Monthly Archives: October 2013

When she’s moving her lips

Featured image An observant reader writes: In today’s Politico, Nancy Pelosi stated that the Washington Redskins should change the team name. (I agree.) But then Politico reports as follows: “Pelosi noted that when she was growing up in Baltimore, the city didn’t have a football team. ‘So one of the first songs I ever learned in my whole life was, ‘Hail to the Redskins.’ I didn’t have the faintest idea what I »

Law Enforcement to Congress: Listen To Us, Not the Lobbyists!

Featured image As you probably know, a number of CEOs have descended on Washington to lobby for immigration “reform,” i.e., legalizing and importing tens of millions of low-skilled workers so as to drive down wages. This is not exactly a noble enterprise, especially since, as Jeff Sessions has documented, many of these same CEOs have been busily laying off American citizens. Nevertheless, the lobbying effort has generally been applauded by the Democratic »

Obama Lied, My Health Care Died

Featured image NBC News is out with a bombshell story this evening, reporting that the Obama administration knew three years ago that 50 to 75 percent of the nearly 14 million people who buy their own health insurance would not be able to keep their policy as Obama promised repeatedly: Obama Admin Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance By Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye NBC News President Obama repeatedly assured »

Sebelius to testify; Power Line to live-blog it (Corrected)

Featured image Kathleen Sebelius is scheduled to testimony tomorrow morning [correction: Wednesday morning] before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The hearing — “PPACA Implementation Failures: Answers from HHS” — will start at 9:00 a.m. I assume that C-SPAN will carry the proceedings. If so, I will live-blog them, at least for a while. It will be interesting to see whether, or to what extent, Democrats on the Committee criticize Sebelius and/or »

House session to fade away

Featured image Politico reports that the House Republican leadership is struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013. The House will finish its work week on Wednesday. After that, it is out of session until November 12. Moreover, Speaker Boehner reportedly is thinking about canceling some of the remaining session days. I consider this good news. For one thing, it confirms that »

Media Malpractice, Chapter 12,894

Featured image A few months back we were treated to MSNBC identifying George Wallace as a Republican.  Yesterday, CBS News proved itself unable to distinguish J. Edgar Hoover from Herbert Hoover.  (See about the 21-second mark in the video below.  Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)  It’s a wonder they can still tell the Kennedys apart. »

Lies of Obamacare: NH edition

Featured image A reader writes from the great state of New Hampshire: I thought I’d add my tale of woe to your list of unhappy readers regarding the coming increase in insurance. I’m retiring in June next year at the age of 64 and although I’ll have access to COBRA coverage, it’s expensive at $13k annually for my wife and me. The great news is that while the plan has reasonable co-pays, »

Marco Rubio’s immigration flip-flop-flip-flop

Featured image Sen. Marco Rubio opposes the passage by the House of the very immigration reform legislation that he sponsored in the Senate. Rubio’s spokesman says that the Senator favors House passage of a series of individual bills, rather than comprehensive legislation such as that which he helped push through the Senate. Why, though, would a Senator not want the House to pass his own legislation? One possibility is the desire to »

Obama’s Middle East abdication

Featured image David Ignatius shows how Obama administration policy towards Libya fits a familiar pattern of unwillingness to support anti-jihadist forces and governments in the Middle East: For a case study of why America’s influence has receded in the Middle East, consider the example of Libya. Some simple steps over the past two years might have limited the country’s descent toward anarchy. . . . When Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan visited »

60 Minutes: Benghazi Is Too Awful a Scandal to Cover Up

Featured image 60 Minutes is normally a reliable Democratic Party news outlet, but tonight it turned its back on its friends in the Obama administration with a scathing report on the Benghazi scandal. CBS says the report was more than a year in the making; it’s too bad some of this couldn’t come out before the 2012 election. Still, better late than never. I didn’t watch 60 Minutes tonight, needless to say, »

What’s Wrong With America

Featured image The Los Angeles Times reports on the surprising–to some–consequences of Obamacare, »

Why the Obamacare Rollout Was a Disaster

Featured image Software expert Dan Weber, in a comment on Marginal Revolution, offers a cogent technical explanation of the failure of the Obamacare launch: The front end technology is not the problem here. It would be nice if it was the problem, because web page scaling issues are known problems and relatively easy to solve. The real problems are with the back end of the software. When you try to get a »

Trick Or Treat: It’s Uncle Sam!

Featured image Generation Opportunity has released a couple of anti-Obamacare ads which were controversial, because rather creepy, but which did generate a lot of attention. GenOpp’s latest Obamacare ad is more effective, in my opinion, and I think will be well received by its target audience, i.e. young people: The video promotes OptOut.org, which encourages young people to shun Obamacare and seeks to inform them about their options. »

Lies of Obamacare: Mark Warner edition

Featured image Following up on our “Lies of Obamacare” series, a reader writes from the Commonwealth of Virginia: I get health insurance through my employer. I carry one child with autism on that. However, the family plan is $800/mo, so my wife and our other two children have had an individual plan. Her premiums are $209/mo for a $2500 individual/$5000 family deductible. We have a health savings account with it and LOVE »

Welfare nation

Featured image It was a long time coming, but we appear to have reached a tipping point. Terry Jeffrey picks up the news buried in Census Bureau data: Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines. There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth »

Lies of Obamacare: Goldberg edition

Featured image President Obama and his Democratic allies, every single man jack of them, retailed Obamacare with a mass of lies. One such lie was the great savings that Obamcacare would achieve for families, some $2500 per family. It was an utterly false and ludicrous statement. In today’s news, we have the Los Angeles Times arriving on the scene: Some health insurance gets pricier as Obamacare rolls out. Then of course we »

A conversation about Israel

Featured image Michael Oren is the brilliant historian and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States; Yossi Klein Halevi is the author, most recently, of Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation and, I take it, Oren’s best friend. In the video below, under the gentle hand of moderator Gary Rosenblatt, Oren and Halevi discuss Halevi’s new book, but the conversation opens up to »