Last Call For Cruz Uncontrolled

Ted Cruz is about to seriously destroy the GOP, and the conservative "minds" at Weekly Standard are emitting delicious tears at waterfall levels of flow and may actually drown themselves in denial.

There’s no doubt Cruz made mistakes. On tactics, he and his allies chose the wrong objective (defunding, rather than delaying key parts) and perhaps the wrong vehicle (the continuing resolution rather than the debt ceiling). And more than once, he put House Republicans in an exceedingly difficult spot. Cruz misled his followers at times by creating the impression that stopping Obamacare was a matter of willpower rather than arithmetic (Republicans alone don’t have the votes). As John McCormack has noted, Cruz alienated many would-be allies with phony purity tests​—​claiming that conservatives who disagreed with his tactics were part of a “surrender caucus” and even likening them to appeasers of the Nazis. Many conservatives​—​both inside the Congress and out​—​have dedicated the better part of the last four years working first to fend off and then to derail Obamacare. Because they disagree with Cruz on a tactical issue, they’re now the surrender caucus? Nonsense. 

But Cruz and his allies have succeeded in one crucial respect: The debate is now focused on Obamacare and at precisely the moment when many Americans are beginning to understand just how flawed the law is. Despite the many missteps​—​sometimes by passive Republican leaders and sometimes by dogmatic defund enthusiasts​—​Republicans today are in a strong position to capitalize on what Cruz and his allies have done.

And then that "strong position" exploded Thursday as the Tea Party decided it will wreck the country and blame Obama, Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, everyone but themselves.

There's now an excellent possibility now that our economy will suffer massive damage over the next few weeks.  Keep in mind that the GOP is to blame.

Like A House Afire

With all indications that the GOP will shut down the government on Monday, House Republicans are moving forward to the bigger debt ceiling battle.  They don't want much in order to spare the country from a second recession and possibly a major economic depression, just pretty much everything Republicans have tried to pass since the Obama administration started.

As the nation moves dangerously close to a government shutdown on Oct. 1, House leaders are shifting their focus to the next big fiscal fight: raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit by one year before Oct. 17. On Wednesday night, Republicanscirculated an outline of demands, threatening to push the nation into default unless President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate agree to enact a wish list of Republican priorities. 

Though Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would not negotiate over the must-pass legislation, leadership is hoping to satisfy conservative members by including every “major piece of the Republican agenda” save a “ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that,” the Washington Post reports.

It gets better.  They want:

• The Keystone XL pipeline.
• A neutered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• $120 billion in Medicare cuts and premium hikes.
• To open up the entire US coast to offshore drilling.
• Eliminate EPA greenhouse gas regulations.
• Subject nearly all executive branch actions to a vote in Congress,
• and a one year delay on Obamacare.

This is their starting position.  See, it's reasonable because it's not a repeal of Obamacare, and there's no federal ban on abortion.  They came down from those demands.

Only one problem:  they don't have the votes to pass this.

In a closed-door meeting, the leaders outlined to their members a proposal that would demand a laundry list of Republican priorities in exchange for a yearlong suspension of the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit. The centerpiece of the plan is a one-year delay of President Obama’s signature healthcare law. 

But hours after the meeting, the party had yet to release the legislation formally, and conservatives complained that it lacked specific spending cuts and failed to tackle entitlement reform. 

“We still have some challenges,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), an ally of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and member of the GOP whip team. “We’ve got an awful lot of support, but clearly at this point we don’t have a final product that’s attracting the number that we need. Hopefully that’ll change, and I think it could.” 

Cole said leaders were still tinkering with the plan, which senior Republicans earlier had said would go to the House Rules Committee on Thursday.

The Tea Party apparently wants even more cuts, and they're not happy about the year delay at all.  They're not going to vote for anything short of full repeal.

So now, odds are not only good that the government will shut down on Monday night and stay shut down for the foreseeable future, the debt ceiling bomb will kick in on top of that, and the American economy will pretty much collapse overnight.

