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The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, January 23, 2017: My Submission

January 18, 2017, 10:31 am
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"So, what cabinet post are you in town for?"



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New Yorker Cover GIF: Trump "At The Wheel"

January 18, 2017, 10:52 am
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VIDEO: Trump Tells More Lies Than Any U.S. Politician. 
Why Do "Patriots" And "Christians" Believe A Liar?


Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Russian Electoral Manipulation




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Check Out The BRILLIANT Video Presentation Of This Recipe

January 18, 2017, 12:12 pm
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Head, Heart And Belly Tell Me That "Christian""Conservatives" Are Spellbound By Essential Evil

January 18, 2017, 4:06 pm
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Witness of Evil Gods - Hitchens: "If I was told to sacrifice my children to prove my devotion to God, I'd say no." What would good Christians, Muslims and Mormons do? > “The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust.” -Jefferson > "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." - Paine > Atheists Face Death Penalty In 13 Countries, Discrimination Around The World According To Freethought Report. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/540924605215377597/:
Alan: Although the above quotation is often ascribed to Christopher Hitchens, it may be apocryphal. In any event, the point is well taken. Abraham of Ur (in present day Iraq) is the founding patriarch of all three Semitic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Judaism was the earliest religion of the three and, in large part, emerged in opposition to the worship of Moloch, an ancient near-Eastern deity who demanded that children be sacrificed on his altar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch For decades I have wrestled with the story of Abraham and Isaac and can reach no other core conclusion (no matter how lovely and edifying the mythic "sidebars" to the story) than Abraham represented, at least in the beginning, an atavistic throwback to the normalization of human sacrifice. Yahweh may hve nixed this normalization as soon as as Abraham gave it his blessing but what remains central is the insuperable "good" of being prepared to kill your own children for God.

What's Wrong With The Abrahamic Religions: Absolutism, Scriptural Inerrancy, Bloodlust

All 3 Abrahamic Religions Should Be As Ashamed Of Themselves As They Are Now Self-Certain

Abrahamic Religions Must Deal With Their Own Bronze Age Atavism And Not Just Window Dress


Are Highly Religious People Less Compassionate?

Conservative Christians Delight In The Punishment And Pain Of Others

Pope Francis: The Horror Of Religious Fundamentalism And What's Wrong With Religion

Pope Francis On Fundamentalism: The Horror Of Turning God Into Ideological Pretext

James' Epistle: "Judgment Without Mercy Will Be Shown To Anyone Who Has Not Shown Mercy"

Creator of anti-Clinton fake news campaign that swept nation 

tells why he did it

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – It was early fall, and Donald Trump, behind in the polls, seemed to be preparing a rationale in case a winner like him somehow managed to lose. “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” the Republican nominee told a riled-up crowd in Columbus, Ohio. He was hearing “more and more” about evidence of rigging, he added, leaving the details to his supporters’ imagination.
A few weeks later, Cameron Harris, a new college graduate with a fervent interest in Maryland Republican politics and a need for cash, sat down at the kitchen table in his apartment to fill in the details Trump had left out. In a dubious cyberart just coming into its prime, this bogus story would be his masterpiece.
Harris started by crafting the headline: “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.” It made sense, he figured, to locate this shocking discovery in the very city and state where Trump had highlighted his “rigged” meme.
“I had a theory when I sat down to write it,” recalled Harris, a 23-year-old former college quarterback and fraternity leader. “Given the severe distrust of the media among Trump supporters, anything that parroted Trump’s talking points people would click. Trump was saying ‘rigged election, rigged election.’ People were predisposed to believe Hillary Clinton could not win except by cheating.”
In a raucous election year defined by made-up stories, Harris was a homegrown, self-taught practitioner, a boutique operator with no ties to Russian spy agencies or Macedonian fabrication factories. As Trump takes office this week, the beneficiary of at least a modest electoral boost from a flood of fakery, Harris and his ersatz-news website, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, make for an illuminating tale.

Alan: Notably, Mr. Harris "knew" -- as all intellectually rigorous liberals know -- that "Christian""conservatives" would buy any bogosity sold them under aegis of being Christian Times Newspaper. 

