StupidiNews!

• After a dozen years out of power, Mexico's PRI party appears to have won yesterday's elections, with presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto getting 38% of the vote.
• A federal judge has issued a last-minute reprieve to keep Mississippi's lone remaining abortion clinic open.
• A new deal with Russia and China is paving the way for the Assad regime in Syria to be replaced in a major shift in policy in Moscow and Beijing.
• After the country's World Cup football victory in 2010, Spain has silenced its critics with a 4-0 destruction of Italy in the Euro 2012 finals.
• This weekend's "leap second" correction in the world's atomic clock timekeeping has thrown off a number of major internet sites who are still scrambling to fix things.

Last Call

The Republicans have lost the ACA battle.  They know it, too.  My senator and GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell?  He's well aware the game is over now.

During an interview on Fox News, host Chris Wallace asked McConnell how Republicans who were promising to "repeal and replace" the law would make sure those 30 million Americans had access to health insurance.

"The single best thing we could do for the American health care system is to get rid of Obamacare," McConnell explained.

"You talk about repeal and replace, how would you provide universal coverage?" Wallace asked again.

"I'll get to it in a minute," McConnell chuckled. "We need to go step by step to replace it with more moderate reforms that will not be a 2,700-page Republican alternative."

"I just want to ask what specific steps are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?" Wallace pressed.

"That is not the issue," McConnell insisted.

"You don't think the 30 million people who are uninsured is an issue?" Wallace wondered.

"We're not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system," the Kentucky Republican replied. "They want to have the federal government take over all of American health care."

No.  The only issue is getting rid of the black guy in the White House to Mitch.  If you're one of Kentucky's nearly 700,000 uninsured, you're not the issue to your senator.   You never were.  Mitch knows the game is over now.  And he's just admitted Kentucky's uninsured aren't the issue to him.  It's all about getting rid of Obama.  Greg Sargent points out just how massive this admission is.

It’s worth pointing out that this is basically Mitt Romney’s position, too. The Romney campaign has acknowledged that he would not replace Obamacare with across-the-board protections for people with preexisting conditions. And the New York Times recently took a look at the alternatives Romney has proposed, and concluded that they would deemphasize the goal of “reducing the ranks of the uninsured.”

So Kentucky uninsured (of which I was one of until six months ago):  why is this asshole still our senator?

Single Payer In 2009 Was Always Impossible

I've had my problems with Josh Marshall before, but he is 100% right about shooting down the nonsense that single payer health care had any hope of passing in 2009.  First, the delusional article that prompted his piece, from HuffPo's Dr. Marcia Angell:

On July 22, 2009, Obama said in a press conference, "Now, the truth is that unless you have what's called a single-payer system in which everybody is automatically covered, then you're probably not going to reach every single individual." Bingo. Too bad he didn't hang on to that insight, and use his rhetorical skills to make the case strongly to the American public. If he had fought for single-payer health care at the beginning of his administration, while he had both houses of Congress, and mobilized public opinion behind it, he might have made it. After all, the only thing members of Congress need more than industry money is votes.

Doctor, heal thyself.  You're suffering from Firebagger's Disease: blame Obama for not achieving the impossible.  Josh Marshall calmly explains why single payer was never a viable option at the time.

But this is a good moment to pierce the liberal delusion that single payer was out there for the taking — even possibly out there for the taking — had President Obama or any other president simply set his mind to it. After the ‘public option’ hit the brick wall that it did, it’s difficult to believe that anyone could really believe that single payer was even remotely possible. It was virtually impossible — with massive majorities in both houses — to push through a bill that left the mammoth health insurance industry intact and forced no one with their current private care plan to give what they know in exchange for something they don’t. So surely it would have been possible to push through a reform which essentially abolished the health insurance industry and forced big change on the overwhelming majority of the population who already has private coverage. To believe that you have to be totally submerged in the lethal progressive/liberal purism of loving defeat.

It’s proved incredibly hard to lasso this horse. So … fuck it, I’m just going to lasso a unicorn instead.

But it’s more than just that. Single payer supporters do themselves a disservice by imagining that the only or even the main obstacle to single payer is the money power of the health insurance industry. That’s obviously a big obstacle. It was a huge issue in 2009. But the biggest is the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of people, especially most people who vote, have health insurance coverage. And even though most don’t like it and hate their insurance companies, in most cases, they’re easily scared off by being told they’re going to lose what they know, lose access to their doctor and get something new that they don’t know. This is a fact. Anyone who’s ever tried to run a political campaign tied to health care reform will tell you this. I’ve been shown various polls showing support for fairly self-serving descriptions of single payer that are totally divorced from how the rhetoric would actually play in the political wild.

