Sunday, September 29, 2013

I am watching a finale with friends.

Have a good evening.

Representative Diane Black is typical of the misleading GOP message surrounding Affordable Care Act.

I value all feedback (click here) from residents of the 6th Congressional District of Tennessee. I am here to serve you, and so is my staff. Below please find the best means by which you may contact me or my offices.

States Rights still exist with the state exchanges. The Red States have chosen to treat the Health Care Exchanges as a penalty rather than an asset to the people of their states. Red States are not in support of the exchanges and it shows. Rather than demanding quality exchanges that compete for best OUTCOMES they only ask there are barebones provisions.

The problems Republicans such as Ms. Black speaks about is not from the federal law, but, the lack of will and ability of the state exchanges.Possible the worst of the State Exchanges is Missouri.

September 28 
By DAVID A. LIEB 
The Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri residents (click here) can begin enrolling Tuesday for health coverage offered through a new online insurance marketplace. But patients searching for insurance may want to practice some patience... 

The private sector is not convinced it is in their best interest to participate in the State Exchanges, so in many Red States they simply don't participate and in the case of Missouri, they actually seek to cause citizens concern of their only option. 

BJC HealthCare (click here) is one of the largest nonprofit health care organizations in the United States, delivering services to residents primarily in the greater St. Louis, southern Illinois and mid-Missouri regions. With net revenue of $3.6 billion, BJC serves urban, suburban and rural communities; and includes 13 hospitals and multiple community health locations....

Missouri's Health Care Insurance Exchange originally had one company participating, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Anthem was not providing BJC (Barnes-Jewish) as a provider for their 'in network' policy. Excluding BJC from 'in network' providers scared people because it is a Level 1 trauma center. The BJC health care system also houses St. Louis Children’s Hospital which is vital to pediatric medicine in the state. Needless to say there have been many worries about access and outcomes. 

Just a couple of days ago Coventry joined the Missouri exchange. It is sure thing for them. Coventry is offering BJC as a provider. Anthem put themselves out of favor now that Coventry is participating.


September 27, 2013 6:45 pm 
BJC Healthcare’s 13 hospitals will (click here), in the end, be available for residents who buy insurance on the federal health care exchange in Missouri.
Officials for BJC and the insurer Coventry Health Care Missouri both confirmed Friday afternoon that Coventry would offer BJC, Missouri’s largest hospital network, as a provider here.
Earlier this week, the Post-Dispatch reported that brokers had been told that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Missouri would sell only individual exchange plans that excluded BJC as a health care provider. They said Anthem was unable to reach agreement with BJC on costs. The insurer had declined to discussed its policies....

This is the gamesmanship the Red States participate in for the benefits of Wall Street and their strain of politics. The problems people are running is not the Affordable Care Act, but, it's application at the state level. Those finding frustration with this new law need to complaint to their state legislators, not their federal representatives. It is the lack of political will, the inefficiency in state governments and lack of state infrastructure that is the problem. The federal law has nothing to do with it. Citizens might want to investigate state level corruption in preparation of the health care exchanges. The opportunity to have a smooth beginning on October 1st was given plenty of time and attention by federal agencies.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/09/28/4514873/advocates-advise-patience-with.html#storylink=cpy
Iran has to lead the Shi'ites as a peaceful nation. They have to stop supplying arms to groups such as Hezbollah. Lebanon has a right to exist no differently than Iran has a right to exist.

By David Lev
First Publish: 8/26/2013, 4:43 PM

A rift has developed (click here) among various terrorist groups, who until recently had overlooked religious differences to cooperate in fighting Israel and other western interests, as they find themselves fighting on different sides of the Shi'ite/Sunni fault line which increasingly characterizes fight for or against the rule of Bashar Al-Assad.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) terror group, which has conducted numerous terror attacks against Israel, is ready to defend Assad and ensure he remains president of Syria. Any group or nation that attacks Syria, said Popular Front spokesperson Anwar Rajah, will be a target of attack by Popular Front terrorists....

In actuality, the involvement of the USA as advocated by Senators Graham and McCain against the Assad government is a thinly disguised assault against Iran. For the USA to position itself among ethnically opposed groups is highly immoral. It also serves only one purpose and that is to draw the Shi'ite nation of Iran into a proxy war.

For the USA to arm opposition groups when there is no viability of their governance is nothing short of an assault against humanity.  Anarchy is among the cruelest of governance. A person does not know whether his or her life is guaranteed to them. 

Human Rights abuses the USA and other nations complain of are best handled through the United Nations, sanctions and leveraging of power. I am confident Iran has come to understand the brevity of sanctions when they are fully implemented. Sanctions work with international consolidation of loyalty to the outcomes.  

