As of this month, even with the near-death experience of the government website that was built specifically to handle open enrollment through the Affordable Care Act, the White House has announced that more than 8 million Americans have enrolled in the Affordable Care marketplaces during the enrollment period starting on October 1, 2013, and millions more have received eligibility to receive insurance coverage through Medicaid by the close of the open enrollment period on March 31, 2014. Since implementation of the law was put into effect in stages 2 years ago, 2 million Americans who had been denied insurance for years due to pre-existing conditions, and children up to 26 years old have been enrolled in health care coverage, bringing the total number of people who are now covered under the Affordable Care Act to about 10 millions.According to Medicaid.gov, eligibility for Medicaid is calculated based on a percentage of the Federal Poverty Level or FPL. According to that office, 60 million of Americans are covered under Medicaid. Those include children, senior, pregnant women, and the disabled. The Federal Poverty Level for a family of four was $23,550 in 2013. For over four decades, politicians debated the rise of healthcare cost in the United States.

 

The debate over the number of uninsured Americans, which was estimated to be 40 million in 2000, and reaching 47 million in 2008. By 2011, it was estimated that the United State had the highest healthcare cost with approximately 50.2 million uninsured citizens. Coverage varied from state to state. Only 12% of the population was covered under Medicare, 13% under Medicaid, and individual insurance coverage was at 5%, while voluntary employer contribution to employees’ healthcare covered 54 of working families. According to various studies conducted by the World Health Organization, the United States was the only leading industrialized nation that did not provide health insurance coverage to its citizens. In 1997, during the Clinton Years, the total number of people who died for lack of medical care was estimated to be close to 100,000 every year.A 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 44,800 excess deaths happen every year in the United States due to lack of health insurance.

                                                                  Republican Party Tea Party Leader                  

                                    Extremist Radio Talk Show Rush Limbaugh_Photo: Longislandpress.com

 

Before the Affordable Care Act of 2010, Congress passed several piece meal bills aimed at addressing the abysmal state of health insurance coverage, the escalating cost of healthcare, and the overwhelming fraud in Medicare and Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) to provide emergency health care treatment to anyone in need, regardless of citizenship, legal status, or the ability. The bottom line here was to cut down on unnecessary suffering and premature death due to lack of health insurance coverage, and to allow undocumented residents to access health services rather than hiding from hospital and spreading diseases. This was followed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) signed by President Clinton.The act was designed to protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. This act required the establishment of national standards for electronic health care records and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. This act is also known by the names of its sponsors as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, Senator Ted Kenney (D-MA) and Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS). This takes us to The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 and The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005; both bills were signed into laws by President George W. Bush. The 2005 bill was meant to encourage reporting and open discussion relating to adverse or fatal events, near misses, and dangerous conditions in the healthcare delivery system. The law also established patient’s privilege and confidentiality, and set standards for patient’s protections and “Safety Work Product” (as defined in the act). Finally, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, (HITECH) Act, was enacted in 2009 and signed by President Obama under Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to promote and expand health information technology. 

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then Senator Obama campaigned broadly on his plan to enact a health insurance policy to provide coverage to the 50 million uninsured Americans. The president often told and retold the painful story of watching his dying mother struggle with insurance paperwork, more than she was able to die in piece from the ravage of cancer. The electoral was fully aware of the president’s agenda, as he retold the story at almost every stop in his campaign. In March 2010, Congress passed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and President Obama signed it into law. Going against the will of its democratic liberal base that wanted a single payer system, Obama adopted a model, which had been developed and marketed earlier to Congressional Republicans by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in a paper published by Stuart Butler in 1989. The “individual mandate,” which is at the core of president Obama’s health care law requires that every American buy health insurance, if they don’t have it through their work, or pay a penalty. By the time Obama was elected in 2008, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, had already instituted this healthcare model for all Massachusetts residents.

But this time, Republicans said, hell no! It was 2010, and the Tea Party was on the rise; The fever was at a pitch. Suddenly, mainstream Republicans had become radical secessionist: President Obama was described in right wing newsletters, fund-raising letters, on more than the 500 hundred radical radio talk shows, websites, and the merchant of Omaba-derangement and a whole-seller of Obama-dementia itself, Fox News, as an illegal Kenyan citizen, the devil personified, Hitler incarnated, a socialist, a communist Muslim dictator, some sort of half human and half something that was born for one and only purpose, and that is to ‘destroy our way of life.’ “He does not like America;” “He hates White people;” “He’s stupid and lazy;” “He hides terrorists in the White House – maybe Osama Bin Laden.” “He’s a food stamp president;” “We can’t trust him;” “He’s a lying outlaw;” “Oh! Wait a minute – He’s Black! No, half-black! No, half-white! No, wait – we don’t know and we don’t care, we just hate him! And on and on…”

