(from Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood)
". . . He was skeptical about the character of his fellow Americans as well. Even before he knew of the outbreak of the French Revolution, he had worked out a chilling assessment of the moral fiber of his own countrymen, one that prepared him to see the worst of people everywhere. . . Right from the beginning of his own American Revolution, Adams had deep misgivings about whether his fellow citizens had the proper moral character needed to sustain their republican governments. "The only foundation of a free Constitution," he said on the eve of America's declaring independence, "is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. . . "
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(from Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power by Jon Meacham)
". . . authorities were now reaching ever more deeply into the lives and fortunes of Americans-Americans who watched such assertions of power warily, fearful that despotism was at hand. . ."
(with excerpts from http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21237370-white-house-president-didnt-mislead-on-insurance-promise?lite)
The White House argued Tuesday that President Barack Obama didn’t mislead the public when he repeatedly promised Americans “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan” under the Affordable Care Act.
Me: Yes, he DID mislead some Americans since he was speaking to ALL Americans when he said that. Some liked their plans. They ARE Americans. The President spoke to ALL Americans. Those whose plans did NOT qualify must purchase a new one and CANNOT KEEP the old one which they liked. (Is this fucking rocket science?)
“No, the president was clear about a basic fact,” Carney said Tuesday when asked directly whether Obama had misled Americans about the impact of his signature domestic achievement. “If you had insurance that you liked on the individual market, and you wanted to keep that insurance…you could.”
Me: Yes, he DID mislead some Americans since he was speaking to ALL Americans when he said that. Some liked their plans. They ARE Americans. The President spoke to ALL Americans. Those whose plans did NOT qualify must purchase a new one and CANNOT KEEP the old one which they liked. (Is this fucking rocket science?)
This part of the law does not apply to the 80 percent of Americans who receive health insurance through their employers or through Medicare or Medicaid.
Me: Yes, he DID mislead some Americans since he was speaking to ALL Americans when he said that. Some liked their plans. They ARE Americans. The President spoke to ALL Americans. Those whose plans did NOT qualify must purchase a new one and CANNOT KEEP the old one which they liked. (Is this fucking rocket science?)
Obamacare regulations estimate that, because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy.
Me: Yes, he DID mislead some Americans since he was speaking to ALL Americans when he said that. Some liked their plans. They ARE Americans. The President spoke to ALL Americans. Those whose plans did NOT qualify must purchase a new one and CANNOT KEEP the old one which they liked. (Is this fucking rocket science?)
Republicans have quickly seized upon the debate as further evidence in their longstanding case against “Obamacare.”
Me: This is only one aspect of the Affordable Care Act (it’s REAL name.) If the President had not said ALL Americans, no misrepresentation would have taken place. Affordable healthcare for ALL Americans (I said AFFORDABLE- not the SAME, not FREE, maybe even not CHEAP) is a good thing. Laws can be amended and need not always be completely repealed.
“If the president knew that these letters were coming and still indicated that you could keep your health care plan if you liked it -- now, well that raises some serious questions about the sales job of Obamacare,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
Me: This is only one aspect of the Affordable Care Act (it’s REAL name.) If the President had not said ALL Americans, no misrepresentation would have taken place. Affordable healthcare for ALL Americans (I said AFFORDABLE- not the SAME, not FREE, maybe even not CHEAP) is a good thing. Laws can be amended and need not always be completely repealed.
“There is no way to fix this monstrosity,” Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. He vowed that the GOP would continue to seek the law’s repeal, even after a 16-day government shutdown triggered by Republican demands that Obama defund his own health care law.
Me: This is only one aspect of the Affordable Care Act (it’s REAL name.) If the President had not said ALL Americans, no misrepresentation would have taken place. Affordable healthcare for ALL Americans (I said AFFORDABLE- not the SAME, not FREE, maybe even not CHEAP) is a good thing. Laws can be amended and need not always be completely repealed.
“The real problem is that people weren’t told the truth. You can remember they were told that they would be able to keep their policies if they like them, and now you hear hundreds of thousands of people across the country being told they couldn’t,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
Me: This is only one aspect of the Affordable Care Act (it’s REAL name.) If the President had not said ALL Americans, no misrepresentation would have taken place. Affordable healthcare for ALL Americans (I said AFFORDABLE- not the SAME, not FREE, maybe even not CHEAP) is a good thing. Laws can be amended and need not always be completely repealed.
. . . of Obama bashing, well, simply because he is Obama. I’m not sure if it’s a subjective thing like, his face, his ears, his smirk or maybe even, (yes Virginia, I’m afraid it’s true) his color. I’m just sick and tired of it. I don’t want to hear about his birth certificate (if that’s a REAL issue which his haters were able to uncover but the election officials were not before the election to his first term, then the haters should be pursuing the election officials), his salary cut, his dogs or even, although they are beautiful, his kids.
Let me be clear. I am not an Obama fan. But none of the reasons above have anything to do with why I am not an Obama fan. The reasons below however, do. . .
• 20,000 Airstrikes (First Term) Cause Death and Destruction From Iraq to Somalia.
• Signed the NDAA into law - making it legal to assassinate Americans w/o charge or trial.
• Escalated the CIA drone war in Pakistan.
