The REAL Reason Republicans HATE Obamacare plus more....

Robert Reich

When I worked in Washington for the first time in 1967 as an intern for Senator Robert Kennedy, the leadership of the Republican Party included responsible adults capable of governing the nation. Fast forward 46 years and there's no real Republican leadership (Boehner and McConnell are the opposite of leaders). There's not even a national Republican Party: The GOP is a hollow shell infested with right-wing nihilists like Ted Cruz and Eric Cantor, conservative fanatics like Paul Ryan and Mike Lee, and a Star Wars barroom of cranks and crackpots, mostly bankrolled by a few billionaires and cheer-leaded by wackos on Fox News and yell radio. No responsible adult is in charge, and yet the rest of us are being held hostage to their playground antics.

A little more than a year from now the nation will have an opportunity to vote many of these people out of office. We must do everything in our power to do so.

Steve Marmel

What do republicans fear more than millions of grateful Americans who finally have insurance?

Millions of grateful Americans who finally have insurance that signed up to be voters in the process of getting that insurance.

All that hard work done by little Republican dictators to keep people from registering, trying to prevent them from getting to the polls... ...

...All the lies about voter fraud that doesn't exist and the gutting the the VRA by this corporatist Supreme Court...

it can be all undone with one single form while getting your health insurance.

Makes you understand why a certain handful of 1% are doing everything they can to prevent it, doesn't it?

From Mother Jones, which I fear is still blocked by facebook for some reason, so you can head over there and verify if you like.

- Http://Facebook.com/TheMarmelPageSee More

Bernie Sanders

Today's news from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):

Shutdown Showdown: Sen. Sanders answered questions from the public Friday morning about the potential of a government shutdown. “The issue we should be discussing is not Obamacare. The issue is whether it is right for a group of extreme right-wing Republicans to shutdown he government because they haven’t gotten what they wanted,” Sanders told the audience of C-Span’s Washington Journal.

Fair Wages for Federal Workers: The biggest employer of low-wage workers in America is not Wal-Mart or McDonald's but the United States government. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Keith Ellison joined low-wage government contract workers at a White House rally to demand fair pay, the New York Daily News, and Al Jazeera America reported. A letter signed by 15 senators asked the president to order a $10.10 minimum wage for federal contract workers, The New York Times reported online. ...

VA Mental Health: New electronic mental health systems used by the Department of Veterans Affairs could help prevent the mentally ill from turning violent, according to CBS8 San Diego. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chairman Sanders says he will remain committed to ensure veterans who suffer from mental health issues during service are provided the care to which they are entitled to receive.

UN Warns ‘We Must Act’: While discussing a new report on Thursday from United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced “the heat is on. We must act.” In their starkest warning yet, following nearly seven years of new research on the climate, the IPCC said it was "unequivocal" and that even if the world begins to moderate greenhouse gas emissions, warming is likely to cross the critical threshold of 2C by the end of this century, The Guardian reported.

Continue reading here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/newswatch/092713

Robert Reich

It's not perfect. I would have preferred a single-payer system, or at least one in which people had an option to buy into Medicare. And I'm sure there will be some glitches as the federal government rolls out new insurance markets in 36 states starting next week. Anything this large and ambitious will need fine-tuning. That was the case with Social Security after it was introduced in 1935, and Medicare in 1965.

But the Affordable Care Act -- now the law of the land -- is a step in the right direction. Doing nothing wasn't an option: Ours is the most expensive and complex healthcare system in the world that delivers poorer results and leaves a larger portion of the population without care than that of any other advanced nation. (One benefit already apparent even before the Affordable Care Act is implemented: healthcare cost increases are beginning to slow in anticipation of it. That means savings for almost every American already insured.)

We'll learn a lot more in coming months and years. And as with Social Security and Medicare, what needs fixing can be fixed. If it turns out we don't like it at all, we can repeal it -- the same way we occasionally repeal other laws, through an orderly process of legislating.

But some Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act before we even try it, threatening to shut down the government and not pay the nation's debts if the rest of us don't go along. Why don't even want to try -- and why are they threatening to hold the whole government hostage if they don't get their way? They must fear that once fully implemented, the Act will prove immensely popular, as did Social Security and Medicare. Republicans had bitterly opposed both of these acts of Congress as well. Fortunately for the rest of us, they didn't try to gut them before they were implemented.