Does a Tyrant Apologize?

Yesterday, President Obama apologized for saying the words that might have misled 14 million Americans, who believed they could keep their health insurance plans if they wanted to. It was the right thing to do because he was damned if he apologized and damned if he didn’t. The president’s enemies are now saying that the apology just proves that he’s not up to the task of being president. I can remember the same people saying that the president was a tyrant who  was pushing his agenda without congressional approval. A tyrant does not apologize.

After the president’s apology, John Boehner put out a statement saying that if the president was sincere, he would get behind the house bill to reinstate those cancelled policies. Wait a minute, Congress doesn’t have the authority to reinstate policies; the insurance companies would never go for that. The Affordable Care Act and private insurance companies made agreements before the law was passed.

The GOP won’t be satisfied until Kathleen Sebelius gets fired thus leaving Health and Human Services without a director. The Senate won’t confirm judges; do you really think they would be in a hurry to confirm someone whose job it will be to make ACA a successful program?

On my way back from taking a blood test, I flipped on an AM station to see what right wing radio was saying this morning. The talk show host was playing parts of the apology and started asking leading questions such as “why isn’t the president apologizing for the hardships that are sure to come from Obamacare?” He went on to say that starting next year companies will start dropping their healthcare plans. There’s no viable proof of that but the talk show host doesn’t have to pay any penalty for lying to his audience.

I can understand the president’s frustration with media’s appetite for sensationalism. They will broadcast several people’s hardship stories after losing their health insurance, but they ignore the ones who saved money through the exchanges. Unless pressed by a supporter of ACA the media will not mention that healthcare costs were a major problem before Obamacare. The media will hold the people who are trying to do something to lower healthcare costs “feet to the fire” but will give those who don’t care a free pass. How many times have you heard a pundit asked a critic of ACA “and what is your plan?”

The day After and What Might Have Been

I learned a couple of things from Tuesday night’s election. We now have another category the GOP loses, the unmarried voter. I also learned the difference between independents and moderates in this present day. The independents are conservatives who have left the Republican Party for some reason and the moderates are Democrats who don’t align themselves with the progressives/ liberals. These labels change meanings from cycle to cycle.

The two major parties interpreted the results of the Tuesday night’s election results differently as we might expect. The GOP is split because some cheered Chris Christie’s landslide victory and others said that New Jersey was not a model to copy for the 2016 presidential election.

The Republican Party doesn’t think they lost the Virginia’s governor’s race because if they would have had a better candidate, poured more money into it, and emphasized the failure of Obamacare at the start, they would have won that contest. It’s another case of “if we would’ve scored more points “ logic.In fact, even though Ken Cuuccinelli admitted he lost, he has yet to call the governor elect Terry McAuliffe to congratulate him. The governor’s race in Virginia was very similar to the congressional race in Alabama where the business establishment ousted the tea party from gaining office. In Virginia, they withheld campaign funds and poured in money into the Alabama congressional race. The establish GOP beat the tea party this time around but not enough to discourage them from running candidates in 2014.

The DNC may be sorry for not putting up of much of a fight in the New Jersey governor’s race but they saw Christi winning since Cory Booker decided not to challenge him. Preliminary polls show Hillary Clinton beating the governor in his own state by six points, so the confidence that he can be beaten is there.

Democrats are like the team that kicks the last-second field goal for the win because they took the governorship of Virginia, but now they have to govern, no time to brag, analyze or declare a mandate. Terry McAuliffe has to find a way to convince the one chamber the GOP controls, to enroll in Obamacare.

Democrats saw new hope in passing minimum wage increase legislation. New Jersey passed a minimum wage hike despite having a Republican governor. The party was also delighted that New York City will get a very liberal mayor who will govern that way.

Republican leaders are trying to say Tuesday’s night’s election was the referendum on Obamacare, but that is very shortsighted. As he usually does, Jon Stewart went through his archives to show the same horror stories existed prior to 2009. Today we’re seeing the horror stories because a lot of lazy reporters are not doing their due diligence. October is usually the month health insurance companies reevaluate their policies with their customers.

As usual, the negativity has drowned out the good news. We just found out yesterday that our economy expanded to 2.8% annual rate during the months of July through September but then the shutdown came. The report stated that exports were rising, businesses were building their inventories in anticipation of sales, home construction was on the rise but then we got struck with another self- inflicted crisis. The naysayers are blaming President Obama and his policies for a stagnant economy but the economic data doesn’t support that.

I keep reading the letters about economic doom, but I don’t see any evidence of that. Yesterday, while I was at therapy, I overheard a conversation about a tamale order. The lady said that she was willing to pay $10.00 a dozen. Look at the cost of ingredients that go into making the delicacy; it wasn’t inflation that cost the price to rise from $7.25 a couple of years ago. I think the restaurants are taking advantage because that there are less people making good tamales these days. That’s just a small example where we can’t always use generally accepted economic reasoning to come to the same conclusion. We were led to believe that you can’t raise the minimum wage without hurting the economy but we know that’s just a myth. We no longer believe that we can’t raise taxes on the rich because it will hurt growth.

I don’t blame people for directing all their bitterness toward President Obama by trying to belittle his credentials, decisions, and policies because that comes with the territory, it’s called “sour grapes” I’ve noticed a pattern with these people; they don’t have an alternative solution. I’ve done my share of criticizing Ron Paul and President George W. Bush, but I submitted the details of why I felt that way.