• Maintained a presence in Iraq even after "ending" the war.
• Sharply escalated the war in Afghanistan.
• Secretly deployed US special forces to 75 countries.
• Sold $30 billion of weapons to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.
• Opened up deepwater oil drilling, even after the BP disaster.
• Did a TV commercial promoting "clean coal".
• Signed the Patriot Act extension into law.
• Continued Bush's rendition program.
• Signed the Monsanto Protection Act into law.
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So congressional Republicans claim they will never allow taxes to increase for wealthy Americans. They claim that they will eliminate loopholes and leave tax cuts in place which will provide the additional revenue the country requires.
Conversely, President Barack Obama says that the amount of revenue that elimination of tax loopholes would generate, (while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy in place) is not nearly close to the amount of revenue required to tackle the budget deficit.
It seems to me that the 'leave-cuts-eliminate-loophole' strategy either WILL or WILL NOT generate the amount of revenue required. There is no OPINION involved. This is an empirical issue and can be proved or disproved.
Either Congressional Republicans or the Administration should take it upon themselves to prove or disprove (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) the effectiveness of the strategy. Or even better, if you can imagine, the news media could take it upon themselves to prove or disprove it (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) and actually provide a service to the general public for a change.
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(from Wikipedia.com)
". . . In early 1791, President Washington appointed Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant to devise a plan for the new city in an area of land at the center of the federal territory that lay between the northeast shore of the Potomac River and the northwest shore of the Potomac's Eastern Branch. L'Enfant then designed in his "Plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of the United States..." the city's first layout, a grid centered on the United States Capitol, which would stand at the top of a hill (Jenkins Hill) on a longitude designated as 0:0. The grid filled an area bounded by the Potomac River, the Eastern Branch (now named the Anacostia River), the base of an escarpment at the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line along which a street (initially Boundary Street, now Florida Avenue) would later travel, and Rock Creek.
North-south and east-west streets formed the grid. Wider diagonal "grand avenues" later named after the states of the union crossed the grid. Where these "grand avenues" crossed each other, L'Enfant placed open spaces in circles and plazas that were later named after notable Americans.
L'Enfant's broadest "grand avenue" was a 400 feet (122 m)-wide garden-lined esplanade, which he expected to travel for about 1 mile (1.6 km) along an east-west axis in the center of an area that the National Mall now occupies. A narrower avenue (Pennsylvania Avenue) connected the "Congress house" (the Capitol) with the "President's house" (the White House). In time, Pennsylvania Avenue developed into the capital city's present "grand avenue". . . ."
And for all it's architectural grandeur, significant history, natural beauty and political, governmental and international relevance one cannot help but think that all the shady, greedy, manipulative, unconscionable, corrupt game-playing that takes place there casting a tarnishing pall over all the aforementioned attributes that the city itself does possess.
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(from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/17/romney-my-job-is-not-to-worry-about-those-people/)
". . . Let’s set aside the question of whether this is what Mitt Romney really believes deep down in his heart. Maybe this is what he thinks. Or maybe he just thought it was a good line to buck up jittery donors. What we can say is that the last part is wrong. There is no fair accounting in which 47 percent of Americans take no “personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Take this simple breakdown from the Tax Policy Center of what households paid in taxes in 2011:
— 53.6 percent of households pay the federal income tax. Presumably Romney is okay with these folks.
— 28.3 percent of households pay no federal income tax, but they do pay the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. That means they don’t need Mitt Romney to convince them to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” They already have jobs.
Most of the households in this group don’t pay any federal income tax because they qualify for enough deductions that their income tax liability has shrunk to zero. See this Tax Policy Center report for more, which gives an example of “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400. They get an $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700, and that takes their liability to zero.” Indeed, it’s worth noting that many of these deductions and credits were part of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which Romney wants to extend.
— 10.3 percent of households pay no federal income tax because they’re retired and elderly. Many retirees aren’t taxed on their Social Security benefits, which they earned by paying into the system over many years. If Mitt Romney secretly thinks that these households are all irresponsible freeloaders, he has a weird way of showing it, as he keeps insisting that he doesn’t want to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits for those over the age of 65.
— That leaves 6.9 percent of households which are non-elderly and have incomes less than $20,000 per year and aren’t paying the payroll tax. These poorer households pay neither income taxes nor payroll taxes. Perhaps Romney thinks that they should all pay more in federal taxes. It’s hard to say. But this is also a much smaller fraction of Americans.
Meanwhile, just as a reminder, the vast majority of Americans still pay state and local taxes — in fact, these taxes tend to be more regressive. When you add up all the different types of taxes, most income groups in the United States tend to pay an amount that’s roughly commensurate with their share of the national income. . ."
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(from MSNBC.com)
". . . Fewer Americans filed for first-time jobless benefits in the latest week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It was the first drop in four weeks and could signal that the labor market remains on the mend, albeit in fits and starts. . .
. . . The last time news claims fell was in the week that ended April 28. . ."
'FITS AND STARTS'??!!!! GIVE IT SOME TIME BEFORE YOU INDUCE PANIC!!! C'mon Man!!! Get a REAL job!!! Take a pill!!! Don't have a cow, Man!!!
It's no wonder people get all worked up about things. Is there a voice of sanity anywhere to be heard?
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