This is what I've been trying to tell people for years now.  People were not going to stand for losing their insurance.  To blame "Obama's oration skills" for the existence of resistance from the American people and his own party is ludicrous. If all it took was explaining to people why single payer was better, we would have had it long ago.

So now we have a law that needs fixing on the way towards something approaching single payer, yes.  Under the circumstances it was the best option we could have gotten.  How sustainable is it?  Depends on who you ask.  Dr. Angell believes our health care system will unravel more slowly, but will still unravel as more and more people refuse to buy insurance and pay the penalty instead, causing premiums to rise, causing more people to refuse to pay the premiums in a feedback circle that will crash the entire market.  Eventually, every criticism of the ACA gets to "And then insurance premiums skyrocket".

I've also noticed how practically every criticism that the ACA is doomed, from both the left and the right. also gets to "And it's all Obama's fault."    Dr. Angell's criticism is just like the rest in that respect.  It's tiresome to see people who might have otherwise good arguments always use it as an excuse and a platform to pound on the President for what Congress and the American people decided to do.  Instead of focusing on what needs to be done for the ACA, we're focusing on what couldn't have been done in 2009, refighting that battle over and over again to no avail.

Change the future then.  You can't change the past. 

It's So Hot...

The crowd: HOW HOT IS IT?

It's so hot our city buses are giving free rides to designated cooling areas, and people without air conditioning are pouring into those places.  Our ice rink and YMCA are packed with people who simply cannot tolerate the heat any longer, and cannot afford air conditioning or perhaps just the luxury of using it.  We tied the June record for an all-time high temperature, and July looks to be even worse.

We have issued warnings to drivers to watch out for exploding pavement, which can cause tire damage or wrecks on the highway, just depending on when and where they strike.  Always guaranteed to make a travel holiday exciting.

Burn bans are in effect because it's already so dry that fire could spread faster than we can control, and a major firework holiday is here.  I already know I'm staying in, away from the sirens and the smoke.  Of course, it's so hot that you would likely pass out during the celebration, which may mean some disasters resolve themselves.

Folks, please be careful.  Be aware of the symptoms of heat stroke, and don't be a hero.  Watch the kids too, and check in on the elderly.  It could mean the difference between life and death.

The Fourth Rule Of Fight Club...

... is you keep it between adults.

In the video, titled "My nephew messed him up for picking on his home boy," two boys are seen kicking, punching and choking each other while an adult shooting the video eggs them on.

An adult voice in the video can be heard saying, "Get off the ground, Charlie." The video ends when a child breaks up the fight.

Classy, eh?  The adults are filming it and the other kid is the one with enough sense to stop things.  Epic fail.

Mandate Mania

Here's the truth about the insurance mandate folks.  If the entire ACA was in effect in 2011 (including the mandate), the percentage of Americans who would actually have faced the mandate penalty because

• they were uninsured,
• affordable insurance was available in their state,
• they had too much income to qualify for subsidies,
• they were under 65 and didn't qualify for Medicare,

...then the grand total of the percentage of Americans who would have to get insurance or face the mandate with no assistance from the government?

Two percent.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research center that focuses on economic and social policy, found that if the law had been fully implemented last year, 93 percent of the population under age 65 wouldn’t have faced a penalty or had to buy insurance under the mandate.

In fact, only 6 percent of Americans, about 18 million people, would have to “newly purchase” insurance under the law, the study found. And of this group, roughly 11 million would be eligible for subsidies to help buy their coverage from new insurance marketplaces, or “exchanges,” created by the law.

The remaining 7 million, about 2 percent of the total population and 3 percent of all Americans under age 65, wouldn’t receive any financial help and could face penalties for lacking coverage, said Linda Blumberg, a health economist and senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center.

This relatively thin sliver of Americans who’d be required to pay for full coverage belies the dominant public perception that the mandate would be a financial strain for wide swaths of the population.

“That was one of the reasons we wanted to do this study, because we felt like the real impact was being blow out of proportion,” said Blumberg, who was the lead researcher on the study.