In 2012, the president got re-elected even though they continued to chant in harmony about how the health care law is “a job killer,” “a train wreck,” “it’s going to kill senior, and women and children,” “the government is going to plant you with microchip,” “death panel is on its way,” IRS agents will be doing your surgeries, and Obama himself will be deciding who should be treated for what illness and who should be left to die. So, they dubbed the law “Obamacare.” House Republicans voted more than 50 times to repeal, undermine, or kill the Affordable Care Act prior to the implementation of the last stage of the program, the open marketplace enrollment, which was set to begin on October 2013. On that day, as the federal fiscal year was schedule to start and the government had reached the amount of money it needs to pay its bills, otherwise referred to as the ‘debt ceiling,’ Congressional Republicans mounted a government shutdown and kept the United States government shut down for nearly three weeks, in a last ditch effort to demolish the law.

The Angry Faces of the Modern Republican Party

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This all happened in an effort by Republicans to bloc and boycott a plan that sought to

·         Guarantee healthcare eligibility to all Americans.

·         Prevent insurance companies from denying people insurance coverage           on the basis pre-existing health conditions.

·         Provide comprehensive benefits, such as those enjoyed by federal               employees

·         Cover essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and           mental health care.

·         Offer affordable premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.

·         Provide subsidies for individuals and families who do not qualify for             Medicaid but still need financial assistance to buy into the new public                                                                              plan or purchase a private health care plan.

·         Make it simple to enroll by providing ready access to coverage.

·         Make it possible for individuals to carry their insurance coverage from job to job or region to region through the               National Health Insurance Exchange

·         Establish quality standards by requiring insurers report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information           technology and administration are being met.

 

After moving from the state of surprise with the election of president Obama, to a state of mania after his re-election, the party of failed ideas whose time has come and gone, moved across the border from the state of denial and occupied the states of frenzy and panic. Even the American press failed to realize the act of total desperation that was embodied in the ill-fated maneuver by the GOP/ Tea Party members to bring the United States Government to a squelching halt. Stopping the implementation of the open enrollment was absolutely, positively critical to undoing the law. The Republicans knew that even the deployment of weapons of mass distortion, such as outrageous lies and the most embarrassing rhetoric would not allow them to go to millions of Americans and ask them to turn their health insurance card over to a party of nihilists. These fanatics are also paranoid and apocalyptic. They construct conspiracy theories, circulate them, and then put them through a process of mutation and transmutation through a Republican rat labyrinth, and lost in the state of delusion, they believe hearing the voices of the majority of Americans cheering them on, when in reality, the sound they hear is that of their own voice echoing back to them; And this has been known in recent time as the right wing echo chamber.

 

This week, we have seen headlines in various online and off-line publications such as the following: Greg Sargent: The Plum Line in The Washington Post, “Business groups aren’t too happy about Tea Party mania they helped unleash;” The New Times,“A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire; But it is this sentence appearing to defend multi-million dollar financing and the rise of the Tea Party in Slate that tells the real story, “It really was a groundswell,” [he said] that changed Washington from the outside in.” No, it was not a groundswell, and it was not a grassroots movement. And anyone with a half of a brain could tell from the beginning that rather than being a grassroots movement, the Tea Party was the Frankenstein’s monster created and highly organized by shadow billionaires who have always been behind the conservative movement to divert government resources away from the needs of the people and into their foreign bank accounts. Even a distracted observer could clearly see the coming together of those ill-motivated financiers with the ever-fading social conservatives who were losing the “family value war,” and the former abortion- clinic-bombing and gay-bashing evangelical Christians, also known as Religious conservatives who joined under the Tea Party Patriots umbrella, hoping to speed up their goal of banning abortion. These various factions formed the perfect toxic mix to house Federalists, survivalists, and various racist and hate groups. This was all very obvious from the beginning, following the election of President Obama. Like any good lawyer, every good journalist knows that the facts do not always amount to the truth. Repeating the facts like a parrot, or implicating both parties in wrongdoing, is not a substitute for investigating and reporting the truth. The media knew the whole time what the government really represents and the value of a well-functioning government to the well-being of the nation. They also knew what those groups implied when they talked about “big government,” or “entitlement.” Yet, members of the press and highly paid political hacks continuously echoed these slogans and buzz words. In reality, social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are not “entitlements.” Those are important social programs that were set up by a country on the march toward civilization; they were established to support people who were not, or would no longer be in positions to support themselves. People in the press also knew that those words were being used as epithets to demonize these programs, in lieu of saying as Tea Party Republican, U.S. Representative of Wisconsin and former vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, previously declared that social security was a Ponzi scheme.

