Month: March 2017

Right-Wing Conservative Boilerplate, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.)

We know we shouldn’t have, but, we just couldn’t help responding to Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) opinion piece in THE HILL. A Trump surrogate and highly partisan right-wing conservative his boilerplate made our blood boil. Truth became stranger to republican party years ago and Trump and his surrogates have simply heightened and accelerated the falsehoods.

Below is quoted text followed by our harsh and often sarcastic criticism of his opinions.

 

I supported the American Health Care Act last Friday because it was the right vote. I didn’t begin as a big fan, but I ended up satisfied that America needed this bill to start a process to repair our healthcare system.

Yes, I’m a conservative. I pal around with those liberty-loving Freedom Caucus guys. I get better grades on conservative scorecards than I ever received in college. And frankly, if you asked the Speaker, I think he’d tell you I’m a bit of a right-wing rabble-rouser.

Well, that is your problem dude, you’re a partisan right-winger that simply happens to believe party and BS rise above what is right for the people of this nation. And, your primary interest, like that of 99.9% of partisan right wingers is to look out for big pharma, big insurance companies, and the very wealthy.

I supported the AHCA, and will continue to support it, because a yes vote is the principled, conservative position.

The repeal of ObamaCare stands as one of Republicans’ greatest, most enduring promises to the nation, the fulfilment of which matters to our livelihood and our country’s future. As ObamaCare continues its death spiral, families across the nation face unaffordable premiums and deductibles and severely limited healthcare choices.

Yup, number one reason you mention is because it is a conservative position. The mention that it is principled is simply right-wing boilerplate BS.

Since 2010, individual premiums have gone up 27 percent and deductibles have soared. Every day, my office fields calls from families who can’t afford to pay their $12,000 deductible, effectively making them uninsured. Meanwhile, several counties in my district only have one remaining insurer in the ObamaCare marketplace.

Much agreement that this is legal highway robbery. Something the republicans give a wink and a nod to. Between big pharma and insurers American’s are getting raped. And the bill you support does NOTHING to correct that. However, 24 million will be thrown off of the insurance they now have under the ACA. But, again, conservative really don’t give a damn.

Our mandate, our duty to the people, is to improve upon the current mess. And the American Health Care Act is an improvement, one that came with three parts.

The first part, a promising reform of the Medicaid program, should be cheered by all Republicans. The bill’s per capita allotment would force spending restraint and reform within the Medicaid system.

The next part was the actual repeal of ObamaCare, those strangling regulations of the insurance market that only help some of the people they’re supposed to help — another policy win for the conservative cause.

The final part of the AHCA was a replacement for ObamaCare, and it’s with this third part that Republicans disagreed.

Yada, yada, yada. Has anyone yet seen a credible source document showing that the bill you support is an improvement for the American people in any way shape or form? If there is one why not cite and link to it? We suspect it’s because it doesn’t exist.

You talk about mandate, well dude, there is NO MANDATE. You then mention a win for CONSERVATIVES, winning is the only damn thing you folks care about. Whether or not it is right and good for the people of America is really of no concern to you or the republican party.

I’ll be clear: I criticized the process we followed to arrive at this bill. We went too fast. We held hearings, but they were not recent and failed to create a consensus in this country. We left out important provisions.

But ultimately, this bill was worth supporting.

The president has been good to conservatives. In fact, much of his first several weeks in office have been a boon for the conservative cause: from a strong set of Cabinet picks to a rock star Supreme Court pick to a set of executive orders and regulatory repeals that undo the most dangerous parts of President Obama’s pen-and-phone legacy.

So, it’s about a “rock star” conservative SCOTUS pick, interesting choice of words, a strong set of cabinet picks, some like DeVos who are highly unqualified,  and being good to conservatives, Dude, you’re simply a right-wing partisan signing onto a horribly flawed effort because of, Party Loyalty and Raw Ideology.

BTW, President Obama, as flawed as he may or may not have been stand heads and shoulders above your party’s leader and pretend POTUS.

Moreover, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been good to conservatives. He negotiated in good faith and offered real, conservative changes to the bill. We won provisions that allowed states to impose a work requirement for Medicaid and choose optional block grant funding for the program. We added a roll-back of mandated essential health benefits.

Yup, all you point to above are items that will impact and hurt those least equipped to absorb the hit. Again, republicans, especially the most right-wing conservative ones modus operandi.

The president has earned our support. Our party leaders deserve our faith. The AHCA vote in the House would have been the first part of a three-pronged approach to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the first stop on a long journey towards a better, more conservative healthcare system. I trust President Trump to orchestrate a conservative final outcome.

LMAO! On what rational grounds can anyone make the above statements and keep a straight face? NONE is the answer. There is nothing rational or true about what you said above.

In fact, we have to trust the president and party leaders, because the law requires a meandering path through Senate rules and administrative action before we can arrive at a better system.

Why yes Rep Buck, republicans must have blind faith in the most arguably dishonest man and accomplished con artist to ever have run for the presidency and won. That and a republican majority that is even less trusted than our pretend POTUS.

We can’t take anymore of Buck’s boilerplate. Find the closing of the article HERE.

 

Dancing The Bolero…

The Bolero is arguably one of the more beautiful and sensual of the ball room dances. One of my former dance instructors described it this way, the Bolero is the closest there is to making love on the dance floor.

The Ballroom Dance Academy describes like this.

Bolero is a slow dance characterized by smooth, gliding movement, dramatic arm styling and a romantic feel. Bolero is a mixture of 3 dances: Tango (contra body movement), Waltz (body rise and fall) and Rumba (Cuban motion and slow Latin music).

