What’s interesting in the news today?

1. My guess would be Obama donors and ACORN like “Navigator” groups.

From TheHill  “The Obama administration has spent at least $3.7 billion to build and promote online marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act, but it can’t prove exactly where it all went, according to an audit released Monday. 

Federal investigators said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not properly track certain data that public officials need in order to determine whether the healthcare law is working. 

The government tracks its healthcare spending in an outdated records system that cannot easily respond to data requests such as salaries or public relations contracts in certain departments. Instead, officials rely on manually prepared spreadsheets that can take months to produce. 

Out of that data, “we were not able to determine the reliability of most of the information,” according to the report by the independent Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

“CMS’s processes are inconsistent with certain federal accounting and internal control standards,” the report states. To improve the system, the GAO recommends that CMS staff create new procedures to provide more timely and reliable information to the public. “Particularly for programs subject to a significant degree of public and congressional scrutiny,” the GAO reports. “

That would be the same CMS that’s run by an Obama donor that totally blew the website launch.

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2. Yes, these are the same “moderates” that Obama just gave missiles and weapons to.

From TheLATimes  “In Iraq, Washington at least has the support of allies on the ground, including the army, affiliated Shiite Muslim militias and the spirited if ill-equipped Kurdish peshmerga force, not to mention a functional government to work with.

In Syria, however, the U.S. has no reliable on-the-ground partner, only disparate “moderate” rebels who have steadily lost territory to Islamist militants.”

“It’s not yet clear whether Washington’s purported allies in Syria are completely on board with the U.S. offensive against Islamic State. One of the administration’s favored moderate rebel factions, Harakat Hazm, part of the Free Syrian Army alliance and a recipient of U.S. missiles and training, issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the “external intervention” — that is, the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria — as “an attack on the revolution.”

The group said its main goal was toppling Assad. It is demanding “unconditional arming” of the Free Syrian Army, yet its members also acknowledge fighting alongside Al Nusra Front, the official Al Qaeda force in Syria.”

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3. The deafening silence of the anti-war left.

From HotAir  “The tragic lamentations howled by the septuagenarians who make up the remnants of Code Pink may never fully dissipate, but the majority of the once ascendant anti-war left seems to have dissolved.

And why wouldn’t they? Theirs was a movement which once bestrode the political and media complex with unmatched influence. The movement culminated in the toppling of Hillary Clinton as the likely Democratic nominee and the election of Barack Obama, the anti-war candidate, to the White House in 2008.

Just six short years later, it is Barack Obama who is deploying the American war machine in a preemptive engagement against Islamist threats in the Middle East. A president who twice campaigned on policies disengagement and retrenchment from the Middle East has utterly abandoned his own stated policy preferences. The sense of hopelessness among anti-war liberals is palpable.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank recently made the trek to a rather sad anti-war protest outside the White House that was attended by a meager 22 true believers.

“It was the latest display of how Obama has neutralized the left,” Milbank observed.”

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4. Silly reporters, you should have thought of that before you became his personal lap-dogs. Now you act shocked that only White House approved propaganda is allowed? 🙄 

From TheWashingtonPost  “White House press-pool reports are supposed to be the news media’s eyes and ears on the president, an independent chronicle of his public activities. They are written by reporters for other reporters, who incorporate them into news articles about President Obama almost every day.

Sometimes, however, the White House plays an unseen role in shaping the story.

Journalists who cover the White House say Obama’s press aides have demanded — and received — changes in press-pool reports before the reports have been disseminated to other journalists. They say the White House has used its unusual role as the distributor of the reports as leverage to steer coverage in a more favorable direction.

The disputed episodes involve mostly trivial issues and minor matters of fact. But that the White House has become involved at all represents a troubling trend for journalists and has prompted their main representative, the White House Correspondents’ Association, to consider revising its approach to pool reporting.”

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5. Your tax dollars at work……. watching porn.

 From CapitolCityProject  “Months after it was discovered an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee was watching porn on the job, a new report shows they have yet to be fired and are still on the government payroll.

During a House hearing back in May, it was brought forth that a senior-level EPA employee had been watching between two and six hours of porn per day on their government issued computer. This wasn’t just a one time deal either, it dated all the way back to 2010 and the employee downloaded over 7,000 pornographic files.”

“How much pornography would it take for an EPA employee to lose their job?” Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked at the hearing.

Apparently more than two to six hours per day for years on end. The EPA has yet to fire the employee and they are still collecting their hefty government pay while on administrative leave, admitted EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia. The name of the employee is not known as it has been withheld by investigators and the agency.”

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6. Atheists and the political left will not like this.

From HotAir  “This seems counterintuitive in an environment where many secularists believe that “separation of church and state” is a quote from the Constitution, but Pew’s results make sense when considering the broader context of American public life. In the same survey that found the general public split on whether businesses should be forced to participate in same-sex marriages, Pew also finds that Americans want more faith-based input on political matters:

Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. And most people who say religion’s influence is waning see this as a bad thing.

Perhaps as a consequence, a growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics. The share of Americans who say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues is up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections (from 43% to 49%). The share who say there has been “too little” expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders is up modestly over the same period (from 37% to 41%). And a growing minority of Americans (32%) think churches should endorse candidates for political office, though most continue to oppose such direct involvement by churches in electoral politics.”

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