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PoliGAF 2013 |OT3| 1,000 Years of Darkness and Nuclear Fallout

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Conservatives shitting bricks right about now:



http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/insurers-the-rescue

I've always wondered why the insurance companies never really bothered to defend Obamacare. Sure, there's a bunch of things in there that makes them sad, but you would think the prospect of millions of new customers would give them a little bit of incentive to play ball.

Aren't you in California? Every other commercial that isn't beer or a car is blue shield or blue cross etc. With Cali's website working from the start, it's actually been really annoying. There are also commercials for the website.

It's only going to get worse and the rest of the country will get it too.

I just don't understand why there are no commercials for Medicaid.
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Aren't you in California? Every other commercial that isn't beer or a car is blue shield or blue cross etc. With Cali's website working from the start, it's actually been really annoying. There are also commercials for the website.

Yeah, I'm in Cali, but I haven't seen many (though my T.V.'s broken so that's a huge part of it).
 

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
I have no idea how I'm even supposed to make sense of this, but I suppose "making sense" isn't really the point, is it?

I can easily picture Steve Doocy speaking to this slide and suggesting that there haven't been enough deaths to warrant all the money that has been spent on Obamacare without batting an eyelid.
 

Chichikov

Member
Bbp--8OIgAAcyXd.jpg

#factcheck
I tried for a while to figure out how they fuck they came up with that death number for nazis, soviets and terrorists (which is a bit on the WTF side), then I realized what I was doing and slapped myself in the face.
 
Yes. The covered california commercial is pretty traditional. Just would like to see a "you may qualify for medi-cal if you earn under 15k single or etc."

I was referring to the medi-cal being advertised in print, radio or tv.
Can you imagine them advertising food stamps or welfare?
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I can easily picture Steve Doocy speaking to this slide and suggesting that there haven't been enough deaths to warrant all the money that has been spent on Obamacare without batting an eyelid.

Yeah, I tried to figure out what the point of that was, and the best I could come up with is that Obama is the Wii-U of genocide.
 

Sibylus

Banned
U.S.-Germany Intelligence Partnership Falters Over Spying (David E. Sanger, Alison Smale, NYT)
American officials have refused to extend the “no spying” guarantee beyond Ms. Merkel, telling German officials in private sessions that if the White House agreed to forgo surveillance on German territory, other partners would insist on the same treatment.

“Susan Rice has been very clear to us,” one senior German official said, referring to Mr. Obama’s national security adviser. “The U.S. is not going to set a precedent.”
But as Mr. Obama considers his options, the effort to repair the damage to the United States’ relationship with Germany appears to have stumbled. American officials have so far refused to pull back from electronic spying in the country, save for Ms. Merkel’s own communications, even though German officials argue that the United States is violating German law.

At the same time, Germany is equally reluctant to enter into a deeper cooperation agreement, at least on American terms.
The dispute also reflects very different views of how far the state should go in conducting surveillance, both at home and abroad.

In an angry conversation with Mr. Obama in October after the phone monitoring was revealed, Ms. Merkel said that the N.S.A.’s activities reminded her of growing up as the daughter of a Protestant minister in East Germany. “She told him, ‘This is like the Stasi,’ ” said one person who had discussed the conversation with the chancellor.

Another person familiar with the conversation said Ms. Merkel had told Mr. Obama that she was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, “the N.S.A. clearly couldn’t be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out.”

American officials said that the German accounts accurately captured the spirit of the heated conversation, but that the quotations given by German officials were more direct and pointed than what was actually said. But the exchange set the tone for a dialogue between Washington and Berlin that has only underscored how differently the two countries see the issue. United States officials talk about conducting surveillance, whether of adversaries or allies, to protect American interests; German officials emphasize the importance of reaffirming the alliance. American officials are intent on gathering the data needed to quickly determine the whereabouts of terrorism suspects; the Germans start with privacy concerns.

All of this blowing over with Germany's accession to the Eyes isn't exactly panning out. Forget different pages, the highest-level representatives of both nations may as well be operating from different manuals on this.
 
