Month: July 2012
Huntsman to Skip GOP Convention
I will not be attending this year’s convention, nor any Republican convention in the future, until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States — a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits… I encourage a return to the party we have been in the past, from Lincoln right on through to Reagan, that was always willing to put our country before politics.
— Former primary candidate Jon Huntsman, telling the Salt Lake Tribune why he’s not going to Tampa.
Gov. Romney on Poor Job Growth in Massachusetts: ‘To Suggest That Somehow the Day I Got Elected, Jobs Should Have Immediately Turned Around, Well, That Would Be Silly’
[When] Romney himself was running a government, in his case the state of Massachusetts, he was even more defensive about his lack of control of the employment picture than Obama is today. A new video unearthed by the liberal research group American Bridge shows Romney at a press conference in June 2006 admonishing reporters on disappointing jobs data. “You guys are bright enough to look at the numbers. I came in and the jobs had been just falling right off a cliff, I came in and they kept falling for 11 months,” he explains.
“And if you are going to suggest to me that somehow the day I got elected, somehow jobs should have immediately turned around, well that would be silly. It takes awhile to get things turned around. We were in a recession, we were losing jobs every month,” he added.
Obamacare Includes a Major Tax Cut for Middle-Class Families – Infographic
Center for American Progress:
Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act will give millions of middle-class families large tax credits to make health insurance more affordable. In size and scope these tax credits far outstrip the shared responsibility payments [i.e., the Heritage Foundation-invented mandate] paid by the tiny percentage of Americans who will voluntarily turn down affordable health insurance.
Only 1.2 percent of Americans will pay this penalty, and they are people who do not already have insurance and choose not to purchase coverage, even though they can afford the cost. Other taxpayers will have to continue to subsidize care for these people if they get sick, but the share responsibility penalty will help offset some of this expense. The bottom line is that the Affordable Care Act is a major tax cut for the middle-class.
See below:
The Root of Mitt Romney’s Comfort with Lying: His Mormon Faith
From the series “Republicans on the Couch” by Justin Frank, M.D., at Time Magazine:
I found myself discussing this situation [Romney’s ability to lie with ease] with several colleagues, and we agreed that Romney doesn’t lie. Let me repeat: Mitt Romney doesn’t lie. He is telling the truth as he sees it — and truth it is, the facts notwithstanding. This is not simply a case of Hamlet arguing about point of view, saying, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is about a conflict between evidence and faith. There is a long tradition in the Mormon belief system in which evidence takes second place to faith. Examples abound, as when two Mormon elders who were questioned about the inconsistency in passages from the Book of Mormon said, “We know the Book of Mormon is true and that it contains the Word of God even in the face of evidence that appears contradictory,” according to The Mormon Missionaries by former Mormon Janice Hutchison. Thus there are no lies, only faith-based certainty that translates as truth for which no apology is needed, since what was said was not a lie.
There Is Such a Thing as a Particle Physics Joke
A Higgs Boson particle walks into a church. The priest says, “You’re not welcome here!” And the particle says, “But wait! You can’t have mass without me!”
— Anonymous
There’s No Such Thing As Not Paying for the Uninsured’s Healthcare
We don’t have a “deficit” problem. We have a “we already pay for each other’s health care in the dumbest way” problem.
LOLGOP’s post on Facebook as rightwing outrage over the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act goes on and on. Since 1986, when Pres. Ronald Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, uninsured people were required treatment if they went or were taken via ambulance to a hospital emergency room.
Does It Matter?
John Roberts refused to wield his judicial axe,
Giving Republicans apoplectic attacks.
Now the question’s become
Something especially dumb:
Is the health care mandate a penalty or is it a tax?
