There’s a Obama Derangement Syndrome Epidemic in the GOP

We are approaching Halloween so Larry Marek wrote another scary letter “President Obama is intentionally ruining America” but as usual, he doesn’t tell us how or what his solutions are. He says that left wingers will reap the same agony as anyone else but isn’t that always the case; regardless of ideology? He states that he is not a Republican or Democrat, but he’s definitely not a Democrat; and that leaves what? He says, “It’s your choice.”Huh?

I can understand Larry being confused. What type of Republican is up in the air because he has a few choices these days? Is he a mainstream Republican who believes what is reported on ABC news, or is he an avid Fox news believer? Wait, he has another option, he can be a Glenn Beck (The Blaze/ info wars) Republican. The GOP is split but they agree on two things; equal hate for Obamacare and President Obama himself.

Larry, you complain about the Obama Administration  not being transparent, yet you preach gloom and doom, so how did you acquire all your information? You are very transparent. You don’t like Muslims because it would be reprehensible if the president of United States belonged to that religion. You find it distasteful, that a college graduate would help people of the poorer south side of Chicago and all this time I thought it was a Christian deed. He was also a college constitutional professor at the University of Chicago before he became a state senator and then a United States senator. Ordinarily, that would be an impressive resume.

This morning, Joe Scarborough tried to make his show all about President Obama either being out -of -touch or a liar with nothing in between. Joe Scarborough reminds me of people like Larry Marek who won’t be satisfied until everyone has the same contempt for the president as he does.

The latest criticism about Obamacare seems to be about the president promising everyone that if you liked your healthcare plan, you could keep it. Joe Scarborough is trying to make the case that the president intentionally lied. I never paid much attention to those words because like 80% of other Americans, I won’t be enrolling in Obamacare. Joe had Lisa Meyers on, who had written an article that stated “50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience ‘sticker shock.” Joe got upset when one of his guests said it was more of an upgrade than it was a cancelation. The people Lisa interviewed had catastrophic policies which are not health plans. Chuck Todd then angered Joe even more when he said that the insurers were ripping off those people. It boils down to this; the old policies did not meet the new ACA standards, so the profit motive insurance companies’ immediately raised their prices and canceled the existing one.

Joe Scarborough is trying to make a case “what did the president know and when did he know it” for every hiccup that involves the administration. It’s as if this administration invented “plausible deniability.” Joe was going hard trying to make his point that President Obama had to know that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone was being tapped.. Mika Brzezinski threw a curveball that hit a surprised Joe Scarborough. She told them that we started spying on our Allies in 2002. All he could say was “are you sure about that?” Joe is the host of that show, so it’s up to him to keep informed and not just make his daily anti-Obama comments.

Things ought to be looking good for Alcoa because the orders for aluminum for all the tin-foil hats has to be at record highs.

If I were to meet  Marek and Joe Scarborough.I would say “dudes the president is not going anywhere for the next three years; the voters have spoken.”    

This Is What I Think

I don’t know what’s going on with the backroom negotiations but neither does the reporters, pundits, and in many cases the politicians.  It’s become an hourly update that cannot be verified.

This morning Joe Scarborough said that the White House is looking at the polls, thinking they have the upper hand so they are sticking it to the republicans. I don’t agree with that because it all goes back to the 2011 negotiations where many democrats thought that Joe Biden and President Obama gave up too much because of the upcoming election.  This time around, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is in charge of the negotiations.

The Republicans want the president and vice-president to get involved in the negotiations because of what they agreed to in the last 2011 fiscal cliff battle.  President Obama is not a good negotiator because he likes to establish long-term goals rather than squabble over short term fixes.  The GOP is always about the next election because they think they will have the upper hand in 2014.  That’s why going for the grand slam (defunding Obamacare) didn’t make a lick of sense.  This current battle is about a short-term fix because the GOP will never agree to raise taxes or increase spending.  They also know that Harry Reid is not a pushover, and he will use the nuclear option (51 votes) to pass a spending bill.  It’s not about letting the Republicans save face because a Senate bill cannot be weighed so heavily to get GOP votes that it makes it difficult for Nancy Pelosi to get all her Democrats to go along.

Joe Scarborough likes to live in the 90s, a time that he was in Congress but things have changed.  He continues to question the leadership of President Obama because he was not involved in the negotiations from the start.  That’s from his line of thinking.  President Obama submitted a budget and he made it clear that he would not negotiate to raise the debt limit.  That’s being involved in the negotiations from the start .  A good leader will use all the tools in the toolbox and will learn from past mistakes.  President Obama has learned that he cannot negotiate in good faith with a group of people that don’t like him and will use any trick in the book to remove him from office or make him a failure.  Present Obama is involved in the negotiations but he using Harry Reid as his proxy.

The cat is out of the bag, the current GOP tactic to shut down the government was thought of this past summer.  Repealing the Affordable Care Act several times was just a warm-up for the upcoming budget battles.  The goal was to overturn the results of the 2012 election.  There’s more to it than Obamacare, and it’s another step toward impeachment.  Louie Goehmer said that going into default is an impeachable offense.  The GOP also said bombing Syria without congressional authority is an impeachable offense. Those people don't know or care about the seriousness of those charges, and they can't do the math because all the House can do is charge the president, the Senate (54 Dems) has to convict.

 This week after being instrumental in shutting down the government, Senator Ted Cruz tried to rile up the veterans by telling them that President Obama does not care about them.  Sunday Chris Wallace asked Senator Manchin of West Virginia, if the administration was purposely closing down the memorial’s to make it hard on the veterans for political reasons. Senator Manchin said no president (Republican or Democrat) would ever stoop that low. Joe Manchin was too kind because he could’ve reminded Chris Wallace, who shut down the government in the first place.

It’s time for Harry Reid to play a little hard ball or these issues and tactics will resurface again in six weeks.  The battle to reopen the government and raise the debt limit for at least a year (to calm the fears and grow our economy), should be over the sequester limits and be neutral on Obamacare.  Republican senator Collins has a good plan but it needs a few tweaks.