Can you imagine them advertising food stamps or welfare?

We should. A public "advertisement" is just a public service announcement, or informing the public. It's one reason public television (and radio and internet) is essential.

I know you are talking about how it will be "branded" but it's long past the time we stopped caring about or taking seriously what delusional conservatives think or say.
 
We should. A public "advertisement" is just a public service announcement, or informing the public. It's one reason public television (and radio and internet) is essential.

I know you are talking about how it will be "branded" but it's long past the time we stopped caring about or taking seriously what delusional conservatives think or say.

I don't think this is true. They exist and vote. We live in a democracy. It will have ramifications on public policy if you ignore their voice or opinion, even if their opposition to many of these programs is for dubious reasons.

There needs to be a shift of the conversation and overall changing of how we discuss issues its been completely hijacked by market and neoliberal ideas and return a kind of moral element that got destroyed in the greed is good era. Reminds me of what Orwell presciently said in Politics and the English language (which hit on the one thing he got right in 1984, the use of language) language hides intentions.

I just don't know how you do it.
 
Conservatives shitting bricks right about now:



http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/insurers-the-rescue

I've always wondered why the insurance companies never really bothered to defend Obamacare. Sure, there's a bunch of things in there that makes them sad, but you would think the prospect of millions of new customers would give them a little bit of incentive to play ball.

BCBS (of Michigan) had an interesting ad campaign in mid October/early November, hyping their own insurance website and noting how reliable it was. It was a pretty direct jab at Healthcare.gov, and probably effective given how much of a monopoly BCBS has here. I haven't seen any ads from them lately.

On the dental side, I talked to an insurance agent friend about the flood of Medicaid eligible children being signed up by various practices, now that the program has raised their provider reimbursement rates. He said "it's fucking Black Friday every day for dental practices. But instead of getting electronics they're getting new patients."
 
I don't think this is true. They exist and vote. We live in a democracy. It will have ramifications on public policy if you ignore their voice or opinion, even if their opposition to many of these programs is for dubious reasons.

Nah. Not as long as they are delusional. It's possible to be a rational conservative. There are plenty in this thread, even. They are a distinct minority of the Republican party. Probably a majority of the Democratic party. But the kind of people who would brand public service announcements about public services as propaganda are rightfully ignored and contemptuously dismissed as cranks who deserve no place in any national conversation.
 
On the dental side, I talked to an insurance agent friend about the flood of Medicaid eligible children being signed up by various practices, now that the program has raised their provider reimbursement rates. He said "it's fucking Black Friday every day for dental practices. But instead of getting electronics they're getting new patients."

And kids get the dental work they need. It didn't occur to me that dental might be apart of this in some respects.
 
And kids get the dental work they need. It didn't occur to me that dental might be apart of this in some respects.

Yup. The law is arguably the greatest expansion of dental care for children in US history. I can't speak for all states, but in Michigan it has had quite a big impact due to a private insurance company now handling the children's Medicaid program. Previously a lot of dentists refused to see Medicaid patients due to how poorly they were reimbursed. For instance I used to work at a dental office, and we charged $155 for a one surface filling (basically the smallest filling you can get). Medicaid might pay $10 of that, and we'd have to write off the remainder; we refused to see any Medicaid patients because it simply wasn't worth it, financially. Since October 1st, Medicaid would pay about $90, with the rest being written off. That's similar to what many private insurance companies pay, only difference is that no co-pays are involved obviously.

So it's a win for providers as well as patients.
 

Chumly

Member
Yup. The law is arguably the greatest expansion of dental care for children in US history. I can't speak for all states, but in Michigan it has had quite a big impact due to a private insurance company now handling the children's Medicaid program. Previously a lot of dentists refused to see Medicaid patients due to how poorly they were reimbursed. For instance I used to work at a dental office, and we charged $155 for a one surface filling (basically the smallest filling you can get). Medicaid might pay $10 of that, and we'd have to write off the remainder; we refused to see any Medicaid patients because it simply wasn't worth it, financially. Since October 1st, Medicaid would pay about $90, with the rest being written off. That's similar to what many private insurance companies pay, only difference is that no co-pays are involved obviously.

