Florida's Crist takes heat for more flip flops in Dem run for governor

Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist is taking heat for his call to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba -- the latest episode in which Democrats and Republicans have attacked him for flip-flopping on everything from policy to his choice of political party.

Crist, now a Democrat, was squeezed from both sides earlier this week after saying he was in favor of lifting the 52-year-old embargo on communist Cuba, calling it an obviously “failed” policy that needs revamping.
The 57-year-old Crist took to social media to better explain himself after his remarks on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“After more than 50 years of hoping the embargo would bring freedom to Cuba, it’s time to admit that it has failed,” he posting on his Facebook account. “We should replace it with a policy that facilitates more trade and more exchange of ideas and values, while simultaneously keeping the pressure on the regime for their human rights violations.”
However, the flood gates had already opened.
“It is not the time to unilaterally go in and lift the embargo until we see some iron-clad guarantees that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the assembly is being allowed inside Cuba by the police state that is still run by the Castro brothers,” said Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
The Florida Republican Party said Crist’s position was “so far out the mainstream” that he’s gone to the left of Nelson, who voted last year with President Obama 100 percent of the time.
Among the first Washington Republicans to attack was Florida’s junior Sen. Marco Rubio.
“It’s just the latest in a series of flip-flops that he’s undertaken on public policy,” Rubio, who parents immigrated from Cuba in 1956, told The Miami Herald on Monday. “My interests in Cuba are about the freedom and liberty of the Cuban people. I wish he’d make that a priority.”
Florida Reps. Illena Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart were among the other Republicans to hammer Crist.
While serving as Florida governor from 2007 to 2011, Crist, then a Republican, signed into law a bill that forced travel agencies to post a $250,000 bond to book flights to Cuba. A federal court eventually struck down the law.
And in 2010, while Crist was running as an Independent for U.S. Senate seat in Florida, he agreed with other candidates that the embargo should remain.
“Democrats have to be wondering, will [Crist] use us to be something else next year," Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, a Republican, recently told Reuters.
Though Crist’s shift might appear like a political misstep, it could be an astute political move.

The older generations of Cuban exiles in Florida vote overwhelmingly Republican. But Crist could be trying to win votes from their children and grand-children, who lean Republican but are more open to ending the embargo, according to 2012 general election data.  

President Obama eased travel restrictions Cuba in January 2009 but is opposed to lifting the embargo.
The conservative-leaning magazine The National Review compiled a list several years ago of Crist’s apparent flip-flops including him suggesting that as a  senator he would have voted for ObamaCare, then saying within hours the legislation was too big and expensive.
Crist also denounced offshore drilling when running for governor in 2006, then embraced the “drill baby, drill” mantra when the possibility arose that he might be 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate, according to the magazine.

