Lessons Learned in Arguing With Conservatives

The first thing I learned was that I was going to need a lot of patience because we were going to go down many rabbits trails before we got to the main topic. I knew I was going to have to take a lot of name calling, sift through the exaggerations, and  I needed to try and calm down my angry opponent. That’s right, I’m satisfied with the last two presidential elections and my opponent is not. An angry person is not likely to make much sense until they cool down.

The conservative is likely to be a Ronald Reagan or a Ron Paul disciple, so they come into the argument with an idea that they are superior and if things somehow don’t go their way, then the system had to be rigged. They seem to think that President Obama couldn’t possibly get those millions of votes legitimately, so he would had to entice his constituents with government goodies. There’s no other possible explanation.

In the VA’s thread titled “America is ineptocrasy not democracy’ “the right-wing commenters wanted to make it about “makers and takers” and they got upset when other posters did not want to follow that storyline. They want to control the dialogue using their talking points rather than facts from reliable sources.

I had to sit patiently while my conservative opponent went through his monologue where he would call the president a socialist, tyrant, illegitimate, or the latest thing he heard from talk radio. I knew that I would be wasting my time trying to refute all those false claims, so I sat there and" bit my tongue" until we could get to the issues. It’s a rope- a- dope tactic.

If we were arguing in front of an audience, my conservative opponent would put on a show, by wildly exaggerating all his points. I had to carefully phrase my opinions and points, so he didn't mock my answers as much, since we are not having a formal debate. A good example is the last comment in the “Voter ID Law No problem in Crossroads” thread where a poster stated “Did you bother to read the article? “The voter ID law hasn't presented any problems. The gloom and doom stories were just that, stories?” The poster doesn’t know that’s such a small sample, that it is not representative sample that we can rely on but he thinks we can’t read.

The conservative is not dumb, but you have to keep repeating the facts that you got from reliable sources because they won’t sink in the first, second or even the third time around. For example, many have moved off the IRS non scandal because there were not enough facts to support their conspiracy, so it quickly became not a matter of concern. Benghazi is still alive to them because they think there are still pieces of evidence around to bring down the Obama Administration or to weaken Hillary Clinton in her presidential run. The Republicans have not come up with any meaningful legislation, so this is all they have to cling to.

Today, the GOP is on a “what did the president know and when did he know it?” strategy. Yesterday’s congressional hearing about the disastrous rollout of the Healthcare.gov website, there were  more questions and statements about the president’s promise that people could keep their crappie insurance policies if they wanted to. It’s too late in the game for the GOP to start playing the “I feel your pain” game because everyone is aware that they have never cared about universal affordable health care.

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.”    

Selective Outrage

A few days ago the Victoria Advocate Editorial Board wrote an article voicing their displeasure over the conduct of national park personnel during the recent shutdown.

The story stated that the closing of national parks and monuments had caused outrage across the nation. I'm waiting for the article expressing  outrage of the shutdown itself and the damage it caused to others. The national parks bring in $76 million a day.

I saw people cursing the park rangers ,dismantling barricades and taking them and placing them adjacent to the front lawn of the White House. I don't think being a WWII veteran gives anyone the right to make more work for the park personnel who weren't getting paid. I can only imagine the outrage if the Occupy Wall Street people would have done that. 

I'm still not sure why a local resident's unpleasant experience  with park rangers at the Aransas National wildlife Refuge was worth mentioning. I'm pretty sure tourists and park rangers have butted heads before but this incident was exploited as part of a national story. 

 There's  no doubt that some park rangers may have gotten out of hand and they should be punished.   I saw Texas Congressman, Randy Neugebauer lash out at a park ranger for doing her job,saying she should be ashamed. No Congressman,you should be ashamed for taking part in closing down the government in the first place and then appearing at the memorial for a photo-op.

The article states that the maintenance of the parks are part of the budget but the land itself belongs to the American people. That doesn't even make sense , you cannot separate the two. Think about that on the local level;Guadalupe Park belongs to us but  there is a gate at the entrance and exit for a reason. I would hate to see the national parks after two weeks of unsupervised visitation. 

The editorial makes the often repeated dumb remark about the park service paychecks coming from the taxpayers. The park personnel are also taxpayers and the public sector employees get their paychecks from consumers,so what's the point? We are all beholding to our customers in one way or the other.

 Excuse me if I don't buy into the hysteria; a manufactured crisis followed by misplaced outrage. 

Fix the Darn Glitches

The shutdown is over, and now the GOP will set its sights on the computer glitches associated with healthcare.gov. This morning Joe Scarborough said the GOP should point out that the company  working on our Affordable Care Act website was recently fired by Canada. Joe said the party should emphasize that this fiasco is in a $100 million overrun so far. If I would’ve been on that panel, I would say “the cost pales in comparison to the $24 billion the shutdown cost us.” I would have also said "the Medicare Part D’s website the Republicans passed had its delays and glitches. That would be just to get the Republicans off their high horse because this administration has to own this horrendous rollout.