So it's a win for providers as well as patients.
Have they expanded reimbursement rates for other things? I mean really this is a gold mine for states to pump money into their economy with the federal government footing most of the bill. At the same time they get to provide their people with better care.
 

Joe Molotov

Member
I accidentally flipped past Fox News on my way to Mike and Mike this morning, and I caught them bashing Jay Carney over some Obamacare thing, and Laura Ingraham was saying:
"What a terrible job, to have to go out there and lie every day. Can you imagine having to go out every day and deny basic facts?"

Yes, just imagine!

tauk9HG.png
 
http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/17/for-democrats-political-correctness-is-the-new-mccarthyism/

Daily Caller fighting the good fight, I know this is probably an attempt at humor and trolling but it illustrates the complete tone-deafness of the GOP on the rhetoric about women. I don't like posting stupid Op-Eds but when they illustrate a wider ideology and world-view I think its worth it.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative who launched a widely mocked boycott of The Daily Caller has also promoted men who engaged in sexual harassment.

DNC deputy communications director Lily Adams called for Republican leaders to boycott The Daily Caller and Rush Limbaugh and the DNC launched an organizing drive to pressure the GOP to “stop enabling rhetoric that condones sexual harassment.”

The DNC’s latest effort to suppress the free speech of conservative outlets based on trumped-up or falsified claims of bigotry (basically their only tactic) focuses on the Caller and Limbaugh because we defended the constitutional right for men to be able to look at attractive women in public places.

That’s shameful sexism according to Adams, a nepotist whose grandmother Ann Richards was governor of Texas and whose mother is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. So, using DNC logic, let’s have a look at Ms. Adams’ social media accounts.

When not tweeting insipid talking points or posting Facebook photographs of herself playing tennis, vacationing in Maine, or enjoying lavish trips to Africa and Asia, Adams found time to declare on Twitter November 8 that John Fogerty is “awesome in concert.”

“I like the way you walk. I like the way you talk…You say that you’ll be mine, baby all the time,” Fogerty’s band Creedence Clearwater Revival declared in the lyrics to their song “Susie Q,” which glorified the act of men admiring women and even suggested that a woman should be the possession of the song’s male narrator.

“Seriously. Can people learn to just stop with comparing anything to rape or situations involving rape?,” Adams tweeted on November 22.

Hmm. Sure sounds like Ms. Adams is suggesting that we should not remind Americans on a daily basis of the grave crime of sexual assault. That’s my interpretation, at least. “DNC flack insults rape survivors in latest despicable battle in the War on Women”?
Yeah, that works. Let’s go with it.

“Happy Birthday to my friend…who shares a bday with and looks as young as Justin Bieber,”
Adams wrote on Facebook on March 1.

Objectification of the opposite gender? Check.

“Grateful for all the nice messages today from all over and feeling pretty lucky to spend tonight with the same gals I’ve spent birthdays w/ for more than a decade,” Adams wrote in a Facebook caption to a photo on March 15.

Gals? Who are you calling ‘Gals’? Women are women. Full stop. I, for one, am not going to enable rhetoric that patronizes women and depicts them as leggy nightclub showgirls from Lily Adams’ backward 1920s-era vision of America. We’ve moved forward, Lily. Get used to it.

Adams has also retweeted former DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse, who once called a Daily Caller reporter a “douche bag.” Apparently Adams is fine with disseminating the rhetoric of a man who despicably made light of a female hygiene product.

See how easy this is?

Of course, Adams also quoted well documented womanizer John F. Kennedy, who allegedly had an affair with a 19-year-old intern, on Facebook in November. As The American Spectator pointed out, Adams’ organization also gave Bill Clinton a prime role at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, despite accusations that Clinton raped a woman named Juanita Broaddrick among many other claims women made against the Democrat. Adams also supported the gubernatorial campaign of longtime Clinton fundraiser/enabler Terry McAuliffe

But asking Lily Adams to clarify her clearly muddled views on women’s rights is beside the point. Democratic flacks speak in an invented language of focus-grouped talking points and innocuous platitudes. Their words and ideas — the very things that define us as individuals in a society — have already been written for them. They sold their individuality and now they try, each and every day, to force us to surrender ours.

