Iron Bowl

I'm not a huge college football fan but - damn - that Alabama-Auburn game was one for the ages.  With one second left on the clock, Alabama tried an improbable 57-yard field goal that fell short then Auburn ran the short kick back 100+ yards to win the game.  Crazy.

Hard sell in FLA

Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard followed around some "nonpartisan" advocates for Obamacare as they tried to get Floridians to sign up.  The story reaches this pitiful denouement:

All told, even with all the hand-holding Navigators, I’m assured by members of the two Navigator groups who worked the session that of the 100 or so prospects in attendance, exactly none walked out with a completed enrollment.

If you read the article, the issue wasn't the glitchy website (which was glitchy).  It was sticker shock which is a problem that will not be fixed no matter how smoothly Healthcare.gov operates.

Smarter - so much smarter - than everyone

Ed Rogers in the WashPost: "Why would Obama say he is not ideological?"

It appears that President Obama believes that dissenting views are irrational or the result of clouded, lesser thinking.  Being blind to his own ideology makes him unable to respectfully deal with others who might readily embrace an ideological point of view. The president’s inability to effectively work with Congress, orchestrate Washington, or build strong alliances or even friendships overseas probably stems from his belief that others should defer to his clear thinking without many questions or objections. He doesn’t see politics as a great debate with multiple possibilities among equal voices.

Obama constantly intones that there's "no reason" to oppose something he supports, as if the other side isn't entitled to dissent and the opposition springs purely from political or more nefarious motives.  Recall how he berated the media for providing "false balance" by even giving attention to these other voices.  And, to a large degree, the media went along.

I volunteer....to look fabulous!

I got a chuckle out of this WashPost article about marketing tie-ins with "The Hunger Games": "This Covergirl makeup makes a statement! Unfortunately that statement is ‘I enjoy watching children fight to the death’."

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm more than ready to watch football and drink beer tomorrow.  Hope everybody has a great day.

Setting expectations

The Hill: "Healthcare website won’t be perfect on Dec. 1, administration says."  You have nowhere to go but up.

Watch this trend

Call it the anti-Detroit effect.  Hit & Run: "Crime rate in Camden, NJ going down after unionized police force sacked."

Western Massachusetts update

The town of Palmer is close to where I live - too close - and for years they've been trying to get Mohegan Sun to build a casino.  One small issue: the voters said "no" and today they had the recount and the answer is still "no."   Whew.  Thank heaven.

Out of the loop

Atlantic: "Why did President Obama Say the Healthcare Website Would Work?"  "Once again: It does not seem credible that Obama was unaware that failure was likely. And if he really was unaware, the implications are extremely unflattering. Either he failed abjectly to ask the right questions of a staff that was also derelict in informing him, or else he asked the right questions and his staff misled him."

But don't call it socialism

It's just government control of one-sixth of the economy coupled with a redistribution of wealth.  But, heavens no, don't call it socialism.

The 2014 box canyon

Tom Maguire notes that the Obama administration pushed back the health insurance enrollment requirement in 2015 until after the election to avoid headlines over sticker shock.  But the real problem for Obamacare is that - by law - insurers must give policy holders 90-days notice that they're losing their coverage.  That means a little more than a month before the 2014 elections, millions of Americans will be getting cancellation notices.

Obviously, the next step would be for Obama to waive the 90 day notice requirement, but the legality of that would be laughable.

Don't sell Obama short!  Maybe it's time for some more "enforcement discretion" that's all the rage nowadays.

The transformation to Jimmy Carter is now complete

With his domestic agenda in complete shambles, Obama now takes his bull-in-a-china-shop act to foreign affairs.  Everything you need to know about our "agreement" with Iran is in Judith Levy's "Deal with the Devil":

The short version of the interim deal just struck between the P5+1 countries and Iran is this: Iran gave away almost nothing, got a major financial payoff, and will retain its entire nuclear infrastructure. The US got a check mark on Obama's legacy ledger, under the column Stuff I Did That Looks Reasonably Good If You're Myopic Or Uninterested But In Fact Conceals a Seething Cauldron of Awful That Will Probably Not Affect Me Personally, Since I Will Be Out of Office When the Full Magnitude of This Failure Becomes Manifest.

