Liberal Forum

Obama sends his furious laser beam eyes in Boehner's direction at the dedication of the Rosa Parks statue in the Capitol.It's even scarier in closeup.

Is congress out of session considered a bad thing? If they ain't there they ain't spending more money we don't have. I think congress should be limited to 1 day a month, that'll solve the debt problem.

Is congress out of session considered a bad thing? If they ain't there they ain't spending more money we don't have. I think congress should be limited to 1 day a month, that'll solve the debt problem. When will they have time to re-name all those Post Offices?

Part of what prompted this internal investigation was the existence of a promotional video produced under the supervision of Adam Brandon, executive vice president of FreedomWorks, and a Kibbe loyalist.The video included a scene in which a female intern wearing a panda suit simulates performing oral sex on Hillary Clinton.FreedomWorks Made Video of Fake Giant Panda Having Sex With Fake Hillary ClintonFarking amazing.

Thank you, that philosophy should apply at whatever level of expenditure, but somehow the left thinks it is responsible to borrow a high percentage of what they spend.Agreed. We need to put the republicans in charge across the board, and let them tackle this issue - like they did between 2001 and 2007 when they had absolute federal hegemony. Size doesn't matter, in this conversation.,Cons. Always trying to slip that one in. So why did sequester originate from the WH?Um, because everything has to start somewhere?Why is the sky blue? Why do whales sing instead of clicking?You seem to be saying that the sequester cuts are not a bad thing, but you also seem to want to blame them on Obama.WHAT? A contard, being a hypocrite and trying to have his cake and eat it, too?Now I have seen everything.

Agreed. We need to put the republicans in charge across the board, and let them tackle this issue - like they did between 2001 and 2007 when they had absolute federal hegemony. Cons. Always trying to slip that one in. Um, because everything has to start somewhere? Why is the sky blue? Why do whales sing instead of clicking? WHAT? A contard, being a hypocrite and trying to have his cake and eat it, too? Now I have seen everything. hey turd misile...sup...thats my obama impersonation

Agreed. We need to put the republicans in charge across the board, and let them tackle this issue - like they did between 2001 and 2007 when they had absolute federal hegemony. Laffin! I'm glad for the sequester...the biggest hit will be to the military budget and NG.When the republicans say "negotiate in good faith" what they mean is "give up all democrat core values". Let the cuts come.let the repubs see what "small govt' means. The rich will sting along with everybody else.

I'm glad for the sequester...the biggest hit will be to the military budget and NG.When the republicans say "negotiate in good faith" what they mean is "give up all democrat core values". Let the cuts come.let the repubs see what "small govt' means. The rich will sting along with everybody else.The states hit hardest by planned Army sequester cuts include Alabama, Texas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, while the states hit hardest by planned Navy sequester cuts would be California, Florida, and Virginia.All but one of those states has a Republican governor.Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia is in a panic.Cancel the Sequester—or Virginia Gets It!

Laffin!I'm glad for the sequester...the biggest hit will be to the military budget and NG.That's my take, as well. Just seeing the military cut in my lifetime is more than I had ever hoped for.I'll deal with the rest of it. Just shut down the military welfare bloat.

I just read a very long article by Steven Brill in a recent edition of Time Magazine called 'Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us'.After reading 11 pages of story after story of people's horror stories when it came to their health care bills, this was the writer's conclusion:Unless you are protected by Medicare, the health care market is not a market at all. Its a crapshoot. People fare differently according to circumstances they can neither control nor predict. They may have no insurance. They may have insurance, but their employer chooses their insurance plan and it may have a payout limit or not cover a drug or treatment they need. They may or may not be old enough to be on Medicare or, given the different standards of the 50 states, be poor enough to be on Medicaid. If theyre not protected by Medicare or theyre protected only partly by private insurance with high co-pays, they have little visibility into pricing, let alone control of it. They have little choice of hospitals or the services they are billed for, even if they somehow know the prices before they get billed for the services. They have no idea what their bills mean, and those who maintain the chargemasters couldnt explain them if they wanted to. How much of the bills they end up paying may depend on the generosity of the hospital or on whether they happen to get the help of a billing advocate. They have no choice of the drugs that they have to buy or the lab tests or CT scans that they have to get, and they would not know what to do if they did have a choice. They are powerless buyers in a sellers market where the only sure thing is the profit of the sellers.Indeed, the only player in the system that seems to have to balance countervailing interests the way market players in a real market usually do is Medicare. It has to answer to Congress and the taxpayers for wasting money, and it has to answer to portions of the same groups for trying to hold on to money it shouldnt. Hospitals, drug companies and other suppliers, even the insurance companies, dont have those worries.Moreover, the only players in the private sector who seem to operate efficiently are the private contractors working dare I say it? under the governments supervision.The real issue isnt whether we have a single payer or multiple payers. Its whether whoever pays has a fair chance in a fair market. Congress has given Medicare that power when it comes to dealing with hospitals and doctors, and we have seen how that works to drive down the prices Medicare pays, just as weve seen what happens when Congress handcuffs Medicare when it comes to evaluating and buying drugs, medical devices and equipment. Stripping away what is now the sellers overwhelming leverage in dealing with Medicare in those areas and with private payers in all aspects of the market would inject fairness into the market. We dont have to scrap our system and arent likely to. But we can reduce the $750 billion that we overspend on health care in the U.S. in part by acknowledging what other countries have: because the health care market deals in a life-or-death product, it cannot be left to its own devices.Put simply, the bills tell us that this is not about interfering in a free market. Its about facing the reality that our largest consumer product by far one-fifth of our economy does not operate in a free market.http://healthland.ti...are-killing-us/Quite a good argument for single payer.

