I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

what RL said: GG, what disturbs me so deeply about the lies about the ACA is the fact that the lies will harm people."  AND, cruz even came out and SAID ( PARAPHRASE) we can't let it get iimplemented, cuz then people will get used to it and refuse to let it go.

Ala Social Secutiry, Medicare, Medicaid,

David Corn, at Mother Jones has some good advice for President Obama.

Kam, why do you CARE if a few people/women are ill advised, and don't agree with you/us.  Just ignore them.  Really.  There are some people you will NEVER get thru to, NEVAH.  And that's fine, really, it is.  Those few people are NOT going to change anything, or make a difference in the short or long term.

Heck, even George Will is starting to see the "light" at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and it IS a train coming the other way.

BTW - if anyone wants to know about GOOD STUFF happening in VA: http://www.bluevirginia.us/

I see that the stock market is going down.  Wouldn't this make a good suspense novel...some members of senate have already dumped their stock and have brought about this crisis to bring down the market.  They will then buy up the cheap stocks with prcise timing because they will control when this 'crisis' will end.

ETA...Apparently  the polls showing Americans not happy with Obamacare include those who think that it does not go far enough.  Hmmm

Pip, would not surprise me at all. One of the most outrageous scandals regarding Congress critters is that they are given insider information about the stock market. Some Dems (of course) tried to get this "privilege" shut down, but nooooo. 

What's going on right now in the House? This:

This has long been a problem with the returns members of Congress get on their stock portfolios.

Members of the House of Representatives considerably outperform the stock market in their personal investments, according to a new academic study.

Four university researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found what they call "significant positive abnormal returns," with portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually.

What's their secret? The report speculates, but does not conclude, it could have something to do with the ability members of Congress have to trade on non-public information or to vote their own pocketbooks -- or both.

A study of senators by the same team of researchers five years ago found members of the higher chamber even better at beating the market -- outperforming it by about 10 percent, an amount the academics said was "both economically large and statistically significant."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/members-of-congress-get-a_n_866387.html

I think there are other, more significant, ways, though, that members make money being in Congress.  Too many multi-millionaires to explain away otherwise.

POTUS to speak any moment.

When I was banned, a number of friends who left this board long ago asked me why I continued to post here. My response was that I know there are a number of people who read but don't post. I don't care about the ones who read here to find things to laugh at or lie about or call nasty names - as I said about them yesterday, steaming pile of crap, meet I don't care.



I care about the people who read here to get information, to see another side of the issue, to learn. That is what I did as my career - make good and useful information available to people who needed it. That is what I do here. Once that ceases to be a priority for me, I will reassess.



L

Yes. It is the same principle that led them to be on the exchanges in the first place. Grassley put an amendment in the ACA to require Congress and their staffs to get their insurance on the exchanges. He believed that the Democrats would strip it out because they would want to keep the FEHB. The Dems called his bluff, said, "Okey dokey - sounds like a grand idea!" and left it in. And left the regressives with egg on their faces, whining about having to go on the exchanges.



Now the hard-right baggers are insisting that they won't take the employer subsidy for the exchanges - so they are stripping it out. They have also put the requirement in for the White House staff so that if the President vetos it, they can say that he wanted to keep his health care (as if that would make a bit of difference).



In the impossible event that it should become law, the Hill would see a MASSIVE exodus of staffers. The staff gets paid very poorly anyway, and they couldn't possibly afford health insurance on what they get paid. Once again, it is regressive posturing to hurt poor people. They are monsters.



They are shutting down the government because they do not want poor people (or women!) to have affordable health care. Monsters.

Thank you, Mods. A link to www.healthcare.gov would be very useful for people, I'm sure. That is the gateway to all the state and Federal exchanges, the law, etc.



You could also post links to the information from the Kaiser Family Foundation - www.kff.org - that explains the ACA and lays out in plain English what happens when and what the plans are.

Kam, I understand talking with people with different opinions, but I'm referring to the people RL is in this case.

GREAT ARTICLE ALERT http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/trent-lott-ted-cruz-cut-his-legs-out-under-him

Even Trent Lott is DONE with him...wow. 

An interesting post by Ernest Canning:

A 'Revolutionary Power'

The so-called 'Tea Party,' which the mega-billionaire Koch brothers fund and controlvia several front groups, such as Americans for Prosperity, is, what Dr. Henry Kissinger described in his 1957 doctoral thesis, A World Restored, as a "revolutionary power" that does not accept the legitimacy of our existing constitutional framework. Specifically, the Koch brothers and their radical brand of libertarianism do not accept a core function of government identified by the framers of the U.S. Constitution in both its Preamble and in Article I, Section 8 --- "to promote the General Welfare."

"When one is dealing with ordinary political movements," Paul Krugman observed inThe Great Unraveling, "it makes sense to presume that their policy proposals, right or wrong, are made in good faith. But when one is dealing with a revolutionary movement that does not accept the legitimacy of the existing system, there's no reason to make that assumption. Revolutionary movements, which aren't concerned about the rules of the game, have no compunction about misrepresenting their goals."

What Sanders and the others are giving voice to is the fact that the radical right cannot be assuaged by either a postponement or outright repeal of Obamacare. Ironically, it may more aptly be argued that both the target of and the solution to this latest round of 'Tea Party' hostage-taking is democracy itself...

Democracy Strikes Back

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself," President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued in 1938. "That, in its essence, is fascism --- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

The true goal of the radical right, as Bill Moyers averred in Moyers on America, is inequality, both political and economic. It entails "a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory cannons, and the intellectual and cultural framework that have shaped public responsibility from social harms arising from the excesses of private powers." It portends to what we have described as the "'Tea Party' Future: Fascism, Feudalism, Economic Collapse".

Ironically, the very tactic adopted by the radical right --- holding a gun to the head of government and the global economy --- is so extreme that it can and has served to engender revulsion on the part of the very democratic forces it seeks to destroy.

This, as we noted in "Why Isn't 'Tea Party' 'Hostage-Taking' a Crime?", is precisely what transpired in California in reaction to the past several decades of GOP hostage taking in the Golden State.

Year-after-year, the CA GOP utilized the state's requirement of a 2/3 vote for passage of either spending or revenue enhancing measures as a means to force austerity, such as former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's draconian $15 billion cuts to education and health care. By refusing to pass a budget, the CA GOP at one point forced the state controller to issue $2.6 billion in IOUs. And, all during the CA GOP reign of economic terror, the Golden State's budget deficit expanded --- reaching an indebtedness in excess of $20 billion despite those massive cuts.

Ultimately, democracy struck back. The percentage of CA voters who are registered Republicans dropped to less than 30%. During the 2012 election, CA voters passed a relatively progressive, revenue-enhancing tax measure supported by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) by a wide margin, and the GOP's ability to hold the state hostage was eliminated when Democrats achieved a super-majority in the state legislature.

As a result, fiscal sanity was restored. CA is now on track to achieving a budgetsurplus even as $5.2 billion has been added to the state's school, university and health care budgets.