The Million Vet March Yesterday
Republican leaders joined the Million Vet March yesterday, as the group vandalized government property, waved Confederate flags, and listened to speeches calling President Obama a Muslim and demanding that he "come out with his hands up."
Politico:
The memorials are closed, of course, because the federal government is closed. Erecting barricades is routine work that probably doesn't cost much of anything -- federal workers were given a half day, October 1st, for "shutdown activities," and that probably included erecting barricades, besides completing time sheets, shutting down servers, and hanging out the Closed sign.
CNN quotes a speech to the group:
Politico:
A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall on Sunday, pushing past barriers to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.According to the Washington Post, "U.S. Park Police estimated there were 100 to 200 protesters and said there were no arrests."
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah were among the demonstrators, as were Texas Rep. Steve Stockman and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Cruz and Lee are among the tea party-backed lawmakers who refused to keep the government operating unless President Barack Obama agreed to defund the nation’s health care overhaul.
“Let me ask a simple question,” Cruz told the crowd of hundreds that gathered beginning at 9 a.m. “Why is the federal government spending money to erect barricades to keep veterans out of this memorial?”
Black metal barricades have lined the front of the memorial since the government closed Oct. 1. That’s when more than 300 National Park Service workers who staff and maintain the National Mall were furloughed. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee at D.C. memorial protest
The memorials are closed, of course, because the federal government is closed. Erecting barricades is routine work that probably doesn't cost much of anything -- federal workers were given a half day, October 1st, for "shutdown activities," and that probably included erecting barricades, besides completing time sheets, shutting down servers, and hanging out the Closed sign.
CNN quotes a speech to the group:
"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up," said Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group. Rallier tells Obama to 'put the Quran down'These stupid people are protesting the highly visible signs of the government shutdown because they do not realize all the things the federal government does. Hundreds of thousands of people are working without pay, and hundreds of thousands more government employees are out of work, medical research is stopped, aid to hungry children, NTSB investigations, thousands of programs -- the President and US Trade Representative are missing a major trade negotiation meeting that could cost the country billions. The memorials and museums are a tiny part of it. By making a scene at the war memorial they may think they are "proving" that the President is disrespectful to veterans, but remember, only House Majority Leader Eric Cantor or someone designated by him can even introduce a bill into the House of Representatives to get the government open again: WATCH THIS [Fixed 10/14/13]
posted by JimK at 9:03 AM
226 Comments:
"The memorials are closed, of course, because the federal government is closed."
Bullcrap.
They are closed because Obama is trying to create the air of crisis. There have been 17 shut downs since 1976. First time a President has attacked the American people.
"Erecting barricades is routine work that probably doesn't cost much of anything -- federal workers were given a half day, October 1st, for "shutdown activities," and that probably included erecting barricades, besides completing time sheets, shutting down servers, and hanging out the Closed sign."
Jim, I went down to the memorials last Sunday. There were rangers stationed at each memorial. I had a long conversation with a ranger at the Vietnam Vet Memorial.
She stood there and informed each person that crossed the barricade that the grounds are closed and no admittance is permitted.
I told her there are tons of people down at the memorial.
She said those people did not respect the closure.
A group of French tourist who had just gone in, started arguing with her. "How are we not respecting the culture?"
Took a while to straighten that one out.
I asked her why she didn't arrest the swarms of people going down to the memorial.
She said she was told she couldn't arrest anyone.
An elderly lady walked up and grabbed her arm and said "thank you for doing your job, honey" and walked in.
I said do you think your role here is "essential" since everyone is ignoring her and she is powerless to do anything about it.
She said this was her first day off furlough
I said do you think Obama is doing this just to cause problems.
She said "no comment"
Some tree hugger on a bike rolled up and started screaming at me about how much Obama has done for this country.
I asked her if she has gotten any free lunches from restaurants
She said she has been getting free beignets from a bakery near her apartment every day
A family of four walked past but she stopped the young boy and said water bottles are not allowed
He looked puzzled for a minute and then poured the bottle out on the grass
then, he said "can I go in if it's empty"
she said "sure, go ahead"
A tour bus rolled and let out
As tourists streamed in, she said to each:
"The memorial grounds are closed. No admittance is permitted"
"These stupid people are protesting the highly visible signs of the government shutdown because they do not realize all the things the federal government does."
no, it's because it requires no manpower to allow citzens to walk by statues
"Hundreds of thousands of people are working without pay, and hundreds of thousands more government employees are out of work, medical research is stopped, aid to hungry children, NTSB investigations, thousands of programs -- the President and US Trade Representative are missing a major trade negotiation meeting that could cost the country billions. The memorials and museums are a tiny part of it. By making a scene at the war memorial they may think they are "proving" that the President is disrespectful to veterans, but remember, only John Boehner or someone designated by him can even introduce a bill into the House of Representatives to get the government open again"
yes, and remember he's passed several bills doing that and Harry has refused to allow the Senate to vote on them because Barry says he will veto them
and after reaching agreement at the end of last week, the President and is now holding out for cancelling the sequester budget cuts
Obama is to blame
he refused to negotiate initially and now is holding for cancelling the one thing restraining government spending
"Obama is to blame"
Maybe that the view inside the bubble, but outside the bubble in the real world, multiple polls indicate the GOTP gets the blame for the shutdown.
Bad anonymous said "Obama is to blame".
Still spinning after you were caught lying about all the polls by falsely claiming more respondents blamed Obama than the Republicans when it was the other way around.
Earlier you falsely claimed no one had pointed out where you were spinning so that meant you weren't. Well, this is another example of you spinning. You'll unsuccessfully try to weasel out of that by saying "some people blame Obama so technically I wasn't lying." but an honest description of the situation would have been "More people blame Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats" but you tried to spin the truth with your comment in order to intentionally mislead people by creating the impression Obama is solely to blame and/or blamed more than the Republicans.
How incredibly sleazy when you claim to hold dear a religion which commands you not to lie. How profoundly hypocritical that you presume to lecture gays and lesbians on morality when you're utterly devoid of morals yourself.
You've utterly destroyed any shred of intregrity you might of had and despite the hole you're in you keep attempting to dig yourself deeper. You truly are the ultimate partisan hack, the sort of person the vast majority of the United States despises as the worst sort of politician.
And I'm still waiting for Theresa to show she actually has some intregrity by offering at least a token admonishment to bad anonymous for doctoring that AP story to falsely say the public only blamed the Democrats and for falsely claiming several polls showed more Americans blamed the Democrats than the Republicans when the exact opposite was true.
"Maybe that the view inside the bubble, but outside the bubble in the real world, multiple polls indicate the GOTP gets the blame for the shutdown."
I don't understand why liberals have this villagers-with-pitchforks mentality
so, to begin with, blame is not dependent on polling data
right now, Obama is to blame because he had this all wrapped up last week and then decided at the last minute, maybe he can push it further
right now, he's trying to nullify the deal he made in the last debt limit crisis and get the sequester overturned
he's a real piece of work
"Still spinning after you were caught lying about all the polls by falsely claiming more respondents blamed Obama than the Republicans when it was the other way around."
never said that
I said they blamed Obama, and they do
I never said who was blamed more
"Earlier you falsely claimed no one had pointed out where you were spinning so that meant you weren't."
never said that either
"Well, this is another example of you spinning."
how so, O Lazy Pile of Sloth
"You'll unsuccessfully try to weasel out of that by saying "some people blame Obama so technically I wasn't lying." but an honest description of the situation would have been "More people blame Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats" but you tried to spin the truth with your comment in order to intentionally mislead people by creating the impression Obama is solely to blame and/or blamed more than the Republicans."
that's your interpretation
and it's pretty stupid
the poll showing Repubs blamed by more people has been widely disseminated
the liberal media hasn't adequately dicscussed how disgusted Americans are with Obama
"How incredibly sleazy when you claim to hold dear a religion which commands you not to lie."
not that I agreed that I had lied, but could you find that command for me
don't be lazy, look it up
"How profoundly hypocritical that you presume to lecture gays and lesbians on morality when you're utterly devoid of morals yourself."
I don't recall lecturing any gays or lesbians
I assume that the religion you refer to is Christianity, which holds that all people are immoral
"You've utterly destroyed any shred of intregrity you might of had"
you must have lied in the past then because you've told me I didn't have a shred before
"and despite the hole you're in you keep attempting to dig yourself deeper."
I'm in no hole whatsoever and, just to make it clear, unless I attribute a post to someone else, I'll feel free to change the wording as I like
if I read that Obama, Clinton and Bush went skinny dipping in the Tidal Basin, I'll feel free to say Obama did so without mentioning the other two if I feel that's the only thing relevant to my point
and, btw, Obama is to blame for this mess
"You truly are the ultimate partisan hack, the sort of person the vast majority of the United States despises as the worst sort of politician."
you know, national polls are skewed by the Eastern megapolis and the west coast
get outside that bubble and the people who elected the Republican majority in the House appreciate that they have kept their campaign promises
WASHINGTON -- 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.
Bad anonymous is furiously spinning a massive quanitity of B.S.to try and dig himself out of the hole he's in - you can just smell the desperation!
Too late bad anonymous, the only way you can get any credibility back is to take ownership of your mistakes,admit you did the wrong thing and scrupulously avoid lying and spinning in the future. That's the only way you can stop your bleeding and set yourself on the long slow track of attempting to regain some credibility.
Liberals constantly lecture, more in theatrical sorrow than in actual anger, about their eagerness to compromise with Republicans, just not with Republicans who are — liberal moderation expresses itself immoderately — hostage-taking terroristic anarchistic jihadist suicide bombers. But Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the very model of moderation, spoiled the Democrats’ piety charade by demonstrating its insincerity when she suggested this compromise:
Republicans would support a continuing resolution funding the government for six months at the sequester levels of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was produced by that year’s debt-ceiling negotiations. Republicans would also support raising the debt ceiling to enable the government to borrow enough to finance the substantial deficit spending involved in even sequester-level spending. (The sequester’s supposed severity does not come close to balancing the budget.) Republicans also would grant agencies greater flexibility in administering the sequester’s cuts.
In exchange, Collins asked for only two things. First, a mere delay, and for just two years, of Obamacare’s medical-device tax, which is so “stupid” — Sen. Harry Reid’s characterization — that bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress favor outright repeal. Second, enforcement of income-verification criteria for those seeking Obamacare’s insurance subsidies — criteria the administration wrote but waived.
Here Collins was asking not for alteration of, but for enforcement of, Obamacare. Just as many Republicans believe the Democrats’ primary goal regarding immigration reform is to turn as many immigrants as possible into voters as quickly as possible, many Republicans also believe the Democrats’ primary goal regarding Obamacare is to turn as many people as possible into subsidy recipients as quickly as possible. Hence Democrats’ aversion to income criteria to prevent fraud.
Democrats refused Collins’ bargain, giving several reasons but really having only one important one: They loathe the sequester, which prevents them from opening the spending spigot. Their knees ache from genuflecting before they alter a “clean” continuing resolution and a “clean” debt-ceiling increase. They insist it is a sin against good government to attach any conditions to either.
Suddenly, however, they decided that conditions are imperative. They now favor attaching to a government funding or debt-ceiling measure a change in the Budget Control Act intended to weaken the sequester.
Barack Obama, who says you did not see and hear him draw a red line regarding Syrian chemical weapons (“the world” drew it), insists: “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” This neon fib, made during last year’s campaign, matters because the sequester has become the main bone of contention in the shutdown and debt-ceiling dramas.
http://surveys.ap.org/data/GfK/AP-GfK%20October%202013%20Poll%20Topline%20Final_POLITICS.pdf
just to cater to Priya's nonsense that we can only mention the substantial failings of Barack Obama if we, simultaneously, dwell on GOP Congressman (who knows, maybe they'll run for Prez someday; all of them are more qualified than Obama), here's a link to the AP the lazy loser disputes, so you don't have to take my word for it
look at page 18
how much do you blame the following for the government shutdown?
the following say "not at all" for Obama: 14%
granted, the same for the following:
Tea Party 15%
Dems 9%
Repubs 5%
so, yes more people blame Repubs but not much more
and at these levels, no one has anything to brag about
interesting that the Tea Party does better than anyone
of course, the poll is now a week old
we await what Americans think of Obama's weekend shenanigans
also remember that this is all about the shutdown
most Americans don't think we should extend the debt limit at all
"the following say "not at all" for Obama: 14%"
WOW!!!!
the only person to win a national election and 86% think he's to blame for this mess
America feels betrayed
throw the bums out!!
Sen. Lindsey Graham is angry. He’s frustrated. He’s upset.
With the government shutdown now in its 12th day, and a possible U.S. debt default looming on Oct. 17, the veteran Republican was in the mood to lash out at President Barack Obama.
“The president is a pathetic leader. He’s only engaged in the last couple of days,” Graham said after the Senate blocked action on a plan for a “clean” debt-ceiling increase through 2014. “Every time you get close to getting a deal over here with our Democratic friends, they move the ball because some poll comes out."
""the following say "not at all" for Obama: 14%"
WOW!!!!
the only person to win a national election and 86% think he's to blame for this mess"
This is truly remarkable. I think we all owe anon a sincere debt of gratitude for pointing this out. Hopefully, he'll extend our limit!
Well done, anon!
LOL, I love your desperation bad anoymous, you take a poll over a week old before the Republicans started to really decline in the polls.
No, you're pathetically attempting to deceive people in the same way you've done all along by at first being honest about the statistic that says 14% say Obama is not at all to blame for the shutdown while 5% say the Republicans are not at all to blame and then later lying about that same poll number After you've tried to hide that bit of honesty in piles and piles of B.S. you dishonestly make the standalone statement "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" as though 86% of people blame Obama and those 86% don't blame republicans when in fact that isn't at all what the poll says. You think because you were honest initially you now have free reign to repeat the lie "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" as often as you like. There's where your integrity has hit rock bottom.
Back where you tried to bury the lead when you were temporarily honest about the poll you couldn't resist falsely claiming "yes more people blame Repubs but not much more" when in reality the poll you quoted showed 62% said Republicans hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown compared to 49% saying Obama and the Democrats hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown - a 13 percentage point difference which is a LOT more than the "not much more" you tried to spin people with given that the default for any poll is that both parties get almost the same numbers.
And even worse for you is that as I pointed out, your poll is over a week old whereas much more recent polls shows by a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has been very accurate and has come to be recognized as one of the best polls out there. So, once again, the most recent poll shows a 22 percentage point difference which is HUGE.
So, to sum up, in a desperate but hopeless attempt to spin the situtation you made two contradictory statements far apart. First that "more people blame Repubs but not much more" which is a deceptive exageration and then "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" which is an out and out lie. Of course given that I forced you to be a little bit honest earlier now you'll feel forced to try to spin that "86%" lie and you'll backtrack a bit and then at some later point try to slither you way back to trying to deceive people into thinking "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" and that's all there is to it.
Despite all your lies about various polls, the truth remains a huge 22% more people blame the Republicans for the shutdown than the Democrats and all your desperate attempts to obfuscate that truth and con people into believing its the other way around by lying directly and through omission are for naught because you have utterly destroyed your credibility with any honest person on this forum.
It'll be a long slow path back for you to get honest people to start taking you seriously again. As any scandal manager will tell you the necessary first step to doing that is to admit you lied and apologize for it. Then you need a long, long record of telling the truth which is not your nature, but you can do it if you choose to.
thanks for sharing, lazy priya
yes, my poll is a week old
it wasn't when you first starting ranting
I don't believe there's been any shift in favor of Obama since
and I have posted a link to the poll so everyone can see it for themselves
only 14% of Americans believe Obama isn't to blame for the shutdown
it's a fact
Obama is an individual and all the people polled participated in an election where he was running
House repubs are a couple hundred people with different stories
they can't be collectively blamed for anything
here's the latest outrage from the biggest hypocrite to ever reside at 1600 Pa Ave:
"WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday warned lawmakers that the country stood “a good chance of defaulting,” with devastating effects for the economy, if lawmakers were not willing to quickly set aside their differences in the coming hours and days.
Speaking at Martha’s Table, a Washington food bank, the president added pressure to urgent negotiations on Capitol Hill as the Thursday deadline for raising the nation’s borrowing authority approached.
“This week, if we don’t start making some real progress, both the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren’t willing to set aside their partisan concerns in order to do what’s right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting, and defaulting could have” a potentially devastating effect on the economy, Mr. Obama said. “This whole shutdown has been completely unnecessary.”"
what chutzpah!!
the debt limit deal was sealed and he re-opened it last week
Blimey!
Anon must have told some devious lie that this surly requires seven full paragraphs to explain why it's a lie. I, for one, can't follow her rambling reasoning.
We certainly have some characters out there in the darker corners of the Commonwealth!
Bad anonymous said "I don't recall lecturing any gays or lesbians".
Oh please. You know everyone is extremely well-acquainted with your non-stop lecturing of gays and lesbians on what you falsely claim is immorality. What do you expect to gain from telling lies you know have no hope of being bought?
I said "How incredibly sleazy when you claim to hold dear a religion which commands you not to lie."
Bad anonymous said "not that I agreed that I had lied, but could you find that command for me[?] I assume that the religion you refer to is Christianity, which holds that all people are immoral".
Oh, please, stop with the pathetic insinuation that your religion doesn't command you to not lie - you're not going to score any points with that kind of blatant B.S. And its also extremely pathetic for you make no attempt to be truthful by trying to hide behind your religion's saying all people are immoral.
Bad anonymous said "I attribute a post to someone else, I'll feel free to change the wording as I like".
We got that - you feel free to lie by contradicting what the news story originally said whenever it strikes your fancy. And of course it would be a lie if you claimed your "I was attempting plagiarism" excuse isn't dishonest because its obvious when you are cutting and pasting a newstory and its obvious you know people will assume what you post is what the story originally said and its obvious you want them to make that unwarrented assumption. Just like when you post standalone statments like "86% of people blame [Obama] for this mess". You hope people will incorrectly interpret that to mean "the poll shows 86% of people blame Obama and not the Republicans" and hope no one will check to find out the truth is many more people blame the Republcans than the Democrats. Your goal is to deceive, lie, and obfuscate whenever possible to try to create a false reality that advances your evil agenda.
"No, you're pathetically attempting to deceive people in the same way you've done all along by at first being honest about the statistic that says 14% say Obama is not at all to blame for the shutdown while 5% say the Republicans are not at all to blame and then later lying about that same poll number After you've tried to hide that bit of honesty in piles and piles of B.S. you dishonestly make the standalone statement "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" as though 86% of people blame Obama and those 86% don't blame republicans when in fact that isn't at all what the poll says. You think because you were honest initially you now have free reign to repeat the lie "86% think [Obama's] to blame for this mess" as often as you like. There's where your integrity has hit rock bottom."
this is my favorite paragraph
we need to send this straight to Vienna and have a team of psychiatrists analyze it
Ms. Priya, if you ever commit a serious crime, this paragraph alone should hold as evidence for an innocent by reason of insanity plea at any court in Canada
do they have involuntary institutionalization in Canada
I do hope the Royal Mounties aren't reading this
how hard it is when you want to deny reality!
when 14% of people don't blame Obama, 86% do
Bad anonymous said "yes, my poll is a week old it wasn't when you first starting ranting I don't believe there's been any shift in favor of Obama since".
B.S. You're obvious well aware that since that poll an even bigger percentage of people blame the Republicans for the shutdown instead of the Democrats - a 22% margin. Telling such painfully obvious lies is only making you look worse. For your own sake, stop it.
Bad anonymous said "and I have posted a link to the poll so everyone can see it for themselves only 14% of Americans believe Obama isn't to blame for the shutdown it's a fact".
That's a lie, the poll didn't say that. What it said was "14% of Americans believe Obama isn't entirely to blame for the shutdown." which is a very different thing from saying "14% of Americans believe Obama isn't to blame for the shutdown and so 86% don't blame the Republicans" which is how you're dishonestly attempting to spin that and how you hope people will interpret your statment.
You posted the link to the poll but hoped few, or no one, would check to see exactly what it said and so you excluded the poll results that contradict your implication. The truth is "62% said Republicans hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown compared to 49% saying Obama and the Democrats hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown". You're attempting to obfuscate the truth and yet make the false claim that technically you didn't lie. You initially soft-peddled that "5% of Americans believe Republicans aren't entirely to blame for the shutdown" so you'd later have an excuse for repeatedly trying to mislead people into thinking the vast majority of people blame Obama for the shutdown but not the Republicans.
If you weren't attempting to deceive people you'd have quoted the poll result that "62% said Republicans hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown compared to 49% saying Obama and the Democrats hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown". but having them know that is the last thing you want so rather than telling the truth you'll keep posting dishonest/misleading statements.
I caught you outright lying by saying several polls had more people blaming the Democrats than the Republicans and that's the only reason you're attempting to deceive people in a less obvious fashion.
