American Politics: THANKS OBAMA

[BigLutz]

Let me see if I understand this again.

I stated that my comment was what I personally believed, and you're claiming I'm lying about that?

I have a right to my personal opinion, and I'm free to express it, right? This is still a free country is it not?

You have every right but if there is no truth behind it then it is purely political slander

I mean to put it another way if I came on here and said that Obama is a Muslim and that he was not born in this country I don't think anyone on here would write it off as a simple personal belief that I was free to state.

By the way your original statement is worded in a way that Obama is preventing these things from happening as if they were fact

 

[LDSman]

Let me see if I understand this again.

I stated that my comment was what I personally believed, and you're claiming I'm lying about that?

I have a right to my personal opinion, and I'm free to express it, right? This is still a free country is it not?

If the Republicans were in complete control of the government, they have pledged to:

You presented it as facts, then backtracked when called on it. You lied.

 

[John Madden]

it's funny because given enough time maedar could probably find a congressional roll-call vote supporting all but 25-27.

(well, assuming maedar even knows where to find roll-call votes without a huffington post writer holding his hand the entire way.)

and apparently "political slander" doesn't apply to the comical exaggeration of flaws in current non-NSA/CIA policy that has made up every page of this thread since mid-october, to say nothing about the general mockery of anything resembling liberalism.

 

[Remorph]

By the way, a lot of people ask me, "How can you support Obama?"

First of all, that's "Mr. Obama", or even better, "Mr. President".

Second, why do I support him? Last time I said, "He's better than the alternative", but now that I have more time, I'll elaborate. Not so much the things he pledges to do, but more the things he pledges to prevent by opposing the Republicans, seeing as I oppose a great deal of their goals. If the Republicans were in complete control of the government, they have pledged to:

1) Dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
2) Reinstate the "Don't Ask / Don't Tell" law
3) Ban all state same-sex marriage laws
4) Reduce taxes on the rich and corporations and raise them on everyone else
5) Shrink programs that help the poor or immigrants
6) Repeal the ACA and block medical assistance for 30M uninsured people
7) Eliminate international aid programs
8) Deport all undocumented immigrants
9) Abolish the CFPB and SEC
10) Abolish the DOE, EPA and all environmental regulations
11) Abolish the Department of Education and FEMA
12) Make all abortions illegal
13) Eliminate support for Planned Parenthood
14) Ban the birth control pill through Personhood bills
15) Weaken child labor laws
16) Eliminate the minimum wage
17) Destroy all unions
18) Obstruct all Obama Administration initiatives
19) Create laws to make registering and voting more difficult
20) Regulate speech and Internet communications
21) Destroy the PBS and NPR
22) Eliminate all public funding for the arts
23) Reduce spending on infrastructure
24) Oppose all regulations of guns
25) Establish English as the official language of the United States
26) Establish Christianity as the national religion for the United States
27) Ban all Muslims from entering the United States
28) Go to war with Iran and Syria

...and those are just their priorities.

Which is why I support the President and his party. They oppose all that.

Ugh... Most of those are RADICAL TEA PARTY Republicans... Us normal Republicans hate those guys.

 

[John Madden]

Ugh... Most of those are RADICAL TEA PARTY Republicans... Us normal Republicans hate those guys.

unfortunately for you normal republicans, you seem to make up a minority even of the republicans in this thread.

(granted the tea party radicals are a minority in congress, but they're enough of a power bloc that the rest of the elected ones are still absolutely terrified of primary challenges)

...and speaking of which.

 

[The Admiral]

unfortunately for you normal republicans, you seem to make up a minority even of the republicans in this thread.

(granted the tea party radicals are a minority in congress, but they're enough of a power bloc that the rest of the elected ones are still absolutely terrified of primary challenges)

...and speaking of which.

To be fair, the Tea Party's power is not in numbers, but in loudness. They just refuse to be ignored.

