Free Republic

Psst. Anic-Pay! Bloomberg‘s Megan McArdle (who has been on an incredible roll lately**) takes issue with the idea that the Obama administration needn’t panic about Obamacare, as long as it can get its glitch-plagued health care exchanges up and running by the end of the year. Wrong, she suggests. It’s time to panic. Now. Why? Because the exchanges are the way to sign up young, healthy people and prevent the fabled “death spiral,” in which only older, sicker people sign up for insurance, causing rates to rise and healthier people to drop out, causing rates to rise even more, etc....

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.'"

Talking Points: If ObamaCare's liberal friends are calling its launch a "failure," an "inexcusable mess" and "beyond the pale," why are ObamaCare's Republican enemies completely tongue-tied about this unfolding train wreck? Earlier in the week, former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs called ObamaCare's launch "excruciatingly embarrassing." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, one of ObamaCare's most shameless boosters, said it was a "disaster" and that the administration deserves "all the criticism they're getting and more." Jon Stewart suggested that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lied about why the law's individual mandate couldn't be delayed. True, these liberals have a...

The Democrats government shutdown is in its third week and it is beginning to look like it will continue, at least past the debt ceiling. Negotiations continue over how to reopen the government, but there is a certain amount of exasperation starting to show. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered plan after plan to end the government shutdown, but they have all been rejected by the Democrats. Their latest plan was threatened with a veto from President Obama, before it could even make it to the floor of the House. I can't help but wonder if Rush...

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the frantic stop-and-go effort in Congress to avoid a debt default and end a government shutdown is "a mess" as a gloomy mood descended over the White House with time running out to a Thursday deadline. Obama, who is to meet Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday, and his Democratic backers stressed there is still time to avoid a historic default even as efforts to reach a deal in Congress floundered on Capitol Hill. "My expectation is that it does get solved, but we don´t have a lot of time," Obama told...

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - One lawmaker in the eye of the storm that is the government shutdown offered his encouragement to residents in the Tennessee Valley Tuesday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spoke at a dinner held by the Huntsville Republican Women. He gave a speech and then took questions from the crowd, via a video link from Washington. Cruz had been scheduled to appear in person but the turmoil in Washington kept him there. During the event, Cruz took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration on a wide range of issues. "We're seeing the constitutional rights of law-abiding...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

<p>Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.</p>

President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview: "One thing that I've shown is that if I say I'm prepared to compromise on something, I can deliver votes and we can get it done," Obama said. "So, look: Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do because I see day in and day out the damage that something like a shutdown does."

ANN ARBOR, MI, October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic priest in Georgia has filed a lawsuit after he was barred from even volunteering to offer Mass at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Father Ray Leonard, who is contracted to serve as base chaplain, and Fred Naylor, one of Father Leonard’s parishioners and a retired veteran with over 22 years of service, launched the suit Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Priests have been prohibited from offering Mass at military bases in the wake of the government shutdown, despite provisions in the Pay Our...

PAYSON, AZ - Republican Rep. Brenda Barton of Payson compared President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler on her Facebook page Monday in a post urging county sheriffs to revoke authority from the National Parks Service “thugs” who are enforcing the federal shutdown on national parks lands. “Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer… where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?” she wrote. Fuhrer is a German term for leader that is...

Defense: The firing of two nuclear commanders in a week adds to a body count that suggests we have either the most corrupt and incompetent general staff in history or our military is being reshaped for other purposes. The Obama administration, which has fired no one over scandals such as its Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running operation, its criminal negligence in the terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission, or the use of the IRS to target and intimidate political foes, seems to have a curious obsession lately about ethics and competence in the U.S. military. Last week the Air...

The Washington Monument syndrome is describe the tendency of government agencies in the United States to cut the most visible or appreciated services provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. And protect massive waste (since no one would miss the massive waste if it was cut). Such as closing National Parks and Monuments. What are government agencies hiding? The fact that agencies have large concentrations of non-essential personnel. Even Time.com recognizes that most of Federal government in non-essential. The interest payments on Federal debt is a small percentage of Federal current expenditures (11.5% at the end of Q2)....

HONG KONG - Perhaps the only people who have managed to find a silver lining in the ongoing US government shutdown are Chinese intellectuals. Of course, Americans view the impasse as a sign of political dysfunction. But to many Chinese commentators, it also reveals certain strengths. Since the shutdown began nine days ago, Chinese social media have been full of wistful, almost admiring remarks about how the shutdown could only happen in a democratic country with a resilient economy and responsive political representation. "The government's closed - is this bad?" wrote Chen Zhiwu, a user on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo....

