Distraction

Political Cartoon is by Clay Bennett in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Right-Wing Is Using Cyber-Attacks To Damage The Obamacare Website

(The image above is by ALAMY on the website of The Telegraph.)

It is no secret that the roll-out of the federal health insurance exchange has had some significant problems, mainly because the website created to help citizens purchase insurance was not ready on the opening date. It has been unable to handle the volume of traffic it has gotten, because the site was put into operation before all the "glitches" were worked out. This should not have happened, but the site is being fixed and should be able to work as expected very soon.

That is, it should be working right soon if the right-wingers allow that to happen. They don't want Obamacare to work, and congressional Republicans have been making a big deal out of the problems with the health care exchange. They claim it is indicative of the entire program being unworkable. But now their is evidence that right-wingers are using cyber-attacks to make sure the system does not work right (even after the glitches are worked out).

Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, says that at least 16 different kinds of cyber-attacks have been directed at the Obamacare website. One of the most successful so far has been a DDoS attacks. Here is how examiner.com describes it:

A DDoS attack is designed to make a network unavailable to intended users, generally through a concerted effort to disrupt service such as repeatedly accessing the servers, saturating them with more traffic than the website is designed to handle.

Right wingers have been distributing the link to the necessary tools to perform the attacks on the Healthcare.gov website through social networking, as pointed out by Information Week, and other websites.

"Destroy Obama Care!", that's the advertised name given to the attack tool by "right wing patriots" who are distributing the DDoS tool through downloads on social networks, which promises to overwhelm the Healthcare.gov website.

"This program continually displays alternate page of the ObamaCare website. It has no virus, Trojans, worms, or cookies. The purpose is to overload the ObamaCare website, to deny service to users and perhaps overload and crash the system," reads the program's grammar- and spelling-challenged "about" screen. "You can open as many copies of this program as you want. Each copy opens multiple links to the site."

I can understand the GOP attacks regarding the inability of the Obamacare website to function as it was supposed to. The site should have been ready before being rolled out. But the right-wing attacks are subtracting from the legitimacy of the Republican arguments. If your followers are cyber-attacking the website to keep it from working, then it is stupid and wrong to keep blaming the Obama administration for the website's problems.

Why isn't the mainstream media making this a big story? They have incessantly reported the problems of the website, but now that it's being fixed, why aren't they reporting the right-wing attacks to damage it and keep it from working. This should be at least as big a story, especially since these cyber-attacks are designed to keep American citizens from purchasing needed health insurance at a lower (or even free) price. It's just mean-spirited and wrong to deny health insurance to Americans, and then try to blame it on someone else.

Puppetmaster

Political Cartoon is by Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Public Attitudes On The Senate Filibuster

The filibuster is a tradition in the Senate. But until recently, it is a tradition that was rarely used. That was because senators knew that the Senate was supposed to be a majority-rule institution, and the filibuster (which requires 60 votes to stop) was only to be used in extreme cases. That is no longer the case.

After the election of President Obama, the Republicans met and decided to use every tool at their disposal to obstruct anything the president tried to do -- including the filibuster. And they have done that. They have used the filibuster more than any Senate in the past -- much more. They have abused the filibuster tradition. They have used it simply to obstruct -- blocking all the president's nominees for executive and judicial positions, and blocking efforts to fix the economy and create jobs. They just didn't want the president to get credit for any positive accomplishment.

Recently the Senate Democrats finally had their fill of this obstruction of presidential nominees, and they used the so-called "nuclear option" to change Senate rules. This allows judicial and executive nominees to get an up or down vote by requiring only 51 votes to invoke cloture and stop a filibuster (but kept in place the 60 vote requirement for filibusters against Supreme Court nominees and legislation) -- a reasonable move that preserves the filibuster for important items (which it traditionally was intended for), but allows the government to fill jobs that are badly needed.

