Govt Shutdown a Week Later
Washington Post: For Boehner, surrender may be only way out of shutdown and debt-ceiling mess
As the government shutdown and the threat of a federal debt default begin to merge into a singular Washington crisis, the only way out for House Speaker John A. Boehner may be something he disparaged earlier this week as “unconditional surrender.”See also Gallup Poll: Republican Party Favorability Sinks to Record Low
More than a week into the shutdown and just days before the government is set to exhaust its borrowing authority, Boehner (R-Ohio) and the White House remain at a standoff with no solution in sight.
President Obama has consistently said he will not negotiate until the government reopens and the debt limit is raised.
Most of the political pressure has been on Boehner and his fellow House Republicans to fix the problem, and none of their options are attractive.
posted by JimK at 2:24 PM
101 Comments:
Boehner has agreed to raise the debt limit for six weeks
Obama has agreed to negotiate debt reduction measures without his previous condition of new taxes
the Senate finally approved one of the House's "piecemeal" this afternoon
bottom line: the deficit has been falling because Repubs held up the previous debt limit increase until Obama negotiated, now, under slightly different arrangements, the negotiations for debt reduction begin again and I think Obama will agree to specific now that he knows his sequester bluff didn't work out for him
oh, and Obamacare will receive no funding after all the "piecemeal" bills have been signed
James Woods is not hiding his distaste for President Barack Obama. The 66-year-old actor -- who starred as the head of the president's Secret Service detail, a man plotting to take down the president in this summer's "White House Down" -- expressed his opinions on Twitter this week in the wake of the ongoing government shutdown.
Woods spoke out on the government shutdown, placing the onus on Obama. He continued to respond to both those who agreed with him and those who did not, calling Obama "a true abomination" and linking to articles about the shutdown. Woods said the remarks might keep him from being able to find a job in Hollywood, but that he put "[his] country first."
Obama tried to bar WWII veterans from holding a meeting at the WWII memorial because the Park Service was, ha-ha, closed
But he said it was fine for illegal aliens to demonstrate
just goes to show who Obama is really concerned about
his cousins
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.
The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad.
Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press." The report notes President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he has fallen short of his promise."
"In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate."
“We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.”
—Ronald Reagan
The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate—this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.
Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”
The closure of the World War II Memorial was just the start of the Park Service’s partisan assault on the citizenry. There’s a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. They do historical reenactments, and once upon a time the National Park Service helped run the place. But in 1980, the NPS cut the farm out of its budget. A group of private citizens set up an endowment to take care of the farm’s expenses. Ever since, the site has operated independently through a combination of private donations and volunteer workers.
The Park Service told Claude Moore Colonial Farm to shut down.
The farm’s administrators appealed this directive—they explained that the Park Service doesn’t actually do anything for the historic site. The folks at the NPS were unmoved. And so, last week, the National Park Service found the scratch to send officers to the park to forcibly remove both volunteer workers and visitors.
Think about that for a minute. The Park Service, which is supposed to serve the public by administering parks, is now in the business of forcing parks they don’t administer to close. As Homer Simpson famously asked, did we lose a war?
We’re not done yet. The parking lot at Mount Vernon was closed by the NPS, too, even though the Park Service does not own Mount Vernon; it just controls access to the parking lots from the George Washington Parkway. At the Vietnam Memorial—which is just a wall you walk past—the NPS called in police to block access.
But the pièce de résistance occurred in South Dakota. The Park Service wasn’t content just to close Mount Rushmore. No, they went the extra mile and put out orange cones to block the little scenic overlook areas on the roads near Mount Rushmore. You know, just to make sure no taxpayers could catch a glimpse of it.
It’s one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It’s another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party.
This is how deep the politicization of Barack Obama’s administration goes.
Have you been furloughed? Lord have mercy!
Go do something productive.
" On Thursday morning, the [GOP] came out of a meeting to announce they'd support "clean" legislation of the sort Obama wanted to raise the debt limit—but only for the next six weeks. "
It took them long enough.
"WASHINGTON, Sept. 26- Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement Monday night that will keep the government running until November 18 and provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with the funds to continue disaster relief. The Senate approved the six-week continuing resolution (CR) with a 79-12 vote."
The national parks and monuments are closed. On the first day, some veterans went to the WWII memorial and were turned away because it is closed. The White House though changed its policy based on legal advice that "First Amendment activities" should be allowed. Now weddings and private affairs are not permitted on federal grounds but protests etc. are. There is nothing political about it. There was no policy on the first day, now there is.
You don't seem to understand the actual seriousness of the government shutting down, if you think looking at Mount Rushmore is the problem.
monuments aren't supposed to close
Obama is attacking his constituents because their representatives dared to disagree with him
it's how dictatorship begins
President Obama has made many promises about his signature health care plan, but one of the simplest was an assurance that it would lower national health care spending and save every family thousands of dollars.
For example, in May 2009 he hailed "comprehensive health care reform -- so that we can do what I pledged to do as a candidate and save a typical family an average of $2,500 on their health care costs in the coming years."
But now government actuaries have reached a different conclusion, finding that ObamaCare will actually increase health care spending by $621 billion over the next 10 years.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, says, "now we're seeing the official scorekeepers of health spending say 'hey it's going up, not down.' That's going to be a mark against the program no matter what."
Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center says the actuaries "made it very clear in their projections that the health care law did not bend the cost curve down. It bent it up," he says, adding, "there will be increase in national health spending associated with the implementation of the health care law."
Analysts say there is no mystery about the increasing costs -- that it's all in the way the law was structured.
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis says he’s not surprised that we're spending more than promised.
"We're adding more people to the rolls. More people have insurance. We're insisting that those who have insurance have more generous coverage," he explains.
Monday night, late night host Jon Stewart pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the price increases many families are facing.
Stewart, seemingly struggling a bit to understand how the law works, asked,"There are people that will end up in difficult times having to spend money they would not have spent, yes? To buy health care if they did not have it - if they did not want it?"
Sebelius, avoiding the most pointed part of the question, said, "there are people who will - yes, pay money, and many of them will pay less than they pay for their cable bill or cell phone bill a month."
But no matter what anyone spends on cable or cell phones, that $621 billion increase does not mean a savings of $2500 a year.
"So when you divide that across the U.S. population," Capretta says, "all Americans will see a higher bill per capita from the health care law , not a lower one."
With some exceptions, the media has decided that it is well and good to frame the government shutdown as a hostage situation perpetuated by a small band of Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
But is that what's really going on here?
There are surface similarities. In a hostage scenario, a small band of thugs threaten to harm people unless they get their way. Yes, that is the negotiating tactic Republicans are using. Give us what we want, and then we will release the government back to you.
But what's happening in Washington is not a hostage situation.
For one thing, and this is very important to keep in mind, Republicans are not in any way abusing the rules or breaking the law. Generally, hostage situations are easy to infuse with moral judgments. The bad guys break the law. They have violated norms that everyone has agreed to.
What Republicans are doing is different. They are using the rules in a way that violates traditions and customs. They are breaking an agreed-upon covenant that, at the very least, the government should be open and operating as a precondition for all other political debates, even those about the nature of said government. Moreover, one person — the Speaker of the House — can change the rules on a whim.
This is an important distinction. And it is a distinction, I think, that Republicans who want to hold out are fair to point out. The Tea Party movement was empowered to force the Republican Party to get serious about its own pledges and promises about reducing government. Until now, cutting government has meant something very different to those who actually governed: A trim here and there, an entitlement reform elsewhere. Governing Republicans never took their anti-government rhetoric to its logical conclusion. They also underestimated what years of denigrating the government would do to the public's perception of it. Being a "small government" Republican doesn't mean what it meant six years ago.
How does this relate to the hostage metaphor? It means that the hostage-takers have already won. And they will get away with it, too, because there is no reason for them not to. They will emerge from this crisis, however it ends, with a much heavier center of gravity than before. Hostage-takers don't usually get away.
The "hostage-takers" have already succeeded in:
1. Closing the government at will;
2. Smashing the hierarchy of one of America's two major political parties;
3. Redefining the meaning of small government conservatism and significantly changing the expectations of small government conservatives;
4. Cutting the government with a hacksaw;
5. Ensuring their re-election.
Democrats will not be able to participate in the practice of governing until they understand that, to a large extent, their opponents have won.
NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks had their biggest gain since the start of the year and yields on longer-dated Treasuries also rose after President Barack Obama agreed on Thursday to consider a proposal from Republican lawmakers to avert a historic debt default.
The Democrats are pretty much staying out of it as the Republicans fight among themselves. You can try to blame Obama but he isn't even part of it -- when Congress agrees on a bill he will have the choice of signing it or not, but as long as the teabaggers control the GOP there won't be anything coherent coming to him.
It is a hostage situation, plain and simple.
good. so the republicans cave, the democrats keep spending us into the oblivion, we get downgraded again, and the dollar becomes no longer the base currency. we end up like greece, far worse than what is happening now
Still waiting to hear how you would get our fiscal house in order or whether you think it is okay to keep running 700 billion to trillion dollar deficits.
what would you do to fix it ?
I know you would get rid of the bush tax cuts, that's one of your answers. for everyone, or just for a particular income threshold ?
that's nowhere close to enough.
what else would you do ? no solutions, just posturing. there's the libs for you.
theresa
"It is a hostage situation, plain and simple."
yes, it is
Obama is telling the country unless he gets his whole agenda, he won't sign any funding bill the House has passed
not to give treatment to children with cancer, not to provide women in poverty with formula for their children
until Obama gets his way, the weak and underprivileged will suffer
after his press secretary has been telling the world all day that Obama will sign the short-term debt increase, he changed his mind and is now holding out for everything he wants
this how we wound up with the sequester
Obama and Boehner had a deal
at the last second, Obama decided that was easy, I think I'll push for more taxes
blew up the deal and here we are today
only saving grace: the whole knows they had a deal today and Obama didn't keep his word
the public will notice
Anonymous has gone off the deep end posting 12 of 14 comments in 7 hours, and he bitches when Priya posts a couple in a row.
Talk about being UNAWARE!
Just 51,000 people completed Obamacare applications during the website's first week, out of tens of millions of Americans in 36 states
Obamacare's main signup engine attracted just 6,200 new customers on its launch day and 51,000 after the first week
At the same rate, the 6-month open enrollment period would sign up just 2 million Americans, including 14 states and D.C., which have their own insurance exchanges
The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financially
Numerous Obama administration officials have denied seeing any enrollment figures at all
Texas congressman says anemic national enrollment numbers are 'roughly the population of a small town in my district'
God forbid people should take some time to review the plans offered, especially people who don't have insurance provided at work, and maybe never had any their entire lives.
They have until March 31 to buy some. Why are you in such a hurry for people to sign up for insurance you want to deny them??
"Republicans at the state level aren't counting on Congress to repeal Obamacare. That's why they've been systematically using a tactic of their own to blow up the health law.
Governors and state legislators are adopting state laws and regulations to sabotage the work of "navigators," the community organizations that will help consumers sign up for care.
Republican governors in 21 states are already denying more than 5 million people health care by refusing to expand Medicaid. Navigator suppression is another way for the Obamacare haters to pile on and limit the reach of the law.
Navigator Sabotage. In a new report, Health Care for America Now conducted a detailed review of the most egregious laws and regulations found in 13 selected states: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. These states are home to 17 million people without health insurance who are eligible for coverage under the health care reform law--fully 41 percent of the nation's uninsured.
The excessive requirements we found include such things as residency rules, extra fees, additional and unnecessary training requirements, superfluous certification exams, and prohibitions against navigators talking with consumers about the benefits offered by different plans. These measures constitute direct interference in the enrollment process.
