Obamacare’s Magical Thinkers

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Photo Credit: National Review If you’re looking for an epitaph for the republic (and these days who isn’t?) try this — from August 2010 and TechCrunch’s delirious preview of Healthcare.gov:

“We were working in a very very nimble hyper-consumer-focused way,” explained Todd Park, the chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew, and all-nighters . . . and, you know, idealism. That kind of led to the magic that was produced.”

Wow. Think of the magic that Madison, Hamilton, and the rest of those schlubs could have produced if they’d only had pizza and Mountain Dew and been willing to pull a few all-nighters at Philadelphia in 1787. Somewhere between the idealism and the curling slice of last night’s pepperoni, Macon Phillips, the administration’s director of new media, happened to come across a tweet by Edward Mullen of Jersey City in which he twitpiced his design for what a health-insurance exchange could look like. So Phillips printed it out to show his fellow administration officials: “Look, this is the sort of creativity that is out there,” he said. “One thing led to another and he left Jersey City to come to D.C. and helped push us through an information architectural process.”

Don’t you just love it! This is way cooler than the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: The only “architectural process” they had was crumbling viaducts. I think we can all agree that Barack Obama is hipper than all other government leaders anywhere, ever, combined. Unfortunately, the dogs bark and the pizza-delivery bike moves on, and, in the cold grey morning after of the grease-stained cardboard box with the rubberized cheese stuck to it, Obamacare wound up somewhat less hipper and, in fact, not even HIPAA — the unpersuasively groovy acronym for federally mandated medical privacy in America. Appearing before Congress on Thursday, the magicians of Obamacare eventually conceded that, on their supposedly HIPAA-compliant database, deep in the “information architectural process” is a teensy-weensy little bit of “source code” that reads, “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this information system.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Arabia Threatening to Cut Ties with US Over Response to Conflict in Syria

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Photo Credit: Reuters Upset at President Barack Obama’s policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.

Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a ‘major shift’ in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria’s civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said.

‘The shift away from the U.S. is a major one,’ the source close to Saudi policy said. ‘Saudi doesn’t want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.’

It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.

Read more from this story HERE.

Prof who Called for Kids’ Deaths Back to Work

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The Kansas University professor who called for the deaths of the children of National Rifle Association members has been taken off administrative leave and assigned to paperwork.

Associate journalism professor Peter Guth blasted the NRA after a crazed man shot and killed people at the Washington Navy Yard, declaring on his Twitter account: “#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God d— you.”

The university initially defended Guth’s statement but then removed him from his classroom assignments and handed him administrative leave.

Now, according to a report by Campus Reform, Guth will be returned to work, not in the classroom but on a paperwork assignment.

“We do have a lot of work to do on assessment as we prepare for various levels of accreditation, and that’s some of the work he will be doing,” said School of Journalism Dean Ann Brill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Timeline: Decision to Shoot Boy Made in 10 Seconds

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Photo Credit: Conner Jay/APThat’s how much time passed after a California sheriff’s deputy reported a suspicious person to dispatch then called back to say shots had been fired.

The shots killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez on Tuesday afternoon in a blue-collar neighborhood in Santa Rosa. Police say Lopez was carrying a pellet gun that looked like an AK-47 assault rifle.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced late Friday that it is conducting its own investigation of the shooting, which has outraged many local residents who are demanding to know whether the shooting was justified.

More than 100 angry middle and high school students walked to City Hall on Friday, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported. Hundreds of people protested earlier in the week.

City police and the Sonoma County district attorney’s office are also investigating.

Read more from this story HERE.

China Killed Your Dog. Are You Next?

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Photo Credit: Daniel J. Groshong/Bloomberg NewsHas your dog exhibited unpleasant health effects — such as, oh, death — after eating jerky treats imported from China? If so, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration would really “like to hear from you or your veterinarian.”

That, in essence, is the white flag of surrender the FDA raised on its homepage this week, effectively conceding its inability to figure out what, precisely, in imported jerky treats has sickened 3,600 dogs and 10 cats since 2007. According to the agency, approximately 580 of those cats and dogs have died from causes that include kidney failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.

Yet, despite the fact that the agency has tested more than 1,200 jerky treats since 2011, visited Chinese pet food plants and engaged in collaborations across governments and academia, there’s no reason to believe that the agency’s regulators are any closer to understanding the outbreak than they were six years ago. So, left to their own devices, they’re asking for help from the public.

