Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
When I awoke a short time ago my mind was in its usual morning fog that slowly dissipates as I go through my wake-up routine which includes laying out the 35 or so pills that I take to stay alive. That fog mentally is usually a jumble of wide ranging short thoughts that are later forgotten as the fog lifts after my first coffee. On the way to the bathroom for my morning ablutions I found myself thinking about the biggest news all week which had been the shutdown of the government and the crisis that ensued. Suddenly, as an idea arose that woke me from the fog. Political Theater, it is all political theater. The threatened shutdown by the Republican Congressman, led by John Boehner et. al. was merely a show whose purpose was to destroy the publicity that would have surrounded the inception of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dubbed by the conservative PR geniuses “Obamacare”. How obvious this was took my breath away and also gave me some chagrin that it took me so long to see this con job in the making, while I mulled over the ramifications of a government shutdown. As the President has said and as some Republican have opined the GOP’s great fear regarding “Obamacare” is that it will succeed. Since enrollment was scheduled to begin on October 1st, without the shutdown speculation dominating the news cycle there would have been much publicity on the beginning of people enrolling in the plan. There would have been actual discussion of the plan and not just the cacophony of misinformation deftly spread by well placed conservative rumor mongers, broadcast blaringly on FOX News and flacked by the innumerable leaders of the “Tea Party”. Our mainstream media would play their continuing game of false equivalence by blithely accepting all information as being equal and not bothering to supply context when lies are told in the service “informing” the public.
Instead we have a manufactured crisis that sends the ACA to the back pages of virtual news media and we have faux layoffs and service loss endlessly debated. Now in truth this thought make me even a little sad for those “Tea Party” congresspeople that haven’t been let in on the nature of the game, nor their role as pawns in the manipulations of some the wealthy elite in this country. As I explained awhile ago in these guest blogs: http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/#more-38049 and http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/16/tea-party-a-phony-movement-mantled-as-legitimate/ the so-called “Tea Party” is not a grassroots movement, but the creation of the Koch, via an organization known as “Freedomworks” which they fund. On the Bill Maher show last Friday night one of his panel guests was the President and CEO of “Freedomworks” Matt Kibbe. From my perspective he was debunked by the panel, particularly Congressman Alan Cranston. What caught my attention though, was that Kibbe was at one point railing about how big government was run by insider lobbyists. None on the panel, or Maher, were perceptive enough to call him out on this since he is the quintessential lobbyist for the Koch Brothers. To my mind there is nothing to see here folks, move along and allow yourselves to be distracted by yet another manufactured crisis, designed to prevent you from actually evaluating the health care plan that is now available to you without adequate health care, or who are paying far too much for what should be a basic right of citizenship, health care. The Affordable Care Act is not my ideal of what American health insurance should be about because I believe in the “single payer” system used in most civilized nations. However, it is far better than what we already have and because of that should be fairly evaluated by the public. Perhaps though that fair evaluation will never get a chance since there are those who consciously work to distract us through propaganda, mythology and political theater into supporting what is in our own worst interests.
After I had written and posted this to my surprise I discovered this article in The New York Times. “A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?hp&_r=0 . A short excerpt:
“WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.”
Perhaps my subconscious was channelling, but it seems that my idea through the morning fog has some weight to it.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Gene and Oro,
that is some list! It seems like they want to go back to the Reagan days.
nick,
“Free thinkers”? Free of the rational? Free of sanity?
As I said to Oky1, “Step outta the box”? The box being your mind?
I’m sure being non-rational, insane, and outta your mind, it all makes sense.
A warm front of free thinkers moving through. It just sounds strange from crouching inside a box. Step outta the box..I know it’s a little scary, but then it all makes sense.
Juliet,
I just checked the moon phases and it is not a full moon; therefore, I have no explanation for what we have seen on this blog today.
I have a feeling the real reason behind this impasse is not about the ACA at all. Hear anyone talking about the sequester?
The non-defense sequester constrictions are here to stay. What’s going on now with the shut-down a distraction which someone’s going to make money on.
Here is more you will not know because it is not going to fit with the world view that Democrats are manipulated so easily with: “http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/421-national-security/19645-focus-greenwald-scahill-to-report-on-nsa-and-us-assassinations
“The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don’t want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S. assassination program,” said Scahill,
(snip)
“There are so many stories that are yet to be published that we hope will produce ‘actionable intelligence,’ or information that ordinary citizens across the world can use to try to fight for change, to try to confront those in power,” said Scahill.”
Before you believe Obama is your true friend and benefactor, consider the truth. Before you think there is a wall of separation between powerful Republicans and Democrats, consider the many truths we already know. Then you will not be manipulated by lies.