We are witnessing navigator suppression, and the Republicans' objective is simple: deny the rights of millions of Americans to get the health care they need and interfere with the effective implementation of the Affordable Act..
For example, in Missouri, state and local officials are barred from providing any assistance to an exchange. In Florida, the Department of Health released a directive prohibiting navigators from conducting outreach at any of the county's 67 health departments. Fortunately, two big counties, Broward and Pinellas, are fighting back and ignoring the order.
And just this month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered the Insurance Commissioner to write new navigator regulations that require, among other things, that navigators complete 40 hours of training in addition to the 20 hours required by the ACA and then pass a "rigorous" state exam. Perry is even trying to limit the hours of navigator operations to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. None of these rules is going to help get people covered in Texas, which has the nation's highest percentage of uninsured residents."
I don't suppose that Texas congressman you blabbed about mentioned any of that, huh?
I couldn't care less
it's just a counterpoint to the exuberance expressed here the day the exchanges opened, making it seem like a smashing success
30 million will remain uninsured, at least
Well now you know why.
It's the GOTP that's trying to impede people from signing up.
Congratufuckinglations. You must be so proud.
Well, isn't that interesting!
"I couldn't care less"
The whole country sees that your party feels the same way about poor people without health insurance and that's why the GOP has reached its lowest nadir at Gallup Polling.
People in my neighborhood care about their neighbors. This is from my neighborhood list serve earlier this week.
"Hi neighbors,
My kids and I are longtime lunch regulars at Mamma Lucia's in the Blair shopping plaza (1302 East-West Hwy, 301-562-0693). They are so nice to the kids, and we love their pizza-by-the-slice (and pasta and gelato, which alas is only seasonal). They usually have a bustling, full house at lunchtime with all the workers from NOAA across the street coming over to eat in and get takeout. Well, with the shutdown, it's a ghost town in there. It is so sad. I was talking to one of the guys at the register today, and he looked really stressed and said, "It's bad. It's so bad." I suspect they make most of their money off the weekday lunch rush, and this is 6 days now they've missed it, with no end in sight. And my understanding is that restaurants are a pretty grueling business with a pretty low profit margin.
It may seem silly to highlight one business, when I know there are thousands of people and businesses across the country that are suffering because of the shutdown, but I hope everyone reading this, regardless of politics, will try to go out of their way this week to patronize the Blairs' Mamma Lucia or another business in the same boat.
FYI, the Blairs' Mamma Lucia does dine-in, takeout, and delivery (2-3 mile radius), and tonight, Tuesday night, is their takeout pizza special night -- buy one large, get a 2nd large for $2.99, I think. 1302 East-West Hwy, 301-562-0693"
This shutdown is hurting a whole lot of people and businesses. The GOP should be ashamed of themselves, enacting their plan since the spring to cause this pain all around.
"Well, isn't that interesting!"
just fascinating
"The whole country sees that your party feels the same way about poor people without health insurance and that's why the GOP has reached its lowest nadir at Gallup Polling."
and why is Obama's approval rating 37%?
the best thing we could do to help poor people get health insurance is to return the country to the economic health it enjoyed until Democrats took over Congress in 2007
just borrowing from here to infinity might work for another five years or so but, by then, they'll be no way to fix things
Obamacare will add 600 billion to a debt that will mean that, in the forseeable future, social security, medicare and interest will use 97% of the government's budget
the only times in the five years of Obama's presidency he has made any progress on this was when the debt limit was used by Repubs before
btw, when Bush was president, in 2006, Obama voted to not raise the debt limit
back in the seventies, Ted Kennedy used the threat not to raise the debt limit to get Nixon to approve campaign finance reform
which the Supreme Court will soon rule unconstitutional
never before has a President attacked the people as retaliation for the actions of their representatives
instead of working to ease problems, he's trying to exacerbate them
he will eventually be held accountable
as far as your pizza parlor goes, that's how business is
for example, when Eisenhower built the interstates, businesses on Route 66 and many other blue highways, tons of places went out of business
businesses need to find a way to adapt
The Obama administration has an implementation problem. More than any administration of the modern era they know how to talk but have trouble doing. They give speeches about ObamaCare but when it's unveiled what the public sees is a Potemkin village designed by the noted architect Rube Goldberg. They speak ringingly about the case for action in Syria but can't build support in the U.S. foreign-policy community, in Congress, among the public. Recovery summer is always next summer. They have trouble implementing. Which, of course, is the most boring but crucial part of governing. It's not enough to talk, you must perform.
There is an odd sense with members of this administration that they think words are actions. Maybe that's why they tweet so much.
That gets us to the real story of last week, this week and the future, the one beyond the shutdown, the one that normal people are both fully aware of and fully understand, and that is the utter and catastrophic debut of ObamaCare. Even for those who expected problems, and that would be everyone who follows government, it has been a shock.
They had 3½ years to set it up! They knew exactly when it would be unveiled, on Oct. 1, 2013. On that date, they knew, millions could be expected to go online to see if they benefit.
What they got was the administration's version of Project ORCA, the Romney campaign's computerized voter-turnout system that crashed with such flair on Election Day.
Here is why the rollout is so damaging to ObamaCare: because everyone in America knows we spent four years arguing about the law, that it sucked all the oxygen from the room, that it commanded all focus, that it blocked out other opportunities and initiatives, and that it caused so many searing arguments—mandatory contraceptive and abortifacient coverage for religious organizations that oppose those things, fears about the sharing of private medical information, fears of rising costs and lost coverage. Throughout the struggle the American people must have thought: "OK, at the end it's gotta be worth it, it's got to give me at least some benefits to justify all this drama." And at the end they tried to log in, register and see their options, and found one big, frustrating, chaotic mess. As if for four years we all just wasted our time.
A quick summary of what didn't work. Those who went on federal and state exchanges reported malfunctions during login, constant error messages, inability to create new accounts, frozen screens, confusing instructions, endless wait times, help lines that put people on hold and then cut them off, lost passwords and user names.
After the administration floated the fiction that the problems were due to heavy usage, the Journal tracked down insurance and technology experts who said the real problems were inadequate coding and flaws in the architecture of the system.
There were no enrollments in Delaware in three days. North Carolina got one enrollee. In Kansas ObamaCare was unable to report a single enrollment. A senior Louisiana state official told me zero people enrolled the first day, eight the second. The founder of McAfee slammed the system's lack of security on Fox Business Network, calling it a hacker's happiest nocturnal fantasy. He predicted millions of identity thefts. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius—grilled, surprisingly, on "The Daily Show"—sounded like a blithering idiot as she failed to justify why, in the middle of the chaos, individuals cannot be granted a one-year delay, just as businesses have been.
More ominously, many of those who got into the system complained of sticker shock—high premiums, high deductibles.
Where does this leave us? Congressional Republicans and the White House may soon begin a series of conversations centering on the debt-ceiling fight. Good: May they turn into negotiations. Republicans are now talking about a grand bargain involving entitlement spending, perhaps tax issues. But they would make a mistake in dropping ObamaCare as an issue. A few weeks ago they mistakenly demanded defunding—a move to please their base. They will be tempted to abandon even the word ObamaCare now, but this is exactly when they should keep, as the center of their message and their intent, not defunding ObamaCare but delaying it. Do they really want to turn abrupt focus to elusive Medicare cuts just when it has become obvious to the American people that parts of ObamaCare (like the ability to enroll!) are unworkable?
The Republicans should press harder than ever to delay ObamaCare—to kick it back, allow the administration at least to create functioning websites, and improve what can be improved.
In the past the president has vowed he'd never delay. But that was before the system so famously flopped when people tried to enroll. A delay would be an opportunity for the president to show he knows what's happening on the ground, a chance for him to be responsive. It would allow him to say the program itself is good but the technological infrastructure, frankly, has not yet succeeded. This would allow him to look like one thing no one thinks he is, which is modest.
The ACA doesn't exist anymore. It isn't the poor piece of legislation it was, it's a new and different poor piece of legislation.
All of this is highly unusual. A continuation of unusual would therefore not be out of order. Delay the program. It's a mess and an oppression. Improve it.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or the Democratic Party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections.
The AP-GfK poll finds few people approve of the way the president is handling most major issues and most people say he's not decisive, strong, honest, reasonable or inspiring.
In the midst of the government shutdown and Washington gridlock, the president is faring much better than his party, with large majorities of those surveyed finding little positive to say about Democrats. The negatives are even high across the board, with people describing Democrats as unlikeable and dishonest and not compassionate, refreshing, inspiring or innovative.
Negativity historically hurts the party in power - particularly when it occurs in the second term of a presidency. More people now say they see bigger differences between the two parties than before Obama was elected. A big unknown: possible fallout from the unresolved budget battle in Washington.
The numbers offer warning signs for every incumbent lawmaker, and if these angry sentiments stretch into next year, the 2014 elections could feel much like the 2006 and 2010 midterms when being affiliated with Washington was considered toxic by many voters. In 2006, voters booted Republicans from power in the House and Senate, and in 2010, they fired Democrats who had been controlling the House. Because of gerrymandering, the effect will likely be more pronounced in the Senate, which is currently controlled by Democrats.
"There needs to be a major change," said Pam Morrison, 56, of Lincoln, Neb., among those who were surveyed. "I'm anxious for the next election to see what kind of new blood we can get."
Morrison describes herself as a conservative Republican and said she is very concerned about how her adult children are going to afford insurance under Obama's health care law. She places most of the blame for the shutdown on the president, but she also disapproves of the job Congress is doing. "I don't think they're working together," Morrison said.
"Congress needs to take a look at their salaries, they need to take a cut to their salaries and they need to feel some of the pain the American people are feeling," said Morrison, who is married to a government worker who she said has been deemed essential and is still on the job.
People across the political spectrum voiced disappointment.
Keep spinning. Nobody's buying it.
This it the GOPs shutdown as all polls clearly show. The GOP would LOVE to have the 43% approval rating the Democrats hold. But they don't. The GOP's approval rating is 28%, a ten point drop in a single month and the lowest favorability rating ever recorded by Gallup for either party.
Why?
You summed up so well.
They "couldn't care less" about Americans who don't have health insurance.
For example, the GOP's last Presidential nominee, Mr. Romney,who couldn't care less about 47% of Americans, once said:
"If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care."
Yeah, and the rest of used to pay for that.
That's why we need the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and will never go back to Romney's "let them eat cake" plan,
Bad anonymous said "and why is Obama's approval rating 37%?".
Wrong. Obama's approval rating is at 47% while the Republican's approval rating as it record low 24%. And since the shutdown the approval rating for Obamacare has gone up 7% points. The Republican's shutdown stunt has backfired on them in a big way.
Bad anonymous made 12 of 14 posts in 7 hours. He's obviously manic depressive and in his manic state. He'll return to depression shortly as he starts thinking about how his side has lost their war on gays and lesbians.
Bad anonymous can't win the argument with quality so he's desperately posting quantity and lies instead, and inevitably failing miserably anyway.
Good anonymous posted a Gallup poll that showed the Republicans aproval rating at 28%. I posted an NBC/Wall street Journal poll which has the Republican's approval rating at 24%.
remember that Nate Silver that Democrats was such a genius last year?
here's his thoughts on the current situation:
1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown's political impact.
2. The impact of the 1995-96 shutdowns is overrated in Washington's mythology.
3. Democrats face extremely unfavorable conditions in trying to regain the House.
4. The polling data on the shutdown is not yet all that useful, and we lack data on most important measures of voter preferences.
5. President Obama's change in tactics may be less about a change of heart and more about a change in incentives.
6. The increasing extent of GOP partisanship is without strong recent precedent, and contributes to the systemic uncertainty about political outcomes.
