Month: September 2013

#DNC $18.1 million in the hole, one year after the election.

I knew that I was forgetting something:

The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.

It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party — especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief — and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election, obscured in part by the much messier spectacle of GOP infighting.

The Democrats’ numbers speak for themselves: Through August, 10 months after helping President Obama secure a second term, the DNC owed its various creditors a total of $18.1 million, compared to the $12.5 million cash cushion the Republican National Committee is holding.

Continue reading #DNC $18.1 million in the hole, one year after the election.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… Illinois, Florida lack trained #obamacare guides.

But surely this won’t be a problem:

Illinois’s health-insurance marketplace said that it had only certified 100 of the planned 1,200 navigators by this past Saturday, but hoped to have “hundreds more” ready by Tuesday. Most Illinois navigators have completed their state training and background checks, but the online system that they use to complete the required federal training only recently became available, a situation which is, according to spokeswoman Kelly Sullivan, “not unique to Illinois.”

In Florida, as of last Wednesday, only 11 of roughly 150 navigators had received their state-level licenses to assist people in signing up for that state’s exchange, and only 57 had even applied for it. According to coordinators for the program, at the University of South Florida and the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, the delay is due to the federal online training system’s being crash-prone.

…Computer problems, you say? – Or, rather, the federal government failed to say.  Until now.

Moe Lane

PS: Look… if you have the opportunity to renew your policy early, you might want to do that unless your current one is really bad.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R, Kansas) rashly promises to sign up for #obamacare exchanges.

I say rashly because he’s making a BIG assumption, here:

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), an opponent of ObamaCare, said he will try to sign up for the healthcare exchange when it opens Tuesday.

“I’m going to try to enroll tomorrow morning, October 1,” Pompeo vowed. “I wish everyone [signing up for ObamaCare] good luck.

…which is to say, Pompeo is assuming that it will be functionally possible to sign up for the exchanges and actually get a meaningful result.  Now, make no mistake: most people will be able to do something tomorrow that the administration will swiftly claim to be ‘signing up for the exchanges,’ even if it’s just entering in contact information.  But anybody who just got notified that they are losing their health care as of January 1, 2014 and who would like to start the process of getting replacement coverage now so that they don’t have a gap in coverage is likely to have an incredibly frustrating experience tomorrow.

When that happens, please remember: NO REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.

Continue reading Rep. Mike Pompeo (R, Kansas) rashly promises to sign up for #obamacare exchanges.

The ‘Emergency’ “Help Feed Moe Lane’s Sudden Castle Addiction” Pledge Drive.

[UPDATE] The pledge drive is now CLOSED. I now have all five seasons and sufficient cash to buy the books.  Thank you all very much; I have the best readers in the world.

It is a grim time, my friends: I just ran out of Castle first season episodes.  Thanks to lingering funds, Castle second season episodes will arrive Wednesday, which will not be so bad; but after those are gone it may be a month before regular revenue streams refresh to the point where I might be able to view further Castle seasons.  To say nothing of the numerous actual books written by Richard Castle, which is a marketing ploy of such breathtaking mercenary audacity that I curse the fact that my local branch library is closed for renovations.

So… pledge drive.  I’ve Amazon Wish-Listed the remaining seasons; and of course there’s always the Tip Jar. Continue reading The ‘Emergency’ “Help Feed Moe Lane’s Sudden Castle Addiction” Pledge Drive.

CNN director confirms that Hillary Clinton is running in 2016.

It’s a bit subtle, to be sure.

CNN’s Hillary Clinton film scrapped as director blames lack of co-operation

Charles Ferguson says he was met with a wall of silence from more than a hundred people who refused to be interviewed

…and the director is bizarrely miffed at the GOP for not being thrilled with the idea of a Lefty director doing a Hillary campaign ad disguised as a documentary*.  I say ‘bizarrely’ because surely even Charles Ferguson knows that one’s reputation precedes oneself.  But, no, it’s mostly the stonewall from the soon-to-be Team Hillary.  Or Team Clinton; they probably haven’t polled that yet. Continue reading CNN director confirms that Hillary Clinton is running in 2016.

So, the Shedite* that preys on Republican candidate’s brains…

…and make them go out and insult roughly 80% of the party seems to have jumped from Jon Huntsman to Peter King.  And thank God for that: Huntsman was actually more or less all right, before he went nuts and started screaming about the political views of the half of the country that he presumably wanted to vote for him.

King, on the other hand, is… well.  I’m sure that he will have an exciting media career ahead of him.

Moe Lane

*Oh, sorry, my bad: I’m using technical jargon.  Imaginary type of demon that invades people’s minds and makes them do more and more awful things, then jumps to another host when things get too hot.  Classic Monster In My Head, in other words.  See also the roleplaying game In Nomine… no, not Fallen: well, yes, see Fallen, but if anything ripped off anything else it was the movie ripping off the game, not the other way around.