There’s no way to sugarcoat the failure to implement a website that was supposed to help seven million Americans get affordable health care. It’s inexcusable but it’s not because the president had a high tech team running his reelection campaign and they should’ve known better. That’s the media version and they will repeat that line time and time again.

 This system has to be able to communicate with Homeland Security, the IRS, the Veterans Administration, and Social Security and also with the state’s unique data bases. It’s a serious problem because consumers have until December 15 to choose a plan that can be in force January 1, 2014 but no later than Feb.15, 2014 or they could be hit with an IRS penalty. I wouldn’t be surprised if Health and Human Services (HHS) extended the deadline, only to hear the GOP say “I told you we should have the delayed the individual mandate for another year.”

The GOP wanted to delay ‘the individual mandate” for political reasons and not because they cared about the people who didn’t or now has insurance. The party knew if they could delay the implementation of ACA, reinforcements would come (more republicans) in the 2014 elections. They are not backing off one bit because their number one goal is to kill Obamacare.. A delay would mean that those who were insured through that the new Obamacare Medicaid program would no longer have insurance. I don’t know why the administration and democrats didn’t do more to emphasize that.

 The president should make the successful healthcare signup website a priority because the GOP will exploit every hiccup. Robert Gibbs said that the administration could hire the best computer techs from Silicon Valley, but I can see the GOP controlled House handing over that much money to repair a system they hate to the core. More importantly, the people trying to signup are probably the ones who need it the most. The state’s websites are running smoothly, but they tell us that the applicants make at least 18 visits before they purchase, and traffic is the heaviest near the deadline for signup. There’s still time and when the glitches are fixed, the ones who remember this fiasco will be drowned out by the successful logins.

People seem to forget that the healthcare insurance was skyrocketing before President Obama ever took office, and the GOP did not have a plan nor were they interested in one. To this day, the Republican Party does not have a healthcare plan that will provide affordable health care for 30 million people. Republican legislators will tell us that people are not ever denied health care, but they leave out the part that those people regularly use the expensive emergency-room. Hospitals in most cases will charge the insurance companies the excess and that domino affect will add about $1000 to our health care premiums.

Rep. Louie Gohmert told a right-wing talk show host that the shutdown kept the Dems from brings up immigration reform. I don’t usually pay attention to Mr. Gohmert, but it’s in line with the GOP minority party tactics. Their plan is to filibuster, delay and basically run out the clock, so the president can’t pass his agenda.

I read an interesting Washington Post story that fact checked Senator Ted Cruz's claims about the job killing ACA. The newspaper only gave him two Pinocchios because our country has 315 million  and a lot of his data could not be verified yet. Once businesses get going, those part timers will become full- timers regardless of their healthcare status ,so to say we are nation of 29 hour work week is not true.

Not all Conservatives Are Good At Math

 

There’s no reason to be in this predicament because this crisis was self -manufactured. Conservatives will tell us that the debt is too high, and we need to cut back our spending and start reforming our tax code and entitlements. Who can disagree with that, as one side of the argument? That’s an argument for austerity that’s doesn’t work but we don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.  That’s where the word compromise comes in to play.

Let’s go back a couple of weeks ago to see what the conservatives thought was important. The GOP basically said that the deficit and debt were OK because they didn’t have any problems funding the government and increasing the debt limit.  The most important thing to the House GOP was defunding Obamacare. In order to accomplish that they would need at least 289 votes in their own chamber to override a presidential veto. They have 232 party members meaning they would need 57 Democrats. They would also need to persuade 13 Senate Democrats to go along with their scheme. As a prominent Republican said, “a fool’s errand.” True conservatives can do the math.

This morning Republican representative from Wisconsin, Sean Duffy said he thought it was perfectly reasonable to put the president and Congress on Obamacare without government subsidies, as most Americans. The question I have to ask (and Mika Brzezinski did) “is this why you shut down the government? “Again we have to get back to basics. Only 15% of Americans are eligible for Obamacare.  Employer contribution is what the Congressman is calling subsidies because it makes it sound cynical. The American taxpayer is the employer of federal employees. It’s common knowledge that those in the exchange (15%) will not get employer contribution but many will get subsides. Many on the “Morning Joe “advised the congressman to write a bill, get Cosponsors and proceed through the normal parliamentary procedure, but that shouldn’t be part of a CR or a reason not to raise the debt limit.

I saw where two or three people in our local newspaper are blaming the Democrats and President Obama for the shutdown. Will our local newspaper be like the Houston Chronicle (they endorsed Ted Cruz) and only start telling its readers the truth when it’s too late, just so they won’t offend a potential subscriber?  I know those two or three people didn’t see the polls where 74% of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown. And even if they did, they have a way of ignoring anything negative by calling it media bias. A newspaper shouldn’t “go along to get along.”

