Thread: RED STATE: Hold Your Ground and Shut John Cornyn Up - "HOLD THIS LINE"

Hold Your Ground and Shut John Cornyn Up

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | October 2nd, 2013 at 04:30 AM | 194

After three years of getting ready, yesterday the nation signed on to get Obamacare only to have websites across America crash. The ones that were not crashing were scam sites designed for identity theft. Amid all of that, if you tried to get Obamacare through an internet search engine, you probably got scammed. “[S]ome of these scam sites actually have better search-engine rankings than official sites,” reports UPI.
This is the backdrop to the fight to defund Obamacare. Some pundits claim if it were not for the shutdown the press would have covered the disastrous launch. A press that has refused to cover all the painful stories of people harmed by Obamacare would never do this. Consider MSNBC, which like the North Korean propaganda ministry, claims the website crashes were because Obamacare is too popular.
Riiiiggghhhhhtttt. That gets us to Congress and the embarrassing performance of John Cornyn and a bunch of House staffers.
John Cornyn is just vomiting all over himself about the shutdown. He was positively worthless yesterday. The man who has been all over Texas yelling that he wants to defund Obamacare — and if you don’t believe him see his web ads — made it perfectly clear he’d like to surrender as quickly as possible.
Texas can thank God Almighty that John Cornyn wasn’t at the Alamo. What an embarrassment.
Then there are John Boehner and Eric Cantor’s staff. Good grief. If you sprinkled salt on them they’d shrivel up.
I am not sure who wants to surrender faster — House leadership staff or John Cornyn. They have done nothing but spend two months strategizing how to lose.
When Senator Mike Lee said the House should just put off the Obamacare fight and instead focus on funding other parts of government, Cantor and Boehner’s staff and John Cornyn seized on the statement and blatantly misrepresented what Lee meant. They claimed Lee was declaring surrender when he was not doing that at all.
Look, House and Senate Republicans are perfectly happy to castrate themselves in public if they can blame Mike Lee and Ted Cruz. We are going to have to forcibly stiffen their spines by making sure they know there are real consequences if they cave.
It is notable that after Cruz and Lee suggested a piecemeal funding approach, the House did that. Perhaps we should just sit back and let Cruz and Lee run this thing. They seem to be the only two leaders willing to fight.
They have zero incentive to cave early. We should not like them cut deals on the medical device tax or the Vitter amendment. If you don’t believe they will find a way around the Vitter amendment, just you look at all the media reports that behind the scenes John Boehner has been working aggressively, preemptively to do so.
The Vitter amendment and the medical device tax are shiny objects designed to make you clap like a seal while Boehner, Cantor, Cornyn, and McConnell cave on funding and implementing Obamacare.
Friends, you absolutely must keep the pressure on congressional Republicans to hold the line. The longer they keep passing appropriations bills to fund the government, the more this is clearly about Barack Obama. The President would rather starve veterans than spare America his healthcare plan.
Keep pressuring Republicans. They must hold this line. They must not cave. In particular, conservative Republicans in the House need to know we expect them to fight for us and defund Obamacare.
Behind the scenes, our side is scared to death. But if they’ll just shut John Cornyn up and ignore leadership staff, this fight is ours to win. Vitter and the medical tax are unacceptable compromises. The only acceptable path forward is to defund Obamacare. It may take a month. It may take two months. But if the GOP keeps passing legislation to fund the government, then it becomes Obama’s burden, not theirs.
Hold this line.
Tags: John Boehner, John Cornyn, Shutdown


http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/02/h...ohn-cornyn-up/

UK Healthcare a Preview of Obamacare By Michael Reagan This latest news from the United Kingdom should be a real heads up for Obamacare supporters who think the nation is soon to be on the receiving end of "free" healthcare. Unfortunately the more-entitlements-now crowd is economically illiterate. They really believe "free" healthcare insurance means no one has to pay for it. What the members of the House and Senate who passed Obamacare — and exempted themselves from the law — won't tell you is that over time the only way government provides any service that's "free" is through rationing. Editor's Notes: Government Prohibited From Helping Seniors (Shocking) In the U.K. they have suffered under what leftists here have wanted for decades: government-controlled healthcare with the government paying all the bills. And government there, like government here, controls exploding demand for medical services (it's "free" remember?) through rationing. Our future situation will be what they have in the U.K. today: The rich pay for their medical services, while the poor — supposedly benefiting from national healthcare — wait until they are so sick the government can't postpone treating them any longer. Reporter Alice Philipson writes that hospitals are making millions by charging for operations that were formerly free through the National Health Service, but have been eliminated to save money. For example, one hospital cited in the Daily Mirror "gives cataract sufferers the option to 'self-fund' their operation before their sight deteriorates to the level required for the NHS to operate." If a senior citizen doesn't want to be reduced to using a white cane and a service dog before the NHS will pay for the eye operation, Southampton General Hospital breezily assures them, "Our premier cataract service offers a new option, between the traditional private sector and the NHS, bringing private healthcare within the reach of many more people." In what would be called irony, if bureaucrats could be said to grasp the concept, the paying patients are being charged what is termed "Standard NHS prices" for the procedures before NHS stopped providing the procedures. Even better, this is a situation that can be used for warnings on two continents. While the story should prove to U.S. observers that government interference in the healthcare market is always a failure and we don't want to follow in the U.K.'s footsteps. In the U.K., the opposition in Parliament is warning British voters they may have to face a system like the one in the U.S., with "NHS hospitals, built with public money, charging people for treatments that used to be free," Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said, adding, "We've got to wake people up to what is happening, the first steps toward an American healthcare system, English hospitals now asking for credit cards before they give care." Obamacare is going to be a train wreck. If you want a preview of what the aftermath looks like, just take a gander at the U.K.'s National Health Service. Michael Reagan is the son of former President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the League of American Voters. His blog appears on reaganreports.com