Email that to everyone you know, folks.  93% of Americans would have been exempt, another 2% would have qualified for Medicaid, another 3% would have gotten subsidies to pay for insurance. This is a good bill, folks.  There are way too many lies out there about it.

This is the truth.  Share it.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/29/154483/health-care-laws-mandate-unlikely.html#storylink=cpy

Last Call

And today's trifecta of GOP asshole governors wouldn't be complete without Florida's Rick "Lex Luthor" Scott.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges," Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.

Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it's unclear how he arrived at that figure.

It's because he's lying.  Really is that simple. But it's enough to fool the "Get your Government hands off my Medicare" morons.  They vote too, Florida.

But the problem is Scott is bluffing.  He's a former hospital CEO.  He knows his former industry friends are going to demand the state enroll and do it ASAP.  All the red state governors know this game is over because the hospitals, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and the rest of the health care sector want in on this money.  The alternative is the industry continuing to eat the tens of billions yearly in the cost of the uninsured in hospital visits.  They're not going to put up with that.

Rick Scott knows it.  Legislature after legislature will sign on.  The industry will make them.  The uninsured will make them.  It's a done deal, folks.

Unless the Republicans are able to repeal the measure in 2013.  You get a say in that.

Power Plays In Ohio

If you recall back in March of this year, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich had to be browbeaten into seeking federal emergency disaster aid when tornadoes touched down across the area, saying he was "thrilled that the state didn't need federal aid."  That lasted all of 48 hours before the public outcry across the country forced him into reversal.

Of course, when powerful storms and a record heat wave knock out power to tens of thousands in John Boehner's district north of Cincy, Kasich wastes zero time in applying for aid.

Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency this morning in Ohio after severe storms swept across the state, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands and causing at least one death.

Kasich cited widespread power losses, utility damages and excessive heat that could create crisis conditions for some Ohioans.

Meanwhile, Duke Energy said outages remaining from Friday’s storms could last several days. The utility has called in extra crews from Progress Energy and Alabama Power to help restore power.

This afternoon, there were still 67,959 outages, according to Duke Energy’s website. Hamilton County, with 24,457 outages, remains among the hardest hit areas in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Clermont County is next, with 14,370 users without power, and Warren and Butler counties also were among the hardest hit areas.

Butler County is the heart of Boehner country.  Of course Kasich was going to immediately apply for aid.  We're all Soshulists now.

Books Are A Luxury, Citizen

And while we're on the subject of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal being an asshole, let's have another round of applause for what massive GOP revenue elimination at the state level brings: a government that dies off in bits and pieces.

Citing budget concerns, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed a $25-billion budget that eliminates almost $900,000 in state funding for its libraries. In a statement, the governor’s chief budget aide, Paul Rainwater, said, “In tight budget times, we prioritized funding for healthcare and education. Operations such as local libraries can be supported with local, not state dollars.”

Sorry, rural parts of Louisiana like Concordia Parish.  Libraries are a luxury and a drain on our precious job creators.  Fund them your gorram selves.  That would of course means raising local taxes, which is prohibited and will only assure that the Tea Party eliminates you from public office.  You will make do, citizen.  All hail the job creators.

“There’s no longer a food stamp office; there’s no longer a social security office. In our rural parish, a lot of our people have low literacy skills and very few computer skills. They come to the library because all of that has to be done online. There are some offices in some bigger areas but there’s no mass transportation and a lot of our people do not have transportation to a place that’s two hours away. A lot of our people have children in the military and they come to email their children that are all over the world on these bases. And almost all of the companies require you to do a job application online, even if it’s just for a truck driver who doesn’t need to be great at computer skills, so it is very important that we offer this service."

Concordia formerly got $12,000 per year from the state, which it used to “keep up all of the maintenance [on its 52 PCs], buy new software, and to buy new equipment as needed.”

With that money gone, Concordia plans not to buy anything new, and hopes all its old equipment keeps working. Maintenance costs will have to come out of the materials budget. In the meantime, Taylor is already working on getting the funding restored. “We are already talking to our legislators about the next budget,” she said. “We are going to work really hard to make the legislators understand how important it is in these rural areas because citizens depend on the public library. We’re going to hope for the Legislature to open their eyes to what we do every day.”

The Legislature works for the job creators, citizen.  If you want a job, you'll fill out an application online.  If you can't find a way to do that, you clearly don't want the job badly enough. The job creators will not be inconvenienced with taxes and regulatory burdens to pay for you freeloaders "reading books" and "using computers".  If you want to have libraries and access to the internet, you would get a job and buy it yourself.  The job creators are sick and tired of your whining.  Convince someone with money to fund it.  We have better things to do with tax money, like giving it to the job creators.