The hallmark of the Obama era is government of, for and by crisis. Elected amid (or possibly because of) a financial crisis, the Panic of 2008, President Obama has spent his time in office lurching from disaster to disaster. Obama’s reflexes, praised instinctive timing and audacious as a candidate, turn out to be poorly suited to high office. Obama has been mostly reactive and mostly captive to events. Veering here and there is part of being president. The world is big and dangerous and governance is hard. But watching Obama govern is like watching a distracted man flipping through television...

<p>On September 11th 2001, America’s big bloated money-no-object bureaucracy and its obsolete brain-dead 1970s hijacking procedures utterly failed the citizens of this country. Nevertheless, on Flight 93 brave freeborn citizens acted as an ad hoc militia and did the job their government had proved incapable of doing.</p>

ANN ARBOR, MI, October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic priest in Georgia has filed a lawsuit after he was barred from even volunteering to offer Mass at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Father Ray Leonard, who is contracted to serve as base chaplain, and Fred Naylor, one of Father Leonard’s parishioners and a retired veteran with over 22 years of service, launched the suit Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The media, members of Congress, and the President of the United States have gleefully disseminated misinformation about what would happen if we do not raise the debt ceiling by October 17th. The biggest blow these lies encountered was when Moody’s, one of the nation's top credit rating agencies, released a memo on October 7th stating: “We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact...The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit...

Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America. Harsh? Look around you at what is happening to America and you will see harsh. I am not talking about closed parks and monuments. I am talking about the funds cut to nearly 9 million mothers and young children for food, breastfeeding support and infant formula. That is harsh. Making a war against babies is harsh. And for what? Because Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, has grown so drunk on the sound of his own voice and so besotted with illusions...

While the media and Democrats scream about the Titanic sinking of government default, there is scant evidence in financial markets of it. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. Actually, the CDS curve has an inverted hump. ustcdes1015E It does look like a bomb crater rather than a typical CDS curve. If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared...

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on FrontPage Mag entitled “The Muslims Are Coming!” about a recent documentary following a troupe of Muslim standup comics as they toured the country, enlightening all the middle-American clods who have somehow gotten the crazy impression that Islam poses a threat. I harshly attacked this concept; my take was that the world has an Islam problem, not an Islamophobia problem, and that claiming otherwise and slapping a happy face on the issue is insulting and pointless. The film’s producer and co-director Dean Obeidallah, who is also one of the featured comedians, unsurprisingly took...

Political Director of ABC News, Rick Klein, pleaded with Wall Street financiers to “manipulate the markets on behalf of President Obama’s efforts to stand against GOP resistance.” “Government spending is what’s been lining their pockets for generations,” Klein observed. “How can they sit by and allow upstarts like Senator Cruz to interfere? They’ve got to use their financial power to provoke a major slide in stock prices. Sure, they might have to take some temporary losses, but they should consider it an investment that will ensure that government cash continues to flow to them in the future.” Klein noted that...

According to a new study conducted by Texas Tech University Professor Dr. Michael Giberson for the Institute for Energy Research, the government and wind lobby aren't telling taxpayers the whole truth about how much wind energy really costs. The study comes as the wind lobby is set to receive another extension on massive subsidies with little results to show for it. "As Big Wind's lobbyists fight tooth and nail to extend the wind Production Tax Credit, it is important that we look at the true costs of wind power to taxpayers and ratepayers," IER President Thomas Pyle said about...

Leadership: Iran's back to chanting "death to America," China's calling for a "de-Americanized" world, Russia kicks us to the curb in the Mideast and Venezuela hauls off five of our sailors. And what does the White House say? The sharp rise in anti-American incidents from antagonistic regimes stands in stark contrast to the environment three decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. As Beltway intelligentsia derided the Gipper as an "amiable dunce," the world's leading troublemakers saw the U.S. president entirely differently: as someone they'd rather not tangle with. That's why Iran's ayatollahs dropped the U.S. diplomatic hostages they'd been...

Class: Because of George Mason University’s screwy scheduling (no class today because Monday’s classes are now Tuesday classes because of Columbus Day), we can’t have our discussion of the impending US default. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. ustcdes1015E If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared to President Obama’s inauguration date, we see an upward sloping CDS...