For newspapers, network broadcasting, and 24-hour cable stations that were losing ground, readership, and viewership at record number to reality TV and the internet, this poisonous movement became a gold-mine. Good and solid investigative journalism and reporting was shelved to make way for three-ring circus. Serious shows competed for “fair and balance,” as if every story had three or four sides to it. The more venom anybody could spew the more often and likely they were called to be a guest on various TV programming, the bigger and more microphones they were afforded, and the more they were quoted in newspaper articles. Racist comments became just another person’s opinion. This trend fed onto itself, as fringe show hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the most outrageous right-wing fringe who had been in the business of fomenting conspiracy theory, and enticing hate, division, and disharmony, see their clips replayed on TV and their vicious diatribes quoted in newspaper unchallenged.

This disintegration of the national press was disheartening. But it was even more frightening to watch as the media followed headlong behind a group of people half of which was heading toward the open ocean, and the other half toward the abyss. To think that the job of a real press was to get ahead and in the middle of events in order to investigate and discover the truth, and to in turn inform the people, the American press and the media at large have betrayed the American people and let the America down. To their discredit, Fox News, which invented “fair and balance” was not fooling anyone, as even the lowest information voters, meaning any fool – except for the delusional,  could tell that Fox News is a branch of the Republican Party. However, it was more than a disappointment when CNN Candy Crowley in her State-of-the-Union, and every other Sunday show, including ABC with George Stephanopoulos, CBS with Bob Schieffer, jumped into the “fair and balance” game; “both parties do this;” “they’re all guilty of that.” Nothing life has two different truths to it. This is not a game. Everyone has the right to their own opinion, however idiotic, insidious, or malevolent, but no one has the right to their own made-up facts and distortion of the truth. David Gregory of NBC Meet the Press is the biggest offender and a true disappointment, having taken over for Tim Russert, a true journalist who would challenge untrue and dangerous statements made by any guests on his show. Russert, with his charming half mischievous smile, used to handle and confront misstatements made on his show in the most professional, ethical, and classy manner. By his conduct on the set, David Gregory disgraces Tim Russert’s legacy. Sandy Crowley who just started her new show on CNN has fallen into the “fair and balance” pits. Fair and balance has become the modus operandi for lazy and unethical journalists, and is used as a cover to schedule outrageous and destructive guests in an effort to boost ratings. Why not create controversy, entertain invective, and encourage conflicts and mayhem, if that can get more people to watch? Ted Cruz of Texas and Marc Lee of Utah want to take down the U.S. President at the risk of crashing the U.S. economy, please book them for our Sunday show. This is not just bad journalism; it is media malpractice and unpatriotic.   

                                 

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Ironically, you have to go to Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith on Fox Fake News, Comedy Central John Steward and Stephen Colbert, the late night comedians and Saturday Night Live, to get information dissected and presented in ways that are informative and present the truth. Fox News Shepard Smith gives straight news and does not typically entertain guests, but he does not engage in distorting the news or try to mislead his viewers. Surprisingly, Chris Wallace, also of Fox Fake News, occasionally taps into the ethics of journalism to challenge guests who come onto his shows to spread non-sense or propaganda. Perhaps, he cannot shed the great journalism ethics of his father, Mike Wallace. The fact is, any good journalist knows that propaganda has been the weapon of choice for mal-intended politicians from the beginning of time, and propaganda never precedes anything good or constructive. For anyone looking for intelligent analysis of the news, good journalism, and reporting on the truth, the only resources left are the MSNBC line up with hosts, such as Weekend’s Up with Steve Kornacki and Melissa Harris-Perry. During the day, one has to admire the wit, sharpness, and the promising future awaiting host, Alex Wagner at 12:00. Thomas Roberts at 11:00 is an excellent and outstanding journalist. Tamron Hall shows journalistic grit in the NewsNation at 2:00. Beginnig at 4:00 with Martin Bashir, a series of real news explosion, and unique views and analysis begin, which go from the Ed Show with Ed Shultz at 5:00, Politics Nation with the Reverend Al Sharpton of the Civil Right Group, the National Action Network ,at 6:00, Hardball with Chris Matthews at 7:00, Chis Hayes’ new show All In at 8:00, the absolutely brilliant Rachel Maddow in the Rachel Maddow show at 9:00, to the very cerebral Lawrence O’Donnell in the Last Word at 10:00. Therefore, for anyone looking to dive into the issues, and for those who enjoy intellectual and vigorous analytic exercise with the ability to consume and digest well dissected information and facts that is the place to be during those hours. Watching those shows is like sitting by a fireplace and having someone reading a book to you, while the story is being re-enacted and dramatized right before your eyes. For a good example of this type of exceptional  journalism—although these are considered to be opinion shows, watch Rachel Maddow on YouTube dealing with statements made on a previous show by Pat Buchanan about how 100 percent of everything in this country was built by 100 percent of White people. Not much can be said for self-professed conservatives Joe Scarborough gathers groups of individuals many of whom seem afraid to speak their mind or have not the courage or any conviction. Since CNN has fallen into disrepute with their fair and balance competition with Faux News on fox, Morning Joe remains the show to watch, with the hope that once in a while the cast of characters will include people like Washington Political Director Chuck Todd who seems to have figured out that good journalism is not about spreading blame evenly and that this country and its people depend on the media to protect their interests through the dissemination of reliable information rather than fiction, speculation, lies, and fantasies. 

