Tuesday, July 15, 2014

"Normal" violence abroad and at home


Over 30,000 deaths by gun occur in America every year. 

Hardcore gun rights activists will offer spin after spin to try to somehow convince you (and themselves) that this insane reality has nothing to do with guns. It's mostly suicide. It's mostly gang related. It's mostly accidents. Oh. OK then. As long as I know there is someway to tell myself that those over 30,000 lives per year lost to guns in America aren't really part of a gun problem, then I guess there is no problem. (Open) carry on. 

Despite the severe spin of such arguments though, they still start with the reality of conceding that over 30,000 Americans die by gunfire on US soil every year, no matter the motivation behind the bullet. In 2010, there were 2,694 kids (age 0-19) killed by guns in the U.S. (The link is here…)

Whatever spin is applied, these stats are unacceptable.

Yet we accept them. We do not surround Congress and demand that something be done to curb these out of control gun deaths.

On the other hand, what about children refugees at our southern border who flee even far worse deadly danger in their own countries? That's a different story. We won't have it! We WILL protest that tragedy.



The tragedy of course having nothing to do with the guns involved in those murders. The real tragedy is the gall of these disease-ridden illegal children trying to escape that danger by sneaking into our shining city on a hill. Don't you dare call them refugees, despite the unthinkable reality they face at home. Work for a gang or be killed? I don't care. They are not refugees, they are illegals! Send them home!! Over 400 children were killed in Honduras alone since Jan. of last year?1 That's not my problem! The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act that George W. Bush signed requires that they have a hearing to be considered for refugee status? I don't want to hear such lies. I don't care. It's Obama's fault!… and it fills me with so much hate that I will go block the buses of these illegals being taken to process centers, and scream insults at them. I don't care how much it makes me look like an insensitive a-hole. I don't care that such action is ridiculously hypocritical in this nation of immigrants. It pisses me off and I'm gonna' scream loud enough to make sure you hear me, dammit!

I find it sickening to see this psychosis of ideological rigidity play out so blatantly along our border. One hypocrisy after another must be ignored in order to stay rigid to this hate. Immigrants only a few generations old screaming at children crossing the border today to escape virtually lawless horror at home. Screaming at Obama for being lawless while he follows the law signed by Bush that offers these children at the least, a hearing of their case before being sent back. Too often implying a Christian moral high ground, while ignoring Leviticus 19:33, and themselves frightening these children while surrounding the buses like a lawless mob. A willful blindness to all these facts while you scream at children who have already been through Hell. Such willful action can no longer be labeled anything less than hate. No matter how hard you try to spin these actions.

There is another macabrely ironic statistic that is overlooked in the midst of this anti-foreigner shouting match. The number of children refugees at our southern border may be growing since George W. Bush's signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, but the number of these child refugees still do not match the number of American lives that have been discarded by American gunfire.

For so many people on the Right, 30,000 Americans killed each year by American gunfire is not enough to have them reconsider their firmly held ideologies. I guess I was a fool then to think that the rising deaths of foreign children could have any impact on the "thinking" process of their long-held stances. It's more than a sickening ideological rigidity. it is absolute hate. 


Thursday, April 3, 2014

JOHN BOEHNER CONVENIENTLY CROSSES THE LINE


We all know that once open enrollment began for the healthcare exchanges as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), there were multiple problems. The federal website crashed regularly. So did some state's websites. The marketplaces did not offer comparisons of various plans like was promised. No surprise then that the completed enrollments were fairly slow at first.

Despite the troubled rollout, millions of people still visited the site. The technical glitches were being worked on around the clock, and over the months following the botched virtual ribbon-cutting, the site's stability dramatically improved. Slowly, even more people began to visit. 

Of course, still not every visitor completed the journey from starting the application to actually enrolling in a healthcare plan via the online exchanges. Still no surprise though. Choosing a healthcare plan is not like picking out which shirt to wear in the morning. It demands lots of comparison shopping and thoughtful consideration. It SHOULD take more than one visit to complete. 

Factor in the predictable rush to enroll as the deadline approaches, and it's no surprise that heavy traffic might cause website crashes, and long waits via in-person and phone-in enrollment options. There would inevitably be many who would miss the March 31 deadline as a result.

That's why President Obama offered the deadline extension for those who began the process by March 31, but were not able to complete their enrollment by midnight. As long as you began the application process by March 31, you would still be allowed to complete your enrollment and get covered.

John Boehner had a fit over this, claiming that 

"this is part of a long-term pattern of this administration manipulating the laws for its own convenience."

Let's just be blunt about this. John Boehner's comment shows him off as the blatantly hypocritical partisan who worries not about the best interests of his fellow Americans, but who instead only seeks any angle to sabotage President Obama. The damage done to the rest of America is just acceptable collateral damage.

This is no aggrandizement. Face it. The PPACA ("Obamacare") is here to stay. Refusing to work to improve the law is not going to change that fact. Actively working to sabotage it and keep people from enrolling blatantly harms Americans. It may be "convenient" that such inexcusable action also dings President Obama's image for some, but the real convenience here is John Boehner's ability to so quickly and blatantly contradict himself if it offers him the opportunity to take a pot-shot at President Obama. It was only in October that Boehner was actually calling for delaying the deadline for everyone. Now he is demonizing President Obama for simply letting people complete the healthcare applications they started but could not complete by March 31.



