Doug Ross @ Journal

Thursday, November 21, 2013

THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS: Deceitful, Mendacious Harry Reid Obliterates the Filibuster

Guest post by Jeff Reynolds

Last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) demonstrated blatant hypocrisy when he stated that he is ready to invoke the "nuclear option" to ram through President Obama's nominees. This option, also known as the Byrd Option, would use some parliamentary stunts to change fundamental Senate rules, effectively allowing a simple majority to end a filibuster instead of the current 67 vote supermajority requirement. Republicans were quick to point out that this would completely remove the rights of the minority party and stray from the intent of the Founders to operate as a republic, as opposed to a democracy. What is striking, however, is just how quickly Harry Reid has changed his tune on this procedure. Less than a decade ago, when his party was in the minority, he decried the majority party for doing exactly the same thing he wishes to do now.

Reid made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows this weekend, making the case for fundamentally altering the rules of the Senate:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Sunday signaled that the Senate remains headed toward a historic remake of its rules this week to ease the confirmation of some of President Barack Obama’s nominations.

Reid said Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press” that he’s faced historic delay and obstruction during his time as majority leader, fighting hundreds of filibusters, including 16 of the president’s executive branch nominees. The Nevada Democrat said it’s time for that to end.

“The changes we’re making are very, very minimal. What we’re doing is saying: ‘Look American people, shouldn’t President Obama have somebody working for him that he wants?’” Reid said. “If you want to look at nominations, you know what the Founding Fathers said: ‘Simple majority.’ That’s what we need to do.”

However, Reid seems to have forgotten his basic principles of fairness that he so adamantly defended in the past:

In 2005, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., threatened to invoke the “nuclear option” against Democrats filibustering President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.
“If there were ever an example of an abuse of power, this is it… The filibuster is the last check we have against the abuse of power in Washington.” – Harry Reid 2005
“Republicans are in power today, Democrats tomorrow. A simple majority can change anything. Mr. President, this is the way it should be. You should not be able to come in here and change willy-nilly a rule of the Senate.” – Harry Reid on Senate floor, May 23, 2005
“I just couldn’t believe that Bill Frist was going to do this. The storm had been gathering all year, and word from conservative columnists and in conservative circles was that Senator Frist of Tennessee, who was the Majority Leader, had decided to pursue a rules change that would kill the filibuster for judicial nominations. And once you opened that Pandora’s box, it was just a matter of time before a Senate leader who couldn’t get his way on something moved to eliminate the filibuster for regular business as well. And that, simply put, would be the end of the United States Senate.” – Harry Reid in his 2008 book “The Good Fight”
“As long as I am the leader, the answer’s no. I think we should just forget that. That is a black chapter in the history of the Senate. I hope we never ever get to that again because I really do believe it will ruin our country.” – Harry Reid on nuclear option, C-SPAN interview, Sept. 12, 2008

So it's a very dark chapter in the history of the Senate, unless it's your party in the majority that's being asked to work with the minority party. Harry Reid has done a lot of hypocritical, hyperpartisan, unprincipled things in his time in the Senate (see e.g. Obamacare, passage), but even by his standards, invoking the nuclear option would be a breathtakingly political move.

ENEMY WITHIN: Obama unilaterally dismantling U.S. nuclear deterrent far beyond what he promised Congress

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Defense: Breaking yet another promise, this one to Congress, the administration jeopardizes our national security with plans to eliminate an entire squadron of intercontinental ballistic missiles and destroy its silos.

Yet another example of what President Obama meant in 2012 when he promised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, that after his re-election he would have more "flexibility" on defense issues, comes on the news that an ICBM squadron would be scrapped to comply with the New START Treaty — even as both the Russians and Chinese deploy new ballistic missiles.

A document prepared by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon maps out a strategy to eliminate an ICBM squadron — and destroy its missile silos — by Dec. 5, 2017.

The military would begin removing ICBMs next October, after an environmental assessment is complete, and the silo elimination would begin in May 2016.

