HALF-FULL REPORT 10/25/13

In 280 BC, King Pyrrhus of Epirus, in what’s now northwestern Greece, came to the aid of a Greek colony threatened by Roman conquest.  At the battle of Heraclea he defeated a larger Roman army, but suffered heavy losses. (According to the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus,15,000 Romans out of a force of 35,000 were killed, many taken prisoner. Pyrrhus suffered 13,000 casualties out of a force of 25,000.)

Sycophantic aides congratulated King Pyrrhus on his "great victory."  Pyrrhus knew better. "Another such victory, and I shall be ruined," he said.

Democrats are learning the hard way what the expression "Pyrrhic victory" means. Dr. John, a health care professional who blogs at Flopping Aces, explains why:

"Obama won the shutdown battle and his prize was the country discovering just how incompetent he is. The great irony of this is that had Obama given the GOP the delay they sought they could have hidden their galactic incompetence."

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In the last week, millions of "low information" voters received letters from their insurance companies informing them that because of Obamacare, their health insurance policy has been cancelled, or their premium has doubled.  Many more will receive such letters soon.

For a creature of media mythology like Barack Obama, nothing could be more dangerous than to permit reality to slap millions of "lofos" in the face.  It’ll be hard for the news media to piece its shattered shield back together.  More likely, damage will cascade:

"The collapse of ObamaCare is the tip of the iceberg for the magical Obama presidency," says Daniel Henninger. "All of a sudden, from Washington to Riyadh, Barack Obama’s credibility is melting."

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His mendacious – and hilarious — refusal to acknowledge Obamacare’s problems during his press conference/infomercial Monday hasn’t helped Zero’s credibility.  It wasn’t just conservatives who noticed the resemblance to the Sham Wow! guy:

"The press conference today was a bizarre mix of propaganda and crass salesmanship unbecoming of a president," said Gregory Ferenstein of Techcrunch.com. "The American people deserve an explanation, not a 1-800 number."

The Sham Wow comparison isn’t fair, says Instapundit.  His Web site worked.

CNN asked Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey to write this article about the "death spiral" of White House credibility.

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The president’s melting credibility has serious consequences.  Zero’s cozying up to Iran and Syria are causing what passes for our allies among Sunni Muslim Arabs to back away from the United States.

"We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States," said a Saudi foreign policy analyst.

American foreign policy in the Middle East has entered Bizarro World, says Jonathan Schanzer. 

"Mr. Obama’s partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him," Mr. Henninger said. "They don’t trust him. Whether it’s the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they’ve all had their fill of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that happens, the world’s important business doesn’t get done."

The silver lining in this darkening cloud is that Arab states fearful of Iran and disillusioned with Obama are drawing closer to Israel.  That bodes well for the future…if we can get through the rest of Zero’s term without WWIII.  That’ "if" gets bigger every day.  Iran could be just a month away from having a nuke.

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Now that Democrats know what’s in Obamacare, it scares the hell out of them, says the Chicago Tribune.

Panic over Obamacare "is splitting the caucus wide open," writes liberal Jonathan Chait in the New Yorker. Here are some signs of mounting terror:

"We need to consider delaying the Obamacare mandate, and leveling with the American people," said the very liberal Sen. Richard Blumenthal from deep blue Connecticut. This may be fueling his angst.

We should be open to delaying the individual mandate, says Rep. Debbie Dimwit, D-Fla, chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ten Democrats in the Senate have sent a letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius requesting a delay.  "Delay is now officially more bipartisan than Obamacare itself," notes Bryan Preston.

The president needs to "man up" and fire somebody for the screw-ups in the rollout, say Reps. Rick Nolan, D-Minn, and Sean Maloney, D-NY.

Savvy liberal Charlie Cook explains why Democrats should be panicky. Things will only get worse for the Dems, say George Will and Kim Strassel and Peggy Noonan.  But no one is more upset about the Obamacare rollout than this guy:

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Fueling panic among Democrats are stories I bet you never thought you’d see in the "mainstream" media.

