Look, the plan the Republicans originally wanted is in, and it’s successful. More than 7.1 million have signed up for health insurance coverage so far, which exceeds expectations. The uninsured rate has dropped, which helps all of us who no longer have to cover people who use the emergency room for their health care because it was free (“personal responsibility,” you know, is another good thing). 
The vast majority of those who are using Obamacare are paying less than before (although you’d never know it from the Fox news coverage of the minority who are paying more, mostly because their previous plans were crappy and worthless).
More and more Americans are supportive of the Affordable Care Act (a majority, in fact) and that number keeps going up.
Most importantly, people are getting covered so that perhaps we will no longer have families going into bankruptcy because of medical bills.
Seriously, why is this a bad thing? The “free marketplace” is what caused all the problems Obamacare was designed to fix, so don’t go telling me that we should have let the market decide. We did, and it was terrible.
While in the short term Obamacare may hurt the Democrats (largely because of all the lies being spread about it by the Republicans), in the long run, this will be seen as a large step forward and supported by almost everyone, in the same way Medicare and Social Security have become.
Mozilla’s CEO Brendan Eich resigned after complaints that he was a supporter of the anti-gay marriage campaign, and now certain conservatives are in an uproar.
You see, when they boycott businesses and TV shows they believe have anti-Christian messages, they are exercising their free speech in a totally American and patriotic way. But when others do it against issues they support, they are suppressing anti-Christian ideals and trying to silence people in the same way the Nazis did. 
I mean, it’s only logical, right?
Look, this guy has every right to his opinion. What he doesn’t have is the right to the job.
As the NY Times pointed out:
Mozilla competes in two markets. First, obviously, it wants people to use its products instead of its rivals’ stuff. But its second market is arguably more challenging — the tight labor pool of engineers, designers, and other tech workers who make software. When you consider the importance of that market, Mr. Eich’s position on gay marriage wasn’t some outré personal stance unrelated to his job; it was a potentially hazardous bit of negative branding in the labor pool, one that was making life difficult for current employees and plausibly reducing Mozilla’s draw to prospective workers.
This company has a policy that supports gay rights, and their guy in charge is working against that policy. It hurts the business’ image with the public, and therefore he has made himself unqualified for the position.
Suppose he had supported the KKK or some other group whose main purpose it was to deny rights to others? Do you think the company should just look the other way, knowing it would hurt their business and their reputation?
Part of the problem too is that equality for gays and lesbian is indeed a new issue, and hard to understand for some people. Most who are against it are not necessarily evil or mean, just ignorant or unwilling to take that step yet. They don’t see themselves as bigots.
However, this was also what it was like at the start of the civil rights movement in the 60s. Many whites just could not conceive of equality with blacks, and some churches even preached that equality was against God’s will — therefore to allow equality meant you were doing the Devil’s work. Doesn’t that sound like what some who are against gay marriage are saying these days?
Bigotry is objective. Are you in favor of denying rights to people over things they do not control? You’re a bigot. Sorry if that makes you angry, but that’s the definition, no matter how you may justify it to yourself.
A company has the right to say “We don’t hire bigots.”
I cannot deny that there is a “slippery slope” argument to be made here, where a company can fire you simply because you have a political position they don’t like. I hold that there is a difference when (a) you are the CEO or someone who speaks for the company and represents its image; and (b) when your position specifically says “I will be treating some of our employees as second-class citizens and advocating discriminating against them.” In a sense, his position on that issue directly affects his job, in the same way a nun could be fired for saying “I don’t believe in God.”
This is not the same as an employee saying “I dislike Obama.” Or even a low level employee who has no control over the company saying “I am against gay marriage.” I agree that firing someone for those things would be absolutely wrong.
Retiring Congressman James Moran just can’t live on his measly $174,000 a year salary.
Sorry, Republicans, but your claims that you represent “mainstream America” is just another one of your lies. 
A majority of Americans support Obamacare. (This is especially true if you call it “the Affordable Care Act.”)
A majority thinks gay marriage, abortion and marijuana should be legal.
A majority supports more gun control.
A majority wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and do not believe that “corporations are people.”
A majority want to raise the minimum wage and do something about campaign finance reform. (And a majority support amending the Constitution to overturn the Citizen’s United case).
That’s why I have been complaining here about wimpy Democrats who refuse to discuss these issues. They’re winning issues! They are “mainstream America.”
As our country becomes a plutocracy, it’s even more important that Democrats take a page from Teddy Roosevelt and come out swinging against the monopolies, corporations, and billionaires who have ruined our country in the same way they did during Roosevelt’s time. (Before you point out that Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, please learn some history. The Republican party was the liberal party back then — the party of Lincoln.)
So when you hear a Republican politician claim that America is against health care or gay marriage or raising the minimum wage or basically just about anything, just remember — the facts don’t support their claims.
An oligarchy is a government run by a small group of elitists; in our case, the very rich. (In which case, perhaps the better term is a plutocracy.) Today’s Supreme Court ruling was the final deciding factor.
How did we get here, in a place that Teddy Roosevelt warned us about? 
1. Reagan’s tax cuts. It started under Reagan when the tax rates on the super rich were dropped tremendously. Soon after this, we started going into great debt (unnecessary wars didn’t help any). Infrastructure started falling apart, education was cut, opportunities started vanishing, and they took the middle class with them. And the rich got even richer and, therefore, more powerful.
2. The removal of regulations. Reagan again. From the very beginning, our economy went through periods of prosperity and crash, on the average of every seventeen years. There was the Panic of 1819, the 1837 Crisis, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, the 1907 Banker’s Panic, and so on up to the Great Depression. Then Franklin Roosevelt put in controls and restrictions on Wall Street and banking and lo and behold, no depressions and no recessions for fifty years. Reagan comes in and removes those and bang! The S&L crisis, the 2001 recession, the 2007 Mortgage crisis, and the 2008 Bush collapse. But more importantly, the lack of regulations produced less competition as huge businesses and banks gobbled up smaller ones and created monopolies. This gives us great income inequality, where the vast majority of wealth in America is concentrated in the very few at a level comparable to the period before the French revolution.
3. Gerrymandering. This isn’t new, but it has gotten so absurd that it keeps those in power there, with hardly any challenges to incumbents. Therefore, there is no one “stirring up the pot” and bringing in new blood to change things. In certain districts, it is impossible for the other party to challenge the incumbent party. This is terrible for democracy, which — like capitalism — needs competition to survive.
4. The removal of campaign contribution limits. With Citizen’s United and today’s McCutcheon decision, the Supreme Court has vested power in the filthiest rich at the expense of the rest of us. You have to be daft to deny that money is power, and what these decisions do is to create the two great fictions that “corporations are people” and “money is speech.” This means those in power now have even more means to keep themselves in power, by being able to spend unlimited, uncontrolled, and unregulated money in politics.
Because, according to the Supreme Court, if you bribe a politician quietly behind the scenes, it’s a crime. But if you do it as a campaign contribution anonymously, it’s protected speech.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this latest nail in democracy’s coffin but for now I am just too angry to think.
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