[wanabidii] Blaming GOP House Speaker Boehner for shutdown, Dem attack ad compares him to crying baby

 

Good People,

 

 

 

A rebellious Republican Congress used a budget bill to deliberately stage a confrontation with a Democratic President over spending priorities. GOP militants of Tea Party and radicals of a few Republicans in the House gave John Boehner momentum and together they got frenzy nuts to fix a gridlock in the Government shutdown......that, President Obama's leadership will be into disarray and embarrassed and White House would be forced to cave in.  Unfortunately, it seems the plan did not work as they expected.   What is more, Boehner has lost it and is regretting and wondering what the heck he got GOP into this mess and to add salt to injury, they have no idea what political dynamics to apply and reopen the Government shutdown without hurting their party.

 

 

Turning to cry-baby, was Newt Gingrich in the mood of sharing, offering him a bottle grudgingly ???

 

Learning from mistakes, are there lessons to be learned here???

 

 

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. House Democrats probe move to reopen government

Reuters
Oct. 04, 2013 12:43PM PDTOct. 04, 2013 12:43PM PDT

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday announced that they are working on a maneuver that, if successful, would force a vote on legislation to fully reopen the federal government.

The ploy involves a rarely used "discharge petition" that would dislodge an existing bill from a committee and send it to the House floor if a simple majority of lawmakers in the chamber sign the petition.

This legislative route generally faces difficult odds in the House as some members of the majority party - in this case Republicans - would have to defy their party elders by signing a petition for a bill that leadership opposes.

"This is an attempt by us in a bipartisan way to open up the government," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference.

Some administration officials privately have expressed concerns over the difficulty of bringing a bill to the floor unless House Speaker John Boehner brings it up.

The move would be slow to play out, even if it were to be successful. It would take a week or so to clear procedural hurdles in the House, according to Democratic Representative George Miller. A House vote, under this ploy, might not come until at least October 14, which is a federal holiday, Miller said.

Asked at a press conference how he would get the 218 votes needed, the California lawmaker said: "We will round them up. We expect to get them in a day."

Democrats said they have their eyes on a bill introduced in March by a conservative Republican, Representative James Lankford, which was aimed at providing automatic funding for government agencies and programs based on prior-year levels in the event Congress failed to pass its normal spending bills.

Since the start of the government shutdown on Tuesday, House Republican leaders have blocked other maneuvers by Democrats to pass a bill granting emergency funding to reopen the government without add-ons to delay or kill the "Obamacare" healthcare plan.

Many Democrats and some Republicans think that if a straight-forward spending bill was put on the House floor, it would pass.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Tim Reid, David Lawder and Mark Felsenthal; editing by Jackie Frank)

 

 

 

 

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Blaming GOP House Speaker Boehner for shutdown, Dem attack ad compares him to crying baby

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News 2 hours ago

There have been plenty of jokes over the years about House Speaker John Boehner's tendency to cry in public. But a new Democratic attack ad goes one step further, comparing Boehner to a bawling infant.

The 30-second-ad, entitled "Temper Tantrum," opens with footage of a baby crying. The nearly hysterical crying continues uninterrupted for a full 15 seconds before a narrator intones, "Speaker John Boehner didn't get his way on shutting down health care reform. So he shut down the government and hurt the economy."

"Temper Tantrum" calls to mind a similar critique made against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995. After feeling "snubbed" by former President Bill Clinton during a ride aboard Air Force One, Gingrich moved forward with legislation that eventually led to the 28-day government shutdown that year.

In response, the New York Daily News famously ran a front page cartoon image of Gingrich in a diaper screaming with the headline, "Cry Baby."

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The famous "Cry Baby" cover of the New York Daily News lampooning Newt Gingrich (Wikicommons)

For it's part, "Temper Tantrum" is certainly a unique approach to an attack ad, coming from the House Majority PAC, a Democratic Super Pac that has raised more than $3 million so far to oppose Republican candidates in the 2014 midterm elections.

