RedState Briefing 12/02/2013

Morning Briefing For December 2, 2013 >> Today's Sponsor 1.  Healthcare.gov Still Barely Works As we get back up and running from the Thanksgiving Holiday, the deadline for the Obamacare website has come and gone. CNN was able to get it to crash live on national television. But that’s okay. The Obama Administration got the New York Times to run a full page ad . . . errr . . . they actually called it journalism … claiming that the site is better. They can’t actually claim it is fully operational, but remember their goal before we adjourned for Thanksgiving was just 80%. Like in so many other areas, the Obama Administration is intent on defining deviancy as normal and failure as success. The website remains more or less unusable, but conservatives are wrong to fixate on it. The press is going to cheer it on the next few weeks as the 404 errors stay, but with less frequency. Conservatives need to keep their focus on the law overall. The website is a reflection of a terrible law. The law is causing millions to lose insurance, millions more to pay more for insurance, and the best the Democrats can do is claim it’d work well if the GOP didn’t think nasty thoughts about it. As we all get back to business today, we must remember the law itself is the problem — not the website. The website they can fix. We must deny them the opportunity to fix the law itself. Let the American people see big government in all its glory. Then offer a repeal. . . . please click here for the rest of the post → 2.  Assessing The Wake of Legislative Hiroshima The nuclear option, which was triggered by Harry Reid last Thursday, is always characterized by the “puppet press,” but never described. And there is good reason for this. The nuclear option is nothing but an exercise in fraud. A majority of senators stand up and vote for a reading of the Senate rules that is absolutely palpably factually untrue — and that everyone knows is untrue. It is like voting that “black” is “white.” But it is successful because the lie is enforced by absolute brute force. In this case, 52 Democrats successfully overturned the ruling of the Chair that 60 senators were required to shut down debate on a nomination — even though 60 senators were clearly required to shut down debate on a nomination. Like “you can keep your insurance,” it is the most recent step in the employment of demonstrable, indisputable fraud for the purpose of achieving legislative gains. You’ll notice the evidence that the perpetrators understand that they are liars and frauds: Originally, the “nuclear option” could, supposedly, only be invoked the first legislative day of Congress. Then, after the first day had passed, only for executive branch nominees. Now it applies to virtually all executive and judicial nominees.  . . . please click here for the rest of the post → 3.  Delayed, Not Dead: Obama’s Labor Department Announces Timing Of New Persuader Regulations Besides the damage that ObamaCare is doing to the job market, if people believed that the President’s administration would be a “lame duck” in the his second term, they don’t know the Obama Administration. In fact, without a re-election to worry about, Barack Obama’s second term may, in fact, be worse for companies than the first when it comes to new onerous regulations. . . . please click here for the rest of the post → 4.  Hunger Games: White House Does Photo Op Of @FLOTUS’ & @BarackObama’s Visit With Pro-Amnesty Activist & Ex-@SEIU Boss On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving–using @LaCasaBlanca, the Spanish twitter handle for the White House–Barack and Michelle Obama tweeted a picture of themselves posing with immigration reform activists who are on a hunger strike. . . . please click here for the rest of the post → 5.  @BarackObama’s (and the Democrats’) war on the scourge of piano teacher nonprofit associations. Background: the Federal Trade Commission got a bug up ah, decided that some boilerplate, non-binding, non-enforceable language in the Music Teachers National Association (a small nonprofit out of Ohio) represented an attempt to jack up prices in the high-stakes, ruthlessly competitive world of piano lessons (average lesson, according to the WSJ: $30). Not having any friends in court – and no, I don’t think that I’ll strike that out, given that it’s brutally truthful – the MTNA simply surrendered to the tender mercies of the FTC. The result? . . . please click here for the rest of the post → >> Today's Sponsor Sincerely yours, Erick Erickson Editor-in-Chief, RedState Forward This Email to a Friend Take me to RedState