Monday, September 30, 2013
The Health Insurance Marketplace Is Open!
The new Health Insurance Marketplace helps uninsured people find health coverage.
GOP Came To Power Seeking Government Shutdown
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Radical House GOP Made Safe By Gerrymandering
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GOP Abandons Democracy Over Obamacare
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Obama Calls For 11th Hour Shutdown Solution
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Is The 1995 Shutdown Doomed To Repeat Itself?
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GOP’s fatal leadership failure: The real story behind the shutdown
"But still, a shutdown might happen. If it does, it will represent an admission by House Speaker John Boehner that the right wing of the Republican party is too unruly for a person of his temperament to lead, and too powerful for a person of his character to ignore. He will be giving them the shutdown they demand, either to call their bluff, or to guard against being ousted from his Speakership, or maybe a bit of both."
As Planet Warms, US Watersheds Go Thirsty | Common Dreams
"A shocking one in ten U.S. watersheds is in a state of "stress" as the nation-wide demand for water outstrips nature's ability to provide, with this trend expected to worsen as the climate continues to warm, an alarming new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder finds."
Billionaire Republican Funder Loses Bogus Defamation Suit, Ordered To Pay Court Fees
"Adelson and his wife spent a reported $150 million to help elect Republican candidates in 2012. Last month, he reportedly agreed to pay $47.4 million in fines to settle a federal money laundering investigation, but is still facing separate inquiries into alleged foreign corrupt practices."
The Farm Bill Will Expire Tomorrow, Leaving Farmers In The Lurch
Thank the GOP for the Shutdown and Holding the Economy Hostage | Common Dreams
"So we know the sequester will give us deteriorating government services, higher unemployment, and slower economic growth. That's the track record which prompts the Wall Street Journal's boasts – and the GOP's misguided actions – in favor of even more austerity."
CNN Host Asks GOP Representatives Whether They’d Give Up Their Salary During A Shutdown, Hilarity Ensues
"On Monday, CNN host Ashleigh Banfield confronted two Republican representatives — Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — to see whether they themselves would be willing to forgo a paycheck in the event of a government shutdown, something nearly every other federal employee would be forced to do."
Low-Income Moms And Infants Will See Support Disappear In A Shutdown
21 Things Republicans Have Demanded In Exchange For Not Shutting Down The Government Or Tanking The Global Economy
"Since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2011, they have repeatedly attempted to use the prospect of a government shutdown or a debt default as leverage. A shutdown would furlough close to a million federal workers and cut off essential services for millions more Americans, while a default on U.S. debt, even according to Speaker John Boehner, could devastate the global economy. While the recent debate has focused on Obamacare, that is just the latest in a series of demands made by Republicans. The following is a list of things that have been, at various times, demanded by Republicans under threat of a government shutdown or default"
Republicans Lose Business Allies As They Push U.S. Toward Shutdown
PERRspectives: Better Dead and Red: How the GOP Blocked Health Care for Red State Americans
"Study after study has long shown that health care is worst in precisely those states where Republicans poll best. But in their zeal to discredit a president they loathe, GOP leaders across the nation passed up an historic opportunity to bring health insurance, greater financial security and higher standards of living to millions of their own constituents. When they didn't outright deny coverage to red state residents, Republicans did their damnedest to prevent their voters from even learning about their options under the ACA. And what "information" about Obamacare the GOP's best and brightest regurgitated simply wasn't true."
POLL: Voters Are ‘Unmoved’ By Government Shutdown Drama, Still Don’t Want To Delay Obamacare
Sunday, September 29, 2013
College Student Attacks Ted Cruz For Lying About Him In Faux Filibuster Obamacare Speech
"Ted Cruz gets caught lying about a young person's story in order to attack Obamacare and the student he cited is not happy about it."
Bill Clinton: Republicans are 'Begging for America to Fail'
"Bill Clinton is no stranger to crazy-eyed Republican campaigns to destroy a Democratic president. But even he thinks that the single-minded extremism with which today's Republican Party operates has gotten to the point where they no longer care if the entire country is a casualty to their battle."
Dear Congress – Stop This Manufactured Crisis | Common Dreams
"Forty-one organizations, representing millions of Americans, have signed this letter to Congress, asking them to stand against those who would “hold our economy hostage in order to dictate the terms of the debate"."