Congress has gone through periods of relatively high partisanship before — for example, at the turn of the 20th century. But the degree of polarization in the Congress is higher than at any point since the Great Depression by a variety of measures, and is possibly at its highest point ever. (Most of the evidence suggests the trend is asymmetric: Republicans in Congress have become much more conservative, while Democrats have become only somewhat more liberal.)
What this means is that, whether they assume the form of statistical models or more anecdotal takes on the evidence, conceptions based on recent history of how the negotiations might play out may not be all that reliable. That there were 17 government shutdowns between 1976 and 1996, for example, none of which persisted for more than three weeks, may not be all that meaningful since none of those came at a time when Congress was nearly as polarized as it is now. Similarly, the fact that an aggregate limit on federal debt has been in place since 1939 [PDF] may not tell us all that much. This is not to imply that the risk of a debt ceiling breach is all that high, especially given the reports of progress in budget talks as of Thursday morning.
But there's a lot we don't know.
here's the poll showing Obama's approval rating at 37%:
http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP-GfK%20October%202013%20Poll%20Topline%20Final_POLITICS.pdf
Lazy Priya is lyin' and lazy
oh, also notice 22% believe America is headed in the right direction
don't blame me, I voted for Romney
"I voted for Romney"
Yep, you voted for Romney, and your candidate lost the election. Dems picked up the Presidency, seats in the Senate, and seats in the House. And now you cling to a single poll number and spin it as if it's the only poll number out there.
Guess again, AnonSpinner.
The new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll not only contains a slew of bad news for the Republican Party but also an explanation for why the GOP is losing the blame game over the government shutdown.
The answer is simple: The American public views the Republican party’s motives in the shutdown as overwhelmingly political. And looking political is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a political party.
A single question (Q#16) in the NBC-WSJ poll captures that sentiment. Seven in 10 people agreed with the statement that Republicans are “putting their own political agenda ahead of what is good for the country” while just 27 percent said that the GOP is “demonstrating strong leadership and standing up for what they believe in.”
Compare those numbers to where President Obama stands on that same question. Forty-six percent of respondents said he is “demonstrating strong leadership” while 51 percent said he is putting his own political agenda first. Those aren’t stellar numbers for the president but they look a whole heck of a lot better when compared to where Republicans stand at the moment...
Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for how the public perceives their actions on the shutdown. The decision to link keeping the government open with defunding or delaying Obamacare was clearly a strategic misstep that allowed Obama to paint Republicans as ideologues bent on achieving their political ends no matter the consequences for the country.
And then, once the shutdown hit, an internal debate over strategy and tactics — with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at its center — broke into public view, drawing even more focus to the political sausage-making of the GOP.
All of that focus on the winning and losing of the shutdown led directly to the current dismal state Republicans find themselves in. Any time a politician or a political party talks about a serious policy matter in political terms, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Poor, poor bad anonymous. Your poll is from Oct 3-7 and is out of date. The one I posted is from yesterday. As Americans have had time to sift through the Republican B.S. they've come to see who's really responsible for trying to push the country over the edge.
And few Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction because of the reckless partisan actions of the Republicans who are at a historic low 24% approval rating.
Poor old bad anonymous, reality is pounding his head against the wall and he's still denying it. Bad anonymous is a true blue Tea partier, more interested in unconditionally opposing Obama than in his own credibility or the good of the country. That's why the Tea party's approval rating is at 21% which is still several times higher than Bad anonymous's credibility rating.
Bad anonymous, the best way forward for both you and the Republican party is to admit your obvious mistake, take ownership of it, and move on. That way you'll at least appear to have some integrity instead of continuing to deny the obvious and just continuing the bleeding.
But then, you're too childish to just admit when you're obviously wrong as we all know. You just stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la la la la la". Grow up little boy.
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or the Democratic Party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections.
The AP-GfK poll finds few people approve of the way the president is handling most major issues and most people say he's not decisive, strong, honest, reasonable or inspiring."
that what the AP poll said two days before the polling lazy priya clings to
if you believe the lazy one, Obama has flipped the electorate in two days
maybe he should get the Nobel Peace Prize
hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
"this how we wound up with the sequester" AnonSpinner.
No, this is how we wound up with the sequester:
"When Congress and President Obama reached their August 2011 deal that averted the first-ever default by the United States, Speaker Boehner declared, "I got 98 percent of what I wanted."
Among the things John Boehner got was the sequester process, the automatic $1.2 trillion in nondefense discretionary spending over the next decade that the CBO forecast could slash GDP by 0.6 percent and cost the U.S. 750,000 jobs in 2013 alone. (Nevertheless, Boehner has more than once played dumb on that point, declaring, "I don't know whether it's going to hurt the economy or not. I don't think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.") What Boehner--and all of the United States--also got was a downgrade of its AAA rating from Standard & Poors.
Just days after the August 2011 deal, S&P explained who was responsible for what should rightly be called the "Tea Party Downgrade."
A Standard & Poor's director said for the first time Thursday that one reason the United States lost its triple-A credit rating was that several lawmakers expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default -- a position put forth by some Republicans. Without specifically mentioning Republicans, S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that "people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default," Mukherji said. "That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable," he added. "This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns."
that what the AP poll said two days before the polling lazy priya clings to
And your AP/GfK poll came out 2 days ago too.
The NBC/WSJ poll, which found "Seven in 10 people agreed with the statement that Republicans are “putting their own political agenda ahead of what is good for the country” while just 27 percent said that the GOP is “demonstrating strong leadership and standing up for what they believe in.”" came out today.
Keep spinning AnonSpinner!
"btw, when Bush was president, in 2006, Obama voted to not raise the debt limit"
AnonSpinner has forgotten some inconvenient facts:
Boehner Voted for All 7 of Bush's Debt Ceiling Hikes
Paying off Uncle Sam's bills for obligations already made is why both parties routinely boosted the debt ceiling, at least until Boehner's Republicans took over the House in January 2011.
Ronald Reagan required 17 debt limit hikes as he tripled the national debt during his eight years in the White House.
President Bush needed 7 more, as he nearly doubled the Treasury's red ink from 2001 to 2009. And as it turns out, John Boehner voted for all of them.
Of course, he had to. Dubya's agenda, including the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, two wars, TARP and the unfunded Medicare prescription drug program, drained (and continues to drain) Uncle Sam's coffers. And as it turns out, Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Eric Cantor along with John Boehner voted for all of it. As Utah GOP Senator Orrin Hatch summed up Republican mismanagement during the Bush years:
"It was standard practice not to pay for things."
Bad anonymous, if you want to regain people's respect first you have to admit you did something wrong and own it, you can never get out of the hole you're in if you keep denying the obvious.
That's scandal management 101
"Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) will circumvent the majority-Republican legislature in his state to advance an expansion of Medicaid benefits to 275,000 people under President Barack Obama's health care reform law, according to a report published Friday in the Columbus Dispatch.
Kasich, who has been campaigning across Ohio and lobbying lawmakers since February to accept federal money to provide Medicaid to more poor residents, will present a proposal to the state funding board that could fast-track the expansion, the Columbus Dispatch reported. The GOP-led legislature has blocked Kasich's proposal to date.
The health care reform law, known as the Affordable Care Act, calls for all states to expand Medicaid coverage to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level in 2014, which is $15,282 for a single person this year. Only about half the states are going ahead with the expansion, however, as Republican governors and legislators have refused to accept the federal dollars that would finance it. When the Supreme Court upheld the law last year, justices also ruled that states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion. States' refusal to expand the program is expected to result in millions of low-income Americans, mostly in the South, remaining uninsured.
Kasich is one of 10 Republican governors who have broken with their party to support the Medicaid expansion..."
AnonSpinner has now pathetically lowered him or herself to doctoring articles to falsify them, as follows:
At 12:33PM today, AnonSpinner posted an AP article that supposedly started this way:
""WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or the Democratic Party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections."
Here is how the AP actually wrote that first paragraph.
"WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or either political party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections."
It takes a special kind of fool to think you can hide such lies just because you refuse to post links to your sources.
AnonSpinner, who "couldn't care less" is AnonLiar now.
So, bad anonymous, trying to cover up your Republican scandal with more lies, what have you got to say for yourself?
You really don't have any integrity, do you?
On second thought, don't bother responding, you've already said you couldn't care less about you and the Republicans lying and using dirty tricks to harm the public.
Republicans are on the verge of again becoming the majority party. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP is taking the brunt of the public blame for the partial government shutdown. In the short term, that is true. In the long term, however, the Republicans are on the verge of a major triumph. They will lose the shutdown battle, but win the Obamacare war.
By confronting President Obama on defunding or delaying his signature health care law, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives finally made a stand. Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are in no rush to end the government shutdown. The reason is obvious: They want to prolong the pain, thereby hoping to direct public anger against the House Republicans. The liberal elite media have peddled the narrative that the Tea Party is responsible for the shutdown. Democrats have resorted to calling Republicans every name in the book — terrorists, anarchists, suicide-bombers and right-wing extremists. The only thing they haven’t called Tea Party conservatives — yet — are Satanists.
The vitriol and hatred reveal not just the Democrats’ fanaticism. They expose something deeper: the left’s profound insecurity about Obamacare. It is their albatross, which threatens to drag down the entire Democratic establishment. Enrollment for Obamacare began Oct. 1. The verdict is already in: The law is a bureaucratic monstrosity. It is a disastrous failure. The government’s website designed to enable customers to enroll online into the marketplace exchanges keeps crashing. The system’s software is flawed — most likely, beyond repair. Few people are able to sign up. And those that manage to get on the site are shocked to discover that, for most people, premiums are exorbitantly expensive.
Obamacare is delivering the very opposite of what was promised: skyrocketing health costs and little choice. Mr. Obama vowed that if you like your doctor or health care plan, you could keep them. That is false. Walgreen, Sears, IBM, UPS, Trader Joe’s and Time Warner all have announced major changes in employee health benefits, spearheading a push toward exchanges. Moreover, the average health care cost for a family of four will explode nearly $7,500. Obamacare represents one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. The middle- and working-class will see their health care expenses dramatically increase and their benefits slashed in order to subsidize free medical care for a segment of the poor. It is redistributionist socialism masquerading as “reform.”
The law’s central promise — universal coverage — also turns out to be a chimera. According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 30 million Americans will still not receive health benefits under Obamacare. In other words, Mr. Obama has erected a vast social-engineering experiment that revolutionizes one-sixth of the U.S. economy, imposes countless taxes, fees and regulations, undermines economic growth and job creation, pushes numerous employees into part-time work, and creates a massive, intrusive bureaucracy that will involve itself in the most intimate aspects of nearly every individual’s life, their personal health. All of this damage will be inflicted without even achieving Obamacare’s singular purpose. The American people have been sold a pack of lies.
“This is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder,” to borrow a line from the French statesman Charles de Talleyrand.
For Democrats, Obamacare is the blunder of a generation. It is their law; they own it — lock, stock and barrel. There is a fierce battle against it because of deep popular opposition. Mr. Obama is paying the price for ramming the law down the throats of Congress and the American people. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — every prior major modern entitlement program has had substantial bipartisan support. This was done to ensure a level of political consensus and social stability when implementing sweeping change.
Obamacare, however, was different. It was passed without a single GOP vote. Every Republican idea — purchasing insurance across state lines, the need for tort reform, stripping out the death panels, abolishing taxpayer funding of abortions and contraception, and eliminating the punishing tax on medical devices — was rejected. It was Obamacare that spawned the birth of the Tea Party.
Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul represents liberalism’s fatal overreach. Most Americans despise it, and the more they find out about Obamacare, the more they hate it. It is a significant reason why the president’s job approval has sunk to 37 percent — and will continue to plummet. The most enduring memory the electorate will have is of Republicans shutting down the government in order to thwart the oncoming disaster. The GOP is being rebranded right in front of our eyes. They are standing as the defenders of small government, fiscal sanity and individual freedom. The Tea Party represents the rebirth of Reagan conservatism, and the last time the GOP embraced Reaganism, they won consecutive landslide elections.
The Republican moment is approaching.
The delusion is strong with this one.
As Ted Cruz (R) said "My biggest fear is that Americans will like Obamacare, it'll be like sugar to them".
This is why Republicans have been so desperate to delay Obamacare because they know once the American public has a chance to see it in action they'll like it and there'll be no chance to repeal it.
When you ask Americans if they support insurance companies having to insure people with pre-existing conditions they overwhelmingly say yes, when you ask them if they support a marketplace for insurance they overwhelmingly say yes. That is Obamacare but when you ask Americans about Obamacare the numbers drop because Republicans have lied to them effectively about it. Unfortunately for Republicans they know they can't keep up the charade for long.
Since the shutdown the approval for Obamacare has gone up 7% because its been rolled out and Americans are getting a chance to see what its really about. Bad anonymous is still clinging to out of date polling trying to claim Obama's approval rating is at 37% when the latest polling shows Obama's approval rating at 47%.
The longer the shutdown goes on the farther Republican numbers drop. Now 47% of Americans say they want a Democratically controlled congress compared to 39%that say they want a Republican controlled congress.
The Republicans are holding the American economy hostage. Democrats are willing to open the government without any conditions but Republicans are only willing to do so with conditions. Republicans say they want to negotiate but Democrats have already agreed to the Republican 986 billion spending level which is a very significant cut which economists say that will hurt the economy.
With the Republicans there are a never ending list of demands, when the Democrats agree to one the Republicans back track and say its not enough, we need more. This is why the Democrats cannot continue conceding to the Republicans, giving in now would just embolden the Republicans to hold the economy hostage every time they want to force an economic slowdown they hope they can pin on the Democrats.
Democrats aren't attaching any conditions to opening the government, Republicans are. Republicans could open the government immediately if they chose to but they aren't willing to take "yes" for an answer. The Democrats have already agreed to their cuts but Republicans position is that unless we get everything and you get nothing we'll shoot the economy.
Its no wonder Republicans are now in a death spiral.
Neurosurgeon Ben Carson said Obamacare is the worst thing to happen to America "since slavery" while speaking in Washington, D.C.
"You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery," Carson said Friday. "And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control."
Carson served as the director of pediatric surgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center for 39 years.
Carson once called white liberals racist."White liberals are the most racist people there are," Carson said in April 2013. "You know, they put you in a little category, a little box -- you have to think this way. How could you dare come off the plantation?"
And of course bad anonymous doesn't want to comment on how he earlier doctored an article to falsify it:
At 12:33PM today, bad anonymous posted an AP article that supposedly started this way:
""WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or the Democratic Party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections."
Here is how the AP actually wrote that first paragraph.
"WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are finding little they like about President Barack Obama or either political party, according to a new poll that suggests the possibility of a "throw the bums out" mentality in next year's midterm elections."
So you can see from bad anonymous's willing to lie because he "couldn't care less" about the truth, you can't believe anything he posts.
Bad anonymous, your lying is well documented, just curious, how do you justify that to yourself?
Oh brother "liberalism's last chance goes to hell,"
Thanks ever so much for posting your two-part comment of an editorial from the Washington Times, where since July 8, 2013, evolution denier, Ben Carson, (the subject of your third comment within 20 minutes) has been a weekly opinion columnist.
I see you didn't have to doctor the editorial's message any since you got it from that rightwing Moonie rag. And of course while he's poopooing Obamacare, the author of that two-part editorial is a radio host in Boston, where Romenycare, the model for Obamacare, has been widely successful.
Oct. 1, 2013
"Today marks a milestone on the nation's long march toward universal health coverage: the launch of online marketplaces, called exchanges, designed to help people find insurance they can afford.
It's an idea pioneered by Massachusetts seven years ago. People here call their program a success, and say the state's exchange was an indispensable factor.
Those involved since the beginning say the Massachusetts health insurance exchange, called the Connector, was the brainchild of former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican.
Glen Shor, who once ran the Connector and is now the state's secretary of administration and finance, is confident that the nation will follow Massachusetts' lead.
"As the [federal] law begins to be implemented," Shor says, "people will see and feel its positive effects. They'll be able to see through some of the rhetoric and spin."
When the Connector opened for business in late 2006, people signed up much faster than projected. Within a year there were 367,000 newly insured citizens.
"Enrollment was fast," Shor says. "One of the clear lessons of the Massachusetts experience is that people want affordable health insurance."
Today, 97 percent of the state's 6.6 million people have it — the highest coverage rate of anywhere in America.
And Shor says Obamacare will bring another 45,000 new people into the fold — those working in low-wage jobs who will qualify for an expansion of MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program.
That group represents "roughly a quarter of the remaining uninsured," says Shor. "A big deal."
Thousands more will become eligible for premium subsidies because they make under $46,000 a year (for an individual) or $94,000 (for a family of four). That will bring Massachusetts pretty close to advocates' longtime dream of universal coverage.
"It's a fight that's worth fighting, and I think ultimately it will be won," Shor says."
Sen. Ted Cruz confronted President Barack Obama over his health care law during a meeting at the White House Friday attended by dozens of GOP senators.
Cruz told Obama that any deal to reopen the government must also provide relief for those negatively affected by Obamacare. Cruz did not use the word “defund” to describe his aspirations for changes to the health care law, but said he wants “substantial” changes.
“I told the president exactly the same thing I have told you here today: That we need to work together and fund the government and at the same time provide substantial relief to the millions of people who are hurting because of Obamacare, who are losing their jobs, being forced into part-time work and losing their health insurance,” Cruz said. “If the outcome doesn’t impact people who are struggling, who are hurting because of Obamacare, then I don’t think it would be a good outcome.”
Asked to give a breakdown of the exchange between Cruz and Obama, a flustered White House press secretary Jay Carney could only respond: “No.”
Its time to address a few of the myths bad anonymous brought up about Obamacare.
"Mr. Obama vowed that if you like your doctor or health care plan, you could keep them. That is false".
That is misleading at best. Under Obamacare you will be able to choose your doctor and the government will not be between you and your doctor, but rather between you and your insurance company, insuring for example that they can't drop you for a pre-existing condition. The law doesn’t force Americans to pick new plans or new doctors. While its true there’s no guarantee that your employer won’t switch plans or if you switch jobs, your new work-based coverage might not have your doctor as an in-network provider but this is how it worked before the law as well.
"Moreover, the average health care cost for a family of four will explode nearly $7,500.".
That is an out and out lie, the average cost for Obamacare is $328 per month with low income families getting government subsides that will dramatically lower the cost from that figure.
"Obamacare, however, was different. It was passed without a single GOP vote. Every Republican idea — Obamacare, however, was different. It was passed without a single GOP vote. Every Republican idea — purchasing insurance across state lines, the need for tort reform, stripping out the death panels, abolishing taxpayer funding of abortions and contraception, and eliminating the punishing tax on medical devices — was rejected.".
Putting aside the republican war on women and contraceptive coverage there are two striking lies there. There never were "death panels". There were panels designed to give end of life medical advice to people if they wanted it. Republicans lied and claimed the purpose of these panels was to decide who would and wouldn't get medical coverage to keep them alive. The innocuous end of life advice panels WERE in fact removed from the Obamacare law but Republicans like bad anonymous find this lie to conveniently juicy to stop telling it. The tax on medical devices, far from being punishing, is a measly 2.3%. There is not a single objective study that supports the claim that it will harm the industry.
WATCH: John McCain Reminds Fox News That Republicans Shut Down The Government
"Senator John McCain (R-AZ) took his fight against the Republican Party’s “wacko bird” crusade to destroy the Affordable Care Act into hostile territory on Friday, reminding Fox News that the government shutdown is actually the GOP’s fault.
Appearing on America’s Newsroom, McCain was asked about the Obama administration’s handling of the suspension of death benefits for military families. While the Arizona Republican did not hesitate to blast the White House for a response that he described as “terribly mismanaged,” McCain made sure to remind host Martha MacCallum who is ultimately responsible.
“Let’s have a little straight talk, Martha,” McCain said. “[The Obama administration] wouldn’t have had the opportunity to handle it that way if we had not shut down the government on a fool’s errand that we were not going to accomplish. The whole premise of shutting down the government was the repeal of Obamacare.”
“If we hadn’t shut down the government, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Towards the end of the interview, McCain listed a number of issues on which he believes the GOP could negotiate with President Obama, but reiterated that “defunding Obamacare is not one of them.”
“Well, we’ll see,” MacCallum replied.
“I guarantee it,” McCain shot back with a laugh. “Not only will you see it, I guarantee it.” The dose of reality prompted an audible sigh from MacCallum, who quickly transitioned away, lest Fox News’ bubble get burst any further.
VIDEO: McCain on Fox News
Both public polling and common sense back up McCain’s assertion; the Republican decision to withhold funding for the government unless the Affordable Care Act gets delayed or defunded has done nothing to halt the law’s implementation, and has actually made the law more popular with the American public."
You're doing a great job good anonymous. I particularly like that you caught bad anonymous rewriting the AP news story to try and deceive people.
Thanks! You're doing a great job too, Priya Lynn. We make a pretty good tag team here IMHO.
Now, if only Congress could work so well at getting to the facts through all the spin....
sorry Priya.
I posted earlier the fact that Raytheon is dropping plans, increasing costs and directly citing Obamacare as the reason.
I will email the PDF to Jim if you don't believe me.
Theresa
I see lazy Priya is making some issue of my changing the wording of an AP story
I didn't reference the source of the material but used it as a basis for the facts
I deleted the mention of the reaction of the public to the Republican side because that has already been noted repeatedly
what gets lost in the white noise of most reporting is that most Americans blame Democrats and Obama for this mess
perhaps to a slightly lesser degree but that's not surprising considering the flagrant bias of the media
how often has the media focused on the intransigent stand of Obama throughout this situation
Obama could have prevented the shutdown by agreeing to delay the individual mandate one year, which would have been reasonable considering that the government was obviously not ready on October 1
or at any time, he could make a counter-offer
his stance throughout is that he's above negotiation
"What to make of all the polls on the government shutdown? You know, the ones that say that, to varying degrees, congressional Republicans are being blamed more than Democrats and Barack Obama.
Let me theorize that people sometimes try to send messages through their responses to poll questions. I developed this theory after watching British political polls since the 1960s.
For the large majority of that time voters have given negative job ratings to the governments of the day. Yet during that time, incumbent parties have won most general elections.
This is not necessarily a contradiction. Britons are adept tactical voters. If they live in a district where Lib Dems are stronger than Labor, then Laborites will vote Lib Dem to keep the Conservatives out.
In responding to polls, British voters who fear the government may go too far will express disapproval as a way of checking the prime minister's theoretically dictatorial power. Backbenchers will pressure the PM not to go too far if his or her job approval is low.
In our two-party system, Americans seldom vote tactically. But I think they sometimes respond to polls tactically.
That helps explain why Bill Clinton's job approval went up 20 points when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke and Republicans threatened impeachment. That looks like a plea to Republicans to drop impeachment.
Americans believe in the Twenty-Second Amendment, limiting the president to two terms. Clinton had been elected to a second term and was competently performing his day work. Let him serve that term out, voters seemed to be saying.