In May 1940 the world faced a menace unlike any it had ever seen. After a decade of economic body blows, much of the world was weary. With the carnage of WWI only 20 years past few people had the stomach to fight for much of anything. It was only with great reluctance that in September 1939 the British and the French declared war on Germany after they invaded Poland with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, even after the declaration, after years of appeasement most British felt that there was little they could do to stop Adolph Hitler. Things were indeed...

The rhetoric is really heating up. California Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi (she of “You have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” fame) is throwing around the world “sabotage” concerning any disagreement with President Obama. uscds101513 And the 10 year Treasury yield rose 3 basis points. ust10101513 And, of course, President Obama nixed ANY deal. Huh. If Pelosi thinks this is sabotage and will lead the US to default, its odd that CDS prices are falling.

Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal. The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, "should have been mine," he said. The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made "jokingly" during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said. However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than...

Squirrels are known for two survival skills: hoarding, and stealing other squirrels’ stashes. h/t BFH on iOTH, who suggests we could substitute “ObamaVoters” for “squirrels” Both skills were on display in Louisiana last Saturday night when an EBT system “glitch” temporarily eliminated card limits. Thanks to the fact that the card holders all have Obamaphones, they advised all their social network friends with EBT cards of this manna from heaven. Soon all the squirrels hustled down to their local Walmart where they were seen hoarding everything from, well, soup to nuts: It was like Christmas…only free! Shoppers abandoned carts at Walmart...

Republicans in the House of Representatives have scheduled impeachment proceedings against President Obama, claiming his inability to halt the federal government shutdown makes him unfit for office. bachmannCongresswoman Michele Bachmann introduced a resolution to impeach Obama this morning and referred the matter to the House Judiciary Committee. Senior aides close to judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte say hearings will begin Thursday. “I think it’s high time President Obama be held accountable for his crimes,” explains Bachmann. “For two weeks now, vital government services have been disrupted, federal workers have gone without pay and national memorials have been closed, all because of...

House conservative, just before meeting: Income verification provision in Senate deal 'especially bad'…House conservative: 'We are setting a precedent whereby a president can refuse to discharge his Article II duty to take care…'…that the laws be faithfully executed but then can turn around and offer to enforce the law as a 'compromise.''Conservative predicts there will be 'broad opposition' inside House GOP conference…

Last week, CNN's Wolf Blitzer made waves when he opined that the ongoing problems with ObamaCare might be reason to delay the program. "They had three years to get this ready," he said. "If they weren't fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them, delay it for a year, get it ready and make sure it works." Blitzer later said he was only referring to the ObamaCare exchange website. But as the rollout continues, there's increasing evidence that an across-the-board delay would make sense — even to supporters of the law.

Unto the jungle gods of politics we commit the bodies of our Republican brethren; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of these ignoramuses’ political extinction… Well, now, isn’t that the media narrative as to the hooting and hollering in Washington, D.C. over debt ceilings, government shutdowns, and so on and so on? Is there anything to such talk? I suggest that before moving that discussion forward we acknowledge and bewail the barren naïveté of those Republicans — are you listening, Sen. Cruz ?— who thought all they had to do to make...

Democrats may think they've won, but the nation will lose if warnings about spending, debt go unheeded. If congressional negotiators fail to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government, voters will blame House Republicans, but it's the president and fellow Democrats that are behaving like teenagers by wanting to spend irresponsibly. Studies by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and Medicare and Medicaid actuaries indicate if Washington continues spending and borrowing as current law requires, then all Americans, and not just the wealthy, will be paying higher taxes and more on private health care. Federal spending on Social Security and...

If you ever wondered why we recommend prepping, and stockpiling food and emergency supplies, one look at what happened this weekend Springhill and Mansfield, LA should tell you everything you need to know – and will give you a glimpse at what this country will look like during a nationwide crisis. Over the weekend, the debit system that allows people on government assistance to buy food, temporarily went down. The resulting chaos is a small glimpse at what I believe will happen, should the government plunge this country into some sort of economic collapse. A couple of Walmarts in Louisiana...

Washington, Oct 14: They came from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Corpus Christi, Texas, from all over the country to the nation’s capital, heeding a call for a “million vets march” to protest the Government shutdown. In the end, it wasn’t million of veterans but perhaps several hundred. And it drew far-right Republicans such as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Senator Ted Cruz, the man credited with engineering the shutdown. But for Freddie Olivarez, 69, a military veteran who drove 2,400 km with his family from Corpus Christi to make his point, it was important to be there. Sitting in...

