… […] Look, at every level, every number that you get on this is either inflated or deceptive. As we just heard from Steve [Hayes], the number of enrollees are not enrollees. It’s people who put stuff in their shopping cart. Amazon would never call it a sale until you get a sale. And they don’t know how many have made the sale. And that’s because what they call euphemistically, the back-end, which is the cash register of the whole system, is not working. 
The idea that you have to hand-match people who paid a premium with the insurers isn’t 20th century technology — it is 19th century technology. An insurer has to find the person, call them up, go over all of the details on the form and then adjust them, which of course is impossible to do in any substantial number.  (more…)

Counterrevolutionaries’ will be punished.  Get out of line and you’ll be chummy with the fishes… 
[“We require the correct attitude in the countryside”.  <—- ring a bell with ANYONE ? ]
WASHINGTON DC – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told contractors not to cooperate with Congress’s efforts to investigate work related to the Obamacare website, a top Republican lawmaker said.
The agency informed Creative Computing Solutions Inc. on Dec. 6 that it isn’t authorized to disclose security testing information and other details to third parties, according to a letter today from Representative Darrell Issa to Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The department may have sent similar letters to other contractors working on the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, wrote Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House oversight committee. (more…)

MICHIGAN –  Michigan union invoked the provision of the state constitution that bans slavery in their argument against right-to-work, court documents show.

Teamsters Local No. 214  stated Dec. 6 that right-to-work was “a violation of the prohibitions against involuntary servitude” because members of the union had to work against their will on behalf of non-union members. The union then referred to Article I, Section 9 of the state constitution, which states:

“Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this state.”

(more…)

Will it come as a shock to people when they find out the deaf sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela funeral was a fake?
Why should it?    Everything about the funeral, and more importantly about the representative ruse around Mandela’s passing, was a collection of global progressives inserting their own desires and scribed pontifications onto something which in reality does not exist.

So why would the interpreter for the deaf audience be real,  everything around the narrative was fake.
SOUTH AFRICA – Deaf people watching the Nelson Mandela memorial were bemused and shocked by a “fake” sign language interpreter on stage whose gestures were unintelligible, activists said Wednesday.

Shame on this male so called interpreter on the stage. What is he signing? He knows that the deaf cannot vocally boo him off. Shame on him !

— wilma newhoudt (@newhoudt) December 10, 2013

The interpreter was watched by millions as he stood beside speakers at the event including President Barack Obama. (more…)

You can read the details in a variety of places. With a large dose of Brutal Honesty I tell you, it just doesn’t matter.
The bottom line is they agreed to spend more money.
The Dems wanted to spend “a lot more” – The Republicans wanted to spend a “little more”. They compromised and are spending “more”.   That’s all this is, a dog and pony show about spending more. Always more.   Just more.

Here’s a perspective from TPM: In a major breakthrough after three years of paralyzing partisan rifts, Congress’ top two budget chiefs finalized a bipartisan agreement Tuesday that would set spending levels for two years and mitigate some of the painful spending cuts required by the sequester. (more…)

Delicious news – President Obama is hiring John “Damn Skippy” Podesta to join his inner circle and advisors.  Podesta was for Bill Clinton what Denis “The Fixer” McDonough is to President Obama.

Now both “Skippy” and “Fixer” are part of the Obama circle with Valerie Jarrett still looming.   That is a highly volatile mix.   Explosive and unstable in the extreme.
However, it makes sense against the backdrop of a Hillary run in 2016 because Team Clinton needs to have their interests represented quickly. (more…)

Catching up… – FLOTUS appears to have a case of the Grumps as he does the Selfie’s at Mandela’s funeral  (with Cameron and Helle Thorning-Schmidt).  Meanwhile I’m hearing rumors that President Stompy Feet shook hands with Mugabe.

(more…)

Allow me to establish from the outset that what Rand Paul is trying is valiant, admirable, and needed.   However, simultaneously he is up against a massive institutional complex which has designed the architecture of dependency and need it to remain.

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system.
For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”  (link)

Some may dismiss what Rand Paul is actually trying to promote, I do not.
Beyond policy is something more important – engagement.
The greatest consideration a person or enterprise can give is the gift of understanding. As much as Rand Paul is offering policy suggestions to improve inner cities, he is engaged and listening.
However, one of the unfortunate realities he faces, which actually establishes the slope of the climb he is attempting, is the reality of dependency.
(more…)

Meaning the bottom 40% of tax filers got almost 10% of their income from other taxpayers.     – PAUSE –  Repeat.    4 out of 10 people filing taxes got almost 10% of their income from other tax payers.   – PAUSE – Repeat.   40% of people who filed taxes paid ZERO taxes and actually got more money than they started with.   
WASHINGTON DC – The top 40 percent of households by before-tax income actually paid 106.2 percent of the nation’s net income taxes in 2010, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.
At the same time, households in the bottom 40 percent took in an average of $18,950 in what the CBO called “government transfers” in 2010.
Taxpayers in the top 40 percent of households were able to pay more than 100 percent of net federal income taxes in 2010 because Americans in the bottom 40 percent actually paid negative income taxes, according to the CBO study entitled, “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010.”
(more…)

Rare !  Ms. Kuster has actually qualified for the Triple Penguin Award 
New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Ann Kuster clumsily refused to answer a  question on the Benghazi attacks during a recent town hall, frantically looking  to the moderator for assistance instead.
A video uploaded Sunday to Youtube shows the congresswoman reading a prepared  question from a constituent about whether she supports a House resolution authorizing the creation of a select committee to investigate  the September 11, 2012 attacks on a Beghazi consulate, which killed Libyan  ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

(more…)