Immigration

Raw Story: Although they’re unlikely to win the legislative fight to kill the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have already succeeded in keeping millions of Americans from getting health insurance.

A New York Times analysis of census data found that two-thirds of the poor black people and single mothers and more than half the low-wage workers who don’t have insurance coverage have been left out of the vast expansion of Medicaid because they live in states controlled by Republicans.

So we would definitely recommend that if you're looking for affordable heath care you leave these states that are controlled by Republicans.

It's already the case that the states that are controlled by Republicans are the welfare states.  That is to say that due to inferior economic activity and a general lack of competitiveness they take more from the federal coffers than they contribute.  A steady flow of workers and families out of these states will no doubt exacerbate that situation.  But it can't be helped.

It's Your Heritage Jim!

TPM: As Jim DeMint sees it, Mitt Romney precluded Republicans from truly campaigning against the Affordable Care Act in last year's election.

“Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” the Heritage Foundation president told Bloomberg Businessweek's Joshua Green in a story published Thursday.

Presumably because it was Romney's idea...  What the TPM piece doesn't say, and Jim DeMint for sure doesn't say, is that before Romney, the idea actually came out of... wait for it... wait for it... yes, the Heritage Foundation.  Of which Jim DeMint is now president.  And if all that's not enough, DeMint himself is on record supporting the idea. So uh, yeah.. whatever.

Here's the fine point of it: if these people are against something just because the president is for it, even if it was their idea in the first place, they're by definition not motivated by what's best for the country.

Working For The People Of New York

Think Progress:  Health care premiums on the individual market will tumble by at least 50 percent as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The state joins Oregon, Montana, California, and Louisiana in reporting lower than expected rates in the law’s new health care marketplaces. 

In states that have allowed Obamacare to be implemented premiums are falling.  In these places Obamcare is working on behalf of the citizens of this country, just as it was designed to do.  If you're unlucky enough to live in a red state however, Republicans are fighting implementation of the law and trying to sabotage it as much as possible.  So no affordable healthcare for you.

This is because Republicans legislate on behalf the ridiculously rich people who run big for-profit corporations and not you.  You can die in the gutter or go broke trying not to for all they care, as long as Steven J Helmsly is happy.

NOT - YOUR - TEAM

Think Progress:  Americans for Prosperity — a conservative group funded by the Koch brothers — is spending millions on ads that aim to turn Americans against the Affordable Care Act, just as government officials prepare to enroll the uninsured in the law’s new health care exchanges beginning on October 1. The campaign will eschew attacks on President Obama in favor of a new non-ideological tone that could appeal “young women” who watch the Food Network, “Law & Order,” and “Good Morning America.”

That's pretty strange.  The election is over.  But anyway, if you believe these billionaire industrialists are out for your best interest, and give a half a rip about your healthcare (other than getting rich off it) go ahead and believe what you will hear in this disinformation campaign.  If you believe that, vote Republican.  If you don't, then you understand why it's beyond ridiculous for anybody who's not an billionaire industrialist to vote GOP.

Consumer Protection

Thinkprogress:  Americans who bought individual health plans in 2012 saved $2.1 billion thanks to Obamacare consumer protections that limit how much insurers can profit off of Americans’ premiums, according to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). The vast majority of those savings stem from individual health plan providers lowering the premiums they charge Americans in an effort to comply with the reform law.

Which is why Republicans hate Obamacare.  The fact of the matter is Republicans represent the transnational CEO class and the stockholders, not the American people.  They will happily stand by while you get raped by your for-profit insurance company.  Better to elect people who will not allow that to happen.

To Promote The General Welfare

Think Progress:  On Tuesday, Golden State small businesses and their employees got some great news: two of the state’s largest insurers will have to give them over $36 million in insurance rebates because of an Obamacare consumer protection.

The health law forces insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on paying for actual medical services, rather than administrative overhead or profits. That means more money for ordinary consumers — and less for profitable insurance companies. 

The so-called “80/20 rule” put $1.5 billion back into Americans’ pockets in 2011 alone. The average rebate was $151 per family across all insurance markets, and in states where insurers blatantly gouged prices, average rebates topped a whopping $500 per family.

Now, the benefits for Californians with small business health plans are beginning to materialize. Blue Shield of California will be forced to pay back $24.5 million in rebates. Anthem Blue Cross will have to pay back another $12 million. 

And here you have the real reason Republicans hate Obamacare.  Republicans represent the transnational insurance giants that are gouging the people. Obamacare is helping to correct that injustice.

In a more general sense, this makes very clear who's on who's side.  Republicans legislate on behalf of transnational corporations, and Democrats legislate on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America.

Terrorist

WASHINGTON: -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex) says that he is expecting a vote Wednesday on his amendment to defund Obamacare until economic growth is restored, adding that he is willing to risk a government shutdown if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and President Barack Obama stand in the way.

