RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama says he can “fix” the millions of canceled health insurance plans with an administrative change. He’s claiming more executive power – power for himself – than the Constitution allows, and is playing fast and loose with the truth.

The culprit behind the cancellations is not an administrative regulation, as he claims. It’s Section 2702 of the Affordable Care Act. It says all plans sold in the individual market or small-group market on Jan. 1, 2014, or later must include the Essential Benefits Package.

This means 10 categories of health coverage the Washington “experts” deem essential, such as maternity care even if you’re 50 years old. Plans are being canceled because they don’t have all 10.

Only Congress can dispense with the deadline. Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to do that.(Insurers and insurance commissioners in several states have said the “fix” is too late to retool by Jan. 1.) Nevertheless, the House bill is a legal attempt to stop the mass cancellations.

Amazingly, our arrogant president says he will veto that bill if it reaches his desk because it would allow insurers to sell the noncompliant policies to new customers as well as old. The real reason is that Obama wants to rule by edict.

This particular edict could put taxpayers on the hook for a hefty amount. The American Academy of Actuaries warned that the fix is likely to cause healthy people to stick with their old plans, leaving the sickest in the new exchanges. That will clobber exchange insurers.

The “racist concept” of a Jewish national state is an “impediment to peace,” Philip Farah of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Palestine (PCAP) judged during the panel “Myths about the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and Impediments to Peace.” Farah spoke at the November 8-9 (with Sunday worship following on November 10), 2013, Waging Peace in Palestine & Israel conference. Farah’s anger towards Israel was typical among the event’s self-professed Christians who consistently undermined the Jewish state’s legitimacy in numerous ways.

The conference sponsor was the Alliance of Baptists (AB), founded in 1987 as a “prophetic voice in Baptist life” among “people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, theological beliefs, and ministry practices.” “[C]ombining progressive inquiry” and “prophetic action,” these diverse individuals are “married, divorced, single, committed and somewhere in between.” AB’s partner congregation in Washington, DC, Calvary Baptist Church, was the conference host.

AB in the conference’s program described the event as an “effort to be faithful to our Statement of support to Palestinian Christians.” Reprinted in the program, The Alliance of Baptists Respond to the Kairos Palestine Document is also available at the AB website. In this statement AB affirmed the December 15, 2009, declaration Kairos Palestine-A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope, and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering as representing the “most prevalent views of Palestinian Christians living in the occupied territories.”

Read online, A Moment of Truth set the conference’s troubling tone. The declaration invokes a “Palestinian people who have faced…clear apartheid for more than six decades,” namely since Israel’s very founding in 1948, and not since any post-1967 Six Day War occupation. The declaration describes Israel solely as an attempt by the “West…to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe…on our account and in our land.” Yet half of Israel’s present Jewish population is of Middle Eastern/North African (Mizrahim) origin, many of them descended from Jews expelled by Arab countries in the years before and after Israel’s 1948 establishment. Such charges call into question A Moment of Truth’s subsequent attribution of hostility with Israel to its post-1967occupied territories, namely that “if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”

The well-worn notion that much of the public has been fed is that Senator Ted Cruz, along with Mike Lee and many Republican House members, caused the government shutdown which was, itself, a disaster. While far from true, the real battle is whether Republicans will learn the proper lessons and how they will move from here, together or in internal disarray, toward their own private sector reform or submit to a pre-planned Democrat drive toward a single payer system.

While extremist radicals such as Sean Penn called for Cruz to be “institutionalized,” the prominent attack on Cruz, primarily by “reasonable” Republicans such as John McCain and Peter King, has been that he chose the wrong “strategy” in his attempt, first to defund Obamacare and later, to cause a delay in its individual mandate and elimination of Congress’ own exemption. It was argued that even if Cruz had convinced enough Senators to vote with him, President Obama would have exercised his veto. Further, no matter how it occurred, any government shutdown would be blamed on Republicans. Instead, they insist, Obamacare would have imploded on its own.

It is certainly true Republicans have taken a beating in the polls. The real cause, however, was the constant bantering of messages by Democrats and their key ally, the media. For months before the shutdown, the media essentially installed critical notions in the minds of the public such as “Republicans will be blamed,” “Obama will not budge,” “a shutdown will result in a national, if not international crisis,” and so on. We tend to think we are sophisticated evaluators of incoming information but, for the most part, our minds find it difficult to fend off that which is constantly barraging them. And once those ideas were force fed to the public, the public tended to feed them right back in the form of polls which, in turn, caused further amplification of the notion.

Accordingly, rarely was the more accurate proposition that Obama and the Democrats were responsible for the shutdown because they refused to negotiate with Cruz and House Republicans given much airtime. Similarly, if Cruz had been successful in converting enough Senators, Obama would have had a difficult time standing alone with his veto trying to do what he does best- blame others. The game would have been very different if the Senate had gone against Obama. And even if the Senate did not fully fall in line with Cruz, many borderline seats would then be better poised for Republican rebounds in the 2014 elections. The only thing that ultimately made Cruz’s actions “bad strategy” is that the “reasonable” Progressive Republicans chose not to join.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/when-obama-said-hes-sorry/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by an All-Star Cast: Ann-Marie Murrell, National Director of PolitiChicks.tv, Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood Actor (“The Artist”) and Monty Morton, a Conservative Entrepreneur.

