Poll: If voters had known they’d lose insurance, Romney would have won

If voters had been aware last year that they might lose their health-care plans when Obamacare went into effect, Republican President Mitt Romney would be sitting in the White House today, according to a poll released Friday.

A Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research survey conducted from Nov. 18-20 asked voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012: “As you may know, millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans despite President Obama’s promise that, quote, ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it.’ If you knew in 2012 that this promise was not true, would you still have voted for Barack Obama?”

In response, 23 percent said they would not have voted to re-elect Obama, while 72 percent said they would still have voted for him. The largest number of defections were among female voters ages 18-54, 31 percent of whom said they would not have supported the president.

An ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this week found that if they had a do-over, Romney would win 49 percent to 45 percent. The difference is within the margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, but Obama polls a lower percentage of the vote today than he did in November 2012.

A generic ballot question on the poll found likely voters favoring Republicans for 2014: 39 percent of independents said they would vote for the unspecified Republican candidate over the unspecified Democratic candidate, compared to 30 percent who said they would vote for the Democrat.

Eight percent of Democrats said they would vote Republican, compared to just four percent of Republicans who said they would vote Democrat.

The poll surveyed 801 likely voters with live phone interviews and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The sample of 2012 Obama voters was 384 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

False job numbers: Did the White House know?

That like asking is snow white!!!!

Let me be the first to ask: Did the White House know that employment reports were being falsified?

Last week I reported exclusively that someone at the Census Bureau’s Philadelphia region had been screwing around with employment data. And that person, after he was caught in 2010, claimed he was told to do so by a supervisor two levels up the chain of command.

On top of that, a reliable source whom I haven’t identified said the falsification of employment data by Census was widespread and ongoing, especially around the time of the 2012 election.

There’s now a congressional investigation of how Census handles employment data. And we can hope that we’ll find out this was just an isolated incident.

But let me tell you why it might not be.

Back in 2009 — right before the 2010 census of the nation was taken — there was an announcement that the Obama administration had decided that the Census Bureau would report to senior White House aides.

The rumor was that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in charge of the nationwide head count.

The chief of the Commerce Department usually oversees the Census, which determines how many congressional representatives and how much money each state gets for the next decade. But the Obama administration had decided — the story went — that Emanuel was a better guy for the job.

Via: NY Post

Continue Reading.....

FLASHBACK: IN THE LOUP: MAY 2001 A toast to the filibuster, R.I.P.

Editor's Note: Obamacare trudges on and Harry Reid has detonated the nuclear option. What better time for a drink? Pull up a bar stool and listen as the late Christopher Hitchens explains -- as he did in our May 2001 issue, using his favorite New York City establishment -- just the kind of place required to properly enjoy one. 

What does one seek in a place of refreshment? Or what qualities, once found, make one think of a bar as in some way one's own? I would list in no special order the following features. The place should be open early and late and in between. In line with this, it should be a setting of moods: a slow start in the mid-morning, a bit of a bulge around lunchtime, a languorous afternoon and then a gradual quickening of pace after 6 p.m., culminating in a commitment to some sort of late-night or after-dinner or post-theater crowd. (It's not absolutely necessary to experience all of these things in the same 24-hour cycle, but you should be able to say that you have experienced them all and can in some way count on them.)

Those who staff the place should by all means recognize a faithful patron, and pull the trick of pouring the favorite bracer as soon as he shuffles in, but they should also recognize those times when he wants to read, or write, or brood, or recuperate. There should be music--not a television--and the customer should be able to have some say in its nature, also its wattage.

The clientele should be various, but not atomized. One wants the certainty of a few familiar faces, but not too many of them or not except at predictable phases of the day. In other words, my true bar should have an element of cafe-society to it; a place for newspapers and espresso as well as cocktails and basic food, and a place where you could bring your mother, if you had a mother, for a light lunch as well as your mistress or male lover, if you had a mistress or male lover, for a late-ish nightcap.

Via: The American Spectator

Continue Reading....

The Scheme behind the Obamacare Fraud

Lies smooth the transition to a fundamental transformation of our health-care system. 

Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.