You're spinning at a very high RPM, you'd better stop or you're going to throw a rod.
"You know everyone is extremely well-acquainted with your non-stop lecturing of gays and lesbians on what you falsely claim is immorality. What do you expect to gain from telling lies you know have no hope of being bought?"
I have often pointed out the fact that homosexual behavior is both deviant and immoral. All homosexuals are aware of this themselves. My discussion of this fact is always in the context of some broader argument and integral to the discussion. As far as lecturing individuals on their personal behavior, I'd never do this. I don't believe homosexuality is the world's worse sin and I believe that all people are guilty of other things just as bad.
"Oh, please, stop with the pathetic insinuation that your religion doesn't command you to not lie - you're not going to score any points with that kind of blatant B.S."
I'm just asking for some reference point
you ever hear the story of Rahab?
she lived in the wall of Jericho and when the Hebrew spies were hiding, she lied to the authorities about where they were
she and her family were spared when Jericho was destroyed and one of her descendants was Jesus
"Minimun-wage workers in a garment factory in Bangladesh finally extracted a long-promised bonus from their boss after holding him captive in the factory for over 18 hours.
The factory boss — who was unharmed — had held back payment of worker bonuses for the Eid al-Adha holiday. Unions are celebrating the success of the bold worker action as a “positive development” in the context of a long fought labor dispute.
Reuters reported:
'The [workers] forced their way into the office of owner Delwar Hossain and locked him in when he said no money was available.
Police, relatives of the owners and the factory owners’ group, the BGMEA, launched talks with the protesters and a police official said Hossain was released after bonuses were paid to 900 workers late on Sunday.
“I see it as a positive movement as the workers were not violent and were able to realize their demand peacefully,” said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Workers’ Federation trade union."'
"trying to mislead people into thinking the vast majority of people blame Obama for the shutdown but not the Republicans"
Lazy Priya,
you're making a fool of yourself
I never once have said Americans don't partly blame Republicans
this point has been made by others though
my unique point is that they also, in large numbers, blame they guy they elected, Barack Obama
only Ohioans have a gripe With Boehner
everyone has voted up or down on Obama
at this point, he'd never win another election
he's most polarizing, partisan, pathetic excuse for a President ever
"WASHINGTON -- 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."
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bad anonymous said "As far as lecturing individuals on their personal behavior, I'd never do this.".
**rolls eyes**. Its obvious you're to childish to ever admit you're lying regardless of how obvious it is - grow up you big baby.
Bad anonymous said "I never once have said Americans don't partly blame Republicans
my unique point is that they also, in large numbers, blame they guy they elected, Barack Obama".
No, you're spinning, you're doing your best to hide and deny the truth - in EVERY poll greater numbers of people blame the Republicans for the shutdown than blame the Democrats. That's why you keep posting:
"only 14% of Americans believe Obama isn't to blame for the shutdown it's a fact".".
and
"86% think [Obama]'s to blame for this mess"
without admitting the very poll you posted said "62% said Republicans hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown compared to 49% saying Obama and the Democrats hold almost all or a lot of the blame for the shutdown".
You're doing that to try and con people into thinking more people blame the Democrats for the shutdown when the truth is more people blame the Republicans.
You are dishonest, spinning, devoid of ethics, and a serial liar.
"Poll: Republicans' Handling Of Shutdown Gets Low Marks From 3 Out Of 4 Americans
10/14/2013 4:25 pm EDT
Nearly three-quarters of Americans disapprove of Republicans' handling of the budget crisis, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll released Monday.
Disapproval of the GOP, which has risen steadily since just before the government shutdown began, is now at 74 percent, up 11 points from late September.
A majority of Americans are also discontented with Democrats' role in the budget negotiations. But disapproval ratings for Democrats in Congress and for President Barack Obama, both of which started at a lower level than disapproval of Republicans in Congress, have remained largely unchanged in the past two weeks. "
"This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.".
I see bad anonymous is being "dispassionate" (as he puts it) again.
House Republicans Changed The Rules So A Majority Vote Couldn't Stop The Government Shutdown
"In its effort to extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for opening the government, the GOP has faced a fundamental strategic obstacle: They don't have the votes. A majority of the members of the House have gone on record saying that if they were given the opportunity to vote, they would support what's known as a "clean" continuing resolution to fund the government.
So House Republican leaders made sure no such vote could happen.
In the hours working up to the government shutdown on Sept. 30, Republican members of the House Rules Committee were developing a strategy to keep a clean CR off the floor, guaranteeing the government would remain shut down.
Though at least 28 House Republicans have publicly said they would support a clean CR if it were brought to the floor -- enough votes for the government to reopen when combined with Democratic support -- a House rule passed just before the shutdown essentially prevents that vote from taking place.
During a floor speech on Saturday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) drew attention to the quietly passed rule when he attempted to present a motion to accept the Senate's clean continuing resolution and reopen the government.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), presiding over the chamber, told Van Hollen that the rule he was asking to use had been "altered" and he did not have the privilege of bringing that vote to the floor. In the ensuing back and forth, Chaffetz said the recently passed House Resolution 368 trumped the standing rules. Where any member of the House previously could have brought the clean resolution to the floor under House Rule 22, House Resolution 368 -- passed on the eve of the shutdown -- gave that right exclusively to the House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.
"The Rules Committee, under the rules of the House, changed the standing rules of the House to take away the right of any member to move to vote to open the government, and gave that right exclusively to the Republican Leader," said Van Hollen. "Is that right?"
"The House adopted that resolution," replied Chaffetz.
"I make my motion, Mr. Speaker," said Van Hollen. "I renew my motion that under the regular standing rules of the House... that the house take up the Senate amendments and open the government now."
"Under section 2 of H.R. 368, that motion may be offered only by the majority leader or his designee," Chaffetz said.
"Mr. Speaker, why were the rules rigged to keep the government shut down?" Van Hollen asked.
"The gentleman will suspend," Chaffetz interjected.
"Democracy has been suspended, Mr. Speaker."
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) also highlighted the GOP's refusal to allow a clean vote on Saturday, using a novel parliamentary maneuver. Unable to shut Grayson down, Chaffetz postponed a vote on the bill.
"They can’t handle the truth," Grayson said."
I saw the comment before it was deleted
it said "you can say that again"
big deal
"Nearly three-quarters of Americans disapprove of Republicans' handling of the budget crisis, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll released Monday.
Disapproval of the GOP, which has risen steadily since just before the government shutdown began, is now at 74 percent, up 11 points from late September.
A majority of Americans are also discontented with Democrats' role in the budget negotiations. But disapproval ratings for Democrats in Congress and for President Barack Obama, both of which started at a lower level than disapproval of Republicans in Congress, have remained largely unchanged in the past two weeks. "
a couple of points here
first of all, the Washington Post has acted like a branch of Democratic National Campaign during this whole shameful episode
secondly, the narrative says Republicans' disapproval has gone up 11 percent and Obama has remained unchanged
actually, Obama's is up 5 percent is the same period
I assume lazy priya will have no problem with this actual lie
let's see
"I saw the comment before it was deleted it said "you can say that again"
LOL, I believe you **wink**
As we've seen you can't believe anything the bad anonymous's post even if they feel forced to include a link
I've had enough of playing with the ill-behaved children. They've made it obvious they think they're somehow saving face if they deny being wrong or lying no matter how obvious that is. It doesn't get much more immature than that.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bad anonymous is being "dispassionate" (as he puts it) yet again.
Here Are The Sleaziest Things Congress Has Done During The Shutdown
"…Grandstand at the World War II Memorial.
…Berate a Park Ranger for the effects of the shutdown.
…Fund raise off the whole debacle.
…Rub their "nice house" in the faces of 800,000 federal employees they helped furlough.
…Tell furloughed employees they shouldn't get back pay while they're prohibited from working.
…Accuse the president of "curb-stomping" people.
… Keep the congressional gym and other amenities open as essential services.
…Complain that the gym is gross and doesn't have enough towels.
well, today was one of those priceless day's on TTF
lazy Priya spent much of the day pitching a fit and saying I lied
LP took exception to the fact that I copied the text of some AP story and changed the words to emphasize the point I was making
I didn't claim it was a verbatim story from a reporter, indeed didn't attribute it at all, and didn't falsify any facts
LP went on about this, as if a major scandal had unfolded
now, it gets funny
I post a story from the Post where they lied in their summary of a poll they took
they didn't just neglect to mention some facts
they blatantly lied
lazy Priya's reaction:
OK, gotta go now!
it was priceless
maybe you thought it was a priceless day because all you did is repeat yourself ad nauseum with old data all day long.
such is life inside the soon to pop bubble.
old data all day long, huh?
how about the Washington Post story?
for the last two weeks we have looked at story after story about how Americans blame the Republicans for the shutdown
yet, if look at the details on those polls, you see that Americans largely blame Obama for the shutdown
this is actually significant because he is an individual and the elected leader of the free world
yet, the media ignored this
but, until yesterday, their deception was indirect, simply a failure to include all facts
yesterday, and this is new, the Washington Post took the deception one step further
this time they outright lied:
"disapproval ratings for Democrats in Congress and for President Barack Obama, both of which started at a lower level than disapproval of Republicans in Congress, have remained largely unchanged in the past two weeks"
if you go back and look at their poll data, however, you find that Obama's disapproval rating went up 5% in the last two weeks
Obama's second term is less than a year old and it is already a catastrophe
he failed to pass gun control legislation in a Senate controlled by his own party
the republicans scored a major victory calling his bluff on the sequester and now everyone knows that the 5% cut was all wasteful spending
he let a low-level government contractor escape after divulging the workings of our intelligence agencies
he made Vlad Putin look like a benevolent statesman by bungling the Syrian situation
we now know that he tampered with a free election in 2012 by using the IRS to harass his employees
Obamacare commenced two weeks ago and has been a disaster with citizens' personal information unprotected according to cyber-security experts, unusable software, skyhigh premiums, deductibles and co-pays
and now the shutdown and debt limit increase he refuses to negotiate and then does and then reneges on deals he makes
if American makes it through the next three years, it will be a miracle
Million Vets March Becomes Confederate Flag-Waving Embarrassment For GOP
"On Sunday, right-wing leaders and Tea Party supporters descended on Washington, D.C. for the “Million Vets March On The Memorials,” a protest designed to pressure the Obama administration to reopen the war memorials closed as a result of the government shutdown. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event quickly descended into a confederate flag-waving embarrassment for the Republican Party.
To many on the right, the protest was supposed to be a major turning point in the battle over the government shutdown. As National Review’s well-sourced Robert Costa tweeted on Sunday:
Robert Costa ✔ @robertcostaNRO
This is a big story; House conservatives tell me it's a "game-changer," gives Right new momentum ahead of this week http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/protesters-reopen-world-war-ii-memorial-on-national-mall-thats-closed-for-govt-shutdown/2013/10/13/0d781264-341d-11e3-89db-8002ba99b894_story.html …
1:39 PM - 13 Oct 2013
Needless to say, that’s not what happened. As Daily Kos documents, the rally’s organizers fell more than 999,000 short of their goal of attracting one milion protesters. And those who did show up were not exactly helpful to the Republican cause.
The rally was highlighted by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and fake politician Sarah Palin, both of whom have gone to great lengths to establish themselves as leaders of the Tea Party movement. Not coincidentally, both are just as unpopular as the Tea Party itself. Voters view Palin unfavorably by an overwhelming 58 to 34 margin, and Cruz is well on his way towards becoming the most hated man in America.
It only got worse from there. Palin and Cruz were joined by Larry Klayman, who followed through on his threat to demand that President Obama “put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!”
Unsurprisingly, the extremism totally overshadowed the rally’s original message. The media has devoted far more coverage to the Tea Party’s domination of the event than the original goal of pressuring the Obama administration to reopen the war memorials, and as Little Green Footballs points out, the protest’s organizers went so far as to release a statement saying that “The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington, D.C. was not in alignment with our message,” and that “we feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain.”
The episode is just the latest in a long series of examples demonstrating how damaging the Tea Party brand is to the Republican Party at large. As congressional Republicans negotiated to end the government shutdown that the far right started, the last thing they needed was to see Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and a legion of birthers and neo-confederates reminding Americans of exactly who’s to blame for the governing crisis. As long as the far right continues to serve as the face of the GOP, it’s hard to imagine the party’s dreadful poll numbers improving."
Do y'all really think you're scoring rhetorical points against one another?
there's a myth being perpetrated by the media that it's improper to question anything about the budget or the debt limit
Obama is clinging to this
but it's perfectly reasonable when legislators are asked to extend the permission to take out more debt, what's the plan for paying it back
everyone needs to get used to it, because with levels this high, this will happen repeatedly until the debt begins to go down
the Tea Party isn't nuts, it's the only rational and incorrupt party
what do you think, Robert?
should we raise the debt limit whenever Obama wants to borrow more, without placing any conditions on it?
no banker would lend money to you without conditions, would they?
Bring back the Gephardt rule.
If Congress votes to appropriate the funds, Congress automatically raises the debt ceiling to pay for what Congress enacts.
would you run your household that way?
every time everybody in the house says they want something, it's automatically put on the credit card?
an sure path to bankruptcy
"The White House appeared to reject a proposal by House Republicans Tuesday morning to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, calling the proposal "a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans."
"The president has said repeatedly that Members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills," said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage.
The White House also announced that the president and Vice President Biden would meet with House Democratic leaders at the White House at 3:15 Tuesday afternoon. Attendees will include House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Reps. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
House Republicans are considering legislation that would fund the government until Jan. 15 and extend the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. It includes language that would prevent members of Congress as well as Cabinet members, the president and the vice president from getting taxpayer subsidies to help offset their coverage under ObamaCare. It would also delay a tax on medical devices under the law.
The Republican language strips out a provision in a developing Senate plan that would delay a tax on reinsurance that labor unions have protested.
The president has said that he does not want to set a precedent by which the president's party provides ransom in exchange for keeping the government open."
Obama, you idiot, everyone now knows that any budget could, with the same logic, be characterized in such a manner. If you want something and will veto unless you get it, that's fine. If the House wants something and won't pass anything else, that's ransom. You need to stop beating that old dead horse. Americans are on to your rhetorical games. Go commiserate with George Orwell.
"the White House stopped short of an explicit veto threat in its statement denouncing the House language."
BWAHAHAHA!!
Conor Friedersdorf, one of the smartest conservatives (real conservative, not just an anti-liberal) around, accurately blames the current budget and debt ceiling showdown largely on the right wing echo chamber that values conflict with liberals (and fellow conservatives) over intelligent policymaking.
“Republicans can pretty much say whatever they want, no matter what the bizarre logic and no matter what connection it has to what they were saying five minutes ago, and Fox News will totally accept it and blast it for hours or days,” Jonathan Bernstein observes. “The result? Republicans have become incredibly lazy. After all, why bother constructing a coherent argument if you don’t need one.”
It’s true. In order to get good press from the conservative media, Republican politicians need not craft a brilliant political strategy or impress with policy substance or excel at persuading the public that conservative ideas are the way forward. They need only find themselves in conflict with President Obama and Democrats…
Watch Sean Hannity. Listen to Rush Limbaugh. With few exceptions, the focus is winning whatever fight happens to be dominating the current news cycle. Each one is treated as if it is as maximally significant as any other, and that is no coincidence. If you’re driven by partisan tribalism more than ideology, if getting in rhetorical digs at liberals thrills you more than persuading adversaries or achieving policy victories, it makes sense that you would fight substantively inconsequential battles with no more or less vigor than any other…
The amount of conservative hackery broadcast and published every day remains staggering. In private, that fact is widely acknowledged even among movement conservative pundits, who can hardly deny something so glaringly obvious. But I have long been in a tiny minority of observers who regard conservative media as something that must be reformed if the right is to recover. How can an ideological movement succeed if its leaders and its rank and file daily rely on bad information from sources that constantly peddle fiction as fact?".
If the Republicans are right and government-provided health care is a horrible evil that will destroy everything good about the country, why aren’t they clamoring to defund the VA, which is truly socialized medicine for military veterans? Senator Stabenow asked Ted Cruz that very question:
“I’m wondering if your motion includes the full funding of the VA medical system, which is a completely government run, government controlled health care system,” Stabenow asked Cruz.
“I would readily support legislation fully funding the VA because the VA is a vital government system, it is a promise we have made and it is unrelated to Obamacare,” Cruz replied.
So let’s see if we understand this correctly. The Affordable Care Act, which provides subsidies for the poorest Americans to purchase private health insurance on the market, is “government control of health care” and “socialized medicine” that will destroy the economy and freedom and grandma too. But the VA, which is genuine socialized medicine, where the government owns the hospitals and clinics, pays the doctors and foots the entire bill, that’s a “vital government program.” But if Obamacare is such an evil thing for those who sign up for it, why isn’t actual socialized medicine an evil thing for veterans? What about the death panels and inevitable rationing? Funny how their arguments magically disappear.
May I ask, how did we end the Great Depression? Wasn't it followed by the greatest levels of government debt with respect to the size of the economy.
we got away with it, Robert, because we were the only country remaining whose infrastructure was not in shambles
things boomed because we were the only ones with capacity to rebuild the world
maybe if we could get some mad Darwinian lunatic to devastate China, Japan, India and Europe, we could take advantage of the whole thing and pay off our debts real fast
thanks for the suggestion, Robo-wonder
she comes across like diamonds diamonds
easy in love when the lights are low
she comes into focus focus / the closer she gets the more i know
she takes more whiskey than i wine / i whine...
(never want to be lost without you)
you OK, Priya?
One picture is worth a thousand words:
Federal Debt Held by the Public 1790-2013
You will notice that the debt as a percentage of gross domestic product we incurred during WWI is the peak of debt of our entire nation and roughly half what we face today.
Today Congress cuts unemployment for people who have been unemployed for too long, but what did we with the unemployed to dig our way out of the great depression? We employed them in FDRs massive workfare programs so they became tax payers too.
"The key to evaluating Roosevelt’s performance in combating the Depression is the statistical treatment of many millions of unemployed engaged in his massive workfare programs. The government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York’s Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown.
It also built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields. And it employed 50,000 teachers, rebuilt the country’s entire rural school system, and hired 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. So much for the notion that government jobs are not “real jobs”, as we hear persistently from critics of the New Deal!"
"you OK, Priya?".
Peachy ;)
Just having a little fun.
don't forget the ridge runners in West Virginia
FDR's memorial has police tape blocking access, courtesy of the one and only Barack Obama
"The White House and its Democratic allies in Congress moved to shoot down an emerging House Republican budget proposal before it even left the ground, blasting the late-breaking plan as a "partisan" product that would imperil efforts to meet the looming debt-ceiling deadline.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid turned a deaf ear, declaring categorically that it "won't pass the Senate."
But Republicans, who say their counter-proposal is still being worked out, claimed the details of their plan are not so far off from a bipartisan approach being crafted in the Senate. Both plans would fund the government through mid-January and raise the debt ceiling through February -- a key difference is the House framework would delay a controversial medical device tax in ObamaCare. Republicans urged Democrats to give it a chance, and questioned why they would preemptively reject it.
"To say, 'absolutely categorically not, we will not consider what the Republicans in the House of Representatives are doing,' in my view, is piling on," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on the Senate floor, as Democrats lined up against the House plan. "Let's sit down and work this out."
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called on the Senate not to take a "my-way-or-the-highway" approach.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner turned the tables on Democrats, claiming they were the ones risking the country's financial health by refusing to consider the House's ideas.
"Is Senator Reid so blinded by partisanship that he is willing to risk default on our debt to protect a 'pacemaker tax' that 34 Senate Democrats are on the record opposing," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement, referring to bipartisan support for repealing the medical device tax."
BWAHAHAHA!!
"Just having a little fun."
glad to hear it
btw, I googled what you were referring to
personally, my favorite Juno awardster is Bruce Cockburn
Yeah, Bruce is great.
Latest from the clown posse in the House:
House hopes to move own debt plan, but may not have the votes
"House Republicans said they hoped to vote Tuesday on a new fiscal plan, but doubts immediately sprouted up over whether they can muster the votes to pass it.
The new House GOP plan would modify an emerging Senate fiscal deal that would end the government shutdown, fund the government through Jan. 15 and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7.
It would do so by delaying ObamaCare’s medical device tax for two years and scrapping the law's tax subsidies for members of Congress and top Cabinet officials, lawmakers and aides said.
Republican leaders presented the plan to House members with just two days to go before a Treasury Department deadline for lifting the nation’s borrowing limit and avoiding a potentially catastrophic default on the nation's debts.
Senior House Republicans had hoped to jump out in front of the Senate plan, but a two-hour, closed-door Republican conference meeting that began with a collective rendition of “Amazing Grace” ended without consensus, and lawmakers said conservatives were demanding changes to the plan.
