I'm Sorry, But What Are We Apologizing For Again?

So let me get this straight, only ONE MONTH into a historic overhaul of the health insurance industry 100 years in the making and OUR side is apologizing for a website?! A F**KING WEBSITE?! Yet after nearly a decade of George W. Bush and the Republican Party trashing the economy, trampling the Constitution, lying us into 2 illegal & unfunded wars, destroying the middle class, blowing up the deficit, deregulating the financial industry into global collapse, ignoring warnings about 9/11, crushing unions, blowing a surplus, slashing safety nets, oppressing minorities, waging war on the poor, botching Hurricane Katrina aftermath, outsourcing jobs, sending my generation to die overseas while starving our country of much needed tax revenue from the wealthy, and overseeing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and NOT ONE SINGLE APOLOGY from THEM?! NOT ONE?! ANY OF THEM?! NONE?! And we're apologizing for A WEBSITE?! Worse yet, there is currently a coordinated whitewashing of George W. Bush's entire presidency, designed to distract you from the atrocity which was his 8 year reign of terror and reinvent him as a simpleton who likes to paint pictures of puppies and self portraits. But I digress.

And about those "millions" of insurance cancellations, WHERE?! All I see is the same 3 already debunked stories circulating the media and news outlets. I mean, if there were MILLIONS of cancelled policies you would think these millions of people would be flooding the Internet, tv shows, newspapers to tell their stories, but nope, the same 3 debunked stories, over and over and over again. I've actually read more positive articles about families saving money than I have of people losing coverage. You would have a hard time finding even 100 such cancellation stories online, or even 10,000, let alone ONE MILLION?! Please. WHERE?! Smells like another Republican manufactured 'crisis'.

Yet here we are, capitulating to unfounded Republican complaints. Don't get me wrong, on one hand, I'm very glad Pres.Obama called a presser today to basically blame any cancellations on the blood gargling psychopaths that inhabit the boardrooms of these insurance companies, on the other hand, we're supposed to be the party that lives in reality, a fact and evidenced based world, unlike our opposition, the mental patient party. And the facts as of now is that there is no evidence that "millions are being cancelled". Actually, these people who signed up for only one year contracts should know they may not be able to get the same plan upon renewal, thats kinda the idea behind these short term contracts, and most of them will actually wind up paying lower costs under the new marketplace anyway. Even with facts and evidence on our side, sometimes I think our side is just too nice for the psychotic game of politics. But good on Pres.Obama, let people keep their crappy insurance, and when they are denied, dropped, and see rising costs, they can't blame the ACA, they can rightfully blame the insurance companies. He gets a "told ya so" and wins the day.

But "Millions of cancellations"?! Please. You mean your shitty insurance expired and the vultures won't renew your plan because they want to squeeze every last dime you're willing to pay from you? Yeah, that's more like it. No need for anyone to apologize, except maybe the entire group of CEOs that make up the for-profit insurance industry in the first place. America pays the most per capita for healthcare and ranks 38th in the world.

I'll let Van Jones finish telling you how I feel right now:

Whoopsie! Looks like #Obamacare may be a success after all.

Number of completed applications through the marketplace: 846,184
Total number of individuals included in completed marketplace applications: 1,509,883
Number of individuals determined eligible to enroll in marketplace: 1,081,592
Number of individuals who have already selected a plan: 106,185

This doesn't figure in the over 500,000+ who have enrolled in Medicaid.

These figures are ONLY for Oct.1st - Nov.2nd

The rest: http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/183955385

Costco Will Close for Thanksgiving

Costco Will Close for Thanksgiving: Employees ‘Deserve The Opportunity to Spend Thanksgiving with Their Families’

Bucking the incredibly lucrative trend for retailers to stay open during Thanksgiving, bulk food utopia Costco has announced that they would stay closed during the holiday, which is seriously blowing our minds with its lunacy.

According to the Huffington Post, Costco is trying out this weird, newfangled idea of giving their workers time off on a national holiday. Why, you ask? Why not squeeze an extra shopping day out of the holiday season? Why deprive America of a 300-pack of paper napkins and a sack of dried cranberries on the day that people need it most? Why, why, why?!

Under current ACA law, insurance companies aren't required to change policies

Until December 31st 2014. Insurance companies can renew such catastrophic individual policies on December 31st 2013 and extend them through the entirety of 2014. Any insurance company dropping people before 12-31-14 are doing so because they are greedy soulless blood-gargling psychopaths. Not one single piece of the ACA needs to be changed in order for them to legally extend these catastrophic policies. After 12-31-14 all insurance must comply to ACA standards.

This Photo of UK Conservative David Cameron Calling For Austerity Is Hilarious.

Spending cuts? Physician, heal thyself.

Elizabeth Warren’s populist insurgency enters next phase

It's about more than politics or 2016. First comes a new plan to restore the economy and blow up the finance sector


If asked, Americans of all political persuasions will say overwhelmingly that they prefer “tougher rules” for Wall Street. But what does that actually mean?