I predicted that the Titans of Wall Street would never allow this to happen.  It may very well be that they can't prevent this from happening either.  The GOP will destroy the country in order to hurt Obama.  That's all that matters to them now.  They will leave a country of ashes and millions suffering in their wake.  If they can't run the country as a Christian fundamentalist Dominionist theocracy, they will raze America to the ground.

Sobering, but becoming more and more true daily.

How The West Was Fired

Apparently Allen West is apparently such a complete and total douchebag that he actually managed to get himself canned from the clown show blog/GOP propaganda mill at Pajamas Media.

Former Congressman Allen West is leaving his job at Pajamas Media after an altercation with a female staffer in which he allegedly called her a “Jewish American princess,” BuzzFeed learned on Thursday. 

“In order to focus on political interests, Allen West will transition from his full-time role as director of programming for Next Generation.TV to a twice-a-month contributor of written commentary on PJMedia.com, effective October 1, 2013,” PJ Media financier Aubrey Chernick wrote to staff in an email from Sept. 16. “I wanted our staff and consultants to have this information first. However, PJ Media is not announcing this publicly for several weeks, so please do not share this news with anyone outside of the company until you see our public announcement.” 

In a message to staff, West wrote: “Shortly, I will be giving up my position as director of programming at Next Generation.TV to get back on the front lines to expand the message of constitutional conservatism across our country.” 

Two sources familiar with what happened told BuzzFeed that West had gotten into an argument with a female employee and called her a “Jewish American princess” while telling her to “shut up.” 

Reached by phone, West told BuzzFeed he was leaving his job voluntarily, though one source familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed he had been fired. He did not deny that an exchange with the employee had occurred, but said it hadn’t led to his leaving the company. 

“No, I didn’t get fired,” West said. “I’m leaving to pursue political aspirations. That’s it. There’ll be a statement that comes out and it’s effective in October.”

Sure, he didn't get fired, just like he didn't get fired by voters in the 2012 election.  He voluntarily chose to lose the election to pursue this opportunity, which he couldn't even hold for a year.  The guy has a completely awful employment record, you know.  I wouldn't hire him as a pizza delivery driver.

It's also pretty amazing that out of all the awful things Allen West has said since employed by PJ Media, the thing that actually gets him fired is "Jewish American princess."  That's pretty insulting, but c'mon, we're talking about a guy who thinks Orange Julius is covering up Benghazi for Obama.

Still employed at Fox.  I think.  Think about what that says for a moment.

StupidiNews!

• The latest comprehensive UN report on climate change raises the probability of man-made global warming in the last 50 years to 95%.
• Texas Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis will reportedly challenge presumed GOP nominee and current Attorney General Greg Abbott for Governor in 2014.
• The UN Security Council could vote as soon as today on a US and Russia backed resolution to turn over Syria's chemical weapons without the threat of US military action.
• At least one Senate Democrat is predicting President Obama will select current Fed vice chair Janet Yellen to lead the Fed after Ben Bernanke's departure in January.
• As Google turns 15 today, a lawsuit claiming Gmail scanning mail to bring ads to users constitutes "email wiretapping" is moving forward as a massive class-action suit.

Last Call For The Party's Over

The Tea Party's over, that is.  Tea Party support among Republicans has plummeted from where it was in Gallup's numbers in November 2010.

The poll suggests that the partnership between the Tea Party and the Republican Party may be waning. Although some of the Tea Party's most visible representatives in politics today are associated with the Republican Party, and while rank-and-file Republicans are more likely to call themselves supporters than opponents of the Tea Party movement -- a far greater number identify as neither.

To be sure, this is much more positive than Democrats' views of the Tea Party, with a majority describing themselves as opponents of the political movement. However, it is also far less supportive than three years ago, when two-thirds of Republicans identified as Tea Party supporters.