Juliet N. But it fits on the back of a business card!
Dave, There will now be some Americans here telling you your healthcare is great. They tell us Cuba is also great. That’s why people risk their lives every day trying to leave Cuba. Now Dave, I know Canada is not Cuba. I love Canada and Canadians, EXCEPT French Canadians. Horrible people.
You know I live in Canada where health care is a “right” & it’s been a consistent downward spiral of higher costs and less service. People assume that health care is a right, why? Because you put a government gun to a doctors head and say do as I say? This type of thinking has lead to the explosion in health care costs in the US. What incentives do doctors have to charge patients the minimum cost? None! Because the Nanny State is there to foot the bill. The problem is, government stolen money ie. taxes and spending are at the point that something has to give. You cannot have empire, a welfare state and equality, it’s backwards thinking and the root of mans problems. It’s a utopian idea to force people to care for you, bottom line, everything costs. The majoritarian rhetoric on this site is hard to stomach at times. I like Turley, he’s great on individual rights, privacy etc. However this false left right paradigm pushed here is palpable, and it’s the wrong basis for this kind of argument. There is either majority rule, screw all the minorities or there is protection of individual rights and liberty. Dressing it up as some conservative/liberal battle is a false narrative. If you truly believe you have a right to dictate to doctors that they must do what you say, you’re an authoritarian nothing more. It’s these kind of ideas that turned the US once the freest country in the world into a police & welfare state. Put yourself in the minorities shoes for once, don’t dictate to everyone.
The debate is absurd, because the very principle of government is absurd: what is required is a free market in medicine, as in everything else.
Carl-Edward: Thank you for that grand pronouncement. I guess we can all just call it a day.
[eye roll]
Carlyle,
Answer to your question is at the link
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=batshit%20crazy
@Oro Lee
So, how BSC is this list?
What is the meaning of “BSC” in this context? I googled “BSC meaning” and one hit defined it as BSc Bachelor of Science another gave a multi page list none of which matched your context.
I’ll be 67 in December and have never received a membership solicitation from the 60 Plus Association. I suspect that the title does not describe the focus of the organization, but the composition of its board of directors.
I linked to information and can’t get the comment to post. Would someone please grab it? Thank you.
Yes, you are being manipulated. You are being taught to view the ruling class not as a single entity that does not have ordinary people’s interest at heart, but as two separate and unique parties, one good, one evil. Obama, man of the people (if those people are in the top 1 percentile of income!)
In this way you will not ever see how the economy is actually being manipulated by elected officials from both parties for the benefit of the few. You will not any longer see that Obamacare is a very bad deal for most people. You won’t understand that the few good parts of it will be stripped out in a compromise over time. You will forget that Obama is going after SS and Medicare. You will forget about mass surveillance, drones, wars, raids, the really bad numbers on the economy, mass unemployment, environmental devastation and you will never question why Obama had Congress kill single payer. universal health care in the first place in favor of a bill that revived insurance corporations.
Democrats will be congratulating themselves for not being stupid and falling for propaganda like Republicans all the way to the complete breakdown of everything that makes a just and good society.
Here is some actual, much needed analysis of Obamacare in the next post.
Kentucky’s success makes a mockery of GOP Obamacare foes
by Jon Perr Oct 03, 2013 12:07pm PDT
Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal provides the perfect encapsulation of the conservative crusade against the Affordable Care Act. On the opinion pages, columnist James Taranto mocked the story of new Obamacare enrollee Brendan Mahoney. But where news is actually reported, the WSJ’s Arian Campo-Flores explained, “Why Kentucky’s Health Exchange Worked Better Than Many Others.” But the Bluegrass State didn’t just provide a relatively smooth first-day enrollment experience. As it turns out, one of the only reliably red states to both establish its own health care exchange and accept the expansion of Medicaid to low income residents, Kentucky is already proving Republican critics of Obamacare wrong.
Those critics include Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, Kentucky’s Republican senators who were caught on a live microphone in Washington admitting their real motives is shutting down the government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But back home, things are going pretty well for Kentucky’s uninsured seeking to obtain coverage at Kentucky’s Kynect exchange:
While Kentucky’s health-insurance exchange experienced some glitches when it launched Tuesday, it seemed to perform better than many of its peers.
State officials and outside experts attribute the smoother rollout to a variety of factors, including intensive testing of the system, a less-flashy but more-efficient website and strong coordination among state agencies involved in the effort.