As a group, "Christian""conservatives" need no more proof of veracity than to "learn" that their news is brought to them by a source containing some reference to the magically salvific name of Jesus or Christ. 

Devious Donald His Life Is A Plutopathic Scam And You Are His Mark | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
And, he "eats the cracker!"
Contacted by a reporter who had discovered an electronic clue that revealed his secret authorship of ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, he was wary at first, chagrined to be unmasked.
“This topic is rather sensitive,” Harris said, noting that he was trying to build a political consulting business and needed to protect his reputation. But eventually he agreed to tell the story of his foray into fake news, a very part-time gig that he calculated paid him about $1,000 an hour in web advertising revenue. He seemed to regard his experience with a combination of guilt about having spread falsehoods and pride at doing it so skillfully.
At his kitchen table that night in September, Harris wondered: Who might have found these fraudulent Clinton ballots? So he invented “Randall Prince, a Columbus-area electrical worker.” This Everyman, a “Trump supporter” whose name hinted at a sort of nobility, had entered a little-used backroom at the warehouse and stumbled upon stacked boxes of ballots pre-marked for Clinton, Harris decided.
“No one really goes in this building. It’s mainly used for short-term storage by a commercial plumber,” Prince said.
In case anyone missed the significance of the find, Harris made it plain: “What he found could allegedly be evidence of a massive operation designed to deliver Clinton the crucial swing state.”
A photograph, he thought, would help erase doubts about his yarn. With a quick Google image search for “ballot boxes,” he landed on a shot of a balding fellow standing behind black plastic boxes that helpfully had “Ballot Box” labels.
It was a photo from the Birmingham Mail, showing a British election 3,700 miles from Columbus — but no matter. In the caption, the balding Briton got a new name: “Mr. Prince, shown here, poses with his find, as election officials investigate.”
The article explained that “the Clinton campaign’s likely goal was to slip the fake ballot boxes in with the real ballot boxes when they went to official election judges on November 8th.” Then Harris added a touch of breathlessness.
“This story is still developing,” he wrote, “and CTN will bring you more when we have it.”
He pushed the button and the story was launched on Sept. 30, blazing across the web like some kind of counterfeit comet. “Even before I posted it, I knew it would take off,” Harris recalled.
He was correct. The ballot box story, promoted by a half-dozen Facebook pages Harris had created for the purpose, flew around the web, fueled by indignant comments from people who were certain that Clinton was going to cheat Trump of victory and who welcomed the proof. It was eventually shared with 6 million people, according to CrowdTangle, which tracks web audiences.
The next day, the Franklin County, Ohio, board of elections announced that it was investigating and that the fraud claims appeared to be untrue. Within days, Ohio’s secretary of state, Jon Husted, issued a statement to deny the story.
“A Christian myself, I take offense to reading such unbelievable lies from a publication alleging Christian ties,” Husted said.
There was nothing especially Christian about his efforts, Harris admits; he had simply bought the abandoned web address for $5 at ExpiredDomains.net. Within a few days, the story, which had taken him 15 minutes to concoct, had earned him about $5,000. That was a sizable share of the $22,000 an accounting statement shows he made during the presidential campaign from ads for shoes, hair gel and web design that Google had placed on his site.
He had put in perhaps half an hour a week on the fake news site, he said, for a total of about 20 hours. He would come close to a far bigger payday, one that might have turned the $5 he had spent on the Christian Times domain into more than $100,000.
The money, not the politics, was the point, he insisted. He had graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina in May, and he needed to pay his living expenses. “I spent the money on student loans, car payments and rent,” he said.
By the time he launched his fraudulent story on ballot fraud, he had found minimal success with “Hillary Clinton Blames Racism for Cincinnati Gorilla’s Death,” a reference to the sad tale of Harambe, the gorilla shot after he grabbed a little boy visiting the zoo. He had done better with “Early Morning Explosion in DC Allegedly Leaves Yet Another DNC Staffer Dead,” spinning off conspiracy theories around the earlier shooting death of a Democratic National Committee staff member.
Later, he would tell gullible readers “NYPD Looking to Press Charges Against Bill Clinton for Underage Sex Ring,” “Protesters Beat Homeless Veteran to Death in Philadelphia” and “Hillary Clinton Files for Divorce in New York Courts.” Eight of his stories would merit explicit debunking by Snopes.com, the myth-busting site, but none would top the performance of the ballot box fantasy.
President Obama thought the fake news phenomenon significant enough to mention it as a threat to democracy in his farewell speech in Chicago last week. “Increasingly,” he said, “we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.”
That was exactly the insight on which Harris said he built his transient business: that people wanted to be fed evidence, however implausible, to support their beliefs. “At first it kind of shocked me — the response I was getting,” he said. “How easily people would believe it. It was almost like a sociological experiment,” added Harris, who majored in political science and economics.
By his account, though he voted for Trump, his early preference had been for Sen. Marco Rubio. Harris said he would have been willing to promote Clinton and smear Trump had those tactics been lucrative. But as other seekers of clicks discovered, Trump’s supporters were far more fervent than Clinton’s.
Alan: I take "fervent" to mean that Trump supporters are more inclined to first "fall for" -- and then vaunt -- falsehood. 