Similarly, just as Republicans are mixed in their views of the Tea Party, Tea Party supporters themselves have mixed views about the Republican Party: 55% hold a favorable view of it and 43% an unfavorable view. This contrasts with the highly positive views toward the GOP expressed by Republicans, with 79% rating it favorably, and 19% unfavorably. Tea Party supporters and Republicans are aligned however, in their broadly unfavorable reaction to the Democratic Party.

The signs of a crack-up in the GOP are all there, and the outcome of the shutdown nonsense is shaping up to be a total disaster for the Republican brand.  The opportunity for the Democrats is huge if they play their cards right.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Miss Piggy is joining Kermit the Frog in the Smithsonian.

(Jacquelyn Martin/ Associated Press ) - A Miss Piggy muppet, that was used on “The Muppet Show,” is all dressed up during a ceremony to donate additional Jim Henson objects to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. Miss Piggy is finally joining Kermit the Frog in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of Jim Henson’s Muppets, and Bert and Ernie will have a place in history, too. Henson’s daughter, Cheryl Henson, is donating 20 more puppets and props to the National Museum of American History.

I'm pretty much okay with this.

Smithsonian magazine welcomed Miss Piggy, dressed in a silver evening gown and holding a red rose, with a photo shoot. The museum allowed her to pose with Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” and wearing the real 45-carat Hope Diamond from the National Museum of Natural History. 

“She was very well-behaved, considering she wanted to take it home with her,” said Bonnie Erickson, who created the Miss Piggy puppet with Henson and now is executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy foundation. 

The gift was made on what would have been Henson’s 77th birthday and shortly after his wife, Jane Henson, died in April.

And yes, Jim Henson's work absolutely belongs in America's most famous museum.

Avik Roy Is At It Again

The official numbers on Obamacare premiums are in and they are better than predicted:

As for premiums, before tax credits kick in, they will average 16 percent below the Congressional Budget Office's original estimates for a silver-level plan (which covers 70 percent of costs). The number of insurers in a state is directly tied to how low premiums will be, Lambrew noted. Arizona, with an average of 106 plans to choose from, had the second-lowest average premiums for a 27-year-old adult: $166 a month. Wyoming, with an average of 16 plans, had the highest average premium at $342 a month. 

But then the tax credits take effect. Those knock the premium for that 27-year-old, projected to earn $25,000, down to $145 in most states. For a family of four making $50,000, the credits take the premium price down from more than $1,000 in some states to $282.

Forbes's official mouthpiece for the Republican party propaganda on Obamacare, Avik Roy, has taken the Health and Human Services report on Obamacare premiums and turned it into this massive pack of cherry picked lies:

Based on a Manhattan Institute analysis of the HHS numbers, Obamacare will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97 to 99 percent, and for younger women by an average of 55 to 62 percent. Worst off is North Carolina, which will see individual-market rates triple for women, and quadruple for men.

HOLY CRAP MY INSURANCE IS GOING TO DOUBLE no it's not, people.  Once again, Roy singles out a small slice of the population, in this case young men buying pre-Obamacare, catastrophic-only coverage that no longer meets criteria for minimum coverage standards, and says OH NO PREMIUMS WILL DOUBLE FOR ALL MEN.

It will not.  And the subsidies will make people who can't afford insurance have options.  Remember, Republicans did everything they could to ensure Red states didn't expand Medicaid coverage.  In these states, insurance premiums are higher than in Blue states that expanded Medicaid coverage.

You can blame Republicans for higher premiums.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in this week's earthquake in Pakistan has risen to nearly 350 as both the military and Islamic militants in contested Balochistan province are looking for survivors.
• A Utah high school football coach suspended his entire team over cyber-bullying a classmate, allowing the team to reform only after meeting conditions.
• As Sen. Ted Cruz ended his 21-hour speech on the floor of the Senate, he and his colleagues then voted 100-0 to take up the bill to fund the government past October 1.
• As a government shutdown looms, 68% of Americans find that Washington is on the wrong track, with President Obama's approval rating at 47% and the GOP at 34% according to Bloomberg.
• AT&T announced plans to use old television spectrum to broadcast video to smartphones across its networks.

