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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; coverage</title>
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		<title>Video: A Day in the Life of Trying to Sign Up for ObamaCare, Part II</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/tommi-trudeau/video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-part-ii</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/tommi-trudeau/video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamacare-part-ii/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Feb 2014 05:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tommi Trudeau]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219582</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Not one doctor, or even one Urgent Care Center, in a 50 mile radius accepts my ObamaCare plan.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pl.gif"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-219583" alt="pl" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pl-450x252.gif" width="450" height="252" /></a><strong>[To watch Part I, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/tommi-trudeau/video-a-day-in-the-life-of-trying-to-sign-up-for-obamcare/">click here</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>Not one doctor, or even one Urgent Care Center, in a 50 mile radius accepts my ObamaCare plan:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/qStqpdVO7ho" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Pelosi: I Never Met &#8216;Anybody Who Liked His or Her Plan&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/larry-elder/pelosi-i-never-met-anybody-who-liked-his-or-her-plan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=pelosi-i-never-met-anybody-who-liked-his-or-her-plan</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2013 04:15:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Elder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Nancy Pelosi]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211246</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New levels of delusion from one of ObamaCare's most enthusiastic supporters. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pelosi-gregory-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211247" alt="pelosi-gregory-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/pelosi-gregory-1.jpg" width="225" height="188" /></a>Asked whether she needed to apologize to the formerly insured who have lost their health insurance plans, former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, &#8220;Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I&#8217;d ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience.&#8221;</p>
<p>Pelosi, whose net worth — combined with her husband&#8217;s — is estimated between $35 and $180 million, never &#8220;met anybody who liked his or her plan&#8221;? Her out-of-touch comment reminds one of then-New Yorker film critic, liberal Pauline Kael. In 1972, after Republican Richard Nixon crushed Democrat George McGovern, 49 states to one, a shell-shocked Kael said, &#8220;Nobody I know voted for Nixon.&#8221;</p>
<p>Pelosi&#8217;s world is that of rich people and government workers whose health care plans are better than those of their counterparts in the private sector. How would she know that, according to a pre-Obamacare ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey, &#8220;88 percent of the insured rate their coverage as excellent or good&#8221; and &#8220;89 percent are satisfied with the quality of care they receive&#8221;?</p>
<p>Ms. Pelosi, meet Kristen Powers, Fox News analyst and a Democratic strategist. After her policy was canceled and her premiums doubled, Powers said: &#8220;My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they&#8217;re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans, because there is nothing to support what they&#8217;re saying. &#8230; I am losing my health insurance. &#8230; If I want to keep the same health insurance, it&#8217;s going to cost twice as much. There&#8217;s nothing substandard about my plan.</p>
<p>&#8220;All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan, all of the things they have listed. There&#8217;s no explanation for the doubling of my premiums other than the fact that it&#8217;s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that, that that&#8217;s the reason they don&#8217;t want to change it.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s because they&#8217;re basically taking the people who are responsible enough to get health insurance in the individual market and asking them to subsidize other people. So they&#8217;re taking young healthy people and asking them to subsidize other people.&#8221; Well, &#8220;shared sacrifice&#8221; — that&#8217;s the whole point behind Obamacare, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p>Democrats flat-out despise insurance companies. They&#8217;ve been called &#8220;immoral villains&#8221; (Pelosi), &#8220;deceptive and dishonest&#8221; (President Barack Obama), &#8220;fly-by-night&#8221; (former Gov. and DNC chair Howard Dean), &#8220;rapacious&#8221; (Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.) and &#8220;greedy&#8221; (Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.).</p>
<p>Are health insurance companies any greedier than any other for-profit sector of the economy? In 2009, before Obamacare, profit margins for the network and communications equipment industry averaged 20.4 percent; Internet services and retailing was 19.4 percent; pharmaceuticals averaged 19.3 percent; railroads 12.6 percent; gas and electric utilities 8.7 percent; and food consumer products 6.7 percent. Health insurance and managed care companies? They averaged 2.2 percent.</p>
<p>Follow the money.</p>
<p>Of the political contributions by the, say, communications/electronic industry in 2012, $94.6 million went to Democrats, and $55.7 million to Republicans. But from 1990 to the current 2014 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, insurance companies gave 63 percent of their political donations to Republicans versus 37 percent to Democrats.</p>
<p>Obamacare is now more unpopular than ever, in large part because of broken promises. At the televised health care summit in February 2010, just before passage of Obamacare, then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor predicted millions would lose their coverage. He had the following exchange with the President:</p>
<p>Cantor: I don&#8217;t think you can answer the question in the positive to say that people will be able to maintain their coverage, people will be able to see the doctors they want, in the kind of bill that you are proposing.</p>
<p>Obama: &#8220;The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to, that might have to change their coverage &#8230; would find the deal in the exchange better.&#8221; Yet Obama still publicly assured people that &#8220;no one&#8221; would take away their policy, if they liked it.</p>
<p>Finally, Obama still gets a pass on a tale he repeatedly told to sell Obamacare. How many times did we hear that Obama&#8217;s mom, dying of cancer, had to fight with her carriers to pay her medical and hospital bills? The story, crucial to humanizing the fight, turns out to be bogus. According to a book by an ex-New York Times reporter, the sole dispute was between Obama&#8217;s mother and an insurance company over a disability policy his mother had taken out. The insurance company said she&#8217;d had a pre-existing condition when she applied for that policy. But her medical bills — and this is what Obama insisted they fought over — were in fact paid by her health care insurer, directly and without dispute.</p>
<p>Yes, our health care system &#8220;suffers.&#8221; But it suffers from a lack of free markets. The antidote is more competition — reducing barriers to entry, health savings accounts, giving individuals the same health care tax breaks as given to business, competition across state lines, and for tough cases, charity.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<slash:comments>45</slash:comments>
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		<title>The 93 Million ObamaCare Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-93-million-obamacare-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-93-million-obamacare-lies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/the-93-million-obamacare-lies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Nov 2013 04:56:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[canceled]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209308</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It's far worse than you thought.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RTR3FHI4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209309" alt="U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the Affordable Care Act in Washington" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RTR3FHI4-450x300.jpg" width="270" height="180" /></a>The Obama administration has known for three years that when the employer mandate is enforced in 2015 up to 93 million Americans will be forced out of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.</span></b></p>
<p>This means President Obama has not only been lying to Americans for at least three years, reassuring them that they would be able to keep their current healthcare plans, but that a massive chunk of the nation&#8217;s insured will be hurt by his signature healthcare reform that leftist Democrats unethically rammed through Congress in the dead of night.</p>
<p>The disturbing 2010 analysis of insurance market upheaval conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">revealed</a> yesterday by Avik Roy of <i>Forbes</i> magazine.</p>
<p>As one commentator <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/31/did-hhs-estimate-that-93-million-americans-will-lose-their-insurance/">puts it</a>, employers still have to decide by September 2014 if they will &#8220;pay the fine for non-coverage and force their employees into the individual exchanges, or absorb more of the skyrocketing premium costs we’re seeing this month.&#8221;</p>
<p>Employers &#8220;may opt for an in-between solution of private exchanges, but even that will force employees out of their current plans, contra[ry] to the Obama promise that Americans can &#8216;keep their plans.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Such decisions will have to be made &#8220;just weeks before the midterm elections. Take the headlines and outrage we are seeing now for the impact that ObamaCare has on the individual market and perhaps as many as 12 million Americans, and then multiply it by six as employers make the rational decision to get out of the health-insurance business altogether. The delay of the employer mandate may end up being the worst decision made by Barack Obama except for the hyperpartisan pursuit of ObamaCare itself.&#8221;</p>
<p>All those who love America can only hope that an earth-shattering electoral backlash ensues that forever snuffs out the utopian nightmare of socialized medicine. We&#8217;ll see soon enough.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Americans are learning just how far behind schedule the Obama administration is in signing up Obamacare enrollees.</p>
<p>It turns out that enrollment has barely gotten off the ground. At a morning meeting of a &#8220;war room&#8221; within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Oct. 2, attendees learned that only &#8220;six enrollments have occurred so far,&#8221; investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57610328/obamacare-early-enrollment-numbers-very-small-documents-show/">reports</a>.</p>
<p>By the afternoon of Oct. 2, enrollments had risen to &#8220;approximately 100.&#8221; By the end of the day there were &#8220;248 enrollments&#8221; nationwide, according to CMS war room documents handed over to the House Oversight Committee chaired by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).</p>
<p>CMS is aiming for 7 million enrollees in the so-called exchanges by March 31, 2014, the end of the initial six-month enrollment period. (That&#8217;s 248 down so far and just 6,999,752 to go in order to meet the official quota. <i>Forward!</i>)</p>
<p>The exchanges are artificial, bureaucrat-created cartels that merely mimic free, competitive markets, perhaps well enough to dupe people with little understanding of real-life commerce. It&#8217;s not really shopping, of course, if you have a gun to your head.</p>
<p>The Obama administration claims that millions of Americans have swamped the Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, since it went live on Oct. 1 and that it registered an impressive 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours despite barely functioning in that period. The administration <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died/">refuses</a> to provide documentation to back up the difficult-to-believe unique visits figure.</p>
<p>Quite understandably, sane people don&#8217;t believe anything the Obama administration says nowadays, especially when it comes to Obamacare.</p>
<p>Issa certainly doesn&#8217;t. Yesterday the lawmaker <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57610277/issa-subpoenas-sebelius-for-healthcare.gov-documents/">subpoenaed</a> Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for information about the bungled HealthCare.gov launch that she&#8217;s refused to hand over voluntarily. Issa wants a complete accounting from HHS about the laughably incompetent website launch, including how many people tried to enroll in an insurance plan using the HealthCare.gov website and how many actually succeeded.</p>
<p>Issa and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have repeatedly demanded the information from Sebelius.</p>
<p>Congress shouldn&#8217;t have to use legal compulsion to get the Obama administration to provide &#8220;basic information&#8221; about the exchanges, Alexander said. &#8220;But apparently that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s going to take.&#8221;</p>
<p>The senator said he hoped the subpoena &#8220;will force open the administration&#8217;s black box of secrets that are keeping Congress and the entire American public in the dark.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Attkisson, the war room notes &#8220;leave no doubt that some enrollment figures, which the administration has chosen to keep secret, are available.&#8221;</p>
<p>Notes from the Oct. 2 morning meeting say, &#8220;[s]tatistics coming in.&#8221; The contractor &#8220;QSSI has a daily dashboard created every night.&#8221;</p>
<p>The notes also indicate that: &#8220;Direct enrollment is not working for any issuers&#8221;; Experian credit reporting agency is &#8220;creating confusion with credit check information&#8221;; and &#8220;Issuer phone numbers are not appearing correctly on the Pay Now page.&#8221;</p>
