On Thursday, Mitt Romney gave a speech about health care reform where he actually lied about his support of a national mandate. Since the tea bagger GOP members hate the mandate, Romney is lying about supporting it back in 2007 to try and make them like him. Kind of like Donald Trump being a birther or Newt Gingrich running for President.
In 2007 Romney said:
HR 3 passes – raises taxes, still no jobs, thanks GOP
When the Republicans won back the House of Representatives, they did it by campaigning about JOBS JOBS JOBS, yet just as I knew they would they instead decided to start by attacking women. One way was by passing HR 3 (aka No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act) on Tuesday. This bill not only prevents federal money being spent on abortions it also goes much further and redefines what is your money and what is the government’s money.
The House of Representatives just passed H.R. 3, the controversial abortion-funding law that pro-choice critics and the White House has said will make it harder for woman to pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
The passage was expected, considering 227 members signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. The final vote was 251-175. Sixteen Democrats and 235 Republicans voted aye. The full rollcall vote is here.
Not only does the bill ban federal funds to pay for abortions, and redefines rape to remove that from reasons to use federal funds for an abortion, it also changes what is meant by “Your money”:
In order to make their “no taxpayer funding for abortion” scheme work, Republicans use H.R. 3 to disallow tax deductions for your health care expenses if your private insurance plan covers abortion. Not if you actually get an abortion. And not if a member of your family does. All it takes for you to see your taxes hiked is if the private insurance plan you selected and paid for with your own money permits coverage of abortion at all. For anyone. Even if you never get one and never plan to. If you bought a plan that agrees to cover abortion if someone else totally unrelated to you needs one, then you lose eligibility for any tax deductions for the cost of your insurance, and your tax bill shoots up. Republicans take your cash, because you agreed to buy a plan that might someday pay for someone else’s abortion.
That’s right. The cheap labor conservatives will raise your taxes to make sure no one gets an abortion – even if you pay for it yourself.
As David Waldman continues:
Yes, it’s the government’s prerogative to favor or disfavor certain activities using the tax code. But of course, just last month, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing went out of its way to preserve state tax breaks for donations made to funds that underwrite religious school tuition in Arizona by holding that tax credits aren’t “government spending.” And yet now, here are Congressional “conservatives” insisting that they are. And that since money is fungible, that means every dollar you have might be in your wallet only by virtue of a tax credit. Which means the government can keep every dollar you have on a string, telling you you can’t spend it on things they don’t like, or else they’ll raise your taxes for making them mad.
AND the GOP went ape shit over something called a “Medicine cabinet tax” after the Affordable Health Care for America Act passed.
As my friends and I say IOKIYAR!
It’s OK If You’re a Republican.
The Real Story of Thanksgiving and Socialism
A friend of mine posted a story of the “A Lost Thanksgiving Lesson” told by FOX “news” talking head John Stossel. He claims that because the colony tried to operate as a commune there was a famine and so to save the colony the Pilgrims ditched socialism. Like most Libertarian fantasies, Stossel’s story is 99.9999999% made up.
Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn’t happen.
Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.
The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.
That’s why they nearly all starved.
When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.
The real history tells a different tale:
Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common — William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the “common course.” But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.
“It was directed ultimately to private profit,” said Richard Pickering, a historian of early America and the deputy director of Plimoth Plantation, a museum devoted to keeping the Pilgrims’ story alive.
The arrangement did not produce famine. If it had, Bradford would not have declared the three days of sport and feasting in 1621 that became known as the first Thanksgiving. “The celebration would never have happened if the harvest was going to be less than enough to get them by,” Mr. Pickering said. “They would have saved it and rationed it to get by.”
The first Thanksgiving or harvest feast was held in 1621 not 1623. The Native Americans were invited because they helped support the colony with food and teaching them how to grow their crops in New England during their first year when half the colonists died.
So socialism did save the colony and the Libertarians/Tea Party/Conservatives are full of stuffing – and not the good kind.
Early thoughts on 2010 Election results
The 2010 election is not official but it looks like a bad night for Democrats both nationally and here in Ohio. The economy was part of the reason – people out of work – blame the party in power. I have some other thoughts on it.
It looks like the GOP will be sweeping all the offices in Ohio but at this hour Governor is still too close to call.
MSNBC had some exit poll info that showed the main reason for turning out the Democrats was JOBS JOBS JOBS. Anger at the government (the Tea party argument) was only 24%.
Genius Chris Matthews asks maybe if the Democrats had forced the GOP to fight for their ideas instead of letting them obstruct real economy recovery solutions and financial reform the results might have been different.
You think Chris??? Duh! Where have been for two years?
Lawrence O’Donnell was upset that the dirty hippies hurt Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas in the end.
No Larry, Blanche hurt herself being a blue dog Democrat and throwing labor under the bus.
The only good thing is now the GOP has their chance to try to govern. Good luck to them and may heaven help us all. They have been saying “No!” for so long they don’t have any real idea what they will do to “give us jobs”.
A good spin I would put on it is like a close football game. It is 21 to 20 with 3 minutes left in the game.
Your team is behind and is driving down the field. You end up scoring a field goal to move ahead 23-21 but there is 2 minutes left in the game.
Commentators usually ask “Did you score too soon?”
What then sometimes happens is the other team drives down close enough to kick a field goal and ends up winning 24-23.
In my world the GOP is the team that scored too soon since the 2012 election counts more than 2010.
We will see.
One note is that the GOP is not winning as many seats as they did in 1994 when the economy was not as bad as now.
Couple of false assumptions about the “Rally to Restore Sanity”
I spent Saturday afternoon watching the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and enjoyed it for the most part. But reading some of the tweets from the pundit class showed some of them missed the point. The only problem I had with it, is the idea that the political insanity comes from both sides equally. That’s a false equivalency.
People like David Corn and Talking Point Memo’s Brian Beutler seemed under the wrong impression that the rally was a GOTV rally and complained throughout that no one on stage mentioned voting. Mainstream media outlets also assumed it was a partisan political rally because they tripped over themselves to ban their employees from attending or participating in it.
Jon Stewart made clear that it was a comedy show to point out the problem of our current rancid political debate in the country not a GOTV show. It was definitely not partisan.
While I do agree that we need more civility, the rancid aggressiveness is one sided and the side that is most aggressive is the Tea Party/GOP side. They need to tone down thousands of percent more than those on the left side.
That is where Stewart is naive. There are two (or more) points of view but NOT all are equally valid. Most from the right are based on complete lies.
I agree we should work on toning down the rhetoric but progressives and others on the left side should NEVER drop our guard and hope and pray the right joins us in working together. That’s why the President and the Democrats are going to take a hit on election day.
How many times do we need to be beat up before people like Stewart get it?