“There are a lot of opinions about which direction to go, and there have been no decisions about what exactly we will do,” Boehner told reporters after the meeting. “We’re going to continue work with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to make sure that there is no issue of default and to get our government reopened.”
Democrats and the White House immediately panned the proposal, meaning that Republicans would need to find most — if not all — of the 217 votes needed for passage on their own.
“It’s unproductive and a waste of time,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. “The House legislation will not pass the Senate.”
The Speaker reiterated that he wanted to avert a first-ever default.
“I have made clear for months and months that the idea of default is wrong, and we shouldn’t get anywhere close to it,” Boehner said. “We’re talking with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to find a way forward today.”
Boehner’s proposal was the third debt-ceiling plan his leadership team has presented to rank-and-file members in the last month, and conservatives have threatened to torpedo each one.
Party leaders acknowledged that changes would likely be needed if the plan stood a chance of passage on the floor...."
Cruz, Lee Are No-Shows at Important GOP Lunch
"Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah did not attend Tuesday’s party luncheon where a number of ideas to avert default were discussed, according to a senator present at the meeting.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — who has referred to the tea party conservatives as “wacko birds” and has repeatedly called their plan to link defunding of Obamacare to the government shutdown a “fool’s errand” — outed the two no-shows.
Cruz and Lee pose two of the most serious threats (outside of maybe the entire House GOP caucus) to getting a debt limit deal before Treasury’s Thursday deadline because they could block any unanimous consent request to cede procedural time. At this point, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has not yet filed cloture on the framework he discussed with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the leaders would need such a time agreement to expedite the procedural process for the bill.
CQ Roll Call asked Lee on Monday whether he would be able to make a decision on whether he would block a consent agreement after attending Tuesday’s lunch and hearing McConnell explain the contours of the plan. At the time, Lee said “perhaps.”
On Monday night, Cruz gathered with House conservatives at a popular Hill restaurant to strategize their plan going forward. It wasn’t immediately clear where he was dining for lunch.
Neither Cruz nor Lee’s office responded immediately for comment."
Stephen Fry interviews “ex-gay” therapist, exposes “ex-gay” therapy as bogus and terrible
"Fry speaks with the founder of an ex-gay organization and one of his former patients, who is now "ex-ex-gay"
English actor, comedian and activist Stephen Fry interviewed the founder of ex-gay organization the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) for an episode of his BBC2 program “Out There,” which explores, per the website, “what it means to be gay in different corners of the world.”
Fry handles his subject with bemused though respectful patience (and, at times, humor), but his conversation with Joseph Nicolosi is pretty painful to watch.
Nicolosi describes being gay as based on “trauma” and as something that can be “resolved” through the therapy he offers — for $140 a session. But perhaps the most devastating revelation in the segment is when Nicolosi tells Fry that more than 60 percent of his clients are teenagers. A growing number of states – including California, where Nicolosi practices — have banned “ex-gay” therapy for minors, citing its harmful impact and well-documented abuses among practitioners.
Fry also speaks with one of Nicolosi’s former “patients,” who, surprise, is still gay and now campaigns against the dangers of “ex-gay” therapy.
Watch it here.
"Pat Robertson is urging the Republican Party to give up on defunding Obamacare and to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.
“The Republicans have got to wave the white flag and say, ‘We fought a good fight and now it’s over,’” said Robertson. “They cannot shut the government down and then bring about a default. We can’t do it. I mean, it would be devastating economically to every human being and the Republicans just can’t get tarred with that.”
Watch it here."
"would you run your household that way?"
Yes. In my household when we buy a car, we take out a loan to pay for it and then we pay the loan off over time.
That's also how we bought our home. We took out a mortgage and paid for it.
That's also how our kids went to college. We took out additional loans for each of them and paid those off too.
Had we defaulted, we'd have lost the cars, the house, and our kids would be without bachelors degrees (they paid for their post-graduate degrees themselves}.
How about your family? Do you make enough money to pay cash for these large ticket items yourself? If so, more power to you, but the truth is sorry, for most Americans, homes, cars, and college educations are not paid for out of cash flow, but by borrowing and repaying loans.
tonight, the House will vote for and pass a bill re-opening the fun parts of government until Jan 15 and allowing Obama to borrow until Valentines Day
it will remove the medical device tax from Obamacare and keep spending at the sequester levels opposed by Democrats
on February 15, it cuts off new debt abruptly, not allowing extraordinary measures to string it out
unless Obama reaches a deal by February 15 with a mutually agreed plan to reduce the debt, the House will not permit him to borrow more
the Senate has suspended their talks on an alternative and don't have time to replace it
Obama has not said it will veto, as he has done with every other budget the House approved
at this point, it's this or nothing
kids, it's over
the Republicans won
tomorrow, America will congratulate them for sticking with it
on to February
Happy Holidays everyone!!
Go back to this one: FDR's memorial has police tape blocking access, courtesy of the one and only Barack Obama
What are you saying, Anon? Did the one and only President drive over there and put up the tape? Did he give an order, in the middle of all this, for the police to go over to the FDR memorial and put up tape? (I am taking your word for it that there is tape there.) Did the President call the Secretary of the Interior and order her to close all parks and monuments associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt?
Are you saying the President, once the government was shut down by Congress' failure to pass a budget, selectively ensured that parks and memorials would be considered "non-essential"? Are you saying that, with the military and federal employees going unpaid, medical research stopped, regulations unenforced, international diplomacy neglected, he called over to have them put tape up at the FDR memorial?
Are you saying that the President even knows that there is tape at the FDR memorial? Are you saying that, of all the functions of government, the parks and monuments are a priority for him? You are not saying he is responsible for shutting down the government, are you?
Really, Anon, explain this. We want to know just exactly what kind of idiot you are.
"(I am taking your word for it that there is tape there.)"
I've got pictures
"You are not saying Obama is responsible for shutting down the government, are you?"
yes, I am
and most Americans agree
meanwhile, the Supreme Court has agreed to stop the global warming alarmists:
"WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority in developing rules aimed at cutting emissions of six heat-trapping gases from factories and power plants.
The justices said Tuesday they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld the government's unprecedented regulations aimed at reducing the gases blamed for global warming."
and once again, Obama appears to be a world class loser
gun control, Syria, IRS, NSA...
and now, he threatens to keep shut down the government unless the sequester is cancelled
and loses
an that's just in the last eight months
the lousy Barry has...
struck out!!
how many at-bats does this guy get?
it's time for him to resign
Bad anonymous said "tonight, the House will vote for and pass a bill re-opening the fun parts of government until Jan 15 and allowing Obama to borrow until Valentines Day
at this point, it's this or nothing kids, it's over
the Republicans won
tomorrow, America will congratulate them for sticking with it".
You sure are flighty. As far as the right wing extremists go that control the Republican party that bill is a loss for Republicans and a win for Obama and the Tea Party won't let it go through.
The House GOP pulled their bill after Heritage Action urged a no vote and Tea party members crapped all over it. Republicans admitted they do not have the votes to pass their own bill. Heritage action asked Republicans to vote against the bill because to them and the tea partiers its all about the Affordable Care act and the bill doesn't kill it so its a non-starter.
The tea party is running the Republican party and they want to destroy government. To them a win requires killing the Affordable Care Act which they won't get so they are going to send the U.S. government into default.
Moderate Republicans are afraid of the tea party even though they are a minority of Republicans so they will let the Tea Party do as it wants and the tea party hates Obama so much they'd rather destroy the U.S. economy than allow Obama to win by keeping Obamacare in place.
And so, as has happened over and over, when Bad anonymous tells us something is sure to happen (the Republcans will pass a bill tonight, its over, and the Republicans won) the exact opposite happens, Republicans can't pass their own bill, they are responsible for the Goverment shutdown continuing and the Republicans have lost yet again.
The grounds for the Republican Party’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act are far from a single coherent argument. It is all the more confusing because one of the health care reform’s key provisions, the individual insurance mandate, has conservative origins. The requirement that individuals be required to purchase health insurance first emerged in Republican health care reform bills introduced in 1993 as alternatives to the Clinton administration’s plan.
That mandate was also a prominent feature of the Massachusetts plan passed under Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006. According to Romney, “we got the idea of an individual mandate from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation,” Forbes reports. Furthermore, as Bill Keller argued in an op-ed for The New York Times, the GOP should be “the people who ought to be most vigorously applauding this success story” because the reform of the United States’s “overpriced, underperforming health care system” was done almost entirely with market incentives instead of government decree.
The fact that the idea of the individual mandate developed out of GOP rhetoric proves that the party is not opposed to the thought of making insurance affordable to millions of Americans. “Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seat-belts for their own protection,” Stuart Butler, a health care expert for the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, wrote in a 1989 brief titled Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans. “Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness.”
So the argument goes that just as legally mandated insurance makes economic sense for automobiles, it makes sense for health care, as well.
Several theories as to why Republicans want to see Obamacare defunded and repealed have been tossed around.
Republicans have said that the health care reform will destroy the economy. “Well, if you don’t believe Obamacare is the biggest job killer in the country, look to the facts,” Republican Rep. Ted Cruz of Texas said during his 21-hour speech on the Senate floor earlier this month. “This year, report after report has rolled in about employers restricting work hours to less than 30 hours per week — the point where the mandate kicks in. The data also points to record-low workweeks in low-wage industries.”
But for most companies, the employer mandate is not a huge burden. The companies that do not provide insurance and will be required to probably employ around 1 percent of American workers.
“You’ve got 5.7 million firms in the U.S.,” Mark Duggan, who served as the top health economist at White House’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010, told the Washington Post. “Only 210,000 have more than 50 employees. So 96 percent of firms aren’t affected. Then if you look among those firms with 50 or more employees, something on the order of 95 percent offer health insurance. So it’s basically 10,000 or so employers who have more than 50 employees and don’t offer coverage.
The unconstitutionality of the reform is another argument that has been made. Sen. Orrin Hatch wrote in The Hill’s “Congress Blog” in 2010 that that to come to “any other conclusion” than that the individual mandate is unconstitutional “requires treating the Constitution as the servant, rather than the master, of Congress.”
But given that in June 2012 the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — with exception of the requirement that states expand Medicaid — that argument has lost its validity. The fiscal argument against Obamacare, that the reform would result in tax hikes and a bigger deficit, has also been recently dropped from party rhetoric.
The theory put forward by Keller in his op-ed and by Eduardo Porter in his New York Times piece entitled “Why the Health Care Law Scares the G.O.P.” is that Republicans are worried that Americans will like the benefits of the reform too much. “You have probably figured out that the real mission of the Republican extortionists and their big-money backers was to scuttle the law before most Americans recognized it as a godsend and rendered it politically untouchable,” Keller wrote.
That argument makes sense to some degree. Speaking to radio host Rush Limbaugh in late August, Cruz said that President Obama “wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar, because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound.”
But in Keller’s opinion, it is too late. Health care reform has already accomplished its first goal of enrolling millions of uninsured Americans, “many of whom have been living one medical emergency away from the poorhouse,” he wrote in the op-ed. The fact that the computer glitches that plagued the first week the exchanges were open for enrollment was evidence of demand for affordable coverage. This demand “is the 90 percent of the story that doesn’t make the headlines,” Sam Glick of the Oliver Wyman consulting firm told Keller.
Data also show demand for reform. Kaiser Family Foundation’s March 2013 health care tracking — the same survey that showed only 37 percent of respondents held a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act — found that a plurality of those surveyed actually support specific provisions of Obamacare.
Eighty-eight percent were in favor of tax credits for small businesses to buy insurance; 81 percent were in favor of closing the Medicare prescription coverage gap; 76 percent were in favor of extending coverage to dependents; 71 percent were in favor of expanding Medicaid; 66 percent were in favor of banning exclusions for preexisting conditions; and 57 percent were in favor of the employer mandate.
The only provision that regularly polled negatively was the individual mandate, but the requirement that all Americans purchase affordable insurance is necessary if excluding those with preexisting conditions is prohibited. To function as intended, the marketplaces need a broad, healthy risk pool to keep staggering rate increases from occurring. The premiums of healthy, cheap-to-insure people cover the big bills for the relatively small number of sick people.
"Health care reform has already accomplished its first goal of enrolling millions of uninsured Americans,"
this is a outright lie
so far, the numbers are in the tens of thousands
as for the number of people trying to enroll, they have no choice
most of the self-insured had low-cost plans that didn't meet the specifications of Obamacare
their insurance companies cancelled their insurance rather than comply and now they have no alternative but to go to the exchange
it takes real gall to claim they're coming because they are enthusiastic
they are there because Obama got their insurance cancelled
Wall Street Journal reports Fitch Put U.S.'s Triple-A Rating On Watch For Downgrade
looks like Obama is going to screw up our credit rating just like he did with our economy and international influence
Barack Obama the gift that keeps right on giving
to our enemies
The article I posted said "Health care reform has already accomplished its first goal of enrolling millions of uninsured Americans,"
Bad anonymous replided "this is a outright lie so far, the numbers are in the tens of thousands".
That is an outright lie. The federal government and many of the other exchanges haven't released any figures for the number of people that have enrolled. Far, far more people have been enrolled than the total noted by those exchanges which have released numbers. The number of people who have enrolled to this point in time is unknown and will remain so for a number of weeks or longer.
So, bad anonymous, what have you got to say about Boehner pulling the Republican bill to end the shutdown because Republicans said they wouldn't vote for it that you assured us just two hours ago would be passed?
"The number of people who have enrolled to this point in time is unknown and will remain so for a number of weeks or longer."
so, when you said "millions", you were lying, right?
sources inside the government have told reporters the number for the first two weeks on the national exchange was 56K
further, it's unknown how many were uninsured before Obamacare and how many were kicked off their plans because of it
Obamcare is a tremendous failure
Bad anonymous said "as for the number of people trying to enroll, they have no choice most of the self-insured had low-cost plans that didn't meet the specifications of Obamacare their insurance companies cancelled their insurance rather than comply and now they have no alternative but to go to the exchange".
That's entirely speculation at this point in time and if it does happen the percentage of people affected will be small.
Bad anonymous said "looks like Obama is going to screw up our credit rating".
That's entirely the Republicans fault. In a democracy the people vote and the party with the most votes gets to run the government. Republicans are trying to overthrow American democracy by holding the economy hostage in order to force Obama to allow them to rule instead of him. The Democrats and Obama for the entire duration of the shutdown have been willing to pass a clean continuing resolution to end the shutdown and then discussions could take place without the Republicans trying to force a crisis every couple of months.
Republicans have have said if they don't get everything they want they'll destroy the economy. There should be no conditions on allowing the government to run and do its job but Republicans have attached conditions before they'll allow the basic functions of the U.S. government to continue.
I said "The number of people who have enrolled to this point in time is unknown and will remain so for a number of weeks or longer."
Bad anonymous said "so, when you said "millions", you were lying, right?".
Of course not, I never said millions had enrolled - Keller did, as the article I posted made clear.
I don't know how many have enrolled, I just know its more than the number reported by a portion of the exchanges that have reported to this point. Could be millions, I don't know.
So, bad anonymous, what have you got to say about Boehner pulling the Republican bill to end the shutdown because Republicans said they wouldn't vote for it that you assured us just two hours ago would be passed?
Are you regretting not showing a modicum of self-restraint before you ran off half-cocked and declared victory?
Consider for a moment what will come next for Obamacare, in the context of Ezra Klein’s five thoughts on the disastrous launch of the program – a bellwether of sorts for how the administration failed to live up to the expectations it sold to the law’s supporters and opinion leaders. There are a few different directions it can go from here, but the worst case scenario hasn’t really entered people’s consciences yet, in part because the insurers are staying quiet at the moment. The reality now is that the system is at least a month from actually working, and likelier two or (gasp) three, given the enormous range of problems. And that could make for a real disaster.
As it stands today, at most nine of the state exchanges are working… but while some systems are being announced as “fixed” on the state level, fixed in this case means the ability to look at plans, not to actually enroll. And the fundamental breakdown for the federal exchange hangs on a decision designed to insulate people from the true cost of plans – an approach which is now backfiring given the load it places on the website. The whole storyline is marked by a disturbing failure of basic technocracy: according to the New York Times, as late as the last week of September, HHS officials were still debating aspects of the site, including that requirement making customers register before shopping for insurance.
Democrats are scrambling for excuses: there wasn’t enough money or time. The decision to delay controversial regulations til after the 2012 election slowed the process. The Republican governors ruined efforts by opting not to implement exchanges. The suggestion that cronyism played a role in the contractor process is already being advanced. But cronyism or no, the decision of those at CMS/HHS to take the lead in organizing the program – despite an enormous absence of institutional experience – may be the real source of the problem.
But whether these excuses work with the public or not, the worst case scenario for Obamacare is now entering the realm of possibility: what if it just doesn’t work, and continues not to work, a month from now? The deadlines for achieving coverage are approaching fast. The political reality is that it’s impossible to legally require people to sign up for something when the system just won’t let them. If a month from now we are still seeing a fail rate of significance within these systems, where people trying to enroll are turned away as often (or more often!) than they get through, the pressure from non-partisan actors is going to explode for a delay of major aspects of the law. It will be a murmur at first, but if it continues to grow, there will have to be a Congressional response.
One factor to consider here is that the consultants involved for the federal and state exchanges have a good deal of overlap. It would be one thing if it were just a few states having issues – they could prioritize the major states over the minor ones – but the fact that the problems are worst for the federal exchange means none of the states are going to get significant attention until that’s taken care of. This could mean smaller states get attention last, leaving their citizens incapable of purchasing the coverage they’re legally required to get. The potential for legal challenges coming out of this is massive if the mandate/penalty is not delayed. But to solve the practical problem requires steps beyond just the individual mandate delay or extending open enrollment for the entire year – we’re talking about actually taking the exchanges offline (insurers would presumably honor the handful of plans already sold through them) in order to fix them. That process could take months of work and millions more in taxpayer dollars… and set us up to do this whole thing again in October of 2014.
So what’s the worst case scenario? Honestly, it’s this: if this is as big of a failure as it looks like at the moment, and the problems are not fixed within the next two months, the Obamacare project could end up backfiring in a way that could have dramatic effects on politics and policy going forward. It will contribute to distrust in government’s basic capability. It will fail to live up to its promise, and wreck the insurance markets for no good purpose. It will represent the administration betraying its strongest supporters. And it may ultimately leave President Obama wishing John Roberts had ruled the other way – turning him into a martyr for the cause as opposed to putting the burden of proof on actually implementing his signature policy.
oh yeah, the Republicans are in big trouble:
American Crossroads, a Republican super PAC, commissioned polls of four red states where Republicans can pick up Senate seats in 2014, and more than a year away from the race and before the real campaign’s even begun, the situation is looking good for GOP candidates in all four states.
In Arkansas, freshman representative Tom Cotton trails incumbent senator Mark Pryor, but by just three points, within the margin of error — and Pryor is at 45 percent of the vote, well below what an incumbent wants. On a generic ballot, Republicans are ahead, with 40 percent of Arkansans sampled saying they would vote for the Republican candidate for Senate if the election is held today, versus 37 percent saying they’d go for the Democrat. Pryor’s favorable rating remains strong, though, at 46–37; Cotton’s is 37–26. A poll released Sunday had the race even tighter, with Pryor up 42–41 over Cotton.
The situation is similar in Alaska, where Democrat Mark Begich is up for reelection next year, and Louisiana, where Democrat Mary Landrieu is defending her seat. Both of them lead their potential opponents, but only by a point or two, and the generic Republican leads the generic Democrat in both states by a small margin.
In West Virginia, where Democrat Jay Rockefeller will not be running for reelection in 2014, the likely Republican candidate, Representative Shelley Moore Capito, is demolishing the likely Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, 51–34. President Obama’s approval rating is well under water in all of these states, but he’s really in bathyscape territory in West Virginia, with just 25 percent of likely voters approving, and 65 percent disapproving. The poll was conducted by GOP polling firm Harper Polling.
Anonymous,
That's an interesting take on the debt the US incurred during World War II, which from what I can gather was the leading factor (along with such programs as the Marshall Plan) in ending the Great Depression in the United States and the industrial world. Is the thinking that US debt was sustainable because the rest of the world was devestated by war a theory you've developed on your own, or is it a more widely held view about which I simply have never heard (I realiz I may sound snarky, but I am in fact genuinely curious--genuousness is hard to convey by type, and often lacking in these comments). If it is a broad-based theory, could you direct me to websites, or authors, or some such? I'd be interested in reading more. Economics may be the dismal science, but as a citizen it is perhaps my duty to learn more of it.
rrjr
BTW, are you by any chance channeling Ted Cruz? I myself sometimes channel Janis Joplin.
Robert
I think I conceived that myself but, you never know, I read a lot and may have picked it up somewhere. As such, it obviously may be a flawed theory although it is not immediately apparent how.