It's what the French have - and they continue to make absolute fools of us. I take that back. They're just being smart. It is we who are making fools of ourselves. We folks that have company-provided insurance have that cost built into the products that the insured and uninsured alike purchase. They pay for our health care. But we don't want to be responsible for theirs. Interesting, doncha think? Right wingers are always moochers. The shout personal responsibility - but they mean "I don't want any personal responsibility." They shout liberty, but they mean freebie.

Republicans are trying to undue the part of the sequester cuts they don't like, while leaving in place the cuts that Democrats don't like. Of course!VIDEOTranscript:MADDOW: Just before 9:00 on Friday night, the White House issued a presidential order, "By the authority vested in me as president by the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that budgetary resources in each nonexempt budget account be reduced by the amount calculated by the Office of Management and Budget in its report to the Congress of March" -- what it means, the sequester -- or as we like to refer to it around here, congressional storm Earl -- has arrived.Earlier that same day, President Obama convened a meeting with the congressional leaders of both parties to try to stop it, to try to stop the $85 billion worth of cuts from going into effect. He said the cuts would hurt the economy and cost people their jobs. He called the cuts dumb and arbitrary. And then pretty much right after he got done calling them dumb and arbitrary, he had to go sign this boring presidential order executive ordering them into law.President Obama was not saying these cuts are dumb and arbitrary because he personally does not like them. These cuts are dumb andarbitrary by design. Both sides agree they are dumb and arbitrary, the whole point of the sequester was that they would be dumb and arbitrary so nobody would want them.The cuts are dumb and arbitrary and purposely hurtful in a bipartisan fashion, because the whole design was about it being equally unpalatable to both parties. That was the whole idea, right? That was on purpose.Democrats were supposed to hate the sequester, because of the dumb and arbitrary cuts to stuff like housing programs for the poor, and early childhood education, and WIC, the women, infant and children nutrition program which provides food and baby formula for low income families. Not to mention cuts in funding for things like national parks and scientific research.Republicans on the other hand were supposed to hate the sequester because of dumb and arbitrary cuts to national security spending. It was supposed to be a "sword of Damocles" hanging over the Defense Department. No way Republicans were going to let that happen, right?Well, all of this collective hatred of on-purpose, dumb and arbitrary cutting was supposed to force both sides to work together to avoid the cuts. That, of course, failed. The sword of Damocles failed.And now, we're budgeting what the government spends its money on using mandatory cuts that every hates, that were never supposed to happen in the first place.Well, what happens now? As you might imagine, they`re trying to retroactively undo it, but in a very specific way.Today, House Republicans introduced retroactive efforts to get rid of these dumb and arbitrary cuts, to get rid of some of these dumb and arbitrary cuts. It turns they just want to fix the parts related to national security and defense spending. The stuff put in there specifically because it was supposed to be unpalatable to them.So, their plan would not just ease the cuts on the Pentagon, it would give the Pentagon $2 billion more than the president asked for in non-war Pentagon funding.So, Republicans -- think about this -- would keep all the austerity for the programs that the Democrats don't want to see cut. But the cuts that they don't like would be mostly reversed. That`s how they`re going to fix it.To review, the sequester was supposed to be the equal pain for both parties -- bipartisan dumbness. Bipartisan arbitrariness. That was the whole point. That was the design.Today, House Republicans said the parts we do not like, we think we'regoing to undo them.But all the rest of it, the reduction in funds for housing programs that could leave more than 100,000 people homeless could force people in emergency shelters out on to the street. The reduction in WIC funding that could leave three quarters of a million low income women and children without benefits. When you're talking about WIC, that means without infant formula. Or 11 percent reduction in unemployment benefits for people who have not been able to find a job.All of that will stay gone away. It's fine for all of that to have gone away. Those cuts must be seen now as permanent. But the things that the Republicans will miss, they'll come back.House Republicans today advancing a plan to undo the part of the sequester their party doesn't like, while keeping the part Democrats do not like, which is just strategic genius, such a deal.Why didn't I think of that? If every time I had to make a deal with somebody, the part they didn`t like about it, they could undo afterwards and leave the part I didn't like intact, I would make a lot more deals.From Politico:House continuing resolution to restore $7B to military operations.