This is ridiculous. You don't get to hold the government hostage like that.  That's what terrorists do.  The GOP lost the election.  The American people want affordable healthcare. That's the way they voted.  To hold them hostage at the point of the gun that is the for-profit medical industry massive profit margins, and threaten their government, should really disqualify him from public.   

Additionally, we do have economic growth.  We have restored growth with our Democratic public policy.  It had to be restored because his team put us into complete economic and fiscal meltdown with the same public policy he's advocating for right now.  He's being deceptive by implying otherwise. 

Last, he's pushing public policy that history has already proven to be a disaster for the country.

Quite a guy...

Who's Side Are They On?

CNN on the Ryan budget:  The plan, which contains many of the same provisions he offered last year, hits all the GOP high notes: less spending, lower tax rates and a rejection of most of President Obama's health reforms.
 
We can summarize his plan in one sentence: We're going to steal the money you've paid into Medicare and throw the poor, the middle class, and future competitiveness of the country under the bus so we can pay for tax cuts for the very rich and the transnational corporation. 

Right-Wing Blood Money

A Republican state lawmaker in Georgia on Thursday introduced a bill that would relax gun restrictions on people who have been treated for mental illness.

Here's the bottom line, the Republican party has made a decision to trade the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year for the ill-gotten gains of their pimps in the NRA and the gun industry.  Everything they do regarding guns make this more than clear.   As a matter of fact, pretty much everything they do, be it with particulate air pollution, heathcare reform, war, whatever, starts with the same motivation and ends with the same results. 

The Party Of Death

Huffingtonpost: To avoid a March 1 sequester, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested on Fox News Sunday that Congress save money by cutting the Affordable Care Act instead.

Tens of thousands of Americans die every year due to the lack of affordable health insurance.  The affordable Care Act starts to address that problem.  The sequester is going to hit the military-industrial complex. Republicans don't like that one bit.  So the current mouthpiece of the GOP just went on record suggesting we kill all those Americans in order to protect a military budget that outstrips the rest of the world combined.  His people need to be paid, 45,000 unfortunate Americans a year be damned. 

Killer Public Policy

Think Progress:  Mitt Romney doubled down on his suggestion that uninsured Americans can find the care they need in emergency rooms, telling The Dispatch that people will always receive the treatment they need, and do not die or suffer because they can not pay for care. 

Well, except for the 45,000 Americans that do die every year because they don't have insurance, that's true.  Of course those people are likely part of the 47% of Americans Willard has promised not to lift a finger for so it's understandable he's more than willing to sacrifice them on the alter of his billionaire country club public policy.

Barbaric

Raw Story:  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Tuesday insisted that President Barak Obama's health care reform law should be overturned and that people with preexisting conditions should be denied coverage if they have never had insurance before.

This is actually from back in March.  But it's no less disgusting today.  It's clearly not a view any president of the United States should have.

Your Life May Depend On It

(CNN) -- Leslie Elder was always a fighter. But in a message to a friend in the waning days of her life, she seemed exhausted.

The note, written at a time of spiritual darkness, suggested defeat after a decades-long struggle for medical coverage.

"I honestly don't know how much more I can endure," Elder wrote earlier this year in a Facebook message to her friend Liz Jacobs. "I am fighting for (Medicaid) and disability. I can't work I sit in bed I cry a lot. I am still fighting for healthcare and still fighting foreclosure.

"I am so upset but perhaps it was not meant to be. I don't know anything anymore," said Elder, who died in July at age 63 without insurance coverage.

 As she typed the note, Elder could scarcely breathe. Her lungs had filled with fluid over several months; her respiratory system was shutting down. After visits to the emergency room and several free clinics, Elder was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But what makes her family bristle: Elder did not have to die.

If she had had health care, "Absolutely she'd still be here," said Jacquelyn Elder, Leslie's daughter, adding that Hodgkin's lymphoma has a high survival rate. "That is something really hard to deal with."

Two things... 1) In Republican America, she did have to die.  They would rather give more tax cuts to billionaires and transnational corporations than make sure Americans have access to healthcare.  And 2) unless you're a millionaire, this can happen to you.

Vote Democrat.  Your life could very well depend on it.  

Takes One to Know One

Huffington Post:  Maine governor Paul LePage blasted the Supreme Court's health care ruling on Saturday, saying the "decision has made America less free." 

"We the people have been told there is no choice," LePage said in his weekly radio address. "You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the I.R.S.."

Yes, because having what will be about 1% of people who refuse, even with government subsidies, to take a minimum of responsibility for their own healthcare pay a small penalty to cover society's cost of taking care of them is just like rounding up six million Jews and sending them to the gas chamber.

