Obamacare: The Single Most Important Anti-Smoking Initiative

Michael Hiltzik (Los Angeles Times)

by Desertflower

Did you know that the Affordable Care Act may be the single most important anti-smoking initiative in the country?

Of course not. That’s because Obamacare’s supposed friends, the Democrats, have been too craven to talk about its benefits, while its enemies, the Republicans, want only to depict it as a “disaster” without addressing its many provisions.

“If the ACA’s tobacco-cessation provisions are fully implemented, they could turn out to be one of its greatest legacies.”

– Tim McAfee, et al, New England Journal of Medicine

But the New England Journal of Medicine in its latest issue sets the record straight. The authors, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Wisconsin, point out that the poor uptake of smoking cessation programs has much to do with their expense and the only spotty coverage by health insurance plans. They say ACA makes this coverage mandatory, without co-pays, cost sharing, or the requirement that doctors get prior authorization from insurers before prescribing. (See accompanying graphic.)

The anti-smoking initiative is just one of many provisions of the ACA that are little-known but likely to have a significant impact on Americans’ health. That underscores the fatuousness of much of the anti-Obamacare campaign. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expresses glee at the prospect that the Supreme Court may yet “take down” the law because he doesn’t like anything that has President Obama’s name on it, these are the babies he’s willing to throw out with the bathwater.

Under the ACA, the NEJM authors write, smoking cessation must be treated as one of the preventive services that private health plans are required to cover without cost-sharing or prior authorization.

THIS INFURIATES ME!! Not this wonderful provision, but the glee at which people like McConnell and other Republicans hope that this signature and historic achievement for the American people, gets gutted! FOLLOW THE FUCKING MONEY….these RWNJ’s care nothing about people. they never did. Never will. They care about money and access and greed…and sucking every last breath from ordinary people just so they can have even MORE! Because to them, this is a win/lose game. If you win, THEY LOSE…and we can’t have that now, can we? Rather than we all want the best for ALL Americans, they don’t subscribe to this. Not even close.

Why do I say this? What the blue fucking blazes set ME off?? I was a smoker. I smoked for 38 years of my life and i loved it and hated it. I was killing myself slowly and I felt guilty as sin for forking over more and more murder money for the tobacco company every time I wanted to feed my addiction. I knew it was bad..I wanted to stop but I was so afraid…thinking of how hard it would be…or gaining some weight…or, or, or…the days went to weeks, weeks to months, months to years and I somehow excused myself. I was a “polite” smoker. Never in my car. Never in the house, Never around those that didn’t smoke. There were never ashtrays all over the place, overflowing with the cancerous remains….I was a one ashtray girl and cleaned up after myself. In fact, I got so good at this deceit, that most people had no idea I smoked at all. But I knew. I was ashamed and embarrassed to be so beholden to this toxic mess. Did you know that these tobacco companies but in things like oven cleaner, DDT and a shit ton of awful, awful stuff. (Cigarette Ingredients)

But look here ( from this piece)

The CDC estimates that about 42 million Americans, or 18% of all adults, are smokers. The highest rate belongs, as it happens, to McConnell’s home state of Kentucky, at 28.3%.

The ACA takes special aim at the Medicaid population. That’s wise, because smoking in the U.S. is especially prevalent among lower-income groups. The law makes no-fee smoking cessation programs and medications a part of Medicaid for new enrollees in those states that have accepted Medicaid expansion, prohibits states from excluding smoking medications from traditional Medicaid, and requires smoking cessation coverage for pregnant women in traditional Medicaid. That’s key, because 20% of pregnant women on Medicaid use tobacco, according to a 2012 study by researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.

Mitch McConnell would be SO FINE with the people of KY continuing to kill themselves! Continuing to give the tobacco companies money they really don’t have to spend….THIS is what makes me livid!

I have to tell you what made me stop. My son. My son and the perfect storm of his pleading and my readiness to take responsibility for my health and no longer making excuses. I need to tell you something else. It wasn’t hard. After 38 years…it wasn’t hard. I chose to vape my way off nicotine for good and I literally weaned myself off nicotine in about 3 months. None of the side effects that we all worry about…just relief and me being proud of myself and feeling better than anyone can imagine.

So when I see just how far these people (I use that term loosely) would go to have this all go away, AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT! I want to scream.