The Gang gathered to discuss When Presidents Lie. The dialogue weighed Nixon’s, Clinton’s and Obama’s falsehoods — on the scales of damage to the American people.

Islam is a religion of Peace. That is as certain as the three slogans of the Ministry of Truth; War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.

These three slogans of the Party in George Orwell’s 1984 are especially applicable to Islam; a religion of war that claims to be a religion of peace, whose political parties (such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party) use “Freedom” in their name but stand for slavery, and ignorance of its true nature creates an illusion of strength for industrialized nations that imagine that they are only battling a tiny handful of outmatched extremists.

The Orwellian world finds its natural expression in our world of unnamable wars against unnamable enemies who are peacefully at war with us in the name of a religion that our leaders assure us is wholly peaceful and should not be identified with the people killing us in its name. There is enough convoluted reasoning in a single press conference after any act of Muslim terror to have provided Orwell with material for three sequels.

But in a Doublethink world where everything means the opposite of what it truly is, even Orwell isn’t immune from inversion. Instead of censoring him, the Doublethinkers, in the fashion of the Ministry of Truth, rewrote him.

Dubai, a city in a totalitarian state that practices censorship and fills jails with political prisoners, will host its Inaugural George Orwell Lecture under the auspices of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum; a billionaire ruler with more wives and yachts than human rights.

Considering Dubai’s international reputation as a glittering city for the wealthy built on the backs of slave labor and a party city where women have fewer rights than kidnapped child camel jockeys; there ought to be plenty of material for an Orwell lecture.

Israel—and Sunni Arab states of the Middle East led by Saudi Arabia—watched with trepidation on Wednesday as the P5+1 countries and Iran reconvened in Geneva for another round of nuclear talks.

British foreign secretary William Hague spoke of narrow differences and a historic deal being in reach. “It is the best chance for a long time,” he told an Istanbul news conference, “to make progress on one of the gravest problems in foreign policy.”

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov—whose country is not exactly a foe of Iran, having helped it build its Bushehr nuclear reactor—said: “We hope the efforts that are being made will be crowned with success at the meeting that opens today in Geneva.”

In a sort of prelude to this lovefest, on Tuesday Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif released a YouTube video in which he said:

For us, nuclear energy is about securing the future of our children, about diversifying our economy, about stopping the burning of our oil, and about generating clean power.

In other words, meet the new, hip, enlightened Iran, second to none in its concern for clean power and diversity.

Zarif did not explain why, if those are Iran’s innocent aims, it has been spending billions of dollars for decades in developing bomb-grade uranium, a reactor for making plutonium bombs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear triggering devices, and so on. But sometimes diversity and clean power come with certain accoutrements.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo — son of former NY Gov. Mario Cuomo (Democrat) — had a heated interview with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz today. Cuomo tries lecturing Cruz on bipartisanship, only to have Cruz lay down some facts.

Cuomo begins by lecturing Cruz on what senators do. Cruz, an accomplished lawyer who has argued cases before the United States Supreme Court, doesn’t appreciate the Democrat talking down to him.

“You don’t think you have a responsibility as a U. S. senator to do better than [opposing Obamacare] in terms of offering a solution for what to do next?” Cuomo badgered Cruz.

Cruz fired back: “Well, I appreciate your trying to lecture me in the morning, thank you for that.”

Cuomo appeared to be trying to drag the Republicans into helping bail the Democrats out of the mess they alone have created with Obamacare.

Cruz did offer a solution, but not one that Cuomo is apt to like: “The way to fix that is to stop this broken law. It was broken at the outset, and all of the bills that have been proposed by the Democrats, they’re designed to be political Band-Aids. Their effort is to cover their political rear ends, not to fix the problem, and the common-sense, reasonable thing to say is this thing isn’t working.”

After that, Cuomo suggested that Cruz should learn to work with Democrats. The problem for Cuomo is that Cruz already has. Cruz reminded Cuomo that he is co-sponsoring a bill on military sexual assault with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Cuomo mocked Cruz, calling that his “Green Eggs and Ham” moment, referring to a few minutes out of Cruz’s marathon speech opposing Obamacare before its disastrous rollout. Cruz reminded Cuomo that it was Obama who refused to negotiate prior to the government shutdown that has been blamed on Cruz.

“Throughout the ObamaCare fight, throughout the shutdown, I was reaching out to Democrats saying, ‘Let’s work together to provide meaningful relief for the millions of people who are being hurt because of ObamaCare,’” Cruz said. “And what President Obama and the Democrats said is we will not negotiate, we will not compromise. In fact president Obama invited all of the Senate Republicans over to the White House in the middle of the shutdown. Well all sat there. He called us in a room and said, ‘I called you over here to tell you I’m not going to negotiate, I’m not going to compromise on anything.’ That’s not reasonable. That’s not how you get anything done.”