This failing by the media is the reason why, while the press was feeding voters hot air during the 2012 presidential election campaign, and projecting how close and unpredictable the election was going to be, voters were actually getting their news from real sources on Comedy Central, Jay Leno, David Letterman,  Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, and the opinion shows. People in the media and journalism business can belong to, and sympathize with, whatever party they like, but they have no right to mislead the public, contribute to the demise or the destruction of the country, or be complicit in any venture to lead the American people into an abyss. Tea Party Republicans have been threatening to destroy the U.S. government for years. And it is curious that all of the groups that make up the Tea Party Patriots have some sort of Americana words attached to their name, Heritage Foundation, Heritage Action, Freedom Partners, Freedom Works, American Commitment, Club for Growth, Americans  for Prosperity, just to name a few. The names alone suggest that somehow people who do not belong to that circle are not a part of the American heritage. This was in plain display in the Republican presidential primary of 2012, with statements, such as Mitt Romney’s self-deportation and 47 percent of the people… are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Until then, the media had been applauding Mitt Romney for how well he could lie and deceive the voters; the media referred to Romney’s attempts to cheat and deceive as a “pivot.” It was only thanks to a hard-working caterer, Former President Carter’s grandson, and David Cone of Mother Jones that Americans finally got to know who Mitt Romney really was. Even then, some in the so-called mainstream media tried to call his 47 percent statement a “gaff,” when in fact it was the only time that Mitt Romney came across as his real self, on that tape.

Now that the country is on the verge of default, whether or not Congress comes up with some monkey solution, another prelude to the next crisis, at the last minute before midnight on October 17, all the shameful media has to say is oops! The media never made any effort to explain to the people that the government is them. They never informed the people that the government is the engine behind individual needs, individual liberty, business development, and economic prosperity, not to mention that the U.S. economy is tightly linked to the global economy. The media was around when the Tea Party bit on the President’s health care law like scavengers. The media was there when the President run on passing a health care law and got elected based on that platform, and the media was well aware that the President literally took a Republican heath care plan, and in doing so went against the will of the majority of his base. But when the Tea Party sank its teeth into the healthcare law and mounted a malignant campaign of disinformation against the law, what did David Gregory do? Did the New York Times study what was going and inform the public of what was really at stake? Who could be against providing health care to society? The media knew or should have known that the health care train wreck propaganda was just a proxy to fight the President, and attack the Federal government. The media also knew that the Federal government was the military, the families made up women and children who are being left behind in this corporations-are-people-too economy; the people who are being pushed off the ladder by millionaires racing to become billionaires.

We now have two blatant examples of how the media let the American people down. First, the media sat on the sideline cheer-leading, while President George W. Bush took the country to war in Iraq on false pretense, and approved the indefinite detention and torture of prisoners on foreign soil. Then the national press, not only sat on the sideline, but egged on a mixed groups of people who clearly were not who they claimed they were, and frankly represented a threat to this country in more ways than one. People in the media knew or should have that the role they decided to play in each of these instances would be destructive to the country they were supposed to be safeguarding, if they were doing their jobs as the independent press they were supposed to represent. The media failed the country and the people who count on them for transparency, truth, and information. Instead, the greater portion of the press engaged in playing games, discounting those Americans who can figure out events and information for themselves, and referring to the rest of the people as “low information” audiences. If given the truth, even the so-called “low-information” Americans would not choose to vote against their own best interests.

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The media knew that the government was veterans who fought for this country, are disabled, and depend on the government for their livelihood. The media knew that the government was frail elderly men and women, widows living near or below poverty who need the government to finish their days off the streets, under bridges, or in the cold. The media knew that the federal government was not just Washington DC, and that harming or shutting down the government would have repercussion from here to Afghanistan, to China and Russia, Iran, and Syria. This is where the focus of the media should have been: on the well-being of this country, and not on self-promoting politicians who will do and say anything, including the most outrageous statements in order to get press attention and self-promote some more. The media knew that the President has been comprising with the Republicans and continues to be opened to comprise. They media understand that the Republicans have in effect taken this country hostage and demanded ransom for doing their job to protect the fiscal stability of this country. The media know that the Republicans have been obstructing and trying to derail this Presidency, and therefore there mantra about compromise is a lie. All of this is wrong. The president has bent over backwards to accommodate those people no matter how unreasonable they are. He has invited them to dinner and got them all to the White House for talks. At this point, the President owes these people nothing; they should get zip, zero for putting the country through this hardship, and the President should not negotiate with terrorists foreign  or domestic. In addition, President Obama should resist further attempts by Tea Party Republicans to open the government piece by piece. This will lead to those people keeping certain parts of the government shut down permanently. After all, they are same people who promised to get rid of the department of education, and every single regulatory department, as if big businesses are not running wild enough. Crashes of the U.S. economy will necessary trigger a domino effect that will be felt in markets around the world. Now, that the United States is nearing default for the second time in two years, perhaps the national press, and the media in general, will soon shed their Tea Party glow, after they lose half of their pensions and wealth in the stock market. But that will be no consolations to the Americans who have already lost so much.

