Travel Warnings, The Aud, and Obamacare

1. The US State Department gives free advice to travelers going abroad, advising people about problems, issues, customs, and other matters. The UK’s Foreign Office does the same for Britons, including this: 

2. A movie is being shot in Buffalo right now, starring Matthew Broderick. The crews were right outside my office on Monday, and there was a “NY *hearts* Film” placard on each vehicle’s dashboard. So, I went to that website, which the state has set up to help convince motion pictures to shoot in New York. If you go to the Western section, you find this interesting potential location – “vacant arena, Buffalo”. 

The Buffalo Memorial Auditorium was demolished in late 2008 / early 2009 – about 4 years ago. 

3. The Republicans have spent millions of dollars, hours of time, and almost 40 votes to try and repeal Obamacare. You see, logic dictates that Obamacare is going to be such a “trainwreck” that instead of letting the law go into effect and fail on its own, they will try their darndest to repeal it because they care – they care so much that 50 million people continue to be uninsured, that families’ health insurance be capped, that our idiotic status quo – so broken that they did absolutely nothing to make meaningful changes to it at any point in recent history, but have attempted incessantly to block every Democratic effort to bring about reform – be maintained, that they will go down fighting against a national implementation of Romneycare.

Guys, you’ve done such a good job lowering people’s expectations to nil. Your scare tactics and horror stories have been somewhat effective, yet you’ve failed and refused to offer any reasonable alternative whatsoever. You pledge to keep the parts you like in Obamacare, ignoring the economics that make Obamacare work – the insurance mandate is the quid pro quo of the lower rates. When Obamacare doesn’t fail and people find that they have access to reasonably priced health insurance, you’re going to look like idiots. You used the same scare tactics when we passed Medicare and Medicaid in the 60s. Now, Medicare is one of the most popular government programs in existence. 

But to top it all off, Republicans will refuse to help their constituents – residents and businesses – navigate the law. A more petulant and childish thing I have never seen. We are run by 5th graders with behavioral issues.