Obamacare's Destruction of Primary Care Doctors Continues

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Before Obamacare was pushed through Congress in 2010 by Democrats unwilling to consider opposition voices to the legislation, conservatives and doctors repeatedly warned the bill would destroy the ability for physicians to properly function inside a government controlled system. Those warnings went unheeded and now patients and those in need of medical care are experiencing even less access to primary care doctors specifically assigned to them under new healthcare regulations. From AP:

When Olivia Papa signed up for a new health plan last year, her insurance company assigned her to a primary care doctor. The relatively healthy 61-year-old didn’t try to see the doctor until last month, when she and her husband both needed authorization to see separate specialists.

She called the doctor’s office several times without luck.

“They told me that they were not on the plan, they were never on the plan and they’d been trying to get their name off the plan all year,” said Papa, who recently bought a plan from a different insurance company.

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Report: ISIS Beheads Four Christian Children in Iraq for Refusing to Convert to Islam

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The brutality and barbarism of ISIS – the Islamic State – has been well documented, but the latest report is unspeakable.

The Christian “Vicar of Baghdad,” the Rev. Canon Andrew White, recounted that ISIS jihadists recently beheaded four Christian children.

As the Christian Post reports:

“ISIS turned up and they said to the children, ‘you say the words that you will follow Muhammad.’ The Children, all under 15, four of them, they said, ‘no, we love Yasua [Jesus]. We have always loved Yasua. We have always followed Yasua. Yasua has always been with us.'” White said. “[The Militants] said, ‘say the words!’ [The Children] said, ‘no, we can’t do that.’ They chopped all their heads off.”

“How do you respond to that?” White asked. “You just cry. They are my children. That is what we have been going through. That is what we are going through.”

Often the nonstop news of terrorist beheadings and persecution of Christians coming out of Iraq has had the devastating consequence of desensitizing many Christians here in America.

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Run, Mitt, Run!

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

With a spate of stories emerging in recent days that Mitt Romney seems likely to run yet again for the presidency, the first reaction of many conservatives (myself included) is to plead for him to “just . . . go . . . away.”

Upon further reflection, and with a caveat, I’d like to say, “Run, Mitt, run!”

The reason conservatives should want Romney to run is that we need as many “establishment” types as possible to run for the Republican nomination. We need more moderates to run, and fewer electable conservatives to run, because Republican primary arithmetic favors the side of the right-center divide that produces fewer truly electable candidates.

Presidential primaries, at least for the first 15 or 20 states, usually are won not by majorities but by pluralities. And pluralities are won by having one candidate who splits an identifiable strain of voters with as few other candidates as possible — or, better yet, with none.

The “establishment” rallied behind John McCain in 2008. Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee all ran to his right (and with Ron Paul also taking the libertarian Right, further diluting conservative votes). McCain won less than 40 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, less than 35 percent in South Carolina, about 35 percent in Florida and Oklahoma, and less than 40 percent in Missouri (to list the most heavily contested early-ish states), but he won pluralities and thus was declared the “victor” in each. (This also meant he grabbed the bulk of the delegates in each of these states.) On the strength of those early pluralities, he grabbed the cloak of inevitability for the nomination.

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Drone Strike: Photographer Injured by 'Mistletoe' Copter

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Photo Credit: Georgine Benvenuto

Photo Credit: Georgine Benvenuto

Turns out a moment of awkwardness wasn’t the worst that could happen when a popular family restaurant chain unleashed indoor aircraft with the mission of prompting diners to kiss on camera.

TGI Friday’s much-hyped “Mobile Mistletoe” drones drew first blood in their New York City debut on Dec. 4 at the chain’s beloved Sheepshead Bay location when one of them hit our intrepid photographer right in the face.

The two remote-controlled helicopters dangling sprigs of mistletoe were intended to spread holiday romance, but one of them flew out of control and clipped Courier photographer Georgine Benvenuto in the nose with one of its spinning, uncovered blades.

“It literally chipped off a tip of my nose,” said Benvenuto, using tissues to stanch the blood. “It took off part of my nose and cut me here, right under my chin.”

Benvenuto said she’s just thankful she wasn’t blinded in the name of love.

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Radio Host: Obama Has An ‘Anti-American Foreign Policy’

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Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Coming to talk radio entirely by accident after a long career in mainstream journalism, Chris Plante, 54, is a rising national star who excels at entertaining and informing his growing audience. With a unique, authentic voice, this quick-witted host often engages with callers who disagree with him by listening and then asking them tough questions.

If the caller won’t engage, he’ll dismiss them as just another “squirrel in the backyard,” while giving sustenance to listeners who frequently report altered thinking from listening to Plante, much to the chagrin of what he describes as “the loony left.”

We interviewed Plante after one of his successful 3 hour morning shows atWMAL in Washington, D.C. He can be found at iHeartRadio and is also a Cumulus host, a network which is, theoretically, in 110 cities and which could put him on air in other cities.

With 17 years spent at CNN, Plante is a frequent thorn-in-the-side of the mainstream media. In this exclusive 22 minute video interview, Plante says, “I think the Iranian regime wishes that they had a media as compliant as the American media is to the Obama administration. It is just a referee bought and paid for by one team, by the Democrats.”

Referring to the drone attacks that killed four American citizens on orders by our President, Plante says “he [Obama] literally, gets away with murder.” When you consider it, the precedent “is very, very bad.”