Trump himself has told so many lies in recent years, in addition to ceaseless flip-flopping (sometimes within the same speech!) that his supporters can choose whatever position they want to see in Trump because - at one time or another - he has expressed nearly every view on the political spectrum. 

This diabolical facility for falsehood -- and the eagerness with which "Christian""conservatives" suck it up -- is something "new under the sun." 

And if it is not curtailed soon, there will be NO meaning left in Jesus' self-identification as "The Way, The Truth and The Life."

VIDEO: Trump Tells More Lies Than Any U.S. Politician. Why Do "Patriots" And "Christians" Believe A Liar

People Want To Be Lied To: The Convergent Horror Of Faithful Falsehood And Aggressive Ignorance

Watch: CNN Spent Ten Straight Minutes Tearing Down Trump's Lies

Who Lies Most? A Pants-On-Fire Comparison Of America's 20 Best Known Politicians
Keith Olbermann's 176 Reasons Trump Shouldn't Be President
(Yes, It's All Here And Worth Hearing In One Relentless Torrent)

In late October, with the inevitable end of his venture approaching, Harris sought an appraisal for the web domain that by then had vaulted into the web’s top 20,000 sites. An appraiser said that given the traffic, he could probably sell it for between $115,000 and $125,000.
But Harris made a costly mistake: He decided to wait. Days after the election, denounced for making the peddling of fake news remunerative, Google announced that it would no longer place ads on sites promoting clearly fabricated stories.
A few days later, when Harris checked his site, the ads were gone. He checked with the appraiser and was told that the domain was now essentially worthless.
All was not lost, however. He had put a pop-up on the site inviting visitors to “join the ‘Stop the Steal’ team to find out HOW Hillary plans to steal the election and what YOU can do to stop her!” and collected 24,000 e-mail addresses. He has not yet decided what to do with them, he said.
Asked whether he felt any guilt at having spread lies about a presidential candidate, Harris grew thoughtful. But he took refuge in the notion that politics is by its nature replete with exaggerations, half-truths and outright whoppers, so he was hardly adding much to the sum total.
“Hardly anything a campaign or a candidate says is completely true,” he said.
Lately he has picked up Trump’s refrain that mainstream news organizations are themselves regular purveyors of fake news. Last week, when BuzzFeed released what it called an “explosive but unverified” dossier suggesting that Russia had planned to bribe and blackmail Trump, Harris wrote on Twitter: “Explosive but unverified” — “That could describe every fake news headline ever.”
He did not mention his own expertise in the field.

Image result for if you need the threat of eternal punishment you are not a good person
What's Wrong With The Abrahamic Religions: Absolutism, Scriptural Inerrancy, Bloodlust

Pastor John Piper "discusses the vexing problem of God ordering the mass killing of every Canaanite man, woman, and child."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/07/john-piper-on-why-its-right-for-god-to-slaughter-women-and-children-anytime-he-pleases-and-why-i-have-some-major-problems-with-that/

Mistakes In Scripture: When The Bible Gets The Bible Wrong

"Is The Bible More Violent Than The Quran?"