<p>The dysfunctional rollout lends a great deal of weight to the theory that Obamacare was designed to fail in order to clear the way for what the Left really wants: a one-size-fits-all single payer scheme that feeds the insatiable leftist fetish of equality &#8212; equally bad healthcare for all.</p>
<p>Our red-diaper baby president and his comrades have long wanted a single-payer system that suffocates healthcare choice. Obama&#8217;s slightly less diplomatic colleague, socialist Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), has gone on record saying she wants to crush insurance companies.</p>
<p>Now she&#8217;s telling Republicans complaining about Obamacare to drop dead. &#8220;You know, I want to say to my colleagues after a three-and-a-half year campaign to repeal, to discredit, to even shut down the government over Obamacare, I want to say: get over it,&#8221; Schakowsky said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.</p>
<p>Is kicking most American workers out of their health insurance plans a way to bring about the ghoulish, America-killing, single-payer system that Obama and Schakowsky so badly want? It may very well be.</p>
<p>President Obama and Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies, instead of the true culprit, sinister anti-market government policies, for the recent nationwide tsunami of Obamacare-related insurance policy cancellations. This week Obama even said Obamacare &#8220;will actually help lower the deficit,&#8221; an absolute fiscal impossibility.</p>
<p>On Wednesday Obama badmouthed the nation&#8217;s insurance companies, which is part of the old Saul Alinsky playbook. Obama had the gall to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/10/30/remarks-president-and-governor-deval-patrick-affordable-care-act">justify</a> his fascistic takeover of the American healthcare system in historic Faneuil Hall, Boston, of all places, a fact that ought to make more than a few Founding Fathers turn over in their graves. During that address to an audience of trained blue-state seals, barely a word of truth escaped the chief executive&#8217;s lips.</p>
<p>Obama demonized insurance companies that provide affordable health care insurance as &#8220;bad-apple insurers&#8221; that &#8220;had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received, or use minor preexisting conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.&#8221; The <i>caudillo</i> from Chicago vilified insurers further by calling affordable plans that pre-date the misnamed, mandate-heavy Affordable Care Act &#8220;substandard plans.&#8221;</p>
<p>Remember, Obama is the same medical genius who <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/08/13/surgical-strike-surgeons-group-blasts-obamas-30k-50k-leg-amputation-clai">claimed</a> doctors delight in chopping off patients&#8217; appendages for fun and profit. In 2009 Obama said doctors get a &#8220;pittance&#8221; for treating obesity but are &#8220;immediately&#8221; reimbursed $30,000 to $50,000 for amputating a diabetic&#8217;s foot. In fact, a surgeon is more likely to get around $1,000 from Medicare for such an operation and no medical professional takes amputating a patient&#8217;s body parts lightly. But truth matters little when you&#8217;ve got a healthcare sector to nationalize.</p>
<p>Americans are also learning that Obama&#8217;s White House thugs are <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-insurance-insiders-fear-retribution-from-wh-amid-pressure-to-keep-quiet-about-obamacare/">threatening</a> officials at trade associations and insurance providers to keep their mouths shut about the chaos the so-called Affordable Care Act is causing in the healthcare industry.</p>
<p>CNN investigative reporter Drew Griffin said the White House is trying to prevent executives from detailing how the Obamacare law is forcing widespread cancelation of plans.</p>
<p>“If an insurance executive is quoted, speaks out, says anything negative about the Obamacare rollout, they, or more likely their bosses, are to get a call from inside the White House asking them to explain the comments,” Griffin said. “It’s being perceived as pressure to keep quiet.”</p>
<p>Multiple “sources within the industry” have told Griffin that “there is a reluctance to speak out because of these phone calls.”</p>
<p>Insurance industry insider Robert Laszewski said the White House &#8220;is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet.”</p>
<p>Griffin said that other industry sources told him they “fear retribution from the White House.”</p>
<p>Incidentally, the American Glob blog <a href="http://americanglob.com/2013/10/31/obama-in-2010-insurance-premiums-will-decrease-by-3000-percent/">reminds us</a> that during a speech in Strongsville, Ohio, on the Ides of March in 2010, Obama irresponsibly hurled numbers at the crowd.</p>
<p>The president claimed that under Obamacare premiums would drop by an arithmetically impossible percentage. For Americans &#8220;who get their insurance through the workplace &#8230; a lot of those folks, your employer, it&#8217;s estimated, would see premiums fall by 3,000 percent, which means that they could give you a raise.&#8221;</p>
<p>Presumably President Obama, who has never been accused of understanding economics, meant to say something other than &#8220;3,000 percent.&#8221;</p>
<p>But in the same speech, he rattled off other percentages that ought to resonate today with Americans who are now suffering from insurance sticker-stock as a result of Obamacare.</p>
<p>In the 2010 <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-health-care-reform-strongsville-ohio">speech</a>, Obama said, &#8220;I’m here because of the folks seeing their premiums go up 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 percent in a year.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Ohio, I am here because that is not the America I believe in and that’s not the America that you believe in.&#8221;</p>
<p>But that is exactly the healthcare regime that Obama is foisting on Americans. As a result of the extravagant healthcare mandates in the Obamacare law, many Americans are lucky to see their premiums jump as little as 20 percent to 60 percent in a year. Many others are seeing their policies canceled outright, rendering them uninsured or forced into an Obamacare exchange.</p>
<p>In the speech, Obama wheeled his dead mother around as a prop, lying about her final half year of life. He said she died of cancer, &#8220;and in the last six months of her life, she was on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family.&#8221;</p>
<p>The story has been thoroughly <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/03/19/obama-nabbed-again-lying-about-mother-health-insurance-problem/">debunked</a> but Obama loves telling it. In reality the insurance company that covered Obama&#8217;s mother, Anne Dunham, reimbursed most of her medical expenses without making a fuss.</p>
<p>In a few short years there may be no private health insurers remaining and Americans may look back fondly on the days when they could talk to representatives of the insurance companies covering them.</p>
<p>If Obama gets his way, we&#8217;ll all be begging bureaucrats for medical treatment and death panels to spare our lives.</p>
<p><strong>Don&#8217;t miss this week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which explores <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/ ">To Lie for ObamaCare</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Lied, Healthcare Coverage Died</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obama-lied-healthcare-coverage-died/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:58:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209092</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Smoking gun emerges proving the president lied about his signature program.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obcr.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-209095" alt="obcr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/obcr.jpg" width="270" height="300" /></a>Although federal officials have known for at least three years that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage, that didn&#8217;t stop President Obama from lying repeatedly, reassuring voters the law would not adversely impact their existing coverage.</p>
<p>In an uncharacteristically media-savvy move aimed at capitalizing on current affairs, Republicans <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.nrsc.org/blog/13-democrats-that-knew-youd-lose-your-heath-insurance-but-promised" target="_blank">compiled</a></span> a list of 13 Democrats &#8211;including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)&#8211; who deceived voters by obediently repeating Obama&#8217;s lies.</p>
<p>Providing another ground for impeachment to pile on to the growing list of Obama&#8217;s high crimes and misdemeanors, NBC News <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite" target="_blank">reported</a></span> that four sources &#8220;deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act&#8221; said that</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a &#8216;cancellation&#8217; letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Many of those required to buy more expensive new policies will experience “sticker shock,” the sources said.</p>
<p>The administration generated an estimate in July 2010 that stated &#8220;that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them,&#8221; according to NBC.</p>
<p>But President Obama, who said the year before, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still promising in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”</p>
<p>For years President Obama has told the public over and over again that after Obamacare took effect, those who were satisfied with their current health coverage would be able to keep it. Obama&#8217;s constant reassurances anesthetized skeptical voters, downplaying the government takeover of the healthcare system. The president told Americans their health care premiums would fall $2,500 per year and they would retain their choice of medical providers. Many Americans, especially on the Left, projected their own fantasies onto Obamacare, and are only now beginning to realize that Obamacare isn&#8217;t actually a cost-free program that causes free health care to fall from the sky.</p>
<p>The 2010 estimate demonstrates that “when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said consultant Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. He says 80 percent of those in the individual market will be forced out of current policies and be compelled to purchase insurance that complies with the Obamacare statute, which mandates expensive benefits.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it turns out that the company of First Lady Michelle Obama’s college friend <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/michelles-friend-at-cgi-federal-met-with-top-officials-at-white-house/" target="_blank">received</a></span> a no-bid contract to construct the malfunctioning Obamacare website. As the Daily Caller reports,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Toni Townes-Whitley, who worked alongside her classmate Michelle Obama in multiple Princeton University student groups, became senior vice president of CGI Federal in May 2010. CGI was the only eligible company considered for the contract to build the disastrous HealthCare.Gov Obamacare enrollment site &#8230; Townes-Whitley maintained her relationship with the first couple after joining CGI, even enjoying &#8216;Christmas with the Obamas&#8217; at the White House in 2010.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>CGI Federal Inc., the primary contractor on the joke of a website, also <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamacare-collapses/" target="_blank">screwed up</a></span> a Canadian-taxpayer funded project, a federal gun registry. The Canadian government canceled the company’s contract in 2007 after that country’s Auditor General determined that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was “significantly over budget” and was repeatedly delayed.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Obama administration won&#8217;t say how many people have actually enrolled in the exchanges.</p>
<p>The administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Marilyn Tavenner, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/obamacare-chief-repeatedly-dodges-questions-on-number-of-obamacare-enrollees/" target="_blank">repeatedly refused</a></span> to give a straight answer to a congressional committee about how many Americans have signed up with the exchanges.</p>
<p>“We’ll have that information available for you in mid-November,” Tavenner said under questioning from House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.). Tavenner confirmed that CMS is aiming for 7 million enrollees by March 31 next year.</p>
<p>The bungled roll-out lends some credibility to the theory that Obamacare was designed to fail in order to clear the way for what the Left really wants: a one-size-fits-all single payer scheme that feeds the insatiable leftist fetish of equality &#8212; equally bad healthcare for all.</p>
<p>CMS&#8217;s Tavenner and Democratic lawmakers are already blaming insurance companies, instead of the true culprit, government policy, for the recent nationwide tsunami of Obamacare-related insurance policy cancellations.</p>
<p>Left-wingers are becoming downright kooky in their desperate efforts to explain away the Obama administration&#8217;s roll-out failures.</p>
<p><i>Washington Post</i> conspiracy theorist Ezra Klein, the creator of the &#8220;Journolist&#8221; propaganda machine, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/mind-boggling-blame-shifting/?singlepage=true" target="_blank">blames</a></span> Republicans for participating in a make-believe campaign to do &#8220;everything possible to sabotage&#8221; Obamacare. The GOP&#8217;s “plan to undermine the law worked too well,” Klein pontificates.</p>
<p>Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/dem-rep-jumps-out-of-chair-explodes-at-gopers-during-obamacare-hearing/" target="_blank">flew out</a></span> of his chair yesterday during a congressional hearing about the Affordable Care Act’s bungled launch. Pascrell accused Republicans of making up problems with Obamacare in order to justify repealing it.</p>