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The Tea Party has been running a high fever since the election of President Obama in 2008. The President and the American people have been more than forgiving and willing to leave behind the inventive and vicious name-calling. But their recent attempts in the past weeks to send the recovering U.S. economy into a tail spin by shutting down the government and threatening to default on the good faith and credit of the United States, after they have tried for the first four years to throw all sorts of money ranches to prevent growth, in order to derail the presidency of President Obama presidency, are unacceptable, and must be denounced and rejected. All of the tape recordings of these people vowing to make President Obama “a one-term president” as they stated time and time in public and on camera were no accidents.  They are both dumb and brazen. The one thing that is very curious about the toxic GOP and Tea Party mix is how indecent and uncivil they can be in their public behavior, for a party who seem so nostalgic about traditional values, religion, and morality. Apparently, the fever was too high, and having already reached the level of delirium, there was nothing anyone could possibly have done, and certainly not President Obama, to save that group of people against themselves. It would have been fine if those suicidal maniacs had limited their cannibalism to their ranks, but they have turned their jaws on the country, and they must be stopped.

The Republican Party, today, is broken beyond repair. The party has been poisoned when it joined in drinking the toxic tea that the rabid group of people who changed their names from religious fundamentalists and evangelical Christians to Tea Party mounted a hostile take-over of the GOP establishment. Unfortunately, the GOP had no choice; the party had been lying to the country for so long in lieu of any decent governing policy agenda, that its members turned to selling their souls to the devils in a their bids to return to the White House. This alliance is proving to be a fatal affiliation for moderate and reasonable statesmen in the Republican Party. The irony is that there was no secret in the fact that the so-called Tea Party was made of loosely tied factions of former abortion bombers, Southern Federalists, and anarchists with various agendas, including skinheads and racists. The goal of these parasites was to use the GOP as a host to allow that crowd to pursue more or less nefarious political agenda items, with the hope that they could never underestimate the stupidity of the electorate. Fortunately, while they were plotting, the American electorate grew younger, wiser, and more diverse. And when they failed to fool the people one more time in the past two elections, they literally lost the figment of a neuron that they had left, and went berserk.

After sucking the bloody life out of the GOP, Tea Party Bolsheviks have left Republicans on their knees, unable to drag themselves out the coral where they have been jammed.  Now, they are moving to impose their delusional agenda on the rest of the whole of the country, after the lying and dishonorable presidential candidate Mitt Romney acted so dishonorably, during the presidential elections and was soundly repudiated by the voters. With the complete anarchy this group is creating in the United States Congress, and the sustained damage they have been inflicting on this country, the time has come for all to recognize that this fever is not going to break. If anything, their frenzied delusion is degenerating into dangerousness. With the advent of radical Tea Party militants in the United States government, Republicanism is looking more and more like a mental illness. The threat to blow up the U.S. economy and with it the global economy, by various means, such as government shutdown and default, the individuals in the tribal groups are terrorizing the country to its core and right down to its psyche. The idea that there is anyone involved in this despicable tactics or responsible for the resulting damage is ludicrous. Even a blind person can tell who is holding this country hostage and who has been trying to crash the already ailing economy. There is one group and one group alone that is responsible for the chaos and any ensuing damage, and that is the Tea Party Congress in Washington and their Speaker in name only, John Boehner of Ohio. They have high-jacked the House of Representatives, refusing to allow important legislation to move forward by keeping Democrats from voting to pass bills. And their mass lying about the Senate not passing the poisoned bills they have sent to take food out of the mouths of children and medical care from the elderly is despicable. They are a threat to this country. 

There are politics and ideology, and there is complete anarchy and chaos. We have long left the territories of politics and ideology and are now drowning in chaos and anarchy. Tea Party members in the House of Representatives have complained this weekend that the President of the United States have taken calls from the President of Iran and is talking with Syria, but yet will not negotiate with them. Could it be that the Presidents of Syria and Iran are now acting more reasonably than they are. Why should President Obama keep reaching out again and again to people who continue to stiff him and wants nothing better than one more occasion to burn him? They have mistaken the President’s good nature and class for imbecility. President Obama should deny these fools of any more opportunity to burn him again. The Republicans have shown themselves to be so irresponsible and derelict that they are even discouraging uninsured people, including young adults, from signing up for the Affordable Health Care plans. However, they are also so idiotic as to not realize that throwing IEDs at the White House and the Senate will not, and cannot, stop the 3 and a half year old health care law. The problem is, several provisions of this law have already been implemented around the country, and many Americans are already benefiting from it, including small businesses, people with pre-existing conditions, and young adults.

