Never forget, never remember

By Capt. Fogg

Good morning Republicans and welcome to another bright new day of  washing our sins in Obama.  And haven't we been having fun preempting the Democrats from using our martial spirit, thanking every veteran for his service by damning Obama for rescuing the one and only soldier (oops, warrior ) who was treasonously disillusioned with our dear war?  Another day, another reason to impeach!

And welcome back to our neocons. Awake after their long sleep to remind us how Obama's weakness has, as we predicted, turned our faultless, perfectly arranged, positively inspiring bastion of freedom in Iraq into a flaming hell of Extremist violence. Let's greet their resurrection with a resounding chorus of  Bonzai Benghazi, Benghazi as we turn his success in capturing a perpetrator into another outrage and let's waste no time since corroboration that the attack really was a response to an Internet video works against us.

It may be another good time to toss out more chaff, more distraction: immigration, gay marriage, climate change racism and Christian rights to make sure the Libtards exhaust themselves chasing the chum while we triumph where it counts, our weapons gleaming in the bright light of a martial dawn.

For lies are the truth and truth lies and Fox is forever.  Thank you for your service. How else would we accuse the father of a war prisoner of being a Muslim terrorist or elevate a rumor to a final verdict but for Fox, the botoxed faces incapable of betraying a lie.  Chemical weapons, Biological weapons, mobile labs, nuclear weapons, centrifuges, yellow cake -- al Qaeda training camps and rape rooms: Saddam and 9/11!  not a smirk, a twitch, a tell.  No, the  America haters were wrong when they said it would be a quagmire with no end and we're right that it's now a quagmire with no end because of Obama.

The quagmire is our glory and our glory eternal, hail Bush and Cheney.  In the words of  Saint Giuliani:

President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, and he said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, "They will hear from us." Well, they heard from us. They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban. They heard from us in Iraq, and we ended Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. And we put him where he belongs, in jail. They heard from us in Libya, and without firing a shot Gadhafi abandoned his weapons of mass destruction. They are hearing from us in nations that are now more reluctant to sponsor terrorists or terrorism. So long as George Bush is our president, is there any doubt they will continue to hear from us until we defeat global terrorism.

We succeeded and Obama failed and the Fox shall lie for ever and ever.  Benghazi!  NEVER FORGET, NEVER REMEMBER.

What deficit?

Can't fail to notice the GOPers don't really mention the once dreaded deficit anymore. Probably because:

Nothing To Cheer

But for the deficit fetishists, the 2013 deficit is $139 billion lower than Simpson-Bowles promised to deliver.

That's actually bad news, and of course it won't even be seen as good news by people who claimed it was the most important thing ever. Because nobody cares about the deficit.

Stolen from Atrios. Supporting documents linked at Eschaton.

Can't spell conservative without the con

And by con I mean lying, dissembling, inhumane ideologues who put politics above the public health and safety. In particular, I'm talking about today's alleged scoop by Tucker Carlson's vanity project, The Daily Crapper which breathlessly announced  Cleveland Clinic is cutting staff because Obamacare:

The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.

“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce,” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.

The funny thing about that "scoop" is this was already reported on Sept 18th by numerous news organizations. Furthermore, as analyzed on Oct 11th, the cuts aren't a direct result of Obamacare. It's not that Obamacare didn't alter the reimbursement schedule. It did, but the overall program was designed to lower federal reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid which would have been balanced by increased coverage under Medicaid and additional insurance subscribers who would sign up for affordable polices, thus cancelling out the unpaid debts that previously plagued hospital budgets.

All the parts were designed to work together and probably would have until the Republicans started screwing around with dismantling the balance points like actively discouraging younger, healthier people from signing up at all and GOP governors refusing to expand the Medicaid coverage after the cons on SCOTUS decided providing health care for poor people shouldn't be mandatory in a civil society.

The weird thing is, after the GOP majority in Ohio's state legislature refused to expand Medicaid coverage, Governor Kasich issued an executive order to do it anyway.

This should have solved the much of the lost revenue problem, except crackpot cons sued to keep the poor from getting Medicaid. They won an expedited hearing just recently.

The procedural ruling was a victory for the six Republican members of the Ohio House and two local Right to Life chapters who filed suit after a legislative-spending oversight panel approved the expenditure last week of $2.56 billion in federal aid provided under the Affordable Care Act. The Controlling Board acted at the request of Gov. John Kasich, who took administrative action to expand Medicaid after the Republican-controlled General Assembly refused to approve it.

Which would have been a big win for both Cleveland Clinic and the state coffers.

Expanding coverage to all Ohioans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — just under $16,000 a year for an individual — is expected to bring $13 billion in federal money to the state during the next seven years.

In other words, it's a great deal for the states. Of course common sense and humanity are not words in the crackpot Republican  lexicon. Nothing is more important than punishing the poor. They'll fight to the death of every last one of "those people" whom they judge to be undeserving in their relentless attempt to win policy concessions they didn't earn at the ballot box.

Cleveland Clinic should be fine in Ohio, if the governor prevails, but they have bigger problems. Thanks to hospital consolidation over the years, they own hospitals in other GOP controlled states where Republicans are determined to sabotage Obamacare. So in effect, they're not cutting staff because of Obamacare. Once again, the onus rests rather firmly on the crackpot cons of Republican party.

Why Mitch McConnell really hates Obamacare

The propaganda doesn't sell as well once the people start signing up in droves for Obamacare. Like in Kentucky:

But in a state where the rollout has gone smoothly, and in a county that is one of the poorest and unhealthiest in the country, Courtney Lively has been busy signing people up: cashiers from the IGA grocery, clerks from the dollar store, workers from the lock factory, call-center agents, laid-off coal miners, KFC cooks, Chinese green-card holders in town to teach Appalachian students.