To be sure, it is the fraud — the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices — that grabs our attention. As I’ve recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” The incontrovertible record — disclosures by the Obama administration in the Federal Register, representations by the Obama Justice Department in federal court — proves that Obama’s promises were systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing, and not just because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama also insults our intelligence. It is one thing to tuck evidence of falsehoodinto a few paragraphs on page 34,552 of a dusty governmental journal no one may ever look at. It is quite something else to announce it in a legal brief publicly filed in a case of intense interest to millions of Americans aggrieved by Obamacare’s religious-liberty violations. To be so bold is to say, in effect, “The public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press is too deep in my pocket to raise alarms.”

Via: NRO

Continue Reading....

Most state insurance exchanges ward off woes of HealthCare.gov BY TONY PUGH, BARBARA ANDERSON AND BRAD SHANNON

WASHINGTON — With millions of dollars in federal funding, a more harmonious political environment and the benefit of early planning, most of the state-run health insurance marketplaces are outperforming the clunky, glitch-prone federal website that serves the other 36 states.

Federal figures show that nearly 3 of 4 Americans who enrolled in insurance coverage through online marketplaces in October did so through the exchanges run by 14 states and the District of Columbia. That’s nearly 80,000 people, compared with roughly 27,000 on the federal website HealthCare.gov, which had a goal of 500,000 enrollees for October.

Leading the enrollment success stories are states such as California, Washington, Kentucky, New York and Connecticut.

“There’s some extraordinary efforts being made in states across the country, and it augers well in terms of the overall implementation of the Affordable Care Act,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a national patient advocacy organization. “Once the federal marketplace website is fixed, I think we can expect similar” enrollment successes.

Some states owe their success to early starts of construction on their enrollment websites. But comparing the operation of the federal health insurance exchange with those of the state-run exchanges is not an apples-to-apples equation.

Via: McClatchyDC

Continue Reading....

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/22/209445/most-state-insurance-exchanges.html#storylink=cpy

[VIDEO] Brokaw: People In Conservative States Wanted Kennedy Shot

Is it possible for Americans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death without the media taking potshots at the Right?

Consider former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw who while on MSNBC’s The Cycle Friday recounting where he was when Kennedy was shot decided he needed to make the case that people in conservative states wanted the president killed (video follows with transcript and commentary):

TOM BROKAW: I was a reporter in Omaha. I was the morning news editor. I did the cut-ins for the Today show on the noon news, and it was kind of an exhausting schedule, about nine hours. And I was in the newsroom kind of cleaning up, and the bells on the wire machines went off. AP and UPI was how we got the news in those days. Not a tweet or anything online. And it meant there was a bulletin of some kind. And I went over and Merriman Smith - who really became legendary for dictating on the run, the UPI reporter – had dictated that shots were fired at the presidential motorcade, the president perhaps fatally wounded. That was the first thing that we saw. And then of course it rolled out there in Parkland and then the announcement of his death.

We didn't have the network up at KMTV because NBC would give back a local station one hour of midday programming. I ran down, there was a garden show on the air. So I put it on over the garden show and then did that a couple of times. And this was unusual but it was not unheard of. As I came running out of the announce booth the chief engineer - with whom I didn't get along very well. A really curmudgeonly guy, old, kind of a gnarly guy – and he said, “What happened?” And I said, “Kennedy was shot.” And he said , “About time somebody shot that S.O.B.” That was heard in other places, mostly in the conservative states. But he was, that was reflecting his real feeling, and they had to peel me away from him. I then ran back up and continued to work.

Via: Newsbusters.org

Continue Reading....

Former Secret Service Agent Says Obama’s True ‘Religion is Government’

Dan Bongino is a 12-year Secret Service veteran who recently announced that after protecting President Barack Obama for four years he would be leaving his job to run for Congress in Maryland as a Republican. Bongino appeared on Steve Malzberg’s NewsMax show Friday to both discuss his campaign and promote his new book, Life Inside the Bubble.

Asked to explain the difference between Obama and President George W. Bush, who he spent most of his Secret Service career protecting, Bongino said Obama “does what’s best for his ideology.” Alluding to those who don’t believe the president is Christian, he said, “his religion is government, and when your religion is government you do anything to further that.”

Bongino accused Obama of making major leadership decisions based on “faith” rather than “evidence.” Using the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act as an example, he said “just like someone trying to tell you, if you’re a Christian, Jesus Christ didn’t exist… it’s his faith in government that despite the evidence, he sticks to it no matter what.”

“I believe he’s a Christian, because he says a Christian,” Malzberg responded. He wanted to know from Bongino whether Obama joined a church for “political expediency” or because he’s actually a “religious man.”

