PK'S NOTE: Perhaps the only thing we agree on with the Progressives. The complaint I have on this video is that the only administration being pictured here is Nixon's. They most certainly should include Bush and Obama.
A Politically Charged Celebrity Video You May Actually Agree With
PK'S NOTE: Keep in mind this next one comes from a Progressive website so the slant is there and they will do what they can to to aid the establishment Republicans, but I do believe RINOS feel this way regarding the Tea Party. This is the full article.
Inside the Messy but Moneyed Republican Plan to Neutralize the Tea Party
The business-friendly GOP establishment is putting its cash to work in skirmishes across the country that might reshape the 2014 elections.
It took a tea party insurrection that disabled the federal government and wrecked the Republican brand, but after months of handwringing, establishment Republicans are preparing to attack ultra-conservative ideologues across red America.From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 mid-term election from turning into another missed opportunity. But this will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in the selection of a presidential nominee in 2016.
"Hopefully we'll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them," said former Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, whose new political group, Defending Main Street, aims to raise $8 million to fend off tea party challenges against more mainstream Republican incumbents. "We're going to be very aggressive and we're going to get in their faces."
The caterwauling over the GOP brand ramped up after President Obama's re-election and a handful of setbacks in the Senate before hitting full screech as the country hurtled toward default. For some Republicans, the time for soul-searching is over. "This is a battle we have to fight," said Republican consultant John Feehery, a former adviser to top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. "We can't just lie down and let this happen."
Tactics being discussed among Republican strategists, donors, and party leaders include running attack ads against tea party candidates for Congress; overthrowing Ron Paul's libertarian acolytes dominating the Iowa and Minnesota state parties; promoting open primaries over nominating conventions, like the ones that produced Republican hardliners like Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and shutdown-instigator Mike Lee of Utah; and countering political juggernauts Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks that target Republican incumbents who have consorted with Democrats.
LaTourette's Defending Main Street group has identified its first project: defending Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho. The Club for Growth threw its support to a tea-party challenger, Bryan Smith, because Simpson backed the $700 million Wall Street bailout, raising the debt ceiling, and a budget deal that staved off last year's "fiscal cliff" crisis.
Defending Main Street also is keeping an eye on other House Republicans who have drawn the wrath of the Club for Growth, including Aaron Schock and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is running for the Senate.
But there are many more races drawing the attention of Republican insiders who fear the tea party – and the public's growing distaste for the movement – is jeopardizing GOP control of the House and a potential Senate takeover. Consider:
- A Nov. 5 special congressional election in Alabama, where former state senator Bradley Byrne is competing in the Republican runoff primary against Dean Young, a tea party candidate who declared at a candidate forum, "We are witnessing the end of a Western Christian empire."
- A crowded Republican primary field facing a top Democratic recruit, Michelle Nunn, for an open Senate seat in Georgia. One GOP operative described two of the candidates, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, as "ticking time bombs." Broun has condemned the theory of evolution, questioned President Obama's citizenship and Christianity, and advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. Gingrey defended former Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, who said victims of "legitimate rape" could avoid pregnancy.
- A Republican primary in the open Senate race in South Dakota pitting challengers from the right against former Gov. Mike Rounds. The front-running candidate has piqued conservatives by refusing to sign a no-new-taxes pledge.
- A Republican Senate primary in Alaska that features two establishment figures, Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and former Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan, against Joe Miller, a tea party firebrand with high unfavorable ratings after a 2010 defeat.
"We want to avoid situations like 2010 with (Delaware Republican nominee) Christine O'Donnell, where a candidate gains momentum and the skeletons come out after the primary," said Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio. "If skeletons exist, we'll make every effort to make sure they're known to every group that spends money long before the primary."
The business community is potentially a major ally in the Republican establishment's comeback plan. After long fueling Republican campaigns, corporate leaders were stunned that a wing of the party would refuse to fund the government and again risk national default in the hope of moving an immovable object, namely President Obama's health care law.