The Senate will likely pass a bipartisan bill to open the government and raise the debt limit this afternoon. They will send it over to the House where it will likely be passed with just enough Republicans. Look back people and ask, “was all this worth it and do we really want to go through this again in a few months?” It’s not out of your hands because one of 80 representatives who signed a letter calling for this shutdown way back in the summer was Blake Farenthold.

Shutdown Hangover

With just nine days until we default on our debt for the very first time in our history, the media is trying to be the first to inform us as to the reason.  

The New York Times,Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times article also reports that the" David and Charles Koch, and their affiliated groups, threw some pretty big bucks around. Freedom Partners distributed $200 million to various “grassroots” anti-Obamacare groups. Meanwhile, the Americans for Prosperity plunked down $5.5 million for anti-Obamacare television ads. Freedom Partners also paid an additional $115 million to the egregiously misnamed Center to Protect Patient Rights. Meanwhile, the youthful and comparatively thrifty Generation Opportunity spent a scant $740 thousand on their creepy Uncle Sam ad. in hopes of scaring us away from Obamacare’s state health insurance exchanges.”

Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell had another theory.  He said that the GOP was not that dumb, and this is an effort to destroy the imperial presidency, which they started with Richard Nixon.  Senator Ted Cruz is being described as a Sarah Palin with a brain, so he used his talent and went around the country pledging to destroy Obamacare to the delight of the base.  Now, you have Republicans wanting to vote for a clean CR, but they are afraid of being exposed as being a RHINO and getting a challenger from the right.  The GOP does not see a clear path to the presidency anytime in the future, so the only thing they have left is to destroy President Obama and his agenda.  The reason their initial plan failed was that President Obama stood his ground, and did not negotiate with the hostage takers.  This left the tea party dumbfounded, so they came up with this “the president won’t negotiate” ploy to get sympathy for their effort.  According to latest polls, the GOP is getting a majority of the blame for the shutdown.

That was fairly heated but informative discussion about the shutdown on this morning’s episode of “Morning Joe.” The cast of characters included Carl Bernstein, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicole Wallace, Matt Lewis,Eugene Washington and Bill Kristol.  It became pretty evident that Bill Kristol does not like President Obama one bit, saying that he was the exact opposite of FDR.  Eugene Washington reminded Mr. Kristol, that the same GOP demonized FDR while he was trying to implement Social Security.  Bill Kristol shot back “ FDR was not at 45% during this time of his presidency.” Well, that’s because a lot more people were democrats back then. 

 Matt Lewis said that young evangelicals were no longer following the GOP because of their views on the social issues.  He also said that President Obama Hillary Clinton followed the philosophy of Noam Chomsky, who wrote a book (game palm) which preached hate and promoted ideas on how to demonize your opponent.  No one on the panel, mentioned that the GOP had Lee Atwater doing the same for them.

Carl Bernstein kept Nicole Wallace in check throughout the segment by refusing to let her say that Obamacare was a government-run health care system.  Joe Scarborough tried to make the best use of Mika running into some Democrats who did not like Obamacare.  She had to explain that the people she talked with were angry with Congress, the shutdown, and Obamacare was just thrown in with it.

We will be the losers if our country defaults or even appears to be defaulting.  My IRA will lose value and our Social Security checks might be delayed but that’s minor compared to people who would lose their jobs.  This country will lose any recovery gains that we have been making..  A default is a lot more than 535 winners and losers.

A good example of what's wrong with the GOP

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when a news anchor knows more about what’s going on than a sitting senator.  In that video, Rand Paul, said that we are taking in $250 billion, and the interest on the debt is $20 billion, so technically if we pay that, then we’re not in default.  That logic will be accepted by the followers of Thomas Sowell and Fox News, but it’s very irresponsible. Senator Paul doesn’t factor in missed Social Security payments, interest rates going up, the spooking of the markets, the feeling of uncertainty or the downgrade of our credit rating. Representative Michelle Bachmann tried to use that flawed logic in her failed presidential run in 2011.

Samantha Guthrie should replace David Gregory as the host of “Meet the Press” because she was just as tough on Treasury Secretary Lew.  We should be able to learn something from the Sunday talk shows and not just listen to the prepared message of the day.  At least, she put in a good effort in trying to extract information but even her best effort couldn’t get Rand Paul to comment on his “open MIC moment.”

Speaker Boehner said the president knows his phone number, so he could call anytime he wants to start the negotiations.  In the 2011, I remember John Boehner refusing to take the president’s call and Eric Cantor walking out of a negotiating process.  I imagine. John Boehner could call the president if he knew what he wanted.  First, it was about defunding Obamacare, and then it was about delaying the individual mandate. When those two were defeated, they offered a piece meal approach, and today they want to talk about the deficit and the debt for passing a two-month CR. If the president agrees to that, we’ll go through the same process two with three more times before the 2014 election.  In the meantime, the GOP is not offering the democrats a single thing. The GOP has a laundry list of demands for opening the government. 

The TV hosts could go home and just play a rerun of last week’s talking points and we wouldn't miss a thing.

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.