Last Call For The Cruz Con Game

The Daily Beast's Patricia Murphy has Sen. Ted Cruz down cold:  his idiotic showboating and fake filibuster did nothing to stop Obamacare, but it sure helped him raise a lot of money from Obama-hating Tea Party suckers and lining the pockets of the one percenters using the movement to destroy what little wealth they don't already own.

The biggest actors so far in Defund, Inc. have been Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, the leadership PAC that Jim DeMint launched as a senator and handed off to his former staff members to run as a conservative super PAC. While Cruz led the defund fight in the Senate this summer, the SCF led a huge parallel fight on the outside,setting up a website, running radio and television ads, robocalls and a direct mail campaign, all designed to raise money from still-hot conservative activists and urge them to sign a petition to tell Congress not to fund the health-care bill when they greenlight funding for the rest of the government.

Starring in the ads, the robocalls, and the direct-mail campaign were Cruz and Lee, two former Supreme Court clerks turned underdog Senate candidates turned conservative Senate firebrands. As Cruz and Lee staged a filibuster-like marathon speech session Tuesday into Wednesday, the SCF streamed them on its website. But while Lee’s brand of fire is like a light you’d offer a friend looking for a smoke, Cruz’s heat has been pure napalm, much of it focused at his own Republican colleagues in the Senate. It’s made Cruz easily the most hated man in the Senate, but a figure quite beloved by Tea Party purists who want nothing more than to support a senator who is willing to mix it up in a scrum, even—or maybe especially—with his fellow Republicans.

And he doesn't care, because he knows the game:  if America despises Congress, and Congress despises Ted Cruz, he's the ultimate Senate maverick.

Fast forward one year and Cruz has become a superstar for the conservative movement that the Senate Conservatives Fund is looking to harness.  Thanks to Cruz’s star power, they’re doing it.  As Cruz and Lee’s multimedia campaign blanketed the country, the month of August, typically a snooze for D.C.-based fundraisers, yielded the SCF’s largest nonelection year fundraising month to date, at $1.5 million. 

Most importantly, the SCF now has in its possession a massive email list of potential like-minded donors, thanks to the 1.5 million people who signed the defund petition on the Don’tFundObamaCare website.  While "a list" may just be a roster in some circles, in the parlance of power and politics, a list is nothing less than a warchest-in-waiting for the SCF to use on behalf of its allies and against its enemies in the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 presidential race.  It also makes the SCF the most relevant, and possibly the most powerful, conservative group in the country, including the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. 

If anyone is still confused after the Obamacare funding fight (faux filibuster and all), Ted Cruz is now a 2016 contender and the SCF’s biggest ally. Its enemies are many of the men and women he shares a cloakroom with—any Republican senator who did not join in. 

It's the ultimate pogrom to cleanse the GOP of anyone who isn't willing to destroy the 99% in the name of the Masters of the Universe.  These clowns are primarying their own Senators, anyone who might cooperate with Obama for any reason, in order to obliterate them from politics.  The GOP Senate isn't as insane as the GOP House, and they're looking to fix that.

The con is on, and the con men are winning.

Not Even I Buy This, Alison

I'm not sure what Alison Lundergan Grimes is thinking in her lates line of attack against Mitch the Turtle, but not even I buy her argument that Obama administration EPA regulations are somehow McConnell's fault.

Alison Lundergan Grimes has tried to blame U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell for the Obama administration’s tough new environmental regulations on greenhouse gas emissions at new coal-fired power plants. 

“We are tired of Senator McConnell’s Washington, out-of-touch regulations,” Grimes told a group of Democrats in Owensboro last weekend, according to a video on Time-Warner’s CN2 cable channel website. 