"God Enjoys The 10 Plagues Way Too Much"

ISIS And The Inquisition: The Shadow Side Of Religion. Why Does Belief Do This?
"What ISIS Really Wants" And How The Patriarch Abraham Appears To Be The Instigator

Christianity's Bedrock Commitment To Torture: Remaking "The Faithful" In God's Image

Time For Catholicism To "Shelve" Traditions And Texts That Represent God As A Terrorist
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/06/time-to-expunge-catholicism-of.html

UNC-CH Professor Bart D. Ehrman:
Biblical Exegete And Former Christian Evangelical
The Bible and Textual Analysis


"Trial By Ordeal: The Bloody Old Testamental Roots Of Modern Justice"

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Political Cartoons Starting With Putin... Err... Trump Being Sworn In On January 20

January 18, 2017, 4:53 pm
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It's Official: Hillary Clinton Swamps Trump In Popular Vote

January 18, 2017, 5:58 pm
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"Where To Invade Next": Michael Moore Explores How Other Countries Actually Solve Problems

January 18, 2017, 7:08 pm
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"Where To Invade Next"
A Movie By Michael Moore Exploring How Other Countries Have Actually Solved Problems That Continue to Stymie The United States Of Barbaria

Don't miss Donald Trump's invasion of Scotland, 
described in: 

"You've Been Trumped"
A Documentary About Devious Donald's Imperious Takeover Of Scotland
(How Donald, Revealed As The Complete Suckhole He Is, Works His Will By Denigrating "Commoners")



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"Racism, Nepotism, Blackmail: Highlights From Paul LePage's Deplorable Governorship"

January 18, 2017, 10:37 pm
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"Why the World's Biggest Sharks Love Mafia Island," National Geographic

January 18, 2017, 10:41 pm
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Mussolini And Trump

January 19, 2017, 8:03 am
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"Power Tends To Corrupt": Acton, Mussolini, Berlusconi, Trump And "La Ley De Herodes"


Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

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How Does A Puntive God Differ From An Abusive Partner?

January 19, 2017, 8:41 am
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Pope Francis On Fundamentalism: The Horror Of Turning God Into Ideological Pretext

Pope Francis: The Horror Of Religious Fundamentalism And What's Wrong With Religion

Faith and Falsehood

Frank Zappa Prophesied A Fascist Theocracy. Barry Goldwater Agrees

Bill McKibben "The Christian Paradox: How A Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong"

James' Epistle: "Judgment Without Mercy Will Be Shown To Anyone Who Has Not Shown Mercy"

People Want To Be Lied To: The Convergent Horror Of Faithful Falsehood And Aggressive Ignorance

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"The Real Story of Obamacare's Birth," Conservative Scholar Norm Ornstein

January 19, 2017, 8:28 am
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Republicans Increasingly Worried About Obamacare Repeal Without A Ready Replacement. Duh.

"Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Scholar, Norm Ornstein

My Facebook Comment Re: The Republican Party's Non-Existent Alternative To Obamacare

My Facebook Comment Re: The Republican Party's Non-Existent Alternative To Obamacare

Poll: More Americans Now Support Obamacare Than Oppose It

Donald Trump Promises ‘Insurance for Everybody’ With Obamacare Replacement Plan

Canadian Letter To The Editor: "You Americans Have No Idea How Good Obama Is"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/canadian-letter-to-editor-you-americans.html

The Real Story of Obamacare's Birth

One reason for the continued resistance to the Affordable Care Act is a badly distorted narrative of how it became law.
Norm Ornstein, July 6, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court’s remarkable 6-3 decision in King v. Burwell saves the Affordable Care Act from evisceration, although Obamacare will undoubtedly face a continuing pattern of guerrilla attacks from Congress, the courts, and Republican governors and state legislatures. Still, as many observers have pointed out, the core elements of the plan, including the exchanges, the subsidies, the individual mandate, the expansion of coverage in family plans to children 26 and under, and the elimination of lifetime limits and of preexisting conditions as bars to coverage, are almost certainly here to stay.

This is, of course, a huge victory for President Obama. But the passage, implementation, and ratification of Obamacare continue to be plagued by a widespread belief that it was tarnished by the way it was proposed and debated.  A raft of reporters, commentators, and politicians argue that the president made a huge mistake in taking up healthcare at the beginning of his term, before building relationships of trust with Republicans, and then compounded that error by jamming it through quickly without any Republican input or efforts to find common ground.