<p>Sixties civil rights protester John Lewis, now an undistinguished garden-variety <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6497" target="_blank">socialist Democrat</a></span> serving in the House of Representatives, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/29/rep-john-lewis-compares-opposition-to-obamacare-to-racism/" target="_blank">played</a></span> the racism card. Comfortably ensconced in a safe Atlanta, Ga., congressional district that would elect and reelect until the end of time anyone with a &#8220;D&#8221; after his or her name, Lewis said yesterday that Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare remind him</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;of another period in our history. Not so long ago during the 50s, many Southern senators signed a Southern Manifesto after the [<i>Brown v. Board of Education</i>] Supreme Court decision of 1954. And those senators — along with many Southern governors — subscribed to the doctrine of interposition and notification and some even massive resistance.”</p>
<p><b> </b>“That’s what we saw on the part of the Republican members of the House and some of the Republicans in the Senate,” he said of GOP attempts to strip away funding for Obamacare. Lewis conveniently ignored the fact that the 1956 manifesto of which he spoke, a document that opposed the racial integration that the high court cleared the way for, was signed by 99 politicians, 97 of whom were Democrats.</p></blockquote>
<p>Of course, Lewis likes to lie in order to advance causes he supports. In March 2010 Lewis and Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind.) falsely claimed Tea Party supporters hurled the N-word at them as they walked past an anti-Obamacare rally outside the U.S. Capitol in March 2010. (Carson, a black Muslim who wants U.S. schools turned into Islamic madrassas, also told a black audience that Tea Party supporters wanted to see &#8220;you and me hanging on a tree.&#8221;)</p>
<p>The intellectually mediocre Clarence Page <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77890657/" target="_blank">embraces</a></span> Obama&#8217;s self-serving explanation that the problems surfacing with Obamacare are the products of mere technological glitches rather than terrifying foreshadowings of the amply documented lethality of government-run healthcare.</p>
<p>The economically illiterate columnist shrugs that Obamacare may not be to blame for recent increases in insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-payments. &#8220;[A]fter decades of rising rates and reduced benefits, as well as rising health care costs, it&#8217;s hard to tell how much of the increase would have happened anyway.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even though the exchanges are artificial government-created cartels that have nothing to do with free markets, Page deludes himself into believing that Obamacare &#8220;opens up competition that &#8230; will reduce the increases in cost.&#8221; As the Jan. 1 deadline approaches for Obamacare coverage to take effect, &#8220;the law, like the federal website, needs more work,&#8221; he writes. No matter how awful the rollout may be, Obamacare is still &#8220;worth the effort,&#8221; according to the Obama lapdog.</p>
<p>No failure, no mountains of evidence, no body count, will ever be enough to convince left-wing true believers like Clarence Page that socialist healthcare is a bad idea.</p>
<p>The Left will continue rationalizing away the failures of Obama and Obamacare no matter how damning the evidence that emerges.</p>
<p>And Barack Obama will continue to be a saintly figure in their eyes as he gets away with  murder.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>The Thuggery of Obamacare Czarina Kathleen Sebelius</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-thuggery-of-obamacare-czarina-kathleen-sebelius/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-thuggery-of-obamacare-czarina-kathleen-sebelius</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-thuggery-of-obamacare-czarina-kathleen-sebelius/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Oct 2013 04:41:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bully]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[demonization]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Kathleen Sebelius]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration's brass-knuckles approach to keeping ailing businesses in line.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/large.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209052" alt="large" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/large-437x350.jpg" width="306" height="245" /></a>U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare&#8217;s Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies.</p>
<p>Three years ago, when insurers and other companies had the audacity to expose Obamacare&#8217;s damage to their customers and workers, Sebelius brought out her brass knuckles. Remember? As I reported at the time, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates because of the new mandate&#8217;s costs. Obama singled out the company in a &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem &#8220;justify&#8221; its rate hikes to the federal government.</p>
<p>A private company trying to survive in the marketplace was forced to &#8220;explain&#8221; itself to federal bureaucrats and career politicians who have never run a business (successful or otherwise) in their lives. Sebelius went even further. She called on Anthem to provide public disclosure of how the rate increases would be spent — a mandate that no other private companies must follow.</p>
<p>In an even more heavy-handed effort to suppress criticism, Sebelius wrote America&#8217;s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association of health insurers, &#8220;calling on their members to stop using scare tactics and misinformation to falsely blame premium increases for 2011 on the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act.&#8221; The threatening cease-and-desist letter commanded: &#8220;I urge you to inform your members that there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases. &#8230; Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.&#8221;</p>
<p>The speech-stifling gag order declared war on every opponent of Obamacare who dared to question the administration&#8217;s phony claims of cost-savings or expanded access.</p>
<p>When McDonald&#8217;s notified the feds that it might have to cancel health insurance plans for 30,000 workers because of Obamacare&#8217;s effective prohibition on low-cost plans, Sebelius slammed The Wall Street Journal for reporting the story. She then rushed to issue McDonald&#8217;s an Obamacare waiver, the first of thousands to quell criticism and bleeding.</p>
<p>Health care policy analyst Merrill Matthews points out that Sebelius cracked her whip against health insurer Humana even before the law had passed. When the insurer warned seniors that an Obamacare proposal to cut reimbursements could harm their Medicare Advantage benefits and coverage, Sebelius demanded that the company &#8220;suspend potentially misleading mailings to beneficiaries about health care and insurance reform.&#8221;</p>
<p>The warning, of course, proved true. In September 2010, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care canceled MA policies covering 22,000 seniors precisely because of Obamacare rules on reimbursements and MA-style plans.</p>
<p>Sebelius&#8217; power-mad partner on Capitol Hill, Henry Waxman, targeted companies including Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and ATT in a brass-knuckled effort to silence companies speaking out about the cost implications and financial burdens of Obamacare. After the firms reported write-downs related to the Obamacare mandate (disclosures that are required by law), Waxman scheduled an inquisition hearing to berate them publicly. After the Democrats&#8217; own congressional staff pointed out that the companies &#8220;acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards&#8221; in submitting filings that were required by law, Waxman called off the hounds.</p>
<p>It was a temporary reprieve. Caught with their pants down on the Obamacare website abomination and unable to stifle the cries of millions of Americans who are unable to keep the plans and doctors they like, Sebelius and her corrupt company are now blaming insurers, contractors and customers for the Obama administration&#8217;s ideological mess. In short: They lied, but for your own good. Culture of Corruption 101.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The ObamaCare Meltdown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamacare-collapses/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacare-collapses</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2013 04:54:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coverage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fail]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[mandate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[rollout]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=208533</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Will the health care overhaul collapse under its own weight? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pic_giant_102313_SM_Top-Ten-Obamacare-Disasters-to-Come.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-208535" alt="pic_giant_102313_SM_Top-Ten-Obamacare-Disasters-to-Come" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pic_giant_102313_SM_Top-Ten-Obamacare-Disasters-to-Come.jpg" width="310" height="244" /></a>Sometimes politics imitates life.</span></b></p>
<p>It turns out the pregnant, diabetic woman who nearly fainted in President Obama&#8217;s arms at the Obamacare damage-control press event Obama held this week, isn&#8217;t herself <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">sold on</a> Obamacare.</p>
<p>The experience of Californian Karmel Allison is a metaphor for the entire rollout of the healthcare exchanges. Failure after failure, glitch after glitch, and spin, spin, spin. Allison was part of the president&#8217;s embarrassing media event this week in which a few Americans who somehow managed to sign up for Obamacare online were paraded for the dupes of the mainstream media to swoon over.</p>
<p>Allison&#8217;s near-collapse was captured on live TV as she was suffering a dizzy spell. Allison isn&#8217;t sure if she will sign up for Obamacare but the Obama White House wheeled her out in public as an example of someone who needs Obamacare. According to the White House:</p>
<blockquote><p>Karmel Allison was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was nine years old. She has stayed on the same insurance ever since, despite constantly rising costs, for fear she would not be able to find a plan that would cover her due to her pre-existing condition. Allison recently began researching her options on CoveredCA and has publically [sic] described her experience as finally feeling equal to others, including her young and healthy husband, when it comes to access to coverage.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obamacare isn&#8217;t likely to help Allison who reportedly prefers her current coverage. She&#8217;s far from alone as Americans experience sticker shock as their health insurance premiums skyrocket &#8212; assuming they haven&#8217;t had their policies canceled outright.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a Canadian company is <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">taking the blame</a> for the failed architecture of <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a>, the federal Obamacare enrollment website. CGI Federal Inc., the primary contractor on the new website and a subsidiary of Montreal, Quebec-based CGI Inc., is in turn blaming the bunged up Oct. 1 launch of the site on a subcontractor.</p>
<p>CGI also <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">screwed up</a> a Canadian-taxpayer funded project, a federal gun registry. The Canadian government canceled the company&#8217;s contract in 2007 after that country&#8217;s Auditor General determined that the Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) being built by CGI was &#8220;significantly over budget&#8221; and was repeatedly delayed.</p>
<p>The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper that took power in 2006 eventually opposed the gun registry which was later repealed by Parliament.</p>
<p>As Joel B. Pollak notes,</p>
<blockquote><p>In another parallel to the Obamacare controversy in the United States, the gun registry had been passed in 1993 over vehement Conservative objections, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2000, before finally being repealed in most of the country in 2012.</p></blockquote>
<p>With the Obama White House&#8217;s blessing, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Norman Lear Center, which has something called a &#8220;Hollywood, Health &amp; Society program,&#8221; is helping TV producers <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">condition the masses</a> into supporting Obama&#8217;s sclerotic Soviet-style health care program.</p>
<p>USC will aim to keep producers, writers, and directors up to speed so they can incorporate the latest information into their storylines. It will also generate public service announcements to match the TV shows&#8217; storylines. The program, which also aids in the spread of Al Gore&#8217;s anthropogenic global warming hysteria, <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">boasts</a> that its &#8220;storytelling resources&#8221; have contributed to more than 550 &#8220;Hollywood, Health &amp; Society-assisted storylines over the span of three years.&#8221;</p>
<p>Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor and lobbyist for vulturous trial lawyers, dove deep last year, swimming with the worst of the bottom-feeders of the activist Left in a quest <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">to recruit fellow thugs</a> from Al Sharpton&#8217;s gang to help con the American people into supporting Obamacare. “We know that the best way to keep moving in the right direction is to get people the facts,&#8221; Sebelius said at the time. &#8220;Right now there are a lot of people who are benefiting from this law who don’t even know that’s why they are benefiting.”</p>
<p>Sebelius has also <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">unleashed</a> the leftovers of the radical crime syndicate ACORN, President Obama&#8217;s ally and former employer, on unsuspecting communities. This means that as you read this article community organizers with a track record for fraud and identity theft are getting their hands on important personal information such as income figures and Social Security numbers of those they convince to sign up for Obamacare.</p>
