The Rachel Maddow Show has the segment House Republicans’ unique appreciation for ‘expertise’.

From time to time, Republican officials will seek out advice from those who are a little … what’s the word … unusual.

For example, earlier this year, the Republican National Committee invited far-right provocateur David Horowitz, author of books such as “Killing Whitey,” to help the party “broaden the GOP’s appeal with voters.” His lack of credibility on the subject didn’t seem to bother party leaders. Similarly, around the same time, House Republicans sought out Dick Cheney for guidance on foreign policy, untroubled by his track record, too.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with seeking out experts for advice – indeed, it’s generally a good idea – but the key is identifying reliable, trustworthy authorities who can help others better understand complex issues and add value to a serious conversation.

It you missed Rachel’s opening segment last night – and my oh my do I hope you saw this one – there’s fresh evidence that Republicans’ appreciation for expertise is a little, shall we saw, skewed.

Rachel Maddow probably ought to get an award for telling the shaggiest shaggy dog story ever told.

It took me a while for her to remind me who this guy is, and then even longer to tie this in, although the headline ought to give this away almost from the start.

Organizing For America has the web page President Obama: The Affordable Care Act is More than a Website.

If we do not like the job the mainstream media is doing in getting the message out that “The Affordable Care Act is More than a Website”, there is more you can do than just grumble. You can help spread the word, just like I am doing with this blog post.

Upworthy featured this video in its story Ever Hear About The Lady Who Spilled Coffee On Herself At McDonald’s, Then Sued For Millions?

It’s really unbelievable what happened to Stella Liebeck. You just have to watch to see how the media turned on this little old lady who lived in Albuquerque. Obviously a villain, right? And at 5:00, prepare to see what the coffee actually did to her. It’s not pretty. Well … nothing in her situation was.

I have known the truth about this story for many years. I may have even blogged about it before. This is the first time I saw some of the pictures of her injuries.

What really burns me, is the talk of tort reform by people who base the idea on fictional beliefs about how our jury system works. (Yes, pun intended.)

Now that I think about it, isn’t bullying the way that Republicans have gotten their way since the days of Ronald Reagan? Maybe this is why I have stood up against Republicans since they started using these tactics. My experience is that standing up to bullies is the only way to handle them.

Found this on YouTube via The Real News Network:

Chris Hedges speaks about suing the Obama administration for the NDAA (Hedges vs. Obama), his experience with banned terror groups as a journalist, and unconstitutional government backlash both in and out of court. The Obama administration attack on civil liberties and abuse of military power through surveillance and assassination, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and more are discussed with Sean Stone in this short clip of the full length Buzzsaw interview.

I’ll have to check my calculus books, but I think if you go off to infinity with right wing conspiracy theories, you can come back from infinity to the left wing.

There is one thing to note as described in The Boston Globe article Conspiracies: Five things they don’t want you to know.

Myth #4: Conspiracy theories are never true

A letter I received from Joaquin Castro and Trey Martinez Fischer had the link to the video below.  By way of explanation, the letter started out as follows:

Today, San Antonio’s Judge Carlo Key, a Republican County Court Judge, is the latest elected official to leave the Republican Party and join Texas Democrats.

I wonder if Ted Cruz appreciates just how good a job he may be doing in finally turning around Texas politics.

C-SPAN broadcast the President’s Remarks.  As of this writing, I cannot embed the video here, but you can click on the preceding link to see it.

The President talked about all the benefits of the ACA that do not require you to use the troubled website.  He promised that the website will be fixed.

He provided a link to See 4 ways you can apply for coverage. Will the mainstream media finally start telling their viewers and readers about the alternatives to the healthcare website instead of exclusively covering the failures of the website? Or will they continue to follow NBC’s philosophy that it is not their duty to inform their viewers with useful information?

One of the ways to get the insurance is by telephone.

To apply by phone, call 1-800-318-2596, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (TTY: 1-855-889-4325). A customer service representative will work with you to complete the application and enrollment process.

The President mentioned that there have been only 1 minute wait times on the phone (expect the waits to get longer now that he has publicized the phone number). It takes about 25 minutes to go through the phone process to finish the application process.  For a family plan it may take 45 minutes.

Another way is to  Get in-person help in your community.  The URL for the previous link is localhelp.healthcare.gov.  I tried the link to see what help there is in Massachusetts.

If you live in Massachusetts, the Health Connector is the Health Insurance Marketplace to serve you. Instead of HealthCare.gov, you’ll use the Health Connector website to apply for coverage, compare plans, and enroll. Visit the Health Connector now to apply.

