Millionaires lead GOP crusade against health insurance for working people

I never voted for Barack Obama and my criticisms of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") are on the record, but GOP attempts to hold the economy hostage to defund it and ram through other parts of their fringe agenda are despicable.

The Republican strategy is essentially this: get a bunch of guys with taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, most of whom are millionaires. Anoint them to be your spokesperson on why people who have to work for a living shouldn't necessarily have access to health insurance.

Let me know how that works out politically.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

I’ve decided I’m not going to listen to the president’s sales pitch for yet another war with a Muslim country that poses no threat to us after hearing his secretary of state angrily lie, “We are not talking about going to war!”

If this administration is going to deem cyber attacks an act of war and then declare that cruise missile strikes are not, it’s not worthy of trust.

Syria bombing: so urgent, we can't upset Congressional holiday

The Obama administration's position on the situation in Syria can be summed up as follows: it's an *URGENT* moral imperative that we bomb Syria in order to (insert one of: punish Assad/protect civilians/send a message/keep our word/effectuate regime change). That's why it's going to wait a week and a half until Congress gets around to reconvening rather than bother them on their long holiday weekend.

Why are chemical weapons deaths worse than conventional weapons deaths?

Discussion topic: the UN estimates that approximately 100,000 people have been killed during the Syrian civil war (not all by Assad’s forces) with conventional weapons over the course of a few years. There has been no serious discussion of a response by external military powers in that time period.

Yet a single attack of chemical weapons that kills a small fraction of that number of people “necessitates” a global (ie: western) military response, we are told.

So why is it that the 1400 deaths caused by chemical weapons is more “morally repugnant,” to use Sec. of State Kerry’s phrase, than the 100,000 deaths that preceded it by conventional weapons?

If the answer is some piece of paper called a treaty, then the follow up question is why does that piece of paper value chemical weapons deaths more? Why does it view those deaths as more of a threat when, by any objective measurement, conventional weapons cause far more deaths and are much more of a threat to international stability?