Read the whole thing: the mullahs are laughing their asses off at us.  Iran does not need to stop uranium enrichment, the heavy water reactor at Arak will be unaffected (although there will be a six-month cessation in "construction activities"), and sanctions will be eased so trade can resume and up to $10 billion in Iranian assets will be released.  What the hell, let's throw in another $4.2 billion for good measure.

The only ally that matters - Israel - is furious about the deal and some have started a betting pool as to when they'll start bombing.  At least there's a certain value to knowing you're alone.

So you have a President who is desperate to divert attention from the Obamacare debacle coupled with a blowhard Secretary of State who wants nothing more than to burnish his image and you end up with this awful deal so the White House can put out a press release.

Peace for our time, indeed.

Extra - Daniel Pipes: "Barack Obama has made many foreign-policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster. Along with the health-care law, it is one of his worst-ever steps. John Kerry is a too-eager puppy looking for a deal at any price."

This tribute needs more of me

Twitchy: "Narcissist in chief strikes again on 50th anniversary of JFK’s death."

Other peoples' money

NY Daily News: "Vice President Joe Biden comes up short on bill for sandwiches."  "During a midday lunch run Thursday to buy sandwiches, the gaffe-prone vice president came up short for the bill and had to borrow the difference from a staffer." Oh Joe.

The "expand Social Security" craze

I normally don't bother with Paul Krugman who has a long history of being wrong and never admitting it.  But now he's in my wheelhouse with "Expanding Social Security."  The transparent ploy here is that since Social Security is on a path towards bankruptcy the entitled Left isn't going to play defense - it's playing offense.  It's a shame this argument is based on such a dearth of facts.

First, the Krugtron tells us that raising the retirement age is wrong because it benefits the wealthy who have the advantage of living longer.  But Social Security is supposed to be a universal system, one that benefits Americans equally and proportional to the taxes paid into the system.  There's already a degree of progressive scaling to Social Security but Krugman wants it to be a full-on welfare program.  Because that shows you care.  I say that in the same tone of disdain that Krugman holds for those of us who think that adding a trillion dollars in debt every year is "austerity."

The second point Krugman makes is that Americans have done a terrible job of saving for retirement and only Social Security can save them from penury.  Maybe Americans could have saved more if they weren't having 6.2% (or 12.4% depending on your point of view) siphoned away to a program only to have automatic benefit cuts kick in the moment they retire.

But let's assume for a nanosecond that - yes - we should expand Social Security.  Who will pay for this expansion?  Surprise surprise, Krugman doesn't say and neither does Elizabeth Warren.  Because it's all about rights and benefits paid for by mysterious benefactors.  They both know that if Americans were asked to support a Social Security expansion by, say, raising the FICA tax by 2% nobody but nobody would support it.

But it's fun to play the populist.

Dr. Nick will see you now

WashPost: "Insurers restricting choice of doctors and hospitals to keep costs down."  "As Americans have begun shopping for health plans on the insurance exchanges, they are discovering that insurers are restricting their choice of doctors and hospitals in order to keep costs low, and that many of the plans exclude top-rated hospitals."  If you like your affordable doctor, you can keep your affordable doctor.  Quality is another matter.

Spool, darn you, spool!

In school I had an awful dot-matrix printer, so I laughed at this:

Your Obamacare factoid of the day

Colorado has signed up more dogs than Oregon has signed up people.

The dog is a 14-year-old Yorkie so it's not one of the "young invincible canines" the exchange is looking for.

New rights

Hit & Run: "The Constitutional right to conscript a wedding photographer."

Can't possibly be true

Sometimes I read a story and say: "Can't possibly be true."  Yesterday it was the story that the Census Bureau manipulated the jobs report before the 2012 election.  Nope - I don't buy it.

But what about this statement from an official from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services?  Hot Air: "CMS tech officer: Roughly 30-40% of the ObamaCare exchange system still needs to be built — including the payment system."

What?  Three-and-a-half years after starting, eight months after warnings that there were serious problems at Healthcare.gov and only a couple weeks after assurances everything would be cool by December, now - now? - we hear that one-third of the programming still needs to be done?  No.  Can't be.  He must have misspoken.