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The shutdown is basically over and the President has won.... But there are caveats to that narrative. First, the Republicans aren't the only ones who ought to hang their heads in shame. It was the Democrat-controlled Senate that first rejected the House's bill and so sparked the crisis. It was the President who refused to talk to anyone about it (and went campaigning instead). It was the federal government – even when in shutdown – that behaved like a spoiled child... what has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again – but...

Eventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time be different? Short of...

A New York Times investigative article based on two dozen interviews with industry insiders and confidential Obama Administration documents reveals that the catastrophic $500 million Obamacare rollout "has deeply embarrassed the White House" and has the technology companies involved "publicly distancing themselves" from the Obamacare fiasco.  "These are not glitches. The extent of the problems is pretty enormous," an insurance executive who participated in Obamacare conference calls told the Times. "At the end of our calls, people say, 'It's awful, just awful.'" The Times says those closest to the three-and-a-half year-long building of Obamacare, like embattled Health and Human Services Secretary...

This is very funny. A Daily Kos regular gets his Obamacare premium notice and is shocked to learn that as young, healthy people, he and his wife will pay twice as much! "My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe. Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to...

President Obama's concession in the current budget negotiations may be that he will enforce his own health care law. Meanwhile, Republicans have shied away from trying to repeal a tax on big business because the party's base doesn't see it as a priority.It's an odd time in Washington.To the perpetual irritation of presidents, the Constitution vests the power to make laws solely in Congress. Like his predecessors, Obama bends laws and stretches executive power in order to seize some legislative power for himself.Most egregiously, Obama has expanded, contracted, twisted, and amended his 2010 Affordable Care Act many times.Obama in early...

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

Tirge Caps, a blogger at Daily Kos, says that in 2013, pre-Obamacare, he pays $150 a month for a health insurance plan from Kaiser. His wife pays $168. However, under Obamacare, their rates will nearly double, to $284 and $302, respectively: Read the comments section to see how Tirge’s compadres reacted to his situation.

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. Gist: Official from Michigan Department of Insurance cannot confirm that anyone has enrolled.

The Obama administration’s internal projections called for strong enrollment in the states in the first year of new health insurance markets, according to unpublished estimates obtained by The Associated Press. The draft, dated Sept. 20, broke down the figure of 7 million among states. It estimated the expected enrollment in California, for example, at 1. 3 million people in 2014. The estimate for Texas was 629,000 and for Florida, 477,000. The report estimated 340,000 people would enroll in Washington state, and 218,000 in New York.

Senate staffers were notified by the Disbursing Office on Tuesday that they will need to enter the D.C. health care exchange, regardless of their state of residency, and will lose their employer contribution if they do not enter the D.C. exchange, according to a memo obtained by CQ Roll Call. Some Washington, D.C.-based congressional staff retain their in-state residency (oftentimes to pay the lower tax rate in their home state) and all members have district staff outside Washington. The open enrollment in the D.C. exchange for most staffers who are losing their Federal Employee Health Benefits plans will be Nov....

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Hollywood’s Obamacare ZombiesPosted By Matthew Vadum On October 15, 2013 @ 12:54 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments If you’re sick and tired of TV news broadcasts spewing pro-Obamacare propaganda, get ready to be inundated with even more progressive health care proselytizing in the dramas and comedies that follow those news shows.For this you have the left-wing California Endowment to thank. The radical philanthropy is in the news because it is funding Obamacare public outreach efforts.As Newsmax reports, the Obama administration is “turning its focus on prime time television series, using the influential...

Bureaucracies in the Obama Administration have thus far published approximately 11,588,500 words of final Obamacare regulations, while there are only 381,517 words in the Obamacare law itself. That means unelected federal officials have now written 30 words of regulations for each word in the law. …

WASHINGTON, October 14, 2013 – If the fact that the Obama Administration has blocked aging veterans from visiting the World War II memorial and denied death gratuity benefits for fallen warriors doesn’t seem to indicate contempt for our military, how about this most recent story? Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance, a 28-year-old combat leader in the 82d Airborne Division from Celeste, Texas was recently found guilty of two counts of murder in Afghanistan and sentenced to 20 years in Ft. Leavenworth. The story of First Lieutenant Lorance has not been covered by a single major media source. anip n little...

Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin, WSJ Editorial Board Member Steve Moore and Dr. Marc Siegel on the launch of the ObamaCare exchanges.

