Over eight million people have signed up for Obamacare and many of them are the young people needed to make the program a success. Of course the GOP is busy knocking this number and finding faults but there were many people in the que when the deadline arrived and shut down that there has to a be a new program to sign them all up,
The Republicans are busy trying to put together a program of their own instead of helping to fix the flaws in this one, but after looking at Paul Ryan’s new budget and his comments on the GOP’s version, it becomes clear that their plan, if it ever comes to fruition, will bring back the insurance companies ability to turn you down for a precondition or to keep your kids on your program..
There is a reason for the ACA, but the GOP just doesn’t understand this reason or they do understand it and just don’t agree with it based on their fealty to the insurance lobbies. Or maybe it’s just because they hate the black guy in the White House and don’t want anything he creates to live on, after him. All positions are wrong for the American people.
There are two big improvements that can be made in the ACA. The first is to make it a single payer system. This will save the American people between 20% and 30%, a huge savings. The second is to limit the ability of every nut to sue doctors for malpractice, which is costing the system billions. The funny thing is that these two changes, one looked for by the Left and the other by the Right could be the unifying items that create a bi-partisan rallying point on which both parties could get together and finally make something work. Fix those two problems and suddenly the ACA really lives up to its name.
*******
Climate change is no longer an issue for debate. 97% of the scientific community agrees that it is real and man-made. 3% don’t think so. Those 3% are backed by the GOP and the fossil fuel industry all over the world. The fossil fuel industry doesn’t care if our children die. The men who run it, like the Koch’s, will already be dead of old age and they obviously don’t give a damn about heir own kids, as long as they have enough money for a third yacht.
*******
There is no right in our democracy more basic than the right to participate in electing our political leaders. The argument that labor unions money offsets the money from a billionaire is fallacious. Unions raise their money from small donations made by millions of members. That money represents the voices of all those people. The money from a Koch demonstrates the will of two men. That is not equal or fair representation.
*******
We are getting ready to get out of Afghanistan and at the same time we are seeing an election there that may decide whether or not we leave a sizeable contingent of American soldiers there to do counter intelligence work and train Afghani troops. Why do we care? The answer in one word. Pakistan. Pakistan is right now, the key to the whole area, and the reason they are is simple. Nuclear weapons. If they did not have nuclear weapons we would ignore them as a third rate power, an ally of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and a state almost as screwed up as North Korea. But they do have them, much the same as North Korea does. So we keep pouring money, over a billion a year, into that mess, just to support some kind of government, flawed as it is, in hopes that it won’t get worse.
Even the Russians are on our side in this one. India did not vote to condemn Russia in the Ukraine simply because they want Russia’s backing in their forever hostile relations with Pakistan. This is all another gift for which we can thank the British, who, when they gave up the Raj, just walked away leaving the mess between India and Pakistan, including Bangladesh to brew and erupt. The Brits really knew how to milk a country of all its resources but they were utter failures at knowing how to run those nations and how to let them go. They dominated the Middle East, India and Pakistan, as well as much of Africa during the Raj and they left all of them in a disastrous state. Can you imagine what they would have done over here if we hadn’t kicked them the hell out?
****
Shawn McCutchcon, the plaintiff in the case the supreme court has just ruled on regarding campaign contributions was on Meet the Press, this week and maybe it’s me, or the southern accent but he seems like one of the dumbest people I have ever heard speak out loud. It’s probably neither of those reasons, it’s definitely his take on what are his rights as a private citizen but he completely, as does the court, misses the point of the right of free speech and what causes corruption. Anyone, including McCutcheon who doesn’t understand that a guy who gives 5 big ones to a candidate will definitely expect something back from them and that’s corrupt, doesn’t deserve to have an opinion and that includes the fascist members of the Supreme Court. If McCutcheon is really dumb enough to think that this quid pro quo doesn’t amount to bribery he is far dumber then, even his fat, blank face indicates.
*****
This Week did a number on religion recently, featuring three Evangelical preachers and Cokie Roberts. One of the preachers was Franklin Graham, son of the infamous Billy Graham. It seems that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, but this one landed in cow flop and is rotting before our eyes. This turkey thinks that gay marriage is bad because they can’t have biological children. Why this makes it bad is beyond logic but then no one ever accused the Evangelicals of being logical. Then this moron goes on to say that gays adopting kids who need parents is a bad thing because they are proselytizing. You mean like all the evangelical missionaries all over the world, Frankie boy?
The idea that it is bad for any loving adult to adopt any child who needs a parent is so blatantly absurd that the propagator of said idea should be committed. Yes, Franklyn Graham belongs in a looney bin.. He sits grinning at the camera while be babbles about Gods love and in the same sentence comes up with the idea that’s it’s bad to adopt needy kids if you’re gay. The man’s a pathetic moron.
The other two clowns tried to cover for him but then got into a corner by quoting old statistics that say that it is better for a child to have a mother and a father to raise them so gays aren’t good choices for adoption. At this point Cokie calls them on this stupidity, pointing out that any loving parent is better than an orphanage.