The fact is, as the Heritage Foundation notes, the U.S. does not need to eliminate an ICBM squadron to meet New START's limits. The State Department's Oct. 1 fact sheet says the U.S. must dismantle 109 of its deployed ICBMs, deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and deployed heavy bombers, and remove another 138 warheads.

Heritage notes the U.S. has already reduced its deployed warheads by 112 and that destroying an ICBM squadron to comply with New START is unnecessary.

Read more »

Predicting a TSA Patdown [Papa B]

Guest post by Papa B*

I'm just saying...

*Editor's note: this post has absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever, which is precisely why we love Papa B around these parts.

WE'RE IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Enrollment Data Entered Into Healthcare.gov Available in Google Search Results

Some rascal online called it IdentityTheft.gov and that assessment appears to have been validated by a top security research team. The Ohio firm TrustedSec has released a security assessment of Healthcare.gov and the results, even though they were cursory by modern standards, were very grim indeed.

David Kennedy, CEO of the firm, revealed that he withheld many of the vulnerabilities because they were so severe that publishing them could have meant the complete destruction of the site. His executive summary read simply, "based on what I can see … I would say the website is either hacked already or will be soon."

I perused the entire report (PDF) this evening. In short, the site is not only a complete catastrophe from an operational perspective, it's also a hacker's dream.

...The website cost an estimated $624 million and consists of over 500 million lines of code. With the number of lines of code, this is one of the most complex applications ever written in the history of applications. To put this in comparison, the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system, which is the latest, has an estimated 50 to 80 million lines of code and has over 25 years of development and maturity. It should be noted that with 80 million lines of code, the Windows operating system has had a significant amount of “exploits” that have hit their product line since it’s early existence...

Microsoft has one of the largest and most sophisticated security development, protection, and remediation processes today. This process has taken years to mature and places security at the forefront. With a website that is over 6 times more complex than the Microsoft operating system and developed in an extremely short period of time, there is and was no foreseeable way to build security into the website...

...there are clear indicators that even basic security was not built into the healthcare.gov website. TrustedSec is confident based on the exposures identified that the website has critical risks associated with it and security concerns should be remediated immediately...

...TrustedSec identified multiple severely critical exposures that it is not publishing publicly until they have been addressed.

...One of the more alarming trends is that the actual security testing of the website was deferred due to project delays. The website was launched without formal testing and with known risks around the security of the applications. Even further, there was little to no security built into the website or through the development. With the complexity of the website, this would indicate
that the website will suffer from significant security concerns for a long period of time unless significant action is taken to address the issues and flaws within it.

...It appears that individual user accounts and names are indexed via Google and can expose profile information of individuals that sign up on data.healthcare.gov.

Based on what I've seen, Healthcare.gov may be the single biggest magnet for identity thieves in world history.

And, come to think of it, that's another historic Obama first!

Larwyn's Linx: ObamaCare by the Numbers

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QOTD: "[In trying to blame Republicans for his failures, Obama] fails to explain how GOP opposition has had any impact at all. Obamacare is the law. It is being implemented. It is funded.

As he bemoans the “toxic political atmosphere” he should do a bit of soul-searching (admittedly it would take about fifty men and a sizable pack of bloodhound to find his soul) and examine how the political environment got this way. It didn’t happen overnight. He struggled in a manner worthy of Hercules to burn down his own credibility, rebuff the opposition, and lie left-right-and-center for no greater reason than just to stay in practice.

Ironically, it has turned out that the most effective opposition to Obamacare has not been the GOP, it has been the Obama administration’s epic incompetence and malfeasance." --Streiff

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

BIG F***IN' DEAL, INDEED: Only 100 million more Americans to lose their health insurance next year

I wasn't a math major in college, but canceling the insurance plans of 140 million Americans to make sure 9 million other Americans are covered seems rather, eh, counter-intuitive.

A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking time bomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancellations next fall -- right before the mid-term elections.

The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader.

...half to two-thirds of small businesses would have policies canceled or be compelled to send workers onto the ObamaCare exchanges. They predict up to 100 million small and large business policies could be canceled next year.