The Republicans are angry though. They don't like this tool of obstruction removed, and they have been trying to paint the Democratic move as a "grab for power" -- a power play designed to deny the GOP a voice in government. This is ridiculous, but it does bring up the following question -- what does the public think about the filibuster and the "nuclear option"?

A new Economist/YouGov Poll tried to answer that question. Their survey was done between November 23rd and 25th of 1,000 nationwide adults, and has a margin of error of 3.8 points.

It turns out that the American public is not nearly as enamored with the filibuster as the senators are. Equal amounts (34%) believe the filibuster is a good thing and a bad thing, and 32% either don't care or don't know what to think about it. And the same is true of the invoking of the "nuclear option". While 35% disapprove of that, another 65% are not that upset by it -- with 30% approving of it, 16% neither approving nor disapproving, and 19% unsure what to think.

There is one thing about the filibuster that a significant majority of Americans do agree on. About 75% (or three out of every four) say if a senator does filibuster, it should be a "talking filibuster" (with that senator being required to be present and participate until the filibuster is over). Only 17% think a senator should be able to filibuster without being physically present.

Phone Calls On Flights

Political Cartoon is by Steve Breen in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

And The Rich Get Richer

I know I sometimes sound like a broken record on this blog, but I believe it is important for an economy in a democracy to be fair -- and to be fair, that economy has to more fairly distribute any rise in productivity or income. If we keep letting the rich grab it all, while the middle and working classes keep losing ground, then we will lose our democracy. It will become a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class). We are already pretty far down that road, and we need to change soon. We should start in 2014 by voting the Republicans out of power.

What We Should Be Teaching

Raising The Minimum Wage Is A Reasonable Way To Reduce The Budget Deficit

The Republicans seem to continually whine that the federal government is too deeply in debt, and needs to cut the budget deficit. I don't think they're very serious about that, because they are the ones that took a budget surplus left by the last Democratic president, and turned it into a huge budget deficit. And they are continually refusing to make legitimate policy adjustments that would reduce the budget deficit -- things like cutting our bloated military budget, or raising taxes a small amount on the richest Americans (many of whom pay a smaller percentage than the middle class) or corporations (many of whom pay no taxes at all).

They act like they can balance the budget on the backs of children, seniors, the poor, and the unemployed -- simply by cutting funding for these already hurting Americans. The crazy part is that they could legitimately cut spending on social programs without hurting anyone by doing one simple thing -- raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour or more.

That one act alone would save billions in social program costs, and it would do that without hurting businesses (who would benefit from all the extra money flowing through the economy increasing their sales and profits). That act would save a couple of billion dollars in Wal-Mart employees alone, so you can imagine the many billions it would save in the economy at large.

It would be the reasonable way to reduce the budget by reducing social spending (because most of the poor who receive government help are working full-time -- but are underpaid for that work). But reasonable is not in the Republican vocabulary. They want to cut that spending by hurting those who cannot afford more misery.

This is just one more reason, among many, why the GOP must be voted out of power in 2014.

Katrina Moment ?

Political Cartoon is by Jim Morin in The Miami Herald.

Approval Ratings For Elected Officials

Much has been made of the recent drop in the president's approval ratings, especially by those on the right -- and it is true that those ratings have dropped recently. According to a new Economist / YouGov Poll (taken between November 23rd and 25th of 1,000 nationwide adults, with a 3.8 point margin of error), the president's approval is now about 37% -- as low as it has ever been.

But I feel it is important to point out that those ratings are still much higher than those of Congress, which currently rests at a miserably low 6%. And while the public is still pretty angry with everyone in Washington, they still blame the Republicans most for the government's inability to get anything done -- particularly the inability to fix the economy. The approval rating for the congressional Republicans is at 24% -- about 13 points lower than the president, and 11 points lower than the congressional Democrats.

And when you look at the demographic breakdown, you can see that is true of almost every group and in every part of the country. Only one group gives the GOP a higher approval than the president and the Democrats, those 65 & over, and even that is by a much lower margin than in the past.