"We expect politicians to conduct themselves in such a way that respects the rule of law and the process by which our forefathers constructed this republic," said Greg Casey, president of a nationwide coalition of business groups called BIPAC. Like other business leaders and prominent Republicans, Casey was reluctant to identify specific targets for fear of antagonizing the conservative grassroots.
"They are going to see a business community interested in results and policy, and they have to decide whether that's to be feared or embraced," he said.
Because efforts to roll the tea party typically provoke activists to roar back stronger than ever, the old guard is stumped in some instances. Ideally, the establishment would figure out a way to channel the movement's passion into electoral victories in 2014 and 2016. But how do you control Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican ringleader of the shutdown, who may not count enough friends on Capitol Hill to rename a post office but whose real power comes from outside Washington? How do you influence House Republicans when gerrymandering leaves them with little to fear?
"This conflict could be the new normal," predicted Rob Jesmer, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Until we have a nominee people can rally around in 2016, I think we're going to be the wilderness for a while."
The latest round of polling offered evidence of this exile: 64 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party in a new CNN/ORC International poll. The party's image also sunk to an all-time low in the latest Washington Post-ABC News survey.
The damage to the party is obvious in the Virginia governor's race, where two weeks before the election, Republicans are already writing off their tea party-backed nominee, Ken Cuccinelli. As he lags behind Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the polls, Republicans are condemning the state party for choosing its nominee at a convention dominated by conservative activists instead of in a regular primary. The decision prompted Lt Gov. Bill Bolling, who has strong ties to the business community, to drop out of the race.
The second-guessing over the convention and party's agenda is expected to dominate a traditional gathering of Republican elected officials in December and the elections for local party chairs in the spring.
"The convention left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and we're not going to see that again," predicted Shaun Kenney, a former spokesman for the Virginia GOP who runs a conservative web site. "It's going to be like divorce court."
The Tyrant as Editor
By Holly CaseEven when not wielding his blue pencil, Stalin's editorial zeal was all-consuming. He excised people—indeed whole peoples—out of the manuscript of worldly existence, had them vanished from photographs and lexicons, changed their words and the meanings of their words, edited conversations as they happened, backing his interlocutors into more desirable (to him) formulations.
...The totalitarians are at the gate again. The stakes are higher now and the weapons much more destructive than the blue editor's pencil of the past, but the aims are the same: you are to submit, and they want total control.
Are you going to live your life ever cautious, under an invisible editor's thumb? I refuse to submit. I'll take my lumps.
I do not need anyone's permission to be free. Let the totalitarian editors frantically wave their blue pencils in your face. Let them pant and sweat and bark and bay till they are blue in the face. And then laugh at them and continue to defend what is rightly ours: liberty.
I challenge you to write your own stories, speak your mind and always refuse to submit to the unseen hand, the unseen editor whose name dare not be spoken.
....Are establishment Republicans naïfs, or are they culpable in the damage being done to liberty?
There are certainly patsies among establishment Republicans. But there are also conspirators, playing their parts in advancing big government. Why?
Because they gain. Establishment Republicans are in their ways as invested in big government as are Democrats. They gain status, incomes, privilege, and much else by being part of the problem -- i.e., the system -- than being against it.
...What purpose does the Republican Party serve when its establishment regularly displays contempt for much of its own base? When it ridicules Tea Party patriots as scourges? When grassroots conservatives are told to clam up, go along, or get lost?
Why the Republican Party?
Be Vocal. Act Local.
By Carol Brown
....Which brings me to a comment posted by Dan Schultz (who uses the handle "ColdWarrior") at The Right Scoop. Mr. Schultz explained a strategy for political action that can have a major impact on the outcome of elections -- a strategy he notes is simple and requires a very small commitment of time. To paraphrase:
Conservatives need to "unite and organize" in the communities in which they live by joining the local Republican Party committee.