So it may be helpful to look at government shutdown polls in a similar light.
Many polls ask which side will be or is more to blame for the shutdown. Pluralities blame Barack Obama over Republicans (there's some difference in question wording) -- 39-36 and 38-30 (Pew), 44-35 (CBS), 42-32 (Fox News). When asked whether Republicans or the Obama administration is more to blame, it's Republicans, 39-36 (National Journal).
A general rule in polling is that individuals are more popular than groups of people -- especially groups of politicians. That Obama has only a small lead, and the Obama administration a statistically insignificant deficit, does not signal great presidential strength.
Note too that one-fifth to one-quarter are not sure. And when given the option of "both equally," 58 percent choose that (Quinnipiac).
WESTMINSTER, Md., Oct 12 - Scott Strzelczyk is fed up with what he calls political slavery in Maryland and sees one way out - creating a breakaway state, a feat that has not been accomplished since the American Civil War.
Riding a wave of anti-government sentiment across the United States, the small-town information technology consultant has launched a long-shot bid to get Maryland's five conservative western counties to secede from the state, one of the most liberal and Democratic in the country.
"We think we have irreconcilable differences, and we just want an amicable divorce," Strzelczyk, 49, told Reuters after pitching secession to the We the People Tea Party group in Carroll County, a county he hopes will be part of the split.
Strzelczyk's breakaway bid is not alone. His Western Maryland Initiative is just one of several secession proposals that are emerging across the United States.
Nearly a dozen rural Colorado counties have put nonbinding secession referendums on their November ballots. A split-off proposal for southern Florida has also been floated.
Some residents of northern California want to join with counties in southern Oregon to form their own state. Liberals in Tucson, Arizona, fed up with the conservative state governor and lawmakers, want out as well.
The United States has seen hundreds of secessionist schemes throughout its history. No state has been formed by seceding from another, however, since 1863, when West Virginia was created during the Civil War.
But analysts said the upsurge in breakaway bids was part of a larger frustration with government, including the sort of legislative gridlock that produced this month's federal government shut-down. Recent opinion polls, for example, show job approval for the U.S. Congress hovering in the teens.
In Maryland, secession hopes feed on tensions between conservative rural voters and more liberal urbanites, said Todd Eberly, assistant political science professor at St. Mary's College on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Democrats have also fueled secession efforts in Maryland by gerrymandering, or manipulating the boundaries of legislative districts while in power to bolster ruling party support and guarantee that those who oppose them are shut out, he said.
This often leaves people in these districts feeling stuck with politicians who do not represent their views.
Remember when Obama said he refused to negotiate? Turns out he find with negotiating as long as the most liberal Republican is the one he deals with. We almost had this all settled Thursday and then, as usual, Obama blows everything up.
House Republicans were furious with Senate Republicans and President Obama on Saturday for trying to cut a debt ceiling deal that leaves them out in the cold.
Members emerged from a conference meeting saying Obama had double-crossed them by breaking off talks in order to shop for a better deal from the Senate GOP.
They said the deal, formulated by centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.), would never get House GOP approval.
“They are trying to jam us with the Senate and we are not going to roll over and take that,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said after a GOP conference meeting.
“We won't support it,” he said of the Collins proposal, which would hike the debt ceiling until the end of January and fund the government for six months at the level of the sequester.
In exchange, it would delay for two years a tax on medical devices used to pay for ObamaCare, and strengthen efforts to ensure people who get tax subsidies to buy healthcare insurance are eligible to do so.
It would also set up a conference of House and Senate members to discuss a longer-term budget deal. The conference would have to report back by Jan. 15.
Ryan said the White House was negotiating with the Senate but not the House.
“We just learned about what's going on this morning. We didn't say anything yesterday because we told the White House we would not comment on the status of negotiation, negotiations that quite frankly weren't taking place with the House,” he said.
He added that the Collins plan had “too many” problems to go into.
“I'm disappointed that the president has rejected the offer that we put on the table,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters as he left the House GOP meeting. “I know he is trying to see which Republican senator he can pick off in the Senate. I hope that the Senate Republicans stand strong so that we can speak with one voice.”
Democrats seem delighted. The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Republicans sustaining historic levels of damage amid the government shutdown, with the party's favorability falling to a dismal 24 percent and 70 percent of Americans concluding that Republicans are putting partisan politics ahead of the common good.
But Democrats shouldn't be thrilled; they should be terrified.
The reason Republicans are being routed is that the House leadership caved not just to the wishes of the party's anti-government extremists, but to their strategy. The Republicans' burn-it-down caucus is powerful enough to bend Speaker John Boehner to its will, but appears to lack a single competent political strategist in its ranks.
As a result, the party adopted the one ploy guaranteed to fail: It shut the government and demanded that damage be done to the Affordable Care Act as the price of reopening it. Genius wasn't necessary to realize what a disastrous approach this would be. All the way back on Sept. 23, the Hill newspaper reported on "a flood of negative polling for the conservatives who want to threaten a government shutdown unless President Obama agrees to give up on his signature healthcare law." A Quinnipiac Poll showed the public rejected that approach by a 3-to-1 margin. The danger couldn't have been more obvious if a green witch had written "Surrender Dorothy" across the sky.
Now that the Tea Party types have steered Republicans onto the rocks, Boehner and his leadership team should be able to retain control next time. But they will likely follow the course Boehner envisioned originally, before he was undercut by Senator Ted Cruz and his minions: Use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract outsize spending cuts that wouldn't pass Congress otherwise.
Unlike the federal government, which provides services that most every American can identify, the debt ceiling is just a phrase. According to this month's United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, 62 percent of Americans believe Congress raises the debt ceiling just to increase future spending. (Or that's what it seems to suggest; as Josh Barro pointed out, even the poll questions are confusing.)
Voters in the survey said by 2-to-1 that they wouldn't support the linkage of discretionary spending cuts to the debt ceiling increase, but given the confusion over what the debt ceiling is, there is far greater latitude for mischief. A more explicit version of the same question, asked by CBS in a poll taken Oct. 1-2, found that 55 percent of Americans favored linking a debt-limit increase to spending cuts, while only 23 percent supported raising it without conditions.
That is a giant opening for Boehner's next gambit.
Republicans, after all, haven't renounced the tactic of taking the U.S. economy hostage and demanding a ransom for not harming it. (The party's most extreme members appear more than willing to shoot the hostage, in fact, the necessary predicate to a successful ransom.)
Meanwhile, there is no reason to believe Republicans will be chastened by the debacle they have brought on themselves. The party appears to have no expectation of seeing the inside of the White House anytime soon, as evidenced by its hunkering down into a congressional and regional resistance. The political dynamics that encourage Republican extremism aren't abating, and have deep roots. Congressional Republicans, wrote Ron Brownstein, are channeling "the bottomless alienation coursing through much of the GOP's base."
In an essay on the same theme, Tom Edsall wrote, "The depth and strength of voters’ conviction that their opponents are determined to destroy their way of life has rarely been matched, perhaps only by the mood of the South in the years leading up to the Civil War."
Republicans are too dysfunctional and splintered to produce much viable legislation, and the next presidential election is not only three years away but potentially out of reach to all but Hillary Clinton. For a party blistered by grassroots rage and struggling to achieve parity under traditional political norms, political extortion will remain a tempting shortcut to power.
The hostage-taking didn't work this time. But Republicans will do it again. Next time, they will do it better.
something that hasn't been given enough attention
the Obamacare software is designed so poorly that it will allow massive identity theft
so says the founder of the largest ant-virus company in the world:
"NEIL CAVUTO: What do you make of Obamacare? Obviously, a lot of
people have been focusing on the law but not really cognizant of the privacy part of the law, and how hackers could have a field day with it. Is it that bad?
JOHN McAFEE: Oh, it is seriously bad. Somebody made a grave error, not in designing the program but in simply implementing the web aspect of it. I mean, for example, anybody can put up a web page and claim to be a broker for this system. There is no central place where I can go and say, 'Okay, here are all the legitimate brokers, the examiners for all of the states and pick and choose one.'
Instead, any hacker can put a website up, make it look extremely competitive, and because of the nature of the system, and this is health care, after all, they can ask you the most intimate questions, and you’re freely going to answer them. What’s my Social Security number? My birth date? What are my health issues?
Well, here's the problem -- it's not something software can solve. I mean, what idiot put this system out there and did not create a central depository? There should be one website, run by the government, you go to that website and then you can click on all of the agencies. This is insane. So, I will predict that the loss of income for the millions of Americans who are going to lose their identities -- I mean, you can imagine some retired lady in Utah, who has $75,000 dollars in the bank, saving her whole life, having it wiped out one day because she signed up for Obamacare. And believe me, this is going to happen millions of times. This is a hacker's wet dream. I cannot believe that they did this.
the idiot's name is Barackety Obama
from a facebook friend of mine that created an account.
DC Obamacare premiums and deductibles.
Turns out that &17K I was given as an estimate yesterday as being an average for our 2 person middle-age family for premiums, deductibles and co-pays was a farce.
Today I went into the site and created an account. Here is what is offered.
Bronze:
BCBS - 17,342.50 - premium 7342.50 Deductible 12,000 (no-co-pays or insurance and only usual and customary charges apply to deductible)
Kaiser - 18,924.50 - premium 8924.50 plus 10K deductible
Silver:
Aetna (others were not offered at this level) - 22,544 premium and 11K deductible
Gold:
Aetna - 23,484.60 - premium 13,484.50 - deductible - 10K
Platinum:
Aetna - 20,172.60 - deductible 4K
We do not qualify for any subsidy and we are both non-tobacco users.
Anyway you look at it, my worst year at 16-17K out of pocket medical expenses does not come near what they are doing to people.
Our premium next year is $5316.00 (may be off by 1-2 dollars)
Our deductible is $750 for family annual maximum Catastrophic protection for family is $5000 Preferred providers and $7000 non-preferred. All of that will rise some this year but nowhere near these quotes.
Obamacare, anyway you look at it, will bankrupt us if we have to switch.
and she is not very well off at all.
Husband is a retired firefighter.
Obama sold Americans a bill of goods on Obamacare
it's basically a huge socialist wealth transfer scheme
worse, the CBO calculates 30 million Americans will remain uninsured when fully implemented
maybe everyone should do that
you pay a small fee but it's far less than the premiums
and if you ever actually get seriously ill, just enroll then
why not?
you can't be excluded for pre-existing conditions
Give it up bad anonymous. You destroyed your last shred of credibility when you doctored that AP story to try to deceive people.
Tell us how someone who claims to follow a religion that commands them not to lie justifies lying as often as you do.
Theresa, you've benefitted disproportionately from American society compared to most people, its only fair that you pay more. You most certainly don't deserve a subsidy.
Bad anonymous said "what gets lost in the white noise of most reporting is that most Americans blame Democrats and Obama for this mess".
LOL, surely you don't expect us to believe you even believe your B.S.
I'll venture to say that despite your brain damage none of us believes you are that deluded. You're not even going to convince yourself with such absurd lies.
Tell us again about how President Huckabee is going to do this and that in his first term. Tell us again about how its a fact Romney is going to win the 2012 election because Clint Eastwood gave people permission to mock the president, Obama's poll numbers are in free fall, Romney's leading in the polls, and one football team beat the other football team.
You really are the buffoon of TTF.
Take your meds Anon. You have posted 9 comments in 2 hours. You must be dizzy from all that spinning.
Here's some insight into the GOTP's government shut down and their "let them eat cake" view of workers:
"WASHINGTON -- Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) has a suggestion for any of the hundreds of thousands of furloughed government workers worried about being able to pay their bills: take out a loan!
