Month: October 2013

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember the Dick Armey of FreedomWorks' gray-haired geezers living on social security and Medicare (some of them double-dipping into Medicaid and the purely "socialist" Veterans Administration health care system) carrying signs during the debate over "ObamaCare," saying in various forms "Keep your government hands off my Medicare"?

These same deeply delusional and misinformed individuals, who reside in the alternate reality of the conservative media entertainment complex feedback loop, are the minority of supporters for the Tea Party economic terrorists taking America hostage and shutting down the government, and threatening to default on the U.S. debt if they do not get their ransom demand: the repeal or defunding of "ObamaCare." Only Tea Party approves shutdown, poll shows.

But "ObamaCare" has never been the real object of Tea-Publicans in Congress. Just last week the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, suddenly revived talk of a "grand bargain" again — code words for cuts to social security and Medicare.

On Wednesday, the GOP's alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan (R-WI), penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal laying out yet another iteration of his GOP "Roadmap to America's Ruin" budget focusing on cuts to "entitlements," i.e., social security and Medicare.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Carl Bernstein was the guest on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday night for a segment on media false equivalency — the "both sides are to blame" default setting of media reporting (especially the Associated Press). So pay attention media villagers, Bernstein wants a word with you. (Video below the fold).

O'Donnell began the segment by referencing a piece by James Poniewozik at Time magazine, Not “Both Sides,” Now: Why False Equivalence Matters in the Shutdown Showdown:

This month’s fiscal crisis is one such situation. One party (in fact,
essentially one wing of the Republican party), seeking the elimination
or delay of Obamacare,
precipitated a government shutdown and threatened to force a default on
U.S. debt. Period. There was no corresponding threat or demand on the
Democratic or White House side; having gotten the Affordable Care Act
into law three years ago, they are not in the situation of saying, “Pass
Obamacare or we shut ‘er down.”

That’s the situation. To accurately describe it, as news coverage
should, is not to endorse an ideology. It’s not to say that Obamacare is
good or bad. It’s not to say that Republicans do or don’t have good
reasons to oppose it. It’s not to say that Democrats have or haven’t
sought political benefit in the aftermath. But it correctly places the
impetus where it belongs.

Much of the big-picture news coverage has been clear on this.
But as the crisis dragged on, more news stories framed the story as
old-fashioned bipartisan gridlock between two equally culpable,
stubborn, useless sides. It becomes “Boehner, White House Harden
Stances” (Washington Post); “Congress Plays Chicken” (a CNN chyron this morning); “each side trying to blame the other” (Politico).

“Both sides are to blame; the truth is somewhere in between”–that has always been the political media’s happy, safe place . . .

* * *

But in a case like the fiscal crisis, false equivalence matters. It’s
the difference between reporting an extraordinary event and an ordinary
one, which in this case is crucial to how the story plays out
politically. It’s a matter of whether “not changing current law” becomes
redefined as “getting 100% of what you want.” If this is just one more
case of those knuckleheads in Washington “digging in their heels,”
“playing the blame game,” and so on, it normalizes the situation for the
news audience: it sends the tacit message that it is entirely ordinary,
every so often, to have a forced debt crisis that reasonable people
resolve through “compromise” by renegotiating major pieces of U.S. law.

by David Safier

I don't know, maybe the end days are at hand. When the Brewer lies down with the Liberals and Barton is, well, Barton . . . Can someone dig up an appropriate quote from Revelations? Something better than Michele Bachman's "leaf is on the fig tree"? (What the hell does that mean anyway?)

Gov. Brewer is pleading with Republicans to leave Obamacare alone. Kill it and Arizona's economy will be crippled, she said.

“The bottom line is we need that money in our economy to save rural hospitals and jobs in the rural areas,” the governor said, as well as making sure hospitals in metropolitan areas, where most AHCCCS patients are seen, get paid. “It’s all about jobs and getting back federal dollars that our taxpayers have paid to the federal government, to bring them home.”

There's more to her calculation — I should probably say "her advisors' calculations" — than I realized. The only reason the lege was able to take people off of Arizona's Medicaid program AHCCCS was because the voter mandate said the state was only required to use "available" funds for the program. When the funds dried up, the lege was able to cut back. But now the state has a surplus.

Since [the budget crisis], state finances have recovered. It ended the last fiscal year with close to $1 billion in the bank, plus another $450 million in a “rainy day’’ fund — money Brewer said she fears a court would force it use to fulfill the voter mandate.

Brewer's people understood, if we didn't take a billion from the feds to fund the Medicaid expansion, the state might be forced to pay for the program. Kill Obamacare and you wipe out the Medicaid expansion money. Brewer may dislike Obamacare intensely, but she's gotta root for it regardless.

Then there's Rep. Brenda Barton.