 

What About the Rest of Us?

A sad and subdued Joe Scarborough said he looked over the GOP’s dismal numbers and had to admit that there are two parties within the Republican Party.  It was either that or he had to admit that the entire Republican brand was at rock bottom.  He used to dismiss the 30 or 40 wacko birds thinking that the elite still ran the party.  Joe would always invoke the names of Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker as examples of good conservative governors. That’s all well and good, but the numbers inside the Wall Street/NBC told a different story.

It’s like hypertension or diabetes; you can only ignore it for so long.  The very thing the tea party went after went up in popularity.  Obamacare gained seven points, 38% now favor the program and 41% despise it; those numbers are just about even and that’s with the website problems.  The president is now at 47% approval and only 31% blame him for the shutdown.  The number that was a surprise me was the 52% that think that government should do more and the 50% that do not want Obamacare repealed.

Only Republicans and political junkies really care about the GOP infighting; the rest of the nation wants the government reopened and our debt limit increased.

Poll numbers are a snapshot in time and they will change but when you shut down the government, people search for the reasons why.  They found out that Obamacare will only affect about 15%, so that’s not worth a shutdown.  Then the GOP House tried to pass piecemeal legislation, showing that vital parts of the government needed to be reopened.  The final nail on the coffin was the debt deniers ,claiming that we would technically not be defaulting and if we did, it would not be a catastrophe.  Those people found out that the average American still listens to the treasury secretary and leading economists.  And in many cases, the national media stepped up to the plate and corrected the misleading statements. 

The House Republicans supposedly offered a clean six week debt limit extension (November 22) but won’t reopen the government without more spending cuts.  The government has already been closed two weeks and in that period it has been unable to collect some revenues.  There are still 400,000 people in government out of work and many are in critical jobs.  Consumer confidence is at an all- time low, so another budget fight during the holidays will not be good for business.  I hope Harry Reid and the president hold out for a one year clean debt limit bill, and insist on the government reopening.  The GOP pinned all their hopes on a freshman senator and his cockamamie idea and now they want something to save face.

The Democrats have yet to ask for anything, other than a clean CR and a debt limit increase with a promise to sit down at a conference to discuss various options to get our fiscal house in order.

The president and the Democrats have not won a thing because raising the debt limit benefits our economy and reopening the government does the same.  Politically, things are favorable for a  Dem takeover of the House of Representatives and maintaining the Senate but that was because of the incompetence of the GOP.

Those lousy Poll Numbers

Joe Scarborough was so happy with this morning’s poll numbers that I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a starring role in the next Geico commercial.  He must’ve run those poll numbers about three of four times during the three hours of “Morning Joe.” His co-host, Mika Brzezinski, showed a poll of the Virginias governor’s race where the Democrat was winning by five points, and then out of nowhere, Joe pulled out an email on his iPhone showing Governor Chris Christie having a 40 point lead in his race.

Towards the end of the show, Ezra Klein and Chuck Todd brought Joe Scarborough back down to earth by saying that those numbers are all too common just before another fiscal crisis.  They said that the president’s poll numbers were on a similar trend with those of the current Congress.  One poll showed that the country wants to tie spending cuts to raising the debt limit by 62% but like always, they don’t want to cut programs that they like.  The president will use the bully pulpit to explain his reason for not negotiating a settlement over the debt limit.  He will say that we should not hold the good faith and credit of the United States government hostage.  If the GOP decides to call his bluff, the government will shut down, and they will take the penalty for doing that.

I will continue to say that the GOP is great at campaigning, but they can’t govern.  They have an endless supply of legislators, strategists, and spokesmen for special-interest groups, who won’t turn down an opportunity to get on television to express their views.  It’s rare to see a Democrat on a Sunday talk show and when they do show up, they’re usually outnumbered by 5 to 1.  The GOP is like a prizefighter who continues to throw body punches and at the end of the fight it takes its toll.  Yes, Democrats are winning the issue and elections but the outcomes are closer than they need to be.

Right now Democrats are silent munching on their popcorn and enjoying the civil war between the different factions of the GOP.

Joe Scarborough and former Republican Party chairman, Michael Steele, got into a verbal fight this morning over the strategy of Ted Cruz.  Joe Scarborough seems to think that only the opinions of George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Scott Walker other conservatives like them matter.  Michael Steele tried to explain to him that the grassroots doesn’t really care about their opinions and that set Joe off; causing him to say something like this “don’t come on my show and try to lecture me on what the little people in the streets think.” Senator Ted Cruz appeals to a certain constituency, who are tired of establish Republicans who say they are for small government but continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow, and then keep losing presidential elections.  These constituents say, “if we’re going to lose- let’s do it our way.” It’s a 97 to 98% conservative purity group who will never compromise.  I agree with Michael Steele, we can see evidence of that locally by the comments made on our VA forum. 

We may all make fun of Senator Cruz, but he accomplished what he set out to do; raise money, gain star power, and he drove a stake through the hearts of establish Republicans.  Senator Tom Coburn got a lot of angry phone call from his tea party constituency, even though he has the highest rating of all conservatives in Congress.

A perpetual cycle

This morning Joe Scarborough brought on a lot a conservative’s to agree with him that this whole defund Obamacare fiasco is Ted Cruz’s fault. I don’t like Ted Cruz either, but I can see through that smoke screen. This is being portrayed as Ted Cruz’s suicidal pact but if that is so, then the legislators who passed the recent congressional resolution bill, supplied the gun, ammunition and a bottle of liquor for him to complete his mission. All the GOP senators like the bill the House sent but they realize it will only take 51 votes to strip the defunding Obamacare out of the bill and send it back to the John Boehner.

