July 8, 2013

Yeah. MSNBC is just the "liberal" Fox News

Still, why do news outlets spend any time giving any political party advice? That's not their job! Never see anybody give Democrats political advice. Never heard how Democrats could beat Bush/Cheney way back when? Or do they now assume that Democrats are more or less unbeatable now?

July 5, 2013

Crazy how

Regulations are great when it comes to women and "teh gays" (regarding marital rights) but regulating corporations and/or people's guns is TOTALLY out of the question (heresy actually)! Also, remember how Republicans HATE government coming between patients and their doctors? They don't seem to have a problem with...um....getting between patients and their doctors when the patients are women and their doctors are abortion providers. They're all for "religious freedom" when it comes to standing up for the Catholic Church's crusade against government mandated birth control coverage but they don't respect the fact that not everybody employed by the Catholic Church and/or its holding companies is Catholic and/or follows Catholic teachings or even has a moral objection to it. We could literally go on forever when it comes to the contradictions and hypocrisies of the modern day Republican Party......

July 5, 2013

My responses:

1. True, but Snowden has been charged with a crime(s) and still needs to return to stand trial to determine his ultimate status. The US Government has every right to attempt to apprehend and detain him during the legal process we know as a trial. Do you think that they are just going to let him walk? The charges may not stick but that's, once again, for a trial to determine.
2. FALSE! What country are you living in? The US is NOT Soviet-era Russia. The US is NOT Nazi Germany. The US is NOT Iran. The US is NOT North Korea. Those are REAL totalitarian states. Not to say that we don't have some issues (i.e. Gitmo) that need to be resolved but c'mon....
3. Debatable I suppose, though it's not like the CIA and other intelligence agencies were created yesterday and they've always operated covertly (by their very nature they have to). We've managed to retain a democratic society despite them and have been through worse periods of time where government officials actually used intelligence agencies improperly against individuals and other countries. No evidence that things are worse today than they were before in terms of secrecy and we the people can petition Congress to change the laws governing intelligence gathering if and when we want and/or elect new members of Congress to address them.

July 3, 2013

and we're going throw Snowden into Gitmo and torture him as soon as he is caught

at least based on some of the discussions I've seen here recently.


I'm sorry but I didn't realize that we had become a third-world totalitarian dictatorship. Our country ain't perfect but c'mon!

July 3, 2013

and creating more Gosnells as well

What the hell is going on out there???? It's the 21st Century for crissakes! We seem to be moving forward on equality for LGBTs but seem to be falling backwards on racial and economic issues, and Roe V. Wade is being continually chipped away it- to the point that states are pretty much getting to do what they want to make abortion inaccessible if not illegal. And religious organizations/businesses are going to war over religious freedom over birth control?!

July 3, 2013

I hope so

When I saw the headline about this yesterday, I felt more concern about how this would be perceived than relief about 2014. Between this and Baucus' anxiety about implementation of ACA (which he helped largely craft too) being a "trainwreck", my concern would be that further delays, setbacks in implementation would be perceived by people that ACA is in serious trouble, even though most of the problems are being needlessly exacerbated by the Republicans, particularly in the states with teabagger governors/legislatures. While implementation of a new system is always going to be cumbersome and can be difficult, I don't believe that any problems are insurmountable and I can't imagine the new system causing more issues and problems than the previous one. In many respects, I expect it to be better (not perfect yet but better) than what we had before and I can't imagine many people wanting to go back to "the way things were" with pre-existing condition denials and other benefits of the law. I would feel more hopeful about any problems with the implementation being fixed if we had a responsible Congress but, alas, we don't and I've given up hope of that until the Republicans are driven out of the majority in the House. Color me concerned but ever hopeful...........

July 2, 2013

As much as I'm not a fan of Snowden

the damage (in general) that George W. Bush did to the country was pretty severe, starting with the fact that his legitimacy even to occupy the office was immediately suspect for a number of reasons.

FWIW however, I don't think that what Snowden did was great either, particularly in terms of taking it upon himself to decide what kind of information to share with other countries about our clandestine activities.

July 2, 2013

LOL

Yeah, and they got sick of voting on Jobs bills immediately after the 2010 election. Can't worry about jobs when there are religious right-wing nut jobs to pacify! Our governor (Mike Pence) responded to the rulings last week by making clear that we've got to finish passing an anti-gay marriage ban into our state constitution next session as well. They've got to make it crystal clear that they just hate "teh gays"! BTW what is the position on this by GOProud and and Log Cabin Republicans on this initiative?

July 1, 2013

Yeah

stuck here in Indiana. The Democratic Party here had held the line on a lot of things until about 2010 and between 2010 and 2012, the Republicans now have quorum-proof majorities in the Indiana Legislature and have held the Governor's mansions for 3 consecutive elections now. While I didn't really like Daniels, I *really* don't like having Mike Pence for Governor. Amazingly, he nearly lost to a fairly unknown Democrat last year but he still won and we'll have to put up with him for at least 4 years. Where I live (Indy) is fairly progressive and we even got a LGBT non-discrimination ordinance passed awhile back but we lost the Mayor's office a couple of elections ago and we lost our majority on the City-County Council due to the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminating some of the at-large positions, which included mainly Democrats. The one bright shining exception to Republican hegemony was the election of State Superintendent Glenda Ritz this past election but then the Republican-controlled Legislature turned around reduced her powers and gave some of them to the Governor, who happens to be Republican. The Republicans have been working on pro-corporate, "right-to-work", anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood legislation since 2011 (though the PP law, thankfully, got struck down in the courts) and we're teed up for a huge battle over anti-marriage equality amendment next session (presumably, which is likely to get ugly (it has been passed once, it has to be passed by another legislative session and then put on the ballot for referendum).

Support group for "Red State" Duers? Great idea!