Finally, the Tea Party clan claims that one of the reasons why the law shall be abolished or delayed is because the President has issued various waivers to businesses. If that is the case, the President of the United States should in fact be applauded for showing flexibility and sensitivity to the need of businesses, as well as a willingness to comprise and to be reasonable. The President said in a speech this week that the Republicans are afraid that the law will work and are trying desperately to stop the beginning of its implementation beginning on October 1st. This is true. The Affordable Health Care Act will be implemented and it will succeed. This may take time, as the roll-out of any new program requires time and adjustments. The people will prevail and the Tea Party extremists will sink to the depth where they belong. Last Sunday, NBC Meet the Press David Gregory scheduled to entertaining Tea Party Radical Senator Ted Cruz as his featured guest. The country does not need anyone handing more fuel to people who are threatening to burn down the US House of Representatives or crash the US and world economy.

The media must stop acting as an accomplice to this destructive force in the life of the country. After the press abdicated its duty to serve as an independent arbiter at the beginning of the Iraq war, and instead acted as cheerleaders for the administration of George W. Bush, the least they can do now is to refrain from encouraging the absurd behaviors of these disgraceful Tea Party members on Capitol Hill. They owe this to the American people. The way the media tried to suggest to Americans how close the elections were right through election night, and the manner in which they refer to Americans as “low information voters,” show how little respect they have for Americans. If people in the media cannot conduct themselves more conscientiously, than they should make sure to at least do nothing to contribute to hardship and suffering among Americans. A person with a catastrophic illness, which no one can plan for, can end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and this is not something young people would think about until it happens to them. With businesses not hiring or hiring part-time workers, thousands if not millions of people are working as freelancers and needs health insurance that they would not be able to afford in the open insurance market. The press must begin to act responsibly and in the interest of the country and the American people, rather than catering to forsaken Tea Party arsonists for the sake of ratings.

 CC_Source

Once the newly elected president and Democratic majority Senate steered the country away from the “Fiscal Cliff” the Tea Party Republicans dragged the country through in early January 2013, the Republicans set a new series of roadblocks and manufactured crisis in their effort to take the country to the brink. In 2011, President Obama negotiated a continuing budget resolution with the Republicans in order to avoid a government shutdown. Even then, the Republicans were so determined to either derail the economy or shut down the government that by the time they reached an agreement on the budget, the country’s credit rating was downgraded from a triple “A” rating to a minus. At that time, the President negotiated the so-called sequester with the Republicans in good faith, with the idea that the cuts in the budget sequester were so severe that the Republicans in Congress would never allow them to go into effect automatically, without making some effort to manage those cuts in order to avoid hurting the most vulnerable American citizens. Before the sequester took effect in the spring, budget wonks and analysts estimated that those cuts would take away food from the hungry and the elderly by cutting funds from critical programs, such as meals on wheels and food stamps. One.org compiled the following figures:

171,900 people would not have AIDS medication, resulting in 39,200 deaths and 77,200 more children becoming orphans

1.2 million fewer insecticide-treated mosquito nets, leading to over 3,200 deaths from malaria

836,800 fewer Pentavalent vaccines would be available for children, resulting in 8,900 more deaths from completely preventable diseases

As of today, we are in a brand new crisis. For the federal government, the fiscal year ends on September 30 each year. Therefore, Congress is mandated under the Constitution to pass a budget to cover the government’s expenses for the new fiscal year. This budget includes all expenditures from the Pentagon to social security and federal employees. Congress has been threatening for months to shut down the government unless the President agreed to one concession or another. But an interesting happened. This year, the end of the federal government fiscal year happens to coincide with the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act. For decades, Washington has tried unsuccessfully to find a solution to cover the millions of Americans who have been uninsured. As the cost of health insurance skyrocketed, the number of uninsured Americans increased, and hospital emergency rooms became the main avenue by which most of the uninsured received health care services. There are many reasons why a person may not have health care coverage. Many young people get thrown off their parents’ health insurance once they turn eighteen. Insurance companies had been free to deny coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions, and sometimes simply suspended coverage for people who are sick after they have used a certain amount of coverage. The price of not having health care coverage adds up to a life and death situation. 

Even though hospitals are mandated by federal law to take care of patients who need critical care, regardless of their ability to pay, they are not required to do any more than may be necessary to save a patient’s life. As a result, a person who shows up in the emergency room sick, but not in critical condition, will receive treatment but also sent a bill to pay out of pocket. The costs of health care have driven many people into bankruptcy. In addition, individuals without medical insurance are more likely to suffer from fatal conditions that do not get discovered early enough for doctors to save their lives. In 2010, the Democrats were able to pass the Affordable Health Care Act, which is one of the agenda items that President Obama ran on during the 2008 presidential election and again in 2012. The Republicans are clearly attempting to implement the failed and repudiated agenda that their Congressional candidates and Mitt Romney offered to the country last November.

