

Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
According to Think Progress and this chart from Kaiser Health, more than 40% of Americans still do not know that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is the law of the land. 4-0. Forty. Even though it’s been around for three years and counting.
We can see the talking heads on the right have done their job well, because 12% thought Congress repealed Obamacare. They must be Michele Bachmann fans. And 7% think the Supreme Court overturned it, even though their decision was so well-publicized, although maybe they hung on to CNN getting that so embarrassingly wrong too (“too” referring to how they mangled the Boston Marathon bombing story).
So, despite all the endless media coverage to the contrary, America doesn’t get it. Or hear it. Or see it. Or read it:
Kaiser found that Americans’ education gaps fall along class lines, as wealthier Americans are more likely to have heard something about health care reform from newspapers, radio, or online sources. Just 30 percent of those with lower incomes reported that they had received information about Obamacare from those sources. [...]
The good news, as Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff points out, is that there’s still some time to change the tide. Obamacare’s new health care options still won’t be available for another seven months, and some health care advocates point out that it might be confusing to tout a product that isn’t accessible yet.
House Republican leaders couldn’t muster up enough votes to revamp part of the Affordable Care Act this week, a proposal Democrats opposed. Republicans had to pull the bill.
One veteran Republican lawmaker said this about putting it to a vote in the first place:
“They’ve lost their minds.”
Took him this long to figure that out?
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) were at odds over the bill, and yes, they lost their minds years ago.
A number of high-ranking Republican lawmakers close to the whip operation told The Hill, on the condition of anonymity, that there has been a “disconnect” with leadership lately.
Unless rectified, that disconnect could hamper Republican efforts to go toe-to-toe with President Obama on raising the debt ceiling. [...]
When House GOP leaders schedule floor votes on legislation and then are forced to retreat, the party loses political leverage. That happened when Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) couldn’t pass his “Plan B” bill during the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations late last year.
Boehner’s fingerprints aren’t on the GOP ObamaCare measure, which some critics on the right have dubbed “CantorCare.”
CantorCare. Now that’s funny.
Cantor has been thinking nationally, but many conservatives in gerrymandered districts are thinking locally. They don’t want to get primaried, so they do everything they can to please voters back home.
But back to that pesky “disconnect”:
“[Cantor and Boehner] didn’t listen to the whip who [has] said they didn’t have the votes for this. They brought it up, then they whipped it, then they lost. This is like the fourth time they’ve done this where they underestimate when the whip’s said, ‘We don’t have the votes for this,’ ” a senior GOP lawmaker told The Hill.
Gee, Republicans failed to listen? Who’da thunk it?
Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
Sometimes I get so frustrated and/or disheartened and/or annoyed by some of the news stories of the day that I can’t bring myself to write about them. Here are a few recent reports that made my blood pressure hit the roof. I am avoiding delving into them at length out of concern for my physical and mental health.
Actually, I did write about one of them: Gun background check plan fails in Senate 54-46. Here are statements from NRA, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and VIDEO: #Newtown parent, Obama on failure to pass gun violence law: “Gun lobby & its allies willfully lied about the bill.”
Here are the others that drove me to drink:
See what I mean? So who’s up for a couple of Margs or a trough of wine?
From our good friend @anomaly100 at FreakOutNation:
The main opposition to Obamacare comes from Southern states, including from Governors who lead some of the nation’s poorest and unhealthiest states. It’s a GOP trend. We see the same thing happening with badly needed clinics being forced by Republicans to close down in rural areas in Southern States, even in states where Planned Parenthood does not offer abortion services, yet those same states have the highest teenage pregnancy rates. The reasoning behind this is a strong distrust of Obama, mostly from areas that supported the Tea Party, where the President was tagged a Muslim- Atheist-Socialist -Marxist. (It’s not as if we didn’t notice.)

Gov. Nikki Haley said in contrast to Republicans deciding to implement Obamacare in their state, “Not in South Carolina, she said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. “We will not expand Medicaid on President Obama’s watch. We will not expand Medicaid ever.”
More at FreakOutNation
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