America needs to Wake Up…those that feel “guilty” for voting for Republicans because they ” always have”…need to take a cold shower, admit they fucked up badly, and vow to be smarter and more aware in 2 more years. This is UNSAT. Unsatisfactory. Unacceptable. Unfuckingbelieveable that people could ever take pleasure in other people’s pain or want to keep them doing the very things that hurt them and not let them be better or flourish for the rest of their good long lives.

THIS is what pissed me off tonight. That these people hate this President and the American people SO MUCH, they would hope for the demise of something that would help people stop smoking.

If this doesn’t anger you into stopping, into thinking, into honest evaluation of so many things….I don’t know what will. This says they care NOTHING about you.

Your move.

a ghoulishly good evening

Original video here

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First Lady Michelle Obama waits with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg in the Green Room of the White House before making remarks to the White House Historical Association, Oct. 31. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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This is excellent:

GOPolitico: Anchors from nine local television affiliates will spend a day behind the scenes at the White House on Tuesday, meeting with top officials and getting brief individual interviews with President Obama before broadcasting evening newscasts from the South Lawn.

“Live from the White House” is a 21st-century update to the “radio row” tradition, which brought talk-show hosts to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to interview West Wing officials going from microphone to microphone during their drive-time shows.

The White House is building risers on the South Lawn for the evening newscasts, which are being spread out by time zones – three from the East, two from Central, one from Mountain and two from Pacific.

The anchors will get to ask White House press secretary Jay Carney a question during the daily press briefing; have lunch with senior adviser David Plouffe; interview a White House staffer from each station’s home market; get an on-camera tour with a White House curator; and tour the White House kitchen garden with Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and policy adviser.

The ringmaster is Josh Earnest, principal deputy White House press secretary, who said the mission is “to increase interest and raise the profile of the president’s efforts to strengthen the economy and create jobs in local communities across the country, and explain to Americans how their communities will benefit from the president’s agenda.”

The stations and their anchors will be from Portland, Ore. (KGW, NBC, Tracy Barr); Phoenix (KSAZ, Fox, John Hook); Denver (KUSA, NBC, Adele Arakawa); Minneapolis (WCCO, CBS, Amelia Santaniello); Houston (KTRK, ABC, Dave Ward); Omaha (KETV, ABC, Rob McCartney); Tampa (WTVT, Fox, Mark Wilson); Hampton Roads (WAVY, NBC, Tom Schaad); and Philadelphia (WPVI, ABC, Brian Taff). A 10th participant will be Nikole Killion, representing Hearst stations.

“The highlight of the day will be an opportunity to briefly interview the President from the Cabinet Room about the American Jobs Act,” Earnest said. “The anchors will also interview Cabinet secretaries … about how the bipartisan proposals included in the president’s American Jobs Act would create jobs in their community and put money in the pocket of every single American worker and small business owner.”

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Also tomorrow: The President has a ceremony at which he’ll sign a proclamation – which the White House will identify later tonight …  discusses legislative strategy with House Democratic Leaders ….. welcomes the crew of the final space shuttle mission to the Oval Office ….. The First Lady holds a Let’s Move event for children In New Orleans and does fundraisers in New Orleans and Houston ….  On Wednesday the President will push for $60 billion in new spending in an 11:25 am ET speech in front of the Key Bridge at Georgetown’s Waterfront Park in Washington, DC.

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AP: President Barack Obama is in excellent health and tobacco free, his doctor said Monday in the results of the president’s second physical exam since taking office.

In the two-page report released by the White House, Dr. Jeffrey C. Kuhlman also said Obama is physically active, eats a healthy diet, stays at a healthy weight, and on occasion drinks alcohol in moderation.

“The president is in excellent health and ‘fit for duty’,” Kuhlman wrote. “All clinical data indicate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency.”

….. The president is 6-foot-1 and weighs 181.3 pounds, according to the report. His blood pressure was recorded at 107 over 71, up from 105 over 62 in February 2010, but still well within the normal range.

…. The president also has “periodic physical therapy” to deal with recurrent upper right back pain, and he had benign skin tags removed from his neck.

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Eugene Robinson: Responding to his insurgent campaign’s first crisis, Herman Cain was upbeat and defiant. “To quote my chief of staff and all the people around this country, ‘Let Herman be Herman,’ ” he said Monday. “And Herman is gonna stay Herman.”

I was afraid of that.

