10/31/2013

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: IF YOU LIKE YOUR (HEALTHCARE) PLAN...YOU CAN KEEP IT!...



YEA...NOT SO MUCH...

SINCE WHEN DID THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BECOME THE LIAR-IN-CHIEF!?

DR

THANKS TO NEW YORK MAGAZINE FOR THIS COMPOSITION


10/29/2013

GOVERNMENT 'MINING' SOCIAL MEDIA FOR INFORMATION ON HEALTH BEHAVIOR

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is “mining” Facebook and Twitter to improve its social media footprint and to assess how Tweets can be used as “change-agents” for health behaviors.
The NLM, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have software installed on government computers that will store data from social media as part of a $30,000 project announced last week.
“The National Library of Medicine is the world’s largest biomedical library and makes its stored information available online at no charge to consumers, health professionals, and biomedical scientists through a diverse suite of resources,” the agency said in a contract posted on Oct. 23. “Evaluating how its databases and other resources are utilized is an important component of continuing quality improvement and has long been an on-going program of NLM management through a potpourri of monitoring tools.”
“The world-wide explosion in the use of social media provides a unique opportunity for sampling sentiment and use patterns of NLM’s ‘customers’ and for comparing NLM to other sources of health-related information,” the agency said.
“By examining relevant tweets and other comments,” the contract said, “NLM will gain insights to extent of use, context for which information was sought, and effects of various health-related announcements and events on usage patterns.”
Specifically, NLM will look at the “value of tweets and other messages as teaching tools and change-agents for health-relevant behavior.”
“The overarching objective of these studies is to obtain a richer understanding of how consumers, clinicians, researchers actually look for the health-related information they seek, and what they do with what they find,” NLM said in a response to frequently asked questions about the project.
OhMyGov Inc., a media company that specializes in the promotion of government agencies, will be paid $30,660 to monitor social media for NLM for one year.
The company will install software on computers at NLM headquarters in Bethesda, Md. to “maintain a comprehensive ‘universe’ of social media data.” Government bureaucrats will be trained on the software so they can search the database for health-related content.
“Content from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, discussion boards, video and image sharing sites will be maintained by the Contractor and kept up-to-date in a timely manner and made available for query by Government,” the contract said.
When asked by a vendor if they are interested in storing the data for “historical analysis,” NLM said “Yes.”
The project will also track NLM’s impact on social media in comparison to its “competitors,” which they define as Google, Mayo Clinic, and WebMD.
“Demographic characteristics” of Facebook and Twitter posts will be noted “to the extent permitted by privacy regulations.” NLM said they are interested in the location, number of followers, and academic degrees held by users.
The contractor OhMyGov Inc. is partially funded by the National Science Foundation, and a member of President Obama’s “Startup America Initiative,” a public-private partnership designed to spur entrepreneurship.
“The OhMyGov Media Monitoring and Policy Analysis system is the first and only business intelligence software completely politically focused,” according to the company’s website. “It provides real-time data mining, analysis, and visual analytics to uncover patterns in message uptake and critical insights into how issues are being characterized by Congress as well as the media, public, and key stakeholders.”
Requests for comment from NLM were not returned.
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DR
H/T: DRUDGE

OBAMA LIED...HEALTHCARE DIED...



DR

H/T: WEASEL ZIPPERS

10/26/2013

#StopWatchingUs - THOUSANDS MARCH ON NATIONAL MALL TO PROTEST NSA SPYING ON AMERICANS



And this -


Thousands are marching on the National Mall in Washington, DC to protest covert NSA surveillance operations on the anniversary of the Patriot Act. The organizers are planning to present Congress with a petition which has acquired over 570,000 signatures.
Stop Watching Us is a collective of 100 public advocacy groups, among them the American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom Works, as well as individuals like Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who worked with Edward Snowden to expose many of the NSA’s surveillance procedures. The began at 11:30 am local time on October 26 – the 12th anniversary of the US Patriot Act.
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Kinda pathetic when we have to go to Russia to get our news...the alphabet "news" channels are completely ignoring this...

