Goodreads Book Giveaway
Ghosts of the Heart
by Barbara Stoner
Giveaway ends November 30, 2013.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Train wreck. Ever since Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, used those words to describe what might happen if funds were not made available to sufficiently implement the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, the no-longer-loyal opposition has used them over and over again to imply that the Senator was referring to the law itself.
That's not even a misrepresentation. It's a bald-faced lie.
It's also patently obvious that not only are Republicans screaming about the wrong train wreck, they have been busy rigging the switches and taking a sledge hammer to the rails.
Dave Weigel, writing last May for Slate, lays it out here far better than I could ever do.
The current propensity of - okay, I'll come right out and name them - Republicans to toss out misrepresentations and bald-faced lies as revealed truth is something I've more or less come to expect. What riles me up is when not only the liberal wing of the liberal media (looking at you, Charlie Rose - I caught that show), but, even worse, my fellow Democrats fail to stand up and holler foul.
Now it seems that a certain coterie of Blue Dogs are proposing quick fixes to the ACA, some of which, according to the few pundits I still trust (looking at you, Chris Hayes), serve more to weaken than to fix.
There was a lot of gleeful talk, after the shutdown debacle, around the slim possibility that Democrats might actually retake the House in 2014. Is that why the Blue Dogs are panicking? Do Democrats actually think that backing slowly away from Obamacare and failing to call out Republican lies and obfuscation will win them anything?
I want to hear them remind us, at every turn, exactly what Senator Baucus meant by train wreck. Who was causing it. And how. And why. I want them to stand by the ACA, remind us over and over again about junk insurance, remind us over and over again about the lack of funds for proper implementation, remind us who is derailing the Navigators in state after Republican-led state. As a matter of fact, every time a Republican uses the term train wreck, I want a Democrat to come back with Train Wrecker!
And then I want them to stand up and say it, loud and proud, this train's gonna run. This train's gonna run today.