I'm channeling George Washington.
While Washington, and the press, have been in an uproar over the government shutdown and the debt-limit negotiations, the debt itself has continued to climb. And that inexorable tide is going to cost us, eventually. As economist Herbert Stein once observed, something that can't go on forever, won't. And this can't go on forever. From this there are two lessons.
How bad has it gotten? In the past two years, the debt limit has grown twice as much as the economy. Can that go on forever? I doubt it very much.
As Niall Ferguson notes, while politicians crow that the deficit has dropped -- from super-enormous to merely really, really gigantic -- every year that we're in deficit adds to the debt. And the long-term trends are bad: "A very striking feature of the latest Congressional Budget Office report is how much worse it is than last year's. A year ago, the CBO's extended baseline series for the federal debt in public hands projected a figure of 52% of GDP by 2038. That figure has very nearly doubled to 100%. A year ago the debt was supposed to glide down to zero by the 2070s. This year's long-run projection for 2076 is above 200%. In this devastating reassessment, a crucial role is played here by the more realistic growth assumptions used this year."
Ah, yes. Growth. We've been pretty short of that over the last several years, as businesses -- even pro-Obama enterprises such as Google and Apple -- park increasing amounts of money overseas, unwilling to be subject not only to high U.S. taxes but, even worse, to the high levels of regulation of which Obamacare is only the most famous.
Something that can't go on forever, won't. Therefore, we won't keep borrowing more and more forever, with stagnant economic growth. So that's one lesson. But the other lesson can be found in the government shutdown: How many people really noticed?
The answer, of course, is so few that the Obama administration was forced to gin up a show with "Washington Monument" strategy efforts like closing war memorials and national parks, cutting off death benefits for dead troops, and the like in an effort to get people to care. These efforts seem mostly to have succeeded in driving Obama's poll numbers down to 37% in an AP poll last week, as a majority of Americans concluded -- correctly -- that he was putting his personal political interests ahead of the nation's.
The big lesson of the shutdown is that -- in a time when so-called "draconian cuts" usually refer to mere decreases in the rate of growth of spending on programs -- America was able to do without all the "non-essential" government workers just fine. (The same AP poll cited above says that 80% have felt no impact from the shutdown; a majority also oppose increasing the debt limit.) Turns out that most of those nonessential workers really are non-essential. And it's a safe bet that some of those who stayed on the job -- like the National Park Service people who chased veterans away from an open-air memorial -- could be done without, too, in a pinch. Under the shutdown, new regulations also slowed to a trickle, suggesting that we can do just fine without those, too.
With these lessons learned, here's my budget proposal: An across-the-board cut of 5% in every government department's budget line. (You can't convince me -- and you'll certainly have a hard time convincing voters -- that there's not 5% waste to be found in any government program.) Then a five-year freeze at that level. Likewise, a one-year moratorium on new regulations, followed by strict limits on new regulatory action: Perhaps a rule that all new business regulations won't have the force of law until approved by Congress.
This approach would drastically cut the deficit, and as the economy grew, our debt-to-GDP ratio would improve over time instead of steadily worsening. (And, with a guarantee of reduced spending and regulation, economic growth would probably also take off.)
GEORGE WILL: The last time we faced cataclysm over this was when Standard & Poor's lowered our credit rating, people said disaster. No, the cost of borrowing actually went down 40%. I don't think the markets are as irrational as some of the people on Wall Street say. I repeat what I have said here before, default is a choice. A choice in the sense that we have 10 times more revenue coming in than is needed to service our debt.
We can continue to service our debt by not paying certain other vendors and certain other programs. We will only default if it is a choice and, furthermore, the 14th Amendment empowering the president not at all, but the Congress entirely, says it is a constitutional requirement to pay, under the full faith and credit of the United States, our bonded debt.
How does the cost of borrowing go down when your credit rating is lowered? Mr. Will is not telling us the whole story.
My concern about the debt limit is whether or not my mother will get her social security check in November, and whether or not medicare will pay her doctor's and medicine bills.
Servicing the debt is not the only thing the U.S. government does with our money.
The way in which the government shutdown has affected me and my colleagues, is that many fewer students than usual are signing up for and paying for our Virginia State Latin Convention (VJCL). I'm essentially extending credit to parents until this is straightened out, but not everyone has received the word, and many people are holding back on discretionary expenses. It's a shame.
Effort by Republican-led House ends in failure
Senate leaders scramble to revive fiscal talks after House GOP plan collapses
Congress stumbles closer to precipice of debt default
Who controls the House GOP? No one.
Senate races the clock
GOP Lawmaker Breaks Ranks, Calling On Party To 'Face Reality' And End Shutdown
'PEOPLE ARE HURTING': Cantor Blamed For Prolonging Shutdown
Republican Aide: 'It's All Over'
Major Newspaper Regrets Ted Cruz Endorsement
Shutdown Talks Continue As Default Looms
Senate Tries To Pick Up After House Fail
State (NC) Becomes First To Cut Welfare Amid Shutdown
IT'S ALL OVER BUT THE CRYING"
I keep checking back here to see Anon's announcement of the latest glorious victory by President Huckabee and his fabulous Republican Party.
Cat got yer tongue, Anon?
Senate leaders reached an agreement this morning to end the shutdown. The whole reason the Republicans shutdown the government was to defund Obamacare but the agreement only made one trivial change to it, requiring those seeking subsidies to purchase insurance to verify their income. Republicans have lost massively in the polls over the shutdown with the most recent poll showing 22% more Americans blame the Republicans for the default than blaming the Democrats.
The Republicans failed to kill Obamacare so their whole shutdown fiasco was a massive loss for them. It should have been obvious to them that they'd never get Obama to tank his signature achievement but delusion knows no bounds in the Republican party.
The proposal called for the Treasury to have authority to continue borrowing through Feb. 7, and the government would reopen through Jan. 15 thus assuring Republicans will take another beating in the polls in short order as they force the country into the same crisis all over again. As it stands now American voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress to a Republican-controlled one by eight percentage points (47 percent to 39 percent), up from the Democrats’ three-point advantage last month.
Republicans - they hate Obama so much they'd rather shoot themselves in the foot than fail to oppose him unconditionally.
"The Beltway budget melodrama rolls on to its predictable and dreary end, with both sides now split over increasingly small differences. None of this is worth a partial government shutdown, much less the risk of a debt default, and both sides are looking like losers. Let's get it over with.
As we went to press Tuesday night, Republican leaders in the House had abandoned a plan to pass a debt-increase bill that was nearly identical to the one that Senate leaders agreed to on Monday. The main differences were funding the government only through December 15, rather than January 15 in the Senate bill, and a provision to require Members of Congress and their staff to live by ObamaCare's subsidies.
None of that was enough to please the small band of 20 or so House conservatives who have been all but running the House since this fiasco began. They refused to support House Speaker John Boehner and even Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. Another 30 or so Members were tired of getting kicked around by Heritage Action and Senator Ted Cruz and want the whole thing settled. With Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi keeping her troops in line for a no vote, GOP leaders pulled the bill from the floor.
The conservatives thus undermined whatever small leverage the House GOP had left. Without a united majority of 218 votes, Republicans might as well hand the Speaker's gavel to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Senate leaders announced immediately that they would resume negotiating to finish a deal that they would bring to the floor as early as Wednesday.
We should add that House Republicans also blundered in refusing to accept the Senate proposal to delay a reinsurance tax of about $60 a year per insured person. Democrats originally passed this tax to help float ObamaCare's exchanges. Insurers pay the per capita fee, which they can pass along to consumers in higher premiums, and the fee goes to a fund that then pays back the insurers if they end up with a mix of patients with higher than average claims.
House Republicans objected to the delay in the tax because unions supported the delay for their own insurance plans, but that was short-sighted. Senate Democrats were willing to delay the tax for a year to please labor and in return agree to better income verification for Americans who apply for ObamaCare subsidies. So out of political pique, House Republicans opposed two ways to make ObamaCare less destructive. Senate Republicans should try to retain it in their compromise.
This is the quality of thinking—or lack thereof—that has afflicted many GOP conservatives from the beginning of this budget showdown. They picked a goal they couldn't achieve in trying to defund ObamaCare from one House of Congress, and then they picked a means they couldn't sustain politically by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit.
President Obama called their bluff, no doubt in part to blame the disruption on the GOP and further tarnish the party's public image. Now the most Republicans will get out of this is lower public approval and a chance to negotiate with Mr. Obama again before the next debt-limit deadline. If the Senate passes its compromise, Mr. Boehner will have little choice other than to bring it to the floor and let it pass with votes from either party. Mr. Obama will have to deliver enough Democratic votes to pass it.
At least that's better than getting the blame for whatever happens if Treasury stops sending out Social Security checks in order to prioritize debt repayments. The politics of that are little better than defaulting on debt. Republicans can best help their cause now by getting this over with and moving on to fight more intelligently another day."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304561004579137791687537388
Senators reach debt deal
Agreement raises U.S. borrowing limit, ends shutdown
Measure leaves Obamacare virtually untouched
Tea party groups denounce plan
Stocks Surge On Optimism Over Last-Minute Debt Ceiling Deal
Cruz says he won't delay vote
BOEHNER: HOUSE WILL VOTE ON SENATE PLAN: Expects partial shutdown of gov't to end tomorrow
Senate leaders strike deal to end shutdown, raise debt ceiling
Sens. Cruz, Lee say they won't block deal
Club for Growth to GOP: Vote no
Boehner to allow vote on Senate plan
Stocks Surge On Debt Ceiling Hopes
See you in January!
Yoo hoo, Anon! Tell us, if the House passes a bill, do you think President Huckabee will sign it? What a great victory, uh, "profile in courage," this has been!
yoo-hoo!
I thought the Dems wanted the sequester rolled back and the debt limit extended through the end of 2014. Repubs will have an opportunity in a short couple of months to pressure for long-term reform of taxes and entitlements. They'll win over the long-term. Obama is detested more and more by Americans. By the time the next negotiation starts, Obamacare will have already been delayed because it's clear the Obama administration has bungled the implementation. They forced millions off their barely affordable insurance and forced them onto exchanges where the premiums and deductibles are sky-high if you manage a middle class income.
If the president has win a short-term victory this week, I suspect its effects will dissipate quickly. It's the real news of October—the catastrophic launch of the Obamacare exchanges, the coming cave in the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and the governmental arrogance demonstrated during the shutdown—that will have long-term implications. Democrats can try to win in 2014 and 2016 by looking backward at this month's showdown. But voters are likely to care a lot more about the stories that will continue to effect them—the burdens of Obamacare and more broadly of the welfare state, the effects of liberal weakness abroad, and big government's arrogance and disdain for the American people. These snapshots from this week will have greater resonance because they pose questions and have implications for the future. It will be up to conservatives to continue to pose those questions and draw out those implications. If they succeed in doing so, the lasting lessons of October 2013, once the temporary Sturm und Drang of the shutdown and debt limit have passed, will benefit conservatives and Republicans.
Polls show Repubs doing well in all states where Dems are retiring. By November 2014, anyone who voted for Obamacare will be politically persona non grata with American middle class voters. Most Dems voted for Obamacare, no Repubs did.
btw, what have you guys got against Mike Huckabee. if repubs had nominated him in 2012, they'd have the White House now.
Enjoy the party. The Dem descent into third party status began this month.
while the forces of evil crow, the valiant vow to continue to fight for the future of America:
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday that he would not block a bipartisan Senate compromise to reopen the government, paving the way for an end to the two-week government shutdown.
"The House has fought with everything it has to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country's debt and providing fairness for the American people under Obamacare. That fight will continue," he said in a statement. "But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us. In addition to the risk of default, doing so would open the door for the Democratic majority in Washington to raise taxes again on the American people and undo the spending caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act without replacing them with better spending cuts."
"We fought the good fight, we just didn't win," he told WLW-AM in Cincinnati.
Boehner said on WLW that he would "absolutely" bring the Senate bill to the floor. "I'm going to meet with all the Republicans here and encourage them," he said. "There's no reason for our members to vote no."
He expects the government to reopen Thursday, he said.
81-18
Congratulations Senator Cory Booker!
81-18
margin of victory for Republicans' lock-in of sequester-level spending for government
"The news from Washington is all about President Obama’s impending triumph in the government shutdown/debt ceiling standoff. “Boehner Blinks,” declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. “Republicans,” explained ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “are working out the terms of their surrender.”
To understand how upside down the current media analysis is, you need to go back a couple of years. In 2011, with Republicans threatening to provoke a debt default, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011, which cut government spending by $917 billion over 10 years. The agreement also created a congressional “supercommittee” charged with finding additional cuts. If the committee failed to do so, cuts totaling $1.2 trillion over ten years would kick in automatically at the end of 2012, via a process called “sequestration.”
Traditionally in Washington, budget compromises had meant Democrats agreeing to cut domestic spending and Republicans agreeing to raise taxes. But by raising the specter of default, Republicans had changed the equation. In the Budget Control Act, taxes weren’t raised a dime. Democrats compromised by cutting spending and Republicans “compromised” by agreeing not to let America default on its debt and provoke a global financial crisis.
Not surprisingly, conservatives liked the deal more than liberals. In the House, Republicans backed it by a margin of almost three to one while Democrats split evenly. “Is this the deal I would have preferred? No,” Obama admitted. By contrast, House Speaker John Boehner boasted, “I got 98 percent of what I wanted.”
Fast forward to the beginning of this year. Despite months of negotiations, the supercommittee failed to reach an agreement, and so this March, automatic sequester cuts kicked in. If Democrats disliked the 2011 Budget Control Act, they disliked its bastard stepchild, the sequester, even more. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama calls the sequester cuts: “harsh” and “arbitrary” and warned that they would “devastate priorities like education, energy and medical research” and “cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Republicans, being less supportive of federal spending on things like “education, energy and medical research,” were more supportive of the sequester. Indeed, as recently as last month, GOP leaders described locking in the sequester cuts—via a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) that extended them into 2014—as a major victory. In a memo to fellow Republicans on September 6, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor boasted that by “signing a CR at sequester levels, the President would be endorsing a level of spending that wipes away all the increases he and Congressional Democrats made while they were in charge and returns us to a pre-2008 level of discretionary spending.”
For their part, Democrats bristled at the prospect of a “clean” CR. Four days after Cantor’s memo, the Democratic-aligned Center for American Progress warned that by extending the sequester, Republicans were “trying to lock these additional spending cuts into place and create a new baseline from which future negotiations must begin.” CAP added that “It’s easy to see why this approach would be attractive to Speaker Boehner; it is much harder to understand why any progressive or centrist would support such an approach.”
Let’s pause for a moment to underscore the point. In early September, a “clean” CR—including sequester cuts—that funded the government into 2014 was considered a Republican victory by both the Republican House Majority Leader and Washington’s most prominent Democratic think tank. Now, just over a month later, the media is describing the exact same deal as Republican “surrender.”
Now, the press is saying Republicans have caved. But that’s like saying that the neighborhood bully has caved because after demanding your shoes and bike, he’s once again willing to accept merely your lunch money.
Most of the press is missing this because most of the press is covering the current standoff more as politics than policy. If your basic question is “which party is winning?” then it’s easy to see the Republicans as losing, since they’re the ones suffering in the polls. But the partisan balance of power and the ideological balance of power are two completely different things. The Nixon years were terrible for the Democratic Party but quite good for progressive domestic policy. The Clinton years were, in important ways, the reverse. The promise of the Obama presidency was not merely that he’d bring Democrats back to power. It was that he’d usher in the first era of truly progressive public policy in decades. But the survival of Obamacare notwithstanding, Obama’s impending “victory” in the current standoff moves us further away from, not closer to, that goal.
It’s not just that Obama looks likely to accept the sequester cuts as the basis for future budget negotiations. It’s that while he’s been trying to reopen the government and prevent a debt default, his chances of passing any significant progressive legislation have receded. Despite overwhelming public support, gun control is dead. Comprehensive immigration reform, once considered the politically easy part of Obama’s second term agenda, looks unlikely. And the other items Obama trumpeted in this year’s state of the union address—climate change legislation, infrastructure investment, universal preschool, voting rights protections, a boost to the minimum wage—have been largely forgotten.
Democrats keep holding out hope that losing yet more public support will break the ideological “fever” that grips the Republican Party and help GOP moderates regain power. The problem, as the last few weeks have shown, is that the GOP keeps defining moderation down. For instance, the Washington GOP’s plummeting approval ratings may well boost the presidential prospects of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, just as the Gingrich Congress paved the way for the comparatively moderate George W. Bush. Like Bush, Christie is described as moderate because he has Democratic allies in his home state and because his rhetoric is not as harsh on cultural issues. But in the White House, Bush’s economic policies were hardly moderate. To the contrary, from taxes to social security to regulation, he governed well to the right of Ronald Reagan. Christie likely would as well. As governor, after all, he’s vetoed a hike in the minimum wage, cut the earned income tax credit, vetoed a millionaires’ tax three times and adopted basically the same attitude towards public sector unions as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.
Yet for the next three years, the press will likely describe Christie as “moderate” for the same reason it now describes a “clean” CR as Republican surrender: Because the GOP keeps moving the ideological goalposts and the press keeps playing along
Nice spin, AnonBubblehead.
The GOP got a big fat nothing for their 16 days of spreading pain far and wide. The sequester level spending was locked in the CR the GOP refused to sign 16 days ago, causing the shutdown.
Pop the cork?
It's more like the GOTP's bubble has been burst.
WaPo got it right: House conservatives face up to their defeat
NYTimes got it right: Republicans Back Down, Ending Crisis Over Shutdown and Debt Limit
So did the WSJ: Business Voices Frustration With GOP
So did TheHill: Republicans grapple with stinging defeat
Even Breitbart: SURRENDER: HOUSE WILL VOTE FIRST ON SENATE DEBT DEAL
Breitbart even tells us what the GOTP "won" for themselves:
"Capitol Hill talk regarding the Senate deal apparently includes a provision that would take away the Congress’ power to increase the debt ceiling. According to Politico, it looks like the buzz appears to be true.:
The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt ceiling would be raised."
Pew Research reports: Tea Party’s Image Turns More Negative
OCTOBER 16, 2013 The Tea Party is less popular than ever, with even many Republicans now viewing the movement negatively. Overall, nearly half of the public (49%) has an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party, while 30% have a favorable opinion.
The balance of opinion toward the Tea Party has turned more negative since June, when 37% viewed it favorably and 45% had an unfavorable opinion. And the Tea Party’s image is much more negative today than it was three years ago, shortly after it emerged as a conservative protest movement against Barack Obama’s policies on health care and the economy.
In February 2010, when the Tea Party was less well known, the balance of opinion toward the movement was positive (33% favorable vs. 25% unfavorable). Unfavorable opinion spiked to 43% in 2011 after Republicans won a House majority and Tea Party members played a leading role in that summer’s debt ceiling debate....
the GOP can say they did everything they could to stop Obamacare
come next summer, when it has become clear how damage Obama has done to our health system, it will be a great thing to talk about
it's kind of like global warming
one cool day doesn't prove that the overall average temperature isn't going up
the Tea Party lost this one battle, but overall, they're succeeding in reducing the deficit and locking in sequester-level spending
and if you put more weight in local polls than some vague national feeling about Repubs, you'll see, as Nate Silver reminded everyone last week, Repubs are likely to hold the House and take the Senate next fall
"The Tea Party is less popular than ever"
really doesn't matter since no legislator is officially a member of the Tea Party and, further, Americans agree with them on most issues
they started out to change the American perspective, and they have won
overwhelmingly, Americans don't favor raising the debt limit, don't like Obamacare and distrust government
Rush Limbaugh On GOP: 'One Of The Greatest Political Disasters I've Ever Seen'
Some of Rush Limbaugh's thoughts about the GOP's surrender on the shutdown and the debt ceiling:
"I was trying to think if ever in my life, I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant. I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican party has been doing. There has not been any serious opposition...against what's happening in this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them and what they've ended up doing is creating one of the greatest political disasters I've ever seen in my lifetime...I was pondering if I could ever remember...a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist, for all intents and purposes."
Government Shutdown Cost $24 Billion, Standard & Poor's Says
WASHINGTON -- The government shutdown has taken at least $24 billion out of the United States economy, the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor's said Wednesday.
The firm said the shutdown caused it to cut its forecast of gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter by at least 0.6 percentage point. The agency lowered its estimate for GDP growth to close to 2 percent from 3 percent.
The estimate represents a staggering cost to the economy of a completely self-inflicted political catastrophe. Unlike the 2008 economic crisis and other past recessions, the government shutdown had nothing to do with larger economic trends. The numbers show Washington's brinksmanship caused real damage beyond furloughed government workers and the Washington, D.C., region.
The shutdown came after the Federal Reserve reported modest growth in the economy in September. "Reports from the 12 Federal Reserve districts suggest that national economic activity continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace during the reporting period of September through early October," the Federal Reserve wrote Wednesday.
