Obama $8.3 billion slush fund
WaveCameCrashin
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Obama admin to use $8.3 billion “slush fund” to fake out seniors? Update: GAO auditors demand end to slush fund.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/23/o ... t-seniors/
How does Barack Obama keep from getting ousted by seniors who discover that their Medicare Advantage options for 2013 will be greatly reduced, if not eliminated altogether? After all, ObamaCare’s $500 billion in cuts to the highly successful private-public partnership begin in 2013, assuming that the Supreme Court keeps the law in place this summer. Those cuts are necessary to fund the Medicaid expansion that comes in 2014 to provide funding for coverage of many — but not all — of the currently uninsured. Unfortunately for Obama, seniors would normally discover how badly ObamaCare has damaged their options in mid-October during the Medicare open-enrollment period for supplemental coverage, just a couple of weeks before voters have to go to the polls to select the new President, House, and one-third of the Senate. Since seniors are the most reliable voting bloc in the US, this would prove disastrous for Team Obama.
How will they avoid that kind of electoral disaster? Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt warn New York Post readers to expect an October non-surprise, thanks to an $8 billion slush fund that will allow the White House to postpone that day of reckoning for one year:
It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.
This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.
But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.
The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.
That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.
Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”
This is what happens when bureaucracies get to spend money without close Congressional oversight. Certainly, the Congress that passed the 1967 statute didn’t foresee that a federal agency could aggregate $8 billion (about $1.24 billion in 1967 dollars, roughly) by itself for “experiments,” but the law along with the massive amounts of money appropriated to HHS makes this possible. The money came from ObamaCare itself, thanks to Democrats who created a structure that allowed HHS to write all of the laws and spend money without much accountability for the way it will be used.
If HHS does do this, though, it will certainly be a demonstration project. Democrats, including Obama, insisted that seniors and the disabled would have no problems with the Medicare Advantage cuts — that their choices would not be constricted in any practical sense, and that the pain would only be felt by the eeeeeeeeeeeevil insurers. Using the slush funds to postpone those changes past the election will demonstrate that they have been lying all along — otherwise, why postpone the cuts? Why not stay on schedule for the Great Leap Forward in American health care?
Update: Uh oh — the GAO just poked the White House and HHS in the eye over the “bonuses”:
In a rebuke to the Obama administration, government auditors are calling for the cancellation of an $8 billion Medicare program that congressional Republicans have criticized as a political ploy.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says in a report to be released Monday that the $8.3 billion the administration has earmarked for quality bonuses to Medicare Advantage insurance plans would postpone the pain of cuts to the plans under the new health care law. Most of the money would go to plans rated merely average. …
GAO, the investigative agency of Congress, did not address GOP allegations that the bonuses are politically motivated. But, its report found the program highly unusual. It “dwarfs” all other Medicare pilots undertaken in nearly 20 years, the GAO said.
That will force the rest of the media to give this more coverage. I’d expect a Romney or RNC ad on this subject in the next few days.
Tags: 2012 presidential election, HHS, Medicare Advantage, obama, Obamacare, slush funds
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/23/o ... t-seniors/
How does Barack Obama keep from getting ousted by seniors who discover that their Medicare Advantage options for 2013 will be greatly reduced, if not eliminated altogether? After all, ObamaCare’s $500 billion in cuts to the highly successful private-public partnership begin in 2013, assuming that the Supreme Court keeps the law in place this summer. Those cuts are necessary to fund the Medicaid expansion that comes in 2014 to provide funding for coverage of many — but not all — of the currently uninsured. Unfortunately for Obama, seniors would normally discover how badly ObamaCare has damaged their options in mid-October during the Medicare open-enrollment period for supplemental coverage, just a couple of weeks before voters have to go to the polls to select the new President, House, and one-third of the Senate. Since seniors are the most reliable voting bloc in the US, this would prove disastrous for Team Obama.
How will they avoid that kind of electoral disaster? Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt warn New York Post readers to expect an October non-surprise, thanks to an $8 billion slush fund that will allow the White House to postpone that day of reckoning for one year:
It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.
This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.
But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.
The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.
That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.
Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”
This is what happens when bureaucracies get to spend money without close Congressional oversight. Certainly, the Congress that passed the 1967 statute didn’t foresee that a federal agency could aggregate $8 billion (about $1.24 billion in 1967 dollars, roughly) by itself for “experiments,” but the law along with the massive amounts of money appropriated to HHS makes this possible. The money came from ObamaCare itself, thanks to Democrats who created a structure that allowed HHS to write all of the laws and spend money without much accountability for the way it will be used.
If HHS does do this, though, it will certainly be a demonstration project. Democrats, including Obama, insisted that seniors and the disabled would have no problems with the Medicare Advantage cuts — that their choices would not be constricted in any practical sense, and that the pain would only be felt by the eeeeeeeeeeeevil insurers. Using the slush funds to postpone those changes past the election will demonstrate that they have been lying all along — otherwise, why postpone the cuts? Why not stay on schedule for the Great Leap Forward in American health care?