DR

MOOCHELLE OBAMA'S COLLEGE CLASSMATE AWARDED NO BID CONTRACT FOR OBAMACARE WEBSITE

BEEN WONDERING WHERE MOOCH HAS BEEN LATELY?

I MEAN SERIOUSLY, THE WOMAN IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND...

WELL TAKE A GANDER...

FROM THE DAILY CALLER:


First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.
Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.
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DR

10/25/2013

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA THE COMMUNIST

If you ever had any doubt that Barack Hussein Obama does not embrace communism, think again...

Here, in his own words..."..the core of his faith"...is communism...



DR

10/23/2013

JAY CARNEY WALKS OUT OF PRESS CONFERENCE



Press Secretary Jay Carney walks out on reporters asking questions about the healthcare.gov website on 10/22/2013

When will the American people get objective reporting of the news? Will these sycophants continue to carry the water for this administration?

Inquiring minds want to know...

DR

10/11/2013

WHO SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT?

Thomas Sowell, gifted writer that he is, has once again made a great analysis of the Democrat led government shutdown. I won't even try to expand on his work. Here it is in it's entirety, as published on Townhall:
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Even when it comes to something as basic, and apparently as simple and straightforward, as the question of who shut down the federal government, there are diametrically opposite answers, depending on whether you talk to Democrats or to Republicans.
There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going -- except for ObamaCare.
This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.
As for the House of Representatives' right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.
Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.
ObamaCare is indeed "the law of the land," as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.
But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.
The hundreds of thousands of government workers who have been laid off are not idle because the House of Representatives did not vote enough money to pay their salaries or the other expenses of their agencies -- unless they are in an agency that would administer ObamaCare.
Since we cannot read minds, we cannot say who -- if anybody -- "wants to shut down the government." But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare.
The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he wants a "clean" bill from the House of Representatives, and some in the media keep repeating the word "clean" like a mantra. But what is unclean about not giving Harry Reid everything he wants?
If Senator Reid and President Obama refuse to accept the money required to run the government, because it leaves out the money they want to run ObamaCare, that is their right. But that is also their responsibility.
You cannot blame other people for not giving you everything you want. And it is a fraud to blame them when you refuse to use the money they did vote, even when it is ample to pay for everything else in the government.
When Barack Obama keeps claiming that it is some new outrage for those who control the money to try to change government policy by granting or withholding money, that is simply a bald-faced lie. You can check the history of other examples of "legislation by appropriation" as it used to be called.
Whether legislation by appropriation is a good idea or a bad idea is a matter of opinion. But whether it is both legal and not unprecedented is a matter of fact.
Perhaps the biggest of the big lies is that the government will not be able to pay what it owes on the national debt, creating a danger of default. Tax money keeps coming into the Treasury during the shutdown, and it vastly exceeds the interest that has to be paid on the national debt.
Even if the debt ceiling is not lifted, that only means that government is not allowed to run up new debt. But that does not mean that it is unable to pay the interest on existing debt.
None of this is rocket science. But unless the Republicans get their side of the story out -- and articulation has never been their strong suit -- the lies will win. More important, the whole country will lose.
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DR

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN...


10/08/2013

TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR CONGRESS AS THEY CONTEMPLATE RAISING THE DEBT CEILING...AGAIN...

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
--Thomas Jefferson,letter to John Taylor, 1816
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DR

10/07/2013

(PROVOKING) THOUGHT OF THE DAY...