I really think, though, that "old guard Republicans" (as it were -- not the literal old guard Republicans of centuries past, obviously) need to tell people that the Tea Party does not speak for them.

 

[John Madden]

now, back to discussion of the unmitigated disaster that is obamacare's rollout

WASHINGTON — Despite the disastrous rollout of the federal government's healthcare website, enrollment is surging in many states as tens of thousands of consumers sign up for insurance plans made available by President Obama's health law.

A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.

"What we are seeing is incredible momentum," said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation's largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month.

Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said.

[...]

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia, covering about one-third of the nation's population, are operating their own Obamacare marketplaces and have their own enrollment websites. The others, including most states with Republican-led governments, have declined to do so, making their residents dependent on the malfunctioning federal site.

In addition to better-functioning websites, many states that are running their own marketplaces also have significantly more resources to help consumers sign up for coverage.

Many of the states that have declined to run their own websites have also refused to expand the joint federal-state Medicaid program, as the new law allows.

wait, did i say "unmitigated disaster that is obamacare's rollout"? because i clearly meant to say "intransigence by the majority of GOP-held states refusing to actually participate in the law so they can help fix it later"

intransigence like that of mitch mcconnell, the "about to lose to grimes next year" senator from kentucky.

Kentucky’s exchange — Kynect — is the gold standard for state-based exchanges, and has been since day 1. It has perhaps the highest functioning Obamacare marketplace, relative to uninsured population, of any state in the country.

McConnell’s response to this has basically been to ignore the private market enrollees and claim that the law’s only success story in his state is the Medicaid expansion, because people like free stuff. Really.

“Look, if I went out here on the street today (and said), ‘You guys want free health care?’ I expect you’d have a lot of signups,” he said at a Kentucky press conference recently. “People signing up for something that is free,” McConnell said, is the only part of the Obamacare rollout in Kentucky that is actually successful.

That was before the November enrollment surge.

By mid-December will he be able or willing to say the same? McConnell has cited a Kentucky Department of Insurance estimate that 280,000 Kentuckians will lose their current plans because of Obamacare. That figure emerged before Obama announced an administrative measure that will allow insurers to renew canceled plans, and Kentucky regulators have given carriers the green light. But either way, this doesn’t help McConnell much past October. If everybody in Kentucky gets to keep their old plans, his talking point — along with a large font of Affordable Care Act animus — will dry up. But if only some plans get renewed, the remainder will still be primed consumers, and many of them will become satisfied customers in Kynect.

McConnell’s current position — his position for the past three and a half years — is that the law “needs to be eliminated and we need to start over.”

But before Obamacare, over 17 percent of non-elderly Kentuckians were uninsured. If Obamacare knocks that figure into the single digits next year — even if it isn’t doing much for Tennesseans — how long will his position hold? His leadership role is about to come into exquisite tension with his responsibility to his own constituents.

 

[((JAWS))]

"To be fair, the Tea Party's power is not in numbers, but in loudness. They just refuse to be ignored.

I really think, though, that "old guard Republicans" (as it were -- not the literal old guard Republicans of centuries past, obviously) need to tell people that the Tea Party does not speak for them."

When most people (at least that I know of) think of republicans they think of radicals. Obviously there needs to be more "positive" and more "sensible" republican leaders represented in the media. So far I, along with most of society fail to see that.

 

[LDSman]

Ugh... Most of those are RADICAL TEA PARTY Republicans... Us normal Republicans hate those guys.

Most of those are either strawman statements or flat out lies.

1) Dismantle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

Fixing it is not dismantling it. How many times do we need to hear "it'll go broke in x years if we don't do something!!!"

2) Reinstate the "Don't Ask / Don't Tell" law

Debatable. Some say yes, some say no, some say don't care, does it impact the troops?

3) Ban all state same-sex marriage laws

Most I've seen is let the individual states handle it, don't force churches who don't wish to perform said marriages.