The Obamacare online exchanges have been met with several concerns since they launched at the beginning of the month, but a recent discovery may raise further fears about privacy under the health-care law. The Weekly Standard’s Jeryl Bier reports that during the process of creating an account, the website asks users if they accept the “Terms & Conditions,” which prohibit unauthorized attempts to upload information or change the site. But the website’s source code, which is not visible to users on the standard “Terms & Conditions” page, includes a warning that users should have “no reasonable expectation of privacy”:

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. FULL TITLE: "146,000 Michiganders - at least - face loss of cheaper policies under new health care reform rules"

Idaho GOP Rep. Raul Labrador was back in front of the TV cameras this morning, this time appearing on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. "We're four days away from reaching the debt ceiling. We gave the president an offer where we would extend the debt ceiling without any requirements ... and I don't see why the president is not accepting that or working with us," said Labrador. "I think it's been very difficult to work with [Obama]. He wouldn't even come to the table to negotiate." And Labrador wasted no time to bring the debate surrounding the federal government...

Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer interrogated Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KA) on the House Republicans’ tactics to shutdown the government and test the breaching of the debt ceiling, challenging Huelskamp to name what, if anything, such measures had accomplished or were intended to accomplish. “At the end of the day, what we have accomplished?” Huelskamp said. “Not much yet. But we have to focus on Obamacare, and we have to focus on the underlying problem that’s been ignored for years, and that’s too much spending.” “But congressman, don’t you have to focus on keeping the government running?” Schieffer asked. When...

House Republicans are no longer a part of negotiations to end the standoff in Washington, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said Sunday. “We’ve reached the point where House Republicans and their leadership have stepped to the sidelines,” the Illinois Democrat said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” knocking the House GOP for what he characterized as shifting demands. “They’re not part of this,” he said. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), meanwhile, blamed President Barack Obama for the standoff over reopening the government and raising the debt limit. “The president has refused to negotiate,” Portman said. “It’s unbelievable.” Portman also echoed other Republicans...

WASHINGTON — Next year was supposed to be a prime opportunity for Republicans to retake the Senate. And for a while, everything seemed to be breaking their way: a wave of Democratic retirements, a fluke in the electoral map that put a large number of races in states that President Obama lost, a strong farm team of conservative Senate hopefuls from the House. Then the government shut down. Now, instead of sharpening their attacks on Democrats, Republicans on Capitol Hill are being forced to explain why they are not to blame and why Americans should trust them to govern both...

Senate leaders attempting to avoid a U.S. debt default remained at loggerheads Sunday and escalated the standoff by reopening the contentious issue of automatic spending cuts... Many Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), oppose retreating from those cuts. That set up a clash that seemed almost as intense as the one that caused budget talks between House Republicans and President Barack Obama to collapse Friday. Senate Democrats have been strengthened by the sidelining, at least for now, of House conservatives, who dropped nearly all their major policy demands only to see Mr. Obama reject their proposal for...

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday he would not vote for a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit if it cannot attract support in the Republican-led House, arguing there is little point in claiming victory if a deal does not pass muster in the other chamber of Congress. If the deal cannot attract the majority of House Republicans, “that really does compromise Speaker Boehner’s leadership,” Mr. Graham told ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, adding he understands that defunding or delaying Obamacare is not a viable option. Mr. Graham said the last thing Mr. Boehner needs...

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has called President Obama a “pathetic leader” for his lack of involvement in negotiations to end the government shutdown. He slammed the president’s unwillingness to compromise with Republicans as “immature.” Today on America’s News HQ, Graham told anchor Doug McKelway, “For [Republicans] to suggest to the American people that we could defund ObamaCare or delay it for a year by shutting down the government, I think was unrealistic.” With the debt limit just four days away, Sen. Graham said, “I’m not going to vote for any deal coming out of the Senate that doesn’t have a...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called on House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to work with House Speaker John Boehner to pass a grand bargain deal that would end the government shutdown, raise the debt ceiling, and protect Obamacare by not delaying or defunding it. On ABC News’ This Week, Graham said Ryan should team with Boehner to pass some kind of deal “that doesn’t delay or defund [Obamacare] but would be good government.” “That’s the best thing for the Republican Party and for the country,” Graham said. “But as between House and Senate Republicans, the sooner this is...

Millions of Americans may be wrestling with computer glitches to try to sign up for Obamacare — but many people eligible just won’t bother and will pay a price for it. Some will flout the mandate to buy coverage on ideological grounds, a health insurance version of civil disobedience. Some will opt for the penalty because it’s cheaper than paying for insurance, even with subsidies — as long as they don’t get sick and have to pay their own medical bills.

While the government shutdown distracted much of the media from the troubled September 30 launch of the Affordable Care Act's national insurance marketplace, heathcare.gov, the site's numerous and ongoing issues have become impossible to ignore. The New York Times took a comprehensive look at the nearly two-week-old system, and it's not pretty. "These are not glitches," said an insurance executive who has communicated with federal officials who are trying to implement the new healthcare plan. "The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, 'It's awful, just awful.'" At least 14.6 million people...