Nothing says “patriot” like waving around the Battle Flag of the Confederacy in front of the White House.I’m still trying to wrap my head around this scene: Yesterday, in Washington, a group of angry white people—it was billed as the “Million Vet March” but numbered in the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and who knows how many were actual veterans—led by Tea Party-aligned Texas senator Ted Cruz and former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, marched on the Lincoln and World War II memorials, tearing down the barricades and demanding that President Obama reopen these sites, which, of course, are closed because...

President Barack Obama is risking “impeachable” offenses with the way he is handling the debt limit debate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a post on her Facebook page Monday. “Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense,” Palin wrote. In her statement, Palin also accused the president of “scaremongering” on the debt ceiling. She suggested that a default could be averted by paying interest on the debt through daily revenues collected by the United States, an idea that...

You’ve seen this movie before, Iowa. Stoking another round of what-if and what-could-be, Sarah Palin is planning a return to the state where presidential dreams are fevered even this far out from the next contest. The Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative and evangelical group, announced that the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee will speak at its 13thannual banquet on Nov. 9. The announcement of the planned Des Moines speech comes at a time Palin has again raised her political profile. Over the weekend, she campaigned in New Jersey for long-shot Republican Senate candidate Steve Lonegan,...

BEIJING — Armed with tens of billions of dollars in investment deals and romantic tales of ancient explorers, Chinese President Xi Jinping has spent much of the past month promoting his vision of two new “Silk Roads” to connect his country to the West and secure its energy supplies — one by land and another by sea. In the process, he has eclipsed an American vision of a New Silk Road that was advanced with much fanfare by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton two years ago and was supposed to revitalize Afghanistan as the link between Central and South...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the famous White House kitchen garden, tomatoes are rotting on the vine. Herbs have gone to seed. And the sweet potatoes - a favorite of President Barack Obama - have become worm food. It's another impact of the government shutdown, one that only the fox and the many squirrels that live on the White House grounds could love. A foodie blog called Obamafoodarama that obsessively covers the White House "food ephemera" and the administration's food policy has posted photos of the normally immaculate garden looking more like what most gardeners' plots appear at this time of...

Leon Panetta served in Washington with nine presidents, starting with Lyndon Johnson. He has been a member of Congress, Office of Management and Budget director, White House chief of staff, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of defense — the last two under President Obama. He is a man who knows Washington and knows how to choose his words. So Panetta’s implicit rebuke of the president’s hands-off approach to the budget crisis at a breakfast Monday was striking. Indeed, implicit may be an understatement. Asked repeatedly whether he was being correctly understood as critical of President Obama, Panetta...

"I say, imagine in your private life, if you decided that I'm not going to pay my mortgage for a month or two—first of all you're not saving money by not paying your mortgage. You're just a dead beat. And you can anticipate that will hurt your credit." - Barack Hussein Obama

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...

A local Iowa affiliate reports that it could confirm only 5 people in that state have signed up for Obamacare:

After a weekend of meetings, there is still no agreement on the debt ceiling or budget. debtceilgst The reaction? US credit default swaps rose this morning. But notice they are still lower than they were on October 10th. uscds101413 The US has the fastest rising CDS. Simply because the alleged default on US sovereign debt isn’t hurting any other country. sovcds101413 So, President Obama and Congress are digging in their heels on cutting spending and debt. Even though Germany is cutting back on its debt. debtdrop Germany was able to lower its debt-to-GDP ratio. Why can’t Congress and Obama agree...

Dissent: U.S. veterans take to the barricades after the White House tries to deny them their right to gather, a mere week after the administration lets a pro-illegal immigration rally take place. Our rights are under siege. Richard M. Nixon, when faced with massive demonstrations during the Vietnam War, at least had the courage to leave the White House and speak with the assembled young demonstrators. And, contrary to his image, he didn't sic the police on them. Not so President Barack H. Obama. Thousands of vets stormed the World War II Memorial on the National Mall Sunday — tearing...

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.” …

Sarah Palin Obama’s Debt Default is on His Shoulders While We Shoulder His Impeachable Offenses Apparently the president thinks he can furlough reality when talking about the debt limit. To suggest that raising the debt limit doesn’t incur more debt is laughably absurd. The very reason why you raise the debt limit is so that you can incur more debt. Otherwise what’s the point? It’s also shameful to see him scaremongering the markets with his talk of default. There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we service our...

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