Showing posts with label Brainwrap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brainwrap. Show all posts

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Late Afternoon

++Ayatollah Khamenei blasted ISIS as "a bunch of morons "and former Saddam Hussein soldiers. He said the struggle was between humanity and barbarity and not between Sunni and Shiite. Meanwhile the real Al Qaeda affiliate is battling ISIS within Syria.

++Ukraine's President Poroshenko has extended the truce in the East. Russian separatists have released the OSCE observers held since December.

++Abu Khattala was arraigned in DC Federal Court and charged with one count of terrorism and entered a plea of not guilty. 

++Civitas polls, which tend to lean toward conservatives, has Democrat Kay Hagan at 42 over Tom Tillis 36 and libertarian Haugh at 9%. If pushed to choose between two, Hagan is at 47 to Tillis'43.

++Brainwrap aka Charles Gaba cleaned up his final ACA numbers and has ACA affecting 15.3-24.7 million depending on which categories of newly insured you want.

++Paul Krugman wrote yesterday in the New York Times how Obamacare works and how the Republicans are batting 0 for 6 in their assertions of what was going to happen.

++Monday is the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga case which will decide whether corporations have religious rights and employers can determine the healthcare options for employees. If the case goes to Hobby Lobby,it will also mean the end of corporate indemnity as individuals and corporations are not separated.

++The most dangerous case for our Democracy is Harris v.Quinn, which could erode unions' ability to collect dues or agency fees. Labor lawyers see this case as feeding "the possible destruction of the American labor movement". Court observers believe Judge Alito will be writing the majority opinion and he is notoriously anti-union. This is meant to be "the killshot against public employee unions".

++Thad Cochran winning the Mississippi primary with the African American vote says he doesn't think we need to reform the Voting Act. Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions told the Senate it just won't be fair to single out certain states.

++Senator Mendendez said that the Obama Administration has given the House GOP a deadline to move on immigration reform or the President will do so himself.

++New Majority Leader McCarthy blamed Harry Reid for obstructionism. Critics urge Reid to offer a gentleman's deal he would offer a House bill in the Senate for a vote without amendments if the House voted on one of the Senate's.

Monday, January 27, 2014

Obamacare Rebounds

++Consider this morning's poll. Among registered voters--47% approve of Obamacare; 48% oppose. 
Among all respondents; 46% support;49% oppose.

++HHS reported last week that sign ups on the private exchanges has topped 3 million. For January sign-ups are expected to meet or surpass projections.

++Another poll from today asks "Who would do the right thing on Healthcare?" 45% Democrats. 38% GOP.

++Brainwrap on his website has been wrestling with all sorts of variations of Obamacare,including Chips and Medicaid expansion. His latest number is 13.5 million benefit from Obamacare.

++Gallup has polled on the number of uninsured in America. Because of Obamacare,it is now down to 16%,a two percent drop already.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Days of Our Lives

++Roe vs. Wade marked its 41st anniversary. Only 25,000 braved the cold weather to protest. Ricky Cantor told the crowd that he was going to insure that the government never pays for abortion--which it doesn't. House Republicans passed a bill for the IRS to audit all women who have had abortions to ensure they don't take it off as a tax deduction. Tom Cotton of Arkansas is introducing a bill that would give fertilized eggs constitutional rights. Weirdly,poll numbers today about abortion mirror almost exactly those from 41 years ago. There has been no movement toward the anti-abortion position in all these years.

++Sean Hannity was miffed that Andrew Cuomo said that there was no room in New York state for extreme conservatives. Hannity said he was going to move from New York in protest but later claimed he really couldn't because so many people were dependent on his show. He does say he may run for public office in Florida. He will be attending the State of the Union Address next Tuesday as a guest of American hero, Louie Gohmert.

++The Secret Service visited the Florida Republican who wants to lynch President obama, saying that the situation has moved beyond impeachment.

++Supreme Commander Major General Paul Valley launched his Operation American Spring in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a fitting place to advocate the overthrow of the government since the state was the first to secede from the Union.

++Marco Rubio plans to make Americans pay higher premiums for Obamacare by sponsoring a bill to eliminate the risk pool guarantees for the health insurance industry. He has twelve sponsors.

++Brainwrap has been driving himself crazy trying to reconcile his numbers for Obamacare. The total with Medicaid is now 11.9 million. Medicaid expansion is now 6.3 million.

++Jeffrey Toobin in the latest New Yorker has a iece on the President's Bipartisan Commission on Elections. Yes, it came out and it shows voter fraud is infinitesimal. The suggestions to enlarge the franchise are totally sane so they don't stand a chance of passing. The same I might add to the revised Voting Rights Act written by Senator Leahy and Rep. Sesenbrenner.

++The President's Privacy Board came out today and said the NSA mass collection of phone information was illegal.

++Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted for corruption in Virginia.