It’s the perfect proof of the thinking person’s argument that organized religion is completely unnecessary. Why does anyone need morons like these telling him what to do? Could anyone make worse choices then these idiots?
*****
Nora O’Donnell interviewed Cardinal Dolan recently on Face the Nation. Dolan is an smart guy but one of the most hypocritical phonies on the face of the earth. I don’t attack him for his stances on things like gay marriage, or abortion or even the ludicrous Hobby Lobby case; that’s his job. He is supposed to be wrong on these things because he represents the kind of mindset created by organized religion that cannot admit to any room for argument. God said it! End of discussion. So he’s just doing his job, wrong as it may be in these circumstances.
It’s when he spends millions to fancy up St. Patrick’s cathedral at the expense of closing Catholic schools that he shows his basic false piety. Yes, the cathedral is a landmark of the city and the church but that doesn’t mean that the Church should be spending money to spruce it up even as it closes schools. People will appreciate the cathedral whether it is sand blasted or not. One of the beauties of old churches and believe me I have seem most of the ones in Europe, is that they look like old churches. It gives them a certain gravitas. Cleaning up the one on Fifth Avenue only makes it look like a ginger bread version of a real church. So we screw up a perfectly good tourist attraction and while we’re doing it we close our schools, schools that are desperately needed for our kids. A Catholic education, setting aside the proselytizing that occurs during it, is still just about the best available to our kids and at a price far lower than that of normal private school. Losing those jewels of education to clean up a tourist attraction is just wrong. If that’s the way Dolan thinks this diocese should be run, then maybe he should be running a CVS.
******
The federalist Society’s second annual Branch Review Conference has finally come up with a purpose for that otherwise useless cabal of Tea Party pond scum. They’re going to impeach Obama for legal and regulatory outreach. What? Wait a minute. You mean some actual grown-ups are going to waste their time and some amount of government money in an attempt to impeach Obama after no one bothered to put Bush, Cheney Rove, Rice, etc. on trial for treason for lying the country into two wars and subsequently destroying the economy? And these guys ostensibly graduated from law school? Obviously they all went to the Samuel E. Drywall , Septic Pumping and Law School.
Yes, the Federalist Society is a platform for the discussion of conservative ideas and it has been active in filling jobs in GOP administrations but is there anyone in the entire group that actually has a cogent thought about anything of importance or do they just spend their time making up shit that makes them feel good?
*****
The question has always been-how do you know this guy is lying and the answer has always been because his lips are moving. The guy, of course, is Ted Cruz, who just had to get into the Ukraine business at the Republican barbecue recently, commenting that people around the world think we are weak because we didn’t invade Ukraine and throw the Russians out. But when asked by George Stephanopoulos, who made a rare appearance on his own show, if he would have used military force there, he stumbles and stutters and has no answer because there is none and all he can contribute to any argument is lies and misquotes about what Obama isn’t doing.
Cruz goes into a whole riff about how we should stand by the Ukraine. It is impossible that Cruz doesn’t know that we started the whole mess by standing so close to the Ukrainians that our money inspired the whole revolt. It was our desire to get the nation, which had a Russian leaning president to overthrow that president and create an illegal government. It is impossible for a man in Cruz position not to know this? So all we can conclude is that he is lying about what he knows and that just affirms what almost everyone knows about Cruz; that he is a sniveling, lying little loser who will do or say anything to get his two minutes of TV time in a desperate but fading attempt to gin up his position in a failing party. Cruz is one of the most despicable characters that have ever disgraced their place in the senate, a blot on the American flag and a disgrace to humanity.
Is ABC and Stephanopoulos so desperate to secure their soap selling or in this case their BP commercial dollar that they put lying hacks like Cruz and Mike Rogers on the air without anyone to refute them on the spot? Is that how far our commentary programs have sunk?
******
Bill Kristol who all my readers know is right at the bottom of my bottom feeder list has actually come up with some intelligent thought on the VA problem. He thinks we should give the vets vouchers to have their problems treated at regular hospitals. It’s a good idea but like everything else Kristol does he can’t leave well enough alone. He wants to privatize the whole VA system. It’s a typical Republican strategy, don’t solve the problem, privatize it. Let some big business make a profit on it rather than use that potential profit to help alleviate the problem.
*****
This Week gave the environment about two minutes at the end of the show, allowing an expert from the coal side to debate an expert from the breathing side for the length of a short commercial. What the show featured was 58 minutes of such earth shattering problems as the return to America of a former American POW, the Benghazi rehash and Hilary Clinton’s book. All you have to do to see why all these forgettable non-stories topped the possible destruction of the planet was to look at who sponsors the show; fossil fuel companies, chemical manufacturers, car companies and insurance companies. Every one of the sponsors of this show are trying to destroy the planet or screw its inhabitants for huge profits that they hope to spend before we are all dead from their products. This is why we don’t have balanced programing.