RUTHFULLY YOURS

Premiums this year are a nice surprise. It’s 2017 when hikes will kick in—‘bronze’ family plans alone could rocket 45%.

Americans visiting Healthcare.gov to purchase 2015 health-insurance plans are finding a nice surprise: Average premiums for the cheap “bronze” plans have increased only by 3.4% and premiums for the middle-of-the-road “silver” plans are rising by 5.8%, according to the American Action Forum. Where are the double-digit premium increases that so many predicted? Check back around this time in 2016. That’s when you’ll see the real spikes.

The Affordable Care Act includes two temporary programs that make compliant health-care plans temporarily appear far cheaper than they are: Risk corridors and reinsurance. Both programs will expire on Jan. 1, 2017. By November 2016, consumers will know how that sunset will affect their plan’s premium.

Risk corridors and reinsurance are simple concepts: They subsidize insurance companies with taxpayer money. With the former, the taxpayer is covering the difference when patients spend more on health care than insurance companies predicted. With the latter, taxpayers are paying for the most expensive patients—those that make more than $45,000 in claims annually. In a telling move, the White House quietly expanded the risk-corridor program earlier this year, implying that health-insurance companies are losing billions of dollars on ACA plans.

This is why premiums on Healthcare.gov are cheaper than many predicted. The taxpayer’s generosity allows insurance companies to hide the true costs of the plans.

But this will likely end when both programs expire in two years. At the same time, the exemptions issued by the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services—including the exemptions that allowed millions of consumers to keep noncompliant plans that would have been canceled—will also expire on New Year’s Day, 2017.

These jihadist savages are now called “militants” and “gunmen”….rsk

PESHAWAR, Pakistan—Taliban militants stormed a military-run school in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 84 people, most of them schoolchildren, and wounded more than 80, hospital and government officials said.

Children remain trapped in the school as hostages, some four hours after the attack began, officials said.

Security officials said at least five gunmen entered the Army Public School on Warsak Road in Peshawar, capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, around 11 a.m. local time, and took control of the main building. The Army Public School is part of a military-run system of schools across Pakistan, offering education from the primary to high-school levels, and is open to children of military personnel as well as civilians.
Provincial government officials said at least 1,500 students, from preschool to high school, were present on campus when the attack occurred. Most of them have managed to flee the compound, according to the Pakistani military.

The provincial chief minister, Pervaiz Khattak, put the death toll at 84, from the bodies at Peshawar’s hospitals.

“These children were innocent,” said Mr. Khattak.

Dick Cheney says he would “do it again in a minute.” He’s right.

I am not sorry Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times. KSM also murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in 2002. He boasted about it: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew,” he said after his capture.

I am sorry KSM remains alive nearly 12 years after his capture. He has been let off far too lightly. As for his waterboarding, it never would have happened if he had been truthful with his captors. It stopped as soon as he became cooperative. As far as I’m concerned, he waterboarded himself.

I am not sorry the CIA went to the edge of the law in the aftermath of 9/11 to prevent further mass-casualty attacks on the U.S. I am not sorry that going to the edge meant, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein put it in 2002, doing “some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves.” I don’t suppose she was talking about removing our shoes at airport security.

I am sorry we weren’t willing to do those “things” before 3,000 people had their lives unnaturally ended on Sept. 11, 2001.

I am not sorry Osama bin Laden died by an American bullet. John Brennan , the CIA director, delivered a master class in rhetorical obfuscation masquerading as epistemology when he waffled last week about the quality of intelligence yielded by the interrogations of KSM and other high-value detainees. But several former directors and deputy directors of the CIA have all attested to the link between KSM’s interrogation and the identification of bin Laden’s courier.

I am sorry that the Feinstein Report, which failed to interview those directors and thus has the credibility of a Rolling Stone article, seeks to deny this. Maybe Sabrina Rubin Erdely, author of the discredited University of Virginia gang-rape story and a pro at failing to interview key witnesses, will find a new career in Sen. Feinstein’s office.

The Biblical Balaam knew what has escaped Ridley Scott.

Director Ridley Scott’s just released “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” is one of those rare movies in which everybody is miscast, but that is not my real complaint.

Here is one part this production did get right – the Land of Israel was promised to the Hebrews, a Binding Resolution that came directly from God Almighty. Scott deserves respect for standing against today’s scoffers. Yes, the Torah was the paper of record long before The New York Times came along.

But how did all these Brits get into the picture, and all of them speaking a different British dialect? The confounding of tongues is the first problem.

You know immediately that despite a $140 million budget, this is something that got cobbled together.