In the aftermath of King v. Burwell, it is worth going back and recounting what actually happened leading up to the enactment of Obamacare, and reflect a little bit on what might, and what should, happen going forward.

Did Obama Leap Rashly to Consider Healthcare Instead of Focusing on Jobs or the Economy?

There is no doubt that the president made healthcare reform a top early priority. There was good reason for doing so; past experience, including that of the Clinton health-reform plan, showed that waiting to pass a major social-policy change, in the absence of a great crisis, is a fool’s errand. A president’s momentum, his public support, and the backing of his party peak early, and major social-policy change by definition shakes up the status quo, creating losers along with potential winners and an even larger number of those unsettled by change. The longer presidents wait, the greater the likelihood that their opposition will mobilize and exploit uneasy voters. And the closer midterm elections loom, the more nervousness builds among lawmakers from the president’s party.

So to accomplish a goal that had eluded a slew of previous presidents, it was necessary to start early. (Alan: In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt became the first American president to propose universal healthcare. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/05/barack-obama/Obama-goes-back-to-his-Republican-roots-on-health-/) But it is also the case that the White House and Democrats in Congress did not lead with healthcare reform. They began, instead, with a series of actions aimed at the broken economy, including the auto bailout and the major stimulus package, which included a series of programs to help financially strapped Americans, and to get more back to work.

We know that congressional Republicans pursued a conscious strategy not to cooperate with Democrats on the stimulus, voting in unison in the House against it. 

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Very early on, Dave Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, asked his counterpart on the committee, Republican Jerry Lewis, to get his leaders and rank-and-file to provide Republican ideas to include, and non-starters to exclude, in a stimulus plan and was told that there were orders from “on high” not to cooperate. But despite that, the stimulus package was adopted over a Senate GOP filibuster before a healthcare reform effort moved into full bloom. Could the stimulus have done more to create jobs in the short term? Certainly—but in part to accommodate Senate Republicans like Charles Grassley, who nonetheless ended up voting against the bill, 40 percent of the stimulus package was tax cuts that mostly did little either to add jobs or stimulate the economy.

The Facts Are In: The Republican Party Is Terrible For Prosperity But Unparalleled For Catastrophe

The Cringeworthy Truth About Bush Tax Cuts And (Non-Existent) Job Growth


Image result for pax on both houses, the birth of obamacare ornstein

The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

The Evangelical Persecution Complex (Projection's Finest Hour?)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-evangelical-persecution-complex.html

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

"The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"


Did Obama Jam Through the Affordable Care Act Without Consulting Republicans or Working With Them to Find Bipartisan Cooperation?

The Obama White House took a number of lessons from the Clinton experience with healthcare policy. First, do not rely on your own, detailed White House plan as the starting point for negotiations in Congress; let Congress work out the structure and details from your  goals. Second, try from an early point to get buy-in from the major actors in the health world, including insurers, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and other providers, to at least defuse or minimize their opposition. Third, recognize that the House and Senate are very different institutions, and let each work through its own ideas and plan before finding ways to merge the two into a single bill. Obama and his White House executed those lessons brilliantly.

There was a fourth lesson: Try in the Senate to find Republican support at an early stage, instead of waiting until the political dynamic shifts toward implacable opposition. The failure to engage John Chafee, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and their colleagues at an early point in 1993, when they crafted their own plan and were willing to negotiate and cut a deal, proved deeply damaging, if not deadly in 1994. As the midterms loomed and Democrats were on the defensive, Chafee and his colleagues were told by then-Republican Leader Bob Dole that there would be no deal, period.

In the House, that lesson was not applicable this time; Eric Cantor and House Republicans had already made it crystal clear that they were not cooperating under any circumstances. There, Democrats debated the issue for several months, but mostly amongst themselves, before introducing a detailed bill that emerged from committees in July 2009 and passing it through the House later in the year with just one Republican vote.

"Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Scholar, Norm Ornstein

But with Obama’s blessing, the Senate, through its Finance Committee, took a different tack, and became the fulcrum for a potential grand bargain on health reform. Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise, working especially closely with Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

Baucus very deliberately started the talks with a template that was the core of the 1993-4 Republican plan, built around an individual mandate and exchanges with private insurers—much to the chagrin of many Democrats and liberals who wanted, if not a single-payer system, at least one with a public insurance option. 

