government reopened of course. Until then, there was no paycheck coming in.

This had some Capitol Hill workers fretting over making various payments if the shutdown kept dragging on. It’s likely that many federal workers would have “[fou]nd themselves in a serious financial bind if they miss[ed] two paychecks.” There are those who had retroactive pay coming, but still could not afford to put food on the table, as they were already living paycheck to paycheck.

Via: Pocket Full of Liberty

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Media Shapes Views of Low-Information Voters

A funny television feature by Dan Joseph on MRCTV prompted me to question how public opinion could possibly be so distorted these days. In man-on-the-street interviews, the reporter asked numerous people whether President Obama or President Bush was responsible for the government shutdown. A hilarious succession of people solemnly declared that President Bush is the one responsible. While the interviews are laughable, the problem of "low-information voters" is not funny at all. A republic whose educational and cultural institutions produce voters that are ill informed cannot hope to arrive at good civic decisions.

Evidence that the public is not well-informed abounds. According to the Pew Research Center's biennial survey, television is still the public's top news source (69 percent) and the public still believes that journalists are the ones who make sense of issues and conflicts (54 percent) and that the press is a "watchdog" preventing political leaders from misleading the public (43 percent).

Yet, a fawning New York City reporter, WABC's Diana Williams, interviewed President Obama, asking him if he felt any responsibility for the government shutdown. Astoundingly, the president accepted absolutely no responsibility whatsoever, calling the standoff purely a result of the "bad strategy" of the GOP, aimed at "blindsiding" the Democrats and "extracting ransom." The obsequious reporter left unchallenged Obama's self-serving statements that painted him as "above the fray" and totally innocent of any involvement in the political crisis. Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, the president claimed that he had a "track record of consistently seeking compromise," to the point that members of his party "were critical of him," but that he "always does what is best for the country." The reporter summed up the interview by calling him "calm, thoughtful and kind." Calm, perhaps. Kind? What planet has this reporter been living on for the last five years?

Via: American Thinker

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Plug-Ins Account For Less Than Half of 1% of Auto Sales This Year

(CNSNews.com) –  After the federal government spent billions of dollars on federal tax credits and subsidies to promote all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, they accounted for less than half of one percent of the 11.7 million light vehicles purchased in the U.S. during the last nine months.

In his 2011 “State of the Union” address, President Obama predicted that the U.S. would “become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” and backed up his prediction with $2.4 billion in federal grants to companies that produce lithium-ion batteries to power them.

But with 14 months to go, sales of the two top-selling plug-in cars are running far behind the president’s expectations. And despite receiving $99.8 million in stimulus funds, electric charging station manufacturer Ecotality filed for bankruptcy last month.

In April, the Congressional Research Service reported that “there is a gap between the Administration’s goal of having one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and consumer demand for such vehicles.” (See CRS.pdf)

Auto sales figures during the first nine months of 2013 confirm CRS’ conclusion.

According to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) “February 2011 Status Report,” General Motors was supposed to produce and sell 120,000 Chevrolet Volts in 2013 to keep pace with the president’s goal.

Via: CNS News

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The Daily Caller investigates: What are the numbers on the hilariously sad failure of Obamacare?

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Obama not Nixon, Carter or Clinton but the president who hates the U.S.

Why do so many empty talking heads and journalists keep comparing Barack Hussein Obama to other presidents?

Journalists: Obama the Worst Since Nixon’ is the latest.

When it comes to presidencies, Obama is not the worst since Nixon, Carter, Clinton, et al, he’s the worst.

“The Obama administration’s hostility toward media and efforts to crack down on whistleblowers and leakers has created “a tremendous chilling effect” on substantive reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters said Thursday.” (The Washington Free Beacon, Oct. 18, 2013).

“The CPJ issued last week a scathing report, written by former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr, on the effects of the Obama administration’s efforts to control press coverage, burnish its image, and thwart unauthorized leaks.

“The Obama administration’s aggressive war on leaks, and its determined efforts to control information that the news media needs to hold the government accountable for its actions, are without equal since the Nixon administration and in direct conflict with President Obama’s often-stated goal of making his administration the most transparent in history,” Downie said.

‘The Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters’?

How about ‘The Committee to Protect average Americans from ‘The Committee to Protect Journalists and veteran reporters’?

How about rather than media scribes racing to the protection of committees, and folding like so many cheap suits, they don’t let Obama get away with it by digging deeper in quest of finding the truth?

The growing trend to compare Barack Hussein Obama to other presidents is a trend that takes its source—from Barack Hussein Obama, who started it all back in 2006.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Obamacare Monster: Mounting Errors Paralyze Plans

The disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website has taken a new turn with errors turning up for the few who successfully managed to enroll through the glitch-filled site.