While the president was being inaugurated in January 2009, the Republicans were making plans to torpedo his administration. The Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell said openly,“ our first priority is to make President Obama a one-term president.” In 2010, the Republicans joined hands with their rising Tea Party flank, a toxic mix of non-Republican Republicans and hang their hat on the Affordable Health Care Act, which they called “Obamacare.” They misled the electorate about the law: It’s a job-killer; it’s socialism; it’s taking away your freedom; it’s a train wreck; it has 2000 pages; the IRS is going to decide if you should live or die; the will be death panels. None of it is true. In fact, now that the law is ready to go into effect, Republicans have been desperately telling Americans to not sign up for health care. Those Republicans could not care less if you were to get sick and did not have health insurance. But they poisoned the atmosphere enough to win the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid-term elections.

As we approached a deadline for funding the government, right-wing Tea Party Republicans demanded that their leaderless House Speaker John Boehner de-fund the Health Care Law as a condition for funding the government. Boehner is a speaker in name only. Since 2010, he has had absolutely no control whatsoever over the Southern band of Tea Party radical Congressmen who were sent to Washington from their districts to do one thing and one thing only, that is to disrupt and topple the government of the United States. These so-called lawmakers do not believe in education, science, mathematics, or democracy. Today, one of their colleagues said on MSNBC that “they [Tea Party Republicans] led people to believe that they can de-fund the President’s Health Care Law; That’s not intellectually honest.” The truth is that those right-wingers have neither the intellect nor the honesty to realize that they are working against the interests of the country, never mind their constituencies. 

On Thursday, Boehner (R-Ohio) tried a last minute maneuver to get his wild flock to let go of their fight to defund the Health Care Act or shut down the government. He offered them to wait and start the same fight over again when it comes time to raise the federal debt limit to pay the government’s bill by the October 17 deadline. Boehner was trying to weasel his way out of this fabricated emergency that blood thirsty Republicans have created for the country as a whole. But the hard-liners in his Tea Party caucus refused to budge. The House sent a bill to the Senate with provisions to defund the Affordable Health Care Law. When the bill reached the Senate, Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) threw a temper tantrum. Cruz took to the Senate floor and held a ridiculous filibuster for nearly twenty hours, only to join the rest of the body and vote to advance a new Senate bill, which stripped the health care defunding language after which the bill passed the Senate. The new bill has been sent back to the House of Representatives, but at this time, no one believes that the House will have sufficient time to vote on a bill to fund the government before the deadline at midnight October 1st. Cruz’ action prompted Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to take to the Senate floor and accused Cruz of blocking the vote and delaying it until Friday so he could “turn this into a show” for his supporters from the Tea Party movement and conservative political organizations.

President Obama has publicly stated that he will not negotiate over paying the country’s debt, or while the country is being held hostage by right-wing Republicans. The President called the Republicans’ threat to shut down the government "irresponsible." President Barack Obama repeated Thursday that he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling and will not sign any bill that defunds or delays the health-care law. He directly denounced the Republicans for what he said were tactics that would endanger the full faith and credit of the country. "You don't mess with that," he said in a speech in Largo, Md. The US News headlined the platform upon which the Republicans are fighting tooth and nails to defund the President’s Affordable Health Care Law as, “The Imaginary threat of the Budget Deficit.” In an article today in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Schlesinger quoted Bloomberg’s Mike Dorning, writing:   

There was an election

Elections have consequences in a democratic republic

Photo_heritage foundation 

 “The federal budget deficit narrowed from more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product at the end of 2009 to 5.7 percent of GDP for the 12 months ended March 31 -- the smallest gap in four years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With tax collections rising and spending growth slowing down, the deficit is on track to drop to 4 percent of the $16 trillion U.S. GDP for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to a May forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. It will shrink to 3.4 percent of GDP next year, the Congressional Budget Office - CBO says, close to the 3.3 percent average over the past 30 years,” [according to Bloomberg data].

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the government will be unable to pay all its obligations sometime in late October.

Looking back on the Clinton Era government shutdown in 1995- 1996, a government shutdown would result in the suspension of certain services provided by the federal government, and in a delay in others. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more significantly the consequences may be felt, and the more far-reaching those effects may be. In a government shutdown, services that are considered “essential” remain open. Those include:  police, fire fighting, armed forces, utilities and corrections.