Did CIA official suppress Benghazi narrative? Accounts raise new questions

New information about the intelligence available in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack raises questions about whether the former No. 2 at the CIA downplayed or dismissed reporting from his own people in Libya that it was a coordinated attack and not an out-of-control protest over an anti-Islam video.
Then-Deputy Director Mike Morell, whose own agency lost two employees at Benghazi, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, was heavily involved in editing the administration’s internal narrative on what happened – known as the “talking points” – which served as the basis for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s controversial claims about a protest on the Sunday talk shows after the attack.
According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, on Sept. 15, four days after the attack and one day before Rice’s appearance, the CIA's most senior operative on the ground in Libya emailed Morell and others at the agency that the attack was "not/not an escalation of protests."
Fox News has confirmed that three days earlier, the CIA Chief of Station and the agency's team in Libya also sent situation reports, known as sitreps, to Washington.The raw intelligence reporting described a coordinated attack by extremists, not an out-of-control protest.
"In a crisis like Benghazi, you would expect it's going directly to the seventh floor," Sam Faddis, who recently retired from the CIA and writes extensively about the intelligence community, said. The “seventh floor” refers to CIA leadership – at the time, Director David Petraeus and his second-in-command Morell, among others. "In a situation like this, you're going to be looking at it immediately ... your aides are going to be asked to flag it to your attention the second that it comes in and bring it to your desk -- right in front of you," he said.
Further, Fox News has learned new details about a secure video teleconference some 72 hours after the attack.Two sources familiar with the call say it included Morell, the CIA chief of station and Benghazi survivors who were evacuated to Germany -- as well as Greg Hicks, the late Ambassador Chris Stevens' deputy.
Fox News is told that after an update from personnel on the ground, Washington's singular focus on the video left participants in Libya baffled, angry and dismayed that Morell seemed to dismiss their on-the-ground reporting.
On Sept. 12, based on the intelligence disseminated to senior lawmakers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., also told Fox News that Benghazi was a “coordinated, military style commando-type” attack.
In a brief statement to Fox News, Morell did not address the situation reports. Separately, Bill Harlow, who is working with Morell on a book, said there was early intelligence reporting from the CIA operation in Libya of a protest before the assault.
This claim conflicts with the assessment of Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which recently released a bipartisan report concluding the Benghazi attack was preventable.
Burr said investigators never found credible reporting linking the attack to a demonstration spawned by an anti-Islam video.
"We've done a forensic on that event. We've never found a reference to demonstrations from individuals who were on the ground -- whether it's the chief of station in Tripoli, whether it's the diplomatic security, or the GRS (Global Response Staff) that went ... from day one, all referrals were an attack that was underway that continued well into the night and to the (CIA) annex."
Yet on Sept. 14 -- when the bodies of Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, as well as Woods and Doherty, were flown to Andrews Air Force base – then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to talk about the video.
"We've seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men,"Clinton told the somber gathering."We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with."
The video was linked to protests elsewhere in the region. But on Sept. 15, in what appears to be a direct response to the administration's public statements about the cause of the attack, the CIA's chief of station sent the email to Morell saying protests were not involved in Benghazi.
Faddis said it was unusual for the chief of station to directly e-mail the deputy director, but it appeared to be an effort to cut through the bureaucracy, to be sure nothing was getting lost in translation. And by taking the message outside standard intelligence channels, it may have been an effort by the chief of station to allow Morell and others to save face.
"The way the agency works, he's (chief of station), been running 24 hour a day to nail every fact,” he said, “… and now he is reaching out four days into this directly to the most senior levels of his organization, saying again with the big red crayon as clearly as he can, ‘there were no protests, I am trying to do my job and tell you at the most senior level don't go forward with anything that says something we can't factually support’."
Documents released by the administration last May show that by Sept. 15, Morell was engaged on the talking points with the State Department and White House.The bipartisan Senate report shows that on the same day, Morell cut half the text including prior intelligence warnings to the State Department.The word "Islamic" was dropped, but "demonstrations" stayed in.
Harlow said Morell was not aware Rice – or any administration official – was going to use the talking points, adding Morell believed they were being prepared for lawmakers. After the Sept. 15 e-mail, Harlow said Morell asked the chief of station to provide more information, adding that on Sept. 16, the chief of station's response was forwarded to the agency analysts.
"Morell immediately passed that to the analysts who produced the original analysis and asked for their reaction,"Harlow explained. "They responded that they had contradictory information and stuck with their judgment. It wasn't until several days later that the CIA was able to get their hands on the CCTV video (Sept. 18) -- when they did, it was clear there were no demonstrations and the analysts changed their reporting."
This emphasis on the analysts who are thousands of miles from the scene of the attack versus the agency personnel on the ground in Libya does not feel right, according to Faddis and other former intelligence officials contacted by Fox News.
"When I hear that explanation, the words that come to mind are disingenuous and frankly incomprehensible," Faddis said. "This strikes me as -- what you're doing is you're looking for an excuse for not paying attention to what (the chief of station) said."
Since retiring from the CIA last year, Morell has taken on high-profile assignments for the administration, including the NSA review panel, which formulated recommendations for President Obama. In addition to the book deal, he is now a TV commentator on national security issues for CBS News and has taken a position for Beacon Global Strategies, which was founded by Philippe Reines.The New York Times magazine recently described Reines as Clinton's "principal gatekeeper."
In a series of questions via e-mail, Fox News asked Morell for his recollection of the early intelligence, the video teleconference and whether he notified the administration at any point that its public statements were in direct conflict with the reporting of U.S. personnel on the ground in Libya.
While not disputing he was aware of the situation reports and participated in the video teleconference, Morell said: "I stand behind what I have said to you and testified to Congress about the talking point issue. Neither the Agency, the analysts, nor I cooked the books in any way."
While Morell has a standing invitation to speak with Fox News on camera, in his statement he said he does "not intend to get into an extended dialogue with you on the subject nor do I intend to grant you an interview on this matter."
While the bipartisan Senate report speculated that protests elsewhere over the anti-Islam video may have played a role in inspiring the attack, the report concludes the intelligence analysts stayed with the protest explanation for too long.“Analysts inaccurately referred to the presence of a protest at the Mission facility before the attack based on open source information and limited intelligence, but without sufficient intelligence or eyewitness statements to corroborate that assertion. The IC (Intelligence Community) took too long to correct these erroneous reports, which caused confusion and influenced the public statements of policymakers."
In an addendum to the bipartisan Senate report, six Republicans on the committee concluded of the talking points: “Rather than simply provide Congress with the best intelligence and on the ground assessments, the administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism.”

When Will the Backlash Occur?

Americans watching the Affordable Care Act’s implementation are witnessing a government policy debacle that is as large as any in memory. It is hard to imagine a more vivid demonstration of the ruinous consequences of government stepping into a market in which it doesn’t belong. And, sadly, what we are seeing now is only the beginning of the policy’s failure. 
In its most updated assessment of the ACA, the government’s own Congressional Budget Office caught the Democrats flat-footed by projecting that the law is severely flawed on a number of fronts, matching in many ways what the ACA opponents clearly and repeatedly warned about. Aside from all of its other negative impacts, millions of jobs will be lost, specifically due to this law.

The Obama administration and its mouthpieces somehow keep spinning this awful news into something positive.