Senate leaders reached a deal Wednesday to end the shutdown and fund the government until Jan. 15. The debt ceiling will be raised until Feb. 7. Senators from both parties hailed the agreement, despite the fact that it is temporary.
Standard & Poor's warned that even a temporary agreement could have consequences for the United States economy, leading consumers to worry about a sequel to the current crisis. "The short turnaround for politicians to negotiate some sort of lasting deal will likely weigh on consumer confidence, especially among government workers that were furloughed," the agency said. "If people are afraid that the government policy brinkmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of another shutdown or worse, they'll remain afraid to open up their checkbooks."
Indeed, many furloughed government workers were anxious, as they waited for Congress to act. "I’m looking at this and going, ‘Oh shit,’" said Nick Wolfe of Arlington, Va. “I literally had no money. If I didn’t get some money in my checking account, I can’t pay the rent in November.”
gee, any idea how much Obama took out of the economy when he raised taxes?
how about when he failed to approve the Keystone pipeline?
how about when he closed the monuments and hindered tourism?
how about the increase in health insurance premiums under Obamacare?
how about when he designed Obamacare with incentives for employers to lay off workers and cut back hours for part-timers?
what's the calculation on those?
The shutdown is basically over and the President has won. Or, at least, he's won because the Republicans have definitely lost. Not only did they not get what they wanted – that "life or death" delay on Obamacare implementation – but they've given the impression of dragging partisanship to new lows. Obamacare had been passed already, the Supreme Court had okayed it and Obama had won an election on it, yet the GOP was still prepared to bring the country to the brink of ruin to cripple it. When Grover Norquist is saying that the Right went too far (he of the "drown government in the bath tub" fame) then the Right probably went a bit too far.
But there are caveats to that narrative. First, the Republicans aren't the only ones who ought to hang their heads in shame. It was the Democrat-controlled Senate that first rejected the House's bill and so sparked the crisis. It was the President who refused to talk to anyone about it (and went campaigning instead). It was the federal government – even when in shutdown – that behaved like a spoiled child, covering war memorials in fences and trying to stop military priests from saying Mass. And it was the mainstream media that took the side of the President and helped foster the impression that the GOP is run by a bunch of blowhard crazy people. For example, Dave Weigel points out that, contrary to reports, wild child Ted Cruz actually had "no intention" of delaying the critical final vote in the Senate. His image of being Sarah Palin 2.0 is entirely a media myth.
Second, what has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again – but tomorrow morning he'll still have the same gridlocked political system that he had the night before. The shutdown is a rare example of him winning, but remember that this lame duck president has not only had a very simple (and, frankly, inoffensive) gun control bill killed in the Senate but was so spooked by bad poll numbers that he tried to dump responsibility for military action in Syria onto the Congress – before quietly dropping the idea altogether. Any thought that the shutdown payoff will be that he can sail an immigration reform package comfortably through Congress is pure fantasy. This is a broken presidency living out its last few years either holding off Republican attacks or lazily cruising the country on some pointless, endless, fatuous campaign trail. Obama's administration is politically bankrupt.
The talk for the next week will be about how the Tea Party is dead and Republicans must elect a politically correct, middle-of-the-road, unimaginative, establishment, compromising candidate in 2016 (preferably a singing sloth, cos the polls show that Americans just love those). But the reality is that US politics right now is a mess for both Left and Right, and the country is stuck in partisan limbo until the 2014 midterms or even the 2016 presidential election. This is not a Republican problem, it is an American problem.
Thanks ever so much for posting the opinions of your British yet US GOP-supporter's input to this debate.
RollCall's non-partisan Stuart Rothenberg opines For GOP, the Damage Is Undeniable
...The political fallout from the confrontation is very real. Republicans got almost nothing out of the deal to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling except, of course, that they lost another 10 percentage points in their favorable rating and looked less like an organized political party and more like a disorganized, confused rabble.
Republican operatives are worried that the showdown will improve Democratic House recruiting considerably for 2014, and it could well damage GOP fundraising, both among small-dollar donors and the party’s bigger hitters.
Small donors will be disenchanted that Republican officeholders caved on both the shutdown and debt ceiling, while the larger donors, who tend to be more pragmatic, are likely to sit on their cash for fear that the GOP will do something else crazy to threaten the economy and the party’s electoral prospects.
GOP insiders point out that while the party clearly has lost some ground in recent years among swing voters because of its position on cultural issues, the party’s great strength — at least up until now — was that it was generally seen by independents as fiscally responsible and prudent on economic matters. Now that argument may be more difficult for Republicans to make.
Ironically, the House Republicans’ suicide mission came at exactly the right time for President Barack Obama and the wrong time for the GOP.
The president had divided his own party over issues like government surveillance and Syria, and for the first time polls showed Democratic support for Obama starting to soften. The normal second-term fatigue seemed to be developing, which might well have produced a more or less “normal” midterm political environment. But all that changed when Republican Sens. Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah egged on House conservatives to oppose anything short of complete surrender by the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Obamacare.
Now, Democrats are united and energized, angry at Republicans’ attempts to destroy Obama’s most important success.
Of course, polls have also shown that Obamacare has become more popular over the past few weeks, in spite of the inept rollout of the program. Instead of being able to capitalize on the snafus, Republicans have talked about the legislative deadlock, robbing themselves of a potentially useful talking point.
We won’t know for a while what long-term effects the confrontation will have on the fight for Congress next year. But as one GOP strategist observed, the damage to the Republican brand could hurt the party in 2014 or 2016.
As he noted, “Before the shutdown it wasn’t plausible that Democrats could regain the House next year. It may be plausible now, but we aren’t sure. But a mediocre year in 2014 for Republicans could improve the chances of a Democratic House takeover in 2016, a presidential year.”
“We need to have good years in (what should be) good years, because you know we are going to have bad years in bad years,” he continued, worrying that the last two weeks have turned lemonade back into a lemon for House Republicans.
All of this leaves two questions. First, are we going to see a replay of the last few weeks in January and February, when the current budget deal expires? And second, will a full-scale Republican civil war — which could be played out in Senate races from Kentucky to Kansas and Mississippi — follow?
Matt Drudge, Visionary
Obama's ratings in first polls out since his refusal to negotiate:
overall 42%
on economy 38%
wow!
what a victory!!
Yeah, what numbers did the tea party get in that poll you are citing?
How about a generic congressional race?
Why don't you just cut and paste the URL out of your browser?
Today's new NBC4/NBC News/Marist poll"finds Republican Ken Cuccinelli slipping further behind Democrat Terry McAuliffe, 46 to 38 percent in the race for Virginia governor among likely voters. That’s 3 points wider than McAuliffe’s 43 to 38 percent lead a month ago -- before the shutdown. Libertarian Robert Sarvis gets 9 percent.
Virginia was one of the top states impacted by the shutdown -- with hundreds of thousands of federal workers, contractors, and military service members and retirees in the state. And a majority (54 percent) in the poll blames Republicans for the shutdown. Just 31 percent of likely voters blame President Barack Obama.
Four-in-10 – 39 percent – said either they or a family member has been affected by the shutdown, whether it’s employment, services or benefits.
Many say the shutdown will have an impact on their vote -- 38 percent of registered voters said it would have a major impact on it; 21 percent said it would have a minor one. Among respondents who said it has had a major impact on their vote, McAuliffe is winning them 55-27 percent. Among those who say it is a minor issue, McAuliffe also leads, 52-33 percent.
Cuccinelli only leads with those who say the government shutdown is not an issue, 49-36 percent.
“Just when Cuccinelli needed to start closing the gap against McAuliffe, the government shutdown became a huge roadblock,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll.
The Republican Party brand appears to be badly damaged in the commonwealth – 62 percent said they had an unfavorable view of the party, while just 33 percent said they viewed the party favorably. Among independents, it was even worse. By a 71-23 percent margin, the GOP was viewed negatively.
The Democratic Party and President Obama get better scores – 45-50 percent unfavorable for the party, 50-48 percent favorable for Obama...."
"Yeah, what numbers did the tea party get in that poll you are citing?"
if that's your way of asking, I used the most recent poll listed in the RCP average (realclearpolitics.com)
you TTFers really are a touch of class personified
MacAuliffe was actually further ahead in polls I'd seen before the shutdown
unfortunately, Cuccinelli's been tainted by some questionable behavior by the Va Governor
you can blow smoke about the tea party all you want but polls show the American people agree with the Tea Party side of most issues
further, they have been very successful
they have so far, despite their small numbers in congress, succeeded in holding government spending at sequester levels, to the dismay of Dems
we'll be at this again in January
they'll do better next time
the Dems have agreed to have a committee set up to find a long-term debt solution by then
Dems won't look good after that
maybe we'll do Sequester the Sequel
MWAHAHAHAHA!!
For two reasons (state race gerrymandering, and the fact that Virginia holds elections in off-years), it remains likely that the Republican party will retain control of the Virginia House of Delegates, despite the fact the party is becoming increasingly extreme, and unpopular in the state.
It is also quite possible that Republican voter regulations will and have affected election outcomes.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/10/18/the_electoral_aftermath_of_the_shutdown.html
analysis from RCP of electoral impact of shutdown
like Nate Silver, they don't any evidence of long-term damage to Republicans' prospects at the ballot box
Amid all the tussling over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, a couple of bombshells went off in the blogosphere that may prove of more enduring importance.
They suggest that there is a nontrivial possibility that Obamacare may implode.
The first bombshell went off on Tuesday, from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post's Wonkblog.
Klein was one of those young writers who formed JournoList a few years ago so that like-minded Obama fans could coordinate their lines of argument. It was like one of those college sophomore clubs, not really necessary in an age of ready contact through email, but it shows him as a guy inclined to play team ball.
So it's noteworthy when he writes, "So far, the Affordable Care Act's launch has been a failure. Not 'troubled.'
Not 'glitchy.' A failure."
Klein fears Obamacare won't get smoothed out. It's not just a problem of overloaded servers. Everyone knew there would be lots of traffic in a nation of 312,000,000 people. Information technology folks say it's easy to add servers.
It's harder to get software systems to communicate. And as Klein quotes insurance consultant Robert Laszewski, "the backroom connection between the insurance companies and the federal government is a disaster."
The reconciliation system isn't working and hasn't even been tested, Klein reports. Insurers are getting virtually no usable data from the exchanges.
Bloomberg.com columnist Megan McArdle, who unlike most Obamacare architects actually worked at an IT firm for a couple of years, sees the possibility of even more trouble ahead.
She points out that the administration delayed writing major rules during the 2012 campaign to avoid giving Republicans campaign fodder.
The biggest contractor did not start writing software code until spring 2013. They were still fiddling with the healthcare.gov website in September.
Instead of subcontracting the responsibility for integrating the software of the multiple contractors, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decided to do it in-house -- "a decision," she writes, "equivalent to someone who has never even hung a picture deciding they should become their own general contractor and build a house."
"If the exchanges don't get fixed soon," she writes, "they could destroy Obamacare." You need the exchanges to enroll enough young healthy people to subsidize those who are sick and old, which is one of the central features of Obamacare.
Otherwise, premiums shoot up and up, pushing others out of the system -- a death spiral that can continue year after year.
"At what point," she asks, "do we admit that the system just isn't working well enough, roll it back and delay the whole thing for a year?" She suggests that if the system can't enroll 50 percent of its users by November 1, such a hugely drastic step would be in order.
That sounds like a nightmare of the first order -- for individuals, for insurers, for employers and for the Obama administration. A far worse nightmare than when Congress in 1989 repealed the Medicare prescription drug plan it passed the year before because of widespread dissatisfaction.
Of course it's possible this nightmare will not happen. Things will get ironed out somehow.
But if they don't, who's responsible? First, a president who is not much interested in how government works on the ground. As a community organizer he never did get all the asbestos removed from the Altgeld housing project.
Politico reports that his "universal heath care" promise was first made when his press secretary and speechwriter needed a rousing ending to a 2007 campaign speech to a liberal group.
Second, lawmakers and administrators who assume that, in an Information Age, all you have to do is to assign a task to an IT team and they will perform it. Cross your fingers, and it gets done.
Third, government IT procurement rules are kludgy. Apple didn't bid on this. The IT work went to insider firms that specialize in jumping through the hoops and ladders of government procurement rules.
Unfortunately, the consequences of a meltdown are enormous when a system is supposed to be used by everybody. If a private firm's software fails, it can go bankrupt. No one else much cares.
But if Obamacare's software crashes, the consequences will be catastrophic -- for the nation and for the Democratic Party.
here's something that oughta be shut down:
Daniel Radcliffe opens up in the November issue of Flaunt about what is was like to play a gay man in the upcoming Allen Ginsberg movie, Kill Your Darlings.
The actor, who portrays Ginsberg as he falls in love with Lucien Carr, tells the magazine, “I don’t think there’s any difference between how one falls in love. People express love differently, person to person, but it’s not gender or sexuality related. The only difference it made was obviously the actual sex scene, of course.”
In the movie, Radlcliffe loses his virginity to a stranger after being rejected by Carr.
Asked about the sex scene, the Harry Potter star shares, “I was talked through it by the director. He would be telling me what I would be feeling in each take. Basically, gay sex, especially for the first time, is really f**king painful.”
“And the director said that he had never seen that portrayed accurately on film before.” adds Radcliffe
hmmmm....
seems like homosexuality is synonymous with S&M
isn't that a mental condition?
I spent an hour yesterday afternoon with a MD Navigator. The MD health care exchange came up with 43 plans for me to evaluate, ranging from $290 to $845 a month, with differences in deductibles, co-pays, and out of pocket expenses. I will spend the next few weeks evaluating the plans to determine which one best meets my family's needs.
No appointment was necessary for me to speak with a navigator yesterday. I simply walked into the downtown Silver Spring office at 8818 Georgia Avenue, Suite 218, and got immediate help. This office is open 8:30AM-5PM M-F. The waits we had for the next computer screen to load lasted 10 -20 seconds.
I had been directed to that SIlver Spring office by the Capital Region Health Connector's Office, which is located at 401 Hungerford Drive in Rockville, but you need to call 240-773-8250 to make an appointment there. The hours at the Rockville Office are 9-5PM M-F. When I called the Rockville office yesterday, I was asked for my zip code and directed to the downtown Silver Spring office.
Here's a link to the regional offices in Maryland where state residents can get information about where to obtain free in-person assistance registering for affordable health insurance to begin Jan. 1, 2014:
http://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/health-insurance-in-maryland/help-with-health-insurance/health-insurance-support
All I needed was my 2012 Form 1040 and my and my spouse's SSNs.
Take your meds, Anon.
Nobody here cares about your obsessions.
"All I needed was my 2012 Form 1040 and my and my spouse's SSNs."
good thing you didn't have to use the Federal exchange
it's a hacker's wet dream, according to McAffee
your SSNs might be viral already if you use any program Sir Barry was in charge of
"Take your meds, Anon.
Nobody here cares about your obsessions."
it's sounds like homosexuals are the ones who need meds
to dull the f**king pain of their regular practices
Practices you think and write about almost every day.
Take your f**king meds and shut up about your obsessions.
if you desire to do something painful, unpleasant and unnatural,
that sounds like a mental illness
Oh, and FYI, I started my search for Affordable Health Insurance at the Healthcare.gov website, which readily sent me to the Maryland exchange with no problem at all.
Get your nose out of my bedroom!
"your SSNs might be viral already if you use any program Sir Barry was in charge of"
You mean like when we all file our income taxes each year with the Internal Revenue Service, which is under the Department of Treasury, which is a part of the Executive Branch?
Tell us how many SSNs have gone viral from the IRS so far. The answer is NONE.
You'll tell any lie about Obama no matter how stupid it makes you look just like all your tea party nuts.
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
"I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.
As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.
“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.
But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.
I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.
First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.
Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.
There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.
Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.
Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $800 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to $19,000 a year.
I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law. She said she hadn’t done so because she’d heard the website was not working. Would she try it out when it’s up and running? Perhaps, she said. She told me she has long opposed Obamacare, and that the president should have focused on tort reform as a solution to bringing down the price of healthcare..."
"...I tried an experiment and shopped on the exchange for Allison and Kurt. Assuming they don’t smoke and have a household income too high to be eligible for subsidies, I found that they would be able to get a plan for around $7,600, which would include coverage for their uninsured daughter. This would be about a 60 percent reduction from what they would have to pay on the pre-Obamacare market.
Allison also told me that the letter she received from Blue Cross said that in addition to the policy change for ACA compliance, in the new policy her physician network size might be reduced. That’s something insurance companies do to save money, with or without Obamacare on the horizon, just as they raise premiums with or without Obamacare coming.
If Allison’s choice of doctor was denied her through Obamacare then, yes, she could have a claim that Obamacare has hurt her. But she’d also have thousands of dollars in her pocket that she didn’t have before.
Finally, I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?
When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.
Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, a 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.
It’s true that we don’t know for sure whether certain ills conservatives have warned about will occur once Obamacare is fully enacted. For example, will we truly have the same freedom to choose a physician that we have now? Will a surplus of insured patients require a scaling back (or “rationing,” as some call it) of provided healthcare services? Will doctors be able to spend as much time with patients? These are all valid, unanswered questions. The problem is that people like Sean Hannity have decided to answer them now, without evidence. Or worse, with fake evidence.
I don’t doubt that these six individuals believe that Obamacare is a disaster; but none of them had even visited the insurance exchange. And some of them appear to have taken actions (Paul Cox, for example) based on a general pessimistic belief about Obamacare. He’s certainly entitled to do so, but Hannity is not entitled to point to Paul’s behavior as an “Obamacare train wreck story” and maintain any credibility that he might have as a journalist.
Strangely, the recent shutdown was based almost entirely on a small percentage of Congress’s belief that Obamacare, as Ted Cruz puts it, “is destroying America.” Cruz has rarely given us an example of what he’s talking about. That’s because the best he can do is what Hannity did—exploit people’s ignorance and falsely point to imaginary boogeymen."
"Get your nose out of my bedroom!"
Be happy to.
Keep your artificial and painful practices out of the classroom.
If you and a "friend" want to play S&M, it's a free country
just stop pushing to have it taught to kids as normal
"You mean like when we all file our income taxes each year with the Internal Revenue Service, which is under the Department of Treasury, which is a part of the Executive Branch?
Tell us how many SSNs have gone viral from the IRS so far. The answer is NONE."
that's because Obama wasn't in charge of setting it up
of course, he did use the IRS to illegally harass his opponents in a close election
and he did illegally share IRS-filed confidential information about certain advocacy groups with their ideological opponents
he thought he should be able because he didn't like the outcome of the Citizens United case
"You'll tell any lie about Obama no matter how stupid it makes you look just like all your tea party nuts."
try to peer outside your Rachel Maddow bubble
the truth is out there !!
OK, it's settled then
MCPS should not portray sexual perversion as normal
and Obama can't be trusted with our health files
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
"Who else but Republicans would give a standing ovation to the coach who just led them into a humiliating defeat?It happened Wednesday, as some Republicans saluted U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and patted themselves on the back for being willing to lose a fight over principle. “We won a moral victory,” one GOP lawmaker said.And what do you call a politician who just won a “moral” victory?A “loser.”Which is why good ol’ “Bipartisan Barack” relished the chance to mock the GOP yesterday with his comment: “Don’t like a particular policy? ... Go out there and win an election.”"
(editorial comment: Earth to Barry. Those people you are talking to all won elections. That's why they had the power to shut down the government, force you to go along with a new commission to find ways to bring down debt, and hold spending to sequester level when you wanted to start wasting money again. Indeed, the currently elected Congress would never pass Obamacare. The American people tried to stop but your friends in Congress played some gimmicks to get it passed.)