Back in March, at an insurance industry conference in Washington, the problems were apparent. Henry Chao, chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, openly fretted that the exchanges wouldn’t be ready by October. “I’m pretty nervous—I don’t know about you,” he told the crowd. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” At the time, Chao’s comment seemed like an attempt at dark humor. One week into the launch of Obamacare, however, it’s not a joke: it’s literally easier to blog from the Kenyan border than to sign up for insurance on Obamacare’s federal exchange....

he roll out of the health care exchanges has been a stunning failure. A look at the federal exchange's Facebook page reveals that there are plenty of unsatisfied customers. As you'll see, not all the complaints are about website glitches, many are about the site's design or simply about prices. I have left out the names but all of these complaints can be found on the Facebook page and all are from the last 48 hours: 1 please help me! I have called the number, did the online chat. How long does it take for ID docs to be verified?...

The White House insists that the health-care law has not affected hiring. That's not what the numbers show. There are times when the Obama administration makes statements so disconnected from economic reality that you wonder if any White House official has talked with anyone in business. A case in point: the administration's mantra that ObamaCare's definition of full-time employment as 30 or more hours per week had no effect on employers' hiring practices. We heard it Monday night on "The Daily Show" when Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told Jon Stewart: "At least the economists, not anecdotal...

The controversy over Orson Scott Card's opposition to gay marriage appears to have simmered down. Maybe it'll kick up again as the Ender's Game premiere closes in, but it shouldn't—Card's religious objection to gay marriage is shared by a substantial minority of Americans, and holding it against him is a little pat. The actual outrage over what's happening to gay Russians appears to have captured all the anger being directed Card's way. That's good! The gay marriage foofarah was a distraction from Card's much more fascinating political paranoia. His last column on politics is a sort of masterpiece of that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ikgQCKilw

Those who buy some health insurance plans on Georgia’s Obamacare exchange won’t get network access to Hamilton Medical Center and most local doctors. In northwest Georgia, only two carriers are selling health insurance plans on the exchange: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia and Alliant Health Plans. Officials at Alliant say exchange customers will have access to all the doctors and hospitals in their regular network including Hamilton and most local doctors. But Blue Cross Blue Shield officials say exchange customers won’t have access to all the providers in its regular network.

Washington Post columnist George Will suggested on “Fox News Sunday” placed blame for “hyper partisanship” that plagues Washington, D.C. on President Barack Obama’s progressive, polarizing politics. Moderator Chris Wallace at suggested the tense atmosphere could either be the result of gerrymandering or an aspect of American culture. Will disagreed, pointing to Obama as the source. “It’s not that simple,” Will replied. “The fact is, we have a very polarizing president. I’m not criticizing him for this. He’s a progressive. He exists to enlarge the power of government as an engine of the redistribution wealth and opportunity. That’s his agenda. He’s...

On Friday, it seemed that a proposal being spearheaded by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) could potentially be the key that would relieve the fiscal crisis stymieing the Capitol. By Saturday, the plan fell flat on its face. Senate Democratic leaders rejected the approach that had been drafted by the moderate from Maine — although Collins’s plan had attracted interest from several Democratic senators eager to strike a bipartisan deal. That left Collins — who had been trying to play deal maker in recent days to save Congress from itself — perplexed by the swift Democratic rebuff. “I have bent over...

I was very disappointed to see Robert Costa of National Review use of the dollar sign in this tweet: Praised recently by a lot of liberals in the press, invited to the White House to sit with Barack Obama, and now subtly suggesting the McConnell – Boehner – K Street GOP attack on Heritage Action for America, Senate Conservatives Fund, Club for Growth, and Madison Project is legit, i.e. they’re in it for the money. That’s disappointing, but unsurprising. In fact, the groups mentioned above, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Mark Meadows, Tom Graves, etc. are under withering fire from the...

Will the Floridians who have enrolled for Obamacare please stand up? Nearly two weeks after the federal government launched the online Health Insurance Marketplace at HealthCare.gov, individuals who have successfully used the choked-up website to enroll for a subsidized health insurance plan have reached a status akin to urban legend: Everyone has heard of them, but very few people have actually met one. The Miami Herald searched high and low for individuals who completed enrollment for a subsidized health plan through the marketplace, also called an exchange, launched by the federal government on Oct. 1 in 36 states, including Florida....

eHealthInsurance.com: If you like your plan, you probably won’t be able to keep your plan. The Obama administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apparently had no interest in determining the best practices for setting up a health insurance purchasing website before plunging ahead with Obamacare’s. eHealthInsurance.com: If you like your plan, you probably won’t be able to keep your plan. The Obama administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apparently had no interest in determining the best practices for setting up a health insurance purchasing website before plunging ahead with Obamacare’s.