Lily Adams is irrelevant. By design, she barely even exists. But we need to pay attention to what her colleagues and superiors are doing, and to defend ourselves in the public debate when they attack us on these invented Speech Code violations. If we don’t, we’ll end up marching in lockstep with an agenda that curtails our freedoms in defiance of the founding principles of the United States. And we won’t even be allowed to use the words necessary to complain about it.

They don't get it and never will, their ideology and lack of desire to understand, empathize or change will push them ever further down this stupid path they've put themselves on.
 
Have they expanded reimbursement rates for other things? I mean really this is a gold mine for states to pump money into their economy with the federal government footing most of the bill. At the same time they get to provide their people with better care.

Yup reimbursement rates increase for health care as well
http://ccf.georgetown.edu/all/kaiser-releases-two-reports-on-medicaid-reimbursement-rate-increases/

I don't know if the increase is as drastic across the board as it is for dental, but any increase is good news.
 
SOme north Carolina news.

Godwin's law is being evoked this morning.


North Carolina State Sen.: Obamacare Worse Than 'Nazis,' 'Terrorists'




Of course... he goes to "redefine" what he said.



ALso, bad news for Kay Hagan:

Sen. Hagan Tea Party Challenger Attended Secessionist Rally



Let me get out of the south before these teatards turn it into the Southern States of Racist and Guns.

Why does anyone pay attention to these clowns? Fuckin' hyperbole all god damn day. Anything they don't like is the equivalent of Hitler.

sometimes i wonder if some of the people that post on the gaming side are politicians. They say the same kind of shit.
 
On several key measures, Obama has lost significant ground to his Republican opponents in Congress. On the question of who is seen as better able to handle the country’s main problems, Obama and Republicans are tied at 41 percent. A year ago, the president’s advantage was 15 points and at this stage in 2010 it was still five points.

Obama also has lost the lead he enjoyed on who could better deal with the economy. Today Republicans are at 45 percent to Obama’s 41 percent. Last year at this time, it was Obama at 54 percent and congressional Republicans at 36 percent. A 26-point Obama advantage a year ago on who would better protect the middle class has fallen to just six points in the latest survey. . . . Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...68fd00-667e-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html
 
This says more about how stupid and fickle Americans are than does about 'Bams.

Maybe if Obama spent more time on economic stimulus and less time on domestic spying, people would trust him.

Funny how that works. Oversee a Soviet style internal observation network, and people don't trust you
 
He's tried, GOP blocks every idea to stimulate the economy.

How do people not see this? Even liberal scream about a pivot. It can't happen with the GOP in the house.

I think the economy will pick up next year but the voters will see that as proof that divided government works or something like that, seeing this budget deal as something that lead to it. I'm not thrilled with the prospects.

Voters in this country are super prone to vote conservative and its really hard to get the message through that its a bad idea unless the GOP does something stupid (which they've been doing a lot of recently).
 

ivysaur12

Banned
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rep-frank-wolf-won-t-run-for-reelection

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has decided not to run for reelection.

Wolf announced his decision on Tuesday. He has first elected in 1980 and, if he had run again, would have been seeking his 18th term in Congress.

Cook PVI of R+2

He's tried, GOP blocks every idea to stimulate the economy.

Except he's alienated his base with the NSA scandals and has lost independents over the fact that the failures of HealthCare.gov have been in the news 24/7 for the past month. Will have hold until November? Probably not. But it's still a snapshot of now.
 
Conservatives shitting bricks right about now:



http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/insurers-the-rescue

I've always wondered why the insurance companies never really bothered to defend Obamacare. Sure, there's a bunch of things in there that makes them sad, but you would think the prospect of millions of new customers would give them a little bit of incentive to play ball.

It's because they can't play ball by the rules they want to. That's why.
 

Wilsongt

Member
Issa gonna Issa.