++Virginia Attorney General Herring said today he was joining a suit against the state's anti-same sex marriage law.

++Virginians may escape the bullet this year. Democratic Jennifer Wexton won the special seat for the Senate in a blizzard. The win may put the Democrats in control of that body. Another seat is waiting for a recount. Meanwhile the first poll has come out with Mark Warner holding a fifty point lead over Gillespie. 

++The Cooch called for Chris Christie to step down as head of the Republican Governor's Association.

++The U.S. Attorney told Dawn Zimmer, the Mayor of Hoboken to stop doing media interviews. The FBI has been interviewing her staff and aides about her claims and apparently five people support her version of her meeting with the Lt.Gov.

++Chris Christie has fallen in popularity and now the GOP front-runner is Rand Paul.

++The President is going to focus on income inequality in his State of the Union Address. A stunning report shows that 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion combined.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Obamacare Update

++Brainwrap continues up to update his figures. But make sure you visit Obamacaresignups.net. He has totally changed the website so it is more readable over the old Excel sheets.

++Major new finding is that the sub-26ers on their parents insurance is not 3.1 million as the HHS claims but is 7.8 million, which Brainwrap got confirmed today from HHS. That brings the total number up to about 14.4 million.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year

++ Happy New Year to all of you. May it be healthy,prosperous and a productive one and may it be very constructive. I'm just hoping for one for me without the surprises of 2013--just dull and steady.

++Congratulations to Andrew Sullivan at The Dish. He took a gamble on establishing a website sustained by subscriptions. He aimed at $900,000. Tonight he reports a surge putting him at over $850,000 with no debt. If you haven't subscribed, please do so. He has created a site that not only provides culture, religion but also politics. He should be singled out for his addition of poetry, which is absent almost everywhere else. Just the videos of Seamus Heaney reading are worth the price of subscription. Or you might enjoy a dialogue between him and Dan Savage where Andrew can't get in a word without Dan going off on a monologue.

++Let's also applaud Brainwrap, the maker of Obamasignups.net for his prediction a few weeks ago that by tonight 2.1 million Americans would have signed up for health insurance. Indeed,they did. Brainwrap has the unusual characteristic of issuing corrections on minute statistics from small states which he got wrong the first time around.

++In case you have been living abroad or in a cave,PEW put out a poll, which Dana Millbank wrote about in tonight's Amazon Post. The Republican Party is becoming more, not less theological,even less scientific,older,whiter, and more conservative. A plurality of Republicans do not believe in evolution,let alone climate change.

++I heard that Mitch McConnell is plotting to get even with Harry Reid for ending the filibuster. McConnell is gearing up to stop the extension of unemployment insurance and the hike of the minimum wage. Maybe the GOP has managed to figure out how to spin this. But it seems to me this is beyond petty, it is cruel and may rebound in the 2014 elections. 

It's already 2014 somewhere

++In Saipan, it's New Year's.

++The US finally released the last three Uighurs from Gitmo. They will probably be sent to Slovakia.

++The tribes in the Anbar Province in Iraq,once known as the backbone of the "Surge", are at war with the Iraqi government. 55 Sunni members of parliament have resigned in protest.

++Prince Bandar said he warned Russia about Chechen terrorists. Is this like his warning to the UK?

++Peter King says that the bombings in Russia are a wake-up call to Americans about Islamic terrorists.

++Josh Marshall at Talkingpoints has an excellent piece on Benghazi and Beyond the Crazy. He argues that the fake scandal prevents us from having the foreign policy debate we deserve about the role of our foreign service in conflict areas.

++Steve Benen, formerly of Washington Monthly and now the Rachel Maddow blogger, has a fine piece on Benghazi.

++The New York Times responded to criticism that their Benghazi piece was meant to exonerate Hillary Clinton. They said Hillary had nothing to do with their piece and they haven't made up their minds.

++Andrew Sullivan says that 2013 was a pretty sucky year but that beneath the surface some good happened. 

++Brainwrap in his public service of keeping us up to date on Obamacare posted new figures from states last night. 

++Sonia Sotomayor will count down the ball at Times Square tonight. 

++For the first time in my life, I actually kept all dates,to-do lists and appointments in one notebook. It really is a BFD!


Friday, December 27, 2013

The Wingnuts Return

++It didn't take long. The anti-Obamacare hate mail has started again. This time it is the cost of malfunctioning websites in Hawaii,Oregon,Vermont and Massachusetts. Yes,they have been a bother and Massachusetts and Vermont are withholding payment from the contractor. But is this how deep in the weeds they will go?

++Apparently,yes. Americans for the Prosperity of the Koch Brothers have unleashed ads against first-term Democrats attacking them for the failures of Obamacare. These ads feature actors who claim they had multiple heart attacks and now they received a letter from the insurance company saying they were cancelled. Good thing they won't be banned from insurance for pre-existing conditions. This will continue through 2014 and beyond.

