RandySF
RandySF's JournalDick Cheney: White House lied about Obamacare health plans
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, citing his own experience with heart disease, slammed President Barack Obama and the administration on Monday for lying when they told people they could keep their plans and doctors under Obamacare.
“It was a lie. It was deliberate. They knew if they told the truth, the bill would’ve never passed,” Cheney on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
Cheney’s comments follow an appearance by Ezekiel Emanuel, former White House health care policy adviser, on “Fox News Sunday,” in which he defended Obama’s repeated claim that Americans would be able to keep their health plans and their doctors under Obamacare.
“He didn’t say you can have unlimited choice,” Emanuel said told host Chris Wallace. “If you want to pay more for an insurance company that covers your doctor, you can do that. This is matter of choice.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/dick-cheney-obamacare-doctors-100867.html#ixzz2mzURP7wK
Colin Kaepernick, 49ers overcome rival Seahawks, 19-17
SAN FRANCISCO – Colin Kaepernick has slayed his boogeyman.
The San Francisco 49ers quarterback got his first win against the Seattle Seahawks in his third start against the 49ers' despised NFC West rival.
Kaepernick got plenty Sunday in the 19-17 victory: four field goals from Phil Dawson, including the 22-yard game-winner with 26 seconds remaining, set up by a 51-yard run by running back Frank Gore.
San Francisco's win might not do much to change the division — the Seahawks (11-2) still have a two-game lead with three weeks remaining — but it certainly sent a message: This rivalry is very much alive.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2013/12/08/seahawks-49ers-week14/3911827/
No soul searching for Virginia GOP after losses
HOT SPRINGS, Va. — Virginia Republicans suffered a drubbing last month, losing all three statewide races (though a recount is impending in one). A year earlier, it was pretty much the same story as Mitt Romney got swamped and the party unexpectedly lost ground in the Senate.
But to hear GOP leaders in this once reliably red state tell it, this is no time to panic. No hint of discouragement is betrayed. Just as many party activists insisted after Romney’s loss, key figures here said that their shortcomings are cosmetic — that the problem is largely about campaign mechanics and how the conservative message is being delivered, not the message
So if the Commonwealth, sure to again be a top battleground in 2016, is a microcosm for the broader Republican Party, the GOP faithful here weren’t showing much interest in the kind of soul-searching many in the GOP believe is necessary if they want to win big elections again.
“All these reports of our demise are premature,” said Bill Howell, speaker of the state House of Delegates. “The cycle swings, and we’ll be back.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/virginia-republicans-100845.html#ixzz2mwArqjC5
The World Cup Draw Couldn’t Have Gone Much Worse For The Americans
The draw for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil completed this morning, and on first glance, it couldn’t have gone much worse for the United States Men’s National Team. The U.S. was drawn into Group G with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana, the first of which is among the favorites to win the entire tournament and the third of which has eliminated the United States from the previous two World Cups.
With all four teams ranked, according to ESPN’s Soccer Power Index, in the top 24 in the world (Germany is 4th, Portugal 16th, the U.S. 17th, and Ghana 24th), this isn’t quite the Group of Death, since the absurdly-drawn Group B, which features Spain (3), Chile (5), and the Netherlands (9) (along with No. 53 Australia), and Group D’s meshing of Uruguay (9), England (10), and Italy (13) are both tougher at the top. But it won’t be easy.
On top of that, because of its position in the draw, the U.S. has to travel to Manaus, a city in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, for the second game of the tournament against Portugal on June 22. American coach Jurgen Klinsmann this week said that Manaus was the one place he wanted to avoid, given that it is in a separate time zone from the rest of the tournament sites, boasts a muggy, tropical climate that could wear down players, and also requires longer travel than any other site.
What makes it even more painful is how close the United States was to falling into easier groups: as the draw unfolded, the U.S. was still eligible to land in Group E, headlined by Switzerland, the weakest of the seeded teams, or Group H, which features a tough Belgium team thought to be a sleeper to advance far into the tournament but, in Algeria, South Korea, and Russia, not much else in the way of better-than-the-Americans competition.