This should worry more than pet owners. According to U.S. government data collected by Food & Water Watch, a nongovernmental group concerned with food safety issues, U.S. imports of Chinese food products for human consumption have increased from 2.3 billion tons in 2003 to 4.1 billion tons in 2012. In effect, Americans would be well within their rights to wonder: If the agency can’t secure the jerky treats, what guarantee is there it can secure the 367.2 million gallons of Chinese apple juice Americans imported in 2012?

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska’s Baggage, Change Fees Go Up Oct. 30

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Photo Credit: Alan Berner/The Seattle TimesYou’ll soon pay more to check a bag or change a flight on Alaska Airlines .

For tickets purchased on or after Oct. 30, the fee for checking a suitcase will increase to $25 for each of the first two bags (up from $20 per bag) and $75 for the third bag (currently $25). However, elite-level frequent fliers still get free checked bags.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sean Hannity Shows His Generosity For Fired Obamacare Phone Worker

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Photo Credit: Irish Central Radio talk show host and conservative Fox News super star Sean Hannity, showed the world a side of him that the far left would pretend doesn’t exist.

During his radio show Monday afternoon, Hannity called the phone number President Obama told the public to use for help with Obamacare questions, since the website doesn’t work.

Phone worker Erling Davis answered Sean’s call and proceeded to field the questions about the Obamacare roll out that Sean prodded her with.

The friendly and good-natured Davis truthfully answered Sean’s questions about the fiasco surrounding Obamacare….and it seems that was her downfall. None of her answers cast the Obamacare roll out in a good light, especially when asked by Sean if any of her callers like the plan and she said not really. Hear dialogue.

Hannity had Ms Davis on his show today to ask if there were repercussions from speaking to him on his national radio show. She explained the next morning, she was taken to a Human Resources meeting and told she was fired. The reason given for her firing was “contact with the media.”

According to Ms Davis, she was never told during her training that she was forbidden from taking calls from the media. “I was just out here trying to help everybody,” she told Hannity.

If you think about it, Ms. Davis was doing a better job of informing the public about Obamacare than the administrations has been doing. She answered questions about the healthcare system and its website heard by millions of Americans listening to Hannity’s radio show.

Upon hearing that Ms Davis had lost her job as a result of talking to him on national radio, Sean Hannity pledged to send her the year’s salary (26,000) that she would have made if she remained at her job and also promised to find her a new job.

Ms. Davis was grateful for the help from Sean. Being a single mother of two suddenly losing her job was a fearful event for her, but Hannity took her under his wing and protected her.

Hannity said: “I’m very sorry that you had to go through that. I don’t want you to have to pay a price just for taking our call. So I want to help you out here.”

This isn’t the first time Sean Hannity has helped out people that he feels need a break and has shown his generosity many times this way. But he is also known as a generous philanthropist behind the scenes as well and many can attest to that.

But it also magnifies a stark fact that if you speak out against President Obama or his policies, you will pay a price for speaking the truth.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

How Badly Will ObamaCare Screw You? Answers Here!

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Photo Credit: Andrew AliferisWell well lookie what the cat dragged in.

That’s a link to the unsubsidized data dump — all 78,437 records — for each county and State under the Obamacare exchange program. I can verify that for at least my state and county the table is correct, since you can now look it up on Healthcare.gov without creating an account first (which I am not about to do.)

There are several very interesting statistical facts that come from this.

First, if you’re “27”, the average premium is $266.20/month or $3,194.40 per year. How many 27 year olds have an extra $3,200 to spend on this? Remember, this is the price that virtually every uninsured 27 year old must be willing — and able — to cough up in order to prevent the model this system is predicated on from collapsing.

If those 27 year olds don’t show up, and they won’t, then the system collapses instantly. If they do show up because the government threatens them with fines the economy collapses as $3,200 a year exceeds the average 27 year old’s disposable personal income after mandatory expenses (e.g. food, shelter, etc.) Remember, there are always exceptions but these premiums are averages and over large pools of people the statistical averages are what matters — not the ends of the barbell.

It gets better. The “average” 50 year old premium, again, for single coverage, is $452.87, or $5,434.44/year. How many 50 year olds will find that attractive compared against what they’re paying now? Probably more of them, especially if they’re already sick. But how about the healthy ones?

Read more from this story HERE.

