Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty January 15, 2014 New Jersey Voters: We Trust the Big Guy Go figure! New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie is more of a leader than a bully, voters say 54 - 40 percent today, one of his lowest "bully" scores since the Quinnipiac University poll first asked the question June 17, 2010. Gov. Christie gets positive marks on key characteristics: Voters say 51 - 41 percent that he is honest and trustworthy; 74 - 23 percent that he is a strong leader and 55 - 41 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. New Jersey voters approve 55 - 38 percent of the job Gov. Christie is doing, down from his all-time high 74 - 22 percent February 20, 2013. Women approve 55 - 37 percent while men approve 54 - 39 percent. Approval among Democrats drops from 56 - 38 percent last February to a negative 36 - 55 percent today. For now, the public doesn't think this was Christie's call. Some 93 percent of all New Jersey voters have read or heard something about the controversy surrounding the September traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge. Voters in that group say 66 - 22 that the governor did not personally order the traffic jam. Even Democrats say 53 - 32 percent that Christie was not involved. Someone pointed out that diverting those traffic lanes made life hell for commuters in Fort Lee in New Jersey… but made life easier for folks from other parts of New Jersey. Maybe some folks feel the lane diversion wasn't such a bad thing. Why Is the Administration So Credulous about Iran? "Wary" is my word of 2014 so far. On front after front, we, the American public, are being asked to accept, on faith, that the big changes afoot will lead to good outcomes, despite ominous indicators. The State of the Union address might as well begin with John Williams's Jaws theme. It's full speed ahead on the individual mandate despite the headaches and messes so far. Full speed ahead for the employer mandate in 2015, despite the fear that some employers will prefer to pay the fine and dump their employees into the exchange. We're told expanding Medicaid won't leave state governments or federal taxpayers on the hook for much higher costs of providing medical care. We're assured that raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour will help all the low-income workers, won't slow down already sluggish hiring, and that we won't notice the price hikes at the cash register. Let's leave Iraq to sort out its own troubles. Let's get out of Afghanistan. "Trust us," they say. And oh, by the way, the Iranians say they're giving up their nuclear weapons. Now, we know these guys. We know these guys because they took over our embassy in 1979. We know these guys from the Khobar Towers attack. We know these guys from our recent State Department report on terrorism: Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, in 2011 Iran continued to provide lethal support – including weapons, training, funding, and guidance – to Iraqi Shia militant groups that targeted U.S. and Iraqi forces. Iran also continued to provide weapons, training, and funding to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. Since the end of the 2006 Israeli- Hizballah conflict, Iran has provided significant quantities of weaponry and funding to Hizballah, in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. In 2011, the United States discovered that elements of the Iranian regime had conceived and funded a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States in Washington D.C. Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iranian-born U.S. dual-national working on behalf of the IRGC-QF, was arrested in September 2011 for his role in the plot; also indicted in the case was an IRGC-QF officer who remains at large. Arbabsiar held several meetings with an associate whom Iranian officials believed was a narcotics cartel member. This associate, in fact, was a confidential source for U.S. law enforcement. The thwarted plot underscored anew Iran's interest in using international terrorism – including in the United States – to further its foreign policy goals. Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, artillery, and rockets. Since 2006, Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives. Iran has shipped a large number of weapons to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in particular, aiming to increase its influence in this key province. In 2011, Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior AQ (al-Qaeda) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. It also allowed AQ members to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iranian territory, enabling AQ to carry funds and move facilitators and operatives to South Asia and elsewhere. This is, arguably, the most ruthless, underhanded, amoral and dangerous regime in the world. (Maybe North Korea. I'll take other nominations; but let's face it, Iran is in the top three, even in a rebuilding year.) Why would we think these guys are going to honor their word? When the Iranians aren't insisting that the deal guarantees their right to enrich uranium -- contradicting John Kerry -- and claiming that they have a secret side agreement with the U.S. — meaning either they're lying, or our government is lying to us — they're offering messages like this: 