Ted Cruz had to negotiate a deal with Harry Reid to allow him to appear to be filibustering a bill that hasn’t come up for vote. In essence he’s really filibustering the GOP bill. Unless Ted Cruz can garner 41 votes, he won’t be able to stop Harry Reid and the Democrats from voting for a clean bill without defunding Obamacare. Let’s not forget the other obstacle; the president’s signature.

The perpetual cycle goes all the way back to Bill Clinton but the tea party is still living on the results of the 2010 election. They are using the results of that election to convince themselves that America is on their side. Never mind the fact that the 2008 Democrat’s number one issue was healthcare reform. The Democrats won both chambers and the executive branch in 2008 and in 2012 they gain seats in the Senate and retained the presidency against the opposing candidate saying that he was going to repeal Obamacare… on day one. Joe Scarborough said those people did not like big government but the panel corrected him by saying that they seem to love Social Security and Medicare. Cokie Roberts surprise me by saying that the tea party dismisses President Obama and she sees a lot of racism in their rhetoric.

We’re only re-litigating the healthcare law because conservatives have never accepted it. A lot of Republicans have never accepted the legitimacy of the current president. Republicans have this tendency to ignore polls, results, or laws they don’t like. There are still some old school Republicans who accepted the results of the 2012 elections and said “ Obamacare is now the law of the land.” Of course he wants to retain his speakership, so today he singing a different tune.

Let’s talk a little reality. The Affordable Care Act is unique because the rules are set up as a compromise between government and private insurance companies. Republicans could never repeal ACA and replace it with a plan of their own because insurance companies would not cooperate with them. Think about that, pharmaceutical companies made a pact with the government before there were ever any serious talks about a healthcare plan. The insurance companies agreed to insure the uninsurable but only after being offered millions of new customers (many being the less risky young employees) and moving more people to Medicaid. If this were to go down in flames, why would private companies ever agree to make another deal with government? The reality is that they wouldn’t and we would see health care premiums go out the roof again and then we would only be left with a single- payer universal health care system.

Senator Claire McCaskill Said the Democrats would not deal on delaying the individual mandate because it would mess up the funding mechanism of the program. The senator also corrected Joe Scarborough, when he tried to spread the myth that Congress was exempt from Obamacare. She said that Congress and their staff will continue to purchase insurance off the exchanges but the GOP is trying to take away the employer contribution (taxpayer funded portion) but that would be unfair; if it didn’t apply to all federal employees.

A lot of misconceptions are fueled by ignorance and unwillingness to research. For example, our local newspaper had a story about a bipolar person finally getting some help and they were called out by Matt Maples. He said he had 23 years of experience and he had not heard of spouses not being allowed on their husband’s VA policy.

According to The VA’s website:
Family Members of Veterans
Under certain circumstances, family members of Veterans are eligible for health benefits. Some of the programs offered include the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA), Spina Bifida (SB), Children of Women Vietnam Veterans (CWVV), Foreign Medical Program (FMP) and Caregiver.  Using these programs may reduce or eliminate your cost for medical supplies, office visits or prescriptions.
CHAMPVA
A health care benefits program that provides coverage to the spouse or widow(er) and to the dependent children of a qualifying sponsor who:

• is rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected disability, or
• was rated permanently and totally disabled due to a service-connected condition at the time of death, or
• died of a service-connected disability, or
• died on active duty, and
• The dependents are not otherwise eligible for Department of Defense TRICARE benefits.

Under CHAMPVA, VA shares the cost of covered health care services and supplies with eligible beneficiaries.

A lot room for interpretation…If  I were in that situation I would call the VA for my unique situation and not depend on someone who thinks they know.

It’s Not About Obamacare

This budget battle has always been about political posturing for the Republicans. Every single legislator who voted to defund Obamacare knew that it would go nowhere in the Senate. I don’t buy the current line that some Republicans were trying to teach Ted Cruz a lesson by putting the ball in his court. I’m not going to overlook the fact that the GOP has voted  42 times to repeal, defund or delay Obamacare. Several GOP senate candidates are running on a platform to defund Obamacare. It leaves other presidential candidates the room to use another tactic that will help them in 2016. For example, Senator Rand Paul is trying to make the federal government the boogeyman to appease the government hating group of his party. He said Justice Roberts and federal employees should be put on Obamacare. Never mind that Obamacare was never intended to take away a plan employees were already on. It was always meant as a vehicle to lower health insurance cost and to insure more people.

The chart shows that workers were being moved to part –time status way before Obamacare came along. Besides small companies will get an extra year to work out all their problems before they will be penalized,so that’s got nothing to do with funding the government this year.

Joe Scarborough, Pat Toomey, Nicole Wallace and others have stated repeatedly how unpopular Obamacare is, and they will cite polls to back up their statements. The three conveniently leave out the polls saying that 59% of Americans do not want a government shutdown to repeal Obamacare. This mornings "CNBC poll had Americans opposing defunding Obamacare(without a shut down) by a plurality of 44 percent to 38 percent.”

This morning Joe Scarborough put himself in the same company with the Wall Street Journal, Scott walker, Pat Toomey, and other reasonable conservative voices who warned the Republican legislators about shutting down the government over Obamacare. Much to the chagrin of Joe Scarborough, James Carville reminded Joe, that GOP ideas and votes are vetted on talk radio and then are implemented by the tea party. It’s obvious the current GOP is not listening to the reasonable conservative voices.

Joe Scarborough hates Ted Cruz about as much as he hates President Obama. When it was pointed out that Ted Cruz is a pretty intelligent person who is saying the right words to the base and that it just might get him through a GOP presidential primary, Joe went ballistic. He said that he didn’t want his party to make the same mistake as the Democrats did when they elected an inexperienced senator to be their nominee. When some members of the panel said they were happy on how things turned out for the democrats; Joe had to go commercial break before he completely lost it.

The fact is 80% of Americans will see very little change when the healthcare law is fully implemented. The strongest disapproval is coming from those who are on Medicare, and they won’t be affected at all by the law. Yes, the young healthy employees who hardly ever use their plan will probably think it’s too expensive and those who will now get health insurance and use it a lot, will think it’s God sent.