Germany, Brazil Turn to U.N. to Restrain American Spies

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Photo Credit: Foreign Policy Brazil and Germany today joined forces to press for the adoption of a U.N. General Resolution that promotes the right of privacy on the internet, marking the first major international effort to restrain the National Security Agency’s intrusions into the online communications of foreigners, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the push.

The effort follows a German claim that the American spy agency may have tapped the private telephone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and dozens of other world leaders. It also comes about one month after Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff denounced NSA espionage against her country as “a breach of international law” in a General Assembly speech and proposed that the U.N. establish legal guidelines to prevent “cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war.”

Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York today with a small group of Latin American and European governments to consider a draft resolution that calls for expanding privacy rights contained in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights to the online world. The draft does not refer to a flurry of American spying revelations that have caused a political uproar around the world, particularly in Brazil and German. But it was clear that the revelation provided the political momentum to trigger today’s move to the United Nations. The blowback from the NSA leaks continues to agonize U.S. diplomats and military officials concerned about America’s image abroad.

“This is an example of the very worst aspects of the Snowden disclosures,” a former defense official with deep experience in NATO, told The Cable, referring to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. “It will be very difficult for the US to dig out of this, although we will over time. The short term costs in credibility and trust are enormous.”

Although the U.N.’s ability to fundamentally constrain the NSA is nil, the mounting international uproar over U.S. surveillance has security experts fearful for the ramifications.

Read more from this story HERE.

Joe Miller: Time to Take a Stand

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The Obamacare shutdown and debt ceiling debacle made one thing abundantly clear. We cannot count on the Washington establishment to save the country we love.

It is time for patriots to take a stand!

It is unconscionable that the President, Harry Reid, and Mark Begich would shut down the government to bail out a failed program that Americans don’t want, can’t afford, and that manifestly does not work.

The backroom deal cut by Congressional leadership to end the government shutdown only reinforced what ordinary Americans already knew – Washington isn’t serious.

The establishment compromise did nothing to mitigate the harmful consequences of Obamacare for Alaskans, it did nothing to address the dire fiscal situation our country is in, and it did nothing to offer relief to small businesses that are struggling in Barack Obama’s economy.

When the President can grant Obamacare waivers for Congress and their staff, big business, big labor, and any number of his favored cronies, but chooses to make the American people and family businesses suffer, we have a problem.  America deserves better.

The bipartisan cabal that just voted to fund Obamacare and give the president a blank check until February simply cannot be trusted.  If you need any further evidence, consider the fact that the national debt jumped by more than three hundred billion dollars the day after the “big bargain.”

Barack Obama told America that raising the debt ceiling would avert a default on US debt, but that’s not how China’s Dagong credit agency saw it. Here is how the Chinese downgrade of US credit was reported by the president’s hometown paper, The Chicago Tribune:

Dagong said that the temporary fix of the debt issue would not defuse the fundamental conundrum of the U.S. fiscal deficit or improve repayment ability in the long-term, but could trigger defaults at any time in the future.

“The deal means only an escape from a debt default for the time being, but hasn’t changed the fact that the growth of government borrowing has largely outpaced overall economic growth and fiscal revenues,” China’s biggest home-grown ratings agency said in a statement. 

It seems everybody but Washington knows that we are swiftly approaching a “fiscal cliff” that will be catastrophic for the future of our country.

As much as he would like to change the narrative and pass himself off as an independent voice in Washington, Mark Begich was there at every turn to aid and abet the President and Harry Reid. The only thing independent about our junior senator is that his words are independent from his actions.

We cannot count on Senator Begich and the “me too” Republicans to represent us. That’s why I’ve filed to run for US Senate.

However Mark Begich and the establishment media choose to spin things, one thing is certain. More spending and debt is bad for Alaska, and it could be catastrophic.

Now the president seems intent on resurrecting the amnesty bill that passed the Senate in June with the full support of our Senate delegation.  

The Weekly Standard reported yesterday that this administration has spent 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare payments over the last five years. Imagine the staggering consequences to our health and welfare systems should we grant blanket amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens. The insanity in Washington has to stop.

With your help, I will take reform to Washington. I pledge to stand along side the 144 House members, and 16 Senators who took a stand against the President’s reckless agenda to bankrupt America!

It’s time to stand and fight for the future of “the last best hope of man on earth.” Can I count on you?

Thanks for your generosity and support!

In Liberty,

Joe