"Enjoy the moment, Mr. President. If the GOP is dumb enough to lose on purpose, you deserve it.But I predict that — like the phrase “If you like your health coverage, you can keep it. Period.” — this will come back to haunt him.At this moment, the GOP is at its lowest point and the Democrats are at their highest. President Obama is gloating over a political win handed to him by Republicans who picked a stupid fight (ending Obamacare immediately) and used stupid tactics (tying it to the debt ceiling).But what did Democrats actually win? Did the president get a blank check? Is Obama-care beyond the reach of this Congress or the next?Those two fights are ideal political territory for the GOP.I don’t even have to write about how dismally awful the Obamacare rollout is going. Hilariously, Democrats are telling themselves that, by next spring, it’s going to look much better.Uh ... guys? You haven’t even started forcing people to buy it yet. And already, according to Kaiser Public Opinion, 54 percent of Americans have a “very unfavorable” view of the individual mandate.And guess which specific part of Obamacare the Republicans just forced every Democrat in the House and Senate to explicitly vote in support of?Bingo.Between now and next November, millions of Americans are going to find out that a) they’ve lost coverage they like; b) their premiums are going up; or c) both. Even the “Friends of Obama” will be getting bad news that their special-interest delays and exemptions are ending.To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke: If you think people hate Obama-care now, wait until they have to write a check for it.Then there’s the debt and spending. Polls show that a majority of Americans would rather bust the debt ceiling and default than add to Obama’s record-setting deficits. Do they really mean it? No, but it shows how much Americans hate this debt — hate it at the political cellular level.Hey, didn’t members of one party just spend weeks outraged over their inability to get a “clean” debt ceiling increase? Doesn’t one party truly own the “borrow more to spend more” mantle today in a way they didn’t just a few weeks ago?Ask yourself: A year from now, when the stupidity of the shutdown fight is long gone, who would you rather be: Team “Obamacare Sucks And We’ve Got Too Much Debt”?Or Team “I Voted to Shut Down the Government Rather Than Change Obamacare or Spend Less Money”?I know what you’re thinking, Democrats. “They’re Republicans. They’ll find a way to screw this up.”And two months ago, you’d be right. But Tea Party politicians are still, in the end, politicians.And to quote U.S. Rep. Trey Goudy (R-S.C.), a former prosecutor and current Tea Party fave: “I didn’t lose many cases in court, and I haven’t won many cases here in Congress. It’s time to re-evaluate my tactics.”
As expected Bad anonymous is desperately trying to convince people his side won in the face of what has been a political disaster for the Republicans. Don't take my word for it, listen to Republicans who've chosen to be honest about this. John Boehner said "We fought the good fight, we just didn't win". Republican Peter King said "This was a terrrible mistake". John Mccain said "“We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare...We fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner and we lost". Even the perpetually dishonest blowhard Rush Limbaugh admitted "What [Republicans have] been able to do is create one of the biggest political disasters of my lifetime."
The entire goal of the Republican shutdown was to defund Obamacare and in the end things ended up exactly where they were before Republicans took the United States down the Rabbit hole. They thought they could get ransom just for doing their jobs and passing a budget and running the government. Obama showed them it doesn't work that way. John Boehner voted for the Iraq war, the Bush tax cuts, he voted several times to raise the debt ceiling under Bush and now he's trying to act like he's doing the Democrats a favour by raising the debt ceiling to pay for debts he and the Republicans were responsible for - typical Republican duplicity. During Bush's terms the Republicans spent money and incurred ongoing debt like it was going out of style and regularly proclaimed "Deficits don't matter any more" and of course as soon as a Democrat gets into power they conveniently get religion and suddenly deficits do matter again and its time to start cutting government deeply and regularly to derail the economy.
After all is said and done 22% more Americans blame the Republicans for the shutdown than blame the Democrats. Typically in a midterm election the party that didn't win the presidency does better than the one that did. It would normally be a lock for Republicans to do better than Democrats in 2014 but they've managed to make even that doubtful. 8% more Americans want a Democrat controlled congress in 2014 than want a Republican controlled one. Democrats need to pickup 17 seats to gain a majority in the house. Because of gerrymandering Democrats need a 6% advantage to break even but even after redistricting there are still 50-55 Republican seats in play for the Democrats and they're defending about 20. Over the last two weeks the advantage for the Democrats has spread anywhere from four to 10 percentage points and in the top 24 most competitive districts in the country a generic Democrat is now ahead in 21.
The Republican shutdown cost the U.S. economy $24 billion and people are going to remember this. The Republicans have managed to alienate a significant portion of their allies from big business interests such as the Kock Brothers to a coalition of 250 businesses lead by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They are not happy with the way the Republicans dragged this out, threatened the economy and hurt business. Business leaders that had given the Republican party tremendous financial backing are now having second thoughts as the party has been taken over by the Tea Party which cares more about destroying Obama than doing whats good for business. The taps of big business won't be flowing for Repulicans in 2014 to anywhere near the level they were in 2012, big business is no longer convinced the Republican party is on their side.
Bad anonymous said "And already, according to Kaiser Public Opinion, 54 percent of Americans have a “very unfavorable” view of the individual mandate."
And of course you are trying to spin yet again by focusing on a small part of what the Kaiser survey said while ignoring the rest:
It found that a plurality of those surveyed actually support specific provisions of Obamacare.
Eighty-eight percent were in favor of tax credits for small businesses to buy insurance; 81 percent were in favor of closing the Medicare prescription coverage gap; 76 percent were in favor of extending coverage to dependents; 71 percent were in favor of expanding Medicaid; 66 percent were in favor of banning exclusions for preexisting conditions; and 57 percent were in favor of the employer mandate.
The only provision that regularly polled negatively was the individual mandate, but the requirement that all Americans purchase affordable insurance is necessary if excluding those with preexisting conditions is prohibited. To function as intended, the marketplaces need a broad, healthy risk pool to keep staggering rate increases from occurring. The premiums of healthy, cheap-to-insure people cover the big bills for the relatively small number of sick people.
And of course things Republicans once loved they suddenly oppose merely because Obama now supports their idea. The individual insurance mandate, has conservative origins. The requirement that individuals be required to purchase health insurance first emerged in Republican health care reform bills introduced in 1993 as alternatives to the Clinton administration’s plan.
That mandate was also a prominent feature of the Massachusetts plan passed under Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006. According to Romney, “we got the idea of an individual mandate from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation,”. Republicans are unmitigated hypocrites.
The fact that the idea of the individual mandate developed out of GOP rhetoric proves that the party is not opposed to the thought of making insurance affordable to millions of Americans. “Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seat-belts for their own protection,” Stuart Butler, a health care expert for the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, wrote in a 1989 brief titled Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans. “Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness.”
So the argument goes that just as legally mandated insurance makes economic sense for automobiles, it makes sense for health care, as well.
If you want to see what Republicans really think, look at the reason Ted Cruz gave for opposing it:
Speaking to radio host Rush Limbaugh in late August, Cruz said that President Obama “wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar, because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound.”
Far from thinking Americans will hate Obamacare, Republicans are scared that once they get used to it they'll like it to much to ever get rid of it. That's why they just fought so desperately to defund, or hopefully at least delay its implentation so Americans wouldn't get a chance to see what its really like.
And let's not forget that during the shutdown the approval rate for Obamacare went up 8 percentage points. LOL, boy did the Republican shutdown ever backfire on them!
Bad anonymous said "“Bipartisan Barack” relished the chance to mock the GOP yesterday with his comment: “Don’t like a particular policy? ... Go out there and win an election.”"(editorial comment: Earth to Barry. Those people you are talking to all won elections".
He was talking about the presidency. The Republicans lost the election for president but were trying to overthrow the American democracy and rule as though their guy is president.
It may be legal, but its not ethical to hold a gun to the head of the American economy to get your way. Its not ethical to demand ransom just for doing your job and passing a budget and running the government. Its not "negotiations" when you hold the country hostage and say "We've got to get everything we're asking for or we'll shutdown the government, default on the debt, destroy consumer confidence, risk lowering the country's credit rating, and set back economimic growth.".
There you go again, spouting off more lies.
I haven't posted a single item from "the Rachel Maddow bubble" in months, but you have spouted off GOTP bubble bulls**t lies everyday multiple times a day.
However, today is your lucky day! This report of Maddow's is too good to pass by so get ready to have the ultimate truth about the GOTP shutdown laid out before your lying eyes:
Rachel Maddow Sums Up The Shutdown In One Incredible Graphic
""Through this process, Republicans said they would shut down the government, or, once it was shut down, they would refuse to open the government unless they got each one of these things. Of all of these things that they demanded, they got none of them! None...these have been sixteen bad days for the country and the economy."
REPUBLICAN DEMANDS
They asked for:
1. Defund Obamacare
2. Delay Obamacare
3. Delay Individual Mandage
4. Deny Coverage to the President
5. Deny Coverage to the Cabinet
6. Deny Coverage to Congressional Staffers
7. Deny Birth Control Coverage
8. Approve Keystone Pipeline
9. Means Testing for Medicare
10. Change Federal Employee Pensions
11. Expand Oil Drilling
12. Block Net Neutrality
13. Tort Reform
14. Weaken Regs for Coal-fired Power Plants
15. Tax Code Changes
16. Thwart EPA Coal-ash Regulations
17. Repeal Medical Device Tax
18. Change Rules on Debt Ceiling.
They got:
(Nothing)"
THE GOTP GOT ABSOLUTELY "NOTHING" FOR THEIR STUNT BUT THE US ECONOMY SUFFERED A $24BILLION ECONOMIC LOSS.
====
I see you have expressed no support for Hannity's lies from the 6 uninformed people he put on his show. I accept your silent cry of UNCLE!
Bad anonymous said "Those people you are talking to all won elections. That's why they had the power to shut down the government, force you to go along with a new commission to find ways to bring down debt, and hold spending to sequester level".
That's exactly where things were at before the shutdown. Republicans got ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for their shutdown and yet cost the economy 24 billion, slowed future economic growth, rattled consumer confidence, and convinced international lenders to think twice about lending to the U.S. in the future because lots or Republicans think it doesn't matter if they don't pay the governments bills(that's going to raise borrowing costs indefintely and keep costing the U.S. more down the road).
Republicans could have just refused to shutdown the government, raised the debt ceiling and they'd be exactly where they are today but they wouldn't have severely wounded the country.
"He was talking about the presidency."
I know what he was talking about. The President is not the one makes budgets. It's largely ceremonial, such as the Queen of Canada.
"The Republicans lost the election for president but were trying to overthrow the American democracy and rule as though their guy is president."
all they did was pass a budget Obama didn't like
"It may be legal, but its not ethical to hold a gun to the head of the American economy to get your way."
and that's what Obama did
he threatened to veto every budget the Repubs passed
he was saying "do it my way or the government will be shut down. he needed to do his job and tell Harry Reid to vote on the bills so he could sign them
why couldn't he just do the job he was elected to do?
"Its not ethical to demand ransom just for doing your job and passing a budget"
the House passed several budgets, you stupid liar
"and running the government."
that's Obama's job
he should have signed the budgets and get on with it
"Its not "negotiations" when you hold the country hostage and say "We've got to get everything we're asking for or we'll shutdown the government, default on the debt, destroy consumer confidence, risk lowering the country's credit rating, and set back economimic growth."."
that's what Obama did and refused to even try to negotiate
the Dems will pay in November 2014 for Obama's sleazy tactics
Bad anonymous said "Those people you are talking to all won elections. That's why they had the power to shut down the government".
Throughout the shutdown Fox news tried to spin it as "Obama's" or "the liberal" shutdown. Nice to see Bad anonymous admit it was the Republican shutdown and Fox was just being their obligatory dishonest selves.
Spinning bad anonymous tries to claim the presidency is a mostly a ceremonial position but then contradicts himself by saying its the presidents job to run the government and admitting the president has the power to veto bad budgets the Republicans propose.
Once again, the Republicans lost the election but tried to overthrow American democracy by pretending their guy won and trying to run the government themselves by holding a gun to the head of the American economy.
Bad anonymous is spinning so fast he can't keep track of his own B.S.
I said "Its not "negotiations" when you hold the country hostage and say "We've got to get everything we're asking for or we'll shutdown the government, default on the debt, destroy consumer confidence, risk lowering the country's credit rating, and set back economimic growth."."
Bad anonymous said "that's what Obama did and refused to even try to negotiate".
Liar, Obama didn't ask for anything to keep the government running, he wanted a clean continuing resolution and the Republicans had 16 chances to go along with that during the shutdown and refused to do so unless Obama was willing to give them everything they asked for.
It was the Republicans who held the country hostage, Obama just wanted them to keep the government going without conditions.
Bad anonymous said "the Dems will pay in November 2014 for Obama's sleazy tactics".
Oh please, it might make you feel better to pretend reality is the opposite of what it is, but no one is buying your spin. By a 22% margin more people blame the Republicans for the shutdown than blame Obama. By an 8% margin more people want a democrat controlled congress in 2014 than want a Republican controlled congress. Aproval for Obamacare has gone up 8% points during the shutdown. Democrats need to pickup 17 seats to gain a majority in the house. Because of gerrymandering Democrats need a 6% advantage to break even but even after redistricting there are still 50-55 Republican seats in play for the Democrats and they're defending about 20. Over the last two weeks the advantage for the Democrats has spread anywhere from four to 10 percentage points and in the top 24 most competitive districts in the country a generic Democrat is now ahead in 21.
I said "Its not "negotiations" when you hold the country hostage and say "We've got to get everything we're asking for or we'll shutdown the government, default on the debt, destroy consumer confidence, risk lowering the country's credit rating, and set back economimic growth."."
Bad anonymous said "that's what Obama did and refused to even try to negotiate".
Those things were all caused by the shutdown and by your own admission it was the Republicans who chose to shutdown the government. By your own admission at October 18, 2013 1:12 PM it was the Republicans who chose to severely wound the U.S. economy.
"Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
October 18, 2013 12:20 PM".
Oh oh, Bad anonymous is getting "dispassionate" again. Being wrong and unable to con people makes him furious.
Yet another win for the pro-family side:
The New Jersey Supreme Court has rejected an appeal of a lower court ruling that says the state must provide marriage equality.
Same sex marriages start on Monday in New Jersey!
The inevitable march of Justice goes forward!
the House passed several budgets, you stupid liar
"and running the government."
that's Obama's job
he should have signed the budgets and get on with it
Waaahhh waaaaahhhhh
Since Romney lost his Presidential race with his plan to repeal Obamacare last fall, the House has passed the repeal of Obamacare more than 40 times.
The Senate rejected it every time.
Obama was not involved.
There was no budget for Obama to sign because there was not a single budget that passed the House was approved by the Senate.
In the spring of this year, the House passed a buget, and a month later, the Senate passed another budget.
Sen. Patty Murray and other Democratic Senators asked for a conference committee of House and Senate Budget negotiators 21 times since the Senate approved its budget, but the Grand Obstructionist Party has refused to confer all 21 times.
We know which incumbents will be turned out of office in 2014.
< wink >
Even Rasmussen knows.
< wink wink >
Hey Bubblehead! Get your head out of the bubble!
"Obama was not involved"
this is kind of the motto of the Obama Presidency
he's mainly there for the perks
never really gets involved in anything
Congress passes the budget!
All the President does is decide to sign or veto what Congress passes.
The shut down was not caused by a Presidential veto.
It was caused by the GOTP trying to control the entire government from the House, though the best they could manage to do is shut the entire thing down, except for their own salaries and gym privileges (ask T how hard those are to do without).
These facts explain why the GOP and GOTP's poll numbers have dropped so much father than the Democrat's or the President's poll numbers.
It's too bad for you these facts are so inconvenient for the web of lies you keep trying to spin.
Get your head out of the bubble, BubbleHeadAnon. Go look at RCP's polling data on a generic Congressional vote to remind yourself of the unspun truth.
Not only are the polls going the Democrat's way, so is the fundraising.
TheHill.com reports Shutdown fears drive DCCC's September fundraising to $8.4M
"House Democrats' campaign arm raised a record amount in September, and now has more than $20 million cash in the bank for the 2014 elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) brought in $8.4 million in September and now has $21.6 million cash on hand. That's more than double what the committee had in the bank at this point last cycle.
And much of that fundraising was fueled by backlash over the potential of a shutdown, which didn't begin until early October but had been threatened by congressional Republicans for days prior.
According to a DCCC aide, more than $2 million of the sum was raised by contributions from 99,000 donors in the six days following Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) 21-hour speech protesting ObamaCare.
That contributed to a record-breaking $3 million raised online from more than 160,000 donors, the best off-year online month ever for a party campaign...
Meanwhile USA Today reports Some insurgent Republicans see weaker fundraising
"WASHINGTON — Campaign donations to some of the House's most prominent Tea Party insurgents tumbled in recent months, and several of the chamber's most conservative new members struggled to match the fundraising pace of their business-backed primary challengers, new campaign filings show.
Fundraising fell in the July-to-September fundraising quarter for two-thirds of the 42 House Republicans elected since 2010 who signed an August letter that urged House leaders to tie dismantling the Affordable Care Act to a bill funding the government, a USA TODAY analysis shows. That letter, circulated by first-term Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., helped ignite the budget showdown that shuttered parts of the government for 16 days this month...."
Rollcall reports For GOP, the Damage Is Undeniable
"...Republican operatives are worried that the showdown will improve Democratic House recruiting considerably for 2014, and it could well damage GOP fundraising, both among small-dollar donors and the party’s bigger hitters.
Small donors will be disenchanted that Republican officeholders caved on both the shutdown and debt ceiling, while the larger donors, who tend to be more pragmatic, are likely to sit on their cash for fear that the GOP will do something else crazy to threaten the economy and the party’s electoral prospects..."
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/10/15/some-data-on-education-religiosity-ideology-and-science-comp.html
A study showing that identification with the Tea Party correlates positively with science comprehension.
Says the author:
"I've got to confess, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.
But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).
I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view."
"Same sex marriages start on Monday in New Jersey!"
yay!!
now, homosexuals will have an option to a lifelong contract to abuse one another in an S&M relationship
in New Jersey
maybe they'll be a new real New Jersey housewife whose a real pain in the arse
now, that's justice!!
will pain pills be included for homosexuals in Obamacare plans?
The Affordable Care Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn't in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department's incompetence.
The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.
What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He's the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create "a world-class user experience." With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to "just make sure it's not a third-world experience."
He didn't succeed.
Whatever is below third-world standards would flatter the 36 federally run exchanges as they've started up. But perhaps Mr. Chao or someone else, if not Mrs. Sebelius, can answer even the simple question of how many Americans have managed to enroll for coverage. HHS could easily resolve any confusion but it won't even talk to Democratic allies, friendly reporters and what it calls the insurance industry "stakeholders" that it will need to make ObamaCare work.
No doubt a hearing would be a spectacle—with TV cameras on hand—but Mrs. Sebelius can't hide forever. Even pro-entitlement liberals want to know about what went wrong and why, how much if any progress is being made, and whether the ObamaCare website Healthcare.gov will be usable in a matter of months—or years.
More disclosure might also help HHS preserve a scrap of credibility, given that none of its initial explanations has held up. Right now, no one trusts a word that emerges from Fortress ObamaCare.
To take one example, this week the Associated Press obtained an internal HHS memo from September 5, 2013 specifying the Administration's monthly enrollment targets—a half-million sign-ups in October, 3.3 million by December 31, and so on. Asked about this by AP, HHS not only declined to say if it is meeting its projections. The department issued a statement claiming that "The Administration has not set monthly enrollment targets." The spokesman did not cite the classic Marx Brothers line, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can't build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won't reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.
A truly unfortunate unintended consequence of the partial government shutdown is that it provided a major distraction from what should have been the real news over the past two weeks — the nightmare of the Obamacare roll-out. Yesterday The Wall Street Journal published a stunning account of just how bad things have been, based on information gathered from more than a dozen insurers around the country that have been on the receiving end of enrollments.Now everyone’s best guess has been that the federal exchange system on which 36 states are all or partially dependent has been a mess. The best evidence of that is simply the refusal of the Department of Health and Human Services to provide any numbers on how many people have actually enrolled — or attempted to.So much for Obama administration transparency.The Journal’s hired techie experts, based on their own sampling, estimated that in the first week of operation only about 10 percent of those who tried to enroll were successful in doing so. By earlier this week (Monday and Tuesday) of the users who began the registration process about 25 percent completed it.But then apparently the fun is just beginning. Insurers report that the data they are receiving from those registrations is often hopelessly flawed with spouses reported as children and vice versa (the woman with three “spouses” was their first clue). Determining income eligibility has already become a scandal just waiting to happen.And many of those insurance executives quoted in the Journal asked not to be named because they said they were already under considerable pressure from HHS to not comment on the law’s implementation.Eventually the trickle of applicants — with their three spouses and their dubious statements of income — is supposed to become a flood of more than 7 million consumers. We can’t wait. -
and to repeat:
many of those insurance executives quoted in the Journal asked not to be named because they said they were already under considerable pressure from HHS to not comment on the law’s implementation.
and they call it democracy
oh, I remember Obama's first inauguration
it was a grand ol' time
when he got to the White House, he let people in off the street and told them to wander and wonder
JUST DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!!
then, he wandered down the hall himself, to the Oval Office and gave his first order:
CLOSE GUANTANOMO!!
wonder how long it will take to fix the Obamacare website
we've got one-sixth of the economy, you know the part that makes life and death decisions, in the hands of some reliable experts now
just think of these guys running a death panel
November 2014
it's gonna be fun!!
The Tea Party/ science comprehension report is a case where you would want to get the raw data and analyze it correctly. The researcher coded Tea-Party/non-Tea-Party as a binary variable, 0 and 1, and then conducted a correlation analysis on it, versus a numeric variable, which was the score on a science test. Normally a correlation is computed between two numeric variables (Spearman phi between two binaries is a special case). The "science comprehension" scale also seems to have been developed by the writer, and you would like to see how the subscales differ between the groups.