This current stalemate can’t possibly be about defunding Obamacare because  Paul Ryan’s budget includes savings from Obamacare to balance it. If they were to defund Obamacare, then the GOP would have to rewrite their budget and they have already gutted all the social programs including $40 billion cuts (over the next 10 years) in food stamps.

I wonder how Catholic legislators interpret the latest words from Pope Francis when he talked about the evils of income inequality. Then again we can talk about the obsession with abortion, gay marriage, and contraception issues. I still favor a secular government but some of those legislators use Bible quotations to justify their reason for cutting social programs.

A War of Messaging

Two minutes into the segment of “Morning Joe” I could tell that the words of President Obama angered Joe Scarborough. President Obama told George Stephanopoulos that the beltway media is about style points, and that he was more interested in the right policy. That message was for Joe Scarborough, Maureen Dowd, Andrea Mitchell and Peggy Noonan because they form the world’s perception through their own eyes. I can’t imagine any country not fearing the military might of United States; those five warships in the Mediterranean influence policy just by being there. Tom Friedman stunned the panel of “Meet the Press” when he reminded them that the United States did not have a thing to do with the successful turnover of government in South Africa; Nelson Mandela did. Barney Frank said that some of those on the panel were talking as if Syria was the 51^st state.

Joe Scarborough thought he was going to win the Obamacare argument after reading some polls where 44% of Americans think that the Affordable Care Act is a bad thing. I believe the numbers because that same poll said that only 30% of Americans understand the healthcare law. Since 70% of the population doesn’t understand what the new healthcare law is all about and all they hear is mainly negative things supported by billions of dollars of pessimistic ads, the results are self-evident. The GOP knows once those subsidies  start kicking in January, the game is over and the Affordable Care Act will be as popular as Medicare. It's funny how the questions get different results. A question about Obamacare will automatically poll badly while a question about the Affordable Care Act will get a lot of "I don't know."

The more Obamacare obsessed wing of the Republican Party thinks they have a winning hand. Their latest proposal is to delay the implementation of the individual mandate portion of the law until 2015 and attach it to the continuing resolution bill to fund the government until mid-December. Why would the Democrats agree to that? It’s the same rationale that the Republicans used by filibustering Social Security in 1936.

There’s no question that the Affordable Care Act will be difficult to implement because besides the Republicans, there’s the hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, private insurance companies and some doctors who love the status quo. For example, hospitals hate the penalties that will be imposed for their high rate of infection and patient readmission rates.

Obamacare is the new bogeyman for the right; it’s what keeps them up at night ,as they continue to try and come up with new gimmicks to get rid of the law. They think that healthcare is a privilege for those who work hard, and it’s not for those lazy poor people who failed to make it in a free-market economy. They are convinced that the government cannot do anything right, so a new entitlement is doomed to fail. They will not be convinced with evidence of bending the cost curve, or the efficiency of Medicare, Social Security and the VA.

Shutting down the government for a few days, by not passing a continuing resolution won’t hurt the economy as much as it would if we decided not to raise the debt limit. Not raising the debt limit would have a downward spiral effect on the world economy. A government shutdown will hurt the GOP in the 2014 elections; even though a lot of people think that we shouldn’t raise the debt limit without agreeing to more spending cuts. President Obama is adamant about not negotiating the debt limit because of the message it sends to our creditors. How would your creditors like it if they were on the list of the bills that might not be paid?

I think we’re slowly hitting reset button by moving away from the thinking that led to the policies of President Ronald Reagan. It’s a slow messy process, and you got to give credit to the Republicans and Frank Lutz for doing everything they can to win the messaging war at the expense of any pretense of governing.

A New Age of Dipomacy?

Immediately after the president's speech last night someone posted this tweet" It was a 16 minutes speech  that will turn into three days of scrutiny."  They were right because shortly after Joe Scarborough read a litany of negative articles criticizing Obama's speech,Cokie Roberts, said that his tele- prompter was too high because he need to face the American people eye- to- eye. She also said the speech should have been given at the White House residency to give it a homely look. It wasn't until 2 hours later that Lawrence O'Donnell injected some truth into the conversation. He said that not one of those astute writers offered a solution.

The people at Fox were praising Putin for pulling a fast one on our president. I thought they were going to run Putin  as their candidate for president. They they changed their tune because someone must have whispered in their ear that a peaceful settlement might help the president. They then starting saying that the president is foolish for trusting Assad and Putin.  

Joe Scarborough thinks President Obama stumbled into this recent development where Russia and Syria agreed that the latter must give up their chemical weapons. No Joe,while you and Andrea Mitchell were criticizing Obama for going to the G20 in Russia instead of staying home to find and twist the arms of the scared Congressmen hiding underneath their desks,  Obama had a  late night dinner with Putin which might have sealed the deal. 

There is constant chatter about us having a weak president and country without acknowledging that it was Assad who went to CBS pleading for a no strike. It is Putin who now is willing to be a broker in getting Syria to give up their chemical weapons;which they say they never had.

I believe were it not for a threat of military action,Putin would have never come to the table. Damascus,Stria is a very important seaport for Russia, The threat of terrorism scares the Russians and the possibility of those chemical weapons falling into the hands of terrorist in the southern most region of their country gives them an incentive to find,secure and eventually destroy the weapons. 

Andrea Mitchell quickly pointed to a pentagon report from the 90s  that said it would take 

75,000 UN troops to find and secure all the chemical weapons. Our friend Israel knows where 80% of those weapons are because they have been tracking them. Andrea said it would be impossible to transport the weapons in an ongoing civil war. I think a cease-fire resolution might work because nobody but al -Qaeda wants to use these weapons.

Lawrence O'Donnell continues to be a nemesis for a shoot-from-the hip,Joe Scarborough.