If you're reading this right now, you have access to the internet.  So why are you complaining, citizen?

All hail the job creators.  Now get back to work.

Surprise! Katie Holmes Is Divorcing Tom Cruise

I'll give TMZ credit in my reference, because they are the authority.  But seriously, if you won't hire me, Harvey, get an editor!  Waring, really?  I thought "taught" stomachs was atrocious, but your web content needs even more love now.

Anyway, TMZ broke the news that Katie Holmes had filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.  It seems at this time that Cruise never saw it coming.  Katie kept her plans under wraps, it doesn't seem that any sources were aware of her plans, though rumors had circulated about unhappiness in general.  She is going for full custody, which pretty much promises this will be an epic battle.

Scientology seems more cult than religion, and Tom Cruise may be a talented actor but he's dumb as a bag of hammers.  That sounds like a marriage made in heaven, pun intended.  There is a video where you can see the crazy in his eyes while he talks about the church.  When he doesn't have intense creeper gaze going, you can watch him reach for answers and spew recycled crap.  There's not an original thought there, it's all programmed.

This was always going to be a problem.  Katie's parents waged war from the start, as they are Catholic and darned proud of it.  I recall reading their comments when their daughter began taking Scientology classes.  They were not kind.

Watch for yourself, it's long but it doesn't take but a minute to get to the thousand yard stare of the insane.

Minty Fresh: Victory

For those who have been here a while, you'll remember I was struggling with Ubuntu and my problems with Unity. I liked it in theory, but in actual use it needed some love, and Ubuntu forced you to move over.  So I tried Mint, an Ubuntu-based Linux flavor that seemed to give me all that I loved about Ubuntu without the crap.

It's been true love ever since.

Today I'm putting Mint on my beloved new desktop, after taking a look at Ubuntu and reading reviews on the improvements.  They weren't kind.  For those it works for, it works great.  For the rest of us, tough cookie and better luck next time.

I will always love Ubuntu, and will eventually have all three on here, because I've seen me do it.  Windows is driving me batshit crazy, and I expect Mint to carry my work while Windows just eases the occasional compatibility issue that comes up.  I'm even going to play with Cinnamon, and likely review it here.

The great news is this: no matter what your experience level (I'm not all that when it comes to Linux, just loyal) there is a Linux out there for you now.  If pretty matters, you can have it.  If function means more than anything, you can have that too.  And because it's free, you can try and test to your heart's content and eventually have your computer just how you want it.

We Don't Need No Water, Let This Malkinvania Burn

As ABL notes, Michelle Malkin is now trying to blame the Colorado wildfires threatening Fort Collins and Colorado Springs on...you got it in one.

While Colorado burns, conservatives have looked for ways to blame it on President Obama.

Some of the same people who have bashed the president as a big government, big spending liberal now say a wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes in the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs can be blamed on the president because he has been too slow to spend money to beef up the federal fleet of air tankers.

The meme began more than a week ago when pundit Michelle Malkin, who lives in Colorado Springs, wrote a piece for the National Review Online titled “Obama Bureaucrats Are Fueling Wildfires.”

“The Obama administration’s neglect of the federal government’s aerial-tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public-safety priorities,” she wrote.

If Colorado Springs sounds familiar to readers,  that's because two years ago I was pointing out how the Tea Party had taken over the city and drastically cut city services, including streetlights, park cleanup, the local transit system...and oh yes, city workers including police and firefighters.  Colorado Springs was in fact held up as a model of the new Tea Party governance style and how it would revolutionize America.

Cut to today, where the city is facing a horrific tragedy with massive wildfires ravaging the suburbs and thousands having to evacuate...including Malkin and her family.  Her immediate reaction?  Obama's fault, of course.  It always is.

A reasonable person would have asked "Hey, have we cut spending on things like fire prevention, forestry monitoring, and firefighters lately?"  But of course, we're talking about Malkin here.  If her house should have tragically burned down (and let's be honest here, Michelle Malkin is a boil on the ass of humanity but nothing she says or prints rates having her house destroyed and her family uprooted like this) you think she would be grateful for government to assist her in a time like this.  This is what government is for.