As a result, Kentucky’s exchange, dubbed Kynect, logged solid results in the first day and a half of operation. As of 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, 10,766 applications for health coverage had been initiated, 6,909 had been completed and 2,989 individuals or families had enrolled in new coverage.
As the Journal suggested, Kentucky’s success may be in large part to the experience of state agencies working closely together on other health care systems in the recent past, including a prescription-drug monitoring database. But the biggest factor of all is Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, who early on opted to have Kentucky run its own health care marketplace and accept billions of dollars of essentially free money from the federal government in order to expand Medicaid to cover 308,000 lower income working residents. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Gov. Beshear explained below why “My State Needs Obamacare. Now”:
There’s a huge disconnect between the rank partisanship of national politics and the outlook of governors whose job it is to help beleaguered families, strengthen work forces, attract companies and create a balanced budget.
It’s no coincidence that numerous governors — not just Democrats like me but also Republicans like Jan Brewer of Arizona, John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan — see the Affordable Care Act not as a referendum on President Obama but as a tool for historic change.
That is especially true in Kentucky, a state where residents’ collective health has long been horrendous. The state ranks among the worst, if not the worst, in almost every major health category, including smoking, cancer deaths, preventable hospitalizations, premature death, heart disease and diabetes.
That “rank partisanship” has left many in Beshear’s state misinformed and confused. When 53-year-old Carolyn Richards of Mount Sherman, a woman who has been uninsured for a decade, visited a Kynect information booth at the recent Wild Turkey Sit N’ Sip Saloon at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, she was surprised to learn about her options under the Affordable Care Act:
“I thought this was defunded.”
As the Washington Post also reported:
Sharon Omstead, 46, who works at a factory labeling bourbon bottles and who calls Obama “the devil” for his economic policies, was surprised to learn that she’ll qualify for Medicaid and have to pay little or nothing for health coverage under the law.
“I’d heard a lot of bad things about the law and how it will make prices for health insurance go up, and how everyone will have to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it,” she said.
Pam Lux, 59, of Edgewood complained about insurers turning her away because of her diabetes and assumed that that would happen again until a Kynect worker informed her that such exclusions are prohibited under the law starting next year. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said.
If that kind of story from the Bluegrass State sounds familiar, it should. In August, Huffington Post documented the same pleasantly surprised reaction from attendees at the Kentucky State Fair:
A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.
The man is impressed. “This beats Obamacare I hope,” he mutters to one of the workers.
“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn’t. If he signs up, it’s a win-win, whether he knows he’s been ensnared by Obamacare or not.
Ensnared, that is, into finally having access to health care in a state ranked 45th by the Commonwealth Fund.
Meanwhile in Republican-dominated states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and more, the GOP has manufactured a “coverage gap” ensuring that millions of their residents will needlessly be left without health insurance next year. But as Gov. Steve Beshear shows, it doesn’t need to be this way. As Mark A. Rothstein, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Louisville, put it:
“If the law can go in Kentucky, it can go anywhere.”
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/03/1243855/-Kentucky-s-success-makes-a-mockery-of-GOP-Obamacare-foes
I wish some of these windy bloggers would learn and follow the rule that:
“if your idea is any good, you should be able to write it on the back of a business card”
Thanks for your input, bubba. It’s always good to hear from the left side of the cognitive bell curve.
(Sorry, Gene. Couldn’t help myself.)
My earlier post was about why Republicans might be afraid to quit the shutdown. The following is about why President Obama can’t and why negotiations should be off the table. It’s about preserving the presidency —
“In a merciful twist of fate, Juan Linz did not quite live to see his prophecy of the demise of American democracy borne out. Linz, the Spanish political scientist who died last week, argued that the presidential system, with its separate elections for legislature and chief executive, was inherently unstable. In a famous 1990 essay, Linz observed, “All such systems are based on dual democratic legitimacy: No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people.” Presidential systems veered ultimately toward collapse everywhere they were tried, as legislators and executives vied for supremacy. There was only one notable exception: the United States of America.
Linz attributed our puzzling, anomalous stability to “the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties.” The Republicans had loads of moderates, and conservative whites in the South still clung to the Democratic Party. At the time he wrote that, the two parties were already sorting themselves into more ideologically pure versions, leaving us where we stand today: with one racially and economically polyglot party of center-left technocracy and one ethnically homogenous reactionary party. The latter is currently attempting to impose its program by threat upon the former. The events in Washington have given us a peek into the Linzian nightmare.”
http://nymag.com/news/politics/nationalinterest/government-shutdown-2013-10/
For those who won’t read the article which Gene linked (which is pretty scary stuff) or follow its link, and as a follow up on my daughter’s third point, I give you the names of the 1 percenters and their lapdogs who brought you the Republican Government Shutdown of 2013, soon to be the Republican Recession of 2013 —
Edwin Meese III
Former Attorney General
President Ronald Reagan
Chris Chocola
President
Club for Growth
Jenny Beth Martin
Co-Founder
Tea Party Patriots
Penny Nance
President
Concerned Women for America
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
President
Constitutional Congress, Inc.
