The Obama Recovery

Do you remember about 3 weeks after the election, when the wagging right said "This is now Obama's economy", and "it's the Obama bear market"? They laid the blame for the disaster Bush had wrought at his feet? Well, now is the time for them to start giving Obama credit for the subtle but obvious signs that things are getting better and that maybe, just maybe, the stimulus is working. Kind of like a "surge" of the economy.

Employers throttled back on layoffs in July, cutting just 247,000 jobs, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent.

And the DJIA has gone from 6500 earlier this year to above 9200.

Takedowns

CNN's Rick Sanchez takes down a corrupt corporate financier of the fake town hall movement:


Andy Cobb takes down Dana Milbank

Palin: Obama's "death panel" is "evil"

(MSNBC)
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama's health plan "downright evil" Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a "death panel" that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

"Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

This is the type of awful rhetoric, utterly misrepresenting the plan, that is going to get people killed. With the "healthers" storming the gates at town hall meetings in a display of mock outrage - spurred on by the RNC and big health - Palin's beyonf-the-pale remarks add fuel to the fire.

Not content to debate on the merits of the plan - a debate they know they would likely lose - they've decided to ratchet up the tension, scare folks half to death and set in motion forces that they ultimately won't be able to control. At what point will they realize that this is not a game and that they're playing with real people and real lives?

If blood spills, it is firmly on their hands. Of course, the right is already lining up deniability on the issues because they KNOW where it's headed. They want to be able to say "told you so, it's Obama's fault".

"Let me suggest ... if anybody's hurt" at town hall meetings, "this White House has some responsibility for it. If something terrible happens at one of these town hall meetings, I think the president in part can be held accountable." - Mark Levin on Hannity

Thanks grandma!

"Obama's plan is most popular among younger Americans and least popular among senior citizens," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "A majority of Americans over the age of 50 oppose Obama's plan; a majority of those under 50 support it." - CNN

They don't really believe that euthanasia nonsense, do they?

I guess they do.

Grassley: senile, stupid or stoned?

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley attempting to derail health care instead took a hard plunge off the cliff of coherency. Mixing up King Arthur and an Aesop Fable with a dragonslayer tale, he attempts to paint health care as dangerous and ends up making himself like he could use his insurance's nursing home benefit.

Finally, the DNC takes it to the mob mentality

Quotes..... WHAT?

Long ago I said that if liberals said the Earth was round, while conservatives said it was flat, the news headlines would read “Shape of the planet: both sides have a point.” But I encountered a new wrinkle today.
I was tentatively scheduled to be on a broadcast dealing with — well, I won’t embarrass them. But first they had to find someone to take the opposite view. And it turned out that they couldn’t — which led to canceling the whole segment. - Paul Krugman

This move towards staged "balance" is part of what's killing America right now. The idea that there can be a legitimate difference of opinion on some topics just isn't true.

It's why the birthers get airtime. It's why the anti-science/creationist crowd gets treated as if they're not insane. It's why outright liars like Mike Pence are given repeated segments on MSNBC.

It's wrong. and it's illustrated below....

"If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government." —Arthur Laffer on CNN

Number one: are you telling me the government DOESN'T currently run Medicare and Medicaid?

Number two: As Bill Maher said recently, anyone can drop a letter into a blue metal box on the sidewalk and in a couple of days it arrives at the place listed on the envelope. For 44 cents. Off the top of your head, can you name anything that costs 44 cents and actually functions exactly as advertised? (Cesca)

You are a sucker

Stop yelling. Start thinking.

Andrew Sullivan on why health care reform is necessary NOW

If you look at the current house bill with the most steam behind it, this is what the Congressional Budget Office says it will do to costs: “The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8% per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade.”

That means almost no industry will exist in the US in the next decade except healthcare. And that’s because every other industry will go bankrupt trying to pay for it. How does GM compete when it has to pay a medical bill that German car companies largely leave to the government?

Read again: a fiscal conservative is telling us that healthcare will overwhelm almost all of the businesses in America under even the bill with the most juice behind it.

Even WITH a health care reform bill, most businesses will either drop coverage or go out of business by 2020.

But it's not an emergency or anything.

LOUD NOISES! GOPsychosis isn't working

New Gallup numbers on political affiliation.

30 solidly blue states. 354 electoral votes.

4 solidly red. Four. Utah, Wyoming, Alaska and Idaho. 15 electoral votes.

Throw in the leaners. 8 leaning blue adds 86 for a total of 439. 1 leaning red. One. That brings the Republicans to 24.

Look at the shift. VA, IN, OH, KY, MO are all solidly Democratic. FL, GA and TN - Tennessee fer Chris'sakes - are leaning Democratic.