...Under the health care law, businesses with fewer than 50 workers do not have to provide health coverage. But if they do, the policies will still have to meet the benefit standards set by ObamaCare.

...For workers, their experience could mirror that of the 5 million or so on the individual market who already received cancellation notices because their plans did not meet new standards under the Affordable Care Act.

President Obama announced last week that insurance companies could offer out-of-compliance plans for another year. But that only means the cancellation notices will resume late next year.

...The business community has already been hit with another side effect from ObamaCare. Because the law will require businesses with more than 50 full-time workers to offer health coverage, there are reports that companies are shifting employees to part-time status to avoid hitting the threshold... A survey showed 31 percent of franchise businesses, and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses, have already reduced worker hours. It also showed 27 percent of franchise businesses, and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses, have replaced full-time workers with part-time employees.

I wonder what the Leni Riefenstahl of the Obama administration -- Taegan Goddard -- has to say about this?

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Crisis of Legitimacy, Superhero Edition

Sent to us by MtnTopPatriot

On a more serious note, there's also this from America's best investigative reporter:

Might want to cancel your plans tomorrow, @Sebelius. It's going to be a busy day. @Project_Veritas
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 19, 2013

Ruh roh.

The Biggest Money-Printing Exercise in World History

Guest post by Martin D. Weiss

The U.S. economy is now so addicted to the Fed’s monthly $85 billion injection of monetary stimulus … that just the thought of withdrawal is enough to cause violent market convulsions.

Consider, for example, the absurdity of this recent chain of events:

* The U.S. Labor Department announces a far better-than-expected report on new jobs …

* Investors fear that the good economic news may nudge the Fed a tad closer to cutting back its stimulus …

* They dump their investments by the truckload, and …

* Bond prices plunge the most in four months, driving interest rates skyward.

All in response to supposedly good news about the economy!

All because investors would rather see the economy sink than see the Fed cut back on its monthly megadose of money shot up their veins.

Or consider the long sequence of excuses Fed Chairman Bernanke has offered for smashing the 100-year Fed prohibition against running the money printing presses 24/7 …

Read more »

If you call it Obamacare now, you could be a racist

Well, that's odd. All of a sudden POTUS's signature achievement -- which, fittingly, is a catastrophic failure -- can no longer be referred to by its proper name.

President Barack Obama told a gathering of corporate executives Tuesday he's confident that his model of health care will work in the end, but he said he's going to have to "re-brand" it to sell it to a skeptical public.

He didn't use the word "Obamacare" once on Tuesday in talking about his health care law, but he mentioned the "Affordable Care Act" seven times ... "We are going to have to, (a) fix the website so everybody feels confident about that. We're going to have to, obviously, re-market and re-brand, and that will be challenging in this political environment."

During a campaign stop in Colorado last year, the president embraced the name that Republicans had given to his health insurance law: "The Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare," Obama said in August 2012. "I actually like the name," he added. "Because I do care -- that's why we fought so hard to make it happen."

Obama isn't the only Democrat moving away from the term "Obamacare." Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told NBC's David Gregory on Sunday that she has always preferred to call it the "Affordable Care Act." "It -- the Affordable Care Act, as I call it -- Pelosi chuckles -- and have always called it; the Affordable Care Act is right up there with Social Security, Medicare, affordable care for all Americans as a right, not a privilege," she said on "Meet the Press."

As for alternative names, may I suggest choosing from among the following?

• ClusterCare
• Obama's Folly
• Final Solution
• Democare

I'm not happy with any of these, so please suggest some better options in the comments. The winner gets to keep his doctor.