++Mitch McConnell has said the number 1 priority for him in 2014 is the repeal of Obamacare. The New York Times, which pretends this people are normal,says that now the law is in effect the Republicans are debating how best to deal with the law--gut it. The Times neglected to mention that because millions more will have healthcare that won't stop the GOP from going after it. After all,they have gone after foodstamps and unemployment insurance. Why should people who now have healthcare insurance benefit?

++Jared Bernstein in today's Huffington Post goes into detail about how Food stamps and unemployment insurance works during the Great recession and how as we climb out of it they taper off. That's why it is nuts to cut them further.

++Paul Krugman is hip to the game in today's op-ed "the Fear Economy". Krugman writes how corporations actually can manage quite well with a moderate depression. This allows them to suppress wages and cut benefits because employees are living in a state of fear.

++Robert Parry writes for Consortium News about "Obama's Not So Bad Year". Parry focuses on Obama changing the dynamic of our Middle East policy and how the Beltway pundits conditioned by years of the neoconservatives blast Obama for this so-called "Failure". 

++I like Eugene Robinson but his column this morning on the civil war among the GOP is just wishful thinking. Gene talks about the CNN polls which show the public favor the GOP in the mid-terms but that the GOP doesn't have any ideas. That maybe true but they whipped up 2010 without any ideas either. 

++It should be noted that at least three polls have shown Democrats with at least a three point margin in the generic poll. Others point out the inconsistency of Americans hating Congress and giving it a single digit approval rating but wanting the GOP to control it. Democracy Corps a few weeks ago--long enough after the shutdown to be relevant--pointed out that in swing districts ,which would determine the control the House,the races are very close. But readers should remember 150 GOP House members are running unopposed.

++Kudos to Brainwrap for having his Excel sheets referred to in the Washington Post concerning the signups of Obamacare.

++What was President Obama's best decision this year? You can debate about certain nominations to the court and to the administration. But my candidate is the decision he did not make--Approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Washington Times yesterday went ape about this because there is now a conflict of interest investigation into the State Department's approval process. Remember Keystone would raise gas prices in the Midwest and would not provide any oil to the United States or create significant jobs.

++Tomorrow 1.3 million Americans will not receive their unemployment compensation.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Christmas Sunday Wrap-ups

**For this holiday season, put Andrew Sullivan out of his misery and subscribe to The Dish. Religious freaks,those interested in scrotums,and other cultural topics, can't go wrong. He even has insightful political analysis. The quicker you subscribe, he'll take down the subscribe post.

**If you need a tax-deduction, Washington Monthly is a nice blog to subscribe to. For Baby-Boomers, they throw in gratuitous Ry Cooder videos.

** For Charles Pierce, who writes for Esquire, support  ReadersSupportedNews.

**Today is the next to last edition of Jason Linkins' TV Soundoff, where you will learn what talking heads on the Sunday Shows say inane things on their way to the nursing homes. Since today everyone is asked whether this was Obama's worst year,Jason reminds everyone that Obama's fate is to be a very rich celebrity and that you would be lucky to have this year as your worst. E.J. Dionne says 2011 was Obama's worst year. Mike Huckabee says it's 50-50 whether he will run for President and all Republicans say Obamacare sucks and will be the issue next year,like it has been for them the last three years. Why change? Ms.Legrande was on Face the Nation adding some spice to the menu and she says the global economy looks like it really is recovering unless Cave Men in Washington default on the US debt. She expects the year to see unemployment in the US in the high 6% and continuing to drop. But,please read Jason's post at Huffington Post before he disappears and we will have lost a national treasure and might actually have to watch the Sunday Shows.

++Brainwrap is one of my favorite blogger this year with his Obamacaresignups.net website. Before the December 23 deadline, his numbers are 1,408,799 signups on the exchange and 3,902,550 on Medicaid. The grand total is 5,311,349. 

++The Duck Dynasty has wasted all the network time and bloggers. A few things to remember. Daddy Duck is worth $15 million and has an estate of 200 acres. The series completed its season and the second one is already in the can. He's been suspended for his Christmas vacation. Sort of like Lara Larison at 60 Minutes. But expect,Duck Dynasty type statements to be the running theme of the GOP during the 2014 election. They have to go culture war as there really isn't much to talk about.

++The New York Times is beginning to print the whines of well-to-do white people about Obamacare. I guess they have finally figured out health insurance costs more money than they previously figured.

++The US is furious with Israel for selling "our" military equipment to China. This comes after Bibi was bragging about Israel's new partnership with China. 

++President Obama is in Hawaii for his vacation. So he could not have had a bad week here in Washington. He knew he was going away from this town.

++Congress left town letting unemployment benefits to expire the end of this month and the Farm Bill unresolved.

++Senator Manchin of West Virginia said that keeping a majority in the Senate is going to be a heavy lift in 2014 because of Obamacare.