Social Security Checks will go out

Public safety and national security: open

All other government services will shut down

Coastal service: open

Medicare and Medicaid payments delayed

National parks closed

Military pay delayed or shutdown

Federal employees furloughed

The House of Representatives is scheduled to remain in session this weekend to take up the bill the Senate sent them today. In response to the Senate passage of the continuing resolution to keep the government open until November, House Speaker John Boehner said, "I do not see that happening," meaning passing a bill in the House that the President can sign in time to prevent a government shutdown. It has become evident that the Republicans never had any ideas about how to govern, but yet they have run out of the zero idea that they have had. The in-fighting among the Republicans has been bloody; it has been an all-out war between moderate Republicans and right-wingers. They have been splattering blood from the South to Capitol Hill, so they are trying to bloody the President in the process. Boehner said he did not expect a government shutdown and many moderate GOP lawmakers are anxious to avoid one. They obviously fear that voters will blame the Republican Party for the consequences of a shutdown, similar to what happened when radical Republicans, under former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, shut down the government in 1995-1996 during the Clinton administration. As of this writing, it is not clear whether or not the House of Representatives will be able to free itself from the dead weight of the Tea Party carcass in order to pass a bill that the President can sign to keep the government functioning, even at the level of the minimalists in the GOP. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                           

 President Barack Obama

                                                                              [ Google Images]

                                                           

to make a pact with the devil, and that is by bringing into their midst

 Google Images [Share]        a toxic mix of people who hate Black and everyone else who does not

they blow up every day into the stratosphere. They have managed to steal

Sarah Palin  [Share] the House of Representatives through voter suppression, which is nothing but another form of voter fraud. Their chairman of the science committee in the House of Representatives does not believe in science; Their House Speaker has no leadership; their minority leader cannot count votes; And the man in charge of their budgets put out budgets every year that do not add up; The so called budget man, Congressman and former vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan’s idea of balancing the government’s budget is to throw millions of people off government programs so they can go die for lack of food, shelter, medical care, and somehow this should make his numbers add up. Those scam artists have one and only agenda and it is a scheme to kill medicaid, Medicare, and social security.

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·         Rush Limbaugh, the former, and who knows current, 500 pills a day swallowing , needs to lose some weight hoaxer who seem to think that the more sex women have the more birth control pills they have to take. [See Limbaugh’s comment about Georgetown university law student Sandra Fluke during the debate on contraceptives around the time of the 2012 presidential election].

 

·         Sean Hannity who is either a complete imbecile or is so busy concocting lies and trashy accusations to malign President Obama that it is hard to tell if he actually has a functioning brain.

 

·         Glenn Beck, probably the only man on earth who continues to make money on the backs of idiots when he himself belongs in a rubber room with a straight jacket. It is amazing; that man flushed his dignity down the Fake News channel toilet and still finds a way to make money on stupid.

 

·         Reince Priebus – The highest of intellectual weight! The man has yet to utter any intelligent ideas. Sure, he does not have to when he can be king among his followers just 

 

·         Laura Ingraham who like to pretend that she has some semblance of decency in  her discourse, when she knows very well that you cannot swear allegiance to a gang and somehow pretend you are above the fray and better than the rest. She is not any better than any of this circus clowns, no offense to clowns.

·         Ann Coulter, a woman with a lethal tongue who will say anything so long as she believe that she can draw blood from the President.

 

·         Grover Norquist – This man has pledged and coerced his cronies in Congress to pledge that taxes should never be raised; the idea is to “reduce the government to a size that it can be drown in a bathtub.” What these people really want is to destroy the government as a method of population control. In other words, since millions of elderly, veterans, disabled people, children, families, and students depend on the government for one thing or another, once the government is “drown” these people will “self-destruct.” This sounds familiar; It sounds almost like “self-deportation.”

·         Bill O'Reilly – This man is not only the biggest jerk on TV, but also an ego-maniacal man with a racist bias he so fails at hiding. This is the man who went on his show to explain that he went to a restaurant in a Black neighborhood, and the people were acting “normal” and eating with stencils. The dumb leading the dumb. The man thinks he is so smart that others will be fooled by his maladroitly disguised imbecility and idiocy. He will be remembered for his pretend objectivity. So repugnant!

 

·         Karl Rove –The man who came down with a case of the meltdown on election night because since his party does not believe in mathematics, they fabricated their own numbers to declare pants-on-fire, say-whatever-it-takes-to-win, Mitt Romney the winner. This man will do anything for money. A           Karl Rove [Share]                      very creepy guy. 

Dick cheney         Bill Cunningham                                                                                                                        Rush Limbaugh            

Of course, this list could go on and on with the disgraceful Newt Gingrich calling the President names and using racist innuendoes to get votes for his miserable candidacy, not to mention the I-lost-my-own-state, "blah people," loser Rick Santorum. Not to forget the whole load of the demented BS tea drinkers out there. But they may have stolen the House of representatives, but even their toxic mix of supporters will not be able to keep them from having to wander in the wilderness for the next forty years for atonement before voters will even consider allowing them to step foot again into the White House. And, get that, Hispanics are not as stupid as some bigots have painted them to be; They will not forget all of the insults upon injury that the Republicans are causing them to endure.. 

                     Faux News Alerts & Made Up Facts & Figures