In a post on his personal Facebook page that was later deleted, Pearce urged government workers to call their banks and take out a short-term loan if money is tight.
"If you are a furloughed government employee, we encourage you to reach out to your financial institution as soon as you worry you may miss a paycheck," read the post. "Don't wait until you are behind on a bill; call now and explore your options."
ProgressNow New Mexico, a nonprofit group that advocates progressive principles in the state, circulated a screenshot of Pearce's Facebook post on Friday, before it was taken down.
Steve Perace
8 minutes ago
If you are a furloughed government employee, we encourage you to reach out to your financial institution as soon as you worry you may miss a paycheck. Financial institutions often offer short-term loans and other resources. Don't wait until you are behind on a bill; call now and explore your options.
Pearce spokesman Eric Layer said a staffer, not the congressman, posted the comment. He acknowledged it wasn't the most tactful message, since it's the fault of Congress, not the workers, that the government shut down and paychecks have stopped.
"Yes that post was in error and placed by staff. It was removed because it was wrong," Layer told The Huffington Post. "What the badly worded post should have conveyed is that many financial institutions have said they will not penalize people who have payment issues due to the federal furlough. But the important part is not to wait, but contact your financial institutions now, so they can adjust things."
Patrick Davis, of ProgressNow New Mexico, said the Facebook post shows how out of touch the wealthy Pearce is with his constituents. Roll Call ranks Pearce the 46th richest member of Congress, with an estimated worth of about $8 million..."
"Give it up bad anonymous. You destroyed your last shred of credibility when you doctored that AP story to try to deceive people."
I know that since facts aren't your side, your only hope is imagine my creditability is shattered. Actually, my creditability is not the basis of anything here nor is anyone else's.
"Tell us how someone who claims to follow a religion that commands them not to lie justifies lying as often as you do."
little puzzled as to what lie you believe was told, lazy Priya
I didn't attribute the story so I wasn't claiming that the article said anything in particular
I didn't include anything that wasn't a fact
and the facts I presented, which were part of the article btw, have consistently under-reported by the liberal media
"Theresa, you've benefitted disproportionately from American society compared to most people, its only fair that you pay more. You most certainly don't deserve a subsidy."
Theresa played by the same rules everyone else does in our country and succeeded. The rates are being raised and taxes raised too to force most Americans to subsidize others.
Contrary to Obama's lies, health insurance premiums are going up for everyone except those who don't contribute. It's called socialism.
It will eventually be repealed but the cost of doing so will go up drastically after January 1.
"LOL, surely you don't expect us to believe you even believe your B.S."
don't know who you mean by "us"?
You exist in a dark and lonely place
Sorry Theresa. It's too bad the CEO of Raytheon is not more like the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz.
"The new health care legislation has forced many large companies to skimp on health coverage, if not cancel it altogether, for spouses, retirees and part-timers among others [or to make their employee pay more]. But coffee giant Starbucks is not one of them.
CEO Howard Schultz told me he refuses to cut back because it will send the wrong message to employees, even as the likes of UPS, Time Warner, IBM and Delta Air Lines complain that the law is hurting profitability and job creation.
....Q: Several large companies have recently changed health care plans — IBM moving retirees off of coverage, for example, because they say the new health care legislation is too expensive. This is one reason companies say they're sitting on their cash or not hiring new people.
A: On balance, I would say the health care law, to provide health insurance for those people who did not have it, was a good thing for the country and a good thing for those people, and I would encourage them to find ways to provide the insurance and not figure out a way to either lower the hours or get around the system.
In terms of cash on the sidelines, it's clear that over the years of the recession and the cataclysmic financial crisis, many companies figured out a way to cut out costs and be very productive. The question now is, are those jobs going to come back? We need to significantly invest back into the country. The only way we can do that is to provide economic opportunities for people who are unemployed.
I think we have a greater responsibility beyond just the (profit and loss) of our business, to do the right thing not only for our employees, but the communities we serve, to try and make a difference beyond just making money. I say this through the lens of being a CEO of a public company, recognizing that I have a significant fiduciary responsibility to make a profit and build shareholder value. But after 30 years of being in this seat, what I've learned is that we can make a profit and perhaps do even greater by also demonstrating to multiple constituencies that we mean well in the world."
"Take your meds Anon."
thanks for the suggestion but, like john Denver, sunshine, almost all the time, makes me high
"You have posted 9 comments in 2 hours."
there's a lot going on
"You must be dizzy from all that spinning."
if it was spin, you'd show how
your problem is it's all true
"Here's some insight into the GOTP's government shut down and their "let them eat cake" view of workers"
so you're comparing the plight of the government worker
having his pay delayed once with the poverty-stricken masses in the reign of Louis and Marie
here is Washington, cranes fill the sky in every direction because the economy is booming due to the fact that America rips confiscatory taxes from the rest of the country and uses it to keep the local economy at full employment
for them to experience a couple of weeks of what the rest of America has suffered for the last five years sounds appropriate
btw, every restaurant in town is giving out free food to federal employees, theaters are giving away tickets- they are having a grand ol' time during their paid vacation
they're eating cake alright, and lots of it
if only the rest of the country had been so lucky during the Obama era
Well, there you have it folks, bad anonymous doesn't just think he's entitled to his own opinion, he thinks he's entitled to his own "facts".
He thinks what he wants to believe is true should qualify as a fact whereas objective randomly sampled statistically valid public opinion polls of thousands of people aren't the truth, the truth is what he says it is, because he's "special".
But of course he's using the same tactic during this Republican shutdown that he did during the 2008 and 2012 elections. He desperately hopes if he puffs out his chest and claims what he wants to be reality is a certainty things will turn out the way he wants. We just have to look back to 2008 and "President Huckabee, President Huckabee" and 2012's "Obama's poll numbers are in free fall!" and we can see how deluded this child is.
And of course try as he might he can never make it okay to take an AP story and rewrite it to say something it didn't originally in order to deceive people about who the American public blames for this shutdown. He pathetically tries to excuse his dishonesty by saying "I didn't attribute the story so I wasn't claiming that the article said anything in particular" but the fact that he admits attempting to plagiarize the story in the first place doesn't excuse him from doctoring something we all knew came from a reputable news source in the first place.
When you hear all the B.S. from Republican's about Obamacare being like slavery and the end of the country just remember what Ronald Regan said about Medicare in 1961:
"One of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was like in America when men were free.".
Ted Cruz said almost the exact same thing about Obamacare yesterday at the "Value" Voters Summit.
Rational people all know that in future years the American public will come to see Obamacare as something they can't do without just as they've come to feel that way about Medicare. Then Republicans will be assuring the voters they hate entitlements but have no intention of getting rid of Obamacare because they know it'll be a vote loser.
The entire Republican shudown has badly backfired on them. Not only are they at record historic lows for approval rating, the popularity of Obamacare has risen 7% since the shutdown started.
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Good anonymous said "You must be dizzy from all that spinning."
Bad anonymous said "if it was spin, you'd show how".
We have, repeatedly, but you just keep denying that obvious reality just like you've been denying the obvious reality that the public blaims the Republicans for the shutdown. You'd rather childlishly claim the facts can be whatever you want them to be because you're not man enough to admit when you're wrong regardless of how obvious that is.
For example:
You said "most Americans blame Democrats and Obama for this mess
perhaps to a slightly lesser degree but that's not surprising considering the flagrant bias of the media".
Note how you try to first claim most Americans blame the Democrats and Obama and then in the next sentence tentatively admit that is a lie and contradict yourself by saying "perhaps to a slightly lesser degree".
Either most Americans blame Obama and the Democrats or they don't but it cannot be true most blame them and they are blamed to a lesser degree than the Republicans. You're spinning so fast you can't even control the contradictory B.S. you're spewing.
The reality is 47% of Americans have said they approve of Obama while only 24% of Americans have said they approve of the Republican party and 70% of Americans say Republicans are putting their politics ahead of the good of the country
A statistically representative random sample of Americans showed by a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96.".
So, no matter which contradictory way you phrased it, you were spinning/lying when you said "most Americans blame Democrats and Obama for this mess" and then contradicted yourself and said "perhaps to a slightly lesser degree".
The truth is most Americans DO NOT blame the Democrats and Obama for the shutdown, most blame the Republicans. Not only that but most do not blame the Democrats "perhaps to a slightly lesser degree" but put a great deal less blame on the Democrats than on the Republicans. 22 percentage points is not a "perhaps slightly lesser degree", its a HUGE margin given polls are normally close to evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.
You spun, you lied, and you unconvincingly have tried to deny the clear reality that the Republicans are getting the majority of the blame for this. I've shown you yet again where you've been spinning but of course being the dishonest child you are you'll deny that obvious fact.
ho-hum
Lazy Priya is slothful as to never consider that people can "blame" more than one party
that would require reading beyond lazy priya's comfort zone:
"..it may be helpful to look closely at government shutdown polls:
Many polls ask which side will be or is more to blame for the shutdown. Pluralities blame Barack Obama over Republicans (there's some difference in question wording) -- 39-36 and 38-30 (Pew), 44-35 (CBS), 42-32 (Fox News). When asked whether Republicans or the Obama administration is more to blame, it's Republicans, 39-36 (National Journal).
A general rule in polling is that individuals are more popular than groups of people -- especially groups of politicians. That Obama has only a small lead, and the Obama administration a statistically insignificant deficit, does not signal great presidential strength.
Note too that one-fifth to one-quarter are not sure. And when given the option of "both equally," 58 percent choose that (Quinnipiac)."
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this was funny
I read this before the lazy psycho deleted it
what a bunch of illogical ranting!!
it was hysterical and comforting to know that only true lunatics still support the Brack Obama!!
You're lying bad anonymous, post links to those polls.
The polls show the American public overwhelmingly blames the Republicans for the shutdown.
And obviously I was aware the public can blame more than one party as I said most blame the Republicans. You on the other hand lied and spun and tried to claim most blamed the Democrats.
And as to the comment you read before I deleted it, other a few extraneous words I accidentally left in it, it was identical to the one I posted immediately after, so once again, you're just childishly trying to con people into believing it was anything less than rational and irrefutable.
lazy priya, if you can't find polls showing Americans blame all sides, you don't know how to search
the polls above are identified
I'm off to the theater for the evening
try not to rant and delete too much tonight
it's unhealthy
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Well bad anonymous, I did find those polls and of course, as we should have known, you were lying about the polls you referred to. The Pew poll was taken before the shutdown on Sept 23 and so has nothing to say about where the public is now. Even so, it shows 39 percent would blame the Republicans for a shutdown and 36percent blame the Democrats - the exact opposite of what bad anonymous claimed which is why he didn't post a link to it. This is the guy who asked for examples to show where he's spinning and lying - Sheesh!
The CBS poll shows 44% blame the Republicans and 35% blame the Democrats, once again, the exact opposite of what bad anonymous said.
The Fox News Poll shows 42% blame the Republicans and 32% blame the Democrats, once again, the exact opposite of what bad anonymous claimed.
The Nationall Journal link only gave me a blank page but their poll was referred to . here. It didn't give percentages for who was to blame for the shutdown but 50% disapproved of Obama's handling of the negotiations, 58% disapproved of the Democrats handling of negotiations and 69% disapproved of the way Republicans are handling negotiations. For whatever reason, here bad anonymous broke his trend and admitted this poll showed 39% blamed Republicans for the shutdown and 36% blamed Democrats.
No numbers were given on this link referring to the Quinnipiac poll, but like all the others it said more people blamed the Republicans for the shutdown than President Obama and the Democrats.