Cain’s policy positions range from the ignorant to the unworkable to the just plain goofy – and yet he is running first or second in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination. He trumpets his utter lack of government experience as a selling point and boasts of not knowing foreign leaders’ names. If through some bizarre series of events he were actually elected president, the result would surely be an unmitigated disaster.

It’s not yet clear whether this remote possibility has been made even more unlikely by reports that Cain faced allegations of sexual harassment from two female employees when he headed the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

…. He needs to answer more questions about the alleged harassment …. I hope he does, because we’re running out of bandwidth. Cain’s famous “9-9-9” tax plan would be ruinous. He wants to privatize Social Security. He believes that “extensive foreign policy experience” is not something a president needs, since when he was named chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, “I had never made a pizza – but I learned.”

So many reasons to oppose this loopy candidacy, so little time.

Full article here

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😆 – thank you Marlz

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Nothing more to say

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rise and shine – it’s friday

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AJC: Pushing a campaign to act without Congress, President Barack Obama will announce on Friday two more executive actions on the economy, both of them small steps intended to give a boost to businesses.

The moves cap a week in which Obama has sought to employ the power of his office as he struggles to make headway on his jobs bill on Capitol Hill.

Obama is directing government agencies to shorten the time it takes for federal research to turn into commercial products in the marketplace. The goal is to help startup companies and small businesses create jobs and expand their operations more quickly.

On the other front, Obama is calling for creation of a centralized online site, to be known as BusinessUSA, for companies to easily find information on federal services. The site is to be up and running within 90 days and will be designed with input from U.S. businesses.

Obama is announcing both steps in presidential memos to be released Friday morning, according to administration officials.

More here

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Washington Post: The U.S. economy grew at its fastest clip in a year during late summer as consumers and businesses shrugged off fears of a new recession, according to government data released Thursday that helped drive the stock market to its best day since August.

Investors were also cheered by overnight news that European leaders have reached an agreement on how to address their continent’s debt crisis, and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index ended the day up 3.4 percent. European markets were up even more sharply, with the German Dax index up 5.3 percent.

The agreement in Europe still has many details to be filled in, and the 2.5 percent pace of U.S. economic expansion in the third quarter isn’t enough to bring unemployment down quickly, even if it is sustained. But on both sides of the Atlantic, the news on Thursday offered a sense of relief: Maybe the world isn’t falling apart after all.

Full article here

National Journal: On the surface, it seems surprising that the U.S. economy nearly doubled its growth in the third quarter.

July brought tense debt-ceiling negotiations and threat of a government default. In August, a top credit ratings agency cut the United States’ top AAA rating. Concerns over European sovereign debt seeped into the U.S. and grew in September as the situation across the Atlantic appeared to be rapidly unraveling. Congress announced no major steps to fix the economy and the weak housing and labor markets treaded water.

But on Thursday, the Commerce Department announced that gross domestic product grew by 2.5 percent during that time, up from just 0.9 percent in the first half of the year.

While 2.5 percent GDP growth hardly signals boom times, it seems to fly in the face of those major headwinds. But economists say it reflects a gradual climb out of recession rather than a rapid shift in the country’s fortune.

…. The good news is that the third quarter shared many of the same uncertainties that are likely to shape the fourth: uncertainty over the budget and deficit, threat of a downgrade, and the European debt crisis. The economy, while hardly in fighting shape, pulled through the third quarter to eke out 2.5 percent GDP growth — which is not too shabby.

Full post here

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AP: He is the man with the mustache who takes a rebellious drag on a cigarette in the Herman Cain Internet ad gone viral …. Meet Mark Block, Cain’s unorthodox campaign manager …. a Republican strategist and tea party leader who’s left a trail of questionable campaign work behind him.

Block has been accused of voter suppression and was banned from running Wisconsin political campaigns for three years to settle accusations he coordinated a judge’s re-election campaign with a special interest group.

Records show Block has faced foreclosure on his home, a tax warrant by the Internal Revenue Service and a lawsuit for an unpaid bill. He also acknowledges he was arrested twice for drunken driving…..

Full article here

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Eugene Robinson: The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it – as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.

Full article here

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ThinkProgress: House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

….. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs……

Full post here

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First lady Michelle Obama visited three Florida cities on Thursday for campaign fundraisers…. “This has been a great day,” the first lady told supporters in Ft. Lauderdale. “This is my third city in one day. And I go home tonight and Barack and I get up and go to parent-teacher conference tomorrow morning.”