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Larwyn's Linx: Obama Still Trying to Blame the Republicans for His Failures with a Straight Face

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Nation

Obama Still Blaming GOP for His Failures with a Straight Face: Stephen Kruiser
Impeach Holder? It's About Time: Dave Blount
Watch Out, Red-State Democrats: Alex Roarty

About that Nuclear Option, Senator Reid...: Ace
Cruz on Potential Impeachment Of "Lawless" Obama: RCP
Collapse of the Leviathan: Erick Erickson

Anti-Gun NYC Chief Wants 6 Armed Guards After Retirement: JPFO
Bummer: Victim shoots attacker in Knockout Game: WGBAL
Open Season on Jews: Black Mob Violence in Brooklyn: WGBAL

Economy

Politico vs. Politico on Insurer Bailouts: Ace
Senator Mike Lee Critiques the War on Poverty: RS
Unionized public employees strike over 14.5 percent raise: Ben Yount

Holder Drops Pursuit of Voucher Program in ‘Temporary Victory’ for GOP: Tatler
WH won’t say if Obamacare payments will be ready 11/30: Poor Richard
Hawaii Spent $778,000 In Taxpayer Funds For Each Obamacare Enrollee: WZ

Scandal Central

Don’t Dismiss a Conspiracy Because it is a Conspiracy: Ben Howe
Fort Worth Drivers Stopped by Police, Asked for Saliva and Blood Samples: Bryan Preston
Emails: IRS official said Lerner threw Cincinnati office under the bus: Instapundit

Climate & Energy

George W. Bush Calls for Keystone XL Construction: WFB

Media

Do Americans Prefer Deception?: Walter Williams
Comically Evasive Mouthpiece Jay Carney: Ace
New York Times signals Dems that it's time to ditch Obamacare?: Rosslyn Smith

WH: “Majority of People” With Group Health Plans Will Lose Their Insurance by December?: PunditPress
“Meanwhile, Obama’s approval rating dipped to a low of 37%”: Scoop
Let me show you precisely how messed up progressive pundits are over Obamacare: Moe Lane

Marco Rubio: No Bailouts for ObamaCare: WSJ
On Martin Bashir's Pooping Fetish: Ben Shapiro
Ted Cruz remembers Gettysburg…: Scoop

World

What could do wrong? Valerie Jarrett reported to have struck deal with Iran for Obama: Sharona Schwartz
White House denies Jarrett's secret deal-making with Iran: Elephant
Ronald Lauder Says ‘Only France Stands Between Us and a Nuclear Iran’ Mocks Wendy Sherman: Algemeiner

British police being ordered to hide crime from being reported: John R. Lott
Shall I SuperSize Your NDAA Combo Meal?: Blasted Fools
UN Chief Ban Ki Moon Visits Auschwitz – Pleads Tolerance for Muslims: GWP

Sci-Tech (courtesy BadBlue Tech News

U.S. Army will have its Iron Man suits in four years: Colin Druce-McFadden
Yahoo CEO Mayer talks mobile strategy, design approach: Chris Kanaracus, CIO
Review: Nike+ FuelBand SE: Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider

Cornucopia

A Democrat Thanksgiving: Rick McKee
Terrified Obama Trapped Inside Healthcare.gov Website: The Onion
Why one Mom's puppy and son photos have become a viral hit: The Blaze

Image: ‘Out of touch’ unionized public employees strike over 14.5 percent raise
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: What is an Article V Convention of States?

QOTD: "In 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that the “leading object” of American government was:

“...to elevate the condition of men – to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life...”

In a single sentence, Lincoln explains precisely what poverty is, and what government ought to do about it. As Lincoln knew first hand, true poverty was not for most people an absence of money, but an absence of opportunity..." --Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

EZRA KLEIN, CNN AND TECHCRUNCH PUNK'D: White House Falsified Unemployment Rate Before 2012 Election

A month before the 2012 presidential election, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment numbers. They turned out to be a stunning surprise: the official U-3 unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September.

At the time, former GE Chairman Jack Welch smelled a rat and said so publicly.

Welch’s tweet unleashed a firestorm of criticism with numerous accusations of him being a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ CNN attacked Welch’s hiring history claiming that Obama’s record on jobs trounced that of Welch. The site Tech Crunch deemed Welch a crazy, accusing him of inspiring a ‘web-wide Obama conspiracy’. In response to Welch’s statement, then Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said, “This is a methodology that’s been used for decades. And it is insulting when you hear people just cavalierly say that somehow we’re manipulating numbers.”