Alan: A spectacular victory for The Republican Noise Machine was to persuade conservative Americans that "the individual mandate" was a particularly egregious bit of satanism crafted by Barack HUSSEIN Obama when, in fact, it was a Republican idea that served as cornerstone of Mitt Romeny's successful universal healthcare legislation enacted while governor of Massachusetts.

Through the summer, the Gang of Six engaged in detailed discussions and negotiations to turn a template into a plan. But as the summer wore along, it became clear that something had changed; both Grassley and Enzi began to signal that participation in the talks—and their demands for changes in the evolving plan—would not translate into a bipartisan agreement.

What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama. 

Alan: I leave it to my readers to devise an epithet worthy of Mitch McConnell for whom God -- if a punitive God exists -- has reserved a very special place in Hell.

They both  (Grassley and Enzi) listened to their leader. An early embrace by both of the framework turned to shrill anti-reform rhetoric by Grassley—talking, for example, about death panels that would kill grandma—and statements by Enzi that he was not going to sign on to a deal. The talks, nonetheless, continued into September, and the emerging plan was at least accepted in its first major test by the third Republican Gang member, Olympia Snowe (even if she later joined every one of her colleagues to vote against the plan on the floor of the Senate.)

"Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservative Scholar, Norm Ornstein


Obama could have moved earlier to blow the whistle on the faux negotiations; he did not, as he held out hope that a plan that was fundamentally built on Republican ideas would still, in the end, garner at least some Republican support. (Alan: Emphasis mine.) Obama and Senate Democratic leaders held their fire even as Grassley and Enzi, in the negotiations, fought for some serious changes in a plan that neither would ever consider supporting in the end. If Obama had, as conventional wisdom holds, jammed health reform through at the earliest opportunity, there would have been votes in the Senate Finance Committee in June or July of 2009, as there were in the House. Instead, the votes came significantly later. (Alan: If Obama had jammed "Obamacare" down the throat of the American people in 2009, he would have lost to Mitt Romney in 2012 and his plan would have been repealed without so much as a replacement in waiting.)

To be sure, the extended negotiations via the Gang of Six made a big difference in the ultimate success of the reform, but for other reasons. When Republicans like Hatch and Grassley began to write op-eds and trash the individual mandate, which they had earlier championed, as unconstitutional and abominable, it convinced conservative Democrats in the Senate that every honest effort to engage Republicans in the reform effort had been tried and cynically rebuffed. 

So when the crucial votes came in the Senate, in late December 2009, Harry Reid succeeded in the near-impossible feat of getting all 60 Democrats, from Socialist Bernie Sanders and liberal Barbara Boxer to conservatives Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, and Blanche Lincoln, to vote for cloture, to end the Republican filibuster, and to pass their version of the bill. All sixty were needed because every single Republican in the Senate voted against cloture and against the bill. Was this simply a matter of principle? The answer to that question was provided at a later point by Mitch McConnell, who made clear that the unified opposition was a ruthlessly pragmatic political tactic. He said, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.”

Alan: In effect, McConnell was saying that subscribing to "compromise" -- the very foundation of democratic process -- is unacceptable behavior. The man is despicable and if American democracy comes undone during the neo-fascist's term, he will be disproportionately responsible.

Trump Will Go Full-Throttle Fascist Following The 1st Major Terror Attack On American Soil. Putin Knows This And Is Both Able And Eager To Make It Happen

The delays engendered in large part by the extended negotiations with Republicans in the Gang of Six, meant in the end that the normal legislative process—in which separate bills passed by House and Senate would be reconciled in a conference committee—was not going to work in this case. When the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy was filled via a January 2010 special election by Republican Scott Brown, Democrats lost their 60th vote—and the McConnell strategy meant that there was no way, no matter what changes Democrats were willing to make in the final package, that there would be a single Republican vote to get them past the filibuster hurdle. Hence, the fallback to using reconciliation to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, and the inability to smooth out the rough edges and awkward language in the final bill that was enacted.