“On his watch, since 1985, we have lost more coal jobs than the industry can account for,” Grimes said.

This is a nonsense attack coming from McConnell's right when his primary challenger Matt Bevin blames the guy for coal regs, but for Grimes to make the argument is not only disingenuous, it's stupid.  Running away from President Obama isn't going to make Democrats in the state vote for her.

Whoever's running Team Grimes needs to get their head on straight.  Even environmentalists here are laughing at her claims.

Environmental activists, who oppose McConnell on many environmental issues, say that Grimes has it wrong.

“That’s a laughable accusation,” said Sarah Lynn Cunningham, an environmental engineer and activist in Louisville. Cunningham said she couldn’t think of one time when McConnell has sided with the environment over the coal industry.

Furthermore, Cunningham said the courts have tied McConnell’s hands when it comes to restraining the EPA on the issue of climate change and greenhouse gases. 

“I can’t believe that she doesn’t know the Supreme Court has twice issued major rulings saying the EPA should be regulating greenhouse gases per the (federal) Clean Air Act,” said Cunningham, a Democrat. “Mitch McConnell has one hell of a lot of power in Washington, but the Supreme Court, they’re the big boys.”

Grimes better figure out a smarter position on coal regs in Kentucky than "They're Mitch's fault."  It's insultingly stupid to the people who would want to vote for her.

Profiles In Courage, Marco Rubio Edition

Sen. Marco Rubio, his immigration push and 2016 chances imploding in real time due to the GOP's Tea Party meltdown, has decided he'll do anything to appease the "We hate those people" crowd that now owns the Republican party, including revoking his support of a federal judge he signed off on ten months ago.

The nomination of a gay black Miami judge to the federal bench will not move forward after Senator Marco Rubio announced he was withdrawing his support over concerns about the judge’s actions in two criminal cases.

Without Mr. Rubio’s approval, Judge William Thomas’s nomination to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in Miami, is effectively blocked. Judge Thomas, who serves on the Miami-Dade Circuit, was nominated by President Obama, with Mr. Rubio’s backing, more than 10 months ago.

Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, signed off on the nomination on July 24 after a background check raised no red flags. For a confirmation to proceed, nominees must secure the approval of both United States senators in their home state.

So Judge Thomas's nomination is all but dead.  Rubio can't flip-flop again, or he's completely out of the 2016 picture.  Even the Times calls him out for such rank hypocrisy and cowardice.

Supporters of Judge Thomas, who grew up on welfare in Pennsylvania in a family of 10 children, said Mr. Rubio’s opposition was rooted in politics, not court rulings. Mr. Rubio, a Republican, has seen his allure among conservatives tumble, a result of his aggressive push for immigration reform. In recent weeks, he has scarcely mentioned immigration, keeping his focus mostly on issues with broad conservative appeal like abortion and health care. 

Had he been confirmed by the United States Senate, Judge Thomas would have become the first black openly gay man on the federal bench. 

“As much as I would like to think that politics has nothing to do with this, it looks as if it does,” said Yolanda Strader, president of Miami’s largest association for black lawyers, who called Judge Thomas one of the hardest working on the bench. “It would be unfair to prevent a well-qualified judicial nominee from proceeding with the nomination process because he is an openly gay black male.”

Which wasn't a problem until the Tea Party found out.  Then it became a problem.  That's what Republicans do, talk a good game about "inclusiveness" and "big tent politics" and when it comes to delivering, they turn into hateful, spiteful bigots.  Anyone who trusts a Republican to not be a bigot, well.

Any questions about where the "savior" of the GOP's loyalties really lie?

StupidiNews!

• Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz continues to speak on the Senate floor about defunding Obamacare, but is expected to decisively lose a Senate vote to defund it later today.
• Brazil's Federal district has become the first regional government in South America to ban the sale of toy guns in an attempt to "change the culture of violence".
• Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has declared the deadly siege of Nairobi's Westgate Mall over, with 11 terrorists captured and three floors of the mall partially collapsed.
• After taking an 8-1 lead in America's Cup sailing races, Emirates Team New Zealand is on the verge of an epic collapse as Oracle Team USA has tied the series to force a decisive final race today.
• New York will create road signs letting drivers know that rest stops are designated texting zones in order to get people to comply with the state's laws against texting while driving.

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds

Well Tea Party nutjobs, here's your chance to "overthrow" the government you hate so much.  Mark your calendar and get to it.

The conservative attorney and birther who called for a coup against President Barack Obama earlier this month has scheduled what he's describing as a "day of reckoning."

Larry Klayman wrote Monday in Renew America that he's established Nov. 19 as the date that Obama will be forced to answer for his "criminality" and "Muslim, socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda." 

Klayman said he hopes his supporters will "descend on Washington, D.C., en masse, and demand that [Obama] leave town and resign from office if he does not want to face prison time."

So here's your "American Spring" uprising, all set for you to attend, for all you Obama haters and SUPER PATRIOTS to stand up and throw the guy out.  

Life is not easy. It requires risk and sacrifice. If as a nation we want to restore our freedom, and we are on the verge of being enslaved under Obama's socialist Muslim inclinations, we must take our fight to a new level. Tea partiers, bikers, construction workers, police officers, school teachers, farmers, truckers, clergy, housewives, husbands, students, doctors, lawyers and all elements of our society who see our nation slipping away into the abyss, must now stand tall and descend on the capital, much like the Egyptians recently did in ousting another radical Muslim, their then president Mohammed Morsi. If the Egyptians can seek to rid their country of the poison of the Muslim Brotherhood without any real history of democracy, then we Americans, who know what democracy is and have practiced it prior to the ascension of the great usurper, can and must succeed.

So yeah, DC police I'm sure will be real happy to see you.  Sure, you'll probably get gassed or hosed or beaten or arrested, but since you're the "true descendants of the civil rights movement" and all, you should be willing to pay that price for your God-given freedom to not have a black President.

Come on down to a city that's 70% black and stand around freezing your asses off in November, complaining how much you hate those people.  Make your voices heard, and maybe, just maybe your long nightmare since January 29, 2009 will finally end.  You've been oppressed for such a long, long time after all.

If You Can Make It Here...

...you can make it anywhere, "here" apparently being "a burn notice by the New York Times when running for NYC mayor."  Congrats, Bill de Blasio.  You're under the spotlight, and Wall Street is terrified of you.

The scruffy young man who arrived in Nicaragua in 1988 stood out. 

He was tall and sometimes goofy, known for his ability to mimic a goose’s honk. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. 

He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters.
Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government. 

As he seeks to become the next mayor of New York City, Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, has spoken only occasionally about his time as a fresh-faced idealist who opposed foreign wars, missile defense systems and apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site. 

But a review of hundreds of pages of records and more than two dozen interviews suggest his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known, and far more political than typical humanitarian work.

And this is supposed to make Brooklyn hipsters not vote for the guy?

By the way, if this undertone sounds familiar, it's the same "Obama is a leftist commie pinko socialist America hater" crap from 2007.  Somehow, I don't think it's going to hurt de Blasio's chances in November.

Forbes Cannot Print The Truth About Obamacare

Forbes writer Avik Roy has made a career of turning Obamacare stats into nifty 1200 word tracts of complete, easily debunked nonsense.  It must be a hard gig, because apparently he must be on vacation, as Forbes's Chris Conover is filling in on the "easily debunked Obamacare lies" department.  Igor Volsky has the honors:

An article published by Forbes claiming that Obamacare will increase health care costs by$7,450 for a typical family of four is spreading like wildfire across the internet, but causing eye rolls from economists across the country. 

