Daily Show Exclusive Preview: Romney - A Human Being Who Built That

The Atlantic on GOP campaign tactics

Bizzaro World Right-Wing Health-Care Attack: Obamacare Not Universal
Aug 17 2012, 6:22 PM ET

Conservatives and Tea Partiers are now complaining the president's private-sector oriented health-care overhaul didn't go far enough.



The argument that Obamacare provides an inadequate decrease in the uninsured a decade out has been floating around for a while in conservative media. An earlier version of the story on CNSNews.com, "Obamacare Will Leave 30 Million Uninsured" asserted:

Currently, according to CBO, there are 53 million uninsured persons in the United States, including uninsured illegal aliens. The CBO estimates that in 2022--8 years after the Affordable Care Act has been fully implemented--30 million people will remain uninsured....despite all the new government regulations and bureaucracies, taxes and subsidies created by Obamacare....

A Townhall.com version of the story, "ObamaCare Will Leave 30 Million Without Health Insurance," quoted from the late-July Congressional Budget Office report that set off the critique:

"CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] now estimate that the ACA, in comparison with prior law before the enactment of the ACA, will reduce the number of nonelderly people without health insurance coverage by 14 million in 2014 and by 29 million or 30 million in the latter part of the coming decade, leaving 30 million nonelderly residents uninsured by the end of the period," the report said.

What the articles fail to mention is that this CBO report was issued to examine the impact of Republican-led states rejecting the Medicaid expansion component of the president's Affordable Care Act in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling that states could do so without penalty. Coverage would go down under this scenario, because many people Obamacare was written to cover under the Medicaid expansion would remain uninsured. All of which is to say that after the GOP-led court challenge to the ACA, GOP states could gut one of its central provisions.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/bizzaro-world-right-wing-health-care-attack-obamacare-not-universal/261227/?google_editors_picks=true

Is your county going to allow 12 days of early voting?

I just got off the phone from calling both my local Supervisor of Elections office (Leon County) and the Florida Division of Elections. My question for both was, "With yesterday's federal court decision that five Florida counties will not be allowed to restrict early voting days to only eight days, will ALL Florida counties also extend their early voting days?"

Neither office has an answer - it's as if they never considered that point. After getting referred to the Division of Election's General Counsel's office, the person who might possibly have an opinion was on another line, so I am waiting for a call back.

I urge EVERY Floridian here to call their local Supervisor of Election office and ask. The federal court ruling only applies to Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe counties, which are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This leaves the other 62 Florida counties with fewer days to vote which I believe is inherently unfair.

As I told the woman at the Florida Division of Elections General Counsel's office, if I have fewer days available to vote, I will be talking to the ACLU.

Let's push our Supervisors of Election to get an opinion from the state office and to offer the 12 days of early voting that we had in 2008 and 2010.

Links to Genealogy Books online

My Dad just sent my this link so I haven't checked it out very much but it looks useful. It tries to link to various genealogy and family history books that are available online:

http://genealogybooklinks.com/

Bird Joins Blue Grass Singer

Bird lands on singer's guitar at a Bluegrass concert. Watch the reaction of the guitarist...

This is fun to watch. About half way through in this song a little wild bird lands on the lead singer's guitar and watches the singer. The singer is then able to pet the wild bird.

Put the video on "full screen" to better to see the bird. The bird really looks straight at the singer.

http://www.dogwork.com/blugrs9