"Compromise" is a bad, bad, nasty word, we absolutely must not soil the purity of our ideals by allow weight to be given to someone else's position.

"Compromise" is a bad, bad, nasty word, we absolutely must not soil the purity of our ideals by allow weight to be given to someone else's position. Depends on the position, of course.

House Republicans Propose Rolling Back Access To Birth Control To Avert Government ShutdownIn order to avert a government shutdown later this month, Congress and the Obama administration must negotiate a continuing resolution to maintain federal funding and a group of House Republicans is suggesting that deal should also roll back Obamacares effort to expand womens access to affordable contraception.The automatic spending cuts that will take effect under sequestration will already compromise programs that disproportionately impact women, including slashing $86 million from critical family planning and reproductive health services. But thats not enough for Republican lawmakers, who want to use the upcoming budget negotiations as yet another opportunity to keep attacking womens health:GOP lawmakers reintroduced a bill Tuesday to repeal the contraception mandate. They also pressed their partys leaders to roll back the provision as part of a continuing resolution later this month to keep the federal government operating.This attack on religious freedom demands immediate congressional action, the 14 lawmakers wrote. Nothing short of a full exemption for both nonprofit and for-profit entities will satisfy the demands of the Constitution and common sense.The continuing resolution that House appropriators released Monday would not cut off funding for the Affordable Care Act, despite years of conservative pressure to defund the healthcare law. But Tuesdays letter, led by Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), indicates that fights over the health law could still roil the funding debate.Obamacares birth control provision, which went into effect on August 1, helped eliminate the gender-based disparity in health costs by eliminating co-pays for womens contraceptive services. Studies have proven that increasing access to cost-free birth control lowers the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion, as well as provides women with greater economic autonomy to achieve their personal financial goals. Nevertheless, right-wing Obamacare opponents misconstrue the law as a threat to religious freedom, despite the fact that it already contains an exemption for faith-based organizations that oppose covering contraception.Despite Republicans insistence that Obamacare is an affront to religious liberty, most Americans dont agree. A diverse coalition in support of the health reform laws expanded access to contraception including religious groups like Catholics for Choice, Jewish Women International, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the United Methodist Church, and the Unitarian Universalist Association is already urging the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations to reject a deal that would restrict womens access to birth control.Unfortunately, Rep. Black is no stranger to targeting womens health. So far this session, she has also introduced a measure to defund Planned Parenthood, as well as called for an unnecessary government study to justify her continued effort to strip funding from the womens health organization.I've said it once and I'll say it again.It's not just about abortion, it's about contraception.The GOP wants to take women back to the 1950s.

"House Republicans Propose Rolling Back Access To Birth Control To Avert Government Shutdown" Always assumed that our government was run by a bunch of babies.

"House Republicans Propose Rolling Back Access To Birth Control To Avert Government Shutdown"Always assumed that our government was run by a bunch of babies.A bunch of Jackholes.They also put something in the bill to defund ACORN, despite the fact that it had already been stripped of federal funding, and has been defunct for nearly three years.

A bunch of Jackholes. They also put something in the bill to defund ACORN, despite the fact that it had already been stripped of federal funding, and has been defunct for nearly three years. oh. you mean that they wasted time, effort and money on a pointless, outdated motive in the bill? damn. they must have took lessons from the democrats on the violence against women act.

oh. you mean that they wasted time, effort and money on a pointless, outdated motive in the bill? damn. they must have took lessons from the democratson the violence against women act.The VAWA is not pointless or outdated.ACORN no longer exists, domestic violence does.

City In Georgia Would Mandate That Everyone Own A Gun A city in Georgia is considering a proposal as soon as next month that requires every homeowner to own a gun. Citing limited police resources and slow response time, Nelson City Councilman Duane Cronic said armed residents would deter crime instead: "When he's not here we rely on county sheriffshowever it takes a while for them to get here," said Nelson City Councilman Duane Cronic. [..] "It's a deterrent ordinance," Cronic said. "It tells the potential intruder you better think twice." Another city, Kennesaw, Georgia, already has a mandatory gun ownership law, although it is not enforced. And outside of Georgia, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin sheriff recently urged residents to get in the game with a gun for emergencies, rather than call 911. Cronic and others tend to argue that more guns mean less crime, based on scant evidence from two methodologicaly flawed studies. But academic consensus finds the opposite to be true: A survey by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health makes a strong case for the idea that more people die from gun homicides in areas with higher rates of gun ownership. Hmmm. A government mandate that forces you to buy something.....sounds like Obamacare. What if you can't afford to buy a gun? What if you have a criminal record? What if you're depressed? Mentally ill? This sounds like a great idea.