-18-Bay Area
-Sports ^
-Music (Hard Rock, Metal, Rap, Alternative Rock)
-Majoring in Exercise Biology
-I tend to post/reblog a lot of performance cars, as well as nature scenes. But most are personal posts/political rants.
First, individuals and businesses have already gotten a billion dollars in refunds from insurance companies because the new law requires 80 to 85 percent of your premium to go to your healthcare — not profits or promotions.
…Second, more than three million young people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time ‘cause their parents’ policies can cover them.
Third, millions of seniors are receiving preventive care all the way from breast cancer screenings to tests for heart problems, and scores of other things — and younger people are getting them, too.
Fourth, soon the insurance companies — not the government — will have millions of new customers, many of them middle-class people with pre-existing conditions who never could get insurance before.
Finally — listen to this — for the last two years, after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade… health care costs have been under four percent in both years for the first time in 50 years.
So, lemme ask you something: are we better off because President Obama fought for healthcare reform? You bet we are. — President BILL CLINTON (via inothernews)
Republicans have ushered in The New Irrationality.
- The state of Texas can cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, pending a court case to decide whether state funds can be used to pay for abortions; Planned Parenthood in Texas currently does NOT provide abortions, but DOES provide other health services to low-income women and others.
- A Republican Senate candidate — who is currently a Congressman — uses the word “legitimate” to describe rape and says that the body possesses a biological capacity for preventing pregnancies resulting from rape, while yet another GOP representative essentially claims that pregnancies never result from rape or incest. Moreover, the Republican Party is (apparently) less disturbed by Todd Akin’s rape comment and more that they’re going to lose the majority in the Senate.
- The GOP is taking unprecedented steps to suppress voters — in most if not all cases, among constituents likely to vote Democratic — under the guise of combating the non-existent plague of voter fraud.
- The Republican Party’s presidential candidate won’t release tax returns that will likely prove that he has tens if not hundreds of millions in assets that he’s hiding in off-shore bank accounts — despite his own father setting a precedent that’s been followed by every presidential candidate since.
That’s EVERY jobs bill.
Republicans. It’s what they are.
How do I get this newspaper delivered to my house.
(via stfuconservatives)
JON STEWART, on Mitt Romney’s claim that, while he was listed as CEO, president and managing director at Bain Capital through 2002, he “did not manage Bain” and actually “retired retroactively” to 1999, on The Daily Show.
Mitt Romneycan’t even do semantics right.
(via inothernews)
Mitt Romney addressed the national convention of the NAACP Wednesday morning, the nation’s largest civil rights organization. He was cordially received by the audience, who greeted him with a standing ovation, but the tone changed quickly after the GOP presidential candidate began his remarks.
In today’s “no shit, Sherlock” news.
(via inothernews)
(via wilwheaton)
Mitt Romney wants you to think…
- …that the Affordable Care Act is a tax. Too bad his own senior campaign adviser very clearly says it isn’t.
- …that he doesn’t support universal health care. Too bad he signed it into law in Massachusetts.
- …that it’s perfectly fine to stash away tens of millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.
- …that he cares about the very poor when he has said he doesn’t.
- …that he’s unemployed.
- …that he hasn’t declared a war on women.
- …that he doesn’t like firing people.
Mitt Romney calls for these things that are already part of Obamacare during his press conference calling for the repeal of Obamacare:
- “We have to make sure that people who want to keep their current insurance will be able to do so.”
- “We also have to assure that we do our very best to help each state in their effort to assure (sic) that every American has access to affordable healthcare.”
- “We’ve gotta make sure that those people who have pre-existing conditions know that they will be able to be insured.”
(via The Daily Show)
So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.
For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.
What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.
How is that possible? Isn’t Mr. Obama a big spender? Actually, no; there was a brief burst of spending in late 2009 and early 2010 as the stimulus kicked in, but that boost is long behind us. Since then it has been all downhill. Cash-strapped state and local governments have laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers; meanwhile, unemployment benefits have been trailing off even though unemployment remains extremely high.
Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much though not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.
That same obstructionist House majority effectively blackmailed the president into continuing all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that federal taxes as a share of G.D.P. are near historic lows — much lower, in particular, than at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
As I said, for all practical purposes this is already a Republican economy.