Joe said if the president was soundly defeated in Congress he would been an ineffective,weak president on domestic and foreign affairs. Lawrence reminded Joe that George H. W. Bush had  approval ratings in the high 80s after liberating Kuwait but he didn't have a clue about the economy and lost to Bill Clinton a few months later.

Then there is the spokesman for the new isolationist wing of the GOP,Rand Paul. who has a lot of hypotheticals but no real answers other than Obama is wrong. He insists that the president is helping al-Qaeda gain Syria but somehow killing Assad would be OK..Want to or not,leaving Assad in power is the best solution for now (the devil we know) in keeping that area stable. Yes,Assad has the military might to keep the New Syrian Army out of power for a long time. One of these days ,we are going to have realize that democracy is not for everyone. 

The speech was on target with what the president has been saying all along. He's not calling for regime change because that might not be in our best interest.  The message we send to North Korea and Iran that we will not tolerate chemical warfare has to mean something. Yes,the speech can be sliced and diced to mean something else for the naysayers but that's to be expected.  

Oh, Whatever

This morning was one of the few times when I have ever agreed with Joe Scarborough, but I approved when he said that the non- crazy wing of the Republican Party is starting to realize that the wing nuts of their party have lost all sense of reality. It’s one thing to argue about economics’; it’s another thing to rally around shutting down the government over an obsession to defund Obamacare. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard Senator Ted Cruz tell CNN’s Candy Crowley that President Obama would agree to defund Obamacare under the right conditions. Joe Scarborough laughed hysterically when conservative/ libertarian Senator Jeff Flake responded to an ad that was running against him because he refused to defund Obamacare. Senator Flake responded with a simple tweet “oh, whatever.”

I’ve got to remember to tell myself “oh, whatever” when I see a post stating that hospitals don’t make a huge profit and that the insurance companies and the government are the reason for the high cost of health care. Last night, Chris Hayes said a bag of saline, including the ingredients of salt and water cost about 44¢ but they charge the patient $191.00 and another $1000 for the use of the operating room. That one poster  I mentioned said that the charge for attending nurses and other costs were part of the saline cost but that’s not true. Every item that a hospital charges has its own unique price. I’m thinking how much my orthopedic surgeon saved the insurance company by using an outpatient service and sending me home the very same day.

Another “oh, whatever” moment is the fallacy that welfare is going to lead us to financial ruin. The $235 billion we spend on the non-working poor amounts to about 10% of the federal budget according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There’s a formula using census data to figure out where this money goes. First you have to combine all the costs of such programs to come up with the base total. Then you have to subtract spending on the elderly, and the disabled. In that figure will be vets, children, survivors of parents who have died, people on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI. Finally we have to add up unemployment insurance, EITC and child tax credits understanding that people move in and out of these programs all the time. These programs come under the Non-discretionary spending and are required by law, so the battle is always about a percentage change or the amount of cost of living adjustments. You will see the GOP fixated on these programs in the upcoming budget battles and the Democrats will fight to keep the cuts as small as possible.

All the insignificant stuff will have to take a backseat to whatever we do militarily against Syria in the next few days. No serious person will question the amount of money we spend to send Syrian president, Bashar al Assad, a message that the international community will not tolerate the use of sarin gas on civilians or military personnel. The last I heard, it costs us about a million dollars to launch just one Tomahawk missile. According to the polls, Americans do not want us to engage in any type of military intervention in Syria but this is one of those cases where the president will have to take action despite the will of its citizenry. President Obama might have one of those “oh, whatever” moments.

Remember, don’t look for a new blog tomorrow but please keep checking because I might be back sooner than later…

Twitter To The Rescue

I exploded this morning when I heard Joe Scarborough ask Politico’s Mike Allen what was wrong with showing a picture ID before voting. Mike Allen had that scared look on his face because he knew that he was in the middle of a partisan political statement. Joe Scarborough went on a rant saying that liberal columnists have tagged the governors of Texas and North Carolina as racist just for requiring a picture ID. He said that the writers tactically put a white hood over those governors. Mike Allen tried to say that they were other issues, but Joe would have none of it because he wanted someone to tell them what was wrong with a picture ID. His co- host Mika Brzezinski agreed with Joe saying that he had a legitimate complaint.

About 30 minutes passed when the director on the show informed Joe Scarborough that he had received several tweets condemning Joe for misrepresenting the voter ID issue. If Joe Scarborough had read the New York Times article, (and I suspect he did), then he knew he intentionally left out the facts that made this new law controversial. He didn’t mention early voting had been lessened, certain types of picture IDs were no longer accepted, the hardships that came with the new requirements (especially democratic voters) voter fraud is almost non-existent, and most of the fraud comes from mail in ballots(a GOP favorite way of voting) which do not require a voter picture ID. Joe Scarborough sheepishly said perhaps there’s more to this but it doesn’t excuse is the obvious attempt to get away with something that wasn’t true. Some might have called those governors racists; I don’t know, but it’s obvious that they are going after minorities who usually vote for Democrats. I think it’s political because given a chance, the Democrats would gerrymander the districts to their wants but there’s not much else they could do to suppress GOP votes.

Joe Scarborough tried to make the same point about the Texas ban on abortion after 20 weeks not too long ago. He intentionally left out the closing of the Planned Parenthood clinics. That particular morning he was surrounded by Democrats, so he didn’t get away with his tactic of emphasizing what he thought was reasonable and ignoring the real intent of the controversial law.

We are getting closer to the day when using television as a means to instantly spread falsehoods will be difficult because I vision a crawler at the bottom of the screen being used as an instant fact checker.Twitter can serve that purpose but it hasn't been incorporated yet. Then again,the RNC is using Twitter to jam the server with anti-Obamacare articles.


Tomorrow’s blog might be my last for a while because I’m going to have rotator-cuff surgery Wednesday. My left arm will be a sling for six weeks, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve used voice-recognition software before so not being able to use my left hand for typing shouldn’t be that much of a hindrance. I will probably have to use my iPad, so I won’t have all the tools for desktop publishing, so I’ll limit myself to short blogs. Writing will be therapy because I’m certainly not going to sit around and watch television all day long. If you’ve had rotator-cuff surgery or know someone that has, please share that experience because even though it’s day surgery, I’m not looking forward to the pain and misery afterwards.