So, no suprises here (other than bad anonymous telling the truth about ONE of the polls he listed and admitting it also showed more people blaming Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats), bad anonymous lied yet again when he said the polls show "Pluralities blame Barack Obama over Republicans (there's some difference in question wording)" - the exact opposite is true.
That's bad anonymous for you, no qualms whatsoever about lying and when you point out he has lied he says "If I did you would have shown me where" and when you show him where he tries to cover it up with more lies.
So, we can see why bad anonymous refused to post links to the polls he refered to. Its so when he tells the lie "most Americans blame Democrats and Obama for this mess" he can lie and claim the polls back him up.
This is the guy who said "I didn't include anything that wasn't a fact" and "if [what I said] was spin, you'd show how" and "my creditability is not the basis of anything here".
This is a guy who says he holds dear a religion which commands him not to lie. Shameful.
Priya.
I wasn't asking for a subsidy.
you didn't read the comment very well.
I said a "friend of mine" had bothered to log into Obamacare, run the numbers and put them on her facebook page. that friend is married to a firefighter, and not very well off.
she is the sort of person the law was supposed to help. she didn't indicate what plan she has now, probably something through her husbands retired dcfd status. but she did log into the website, enter all her information, and got a quote. she also posted all the information, which is interesting.
anyway, I am STILL WAITING for an answer on how folks here would get us to a balanced budget....
do you not feel that is worth discussing ?
I am just asking you would actually solve the big fight we are fighting over spending and taxation.
I told you what I would do. Your turn !
You each have to state a position before you can reach a middle ground....
so go on, suggest something... I can post what the numbers are now again ( and the link) if you would like).
Theresa
Theresa, I already told you how to balance the budget. The U.S. spends more on defense than the next 16 highest spending countries combined. The U.S. could cut its defense spending by 90% and still be spending two or three times what the next highest spending country does.
The defense spending is a make work jobs program, its pork for the wealthy. There's 3000 M1 Abrahams tanks sitting unused parked in the desert because the military doesn't need them and said they didn't want them but pork barrel politicians insisted on making them, because, you know - jobs. That's just the tip of the iceburg of non-productive military spending.
And in the meantime Obama's tried to create a jobs program that would rebuild crumbling bridges and infrastructure, things, you know, all Americans use and need. That'd be a jobs program that creates something useful but Republicans have blocked it so they can send back pork to their states with war machine industries.
That alone would balance the budget but they should also raise taxes on the uber-rich where the top 1% has 90% of the countries wealth. Republicans bitch "Don't tax the wealthy" and "cut subsidies for the poor" but they can't have it both ways. The richest Americans can easily afford to pay for the poorest half of Americans and not have it affect their standard of living in any noticeable way. If they want to bitch that that's unsustainable (which it isn't) then they need to pass a minium wage law that gives poor people a liveable working wage instead of fighting tooth and nail to eliminate the minimum wage altogether so the rich can suck ever more out of the poor and have money they don't need. If you want to see the economy improve (and most Republicans don't) then have the so-called job creators put some of that money they do nothing with back into the economy through a living minimum wage for people who will actually spend it and improve the economy.
As far as your facebook friend goes, you are correct, I only glanced at your comment. I can't comment on it without knowing what you mean by "not well off". From what I've seen of you, your idea of "not well off" and mine differ greatly.
And by the way, your silence on bad anonymous's wanton lying is deafening - would you like to at least offer a token admonishment to your teammate?
priya.
Okay.
you know what, I am willing to entertain cuts to the military. I would like to restore some NASA funding but I have seen WAY too much pork to not agree with you.
I had a navy research base young engineering team port their software (a major missile program) off obsolete hardware to my old company's software and current hardware, demonstrate that it worked better, was like 5% of the original systems cost and 10x the speed, and they STILL bought the old hardware because Lockheed in valley forge was selling it.... and that deceased PA senator worked a deal for Lockheed to sell their old stuff. I am not going to say which program it was, but it was a pretty major one.
I was horrified.
the engineer I was working with at the navy base was equally amazed. I was not happy, because we supported him, gave him free eval software, helped him port, only to get blindsided by a PA senator that wanted to send money to Lockheed for an obsolete inefficient program. so, I agree.
I got to the point that when I was presenting to the bases I would say "this is less expensive, better time to market, and a higher performing solution" ASSUMING THAT THIS IS THE OBJECTIVE.
you can point at programs like the Q70 managed by LMCO that went from one set of obsolete hardware to another likely to go obsolete set of hardware... ON PURPOSE. because they got paid on a cost plus basis to replace it. and of course the new LMCO VP is the latest and most recent retire from NAVSEA. and the about to retire NAVSEA admiral is awarding contracts to his soon to be employer LMCO at a 400K salary even when they have not met the higher performance for the best price requirements.
we can cut the military a LOT. but it would involve term limits so that senators don't get too cozy with their larger company constituents.
I don't know that I would take 600 billion out of it, because I think that you can only support current deployments and no current research.
I would be open to taking 200 billion in cuts based on what I Have seen.
Okay, fine, you continue to say that the "less fortunate" are entitled to more assistance from govt.
Yes and no.
If they are "less fortunate" because they were presented ALL the opportunities in the world and choose not to execute, that's one scenario. It they are "less fortunate" because they were born into a poverty situation and never worked their way out that's another ?
agree that we can differentiate this way ?
Nothing if you're a GOTP supporter.
Viral photo from Beltway trucker protest actually from an event last May
"A picture circulating in some corners of the Internet shows a huge convoy of tractors, tractor trailers and pickup trucks seemingly bound for Capital Beltway as part of a trucker protest.
The only problem? The photo was actually taken in May at a Make-a-Wish Foundation fundraiser in Lancaster, Penn.
...The confusion involves a group of truckers calling itself “Truckers Ride for the Constitution,” which had promised to organize a protest rally that could potentially tie up traffic on the Beltway.
But the turnout has been a bit disappointing, as my colleagues Dana Hedgpeth and Lori Aratani reported Friday morning: Only 30 or so truckers came out for the event, and most of this morning’s traffic resulted from D.C.’s miserable, rainy weather, not any truck-induced congestion on the road. The rain is notably missing in that Make-a-Wish photograph.
Unfortunately, that anomaly didn’t stop the photo from gaining traction on Facebook and Twitter. A post about the photo on one right-wing blog, The D.C. Clothesline, was shared nearly 600 times. The blogger, Dean Garrison, has since noted that “I was told by a reader that this was not taken yesterday but was from a prior event.”
It’s unclear exactly how many trucks are out on the Beltway for the protest, but an estimated 30 were out Friday morning. The Make-a-Wish rally, for the record, had 332."
Trucker protest hits Beltway but causes no major delays, authorities say
thoughts from Nate Silver, liberal super-hero:
1. The media is probably overstating the magnitude of the shutdown's political impact.
2. The impact of the 1995-96 shutdowns is overrated in Washington's mythology.
3. Democrats face extremely unfavorable conditions in trying to regain the House.
4. The polling data on the shutdown is not yet all that useful, and we lack data on most important measures of voter preferences.
5. President Obama's change in tactics may be less about a change of heart and more about a change in incentives.
6. The increasing extent of GOP partisanship is without strong recent precedent, and contributes to the systemic uncertainty about political outcomes.
Congress has gone through periods of relatively high partisanship before — for example, at the turn of the 20th century. But the degree of polarization in the Congress is higher than at any point since the Great Depression by a variety of measures, and is possibly at its highest point ever. (Most of the evidence suggests the trend is asymmetric: Republicans in Congress have become much more conservative, while Democrats have become only somewhat more liberal.)
What this means is that, whether they assume the form of statistical models or more anecdotal takes on the evidence, conceptions based on recent history of how the negotiations might play out may not be all that reliable. That there were 17 government shutdowns between 1976 and 1996, for example, none of which persisted for more than three weeks, may not be all that meaningful since none of those came at a time when Congress was nearly as polarized as it is now. Similarly, the fact that an aggregate limit on federal debt has been in place since 1939 [PDF] may not tell us all that much. This is not to imply that the risk of a debt ceiling breach is all that high, especially given the reports of progress in budget talks as of Thursday morning.
what can I say?
too funny:
"I'm off to the theater for the evening
try not to rant and delete too much tonight
it's unhealthy
October 12, 2013 6:56 PM"
"Blogger Priya Lynn said...
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October 12, 2013 7:57 PM"
wasn't online at the time so I don't know what kind of rant lazy Priya went on but it musta been a doozy!!
Theresa, you saw bad anonymous doctor that AP wire story, you saw him list all those poll results and say ""Pluralities blame Barack Obama over Republicans" when in reality pluralities blamed the Republicans and NOT Obama.
So, once again, your silence on bad anonymous's wanton lying is deafening - would you like to at least offer a token admonishment to your teammate?
And of course bad anonymous wants to pretend it never happened after I exposed his lying about all those polls, instead pathetically trying to sidestep the issue with "wasn't online at the time so I don't know what kind of rant lazy Priya went on but it musta been a doozy!!".
Riiiight. Me deleting a comment because of a minor ommission and reposting it and you blatently lying about several polls means you won the argument - gotchya.
This is a guy who says he holds dear a religion which commands him not to lie. This is a guy who hypocritically presumes to lecture gays and lesbians on morality based on his supposedly deeply held religious beliefs. This is a guy who says he "couldn't care less" when Republicans such as himself behave unethically and boy does it ever show.
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In desperation to hide his dishonesty bad anonymous has been reduced to posting for a second time part of an article that referred to Nate Silver. Let's see what he choose to leave out from that article:
"Sometimes politics can be a lose-lose game.
But the more likely outcome is that, even in defeat, the tea party wing of the Republican Party will draw the wrong lessons from its repudiation by a lopsided majority of voters. Instead of recognizing that House Republicans went too far in their implacable and implausible demands to defund Obamacare, the right wing of the GOP may perversely conclude that its congressional leaders hoisted the white flag too soon. The NBC News/WSJ poll picks up this split: 72 percent of tea party backers approve the scorched-earth tactics of the congressional GOP, while only 42 percent of non-tea-party Republicans hold similar views.
Not too long ago it would have been easy to predict that the 2014 elections would be a referendum on the rollout of Obamacare. Today, a better guess would be that the health care law will prove to be one of those partisan issues in which supporters and critics cancel each other out. There will be the inevitable clash of testimonial ads: Democrats will favor weepy spots featuring Americans getting health insurance for the first time, while Republicans will go with small-business owners wailing about how Obamacare forced them to cut jobs. And most voters will wisely hit the mute button.
What this suggests is that the after-effects from the government shutdown and the debt ceiling dance of doom are apt to become the dominant voting issues of 2014. That is why, despite the down-with-all-incumbents mood among the voters, Republicans are disproportionately at risk. Voters are accurately blaming the Republicans for the government shutdown — and that stigma will be hard to escape.
It is telling, in the NBC/WSJ poll, that 65 percent of voters think the government shutdown is hurting the economy and 63 percent describe a failure to approve a debt ceiling bill as “a serious problem.” These are memories that are not going to be erased with a handshake deal at the White House and the reopening of the national parks.
What has been happening, in effect, is that the Republicans have been re-enacting the centennial of World War I a year early.
In 1914, cheering throngs all over Europe sent their boys off to war confident that victory could be achieved in a few months with limited casualties. Instead, for the next four years, armies on both sides endured horrible death tolls in the trenches of France. And, increasingly, soldiers found it impossible to recall what they were fighting for.
So it was when the House Republicans shut down the government confident that they could win major concessions from the White House in a few days. Now they are hunkered down in the trenches, with public opinion turning against them, desperate for any rationale to abandon the battlefield. But they cannot simply surrender because … well … that would mean that they have been bleeding in the polls for nothing. Rarely has a political party lost so much so rapidly from a series of strategic blunders. So, for a change, I believe the hype. Republicans will need a long time to recover from their biggest Capitol Hill debacle in memory.".