— PAUL KRUGMAN, in the New York Times, “This Republican Economy” (via inothernews)House Republicans emphatically agree with Mitt Romney that stay-at-home moms work just as hard as anybody in the workforce. But when it comes to applying that standard to mothers on welfare, they draw the line.
Romney weighed in on the work of stay-at-home moms last week after Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen suggested that Ann Romney, a stay-at-home mom, had “never worked a day in her life.” Mitt Romney defended his wife’s choice to stay home with their five sons by saying, “All moms are working moms.”
“Well, I agree,” Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said of Romney’s comment.
But when Mica was informed of a Democratic bill that would allow child rearing to count toward the required “work activity” that must be performed by recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families — the federal program born out of welfare reform in 1996 — he had a change of heart.
“It’s a stretch. It’s a stretch. It’s a stretch,” Mica told The Huffington Post earlier this week.
Specifically, the bill, called the Women’s Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act, would allow low-income mothers with children ages 3 and under to stay at home with their children and continue receiving benefits. It will be introduced by Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and has about half a dozen Democratic cosponsors.
“It really is a luxury these days for a mom to be able to stay home and raise the kids,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a cosponsor of the WORK Act, said Thursday on MSNBC. “But if you’re lower income, it’s just virtually impossible right now not to look for some outside income.”
Mica tried to explain why he thinks the work of stay-at-home moms is different from other kinds of work.
“It is work, but it isn’t work in the normal sense that you would qualify for those kind of benefits,” he said.
Asked if he understood the point that Democrats were trying to make with their bill — that if everyone agrees that raising children is real work, the government should treat it as such, too — Mica said he did.
“I see the argument. Yeah,” he said. “But it doesn’t pass the test.”
Some Republicans became irate as they tried to square their views on the work of stay-at-home mothers with the aim of the Democratic proposal.
“Anybody who knows what they’re talking about would know it’s darn hard work,” said Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The entire issue is that women bear a disproportionate share of the hard work. Birthing, carrying, the whole thing — it’s hard work.”
But he raised his voice when asked if that meant he could support the Democratic bill.
“Of course not!” he said. “I’m for jobs!”
Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who is running for Senate, called the Democratic bill “disgusting.”
“Frankly, the idea that Democrats are doing something like this is disgusting,” Mack said. “That being said, we should honor women not only for the work they do outside the home, but for the hard work at home.”
Tea Party favorite Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) described raising children as “the most precious and valuable work that gets done in America.” But he scoffed when he learned of the Democratic bill.
“There are lots of things we can describe as work. Is raising children as a mother work? Is raising children as a father work? Is washing the car work?” King asked. “I’d like to be paid for washing my car, but we have to draw the line somewhere.”
The Iowa Republican said the most important work is “raising children right,” and part of that means that “they get the message to be self-reliant, not to rely on the government, but to be self-reliant as Ann and Mitt Romney’s five sons are.”
He speculated that Mitt and Ann Romney’s values would be quite different if Ann had been collecting TANF benefits while staying home raising her sons.
“They wouldn’t be saying, ‘Go out there and get a job and contribute to the economy and pay taxes.’ They would be saying, ‘Find a way to game the system,’” King said. “Mothers would start to teach that to the children even more … because they would be rewarded for gaming the system.”
Not all House Republicans had such strong reactions to the idea of the government treating child rearing as work.
“That has some logic to it,” Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said when he learned of the Democratic proposal. Asked if he could support it, he said it’s possible.
“I’d definitely consider it,” he said.
Bishop guessed that some of his GOP colleagues were having such strong reactions to the bill because they didn’t agree with the TANF program in the first place. In the case of his own family, he said his wife stayed home to raise their kids, which was financially challenging since he was a schoolteacher and she was a school secretary.
“Unfortunately, I’m not one of the rich people here,” Bishop said.
Freshman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), a father of six, said nobody knows better than his wife that being a stay-at-home mom is hard work. She has a book out on the topic and, in the wake of Rosen’s comments, she went on CNN and CNBC to push back. Duffy and his wife are already known TV personalities: They were both castmates on MTV’s “The Real World,” which is how they met.