House Republicans Throw in Birth Control Access in Government Funding Bill
"Typical of the privileged, entitled spoiled brats that they collectively are, the House Republicans threw everything but the kitchen sink into their government funding bill. The bill, which purportedly was to stave off a government shutdown, was instead a big, fat sloppy kiss to all of the special interests that want to curtail average Americans' lives while enriching the top one percent even further."
College Student Attacks Ted Cruz For Lying About Him In Faux Filibuster Obamacare Speech
"Ted Cruz gets caught lying about a young person's story in order to attack Obamacare and the student he cited is not happy about it."
The National Memo » Republicans Are Terrified That Obamacare Will Succeed
"the Koch brothers, like most conservatives, want Obamacare to fail. They are not concerned that the new health care law, which would extend insurance to the vast majority for the first time in history, is a “government takeover” of medicine or a “jobs-killer” or a ruinous new entitlement. None of that is true. (See factcheck.org or PolitiFact.com for actual facts about Obamacare.) Nope, the real concern of most conservatives is that Obamacare will work, proving popular over the long run."
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Idiots Rule as House Republicans Vote to Shut Down the Government Over Obamacare
"Whether House Republicans want to admit it or not, there is a sizable contingent among their ranks who have been chasing after this moment since the day that they arrived in Washington. The idiot ideologues completed their takeover of the House Republicans tonight. They are firmly in charge now. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the House leadership were nowhere to be found as their party went down in flames.
It was as if the Republican leadership thought that if they stay away, they will avoid the blame for this entire situation. Out of sight, out of mind won’t work on this one. Boehner’s caving to the extremists is what caused this series of events to play out the way that they have."
Dean Of Congressional Press Corps Finds Root Of Government Shutdown In Paul Ryan Budget
"David Rogers, the unofficial dean of the congressional press corps, has been reporting on Capitol Hill since Charlie Wilson was figuring out ways to fund the mujahedeen in Afghanistan (and, in fact, he broke that story). When it comes to budget issues, nobody is more respected on Capitol Hill.
And the root of the impending government shutdown, he is reporting, goes back to the House Republican budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), that promised unrealistic cuts that finally have collided with reality"
VIDEO: Conservative Conference Cheers At Suggestion That Obama Is Going To Hell
"Inopportune audience interjections at conservative events aren’t limited to CPAC. GOP debate crowds yelled out during a 2012 election debate to let uninsured people in the emergency room die rather than cover their expenses. They also cheered when it was announced that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has overseen 234 executions during his time in office. What Republican audiences have found fit to boo, however, was a gay soldier who wanted to know why he shouldn’t be allowed to serve his country and love his partner."
Debunking The 'Vast Obamacare Conspiracy'
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PERRspectives: 10 Things John Boehner Doesn't Want You to Know about the Debt
"So it's come down to this. Once again kowtowing to the most extreme members of his Republican Party, House Speaker John Boehner is willing to shut down the federal government and trigger a global economic meltdown, all in the GOP's quixotic quest to defund, delay or otherwise damage Obamacare."
The Complete Guide To The GOP’s Three-Year Campaign To Shut Down The Government
Tea Party Lawmaker Letter on Med Device Tax Repeal Authored by Lobby Group | The Nation
"In fact, medical device lobbyists have been close to Congress all week leading up to the vote today."
Scott Walker’s Fiscal Irresponsibility Will Now Cost Wisconsin Billions As Bridges Start Failing (VIDEO)
"This is yet again evidence of how putting off maintenance costs more than any money saved, as the economic impact ripples outward. The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, delayed critical maintenance of the bridge, even ignoring when cracks were discovered in 2012, and used money for bridge maintenance to instead pay back mutual funds and bankers."
Debunking the Propaganda Campaign to Kill Obamacare | Alternet
"You can bet the figure that will stay in recipients’ minds is the prospect of $2,672 in savings, compared to current costs. Most people will ignore the anti-Obamacare noise and see just what they can get for $222 less a month."
House GOP Marked By Lack Of Empathy
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Nation Agape At House GOP Chaos
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Friday, September 27, 2013
Fox And Friends Do Not Understand Obamacare
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Obama To Congress: 'Do Not Shut The Government Down'
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Sanders' Epic Senate Rant Shames 'Right-Wing Extremists' for Shutdown Threat
"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday tore into what he called "extreme right-wing Republicans" for threatening to shut down the government and default on the nation's debts if President Barack Obama's health care reform law was not defunded."
