Medical professionals’ knowledge vs. tea party hallucinations about Obamacare

I get an absolutely ridiculous amount of email every day and a goodly amount of it comes from folks recommending things for me to write about or from one of the various organizations that I subscribe to. I also subscribe to some right wing groups, just so I can get a pulse on what they are going on about at any given time.

This past week I received two emails that were essentially about the same thing. One pointed me to an amazing interview of two medical professionals by my dear friend Betsy de Parry. In it, they talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”) and what it really means to Americans.

The other was yet another freakout passel of lies and fabrications about the ACA from the Tea Party of West Michigan.

The two emails could not have been in starker contrast. More after the jump.

POTUS leadership: UR doin it right Today, at the direction of President Obama, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced an Executive Order that “interim final regulation that immediately extends eligibility for health insurance coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program to temporary firefighters and fire protection personnel working on wildland fires across the country”. These brave men […]

Leveling the playing field for American workers

In 2009, the Obama administration imposed harsh tariffs on tires imported from China. This move, called a “safeguard provision”, is allowed under a 2000 law. China agreed to the provision when it negotiated its membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The provision allows such tariffs to be imposed when a surge in imports into the U.S. damages our industries.

China retaliated by placing antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of American-produced automobiles in 2011. This week, the U.S. government filed a challenge with WTO, saying these duties are based on phony allegations.

[More after the jump.]

How fail is Mitt Romney? Let me count the ways.

We all know how hard it is to pin Mitt Romney down. That’s why, when he’s attacked on his private sector job growth history — and by “growth” I mean “you call that growth?” — he pivots to talking smack about public sector employees.

Rather than trying to keep up with his dancing, weaving and bobbing, the Obama campaign is simply hitting him on both fronts simultaneously.

What’s the Mayan word for “Tea Partier”? Dear people who live outside of Michigan, Michigan is a “blue state.” Democrats have won the state in every presidential election since 1992. Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama. Yet in blue Michigan, we know exactly what happens when Republicans take control of all three branches of state government: corporations win and people lose. […]

What’s more pathetic? That he says these things or that people believe them?

Last night, Mitt Romney assumed the mantle of Republican nominee for the 2012 presidential election. Newt Gingrich thinks that’s insulting (to voters, he says) and Ron Paul thinks… well, who knows what Ron Paul thinks?

What came out of Mitt Romney’s mouth was a string of lies as long as the plane trip between here and the last job he outsourced.

Let’s take a look…

Compassion is an American value

There’s a humanitarian crisis going on in the Horn of Africa right now. A drought in 2011 was the worst in six decades. A quarter million people in Somalia face famine and death.

International donors have pledged nearly $4 billion to help avert this tragedy.

The Obama administration is on it. From their press release today: [more after the jump]