Wednesday Open Thread

11 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

1. life long republican quits his party  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/05/19/3660701/luis-lang-obamacare/

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   1. "… pointed out that it’s too difficult for him to predict his annual income as a self-employed contractor, which is what prevented him from signing up for a plan during previous enrollment periods. He was too nervous about underestimating his income during the enrollment process and being required to pay back his insurance subsidy during tax season."

       

      This is bs.  He could have enrolled without subsidy – then if he qualified at year end, when  (if)  he filed he could claim his subsidy.

      But then he's really upset because his home state didn't expand Medicaid, because he would qualify and he needs it now.  Clearly, his South Carolina neighbors don't care about him and the best move now would be to  move to a state with better acess to healthcare for the (sometimes) working poor. 

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2. Obama had to move to the middle after his election to "govern". This is a DC Beltway Conventional Wisdom assumed truth. If he only knew at the time the great effort almost every R in DC would expend to prevent him from doing anything productive.

   Howard Fineman:

   Is Hillary Clinton actually moving left, and if so, why?

   The answer is yes, though not on every topic. And the reason is to push young voters' turnout and grassroots organizing enthusiasm as close as possible to the levels that President Barack Obama enjoyed in 2008.

   “After two terms of President Obama, it won’t be easy, but our challenge is to again excite the passion of the youngest voters,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told fellow Georgetown Law Center alums at a luncheon last week.

   Six years of trying to be bipartisan with Repubilcans, to the point of passing "their" health care law that they have vowed to repeal "root and branch" "every blasted word" of the "job killing" "deficit exploding" bill that tried to create an affordable health insurance market for those without good insurance.  

   If Obama hadn't made that glaring miscalculation, the fired up, young, and historic base that elected him in '08 would still be there and we wouldn't be contemplating a Bennet vs. Coffman race next year.

   And while we know what the Republican candidate will look like, there’s still time for the Democratic one to expunge those nasty corporate instincts:

   Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders keeps bending the rules of Senate service and presidential campaigning by offering up proposals that imagine America as the fair, functional, and prosperous country it could be. Instead of playing politics within the narrow lines prescribed by the partisans and pundits who police the political process in America, the recently announced contender for the Democratic presidential nomination is going big—this week with a plan to provide tuition-free higher education for students at four-year colleges and universities in the United States.

   “We live in a highly competitive global economy and, if our economy is to be strong, we need the best-educated work force in the world,” says Sanders. “That will not happen if, every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and if millions more leave school deeply in debt.” […]

   According to the Republicans who are running Congress—and running for president—there’s just no money for free higher education. Or for other useful initiatives. In an age of austerity, as defined by House Rules Committee chairman Paul Ryan and his minions, we are told that all Americans have to look forward to are more cuts, more privatization, wage stagnation, and staggering income inequality.
   Ryan and his ideological amen corner moan that there’s just no money for programs that might educate and employ and care for Americans.

   Of course, there is money: trillions of dollars that can be freed up, at the drop of a hat (or a stock market), to bail out banks and fund wars. But Republicans like Ryan and the contenders for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination claim the country is damn-near broke—with just enough money left for one more tax cuts for one more billionaire campaign donor. And, too frequently, America’s “fair and balanced” media and compromised and compromising Democratic Partygo alongwith the fantasy.

   What has distinguished Sanders’s Senate service and his presidential bid is a refusal to buy into the lie of austerity.>

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   1. Obama has always been in the middle. He ran  from the middle. He moved a little more to the center right. That's all.

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   2. I would hope that one day you will post a diary about your vision for political America.  Are you a socialist? communist? Do you support or resist the dominance of the two party system? Was Ralph Nader a presidential spoiler, or was the D nomminee that cycle just not liberal enough to win?  How do you propose a far left liberal progressive candidate win the electoral math? (Appeal only to the smart voters doesn't count as an answer.)  If you had to choose one public policy in the history of the USA (which, really, we should give back to the inhabitants who immigrant ancestors overran) as the most important and the model for how other public policy should be modelled – which would it be?

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3. Interesting story about the GOP scrambling to figure out what to do if they get their wish and SCOTUS kills Obamacare (which legal quacks like Scalia and Thomas are drooling to do):

   http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/supreme-court-freak-out-obamacare.html

   HINT: can you spell Pyrrhic Victory?

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4. The only thing the state should kill, the death penalty, is on death row in Nebraska.

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   1. They did it, B.C. and with a veto-proof majority!

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/nebraska-death-penalty-repeal_n_7343784.html?igoogle=1

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      1. BC? Different cat. But I'm pleased to see this confounding development in Nebraska, of all places.

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         1. My bad! I didn't notice until it was too late to fix it.

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5. They should do this in Colorado – http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/05/19/vienna_s_gay_traffic_lights_aim_to_stop_homophobia.html the signs are really cute. (And yes, Eurovision it's awesome!)

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