Nope.  You will see more of this, as disasters like this will prove not that the proper response to climate change and increasingly costly disasters is intelligent prevention steps, but to scream, cry, and eliminate as much of the infrastructure preventing tragedies like this anyway just to say "Well the system clearly failed us here so why have common government at all?  You're on your own."

Once again, the lesson of Colorado Springs to wingers is "since government can never prevent 100% of all disasters, government is a failure."

The rest of us get to pay for such stupidity.  A little prevention there, by us voting, goes a long way, folks.  This is what Republican government gets you, and it really is a failure.  It's designed to fail, actually.  Watch.  The solution from sity officials will be "if we had only privatized more of the city functions sooner and fired more city workers, we could have had the money to prevent this tragedy..."  Revenue increases?  What are those?  They don't exist.

Pretty soon that won't be sarcasm.  It will be fact.  But you have a say in how your city, county, state, and country are run.  I suggest you register and vote.

Before that's "cut" too.

Here We Go Again

Republicans are now back to the "repeat complete falsehoods on the ACA until they become conventional widsom" plan, and the notion is to repeat the summer and fall of 2010 in town halls, campaign stops, and the ballot box.  I can't blame them for going this route.  I can blame us for being stupid enough to fall for it again.  Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby "Kenny" Jindal:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said Thursday's "frightening" Supreme Court ruling could lead to penalties for Americans whose lives are out of step with government priorities.

On a call with reporters, Jindal said that the decision to uphold the healthcare law as a tax is a "blow to our freedoms."

"What's next?" he said, expressing concern for people who "refuse to eat tofu" or "refuse to drive a Chevy Volt" — a popular hybrid car.

To repeat, Bobby Jindal would like you to know that the Republican Party believes that affordable health care for the tens of millions of uninsured is not a priority for Americans, especially not the uninsured ones.  What the ruling actually does do is allow states like Louisiana to deal with uninsured Americans costing the states billions through high-risk insurance pools, exchanges to shop for the best deal, federal Medicaid expansion and subsidy assistance.  Does Gov. Jindal want to take advantage of that?  Of course not.

Jindal said he expects opposition to the law to "escalate" before November and that Republican governors will wait for the outcome of the election before implementing the law. 

Here's the funny part:  insurance companies absolutely see the cost savings in this plan, as do hospitals, and they are going to be ringing Jindal's phone off the hook until he comes crawling to the feds to join the law.  The Health care industry has accepted the law and is moving to implement it for the red states, because frankly the crapload of uninsured folks in those states are costing the health care industry an assload of money.

It's not up to guys like Jindal anymore.  That ship sailed.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Millions of Americans from Indiana to Washington DC lost power Friday evening as intense thunderstorms spawned by record heat ravaged the Midwest and East Coast.
• Mississippi Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson openly called for insurrection against the "criminal invaders" of the Obama Administration in the wake of the ACA SCOTUS ruling.
• Several civil legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act remain in the court system as opponents of the law predict the ruling will trigger even more litigation.
• Peter Madoff has plead guilty to assisting in his convicted brother Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, facing counts of conspiracy and falsifying records.
• The first privately funded US deep space mission will construct and send the Sentinel telescope looping around Earth and Venus to spot asteroids that could impact our planet.

Last Call

Error in Romneybot.exe in processing DREAM.dat.  Please reboot system and report error to nearest political press.

Mitt Romney accidentally floated a new immigration position in an interview with conservative site Newsmax on Friday, suggesting that he favored a path to permanent status for young illegal immigrants through higher education. The campaign quickly walked the position back when confronted with the discrepancy by TPM.

“For those that are here as the children of those who came here illegally, I want to make sure they have a permanent answer to what their status will be,” Romney said in the interview, “and I’ve indicated in my view that those who serve in the military and have advanced degrees would certainly qualify for that kind of permanent status.”

Oops.  Didn't anyone defrag the candidate this week?  All the data overload from the SCOTUS decisions must have caused serious memory leaks in his operating system.

Williams told TPM in a subsequent e-mail that Romney had inadvertently misstated his position.

“The Governor was referring to his long held position that young illegal immigrants brought here as children who serve in the military should be able to obtain legal permanent residence and that we should staple a green card to the diploma of every eligible student visa holder who graduates from one of our universities with an advanced degree in math, science, or engineering,” Williams said. “He simply misspoke in this interview.”

Funny.  That seems to happen a lot with his core programming.  It's like all he does is lie.