The Daily Mail's Thursday scoop revealed that just 51,000 Americans successfully enrolled in the federal Obamacare exchanges over its first week -- an infinitesimally tiny percentage of the "46 million" uninsured Americans the law's supporters frequently cite. But is the real number actually a fraction of that fraction? Oh my: Based upon my survey of a large number of health plans accounting for substantial market share in the 36 states the federal insurance exchange is operating in, not more than about 5,000 individuals and families signed-up for health insurance in the 36 states run by the Obama administration through Monday....

President Obama, speaking in 2007 and 2008, explains why he was very much against an individual mandate... Time to give an opt-out for the individual mandate, and hold Congress to the same rules that they enact over others - as to ObamaCare.

The Republican Party is at war with itself. It's divided over how best to shrink the federal budget and how to undo President Obama's healthcare law. Behind the GOP crackup over the government shutdown lies a much bigger battle for control of the party. And the most important actors aren't Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us the government shutdown. The party rift's chief driver is a constellation of hard-line conservative fundraising groups, led in part by a former senator most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, Jim DeMint of South...

WASHINGTON — As the battle over the health care law was grinding on — Republicans no closer to victory than when they forced the government shutdown — a different fight was rising on a recent Saturday from inside Sharkey's, a bar near the campus of Virginia Tech, 260 miles away. Lured by free beer, gift cards and the chance to win an iPad, 100 students heard a pitch from the young staffers of a group named Generation Opportunity: Obamacare is a bad deal and you should opt out. With enrollment in the insurance marketplaces under way, and tens of millions...

Andy Mangione, who lives in Louisville, Ky. with his wife Amy and their two boys, is doing the same thing millions of people are doing --trying to figure out how much his insurance will cost under ObamaCare. Before the exchanges opened, his insurance company said his rates would soar. But now that there are subsidies, he's been trying for days to find out how much he would get. "To logically compare plans, I've been calling them every day since October 1st," says Mangione, "several times a day on some occasions. Sometimes enduring 45, 50 minute holds, half an hour holds."...

The architects behind the iPhone never described it as a “train wreck.” #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 The media doesn’t have to send out a national search party to find someone who has bought an iPhone. #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 Apple can ship the iPhone to your doorstep faster than it takes to log in to http://t.co/B4wfKR71RO #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013 The iPhone wasn’t rendered inoperable for “maintenance” the first week it was on the market. #ObamacareIsNotAniPhone— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 12, 2013

Skeptics warned from the start that it was a suicide mission for Republicans to shut down the federal government in a long-shot attempt to defund Obamacare. Now that such dire predictions have come to pass, the lawmakers who engineered the shutdown are getting the conflagration — and the martyrdom — they sought. Call it the Cruzifiction of the GOP. At least so far, the standoff has been a political bloodbath for Republicans. And maybe that’s exactly what was needed to right the political system: The effort to gut Obamacare had to crash like this so that Republican leaders and lawmakers...

Sometimes polls state the obvious. Sometimes they surprise. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal and Gallup surveys, which landed late last week during the government shutdown, did both. Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democratic pollsters Peter Hart and Fred Yang conducted the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. All are longtime practitioners, but even they seemed startled by the findings. McInturff wrote in an analysis, “Overall, this is among the handful of surveys that stand out in my career as being significant and consequential.” Hart called the findings “jaw-dropping.”

The Gallup poll that tracks the approval rating of Republicans in Congress looks like the bend of a hockey stick. Whether this is a permanent condition or a temporary one depends on getting Sen. Ted Cruz off the stage and Rep. Paul Ryan on--substituting a bristly champion of an unpopular strategy that divides the party with a congenial representative of the GOP's traditional views on taxing and spending. That's why House Republican leaders are trying to craft a deal with the White House to reopen government and start budget negotiations where House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan will be the key...

For most congressional Republicans, opposition to the Affordable Care Act is a simple matter of political math. Democrats represent most districts where the greatest numbers of uninsured residents reside. Republicans, in turn, need not rely on the votes of the people who lack health insurance and would gain most from Obamacare.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) suggested Sunday that Democrats would consider raising the debt limit with only 51 votes in the Senate. Democrats tried to pass a $1.1 trillion increase in the debt limit Saturday, but they failed to achieve the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace asked Manchin to explain Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) comment that Democrats have "several somethings" they can use as a back-up plan to raise the debt ceiling and avoid default. "I would assume that they might be referring to the so-called 'nuclear option,'" Manchin said. "If...

I know way too many folks on the Right that are fighting for “our country” and for “family values”, and yet they don’t “value” their own family. Heck, I know several people that are more well known in Tea Party circles than they are at their own kitchen tables. It’s gross. I know that’s harsh but … someone’s got to say it. Over the last few years my wife and I have spent more time than we’d like listening to haggard tales of marriages that are on the rocks and kids that are jacked up simply because mom or dad...