Issa To Texas Health Official: 'You Need To Watch More Fox News'


House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) on Monday told Dr. Randy Farris, a Texas health administrator for the federal government, to watch more Fox News after the health official did not satisfactorily answer Issa's questions about HealthCare.Gov, according to the Dallas Morning News.

"You need to watch more Fox News, I'm afraid," Issa retorted after Farris claimed that consumers' personal information was not stored on the health exchange website.

Issa was in Texas presiding over a field hearing focused on exposing flaws in the navigator program, which employs people to help Americans sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

Yes. Strengthen that bubble.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Except he's alienated his base with the NSA scandals and has lost independents over the fact that the failures of HealthCare.gov have been in the news 24/7 for the past month. Will have hold until November? Probably not. But it's still a snapshot of now.

I wasn't commenting on the perception, just the reality of Obama's proposals, which the GOP has blocked. But as you've said, his efforts are totally overshadowed by other events. And there's the general tendency for the public to blame the party in power (namely the President) when things don't get done.

It's worth noting as well that Obama undercuts his own efforts when he supports a two-year budget deal that bakes in austerity measures he's been supposedly fighting. The dual track of deficit reduction and job growth has been hugely damaging and done nothing but undercut the economy. One of the reasons the public opinion gets confused on this is because Obama's policies are all over the place.
 

bonercop

Member
It's worth noting as well that Obama undercuts his own efforts when he supports a two-year budget deal that bakes in austerity measures he's been supposedly fighting. The dual track of deficit reduction and job growth has been hugely damaging and done nothing but undercut the economy. One of the reasons the public opinion gets confused on this is because Obama's policies are all over the place.

Funnily enough, the GOP has been an unexpected(and unintentional) ally of liberals in some of these moments: their reflexive rejection of everything he proposes has saved the country from some pretty terrible attempts at austerity.
 
Bbnu69GCAAAxtmc.jpg


This stuff infuriates me. That's not what the bill does, it attempts to eliminate any public financing of campaigns (which is kinda pointless with Citizens United anyways) and hides behind helping kids.

Why not just add the spending to the budget?
 

ivysaur12

Banned
I wasn't commenting on the perception, just the reality of Obama's proposals, which the GOP has blocked. But as you've said, his efforts are totally overshadowed by other events. And there's the general tendency for the public to blame the party in power (namely the President) when things don't get done.

It's worth noting as well that Obama undercuts his own efforts when he supports a two-year budget deal that bakes in austerity measures he's been supposedly fighting. The dual track of deficit reduction and job growth has been hugely damaging and done nothing but undercut the economy. One of the reasons the public opinion gets confused on this is because Obama's policies are all over the place.

I don't even know if the public is aware of Obama's specific policies. What they are aware of is middling growth, partisanship, NSA, HealthCare.gov... it's unfortunate, but I don't know if the public is even aware of Obama's austerity measures because all people see is the perception of a stagnant economy.
 
He's tried, GOP blocks every idea to stimulate the economy.

I just don't buy this. The White House's gameplan since 2010 has been to send Obama out to give speeches about various issues and shame congress for not doing x,y,z. I don't remember the last time it worked. This year valuable time was wasted on a shitty gun bill and a pie-in-the-sky Pre K. When the WH pivoted back to the economy (due to NSA/IRS problems), there was very little focus outside of speeches. I don't want to hear about a Jobs Bill that went nowhere - it should be obvious the House will not pass a White House bill. The goal should be to work with the senate on smaller bills that can pass the House.

Does anyone think a corporate tax cut couldn't pass? Or tax reform in general. It's a pinata Paul Ryan has wanted to pop for awhile. Likewise Dave Camp has been trying to make moves on tax reform, but was shut down by Boehner apparently. Democrats can't get the ball rolling in the senate, with the White House nudging them a bit?

Empty Vessel time: eliminate the payroll tax for employers and employees; the big reason the GOP didn't like the past payroll tax holiday was because it was temporarily and thus increased "uncertainty" (lol, I know). End it outright then.

I don't see any focus from the White House on anything, economically.
 
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