4) Reduce taxes on the rich and corporations and raise them on everyone else

This one is complete crap. Gov't actually makes more money when taxes on all individuals are reduced.

5) Shrink programs that help the poor or immigrants

True in that people want to reduce the amount of waste and corruption in said programs.

6) Repeal the ACA and block medical assistance for 30M uninsured people

Half crap. Repeal ACA, yes. It's a crap program that is already negatively affecting people. No one wants to block medical assistance to those that want insurance. Part of that 30 mill don't want or need insurance and shouldn't be forced to spend their hard earned money.

7) Eliminate international aid programs

Just certain ones. Like the ones the Palestinians use to reward their terrorists. Too much money is going to help corrupt gov'ts stay in power and it doesn't aid the people who need it.

8) Deport all undocumented immigrants

Illegal immigrants. Here illegally. Do what other countries do and kick them out.

9) Abolish the CFPB and SEC

First I've heard of this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-schram/abolish-the-sec_b_152748.html Huffpo seems to want the SEC abolished too. Though it is an old article.

10) Abolish the DOE, EPA and all environmental regulations

The DOE was supposed to make the US energy independent and has instead become a bloated agency.
The EPA strangles business by introducing arbitrary regulations that are often impossible to meet and is currently trying to take control over all the waterways in the US, including your ditch. Some of the enviromental regulations are crap, other are not. EPA keeps trying to fine people regardless of actual pollution.

11) Abolish the Department of Education and FEMA

The Department of Ed is wasteful and produces poor results.
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...-department-education-not-radical/mona-charen

The Department of Education was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers’ unions by Pres. Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsement). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, DE’s original budget, in 1980, was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars), and it employed 450 people. By 2000, it had increased to $34.1 billion, and by 2007 it had more than doubled to $73 billion. The budget request for fiscal 2011 is $77.8 billion, and the department employs 4,800.

All of this spending has done nothing to improve American education. Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat.

Comparing educational achievement with per-pupil spending among states also calls into question the value of increasing expenditures. While high-spending Massachusetts had the nation’s highest proficiency scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, low-spending Idaho did very well, too. South Dakota ranks 42nd in per-pupil expenditures but eighth in math performance and ninth in reading. The District of Columbia, meanwhile, with the nation’s highest per-pupil expenditures ($15,511 in 2007), scores dead last in achievement.

Many people on both sides called for FEMA to be shuttered after Katrina.

12) Make all abortions illegal

Not even the Republicans can agree on this. Most favor more limitations, others favor letting the states decide for themselves.

13) Eliminate support for Planned Parenthood

They are a business, let them support themselves.

14) Ban the birth control pill through Personhood bills

Most I've seen is pushing it back to being doctor's prescription required.

15) Weaken child labor laws

Bull.

16) Eliminate the minimum wage

Everytime the min wage goes up, the cost of goods go up.

17) Destroy all unions

Eliminating the mandatory enrollment is not destroying unions. Unless the unions are incapable of getting members any other way. Then that is the fault of unions.

18) Obstruct all Obama Administration initiatives

Meh. Just the ones that suck.

19) Create laws to make registering and voting more difficult

Too bad voter ID laws actually increase voter turnout.

20) Regulate speech and Internet communications

that's the dems actually.

21) Destroy the PBS and NPR

Stop funding NPR and PBS is not "destroying it." PBS certainly makes enough money with Sesame Street that they don't need the money and NPR is quite biased for a supposedly neutral program.

22) Eliminate all public funding for the arts

Why should taxpayers pay for things like "Piss Christ"?

23) Reduce spending on infrastructure

Eliminate pork projects.

24) Oppose all regulations of guns

Oppose gun regulations that don't work or had nothing to do with the recent shooting. Remove regulations that are ineffective.

25) Establish English as the official language of the United States

Only a few extremists go for this.