The video is also an advertisement for Arthur Murray Studios. This site has no affiliation with Arthur Murray, either in the past or present.

Enjoy!

Record Numbers Of Civilians Reported Killed In US Air Strikes… Iraq & Syria

An elderly man sits speaking incoherently amid the rubble of a building in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq, on March 24. (Alice Martins for The Washington Post)

Ultimately, this is what GWB’s war in Iraq has resulted in. Destruction, misery, death, and ISIS. The die was cast in March of 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq under false pretense, toppled the Baath government,  and created regional instability. Nothing has been the same since. Trump’s campaign promise of defeating ISIS quickly is a pipe dream. Middle East instability, bringing about  more destruction, misery, and death will continue. And, the West will only be reviled all the more by the eastern world.

Continuing to think in the same box, refusing to acknowledge our responsibility for heavily contributing to Middle Eastern instability, and continuing on our present course will serve only to perpetuate war. The only winners will be the United States Military Industrial Complex. Hate begets more hate, violence begets more violence, and war begets more war. Humankind, as advanced as we have become, remains stupid. All of us…

From The Washington Post a story abut misery and despair in Iraq and Syria.

MOSUL, Iraq — A sharp rise in the number of civilians reported killed in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria is spreading panic, deepening mistrust and triggering accusations that the United States and its partners may be acting without sufficient regard for lives of noncombatants.

The increase comes as local ground forces backed by air support from a U.S.-led coalition close in on the Islamic State’s two main urban bastions — Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

In front-line neighborhoods in western Mosul, families described cowering in basements for weeks as bombs rained down around them and the Islamic State battled from their rooftops. Across the border in Raqqa, residents desperately trying to flee before an offensive begins are being blocked by the militants, who frequently use civilians as human shields.

Throughout his election campaign, President Trump pledged to target Islamic State militants more aggressively, criticizing the U.S. air campaign for being too “gentle” and asking for a reassessment of battlefield rules. The United States has denied there has been any shift and defended the conduct of its campaign.

But figures compiled by monitoring organizations and interviews with residents paint an increasingly bloody picture, with the number of casualties in March already surpassing records for a single month.

The worst alleged attack was in Mosul, where rescue teams are still digging out bodies after what residents describe as a hellish onslaught in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood during the battle to retake it two weeks ago. Iraqi officials and residents say as many as 200 died in U.S.-led strikes, with more than 100 bodies recovered from a single building. The wooden carts that residents use to carry vegetables and other wares in the once busy market area instead ferried out cadavers recovered from the rubble last week.

The U.S.-led coalition, which has acknowledged carrying out a strike against militants in the area, says it is investigating the reports. “If we did it, and I’d say there’s at least a fair chance that we did, it was an unintentional accident of war,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. commander for Iraq and Syria, said Tuesday at the Pentagon.

Amnesty International on Tuesday said the coalition was not taking sufficient precautions to prevent civilian deaths in Mosul, in a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law.

It was just one of numerous incidents across Iraq and Syria in recent weeks that have raised concerns that the United States has flouted rules requiring it to protect civilians. In both countries, politicians and activists say the high numbers of deaths are spreading alarm among civilians and sowing distrust of the U.S.-backed campaign advancing toward their homes.

“People used to feel safe when the American planes were in the sky, because they knew they didn’t hit civilians,” said Hussam Essa, a founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which monitors violence in Raqqa province. “They were only afraid of the Russian and regime planes. But now they are very afraid of the American airstrikes.” American planes are “targeting everywhere,” he said.

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“The scale of the destruction is huge, and we are reeling from the number of alleged cases, not just in Mosul but in Raqqa, too,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars. “Casualty numbers from western Mosul are absolutely shocking. In Syria it’s a car here, a family there. It happens every day.”

The group said in a statement last week that it had stopped monitoring Russian strikes in Syria, in order to focus on accusations linked to the U.S.-led coalition, saying its organization is overwhelmed. In the first two months of the year, U.S. strikes were responsible for more civilian casualties than Russian strikes for the first time since Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, according to Airwars figures. Russian strikes are now climbing again as a partial cease-fire collapses.

Continue reading HERE.

Could the human race be nearing The Eve of Destruction?

It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. Only the geographics change. But now it’s global.

 

The POTUS Has A Trust And Credibility Problem…

West Long Branch, NJ  – Fully 8-in-10 Americans agree that Donald Trump has had a worse relationship with the media than his predecessors, with most saying this is hurting both his image and the media’s image as well. When the Monmouth University Poll  pitted the president against three major television news outlets, Trump was found to be less trustworthy in each instance. The poll also found that most Americans believe that news outlets – from traditional media entities to newer online sources – report “fake news” stories at least occasionally.

81% say Trump’s relationship with the media is worse than his predecessors.
4% say his relationship is better.
12% says it is close to the same.
58% believe this has hurt Trump’s image.
7% believe it has helped Trump’s image.
32% believe it has made no difference.

28% are moe likely to trust Trump -vs- ABC as a information source.
38% -vs- MSNBC
17% -vs- FOX

When it comes to GOP partisans the story is much different.

Trump -vs-  MSNBC – Trump 66% to 16% MSNBC
Trump -vs- ABC –  Trump 56% to 22% ABC
Trump -vs- FOX – Trump 29% to FOX 26%, with 44% of republicans having equal trust.

Generally Trump has dug himself a hole with respect to credibility. One which is unlikely to become shallower given his past and present affinity for lying.

Read the entire poll results with in-depth write-up HERE.