World News Korner

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

What’s that you say? Hospitals are mandated to give away free services?

Yes. In response to some earlier bad behavior from hospitals called “patient dumping,” a mandate for unfunded medical care was created and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. It said, “Hospitals provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay.”

That’s right, Reagan created a universal coverage mandate, forced the private sector to pay for it, thereby creating the world’s most expensive, least efficient health-care program. Hospitals hated it, the poor and indigent took advantage of it, and prices were jacked up in response to it. Eventually, the costs spread to everyone else.

Given that history, it is no surprise that hospitals were quietly pleased with Obamacare. After the Supreme Court ruled on the legality of the new rules in June 2012, hospital stocks rallied. It should come as no surprise: They get to remove a huge cost that they had no ability to control. They also get a massive number of new paying customers. And they now have some control over who their patients will be.

Yes the man who claimed to want to keep government out of our lives created a law that put the burden of caring for those without insurance or money onto the hospitals, which forced them to make up the cost by gouging insurance companies, who in turn gouged their customers. In other words, us.

And then when President Obama came up with a plan to reduce the cost of insurance, and remove the burden from hospitals, thereby lowering the cost of medical care and prescription drugs, he was accused of being un-American and undermining the freedoms of the American people.

In other words the man who has worked diligently to protect our citizens from the unseen tax placed on them to cover uninsured hospital visits, is vilified. While the man who created that problem in the first place, is idolized.

Not only that but in order to protect Ronald Reagan's destructive health care mandate, his Republican heirs are willing to bankrupt the entire country.




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This is taken from a much longer article over at the Daily Beast concerning a new poll taken by Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin, in which he states that only 20 percent of the electorate thinks that the government shutdown is a rational or reasonable approach.

His take is supported by William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a veteran of the 1995–96 shutdown when he was President Clinton’s domestic-policy adviser.:

Before the shutdown, Democrats were pretty much reconciled to falling short in efforts to retake the House next year. With so many gerrymandered seats, the 17 pickups Democrats need seem out of reach and may still be. But Galston points to research that says Democrats can overcome the structural disadvantage they face if they add 5 percentage points in their overall votes for the House, then they would have a better than 50 percent chance of winning control. “The Republicans are doing the only thing that could conceivably endanger their majority,” Galston says. The latest Quinnipiac and Pew polls show Democrats with a 9-point generic edge, twice what it was in late August. “After the dust settles next November and the generic Democratic edge is 9 points, I guarantee you the next speaker is Nancy Pelosi,” he says.

On the Senate side, Republicans need six seats to gain control of the chamber. In just about every contested race, Republicans are battling each other in primaries to see who can be the biggest cheerleader of the government shutdown. “If Ted Cruz becomes the public face for the Republican Party, it will be a cold day in hell before they have a Senate majority,” says Galston. The last shutdown 17 years ago helped reelect Clinton. This one could give Obama the Congress he wants.

I am cautiously optimistic, but if the Republicans were able to make such incredible gains in 2010, using unsubstantiated fear of the President to energize their electorate, I don't see why it would be impossible for the Democrats to use the very much substantiated fear of what these Teabagger idiots are doing to our political system to run the board on them in 2014.

I mean it is not like there is not ample evidence as to the negative effects of this group of insurgents on the country, so all it takes is to wait out the upcoming Bloodsport version of the GOP primaries and kick the broken and battered survivor in the face before he can regain his footing.

All I know is that I am going to keep a happy thought.

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Courtesy of TPM:

The letter circulated by the Chamber of Commerce urges lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling "in a timely manner and remove any threat to the full faith and credit of the United States government." It also acknowledges Republican fears over the unsustainable growth of major benefit programs such Medicare and Social Security and the need for a more business-friendly tax system.

But in a rejection of the tactics of House Speaker John Boehner, the letter urges Congress to pass first a short-term spending bill, then raise the debt ceiling, "and then return to work on these other vital issues."

That advice is being ignored by the GOP-led House.

"There is an element of the more independent, tea party coalition Republicans that, frankly, don't listen to very many people," said John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan and now president of the Business Roundtable, one of the groups that signed the chamber letter. "They are on a mission, often defined on the basis of their view of the world, and they aren't paying very much attention to what this means beyond maybe their own districts."

Concerned, the Chamber of Commerce is preparing to participate in political primaries, protecting friendly lawmakers from conservative challengers. "Clearly we're getting to a point where we need a Congress that's going to be productive, proactive and create a stable environment for economic growth and job creation," said Scott Reed, a Republican political consultant who is advising the chamber on its strategy.

Well this is certainly going to get a certain Arizona based political pundit's panties in a twist.