Healthcare.gov understates prices by as much as half, said CBS News.  The rollout is a "total fiasco," said CBS political director John Dickerson.

Blowing up Healthcare.gov and starting over is the best option, said CNN.  That Web site, by the way, cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

The bungled launch may be confirming Republican warnings about Obamacare, said NBC’s David Gregory.

Obamacare disproportionately hurts poor, rural Americans, said the New York Times.

Obamacare backfires on literally everyone, said Robert Samuelson, economics writer for the Washington Post.

Megan McArdle, economics writer for Bloomberg News, compared Obamacare to the Iraq war and Three Mile Island.

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The Obamacare law may be the most sloppily drafted piece of legislation ever passed by Congress.

Four pending lawsuits could kill Obamacare subsidies in most of the country.  In two, judges have rejected the Justice Department’s frantic efforts to have them dismissed. 

The IRS says people who buy health insurance on federal exchanges are eligible for tax credits and subsidies.  That’s probably what the Dems intended, but that’s not what the law they wrote says.  It authorizes subsidies only for insurance purchased on an exchange "established by a state." 

This is a big deal, because 34 states – essentially all those with Republican governors – have chosen not to form state exchanges.  If plaintiffs win, nobody in those states can get an Obamacare subsidy.  Their argument is summarized here.

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line, who is a first rate attorney, thinks the government can win only if courts are "willing to ignore the plain meaning of the ACA in order to bail Congress out of a huge hole that it dug."

Which, "given the distasteful way Congress went about enacting this law," Mirengoff doubts they will be.

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The Obamunists are depending on the fine for not having health insurance to dragoon/bludgeon/bamboozle enough healthy young people to buy insurance to subsidize the old, sick and indigent.  But, says John Hinderaker, another attorney who blogs at Power Line:

 "The mandate is a sham, and always has been. Theoretically, someone who chooses to be uninsured owes the government money, but the government is prohibited by the ACA from trying to collect it."

The way the law is drafted, the only way the IRS can collect the penalty is by withholding your tax refund.  So all you have to do to avoid the penalty is to take out enough exemptions so you don’t overpay your taxes.

The idiocy of this "is one of the reasons why many analysts say that Obamacare was designed to fail," Hinderaker says.

I acknowledge the possibility, but more likely it’s yet another drafting boo boo.  The conspiracy theory assumes that once people are hopping mad at the government bozos for screwing up Obamacare, they’ll clamor to give those government bozos vastly more power.  I wouldn’t bet the ranch on that.

Occam’s Razor should guide us.  The simplest explanation for what appears to be stupidity is stupidity. Zero and the Obamunists has given Americans lots of reasons recently for thinking they’re not very smart.  I doubt it’s because they’re such terrific actors. 

"Perhaps they did want single payer all along, in their secret heart of hearts, but it’s ludicrous to think that they were capable of designing and pulling off a conspiracy of that magnitude," says Megan McArdle.

* * * *

Journalists have forgotten about Benghazi, but Americans haven’t.  By a margin of 60-28, respondents to a Fox News poll say the Obama administration is trying to cover up what happened there on 9/11/2012.  That’s a big increase from a year ago.

"60 Minutes" will broadcast an interview Sunday (10/27) with one of the witnesses to the attack the administration has been trying to hide. 

* * * *

Zero is trying to force upon the Marines a unisex cover (hat) for the dress uniform.

"The thin new covers) have a feminine line that some officials think would make them look just as good on female marines as on males – in keeping with the Obama directive," the Washington Times reports.

The unisex cover isn’t going over well with Marines, or former Marines.  It makes male Marines look "French," some think.  The unpopular uniform change comes at a time when the military is being starved for funds, allegedly because of the budget sequester.

"Wasting money to make our warriors look like more ladylike is among the most idiotic ideas imaginable,"

Bryan Preston thinks.  Amen.  Except maybe for Obamacare.

* * * *

Erling Davis, an Obamacare operator who Sean Hannity called on his radio show Monday, was fired after the broadcast, apparently because she told Sean that once she gave applicants who called details about Obamacare, hardly any of them liked it. 