You can frame this conventionally: supporting regulators, punishing rules violators, mopping up 2008-style disasters to limit the damage and attempting to prevent such chaos from happening again. But by “tougher rules,” maybe Americans are really signaling a vague but persistent dissatisfaction with an economy that has become dominated by the financial sector. And you can see within that how transforming banking back to its traditional purpose — as a conduit for putting capital in the hands of worthwhile business ventures and driving shared prosperity — would be one antidote to an unequal society full of financial titan gatekeepers, who confiscate a giant share of the money flowing through the system.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren — in many ways the avatar of a new populist insurgency within the Democratic Party that seeks to combine financial reform and economic restoration — will speak later today in Washington at the launch of a new report that marks a key new phase in this movement. Released by Americans for Financial Reform and the Roosevelt Institute – and called “An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for Us” — the report is a revelation, because it finally invites fundamental discussions about these issues. Its 11 chapters from some of the leading thinkers on financial reform do look back at the successes and failures of the signal financial reform law of this generation, the Dodd-Frank Act. But the report also weaves in a story about how we can reorient finance as a complement to the real economy, rather than its overriding force. Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the co-editor of the report, tells Salon, “The financial sector is still eating up a lot of GDP [gross domestic product], and it’s not clear what we’re getting out of it. We want to get the conversation at that level.”

This report fills in the details, creating definable action items and goals that could serve as a marker for legislative and regulatory action, as well as primaries in the next several election cycles.

^^^^THIS^^^^

The rest: Elizabeth Warren’s populist insurgency enters next phase http://www.salon.com/2013/11/12/elizabeth_warren%e2%80%99s_populist_insurgency_enters_next_phase/

Medicaid Signups Are 'Exceeding Expectations', Nearing Half-Million Mark

WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — The underdog of government health care programs is emerging as the rare early success story of President Barack Obama's technologically challenged health overhaul.

Often dismissed, Medicaid has signed up 444,000 people in 10 states in the six weeks since open enrollment began, according to Avalere Health, a market analysis firm that compiled data from those states. Twenty-five states are expanding their Medicaid programs, but data for all of them was not available.

Meanwhile, private plans offered through troublesome online markets are expected to have enrolled a much smaller number of people.

The Obama administration plans to release October enrollment statistics this week, but publicly available figures already provide a contrast between a robust start for Medicaid expansion and lukewarm early signups for new, government-subsidized private plans offered separately under the law.

The rest: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/12/obamacare-medicaid-enrollment_n_4259410.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

According to other statistics I've seen Medicaid enrollment may be closer to 700,000 so far.

Centrism Is A Corporate Scam. DON'T FALL FOR IT.

Today, the "centrists" try to define centrism as this notion that we must cut taxes for corporations and the rich while reigning in "entitlements" for the middle class and poor. Centrists will tell us this is the "reasonable approach". These are corporate stooges who put on $2000 suits, go on tv, and try to redefine their version of the center as "reasonable" and rebrand trickle down economics to distract from the fact that it has failed us for the past 30 years. They try to convince the viewer or listener or reader that they are being completely reasonable and non-ideological and just want what's best for our country.

And it's all bullshit. It's a corporate scam. There are no centrists. Centrists are politically unaware, socially unaware, and economically unaware. The fact is, at this point in US history, we are two separate countries. You're either FOR continuous economic inequality, social oppression, and political obstruction, or you're AGAINST it. Where the center is defined today isn't centrism, it's conservatism in sheep's clothing. Centrism doesn't exist, it's a corporate scam to put a smiley face on the right wing agenda of continuing to crush the middle class, exploit workers, and reap massive profits.

This is probably why you are broke and stuff

It's Conservative Economics That Breed Govt. Dependency, Liberal Economics Would Lower It.

With all of their talk about lowering govt dependency, conservative economics actually creates it. When your policies are about keeping wages low, slashing pensions, crushing unions, forced childbirth, cutting education, cutting healthcare, outsourcing jobs, destroying social benefit programs like SS and Medicare, allowing Wall St. to raid retirement savings, defunding investments in science and technology, infrastructure and transportation, starting endless wars, corporate welfare, and defunding America by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, then like Bill Maher recently said, "if Colonel Sanders won't pay a living wage, then Uncle Sam is going to have to". Conservative economics makes the American Dream practically unattainable. The conservative idea of the American Dream is: be born rich, and if you're not, then serve your corporate masters with hard labor and low wages.

On the other hand, Liberal economics would raise the living wage, therefore cutting govt. dependency, fund education, technology, and science, which would lead to a smarter, more productive and well paid work force. Making healthcare more accessible which would lead to a healthier population and further financial stability, both of which would also lower govt dependency. Strengthen SS and Medicare, pensions and retirement investments, which would lead to less of the population needing food assistance and welfare programs to get by in their senior years. Strengthening unions which allow for a thriving middle class earning decent wages. And of course, NO MORE WAR, which not only bankrupts our country, but creates far too many war veterans who not only have to use the already stretched VA medical, but because of low pay and possible disabilities, must also use far more govt assistance programs. Liberal economics makes the American Dream far more attainable, and not only for those born rich, but for all. And a thriving, educated, healthy workforce and population leads to much less govt dependency and far more tax revenue. Which not only makes our citizens physically happier, but mentally happier as well.

Note: I have absolutely no problem with my tax money going towards these social safety nets, I actually prefer it any day over my tax money going for war or corporate subsidies, because we are not playing by the rules of Liberal economics, we are still playing in this broken system of conservative trickle down economics, which has made our citizens far too thirsty due to lack of "trickling down". So as long as we're in this broken and obviously failed conservative economic system, I am all for helping those adversely effected by the negative effects of such a system and will fiercely defend those marginalized voices over pandering to the wealthy any day, 24/7 365. The conservative alternative would be to cut all assistance programs and let the people suffer. Conservatism is cannibalizing our country.