Still, it is true that the Obama administration is winning the zero-sum contest. One way to measure this is polling, which already shows movement toward the Democratic side. Another way to measure it is that Republicans, who have spent months refusing any budget deal, are suddenly desperate to make a budget deal. A flurry of…
$11 a month? Obamacare super-cheap for some, feds find
Bare-bones health insurance could cost just $11 a month for a family of four in Indianapolis on the federal governments new exchanges, which start serving customers next week. A similar family in New Orleans might pay as little as $23 a month, although they’d have to shell out $282 for a more generous “silver” plan,…
The Biggest Myth About Obamacare
When Congress wrote the law known as the Affordable Care Act, their idea was to maintain Americans current health coverage as much as possible, to boost consumer protections in the health insurance market for individuals, and to cover the uninsured. That doesnt mean all workers will keep what they have. The Congressional Budget Office predicts…
GOP Congressman Pushes For Obamacare Repeal: “This is not a Democracy”
Doug Collins, representative from Georgia came on Politics Nation and it was no surprise when he started spouting the typical one-sided nonsense about how they weren’t shutting down the government and were in fact funding the government – as long as it didn’t include the affordable care act. Nothing shocking there, but what may have…
Florida Among States Undercutting Health Care Enrollment
As many states prepare to introduce a linchpin of the 2010 health care law — the insurance exchanges designed to make health care more affordable — a handful of others are taking the opposite tack: They are complicating enrollment efforts and limiting information about the new program. Chief among them is Florida, where Gov. Rick…
48 Million Americans Remain Uninsured, Census Bureau Reports
The rate of uninsured Americans dropped slightly for the second consecutive year in 2012, from 15.7 percent to 15.4 percent, largely a result of more people enrolling in Medicare and Medicaid, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The closely-watched report found that about 48 million Americans were uninsured in 2012, down from 48.6 million in…
Republicans Like The Affordable Care Act More Than Obamacare
Republicans like the 2010 health care law better when its called by its proper name — the Affordable Care Act — instead of Obamacare, according to a new Fox News poll. Republican support for the law jumped eight percent, from 14 percent for Obamacare to 22 percent for the Affordable Care Act, when pollsters…
UN Inspectors On Syria: Clear And Convincing Evidence Chemical Weapons Were Used On Large Scale
The inspectors report said “the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus” on Aug. 21. “The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in…
Obama May Have Played Us All And Won–That Is Leadership
In one chess match the President was able to make the rank and file Republicans seem like doves, the neocons look reckless, the Tea Party wing seem like flip flopping buffoons all while potentially shutting down Syria’s use of chemical weapons without firing a shot or dropping a bomb. The Right Wing would have none…
U.S., Russia Reach Deal – Syrian Weapons May Be Destroyed In Less Than A Year
After days of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia reached agreement Saturday on a framework to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 and impose U.N. penalties if the Assad government fails to comply. The deal, announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva, includes…
Syria Napalms Kids, Americans Bury Their Heads
I have to shake my head at the level of American ignorance displayed in regards to the Syria conflict. People talk about Muslims and say they will never stop fighting. AMERICA has never stopped fighting. Our last war is still going on! Just because we take our fights out of our country does not make…
With the World Watching, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas
Now, as President Obama confronts enormous difficulties in rallying a reluctant Congress and a skeptical world to punish the Syrian government with a military strike over what is said to be its apparent use of deadly nerve agents last month, he appears to be facing a similar challenge to the one that allowed the Assads…
Nine facts about terrorism in the United States since 9/11
It’s the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Both Washington D.C. and New York City are commemorating the occasion with ceremonies this morning. And this seems like an apt time to go back through the history of terrorist attacks in the United States and see how things have changed since Sept. 11. First,…
Why the Push for Syrian Intervention Is About More Than Just Assad
This is the dilemma facing Obama today. If the United States cannot extricate himself from the geopolitical imperatives posed by Iran’s continuing threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies, it cannot extricate itself from the turmoil in Syria. Because a failure to confront Assad’s excesses could be viewed as…
The Good News About Race And Crime In America
Civil rights leaders and progressive activists have cited Zimmermans acquittal and the proliferation of robust self-defense laws as evidence of a “war on black men” — or, similarly, that its now “open season on black men.” Meanwhile, Zimmerman supporters and many on the political right have used the case to bring up old discussions of…
Banks Are Doing Better Than Ever. The Middle Class, Not So Much.
The nation’s banks are reporting record profits, according to new numbers out Wednesday from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Most of the rest of us aren’t faring quite so well. Bank profits topped $40.3 billion in the first three months of the year, according to the FDIC, attesting to a strong recovery… in the…
Supreme Court Upholds Warrantless Collection Of DNA
By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Maryland law that allows police to collect DNA, without first getting a warrant, from persons who are arrested. “When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and bring the suspect to the station to be detained…
WSJ Editorial Board Member: NYC Bike-Share Program Has ‘Begrimed’ Best Neighborhoods
Dorothy Rabinowitz, an editorial board member for the Wall Street Journal, disparaged New York City’s recently launched bike-share program. “Do not ask me to enter the mind of the totalitarians running this government of the city,” Rabinowitz said when asked what she thought was the motivation behind the program. The program is privately funded,…
Kansas Gov. Doubles Down On Taxing The Poor More Steeply Than The Rich
Gov. Sam Brownback R will soon sign what he calls the “fabulous package” of sales tax hikes and income tax cuts passed by the Republican-dominated legislature over the weekend. The sales tax rate increase will apply to food as well as other purchases, making it even more targeted at the lower end of the…
GMO Wheat Found In Oregon Field. How Did It Get There?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says its investigating, trying to find out how this wheat got there. The USDA says there’s no risk to public health, but wheat exporters are worried about how their customers in Asia and Europe will react. In fact, worry about export markets is the main reason why genetically engineered wheat…