Only Christian Bale (“Moses”) shows up speaking American, too much as though he rushed straight from the set of “American Hustle.” Sigourney Weaver, it seemed, blundered onto the set from another sound stage, quickly got costumed, rehearsed, reminded what movie she was in, and off she goes to collect a paycheck.

The women in this flick, we have no idea who they are or what they want. They have practically no lines and no “faces.”

Somebody forgot that during the Exodus, the real one, our incredibly gorgeous but modest Hebrew women played a big part and that if it were not for Miriam, fuhgeddaboutit, we never would have made it those 40 years. This anti-epic production tries too hard to meet our generation’s hero-averse sensibilities and thus turns a story entirely sublime into a story entirely trivial.

‘Deluded’ hostage-taker saw himself as a martyr By Nick Perry

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/16/deluded-hostage-taker-saw-himself-as-a-martyr/21116818/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D582876

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – FEBRUARY 10: (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) Man Haron Monis, gunman in the Lindt Chocolat Café siege in Martin Place, Sydney, is photographed outside the Downing Centre Court, Sydney, February 10, 2010. He was convicted in 2013 for sending hate mail to Australian war widows and was charged with sexual offences in October 2014 relating to his time as a self-proclaimed spiritual leader. (Photo by Kate Geraghty/Fairfax Media/Fairfax Media via Getty Images)
Man Haron Monis: Who was the Sydney siege gunman?
The self-proclaimed Sheikh was born in Iran but fled to Australia in 1996

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/544553733938774016

Andrew Bostom ‏@andrewbostom

Sydney jihadist: “Islam is the religion of peace and a Muslim should be a peace activist.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-haron-monis-who-sydney-4815347 …

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/544553940306898944

Andrew Bostom ‏@andrewbostom

Sydney jihadist: “Islam is against oppression and any unfair violence.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-haron-monis-who-sydney-4815347 …

Muslim and Arab hostility toward Israel and Jews was downplayed and ignored while Jewish wrongdoing was highlighted. Palestinian violence was depicted as an attempt to achieve sovereignty, and not as an attempt to deny the Jews their right to sovereignty. Palestinians’ actions were explained; Israelis’ actions were condemned.

When presented with evidence of James M. Wall’s factual errors, the publication declined to correct them.

Eventually some people in mainline churches started to realize that these overtures were causing more damage to mainline Protestantism than they were to Israel.

The crimes of The Christian Century continue unabated.

Yahoo, the well-known search engine company, has apparently decided that an antisemitic website, Veterans News Now [VNN], is a credible news source. People who rely on Yahoo’s news aggregator to view information about the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict will now find in their news feed links to articles published on this website, which traffics in Holocaust denial and displays articles that blame Israel for the attack against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. This scandal was exposed last week by Gilead Ini, a colleague at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America [CAMERA].

Yahoo should not be mainstreaming a website that posts like this. Moreover, it is not the only entity helping to make VNN look like a respectable website.

James M. Wall, former editor of the The Christian Century, a magazine that caters to liberal (mainline) Protestants in the United States, is also helping to mainstream the website. He does this by having his articles published on the website and by agreeing to serve as an “associate editor” for the publication. During his decades-long career at The Christian Century, Wall was the standard-bearer for liberal Protestantism in the United States. As a result of his recent actions, Wall’s name and writings will be forever linked with virulent antisemitism.

Naturally, no one would be responsible for their parents’ choice of a name. Nor would they all be likely to emulate the men after whom they were named. But it would probably be reasonable to assume that the choice of names might be telling you something about whom large numbers of people in your country identify with. At least it would seem a question worth discussing.

If we were confident about most of the people involved going overwhelmingly the proud to-be-British way, then we would discuss it. But we aren’t, so we don’t.

Last week the news arrived that the most popular name given to boys in the UK in 2014 was “Mohammed.” The reactions and non-reactions to this story betrayed the deep unease and denial that are now part of the debate around Islam in modern Britain.

We have of course been here before. For some years now, there have been stories of “Mohammed” creeping up the list of most popular names in the UK. And each time the reaction has been similar.

First there come doubts over the sources of such stories, whether informal contributions from, for instance, new mothers’ websites, or official statistics. There is also now extensive discussion about the varied possible spellings of the name (Muhammad and Mohammad for instance). Each year this leads to a fruitful and interesting debate about whether the reason why this name has come so high up the list of most popular boy’s names is because all the different variants of the spelling have been clumped together or whether the name is lower down than it would be because they have been kept apart. This is a now traditional annual debate in Britain.

This year, the story came out with an added twist: whichever way you cooked it, it looked as if “Mohammed” had come out on top. This seemed to be the case with the Office for National Statistics official figures for England and Wales and this latest one, from the “Baby Centre.” It was the latter that garnered a particular amount of attention. In the war between “Oliver” and “Mohammed” to reach the top spot, this poll came to the conclusion that if you put “Muhammad,” “Mohammed” and “Mohammad” together, the variations brought the name to the top by a considerable margin.

This week, in Washington DC, New York City, and Los Angeles as well as other cities, local PBS stations will broadcast our recent film RICKOVER: The Birth of Nuclear Power. Here are the air dates (additional cities are listed below, otherwise please check your local listings):

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​Washington DC – WETA: Wednesday 12/17 at 9PM, and Thursday 12/18 at 3:30 PM

​​New York – WNET: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
Los Angeles – KOCE: Thursday 12/18 at 8 PM

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​Please tune in—or record it. Rickover was one of the most fascinating characters of the twentieth century–a maverick, who infuriated infuriated his bosses but managed to transform the Navy, develop a new energy source, and fight the cold war. Our aim was to make his story entertaining as well as informative, with 30 minutes of scripted drama, strarring Tim Blake Nelson as Rickover.

Thanks for tuning in and letting others know! We are eager to hear your comments and thoughts on the film.

Holiday wishes to all.

Best,

Michael

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​Watch the trailer at http://manifoldproductions.com/AdmiralRickoverfilm.html

https://cts.vrmailer1.com/click?sk=aWYgB2JgFjBIYpnZQAPoF5Gg20kEtsd2jWKSJCybn57c=/aHR0cDovL21hbmlmb2xkcHJvZHVjdGlvbnMuY29tL0FkbWlyYWxSaWNrb3ZlcmZpbG0uaHRtbA==/hZNEnfjibqqVeDhVobpRcA==&merge_field_type=(?x-mi:(?<=href=)['"](?[^{‘”].+?)[‘”])

RICKOVER: The Birth of Nuclear Power

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​He was the greatest engineer who ever lived on earth, in my opinion.

​- President Jimmy Carter

My job was not to work within the system. My job was to get things done and make this country strong.

-Hyman G. Rickover

The bottom line is that Rickover was genius and a SOB.

​ -Norman Polmar, Naval Historian

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Tim Blake Nelson (Lincoln, O Brother Where Art Thou, Holes) stars as Rickover. Joan Allen (The Bourne movies, The Contender) narrates.

​DVDs Available

DVDs are available for purchase through

www.manifoldproductions.com

​

GI Film Festival

Rickover Emerging from the Nautilus

When Rickover was six years old, his family left Poland for Chicago. To get a free education, he went to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he experienced anti-Semitism. As a young officer, Rickover, disliked for his perfectionism, left active sea duty to become an engineer who repaired ships, which he did throughout World War II, ending with the rank of captain.
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After the war, Rickover found his true mission at Oak Ridge National Lab, which had helped build the atom bomb. There, he decided he would build the first nuclear sub, which would become the most powerful weapon of the Cold War. When experts like physicist Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, thought it would take 30 years, Rickover promised the first nuclear sub, the Nautilus, in six. Against opposition from the Navy and daunting technical challenges, Rickover succeeded—and maintained impossibly high safety and quality standards.

In response to the Soviet launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, President Eisenhower wanted to send the Nautilus across the North Pole under the arctic ice, which had never been done before. The perilous journey was one of the great adventure stories of the fifties. The spectacular success of the Nautilus’ journey led to ticker tape parades in New York and put Rickover on the cover of Time magazine.

In the fifties and early sixties, success followed success: the first nuclear aircraft carrier, the Enterprise, and the first commercial nuclear power plant, which generated electricity for the people of Pittsburgh. But, then the times changed. Protests against the Vietnam War turned many against the Cold War, which Rickover had spent his life fighting, and led to the anti-nuclear power movement of the seventies. In 1976, a man who loved Rickover became president: Jimmy Carter. Though a former nuclear submariner, he welcomed anti-nukes into his administration. Problems at Three Mile Island further eroded public support for nuclear power. Then, in 1982, in a contentious meeting in the Oval Office, which we dramatize, President Reagan “fired” the 82-year-old admiral, who died four years later.

Admiral Rickover had succeeded in changing the world: developing a new source of energy, making a more high tech Navy, and keeping the Soviet Union at bay, leading to the end of the Cold War that he did not live to see. His story is all the more relevant today as we confront our doubts about our energy future, global threats, the future of the Navy, and America’s ability to innovate.

RICKOVER: The Birth of Nuclear Power is a production of Manifold Productions, Inc., produced and directed by Michael Pack.

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Additional Airdates
​

Alabama APTV: Monday 12/15 9:30
Charlotte WTVI: Tuesday 12/30 at 9 PM
Chattanooga WTCI : Thursday 12/18 at 10 PM
Chicago WTTW: Thursday 1/8 at 9 PM
Fresno KVPT: Sunday 12/21 at 12:30 PM
Hartford CPTV: Monday 1/19 at 10 PM
Houston KUHT: Monday 12/15 at 9 PM
Indianapolis WFYI: Tuesday 12/30 at 9 PM
Jacksonville WJCT: Monday 12/22 at 10 PM
Los Angeles KOCE: Thursday 12/18 at 8 PM
Miami WPBT: Tuesday 12/16 at 10 PM
Minneapolis TPT: Thursday 12/18 at 8 PM
Nashville NPT: Thursday 1/8 at 8 PM
New York WNET: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
Orlando WUCF: Monday 12/29 at 8 PM
Pittsburgh WQED: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
Portland KOPB: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
Reno KNPB: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
Sacramento KVIE: Wednesday 12/17 at 9 PM
South Carolina SCETV: Thursday 1/22 at 9 PM
St Louis KETC: Friday 12/19 at 8 PM
​Washington DC WETA: Wednesday 12/17 at 9PM, and Thursday 12/18 at 3:30 PM
For all other stations, please check local listings at PBS.org

We have arrived at the most vulnerable stage in reconstituted Israel’s modern history. In 1967 those who were her enemies were easily identifiable. Now, those who casually contribute to the trend of her “de-legitimization” come from all walks of life, and many come from the very heartlands of Israel’s list of official allies.

There is a need now, more than ever, to address the history of what brought Israel to this point, and to identify how the undermining process takes place. Hamas, among Israel’s most virulent enemies, implacably opposed as it is to the existence of the Jewish state and to the very survival of Jews worldwide, has gained friends in the West.

Publicity stunts with manipulated photos and videos, the use of women and children as human shields – a crime against humanity – all carried out by Hamas to provoke violence and falsely accuse Israel are ignored by the mainstream media in what passes for the civilized West, and Israel is blamed for merely defending itself.

After the last Hamas aggression during the 2014 Gaza War, foreign correspondents sheepishly admitted to having been blatantly controlled by Hamas minders and violently threatened if they dared to report the truth during the conflict.

The passive-aggressive machinations of Hamas, Fatah and their Islamist and leftist supporters – those who go on convoys or flotillas and constantly claim that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian civilians – are reigniting the ancient blood libels spewed by both the Church and the Mosque.

They do so, they claim, to support the rights of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. The corrupt and petro-dollar whorehouse known as the United Nations gives its ear to the Holocaust denier, Mahmoud Abbas, even though he proclaims endlessly that in his proposed Palestinian state – a state that has never existed in all of recorded history – no Jews would be permitted to live.

Such bigotry and espousal of naked Muslim Arab apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Jews ignores the undeniably fact that Israel is the most pluralist and democratic nation in the entire Middle East.

SENATE REPUBLICANS VOTE TO WAIVE THE CONSTITUTION

There is no question that President Obama’s executive amnesty violates the Constitution. Even the president acknowledged back in September that he would be “ignoring the law” to carry out such an action.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) raised a constitutional point of order against the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending that, if sustained, would have sent the bill back to the House to remove amnesty funding.

Unfortunately, a group of Republicans joined the Democrats in voting to reject Cruz’s point of order and to ignore the serious constitutional problems with the president’s executive amnesty.

These 20 Republicans voted to waive the Constitution.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
John Barrasso (R-WY) Dean Heller (R-NV)
Dan Coats (R-IN) Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Thad Cochran (R-MS) Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Susan Collins (R-ME) John McCain (R-AZ)
Bob Corker (R-TN) Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
John Cornyn (R-TX) Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Mike Enzi (R-WY) Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ) Roger Wicker (R-MS)

CR #353, 12/13/14

SENATE PASSES $1.1 TRILLION OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL

After waiving the constitutional point of order, the Senate passed the omnibus bill, which fully funds Obamacare, does nothing to stop the president’s amnesty, and includes an earmark to help the DC establishment defeat conservative challengers.

These 24 Republicans voted for the bill.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
John Barrasso (R-WY) John Hoeven (R-ND)
Roy Blunt (R-MO) Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
John Boozman (R-AR) Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Richard Burr (R-NC) Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Dan Coats (R-IN) Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Thad Cochran (R-MS) Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Susan Collins (R-ME) Pat Roberts (R-KS)
John Cornyn (R-TX) John Thune (R-SD)
Mike Enzi (R-WY) Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Deb Fischer (R-NE) Roger Wicker (R-MS)