Executives at more than a dozen health plans have told The Wall Street Journal that errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields, and suspect eligibility determinations. 

In one case, a customer successfully signed up on Healthcare.gov for three plans at one company.

"The longer this takes to resolve… the harder it will be to get people to [come back and] sign up," Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Mark Bertolini told the Journal. "It's not off to a great start."

While insurers have indicated they have been able to solve the problems manually, there is concern it won't be possible as enrollment accelerates in the coming months, the Journal reports.

ObamaCare: You Can Win With The Facts 

"We know that people are enrolling in coverage and the system works. As individual problems are raised by insurers, we work aggressively to address them," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters told the Journal.

From its launch on Oct. 1, the website has been immobilized by problems, including an inability to cope with high levels of traffic, which prevented people from accessing the site, as well as major software flaws.

Republicans have called for the head of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for failing to ensure the system would work. 

The administration initially blamed the issues on high demand, but has since admitted the site was fraught with serious flaws, though officials have withheld details.

Via: Newsmax

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[CARTOON] Kicking the Can

Via: California Political Review

U.S. debt jumps a record $328 billion — tops $17 trillion for first time

U.S. debt jumped a record $328 billion on Thursday, the first day the federal government was able to borrow money under the deal President Obama and Congress sealed this week.

The debt now equals $17.075 trillion, according to figures theTreasury Department posted online on Friday.

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The $328 billion increase shattered the previous high of $238 billion set two years ago.

The giant jump comes because the government was replenishing its stock of “extraordinary measures” — the federal funds it borrowed from over the last five months as it tried to avoid bumping into the debt ceiling.

Under the law, that replenishing happens as soon as there is new debt space.

Enlarge Photo

(Treasury Department) more >

In this case, the Treasury Department borrowed $400 billion from other funds beginning in May, awaiting a final deal from Congress and Mr. Obama.

Usually Congress sets a borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, that caps the total amount the government can be in the red.

But under the terms of this week’s deal, Congress set a deadline instead of a dollar cap. That means debt will rise by as much as the government spends between now and the Feb. 7 deadline.

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Judging by the rate of increase over the last five months, that could end up meaning Congress just granted Mr. Obama a debt increase of $700 billion or more.

Via: Washington Times

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ObamaCare and the Tea Party's Coming Vindication ...

The conventional wisdom is wrong. The mainstream media — and their parrots in the Republican establishment — are claiming that President Obama decisively won the government shutdown battle. In fact, the narrative being peddled is that the GOP brand has been badly damaged, paving the way for a possible Democratic Party takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2014 elections. This is puerile nonsense. Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, may have lost the battle, but they are poised for a major victory in the larger Obamacare war.

Liberal pundits and Republican moderates, such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, are blaming one person for the partial government shutdown: Mr. Cruz. They argue that for all their attempts to defund or delay Obamacare, Mr. Cruz and his conservative allies accomplished nothing. The final deal reopens the federal government until Jan. 15 and lifts the debt ceiling into early February. In exchange, no significant reforms or revisions were made to Mr. Obama’s signature health law. As for the repeal of the medical devices tax, a one-year delay in the individual mandate and an end to the exemption given to Congress and its staff, none of these proposals were accepted by the Democrats. Hence, the political and media class are convinced Mr. Cruz’s obstructionist tactics backfired, fostering the public perception that “right-wing extremists” have hijacked the GOP. Mr. Obama now openly refers to the Tea Party as a “dangerous faction.”

This is myth and propaganda masquerading as analysis. The legislative deal simply does one thing: kick the can down the road. Yet the same, enduring problems remain — the very problems identified by Mr. Cruz and Tea Party Republicans. America is sitting on a ticking debt bomb, Obamacare — the most destructive law in modern memory — is a disaster, and our ruling elites are incapable of reining in out-of-control public spending.

Via: Washington Times

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Growing the Debt: Stopgap funding bill sprinkled with $$ for local projects

The stopgap bill to fund the government was only supposed to end the partial shutdown for a few months, no strings attached -- right? 

Nope. 

Despite the bill being tiny by Washington standards -- just 35 pages -- lawmakers still managed to tuck in billions of dollars in additional spending. 

Already, one item has earned some degree of notoriety. Appropriators included a line increasing the budget for an Ohio River dam project from $775 million to $2.9 billion. 

Costs for the project, approved in 1998, have soared above the original price tag. Supporters of the Olmsted Locks and Dam funding argue the additional money is necessary to reduce bottlenecking at the crossing of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who along with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., supported the item, told Fox News that all barge traffic would be suspended if the dam wasn't funded. 

She said the funding was included in the budget bill because it is the only spending bill moving. The House had earlier approved funding for the dam, though at a lower level. 

Via: Fox News

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