The President mentioned that unlike after Thanksgiving shopping, these deals will not run out. He could have also mentioned, that there are millions of people who are willing to withstand long waiting times to get the bargains on Black Friday, and they aren’t even shopping for something as important as life-long health insurance.

Was the Darwin Award invented for those people who will not get health-insurance because they are influenced by the lies on Faux Noise?

Think of all the people who are stuck in dead-end jobs that they do not like because of the need for health insurance for their families, but if it weren’t for the insurance problem, would prefer to start their own businesses.

Think how much better the economy will be when these creative entrepreuners are set free to follow their dreams.

Talking Points Memo has the article One Big Problem With Heritage’s New Obamacare Study.

The conservative Heritage Foundation released last week a new report on insurance premiums under Obamacare, and the conclusion was that favorite of conservative talking points: people are going to pay more for insurance under Obamacare.

Only the foundation left out one key variable in the equation, one that undermines their conclusion that “individuals in most states will end up spending more on the exchanges.”

They didn’t account for the financial help that the Affordable Care Act gives uninsured people to purchase insurance, one of the law’s central provisions.

So, when you hear Republicans talk about the harm ACA is doing, the jobs that have been lost, and the working hours cut, just repeat after me, “They are lying.” It seems a pretty safe bet that you will be right. So what else about the Republican plan for this country should you doubt?

Just once, when Ted Cruz and others start with their tirades, it would be nice to hear a reporter ask, “Can you prove any of this?”

The Daily Kos featured this video in their article Tea Party Negotiating Tactics: Video. Why didn’t this work for the Tea Party?

The scary part is that this is the tactic that might work when President Obama buys the premise of the Tea Party about Social Security and Medicare during his “negotiations” with them.

Adam Green of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, was on C-SPAN for about 45 minutes explaining what a Progressive is, what progressive priorities are right now, and how they decided whether or not a political candidate is a bold progressive. He answered a number of questions from viewers.

Green was refreshingly articulate on what my kind of progressivism is. In a survey after seeing the C-SPAN episode, I rated his performance as nearly perfect.

The only reason I did not rate his performance as perfect was his failure in a few instances to understand a viewer question well enough so that he could represent the progressive side as well as he might have.

In October 2011, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank published the report Why Health Care Matters and the Current Debt Does Not.

 The overwhelming obstacle to a sustainable fiscal path for the United States, regardless of the size of the current debt, remains health-care spending.

In discussing a figure published in the report, the authors draw three key inferences, to wit:

1. If growth in government spending on health care and Social Security is matched by growth in government revenue, the cost of servicing the debt, and moreover the debt itself, will largely stabilize as a percent of GDP from 2020 to 2030. In other words, the current level of the debt is not by itself an obstacle to fiscal sustainability.
2. If, on the other hand, the government increases spending on health care and Social Security without raising additional revenue, the debt, and the cost of servicing the debt, will skyrocket toward unmanageable levels.
3. As a share of GDP, outlays on Social Security are expected to largely stabilize by 2030. Hence, the overwhelming driver of increases in government spending is health care.

These points were often made by President Obama in justifying his drive at the beginning of his Presidency to focus on what came to be called The Affordable Care Act (ACA).  When people wondered why he focused on this, rather than the debt problem, his point was to remind people that reining in the cost of health care was THE way to solve the long term debt problem.

One point that President Obama did not make strongly enough is that the unrestrained rising cost of health care will overwhelm our economy no matter who pays for it.  Even if the government paid nothing toward the cost of health care and individual people and business bore the entire burden, the cost of health care would still overwhelm the economy.

Since the passage of ACA, President Obama seems to have forgotten the key message.  In all the cries about getting our fiscal house in order, the President needs to keep pointing out that the passage of the ACA is the first step to doing just that.  Attacking Social Security and Medicare is not part of the solution.  Repealing ACA rather than fixing it and improving it will be a giant leap away from fixing the long term debt problem.

The problem of the long term debt is not that the Government could not produce enough money to cover that debt.  The problem is that the economy could not produce enough goods and services to meet the needs of the costs of health care and meet all the other needs of the people of this country.  It does not make any difference what you use as the measuring stick (U.S. money as is now done or some other proxy measure), the productive capacity for making real goods and services is the ultimate limit on what can be done.

The Fed report mentioned here was the center of the previous post How to Talk About Debt and Deficits: Don’t Think of an Elephant*, however, I think its significance and the points it made were lost in the shuffle of that post.