Update: Uh oh — the GAO just poked the White House and HHS in the eye over the “bonuses”:
In a rebuke to the Obama administration, government auditors are calling for the cancellation of an $8 billion Medicare program that congressional Republicans have criticized as a political ploy.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says in a report to be released Monday that the $8.3 billion the administration has earmarked for quality bonuses to Medicare Advantage insurance plans would postpone the pain of cuts to the plans under the new health care law. Most of the money would go to plans rated merely average. …
GAO, the investigative agency of Congress, did not address GOP allegations that the bonuses are politically motivated. But, its report found the program highly unusual. It “dwarfs” all other Medicare pilots undertaken in nearly 20 years, the GAO said.
That will force the rest of the media to give this more coverage. I’d expect a Romney or RNC ad on this subject in the next few days.
Tags: 2012 presidential election, HHS, Medicare Advantage, obama, Obamacare, slush funds
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
But, either way - the one thing the Obama Administration is good at is scape goating. Unfortuanately, if these policies are left to stand the only ones getting hurt are the Seniors. And it is DIRECTLY Obama's fault. (yet, somehow the bulk of them will line up like lambs to the slaughter come November).
(The other thing he's good at is crappy PR that simpletons eat up - close the Rx Donut Hole!!! Hey, stupid - it's there to provide benefits to more people.)
At this point, I would vote for Jimmy Carter over this buffoon.
have any of you heard of this ? either way this ass hat is way out of control I hope all the obamaites
are happy with the CHANGE he promised...a one temrm president that has probably inflicted more
damage than any 2 term president in history.
Godfather.
You heard that?
Tell us, Godfather... Where did you hear that?
I'm sure it must be a very reputable source. :fp:
Before we waste any more time on people posting stuff from HotAir.com and presenting it as fact... Would it be possible for people to check their facts before getting their panties in a bunch?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I was told obama want's to impose a tax on ATM transactions of 1% every time we use a ATM
have any of you heard of this ?...it was question...
Godfather.
so googled it and found these.
http://www.infowars.com/democrats-want- ... thdrawals/
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/07/0 ... thdrawals/
but also found this.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/debtfree.asp
Godfather.
There you go. See how easy that was?
I know that when we find info that supports our own political stance, we're more likely to believe it and not fact-check. But as you just learned, posting things like "I heard that Obama wants to..." and then repeating something that's totally made-up makes you a pawn of the people who want him out of power for other reasons... And maybe reasons that you would not support.
Godfather.
The Republicans were WAY worse! You want a President that will totally ignore problems at home and spend a shit load on foreign policy at the expense of regular Americans?
The economic collapse happened because of things that happened BEFORE Obama got into the White House but people are quick to point the finger at him because he couldn't clean up GW Bush's MESS in his first year or two in office. People don't realize that it's going to take at least a FULL TERM in office to do that.
He might have had an easier job had the people not fucked him over by putting the republicans in charge of congress!
I know the Dems were in power for like a year after the election, but that's not enough time to pass very many bills that make any kind of change. Esp since he had the big wigs from the auto and insurance industries lined up with their hands out during much of that time. Obama was in a position of REACTING to the BS that Bush caused rather than ACTING on what he promised to do during the campaign.
It's a pity that most voters are too stupid and short sighted to see that, and that so many votes believe the Propaganda BS spewed by media outlets such as Fox news rather than think for themselves.
This all said...Except for the very first question in this post - This post was not directed at anyone in this thread..I was speaking in general.
cool, speaking of speaking in general.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=7S ... &vq=medium
Godfather.
It did not take Reagan a full term to clean up Carter's mess. This is Obama's Economy. And it is Obama's wars. If he wanted something different or had any ideas on how to fix, they don't take 4 years. That line is old. This election has nothing to do with Bush. I find it funny that the Economy and the Wars were a problem, but his first action was to pass a health care bill that nobody wanted and nobody read. I think it's ironic it's going to be going out of office with its owner.
I would also think a guy that wins in the State of Kennedy would be a welcome sight. But, the bottom line is - anyone. Quite frankly anyone. (I do love how its ONLY Fox that "spews BS propaganda."
also, the health care bill that passed was not his first piece of legislation that he passed. it is a convenient talking point though, so yeah. it was also not exactly what he wanted. he wanted to get the basics passed and then he was going to strengthen it with other bills later but it took him 2 years to figure out that the blue dogs and the republicans were not going to work with him at all on any single issue. we could have had another 9/11 and the republicans would not have voted for anything obama would have wanted to do in response to those attacks..
it is really funny to me that republicans are so eager to blame obama for everything when it was the republican's policies that got us so fucked in the first place.
keep up with the short term memory failure america.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
We've got STM and you think Carter left our economy and foreign relations in a better place?
Ok Firstly, Carter did not leave your economy in NEARLY as bad a shape as GW Bush left it for Obama.
Secondly how the F do you figure any of the wars are Obama's?!?!? You guys were ALREADY fighting said war BEFORE the election! You can't just pull the troops out cold turkey. Obama has been trying to get them out of there his whole term, but he's trying to do it in such a way that he's not screwing the Iraqi or Afgani citizens any more than GW already has with both wars. (err invasions).