<p>Disgraced ACORN founder Wade Rathke&#8217;s shady union is helping people enroll in Obamacare exchanges. The United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">announced</a> on its Facebook page Sept. 15 that it was gearing up to do mass enrollment of people in the Affordable Care Act exchanges in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. (HHS has made a <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">searchable database</a> of Obamacare navigators available online.)</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s detractors, already accustomed to the president&#8217;s gross bureaucratic mismanagement of, well, everything, are understandably aghast at the breathtaking incompetence of those who managed the website launch.</p>
<p>But so are some of the president&#8217;s staunchest defenders.</p>
<p>Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Affordable Care Act&#8217;s online debut is &#8220;excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services.&#8221;</p>
<p>The technical snafus that accompanied the rollout of health care exchanges were much larger than mere server issues. &#8220;This was bungled badly,&#8221; Gibbs said. &#8220;This was not a server problem, just too many people came to the website, this is a website architecture problem.&#8221;</p>
<p>Think tank analyst Norman Ornstein, a left-winger who is normally an Obama apologist, <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/22/the-tiny-but-very-important-detail-about-the-woman-who-nearly-fainted-at-the-obamacare-press-conference/">slammed</a> the rollout.</p>
<blockquote><p>To be sure, every major rollout of a new or changed social policy, including Medicare itself, is rough and takes weeks or months to resolve. But this rollout is clearly worse, and, as we learn more about its history over the past six months and more, the failures in vision and execution, in the face of clear and blunt warnings of problems ahead, are striking and troubling.</p></blockquote>
<p>It is clear, Ornstein said, that &#8220;the stark internal warnings from tech experts of deep-seated problems in the programs came months ago and went unheeded.&#8221;</p>
<p>Some conservatives are demanding that HHS Secretary Sebelius fall on her sword for botching the initial six-month implementation phase of the online insurance markets required by the Obamacare law.</p>
<p>This is, of course, a terrible idea. Americans who want to prevent the radical transformation of American society that Obamacare will lead to should do everything they can to keep Sebelius.</p>
<p>Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s monumental mistakes in implementing Obamacare may be the program&#8217;s downfall. Let&#8217;s hope she continues her fine work.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>CNN&#8217;s Iran Coverage: Biased, Inept, or Corrupt?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/noah-beck/cnns-iran-coverage-biased-inept-or-corrupt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cnns-iran-coverage-biased-inept-or-corrupt</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2013 04:24:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Noah Beck]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christiane Amanpour]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CNN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coverage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hassan Rouhani]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206140</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Promoting a biased, re-branded image of a murderous regime. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Christiane_Amanpour1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206158" alt="Christiane_Amanpour1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Christiane_Amanpour1.jpg" width="207" height="312" /></a>Al-Jazeera bought access to US public opinion when it purchased Current TV from Al Gore, but it faces stiff competition from CNN when it comes to misleading viewers about the Middle East. Over the last week, CNN has promoted a biased, re-branded image of the Iranian regime on at least three major programs.</p>
<p>CNN&#8217;s positive spin on Iran is collectively staggering. Did the Iranian regime secure such favorable coverage with payments? Or was CNN just so inept and/or biased that it inadvertently promoted the Iranian regime at every opportunity? Consider each program.</p>
<p>CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR</p>
<p>When Christiane Amanpour interviewed Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, she asked him about his views on the Holocaust. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, frequently doubted the Nazi genocide against the Jews, so Rouhani&#8217;s views on the issue might indicate whether the Iranian regime, under a more palatable facade, has substantively improved. The title of a <a href="http://camera.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8b7948e93d155a16f6202c669&amp;id=d13094cd71&amp;e=23ef708ae0" target="_blank">post</a> on Amanpour’s blog reports “Iran&#8217;s new president: Yes, the Holocaust happened.”</p>
<p>But, as <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&amp;x_outlet=2&amp;x_article=2553" target="_blank">CAMERA noted</a>, multiple independent translations by Farsi speakers conflict with CNN’s translation and agree with Fars News Agency&#8217;s conclusion that CNN mistranslated Rouhani&#8217;s vague reference to &#8220;historical events&#8221; as &#8220;the Holocaust.&#8221; Indeed, the fact that Fars &#8212; which <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/12/12/iran.protests/" target="_blank">CNN itself considers a &#8220;semi-official&#8221; news agency</a> with ties to the Iranian government &#8212; rejects any conclusion that &#8220;the Holocaust&#8221; was explicitly acknowledged should have caused CNN to question its conclusions and issue a correction.</p>
<p>But despite being challenged also by a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303796404579097491626493058.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal editorial</a>, Newsweek&#8217;s <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/26/what-hassan-rouhani-really-said-about-the-holocaust.html" target="_blank">The Daily Beast</a>, and <a href="http://iranpulse.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/09/2894/rouhanis-holocaust-comments-on-cnn-spark-controversy/" target="_blank">Al Monitor</a>, Amanpour has stood by the accuracy of CNN’s translation (which reportedly came from a translator hired by the Iranian government), and has refused to issue any corrections. CNN apparently wants to convince viewers that the new Iranian president does not share the anti-Jewish, ahistorical, and extremist sensibilities that have defined the Iranian regime for the last few decades.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, <a href="http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/24/iran-president-rouhanis-english-language-message-to-the-american-people/" target="_blank">CNN’s written summary of the interview</a> excludes a highly objectionable part of Rouhani&#8217;s answer. In the same breath that Rouhani supposedly acknowledges the Holocaust, he suggests that the Jewish claim to the land of Israel is based only on the Holocaust, and — in equally twisted moral and historical logic — suggests an equivalence between the Holocaust and the Israeli “occupation” of Palestinians. Indeed, a far more accurate headline for Amanpour’s CNN blog would read: “Iran&#8217;s New President: Any Holocaust Is No Justification For Israel&#8217;s Existence And Was Like Israel&#8217;s Occupation Of Palestine.&#8221;</p>
<p>Worse still, CNN has continuously replayed the clip of Rouhani&#8217;s purported Holocaust &#8220;condemnation&#8221; to promote Christiane Amanpour&#8217;s program. This brainwashing-style repetition reinforces the inference that CNN naturally wants to promote the repackaged Iran and/or was handsomely paid to do so.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, CNN&#8217;s biased Iran reporting and distortions continued on two other programs. Both programs featured Ciamak Morsadegh, Iran&#8217;s only Jewish Member of Parliament, as their &#8220;star witness&#8221; testifying to how Iran is Disneyland for Jews. Neither program questioned whether Morsadegh might be a shill for the Iranian regime or how free any Iranian parliamentarian (much less the token Jewish one) is to criticize Iranian policy. No dissenting views, fact-checking, or context were included to correct or balance Morsadegh&#8217;s far-fetched claims.</p>
<p>FAREED ZAKARIA</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/29/ciamak-morsadegh-mp-on-life-as-a-religious-minority-in-iran/" target="_blank">Zakaria interview</a>, Morsadegh claims that &#8220;there were some problems in Iranian Jewish society&#8221; in the early days of Ahmadinejad&#8217;s presidency &#8220;but after that, there was no problem.&#8221; But Morsadegh contradicts that dubious claim &#8212; and the rosier statements he makes about Jewish life in Iran &#8212; when he states that Iran&#8217;s Jewish minority does &#8220;have some problems.&#8221; Of course, Zakaria doesn&#8217;t note the contradiction or explore what those &#8220;problems&#8221; might be.</p>
<p>Morsadegh also misrepresents reality when he states that &#8220;For religious freedom, Iran is one of the most free countries.&#8221; Try telling that to Iran&#8217;s Bahai or Christian minorities. Or just consult the <a href="http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/ir0108a.pdf" target="_blank">International Federation of Human Rights report</a>, which details the severe discrimination against Iran&#8217;s religious minorities. Shouldn&#8217;t Zakaria know such basic facts? Why didn&#8217;t he follow up with Morsadegh or at least provide some balancing information from another source after the interview?</p>
<p>Morsadegh also says that he is not a Zionist and rejects the behavior of the Israeli government and army. But in a televised interview, was he really free to say &#8220;I am a Zionist&#8221; or &#8220;I condemn my country&#8217;s threats to destroy Israel and its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah?&#8221; Could any Iranian public official say such things and survive? Zakaria never points this out.</p>
<p>REZA SAYAH</p>
<p>In <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1309/30/ctw.01.html" target="_blank">CNN&#8217;s &#8220;Connect the World</a>,&#8221; Reza Sayah also failed basic journalistic duties, allowing Morsadegh&#8217;s misrepresentations to go unchallenged, while adding a few of his own. Morsadegh claims that &#8220;In the history of Iran&#8230;[there was never any] organized anti-Semitic phenomenon.&#8221; What about the thirteen Iranian Jews who were executed for alleged connections to Israel (including Habib Elghanian, the former head of the Iranian Jewish community)? More generally, if life is so great for the Jews of Iran, why did their population drop from over 100,000 (in 1948) to under 20,000 today?</p>
<p>Sayah&#8217;s report touts the fact that Iran has Jewish schools, kosher restaurants, and a charity hospital founded and run by Jews, and preposterously suggests that Jewish life in Iran could somehow compare to Jewish life in Israel (&#8220;Sure, it may seem like we&#8217;re in Israel, but in fact we&#8217;re in the Islamic Republic of Iran.&#8221;). Seriously?</p>
<p>Sayah&#8217;s report continues with glowing reviews for Jewish life in Iran: &#8220;&#8216;Here they show a lot of respect for Judaism,&#8217; says Shahnose Rahanian. It&#8217;s better than many other places.&#8217;&#8221; Which places? Egypt, where there are just a few dozen Jews left? Compared to Jewish life in any non-Muslim country with a significant Jewish population, Jewish life in Iran is pathetic and doomed to the same extinction that has occurred in nearly all of the Muslim world. Sayah never questions the truthfulness of his interviewees, who are from a tiny and extremely vulnerable minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim country where criticism of Islam &#8212; or the regime &#8212; can leave the critic dead. Nor does he mention reports that <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6065" target="_blank">Iranian Jews live in fear that their telephones are tapped.</a></p>
<p>Sayah reports that &#8220;some Jews here say they&#8217;ve traveled to Israel, but home remains Iran,&#8221; but he fails to mention that the majority of Iranian Jews are elderly and speak only Persian, making emigration much harder (as observed by Iranian-American activist Sam Kermanian).</p>
<p>Sayah mentions that Jews have lived in Persia/Iran since the sixth century BC, when Persia&#8217;s King Cyrus liberated Jews from Babylonian captivity, but Sayah never discusses the persecution of Jews in Persia/Iran since then, or the likely explanations for their massive &#8220;migration.&#8221;</p>
<p>Both Zakaria and Sayah could have easily interviewed some Iranian-American Jews, many of whom have family still living in Iran, to get alternative perspectives.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, CNN has a long history of anti-Israel bias, as documented by <a href="http://honestreporting.com/search/?cx=008933639011795058321%3Av1i1e0c9w1w&amp;cof=FORID%3A11%3BNB%3A1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=cnn&amp;sa=Search" target="_blank">Honest Reporting</a> and <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=3&amp;x_outlet=14" target="_blank">CAMERA</a>. Are the above issues part of that problem? Or were Iranian payments involved? CNN must come clean about its Iran &#8220;reporting&#8221; or lose even more of its already damaged credibility.</p>
<p><b>Noah Beck is the author of <i><a href="http://thelastisraelis.com/buy-the-book/" target="_blank">The Last Israelis</a></i>, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.</b></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Rush Transcript: CNN Reports on Egypt&#8217;s Big Day</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/rush-transcript-cnn-reports-on-egypts-big-day/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rush-transcript-cnn-reports-on-egypts-big-day</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jul 2013 04:09:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[CNN]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[International]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What the TV-viewing world missed while it was not watching CNN. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p dir="LTR"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/09785.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195621" alt="09785" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/09785-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a></p>