Correcting Five Myths About Medicaid — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
"Some claim that Medicaid is an inefficient program whose costs are growing out of control. That’s a myth. Medicaid’s per-beneficiary costs are lower than for private insurance, and its costs have been growing more slowly than employer coverage."
Krugman: Plutocrats Have Become Sociopaths with Their Persecution Complexes | Alternet
"Insurance giant AIG's CEO is latest to compare criticism of his bonuses to 'lynchings.' Is he nuts?"
GOP Fears American Appreciation Of Obamacare
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House Republicans Reckless With US Credit
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Lacking Leadership, GOP Takes US To Brink
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15 Things You Should Know About The New IPCC Report On Climate Science
Global Warming: Why is IPCC Report So Certain About the Influence of Humans? | Common Dreams
"This is why there's a 97 percent consensus amongst climate experts and in the climate science literature that humans are causing global warming. The scientific evidence on this question is overwhelming."
House GOP Debt-Ceiling Plan: Paul Ryan’s Losing Ideas From 2012 | Common Dreams
"Now, they seek to use those positions to make debt-ceiling threats, with the purpose of implementing an agenda that was rejected by the American people. Which brings us to the final question: What was the point of the 2012 election if the will of the people can be thwarted by the politicians whose “big ideas” failed at the polls?"
Republican Debt-Ceiling Demand: Nullify Democracy | Common Dreams
"So with the shutdown fight underway, Republicans are planning out what they will demand in exchange for not destroying the country by defaulting on the debt. It looks like they are going to demand a wish list of plutocratic crap."
Missouri GOP Senator Breaks From His Party, Encourages People To Sign Up For Obamacare Next Week
Ted Cruz Is a Big Phony and A Giant Narcissist | Alternet
"Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling, fake-filibustered his way into headlines recently with a 21-hour anti-Obamacare verbal rampage that simultaneously made his party look stupid and accomplished nothing. It did, however, spread images of his smarmy mug across televisions and newspapers around the country, which is the outcome Cruz most ardently hoped for.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
President Obama Defends Obamacare
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The Most Ridiculous Job In Washington
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Pinheads And White House Correspondents
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Republican Righteousness: Taking Food From Hungry
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Obama Calls Out GOP Healthcare Lies
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California Sets Example For Minimum Wage
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How America’s 401(k) Revolution Rewarded the Rich and Turned the Rest of Us Into Big Losers | Alternet
"It was a bad idea from the get-go, but new research shows that America’s 401(k) revolution has left us even worse off than we thought."
Detroit Emergency Manager Floats Surprise Plan To Freeze City Pensions
"The man appointed to oversee Detroit’s finances would like to freeze future pension benefits for those still on the job for the city."
Jon Stewart Uses Dr. Seuss to Mock Ted Cruz' Ridiculous 'Fauxlibuster'
"The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his ridiculous Hitler-invoking, Dr. Seuss-reading, fake filibuster to task this Wednesday."
California Governor Signs Law Raising Minimum Wage To $10 Per Hour
"California’s minimum hourly wage will rise to $9 by next July and $10 by the beginning of 2016 after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the wage hike into law Wednesday."
The Radicalism of Today’s Austerity in One Chart | Economic Policy Institute
"So there have been radicals in fiscal policy debates in U.S. politics over the past 5 years, and they’ve won. And the country is much worse off for it."
Republicans Will Raise The Debt Ceiling For One Year Only If Obama Becomes A Republican
Tea Party Supporter Has Set A Date For The Armed Overthrow Of The Government
"Other Tea Party supporters have put out the call for armed assaults several times before. They do this whenever a decision does not match their narrow world view. The call is getting louder as time goes on.
And it’s only a matter of time before they snap, and then try and force their flawed and broken view of the world upon us all."
Conservative radio host jokes Hillary Clinton should be shot
"The host, who goes by the name “Georgia,” has a history of inflammatory remarks. According to Brad Kava at Santa Cruz Patch, Georgia’s show “comes from a Tea Party perspective and has all the wit and intelligence of a Ku Klux Klan meeting.” As an example, Kava writes that Georgia has previously argued that American slavery wasn’t as bad as is commonly believed."
Exposed: Enron billionaire’s diabolical plot to loot worker pensions
"The goals of the plot against pensions are both straightforward and deceptive. On the surface, the primary objective is to convert traditional defined-benefit pension funds that guarantee retirement income into riskier, costlier schemes that reduce benefits and income guarantees, and subject taxpayers and millions of workers’ retirement funds to Enron’s casino-style economics.