26) Establish Christianity as the national religion for the United States

See above. Most want the gov't to stop trying to restrict the free exercise of religion.

27) Ban all Muslims from entering the United States

This one is one hundred percent crap.

28) Go to war with Iran and Syria

Crap. Most people want to just stay out of it and let them screw themselves over.

 

[John Madden]

speaking of sensible republican leaders, guess what this link isn't a story about?

With Senate Republicans blocking a third Obama nomination to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me Reid is now all but certain to move to change the Senate rules by simple majority — doing away with the filibuster on executive and judicial nominations, with the exception of the Supreme Court – as early as this week.

[...]

“They’ve boxed themselves in — their position allows them no leeway,” the aide says, in characterizing Reid’s thinking. “This is not a trumped up argument about the qualification of a nominee. They are saying, `we don’t want any nominees.’”

The aide says Reid believes he now has 51 Dem Senators behind a rules change, if it comes down to it. The Huffington Post reports that some Dem Senators who have previously opposed changing the rules — such as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein — are now open to it. “I believe that we are there,” the aide tells me.

The key to understanding what’s happening now is that it is fundamentally different from the last “nuclear” standoff. In that one, Republicans blockaded a handful of executive nominations (such as Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) in part out of an objection to the function of the agencies they had been picked to lead. Republicans ultimately dropped their objections in exchange for Dems agreeing not to change the rules.

But now, Dems have already agreed not to change the rules once, and the filibustering continues, even though Republicans admitted when the last deal was reached that they were wrong to block Obama from staffing the government. And now, the GOP position is not grounded in an objection to Obama’s nominees or to the function of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; it’s grounded in the argument that Obama should not have the power to fill these vacancies on the court at all. As Jonathan Chait argues, Republicans may not have even thought through the full implications of the position they’ve adopted. But Dems have, and taking it to its logical conclusion, they believe Republicans have presented them with a simple choice: Either they change the rules, or they accept those limits on Obama’s power. And that really leaves only one option.

 

[((JAWS))]

^Surprise, surprise.^

 

[Maedar]

Well, it's about time.

They had enough chances. And like I said, they should have kept their word.

 

[BigLutz]

And Obamacare continues to crash and burn the website only getting 50,000 selections up to mid November with the original projection being 700,000 there is no way they will get anywhere close to that number, it would even be surprising if they made 1/10th of that.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/...an-on-the-federal-website-as-of-mid-november/

And now Reid is threatening the nuclear option which I completely welcome with the possibility of a Republican take over in the Senate in less than a year's time it will be nice to be able to block any Democratic filibuster

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/11/19/harry-reid-is-set-to-go-nuclear/

 

[Maedar]

May I present an alternate viewpoint? See this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/insurance-company-obamacare_n_4303414.html?ref=topbar

The top insurance company in Iowa is using this ad that pokes fun of Obamacare...

And they're actually attempting to get more business because of it!

Seems that some people are deciding to make lemonade out of lemons, rather than do nothing except complain.

 

[BigLutz]

May I present an alternate viewpoint? See this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/insurance-company-obamacare_n_4303414.html?ref=topbar

The top insurance company in Iowa is using this ad that pokes fun of Obamacare...

And they're actually getting more business because of it!

Seems that some people are deciding to make lemonade out of lemons, rather than do nothing except complain.

Great for them but for the exchange to work it needs healthy people to sign up enmass to offset the sick ones and by doing this the company is taking away from some of those healthy individuals

 

[ccangelopearl1362]

Daily Caller: Josh Peterson: Tech problems plague Obama’s ObamaCare conference call
US News and World Report: Rebekah Metzler: Chris Christie Knocks Republicans, Obama at CEO Council