(Hold on! Don't throw your hands up in the air and think this is about becoming a card-carrying member of the GOP and supporting establishment go-along-to-get-along candidates, because it's anything but. It's about conservatives taking over the party from the inside.)
...In addition to impacting local politics, the implications of this strategy can be far-reaching and powerful. We often hear talk of primaries to remove RINO's from office and I've wondered where the candidates come from to run in the primary. How are they identified? How are they supported? It's great to say certain incumbents should be primaried, but we need to identify and support strong conservative candidates to offer as an alternative. In order to do that, we need to be well-positioned to have influence in every district. Mr. Schultz's recommendations will do that very thing. It is a viable path forward.
The Hidden Obamacare Taxes That Will Crush The Middle Class
...In fact, analysts estimate Obamacare will cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes as early as next year.
...According to most experts, Obamacare will create a total of twenty new taxes or tax hikes on the American people.
In fact, the Obama administration has already given the IRS an extra $500 million to enforce the rules and regulations of Obamacare.
The new taxes don't bode well for millions of middle-class Americans. Incomes for the rich have soared this decade but middle class workers have seen their wages stagnate and even drop since the 2008 Great Recession.
By John Case
There is good news and bad news regarding Healthcare.gov. The good news is that despite the systemic failure infecting much of the site, there is one essential component — the federal data hub — that is working as it was designed. The data hub links federal-agency records together to determine whether an applicant for health insurance is eligible for subsidies. The bad news is that because the data hub is the largest consolidation of personal data in our nation’s history, it will become a magnet for identity thieves.
...More than 700 “cyber-squatter” websites with similar domain names have been created to siphon off some of the public traffic meant for Healthcare.gov. Some sites direct people to fill out an “Obamacare enrollment form,” even though they actually offer no insurance. ...There will also be inevitable unauthorized releases of information. Minnesota’s health-care exchange inadvertently revealed the Social Security numbers of 2,000 state residents before its website even went up on October 1.
There is no federal requirement for background checks on navigators. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that some people have found a way to form new “navigator” groups out of the ruins of ACORN, the notoriously corrupt left-wing “community organizing” group that saw dozens of its employees in multiple states convicted of fraud before and after the 2008 election.
...“There is a real danger that Obamacare ‘navigators’ will harvest the data of applicants and use it outside of the context of the health exchanges,” says Bruce Webster, a leading IT consultant to private companies. “They couldn’t care less what plans you qualify for — but with sufficient personal information, they stand a much better chance of committing traditional identity theft on you. Or they might simply sell that information to those who will commit the actual identity theft.”
Why Obamacare Is Like Three Mile Island
By Megan McArdle...These mechanisms were not put in place to prevent a death spiral, and they aren’t designed to do that. Rather, they were put in place to prevent an entirely different problem: insurers trying to cherry-pick healthy people out of the pool (by, say, offering a policy that comes with a free gym membership). The idea is that there’s a huge tax on excess profits -- and a subsidy for losses -- so that it doesn’t make sense to expend a lot of energy trying to get a better patient mix.
The mechanisms do ensure that insurers will not go bankrupt from getting a much older and sicker pool of folks than they expected. But I wasn’t really worried that insurers would go bankrupt; the major insurers have enough reserves to last them a year and a keen eye to their own self-interest. Rather, I’m concerned that insurers will raise premiums a lot next year, which will mean a big spike in subsidy payments and an adverse-selection death spiral among the folks who buy unsubsidized insurance. And since the risk adjustment transfers do not cover all their potential losses, insurers still have a pretty strong incentive to price based on their 2014 costs -- which is to say raise premiums by a lot.
