HALF-FULL REPORT 02/14/14

Happy Valentines Day!

The big news this week was the announcement by our caudillo-in-chief that for the 27^th time, he’s going to make a unilateral change in Obamacare.  This is both outrageous and amusing, I noted in a column earlier this week. 

Obamacare "is just another word for laws we ignore together," said David Harsanyi.  It’s "stuff you do in a banana republic," said Charles Krauthammer, who predicted Zero ultimately will cancel the employer mandate altogether.

Many liberals too expressed dismay at this blatantly political move by our Fielding Mellish in mirrored sunglasses.  In addition to those I cited in the column, Kirsten Powers said: "I’m tired of defending Obamacare."

"The left’s indifference to Obama’s executive power grabs is beginning to border on a cult of personality," said liberal law Prof Jonathan Turley, who teaches constitutional law at George Washington University.

In a Fox News poll Wednesday (2/12), even Democrats (54 percent) and liberals (56 percent) disapproved of what the caudillo-in-chief is doing.  The good news for Democrats, David Freddoso notes wryly, is the constant amendment of Obamacare by ukase gives them an excuse for not having read the bill before they passed it.

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Companies which get the one year delay must swear to the IRS on penalty of perjury that they did not fire anybody to get down to 99 employees, according to a proposed rule the Obamunists published in the Federal Register.

Firms must certify to the IRS that ObamaCare was not and is not a factor in their staffing decisions, even though it is obvious that many employers of economic necessity are trimming staff and reducing hours due to the burden of ObamaCare’s mandates, said Investors Business Daily.

"The administration thus acknowledges that its policy creates a perverse incentive and orders employers not to act upon it," said Jim Taranto of the Wall Street Journal.  "Call it Omertacare – a government-imposed conspiracy of silence."

Every 501C4 the IRS audited was conservative, said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Vulnerable Dems in the Senate want the IRS to hound conservatives more.

There’s not even a "smidgen of corruption" at the IRS, Zero told Bill O’Reilly.

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Despite Omertacare, feverish spinning, and an allegedly fixed web site, enrollment in Obamacare in January was substantially lower than it had been in December.

HHS announced Wednesday that 3.3 million have signed up for Obamacare, but wouldn’t say how many have paid.  Industry experts think roughly 20 percent haven’t.

"The question about nonpayment is not a technicality," said Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine. "Many of those purchasing the insurance may be first-time buyers and not understand that they must pay their bill before coverage starts rather than long after the fact, as they can with a credit card transaction. Or it may be that some enrolled with no intention of paying or thinking that the hype about the glories of ObamaCare they’ve heard in the mainstream media and from the president absolved them of the obligation to pay for it. But either way, the large number of non-payments renders the enrollment figures broadcast this week utterly meaningless."

Nobody outside the administration thinks the HHS numbers are kosher.  But even if they were, "it is clear by now that the administration will not reach the original CBO estimate of 7 million enrollees by the deadline at the end of March,"said Jay Cost.

Those "Brosurance" ads in Colorado were a spectacular failure, which suggests it’s going to be hard to get healthy young people to sign up. It won’t help that Healthcare.gov won’t be working on National Youth Enrollment Day. 

Fewer are signing up chiefly because of rate shock, Allahpundit suspects.

"It doesn’t make sense that, having once failed to enroll, people would stop trying forever. It does make sense that, having finally seen what they’ll be paying in premiums, they’ve made a reasoned decision to pass."

If you suspected Zero was lying when he said he was unaware of Healthcare.gov’s problems, you were right.

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It was jump the shark week for Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who told the Dallas Morning News Tuesday that hey, maybe she could support a ban on abortions after 20 weeks. 

I doubt she’ll be getting as many Valentines as she’s accustomed to from the feminists. She got this big one from the New York Times, which appeared, embarrassingly, the same day as her Mother of All Flip Flops.

In answer to the question the New York Times posed:  "Can Wendy Davis have it all?" The voters of Texas appear to be saying "no."

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A Republican won the special election Tuesday to replace Bob "the groper" Filner as mayor of San Diego, and won big, despite being heavily outspent by the Dems and public employee unions.

Democrats were stunned at the margin," said John Fund of National Review. "In the November open primary, Democrats had won 54 percent of the ballots cast and were convinced they could win the runoff between Faulconer and Alvarez."

It’s especially good news if this time line means what San Diego pundit W.C. Varones thinks it means:

Feb. 3-6: Poll shows the mayor’s race is a dead heat.

Feb 8: Obama endorses Alvarez

Feb. 11: Faulconer crushes Alvarez by 9 points.