One could imagine the dropped jaws as the news about that particular glitch raced throughout the Internet. The audio quality and user broadcast connections went awry, all after the fiasco behind that website. For their part, the group volunteers who put this call together estimated about 200,000 listeners, a striking contrast to the tally conducted by the live broadcasting platform they enlisted, namely 16,000 listeners. One of the comments in the article stated that “computers are becoming self aware, and even they do not want to have anything to do with this administration”. The benefactors rallying behind New Jersey Governor Chris Christie could share the sentiment, as could the Wall Street Journal, which helped sponsor the event in question. He proved consistent in citing support from blacks and Hispanics for his broader message of prosperity, but his online team could need every pointer they can get, right alongside other prospective 2016 candidates, of course. I’ll call this a self-inflicted stalemate for President Barack Obama and his advisors, incredibly enough, after last year’s presidential election, no less, and it could very well reflect some new shifts overseas.:

Daily Beast: Eli Lake: Blackwater Founder Erik Prince: War on Terror Has Become Too Big
Ahram: Anti-military, anti-Brotherhood protesters enter Tahrir for 1st time since Morsi’s ouster

It would appear that even private security companies couldn’t quite imagine the self-destruction they were witnessing around them after September 11, 2001. Erik Prince is writing a book with details of his own surrounding the company that he built in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and he evidently disapproves of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance program(s). He included an anecdote in which an Internal Revenue Service auditor told his accountant that he hadn’t seen anywhere near as much pressure to audit any individual or entity as he had in the now-former contractor’s case. He didn’t speak highly of our worldwide drone attacks, either, but one could imagine that it would be a matter of time before the instability across North Africa intensifies, especially should certain groups inside Egypt escalate their preferences for violence. The protesters this time demanded attention for some of their dead associates throughout the upheaval in that country in the past couple of years, as well as an end to anyone they perceive as having betrayed their mission, from acting Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi to… the Muslim Brotherhood. There was a clash between security teams and demonstrators two years ago – right in the middle of a certain convergence on my part – that left hundreds injured, and it looks like Defense Minister Abdul-Fatah Al-Sisi and his fellow officers have other hints to inform their decisions, starting with their new benefactors.:

Reuters: Suicide bombings kill 23 near Iran embassy in Beirut
Daily Beast: Josh Rogin: John Kerry Defies the White House on Egypt Policy
Voice of America: Cecily Hilleary: Are Saudi Arabia, Israel Behind France Scuttling Nuclear Talks?

What an awakening this morning I ended up having once that new attack flew over Twitter, and as it turned out, a Lebanon-based, Al-Qaeda-linked jihad group ended up claiming responsibility rather quickly, through its main Sharia guide, calling for a complete withdrawal of Iranian units, whether Islamic Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah, from the national battlefield that used to be Syria. The security camera footage showed a man with a belt of explosives rushing over the wall before blowing himself up, followed by a car bomb “parked two buildings away from the compound”. With the Putinists readying their weapons and money flows, I suppose the Sunnis will have plenty of reasons to make certain that their position remains what it is. A cameraman for Reuters counted six bodies outside one of the compound’s entrances, and perhaps naturally, the Iranians blamed Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations for the attack, with fires engulfing cars, tearing off some of the buildings’ facades, and uprooting some trees. British Ambassador to Lebanon Thomas Fletcher offered to donate some of his blood to assist the injured agents there, which could complement Secretary of State John Kerry’s current outreach. It was National Security Advisor Susan Rice who urged the man to speak more openly in support of the Muslim Brotherhood during former President Muhammad Morsi’s recent trial proceedings, pitting the White House against the State Department. Whereas Kerry avoided the trial during his meetings with Egyptian officials, Rice went out of her way to call for constant participation in the country’s supposed transition, which could say quite a few things about the current state of the maelstrom in that part of the world. If anyone would wonder just what could get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, French President Francois Hollande, United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Muhammad bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, and the House of Saud to attempt their own alignment for the Middle East, then between Iran’s societal suicide and President Barack Obama’s ensuing campaign of spite, it would appear that we, at least for now, have a justifiably grim answer. Indeed, a lawmaker who happens to be a close friend to the first official there reportedly phoned Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to warn him of preemptive strikes unless the tougher sanctions against that special unit and its clerical captives held steadily. France has a deal to overhaul Saudi Arabia’s ships and tankers and wants to discuss anti-aircraft missile sales in the future, alongside new fighter pets for, of all places, Qatar. Since we’ve no way to truly verify that any facilities oriented toward nuclear production and refinement have been dismantled, the relevant activists remain on alert. An expert at the University of South Carolina said that more and more officials in the region sense that this administration intends to wash its hands of as many problems as it can, making David Goldman’s warning about this maelstrom that much eerier, I would think.