CNN Segment Explains Why Media's Ignoring ObamaCare Victims
Wednesday night on CNN's "Erin Burnett Out Front," Burnett did something I have seen no one in the media do since the official October 1 launch of ObamaCare, and the very real fallout that has occurred since. Hundreds of thousands of everyday American families are losing the very health insurance president Obama repeatedly promised them they could keep. The CBO predicts that up to 19 million more could face this same nightmare. Finally someone in the media acknowledged this catastrophe and demanded an answer from a top Democrat.Obama Admin Was Responsible for Testing Obamacare Site
The contractors responsible for building the troubled Healthcare.gov website say it was the government's responsibility _ not theirs _ to test it and make sure it worked.Lead contractor CGI Federal tells Congress the Obama administration made the call to go live with the insurance website, while the company made no recommendation either way.
Another contractor says the company shared concerns about insufficient testing with the Obama administration.
Lawmakers: Sebelius failed at government website projects prior to serving in Obama administration
By Patrick HowleyObama administration Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ failure at designing websites to provide government
services began during her term as governor of Kansas, long before the
Obamacare website debacle, Kansas political insiders told The Daily
Caller....Other lawmakers acknowledged the failures of Sebelius’ tech projects.
“We heard several excuses for IT failures under Sebelius. Especially towards the end of her administration. The legislature was often frustrated with the Labor Department, Department of Administration, and also Pharmacy claims. It was hard to get clear answers back then too,” Kansas state Rep. Scott Schwab told The Daily Caller.
“We pretty much expected HealthCare.gov to fail, because she has a pattern of failing on these big initiatives. We thought that was why she was not nominated originally,” Schwab said.
Obama's Credibility Is Melting
Here and abroad, Obama's partners are concluding they cannot trust him
By Daniel Henninger...What is at issue here is not some sacred moral value, such as "In God We Trust." Domestic politics or the affairs of nations are not an avocation for angels. But the coin of this imperfect realm is credibility. Sydney Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman explained the terms of trade in "The Maltese Falcon": "I must tell you what I know, but you won't tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable, sir. I don't think we can do business along those lines."
Bluntly, Mr. Obama's partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don't trust him. Whether it's the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they've all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world's important business doesn't get done. It sits in a dangerous and volatile vacuum.
...Voters don't normally accord politicians unworldly levels of belief, but it has been Barack Obama's gift to transform mere support into victorious credulousness. Now that is crumbling, at great cost. If here and abroad, politicians, the public and the press conclude that Mr. Obama can't play it straight, his second-term accomplishments will lie only in doing business with the world's most cynical, untrustworthy partners. The American people are the ones who will end up on the short end of those deals.
Another IRS Triumph
The Treasury makes at least $11 billion a year in faulty EITC payments.
While we're talking about incompetent government—see the ObamaCare website rollout—the IRS inspector general reported on Tuesday that from 2003-2012 the feds paid at least $110 billion and as much as $132.6 billion in improper earned-income tax credits. That's at least $11 billion a year, or more than the $9.5 billion Congress will spend on the Department of Commerce this fiscal year.The earned-income tax credit, or EITC, is a major welfare program intended to supplement the incomes of the working poor. It is "refundable," which means you get the credit even if you pay no income tax. In 2011, more than 27 million families received EITC payments of nearly $62 billion.
But here's the catch: The IG report says that in 2011 at least 21% of those payments and as much as 26% were "improper." The percentages in 2012 were 21% and 25%. In other words, at least one of every five dollars, and maybe one in four, of EITC payouts were in some way undeserved.
The IG report attributes the erroneous payments to the complicated structure of the EITC and the overall tax code, confusion and turnover among claimants, "unscrupulous tax return preparers" and fraud. The nature and scope of this problem have been known for years, and President Obama issued a 2009 executive order instructing the IRS to reduce the bad payments.
...Our prediction for what will happen as a result of this report: Nothing. Nada. Zip. No one will lose a job, the White House and press corps will ignore it, and in two years the IG will issue another report with the same finding.
This EITC fiasco is another reminder that results don't matter for modern liberals. What counts is how much they spend, not whether the right people get the money or if those people ever escape poverty. We are supposed to accept a 21% error rate, and $11 billion in undeserved largesse, as the price of their good intentions.
No One Sabotaged Obamacare
Obama still does not appear to have noticed that he’s the executive and accountable.