<p>ANCHORMAN: I&#8217;m Michael Holmes and this is CNN International, the international headquarters of self-congratulatory bombast and the very best source of news for all of you poor bastards stuck in airport waiting areas around the world – provided, of course, you don&#8217;t have a laptop with you or enough change in your pocket to buy a newspaper. Well, it&#8217;s been an amazing day. History is in the making! At this very moment Egypt is undergoing a spectacular transformation. It&#8217;s absolutely extraordinary and it&#8217;s all happening live before our CNN cameras right there in Tahrir Square. [He is careful to pronounce <i>Tahrir </i>in the proper Arabic way.] At the moment we&#8217;re awaiting what we&#8217;re informed will be an extremely important speech to the people of Egypt and the world. But first these words.</p>
<p>COMMERCIAL: [While exotic music plays, we see gorgeously photographed shots of women in niqab, happy children flying a kite, a row of men kneeling on prayer rugs, camels, a tree, a sparkling blue body of water, a mosque, a group of modern buildings, another mosque, a bird flying over the desert, a series of men, women, and children smiling into the camera, followed by a black screen bearing the words <i>Qatar: Heart of the Arabian Gulf.</i>]</p>
<p>PROMO: AN OFFSCREEN VOICE WITH A HEAVY EAST END ACCENT: This week on <i>Global Exchange, </i>we&#8217;re live from Abu Dhabi, which sits at the crossroads between East and West. Yes, Abu Dhabi! This is the future – the heart of the emerging markets! Abu Dhabi – this week on <i>Global Exchange!</i></p>
<p>MICHAEL: This is Michael Holmes again, and I&#8217;m back with my incredibly thick Australian accent, just to show how international we are. We&#8217;re still waiting for that important speech from Cairo. At this time we&#8217;ll be joining our sister station, CNN in the United States.</p>
<p>WOLF BLITZER: Hi, I&#8217;m Wolf Blitzer, and welcome to both, I mean all, of our viewers in the United States and around the world. I&#8217;m here in the Situation Room with the finest team of journalists in the business, at least those who haven&#8217;t yet managed to find jobs at other traditional-media operations that aren&#8217;t sinking quite as fast as we are. As I said, we&#8217;re the oldest and best in the business, and no, we&#8217;re not forgetting that we royally screwed up that Boston bombings story – but it&#8217;ll take a lot more than that to make us actually learn any lessons about the basics of journalism, let alone develop any humility. At the moment it&#8217;s late afternoon in Egypt and it&#8217;s shaping up to be an utterly amazing day in Tahrir Square. [He too pronounces it in the correct Arabic way.] I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s any exaggeration to say that Egypt is undergoing an absolutely spectacular transformation. Let&#8217;s turn now to Candy Crowley, who&#8217;s been busy working her sources, while at the same time showing a large pizza who&#8217;s boss. Candy, I believe you&#8217;ve come up with a CNN exclusive?</p>
<p>CANDY CROWLEY: Thank you, Wolf. Yes, just a few minutes ago I had an exclusive interview with Distinguished Professor Jihad al-Kaboom of the Hassan al-Banna School for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Here&#8217;s a little bit of what he had to say.</p>
<p>JIHAD AL-KABOOM [ON VIDEOTAPE]: Candy, it&#8217;s an amazing day in Egypt. The country is undergoing an absolutely spectacular transformation.</p>
<p>CANDY: Thank you, Professor al-Kaboom.</p>
<p>JIHAD AL-KABOOM: Any time, Candy. [END OF VIDEOTAPE]</p>
<p>WOLF: Before you go, Professor al-Kaboom, may I ask you a question?</p>
<p>CANDY: Wolf, that was a videotape.</p>
<p>WOLF: Indeed it was. Folks, that was Candy Crowley in an exclusive CNN interview, held moments ago with Professor Jihad al-Kaboom of Harvard University. Let me ask you, then, Candy: what do you make of today&#8217;s events in Cairo? [He pronounces it KAY-ro.]</p>
<p>CANDY: Wolf, I think it&#8217;s actually pronounced KI-ro.</p>
<p>WOLF: Candy, you may be correct. Let me work my sources and get back to you on that. In the meantime, what <i>do</i> you make of today&#8217;s developments?</p>
<p>CANDY: Absolutely amazing, Wolf. A spectacular transformation.</p>
<p>WOLF: Thank you, Candy, for your insight and analysis. Just to bring our viewers in America and around the world up to speed, it&#8217;s been a remarkable day in Tahrir Square and we&#8217;re still awaiting that all-important speech from Cairo. [He pronounces it KAY-ro, then pauses and touches his earpiece.] I&#8217;m being told now by our control room that it is indeed pronounced KI-ro. KAY-ro is the city in Illinois, located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. We&#8217;ll be back in the Situation Room after these words.</p>
<p>PROMO: This week on <i>CNN in the Middle East, </i>we go waterskiing in Tunisia<i> </i>and visit the very best restaurants in Yemen with <i>Vogue </i>editor Anna Wintour. Brought to you by CNN in association with the Qatar Foundation – wink-wink!</p>
<p>COMMERCIAL: [While exotic music plays, we see gorgeously photographed shots of women in niqab, happy children flying a kite, a row of men kneeling on prayer rugs, camels, a tree, a sparkling blue body of water, a mosque, a group of modern buildings, another mosque, a bird flying over the desert, a series of happy men, women, and children smiling into the camera, followed by a black screen bearing the words <i>Bahrain: Small Is Beautiful.</i>]</p>
<p>PROMO: Hello, this is Christiane Amanpour, host of <i>Amanpour, </i>and on tonight&#8217;s <i>Amanpour </i>I&#8217;ll be explaining what kind of accent this is supposed to be. That&#8217;s tonight&#8217;s <i>Amanpour, </i>only on CNN.</p>
<p>WOLF: Welcome back to all our viewers in the United States and around the world. We&#8217;re still awaiting that big speech from Egypt. We&#8217;ll now be rejoining our sister network, CNN International.</p>
<p>ANCHORWOMAN: Hello, I&#8217;m Fionnuala Sweeney and this is my incredibly thick Irish accent. Are we international or what?  I&#8217;m honored to be sitting here with the distinguished, award-winning journalist Asma Attaq, a leading supporter of President Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and fashion editor of al-Qaeda&#8217;s in-flight magazine, <i>Insight. </i>Thank you for being here, Asma, on this astounding day when we&#8217;ve seen such a spectacular turnout in Tahrir Square. [She is careful to pronounce <i>Tahrir</i> in the proper Arabic way.] What do you make of today&#8217;s developments?</p>
<p>ASMA ATTAQ [in full burka]: Well, I have to say, with a heavy heart, Fionnuala, that the fall of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood makes this a deeply tragic day for me and for all of my fellow true believers in Allah and the Holy Qu&#8217;ran who are fervently consecrated to the cause of armed jihad in the name of our beloved Prophet – peace be upon him – and to the sacred struggle to bring the entire population of the earth under the rule of sharia law, thereby overcoming the tyranny of America, the Great Satan, and of Israel, whose inhabitants are the descendants of pigs and dogs.</p>
<p>FIONNUALA: Thank you very much, Asma. Well said. Let&#8217;s bring in my other guest, Ali Frazier, who is on the other side of the issue. You see, folks? We&#8217;re balanced! Mr. Frazier?</p>
<p>ALI FRAZIER: Well, for my part I&#8217;d say this is a promising day for all of us who are opposed to the violence of jihad and the intolerance of sharia law.</p>
<p>FIONNUALA: Mr. Frazier, with all due respect, I can&#8217;t sit here and allow you to make the frankly appalling suggestion that anything but a vanishingly tiny minority of the supporters of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are motivated by intolerance or violence. Asma?</p>
<p>ASMA ATTAQ: Yes, this is the kind of ugly bigotry with which I and my fellow Muslims must constantly contend.</p>
<p>FIONNUALA: Thank you very much indeed, Asma. It&#8217;s been an honor to speak with you, and I&#8217;m sorry you had to listen to those truly ill-informed and offensive remarks. Now, while we&#8217;re still awaiting that important speech from Cairo, let&#8217;s pause for these words.</p>
<p>COMMERCIAL: [While exotic music plays, we see gorgeously photographed shots of women in niqab, happy children flying a kite, a row of men kneeling on prayer rugs, camels, a tree, a sparkling blue body of water, a mosque, a group of modern buildings, another mosque, a bird flying over the desert, a series of happy men, women, and children smiling into the camera, followed by a black screen bearing the words <i>Come to Iran and Spend Your Dollars and Take Pictures of the Scenery While We Execute Apostates, Gays, Rape Victims, Drinkers of Alcohol, Political Opponents, Etc., Etc., You Spineless, Self-Hating Dhimmi Nitwits.</i>]</p>
<p>FIONNUALA: Welcome back. We&#8217;ll now be joining that important speech in Cairo, which I&#8217;ve been told is already in progress.</p>
<p>EGYPTIAN MILITARY LEADER: [voice of English interpreter] &#8230;and may Allah shower his blessings upon the people of Egypt.</p>
<p>FIONNUALA: Well, it looks as though we missed that speech. Shame, that! We&#8217;ll right be back after this message from the Saudi Arabian tourist board. Their slogan: <i>Come to Saudi Arabia – come stay with fiends!</i></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Left Complains NBC’s Olympic Coverage Too Patriotic &#8211; Bucks Right</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/left-complains-nbc%e2%80%99s-olympic-coverage-too-patriotic-bucks-right/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=left-complains-nbc%25e2%2580%2599s-olympic-coverage-too-patriotic-bucks-right</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:20:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[2010 olympics]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley is upset that NBC is focusing too much of its coverage of the 2010 Olympics on American athletes and seems to be (gasp) cheering for the Americans to do well and happy when they win events. Technology evolves, organizers add new sports — this year it’s ski cross — [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bucksright.com/inevitable-left-complains-nbcs-olympic-coverage-too-patriotic-5325"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/3448110963.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>The<em> New York Times</em>’ Alessandra Stanley is upset that NBC is focusing too much of its coverage of the 2010 Olympics on American athletes and seems to be (gasp) cheering for the Americans to do well and happy when they win events.</p>
<blockquote><p>Technology evolves, organizers add new sports — this year it’s ski cross — but NBC’s Olympic reportage, up close and way too personal, never seems to change. And in Vancouver the best exploits of what the network unfailingly refers to as “Team USA” only bring out the worst in network heavy breathing.</p>
<p>At a time when American athletes are amassing record numbers of medals, and NBC is drawing an impressive number of viewers, sports fans couldn’t ask for more fulsome, pro-American coverage — they could ask for a little less. NBC anchors, including those paid by the news division, glom onto the glamour and reflected glory of winsome champions, as per Matt Lauer’s no-boundaries embrace of the skier Lindsey Vonn on “Today” after she won the downhill race. He draped a chocolate gold medal around her neck, gave her flowers (“just because we adore you”) and hugged her tight (“we are so proud of you”) — as if he and Meredith Vieira had spent the last 15 years rising at dawn to drive her to training.</p></blockquote>
<p>The horror.  Athletes who Americans know getting profiled and congratulated on American television during a world event that is supposed to be about national pride.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, not to be outdone, the virulent leftist copycats at Gawker’s Deadspin rewrite Stanley’s article to hate American dominance just that much more.</p>
<blockquote><p>The U.S. is on its way to perhaps its most successful Olympics ever, “owning the podium” that Canada hoped to keep for itself. A lot of those medals were captured in events that the U.S. was expected to win, so puffing out our chests and trashing talking about how awesome our boys and girls are kind of makes us look like the globe’s equivalent of Yankee fans. Yet, there is one popular sport where America is not the big kid on the block, but since our plucky upstarts are dominating anyway … well, break out the cigars, a-holes! The world community has to pay attention to the United States for once!</p>
<p>Yes, our NHL All-Star team beat another country’s NHL All-Star team in a tough hard-fought non-elimination game that is seriously being compared to the most important international sporting victory in our nation’s history. (Today is the 30th anniversary of America’s loss of perspective.) Canada, the politest country in the hemisphere, is seriously hurting right now and we are perfectly content to push their faces back down into the mud. Why can’t we feel good about ourselves? After a decade of war and financial ruin that we’re pretty much responsible for haven’t we earned it?</p></blockquote>
<p>So sorry we win things, Deadspin. I guess we should lay down in some of these events to “spread the wealth around” and redistribute victory a little bit.  Apparently, minimizing American success is preferable to celebrating it.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.bucksright.com/inevitable-left-complains-nbcs-olympic-coverage-too-patriotic-5325">Inevitable: Left Complains NBC’s Olympic Coverage Too Patriotic | Bucks Right</a>.</p>
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		<title>Politicians in Wonderland</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/politicians-in-wonderland/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicians-in-wonderland</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/thomas-sowell/politicians-in-wonderland/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:02:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48479</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What's the real story on how many jobs the president has created?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48480" title="GYI0000729870.jpg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obama.jpg" alt="GYI0000729870.jpg" width="450" height="356" /></p>
<p>There was a recent flap because three different members of the Obama administration, on three different Sunday television talk shows, gave three widely differing estimates of how many jobs the president has created.</p>
<p>That should not have been surprising, except as a sign of political sloppiness in not getting their stories together beforehand. They were simply doing what Barack Obama himself does — namely, just pulling numbers out of thin air. However, being more skilled at creating illusions, the president does it with more of an air of certainty, as if he has gone around and counted the new jobs himself.</p>
