What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Severe weather has once again taken a heavy toll on the nation’s mid section.
From TheChicagoTribune “A string of tornadoes and severe storms left a trail of damage and flooding through the Midwest Sunday, leveling parts of a town near Peoria, knocking down buildings in Grundy County and prompting Bears fans to scatter for cover as the game at Soldier Field was postponed.
In Washington, in Tazewell County, one person was reported killed, two were killed in Massac County and in Nashville east of St. Louis, two elderly siblings were reported killed . Dozens of others were reported injured including at least six who were seriously injured as the tornado spawned warnings through much of Illinois and northern Indiana.”
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More here from APNews “Dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms swept across the Midwest on Sunday, causing extensive damage in several central Illinois communities, killing at least three people and prompting officials at Chicago’s Soldier Field to evacuate the stands and delay the Bears game.
“The whole neighborhood’s gone. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house,” said Michael Perdun, speaking by cellphone from the hard-hit town of Washington, where he said his neighborhood was wiped out in a matter of seconds.”
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2. The hits just keep on comin’.
From Yahoo/Reuters “UnitedHealth Group dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks, leaving many elderly patients unsure whether they need to switch plans to continue seeing their doctors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The insurer said in October that underfunding of Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly could not be fully offset by the company’s other healthcare business. The company also reported spending more healthcare premiums on medical claims in the third quarter, due mainly to government cuts to payments for Medicare Advantage services.
The Journal report said that doctors in at least 10 states were notified of being laid off the plans, some citing “significant changes and pressures in the healthcare environment.” According to the notices, the terminations can be appealed within 30 days.”
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3. Is President Obama’s “fix” even legal? Doesn’t look like it.
From NationalReview “No, the purpose is to highlight how insouciantly lawless and transparently political the president’s latest Obamacare “fix” is. I refer, of course, to Obama’s magnanimous proclamation that he now deigns to permit insurers to issue policies made illegal by the Obamacare statute — at least until the Democrats can get through the 2014 elections. This was frivolous to the point of malfeasance.
Let’s start with the basics. The president has no power to rewrite statutes — he is bereft of dictatorial power to legitimize what Congress has made a violation of law. This reflects our abiding conceit that we have “a government of laws and not of men,” ascribed by John Adams to the 17th-century political theorist James Harrington. As Justice Antonin Scalia recounts, Adams provided the best elaboration of this principle when he enshrined it in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution:
The legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws, and not of men.”
Now what?
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4. Who’s up for an ObamaCare marriage penalty? Well here it comes anyway.
From TheWeeklyStandard “Every time you think that we’ve finally touched bottom on Obamacare, some new problem emerges. So what began merely as a dysfunctional website became a broken and mis-designed system. When it turned out that lots of people were paying more for their plans, it then turned out that others were having their plans canceled—and that some people were even losing their doctors. And now we’re finding that, along with everything else, Obamacare contains a marriage penalty, too.“
“The Atlantic reports that in practice, this means that a married couple in New York making more than a combined $62,040 gets no subsidies from Obamacare. But two people who live together without getting married? They can make up to a combined $91,920 and still get subsidies from the government.”
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5. Here’s more on the new revelations in the Benghazi scandal.
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Wandering Views 
Pelosi was right. We had to pass it to find out what was in it.
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They sure as heck weren’t going to tell us.
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Benghazi: They hired locals to defend the embassy.
Translation: They hired jihadists to protect our ambassadors.
Or” They hired foxes to protect the henhouse.
Hillary for our next Commander in Chief.
She couldn’t be worse than Obama; just more of the same.
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Obama’s “fix” doesn’t have to be leagal. It just has to be proclaimed. That works until someone stops it.
If you own the Aatty. General and the MSM, you can do anything.
That’s what Hitler and Stalin and Mao did.
It works.
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1. Drought here in California. The weather is gorgeous. But there hasn’t been any rain. I cannot say I’m surprised–God has extended a huge amount of grace to us out here–and to you who eat our produce–but for how long? I don’t know why we were spared when so much of you have had terrible weather. Maybe, alas, that is changing.
3. WHO will call them on the illegality of their actions? Holder has been getting away for years not prosecuting the laws he has sworn to protect. So, who will say “No. You cannot do this. It’s against the law?”
Will Congress, with everything riding on reelection rather than the good of the people?
And I had another thought on the fixes being done with Obamacare. How about the President and Congress demonstrate their confidence in the program by jettisoning their own expensive out-of-Obamacare-plan that the taxpayers pay for, and be the very first ones to sign up with their legitimate SSNs?
Then, I might believe they have faith in what they have put together.
What’s good for the goose has got to be even better for the gander.
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I second michelle’s suggestion that those in our government be the first to sign up for what they say is so good for all the rest of us.
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Yesterday, HRW and I were discussing free trade vs protectionism in Asia. The two countries/provinces that have the greatest commitment to free trade are Singapore and Hong Kong. They have virtually no natural resources. Yet, their per capita GDP exceeds that of the US. This table also shows that China is not yet “rich”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
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