“Just so you know,” she said. “Just handling our business.”

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The Hill: The government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac might end up costing taxpayers billions less than originally estimated, the mortgage giants’ regulator said Thursday.

In a new report, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said the actual performance of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) had been “substantially better” than originally projected, lowering the overall bill for the bailout, a longtime sore spot with GOP lawmakers.

…. So far, Fannie and Freddie are beating bailout expectations. In the first year of projections, the GSEs actually tapped the Treasury Department for $19 billion to $73 billion less than anticipated, depending on what scenario was applied.

Full post here

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‘night people

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Thursday:

12:00 PM: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a Democratic National Committee luncheon in Jacksonville, Florida

3:10 PM: President Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Petr Necas of the Czech Republic

3:30 PM: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a DNC reception in Tampa, Florida

5:05 PM: The President greets city and municipal leaders from across the country

6:45 PM: The President has dinner with winners of a campaign contest

7:00 PM: Michelle Obama delivers remarks at a DNC reception in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

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Andrew Sabl: I’ve been reading a lot about Occupy Wall Street. Last Saturday, I visited Zuccotti Park and took a look for myself. I think it’s time we recognized a clear but complex set of truths.

The demands of Occupy Wall Street are both valid and popular; Democrats and Progressives of all tendencies should endorse them. The people actually occupying Wall Street are total flakes….

…. There is no other way to put it. They are ….. fanatics: sincere (in fact, prone to worship, cloyingly and off-puttingly, a cult of sincerity) and often eloquent, but opposed in principle to anything that might give them any power: alliances, membership lists, the authority to endorse….

Here the contrast with the civil rights movement could not be starker. SCLC, CORE, and SNCC marches, freedom rides, and sit-ins always had a clear target: the Jim Crow laws and practices that the protestors were decrying …. With a view to actually getting what they wanted, they gathered as many allies as humanly possible …. In contrast, OWS proudly calls itself a “post-political movement representing something far greater than failed party politics”.

…. Well, they might not need politicians, but the people whose interests they claim to represent sure do. I’m all for construing politics broadly, to include union campaigns and grassroots organizing as well as the corridors of power. But OWS doesn’t like union or grassroots politics any more than the legislative kind. There’s a fine line between participatory democracy and collective narcissism. OWS has not only crossed it but made it a rampart, and they’re standing on the wrong side.

Full post here

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Robert Parry: A curious feature of the American Left is its resistance to recognize its own successes. So, even as President Barack Obama is bringing the eight-year U.S. occupation of Iraq to an end, some on the Left refuse to celebrate.

…. It appears that some don’t want to accept that the anti-war movement has won a hard-fought victory and that Obama’s election was a factor. It’s almost as if the fact that something has been achieved through the deeply flawed U.S. political system threatens a preferred political analysis, which holds that nothing good can happen.

… one only has to think about what the U.S. approach toward Iraq would have been under a President John McCain or even a President Hillary Clinton.

…. Obama’s election marked a significant turning point in the difficult struggle to bring this ill-begotten war to a close. It shows how anti-war dissent and electoral politics can combine – however imperfectly – to get results. Achieving an outcome may take time and surely is frustrating, but victories can be won.

… By refusing to recognize the value of Obama’s election as, in part, an expression of the nation’s anti-war sentiments, the Left could veer off into a rejection of electoral politics altogether – arguing there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Obama and, say, Mitt Romney or Rick Perry, either of whom would restore the neocons to their place of preeminence in U.S. foreign policy.

…. some on the American Left operate under what might be called “the vanity of perfectionism,” the notion that what’s most important is to have the “perfect” analysis even if its consequences are destructive to mankind.

… what might reverse the course of history would be Obama’s electoral defeat in 2012. Republican front-runners, including Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, have made clear that they would again pursue a muscular neocon agenda with higher military spending and insistence on U.S. global dominance.

… So, the question now is whether the American Left will learn from these past experiences and recognize that – as difficult and as imperfect as it was – the movement to get the United States out of Iraq succeeded.

Full article here

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Woot! Love how Matthews mashes the GOPolitico guy:

TampaBay.com: On May 18, 1956, Mario and Oriales Rubio walked into the American Consulate in Havana and applied for immigrant visas. The form asked how long they intended to stay in the United States.

“Permanently,” Mr. Rubio answered.