<p>The big question that seldom— if ever— gets asked in the mainstream media is whether these are a net increase in jobs. Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector.</p>
<p>So long as most people do not look beyond superficial appearances, politicians can get away with playing Santa Claus on all sorts of issues, while leaving havoc in their wake— such as growing unemployment, despite all the jobs being &#8220;created.&#8221;</p>
<p>Whatever position people take on <a style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen ! important; font-weight: normal ! important; font-size: 100% ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; padding-bottom: 1px ! important; color: darkgreen ! important; background-color: transparent ! important; background-image: none; padding-top: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt;" href="http://www.creators.com/conservative/thomas-sowell/politicians-in-wonderland.html#" target="_blank">health care</a> reform, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus— usually a sign of mushy thinking— that it is a good idea for the government to force insurance companies to insure people whom politicians want them to insure, and to insure them for things that politicians think should be insured.</p>
<p>Contrary to what politicians expect us to do, let&#8217;s stop and think.</p>
<p>Why aren&#8217;t insurance companies already insuring the people and the conditions that they are now going to be forced to cover? Because that means additional costs— and because the insurance companies don&#8217;t think their customers are willing to pay those particular costs for those particular coverages.</p>
<p>It costs politicians nothing to mandate more insurance coverage for more people.</p>
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<p>But that doesn&#8217;t mean that the costs vanish into thin air. It simply means that both buyers and sellers of insurance are forced to pay costs that neither of them wants to pay. But, because soaring political rhetoric leaves out such grubby things as costs, it sounds like a great deal.</p>
<p>It is not just costs that are left out. It is consequences in general.</p>
<p>With all the laments in the media about skyrocketing unemployment among young people, and especially minority young people, few media pundits even try to connect the dots to explain why unemployment hits some groups much harder than others.</p>
<p>Yet unusually high unemployment rates among young people is not something new or even something peculiar to the United States. Even before the current worldwide recession, unemployment rates were 20 percent or more among workers under 25 years of age in a number of Western European countries.</p>
<p>The young have less experience to offer and are therefore less in demand. Before politicians stepped in, that just meant that younger workers were paid less. But this is not a permanent situation because youth itself is not permanent, and pay rises with experience.</p>
<p>Enter politicians. By mandating a minimum wage that sounds reasonable for most workers, they put a price on inexperienced and unskilled labor that often exceeds what it is worth.</p>
<p>Mandated pay rates, like mandated insurance coverage, impose on buyers and sellers alike things that they would not choose to do otherwise.</p>
<p>Workers of course prefer higher wage rates. But the very fact that the government has to impose those wage rates means that workers were unwilling to risk not having a job by refusing to work for less than the wage rate that has been mandated. Now that choice has been taken out of their hands, with the hidden cost in this case being higher unemployment rates.</p>
<p>It is of course no secret that there is no free lunch. It is just an inconvenient distraction that gets left out of political rhetoric.</p>
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		<title>Spitting on Howard Zinn’s Grave?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/spitting-on-howard-zinn%e2%80%99s-grave-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=spitting-on-howard-zinn%25e2%2580%2599s-grave-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:32:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48198</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here's what I really said about the lifelong Stalinist and propagandist.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">NewsReal</a></strong></p>
<p>The other day <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/29/horowitz-on-zinn-on-npr/" target="_blank">a reporter from NPR called me and asked me for my comments </a>on the death of the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939" target="_blank">lifelong Stalinist</a> and propagandist <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939" target="_blank">Howard Zinn</a>. I was a little reluctant because I knew that whatever I said, legions of unscrupulous myrmidons on the left would jump on it and say I had spit on Zinn’s grave. I also knew that while I was interviewed for ten minutes, out of what I said only a 20 second sound-bite would make it onto the air. I don’t begrudge NPR this selection. That’s what their obit was and would have to be, a collection of sound-bites.</p>
<p>Sure enough <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7092" target="_blank">the bottom-feeders</a> at <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7092" target="_blank">FAIR</a> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/01/29-8" target="_blank">pounced on my bite</a> and accused me of spitting on Zinn’s grave. So here’s what I said that was cut from the interview. I’m not putting quotes around it because it’s from memory, but it’s pretty close to some of my remarks and captures the sense of others:  No one should celebrate the death of another human being unless they are child-molesters or murderers. Howard Zinn lived to a ripe old age (87), and<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/howardzinnexpanded.html" target="_blank"> bad human being</a> that he was, I wouldn’t begrudge him an extra few years;  he’s done about as much damage as he could.</p>
<p>Howard Zinn was a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2042" target="_blank">Stalinist</a> in the years when the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">Marxist </a>monster  was slaughtering millions of innocent people and launching his own<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=145&amp;type=issue" target="_blank"> ‘final  solution’ against the Jews</a>. Put another way, Howard Zinn was helping Stalin to conduct those slaughters and to enslave  all those who had the misfortune to live behind the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/The%20Road%20to%20Nowhere.htm" target="_blank">Iron Curtain</a>.  Howard never had second thoughts about his commitment to leftwing totalitarians and never flagged in his political commitment to freedom’s enemies. In the years since Stalin’s death, Zinn supported every enemy of the United States in every war, and devoted his writing talents to every socialist tyrant including <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2073" target="_blank">Mao Zedong</a> who killed 70 million  Chinese in peacetime because they got in the way of his progressive  agendas.</p>
<p>When the Cold War was over and freedom had won — thanks to all the political forces and figures (e.g., Reagan and Thatcher) that Zinn opposed – Zinn continued his malignant course. He supported America’s enemies right to the end including the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=183&amp;type=issue" target="_blank">Islamic Nazis</a> whose first agenda is to  finish the job that Hitler started and then to impose a totalitarian theocracy  on the infidel world.</p>
<p>Zinn’s wretched tract, <a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385" target="_blank"><em>A People’s History of the United States</em></a>, is worthless as history, and it is a national tragedy that so many Americans have fallen under its spell. It is a political cartoon which even <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6978" target="_blank">the  socialist magazine </a><em><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6978" target="_blank">Dissent</a></em> <a href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385" target="_blank">described as an intellectual fraud</a>, which it is. All Zinn’s writing was directed to one end: to indict his own country as an evil state and soften his countrymen up for the kill. Like his partner in crime, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1232" target="_blank">Noam Chomsky</a>, Zinn’s life’s work was a pernicious influence on the young and ignorant, with destructive consequences for people everywhere.</p>
<p><strong>Editor’s Note: <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/28/leftist-heads-explode-over-howard-zinns-death/" target="_blank">Click</a><a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/28/obama-disappoints-howard-zinn-groupies/" target="_blank"> here</a> for more of NRB’s coverage of Howard Zinn’s death. <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/12/20/case-closed-on-howard-zinns-the-people-speak/">Click here</a> for a collection of NRB’s coverage of the recent Zinn-inspired documentary “The People Speak.”</strong></p>
<p><strong>UPDATE: David Horowitz has decided that he came down a bit too harshly on Zinn. The above text is revised to remove the description of Zinn as a “wicked man.” For an explanation <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/01/31/a-wicked-man-no-a-fool-with-wicked-ideas/" target="_blank">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Praying for Socialized Medicine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/praying-for-socialized-medicine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=praying-for-socialized-medicine</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:07:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47246</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As Obamacare implodes, the religious Left has a meltdown.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47250" title="tooley" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tooley.jpg" alt="tooley" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>The apparent political implosion of Obamacare after Scott Brown’s Massachusetts win is already enraging the Religious Left.  To have been so close to fulfilling a decades long crusade only to face defeat can be infuriating.  When government controlled health care is seen as portending the advent of God’s Kingdom, then the fury is even greater.</p>
<p>Writing for Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, activist Valerie Dixon impatiently urged “congressional courage” to defy public opposition to Obamacare.  It’s a typical Religious Left theme:  Help the people even when they don’t want it!</p>
<p>“Now is not the time to read more into election results than we ought,” Dixon anxiously cautioned.  “And even if the election were a referendum on health-care reform, so what?  This is a representative democracy. It is a republic because we expect our leaders to lead.”  How wonderful that the Religious Left is now interested in political and constitutional theory.  More frequently, they demand virtual rule from the streets.</p>
<p>But Dixon explained that we should expect Congress, when overriding the people’s opposition to government-controlled health care,  to summon the “moral vision to lead us forward and to have an enthusiasm and a commitment to that vision which is so strong that we will see the vision too.”  In other words, maybe Americans will awake to the beauty of Obamacare if Congress will presciently force it upon an unwilling public.  After all, “We need our elected officials to demonstrate the virtues necessary to do what is right for the American people.”</p>
<p>Evidently Dixon, like the rest of the Religious Left, does not believe that Obamacare proponents are obligated actually to persuade Americans of the merits of their “vision.”  Just pass it, at whatever cost, and hope that public opinion will supinely surrender when they have no option left.  “We need them to demonstrate the virtues of responsibility, commitment, complexity, and love,” Dixon serenely opined about Congress, which is so well known for these noble traits.  “Now is the time for courage.”</p>
<p>Contrary to Dixon’s insistence that a republic is supposed to be about leaders stubbornly defying the public will, America’s divided form of government is supposed to inhibit radical agendas that lack consensus support.  Famously, if apocryphally, America’s founders supposedly framed the Senate especially to be a “cooling” saucer that resists the heated “vision” of zealots, with or without majority support, who want to impose what many Americans ardently oppose.  “ The country needs the moral clarity that universal health-care legislation will bring,” Dixon insisted.  But if such a vision arouses such widespread resistance, its proponents, at least in American democracy, are obliged to argue more persuasively before the nation must kneel before it. Evidently, the Religious Left realizes its arguments have failed, but it still demands the coercive powers that Obamacare would grant.</p>
<p>Similarly, another Sojourners columnist bewailed the collapse of public support for Obamacare.  “The insurance, pharmaceutical, medical, and financial industries are simply delighted that a majority of Americans are now unwilling to do what it takes in order to have a fair, compassionate, and reasonably priced health-care system,” fretted LaVonne Neff.  “We like the health care we currently have, even though our insurance premiums and copayments increase every year as our coverage decreases and our claims are denied. We don’t want to change our system in any way. Except, of course, to make it better. And cheaper. Without actually changing anything.”  She snarkily concluded:  “We believe in magic.”</p>
<p>The real “magic,” of course was the proposal that government directed health care could, through centralization and force, provide better and more expansive health care at reduced cost and increased efficiency.  Neff cited the usual and now discredited claims that other Western countries have better health statistics because of government health care.  Americans do have greater health problems because of behaviors not as common to Europe’s homogenous and more static societies. But America remains virtually the best place to actually receive care once sick.</p>