In this case he has two groups: Tea Party and not-Tea Party. The not-Tea-Party group is more than four times as big as the Tea Party group, suggesting that nonparametric statistics should be used. In any case, at least he should have reported a t-test and not a correlation. The finding, a correlation of r=0.05, is near enough to zero that no scientific journal would allow a report of a "significant" effect (this was an unpublished paper written by a law school professor); in this dataset, p<0.05 because of the sample size. With more than 2,000 observations, the criterion for significance is very small.
Even granted that this is a zero correlation, the surprising result here is that Tea Party members are not stupider about science than the general public. Religion and conservatism both correlated negatively with science knowledge, Tea Party slightly on the positive side. But I would like to see the data set and analyze it correctly before drawing any conclusions from it.
JimK
Jim, you're so biased. The truth is that all correlations in the study were slight, whether negative or positive. Which is the point. Political or religious beliefs are significantly correlated with intelligence or knowledge.
The myth that is the main focus of this blog, that leftist atheists are intelligent and that libertarian believers are ignorant is simply wrong.
The British multinational in charge of processing Obamacare paper applications received a hefty contract boost just days before Healthcare.gov’s disastrous roll-out, a sign that the Obama administration may have expected serious problems with the website.
The Business of Federal Technology (FCW) reports that on Sept. 26, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) increased their planned payout to Serco’s U.S. subsidiary by 75 percent, adding an extra $87 million to the $114 million promised for processing initial Obamacare enrollment applications.
The contract documents do not explain the last-minute infusion of federal dollars, and neither Serco nor CMS would disclose why the agreement was modified so soon before the rollout.
I would think that anybody whose philosophy is based on the concept "I want my white country back" would have difficulty with science comprehension, and it turns out they are pretty normal on that measure. I would think that somebody who forces the government to shut down and then gets furious when government facilities actually close might not have a real good grasp of science. But there is basically no effect, teabaggers are about like everybody else in this measure of science comprehension. It might say more about the general public than it does about teabaggers specifically.
Some of the correlations in the study are big. Postgraduate education for instance correlates with science comprehension r=0.36. Religiosity correlates r=-0.26, where religious people are not good at scientific comprehension, which makes sense since they are opposites. Conservatism and Tea Party membership correlate weakly, r of -0.05 and +0.05 respectively, which is basically zero. Even the author says "These effects are trivially small." I say not only are they small, but a Pearson correlation coefficient is the wrong statistic to use.
JimK
$87 million to fix some glitches in the roll out of a nationwide computer program pales in comparison to the $24 BILLION S&P estimates the US economy lost during the teabagger shutdown.
"NEW YORK, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- The federal government shutdown has cost the U.S. economy at least $24 billion, and probably more than that, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said Wednesday.
In a release, the ratings agency said the shutdown, which began two weeks ago, "has shaved at least 0.6% off of annualized fourth-quarter 2013 GDP growth, or taken $24 billion out of the economy. However, the closer we get to breaching the debt ceiling, the higher we expect the economic impact to be."
The agency noted that the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff was associated with a 31-year low for consumer confidence, and said a major difference between the current budget and debt ceiling fight the 2011 fight is that "this round of debt-ceiling negotiations is occurring after two-plus weeks of a government shutdown" -- so the final cost to the economy "will likely be even more severe."
"While we believe the Senate deal will be passed and the debt ceiling will be raised, the impact of a default by the U.S. government on its debts would be devastating for markets and the economy and worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008," S&P said.
The release said if the United States were to default on its obligations, there would be a "sudden, unplanned contraction of current spending," including a federal government spending cut of about 4 percent of annualized GDP.
"That would put the economy in a recession and wipe out much of the economic progress made by the recovery from the Great Recession," S&P said."
Ted Cruz should be impeached for his costly stunt.
Gay rights supporters wage a quiet campaign to push Republicans to the middle
"Few elected Republicans support giving gays the right to marry. The party’s influential social-conservative wing sees “traditional marriage” as a defining issue. And while most major Democrats are rushing to embrace same-sex marriage, none of the most prominent potential Republican presidential candidates have taken that step.
But a powerful group of Republican donors, who see the GOP’s staunch opposition to gay rights as a major problem, is trying to push the party toward a more welcoming middle ground — where candidates who oppose marriage rights can do so without seeming hateful.
The behind-the-scenes effort is being led largely by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer, a hedge fund executive whose son is gay, and former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who revealed his homosexuality in 2010, long after he had left the GOP leadership.
Singer’s advocacy group, the American Unity Fund, has been quietly prodding Republican lawmakers to take a first step toward backing gay rights by voting for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The measure, which is expected to come to the full Senate for a vote as early as this month, would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Singer’s group recently hired as lobbyists two former GOP lawmakers, Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and Norm Coleman (Minn.), who say they oppose same-sex marriage but support workplace protections for gays.
Armed with new polling data and talking points, organizers are coaching lawmakers and potential candidates on politically smart ways to talk about gay rights to reassure general-election voters while not alienating core conservatives.
A softer GOP approach, they argue, would boost the party’s chances with young voters, women and centrist independents, all of whom tend to be supportive of gay rights and have drifted away from the party.
One poll-tested sound bite being suggested to candidates references the Golden Rule — to “treat others as we’d like to be treated, including gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.” The line, according to a memo from a GOP polling firm hired to guide the campaign, wins support from 89 percent of Republican voters.
“The Republican image, unfortunately, is one in which we have an empathy gap,” Coleman said. “That impacts us across the board. An issue like this, which is about being against discrimination, feeds into the long-term future of the party. It addresses one of the negatives that we are facing today.”
Some pro-gay-rights Republicans point hopefully to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a case study of a GOP politician who seems to be looking for a politically viable approach. The governor, expected to easily win reelection next month, is close to Singer, though aides to both men declined to discuss their private conversations about the issue.
Christie won praise from social conservatives last year for vetoing a same-sex-marriage bill. But he also routinely voices sympathy for gays; in a debate last week, for instance, he said that if one of his children came out, he would “grab them and hug them and tell them I love them.”
Christie, who has said he does not see homosexuality as a sin, nominated an openly gay judge to the state Supreme Court and, in August, signed a law banning licensed therapists from practicing gay conversion therapy on minors. LGBT activists hailed an anti-bullying law he signed as one of the country’s toughest measures protecting gay children.
Christie’s opposition has not been enough to block same-sex marriage in New Jersey..."
Jim.
I know a lot of tea partiers, and none of them are racists.
so I consider your statement 'I would think that anybody whose philosophy is based on the concept "I want my white country back" would have difficulty with science comprehension, and it turns out they are pretty normal on that measure.'
As a matter of fact, one of the tea partiers I know and more actively conservative than a lot of folks I know is my old nanny, Josie, who is African.
Tea partiers simply believe in personal responsibility. It can be summed up pretty simply... "whose fault is it if I am poor"... "it's your fault".
Josie came here without a penny, she is now a doctor, because she worked hard.
A concept Priya finds difficult to understand, but most of us get.
Theresa
http://health.wusf.usf.edu/post/fl-blue-cancels-300000-policies
Florida blue cancels 300,000 policies.
and 40,000 have signed up so far for Obama care.
"If you like your health insurance you can keep it"
LIAR.
Clicking on the link to the original source, insurance giant Kaiser, in the article you provided the URL for, some truth is found. One woman's case is cited:
"Some receiving cancellations say ***it looks like their costs will go up***, despite studies projecting that about half of all enrollees will get income-based subsidies.
Kris Malean, 56, lives outside Seattle, and has a health policy that costs $390 a month with a $2,500 deductible and a $10,000 in potential out-of-pocket costs for such things as doctor visits, drug costs or hospital care.
As a replacement, Regence BlueShield is offering her a plan for $79 more a month with a deductible twice as large as what she pays now, but which limits her potential out-of-pocket costs to $6,250 a year, including the deductible.
“My impression was …there would be a lot more choice, driving some of the rates down,” said Malean, who ***does not believe*** she is eligible for a subsidy."
I suggest they have this woman FIND OUT if she is eligible for any subsidy and that she also add up and compare her expenses.
OLD POLICY COSTS: $2,500 deductible, $10,000 out of pocket limit. $12,500 plus the cost of the premiums
NEW POLICY COSTS: $5,000 deductible, $6,250 out of pocket limit. $11,250 plus the ($79 x 12 =) $948 higher cost of premiums
Do the math.
Her annual maximum costs will be lower with her new policy than they were with her old policy ($12,198 vs. $12,500) AND all ten essential benefits will be covered.
Who's the LIAR??
And what else did the Kaiser article point out?
"...Health plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.
The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.
By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost...
"a health policy that costs $390 a month with a $2,500 deductible and a $10,000 in potential out-of-pocket costs for such things as doctor visits, drug costs or hospital care.
As a replacement, Regence BlueShield is offering her a plan for $79 more a month with a deductible twice as large as what she pays now, but which limits her potential out-of-pocket costs to $6,250 a year, including the deductible."
If the $6,250 maximum out of pocket expense of her new policy includes the $5,000 deductible, but the $10,000 "potential in out of pocket costs" of her old policy does NOT include the $2,500 deductible, her annual costs under Obamacare will be substantially lower AND will provide more coverage.
Her annual costs will be $5,268 [($360 + $79) x 12] in premiums plus $6,250 maximum OOP including the deductible under Obamacare vs. $4,320 [$360 x 12] in premiums plus $12,500.00 maximum OOP + deductible under her existing policy.
That's $11,518 under Obamacare vs. $16,820 for her existing policy per year. If she qualifies for a subsidy, her cost under Obamacare will be even lower.
"If you like the policy you have, you can keep it."
He did not say ... I am going to give you what I think is a better policy for you, assuming you max out your coverage every year.
What he said was a LIE. Pure and simple. policies are getting cancelled all OVER the place.
"Ohio's Controlling Board has approved Medicaid expansion in the Buckeye State, meaning 275,000 low-income Ohioans will now be eligible for health care.
Gov. John Kasich (R) turned to the obscure Controlling Board, made up of six lawmakers and one administration official, for approval after Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature balked on the issue. According to Politico, 39 Republicans in the Ohio House filed a protest letter last week, saying the move by Kasich “does not carry out the clear intent” of the Legislature.
Kasich released the following statement on the decision, which approved the spending of over $2.5 billion in federal funds to expand the state's Medicaid program:
Together with the General Assembly we’ve improved both the quality of care from Medicaid and its value for taxpayers. Today’s action takes another positive step in this mutual effort. I look forward to continuing our partnership with the General Assembly to build upon the progress we’ve already made to make Medicaid work better for Ohioans."
""If you like the policy you have, you can keep it."
He did not say ... I am going to give you what I think is a better policy for you, assuming you max out your coverage every year.
What he said was a LIE. Pure and simple. policies are getting cancelled all OVER the place."
The *one* example of a person getting her current health insurance policy cancelled you provided via the original source of the URL you posted can get better coverage for a lower annual price.
HOW TERRIBLE!
What pain that poor woman must be suffering so much because her insurance company has cancelled her policy and now she can get BETTER COVERAGE AT A CHEAPER ANNUAL COST!
< eye roll >
Enjoy your life inside the bubble!
Today's shooting at a middle school in Nevada is the 12th school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school 10 months ago.
one example ?
try 1/2 million....
NBC news, typically what I would consider a liberally biased site...
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/thousands-get-health-insurance-cancellation-notices-8C11417913
"Blue Shield of California sent roughly 119,000 cancellation notices out in mid-September, about 60 percent of its individual business. About two-thirds of those policyholders will see rate increases in their new policies, said spokesman Steve Shivinsky."
"Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent."
And how many of those can't find better, cheaper insurance via their state or the federal exchanges??
"If you like your policy, you can keep it"
what about that statement is true?
NOTHING.
I could keep my insurance policy if I wanted to, but I prefer lowering my costs by nearly 50% for better coverage.
Show us someone who can't do the same.
And they better not be like the folks Hannity brought on his show, who have been outed as uninformed people who didn't even look at Heathcare.gov to see what they could get.
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare -- UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
Excerpt: "I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.
Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.
I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law. She said she hadn’t done so because she’d heard the website was not working. Would she try it out when it’s up and running? Perhaps, she said. She told me she has long opposed Obamacare, and that the president should have focused on tort reform as a solution to bringing down the price of healthcare.
I tried an experiment and shopped on the exchange for Allison and Kurt. Assuming they don’t smoke and have a household income too high to be eligible for subsidies, I found that they would be able to get a plan for around $7,600, which would include coverage for their uninsured daughter. This would be about a 60 percent reduction from what they would have to pay on the pre-Obamacare market."
Keep leaving off the truth of what you call the "LIE," which is if your insurance company cancels your policy, under Obamacare you will most likely find a policy with better coverage for a lower cost than you pay now.
Scientists in Siberia say they've discovered a new and extremely virulent strain of HIV in Russia.
Announcing their discovery on Oct. 16, researchers at Novosibirk's Koltsovo science city say the HIV subtype, known as 02_AG/A, may be the most virulent form of HIV in the country.
In a report in the Naukograd Press, Koltsovo science city's news site, it's explained that the HIV variant is believed to be capable of spreading at a much faster rate than subtype A(I), which, according to researchers, is Russia's current leading HIV strain.
The new subtype, which researchers say was first detected in the city of Novosibirsk in 2006, is said to be spreading through some parts of Siberia at an alarming rate. In the Novosibirsk area, it is now said to account for more than half of all new HIV infections.
Citing the scientists' statement, RIA Novosti writes that the "number of HIV-positive people living in the Novosibirsk region has leaped from about 2,000 in 2007 up to 15,000 in 2012."
Outside of Siberia, the subtype also may have been detected in Chechnya and parts of Central Asia, according to the Naukograd Press.
Though rates of HIV infection have been falling worldwide, Eastern Europe and Central Asia remain the only regions on the planet where HIV prevalence is clearly "on the rise," says the United Nations. According to RIA Novosti, 52 percent "of the HIV-positive people that live across that area are in Russia."
http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_24248486/obamacares-winners-and-losers-bay-area
Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.
Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.
"Welcome to the club," said Robert Laszewksi, a prominent health care consultant and president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Virginia..............
Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
these guys just don't understand
Obama's intention her was to transfer wealth
these guys have worked hard and have some assets so they have to be punished by forfeiting the fruit of their labor
question: why shouldn't Obama and members of Congress have to do the same?
right now, they're being subsidized by our taxes
they can afford to pay more so they should be punished for their success and have to pay for everyone else's insurance just like the self-employed
looks like I was right
Americans are blaming Obama for the shut down:
"PRINCETON, NJ -- President Barack Obama averaged a 44.5% job approval rating during his 19th quarter in office, a decline of more than three percentage points from his 18th quarter. That is one of the largest quarter-to-quarter declines of his presidency, behind a nine-point drop in his third quarter and a six-point drop in his 11th quarter."
blame poor Barry?
just because he could have prevented the whole thing by agreeing to delay the employer mandate for a year, which sounds like a better idea every day?
An IT problem has never escalated faster than the president's Rose Garden speech Monday addressing the problems with healthcare.gov. He could no longer outsource responding to user complaints. At first, the White House had said the headaches signing people up for health care coverage were just technical glitches, but now the sheer number of those glitches defies that explanation. Reporting about deeper systemic problems suggest that fixes will not come quickly. As my colleague Matthew Yglesias explains, adding more bodies to the problem adds more complexity, which may exacerbate the problem. It's hard to untangle Christmas lights by committee.
With the botched Obamacare rollout, the president was applying all the rhetorical torque he could muster. "Nobody's madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should," Obama said on Monday, "which means it's going to get fixed."
Rhetoric and will isn't going to solve this problem. He has an operational challenge, where his talent for politics and persuasion are less useful and may even make matters worse. Putting a good spin on things only sets expectations that can then be dashed by reality.
More than any other domestic challenge, his administration should have been able to anticipate the problems they’re now scrambling to fix.
It’s a challenge of the president's own making. Unlike his battle with Republicans over the serial budget crises or the economic mess or smoldering wars he inherited from the Bush administration, the president is not reacting to uncontrollable events. He can't blame BP or Halliburton. The Affordable Care Act is his baby. His administration should have been able to anticipate the problems they’re now scrambling to fix.
In the Rose Garden on Monday morning, the president had a tough balancing act. On the one hand, he wanted to show that he was personally peeved, but he also had to simultaneously argue that the problems that made him so angry weren't threatening the underlying health of the product. That's a proposition that has yet to be tested. There are substantive ways in which the rollout can damage the fundamental enterprise. If the problems are as systemic as some reporting suggests, then they will not be fixed easily or anytime soon. The premise of the website was that its rollout would initiate a wave of social media success stories that would reach those younger applicants who are so vital to Obamacare’s success. Younger, healthy people must sign up to keep the insurance pools from being dominated by older sicker Americans, an outcome that would make prices soar. But those great sign up stories are not filtering through social media to this hard-to-reach group. Instead, they're hearing that the program is a mess. If enough young people don’t sign up, then the death-spiral scenario kicks in.
The president's speech was just the latest attempt to put the problems with healthcare.gov into perspective—a job that is not going well. Before the site was launched, the president said it would make signing up for health care as easy as making a plane reservation. When, after a few rocky days that turned out to be too rosy, the administration dropped the airline analogy. Now the experience more closely approximates the saga of having your flight delayed. First, the airline tells you it will be a half hour, then it stretches it to an hour, then two, then you're offered a voucher for a drink. After four hours, it dawns on you that the plane is never taking off. They continue to assure you it will—just before they cancel your flight.
The stories keep shifting. Administration officials said the site had been tested as thoroughly as the IRS computer systems that handle electronic tax returns. Now Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admits the system wasn't tested enough. In the first several days, administration officials spoke of "glitches," and Secretary Sebelius asked that people give the government the same amount of slack Apple gets when it launches a new product. But the administration dropped that analogy because, unlike Apple's quick admission that Apple Maps was a mess, the government can't just let users install Google Maps (and there have been no quick firings for the mess, as there were at Apple). The president and his team then said the website snafus were the result of huge traffic, but that explanation doesn't explain the considerable technical problems now being reported. Reports of the extraordinary number of people who have accessed the site are themselves full of fuzzy claims that seek to oversell the success.
There's a dangerous spiral that can take hold in these situations, as spin intended to distract from the current mess becomes its own problem. That is especially true when the facts demonstrate that the story the administration was selling is too optimistic: Either the White House knew how bad things were and wasn’t playing it straight or it didn’t know how bad things were and is just inept. Which one the public chooses—or whether they forgive the launch pad mishaps when everything is repaired—depends on the administration’s operational, rather than its political, skill. The customer support ticket has reached the highest level; now the country must wait.
WASHINGTON -- For liberals, it is a cruel twist of history that Harry Truman's dream of universal health coverage, carried forward by generations of committed Democrats, should fall to the Obama administration for its fulfillment.
Barack Obama seems to have adopted this cause in January 2007 as a last-minute speech insert. "We needed something to say," one adviser told Politico. "I can't tell you how little thought was given to that thought other than it sounded good." Eventually, the Affordable Care Act was passed by a partisan vote, draining the law of legitimacy outside the Democratic Party. Over the next three years, Obama proved incapable of explaining Obamacare's virtues and its popularity fell. Then its implementation was entrusted to a Cabinet secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who gratuitously alienated religious groups and massively bungled the law's rollout.
Obamacare is a multiyear, multifaceted fiasco. It is a case study in how to alienate a country you intend to help. And it could become an intellectual crisis for modern liberalism.
The "glitches" are shockingly serious systemic failures, which were caused, in part, by a political calculation.
Obamacare's mandates and regulations drive up health insurance costs. Late in the planning process, the administration decided that it could not allow people on HealthCare.gov to see their raw price increases without also seeing their offsetting federal subsidies (for those who get them) -- which means that consumers must provide their financial information before they can browse their insurance options. The techies objected that this would introduce needless complications and reduce eventual enrollments. The Obama administration insisted.
And these interface problems may be the easiest to solve. The new system requires the smooth transfer of information among massive databases. Even the trickle of enrollment files currently going from the government to insurance companies has been lumpy with errors.
The greatest risk in the implementation of Obamacare was always adverse selection -- that the exchanges would not attract enough young and healthy people to make them economically viable. If there are too many sick people in an insurance system, premiums rise, further discouraging younger, healthier people from participating, resulting in higher premiums, etc. ... The insurance "death spiral."
No one even considered the scenario we are now seeing: a partially working system in which it is difficult to sign up but not impossible. This means that the most motivated consumers (the sickest) are likely to persevere in creating accounts, while the younger and healthier are more likely to skip an unpleasant process and risk a minimal fine. "If they don't get the necessary volume and demographic mix in the exchanges," Yuval Levin of National Affairs told me, "it could set off a catastrophic adverse selection spiral that would not only render the exchanges inoperable but badly damage our large health care systems."