Here's Jeffrey Goldberg's pitch: So why support negotiations? First: They just might work. I haven't met many experts who put the chance of success at zero. Second: If the U.S. decides one day that it must destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, it must do so with broad international support. The only way to build that support is to absolutely exhaust all other options. Which means pursuing, in a time-limited, sober-minded, but earnest and assiduous way, a peaceful settlement. Er, really? That's the best argument? Most experts put the chance of success at better than zero? Or we need to go through the motions to persuade the world we're not warmongers? Look, the world's opinion on our alleged warmongering has very little to do with our actual mongering of any wars. If we were "warmongers," we wouldn't have "led from behind" in Libya and Bashir Assad would be a red spot on Damascus rubble right now. Besides, the world's usual suspects are going to call us "warmongers" no matter what we do. Here's the Israeli Defense Minister with a different interpretation of what's driving our foreign policy: Ya'alon had lashed out at Kerry and savaged Washington-led peace talks in private conversations, according to a report Tuesday in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily. The paper recounted the defense minister lambasting the proposed security arrangements drawn up by Kerry as part of his peace proposal, saying it was "not worth the paper it is printed on" and would not provide security for Israel. The report also quoted Ya'alon calling Kerry "inexplicably obsessive" and "messianic" in his efforts to coax the two sides into a peace agreement. The defense minister reportedly said Kerry has "nothing to teach me about the conflict with the Palestinians. All that can 'save us' is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace." Legacy time, baby! Time to reach out to the world's worst and get their signatures on the dotted line, because nobody ever garnered a reputation for being a peacemaker by warily assessing their foes. MSNBC Host Finds 'a Reluctance by Democrats to Run Home and Talk About How Positive This Health-Care Law Is' Another quick tour of the news that fans of Obamacare will pretend they didn't notice… MSNBC's Ed Schultz is surprised to find Democrats don't want to run on Obamacare in 2014: "I was visiting with some lawmakers last night in Washington. We talked a lot about health care when I was visiting them. I asked them, did they have a problem running on it? There does seem to be, for some reason, a reluctance by Democrats to run home and talk about how positive this health care law is. And I find that very interesting. The moral aspect of this, the moral component to this — and when you talk to them about voting to take something away from another American, it does resonate with people. If you're doing statistics, you know, you're not going to win that battle, but if you talk about people's lives and the moral component, who can argue with it? It's almost like there's a lack of confidence, like they're not sure this is the right thing to do in front of constituents." Imagine that! Every deadline is negotiable, apparently:
The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it was again extending the ObamaCare enrollment deadline for people with pre-existing conditions. The administration said it will extend the Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan (PCIP), slated to end January 31, until March 15… The deadline was originally at the end of December, but last month the administration pushed it back through January because of the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov website. The new extension is just the latest in a string of unilateral delays the administration has implemented to buy time after the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov. The Obama administration has so far delayed the premium payments deadline, delayed by one week the sign-up date for coverage beginning Jan. 1, pushed back by six weeks the sign-up date for those seeking coverage by April 1, and delayed the second-year enrollment period until after the 2014 elections.
Joseph Swedish, CEO of WellPoint, which runs 14 Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers under the Empire and Anthem brands, says Healthcare.gov isn't really fully fixed: "While the front-end has improved, the systems that transfer customer data behind the scenes are still being fixed. Problems with transferring that data has forced insurers to verify some sign-ups manually, and also caused applicant records to be duplicated or lost."
And Hawaii's state small-business-insurance exchange still stinks:
The number of small businesses that have signed up for health-care through Hawaii's exchange network is decidedly miniscule. Of Hawaii's 30,000 small businesses, 296 registered for insurance through the Hawaii Health Connector by the Dec. 25 deadline, according to the exchange. Some small businesses, we've found, have encountered problems even getting affordable health care through the exchange, qualifying for subsidies and tax breaks or even being able to sign up at all. In New York state, "about 44 percent of people who enrolled in private health insurance on the exchange were not insured when they enrolled." This could be interpreted as good news — the other 56 percent were folks who were losing their insurance, and managed to find replacement on the exchange — or bad news, in the sense that of the 230,264 signups through December 24, only about 101,316 are people who didn't have insurance before and are joining the ranks of the uninsured. For perspective, New York is estimated to have 2.2 million uninsured people. ADDENDUM: Andrew Kaczynski: "By the end of BridgeGate, [former Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Barbara Buono will have had more MSNBC hits than votes received in the 2013 election."
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