Not only that, but the rubes are discovering the GOPers have been lying to them.

Although she once had to dispel a rumor that enrolling involved planting a microchip in your arm, and though she avoids calling the new law “Obamacare” in a red state, most people need little persuading.

One person signs up successfully and tell their friends and family. The governor went all in on making the program work well. He clearly understands a healthier population saves the state money and it's just the humane thing to do. Now 60 year old people who have never had health insurance their entire lives are covered. Waiting for the tipping point where the lies just won't sell at all anymore and the GOPers start trying to take credit for the program. Only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, it will be too late for McConnell either way. He's led the vanguard against health care for his own constituents, so the newly covered rubes who once believed the lies won't vote for him now and the angry cons who won't ever sign up because, Dimmocrats invented it, won't vote for him because he signed off on a compromise or two. He's pretty well screwed.

Democrats fight back on Obamacare

This is a good sign. Granted it's not all their fault but the biggest obstacle to the successful implentation of the ACA has clearly been the ongoing GOP sabotage of the rollout. Our POTUS was too polite to call it that but Obama called out the GOP in his own mild way at his inquistion before the WSJ CEO judges panel:

Addressing a gathering of business executives, Obama acknowledged that the health-care rollout “has been rough, to say the least,” and he lamented the government’s archaic information-technology procurement system.

Obama said that fixes to the HealthCare.gov Web portal are underway and that the exchange will function for a majority of people by the end of November. But the president said staunch opposition from congressional Republicans is inhibiting the law’s implementation.

“One of the problems we’ve had is one side of Capitol Hill is invested in failure,” Obama said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council meeting in Washington. “We obviously are going to have to remarket and rebrand, and that will be challenging in this political environment.”

This is also encouraging. It appears our Democratic party found a winning rescue strategy:

I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as ”Cruz Care.”

“The polls all show that when you shift the conversation from `support or oppose’ to ‘fix versus repeal,’ Democrats have the advantage,” Matt Canter, a spokesman for the DSCC, tells me. Regular readers know I broadly agree polls show disapproval of the law does not equal support for the GOP position of repeal.

As I've been saying, it never made sense for Dems to try to run from reform. Their ownership of ACA is set in stone. Their only practical choice is to stand up and fight for it with everything they've got. When GOPers wail repeal, they respond with repair. The problems aren't insurmountable and the GOP's "plan" is to revert to the former status quo. Dems could be reminding the public every day that before ACA junk policies were being cancelled at will by insurers just when they were needed the most. And sticker shock? People forget how fast the premiums were rising and benefits were being cut even in relatively affordable employer based polices. Could only help to remind them.

Mitch McConnell's losing battle

The GOP's greatest fear is the success of Obamacare. Make no mistake, it will succeed over time. Indeed it's already surpassing expectations in the states where Democratic governors are actively trying to make it work. In fact, one of the biggest success stories so far is Kentucky, which brings us to Mitch McConnell's Obamacare nightmare:

As minority leader, and an in-cycle candidate with a primary challenger, he has to be leading the vanguard of Affordable Care Act opposition. But as a Kentucky senator, and a candidate with a general election opponent, he will soon be running on a platform of taking insurance away from tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of his own constituents.

Republicans went all in on anti-Obamacare arglebargle bullshit. Now they're racing the clock, working like mad to sabotage it before the electorate realizes they're better off with Obamacare than no reform at all. The GOP have pinned their strategy on raw hate and scurrilous lies. Thanks to a compliant insider press desperate for daily outrage, (real or invented), GOPers have been winning the day but even the rubes are beginning to see through their perfidy. We may actually live to see McConnell lose his cozy sinecure. Wouldn't that be something?

House passes Protect Predatory Insurers Act

John Boehner's House of Dysfunction passed a bill protecting junk health insurance with a convenient side effect of slow motion undermining the very core of health insurance reform. House GOPers rejected an amendment to protect consumers brought forward by the Democrats. They objected to this language as not being germane to their bill.

The amendment proposed in the motion to recommit in pertinent part requires state insurance commissioners to examine notices of health insurance cancellations or conversions. It also addresses the regulation of health insurance rates, specifically the amendment delineates what would constitute inadequate notice of cancellation or conversions of health insurance coverage and directs state insurance commissioners to investigate such cases of inadequate notice. Additionally, it permits the Secretary of Health and Human Services or the relevant state insurance regulator to take corrective actions if health insurance rates are determined to be excessive, unjustified, or discriminatory….

Translated: If insurance corporations are allowed to sell junk policies, there have to submit to regulatory review if they cancel the policies when people actually get sick and they won't be allowed to indiscriminately price gouge. You'll recall President's Obama's fix also required the insurers to clearly state the limits of the policies and make the consumer aware they had other options on public exchanges.

Well the Republicans won't stand for that. It completely ruins their plan to destroy all and any reforms that interfere with insurance corporation's profits. Even more depressing, 39 Democrats crossed over and voted for the GOP's malicious fakery in a vain attempt to dodge Republican attack ads. As if the dark money frontmen of the GOP won't still pour millions into taking their seats.

A word to those 39 spineless idiots. If you have "D" after your name, you own Obamacare. The good and the bad. The rubes in your district aren't going to be impressed by your cowardly caving into the GOPers thuggery. They'll only respect you if you stand up and fight. Every Democrat should be refusing to countenance the GOP's trickery and holding press conferences on the Capitol steps every day blasting the GOP's perfidy instead of kowtowing to Republican demagoguery.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings) for kindly linking in at Mike's Blog Round Up]