Where's It Coming From ?

Political Cartoon is by Lee Judge in the Kansas City Star.

Grayson Calls For Public Option (Medicare For Anyone Who Wants It)

Think about it: Has anyone ever complained about being canceled by Medicare? No. 

Has anyone ever complained that the Medicare website crashed? No. 

Has anyone ever complained that Medicare refused him coverage? No. 

Has anyone ever complained that Medicare cut him off when his care got too expensive?No. 

Has anyone ever whined that Medicare is socialism? Well, yes. In 1961, Ronald Reagan said that Medicare would bring on a socialist dictatorship. As if. 

The real problem that we have is not that some website doesn't work. The real problem isnot that Obamacare somehow is compelling employers to drop health coverage (because it's not). The real problem is not that some insurance companies are canceling some policies - when has that ever not happened? 

Here are the real problems: 

1. A lot of Americans can't afford health insurance.
2. In many areas of the country, the health insurance companies and the hospitals are monopolies or duopolies, and they control the market.
3. The health insurance companies charge as much as they can, they provide as little care as they can get away with, and they call the difference "profit." They have a conflict of interest with you. They make more money by denying you the care that you need to stay healthy, or even alive.

But there is a solution to these problems. In fact, some Americans have an excellent healthcare system, which is overwhelmingly popular. It provides care from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, and from sea to shining sea. It's cheap and efficient - 97% of the cost goes directly into providing care. We've invested billions of dollars to make it comprehensive and universal. You may have heard of this healthcare system -- it's called "Medicare."

And, weirdly, we open it only to seniors and the disabled. It's as if we were to say that the minimum age to drive on interstate highways were 65 years old. It's as if we were to say that only seniors could go to public school.

That's just nuts.

What would it cost for everyone else? I'm glad you asked. According to the experts, for full coverage, including the prescription drug benefit, Medicare would cost barely $100 a month for children, and less than $500 a month for people in their sixties. Which is much less than my coverage costs -- and, I would venture to say, probably yours, too (unless you're on it already).

Which is why, back in 2010, I introduced a simple, four-page bill, the 'Medicare You Can Buy Into Act.' The bill allows Americans to buy into Medicare at cost. If you want Medicare, and you pay for it, you've got it. Period. End of story.

I signed up more than 80 co-sponsors in the House, in two weeks.

Poll after poll found that a "public option" like this was very popular with the public, too.Politifact did a survey of surveys, and found that in 28 polls, the average result was 57 percent in favor, and 38 percent against - despite massive negative propaganda spewed out by the Chamber of Commerce. 

Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act passed without a Medicare buy-in, or any public option. King Lieberman (D-Aetna) vetoed it. That kept private insurance companies exclusively in charge of health coverage for people under 65. We can all see how well that's turned out. These large and profitable corporations have cancelled policies and raised rates at will. They are demanding the power to continue to discriminate against women, to deny coverage to people with existing illnesses, and to pull the plug - literally - on anyone whose coverage becomes too expensive.

If we open up Medicare to everyone who can pay for it, private insurance premiums will drop, because health insurance companies with local monopolies will face much-needed competition. And, to compete, those companies will have to offer better policies -- policies with more comprehensive coverage, with a broader network, and better service.

Now that's what I call true health care reform. That's what I'm talking about.

We want a public option. We need a public option. And that public option already exists - we just need to open it up, to all Americans.

It is never too late to do the right thing.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida) 

GOP Outreach

Political Cartoon is by Mike Stanfill at farleftside.com.

The Beast

I attended a public high school, so it took me a bit longer to realize the truth of what Marilyn Manson is saying. It was not until I went to a right-wing fundamentalist college that it became obvious to me that the right-wing fundamentalism I was witnessing was not a solution to any of this country's problems -- it was the biggest problem of all. It produced little except division and hatred. I became an atheist because I could no longer pay homage to that beast.