Hannity plans to give Ms. Davis a year’s salary ($26,000) and help her find another job.  Hannity wonders why she was fired, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hasn’t been.

* * * *

A Rasmussen poll Tuesday (10/22) showed Dem Terry McAuliffe’s lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli ballooned from 6 to 17 percentage points, chiefly because of a backlash against the GOP for the government "shut-down."

But when my old pal Fritz Wenzel began polling the day Rasmussen stopped, he found the race in a dead heat, 41-40.  One, or both, could be way off.  But both Fritz and Scott Rasmussen are first rate pollsters with good track records, and solid conservatives.  Could the Obamacare rollout have overcome the shutdown backlash this much this soon?

* * * *

Recalls of gun-grabbing state legislators may spread to California.

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The HFR this week has been all Obamacare all the time, pretty much. There are some lessons in this.

Once the "shut-down" ended, and the news media could no longer hyperventilate about largely imaginary ills they blamed on Republicans, the botched Obamacare rollout became far and away the number one story, and will remain so for weeks and months – unless Republicans step on their dicks again.

The Obamacare rollout has done vastly more for the GOP than ever could have been achieved by the most brilliant strategies, the most soaring rhetoric, the most steadfast courage. 

The events of this week have made it clear the premise on which Sens. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz based their shutdown strategy – that once Obamacare began, it would prove too popular ever to repeal – was completely, totally, preposterously wrong. 

The opposite is true.  In an electorate in which lofos predominate, and a biased media spins madly for Democrats, the only way to get the attention of millions of Americans is to let reality belt them in the mouth. 

It was a lousy strategy in other respects, too, as Clark Judge, who was once a speechwriter for the Great Communicator, explains here.

The shutdown did enormous harm to Republicans.  During it, the generic Congressional ballot in Rasmussen’s polling went from a 40-40 tie to a 43-36 advantage for Democrats.  To make light of it, as my friend Andy McCarthy does here, is delusional.  But the damage isn’t likely to last.  Within a few months – possibly within a few weeks – the GOP is likely to benefit more from having taken a strong stand against Obamacare than if the shutdown had not been triggered. 

But this will be true only if the GOP avoids doing in the future the things that made Americans so pissed at them during the shutdown.  The fate of the nation depends on this, because two tipping points were passed this week.

There is now nothing Barack Obama can do to keep from becoming the lamest of lame ducks far earlier than any president ever before.  His presidency is based on myth, and the ugly reality of the Obamacare rollout has shattered it for good.  The news media can’t resurrect the shield they’d erected around him, no matter how hard they try.

Fewer journalists will.  There’ve been more negative stories about Obama in the "mainstream" media in the last week than during his entire first term.  This is in part because some liberal journalists who’ve retained shards of integrity genuinely are shocked by the scope of the administration’s incompetence and mendacity the rollout has revealed.  It’s more because if they don’t cover Obamacare’s woes, their own credibility will suffer.  Events far away – overseas or in the future – can be spun.  What’s happening to millions here at home can’t be.

Soon another factor will take hold.  It’s clear now – and will become clearer still in the next few days and weeks – that Obamacare is a hopeless mess.  Journalists can’t spin that reality, but they’ll try to spin blame.

The Obamunists are particularly inept, but Obamacare’s problems stem from the nature of big government, TTPers know.  Liberals won’t want to admit this.  They’ll place the blame for Obamacare’s failures not on its concept, but on its execution.  The days of Barack Obama getting good press are over.  He’ll fall fast.

And take many Democrats in Congress down with him.  By hanging together to hand Zero his Pyrrhic victory on the shutdown, they’ve waited too long to jump ship.  There isn’t much they can do avoid a bloodbath in the midterms.

Only the Republicans can save Zero and his party from the fate they so richly deserve.

What should Republicans do to keep from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?  I’m running way long again, so that discussion will have to wait until next week.  In the meantime, enjoy the schadenfreude from the Democrats’ misery.  I’m off to drink a toast or two to the hero of the week: Reality.