“It reeks of politics,” Duffy said of the Democratic bill. He acknowledged that some parents have the ability to choose to stay home because they have the money to do it, while others don’t. But Duffy never quite answered the question about whether he thought the government should classify raising children as work.
When asked about the idea of Ann Romney babysitting for low-income moms who can’t afford to stay home, Duffy didn’t offer much of a response, though said she would be able to say she understood how hard they had to work because she went through the same thing.
“You know what, a poopy diaper is a poopy diaper,” he said. “Whether you’re in a rich house or a poor house.”
Dear Republicans:
A poopy diaper is a poopy diaper, unless you’re a multimillionaire like Ann Romney and pay someone else to change it.
STFU.
— Republican presidential candidate RICK SANTORUM, understanding the plight of the average American, as per usual.
This should free him up to worry about other things he shouldn’t worry about, like banning pornography.
With emotions still raw from the fight over President Obama’s contraception mandate, Senate Democrats are beginning a push to renew the Violence Against Women Act, the once broadly bipartisan 1994 legislation that now faces fierce opposition from conservatives.
The fight over the law, which would expand financing for and broaden the reach of domestic violence programs, will be joined Thursday when Senate Democratic women plan to march to the Senate floor to demand quick action on its extension. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has suggested he will push for a vote by the end of March.
Democrats, confident they have the political upper hand with women, insist that Republican opposition falls into a larger picture of insensitivity toward women that has progressed from abortion fights to contraception to preventive health care coverage — and now to domestic violence.
“I am furious,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. “We’re mad, and we’re tired of it.”
Republicans are bracing for a battle where substantive arguments could be swamped by political optics and the intensity of the clash over women’s issues. At a closed-door Senate Republican lunch on Tuesday, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska sternly warned her colleagues that the party was at risk of being successfully painted as antiwoman — with potentially grievous political consequences in the fall, several Republican senators said Wednesday.
Some conservatives are feeling trapped.
“I favor the Violence Against Women Act and have supported it at various points over the years, but there are matters put on that bill that almost seem to invite opposition,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who opposed the latest version last month in the Judiciary Committee. “You think that’s possible? You think they might have put things in there we couldn’t support that maybe then they could accuse you of not being supportive of fighting violence against women?”
The legislation would continue existing grant programs to local law enforcement and battered women shelters, but would expand efforts to reach Indian tribes and rural areas. It would increase the availability of free legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, extend the definition of violence against women to include stalking, and provide training for civil and criminal court personnel to deal with families with a history of violence. It would also allow more battered illegal immigrants to claim temporary visas, and would include same-sex couples in programs for domestic violence.
—The New York Times, “Women Figure Anew In Latest Senate Battle.”
Just so we get this straight: conservatives have a problem with renewing the Violence Against Women Act because 1) it would actually protect more people than the original 1994 law, and 2) semantics.
Got it. And BTW according to some conservatives there is no war on women, LOL.
(via inothernews)
MITT ROMNEY, praising the Chinese government’s ability to “seize property by fiat and marshal state-owned industries to build large projects,” we guess.
Mitt’s new campaign slogan: “yay Communism.”
(via inothernews)
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, stood by his libertarian beliefs on Sunday, saying that victims of the violent storms and tornadoes that have battered a band of states in the South and Midwest in recent days should not be given emergency financial aid from the federal government.
“There is no such thing as federal money,” Paul said, on CNN’sState of the Union. “Federal money is just what they steal from the states and steal from you and me.”
“The people who live in tornado alley, just as I live in hurricane alley, they should have insurance,” Paul said.
Paul said there was a role for the National Guard to restore order and provide care and shelter in major emergencies, but that theFederal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) led to nothing but “frustration and anger.”
“To say that any accident that happens in the country, send in FEMA, send in the money, the government has all this money—it is totally out of control and it’s not efficient,” Paul said.
Lose all your things in a natural disaster? Too bad, shoulda had insurance.
Lose all your things in something beyond your control? Too bad, the government shouldn’t pay for it.
Lose all your things thanks to my God? Too bad, you can remain homeless and hungry.
Good work Ron Paul. Keep it classy.Fuck this man. Why would you vote for him?
Ron Paul is also a racist and a medical doctor who thinks people without health insurance should die, but let’s all act surprised anyway.