 

[John Madden]

Fixing it is not dismantling it. How many times do we need to hear "it'll go broke in x years if we don't do something!!!"

The "fix" proposals I've seen coming from the Republican Party since 2002 amount to chained CPI - which amounts to real cuts in benefits and measurable increases in poverty for seniors and the disabled and any of their possible dependents in the long run - and tying the program to "retirement accounts" akin to 401Ks, which is a whole new problem for reasons I don't think I need to articulate here.

Fixing it within its current bounds could also include a lifting of the payroll tax limit beyond $250,000 - a policy that would affect a whopping 1% of people while by itself guaranteeing the program's solvency well into the 22nd century.

This one is complete crap. Gov't actually makes more money when taxes on all individuals are reduced.

And the second sentence of this quote, according to the overwhelming majority of economists and historical evidence of wide-ranging cuts in American taxes, is also complete crap, not the least of which because tax cuts are not the only causal actor in annual federal tax revenue.

True in that people want to reduce the amount of waste and corruption in said programs.

SNAP waste and corruption amounts to less than 5% of annual receipts yet we're seeing cuts in SNAP (both enacted and proposed) significantly greater than 5%, and that's just the program with the most "controversy" surrounding it.

Half crap. Repeal ACA, yes. It's a crap program that is already negatively affecting people.

Your arguments toward this end appear to be "the federal site isn't 99.999% functional" and "people are [were?] losing substandard policies that were by and large bankrupting them to begin with", but I digress...

No one wants to block medical assistance to those that want insurance.

...because from the party that made "repeal and replace" part of its 2010 platform, I've seen no compelling "replacement" that would actually address any cost problems in the healthcare sector. Torts are negligible as a contributor to cost inflation, the "across state lines" policy would have the same end result as when that was enacted for credit cards (i.e., every company moves its headquarters to the state with the least regulations so the consumer's ****ed even harder), and nothing else has so much as been discussed beyond worthless campaign platitudes.

Part of that 30 mill don't want or need insurance and shouldn't be forced to spend their hard earned money.

Don't want insurance, yes; in order to demonstrate a lack of need for it, you'll have to first demonstrate that 1) those people purchasing insurance would not lead to lower health-care costs in the long run (for both them and the combined sector) and 2) that segment of the 30 million is not high-risk to begin with.

The Department of Ed is wasteful and produces poor results.

And the DoE has "produced poor results" contingent with public policy that has exacerbated poverty (and education policy that has all but ignored the strong and extremely blatant causal link between student poverty and educational results). The solution isn't to abolish the federal body; the solution is to pursue policy solutions that do not exacerbate student poverty, which are wholly incoherent with what the Republican Party has presented at any point in the last fifteen years.

Bull.

This, at least, I'll agree is bull - the only concerted push to weaken child labor laws that I've seen has been coming from just Missouri and Maine Republicans, not the federal party.

Everytime the min wage goes up, the cost of goods go up.

Equally bull, at least at the levels you're thinking of. Cost increases with a 10% minimum wage increase are statistically negligible at the state level[SUP]2,3[/SUP] and no econometric analysis at the federal level shows a statistically significant impact on such a price increase[SUP]1[/SUP] - at 10% you're looking at an increase of a dime on a $10 product.

