Six seconds later...they'll get back to [us] on that... (VIDEO)

One more accomplishment for the President to brag about... (VIDEO)

He signed the STOCK act today...so, I'm guessing Mittens is in favor of repeal??

Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. McCarthy write a really dumb-ass column together...

Here is the actual headline in the piece o' crap Huffington Post today. Mind you, not the headline that makes you click on the story, but the actual headline:

Tell President Obama: Stop the NRA From Making Our Laws.

And the gist of the piece is?

The National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 822) would allow gun owners to carry a concealed firearm across state lines even if they weren't issued a permit by that state. That means Texas Governor Rick Perry could decide who can carry a concealed weapon in your state -- even if they have a criminal record that your state would consider a barrier to owning a gun.

This gun industry bill recently passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, with a little bit of Democratic help as well.

Americans of conscience who believe in protecting public safety should join us in asking President Obama to issue a veto threat to this ridiculous bill now, before it goes even further in Congress.

We have a petition, at www.StopHR822.com, to send President Obama a strong message from regular Americans across the nation that we will not let the gun manufacturers make laws that benefit them at the risk of public safety.

Click here immediately to call on President Obama to veto H.R. 822 -- we can't let this bill go any further.

Uhhh, excuse me Senator Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey...and Congresswoman McCarthy, Democrat of New York.

It strikes me you really should be going after to the people who would actually helped pass (and thus stop) said legislation.

Oh yeah...THEY WOULD BE CALLED SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES!!!

Look, these are two of the good guys when it comes to Gun Control. But it strikes me that people who are in a position to actually do something about bad legislation in its tracks have real nerve demanding President Obama do their damn job for them.


McCarthy is outnumbered.  She's got an excuse.  But in case you've forgotten, Senator...this hasn't passed the Senate yet, and there are things you yourself can do to stop this thing from happening.  You work within the single most dysfunctional branch of Government.  A Single Senator has the ability to grind any piece of legislation to a halt.  So how about putting a hold on the legislation?  How about organizing a filibuster?


How about you do your damn job before you go bitching to President Obama.

Lawrence O'Donnell: When Obama starts campaigning...watch out! (VIDEO)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The American Jobs Act...this ain't over yet! (VIDEO)

AFSCME: More Jobs Equal Less Debt (VIDEO)

Can't be posted (or seen on TV) enough:

The Fireside Chat for May 20th, 2011 (VIDEO)

Having just given the commencement address at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, which has made inspiring progress in recent years, the President says Congress must replace No Child Left Behind to help all our schools thrive.

Why has the Media abdicated actual Journalism to the Daily Show? (VIDEO)

Remember when Network TeeVee news used to do this?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Worst Responders
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

And the roundtable afterwards:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

I'm not going to bother with the Mike Huckabee portion of the interview, as he seemed more interested in defending (and lying in favor of) Fox News than about the GOP's blocking the bill.

Ezra Klein: The Virgina Judge's ruling is good news for Health Care Reform?

Really?

Hudson's ruling is the third from a district court so far. Previously, Judge Norman Moon found the mandate constitutional, and so too did Judge George Steeh. Both Steeh and Norman were Clinton appointees, which is to say that so far, the rulings are proceeding along predictably partisan lines.

Hudson ruled against the government, but he didn't stop it. He refused the plaintiff's request for an injunction against the legislation's continued implementation. The construction of the bill's infrastructure will continue. And second, he refused to overrule anything but the individual mandate itself.

The real danger to health-care reform is not that the individual mandate will be struck down by the courts. That'd be a problem, but there are a variety of ways to restructure the individual mandate such that it doesn't penalize anyone for deciding not to do something (which is the core of the conservative's legal argument against the provision). Here's one suggestion from Paul Starr, for instance. The danger is that, in striking down the individual mandate, the court would also strike down the rest of the bill. In fact, that's exactly what the plaintiff has asked Hudson to do.

Hudson pointedly refused. "The Court will sever only Section 1501 [the individual mandate] and directly-dependent provisions which make specific reference to 1501." That last clause has made a lot of pro-reform legal analysts very happy.

Remember what I said about Tim Pawlenty?

Never mind:

Although Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at keeping the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act out of the state, he has also approved a budget that encourages state agencies to apply for grants funded by that very same health care law.

Pawlenty's executive order explicitly states, "All executive branch departments and agencies are directed that no application shall be submitted to the federal government in connection with requests for grant funding for programs and demonstration projects deriving from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("PPACA" or "the Act") (Pub.L. 111-148) unless otherwise required by law, or approved by the office of the Governor."

But in Minnesota's Special Session Budget, signed by Pawlenty on May 21, the state health commissioner is directed to apply for grants from this exact law:

Do as I say, not as I said to get a couple of headlines a couple days ago in the interests of my faltering Presidential ambitions.

And yes, I know I just ripped Huffington Post and quoted something from Huffington Post in the space of two postings. I am just Mr. Consistency!

Vanity Fair: "F@#$nutsville..."

From Todd Purdum's new piece in Vanity Fair:

Like many changes that are revolutionary, none of Washington’s problems happened overnight. But slow and steady change over many decades—at a rate barely noticeable while it’s happening—produces change that is transformative. In this instance, it’s the kind of evolution that happens inevitably to rich and powerful states, from imperial Rome to Victorian England. The neural network of money, politics, bureaucracy, and values becomes so tautly interconnected that no individual part can be touched or fixed without affecting the whole organism, which reacts defensively.