Barry Popik reminds us that the pencil-necked journoleftist named Ezra Klein was among the first to mock "jobbers" (i.e., "jobs birthers"):

The Daily Kos and Washington (DC) Post writer Ezra Klein came up with the term “jobber” on October 5, 2012—after an important BLS pre-election jobs report favored the current Democratic administration and Republicans questioned the numbers. “Jobber” follows similar names of “truther” (a 9-11-2001 conspiracy theorist), “birther” (a Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorist) and “deather” (an Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theorist).

Of course, as we recently found out, the White House falsified the unemployment numbers in one of their various criminal enterprises designed to steal the 2012 election.

Now that Welch (and everyone of us with an ounce of common sense) have been vindicated, how long will it take the unemployment denialists like Gregory Ferenstein, Felix Salmon, the freakish Austan Goolsbee, and the loathsome Ezra Klein to apologize?

That's a rhetorical question, of course. Religious extremists like these leftists aren't bound by facts, logic, reason and history. That's why they're fanatics, irrational kooks who have an insatiable desire to control others.

In a word, they're Democrats.

Hey, @ezraklein, @ferenstein, @felixsalmon, @Austan_Goolsbee: @jack_welch awaits your apology! http://t.co/mVGWtACDyP #DontBeACrimeDenier
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) November 20, 2013

Education Secretary Rips "White, Suburban Moms" for Opposing Marxist-Aligned Common Core Curriculum

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Common Core: Rather than defend a program accused of indoctrinating students via national standards and whose implementation is as bad as ObamaCare, Education Secretary Arne Duncan plays the race card.

Perhaps nothing personifies the arrogant nanny state paternalism of the Obama administration more than this statement by Duncan on Friday: "It's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary."

Secretary Duncan made his comments about the Common Care State Standards (CCSS) before a group of school superintendents in Richmond, Va., to a meeting of the Council of Chief State Schools Officers organization (CCSSO). This is one of the two organizations that own the public license to the Common Core State Standards.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was devised by a group of the nation's governors and backed by the Obama administration in 2009 with the goal of setting a uniform standard for grades K-12 nationwide. Some 45 states, in many cases enticed by federal grants, have signed on.

It has since morphed into what many consider an attempt to nationalize education and control what future generations think and know.

Once again, as with ObamaCare, the Obama administration has told Americans they are too stupid to know what's good for them — and their children.

Read more »

EXPLOSIVE CHART: There Have Been 40 Insurance Cancellations for Every Obamacare Sign-up

I describe this chart as explosive because I recommend wearing ear, eye and head protection if you show it to a liberal drone. Be wary of flying brain shrapnel. Send them the link, then tuck and roll.

And here are two more shots.

And a chaser.

Hat tip: Twitchy.

IT'S THE NEW MATH: Healthcare.gov Website Only 30% Done But Will Work for 80% of Users in 11 Days

Please pay close attention to the percentages.

NRO reports that as much as 70 percent of the entire Obamacare website will have to be rewritten.

A chief official responsible for building the federal health-insurance exchange revealed that as much as 70 percent of the system still needs to be built.

Henry Chao, the deputy chief information officer for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a House subcommittee that the administration still needs to construct the payment systems and other “back office” functions, which constitute 60 to 70 percent of the system.

The White House has said that HealthCare.gov will be functioning for a “vast majority of people” by its self-imposed November 30 deadline... [they] will consider the website a “success” if 80 percent of users are able to enroll by the end of the month.

In other words, the Obama administration has spent the last three years building a website that is only 30 percent complete, but by November 30th it will work correctly for 80 percent of the users.

Those percentages add up... if your last name is Pelosi or Jarrett.

But don't worry, it's a bargain at any price: the site has only cost the American taxpayer around $630 million. So far.

I swear to you that the first person to write an Office Space-style screenplay focusing on the Obamacare website debacle is going to make a hundred million dollars.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers.