This and That...

[Ross]

'Seething' Obama Called Out Senior Staff: Report

NYT has a 'White House in Crisis' story
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 9, 2013 11:44 AM CST

(Newser) – President Obama may have apologized to the American public over ObamaCare, but he took a decidedly different tone with senior staff, reports the New York Times. In a piece whose headline begins "A White House in Crisis Mode," Michael D. Shear reports that a "seething" Obama summoned senior staffers to the Oval Office over the website debacle and let them have it. "If I had known, we could have delayed the website," he told the group, according to an aide present. The president's anger seems to have worked, suggests the story, given the all-out press to get the website fixed this month and the story off front pages. "I think they do realize that this is Defcon 1," an outside adviser tells the paper.

The trick is avoiding the perception that the White House is ignoring other matters as well. As the Washington Post reports, Obama was in New Orleans yesterday for a speech that was supposed to be all-economy. Instead, he had to talk ObamaCare. "I wanted to go in and fix it myself," he said of the website, "but I don't write code." Both the Post and Politico say the White House is working on some kind of "administrative" remedy for those affected by policy cancellations, but no details were available on what it might entail.

[Ross]

Money Manager Baker: Fed Policy Helps the Wealthy at Expense of 'Main Street'

Thursday, 07 Nov 2013 12:20 PM
By Dan Weil

While the wealthy benefit from the red-hot stock rally created by the Federal Reserve's gargantuan easing program, many Americans are taking it on the chin, says Simon Baker, CEO of Baker Ave. Asset Management.

"Main Street is a long way from back," he tells Yahoo. "If the question is, 'Is Main Street happy?' I don't think so."

Baker labels the Fed's accommodation "a massive, $3.7 trillion redistribution of wealth" that has helped only Wall Street and the wealthiest 5 percent of the country that owns appreciating assets such as stocks and real estate.

"They're the ones benefiting, not Main Street," Baker argues.

"[Quantitative easing] is not encouraging banks to do more loans, and it's not encouraging people to hire more folks," he contends.

"So it's not helping Main Street." Indeed, sluggish wage growth is increasing the inequality between the ultra-wealthy and average Americans, Baker says.

"The problem is really wage deflation. . . . If you're the average guy on Main Street, your wages haven't gone up over the last 10 years."

And more Fed easing will do nothing to solve that, Baker believes.

But more Fed easing may be just what we'll get. Three central bank officials who vote on policy this year signaled Tuesday that the Fed might continue easing for a while to boost the somnolent economy, Bloomberg reports.

The trio includes Fed Governor Jerome Powell, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard.


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.moneynews.com/Personal-Finance/Baker-Fed-policy-Main-Street/2013/11/07/id/535409?ns_mail_uid=7144240&ns_mail_job=1545395_11092013&promo_code=158A5-1#ixzz2kCS71hlk
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

[Ross]

Top hospitals opt out of Obamacare

By Tori Richards  /   November 4, 2013  /

The Obama administration has been claiming that insurance companies will be competing for your dollars under the Affordable Care Act, but apparently they haven't surveyed the nation's top hospitals.

Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

"This doesn't surprise me," said Gail Wilensky, Medicare director for the first Bush administration and senior fellow for Project HOPE. "There has been an incredible amount of focus on the premium cost and subsidy, and precious little focus on what you get for your money."

Regulations driven by the Obama White House indeed have made insurance more affordable – if, like Kathleen Sebelius, you're looking only at price. But responding to Obamacare caps on premiums, many insurers will, in turn, simply offer top-tier doctors and hospitals far less cash for services rendered.

Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.

Click here for a list of Obamacare insurance carriers for the best hospitals of 2013-14

The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.



AP PHOTO

CEDARS-SINAI: Just takes one insurance company under Obamacare

Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.

And that's not because their exchanges don't offer options. Both Ohio and California have a dozen insurance companies on their exchanges, yet two of the states' premier hospitals — Cleveland Clinic and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center —  have only one company in their respective networks.

A few, like No. 1-rated Johns Hopkins in Maryland, are mandated under state law to accept all insurance companies. Other than that, the hospital with the largest number of insurance companies is University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland with just four. Fully 11 of the 18 hospitals had just one or two carriers.

"Many companies have selectively entered the exchanges because they are concerned that (the exchanges) will be dominated by risky, high-using populations who wanted insurance (before Obamacare) and couldn't afford it," said Wilsensky, who is also on the board of directors of UnitedHealth. "They are pressed to narrow their networks to stay within the premiums."

Consumers, too, will struggle with the new system. Many exchanges don't even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don't provide names of doctors or hospitals.

The price differences among hospitals "can be pretty profound," said Joe Mondy, spokesman for Cigna insurance. "When you are doing a cost comparison with doctors, you should look up the quality of the hospital as well. Hospital 'Y' could be great at pediatrics and not great at surgery."

Insurers operating in the exchanges apparently are hesitant to talk about the trade-off between price and quality. Two of the nation's largest insurers — Wellpoint and Aetna — refused to respond to a dozen calls and emails placed during the course of a week.



Gail Wilensky

Wellpoint and Aetna's decision to not educate the public on its choices doesn't sit well with two experts.

"There is no reason to keep that quiet. It's not going to be a good secret for very long when people want to use the plans," Wilensky said.

"In many cases, consumers are shopping blind when it comes to what doctors and hospitals are included in their Obamacare exchange plans," said Josh Archambault, senior fellow with the think tank Foundation for Government Accountability. "These patients will be in for a rude awakening once they need care, and get stuck with a big bill for going out-of-network without realizing it."

All of this represents a larger problem with the Affordable Care Act, said Archambault, who has studied the law extensively.

"It reflects deeper issues in implementation," he said. "Some hospitals and doctors don't even know if they are in the network."

Just look at Seattle Children's Hospital, which ranks No. 11 on the U.S. News & World Report best pediatric hospital list. When Obamacare rolled out, the hospital found itself with just two out of seven insurance companies on Washington's exchange. The hospital sued the state's Office of Insurance on Oct. 4 for "failure to ensure adequate network coverage."

"Children's is the only pediatric hospital in King County and the preeminent provider of many pediatric specialty services in the Northwest," a hospital news release said. " Some of these specialized services not available elsewhere in our area or region include acute cancer care, level IV neonatal intensive care and heart, liver and intestinal transplantation."

And for doctors in Texas, "Basically, we don't know," said Stephen Brotherton, president of the Texas Medical Association. "We can't find out. At this point, it's part of the various unknowns with the marketplace. There are ways you can be on plans and not even realize it."

Editor's Note: This story first appeared in U.S. News & World Report.
http://watchdog.org/114137/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare/

[Warph]

Twenty years ago, New York's long nightmare ended with a Giuliani victory over Mayor Dinkins. Now the nightmare returns as former Dinkins staffer and terrorist supporter Bill de Blasio will begin wrecking the city where Dinkins and his Democratic predecessors left off.

Bill de Blasio vowed to undo Giuliani's reforms and turn back the clock on fighting crime and terrorism. Giuliani's victory was a wake-up call to Democrats that one of the more dangerous cities in the country had rejected their liberal soft-on-crime policies that had made it unlivable. Bill de Blasio's victory tells them that soft-on-crime is popular again.

Welcome back Michael Dukakis

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[Warph]

Obuma Hates Black Politicians, Black Politicians Hate Obuma

It's an interesting dynamic. And apparently it goes both ways.

It's not news that black politicians, particularly of the older sort, hate Obama. The Congressional Black Caucus nearly went all in for Hillary. Jesse Jackson talked about cutting off Obama's nuts. No doubt much worse was said in private.

Some of this may be a personality clash between the old corrupt generation of black pols, the Charlie Rangel era, and the younger savvier Cory Bookers, like the one that played out in Newark. The Charlie Rangels think the Obamas and Bookers are too slick and too phony, that they don't know how things really get done and that they're little more than puppets of white bosses.

There's some truth to that. Certainly Obama doesn't exactly represent the black community, even though he gets all their votes. Rangel and that generation rightly fear that they are being displaced by smooth-talking black radicals who exploit black identity with no commitment to the black community, for left-wing causes.

And there's not much love going the other way.

"Obama had little patience for the 'professional left,' and vanishingly close to zero for what one of his senior African American aides, Michael Strautmanis, referred to as 'professional blacks' (as opposed to black professionals)," authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann wrote on page 39 of the book. "Apart from Georgia congressman John Lewis and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Obama had nearly as much contempt for the CBC as he did for the Tea Party Caucus."

"New York's Charlie Rangel he derided as a hack; Jesse Jackson Sr. was effectively banned from the White House," according to the authors. "Obama remembered all too well a conversation with [Cornel] West in 2009, in which the professor used the precious time to complain about his seating at the inauguration."

It's not hard to see why Obama would despise the CBC. It's a clown act.

If not for political correctness, world-class idiots like Sheila Jackson-Lee and Hank Johnson would be mocked from one end of the country to the next. And Jesse Jackson even became a joke among white people a long time ago, never mind what black people think of him.

On the other hand, Obama hooked up with Al Sharpton as his rep to the black community who makes Jesse Jackson look like a class act.

Obama has shown a certain amount of institutional disdain, avoiding the NAACP for the Urban League; that's both a generational and class gap. No matter how helpful Jealous' NAACP has been to Obama's program of gay rights and illegal immigration, Obama doesn't seem to like it.

Even though Obama wrote two books on the subject of his race, those were political pamphlets whose feigned honesty was part of an effort to sell himself on campuses. What his real identity is may be a more complex matter.

Growing up in a Muslim country where black people were despised and with an affinity for left-wing radicalism, but little for American black culture and Christianity, as his mentor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has said, Obama's third culture approach to black politics is conflicted.

On the one hand, Obama relies on the "Black" brand for political reasons. Without black turnout and white boomer dreams of the Camelot of race relations that might have been, he would have been just another bored college grad marking time. But that just makes an egomaniac who believes firmly in his own genius more conflicted about his political dependence on that identity.

Obama doesn't believe in the black-white vision of America that is so integral to black politics. The tribalism means very little to him, as does tribalism of any kind.

And that's something most professional black politicians understand about him. No matter how much the black community has done for him politically, he feels burdened by it.

Obama's radicalism isn't the black radicalism of an Eric Holder. It dovetails with some of the resentment of black politics, but its leftist purity ultimately has as little use for black tribalism as it does for white tribalism.

[Warph]

Book: Obuma Has 'Close to Zero' Patience for 'Professional Blacks'

The new book Double Down: Game Change 2012 claims President Barack Obama does not have "patience" for what his advisors say he calls "professional blacks." The book also says Obama dislikes the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) as much as he despises the Tea Party movement.

"Obama had little patience for the 'professional left,' and vanishingly close to zero for what one of his senior African American aides, Michael Strautmanis, referred to as 'professional blacks' (as opposed to black professionals)," authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann wrote on page 39 of the book. "Apart from Georgia congressman John Lewis and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Obama had nearly as much contempt for the CBC as he did for the Tea Party Caucus."

"New York's Charlie Rangel he derided as a hack; Jesse Jackson Sr. was effectively banned from the White House," according to the authors. "Obama remembered all too well a conversation with [Cornel] West in 2009, in which the professor used the precious time to complain about his seating at the inauguration."

The passage comes in a section that details the aftermath of the 2011 Budget Control Act. The debt ceiling grand bargain reached with House Speaker John Boehner ultimately resulted in the sequester. The time frame was during the summer of 2011, as Obama's re-election campaign began to heat up and as Mitt Romney was emerging as the Republican nominee to face off against him the following year. At that time, many leftist organizations came after Obama, arguing he was not liberal enough for their tastes.

"He [Obama] returned to Washington in a foul mood that would quickly turn rancid as the criticism being heaped upon him intensified," the authors claim. "Obama had sought a big deal with Boehner because he believed it was the correct thing to do, but also to get right with the monarchs of high capitalism. He had cut the small deal to avert an economic conflagration."

"Here he was that Monday, August 8, facing the cameras in the State Dining Room, addressing the downgrade, citing Warren Buffett, articulating an obvious truth: 'No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a triple-A country.' And still the stock market kept on falling— 635 points that day, 200 while he was speaking," the book notes. "Then there was the ululating of the left, now aimed less at the deal than directly at Obama."

The authors cited several members of the "professional left" and "professional blacks" as having gotten under Obama's skin because of their criticism of him. 

"On the op-ed page of The New York Times the Sunday he was at Camp David, liberal psychology professor Drew Westen gutted him in a jeremiad that was burning up the blogosphere: 'Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama... believes on virtually any issue,'" the authors wrote. "California congresswoman Maxine Waters and the rest of the CBC were shelling him mercilessly. The African American TV talk show host Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor Cornel West, on a sixteen-city poverty tour, were doing the same. 'Too often [Obama] compromises, too often he capitulates,' West told ABC News. 'I think the Republicans know that. I think they laugh when he's not around.'"

Obama, according to the authors, has struggled with the left and the black community. "One day in the spring of 2011, as he sat with some staffers preparing for a speech to Al Sharpton's National Action Network, Obama rattled off a list of his policies," the authors note in the same passage. "Cracking down on predatory lending. Education reform. Student loan reform. Most important, health care reform. All with an outsize impact on African Americans. All achieved at a time when half of the GOP believed he'd been born in Kenya . Obama threw up his hands. 'After all that,' he said, 'am I still not black enough?'"

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/07/Book-Obama-has-vanishingly-close-to-zero-patience-for-professional-blacks

[Ross]

Ted Cruz


Wishing a very happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps. Today marks 238 years of fighting with unprecedented valor so that we may be free.

Thank you to all Marines for your service and Semper Fi!

[Ross]

Common Core lessons blasted for sneaking politics into elementary classrooms

By Perry Chiaramonte 
Published November 10, 2013
FoxNews.com

It's exactly what critics of the Common Core school curriculum warned about: Partisan political statements masquerading as English lessons finding their way into elementary school classrooms.

Teaching materials aligned with the controversial national educational standards ask fifth-graders to edit such sentences as "(The president) makes sure the laws of the country are fair," "The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation" and "the commands of government officials must be obeyed by all." The sentences, which appear in worksheets published by New Jersey-based Pearson Education, are presented not only for their substance, but also to teach children how to streamline bulky writing.



"We are doing a terrible disservice to this generation and the next if we only present them with one side of the argument and bombard them with ideas contrary to the American ideal."

- Glyn Wright, Eagle Forum


"Parents should insist on reviewing their children's school assignments," said Glyn Wright, executive director of the Eagle Forum, a think tank that opposes implementation of Common Core. "Many parents will be shocked to find that some 'Common Core-approved' curriculum is full of inappropriate left-wing notions, disinformation, and fails to teach the truth of American exceptionalism and opportunity."

The politically charged lesson appears in a worksheet titled "Hold the Flag High," in which students are taught about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The assignment asks students to make examples of sentences; "less wordy by replacing the underlined words with a possessive noun phrase." They are then presented with a half-dozen sentences describing the job duties of a U.S. president.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL WORKSHEET

But if the lessons are meant as a primer on the Constitution, there's another problem, note critics. The job of making sure laws are fair is not the president's, but the judicial branch's. The executive branch's duty is to administer laws. And the example that places the well-being of the nation above the "wants of an individual" appears to run counter to the basic principles of the Bill of Rights.

"We are doing a terrible disservice to this generation and the next if we only present them with one side of the argument and bombard them with ideas contrary to the American ideal," Wright said. "In doing so, we allow our children to be indoctrinated instead of educated."

A Pearson spokesperson told FoxNews.com the "Hold the Flag High" worksheet will undergo some editing of its own, based on issues raised by critics, including Education Action Group Foundation.

"These particular questions appear in a fifth-grade unit of Pearson's Reading Street, an English Language Arts program," the Pearson official said. "They accompany a selection about soldiers during the Civil War, and they attempt to make a connection between that passage and language skills. As with all our curricular materials, they underwent a thorough development and review process. Still, we are always open to improving our work ... Based on this feedback, we will be modifying the worksheet to clarify these questions."

The official adds that while they are currently being used as common core material, versions of this worksheet including the questions of the Possessive Nouns section have been around and copyrighted since 2007.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative was devised by an association of the nation's governors and backed by the Obama administration in 2009 with the goal of setting a uniform standard for grades K-12 nationwide. Some 45 states, in many cases enticed by federal grants, have signed on and testing of students in grades 3-8 and once in high school is scheduled to begin next year.

Critics of the initiative say that school districts will devise curriculums to maximize their students' performance on the national exams; some in fact, have already done so. The same critics also claim that Common Core math standards barely cover basic geometry or second-year algebra and that the classics are all but ignored in English classes.

While Common Core has plenty of defenders -- and may prove beneficial -- critics maintain that it is not the federal government's job to impose educational standards.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/10/common-core-lessons-blasted-for-sneaking-politics-into-elementary-classrooms/?

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In this worksheet, certain questions are misleading students on the basics of the US political system. Pearson Education, who produced this lesson worksheet told FoxNews.com that they are reviewing the worksheets and will make necessary changes for future copies. (eagnews.org)

(Isn't this too little, too late?)   ( I personally think it shows their true intentions)

[Warph]

Barack H. Obama during his college days

Democratic strategist James Carville said Monday in light of President Barack Obama's declining poll numbers, maybe he should take a page from an infamous Canadian mayor.

"I think the best thing he can do is take a toke on the mayor of Toronto's crack pipe, because his numbers are about 48," Carville joked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," referring to Rob Ford, who has admitted smoking crack.

Scandal: Toronto mayor Rob Ford admitted last week that he has smoked crack cocaine

[Warph]