<p>Immune to factual data, history and human nature, government-controlled health care has long been and remains the object of the Religious Left’s frenzied faith.  What tent-revivals once were for evangelicals, Obamacare rallies have been for the Religious Left.    Last month, United Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ lobbyists joined with Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and Moveon.org at a Capitol Hill Obamacare candle light vigil and rally.   United Methodist Board of Church and Society chief Jim Winkler unthinkingly defended the Senate’s version of Obamacare’s abortion coverage, which would become one cause of its demise.  “American families should have the opportunity to choose health coverage that reflects their own values and medical needs,” he implored.  “A principle that should not be sacrificed in service of any political agenda.”</p>
<p>Surreally, Winkler further cluelessly pleaded that Congress “should stand up for the people who could be most helped by health-care reform” by “enacting meaningful legislation now that includes a strong public option.”  A little later, Winkler convened a press conference with Michigan Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow and, perhaps sensing the impending collapse, became a little histrionic:  “Authentic health-care reform has been delayed by insurance companies seeking to protect vast profits and grotesquely inflated executive salaries.”  He further angrily alleged:  “Demagogues have frightened many U.S. citizens — including the so-called “teabaggers” who are demonstrating on Capitol Hill today — into believing their health care is at risk.”</p>
<p>Even last month, Winkler was complaining at his press conference:  “One disappointment has followed another,” while warning recalcitrant Congressmen that “they risk facing the same prophetic judgments once visited upon the rulers of Israel,” and insisting:  “Now is the time for moral courage in the face of money and power.”  In other words, Winkler realized most Americans opposed Obamacare but desperately demanded that Congress approve it any way.  After all, it’s the Lord’s will, or so the Religious Left insists.</p>
<p>Winkler shrilly complained that pro-life “faith leaders of various stripes have placed their ideological and financial agendas ahead of the needs of the American people” by opposing Obamacare.  Unselfconsciously, he actually was describing the Religious Left’s own zealous and apparently failed imposition of health care statism on an unwilling nation.</p>
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		<title>FIRE &#8211; Temple University Charges Unconstitutional ‘Security’ Fee for Geert Wilders Event; Dutch Trial Begins Today over Controversial Expression</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/terrorism-awareness-project/fire-temple-university-charges-unconstitutional-%e2%80%98security%e2%80%99-fee-for-geert-wilders-event-dutch-trial-begins-today-over-controversial-expression/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fire-temple-university-charges-unconstitutional-%25e2%2580%2598security%25e2%2580%2599-fee-for-geert-wilders-event-dutch-trial-begins-today-over-controversial-expression</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:18:42 +0000</pubDate>
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Temple University Charges Unconstitutional ‘Security’ Fee for Geert Wilders Event; Dutch Trial Begins Today over Controversial Expression
January 20, 2010

Dutch politician Geert Wilders' trial begins today in Amsterdam over his controversial remarks about terrorism and Islam. While such a trial would be unconstitutional in the United States thanks to the First Amendment, students at Temple University in Philadelphia are nevertheless facing an unconstitutional, after-the-fact security fee levied by the university for hosting a presentation by Wilders.
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Press Release<br />
Temple University Charges Unconstitutional ‘Security’ Fee for Geert Wilders Event; Dutch Trial Begins Today over Controversial Expression<br />
January 20, 2010</p>
<p>Dutch politician Geert Wilders&#8217; trial begins today in Amsterdam over his controversial remarks about terrorism and Islam. While such a trial would be unconstitutional in the United States thanks to the First Amendment, students at Temple University in Philadelphia are nevertheless facing an unconstitutional, after-the-fact security fee levied by the university for hosting a presentation by Wilders.</p>
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		<title>Deceiving the Young &#8211; by Rich Trzupek</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/rich-trzupek/deceiving-the-young-by-rich-trzupek/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=deceiving-the-young-by-rich-trzupek</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:01:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43700</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Rock the Vote’s racy new video misleads young people about Obamacare. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-43701" title="vote" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vote.jpg" alt="vote" width="364" height="367" /></p>
<p>The self-styled “non-partisan” website <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/20/rock-vote-encourages-youth-use-sex-pass-obamacare">Rock the Vote</a> recently chimed in on the health care debate, with a video that urges young women to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNfG8gwamKM&amp;feature=player_embedded">avoid engaging in sexual intercourse</a> with any lad who fails to support Obamacare. Actors Eva Amurri (“Californication”) and Zach Gilford (“Friday Night Lights”) delivered the pitch in a two-minute short.</p>
<p>At one point in the <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/12/20/rock-vote-encourages-youth-use-sex-pass-obamacare">video</a>, Gilford declares:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine are the most uninsured group in the country.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The implication is that the health care bill will solve this supposed inequity. In fact, as many observers have noted, the result is likely to be the opposite. The health care bill creates an incentive for more young Americans to stay uninsured, by removing the free-market constraints that would force them to consider risk. Obamacare would thus push the costs of health care even higher. It’s a bill that appears designed to paralyze the system and to drive up premiums so dramatically that the “public option” will become the only viable option.</p>
<p>Both the House and Senate versions of the bill provide for a <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/business/nation/story/1381160.html">tax of up to $750 per person</a> to be levied against anyone who fails to purchase insurance. As anyone who has purchased insurance knows, this is much less than the annual cost of insurance premiums for even modest coverage. Another provision of the bill says that no one can be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. Combined, these two provisions create a tempting incentive for many healthy young people to avoid paying for insurance until they absolutely need it. Healthy young people are obviously much less likely to need insurance than their older fellow citizens, so why bother to pay for coverage until one actually needs it?</p>
<p>The one incentive that might deflect a healthy young person from such a strategy – the risk associated with not being part of an insurance program when disaster strikes – is effectively eliminated by the health care bill. If you get sick, you get coverage. Why enroll beforehand? This appears to be a recipe for disaster.</p>
<p>We’ve been down this road before. When government forces the free-market to take on risk that it doesn’t want, and isn’t allowed to properly value, the results are not pretty. The housing bubble grew and exploded as a result of this kind of interference.</p>
<p>One insurance company executive glumly assured me that premiums will rise by a minimum of two hundred percent in the first year of Obamacare, and by more than one thousand percent by 2020. Without all of those healthy young kids to dilute premiums for the rest of us, carriers will have no choice but to pass along the attendant risk.</p>
<p>That formula is clearly unsustainable. Americans will not stand for, and cannot afford to pay insurance premiums that are ten times higher than those they pay today. There can be only one answer at that point. Liberals will declare that they tried their best to fix private sector health care, but there is even more greed in the free market than they imagined. How else can one explain a jump in insurance premiums by an order of magnitude?</p>
<p>The only option remaining will be to cede responsibility for health care to a benevolent government. We will thus jump past the public option to the public necessity and, by doing so, we will give the government, and more important, the party of government, control over six per cent of the United States economy.</p>
<p>If signed into law, the health care bill may face some <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/22/health-care-face-string-legal-challenges/">difficult legal challenges</a>. Whatever the result of those constitutional debates, the economic realities inherent in the bill, should it remain in effect for any significant period of time, might just make socialized medicine in the United States a <em>fait accompli.</em></p>
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		<title>Nanny State Gone Wild &#8211; by Michelle Malkin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/michellemalkin/nanny-state-gone-wild-by-michelle-malkin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=nanny-state-gone-wild-by-michelle-malkin</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:02:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43600</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Defining dependency up.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-43602" title="wild" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/wild.jpg" alt="wild" width="450" height="363" /></p>
<p>The greatest gifts you can give your children can&#8217;t be boxed and bowed. Consider the timeless gift of self-sufficiency — a stubborn thirst to leave the nest, make it on your own and live as a free-willed adult. It&#8217;s a concept that Big Nanny Democrats are sabotaging at every legislative turn.</p>
<p>Several times during the sneaky debate on the government <a style="border-bottom: 0.075em solid darkgreen ! important; font-weight: normal ! important; font-size: 100% ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; padding-bottom: 1px ! important; color: darkgreen ! important; background-color: transparent ! important; background-image: none; padding-top: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt;" href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">health care</a> takeover bill this past Sunday, Democrats hailed a provision requiring insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Democratic Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Harkin both specifically championed the unfunded mandate in their floor statements.</p>
<p>This manifestation of the Nanny State is especially galling given the massive levels of generational theft the Democratic majority has presided over this past year. If they truly cared about the physical and financial well-being of young Americans, they&#8217;d stop piling on expensive regulations that simply put affordable health insurance out of their reach.</p>
<p>I propose a new symbol for the Democrats. Out: donkey. In: a giant adult pacifier.</p>
<p>I can tell you what most fiscally responsible parents are thinking when they hear the feds &#8220;taking care&#8221; of everyone else&#8217;s adult &#8220;children&#8221; by confiscating their tax dollars and forcing private companies to comply: <em> You&#8217;ve got to be kidding me. </em> Yes, Virginia, there are still some of us left who believe our children shouldn&#8217;t depend on a government-manufactured umbilical cord as they approach their third decade on earth.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover &#8220;kids&#8221; ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it&#8217;s these government health care mandates that are driving up the cost of insurance.</p>
<p>Health policy researcher Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation reported that in New Jersey, Nanny State peddlers claimed the adult kiddie protection law would help 100,000 uninsured young adults.</p>
<p>&#8220;Yet in two years, only 6 percent of that estimate has been realized. The primary reason — health insurance is still too expensive.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wisconsin has experienced similar results. &#8220;Whenever you insure somebody whom you didn&#8217;t insure before there&#8217;s some additional risk,&#8221; insurance expert James Mueller told the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. Mueller points to the premium increases that have followed coverage mandates on employer-sponsored plans. &#8220;The problem with all these good ideas is there&#8217;s funding necessary,&#8221; Mueller said. In Wisconsin, not only are adult children covered, but also the children of those &#8220;children&#8221; if they live in single-parent homes.</p>
<p>As he rammed through this mandate and the mountain of other government regulations buried in Demcare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised on Sunday: &#8220;We are reshaping the nation. That&#8217;s what we want to do.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed, this defining dependency up phenomenon is part of the larger push for single-payer-by-proxy. The other universal health care Trojan horse signed into law this year — the expansion of SCHIP (the State Children&#8217;s Health Insurance Program) — welcomed more non-&#8221;children&#8221; into the government insurance fold.</p>
<p>Both political parties have advocated federal waivers to use SCHIP funds for adults, including parents of Medicaid/SCHIP children, caretaker relatives, legal guardians and childless adults. According to the General Accounting Office, SCHIP-funded expenditures on adults nationwide &#8220;totaled about $674 million in 2006.&#8221; J.P. Wieske of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance notes that the bennies provide an incentive for parents to drop their private coverage in order to take advantage of free or discounted health insurance for their children. &#8220;It has become a program for the middle class at the expense of the poor.&#8221;</p>
<p>This is the engine that will power the Demcare architects&#8217; most naked, radical ambitions: &#8220;Health care as an inalienable right,&#8221; as Sen. Harkin put it. How? By breeding a massive permanent culture of dependency and bottomless debt in the name of the &#8220;children&#8221; from birth through quarter-life — and beyond.</p>
