Conservatives will bear the blame for government shutdown

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According to this CNN poll conducted over the weekend, 46% say they would blame congressional Republicans for a government shutdown, with 36% saying the president would be more responsible and 13% pointing fingers at both the GOP in Congress and Obama. That 36% who blame the President is bolstered by about 20% of the nation who would blame him for anything. We’re going to get to test this data, because we’re heading for a government shut down in a few hours and nothing seems to able to stop it.

At issue is healthcare for millions of people, something conservatives have always been against. Whether it was Medicare or CHIP or Obamacare, they hate the idea of poor and middle-class people seeing doctors and being treated. It’s bizarre but that’s the ground they’ve staked out: [Read more…]

Pretty sure it’s not the heart!

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Sorry, I miscalculated, need a few more bucks. Paypal email is DarkSydOtheMoon-at-aol.com

Sorry for the constant blegging, today will be the last day and I’m grateful for any small dollar donation; I’m just so goddamn poor and I’m new at it. There’s always a bill around the corner or something else I forgot about, and I’m not used to running so close to the edge with no safety margin. There’s an entire political party hellbent on punishing people who are already struggling. I’m lucky to have a well read website to bitch about it and readers who care enough to help out. Most people in my situation don’t. So, some good news, because things could always be worse, eh? I’m pretty sure the pain mentioned a few days ago is not a cardiac issue. I’ll still follow up with the cardiologist, but the symptoms have improved with treatment for auto-immune inflammation — which btw can indeed contribute to all kinds of health problems including recovering from cardiovascular surgery. [Read more…]

Rachel Maddow exposes the origin of the Uncle Sam between-your-legs ad

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The ALEC ultrasound guy cooked that up, wow! It’s way more hypocritical than I imagined. And speaking of MSNBC, on the Ed Show right now they’re calling out conservatives posing as Christians to cloak their obsession with helping the rich and punishing the poor. I’ll have that clip up when it gets posted.

Cruz control is good for everyone, and that’s why it’s good for us

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Thanks guys and gals, I’m now 20% to salvation on the first day!

Conmen are protective of their marks, in the sense that they don’t want other grifters horning in on their con. Especially conmen who are so greedy that they risk blowing the deal for all conmen. That’s the gist of the fight now in progress between Ted Cruz representing the Teaparty vs the larger GOP: [Read more…]

New poll shows public wants Obamacare to work

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Pew and USA Today have a nice poll out with great cross tabs and more detailed follow-up questions on the Affordable Care Act or ACA, also know as Obamacare. The results are mixed but one thing is a little encouraging: if you combine those who outright approve of the ACA, and those who disapprove but say elected officials should seek to make the ACA work as well as possible, we have a solid majority who want this to work: [Read more…]

GOP finds new way to sabotage Obamacare: Big Gubmint red tape

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For a small government party the GOP sure is happy to use red tape when they can slow down people’s access to healthcare. Case in point, the HHS has provided grants to organizations that will hire people called navigators. The navigators will help people navigate the healthcare exchanges and enroll in Obamacare. Here’s how the Republicans are trying to slow those orgs down: [Read more…]

Live ACA calculator, see if you can break it

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The graphic above is an organizing image a colleague and I worked out. Later we can hyperlink any of the three elements and use it to build up a database of articles. But the even cooler feature below: there should be a partially embedded ACA premium calculator. I say partially because, while you can enter data directly into it from this website, it will open a new window and render results at the home site. This took some developers a lot of work and as best I can tell, they did well. But I could use a few beta testers …

So if you would be so kind, go ahead and give it a whirl if you like, see if it works, see if you can break it. Tomorrow it’s gonna get quite a workout at the Great Orange Satan. [Read more…]

Biggest money saver in Obamacare

We talked a little bit about what an exchange is and how they will be used for enrollment into a healthcare policy after Jan 1, when the main parts of the Affordable Care Act kick in. There’s two important differences between those policies to come on the exchanges and those available now at private insurance companies. The first, they’ll be required to cover a lot more than they do now. We’ll talk more about that in future articles. What I want to show here is an actual calculator that can estimate what you would pay for one of those future policies as a function of your income. There’s a huge money saver embedded in this. [Read more…]