Road through the grass on Mt. Diablo. You get inland this time of year and the mountains are covered in brown - and you understand why they have these wildfires. No rain, ever. Coastal areas seem to stay green though, along with the trees.
You say you wanted affordable health care? Speak louder, because John Boehner isn't listening...
Nothing like telling it like it is. "GOP to the uninsured: Drop dead." As the House wastes our time with the 33rd vote to repeal health care coverage for millions of Americans, some of us out here understand the bottom line. "Fifty million uninsured Americans would be the immediate casualties of the GOP’s 'let them eat the emergency room' mentality. But all of us would be at risk. In America — alone among wealthy nations — everyone is a pink slip or job change or new illness away from finding they’ve lost coverage or are uninsurable. This is the shameful reality behind the GOP’s rhetoric on health care. Republicans don’t want to spend a penny to insure the uninsured." It's the ultimate line where their faux-libertarian bluster falls apart - unless you want to live in a third-world country.
"They're not even pretending to govern." Read about how Congress will become one big political attack ad for the foreseeable future. Or, spare yourself the ulcer and don't. You're going to live it soon enough.
Those GOP governors that are making a big show of refusing Medicaid? They are putting their existing health care systems at risk of collapse and turning down new jobs and economic growth. Besides asking their sick to physically suffer and face huge financial losses in illness. History will not be kind.
Greg Sargent does a round-up of the recent polls and finds a brutal truth for the GOP: Americans don't want a full repeal of Obamacare. ABC, 18%. Gallup, 31%. Kaiser, 38%, and the question included the word "replace". Seems America wants a solution to the problem of unaffordable health care, and the Republican non-answer of "freedom" just isn't cutting it.
The new attack from Romney and the Republicans on Obama as outsoucerer is - surprise! - another lie. "In fact, several of the companies cited on the new site said the Republican characterizations of their activities were far from accurate." Try and contain your shock, and let's hope this classic Rove swift-boat move falls flat this time.
Scathing editorial from the NY Times on Romney's lack of disclosure of his finances and tax avoidance. Ouch. Chuck Grassley and Mike Huckabee step right up and help throw Mitt under the yacht parked at the Cayman dock.
In 2009, Americans paid the lowest tax rates in 30 years. "At the very moment anti-tax protesters were emerging as the most powerful force in American politics, handing Republicans landslide control of the U.S. House, the data show that people were sending the smallest portion of their income to the federal government since 1979." Call them the Free Lunch Republicans. They want an "exceptional" country, they just don't want to pay the bill for it. And it leaves you to wonder: Why aren't we swimming in jobs if "more tax cuts" is the answer to every question?
House Republicans move to cut-off loans for renewable energy companies, beating the dead Solyndra horse into the ground. Need someone to poll renewables and see how that flies nowadays. They also want to take away food from poor children, which threatens to scuttle the entire farm bill the Senate worked so hard on. Women shouldn't have contraception, either. That about wrap it up? Any more demands from the crazy base they need to fulfill? (See: "They're not even pretending to govern" above.)
Off to the races....