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I find these continual attempts to make President Obama a failure incredibly disgusting, and as much as I desire to refrain from questioning anyone's love of country, it is a greater misdeed to not call out this Republican obsession as patently un-American. This is especially so when your attacks on Obama hurt millions of Americans - not with demonizing words or approval ratings you seek to inflict upon President Obama - but with extremely serious real-life effects. When you actively seek to keep Americans from healthcare, Americans suffer not only real-life effects of your obsession, but real-death effects. It is one thing to criticize a sitting President if you disagree with policy. John Boehner's comment however is just the latest example of blatantly crossing the line into un-patriotic attacks on our President. We all suffer for it.

Now, here are my TOP TEN RESPONSES to John Boehner's comment...

10. What's next? Turning away people in long lines to vote?
9. So then, by your own logic, making healthcare enrollment an INconvenience for Americans is YOUR political "convenience".
8.Are you afraid that over 7 million will get health insurance - DESPITE your endless obstruction?
7.The GOP has placed nearly all its political eggs in the "making-Obamacare-a-failure" basket. And YOU are the one arguing that its degree of success is more about a political convenience - rather than it actually being about ending pre-existing condition exclusions, reducing the reality of emergency-room-as-primary-care because of such high rates of uninsured Americans, eliminating worthless junk insurance policies that bankrupt family savings because they don't cover the costs of major illnesses, ending annual and lifetime caps on needed care, making it illegal to not renew someone's insurance because they became ill, all while working to halt the hurtling rate of healthcare cost increases over the last decade? Really?!? YOU spend millions of taxpayer dollars trying to endlessly block fixing all these things, and then claim that OBAMA is the one acting only out of political "convenience" rather than for the good of Americans? I don't know what is more bronzed - your face or your brass balls!
6. When your political "convenience" relies on making healthcare reform an inconvenience for as many Americans as possible, YOU need to re-assess your values. 
5. Seriously?!? You are bitching now because people who started the signup process by the end of March will be able to complete their healthcare enrollment in April?!? YOU were bitching only months ago that there was NO delay in the deadline for individuals to sign up. The only "convenience" here is your ability to attack President Obama and "Obamacare" by any and all angles - even if you have to blatantly and directly contradict your own arguments.
4.You really want to talk about  "manipulating the laws"? It was only back in October that H. Res 368 took away the power of any House member to propose re-opening the government and put that power exclusively in your control. YOU made sure the government shutdown continued by blatantly "manipulating the laws".
3. The fewer people that sign up for healthcare, the more ALL our premiums will increase next year. Stop screwing us all, you idiot!
2. We'll make it "convenient" for you to find a new job in November, John
1. A**hole!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

BILL KRISTOL'S REPEAL AND REPLACE FANTASY


On the Jan 26, 2014 Face the Nation, Bill Kristol went back to his repeal-and-replace fantasy yet again.

“Senior Republican Senators tomorrow are going to lay out the outlines of legislation, which I think will become real legislation, that would be a Conservative reform, alternative to 'Obamacare'. It would deal with the pre-existing condition problem, it would have tax credits for the poor, it would get rid of all the ridiculous bureaucracy regulation limitations of 'Obamacare'… but I think it really will make it harder for the President and for Democrats to say the Republicans have no alternative.”

So finally, after roughly five years of repeated empty rhetoric against health care reform and over forty attempts to only repeal, but NOT replace the PPACA, Bill Kristol says THIS time they really mean it. They intend to repeal-and-replace. He predicts it will likely pass in House and in the Senate if GOP wins Senate control. 

Then he proposes, with that inescapable poker tell grin of his -

“…and again, then it’s up to the President whether he wants to abandon 'Obamacare' and sign on to a sensible healthcare reform.”



Of course trying to now "…deal with the pre-exiting condition problem" is laughable in itself. 

For anyone who has forgotten, "Obamacare" is not the name of the law. Frankly, neither is it The "Affordable Care Act". The healthcare reform signed into law by President Obama is called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act". Virtually everyone ignores that vital first part. Maybe just for brevity's sake, but the "Patient Protection" component of the law is, to quote someone else, a pretty "big f@&king deal!"

So let's just restate the obvious. PPACA has already ended denial of coverage for simply having a "pre-existing condition". Additionally, it also has subsidies for the poor.

They can claim all they want that their real goal is to provide the patient protections and reforms that already exist in law now. They can sell the rebranded "repeal and replace" talking point all they want in an effort to say that they actually "...do have a positive reform agenda with healthcare." while they simultaneously do everything they possibly can to sabotage it, including shutting down the government over trying to simply repeal the law. Conservatives can do this all they want, but they cannot escape the blunt reality that their biggest objection to the health care reform law is the "Obama" part. 

Had they honestly wanted to "...deal with the pre-existing condition problem..." or offer "...tax credits for the poor...", they could have worked with Democrats and President Obama five years ago rather than put all their efforts into trying to make President Obama a failure. 

Better yet, they could have made such reforms themselves sometime in the past century when they had the power to do so.

But since it is the "Obama" part that they are so objectionable to, and not the patient protections, or the opening up of healthcare access to the poor, I have a really simple solution. 

Stop trying to kill "Obamacare". Instead, embrace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that actually exists as law. Do your job as members of Congress to tweak it and improve it, but stop trying to sell us the latest "repeal and replace" BS.