Instead of being part of the remarkably productive American workforce, a labor force that has served as the model for the free world, millions of American families will become newly dependent on government subsidies and will exit from the workforce.
Yet, as we should have expected, the Obama administration and its mouthpieces somehow keep spinning this awful news into something positive. White House economist Jason Furman said it gives people new freedom, liberating them from full-time jobs with their long working hours to spend more time with their families. Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that people won’t be “trapped” in their jobs. And the New York Times editorial board joined in, claiming that reducing the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade “is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law.” 
Eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 where a new word blackwhite meant “a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this … the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary,” supporters of ObamaCare seem to have swallowed the president’s narrative about the ACA, illogical and distorted, indeed destructive to the very foundation of American society, as it is.
All that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes and a dramatic take-over of authority over health care by the government. And despite spending over 2 trillion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money on subsidies, government insurance, and other costs, the law still leaves 31 million non-elderly adults uninsured. Yes, after an entire decade under this law, the most heralded “achievement” of ObamaCare, indeed the administration’s main justification for the law, getting people insured, is projected to be a failure by the CBO.
It couldn’t be a legitimate policy mistake, could it?
Only one conclusion about this administration seems reasonable at this point. President Obama and his administration must be convinced that the American public will remain “loyal soldiers” to his vision of liberalism, no matter what their cost. The Obama administration must cynically believe that Americans will continue to show a shocking naïveté and a near total lack of critical thinking about the Affordable Care Act.
Given that the public has been fed a wholly deceptive narrative on America’s health system - the gross misinformation and distortions directly contradicting the facts about the high quality and world-leading access in our health care system in the world’s leading scientific and medical journals - perhaps this should not be a surprise. And given that the ACA is completely antithetical to the best interests of young Americans yet they still support the law, perhaps the president can still be comfortable in assuming that he will receive their important support, regardless of the facts.
How long can the Obama supporters remain loyal to this catastrophe of a law? Common sense and independent thought are fundamental to the American psyche, so when the facts become clear, Americans typically see the truth. January 2014 polling from Gallup shows a startling increase in the percentage of Americans who now view health care as the nation’s most important problem, quadrupling from only 4 percent to 16 percent in just one year. And the most dramatic uptick is specifically among the very groups who were critical in reelecting this president. Almost five times as many women now point to health care as the top US problem compared to only 12 months ago, roughly 50 percent more than the percentage of men who do so. Among age groups, the percentage of those voters under 35 specifying health care as the biggest problem facing the country has skyrocketed by more than six-fold from an almost unnoticeable two percent in January of 2013 to 13 percent now, an increase far steeper than any other age group. Even the president's most ardent, most loyal supporters are rejecting ObamaCare, now that they have finally understood its impact.
So now, we are left wondering … when will the backlash occur? I have a feeling that it is already underway.
Scott W. Atlas, MD is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of "In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care" (Hoover Press, 2011).

ObamaCare patients with serious pre-existing diseases could face expensive drug costs

People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those the president aimed to help with ObamaCare, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the health care exchanges.
Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a "closed drug formulary."

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains,"if the medicine that you need isn't on that list, it's not covered at all. You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn't count against your deductible, and it doesn't count against your out of pocket limits, so you're basically on your own."
The plan had claimed it would rescue those with serious pre-existing conditions.
"So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication," says Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats MS patients and others with neurological conditions near Jacksonville, Florida. "That’s a possiblity under the new ObamaCare going on right now."
In fact, one conservative group, Americans for Prosperity, is running an ad on exactly this subject, featuring a woman with lupus, an auto-immune disease.
She starts by saying, "I voted for Barack Obama for president. I thought ObamaCare was going to be a good thing."
But Emilie Lamb says she later got a letter saying her insurance was canceled because of ObamaCare, pushing her premiums from $52 to $373 a month.
"I'm having to work a second job, to pay for ObamaCare,” she adds. “For somebody with lupus, that's not an easy thing. If I can't afford to continue to pay for ObamaCare, I don't get my medicine. I don't get to see my doctors."
One of the problems is that drugs for some diseases such as MS do not have generic versions. So without cheaper alternatives and no help from ObamaCare, patients could face huge personal out-of-pocket bills, forcing some to skimp on their medications.
Kantor worries that "this may drive more patients" to not buy their medicines, "which we know is dangerous," he says. "We know MS can be a bad disease when you’re not treating it. When you’re treating it, for most people they handle it pretty well, but we know when you don’t treat (it), it’s the kind of disease where people end up in wheel chairs potentially."
In the commercial market, of course, drugs not on a preferred list would also be more expensive, but with a major difference, according to Gottlieb.
"You go outside that list, you have to pay out of pocket for it, but you do get some co-insurance, meaning the plans will pay some of the cost of that."
Some say ObamaCare hoped to do better on that problem but ran out of time. Matthew Eyles of Avalare Health, a consulting firm, says although officials wanted "to be able to make sure that all the systems were operational in 2014, they realized that they needed to give an extra year to get those systems changes in place."
Officials intend to try again next year.
Additional benefits cost more, though, meaning premiums would have to rise, or the networks of providers would shrink even further.