The estimate by author Chris Conover, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, comes from a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) report, which projects that national health care spending will increase once the uninsured begin enrolling in the law’s health care exchanges. 

“By 2022, the ACA is projected to reduce the number of uninsured people by 30 million, add approximately 0.1 percentage-point to average annual health spending growth over the full projection period, and increase cumulative health spending by roughly $621 billion,” the report finds.

So, $621 billion divided by 310 million Americans = $7,450 per household of four Americans.  MATH FOR THE WIN!

Only, it's not.

One economist interviewed by ThinkProgress, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ Paul Van de Water, described this calculation as one of the stupidest things he’s read in a long time and likened it to arguing that college costs will increase for a “typical” family if the federal government adopts policies that help lower-income Americans afford college educations. Yes, the nation will spend more on education if more students enroll in colleges and universities, but the “typical” student already attending college won’t; she or he will continuing paying tuition at more or less the same rate, while the newly-enrolled student will presumably benefit from some sort of subsidized tuition rate. 

The same is true here. The so-called “typical” family that Conover describes already receives health care insurance through their employer. The existence of 30 million newly-insured people — many of whom will receive tax credits if they purchase insurance in the law’s exchanges — won’t do much to move their premiums in one way or another. (Health advocates hope that the law will slow the rate of growth in health care spending, but that’s a long-term proposition.) 

In fact, if anything, the CMS report that Conover links to shows that Obamacare is a good financial proposition. In 2022, total health care spending will increase by 1.5 percent, while the number of non-elderly adults with health care coverage will increase by 9 percent. That’s a pretty good deal any way you slice it.

Most Americans get their insurance through either the government or an employer, which absorbs a lot of that cost.  Every dollar in higher costs (which happens in 30 million people get health insurance) does not equal a dollar higher premiums.  Systems as large as the American health insurance industry under the Affordable Care Act have methods of spreading that cost around.  

That's like saying if the price of oil goes up a dollar, the price of gas goes up a dollar too.   By that math, gas in the US should be $100 a gallon, but not every single dollar in oil increases gets passed along to the gasoline consumer at a 1:1 ratio.

But that's what Conover claims will happen with Obamacare.  And since we already know that Republicans pretty much don't believe in science or math (unless it somehow "proves" the Earth is 6,000 years old and that white people are genetically superior to everyone else) why are we surprised by this?

StupidiNews!

• The death toll at Nairobi's Westgate Mall has risen to 62 as the hostage standoff between Kenyan military troops and Al-Shabaab militants continues into day four.
• The airline industry is calling for global standards on carbon emissions, saying that widely differing laws from country to country are a problem.
• Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the Tea Party's scandal crusade, has resigned reportedly ahead of being removed by an internal review board over mismanagement.
• Sony film marketing head Marc Weinstock is out after Sony Pictures slid from first to fifth in ticket sales from last year amid a number of high-profile duds.
• Struggling smartphone maker Blackberry is considering a $4.7 billion deal to go private as a division of a Canadian financial holding firm.

Last Call, Now Watch This Drive!

When the going gets tough, Dubya reminds us, the tough go golfing.

Former President George W. Bush said President Obama should not be criticized over his frequent golf outings.

Bush, who himself was criticized for his golfing as president, called the rounds "important for the president." 

"I see our president criticized for playing golf. I don't. I think he ought to play golf," Bush told "In Play with Jimmy Roberts." 

Bush said he knew what it was like "to be in the bubble" and saw getting off the White House grounds as an important way for the president to clear his head. 

"I know the pressures of the job," Bush said. "And to be able to get outside and play golf with some of your pals is important for the president. It does give you an outlet." 

"I think it's good for the president to be out playing golf," he added.

The difference between Presidents Obama and Bush are that the latter never required much to clear his head to begin with, it was mostly empty.

Still, a nice reminder next time you see the Village or the Breitbrats waste bandwidth on This week's Lazy Black President Golfs While You Suffer story.

