Category Archives: Election

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

The Nullification Party by Andrew Sullivan

Hat tip to Rebecca Lasley.

The Nullification Party « The Dish

How does one party that has lost two presidential elections and a Supreme Court case – as well as two Senate elections  –   think it has the right to shut down the entire government and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury to get its way on universal healthcare now? I see no quid pro quo even. Just pure blackmail ….

I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment. …

If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.

The Nullification Party « The Dish

Election

Mission accomplished: The tea party shutdown By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

Mission accomplished: The tea party shutdown By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

Yes, the tea party Republicans should hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner across the House of Representatives. They could flank it with large portraits of Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who ousted John Boehner as speaker of the House in an unacknowledged coup. The right-wing extremists got exactly what they wanted. Now, what will the country do about it?

Mission accomplished: The tea party shutdown By E.J. Dionne Jr.,

Throw the bums out?

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Critics miss the point of Affordable Care Act | ABQJournal Online

Quigley does it again. Brilliant. Medicare for all!

Critics miss the point of Affordable Care Act | ABQJournal Online

Winthrop Quigley / Journal Staff Writer | 10 hours ago

Wealthy opponents of the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – in the form of the Club for Growth have launched some absurd television commercials featuring Uncle Sam replacing the kindly family doctor to examine the most private part of a patient’s anatomy. The message is that the government wants to take over your health care.

There are many Americans who would love to see a real government takeover by eliminating the private, for-profit insurance industry and replacing it with that radical, socialistic, alien form of health care finance known as … Medicare.

As it happens, Obamacare has very little to do with health and everything to do with finance. It is an attempt to rescue the nation’s for-profit health-care financing system from itself.

The United States has a lot of experience with rescuing elements of capitalism from capitalism’s strange propensity to self-destruct. [keep reading]

Critics miss the point of Affordable Care Act | ABQJournal Online

As for that leering Dr Sam, he could be the symbol of the fight against reproductive rights. These fools have no shame at all.

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Data deniers and their fears

A friend expressed an interest in data regarding the Affordable Care Act. My first thought is that data means nothing to the deniers of evolution or the deniers of climate change. They are simply data deniers.

Another example comes to mind: gun violence. In this case, those who profit from gun violence have worked steadfastly to prevent the accumulation of data.

The ACA contains detailed mechanisms for the accumulation of and transparency of data. We will have real data on what works and what doesn’t, data we can use to improve the ACA.

The anarcho-libertarians who control the Republican party fear information. Information is the messenger of change, which these paleo-conservatives fear most of all. Change is the root of all their fears.

The opponents of affordable healthcare don’t give a damn about the economy they claim to want to protect. Their current actions prove that. They fear every example of successful government. A government that works might interfere with their profit taking. Better we should all die, be it disease, the food we buy, guns, or pure ignorance.

Election

Who profits from the deadbeat Republicans? The already rich.

Stocks sink as government heads toward shutdown | ABQJournal Online

NEW YORK – Stocks sank Monday as Wall Street worried that a budget fight in Washington could lead to an event far worse for the economy- a failure to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

Investors pulled back from stocks as a budget fight in Congress threatened to push the government into a partial shutdown for the first time in 17 years. Lawmakers have until midnight Tuesday to reach a budget deal that would keep government in full operation.

There is a simple reason why the budget battle – and, more importantly, an upcoming fight over the debt ceiling – are so crucial: the credit of the United States is the bedrock that nearly every other investment is built upon, largely due to the assumption that the nation will always pay its debts.

Stocks sink as government heads toward shutdown | ABQJournal Online

What’s changing, what’s not, in a shutdown | ABQJournal Online

In this time of argument and political gridlock, a blueprint to manage federal dysfunction is one function that appears to have gone smoothly. Throughout government, plans are ready to roll out to keep essential services running and numb the impact for the public. The longer a shutdown goes on, the more it will be felt in day-to-day lives and in the economy as a whole.

A look at what is bound to happen, and what probably won’t, barring a political breakthrough in the final hours:

What’s changing, what’s not, in a shutdown | ABQJournal Online

Election

Who will *profit* from a government shutdown? Who will be hurt?

Who do Republicans represent? Ask the Koch brothers. Remember this come election time.

House votes to avoid shutdown, delay Obamacare | ABQJournal Online

House GOP rank and file that includes numerous tea party allies would soon have to choose between triggering the first partial shutdown in nearly two decades — or coming away empty-handed from their latest confrontation with Obama.

Undeterred, House Republicans pressed ahead with their latest attempt to squeeze a concession from the White House in exchange for letting the government open for business normally on Tuesday. “Obamacare is based on a limitless government, bureaucratic arrogance and a disregard of a will of the people,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind. [mjh: I can think of nothing more arrogant and disregarding of the will of the People than the Republicans.] …

For a moment at least, the revised House proposal papered over a simmering dispute between Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the leadership, and tea party conservatives who have been more militant about abolishing the health law that all Republican lawmakers oppose.

It was unclear whether members of the rank and file had consulted with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has become the face of the “Defund Obamacare” campaign that tea party organizations are promoting and using as a fundraising tool.

House votes to avoid shutdown, delay Obamacare | ABQJournal Online

Our own Winthrop Quigley does his usual thorough and balanced job regarding Obamacare. (The Republicans will rue the day the named the ACA that. Imagine if Social Security were called RooseveltCare, Medacaid as JohnsonCare or both as DemocratCare 1 and 2.)

Obamacare starting Oct. 1, changing U.S. health insurance | ABQJournal Online

    By Winthrop Quigley / Journal Staff Writer | 10 hours ago

    Copyright © 2013 Albuquerque Journal

    History will be made Tuesday.

    On that day will begin the major push to implement the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – a federal program designed to assure that, in 2014, nearly everyone will have a way to pay for health care and that no one can be denied coverage. Not since Medicare was enacted in 1965 has a government social program been designed to touch so many lives

    Obamacare starting Oct. 1, changing U.S. health insurance | ABQJournal Online

    Highlights you might need to know | ABQJournal Online

    By Winthrop Quigley / Journal Staff Writer | 10 hours ago

    Copyright © 2013 Albuquerque Journal

    A number of significant Affordable Care Act provisions take effect Tuesday; others start in a few months.

    Here are some of the things the average citizen needs to know.

    Highlights you might need to know | ABQJournal Online

    Election

    jfleck cogently asks, “who represents Al-Qaeda” in these metaphors

    Well said and heartfelt.

    Annals of fucked up metaphors | jfleck at inkstain

    As a group of U.S. politicians prepared to vote on a measure intended to delay implementation of a federal effort to extend health care to uninsured Americans, one of them, a Republican Texas congressman named John Culberson, was quoted thus:

    “I said, like 9/11, ‘let’s roll!’”

    It is a reference to the words attributed to Todd Beamer, a passenger on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, as a group of passengers tried to overpower the hijackers and prevent the use of the aircraft in a suicide attack.

    In discussing U.S. health care policy in a column back in 2009, I employed a different use of the 9/11 metaphor in an effort to help readers make sense of the 18,000 people who, according to an Institute of Medicine study, die each year in the United States because of a lack of health insurance:

    I’ve struggled with ways of getting across 18,000 preventable deaths per year. It is a 9/11 attack every two months, year in and year out.

    I’ve often found it useful to push metaphors to the breaking point. Thinking through their failure mode provides useful information. So I’d invite you, in considering Culberson’s words and mine, to think about who represents Al-Qaeda here – the people attempting to extend health care coverage to the uninsured, or the people attempting to stop them.

    Or maybe we should all just stop with the 9/11 references.

    Annals of fucked up metaphors | jfleck at inkstain