William Wilson
President
Americans for Limited Government
Duane Parde
President
National Taxpayers Union
Susan Carleson
President
American Civil Rights Union
Andrea Lafferty
President
Traditional Values Coalition
Alfred S. Regnery
President
The Paul Revere Project
Lewis Uhler
President
National Tax Limitation Committee
Brent Bozell
President
ForAmerica
Matt Kibbe
President
FreedomWorks
Marjorie Dannenfelser
President
Susan B. Anthony List
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
The Honorable David McIntosh
Former U.S. Representative
Indiana
David Bozell
Executive Director
ForAmerica
Colin Hanna
President
Let Freedom Ring
Stuart Epperson
President
Council for National Policy
Heather Higgins
President
Independent Women’s Forum
Cindy Chafian
President
The Mommy Lobby
Gary Bauer
President
American Values
Mike Needham
CEO
Heritage Action for America
David Bossie
President
Citizens United
Mathew D. Staver
Chairman
Liberty Counsel Action
James Martin
Chairman
60 Plus Association
Erick Erickson
Editor
RedState.com
T. Kenneth Cribb
Former Domestic Advisor
President Ronald Reagan
Becky Norton Dunlop
Former White House Advisor
President Ronald Reagan
Grace-Marie Turner
President
The Galen Institutue
Myron Ebell
President
Freedom Action
Craig Shirley
Reagan Campaign Biographer
Rev. Lou Sheldon
Chairman
Traditional Values Coalition
Richard Rahn
President
Inst. for Global Economic Growth
Lee Beaman
Businessman
Nashville, TN
Bob Reccord
Executive Director
Council for National Policy
Angelo M. Codevilla
Professor Emeritus
Boston University
Tom Donelson
Chairman
America’s PAC
Brian Baker
President
Ending Spending
Kay R. Daly
President
Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
Don Devine
Senior Scholar
The Fund for American Studies
Gary Aldrich
President
Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty
Ralph Benko
President
Center for Civic Virtue
Andresen Blom
Senior Strategist
Center for Civic Virtue
Joe Gregory
CEO
Gregory Management Co.
Rebecca Hagelin
So, how BSC is this list? Too crazy for even Grover Nordquist to join!
My older daughter, who just graduated college and lost her health insurance but thanks be to ACA can be carried on my policy for a few more years, made the following observations about the run up to federal government paralysis and the general background of any analysis of politics today
1. The last general election is the first in which the white male voting block was not the determining block in picking our president. With the loss of white status comes a loss of white privilege, which whites interpret as a loss of rights, and this loss of white status was brought about by the federal government with its pesky voting and civil rights laws and those which empowered women and minority owned businesses. That the president is black is their Exhibit A – something to be feared not celebrated. This fear is the foundation of voter suppression efforts including the successful attack on the Voting Rights Act. And for out of control gun purchases. To stop this erosion of white rights every battle must be fought to destroy this administration, ultimately by force if necessary. For now their Great White Hope to assuage their Great White Fears? – the party of wealth and whites, the party of means and meanness, the GOP!
2. This to-the-death-match mentality exists especially with respect to the ACA, that the American people will develop the same attitude toward the ACA once they are familiar with it as they have with respect to Medicare – go ahead, get rid of all those socialist programs but don’t touch my ACA. Of course, if the ACA were such a train wreck as the Republicans insist, it would seem they would want the populace to feel its full effect prior to the next general election to ensure that every Democrat is turned out of office. But if the populace accepts the ACA, then government is no longer the problem but part of the solution. The Reagan Revolution is overturned and the need for a Republican counterforce reduced. ACA constitutes an existential threat to the GOP.
3. The worst thing that anyone who is not rich can do is belong to or support the GOP, excluding of course the 1% and those who enable or are beholden to them; yet Zinn’s history book (according to her, I haven’t read it) explains why this has always been the case. It’s called class conflict but not among those who have and those have not, but between the have nots – those who have been duped by the 1% and those who haven’t. The problem is that the Democrats are unable to avert their eyes from the wealth of the 1%, but ‘tis only a mirage for them. They need the white males but don’t know how to get them.
My supplementary health insurance tripled, So F—- Obama the liar.