By Charles C W Cooke...I should make it clear that I have precisely no intention whatsoever of ceasing to “root for failure.” I am actively hoping for the abject and embarrassing deterioration of Obamacare and I am not remotely ashamed to admit it. I loathe the law as a piece of public policy, as a means by which federal involvement in health care and society is being expanded rather than reduced, and as an unlovely example of the arrogance that presidents in the modern era have come to exhibit. Like Ed Rogers, “I would like to see the project’s collapse deter those who think a bigger, more domineering U.S. government is the answer to our problems.” And, like David Harsanyi, I want the project to fail “so hard that any residual perception among voters that any part of it was prudent policy is completely eliminated.”
...That notwithstanding, my opinion on this matter has absolutely no bearing on the outcome — and to pretend that it does is extremely naïve. I am not possessed of any magical power with which I might prevent the law from working, any more than I am able to stare at an airplane and will it to crash into the ground. I did not award a no-bid contract to a failed Canadian IT firm, nor ensure that the system wasn’t tested until four days before it launched, nor allow it to be “built using ten-year-old technology.” Nor, for that matter, did Republicans. Unless you believe that the role of Congress is merely to “support” the president in all that he does, the fact that more than half of the voting public and one of the country’s two political parties have been critical should not be held against them.
...A frequent criticism of this president is that he does not yet appear to have noticed that he heads up the government. Barack Obama is quite capable of saying that he is as “angry as anyone” about the mistakes of his own administration, but a little less adept at knowing when to say “sorry.” Even here, with the law that bears his name, and which he fought for years to pass and to protect, his instinct is to look elsewhere.
...But it would be nice if the people who inflicted this turbulent law on the rest of us could recognize that it is one thing for the faithful to indulge in conspiracy theory and blame and to look desperately for ghosts in the machine, and quite another for their elected officials to do so. The problems with Obamacare are of design, of leadership, and, ultimately, of hubris. It is possible that they will be fixed and the program will be back on track before it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. Either way, though, there is a tough road ahead — and eliminating the kulaks won’t help one bit.
Next up: Medicaid expansion meltdown
By Rick Moran...Pop some more popcorn, sit back in your chair and watch the meltdown that will occur when the Medicaid expansion begins on November 1.
Politico:
A new phase of the Obamacare launch is coming, this one involving Medicaid. And it could be déjà vu all over again.
On Nov. 1, the health law's malfunctioning enrollment system is supposed to send reams of data to states so they can begin placing thousands of people into Medicaid. But state officials say that transfer system has barely been tested and could be vulnerable to technical failures like those that have crippled the broader Obamacare sign-up process.
Hypocrite: When Hillary Yelled
The media are celebrating Hillary Clinton's response to a heckler at an event in Buffalo, NY. The man shouted at her about the Benghazi scandal: "You let them die!" In response, Clinton said that Americans had to work together for a future--and that future "doesn't include yelling." The audience erupted in applause.But it was Hillary Clinton herself who started the yelling over Benghazi at a Senate hearing in January, when she famously shouted at Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): "What difference, at this point, does it make?" The media loved it, while conservatives were appalled. Beyond the substance, however, was the fact that she had yelled.
Not only was her response rude, but it displayed a contempt for the oversight role that Congress is meant to exercise over the functions of the executive branch. Her tone added insult to injury. If the future "doesn't include yelling," then Clinton's political future may depend on cooperating with Congress, not shouting it down.
Liberal billionaire George Soros has joined the finance council of Ready for Hillary, the Super PAC rallying support for a potential presidential bid by Hillary Clinton the Washington Post reports:
“George Soros is delighted to join more than one million Americans in supporting Ready for Hillary,” Michael Vachon, Soros’s political director, said in a statement. “His support for Ready for Hillary is an extension of his long-held belief in the power of grassroots organizing.”...Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported Ready for Hillary’s focus is more “grass-roots organizing” than that of Priorities USA.
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