While the debate over Obamacare has continued unabated since its passage in 2010, the rhetoric has recently turned up in the weeks leading up the government shutdown.

Conservatives made national headlines with their strange and arguably effective "Creepy Uncle Sam" attack ad showing a man dressed in a disturbing Uncle Sam costume who walks in on a young woman awaiting a doctor's exam. That ad has generated more than 2 million YouTube views since going live on Sept. 18.

And there's good reason why partisans of all stripes run attack ads: They work. Poll after poll shows that most Americans say they don't like negative campaign ads. But every major study on their effectiveness shows that negative political advertising resonates with the average voter.

Whether it's the famous "Daisy" ad from the 1960 presidential campaign or more recent efforts like the 2004 ad showing Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry windsurfing, these sort of "name calling" attack ads have become almost expected in the political debate.

In fact, personal attack ads are so commonplace in the current political debate that some of them are formulated before a political event even takes place. For example, it was reported this week that conservatives in Texas had preemptively crafted an attack ad against State Sen. Wendy Davis just in case Davis decided to run for governor in 2014. For the record, Davis announced her candidacy on Thursday, and the ads are expected to begin airing this weekend.

 

 

 

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Arkansas Leads Way on Alternate Route for Medicaid Expansion

By Gillian Mohney

 

Friday, October 4th 2013

ABC News Blogs – 15 hours ago

 

 

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  Arkansas Leads Way on Alternate …

With only a few months to go until the Affordable Care Act is fully up and running, many states remain on the fence about expanding Medicaid, the U.S. health program that provides medical coverage to low-income individuals and families.

But the state of Arkansas has provided an alternative means of expanding the program. Last week, it became the first state approved by the Obama administration to use federal money for the purchase of private insurance plans by certain Medicaid participants.

Rather than simply expanding the Medicaid program, Arkansas can use federal money to buy private health plan coverage through the state's new insurance exchange for adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

The state's version of Medicaid expansion, approved Sept. 27, could provide a template for states that have balked at expanding Medicaid and left millions of poor and uninsured people ineligible for both federal subsidies to help buy insurance on the health care exchange and Medicaid services.

"I think the Arkansas model has provoked a lot of discussion in other states," said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, who pointed out that the governors of Georgia, Tennessee and Pennsylvania have cited Arkansas' plan as a potential blueprint for Medicaid expansion in their own states.

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Currently, 26 states are still undecided or have said no to expanding Medicaid. An analysis of census data by the New York Times found that as a result of not expanding the program, more than 8 million of the poorest Americans, including two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers, and more than half of low-wage workers who do not have insurance, are not eligible for subsides under the new health care law because their incomes are too low. They also make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid.

Most of these states, which are mainly in the South and Midwest, are controlled by either a Republican legislature or governor.

Although the Affordable Care Act originally required states to provide expanded Medicaid coverage, last summer the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion would be left up to each state..

The federal government will cover the full costs of expanding Medicaid until 2016, after which it will pay no less than 90 percent of costs.

A spokeswoman at the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services emphasizes that states can decide to expand Medicaid coverage at any time, even after the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act on Jan. 1, 2014.

"We're in round two now of the Medicaid expansion," said Alker. "The states that were going to accept federal [funding] right away did that last year. … What we're seeing now are states where you may have a split legislation [deciding] on coverage."

Arkansas, which has a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, is the only southern state to approve Medicaid expansion.

Arkansas was approved under the 1115 waiver rule that gives the secretary of Health and Human Services authority to approve experimental, pilot or demonstration projects that promote the objectives of the Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Policy.

Iowa is also in the process of having a similar waiver approved with a slightly different coverage plan.

Alker said she believes that eventually all states will expand Medicaid to take advantage of federal money and points out that the state is still paying for the uninsured today .

"States are spending money on this [uninsured] population today," said Alker. They're not getting primary care up front that would be more cost effective way of treating them.

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