Month: September 2013

Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky: ‘Get over it … and get out of the way so I can help my people’

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Democratic Governor of Kentucky (you read that right) Steve Beshear wrote an opinion for the New York Times on Friday well worth the read. My
State Needs Obamacare. Now.

SUNDAY morning news programs identify Kentucky as the red state with two
high-profile Republican senators who claim their rhetoric represents an
electorate that gave President Obama only about a third of its
presidential vote in 2012.

So why then is Kentucky — more quickly than almost any other state — moving to implement the Affordable Care Act?

Because there’s a huge disconnect between the rank partisanship of
national politics and the outlook of governors whose job it is to help
beleaguered families, strengthen work forces, attract companies and
create a balanced budget.

It’s no coincidence that numerous governors — not just Democrats like me
but also Republicans like Jan Brewer of Arizona, John Kasich of Ohio
and Rick Snyder of Michigan — see the Affordable Care Act not as a
referendum on President Obama but as a tool for historic change.

Countdown to the Health Insurance Marketplace

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

3It is incriminating headlines such as this that demonstate the abject failure of the corporate media to inform and educate the public. This is a national disgrace. Three-quarters
of the uninsured don’t know when Obamacare starts:

So says the Kaiser Family Foundation in a poll conducted in mid-September, a few weeks before the Affordable Care Act's new marketplaces open for enrollment.

Twelve percent of the uninsured knew that the marketplaces would open on
Oct. 1, just three days from now. An additional 14 percent guessed that
it would start sometime in 2013 or 2014. The majority, though — and
this held true for the general population as well — just didn't know
when the programs kick in, or declined to guess.

Of course, Sarah Kliff, like all Beltway media villagers, blames the White House for not "hyping" the Affordable Care Act enough. Are you effin' kidding me? The Obama Administration has had a multimedia campaign in place for years. If the media has not received this information, it is because they chose not to receive it.

it is the corporate media, which chooses to report on conflict between Republicans and Democrats in Congress rather than providing factual information with which to inform and educate the public who are at fault. (It is amazing to me how the media can always absolve itself of any fault in any situation. There is no accountability.)

Phoenix CD8: Questions For Our Civil Rights Leader and Member of the Clergy

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Posted by Bob Lord

[Disclosure: I have contributed to and support Kate Gallego in the CD8 Phoenix City Council Race]

On Wednesday, I posted on the campaign waged on behalf of Warren Stewart in Phoenix's CD8. Several hours after posting, I became aware of an email in which Warren Stewart had characterized as despicable a mailer sent out, by an unidentified person or group, likening Kate Gallego to Paula Deen. Accordingly, I updated my post to give Stewart credit for having sent the email. 

Turns out, I may have been too kind. You see, the email, which was all about how Stewart was going to win this race the "right way," together with a subsequent comment to my post, raises a host of questions.

Time to call a spade a spade: economic terrorists

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

REDLike John Malkovich in the movie Red, the House Republicans have `a bomb strapped to their chest’ theatening to blow up the U.S. and world economy if Democrats do not surrender to their extortionary hostage demands:

Republican outrage continues over this quote from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer to CNN’s Jake Tapper:

The White House “is for cutting spending. We’re for
reforming our tax code, for reforming entitlements,” said senior White
House adviser Dan Pfeiffer.

“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” he added.

Republicans claim this constitutes comparing them to terrorists.

And rightly so. It is time to call a spade a spade and to drop all this PC Cops poliitcally correct crap where we are required to treat the truly insane and outrageous as reasonable and acceptable. It is not.

The GOP's governing-by-extortion is way outside the norms of what is acceptable and reasonable in American politics. See James Fallows at The Atlantic, Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead: "As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a 'standoff,' a 'showdown,' a 'failure of leadership,' a sign of 'partisan gridlock,' or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism and an inability to see or describe what is going on." So I beg to differ with Steve Benen and Greg Sargent, whom I respect, on this PC Cops style point.