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."
Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
--------------
An interesting statement, to say the least...
And what, exactly, is 'licentiousness' you ask...
Licentiousness: Acting without regard to law, ethics, or the rights of others.
There was a lot of wisdom within our Founding Fathers...wisdom that has been passed down through the ages...and that same wisdom having been recently set aside in order to embrace "progressive" ideas...
But are these ideas that are being put into place by this administration really anything 'new'?...
From Mr. Ames' speech in 1788 it would appear not...
Thing that always confounds me is this:
This experiment people call the United States of America is the only one of its kind in the history of the world...a republic set up using the Rule of Law...a Constitution written to minimize the size of government, leaving most decisions to the people...
Why have there been so many attempts to subvert this great nation over the years?
Why - if people do not believe in this form of real freedom - why don't people simply move to a country that is a dictatorship or other form of controlling ruler where they can live in their nirvana?
Why impose their ideas on people that cherish freedom?
Does it intimidate these socialist lovers of iron-fist ruling to see people able to make decisions free of interference from an all-seeing, all-controlling government run by those that would imprison, silence or do harm to anyone that dare speak out against them?
It does make me wonder...
I wonder why, if those that embrace the teachings of Karl Marx and others of his mindset, they are not happy until their controlling of others is forced upon free people...
DR

10/04/2013

FACT SHEET FOR CONGRESS UNDER OBAMACARE FROM OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT (OPM)

Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Members of Congress and 
Congressional Staff 

• OPM has published a final rule to clarify eligibility for health insurance benefits 
coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program for 
Members of Congress and certain congressional staff members due to§1312 of the 
Affordable Care Act.
• The following changes have been made in the final rule:
• OPM has clarified that Members of Congress and designated 
congressional staff must enroll in an appropriate SHOP as determined by 
the Director in order to receive a Government contribution.
• References to annuitants purchasing coverage on the Exchange have been 
deleted in the final rule.
• OPM has provided a one month extension for staff designations for the 
2014 plan year.
• Additional non-substantive edits have been made to improve clarity.
• Current FEHB plan coverage for Members of Congress and congressional staff 
employed by the official office of a Member of Congress will terminate on 
December 31, 2013. An additional 31 days of coverage is included after the 
termination date at no cost to the enrollee.
• Members of Congress and designated congressional staff who choose to purchase 
health insurance via the appropriate SHOP as determined by the Director may do 
so with an effective date of January 1, 2014.
• Given the location of Congress in the District of Columbia, OPM will work with 
the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority (DC SHOP) to implement this rule.
For plan year 2014, Members of Congress and designated congressional staff will 
choose from 112 options in the Gold Metal tier on the DC SHOP.
• Open Season dates for DC SHOP coverage will coincide with FEHB Open 
Season dates. Coverage will be effective January 1, 2014.
• OPM is planning to launch a web site with additional information in the near 
future.
• Nothing in this rule or the law prevents a Member of Congress or designated 
congressional staff from declining a Government contribution for him or herself 
by choosing a different option for their health insurance coverage.
• All Members of Congress, including representatives of U.S. Territories, and their 
designated staff will be required to purchase health insurance via the DC SHOP in 
order to receive a Government contribution. The DC SHOP offers health plan 
options with in-network access to medical providers across the nation and 
overseas.
• Members of Congress and congressional administrative staff are best equipped to 
make the determination as to whether an individual is employed by the “official 
office” of that member. Designations must be made prior to November 2013 for 
the coverage year starting January 1, 2014 and October for subsequent plan years.
 • No Federal funds, including administrative funds, will be used to cover abortions 
or administer plans that cover abortions.
• Nothing in OPM’s final rule changes eligibility for other Federal benefits 
programs. 

AMERICANS ARE BEING FORCED INTO OBAMACARE **AND** HAVE TO SUBSIDIZE CONGRESS' GOLD PLAN UNDER OBAMACARE

So, we not only are being forced into the abomination known as Obamacare...

we also have to subsidize...to the tune of 75% of their premium...the GOLD plan that Obama has dictated they must choose...

you see...Congress members and their staff are subsidized...by their "employer"...75% of their premiums...something not one of us are able to get...

