The word “genius” gets bandied about in the most disagreeable fashion. When the same term can be applied to Stephen Hawking as well as the latest pop flavor-of-the-month, we’ve reached a point of not being able to discern the genuine article from mere frippery.
However, composer/musician Sufjan Stevens fits the bill. His songs are swirling soundscapes, as informed by pop craft as serious compositional strategies. His lyrics are spare, cutting poems. Every one of his albums is the work of a master; and the frightening thing is that he’s only 38, just entering into fully harnessing his powers.
So, for our evening music chat, a bit of the genius that is Sufjan Stevens.
It is with great dismay that I’ve learned about your joining in the effort to “reform” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Specifically, in allowing consumers to keep insurance policies which no longer meet the standards of the PPACA.
Any cursory review of the matter will show that the insurance companies are behind the effort to scupper the successful implementation of the PPACA. They could have easily informed their customers that their current plans do not meet the requirements of the Act, and worked to provide them with plans which do pass muster. For reference, you can read this investigation published by Talking Points Memo. Insurance companies are cancelling customers’ insurance plans, without informing them of the options available on the health exchanges. Obviously, this is a problem of their own creation, and one which has now exploded into accusations of “broken promises”.
Being the senior Senator from California, a state which has its own health exchange, I’m very saddened that you would lend your name to an effort by frightened red state Democrats to show “independence” from President Obama. The President has always said that he’s open to making the law better. This “reform” would raise insurance premiums for everyone, and encode insurance plans which are near fraudulent into law. This goes directly against the aim of the PPACA, which is to provide everyone in the United States with comprehensive, affordable health care. The plans which the insurance companies are cynically cancelling are far from comprehensive; and while they may be “affordable” in regards to a monthly premium, their high deductibles make them near worthless.
I urge you to reconsider your stance. You are seen as a leader among Democrats in the Senate; you do yourself and the people of California a disservice by lending your name to this effort by colleagues running for the hills. Among my friends and family, we always wonder why Democrats can never stand firm in the face of an assault of lies and disinformation from those on the Right and in the corporate media. As a party, we have a chance to take back the House and increase our majority in the Senate in 2014. This can only happen if we stand firm, and fight lies with truth, rather than “triangulating” against the President. If that happens, 2014 will be another 2010, with grievous consequences for the country.
Please stand with the President in finding a workable fix for a problem brought about by insurance companies. Making the PPACA successful is the surest route to electoral success.
On This Day: President Obama looks at the view from the InterContinental Yokohama Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, Nov. 13, 2010 (Photo by Pete Souza)
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Today (all times Eastern):
10:50: President Obama and VP Biden meet with faith leaders
1:30: Dr Jill Biden delivers remarks at event titled “Improving Veterans’ College Graduation Rates” hosted by Google at the Army and Navy Club in Washington
2:15: Jay Carney briefs the press
3:30: President Obama delivers remarks at the 2013 Tribal Nations Conference at the Department of Interior
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A small group of faith leaders will meet with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and top staffers Valerie Jarrett, Cecilia Munoz and Melissa Rogers today to map strategy to push the GOP-controlled House to pass immigration reform. According to a White House official, here are the faith leaders who will be at the meeting:
· Leith Anderson, President, National Association of Evangelicals
· Eusebio Elizondo, Auxiliary Bishop, Archdiocese of Seattle
· Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland Church, Orlando, FL
· Hyepin Im, President and CEO, Korean Churches for Community Development, Los Angeles, CA
· Mike McClenahan, Senior Pastor, Solana Beach Presbyterian Church, Solana Beach, CA
· Russell Moore, President, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Nashville, TN
· Gabriel Salguero, President, National Latino Evangelical Coalition
Igor Volsky: ‘If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It’ Is Easier Said Than Done
Flooded with news stories and constituent calls from Americans losing their health care plans, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed seemingly easy solutions that they say will allow everyone keep their existing insurance coverage. On Friday, the House will consider such a measure, spearheaded by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). Several Democrats in vulnerable districts are expected to back the effort. On Tuesday, even Bill Clinton threw his support behind the change and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she would vote for similar legislation being introduced in the Senate by Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
But lawmakers who have fought for years to enact a law that expands health care coverage to sick people, overcame almost insurmountable legislative hurdles, and survived a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court, should be wary of supporting measures that take away key consumer protections from millions of Americans and increase costs for millions more.