Bongino admitted that he did not get the chance to meet with Obama on a “personal” level and would not know what he does on his own time, but, he reiterated, “my impression of him is his religion really is government.”

Watch video below, via NewsMax:

\

Via: Mediaite.com

Continue Reading.....

Sharpton, Guests Clash Over Nuclear Option: Dems ‘Played Into Republicans’ Hands’

Al Sharpton said Friday night it’s now “par for the course” for conservatives to make tone-deaf remarks about rape, in the wake of comments made by Rush Limbaugh comparing the nuclear option to a circle of people voting on whether to rape women. Sharpton and his guests, Joe Madison and Patricia Murphy, condemned Limbaugh’s comments, but actually disagreed on whether the Democrats were in the right to push the red button in the first place.

Murphy called Limbaugh’s comments “disgusting [and] totally uncalled for,” but then proceeded to disagree with Sharpton and Madison on the nuclear option. She argued the Democrats “played into Republicans’ hands,” saying they should have fought within the rules rather than changing them.

Madison shot back that the Democrats aren’t “dealing with honest brokers,” that the Republicans brought this on themselves after years and years of obstruction and blatant opposition to anything President Obama wanted.

Sharpton also brought up two distinct criticisms of Obama from the right: he’s a ruthless dictator who doesn’t abide by the rule of law, and he’s also a weak-kneed politician with no spine. Well, which is it?

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

Via: Mediaite.com

Continue Reading....

Subcontractor working on Obamacare site under FBI investigation

One of the subcontractors working on the Obamacare website is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Client Network Services Incorporated (CNSI) became a sub-contractor on the Obamacare website in 2012, working hand in hand with QSSI, according to its website. QSSI was one of several contractors hauled before Congress to address the sites troubled rollout in October.

According to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “war room” notes released in October, CNSI was responsible for assisting with electronic data interchange (EDI) — defined as a system to transfer data between computer systems without human interaction.

Among the plethora of problems with the website rollout, insurance companies have complained that data received on their computers has often been inaccurate, suggesting a problem with the EDI.

CNSI is currently under investigation by the FBI, which has alleged that then-Louisiana Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein, a former CNSI employee, exerted undue influence in steering the Medicaid contract to Louisiana.

According to a story in the New Orleans Times Picayne, the FBI also acccused CNSI of witness tampering in another case.

“According to the FBI report in this Court’s possession, one of CNSI’s owners, in front of the other three owners, said if the employee ‘ever disclosed the misconduct at the company they would have him killed.’”

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

The New York Times Equates Opposing Obamacare With Slavery

One does not expect to find insightful, cogent, or fair commentary on the editorial pages of the New York Times. Banal liberalism, provincialism, and insulation from the beliefs of flyover America are standard fare and thus to be expected. But every once in a while, a piece comes along which is so utterly devoid of reason, taste, or linear thought that it deserves to be pointed out for special ridicule. Such is this piece by Timothy Egan which equates – and I am dead serious – opposing Obamacare with supporting slavery:

Before he was immortalized for saving the union, freeing the slaves and giving the best political speech in American history, Abraham Lincoln was just an unpopular new president handed a colossal crisis. Elected with 39.7 percent of the vote, Lincoln told a big lie in his inaugural address of 1861.

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists,” he said, reaching out to the breakaway South. “I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

He was saying to a Confederacy that would enshrine owning another human being in its new constitution: If you like the slaves you’ve got now, you can keep them. It was a lie in the sense that Lincoln made a promise, changed by circumstances, that he broke less than two years later — and probably never meant to keep.

The comparisons of President Obama to Lincoln fade with every day of the shrinking modern presidency. As for the broken-promise scale: Lincoln said an entire section of the country could continue to enslave more than one in three of its people. Obama wrongly assured about five million people that they could keep their bare-bones health plans if they liked them (later amended when it turned not to be true).

There’s a lot to unpack in this particular bowl of word salad, including some questionable historical assertions about Lincoln’s intent with respect to the South upon taking office, and the New York Times’ continued use of bizarre Orwellian language to avoid calling Obama a liar. Lincoln, on the one hand, told a “big lie.” Obama, on the other hand, “wrongly assured” people something that he “later amended” only after, due to circumstances completely beyond his control, “it turned out not to be true.”

Via: Red State

Continue Reading....