Instead, they landed in Group G with old foes Germany — for whom Klinsmann played his international soccer and the team that knocked the U.S. out of the 2002 World Cup, thanks to a handball that went uncalled in front of the net — and Ghana. If you’re in the business of drawing optimism from historical context with no present consequence, the U.S. dominated Portugal in the 2002 Cup when the Selecção were considered a pre-tournament favorite.
http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2013/12/06/3033391/world-cup-draw-worse-americans/
Fox Guest Encourages Female Host To Quit, Get Married, Have Babies
Fox News ran a segment entitled “You Do Need A Husband!” on Sunday. Their guest, founder of the site ‘Women for Men’ Suzanne Venker, was on to argue that women are trying too hard to reduce their reliance on men. Her appearance followed up on her article “Why women still need husbands,” published Friday on Fox’s website.
In the piece, Venker argues that women won’t find fulfillment trying to balancing a relationship and family with full-time work. “Financial independence is a great thing,” she writes, “but you can’t take your paycheck to bed with you. And there’s nothing empowering about being beholden to an employer when what you really want is to have a baby. ” She uses this opinion to advocate for women having less of a role in the workforce, and letting men be the breadwinners. “Unlike women,” Venker writes, “a man’s identity is inextricably linked to his paycheck.”
During the segment, hosts Clayton Morris and Tucker Carlson lavished praise on the piece, thanking Venker for writing it and saying “I’m confused why this controversial.” But Fox correspondent Anna Kooiman seemed a little more skeptical of Venker’s argument, pointing out that, “some critics have said it’s a little bit too broad to say men are this way and women are that way.”
Kooiman then got personal with Venker, asking her for “some words of wisdom:”
KOOIMAN: I fit into that category perfectly. I’m single. I’m 29 years old. I’m very career-oriented. What is your advice in just a couple sentences?
VENKER: My advice is, as the years go on and you find that you want, if you do, to get married and settle down, to understand time is going to be your greatest enemy. Not your husband, not men, not the government, not your employers. It’s time, there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything. So if you learn to embrace that side of yourself that isn’t about work — in other words, the nurturing side, the motherhood, all of that — it’s okay to let your husband bring home that full-time income so you can have more of a balanced life. And we should really be thanking men for this, not saying they’re in our way or not doing enough.
Venker has previously argued that, as women become major breadwinners and stop acting like “traditional women,” they are becoming increasingly more annoying and less marriageable to men.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/12/08/3035761/need-husband/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
GOP staffer calls herself a Ho' on Facebook, post drunken party pictures of tax-funded trip.
Strickland is very much disliked and mistrusted by Republicans-- let alone normal people-- in Santa Clarita. And the GOP Establishment dug up an even more extreme right-winger, Palmdale state Senator Steve Knight (who inherited his seat from his father), to run against him. Neither Strickland nor Knight fit the moderate suburban district, although Knight is clearly the worse of the two Republican candidates. It should be really hilarious watching McKeon and his pathetic staff try to discredit Knight on behalf of his boy Strickland. And who will be making the case? Hopefully Capitol Hill's most incompetent and laughable press secretary, McKeon's inimitable Alissa McCurley. She crafts all McKeon's idiotic public statements that make him sound like he's been up drinking all night. And that's probably because she's been up drinking all night! Just look at this Facebook page for McKeon's Communications Director, who seems to be having a great post-teenage life at taxpayer expense.
Guys dressed in drag, drinking and drinking and drinking and the usual I-am-enjoying-my-youth party stuff. And, it turns out, she's the sole member of a group on Facebook called... wait for it... You Can't Turn A Ho Into A Housewife: "A group for any ho who leads a 'crazy' life and influences others by their hoish example. Also for anyone who is trying to become famous." Thanks, Santa Clarita Republicans for putting this on the public payroll-- and for making it the spokesperson for Boehner's Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee-- who is so busy super-serving mobster Sheldon Adelson that he hasn't cared to see what's up with the drunken ho in his office.
