Question: How were Senate Rethugs able to vote to repeal the ACA?

How were they able to use the Budget Reconciliation process to do that and avoid a filibuster?

They've never been able to do that before, because repealing the ACA would trash the budget, not help it -- and the BR process is only supposed to be for measures that help the budget.

So does anyone know how they were able to use BR this time, when they weren't allowed to all the previous times?

If they could now, they certainly could if the Rethug is elected President.

Adolph Trump says he's no racist -- FDR did it, too, with the Japanese.

And that's the one thing he's right about. FDR "did it." But "it" was a terrible, fearful, and racist thing.

People here who want to deify FDR should remember -- he led us out of the depression, instituted financial reforms that lasted for decades ,and was a giant figure for much of the 99%.

BUT he was also a racist and the person who ordered the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during WW2.

http://news.yahoo.com/trump-calls-muslims-temporarily-denied-entry-us-214140197.html

Trump showed little inclination to back down, however, and instead compared the proposed ban to actions taken by Franklin D. Roosevelt against Japanese and German "enemy aliens" during World War II, though he stopped short of advocating internment camps.

Asked in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program if his proposal went against treasured American values, he responded: "No, because FDR did it!"

If Hillary were to make an "if men could get pregnant" statement,

like Bernie recently did, and Obama did before him, she wouldn't be applauded for it, as if she were a hero.

She'd be accused of "playing the gender card."

Every progressive woman has probably made a similar statement. Several decades ago Gloria Steinem said, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

But it's only men who think "if men could get pregnant" statements are insightful and new.

Women say, "duh."

Bernie says the President got it RIGHT in his Sunday address.

Growing number of cyber shills

I do wonder, sometimes.

http://consumerist.com/2011/12/13/growing-number-of-cyber-shills-invade-online-reviews/

Since the dawn of online reviews, businesses have been attempting to game the system by flooding sites with bogus star ratings, fictitious reviews. And even though the major sites have enacted safeguards to prevent automated ways of rigging reviews, there’s little they can do to stop an actual human from logging on to boost a review in exchange for a few pennies.

And that’s literally all it takes, says a new study from researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara, which found that a growing number of companies are turning to shadowy shills in China, where a fake review — or a Facebook like, a Twitter follower, etc. — from a real person can run you as little as $.13 to $.70.
The chart shown above (from the UCSB study) shows what two China-based companies charged per-task for things like posting on forums and registering accounts.

Explains InfoWorld.com:
Organizers enlist dozens or hundreds of professional shills. They orchestrate mass account creation (bolstering “XYZ Systems now has 100,000 registered users” claims), generate bogus ratings, post canned cut-and-paste positive reviews — and follow up with screenshots of their successes. Money flows from the customer to the organizer, then to the shills. And it’s very difficult — if not impossible — to trace.

Abusive private messages

Is there any action to take on these, other than blocking the person from sending future abusive emails?

I just got a PM that is titled "Fuck You" and goes on to tell me how much I suck as a person. This person then got two hides (he was abusive in the thread to other posters, too) and his account is now "flagged for review.)

I've never, with all my posts, had anyone send me an abusive email before. Maybe I've just been lucky.

All products created by Big Pharma are not created equal.

All products approved by the FDA are not equally safe and effective.

Not every person benefits from the products that benefit most other people.

Drugs are a vital part of the health care system but not every drug is equally safe and effective.

Vaccines are a vital part of the health care system but not every vaccine is equally safe and effective.

A vaccine, like a drug, may be taken off the market when the risks turn out to outweigh the benefits. (As with the old DPT vaccine.)

Having specific concerns about a particular drug or vaccine in particular situations does not make anyone either anti-drug or anti-vaccine.


Given all the above, mandated vaccines historically have been reserved for potentially serious diseases that can be spread through casual contact: like measles, whooping cough, etc.

HPV was the first vaccine that a governmental unit (Rick Perry's Texas) tried to mandate even though it was for a disease that was NOT spread through casual contact.

IMO, in order to preserve public confidence in the system, we should be wary of mandating vaccines that are not spread through casual contact unless the disease is both life threatening and not easily treatable. (Such as an HIV vaccine)

Big Pharma will produce the vaccines it deems to potentially have the most profit. That's why Big Pharma wants a mandate -- for everything. Big government should only mandate vaccines based on overall social good -- not the economic good of Big Pharma.

Big Pharma will pick the low-hanging fruit -- i.e., produce the vaccines that are easiest to produce. That does not mean we have to eat everything Big Pharma picks. We can only eat so much, so we need to be choosy.

Vaccines should be prioritized on a public health need -- not based on which is easiest or most profitable for the drug companies. So the decisions regarding the need for a vaccine or a mandate should be driven by the CDC and/or the FDA, not Big Pharma.

Only a legal loophole allowed the sale of the CA shooters weapons.

Someone other than the shooters legally purchased the weapons (after which they were illegally transferred to the shooters) but the weapons shouldn't have been able to be purchased by anyone in CA -- except for a legal loophole.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/san-bernardino-shooters-assault-rifles-california_5661f892e4b079b2818ea0ac

The two assault-style rifles that the attackers used to carry out a shooting massacre in San Bernardino on Wednesday were legally purchased in California due to a technical loophole in the state's assault weapons ban.
Meredith Davis, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), confirmed to The Huffington Post that the two long guns were bought legally in the state, but declined to identify the dealer who sold the weapons or the person who purchased them. Davis said that law enforcement is still investigating how the shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, acquired the rifles, since someone else purchased them.
The Smith & Wesson M&P15 that Farook wielded and Malik's DPMS A-15 were both legal in California despite the state's tough assault weapons ban because they had button mechanisms to release their ammunition magazines. An exception known as the "bullet button loophole" allows rifles that would ordinarily be prohibited to be manufactured and sold if they have the button-release feature, since their magazines are then considered fixed rather than detachable.
The loophole has spawned a cottage industry for gun makers in California, some of whom specialize in specially manufacturing assault-style rifles to comply with state law.

Rosa Parks had no children and her only brother died decades before she did.

So there may not be anyone left who can truly speak for her now.

But we should all remember her. She had a long and productive life as a citizen-activist, and 23 years spent working as a secretary for US Rep John Conyers.

ON EDIT: She had a substantial estate when she died, which she left to a charity. Her nieces and nephews sued the charitable trust and battled all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court, where they finally lost -- and yet, with her papers and memorabilia valued in the millions, the battle didn't end till earlier this year, ten years after her death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

The Senate just repealed ACA and defunded Planned Parenthood; Bernie didn't vote.

Obama will veto this piece of shit, but it should never have had to come to his desk. With a vote as close as this one, any one vote might have been critical.

Bernie was out campaigning.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/262071-senate-approves-bill-repealing-much-of-obamacare