Thirdly, Obama care was NOT the first bill he passed. He had to lobby long and hard after the election to get the support he needed. If you remember the economy collapsed shortly after he took office so he had the bloody Auto industry CEO's and Insurance company CEO's knocking at this door with their hand out.
By the time he was in a position to finally do something more, the republicans had control of Congress. (Thank you stupid, short sighted, short term memory impaired voters!!) and refused to play nice and NEGOTIATE for the greater good. How does handcuffing Obama so he can't pass anything, forcing a downgrade in the countries credit rating GOOD for anything?!?! Yes your precious republicans are to blame for that!!
I will then offer up an opinon on it. It's like believing something that fox news or a news outlet that is grossly pro democrat without question. I will not do that and neither should any of you.
Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.
What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.
From the day he entered Congress in 1979, Gingrich had a strategy to create a Republican majority in the House: convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority. It took him 16 years, but by bringing ethics charges against Democratic leaders; provoking them into overreactions that enraged Republicans and united them to vote against Democratic initiatives; exploiting scandals to create even more public disgust with politicians; and then recruiting GOP candidates around the country to run against Washington, Democrats and Congress, Gingrich accomplished his goal.
Ironically, after becoming speaker, Gingrich wanted to enhance Congress’s reputation and was content to compromise with President Bill Clinton when it served his interests. But the forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress. (Some of his progeny, elected in the early 1990s, moved to the Senate and polarized its culture in the same way.)
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.
In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship. In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
Republicans often dismiss nonpartisan analyses of the nature of problems and the impact of policies when those assessments don’t fit their ideology. In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.
The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal so that there would be zero GOP backing for any bill that came within a mile of Obama’s reform initiative. As one co-sponsor, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: “I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.”
And seven Republican co-sponsors of a Senate resolution to create a debt-reduction panel voted in January 2010 against their own resolution, solely to keep it from getting to the 60-vote threshold Republicans demanded and thus denying the president a seeming victory.
This attitude filters down far deeper than the party leadership. Rank-and-file GOP voters endorse the strategy that the party’s elites have adopted, eschewing compromise to solve problems and insisting on principle, even if it leads to gridlock. Democratic voters, by contrast, along with self-identified independents, are more likely to favor deal-making over deadlock.
Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government, reluctantly willing to revamp programs and trim retirement and health benefits to maintain its central commitments in the face of fiscal pressures.
No doubt, Democrats were not exactly warm and fuzzy toward George W. Bush during his presidency. But recall that they worked hand in glove with the Republican president on the No Child Left Behind Act, provided crucial votes in the Senate for his tax cuts, joined with Republicans for all the steps taken after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and supplied the key votes for the Bush administration’s financial bailout at the height of the economic crisis in 2008. The difference is striking.
The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskacalled his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”
And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.
Shortly before Rep. West went off the rails with his accusations of communism in the Democratic Party, political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who have long tracked historical trends in political polarization, said their studies of congressional votes found that Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.
If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen. If anything, Washington’s ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.
In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.
Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?
In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.
Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
thanks Gimmie. Good find.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Thanks for this ....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I agree it's about time some conservative's are stating these facts ...
Don't think for a second b/c someone points out Obama's failings that they don't also see the Republican's failures. The point is - Obama needs to go. Is Romney better? Meh. But, I know the disaster we have. I know I have dirty bath water, I'll get rid of it. Worst case, I have new dirty bath water.
Further, if anything, Romney is more liberal than Republicans would like. As a conservative myself, I'm not totally enamored with either choice. And, yes, Congress needs to be cleaned up. We need to stop pandering to special interests (i.e. SPENDING) on BOTH sides and start doing what is right for the country.
I realize that many have been saying it...but I think what they are neglecting to acknowledge is the existence of a loud group called neo-conservatives. That is where I get frustrated when people blame conservatives. There are many kinds. a straight-line spectrum of measurement lumps together too many things. I don't think I have ever argued that neo-conservatives aren't a problem. It is an interesting issue right now for me...I like that politicians are finally making stands...but on the flip side, they aren't really taking a stand on principle...they are taking a stand on despising the other side. But it is a strange existence. I don't think these guys are limiting it to 3 years however, as Tobias said "I don't want to blame it all on 9/11 but it certainly didn't help." The mutated patriotism that grew out of that ground zero has ruined the republican party. It was always heading that way I suppose, but it sped it up about 100 years. But a good thing has happened since these dopes took over the party...people are finally looking for a viability of a 3rd party. People want one. People want a socially liberal fiscally conservative party and the longer the neo-cons squeeze out every other type of conservative from the party the closer we are to getting a real 3rd party.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
The bold and red is an excellent point that, I feel, doesn't get mentioned enough. We are living in the post 9-11 world, and this has affected almost every aspect of our political structure.
And, you make some very good points about the Repub party.
Also, Gimmie, that was a great op-ed, and this: "it is scathing, but sometimes when we look in the mirror we have to be honest and unmerciful, and that is what these two guys did. and that to me is really admirable" is an excellent point.
I think inlet13, in my thread on obesity/unhealthy living, talked about deflecting blame and the decline of personal responsibility. All of these ideas should be in the public discourse.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."