Another Benefit of Obamacare

Republican: Pre-Existing Conditions Are Your Own Fault

Ted Cruz Flounders on CNN

Pro-ACA Republican Wins in Louisiana

From Think Progress:

Louisiana voters elected Republican Vance McAllister in a runoff to fill the state’s vacant Fifth District U.S. House seat on Saturday. McAllister, a businessman who embraced the expansion of Medicaid available to the state under the Affordable Care Act, defeated a Republican party favorite who called for full Obamacare repeal.

In a district won by Mitt Romney with 61 percent of the vote in 2012, two Republicans were the top vote-getters in a 14-candidate October primary. McAllister, who received nearly 60 percent of the vote in Saturday’s special election, criticized much of the Affordable Care Act, but also criticized Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) decision to dismantle charity hospitals in the state, and to reject its Medicaid expansion, which would expand the qualifications for Medicaid recipients and extend healthcare coverage to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Louisianans. “Our governor and Sen. Riser right here have gutted [heath care] to the core and privatized it.”

McAllister’s top opponent, State Senator Neil Riser (R), received support from House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), three of the four other Louisiana Republican Congressmen, the National Rifle Association, FreedomWorks and, more tacitly, Gov. Jindal. Riser ran ads saying that he would go to Washington to balance the budget and stop Obamacare — not make friends — andslammed McAllister for ” attempting to redefine himself and stand with President Obama.”

Republicans Are "Lying Like Motherf***ers"

Clearing Up Some ACA Misinformation

Gov. Kasich (R): There Seems to Be a War on the Poor

From the New York Times:

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin schooled lawmakers in a Washington Post opinion column midway through the 16-day shutdown on “What Wisconsin Can Teach Washington.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, with a record of bipartisan support at home, remarked after a visit to the nation’s capital, “If I was in the Senate right now, I’d kill myself.”

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Partywing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law...

The Religious Wrong: Embracing Economic Collapse

John McCain: Republicans Shut the Government Down

Why the Tea Party Welcomed the Shutdown

FRC President Tony Perkins

From Salon.com: 

...The press often talks about the Tea Party like they’re secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting “fiscal conservatism”, a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they’re being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.

It’s not just that the rogue’s gallery of congress people who are pushing the hardest for hostage-taking as a negotiation tactic also happens to be a bench full of Bible thumpers. Pew Research shows that people who align with the Tea Party are more likely to not only agree with the views of religious conservatives, but are likely to cite religious belief as their prime motivation for their political views.  White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to approve of the Tea Party. Looking over the data, it becomes evident that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the same old white fundamentalists who would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with everyone else, and this latest power play from the Republicans is, in essence, a move from that demographic to assert their “right” to control the country, even if their politicians aren’t in power.

It’s no surprise, under the circumstances, that a movement controlled by fundamentalist Christians would be oblivious to the very real dangers that their actions present. Fundamentalist religion is extremely good at convincing its followers to be more afraid of imaginary threats than real ones, and to engage in downright magical thinking about the possibility that their own choices could work out very badly. When you believe that forcing the government into default in an attempt to derail Obamacare is the Lord’s work, it’s very difficult for you to see that it could have very real, negative effects.

Rep. Bachmann (R-MN)

It’s hard for the Christian fundamentalists who run the Republican Party now to worry about the serious economic danger they’re putting the world in, because they are swept up in worrying that President Obama is an agent of the devil and that the world is on the verge of mayhem and apocalypse if they don’t “stop” him somehow, presumably be derailing the Affordable Care Act. Christian conservatives such as Ellis Washington are running around telling each other that the ACA  will lead to “the systematic genocide of the weak, minorities, enfeebled, the elderly and political enemies of the God-state.” Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist.Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner argued that Obama is using his signature health care legislation to promote “the destruction of the family, Christian culture”, and demanded that Christians “need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law...”

It just gets worse from there.

McCain: Defunding Obamacare is a Fool's Errand

The Anti-Obamacare Plot a Year in the Making

Elizabeth Warren's Message to the Tea Party

Sen. Ayotte (R-NH): Defunding Obamacare Didn't Work

Disney World's Reaction to Obamacare

From Think Progress:  

Walt Disney Co. announced on Wednesday that it is offering full-time employment to the 427 part-time employees at its Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida who work at least 30 hours per week — the threshold at which the Affordable Care Act requires large employers with 50 or more workers to offer basic health benefits to employees or risk paying a $2,000 per employee fine after the first 30 workers.

Disney already offers a level of health coverage that is acceptable under Obamacare to its full-time employees. But part-time workers, including those who work at the 30-hour cutoff set by the health law, receive more limited benefits. Instead of rolling back these workers’ hours to avoid expanding their health coverage, Disney is choosing to promote them to full-time status.

“Disney wants to be proactive,” said Ed Chambers, president of the Service Trades Council union that represents tens of thousands of Orlando Disney employees, in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Disney is way out in front on this.”

Quinnipiac Poll Shows Red Flags For the GOP

From the Business Insider:

According to the poll, American voters oppose shutting down the federal government to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act by a significant, 72-22 margin. 

And on another upcoming fight — raising the debt ceiling — Americans oppose using it to stop the health-care law's implementation by a 64-27 margin. 

All of these should be significant red flags for the Republican Party, which polls have shown will take the bulk of the public's blame for the shutdown.And in general, 58% of Americans oppose cutting off funding for Obamacare to tinker with its implementation. 

According to the Quinnipiac poll, Democrats now hold a 9-point advantage in the general Congressional ballot — that is, Americans said they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their district over the Republican candidate by a 43-34 margin. That's the highest it's been all year.

Sen. Warren Calls the GOP Hostage Takers

Obama's Reaction to the GOP on Obamacare

Ted Cruz's Big Waste of Time

Ted Cruz Brings Nazis Into the Obamacare Debate

From Talking Points Memo:  

"If you go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany," Cruz said. "Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, 'Accept the Nazis. Yes, they'll dominate the continent of Europe but that's not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We can't possibly stand against them.'"

"And in America there were voices that listened to that," he continued. "I suspect those same pundits who say it can't be done, if it had been in the 1940s we would have been listening to them. Then they would have made television. They would have gotten beyond carrier pigeons and beyond letters and they would have been on tv and they would have been saying, 'You cannot defeat the Germans.'"

First problem: Cruz is wrong on the history. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, it triggered a British (and french) declaration of war against Germany. Appeasement was over before the 40's even began. Before anyone says he probably just misspoke, keep in mind that these were prepared remarks said on the Senate floor, not something said off the cuff on a Sunday morning show.

Second problem: Cruz is still living in a fantasy world. He lives in a world where he thinks a piece of legislation commonly called "Obamacare" can be defunded or repealed while a man named "Obama" is in the White House. He lives in a world where he thinks he can achieve success in getting rid of Obamacare can be done with less than 67 votes in the Senate, and the fact of the matter is that 67 is the number of votes he needs in the Senate. He needs to face reality. Even if the Senate sends President Obama a version of the Continuing Resolution in question that does not fund the Affordable Care Act, he WILL veto it. If the Senate cannot muster 67 votes to override this presidential veto - and it cannot - then the government will shutdown, and all sign are pointing to congressional Republicans getting the blame when this shutdown negatively affects the government.

Usually when people bring Nazis into a political argument, it means that they have no more valid arguments to make...if they had any at all to begin with that is. many people consider this jumping the shark. As if cruz had not done this enough already, he has done it again. I doubt any one, at least anyone with their wits about them, will fall for this hyperbole.