McConnell’s hardball strategy certainly worked as a political weapon. The narrative of Obama steamrollering over Republicans and enacting an unconstitutional bill that brought America much closer to socialism worked like a charm to stimulate conservative and Republican anger. The 2010 midterm elections resulted in huge Republican gains across the country, a Republican majority in the House, and a much narrower Democratic majority in the Senate. But the strategy also prevented Republicans from having a much bigger impact on the healthcare reform bill—some level of cooperation would have meant more sweeping malpractice reform and reductions in defensive medicine, and more market-oriented approaches to many areas of health delivery. It also meant that the standard technical corrections bill that every major policy change requires was unavailable in this case, creating its own challenges for implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

At the same time, the overheated rhetoric, reinforced by conservative talk radio, cable television, blogs, and social media, has created a visceral backlash. It has kept every Republican presidential candidate calling for “root and branch” repeal of every element of Obamacare, prevented many states from expanding insurance to millions of people who need it via Medicaid, and erased any hope for the foreseeable future of bipartisan efforts to revise or tweak the law to make it more effective.

Alan: Uncompromising absolutists that they are, American "conservatives" want everything their way and only their way. Their white conservative Christian Base believes that God is on their side, solely on their side and wholly on their side and that Democrats are, ultimately, baby killers with whom it is as immoral to compromise as it is immoral for "conservative""Christians" to bake cakes for gay weddings.

In fact it is pro-lifers who are responsible for increasing the number of abortions and increasing them by a factor 2 to 3. 

Conservatives cannot understand why this is so because 1.) they are constitutionally unable to entertain any truth that threatens their belief system, and 2.) they have little-to-no understanding of paradox, irony, historic distance and proportionality born of deep contextualization. 

In brief, they not only want everything simple, straightforward and consistent with "common sense," they demand that these three reductionist qualities pre-empt any understanding that might require subtle understanding associated with the apparent "contradictions" and seeming "outrages" of paradox, irony and proportionality. 

The Data Prove That Pro-Life Countries Have FAR More Abortions Than Pro-Choice Countries


Abortion, Donald Trump, Conservative Christians And Marley's Chains

Interestingly, even Obama has said that Obamacare was drawn from Romneycare, the Massachusetts plan championed by then-Governor Mitt Romney. 

But Romneycare was itself derived from the Chafee / Grassley / Durenberger / Hatch Republican alternative to the Clinton plan. 

The essence of Obamacare is a structure devised in 1993-94 by those Republican senators, then rejected and renounced in apocalyptic terms by Grassley and Hatch. (Durenberger, retired from the Senate and a genuine expert on health policy and reform, took a very different tack from outside the body.)

Thanks in part to the overheated rhetoric demonizing the plan, guerrilla efforts to undermine its implementation and disrupt the delivery of its services continue apace. 

Perhaps they will end as it becomes clear, in the aftermath of King v. Burwell, that the law in its fundamentals is not going away. 

It may help a bit if more Americans, including prominent commentators, stop repeating a false political narrative about the genesis of Obamacare.

Donald Trump Explains "Dumbo Care"



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"Socialism" Distinguished From "Socialized Capitalism"

January 19, 2017, 9:10 am
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Socialism

A necessary clarification...

Socialism is a system of government in which The State owns "the means of production."

What we have in the "United" States is capitalist ownership of the means of production, coupled with a system of socialized benefits which provide for "The Common Good" and "The General Welfare" - both made possible by tax revenues.

Ben Franklin On "No New Taxes"

Image result for pax on both houses the 1% is smart enough

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New Energy Secretary Rick Perry Expresses "Regret" For Pledging To Abolosh Energy Department

January 19, 2017, 10:19 am
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Perry's "Oops!" Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWZ-e3T1gVI

Alan: The lying dogs "on the right" will -- always and everywhere -- say ANY damn thing to increase their likelihood of election.

"Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem"
Conservtive Scholar, Norm Ornstein

Rick Perry expresses ‘regret’ for pledging to abolish Energy Department
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/rick-perry-seeks-to-lead-the-energy-department-an-agency-he-pledged-to-abolish/2017/01/18/19b14494-dd0a-11e6-acdf-14da832ae861_story.html?utm_term=.1a6bf3f87889

Alan: When Perry (and other conservatives) finally get real information it displaces their Noise Machine delusions. Suddenly, facts-in-hand, they realize that their ideological bluster was regretable showmanship and that The Real World is an entirely different world from the midden of Faux News.

