Politics Plus

Perhaps I’m being too familiar to address this Republican by his first name only.  Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot (R-KY) has been caught in a major scam, trying to misrepresent his so-called experience with ObamaCare.  He may have fraudulently obtained a bogus Medicaid Card for his son.  Lets start with the video:

What he said, however, is completely unrelated to the facts.

Sunday, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told a wild tale about his son’s trouble with Obamacare. Paul claimed that one of his sons (the Pauls have three—William, Duncan, and Robert) was enrolled in Medicaid in Kentucky against his will. The senator briefly flashed a blue-and-white insurance card before launching into a diatribe about his son’s travails: "We didn’t try to get him Medicaid…They automatically enrolled him in Medicaid," Paul said. "For a month they wouldn’t talk to us because they said they weren’t sure he existed. He had to go down to the welfare office, prove his existence, then, next thing we know, we get a Medicaid card."

Paul then extrapolated from his son’s experience to make a general point about Kentucky’s health exchange: "Most of the people in Kentucky are getting automatically enrolled in Medicaid."

Conservative websites [Faux Noise delinked] latched [Propaganda delinked] onto [propaganda delinked] Paul’s claim as the latest example of Obamacare’s failures. There’s one problem, though: Paul’s story doesn’t make sense. No one is being automatically enrolled for Medicaid in Kentucky, says Jill Midkiff, communications director for the state’s health department. "We’re not automatically enrolling people," Midkiff explains. "People have to actually go and apply." The Affordable Care Act allowed states to automatically add residents who already receive other social services, such as food stamps and other health programs, to the Medicaid rolls. But Kentucky chose not to take advantage of that provision of the law. The state is notifying some residents of their eligibility for Medicaid, but Paul’s son  would have needed to actually apply for Medicaid in order to receive a Medicaid card… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Mother Jones>

That leaves us two possibilities.  One is that the card Paul flashed, claiming it is a Medicaid card, is something else.  If that is the case, he should be recalled for committing fraud against voters.  The other possibility is that it is a Medicaid card, for which a privileged scion of the millionaire Idiot family could not quality.  If that is the case he should be criminally charged for fraud, and be recalled.  Either way, he has proven that he is not fit to hold office.

Republicans have different reasons for their wars.  Their Ear on Women, for example, is to subjugate them at home.  Their War on the Environment is to increase profits for criminal corporations.  Their War on Voting is to steal elections that they cannot win in a fair contest.  Their Wars on Minorities and LGBT people are to tap the hatred of their rabid base and energize them to activism.  Now, their War on Education is to make America stupid.  Why?

Among the many visionary goals of our nation’s right wing—impoverish older people, starve the poor, deny climate change, outlaw abortion and contraception, eliminate healthcare for millions—few are more foundational than  defunding education in general and higher education in particular. Public colleges and universities nationwide have seen significant funding cuts over the past five years, and while the recession is usually blamed, the Right keeps the fiscal screws tight by cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Here in Michigan, in Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s first budget, there was a 15 percent cut in state aid to universities and a $1.8 billion tax cut for businesses. This equals a win-win for the Right: Keep the fat cats in your corner, and constrain the opportunity for young people to learn a host of things that might, well, make them interrogate right-wing policies. The Pew Research Center and others have found that lower income and less-educated whites are becoming more likely to vote Republican than Democrat, with 54 percent of those without a college degree identifying as Republican in 2012; only 37 percent identified as Democratic, so the gap is, well, quite wide.

And here’s the ideological bonus: Public universities, clobbered by defunding,  raise tuition. Then conservative pundits like S.E. Cupp can scream about the outrageous unaffordability (and elitism, of course) of a college degree and claim that it’s money down a rat hole. As she put it, colleges are “not meeting the demand of manufacturers and employers who want people who can’t just, you know, read Freud and Nietzsche … but who can actually read a business plan.” She’s hardly alone— stories asking “Is College Worth It?” are everywhere now. Few put two and two together: that the government cuts have to be made up somehow… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

Most people are shocked, when I tell them, I do not have a four year degree, just an AA.  I come across ads better educated, because I received a better and more rounded high school education in 1960s than many degrees individuals have today.  In those days the focus was on learning how to think, not what to think, and it instilled in me a thirst for knowledge that still demands I keep learning learning, as I have since my formal education ended.

Unless we produce a generation of Americans smart enough to find new innovations to succeed in a competitive world economy, America will become a third world, totalitarian nation under rigid Republican rule.  However, we have teachers that are good enough and students capable of learning.  The only thing preventing us from giving those students what they need to lead the world into a better future for all is the Republican Party.  Removing them from power is a national imperative.

Let me begin with the caveat that I consider abortions tragedies.  However, I also recognize that, at times, there are no better choices available.  That said, if I ever become pregnant, an event I consider highly unlikely, what to to about it must be MY choice.  Neither I, nor anyone else, has the right to impose our values on any woman or interfere with her right to choose.  Republicans, however, refuse to respect women’s rights.

A three-year surge in anti-abortion measures in more than half the states has altered the landscape for abortion access, with supporters and opponents agreeing that the new restrictions are shutting some clinics, threatening others and making it far more difficult in many regions to obtain the procedure.

Advocates for both sides are preparing for new political campaigns and court battles that could redefine the constitutional limits for curbing the right to abortion set by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and later modifications by the Supreme Court.

On Monday, in a clash that is likely to reach the Supreme Court, a federal appeals court in New Orleans will hear arguments on a Texas requirement that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals — a measure that caused one-third of the state’s abortion clinics to close, at least temporarily.

Advocates for abortion rights, taking heart from recent signs in Virginia and New Mexico that proposals for strong or intrusive controls may alienate voters, hope to help unseat some Republican governors this year as well as shore up the Democratic majority in the United States Senate…

Inserted from <NY Times>

Rachel Maddow covered this issue and discussed the coming political backlash.

The Republican War on Women continues. They would return women to their position in the 19th century. As chattel their ownership was passed from father to husband. Women who do not organize to remove them from office are fools!

Ladies, this is the Republican Plan for you!