I’ve read BigJ’s blog where he agreed with a poster that placed the blame of our education woes entirely on liberals. I’ll probably use that topic as the next subject matter for one of my next blogs. I did a little research into the subject but all I could find was that conservatives don’t like the all- out support liberals give to public education. I did read some blogs at the National Review that blame the liberals for our education downfall, but it all had to do with social issues. I’ll have plenty of time to research this matter.

No Scarborough, MSNBC is Not Like Fox.

To view the video go here

This morning  Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were arguing about RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’s   decision to bar CNN and NBC from airing the GOP presidential debates if they show the documentary on Hillary Clinton.

Mika Brzezinski said that Priebus should come on their show and explain his position because he still had Fox for the friendly venue that he wants.  Joe stepped in and said “Every time you bring up Fox, you’ve got to bring up MSNBC."

If Joe’s comments comparing the networks and the rhetoric stopped there, I might tend to agree with him more often. MSNBC, low ratings and all, do not recruit people who are running in the democratic primary.  There's no doubt that the network liens liberal and they will discuss the issues from that point of view.  I don't think any one is blaming the RNC for trying to use their leverage but they can't be crying media bias.

Joe Scarborough always plays the moral equivalence card when confronted with some crazy things republicans say.  These days, moderates  like to stay above the fray by saying that both sides do it, but that's not true. The left has their fringe elements but they've been kept  out the limelight for several years now.  The right on the other hand has been out of power for several years, so they're more willing to show their frustration.  For example, Republicans are attacking Republicans right now and Democrats are sitting back and enjoying the show.

For whatever the reasons, liberals don't tune in to talk radio or view MSNBC unless it's during a presidential election year, and the network’s rating prove it.  I normally record the evening programming for some tidbits I might of missed during the day.  Oftentimes, a guest like Erza Klien will break down an economic theory enough to where I can understand it.  Lawrence O'Donnell will break down policy procedures as he did when he was a senior staff member in the U.S. Senate.

Fox on the other hand appeals to the older 65 year plus white viewer, who will turn on Fox at 6:00 AM and a leave it there until they go to bed.  It's a constituency that votes.  Christianity, conservatism, the Second Amendment and traditional values is what drives these people and Fox tailors their programing to suit their needs.

I don't see what Republicans are complaining about because they have more than their share of the media. Conservatives certainly dominate talk radio and Fox dominates political cable television.  I guess they want network television, Hollywood, the New York Times  and the White House as some sort of entitlement. They think that the country is center right even though the data doesn't support that.

A good illustration  of the media and political differences is someone's take on the George Zimmerman trial. I bet an avid viewer of Fox thinks that Trayvon Martin was a thug, and George Zimmerman had every right to kill him in self-defense.  An MSNBC viewer like myself watched most of the trial and was disappointed but not surprised at the verdict. It wasn't so much the network's influence because most of us already had preconceived notions about the outcome.I believe networks like MSNBC, and Fox serves as cheerleaders for a certain point of view and CNN does a disservice because they go out of their way to try to stay in the middle.  Look at the several George Zimmerman trial letters that have been written in our newspaper which are mostly about promoting an agenda.

Joe Scarborough Just Doesn’t Get It

Joe Scarborough, like so many conservatives, live in the past, the golden days of Ronald Reagan, so when things don’t go like they did back then, he simply doesn’t get it. I say this because he doesn’t understand why President Obama takes this message to the people, instead of trying to penetrate an impenetrable object like House Republicans. Joe seems to think that the president has to find something that the tea party republicans can agree with. How can you deal with a party who wants to be judged on what they repeal? They remind me of trolls who repeat the same message in a continuous loop thinking it’s a winning strategy. The only way to deal with spoiled children or trolls is to ignore them.

It’s no secret that Joe Scarborough doesn’t like President Obama, but he puts the entire blame of gridlock on the president’s shoulder because of his lack of leadership. He doesn’t see the reality; the Republicans of today do not respect the current president of the United States. They remind me of the 1950s, where a white filling station attendant, thought he was more important than a black Harvard-educated lawyer because of his skin color. That’s not to say that today’s Republicans are racists, but they harbor the same resentment towards President Obama. Sure, many Democrats didn’t think highly of President George W Bush’s intellect but their disagreement never led to a government shutdown. Today’s House Republicans would relish a government shutdown.

For the past few months, Joe Scarborough has used the years 1995 through 1997 to illustrate that Bill Clinton managed to find a way to make deals with a right-wing Congress like the one he belonged to. Although he’s been told many times, Scarborough won’t accept the fact that in those years, there were 45 moderate Republicans in the House of representatives, today there might be 2. Back in those years, there were sweeteners called pork and most members wanted to sit on committee chairs, but that’s no longer the case. The gerrymandered districts of 1995 are now super gerrymandered districts. This Congress has only passed 19 pieces of legislation, and the tea party is probably complaining about that. Those members love that 12% approval because it only enforces their message that any government is bad.

This morning, Nicole Wallace quoted from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial that essentially said that the president’s policies were bad for the middle class. Nicole Wallace is a reasonable person, so I went back to read the article she quoted from. The statistics they used were nothing that liberals haven’t been saying all along about inequality. As expected, the conservative editorial blamed ObamaCare, regulations, taxes and uncertainty for the stalemate. The president is talking about a middle class-out strategy while conservatives still seem to think that a top-down strategy is best.