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October 13, 2013 8:15 AM"
priceless!!!
ranting nuts often have second thoughts after their ill-considered fits come out
ha-ha!!
well, yes, it's all the Republicans fault and the voters are furious
thing is: those House Repubs are in districts gerrymandered to re-elect them and those constituents specifically elected them to stop Obamacare
more likely to be victims of the throw the bums out mentality are the Senate Dems
as it is, Repubs offered to extend the debt limit on Thursday and Obama agreed, causing the biggest gain on Wall Street this year
alas, after stocks closed on Friday, Obama takes it back and says he wants the shutdown ended to, or he will allow the "default"
and then he encourages the most liberal Repub Senator to introduce a budget without changing Obamacare
as you recall, this is the original charge against Repubs
if they had just passed the budget without changing Obamacare, the shutdown wouldn't have happened
but, now, this morning Senate Democrats rejected Susan Collins' budget
little hard to see why Obama and the boys in the Senate shouldn't be blamed
but, of course, as we've seen Americans do think Obama and the Dems are to blame
and they're right
pretty sure we can get rid of Obama before 2016 by impeachment
he has clearly acted illegally and repeatedly in a temper tantrum against the American voter
Someone's desperate for attention - no matter how badly he gets spanked.
Obama Glitch: After spending three-and-a-half years and $634 million building its ObamaCare exchange, the administration claims it can't manage to produce any enrollment data. What's it hiding?
For months, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised that 7 million Americans would eagerly sign up for ObamaCare in its first six months. That is, she said, a "realistic target."
But in the 10 days since ObamaCare has been "open for business," Sebelius has been dodging questions about how many actually enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov exchange — which covers 36 states.
"I can't tell you. I don't know," has been her refrain.
After being pressed by reporters, the administration now says it will only release monthly data.
That makes no sense, since the 14 states running their own ObamaCare exchanges have already released their first week's enrollment figures.
New York says 40,000 signed up, for example, and California claims 28,000 did so.
The only conceivable explanation for Sebelius' refusal to do likewise is that the federal enrollment number is embarrassingly small.
The U.K.'s Daily Mail claims administration sources told it that just 51,000 managed to complete an application at the federal exchange in the first week.
At that rate, only a little more than 1 million will be enrolled by the end of March. Even if you add numbers from the states, at the current sign-up pace, enrollment will be just half of what Sebelius promised.
An AP poll confirms that ObamaCare woes are widespread. Less than one in 10 of those who say they visited an ObamaCare exchange were able to sign up.
The administration wants everyone to think that low enrollment numbers are due, ironically, to the crush of interest in ObamaCare, which caused the federal site to crash.
True, the technology problems are genuine, and ongoing.
When Sebelius was in Pittsburgh this week for an ObamaCare enrollment event, those attending spent their time "fruitlessly trying to access the website," according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
But these glitches have nothing to do with the number of visitors, as various IT experts who've looked at the site have since made clear.
Sebelius herself admitted as much when she said she just couldn't understand why the exchange site wasn't working at the Pittsburgh event, since she'd had technicians "working around the clock to add capacity."
And even if it's true that millions of unique visitors went to the exchange website in the first few days, that doesn't mean there's some groundswell of interest in ObamaCare.
Given the hoopla, you'd expect plenty of curiosity seekers who have no intention of buying.
Then there are the 26 million people who currently buy insurance on their own, many of whom are being forced into the exchanges because their current policies don't comply with ObamaCare's rules and regulations.
In the end, the biggest problem for ObamaCare isn't too many visitors overloading its websites, but far too few bothering to buy the overpriced product it's selling.
RCP agrees with Nate Silver: Republicans in the House are in no danger of losing in 2014:
The 2010 midterm election that swept Republicans into power in the U.S. House of Representatives was a mandate to put the brakes on President Obama and his agenda.
Aside from voters also hoping that Republicans would do something – anything – to boost the economy, restraining Obama was pretty much the issue of that election.
It was the second wave election in four years (Republicans were dumped from the majority in 2006). And it had less to do with voters finding Republicans appealing once again and more to do with putting a halt to the Democrats’ overreach.
At the center of that overreach was the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare – which is why many of those elected to office in that cycle and reelected last year have been adamant about repealing it, even at the cost of a government shutdown.
Or even at the cost of losing their seats, which has led to talk of a Democrat wave election cycle. It is a possibility pushed by paid pundits as reality, but the facts do not support it.
That does not mean a wave election isn’t brewing out on Main Street. In fact, early polling indicates the 2014 midterm might produce another electoral shift, but not one that shoves Republicans out of power.
First of all, the playing field of vulnerable GOP seats is too narrow for Republicans to lose their majority, baring a massive wave.
Second, major waves historically have not happened concurrent with the “six-year itch” – the election held in the sixth year of a president's tenure, in which the party holding the White House typically loses a substantial number of House and Senate seats.
And remember that, in the 1996 midterm election of the Clinton era, Republicans lost 18 incumbents but kicked the Democrats’ butts in the open-seat races. The Republicans’ losses were mostly “wave seats” that they unexpectedly won two years earlier, during their first sweep back into power after 40 years in the political wilderness.
Coincidentally, all of that occurred in the year of another government shutdown – that one over the funding of Medicare, which is a heck of a lot more popular with voters than Obamacare.
Today, every member of Congress, along with the White House and President Obama, are getting battered in the polls over how they’ve handled the shutdown, with Republicans taking a slim lead on the voter-anger index.
Kyle Kondik, a House analyst for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, says that if (and he stresses a big “if”) Republicans eventually suffer because of the shutdown, it will not be Tea Partiers who are hurt.
“While the Republican brand is poor, the president isn’t particularly popular – his approval is only in the low to mid 40s, according to polling averages,” said Kondik. “There would have to be an incredible amount of revulsion with the Republicans to deliver the House to the Democrats.”
Plus, historically, there’s basically no precedent for the president’s party to capture control of the House in a midterm year. Many presidents have held the House in a midterm, but they haven’t taken control of it in a midterm.
Bottom line: It’s always better to be the “out” party in a midterm year.
Presidential parties have lost ground in the House in 35 of the 38 post-Civil War midterms, according to Kondik.
One variable to watch is retirements; it’s a lot easier to win an open seat than to beat an incumbent. If Republicans in marginal districts start retiring, that will be a very good sign for Democrats.
So far, that’s not really happening.
Obama is a disgrace
after promising to sign the debt limit last week, he reneged
when the government shutdown began, he said it was because the House bill, which would otherwise be fine, he has now rejected just that bill from the Senate
throw the bum out!!
Anon, I suspect that you realize how stupid you look trying to blame the President for the Republicans' government shutdown.
The struggle is between the rightwing branch of the GOP and the extreme rightwing branch. The anti-American Republican Party is taking the direct approach to destroying the country, and so far they are succeeding. The House rules have been re-written to make sure Democrats are unable to get the government open again, and now the GOP is twiddling their thumbs while the United States of America circles the drain.
Obama has had the opportunity to conclude this matter easily and has not
Americans elected a split government, giving the power to pass the budget to Republicans, as well as a mandate to stop Obamacare
the shutdown doesn't amount to destroying the country
it has happened 17 times before in the last few decades and always been resolved by a negotiation between the White House and Congress
Obama refused to negotiate, holding that it is the "job" of Congress to pass whatever he tells them to
not extending the debt limit also wouldn't destroy America
with the accumulated deficit so high, the administration must devise a long-term plan to bring it down
going forward, this will happen every time the debt limit needs to be increased
a review of the progress toward paying off our debt before incurring new debt
the administration has lied and said we will default next week if the debt limit is not increased
first of all, we have ample money to pay our obligations and non-obligations will wait until the President negotiates a compromise
secondly, although the government has been shutdown for two weeks, this date hasn't changed
doesn't make any sense if we aren't spending money
although Democrats would like to pretend otherwise, most Americans blame this for this problem and more will soon, despite the full court propaganda press of the media
The government shutdown is two weeks old and default is two weeks away. Washington is wondering why more people aren’t paying attention. The reason is as old as the story of the little boy who cried “wolf” too many times. When the wolf finally came, the people had stopped listening.
Once again, Washington is on the brink. Only this time, it is different. The acrimony is worse, the stakes higher, the economy lower, and the sides further apart. And perhaps worst of all: the sides seem quite comfortable fighting. As much as America needs Washington to get its fiscal problems solved, Washington appears even more to need America to force them to solve them.
Yet as focused as Washington appears to be on fighting, America appears relatively unfocused on the fight. In an October AP poll (1,227 adults, MOE +/- 3.4%) regarding the debt limit, the bigger of the two current crises, 30% of respondents supported raising it, 21% opposed, and 46% neither supported nor opposed raising it.
There are many reasons why the nation has crisis disinterest right now.
First, there has been no shortage of past shutdowns or debt limit deadlines. Seventeen times from 1976 to 1996, the government shut down. As for raising the debt limit, it has happened 53 times from 1978 to 2013. Familiarity may breed contempt eventually, but it spawns apathy first.
Second, there is the question of the impact. America has been here before – already this year to be exact. Remember the ballyhooed $85 billion sequester earlier this year? Although billed as the apocalypse, the sequester’s lower spending levels are now the norm and people have moved on. The shutdown’s effects are far less at this point and no one expects the shutdown to last for as long as the sequester.
As of now, America has not felt the crisis. The same October AP poll asked: “have you personally or has anyone in your household felt any impact from the federal government shutdown, or not?” Eighty-one percent of respondents said “no.” Not many issues, let alone “crises,” prevail when they register less than one in five feeling an effect.
Nor does it help the credibility of the “crisis culture” when rhetoric and reality so often significantly diverge. As an example, compare the treatment of this year’s spending cuts to this year’s tax hikes. While the focus has been on the “crisis” of sequestration’s spending reductions, the much larger impact of tax hikes has been forgotten.
According to CBO’s calculations through the first 11 months of fiscal year 2013, federal spending has fallen $129 billion, or 3.9% from last year. If transfers from government-sponsored entities were excluded, the spending decline would have been just $42 billion, or 1.3%. Contrastingly, federal revenues were up $284 billion, or 13%. Yet which has gotten the greater coverage and the coveted “crisis” label?
When crisis and reality diverge, people invariably choose reality and leave with the feeling: Why should I listen?
However, the biggest problem is with “crisis messaging” itself and the media’s dissemination of it. Everything in America is now a “crisis” – nowhere more so than in Washington and to no one more than the media. The problem is that when everything is a “crisis,” nothing is.
The “crisis” sequence is numbingly familiar. The crisis message becomes noise. The crisis impact then does not equal the alarm. The impact quickly becomes a new normal. Then, normal becomes life and people just go about it.
The media that so quickly declare crises also desensitize us to them. Over-billed to get short-term attention, this simultaneously undermines the subject’s ability to hold our attention long-term.
WASHINGTON — A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall on Sunday, pushing through barriers to protest the memorial's closing under the government shutdown.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, along with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were among those gathered Sunday morning. Cruz said President Barack Obama is using veterans as pawns in closing the memorial.
"Let me ask a simple question," Cruz told the crowd. "Why is the federal government spending money to erect barricades to keep veterans out of this memorial?"
The crowd chanted "Tear down these walls" and "You work for us." Protesters sang "God bless America" and other songs as they entered the memorial plaza.
"Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game," Palin told the crowd.
The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.
Sunday's rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.
Later some protesters carried memorial barricades to the White House and rallied outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Protesters carried signs reading "Impeach Obama."
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