THIS is what people are up in arms about...it's not wanting grandma thrown over a hill...it's not wanting women to suffer...none of the moronic things that liberals have been throwing around, accusing Republicans of being heartless SOBs...

who do you think the "employer" is in this case? Government has only one way to get money to pay for all the transactions they make...TAXES...

from The Hill:


Regulations issued by the Obama administration this week would require members of Congress to buy one of the top-tier insurance plans from the ObamaCare exchanges.

The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the House sent guidance to members of Congress this week, based on a directive from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), that says they must choose plans from the "gold" level of insurance coverage, not "bronze" or "silver" plans. "Platinum" is the only higher level of coverage under the exchanges. 


"For plan year 2014, Members of Congress and designated congressional staff will choose from 112 options in the Gold Metal tier on the DC SHOP," CAO said in a fact sheet that was emailed to Congress.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) called attention to this requirement in a House floor speech Thursday, in which he said the policy shows more favoritism toward members of Congress and their staff.

"We all … have to go and get the gold policy. Not the bronze, not the silver, the gold policy from the exchange. That's the only one we can get," he said.

"You see, bronze and silver's only good enough for everyone else in the country. For members of Congress and members of the Senate and their staff, it's gold or nothing."

The fact sheet also says that the only way for members of Congress to get subsidies for their insurance plan is by using the Washington, D.C., health insurance exchange, or SHOP.

"All Members of Congress, including representatives of U.S. Territories, and their designated staff will be required to purchase health insurance via the DC SHOP in order to receive a Government contribution," it says. "The DC SHOP offers health plan options with in-network access to medical providers across the nation and overseas."

Harris said allowing members to be subsidized for only buying gold-level coverage is probably why many members don't want to eliminate the subsidy for Congress, something Republicans have been pushing.

"That's why this fight has been for a clean CR. No one wants to remove that exemption," he said.

----------------

So there you have it...look beyond the smoke screens...push past the rhetoric...the truth of the matter is...

Democrats in congress are refusing to push for what they call a "clean CR"...in other words...a CR (continuing resolution) without the mandate Republicans put in to defund Obamacare until this mess is straightened out...

these elected officials...who make more money than the average middle-class American...who get more subsidies than there are flies at a city dump...these greedy, dishonest, self-serving people are lying - once again - to serve their own purpose...

Democrats are pushing for this "clean CR" because they WANT THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS TO PAY FOR CONGRESS' INSURANCE AS WELL AS THEIR OWN INSURANCE UNDER OBAMACARE...

I, for one, have had enough...

DR

TODAY'S THOUGHT...

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, 1808
DR

10/03/2013

REBELS THAT JOHN MCCAIN CLAIMS ARE 'MODERATE' HANG A BABY'S HEAD FROM A TREE; SLICE A WOMAN IN HALF AND HANG EACH HALF ON A DIFFERENT TREE

For more than two years, as fighting has escalated throughout Syria, a group of villages peopled by government supporters in the mountains above this coastal city has been spared any attacks.
In spite of their proximity to the Turkish border, across which rebel fighters are armed and financed, farmers continued their lives as normal, even though as Alawites allied to the Shia sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs they could have been obvious targets...
Shadi, a 32-year-old officer in a local defence unit that is separate from the Syrian army, was lightly wounded during the government's counter-attack. "When we got into the village of Balouta I saw a baby's head hanging from a tree. There was a woman's body which had been sliced in half from head to toe and each half was hanging from separate apple trees. It made me feel I wanted to do something wild," he recalled.
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On September 3, 2013 John McCain was on Fox News and said the following:

Seriously, McCain??? Really???
Defending rebels when they scream Allah Ahkbar??
Claiming the rebels are MODERATE??
I tell you...the stench coming from the capitol of our great nation is getting worse by the day...no...by the hour...
DR

10/01/2013

TODAY'S QUOTE...

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792
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Funny how the more things change...the more they stay the same...
DR