In any language. This story provided the perfect hook for catching up on the week. And this strikes me as the perfect summation:
I don't know what universe Perino lives in -- although I could make a couple of guesses -- but let me explain something. I live in Chicago, and like other major cities in this country (and probably just about any other country), it's pretty cosmopolitan. I am likely to hear three or four languages being spoken while riding the bus, including a couple of West African languages. The county hospital has notices posted in English, Spanish, and Polish, and interpreters available in a number of other languages. The county Board of Election Commissioners sends out mailings in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Hindi. (Those are the ones I recognize.) The guy who cleans here is Russian; I help him with his English.
So, ACA help in 150 languages? That sounds about right.
What's obvious to me, if not to Perino and the Fox News gaggle, is that the ACA is proving to be overwhelmingly popular -- their biggest nightmare come to life. Since they can't really address the response, they're reduced to picking at irrelevancies, with an added perk: they get to throw some red meat to their racist, insular base, who are, if anything, even more ignorant than they are.
Oh, and for the shutdown -- how's that working out for you teabaggers in Congress?
The public overwhelmingly blames the Republicans for the shutdown.
Digby has a good post on the coverage of the mess -- at the local level. I've discovered that local coverage on national events is usually better than the national sources -- like, they're still committing journalism in the local papers and TV stations.
There's still a lot of speculation in the press and the blogsphere, of the "where do we go to from here?" variety, including a lot of "who's going to blink?", up to and including the proposition that the teabaggers are delighted and fully intend to shut down the government permanently. We'll see how far that goes. So far, in spite of their attempts, they're not managing to pin the mess on Obama. What they don't seem to have figured out is that most Americans are smarter than their base. Maybe that's because they only listen to their base.
Josh Marshall has a good comment:
It gets better: cue the terrorists.
The story points out one salient fact, in case anyone has forgotten:
Unintended consequences, anyone?
I don't know what universe Perino lives in -- although I could make a couple of guesses -- but let me explain something. I live in Chicago, and like other major cities in this country (and probably just about any other country), it's pretty cosmopolitan. I am likely to hear three or four languages being spoken while riding the bus, including a couple of West African languages. The county hospital has notices posted in English, Spanish, and Polish, and interpreters available in a number of other languages. The county Board of Election Commissioners sends out mailings in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Hindi. (Those are the ones I recognize.) The guy who cleans here is Russian; I help him with his English.
So, ACA help in 150 languages? That sounds about right.
What's obvious to me, if not to Perino and the Fox News gaggle, is that the ACA is proving to be overwhelmingly popular -- their biggest nightmare come to life. Since they can't really address the response, they're reduced to picking at irrelevancies, with an added perk: they get to throw some red meat to their racist, insular base, who are, if anything, even more ignorant than they are.
Oh, and for the shutdown -- how's that working out for you teabaggers in Congress?
Republicans insisted they wanted to shut down the nation's 3-year-old health care overhaul, not the government. They got the opposite, and now struggle to convince the public that responsibility for partial closure of the federal establishment lies with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
There's ample evidence otherwise, beginning with Speaker John Boehner's refusal to permit the House to vote on Senate-passed legislation devoted solely to reopening the government.
The public overwhelmingly blames the Republicans for the shutdown.
Digby has a good post on the coverage of the mess -- at the local level. I've discovered that local coverage on national events is usually better than the national sources -- like, they're still committing journalism in the local papers and TV stations.
There's still a lot of speculation in the press and the blogsphere, of the "where do we go to from here?" variety, including a lot of "who's going to blink?", up to and including the proposition that the teabaggers are delighted and fully intend to shut down the government permanently. We'll see how far that goes. So far, in spite of their attempts, they're not managing to pin the mess on Obama. What they don't seem to have figured out is that most Americans are smarter than their base. Maybe that's because they only listen to their base.
Josh Marshall has a good comment:
The down and outs have hijacked the school bus and taken the kids captive. But now the cops have shown up. They're surrounded. It's pretty clear our heroes are not getting the million dollars in unmarked bills or the plane to Cuba or Shangri-La or ThreeTimeLoserStan. So now they're fidgety and angry, a mix of desperate and threatening. They're not even sure what they want or perhaps more candidly, what they can get. But they better get something!
It gets better: cue the terrorists.
CRUZ: If the Senate cooperates, we could get this passed by the end of the day. We could respond to the national security threat these two gentlemens [sic] have laid out. The only impediment to doing so is the prospects that Majority Leader Harry Reid would object to doing so. If, God forbid, we see an attack on the United States because the intelligence community was not adequately funded, every member of the committee would be horrified. So I hope issues of partisan politics can be set aside and we can all come together and pass, right now by the end of the day, a continuing resolution to fully fund the Department of Defense and intelligence community.
The story points out one salient fact, in case anyone has forgotten:
What Cruz did not mention during his speech was that the he is the reason a separate bill would be needed at all. For weeks, he and his allies in the House and Senate have insisted that any continuing resolution that fund the government past Sept. 30 would have to remove funding for the Affordable Care Act.
Unintended consequences, anyone?
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