The local paper did an article about a local Wiccan follower, and I will give them some credit: They didn’t make her look like an idiot (which is usually what happens in these kinds of articles). 
They still described the rituals her religion has her do, and to someone not familiar, it would seem strange. They “party with the dead,” says the headline. I mean, after all, it’s not like she believes in a real religion, where they drink the blood and eat the flesh of their savior during their rituals.
Any religion seems silly and weird if you observe it from a distance with a cynical eye and phrase it in such a way to take the meaning out of whatever they’re doing.
So let me just say Happy Halloween to my Wiccan friends. And to everyone else, too!
To my Republican friends who keep pointing out examples where insurance is going up under Obamacare:
By golly, you’re right! If only we could get the free market out of this, and do a medicare-for-all plan like every other civilized country — oh, right! Keeping the insurance companies involved was your idea! Letting the market decide was what you wanted! Silly me.
Let’s leave aside the webpage problems which are real, do exist, and make Obama look kind of incompetent. Criticism of that is justified.
But many conservatives are complaining that some people are finding their rates increasing — and this has to be Obama’s fault!
First of all, remember that for the vast majority of Americans (around 80%), this isn’t affecting them at all because their employer provides the health care.
Second, Obamacare requires that basic medical care needs to be covered, and some people who had only purchased catastrophic care (that they never used) now have to purchase plans that cover more and yes, those plans do indeed cost more. The fact that you are getting more for your money doesn’t seem to matter to the critics, though. (These people may also be eligible for subsidies to help pay for this.)
Third, it turns out that some insurance companies are lying to their customers and forcing them to buy more expensive plans and blaming that on Obamacare. Shocked! Shocked I am to discover this!
Fourth, rates have been rising for health care for forty years. Apparently, according to the critics, Obamacare’s effect on rates reverberated through time and space.
Here’s the point I was trying to make, though: We wouldn’t be having these problems had not the conservatives insisted on a market-based health system in America. The original plan for medicare-for-all (“single payer”) cut out the insurance companies. We wouldn’t be having these issues had we done what every other civilized nation on Earth had done. We know medicare works. We already have the bureaucracy in place. It would have been so easy to switch to that.
But conservatives insisted (and I am including conservative Democrats in this) and so we ended up with this awful bill. It’s a Republican plan that the Republicans are now trying to deny, rewriting history to their liking. It used to be called Romneycare.
I’ll blame Harry Reid and his 60 vote thing in the Senate though. There were 50 votes for a medicare for all plan, but Obama and Reid thought if they compromised they’d get some Republican votes. And come on, it’s not like the GOP wanted medicare for all. They don’t even want medicare.
I still don’t like Obamacare but it’s better than what we had before, which was nothing.
My dream is that the GOP keeps imploding, the Democrats get to control the House and Senate, and we can do this the right way, like it should have been done way back when Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it.
The bottom line is that Republicans always want the market to decide, and Obama caved in on that. Prices are going up for some, just like they’ve been doing for years without a word of complaint from Republicans. The market is now deciding. Republicans should be thrilled.
Unless, of course, they’re all a bunch of hypocrites who would criticize Obama no matter what happened, and that could never be the case, could it?
I don’t know what is worse: A President who spies on his allies, or a President who doesn’t know we’re spying on our allies.
Apparently, Obama was not aware until just recently that the NSA spied on foreign leaders who were our allies.
Members of Congress who are on Foreign Relations committees who normally have access to this kind of information also were unaware.
Shouldn’t the Commander-in-Chief know these things? Will we see some heads roll over at the NSA? Should we have agencies that are unanswerable to anyone?
We must again thank Edward Snowden. Had it not been for his unearthing of these secrets, we would never know. Sometimes whistleblowers are indeed the good guys. Obama needs to stop going after Snowden and instead go after General Alexander, head of the NSA.
The votes are the middle.
Candidates who veer too far to the left or the right don’t win elections. (Disclaimer: I’m talking mostly about Presidential and Senatorial races here; if you come from a small district that is very conservative or very liberal, then your “middle” is in a different place.)
The GOP has been nominating people far to the right lately in many races, and looks to be headed that way in the 2016 Presidential race unless they come to their senses. Some clueless Republicans think that if they had nominated someone more conservative than Romney, they would have done better. Their lack of success with very right wing Senatorial candidates even in Republican states shows that this is not true.
The Democrats have won 5 of the last 6 Presidential races with moderate candidates. (Aside #1: I am counting Gore as a “win” for the purposes of this because he did win the popular vote and would have been President save one Supreme Court justice. Aside #2: Don’t go telling me Clinton and Obama are “liberals.” They only seem that way compared to Republicans.)
So the question now is: Could the Democrats go farther left, since the Republicans will most likely nominate someone so far to the right that they will alienate most moderate voters?
No matter how people identify themselves, the fact remains that the majority of Americans support many liberal ideas. They want abortion to be legal; they favor gay marriage; they like medicare, medicaid, and even Obamacare; they want marijuana legal; they support environmental laws; and when their government is taken away during a shutdown, they discover they actually like a lot of the things the government does. Could the Democrats nominate a real liberal — Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Al Franken or someone?
Given the choice of the crazy person and the liberal, the Americans might make the right choice.
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