[SUP]1*[/SUP]“A Survey of the Effects of Minimum Wages on Prices,” by Sara Lemos, Journal of Economic Surveys 22(1): 187–212, 2008.[SUP]
2*[/SUP]"Economic Analysis of the Arizona Minimum Wage Proposal," by Robert Pollin and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Political Economy Research Institute, 2006.
3*"Economic Analysis of the Florida Minimum Wage Proposal," by Robert Pollin, Mark D. Brenner and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, Political Economy Research Institute, 2004.

Eliminating the mandatory enrollment is not destroying unions.

Eliminating the requirement that you be in a union to enjoy union-provided benefits will, in the long run, remove all incentive to actually join that union, which effectively means that union is destroyed in the long run.

Meh. Just the ones that suck.

And if their constant filibustering of judicial nominees regardless of actual qualifications (and, hell, constant filibustering of every initiative to the left of pre-2009 policy when it's not a lame-duck Congressional session) is any indication, "the ones that suck" equates to "every single one of them."

Too bad voter ID laws actually increase voter turnout.

Ex post facto fallacy - increased turnout is not these laws' intended consequence.

Stop funding NPR and PBS is not "destroying it."

It's the same thing as "destroying" it for anyone outside a well-funded urban or suburban area.

Why should taxpayers pay for things like "Piss Christ"?

I'll allow a British man to make the argument for funding of federal arts programs on British terms - namely, the cuts that started hitting early last year:

A recent Europe-wide study of 5,000 13- to 16-year-olds found that drama in schools significantly increases teenagers' capacity to communicate and to learn, to relate to each other and to tolerate minorities, as well as making them more likely to vote (by contrast, those who didn't do drama were likelier to watch television and play computer games).

Increasingly, such benefits are presented not as happy byproducts of artistic activity (and therefore able to be provided by other agencies more cost-effectively) but as part of its very essence.

[...]

The cuts which start biting in April will have major and still unpredictable effects on arts provision in England. Unless the National Theatre, Walsall's New Art Gallery, Battersea Arts Centre, Sadler's Wells and Cardboard Citizens are all profligately run, or the prospects for private patronage have been scandalously underestimated, then a failure to win the argument for continued public funding – even at reduced levels – would lead to the closure of the great majority of currently funded arts organisations, especially outside London. Even if some London flagships survive, they would be unable to continue the very participatory projects that are being urged on them and to which they are increasingly committed.

Eliminate pork projects.

Pork? Non-partisan civil engineering studies find we need an additional $800 billion in capital in the next seven years (i.e., both private and public-sector investment) just to keep up with road infrastructure deficiencies. The House GOP has thus far steadfastly refused to provide any of that.

 

[Maedar]

Great for them but for the exchange to work it needs healthy people to sign up enmass to offset the sick ones and by doing this the company is taking away from some of those healthy individuals

Do you not understand that the exchanges are there for people to sign up en masse for private insurance, and that by trying to pick up business by making fun of healthcare.gov in its marketing, this Iowa insurance company is kind of doing the ACA's job by getting people insured?

 

[John Madden]

(better fix that grammar up right quick)

Regarding that "tax cuts result in increased revenue" claim, I'm not kidding when I say the overwhelming majority of professional economists disagree with it.

 

[BigLutz]

Does you not understand that the exchanges are there for people to sign up en masse for private insurance, and that by trying to pick up business by making fun of healthcare.gov in its marketing, this Iowa insurance company is kind of doing the ACA's job by getting people insured?

And with out the healthy people signing up en mass with the exchanges then the premiums in the exchanges go up as there is no one there to balancing it out. The Iowa Insurance Company may be getting business but it does not help cover those that will be inside the exchanges using subsidies to buy insurance from the companies in there.

Also I noticed you have not said anything about the horrible sign up the exchanges have OR Harry Reid engaging in the Nuclear Option and thus hurting his party