There’s a world of difference between Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama. President Bill Clinton is a political junkie who could tell you who’s running in the 21^st district of West Virginia and what their poll numbers are at any given time. President Obama couldn't care less, and he’s not interested in smooth talking anyone for their vote. Bill Clinton did not carry a grudge because he was thinking of the next piece of legislation that he wanted to pass. The president is less forgiving because he has a long-term vision, so he’s not interested in the day-to-day today squabbles or people who are prone to lying. For example, Bill Clinton did make a deal with the GOP, he got re-elected but he lost several seats. President Obama is not willing to cut a deal that will cause his party to lose seats. I guess you can make an argument that Bill Clinton put country before party but did he?

The House of Representatives reminds me of the “Wild Wild West” where members of Congress can’t wait to get to the microphone, so that their outrageous statements make the evening news. A Republican member of the House of Representatives blamed the media for broadcasting Representative Steve King’s racist remarks. Really! In a committee meeting about legislation regarding the Dreamers, Steve King said that for every valedictorian, there were 100 drug mules in that group who packed 75 pounds of marijuana into this country, as evidenced by their cantaloupe sized calves. When asked for his proof, he named some anonymous border patrolmen. Oh, the speaker condemned the words, but he remains on the committee. This is the same speaker who removed three committee members for voting against him for the Speaker the House.

The bottom line, the Speaker the House, John Boehner, cannot control his own party but Joe Scarborough expects the president to come up with a proposal they can agree with. That’s a tall order.

Living in the Past

I'm an old guy; I love my nostalgia, but I don't let it influence me that much.  I believe there's a time and a place for everything, and that's why Joe Scarborough drives me up the wall when he continues to compare presidents Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson to our current president. He always leaves out the part where Reagan won 49 states and Johnson consistently had control of both houses. Scarborough considers himself an expert in presidential politics because he served in Congress.  That will give him a one up on me on the day –to- day operation but revisionist history cannot wipe out the reality of having to have 60 votes in the Senate in order to pass a major piece of legislation. President Obama  has to have the votes of five Republican senators on any given day. 

Joe Scarborough thinks President Obama is a weak president with no leadership skills, and some mainstream columnists are starting to write columns echoing the same thoughts. At his press conference yesterday, the president looked down beaten because nothing is getting done. Many in the press are blaming the president because the background check legislation failed although it had a 90% approval.  I guess in a country where we believe that the “the buck stops here” that's to be expected. Unlike other presidents before him, Obama doesn't have earmarks to persuade a wavering lawmaker.  Committee chairs are powerless with the sixty vote mandate.  Polarization and primaries are the main reasons for the stalemate. Those situations may sound like excuses , but no one can deny that those conditions exist in today’s politics.

Republican representative Tom Cotton from Arkansas is a Harvard Rhodes Scholar  and a veteran of two wars in the Middle East but has chosen to vote and take positions outside the mainstream in order to stay to the right of future  competition.  Senator Ted Cruz is a graduate of Harvard and Princeton, yet placates himself to the less-educated  Tea Party.  Those two politicians can see the reality of partisan redistricting, so they'll do and say whatever  it takes to hold on to their seat. Peddle revisionist history, no problem, obstruction, easy  consider it done and CNN, Meet the Press,  and Fox loves to have controversial guests spout their views because it boosts ratings.

History is important and it should help us from repeating mistakes. I’ll bet my last dollar that the mistakes of invading Iraq is influencing the president’s decision on what to do about Syria. The president was talked into tripling the size of troops in Afghanistan because the surge in Iraq slowed down the violence. This is where history failed us with the surge of troops in Afghanistan because the countries and situations were not the same.

For some reason, the press doesn’t want to believe that the GOP hates the president even though Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) revealed that some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales recently because they didn't want to "be seen helping the president." The press forgets, and the Democrats don’t remind them of the meeting by GOP leaders had on the day of the president’s first inauguration where they decided to vote against anything that the president wanted.  I remember the bad right- wing press Governor Chris Christie got when he praised President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy response.  History will write that chapter, but it's not going to be before President Obama leaves office. 

Joe Scarborough likes to say that President George. W. Bush was equally hated by the left, but he scrambles the whole eight years together. After 9/11 the country united and Bush enjoyed high approval ratings until he made the mistake of invading Iraq. Joe continues to say that Bush found a way to push through legislation as if to praise his leadership capabilities. That’s not so on many fronts because Democrats voted for the war resolution because they were afraid of being painted as being weak and Bush passed the two tax cuts through Budget Reconciliation where only 51 votes were needed. President Bush tried to pass Social Security privatization , but his own party didn’t back him up nor did they allow Harriet Miers to be a Supreme Court nominee.

History can be your ally or your foe so it’s important to get your fruits (apples and oranges) to match.

We are So Superficial

After looking for a word to describe what I heard on “Morning Joe” I finally settled on the word “superficial” because according to the dictionary I used that word means “Concerned with or comprehending only what is apparent or obvious; not deep or penetrating emotionally or intellectually.” Isn’t that what we do every day?

The topic this morning was the president’s phone calls to senators Rubio, McCain and Graham, congratulating them for their efforts in trying to get a comprehensive immigration bill through the Senate. The president only did this because he knows he has to play the political game for the media. The 2007 immigration bill is still the template, and you couldn’t squeeze a paper clip between the Senate's version, and the one drafted by the White House. The White House version threw out the red meat out for the naysayers because it put in an eight-year time frame for someone who’s here illegally to gain citizenship; bypassing border enforcement first. That language gave Marco Rubio the opportunity to jump up and down and cry foul and gain some support from his base.


There’s only one issue to be resolved, and it lies within the GOP. That elephant in the room is the 11 million undocumented immigrants. Those that vote Republican because they could never vote for a Democrat want attrition only and if that means bankrupting the country, the party, and maintaining this wedge issue; so be it. The Republicans want the president to get involved but when he does, they accuse him of derailing the bipartisan effort. The truth is, the Democrats at those meetings are just the potted plants because there are they ready to push the “yea” button but the Republicans need to reinvent the English language to try to convince their base that what they are proposing is not amnesty. If anyone saw the video clips of Senator McCain fighting for the Senate's proposal in his district; you would have a better understanding of what I’m trying to say. I think we all know why the GOP wants an immigration bill to pass.They have already lost the black vote, the Asian vote and the single woman vote and to keep losing the fastest growing demographic(Latino vote) by over 45 percentage points  will mean permanent minority status at the national level;no pun intended.It's very difficult for them because it's as if they are recruiting for the opposition party. They feel like they are using a coffee cup to remove water from their sinking boat. I don't feel sorry for them because they put themselves in that situation by allowing the hateful rhetoric to dominate their overall message.  

