American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

lol classic Beltway twaddle:

When a recent Manhattan fund-raiser for the Virginia candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe wound down and most of the donors had left the host’s swanky meatpacking district loft, President Bill Clinton stuck around.

Only a handful of guests (“And none of the really important ones,” according to one attendee) remained, but Mr. Clinton continued to shake hands and pose for photos. He greeted the waiters and joked with stragglers that he would meet them at a nearby bar.

This spring, as guests gathered around a big table inside a grand Washington home at a fund-raising dinner for Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Clinton noticed the hosts’ bored young son on a sofa. The former president plopped down and the two played on an iPad together.

The behavior wasn’t anything unusual for Mr. Clinton, who has always been known as a gregarious party guest. But for some Democratic donors — accustomed to what some see as the aloof indifference of President Obama — experiencing the full embrace of the Clintons in fund-raising mode comes as something of a revelation.

Mr. Obama has rewarded his top backers with coveted diplomatic posts like London and Tokyo, but he does not expend much personal energy when it comes to stroking donors: More than a dozen Obama supporters interviewed for this article described the president as an introvert who views big-dollar fund-raising as an unappealing, if necessary, chore. If the situation were a movie, one donor said, it would be titled: “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

It's really annoying me that the media is ignoring/downplaying the fact that you can sign up over the phone (or by mail? Who knows lol check out this listicle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vndm3MjJbSo

ronan has a show?

stroking donors

ronan has a show?

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, October 23, 2013 3:26 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just starting

i didn't know one could be so smug so young it's sort of impressive

Eugene Robinson pitches his voice at "Democratic weenie" levels.

Oh fun, right-wingers salivating over a chance to crticize salon's Joan Walsh in response to the Joan Walsh of Salon piece that criticizes Ezra Klein's health care rollout coverage (and Ezra's response)

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/10/23/Ezra-Klein-Responds

ignore the grammar issues there

brzezinski jr's body language before sinatra jr speaks is hmmmm

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115272/obamacare-and-republicans-relationship-gets-more-complicated

Generally, holding a hearing demanding to know why a new program isn’t functioning better implies that…you want it to function. Until now, Republicans have managed to oppose Obamacare totally, to undermine its implementation left and right while casting symbolic votes for repeal and, just recently, engaging in an immensely costly charade to press for the “defunding” of the law.

But now that the law is actually going into effect, seizing on its deficiencies takes on a different aspect: It means, at some basic level, accepting the goals of the law as worth achieving. Now, Republicans will say that by highlighting implementation flaws they are simply exposing its inherent unworkability, but I’m not sure that pose will hold up in their new mode of inspector general. Administration officials will come in for questioning and Republicans will demand to know: How many people are signing up for coverage? When will the site be working better? What are you doing to fix it? Unspoken in all of those questions is something that Republicans have simply shut out of their assault on Obamacare until now: That there are people out there, millions of them, who do not have coverage and will be helped by the law if it can be made to function properly.

Along similar lines: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/the_amazing_politics_of_healthcare_gov_failure/

That will help immunize it from legislative mischief. But it’ll also put legions of Republicans in the same position Ellmers found herself in on Tuesday — forced to confront the reality that the law only isn’t working for people whose states begged off the project, or undermined it intentionally. Many people living in those states will know that things would be better if only their elected leaders would just make their peace with Obamacare and make their own constituents’ lives better by implementing it.

there was a discussion about people who fell through the cracks in obamacare in the states that didnt extend medicare on npr this morning. kinda breezed through the fact that the governors of those states are intentionally fucking over these millions of people and refusing to accept basically free money for politics.

politics wise, npr is basically cnn with a world music soundtrack

The White House denied allegations Wednesday that the United States monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

According to the Associated Press, Merkel called Obama after learning that the U.S. "may have spied on her mobile phone."

White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that the phone call took place, and said that Obama assured Merkel that the U.S. is "not monitoring" her communications.

...however, the U.S. did record the call and someone listened to it while eating popcorn. but no, they're not actively monitoring her phone at this very moment, no

just like they did not monitor the president of Brazil

I remember a story from the Little Bush years when it was reported that Rove would only discuss sensitive matters in person, because of surveillance worries, so he would meet people on street corners and the like. can't find a link now but Rove otm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-jhmkcOGAA

Rove on a foldout chair, chewing on sausage

Ted Cruz:

“Having spent the last month in Washington, it’s good to be back in America,” he told the crowd. “

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/10/22/5269164/us-sen-ted-cruz-brings-crusade.html#storylink=cpy

He's not wrong, but not for the reasons he thinks he's not wrong.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BXS6X0vCIAEWq6L.png

Philip Klein ‏@philipaklein 39m

Cruz says top1% has higher concentration of wealth than any time since 1928. Blames Obama economy.