Nine days later, the couple boarded a National Airlines flight to Miami, where a relative awaited.

So began a journey that seems as ordinary as any immigrant story, but decades later served as the foundation of an extraordinary and moving narrative told repeatedly by their third child as he became one of the most powerful politicians in Florida and then a national figure.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has come under fire for incorrectly linking his parents to the Cubans who fled Fidel Castro beginning in 1959. He insists they are exiles nonetheless and angrily denounced the suggestion he misled for political gain.

…. But the visa documents cast clearer divisions between his parents, who came for economic reasons, and the Cubans who scrambled to leave their homeland but thought they could soon return. And the documents come to light amid new discrepancies since Rubio’s time line came under scrutiny last week.

Full article here

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CBS: …. President Obama on Wednesday announced a series of new measures aimed at easing the burden of debt on students struggling to repay their federal college loans.

….Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., lauded Mr. Obama for his plan and said the president was “right to give these students a way to pay these loans off quicker”. “These loans can be phenomenally expensive,” he said, and argued that borrowers who get buried in debt “never get their foot out of the bucket. That’s not a fair way to get started”.

Robert Shireman, former Deputy Undersecretary at the Department of Education and a chief consultant at the education-oriented California Competes program, said the administration’s plan would increase confidence among students about their post-graduate prospects.

“It means people can go to college and use federal loans and have confidence that it’s not going to drive them to bad personal situations,” he said.

The Obama administration has said that 1.6 million Americans will benefit from the lower monthly payments, and upwards of 6 million can take advantage of the loan consolidations, which will lower interest rates by up to 0.5 percent. Most of those affected will be current students or recent borrowers whose income is sufficiently low upon entering the workforce that monthly payments are a significant financial burden.

Full article here

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Happy Diwali:

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See you tomorrow 😉

good afternoon

ABC: President Obama has crossed off 60 percent of his 2008 campaign promises from his to-do list, he told supporters in Los Angeles Monday as he asked them to help him check off the remaining items.

“I keep a checklist in my desk, and I kind of see, all right, I made a bunch of these promises during the campaign and let me see, yes, I got that done and that one, yes. No, that one’s not done yet. So we’ve got about 60 percent done in three years”….

The president listed health care reform, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and passing consumer protections among the promises that he has fulfilled.

“A lot of the things that we promised we’d do, we’ve done… we’ve made great progress, but we’ve got so much more work to do” …. Items left on the president’s agenda include comprehensive immigration reform, passing energy policy “that makes sense” and, of course, fixing the economy.

To check off the remaining 40 percent, the president said lawmakers will have to put politics aside. “Obviously, in Washington, the politics that I think people are hoping for is not what they’re getting. It’s still dysfunctional, it’s still perversely partisan. You still have folks who seem to be more interested in the short term and the party and elections than they are in the long term and the future and the next generation”….

Read full post here – thanks Marlz

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From yesterday:

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Today:

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Thank you Tally 😉

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OFA

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Loop 21: Even though they can barely hear over the echo from their empty wallets, unemployed people are still shouting “Yes We Can!” apparently.

The Associated Press has found that President Obama still receives tons of support from the jobless, even as Republicans attempt to blame him for high unemployment and after blocking his jobs bill.

A study conducted by the AP shows that people living in the most economically distraught areas with the highest unemployment rates are still donating money to Obama’s re-election campaign. In fact, they are actually donating more than they were in 2008 during Obama’s first presidential campaign and right before the recession hit.

Detroit for example, even with a 14% unemployment rate, wrote more checks to the campaign than it did in 2007. Even though the amounts are smaller (Obama’s website allows people to donate as low as $10), they all still add up eventually.

Thanks Gobrooklyn

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Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast): Perry’s Ridiculous Tax Plan

….. his plan, like all flat-tax plans, is a gussied-up way of stealing money from the working and middle classes and handing it to the rich…..

…. whether Perry revives his candidacy or not, the real issue here is that a flat tax or something like it is getting ever so closer to becoming GOP dogma. Some years ago, it was just the messianic loons: Steve Forbes. Now the flat tax is mainstreaming within the GOP. Mitt Romney, who used to hate it, has recently opened up to the idea. It’s getting … respectable.

Simplicity is for simpletons: a handy slogan for the ruling class that wants more of your money. Don’t be that simple.