Chris Cuomo went full partisan hack against Cruz, never acknowledging that Obamacare is not working and that because it is a Democrat law, the Republicans have no responsibility to bail Democrats out of the consequences for pushing it.

Pressure is growing on House Speaker John Boehner to appoint a select committee on Benghazi.

So far, 178 Republican House members have called for a select committee with broad powers to investigate the killing of Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Three out of every four Republicans on the committees currently with jurisdiction, recognizing the failure of the current process to obtain answers, have asked for a select committee to be appointed by Speaker Boehner.

These numbers easily satisfy the “Hastert Rule,” as a super-majority of the GOP conference wants House leadership to chart a new, more aggressive course.

Currently, five committees “investigating” Benghazi are limited by each committee’s unique jurisdiction. The Foreign Affairs Committee, for example, can’t talk to Department of Defense witnesses. The Armed Services Committee can’t talk to State Department witnesses or review State Department documents. And the Intelligence Committee won’t let anyone talk to CIA witnesses.

As Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) noted, “Americans from across the political spectrum recognize that not only are they not being told the truth [about Benghazi], but they feel Congress needs to change its approach to the investigation by creating a special committee.”

A select committee is part of regular House order, and would solve all the shortcomings of the status quo.

Benghazi has highlighted the shortcomings of the status quo, especially if House leadership takes a passive approach toward the Obama administration. More on that later.

The Obama administration is altering its language like there’s no tomorrow.

The Obama administration once gave us “man-caused disasters” for acts of terrorism and “workplace violence” for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster.

The president and his advisers apparently knew long ago that millions of the insured would face cancellations or premium hikes once Obamacare was fully implemented. Yet to get the 906-page bill passed, they had to convince the public of the very opposite scenario. So they repeated ironclad guarantees that no one would lose their coverage or doctors — “period!”

Now the administration explains the deception by going after both the ethics of the insurers and the intelligence of the previously insured. That task required language to be altered. The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as “subpar.” Only in autumn 2013 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, “bad apple” insurance companies sold them “substandard” plans.

According to Obama, millions of Americans were once ignorant or uninformed, and thus will soon be pleased about their cancellations: “So the majority of folks will end up being better off. Of course, because the website’s not working right, they don’t necessarily know it.”

By that logic, the legions of Obama supporters who desperately sought and won exemptions from Obamacare are not “better off” now, but those stuck with it will be?

The arguments in its favor are emotional appeals and distortions of economic reality.

The perennial fight over the minimum wage is once again in bloom, and the usual arguments will be rehearsed on both sides. Those against raising the minimum wage will cite Economics 101: Raise the price of something and demand will go down. Those in favor of raising the minimum wage will harrumph in the face of economics and declare that their opponents, and economics, hate poor people.

The purpose of this fight is not to hash out economic questions related to low-income people. The purpose of the fight is the fight: There is no minimum wage high enough to keep the Democrats from introducing an increase next year, because the point of bills hiking the minimum wage is to force Republicans to vote against them, which provides Democrats with a moment of cherished political theater. They do not give a fig about poor people — as everybody knows, the real minimum wage is $0.00, and more Americans today are making that than at any time in recent memory, which is what is meant by “record low workforce-participation rates.”

But let’s pretend like those pushing the new increase are not a gaggle of cynical charlatans building their political power on the backs of the poor and the unemployed and examine their arguments.

Why would you want to raise the minimum wage? A few possibilities:

1. Minimum-wage workers are worth more than we pay them. That is a meaningless statement; labor, like apples and oranges and widgets, is worth what you can sell it for. If you believe that we have a large supply of low-wage workers who are secretly more skilled and productive than they let on, you have to assume that everybody in the question — the workers, their employers, their employers’ competitors — has somehow overlooked that fact, but that our ingenious friends in Washington have special insight into the conditions of people they have never met and markets they have never operated in. That’s fanciful.

2. Slight variation: You might want to raise the minimum wage because you think that markets can set prices for most things but not prices for labor. This is contrary to pretty much all of the economic evidence in existence on the question, so maybe you want to refine that and argue instead that markets may do a pretty good job of setting prices for labor, but they don’t do a good job of setting prices for labor when those laborers are at the lower end of the market. Another way of saying this is that you believe that low-income people are too stupid and hopeless to negotiate appropriate, market-value wages for themselves, and that the vast majority of businesses that employ minimum-wage labor are operated by people too stupid to see that there’s a lot of higher-value labor out there for the taking that they are simply too thick to avail themselves of. But that isn’t really an argument for a higher minimum wage; it’s an argument for a more generous food-stamp program. It’s sort of uncomfortable to argue that low-income people are too stupid to see after themselves, but that is, after all, the assumption behind things like Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers and food stamps — if low-income people could be trusted to make appropriate choices about things like health care and housing, we could just give them money and let them make their own decisions about whether they need an extra $1 in health care or an extra $1 in groceries. In any case, it’s not likely that that millions of low-income people are too dumb and shiftless to seek higher wages but are smart and enterprising enough to compete for those higher-wage positions.