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Speaking of elections, Herb Meyer, once a key aide to the greatest ever CIA Director, William J. Casey, points us to a new book which describes how Ronald Reagan, the greatest of our 20^th Century presidents, won them.  It’s written by Grove City College Prof. Paul Kengor, an affable and brilliant young man who has become the foremost historian of the Reagan era.

The 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative  is a "beautifully written summary of what Ronald Reagan believed and how he communicated his beliefs to those of us he cheerfully called ‘my fellow Americans,’" Herb Meyer says. "Kengor has sifted through President Reagan’s speeches, blended those words with Reagan’s actions in office, and distilled from all this the eleven principles on which Ronald Reagan lived and governed."

The secret to Reagan’s success, say Kengor and Meyer, is that while he played to his base, "he did it in a way that expanded his base across party lines and into the hearts of ordinary Americans who just wanted to be left alone to do their jobs, raise their kids, and pursue their dreams," Meyer said.

Kengor’s book is a roadmap to victory for conservatives today "if only they have the brains and courage to grasp it."

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The House passed a "clean" debt ceiling bill Wednesday, prompting some conservative groups to howl for the head of Speaker John Boehner.  Later that day, after Senate GOP leaders joined the Dems on the vote to bring it to the floor, the Senate approved.  This prompted the usual suspects to howl for their heads, too.

They should chill.  There is no way the Dems would have agreed to spending cuts.  The debt ceiling is a big political loser for our side, for reasons I outlined here.

Still, it would have been nice if Republicans had attached to the debt ceiling bill a provision forbidding an Obamacare bailout of insurance companies.  Democrats in the Senate almost certainly would have opposed it, but they’d have had a hard time explaining to their constituents why.

But Boehner couldn’t get enough Republicans on board to pass even that.  This is less a failure of leadership than a reflection of the divisions, the lunk-headed obstinacy, the "my way or the highway" attitude of so many in the GOP caucus.

In the end, all but 28 Republicans (most of them old bulls on the Appropriations committee) voted against raising the debt limit.  But they were enough to force Boehner to punt.  If they voted with Democrats to pass a "clean" bill while most Republicans were insisting on conditions, it would have been politically disastrous.

"I don’t care who the Speaker was," an aide to a conservative Representative told Ross Kaminski of the American Spectator. "It’s hard to see how this would have gone down differently, given all the different factions. But here’s what we really need to be talking about: Democrats have absolutely checked out in terms of fiscal responsibility. It’s one thing to say you won’t negotiate on a debt ceiling increase. It’s another thing to blindly increase our nation’s debt by trillions of dollars."

There’s an ugly reckoning coming soon with runaway deficit spending.  But with the Dems in control of the Senate and the White House, there’s nothing meaningful the GOP can do now to prevent it.

Republicans are on record warning of the consequences.  They voted overwhelmingly against raising the debt limit.  So when the reckoning comes, it will be nearly as clear as it is with Obamacare now who is to blame.  Prompt passage of a clean debt limit bill keeps the focus on Obamacare.

Jack Wheeler’s friend Quin Hillyer praised Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for his courage on the debt ceiling. National Review’s Charles Cooke agrees.

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Wednesday was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  Zero honored it by sending out a picture of himself.

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The director of the Obamacare health exchange in Colorado has been placed on administrative leave after she pled guilty in a U.S. District Court in Montana Feb. 6 to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings.

The FBI is looking into allegations of criminal fraud in the exchange web site in Oregon.  John Kitzhaber, the Dem governor, may have known about it.

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Dozens of U.S. warships were in the waters nearby during the attack on our consulate in Benghazi on 9/11/2012, according to this map obtained by Judicial Watch.

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Guess what CBS blames for the cold weather that’s blanketing much of the country this week. CNN agrees.

In another sign of accelerating global warming, Lake Superior could freeze over.  The record for maximum ice coverage, 94.7 percent, was set in 1979.

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Liberals have begun to notice how cheesy Zero’s ambassadorial appointments are.  Comedian Jon Stewart mocks them here.

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Mirable dictu!  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the 2^nd Amendment means what it says.

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The Hero of the Week is Billy Heroman of Heroman’s Flowers in Louisiana who says he’s cutting jobs because of Obamacare – IRS threats be damned.

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This was another bad week for the United States.  (They all will be as long as Zero is in the White House.)  But it was a worse week for Democrats. 

A big majority opposes Obama’s efforts to rule by decree, the latest of which is so blatantly political even liberal journalists felt compelled to criticize it. Dismal enrollment figures for January indicated Obamacare is imploding.  Obamacare will hurt Democrats "irreparably," Charles Krauthammer thinks.  By making lemonade out of the lemon a fractious GOP caucus handed them on the debt ceiling, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell kept the focus on Obamacare. 

So I pronounce the glass more than half full. I’m off to buy some chocolates for my Valentine.