Full post here

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The Obama Administration is announcing two new initiatives to help create jobs for veterans – read more here

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New CBS/NYT poll

Wait til they see this, um, extraordinary ad, Herb will go up another 10 points:

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I thought at first this was a kitten watching a GOP debate on TV:

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More soon 😉

wrap-up

President Barack Obama greets neighbors near the Bonilla residence in Las Vegas, Nev., where he spoke about the mortgage refinancing proposal and ‘Project Rebuild’, a piece of the American Jobs Act, Oct. 24. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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Tomorrow’s news today:

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Link

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😯

LittleGreenFootballs

Thanks Marlz

the congressional picnic

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrive for the Congressional Picnic at the White House, June 15

“I want you guys to eat until you can’t eat any more. All right? And then tomorrow you can ‘Let’s Move’.”

Rusty Boehner

Dracula Cantor

Rusty with Jay Carney

“Hello little girl.”

“**** off Rusty .”

Rusty? Enough.

Security?

Sen. Max Baucus dances with Melodee Hanes

Rusty? Time to go home.

Rusty? HOME.

put that in your pipe and smoke it

The Boston Globe: The head of Fiat-Chrysler said today that Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney must have been “smoking illegal material” when he argued in 2008 that the US auto industry could be resurrected without federal financial assistance.

During an interview with CNN, Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat and Chrysler, said government support was pivotal.

The comment contrasted with a 2008 op-ed column in which Romney urged the federal government not to provide an industry bailout but instead force automakers into a “managed bankruptcy.”

Marchionne told CNN: “Whoever told you that is smoking illegal material. That market had become absolutely dysfunctional in 2008 and 2009. There were attempts made by a variety of people to find strategic alliances with other car makers on a global scale and the government stepped in, as the actor of last resort. It had to do it because the consequences would have been just too large to deal with.”

hmm…..

TPM: The ongoing scandal surrounding a lewd tweet sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account took yet another turn for the weird Thursday as alleged e-mails between the person who first noticed the photo and conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart were leaked.

Breitbart first reported the Weiner story Saturday on his site Big Government using a screengrab from the person in question, Twitter user “@patriotusa76,” who lists his name on his account as Dan Wolfe and said he captured the image from Weiner’s feed before it was deleted. Weiner has said his account was hacked and a number of liberal blogs have pointed to Wolfe – who had a history of crudely taunting Weiner online – as a person of interest.

….The Smoking Gun published emails today from Dan Wolfe, AKA “patriotusa76,” at least one of which listed Breitbart as a recipient. In the first email, Wolfe tips off Breitbart to the screengrab as well as key details of the story and promises at the end that “we have more.”

In the second email, Wolfe appears agitated and warns that he will be in big trouble if unspecified details about his role in the incident leak….

More here

Thank you Fred 😉

where’s the birth certificate?!

Foreign person?

Business Insider: What goes around comes around. After spending the last week casting doubt on the nature of Obama’s birth certificate Donald Trump may have some birther issues of his own. Turns out the birth certificate he ‘released exclusively’ to Newsmax earlier this week is not the actual thing.

Ben Smith at Politico reports that what Trump provided was a hospital “‘certificate of birth’ meaning the piece of paper the hospital gave to his family saying he was born. Such a document typically has the signature of the hospital administrator and the attending physician.”

Apparently an actual birth certificate would would have the Dept. of Health’s seal as well a signature of the city registrar. Oops.

Take it away Ben Smith:

Trump’s mother, it should be noted, was born in Scotland, which is not part of the United States. His plane is registered in the Bahamas, also a foreign country. This fact pattern — along with the wave of new questions surrounding what he claims is a birth certificate — raises serious doubts about his eligibility to serve as President of the United States.

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Slate: “… Trump can obviously clear this up if he provides everything Barack Obama’s provided to the press, and everything he’s demanded from Obama. This would be:

– Two (or more) contemporary newspaper announcements confirming that Donald Trump was born in the United States. (Two of these exist for Barack Obama.) eg

– A certification of live birth produced by the state Trump was born, verified by hand by reporters. (FactCheck.org verified Obama’s certification in 2008.)

– A picture of the young Donald Trump and or/interviews with people who knew him. (Something like this:

…..interviews here)

Hey, I didn’t dig this rabbit hole. Trump decided to jump down it.”

More here (and here at The Smoking Gun)

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Hachikō wonders if Chump’s birth certificate is “under that thing on his head”. If it is, he’ll have trouble releasing it in to the wild.