With so many issues to be concerned with, Fox News White House correspondent, Ed Henry, is throwing a fit because the media did not get access to the golf outing between Tiger Woods and President Obama. Really, how about an expose about the financial devastation the upcoming sequester cuts will cost? Talk about a superficial manufactured crisis; the stock market doesn’t pay any attention to Washington anymore because they know when push comes to shove, Congress will kick the can down the road and eventually come back to the same place they were three months ago. The truth is, you won’t get a republican excited by saying that 200,000 federal jobs will be lost.

For the past for four years, I’ve heard that this president is not like past presidents because he doesn’t reach out to his fellow Democrats or to the opposition party. The pundits don’t realize that whatever he’s doing; it gave him two terms, and he just might be setting precedent for successful presidents of the future. If we subjectively look back on this presidency; I think we will find that President Obama accomplished a lot more than most presidents. He was the first in 100 years to get a comprehensive health-care package passed, did not allow us to go into a deep recession, ended the war in Iraq, disposed of Osama bin Laden and Omar Qaddafi, ended “Don’t Ask Don't. tell” got the Republicans to vote for a tax increase for the first time in 30 years and there are still the immigration and gun universal background checks to go.

There’s a plus to being my age; you don’t have to play the superficial game unless you want to.

Now I’m Beginning to Understand the Difference

I finally got the republican message the other day when Chris Matthews was interviewing a representative of the Tea Party Express. Every question he asked her got a response, of “ we need to reduce our debt.” That in itself is not a bad goal but more importantly, it lays out the differences between liberals and conservatives.

Allow me to simplify the mindset of the ideological divide in our country. Republicans want a balanced budget and they want to remain revenue neutral throughout. For example, right now we spend about 25% of GDP and take in 15% of GDP(revenues), leaving a 10% budget deficit. Republicans don’t want more revenues for balance because they are upset with the 25% we currently spend. Their goal is to get spending to 18% of GDP, which will leaves no room for expanding or maintaining entitlements and social programs. That’s their smaller government approach which means they are in favor of tax reform if all the savings go toward lowering the debt. Once we get the savings, then they want to broaden the base and lower the corporate and individual rates. That is classis supply-side trickle- down economics that has never worked.

Democrats are not against a balanced budget but they don’t want a constitutional amendment that requires it. That would mean making equivalent cuts in social programs, every time FEMA went over their budget amount, in responding to a natural disaster. Democrats think that we have to continue investing in education, innovation and infrastructure to remain competitive. I don’t think anyone can disagree that we are behind in education, innovation and infrastructural repair.

Joe Scarborough is trying to turn everyone against the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman because he said that we don’t have to worry about the debt right now. Joe is obsessed with the debt (we will never pay it off in my lifetime) and he talks about it every day. Paul Krugman is obsessed with jobs and he thinks that worrying about the debt can be put off for now. Joe Scarborough thinks Congress can do two things at once and Paul Krugman disagrees with that.

There’s a lot of “blowing out someone’s candle to make theirs shine brighter” attitude from people who are demonizing those on welfare and it starts at the headquarters of the GOP. Republicans continue to spread the myth that democrats support a culture of government dependency. In fact, Marco Rubio, alluded to that in his rebuttal to the president’s SOTU the other night. The demographics have changed a lot from that of the 1980s Ronald Reagan era. This new generation is not anti- government and they see a positive role for an efficient government. Government doesn’t solve all our problems but that doesn’t mean it can’t solve any problems. For those of you who don’t need government, good for you and I applaud your success but not everyone has your good fortune.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, got his hat handed to him after he expected Mitch McConnell to keep up his end of the bargain of limiting the filibuster rule. The republican senators made history by blocking a president’s cabinet position nominee when the 60 vote threshold was not met. John McCain said on tape that he would not filibuster Chuck Hagel , thus allowing it to go to the floor for an up or down vote. He excuses his slide by saying that it was a temporary delaying tactic to get more information and that once recess is over(10 days), he and Lindsey Graham would vote to let the nomination come to the floor. At least John McCain is honest by saying that it’s about payback for Chuck Hagel saying that President Bush was the worst president in our lifetime (true) and the surge in Iraq was the worst foreign policy ever. Some senators like Lindsey Graham are holding the nomination as a hostage, to get more answers about Benghazi. I think the minority party is using all the delays, as a last stop effort to keep any of Obama’s agenda from getting a vote. They think they will gain enough seats in 2014 to be the majority in 2014.

There’s been a long tradition that freshmen senators were to be seen and not heard but Ted Cruz has broken that tradition, but he’s in good company because Rand Paul and Marco Rubio did the same thing but they didn’t get the coverage. Ted Cruz had the audacity to question the patriotism of a bronze star recipient, Chuck Hagel and everyday he is making a a complete ass of himself . Texas’s other senator is up for reelection in 2014, and he’s scared he will get primarried by someone to the right of him, so the joke around Washington is that Ted Cruz has two votes. Democrats are sticking with the tradition because their rising star, Senator Elizabeth Warren, is following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton by keeping a low profile. Well yesterday, Senator Warren put Wall Street and the federal regulators on notice with a simple question “have you ever taken a bank or Wall Street CEO to trial?”

The GOP is angry and frustrated because no one likes to be the minority party,so right now they are struggling with their identity,do they want to be a Tea Party or like like they were in the 1990s? It took the Democrats 12 years to get over their losing ways until Bill Clinton showed them the way with a little help from Ross Perot.