And thus a new president, who was elected with 53 percent of the popular vote, and who began office with 80 percent public-approval ratings and large majorities in both houses of Congress, found himself for much of his first year in office in stalemate, pronounced an incipient failure, until the narrowest possible passage of a health-care bill made him a sudden success in the fickle view of the commentariat, whose opinion curdled again when Obama was unable, with a snap of the fingers or an outburst of anger, to stanch the BP oil spill overnight. And whose opinion spun around once more when he strong-armed BP into putting $20 billion aside to settle claims, and asserted presidential authority by replacing General Stanley McChrystal with General David Petraeus. The commentariat’s opinion will keep spinning with the wind.

The evidence that Washington cannot function—that it’s “broken,” as Vice President Joe Biden has said—is all around. For two years after Wall Street brought the country close to economic collapse, regulatory reform languished in partisan gridlock. A bipartisan commission to take on the federal deficit was scuttled by Republican fears in Congress that it could lead to higher taxes, and by Democratic worries about cuts to social programs. Obama was forced to create a mere advisory panel instead.

Four years after Congress nearly passed a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws, the two parties in Washington are farther apart than ever, and hotheaded state legislatures have stepped into the breach. Guantánamo remains an open sore because of fearmongering about the transfer of prisoners to federal prisons on the mainland. What Americans perceive in Washington, as Obama put it in his State of the Union speech, in January, is a “perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side—a belief that if you lose, I win.” His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, whose Friday-afternoon mantra has become “Only two more workdays till Monday!,” sums up today’s Washington in terms both coarser and more succinct. To him, Washington is just “Fucknutsville.”

The Republican Con-job on Health Care

As expected a number of states are suing the Federal Government over the “Individual Mandate” in the Affordable Care Act (aka Health Care Reform), all while they work very hard to collect the money they're suing to...keep from...having to take??

Anybody get all that?

The Conservative position is simple. The Individual Mandate makes people buy Health Insurance, and people shouldn’t have to be forced to buy Health Insurance if they don’t want to.

Here’s the problem with that notion. One of the most popular aspects of Health Care Reform is the provision that forbids Insurance Companies denying you coverage based on Pre-Existing Conditions. This provision is so popular that even Conservobots who voted against the bill say that this is the one thing they agreed with. If the Democrats had just gotten rid of the Individual Mandate, we could have voted for Health Care Reform.

Of course, that’s bull@#$%. One of the hard lessons people learned in the last few years is you cannot have one without the other.


Paul Krugman from back in March:

So what’s the answer? Americans overwhelmingly favor guaranteeing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions — but you can’t do that without pursuing broad-based reform. To make insurance affordable, you have to keep currently healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that everyone or almost everyone buy coverage. You can’t do that without financial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can pay the premiums. So you end up with a tripartite policy: elimination of medical discrimination, mandated coverage, and premium subsidies.


Or to put it another way, you end up with something like the health care plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts in 2006, and the very similar plan the House either will or won’t pass in the next few days. Comprehensive reform is the only way forward.

Of course, as you remember, the reform was passed, and Republicans are campaigning to repeal it.

It’s very simple. Health Care is a complicated machine. Piecemeal reform isn't going to cut it (as Dr. Krugman said). If you wanna do X, then you have to do Y. If you don’t, costs spiral out of control and soon nobody will have Health Insurance (see, Insurance Death Spiral).

Which brings me to Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota, and potential Republican Candidate for President in 2012, doing his damnest to make it impossible to carry his own state.


From Steve Benen:

As implementation of the Affordable Care Act proceeds, the law extends subsidies to states to help early retirees -- folks who leave the workforce before they're eligible for Medicare, but who still want to maintain their coverage. States led by Republicans may claim to hate the new law, but they're nevertheless seeking the funds -- even many of the states trying to kill the ACA in court.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is taking a different route. The increasingly right-wing governor, desperate to pander to the party's base in advance of his presidential campaign, issued an order to state officials yesterday, demanding that they not seek grants through the new law, even if the funding would help the people of his state.

Keep in mind, this isn't some kind of opt-out scheme -- the law still applies to Minnesota, just like every other state. This is a scheme whereby funds are made available to states, and Pawlenty is demanding that Minnesota not seek those resources, at least for now.

Let’s call it what it is. Tim Pawlenty is screwing over the uninsured in his state to burnish his Conservative Credintials in advance of the 2012 race.

What a guy!

Needless to say Doctors in Minnesota are pissed off:

The heads of Minnesota's most influential medical associations -- which nearly always keep political matters at arms' length -- issued a sharp rebuke. "The governor's decision just doesn't make sense for Minnesotans," the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Medical Association said in a joint statement late Tuesday.

But not all Doctors are pissed off, according to Jonathan Chait. Actually, they are pissed off, but for them, not for you:

Hal Scherz, a doctor and president of the right-wing lobby "Docs4PatientCare" writes in today's Wall Street Journal that he and members of his group are posting letters in their waiting rooms warning patients of the horrors of the Affordable Care Act and urging repeal.

This is all real simple.

Republicans don’t give a rats ass about deficits or future costs. Period. All they care about is representing the Corporate Master who has given them a lot of campaign cash. They don’t care about the Health of the Health Care System. It’s broken (but starting to mend thanks to HCR), a fifth of our Citizens can’t access it, but screw ‘em. They should have been born to richer, whiter households. We don’t like President Obama anyway, and this seems as good an excuse as any to rail against him, even if it means lying through our teeth to get the job done.

If you fall for this, America, you'll fall for anything.

We’re about to learn a lot about America in the coming months. I maintain my position that the problem with the country isn’t its Polticans, but its people.

The President signs the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (VIDEO)

The most under-reported story of the year? The President signs a bill that allows the Government to get back lost money paid to dead people, to create a "do-not-pay" list, to go after deadbeat contractors and the like...and the Republicans (you know, the anti-deficit party) are against it?

And how much coverage did this get in the Media, even on Keith?