This isn't going to be all that helpful to Strickland or, for that matter, to Santa Clarita Republicans in general.
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com
Rand Paul: Unemployment Benefits Extension Would Be A 'Disservice' To Workers
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday he opposes extending unemployment benefits for workers, arguing that it would be a "disservice" to jobless individuals.
"I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they're paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers," he said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."
About 1.3 million long-term jobless Americans will lose federal benefits if Congress fails to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which expires at the end of December.
Without congressional action, the most time that people could get would be six months of state unemployment benefits.
"When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy," Paul argued on "Fox News Sunday."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/rand-paul-unemployment-benefits_n_4408046.html
Woman's Christian Temperance Union Targeting Marijuana
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The mansion that serves as Maine headquarters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union lay largely fallow until recently, with drug needles, liquor bottles and pornographic magazines littering the grounds. Now, in the state where Prohibition had its roots and in a city that just legalized recreational marijuana, the WCTU is overhauling the building and looking to reinvent itself.
Leaders of the organization, which is committed to abstinence, plan to take a lower-key approach, compared with the old days when crusading women terrorized saloon owners.
"We just want to bring a new passion here. It's not that we want to be self-righteous and condemn you because you're drinking or drugging or you're smoking pot," said the Rev. David Perkins, who is working with his wife to restore the WCTU's Portland chapter. "It's not that. We want to love you but tell you that there are ill effects."
Last week marked both the 80th anniversary of the end of Prohibition and the legalization of marijuana in Portland, Maine's largest city.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/womans-christian-temperance-union_n_4408568.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green
Boo Hoo: Insurance Agents Feel Left Out Of Obamacare
MIAMI (AP) -- When insurance agent Kelly Fristoe recently spent 30 minutes helping a client pick a mid-level health plan and the federal marketplace website froze, he called the government's hotline and tried to finish the application. But the operator refused to credit Fristoe as an agent on the application, meaning he wouldn't get the commission or be listed as the follow-up contact if his client needed help again later.
The Wichita Falls, Texas, insurance agent is one of many brokers around the country finding frustration as they try to help customers navigate the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces while earning the commissions they've long built their businesses around. Some insurers and insurance agents are calling on President Barack Obama's administration to allow them to bypass healthcare.gov and enroll consumers directly amid growing complaints about problems with enrollment information generated from the website.
The so-called 'back-end' problems could mean that consumers who think they've successfully signed up for a health plan, may find themselves unable to access their coverage come January. The problems include enrollment information that's rendered practically useless by errors, duplication or garbles. Efforts to fix the issues are underway.
Nearly 70,000 agents and brokers have been certified nationwide to sell health insurance on the federal exchange. Many say they could be the troubled health law's best ambassadors with the potential to boost lackluster enrollment figures -- only about 27,000 had enrolled via the federal website nationwide in the first month. But instead, many agents said they're continually met by obstacles.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/insurance-agents-obamacare_n_4408508.html?utm_hp_ref=business
Baker: Reagan Regretted Veto Of Sanctions Against South Africa
Former Secretary of State James Baker on Sunday said he was "certain" that President Ronald Reagan regretted his decision to veto sanctions against South Africa during Apartheid.
"I'm sure he did regret it," Baker said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "In fact I'm certain that he did."
He said that Reagan later worked to end Apartheid in South Africa.
"Once that happened and control of South African policy passed to the Congress, President Reagan was really determined to … meet with the black leaders of South Africa and deal with the problems of Apartheid. And he was able to do so," Baker said.
Baker, who met Nelson Mandela, called the leader an "extraordinarily beautiful human being."
"He had an enduring and endearing presence of dignity that I don't think I've seen on any other person," he said. "How many people forgive their captors when they've been imprisoned for 27 years?"
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/baker-reagan-regretted-veto-of-sanctions-against-south-africa
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