This is possible, not certain. The administration could dramatically step up its game by year-end and reach the enrollment levels and demographic mix necessary for the system to function.
But the failed rollout has already raised ideological issues of broader significance. It has reinforced a widely held, pre-existing belief that government-run health systems are bureaucratic nightmares. And it has added credence to the libertarian argument that some human systems are too complex to be effectively managed.
Perhaps the problem with Obamacare is not failed leadership, but the whole project of putting a federal agency, 55 contractors and 500 million lines of software code in charge of a health system intended to cover millions of Americans.
I am not a libertarian who argues against the need for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But Friedrich Hayek has this much going for him: He understood that the challenge of technocratic planning is always limited information. "The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess."
Which is why planning tends to fail, particularly in highly complex systems. "This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not," Hayek said. "It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals."
So maybe the problem is not Obama or Sebelius but rather a government program that requires superhuman technocratic mastery.
Way back before all the spin you posted on October 22, 2013 11:24 AM, October 22, 2013 11:30 AM, October 22, 2013 11:38 AM, October 22, 2013 12:05 PM, October 22, 2013 12:06 PM. October 22, 2013 12:13 PM, October 22, 2013 12:13 PM, you posted an actual URL!
I'm proud of you, I knew you could do it!!
Of course you only posted part of that article....
But in fact your Mercury article, reports:
"...Covered California officials note that at least 570,000 of the 1.9 million people who buy their own insurance should be eligible for subsidies that will reduce their premiums.
Even those who don't qualify for the tax subsidies could see their rates drop because Obamacare doesn't allow insurers to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and cancer, he said.
People like Marilynn Gray-Raine.
The 64-year-old Danville artist, who survived breast cancer, has purchased health insurance for herself for decades. She watched her Anthem Blue Cross monthly premiums rise from $317 in 2005 to $1,298 in 2013. But she found out last week from the Covered California site that her payments will drop to about $795 a month...."
And then back to Waschura and Vinson, who live in San Fransisco, we learn:
"...According to data compiled by ValuePenguin, Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, San Francisco as well as Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties have some of the highest health insurance rates in the state. Covered California officials say that in addition to the higher cost of living here, more hospitals in the Bay Area are owned by hospital groups that can demand higher rates because of the lack of competition.
Not all of the sticker shock can be blamed on Obamacare.
Health care inflation costs routinely increase at least 4 percent annually, said Ken Wood, a senior adviser for Covered California. Those increases, he noted, are due to an aging population and the rising costs of new medical technology and drugs, among other factors.
But Wood, Wu and others also said premiums will rise as a result of people getting better insurance under the new law, which requires most Americans, with few exceptions, to buy health insurance no later than March 31, or pay a minimum $95 annual penalty.
The law's intent is to cover people who are now uninsured by making insurance accessible to everybody. But that means rates will rise for many because sick and healthy people will now be charged the same premium.
Adding a required list of 10 essential benefits to all plans is also significant. A study published last year in the journal Health Affairs said more than half of Americans who had individual insurance in 2010 were enrolled in plans that would not qualify because they didn't meet all the new requirements.
Wood likened these mandates to the higher cost of buying cars today that must have safety features like air bags and anti-lock brakes.
The law also will often make some policies more expensive because it limits out-of-pocket expenses to $6,350 annually for an individual and $12,700 for a family. In addition, the law restricts the minimum and maximum premiums that people can be charged based on their age.
Now, a 64-year-old can be charged almost five times more than a 21-year-old. Beginning Jan. 1, it will be a 3-1 ratio...."
Spin yourself silly, BubbleHeadAnon.
Wonkbook: Two new polls have good news for Obamacare
"The rollout of the health-care law has been troubled, to say the least. But are Americans turned off by what they've heard?
Not yet. Monday saw two new polls released on Obamacare. Both contain good news for the law. Here are the takeaways:
- Obamacare's as popular, or unpopular, as ever. Both The Washington Post/ABC News poll and the Pew poll found views of the law mostly unchanged. The Post poll, in fact, saw a slight uptick in support for the law, from 42 percent in September to 46 percent in October.
- Make D.C. listen! For comparison's sake, that makes Obamacare significantly more popular than the Republican Party (32 percent) or the tea party (26 percent). It makes it a bit less popular than President Obama (50 percent) and exactly as popular as the Democratic Party (46 percent).
- Americans are confused about whether the insurance exchanges are working. The Pew poll found that 46 percent of Americans know the online insurance portals aren't working well. But 29 percent think they're working fairly or very well. And 25 percent don't know. So a majority of Americans either don't know how the exchanges are working or think everything is going fine. Given that the exchanges are working quite badly, that's good news for the law.
- People who use the exchanges like them. About one in seven Americans say they have tried using the exchanges. Fifty-six percent found them easy to use. Three out of five people who've tried the exchanges were just curious about them.
- The uninsured want insurance. Sixty-five percent of the uninsured say they plan to get insurance within the next six months. Those numbers are reflected in the visits to HealthCare.gov: Among the insured, 12 percent have visited the exchanges, and 19 percent plan to. Among the uninsured, 22 percent have visited the exchanges and 42 percent plan to. That's great news for the law. It's much easier to sign up people who want insurance than to sign up people who don't.
- A majority want the law to keep going. Obviously the 46 percent who approve of Obamacare in the Washington Post/ABC News poll want to see it implemented. But so do many of those who disapprove of the law. The result is that 66 percent want to see the law implemented...."
"Adding a required list of 10 essential benefits to all plans is also significant. A study published last year in the journal Health Affairs said more than half of Americans who had individual insurance in 2010 were enrolled in plans that would not qualify because they didn't meet all the new requirements."
yes, and Obama was fully aware of this
and that's why he was lying when he said that if you want to keep your current plan, you can
all this represents a robbing of your freedom to make your own personal choices and risks
with a big scoop of wealth transfer on top, also robbing people of the fruits of their labor
Obama is a university socialist who never matured in viewpoint because his first real job was running the country
yeah, he's doing a great job
most of the country thinks we're on the wrong track
here's an example of what happens on Obama's watch:
"WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Force officials tell The Associated Press that twice this year, officers entrusted with the launch keys to nuclear-tipped missiles have been caught leaving open a blast door. That door is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering the officers' underground command post and potentially compromising secret launch codes.
The blast door violations are another sign of serious trouble in the handling of the nation's nuclear arsenal.
The crews who operate the missiles are trained to follow rules without fail because the costs of mistakes are so high."
fortunately, the Republicans have been winning so overall things are set up to improve but bad management can screw up a lot
the Republicans this year:
1. have succeeded in protecting the sequester level spending that Obama thought he could bluff them out on
2. have succeeded in making 99% of the Bush tax cuts permanent
3. have failed to repeal Obamacare
two out of three ain't bad
note that as long as Republicans hold one of the houses of Congress, #1 and #2 can't change
the Congressional elections are a year off
the American people agree with the Republicans' position, if not always their tactics
Obama has always assumed Obamacare's implementation would convince the public
not looking likely
Hello Bubblehead!
No URLs this time??
I knew it wouldn't last...
My URLs are embedded in HTML, making clickable links.
Here's a video you might want to see: GOP asked tech founder, ex-fugitive McAfee to diagnose Obamacare
...and an article you may want to read (did they have you in mind when they came up with the title?): The Morning Plum: Outside the conservative bubble, GOP sustains epic damage
CNN apparently ran an expose on Obamacare last night - Anderson cooper, all the folks who are losing their current coverage.
Haven't been able to find the link yet though.
You can't find the link to a CNN show that aired last night?
< eye roll >
Here's the link for you: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/22/obamacare-who-pays-more-who-pays-less/?hpt=ac_bn5
And here are some facts.
There's a 4 person family, and two singles, one male, one female, found by the reporter, Drew Griffin, who appear to need to pay higher premiums next year.
However:
- The couple has not yet found out if they will qualify for subsidy or not so they may not know the final price of their Obamacare compliant policy yet.
- The single male's existing insurance policy, which HE CAN KEEP, will go up 9.8%. This man claims that a "comparable plan" (no details given so this claim in unverifiable) under Obamacare will cost almost double.
- The single 56 year old woman opted not to have insurance at her government job so she doesn't have an existing policy to compare her costs to.
Of these three examples, only the family currently has a plan they cannot continue because it is not Obamacare compliant, but they do now yet know if they qualify for a subsidy or not.
The reporter Mr. Griffin pointed out he did NOT search for people who have found more affordable care.
I don't know where the family lives, but both singles live in GOP controlled states (NC and GA) that do not have their own state exchanges like we do here in MD.
In fact in NC:
"North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) made clear Tuesday that he doesn't want any part of the coverage expansion under President Obama's signature healthcare law.
McCrory rejected the law's Medicaid expansion and said he doesn't want to work with the federal government to retain some control over his state's insurance exchange. He'll cede that power entirely to the Obama administration.
"There has been a lack of preparation within state government during the past year to build necessary and reliable systems to implement a state exchange," McCrory said Tuesday as he rejected a partnership exchange.
The governor also said he will not take part in the law's Medicaid expansion. The expansion is initially funded entirely by the federal government, but McCrory said he doesn't trust Congress to follow through on that funding commitment.
And in GA:
"Lawsuit: After the Democratic attorney general said he would not join Florida's lawsuit, then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, got a private attorney to handle the case in May of 2010 as a "special attorney general."
Medicaid: Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, Perdue's successor, decided in August of 2012 that the state would reject the Medicaid expansion because he thought the federal government's promises of future funding were unrealistic.
Exchange: Deal put off a decision on running a state exchange in hopes that Mitt Romney would win the presidential election, then decided to default to a federal exchange in November.
Navigators: Deal signed a law which required navigators be licensed by the state Department of Insurance, which is making them undergo special training. The new Republican attorney general also signed the letter calling for tougher federal rules.
More: Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens, a Republican, boasted at a party gathering that his office was doing "everything in our power to be an obstructionist." Deal also signed a long-shot interstate compact seeking to allow states to opt out of federal health care regulations. "
so anon.
you are going to have an excuse for everyone aren't you, without knowing the facts.
try this one :
My premium went up practically 50%, from 4000 to 5700, all my co-pays went up close to 50% and in some cases double, for a United Health Care Choice Plus plan.
this is an employer sponsored plan that specifically called out ACA as the reason for the increase.
What's your excuse for me, anon ?
do you think I could get a "less expensive plan" on the exchanges ...
And by the way, they cancelled the UHC Choice - not Choice Plus - plan I was on...
I won't qualify for a subsidy.
and by the way, I don't think ACA made the cost of insurance when purchased by individuals deductible.
that just seems nuts. Of course it should be to equalize employer sponsored versus non employers sponsored plans.
Oh.
since I was in Sweden last week on business.
VASA = Obamacare.
the parallels were QUITE amusing.
overbuilt, huge investment, important to the King, overblown, launched, sank within 1500 meters of the dock.
Last week I got news that my health insurance costs are going up. A lot. In 2014 my monthly premium for a family of four will increase 15 percent to $575, my deductible will double to $3,000 and I will lose my drug coverage, adding another $100 a month to my expenses. My story is typical for employees of Gannett, the Detroit News’ parent company, and other businesses across the country.
Obamacare is not just creating havoc in state exchanges, it is roiling the larger private health insurance market. Costs are skyrocketing thanks to the expensive mandates, regulations and taxes buried in the Affordable Car Act.
Call it the Unaffordable Care Act.
Billed by President Barack Obama as a historic reform that would reduce heath insurance costs by $2,500 a year and cover 40 million uninsured, the program is dictating terms to every health insurer while offering employees a grim choice of rising costs with their company plan or seeking refuge in unworkable, expensive government-run state exchanges.
While many small employers have welcomed a delay in the ACA’s employer mandate until 2015, businesses that already provide insurance are facing Obamacare’s new reality. The bad news has come in waves as companies like Home Depot and Trader Joe’s announced they are dropping coverage for part-time employees. Hundreds of thousands of consumers are losing their “mini-med plans” because they don’t meet Washington’s minimum requirements. Now come the premium increases for self-insured businesses that an analysis by Duke University’s Center for Health Policy estimates will cost an average family $800 a year. In Michigan, for example, insurance costs for the Extreme Chrysler dealership in Jackson are going up 70 percent and Michigan Group Benefits insurance says its clients’ average increase is 23 percent.
The $2,100 cost jump in my Gannett plan, administered by United Health, is actually worse than it appears, as my premiums have already swelled by 45 percent since 2011 as insurers anticipated federal regs forcing, for example, coverage of dependents up to 26 years old. Gannett must also swallow a $63 tax for each individual in its group plan and another $2.13 fee per head to “study heath care outcomes.” Similar costs threaten private, union-negotiated health plans, leading Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa to say Obamacare will “destroy the very health and well being of our members.”
“Health care costs historically have been going up 7 percent a year, so anything above that is probably due to provisions in Obamacare,” concludes Drew Gonshorowski, a policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Analysis, who says the ACA’s over-regulation is upsetting important insurance calculations like “age-brand compression” that balances risk pools.
“Insurance pricing is one of the most complicated, difficult-to-price markets,” he says. “The ACA doesn’t allow insurers to price freely.”
Obamacare promises that its state exchanges offer insurance options, but the government-run system is dysfunctional. Three weeks after its launch, the federally run Michigan Health Care Exchange is still a nightmare. In the first two weeks I couldn’t sign up because the three security questions wouldn’t load. Last week, the security questions were finally there, but then I stalled at the next page. After waiting in a chat room, an Obamacare assistant finally responded: “Unfortunately, (high volume) is causing some glitches for some people trying to create accounts, log in, and complete their application. Keep trying and thanks for your patience.”
But if/when if I do get in, more sticker shock awaits.
An analysis of the feds’ own data by Heritage’s Gonshorowski finds Michigan consumers (as in most states) will experience cost increases across the board. For a family of four, the state exchange will increase costs from $771 to $864 per month. Even for a 27-year old, the youth demographic on which exchanges depend to subsidize older applicants, the exchange increase costs from $117 to $255 per month, a 118 percent hike.
“The essence of the law is working,” said the president at his Monday news conference. “The prices are lower than we expected, the choice is greater than we expected.” Do you believe him or your lying eyes?
Jim.
I know a lot of tea partiers, and none of them are racists.
so I consider your statement 'I would think that anybody whose philosophy is based on the concept "I want my white country back" would have difficulty with science comprehension, and it turns out they are pretty normal on that measure.'
As a matter of fact, one of the tea partiers I know and more actively conservative than a lot of folks I know is my old nanny, Josie, who is African.
Tea partiers simply believe in personal responsibility. It can be summed up pretty simply... "whose fault is it if I am poor"... "it's your fault".
Josie came here without a penny, she is now a doctor, because she worked hard.
A concept Priya finds difficult to understand, but most of us get.
RESPONSE JIM ?
Or do you support people like Priya sucking the productivity out of the rest of us ? Including the Africans who join us ?
JIM YOU ARE A RACIST for thinking people like Josie should be forced to support people like Priya.
You must be a slaver.
RULES for Radicals.
HERE WE GO.
do you enjoy it ? does it FEEL GOOD ?
let's call everyone we disagree with a nasty name, shouldn't we ?
do you think I AM A RACIST JIM ?
I am tea partier. And I fired a blue eyed blonde college student to hire Josie - an African - over the CONTENT OF HER CHARACTER not the color of her skin.
and my children are the successful productive US citizens because of HER EXAMPLE.
SO GO AHEAD, again, call me a racist.
I know LOTS of people that are going to disagree with you drastically.
including black as coal Josie.
can you be a racist against your OWN race ? what do you think Jim ?
I think we should get Josie herself to join this site and start commenting on how racist she thinks I was to her... that co-signed her student loan, co-signed her car loan, and launched her... because I don't know what I would have done without her, and my children would not be the same successful kids as they are without her.
YOU KNOW, Jim, that I am a tea partier, and that I fired a white college student to hire an African American to raise my children and paid her extremely well over the years and yet you would dare post a subject matter that implies that folks like me don't exist.
I thought you were intellectually more honest that that.
I guess I was wrong about you.
Theresa
Theresa, it is easy to call people racists, and I have not done that. "Slaver," I don't know, that is a long shot, I would think I would have to have slaves to be that, but I do not know the exact definition of the term. I do not have slaves. Even one.
You will agree that teabaggers are often quoted saying some variation of "We want our country back." Further, I challenge you to show me any photograph taken at any Tea Party event, ever, where even ten percent of the group is black. Make it five percent. One percent, show me a picture with one black face in a hundred. It is a white people's movement. Do you think it is a coincidence that it rose up while there was a black President? When they say they want their country back they mean a certain kind of country, don't they. What kind of country do you think that would be? The kind of country that goes to war needlessly and runs the budget into the ground, like in the years before Obama? What do you think has changed that makes them feel it's not "their" country any more? It is not hard to figure out.
Plus I should mention your comment that I am saying "folks like you don't exist." Really, Theresa. Really.
JimK
Jim, defend the drastic and increasing debt from Obama who decried it while running for President.
what do you believe will happen if we continue spending like this without paying for it ?
are you okay with a debt 17T that equals our national GDP ... or are you in denial like our incompetent never held a real job president ?
And it is NOT hard to figure out .
It is the kind of country that SUPPORTS itself.
It this the KIND of country that believes it can support itself.
It is the kind of country that believes in self-reliance.
It is the kind of country that believes in INDEPENDENCE Jim.
IT IS CLEARLY NOT YOUR KIND OF COUNTRY
BUT it is MY kind of country.
Theresa
How do you justify the debt your President, that ran on decreasing it, has run up ?
Seriously, 6 years later, you are still blaming it on BUsh ?
Seriously ?
You are kidding right ?
2007 was 162 billion
2008 (the LAST PASSED BUDGET) was 500 billion.
2008 (after Obama took office) was 1.6 trillion or so
2008 and on was 1.x trillion,and this was ALL BUSH's fault even though your president has not passed a budget since he was elected.
and this is all BUSH's fault, even WHEN Obama controlled ALL branches of govt.
even though the constitution requires the congress to pass a budget and the president to ratify one, when the president controlled all branches of govt it was bush's fault that the govt didn't pass a budget.
REALLY JIM ?
Your excuse ?
Theresa
actually, anyone who would say this about the Tea Party:
"I would think that anybody whose philosophy is based on the concept "I want my white country back" would have difficulty with science comprehension, and it turns out they are pretty normal on that measure. I would think that somebody who forces the government to shut down and then gets furious when government facilities actually close might not have a real good grasp of science."
doesn't have a good grip on reality of any kind
then, there's this bit of illogic:
"You will agree that teabaggers are often quoted saying some variation of "We want our country back." Further, I challenge you to show me any photograph taken at any Tea Party event, ever, where even ten percent of the group is black. Make it five percent. One percent, show me a picture with one black face in a hundred. It is a white people's movement. Do you think it is a coincidence that it rose up while there was a black President? When they say they want their country back they mean a certain kind of country, don't they. What kind of country do you think that would be? The kind of country that goes to war needlessly and runs the budget into the ground, like in the years before Obama? What do you think has changed that makes them feel it's not "their" country any more?"
the objection to Obama is that he is socialist and treats our constitution with contempt
no one cares what color he is
liberals would like to perpetuate racism because they have used it to political effect
a world where racism doesn't exist is one that makes liberals very uneasy
and, yes, it's racist to assume that minorities will feel they can't survive and thrive without confiscatory taxes being transferred to them
as Obama's election and re-election prove, there are no insurmountable hindrances to success, based on racial factors, in our country
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) called on the White House Tuesday to extend the open enrollment deadline for Obamacare because of the government's glitchy website rollout.
In a letter to the White House obtained by Politico, Shaheen said her constituents have faced "incredibly frustrating and disappointing" issues with HealthCare.gov, which had been billed by President Barack Obama as a one-stop marketplace for health insurance.
"As website glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans," Shaheen wrote. "I also fear that people that have tried, and failed, to enroll online may become frustrated and not return to the website to try again at a later date."
Uninsured Americans have until March 31 to sign up for a health care plan, or face a penalty. Shaheen is the first Democrat to support an extension of the enrollment deadline.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he would introduce a bill with a similar premise -- calling for a delay to the penalty that uninsured Americans will face if they do not sign up for insurance before the March deadline. He appeared on CBS' "This Morning" to express qualms with the penalty.
"It's not fair to punish people for not buying something that's not available," Rubio said.
"Further, I challenge you to show me any photograph taken at any Tea Party event, ever, where even ten percent of the group is black. Make it five percent. One percent, show me a picture with one black face in a hundred. It is a white people's movement."
My bestimate is that anyone who would say this would have difficulty with science comprehension.
Based on the logic of this statement, PTAs at most schools are racist.
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