The truth is, letting everyone in the individual health care market maintain their existing coverage would have real consequences for health care reform.
I think a successful ACA is trying to emerge, through the fog of political war. Do not think the GOP can reverse the process; the policy fundamentals are in place. For me the question is not whether a working ACA will emerge, but when this will be recognized….
…. I, too, worry about the website, the slow enrollment uptake, the GOP onslaught, and their and the MSM’s total assurance that the ACA is and will remain an unmitigated catastrophe. But the facts on the ground tell me that major seeds have been planted, that they will not be dug up, that they will, now planted, grow naturally into a splendid harvest that will not be prevented.
Republicans are making a fatal and permanent mistake in seeking all-out to destroy the ACA with no attempt to replace it with something that could address the same issue of the uninsured.
…. So what is trying to emerge from the fog of political war? A gold mine of help to the poor and the middle class, and to the country’s economy by helping to tame healthcare costs; and this gold mine is the much maligned ACA!
Over the weekend, The Hill published an interesting piece suggesting congressional Republicans, who had been fully committed to repealing the entirety of the Affordable Care Act since its inception, have “shifted their strategy.”
The “pivot,” the article said, was from repealing the health care to law to helping “fix” it through something called the Keep Your Health Plan Act, sponsored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). “The GOP,” The Hill reported, “wants to rebuild its political capital and public credibility by solving ObamaCare’s implementation problems.”
With respect to The Hill, whose reporting I rely on frequently, the piece was a little naive. To think that House Republicans, a month after shutting down the government over a health care law they hate with blinding rage, suddenly want to improve the Affordable Care Act is hard to take seriously. Upton’s Keep Your Health Plan Act is about a partisan game to undermine the law and put Democrats on the defensive – and little else.
Igor Volsky: 6 Reasons Why Obamacare Enrollment Is Going Better Than You Think
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that between 40,000 and 50,000 uninsured Americans signed up for health care coverage in the 36 states where the federal government is running the Obamacare exchanges. But the initial estimate doesn’t tell the whole story about how many people are connecting to coverage. Here is what you need to know about the enrollment figures
More than 500,000 have signed up for insurance overall. Avalere Health, a consulting firm tracking sign-ups, estimates that at least 440,000 people have signed up for Medicaid and another 49,000 people enrolled in coverage in 12 states and the District of Columbia that are operating their own exchanges. Significantly, that state number don’t appear to include enrollment from California, Massachusetts, or Oregon. Thus, all told, more than 529,000 have enrolled in coverage.
Sahil Kapur: Red State Dems Push Reforms That Would Damage Obamacare
A trio of face-saving changes to Obamacare proposed by conservative Democratic senators would do significant damage to the law, according to health policy experts.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) wants to make sure people can keep their insurance plans even if they fail to meet basic benefit standards under Obamacare. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wants to delay by one year the tax penalty for failing to comply with the individual mandate. And ten Democrats want to give people more time to enroll on the exchanges.
“I think each of these [proposals] would be significantly disruptive to the law’s goals,” said Tim Jost, a professor at Washington and Lee University and leading expert on Obamacare.
Sara Kliff: One In 10 Veterans Lacks Health Insurance. Obamacare Could Change That
The Veterans Administration operates the country’s largest health-care system. It has more than 1,700 hospitals and clinics across the country. Doctors there had about 50 million appointments with veterans in 2012. This sweeping system does not, however, cover everyone: One in 10 veterans lacks health insurance.