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		<title>Witnesses: Iran Kills 5 Protesters in Fierce Clashes in Tehran &#8211; FOXNews.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/witnesses-iran-kills-5-protesters-in-fierce-clashes-in-tehran-foxnews-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=witnesses-iran-kills-5-protesters-in-fierce-clashes-in-tehran-foxnews-com</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/witnesses-iran-kills-5-protesters-in-fierce-clashes-in-tehran-foxnews-com/#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:52:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43710</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iranian security forces fired on stone-throwing protesters in the center of the capital Sunday in one of the bloodiest confrontations in months, opposition Web sites and witnesses said. At least five people were killed. Some accounts of the violence in Tehran were vivid and detailed, but they could not be independently confirmed because of government [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Iranian security forces fired on stone-throwing protesters in the center of the capital Sunday in one of the bloodiest confrontations in months, opposition Web sites and witnesses said. At least five people were killed.</p>
<p>Some accounts of the violence in Tehran were vivid and detailed, but they could not be independently confirmed because of government restrictions on media coverage. Police, who denied using firearms, said dozens of officers were injured and more than 300 protesters were arrested.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581209,00.html">Iran Kills 5 Protesters in Fierce Clashes in Tehran, Witnesses Say &#8211; International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News &#8211; FOXNews.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Senate OKs health care measure, reaching milestone &#8211; AP</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/senate-oks-health-care-measure-reaching-milestone-ap/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=senate-oks-health-care-measure-reaching-milestone-ap</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/senate-oks-health-care-measure-reaching-milestone-ap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:54:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43255</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Senate Democrats passed a landmark health care bill in a climactic Christmas Eve vote that could define President Barack Obama&#8217;s legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the country&#8217;s history. &#8220;We are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform that will bring additional [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Senate Democrats passed a landmark health care bill in a climactic Christmas Eve vote that could define President Barack Obama&#8217;s legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the country&#8217;s history.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform that will bring additional security and stability to the American people,&#8221; Obama said shortly after the Senate acted.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=AquFuWkXiBKRvApJdKe7upCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNucGh1N21hBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjI0L3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDc2VuYXRlb2tzaGVh">Senate OKs health care measure, reaching milestone &#8211; Yahoo! News</a>.</p>
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		<title>David Frum: Why Health Care Bill is Too Big a Risk &#8211; Frum Forum</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/david-frum-why-health-care-bill-is-too-big-a-risk-frum-forum/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=david-frum-why-health-care-bill-is-too-big-a-risk-frum-forum</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/david-frum-why-health-care-bill-is-too-big-a-risk-frum-forum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:32:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42951</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I wanted to support President Obama’s health care reforms if I possibly could. The U.S. health care system costs too much, delivers too little and excludes too many. Americans pay 60 percent more per person for health care than any other nation. Yet Americans rank only 41st in life expectancy and live with the paralyzing [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wanted to support President Obama’s health care reforms if I possibly could.</p>
<p>The U.S. health care system costs too much, delivers too little and excludes too many. Americans pay 60 percent more per person for health care than any other nation. Yet Americans rank only 41st in life expectancy and live with the paralyzing fear that the loss of a job means the loss of coverage.</p>
<p>Rising health care costs are devouring worker pay. Employers pay 25 percent more per hour on average for labor in 2006 than they did in 2000. Yet not one dime of that extra money reached workers. All of it was gobbled up by the surging cost of health care benefits. The typical worker actually earned less after inflation in 2006 than in 2000.</p>
<p>Health care drives federal spending. The U.S. government will spend twice as much this year on Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs as on national defense, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/why-health-care-bill-is-too-big-a-risk">Why Health Care Bill is Too Big a Risk</a>.</p>
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		<title>Diana Furchtgott-Roth: The High Cost of Health Reform &#8211; RealClearMarkets</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/diana-furchtgott-roth-the-high-cost-of-health-reform-realclearmarkets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=diana-furchtgott-roth-the-high-cost-of-health-reform-realclearmarkets</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:19:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[WASHINGTON-Last night, speaking about the health &#8220;reform&#8221; bill to ABC&#8217;s Charles Gibson, President Obama declared, &#8220;If we don&#8217;t pass it, here&#8217;s the guarantee&#8230;.your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they&#8217;re going to drop your coverage, because they just can&#8217;t afford an increase of 25 percent, [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>WASHINGTON-Last night, speaking about the health &#8220;reform&#8221; bill to ABC&#8217;s Charles Gibson, President Obama declared, &#8220;If we don&#8217;t pass it, here&#8217;s the guarantee&#8230;.your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they&#8217;re going to drop your coverage, because they just can&#8217;t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. &#8221;</p>
<p>But even without a public plan and a lower Medicare age eligibility, the bill would limit Americans&#8217; choice of plans, increase the cost of care, and discourage people from signing up for insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimates premiums would rise by about 50% under health &#8220;reform&#8221; by 2016.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/12/17/the_high_cost_of_health_reform_97555.html">RealClearMarkets &#8211; The High Cost of Health Reform</a>.</p>
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		<title>Emperor Obama&#8217;s Health Bill Has No Clothes &#8211; by Dick Morris</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/dick-morris/emperor-obamas-health-bill-has-no-clothes-by-dick-morris/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=emperor-obamas-health-bill-has-no-clothes-by-dick-morris</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:02:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dick Morris]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42164</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ObamaCare has been stripped of its most pernicious features. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42165" title="obama-signs-paper" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/obama-signs-paper.jpg" alt="obama-signs-paper" width="467" height="344" /></p>
<p>Due to pressure from enraged Americans, the most pernicious features of Obama&#8217;s health care legislation have, for now at least, been stripped from his bill. This is no time for complacency, however, since the liberals are trying to push back and get the provisions back in.</p>
<p>As the bill now stands, it doesn&#8217;t have any teeth.</p>
<p>— Without the public option, the government does not have the <a style="padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal! important; font-size: 100%! important; background-image: none; padding-bottom: 1px! important; color: darkgreen! important; padding-top: 0px; border-bottom: darkgreen 0.07em solid; background-color: transparent! important; text-decoration: underline! important;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/wp-admin/#" target="_blank">financial</a> clout to enforce the decisions of the new secretary of health about the protocols of care to be followed. The left had hoped that the federal public option insurance company would put the private firms out of business and leave a single, governmental payer in place.</p>
<p>This single payer could slice reimbursements to providers at will and bring them into line offering low cost, long waiting lists and rationed medical care. But with no expansion of Medicare to those over 55 and no federal public option, the secretary of health won&#8217;t have the power to force bad medical care down the throats of the American people.</p>
<p>— Relatively few new people will get health insurance. The costs of coverage are too high, the subsidies too shallow and the punitive fines too low to force people to buy <a style="padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal! important; font-size: 100%! important; background-image: none; padding-bottom: 1px! important; color: darkgreen! important; padding-top: 0px; border-bottom: darkgreen 0.07em solid; background-color: transparent! important; text-decoration: underline! important;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/wp-admin/#" target="_blank">policies</a> they don&#8217;t want and think they don&#8217;t need. What young, childless couple is going to pay 8 percent to 12 percent of their income for insurance rather than just pay the $1,000 fine for not having coverage? Oddly, this bill is really just a tax on the uninsured.</p>
<p>— Without the feared flood of new patients into the system, the rationing that threatened may not be as bad as it once seemed. With only a few newly insured people, the long waiting lists and shortages of medical personnel Massachusetts is experiencing under Romney-care may not happen nationally.</p>
<p>— The cuts in Medicare are to be proposed by a special <a style="padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal! important; font-size: 100%! important; background-image: none; padding-bottom: 1px! important; color: darkgreen! important; padding-top: 0px; border-bottom: darkgreen 0.07em solid; background-color: transparent! important; text-decoration: underline! important;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/wp-admin/#" target="_blank">commission</a> in the Executive Branch akin to the federal base-closing commission that decides which military bases to shutter. But then they will have to be approved each year by Congress. A former secretary of health and human services under a Republican president told me recently that he expects that the cuts will be vetoed by Congress each year and never really take effect.</p>
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<p>He says that the <a style="padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal! important; font-size: 100%! important; background-image: none; padding-bottom: 1px! important; color: darkgreen! important; padding-top: 0px; border-bottom: darkgreen 0.07em solid; background-color: transparent! important; text-decoration: underline! important;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/wp-admin/#" target="_blank">savings</a> won&#8217;t materialize and the additional costs of Obama&#8217;s program will just be financed through even more deficit spending. He cites, for example, the refusal of Congress each year to approve the automatic 6 percent cut in physicians&#8217; fees that the legislative branch has laid over for each of the past five years.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s left is a bill that expands Medicaid to cover more of the poor and working poor. It requires that all states cover everyone making 150 percent or less of the poverty level. This will end the practice of many states of restricting Medicaid, in effect, to the elderly in nursing homes.</p>
<p>Arkansas, for example, only covers up to 17 percent of the poverty level (about $4,000 of income). Under the new law, anyone in the state whose income is less than about $27,000 will have to be covered. This provision will, of course, mean much higher state <a style="padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal! important; font-size: 100%! important; background-image: none; padding-bottom: 1px! important; color: darkgreen! important; padding-top: 0px; border-bottom: darkgreen 0.07em solid; background-color: transparent! important; text-decoration: underline! important;" href="http://frontpagemag.com/wp-admin/#" target="_blank">taxes</a> throughout the South and in Texas, California, Pennsylvania and Florida, states will low Medicaid thresholds.</p>
<p>The rest of the bill is essentially a consumer protection statute that bars insurers from denying coverage to anyone and stops them from charging more for those who are sick. Both the expansion of Medicaid and this reform of insurance company practices could have been achieved in considerably less than the 2,000 pages of dead trees that this bill consumed.</p>
<p>There are still bad parts of the legislation:</p>
<p>— Medicare Advantage, an important program for 10 million elderly, will be gutted and replaced by Medigap insurance, which is more limited in coverage, higher in cost and more profitable to the AARP.</p>
<p>— Medical devices — from pacemakers to automated wheelchairs — will still be taxed, and sick people will be forced to pay higher taxes and deduct fewer of their medical costs.</p>
<p>— Reimbursements under Medicare are likely to continue to drop, forcing more and more providers to refuse to treat patients under the program.</p>
<p>But Obama is left with the symbol of a victory but not much substance. He will still sign the bill — if it ever passes — with great fanfare, but the substance of the legislation will be painfully thin.</p>
<p>We haven&#8217;t dodged the bullet yet. The Left is still to be heard from. But the momentum against the bill and the focus on its worst provisions is paying off.</p>
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