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New York Flags 278 Gun Owners as Mentally Unstable

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Photo Credit: AP / Tony Dejak

Photo Credit: AP / Tony Dejak

New York State’s tough new SAFE Act gun control law has flagged 278 gun owners who could lose their weapons because they have been deemed mentally unstable, a new report shows.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged lawmakers to pass the SAFE Act quickly after the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The Syracuse Post-Standard reported last week that since the law’s enactment, the state has collected 38,718 names in a database of individuals who have been found at-risk for owning guns by psychiatrists and other health professionals.

The paper said when the database was checked against a list of pistol permit holders in the state, there were 278 matches, less than 1 percent.

Monroe County had the most matches at 36, followed by Westchester, 17, Suffolk, 16 and Dutchess, 14.

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Most Americans See Race Relations Worsening Since Obama's Election

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Photo Credit: Scott Olson / Getty

Photo Credit: Scott Olson / Getty

By Julie Bykowicz.

President Barack Obama had hoped his historic election would ease race relations, yet a majority of Americans, 53 percent, say the interactions between the white and black communities have deteriorated since he took office, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll. Those divisions are laid bare in the split reactions to the decisions by two grand juries not to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.

Both times, protesters responded with outrage and politicians called for federal investigations. Yet Americans don’t think of the cases as a matched set of injustices, the poll found. A majority agreed with the Ferguson decision, while most objected to the conclusion in the Staten Island death, which was captured on video. The divergent opinions—52 percent agreed on Ferguson compared with 25 percent who approved of the Staten Island outcome—add to an ongoing discussion that was inflamed when Officer Daniel Pantaleo was seen in the July video putting what appeared to be a chokehold on Eric Garner, a 43-year-old man suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner could be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” and died of a heart attack in what a medical examiner ruled a homicide. The grand jury decision not to charge Pantaleo came just 12 days after a similar panel in Ferguson declined to charge Officer Darren Wilson, who in August shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown. That altercation was not captured on video, and the prosecutor presented evidence of a physical confrontation between the two men before the fatal shots were fired.

-1x-1

To Dania Wilson, 49, a Northern Virginia white woman, the cases shouldn’t be lumped together. “I think sometimes the media likes to put upon people a theme that’s political in nature,” she said in an interview.

Bloomberg Poll on Race Relations

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Obama: Racism ‘deeply rooted in our society’

By Rachel Huggins.

President Obama will sit down with BET Networks to discuss calls for criminal justice reform after two controversial grand jury decisions cleared white officers in the death of black men.

In a special segment, “BET News Presents: A Conversation with President Barack Obama,” the president will help find meaningful solutions to unrest after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner sparked nationwide protests.

“This isn’t going to be solved overnight,” Obama said in an excerpt of the interview to air Dec. 8 at 6 p.m.

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Why So Secret? GOP Keeps Tight-Lid On $1 Trillion Funding Bill

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spending

Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

Outside groups are bracing for surprises in the massive government-funding bill the Congress is expected to consider next week.

The $1.014 trillion bill funding most of the government through September 2015 is one of the last trains out of the station, as the 113th Congress is set to close shop on Friday.

That means it could be a final chance for lobbyists and lawmakers alike to find a vehicle for their priorities.

“We’re ready to be surprised,” said Steve Ellis, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, which regularly highlights hidden measures included in funding bills.

Appropriators preparing the bill are keeping a tight lid on its contents. They are expected to release the legislation on Monday.

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ObamaCare Architect Jonathan Gruber: Abortion of 'Marginal Children' a 'Social Good'

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Embattled MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has not only gotten in trouble for bragging about helping President Obama put one over on the American people with Obamacare, he’s also been uncovered as an abortion advocate—but not a run-of-the-mill advocate of “women’s rights.”

No, Gruber’s abortion advocacy is of a particularly pungent eugenics variety. He’s on record repeatedly making the case from social science that abortion is a “social good” because it reduces the number of “marginal children,” by which he means urban poor—those he says can be counted on to commit crimes if they were ever born.

Gruber co-authored a paper during the Clinton years which argued that legal abortion had saved the U.S. taxpayer upwards of $14 billion in welfare benefits and that it also lowered crime.

Gruber’s work heavily influenced other researchers, including a paper called The Impact of Legalized Abortion by Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago, whose later bookFreakonomics and whose ongoing work makes the strongest case that abortion legalizations in the 1970s caused a dramatic drop in crime twenty years later.

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America's Military: A Force Adrift

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military_3A worsening morale crisis

For many of the war-weary troops who deployed to combat zones over and over again for 13 years, the end of an era of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is good news.

But for Marine Sgt. Zack Cantu and other service members, it’s a total morale killer. For many of them, particularly the young grunts and others in combat arms specialties, it’s the realization that they may never go into battle for their country and their comrades.

“Most people in [the Marine Corps] are in because of the wars,” said the 25-year-old Cantu, a former infantryman at Camp Pendleton, California. Cantu has retrained as a telephone system and computer repairer, a specialty more likely to survive as the service downsizes.

“Now, everyone’s coming to the realization, ‘It’s probably not going to happen for me,'” he said.

The wars against America’s enemies gave troops like Cantu a noble purpose. Their training had focus, their sacrifices were appreciated by a largely grateful nation. That gratitude was reflected from the White House to the citizen in the street, all of whom heaped praise upon military members for their service.

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