In 2010, the GOP steamrolled to its House majority by scaring the bejesus out of seniors about $716 billion in Obamacare cuts to Medicare. Three years later, House and Senate Republicans are repeating their tried and untrue talking point. Untrue, that is, not just because the savings from private Medicare Advantage insurers and providers do […]

Karl Marx famously said that historical events occur twice, first as tragedy and then as farce. So it would seem with the reaction of American conservatives to Evangelii Gaudium, the new 85-page apostolic exhortation issued by Pope Francis. Just days after Sarah Palin fretted that some of the Pope's statements "sound kind of liberal," Rush […]

The Republican National Committee's proclamation honoring Rosa Park's "role in ending racism" is continuing to receive the scorn and derision it richly deserves. As it turns out, the GOP's attempt to literally whitewash American history is hardly its first. Consider, for example, the RNC's response to President Obama's 2010 nomination of now Supreme Court Justice […]

What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than with a heat-warming story on good, old fashioned American capitalism. Texas teacher and Obamacare opponent Thomas Ritter, who wrote President Obama and accused him of liking to "make fun of tea-baggers," is selling the letter he received in response for $24,000. Given right-wing apoplexy over Obama's repetition of […]

Even without the occasional shotgun blast in the face, this Thanksgiving at the Cheney home could offer some real fireworks. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne declared themselves "pained" at the very public split between their daughters over the issue of marriage equality. But while Mary Cheney is helping Freedom Indiana fight […]

Despite the massive--and tightly scripted--Republican effort to dominate the media reporting about the troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act, slowly but surely success stories are beginning to appear in the headlines. Just this week, articles detailed the growing Obamacare enrollment momentum--and lives changed for the better--in Kentucky, California and other states. Meanwhile, the pressure […]

Last week, Americans learned about the GOP playbook laying out the strategies, tactics and talking points the Republican faithful should use to demagogue the Affordable Care Act. A quick glance at Monday's headlines from the Chicago Tribune ("Employers could drop health care"), the Wall Street Journal ("Companies Prepare to Pass More Health Costs to Workers") […]

Six years after the start of the Great Recession, there should be little disagreement what America's number one domestic priority should be. With unemployment still stuck around 7 percent four plus years after that recession was declared "over," creating jobs has to be Job #1. That urgency is underscored by the new analyses warning that […]

As he tries to right the course with the troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama finds himself at the mercy to the American insurance industry. And that's not a good place for him--or the American people--to be. After all, while Obama now needs the insurers to work overtime to manually enroll […]

During the run-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Americans were introduced to a dictionary of terms used by health insurers to maximize their profits by denying or dropping coverage for the costliest customers. For example, a "pre-existing condition" allowed the insurance companies to reject millions of potentially sicker applicants--as many […]