health care reform

Saturday night House Republicans passed 248-174 a repeal of a medical device tax as part of the CR that threatens to shut down the government. They are demanding a one year delay to the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of the medical device tax.

Martin County won't care... They love Rand Paul there anywayRepublicans just can't help themselves when it comes to their latest bout of nihilism-- the fake battle to "defund" the Affordable Care Act and deny health insurance to millions of Americans. It's not just their instinctual hatred for minorities and poor people. It's a business model.

The GOP-- or at least the Ted Cruz/Teabagger wing of the Republican Party-- seems determined to run on a platform of repealing Obamacare next year. Polls show something between a quarter and a third of Americans embrace that position. The problem, for the Republican Party, is that all of the embracers are GOP primary voters.

The vast majority of Americans, when polled, oppose defunding ObamaCare, including people who oppose the law for one reason or another.

Workers too now?I think of Trader Joe's as the big grocery story less than 5 minutes my house with good prices on organic blueberries, pomegranate seeds and boxes of 1.5 liter bottles of Fiji Water. Erewhon, where I do most of my grocery shopping, has a better selection of the healthy foods I want but is half an hour away and is slightly more expensive on most products.

Last month we looked at how an unabashedly right-wing, anti-immigration Republican can win in a swing district with a pretty heavy Hispanic population. We're talking about New Mexico's gigantic 2nd district and multimillionaire extremist Stevan Pearce. The last Democrat who Pearce defeated, a one-term incumbent, was nearly as conservative as Pearce.

Fred Upton represents a blue-leaning district in western Michigan that Obama won 53-45% in 2008 and lost to Romney by a handful of votes. The biggest county in the 6th district, by far, is Kalamazoo. Upton only got 49% of the vote there last year (same as his under-funded opponent).

I honestly never understood why the Beltway media-- all of it-- insists on calling far right extremists "conservatives," when they are obviously reactionaries and not conservative at all. John McCain, Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski are mainstream conservatives.

From the beginning of the Republic, the kind of conservative assholes who now call themselves Tea Partiers-- but were originally known as Loyalists or Tories and took up arms against the Patriots who fought the Revolutionary War-- were not just willing, but eager to see democratic government die. And they still are today. In the video above between mainstream conservative Aaron Schock and his constituents, including more than a few brainless teabaggers, the 'baggers demand that Schock commit to voting against any bill that includes funding for the Affordable Care Act.

Hanabusa and the crooked husband have their sites set on the U.S. SenateTuesday afternoon we looked at what a mistake it is to compromise ideals with craven corporate interests and the political hacks they finance.