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"There's A Sucker Born Every Minute" | made w/ Imgflip meme maker



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Poll: More Americans Now Support Obamacare Than Oppose It

January 19, 2017, 10:39 am
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"Hey man! I told ya."

Obamacare Is More Popular Than Ever, Poll Finds

http://time.com/4639119/obamacare-popularity-rises-poll/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

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Alan:"I told ya."


Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Russian Electoral Manipulation


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Trump Reveals His Universal Healthcare Plan

January 19, 2017, 11:43 am
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The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism

The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. 

The sooner the better. 

Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right." 

To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice,  hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html 

Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see  that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.

Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment. 

Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold. 

Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this. 



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Video Shows Police Cornering Mentally Ill Man And Shooting Him Dead: "This Was An Execution"

January 19, 2017, 3:09 pm
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Video shows police cornering mentally ill man and fatally shooting him: 'This was an execution'


Extrajudicial Execution By Killer Cops: Best Pax Posts

American Cops Fire More Bullets At One NYC Man Than All German Cops Fire In A Year
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/85-shots-us-cops-use-more-ammo-per-man.html


1 Small Town's Cops Have Killed More People Than Combined Police Of Germany And U.K.
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/1-small-towns-cops-have-killed-more.html


The Caging Of America: Why Do We Lock Up So Many People

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/caging-of-america-why-do-we-lock-up-so.html


Selma, "Glory" And America's Astronomical Incarceration Rate Particularly For Blacks

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/selma-common-and-john-legend-win-best.html


There's Never Been A Safer Time For Cops Nor A More Dangerous Time For Criminals

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/theres-never-been-safer-time-to-be-cop.html

Diane Rehm Guest Gets To The Nub Of Police Violence And How Easily It's Prevented

"Is The United States Still A Nation Of Law? Bad Cops And Bad Politicians Walk"

Killer Cops: Slow Motion Serial Killing By White People

The Caging Of America: Why Do We Lock Up So Many People?

Lists Of Americans Killed By Cops In 2013, 2014, 2015
http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html

50 Police Officers Shot & Killed In 2014. Huge, Steady Decline Since 1970s

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/50-police-officers-shot-killed-in-2014.html

"Non-Racist" Gringos Cheer Black Man Who Would "Ventilate Black Asses With M16s"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/non-racist-gringos-cheer-black-man-who.html

Jesus Says: If Walter Scott Was Running Away Because He Was Guilty Of Something, Kill Him

Compendium Of Pax Posts: What's Wrong With Race Relations? 
Hatred, Cops And The Law
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/04/compendium-of-pax-posts-whats-wrong.html

Here's The News Report We'd Be Reading If Walter Scott's Murder Wasn't On Video
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/04/heres-news-report-wed-be-reading-if.html

Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of U.S. Prison System Posts

"Cops Kill Eric Garner For Selling Cigarettes"
(No Indictment)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/cops-kill-eric-garner-whose-crime-was.html

"Attorney General Eric Holder Recalls Being Hassled By Cops"

A Cop's Take On Ferguson

Former Prosecutor Reflects On "Good Cops," Bad Cops" And Ferguson, Missouri

"Ferguson Isn't About Black Rage Against White Cops. It's About White Rage Against Progress"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/ferguson-isnt-about-black-rage-against.html

Toddlers Kill More Americans Than Terrorists. American Cops Kill Nine Times More Americans


How Cops And Citizens Should Handle Pullovers

In The United States Of Barbaria, We Train Our Cops To Kill


"The Deadly Oppression Of Black People: Best Pax Posts"

1000 U.S. Cops Lose Licenses For Using "Badge" To Rape, Sodomize And Abuse Women


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Soros: Trump A "Would-Be Dictator" Who Will Rattle Markets

January 19, 2017, 4:18 pm
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Bill Maher On Superheroes And Fantasyland

January 19, 2017, 6:40 pm
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On Inauguration Eve: Telling It Like It Is

January 19, 2017, 6:54 pm
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