Clear enough for ya? 439-24. The crazy is having the opposite effect.

A Salute to South Carolina

(Huff Post)
It's been a rough couple of years for South Carolinians: Their governor disappeared for a week then admitted to an affair that he wouldn't shut up about, one of their senators quoted Steve Urkel while trying to make a serious political point, their representative to the Miss Teen USA contest gave the dumbest answer in pageant history, one of their GOP activists compared Michelle Obama to a gorilla, and now they've become the poster children for sex with horses.

Fortunately, they have Jon Stewart to show them the bright side of all of this insanity: They're making his job really easy. In a segment saluting the Southern state, Stewart thanked South Carolina for all the fodder it's provided of late, giving its people their rightful place at the comedy table.

Olbermann's Outstanding Special Comment on Health Care

BOMBSHELL: Obama's Kenyan birth certficate found!

THIS is who the birthers are following? No shit?

This pile of cra-da-zy is Orly Taitz. Dentist/lawyer/real estate agent. Really. and she's leading the already debunked fight to make "Barry Soetoro" prove he was born in America.

I don't think anything else needs to be said here. Just watch this video and ask yourself "is this a woman I want to be in any way affiliated with?"

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

America's message to the wingnuts: Slow the f' down!

Oh Snap! Anti-Lou Dobbs ad to appear on Lou Dobbs' show

Media Matters has produced an ad targeting Lou Dobbs tacit support of the birther movement. The ad, which calls for CNN to take the situation more seriously than it has, is set to appear on Tuesday on Dobbs' CNN show, along with Fox and MSNBC.

"It's time for 'The Most Trusted Name in News' to live up to its slogan," the commercial proclaims. "Let CNN know there's nothing 'legitimate' about racially charged paranoia."

GOP Senator Mike Pence repeatedly, blatantly lies on national TV

Republican Senator Mike Pence (IN), chair of the House Republican Caucus, went on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday to talk against the Health Care bill. He told Mitchell that the bill would include $1 trillion in new taxes, most of which would fall squarely on the heads of small business. This is a number with no basis in fact. The CBO has put it at $540 billion. Still a significant sum, but almost half of what Pence is claiming.

Mitchell, in a roundabout way, called him on the number. Pence shrugged it off and kept on going.

As a reward for lying, MSNBC invited him back on the next day, where he repeated the lie.

Host Carlos Watson immediately jumped in. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Watson interjected, "unless you're looking at different data than I'm looking at, I don't remember there being a trillion dollars in new taxes." Pence said he was "rounding up," and then later revised his figure to $800 billion. But Watson wouldn't budge, and neither would Pence:

WATSON: I'm very clear that we are not talking about anywhere close to a trillion or $800 billion in new taxes...so if you've got data from the CBO that suggests that some of the proposals on the table...represent that much in new taxes then that's significant new information. Where are you getting that?

PENCE: Well I don't think that's significant new information I think the estimates we've all been working with from the CBO are in the -- I'm trying to remember -- it's about the $800 billion range in the estimated cost of new taxes.

Mike Pence decided to "round up" (his words) from $540 billion to $800 billion, then go up to one trillion because he felt like it.

This is a guy House Republicans are trusting with anything? It recalls this essay from Matt Yglesias at thinkProgress where he describes Pence as:

And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at.

If cable news networks were run by people with any conscience, any sense of obligation or ethics, they would be treating (Pence) as the joke he is. But of course they aren’t run by people with any conscience or any sense of ethics, so it’s all just treated as another subject for debate.

So is Pence a liar, or just an idiot of immense proportions? Either way, he shouldn't be put out front by the GOP. And even if the GOP is so morally bankrupt as to put him out there, the cable news networks should take some responsibility to put on people of substance, those who won't maliciously repeat debunked lies.

Newsweeks Jonathan Alter on healthcare: It's fine. (not)

Alter talks about his first-person experience with health care as a result of his cancer a few years ago:

I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won't be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners' insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I'd face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That's what you call a "post-existing condition."

Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what's reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.

Yes, the insurance company status quo rocks. I learned recently about something called the "loading fees" of insurance companies. That's how much of every health-care dollar gets spent by insurance companies on things other than the medical care—paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. According to a University of Minnesota study, up to 47 percent of all the money going into the health-insurance system is consumed in "loading fees." Even good insurance companies spend close to 30 percent on nonmedical stuff. Sweet.

The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up! According to the Council of Economic Advisers, it will hit $25,000 per family by 2025. The sourpusses who want health-care reform say that's "unsustainable." Au contraire.

And then points out the hypocrisy of the whole situation:

I'm with that woman who wrote the president complaining about "socialized medicine" and added: "Now keep your hands off my Medicare." That's the spirit!