Please Proceed, GOP

Oh look, Americans think shutting down the government and/or defaulting on the debt, either of which would wreck the economy again, are terrible, terrible ideas.

A solid majority of Americans oppose defunding the new health care law if it means shutting down the government and defaulting on debt.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey of 800 people across the country conducted by Hart-McInturff, finds that, in general, Americans oppose defunding Obamacare by a plurality of 44 percent to 38 percent.

Opposition to defunding increases sharply when the issue of shutting down the government and defaulting is included. In that case, Americans oppose defunding 59 percent to 19 percent, with 18 percent of respondents unsure. The final 4 percent is a group of people who want to defund Obamacare, but become unsure when asked if they still hold that view if it means shutting down the government. 

Keep it up, guys.  The Democrats actually gaining seats in 2014?  Won't that be awesome?

Citizens United, The Sequel

In the first major case of the 2013-2014 term, the US Supreme Court could all but eliminate individual limits on personal campaign donations, meaning the wealthiest Americans could then give millions of dollars directly to candidates, effectively buying elections.

Three years ago, the current court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in the Citizens United case that "independent" spending on election races was protected free speech and struck down long-standing bans on such spending by corporations and unions. 

But until now, the court's conservatives have not joined together to strike down the Watergate-era limits on how much donors can give directly to candidates or party committees. 

That has left the law in an odd posture. Wealthy people who want to influence campaign races can give millions of dollars to "super PACs" and other groups that pay for "independent" election ads, but they are barred by law from giving more than $48,600 total to all members of Congress or more than $74,600 to various party committees. 

That may be about to change. On Oct. 8, the Supreme Court will take up an appeal from the Republican National Committee, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon, who say contributions should be treated as "core political speech." If they win, wealthy Republicans or Democrats could each give as much as $3.6 million total by giving the maximum amount to all of their party committees and candidates. This money could be funneled by party leaders into a close race or races, tipping the balance of power in Congress. 

Defenders of the election laws have been sounding the alarm. "It would be terrible for our democracy … if one politician could directly solicit $3.6 million from a single donor," said Lawrence Norden, an election law expert with the Brennan Center, a liberal legal advocacy group in New York. "That is 70 times the median income for an American family. It would mean a tiny, tiny group of donors would wield unprecedented power and influence."

I'm not surprised to find Mitch the Turtle in the thick of this.  He has long been the most corrupt Senator in Washington, enriching himself by millions of dollars since coming into office.  And here's the best part:  If Mitch gets his way 100%, not only could the super-rich buy candidates and races, but they could do so anonymously.

This case could pretty much finish off our democracy heading into 2014 and especially 2016.  Being able to plunk down millions to give directly to a candidate would change the face of politics in America forever, ensuring the Golden Rule:  whoever has the most gold, makes the rules.

If you thought Congress was massively corrupt now, wait until the 0.01% can say "I'll give you millions to vote against the poor and middle class, and once you get in I'll keep you there for life."  Oh...and remember, far more of these super donors lean towards the right, not the left.

Just what we need, more Tea Party goons bought and paid for by the ultra-rich with the sole intent of destroying what's left of the 99%'s wealth.  America, America, God shed His grace on thee... 

StupidiNews!

• The siege at Nairobi's Westgate Mall continues into the third day with reports of fewer than 10 hostages remaining, 69 dead, and several Al-Shabaab gunman holed up in the complex.
• It took German hackers all of 2 days to break the encryption on Apple's iPhone 5S fingerprint reader, with video evidence of replacing the actual fingerprint with a fake one to access the phone.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel easily won her third term Sunday, with her party taking 42% of the vote and plans to form a major coalition government with her chief opposition. 
• India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is waning political parties not to stoke any more political violence in the wake of that country's worst political riots in a decade leaving 50 dead.
• Under heavy pressure from the US, Spain has passed new anti-piracy laws with penalties up to six years in prison for major copyright offenders.