It's just like Republicans to minimize the horrors of the Gestapo.  Of course one would expect nothing less from a political party that that makes common cause with Nazis, has candidates that like to dress up and behave like Nazis, pose for pictures with Nazis, deny the Holocaust was carried out by Nazis, and accept endorsements from Nazis, has Nazis working for them overseas,  former officials that were Nazis, current officials that are Nazis, senators who are supported financially by Nazis, commentators that praise Nazis, supporters that are fascists, and administrations that employ "Jew Hunters."  And oh yeah, whose preeminent political family got rich underwriting the Nazi war machine.

Taxing Logic

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday reversed his campaign’s position that mandates to buy health care are a “penalty” and not a “tax,” telling CBS News that “the majority of the [Supreme Court] has said it is a tax, and therefore it is a tax.” 

Holy crap, on Tuesday he says it's not a tax and on Wednesday he says it is.  This guy flip flops faster than a dying fish on one of his yachts.  If we put a tax on flip flops this guy could pay down the national debt.    Either way, tax, penalty, tax penalty, free rider fee, deadbeat citizens fee, whatever, it was Romney's idea and so he's a total scumbag for criticizing Obama for it.  Don't vote for a total scumbag.

Projecting Death

Think Progress:  During an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Tuesday, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) pledged that Republicans would kickstart the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act shortly after the November elections and predicted that the party would be able to undo the law through the budget process “by sometime in the spring.”
 
Unimpressed by the timeline, Hewitt pressed Republicans to move faster. He compared the urgency of repeal to Congressional action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and argued that people are already “dying” from the law. Thune seemed to agree with the sentiment:

HEWITT: Yeah, the reason I balk a little bit is only because I know people are out there dying under the burdens of this thing.
THUNE: Yeah.
HEWITT: And they expect, you know, the light speed for Congress is like molasses for the rest of the real world.
THUNE: Yeah.
HEWITT: And so it just seems to me that after 9/11, you guys moved fast, and I would hope it would happen again.

This is the projection of public policy that causes massive death.  If the GOP repeals Obamacare 30 million more Americans would be without health insurance.  Since 45,000 Americans die every year due to lack of health insurance, over a 10 year period, repealing Obamacare will doom nearly a half million Americans to death.  That's a lot of dead people on Republican hands.  That's not our opinion, it's simple math.  Democrats had best start saying so.

Not The Same

Raw Story: At a town hall event on Sunday, tea party favorite Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) said that his political opponents wanted everyone to be exactly the same.

Ah yes, the worlds most famous deadbeat dad opens his yap yet again.  This time he's kind of right though.  We want to give everybody a good shot at being healthy.  By their constant efforts to kill legislation that would cover more people, it's clear they don't.  We want everybody to have the same opportunity for an education.  They only want to include people that can afford it.  We want this to be the land of opportunity.  Everything they do pretty much works against that.  Fact of the matter is conservatives have been working on behalf of the plantation owner since before this country was founded.   We don't expect them to change any time soon.

Pray For a Cure

Raw Story:  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is arguing that President Barack Obama’s health care reform law should be repealed because rights come from “nature and God,” not the government. 

Half of men in this country will get cancer.  If Paul Ryan is unlucky enough to be in the half that does, we'll expect him to renounce his government health care plan and let God cure his cancer.  For the rest of us, we'll need help paying for treatment. So unless Paul Ryan can get God to pay up, he really needs to stop spouting nonsense on national TV.

And while Ryan may say that God wants him to repeal Obamacare, he knows very well his rights don't come from God.  They come mostly from the Koch Brothers.

Cancer Givers

The Merrimack Patch reports that a Tea Party leader in New Hampshire is wishing cancer on the justices:

Former Town Councilor Mike Malzone, the founder of the Merrimack Tea Party, said Thursday in a Facebook post reacting to the Supreme Court ruling on health care, “I hope the (5 supremes) get colon cancer.”

We always thought the conservative hatred of environmental laws, public safety laws, food safety laws, access to affordable heath care, etc was based in a corporatist, profit-uber-alles kind of philosophy.  But this indicates that perhaps they actually wish the cancers that result from their dirty public policy to happen.  Either way, if you get cancer, and you vote Republican, you may very well have brought it on yourself. 

Pre-Existing Treason

Huffington Post: Conservatives were united in their disappointment over the Supreme Court's upholding of President Barack Obama's health care law on Thursday. But one former GOP spokesman took things a bit further than the near-uniform vows to repeal the legislation.

Matt Davis, a Michigan attorney who was once the state Republican Party's spokesman, sent out an email that asked whether armed rebellion would be justified in the wake of the court's decision. According to Michigan Capital Confidential, a local news service that originally reported the missive, Davis sent it "moments after the Supreme Court ruling to numerous new media outlets and limited government activists." 

Hmmm... we have a different question, would arresting this guy immediately on the charge of conspiracy to commit treason not be an appropriate response to his behavior?  Typical conservative, always ready to betray this country.  They've been doing it since the civil war.