Dem 6-point lead in generic ballot translates into GOP keeps house by the way, thank your friendly neighborhood district-drawer

Is Cruz advocating socialist wealth distribution methods or what? or will we let the totally unregulated free market settle things?

there's been this complaint of crony capitalism thrown at obama/fed govt in tea party rantings. it's never anything more than vague accusations of 'chicago way' corruption, solyndra!, etc but it resonates on some level w/ the base, that same strain of ironic populism that their anti-wall st rhetoric ties into. it would interesting to see someone, maybe even a democratic or two, tap into this and maybe advance some kind of policy objectives that due reduce the amount of influence corporations and the superwealthy do have on the fed and state govts. prediction: it will not be hillary clinton. or joe biden. or andrew cuomo. or cory booker. but maybe elizabeth warren?

alan grayson!

that 'do reduce' rather. early onset dementia right here.

phonemic paraphasic error, perfectly normal when infrequent.

Um, what about when it's not infrequent? Like when it happens on a weekly basis to where you begin to think you have some form of mild dysgraphia?

Still normal especially if you're writing a lot, busy/stressed/tired, or vaguely dyslexic in the first place. Weekly is infrequent anyway; people with progressive aphasia d/t dementia make way more mistakes than that.

Can't tell you the number of mostly very bright, introspective people who come see me for concerns of early dementia with all tests normal and excellent cognitive performance on examination. Universally good prognosis ime.

My thing is with tenses; I type the one I'm thinking of a few words down the line, rather than the correct one for that particular word

As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.

While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by The New York Times has found.

don't worry Alfred this will all be fixed very soon.

After all, we've got some good tech theater coming today when that Bad Guy Contractor appears before Congress to explain wayward coding and funky ass backend servers.

xxxp gosh wonder if that's the kind of issue a strong public option might have ameliorated.

yeah but socialism!

It is truly pernicious even in Wyoming.

HealthCare.gov is in de facto shutdown

Pro tip, elect state governments that will implement their own website.

Pro tip: when building anything digital, underpromise and overdeliver

While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces

so i know why tort reform is utter bullshit and any alleged savings would be negligible and outweighed by corporate abuse...
but what about that other GOP broken record 'buying across state lines'? considering the relatively substantial regulatory controls ACA implements, surely it could have been crafted to impose a 'basement' for terribleness on states like Texas or Alabama or anyone else racing to the regulatory bottom. or am i totally off base here?

I'm thinking states like Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama would consider it an infringement on their state rights to allow their citizens to receive from across state lines more than "race to the bottom" mediocre insurance. Plus such states seem happy with citizens having no insurance at all (if you haven't worked hard and earned it).

But it seems like Republicans just keep coming back to their same old Republican cliches about how malpractice reform will magically make insurance affordable

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/defense-ted-cruz/page/0/1

ted cruz's ideas on health care barely qualify as ideas, let alone his ideas.

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has an idea who might be behind the allegations of sexual harassment that plagued his campaign two years ago: the Devil.

The former CEO of the National Restaurant Association told RealClearReligion in a story published Wednesday that he didn't challenge allegations that he sexually harassed at least four women, some of them anonymous, while at the helm of that organization because it would have been a "huge distraction" from his campaign. He maintained that his accusers are "liars."

Now serving as an associate pastor at a Baptist church in Atlanta, Cain speculated to the publication that the Devil may have masterminded the allegations.

"It made me realize that there was a bigger force than right," he said, further blaming the media for "not doing their due diligence."

Cruz then launched into an epic soliloquy, with basically no interruptions, dysfluencies, or rhetorical cul-de-sacs.

“Number one: it should expand competition and use of the marketplace. Number two: it should empower consumers to exercise choice to meet their health-care needs. And number three: it should disempower government bureaucrats to second-guess and get in between doctors and their patients in making health-care decisions. Those are all general principles. Now let me give three specific policy proposals that are manifestations of those principles.”

Number one: Obamacare does that.

Number two: Obamacare does that.

Number three: Obamacare does that.

So much for his ideas. Next!

Cruz just recites the Republican across the state line thing without addressing the need for state and federal regulation of insurance to prevent the race to the bottom.

it gets a little darker if you read between the lines: the point of selling across state lines and removing 'gov't mandated bells and whistles' (ie minimum coverage req's) is to get people into high-deductible catastrophic plans that only count as 'coverage' if you squint -- somebody in a lower income quintile who's on the hook for the first 6 or 10k of costs? yeah that's the status quo dude.

he's especially cagey about the pre-existing conditions, which would be taken care of by delinking coverage from employment, ie you should never lose your coverage and have to restart elsewhere hence nothing would ever be 'pre-existing'. which starts to fall apart if you think about it for 10 seconds. never mind how a move toward employer/ee delinking flies in the face of all this complaining about "you can keep your plan" promises. nobody's plan would be the same if the employer-provided system were to go away.

xp well iow he WANTS a race to the bottom. he is from texas after all...

hey at least he didn't say tort reform

afaic the exchanges can never work at all but if a lot less americans go bankrupt from catastrophic medical bills (#1 cause of bankruptcy!) then the ACA is fine by me