It is really only the threat of uber conservative primary challengers that is keeping a number of these Republicans in line due to the fact that they are too afraid to cross Ted Cruz and his Teabagger minions. If the Chamber of Commerce has the funds on hand to actually accomplish this tactic of funding primaries around the country that will surely inspire the Koch brothers and Heritage Action to up the ante, and we could see local elections spending multiple millions of dollars for seats in relatively small districts that were once conservative strongholds.

Which by the way might leave coffers somewhat depleted when it came time for the general election against a democratic challenger.

Gonna need some more popcorn I see.

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His name was first pushed into the public sphere during the George George Stephanopoulos moderated debate between Hillary and Obama in April 2008, but then it was picked up by Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others to be used as a bludgeon against the future President of the United States.

Finally Professor Ayers will explain his take on what happened, why it happened, and what it all means.

Here is an excerpt, entitled "I was Sarah Palin's Roadkill" courtesy of Salon:

“This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin cried out to the agitated crowd during a 2008 campaign rally, referring to then-Senator Barack Obama. “We see America as the greatest force for good in this world” and as a “beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy.” This was how “real Americans” saw things, according to Palin. As for Obama, he’s “someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country!”

There it was: the punch line that would resonate no matter what else was said or done— palling around. It had a special creepy ring to it, for sure.

When Governor Palin—or, as our late friend Studs Terkel called her, “Joe McCarthy in drag”—uttered it that first time (and ever after) the crowd exploded: “Kill him! Kill him!” I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was me or Senator Obama who was the target of those chants— perhaps both. I’d been designated a public enemy before. I knew the territory pretty well and accepted the consequences with some equanimity, but now poor Barack Obama as well was forced to play Ibsen’s brilliant character, the embattled Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the “enemy of the people.” Stockmann was viciously taunted in the public square by a chorus of townspeople bent on delusion and self-deception: Kill the enemy of the people!

There was no way to prepare for what was about to hit me, of course, and at the outset I could barely glimpse it on the far horizon of my imagination—the great speeding locomotive designed to derail Obama would run me and others down as just some unavoidable debris or collateral damage, the inevitable road kill. No one really knew its shape or its power yet, no one could guess at its velocity. I grasped a couple of small things right away, but my family understood a lot more, and they were in fact already gearing up.

There is quite a bit more and I think you would do well to read it.

As somebody who weathered their own vicious attack from those forces that Sarah Palin put into motion, I feel I share a certain common experience with Bill Ayers, though of course HIS was a thousand times worse than anything I had to endure.

Still I find myself interested to learn more about the man whose name was considered so polarizing that it was brought up over and over again in attempts to derail Barack Obama's inevitable journey to the White House.

Besides let's face it, anybody who freaks Sarah Palin out this much, and scares the crap out of the Right Wing, is somebody worth paying attention to.

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As you know I have my own issues with Wal-Mart and the people who go there, so I found this especially entertaining and painfully accurate.

By the way there were a number of good segments on the show, including this one from Alexandra Pelosi asking New Yorkers what they knew about Obamacare.

I love the medical chip lady, "I don't know how you don't know about it, but it's in the news."

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I just saw the movie Gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and I was blown away.

This movie is a smart, visually impressive thriller, that rarely lets up.

There is no way that I can adequately describe how enveloping this film is, but if you ever wondered what it would be like to walk in space, THIS might be as close as you can get without first going through astronaut training at NASA.

There have been a few naysayers concerning the physics of the film, or the believability of the story line, but I will leave it to none other than Buzz Aldrin to convince you that it meets and exceeds the highest standards for a believable thriller set in space.

Damn that was a good movie!

P.S. Make sure to see it in 3D if you can. Believe me when I say you will miss out on a lot if you don't.






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Courtesy of Raw Story:

Someone at the National Weather Service’s Alaska bureau has a message for those who have shut down the government: “PLEASE PAY US.”

Check the left hand side and read down.

Raw Story contacted the Anchorage office, but was told that “no one wanted to comment right now.”

Although many National Weather Service employees are considered “essential” and are therefore exempted from the furloughs caused by the government shutdown.

However, as Dan Sobien, present of the NWS Employee Organization told Popular Science, these “essential” employes aren’t being paid.

“There’s no money to pay them,” he said. “Nobody knows when anyone’s going to get paid.”

In the meantime, these employees are being issued IOUs if they work despite the lack of compensation for their labor.

People need to be paid for their work, and asking them to work without compensation while the people who caused this train wreck are still able to draw their pay is unconscionable. (And yes I know a number of millionaire lawmakers have said they will refuse their pay during the shutdown as well, in a purely symbolic gesture. But let's face it, MOST of these guys simply use their Congressional pay for cab fair, tipping doormen, and renting hookers anyhow. Nobody in THEIR families are going to go to bed hungry due to this shutdown.)

I have to imagine that if this thing goes on muhc longer there will be crowds of furloughed federal workers with torches and pitchforks at the ready.

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