How Republicans must respond to Democrats on the government shutdown

BY CAL THOMAS | OCTOBER 2, 2013 AT 1:51 PM
TOPICS: CONGRESS OBAMACARE REPUBLICAN PARTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY HARRY REID JOHN BOEHNER HEALTH CARE 2014 ELECTIONS 2016 ELECTIONS GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

If Republicans were smart their focus during the Obamacare debate should have been less on...If Republicans were smart (I know, but stay with me) their focus during the Obamacare debate should have been less on blocking its implementation and more on a page they might have taken from the Democrat's playbook, which is to rally the country to its side by use of sentimentality and the threat of impending doom.
The good news for Republicans is that there’s still time.
It’s a sure bet Democrats are right now writing sob stories of tearful children barred from the Lincoln Memorial because of the government “shutdown.”
The National Zoo in Washington inexplicably turned off its unmanned Panda Cam, which showed live video of the newborn panda cub on the Internet. Boohoo.
A recent CBS News poll found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of Obamacare. Republicans should respond with a campaign to encourage citizen outrage.
The Republican Party might create a series of TV and radio ads to run in states where Democrats are vulnerable in next year's Senate and House races.
Here are a few suggestions as to what these ads might highlight:
* Doctors who have quit their practices because they can no longer make a living under the voluminous federal requirements and rising costs of the new health care law would tell their stories.
Similarly, because with Obamacare you may not be able to keep your old doctor, depending on the network you choose, show people lamenting this loss.
Yes, the Democrats could counter with ads showing people who say they had no insurance before Obamacare and they can now have their chronic diseases treated.
Republicans might respond by saying the insurance “cure” may be worse than the disease and could ultimately reduce the quality and affordability of treatment for many others.
For example, instead of saving $2,500 per person as President Obama promised, according to Forbes magazine, “Obamacare will add $7,450 to average health care spending for a family of four between 2014 and 2022.”
* People can be shown opening envelopes from their private insurance companies that announce higher premiums, contradicting the president’s promises regarding the low-cost benefits of the Affordable Care Act.
* Show young people who had planned to become doctors choosing other professions, claiming Obamacare has made the practice of medicine less desirable.
* Provide testimonials from the British, who languish under the weight of a ponderous universal health system, about long waits to see general practitioners, additional waiting time to see a specialist and still more delays for any kind of government-approved medical procedure. The tagline might be, “Take it from us, America. You don’t know what’s coming. We do.”
* Disseminate headlines from British newspapers that report on unnecessary deaths, substandard treatment and unavailable hospital beds in conditions that most Americans would not accept.
If the United Kingdom, whose population of slightly more than 62 million people, is experiencing severe problems and potential insolvency with its 65-year-old National Health Service (NHS), why would anyone believe a government-run health insurance system in the United States and the health care monstrosity that must inevitably follow will be any more successful with a population more than 300 million? Government, lumbering and inefficient at best, should not be the arbiter of health care.
This battle will not be won in Washington. It must be won in the states. Only when Americans awaken to where Obamacare inevitably leads will Republicans have a chance of winning the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016. Only then might Obamacare be repealed.
With most diseases, early detection is important. An early repeal of Obamacare is equally vital — before it has a chance to metastasize.
Ads will help bring the issue home to a wary public.

CAL THOMAS, a Washington Examiner columnist, is nationally syndicated by the Tribune Content Agency.

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Obamacare Victim No. 12,247,002 says:

I actually made it through this morning at 8:00 A.M. I have a preexisting condition (Type 1 Diabetes) and my income base was $45K-55K annually. I chose Tier 2 ("Silver Plan") and my monthly premiums came out to $597.00... WITH A $13,988 YEARLY DEDUCTIBLE!!! There is NO POSSIBLE way that I can afford this. So I "opt-out" and choose to continue along with no insurance.

I received an email tonight at 5:00 P.M. informing me that my fine would be $4,037 and could be attached to my yearly income tax return. Then I read down to the "REPERCUSSIONS PORTION" for "non-payment" of yearly fine. First, your drivers license will be suspended UNTIL PAID, and if you go 24 consecutive months with "Non-Payment" and you happen to be a home owner, you will have a federal tax lien placed on your home.

But there's a silver lining! You can agree to give them all your bank information so that they can easily "automatically withdraw" your "penalties" weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

This by no means is "Free" or even "Affordable"... FML.