At the same time, waging a high-profile fight for such an objective also simultaneously helps achieve the conservative movement’s larger goal of protecting profligate corporate subsidies."
Poll: 80% Say Government Shutdown Threats 'Unacceptable'
"Americans are united across party lines in thinking that threatening a government shutdown as a negotiating ploy is unacceptable. In a new CBS News/New York Times poll, 80 percent of people said no, it's not okay to do that."
GOP Returns To Government Shutdown Agenda
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Cuccinelli Plumbs Right Amid Listing Polls
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Ted Cruz's Money Motives
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Clearing Out The Message On Obamacare
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Final Word On Obamacare Coverage: Cheaper Than Expected
"On average, people will have a choice of 56 different insurance plans -- depending on which state you live in, though, that figure could range from seven (in Alabama) to 106 (in Arizona). The average number of insurers in a state is eight, though that again ranges from one to 13 in different states.
As for premiums, before tax credits kick in, they will average 16 percent below the Congressional Budget Office's original estimates for a silver-level plan (which covers 70 percent of costs). The number of insurers in a state is directly tied to how low premiums will be, Lambrew noted. Arizona, with an average of 106 plans to choose from, had the second-lowest average premiums for a 27-year-old adult: $166 a month. Wyoming, with an average of 16 plans, had the highest average premium at $342 a month.
But then the tax credits take effect. Those knock the premium for that 27-year-old, projected to earn $25,000, down to $145 in most states. For a family of four making $50,000, the credits take the premium price down from more than $1,000 in some states to $282.
The numbers before and after tax credits drop even further for bronze-level plans (which cover 60 percent of costs), often below $100 on average when tax credits are accounted for."
Ball On Conservatives Opposing Obamacare
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Jon Stewart Eviscerates Cruz and Republicans on Anti-Obamacare Crusade | Alternet
"Jon Stewart had a field day with the Ted Cruz-led Republican Party threat to shut down the government unless the President agrees to defund Obamacare last night."
John McCain Defends Obamacare, Slams Ted Cruz For Comparing Implementation To Nazi Appeasement
How Doctors Are Preparing For The Millions Of People Who Will Get Mental Health Care Under Obamacare
A New Voice of Morality Responds Bluntly to Right-Wing Rants Against Anti-Poverty Programs | Common Dreams
"The plight of the poor in our Land of Plenty is so dramatic that even the Republican leaders of the U.S. House have noticed them and are reaching out with open hands. Unfortunately, they are not offering a helping hand to the needy, but a cold, hard slap in the face."
Top Nevada GOPer Brags 2014 Will Be ‘A Great Year For Republicans’ Because Minorities Won’t Vote
Arizona Republicans File Lawsuit To Make Congressional Gerrymandering Even Worse
Cruz A Spectacle With Faux Filibuster
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Senator Sanders Continues Relentless Flogging Of Extremist GOP
"Congressional Republicans are threatening to shut down the federal government next Tuesday unless the Affordable Care Act is defunded. The truth is that they’re just warming up and some of their other ideas are even further “off the deep end,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told radio host Bill Press on Tuesday. Then in a Senate floor speech, Sanders detailed a Republican to-do list that ranges from abolishing Social Security, privatizing VA health care, getting rid of the EPA, junking the minimum wage and more."
New Report: For 95% Of Americans, Obamacare Will Cost Much Less Than Expected
DC Republicans in Full Panic Mode: Obamacare Will Be Hugely Popular and There's Little the GOP Can Do to Stop It | Alternet
"Thus, their posturing, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest bill for complete defunding and his Tuesday filibuster, needs to be seen as the old cliché it is: a desperate measure for their desperate time.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Obamacare Explained By Clinton And Obama
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Why Ted Cruz’s Anti-Obamacare Grandstanding Doesn’t Matter At All
GOP rebranding effort is officially dead
"Republicans will go to the electorate in 2014 and perhaps again in 2016, without anything new or different or improved to offer an increasingly liberal electorate."
Extreme Energy Extraction Roadtrip — The Scary Ways We're Ruining the Country to Get Fossil Fuels | Alternet
"A look at what fracking, mountaintop removal for coal and other extraction methods are doing to communities across the country"