Mad_Machine76
Mad_Machine76's JournalGrover Norquist set the bar for the Republican candidate for POTUS this year
in terms of suggesting that all the Republican Party needs is somebody to sign the stuff that Paul Ryan and other Republican *luminaries* crank out of Congress. In that respect, Mitt Romney is clearly that guy. He clearly has no bold ideas, policies, or vision for his candidacy and will say or do whatever people in the party want him to do or say. He will eagerly be "President Autopen" if it means he gets to sit in the Oval Office. Other than just wanting to add being POTUS to his trophy case and he and Ann feeling that it's "his turn" to be POTUS, I really have no clue whatsoever why he's running for POTUS or what he'll bring to the country. I wouldn't ordinarily be worried about such a person running for POTUS except for the fact that approximately 30% of the population will vote for him for no other reason than the fact that he is not Barack Obama.
LOL +1
Yes they do. Almost like "the most liberal" Senator, Congressman, Governor, etc. I remember that Fox News awarded Kerry that particular title in 2004 and then Obama in 2008 in coverage that was almost identical.
Kind of hard to argue that he wasn't
He's tangled himself up again. The way I see it is that if people don't buy health insurance, they are essentially just paying "dues" to help keep the system operating for everybody else. 
They made a good point
Santorum and Gingrich were the "red meat" ideological candidates. They would've lost by huge margins running against President Obama but they would have been at least consistently bad. However, despite my earlier reservations about Romney being the GOP's candidate (I thought that he would be able to be seen as an acceptably "moderate" candidate) I'm perfectly satisfied to have Mitt as their candidate. He is simply too compromised, both by his past record (i.e. Romneycare) and his need (and inability) to pander simultaneously to the indies and moderates he will need to win and the teabaggers he can't risk offending either. His campaign has become one ginormous gordian knot that he and the Republican Party has him tied up in and I rather doubt that he will be able to extricate himself from it in time to win in November.
Now that he claims that ACA imposes a tax
(albeit only those whom can afford but choose not to purchase insurance), he's fessed up to doing it himself in addition to looking confused and incompetent by stepping on his own campaign spokesperson. Look for the spokesperson to find himself unemployed very soon. After all, Romney loves firing people!!!
You asked
so, I'm going to answer: YES! Just think how Palin energized the wignuts in the last election. It didn't win them the election, of course, mostly because her obvious lack of experience/qualifications (and the blunder of the McCain campaign nominating her in the first place) scared a lot of indies and moderate Republicans right into the Obama camp. Their (dis-)regard for the rights and basic humanity of women and their "war on women" has been going on for a long time but it hasn't been until 2011 that they've been able to actually pass a whole lot of crazy stuff (i.e. transvaginal probes and the like). Any woman whom would be swayed to vote for Romney simply if he chooses a female candidate..................
Does the Birth Control coverage rule still go into effect in August as scheduled?
or is it now being held up with litigation?
I haven't heard much about this issue since President Obama came up with his compromise that seemed to appease a lot of Catholic organizations. Not all of them, of course, since I believe that there is some pending litigation but is there some kind of injunction against the rule or will it move forward while the litigation is pending? Anybody know?
That's good
but Rand Paul's comment about something not necessarily being constitutional "just because SCOTUS said so" was completely OTT in terms of it's abject stupidity and indifference. People like Rand Paul and Ron "I don't care about Cancer patients" Johnson demonstrate why we need to treat Senate elections even more seriously than House elections since they get SIX WHOLE YEARS to not only showcase their stupidity but also to do a LOT of damage (Paul's become a particularly proud obstructionist in the Senate). 
Republicans need to suck it up and start helping (real) PEOPLE!
This was inspired by an earlier thread about Governor Chris Christy (R-obviously) complaining (i.e. making excuses) about implementing the Medicaid expansion that is part of ACA. I have become so very tired of Republicans endlessly complaining about how Democratic proposals meant to help improve people's lives are somehow difficult to implement, impractical, or somehow unworkable and then they just shrug their shoulders and give up on the idea of helping people entirely just because they act like it's "difficult" and don't want to make the time or the effort to come up with an alternative solution.
They tell us how horrible ACA is supposed to be but they have no alternative plan for everybody to consider. They drag their feet and try to obstruct progress on social reforms or basically any kind of reform that helps people because they complain about an aspect or two about proposed legislation but don't offer any alternative suggestions. They simply tell us it's too expensive, too difficult and demand that it just be scrapped and never discussed. There are no attempts to work with Democrats to try to find a solution to their concerns with their legislation, no attempts to amend it. They usually want to "kill the bill" and demagogue anything the Democrats want to do to help people to death at the polls so that they can get more power and help the people THEY want to help instead (often pretending that THEY are the ones sticking up for "the little guy"
.
The only conclusion I can reach is that they simply don't care about anybody whom isn't (enough) like them and/or doesn't contribute to their campaigns IMHO. How do I know this, you may ask? Well, if you compare how much they not only drag their feet and bemoan the difficulty of helping other people whom are less fortunate than them but also actively work to obstruct any kind of social reform to how they practically bowl everybody else over to enact tax cuts for the wealthy, decrease/eliminate regulations on corporations (their kind of "people" , bust public sector unions, add more money to the Pentagon budget, etc, it should be pretty obvious to anybody that they are smart and/or crafty enough to figure out how to get things done for some people but apparently not others. It's not that there are simply no solutions to fixing social/economic/political problems other than to admit defeat and prepare (most of) us for a bleak(er) future but rather a complete lack of willingness (mostly on their part) to work with others to find reasonable and common-sense solutions to complex problems.
Yeah but Switzerland is undoubtedly under the control of a socialist dictatorship
Oh wait a minute, the Heritage Foundation rates them higher than the US in terms of economic freedom. How did they manage that AND have a similar health care plan like ACA?
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Name: Mara Alis ButlerGender: Female
Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Home country: USA
Current location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Member since: Sat Feb 28, 2004, 01:13 AM
Number of posts: 24,412
