Morning Briefing
For October 7, 2013
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1. Obamacare or the Debt Ceiling
Republicans are winning the shutdown fight, and Democrats know it.
People turning on the news this week came
away with the knowledge that it was about Obamacare and kept hearing
that Democrats wouldn’t negotiate. They also learned that for some
reason the President didn’t want Word War II veterans to tour their own
memorial, and Harry Reid won’t turn the funding on for cancer clinical
trials at the NIH. Oh, and the rollout for Obamacare is one big glitch.
Late
yesterday came word that the Amber Alert system has been shut down, but
Barack Obama’s federally funded golf course remains open. Catholics are
openly fretting that priests on military bases could get arrested for
performing mass — at the very least they are prohibited from doing so.
The President had to invite Congressional
Leaders to talk, Harry Reid had to sit down with Dana Bash of CNN to
explain himself, the shutdown coverage overall started to recede by
Friday, and the Democrats began to shift the conversation to the debt
limit.
The
polls are shifting against the Democrats. They will continue to shift as
more and more Americans realize that this fight is fundamentally about
the letter they just received informing them of massive premium
increases.
But the problem is that the expiration of the
debt limit is on October 17th (or thereabouts, as the President
manipulates it) and both Democrats and Republican Leadership have an
incentive to merge a “grand bargain” to increase the debt limit with a
continuing resolution that funds Obamacare. Both sides get to change the
conversation–one to protect an unpopular law and the other to minimize
political risk by reverting back to the norm–and get past two critical
leverage points with a blend of GOP and Democrat votes.
The result will be no substantial changes to
Obamacare. It will be funded in its entirety. Sure, they will repeal the
medical device tax and maybe add the Vitter language to have the
illusion that Congress is going to live under Obamacare. Nothing real
though.
Don’t believe me? Listen to the reporting. Its all grand bargain and debt limit. The negotiations do not include Obamacare.
So the
question is do we want to stop Obamacare or do we want to stop the debt
ceiling increase? My view is that we cannot do both at the same time. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. White House, Democratic Senate shuts down government’s AMBER Alert child-abduction site.
This is what you get when you go to http://amberalert.gov/ . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. Government Shutdown Gives Union-Free America Temporary Reprieve From Union Assaults
For the
vast majority of America’s private-sector workplaces, the nearly
week-old government shutdown has provided a welcome, but temporary
reprieve from assaults by unions accustomed to using Obama’s pro-union
National Labor Relations Board. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4. Are Illinois politicians beyond redemption?
Political scandals are not exclusive to any
one state – but Illinois seems to have perfected it. In fact, if you
type “Illinois gov” into Google and the search engine auto-completes
with “illinois gov jail.” And for good reason – four of the state’s past
seven governors have been sent to the big house, culminating in
Governor Rod Blagojevich’s high-profile attempt to sell a departing
Senator Obama’s Senate seat.
But, you
don’t have to hold the top job in order to get in on the corruption.
Meet Mike Jones, the Illinois lottery commissioner. Like many
bureaucrats, Michael Jones’ dream was apparently to work for the
government, make high-level contacts and then cash out in the private
sector. He succeeded on two of the three goals. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
5. Sticker Shock: Californians suddenly discover why all the Republican shouting over #Obamacare.
And BOOM goes the dynamite.
Meet Tom
Waschura, Californian, father of two – oh, and right: Obama supporter.
Just got a letter from his healthcare provider telling him that his
private health insurance just went up by ten grand a year . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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