Haley and Kenney wrote a follow-up paper in March 2013, looking at what the Affordable Care Act would mean for uninsured veterans. They estimate that about 40 percent of uninsured veterans earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty line (about $15,000 for an individual) and would therefore qualify for Medicaid, if their state had opted to expand the program.
The economy is growing much more quickly than expected. Inflation is basically nonexistent. The federal budget deficit has been slashed dramatically. The stock market is reaching all-time highs. One of our long-running wars is over, and the other is winding down. The status of the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and military power is unchallenged.
Last week’s announcement that the U.S.economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the third quarter was stunning. That news was followed by the October employment numbers, which were also promising: a total of 204,000 new jobs. The federal deficit for fiscal 2013 was just $680 billion. That sounds like a lot of money — all right, it is a lot of money — but it’s an incredible 37 percent less than the deficit for fiscal 2012.
If you listen to President Obama’s critics, especially his Republican adversaries on Capitol Hill, you’d think the economy was wheezing its last gasps. But investors obviously disagree, since the Dow closed Monday at a record high — and has nearly doubled since Obama took office. Put simply, money talks.
President Obama signs the Tribal Law and Order Act joined by congressional and tribal leaders at a bill signing ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington on July 29, 2010
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ABC: Tribal Leaders Thank Obama For Redskins Comments
Native American leaders used a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to thank President Barack Obama for wading into the controversy over the Washington Redskins team name and voicing his concern that the nickname was offensive.
Ray Halbritter of the Oneida Nation, which has led efforts to get the National Football League team to change its name, thanked the president for speaking out. Other tribal leaders responded with applause during the meeting in the Roosevelt Room.
In an October interview with The Associated Press, Obama said that if he owned the Redskins he would consider changing the name. He said that while fans get attached to nicknames, nostalgia isn’t a good enough reason to keep a name that offends “a sizable group of people.”
The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn’t actually racist, but “conventional” or “culturally conservative.” Obstructing the right of black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn’t racism, then there is no racism.
Context can not improve this. “Context” is not a safe-word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear. And horse-shit is the context in which Richard Cohen has, for all these years, wallowed. It is horse-shit to claim that store owners are right to discriminate against black males. It is horse-shit to claim that Trayvon Martin was wearing the uniform of criminals. It is horse-shit to subject your young female co-workers to “a hostile work environment.”It is horse-shit to expend precious news-print lamenting the days when slovenly old dudes had their pick of 20-year old women. It is horse-shit to defend a rapist on the run because you like “The Pianist.”
If you’re a conservative strongly opposed to abortion, shouldn’t you want to give all the help you can to women who want to bring their children into the world? In particular, wouldn’t you hope they’d get the proper medical attention during and after their pregnancy? This would seem a safe assumption, which is why it ought to be astonishing that conservatives are positively obsessed with trashing the Affordable Care Act’s regulation requiring insurance policies to include maternity coverage.
Never mind that we who are lucky enough to have health insurance end up paying to cover conditions we may never suffer ourselves. We all want to avoid cancer, but we don’t begrudge those who do get it when the premiums we pay into our shared insurance pools help them receive care.
A week after the 2013 elections, there’s one incredibly close race the political world is watching with great interest: who’ll be Virginia’s new state attorney general?
The vote-counting process ended last night, and as the dust settled, Democrat Mark Herring finished with 163 more votes than Republican Mark Obenshain – out of more than 2.2 million votes cast. Overnight, Herring declared victory.
So, is that it? Of course not. Given the margin, Obenshain has not conceded the race – it stands to reason that if the roles were reversed, Herring wouldn’t concede, either – and a statewide recount is probably inevitable. That, however, can’t begin until these preliminary tallies are certified, and that won’t happen until Nov. 25.
On This Day: President Obama observes the Cybernetic Human Robot prior to the start of the APEC dinner at the Pacifico Yokohama Conference Center in Yokohama, Japan, Nov. 13, 2010
The Obama Diary 
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