The peace the Middle East needs requires stability of all nations. That means all nations contributing to the instability by supplying a flow of weapons to facilitate anarchy have to stop. The peoples in uprising for the reason of their own religious affiliations are pawns in international power struggles. No matter whom is participating in those power struggles are wrongfully involved in victimizing innocent people best allowed to live their lives uninterrupted and within a stable nation. 

The best international power struggle belongs only in economic competition, not trading weapons to promote anarchy. 

Assad needs to do a couple of things.

He needs to recognize Lebanon as a stable and autonomous nation.

He needs to re-establish a valid chain of command within his own military. Ultimately, it is up to Assad to deal with al Qaeda within his nation. The USA cannot arm those rebels.

He needs to allow UN Peacekeepers into Syria to carry out the removal of chemical weapons. He does not have to accept any other armed forces into Syria except those that are sanctioned by the United Nations with an understanding the UN forces will leave after the mission is complete unless he decides it would be best for them to stay to assist in stabilizing the nation.

He needs to declare a Cease Fire in order to facilitate NGOs to do their work while the weapon inspectors are in his nation.

In the RT video appears Said Arakat states, "...this opposition is primarily an Ad Hoc organization, each 3 or 4 people, sometimes 10 or 20 people..." That is exactly what has been occurring in Libya. There is no respected central authority. It is easy to defeat 3 or 4 or 20 people at a time. The reason they look cohesive is because they enter the fight together to survive the day. They are not affiliated, they are fighting together only to return to their own territories.

As Libya’s Prime Minister asks Britain for help in ridding his country of weapons, The Independent discovers a flourishing online arms market (click here)

On a late July day in downtown Tripoli, a young man steps into a car idling next to the Libyan capital’s iconic Martyrs’ Square. From the back seat, he hands to the driver what Libyans refer to as a “Turkish pistol” and some bullets. In return, the driver hands him a thick stack of 10-dinar notes. The exchange had been arranged using one of the numerous Facebook “groups” created in recent months to link gun-sellers to gun-buyers through the social network.
The driver, Muhammad, an unemployed, 23-year-old Tripolitanian, is one of hundreds of Libyans who are taking advantage of a security vacuum in a country awash with weapons nearly two years after its successful revolution removed a dictator.
It is these weapons that Libya’s prime minister, Ali Zeidan, asked for help in removing from his country while on an official visit to Britain yesterday. After meeting with David Cameron, Mr Zeidan called the mass of Gaddafi-era weapons an “international matter” and asked for assistance in disposing of them....

This blog is familiar with online sites where very dangerous weapons are for sale. The NRA and it's extremists in the USA are profiting off of death in other nations. That is illegal. Any escalation of instability in a nation puts the USA in the precarious position of entering a forever war, exactly as what is being witnessed in Libya and now Syria.

The Libyan military mission by NATO was correct as it stopped the slaughter of people in Benghazi. But, the after math has left the country in chaos. With the easy access to weapons 'online' the central governments of these nations haven't got a chance.

3 Libyan army officers assassinated in Benghazi (click here)
 
Posted: Sep 29, 2013 8:14 AM EST Updated: Sep 29, 2013 8:14 AM EST 
By ESSAM MOHAMMED
Associated Press

 
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - A Libyan security officer says unknown attackers have assassinated three army officers in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Sunday's killings are the latest to hit the security forces in Benghazi, where like much of the country the government faces a challenge from armed groups, many descended from the rebels that overthrew dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Col. Abdullah al-Zayedi, spokesman of joint security operations in Benghazi, said two of the officers, one a lieutenant colonel, were killed by bombs attached to their cars. He said a third, who held the rank of colonel, was shot dead by unknown gunmen.
Benghazi has been hit by a months-long wave of targeted killings. Victims have included political activists, judges and members of security agencies.

The Arms Market with or without the access to the internet is creating danger for people everywhere, not just within the USA domestically.

Inspectors and funding needed.

The timeline may be too short, there are only half the number of weapons inspectors to do the work and the civil war is still being carried out. Where are the peacekeepers coming from to protect the weapons inspectors that will work to remove the chemical weapons?

Funding is going to be needed to hire and train HONEST and RELIABLE inspectors to carry out the timeline. 

Bombing missile sites does not do anything to complete the task, so there is no back tracking on this resolution.


...Experts say the OPCW (click here) will need up to 200 inspectors for the Syria force. It currently has less than half that number who already have a heavy regular workload. The watchdog has had to appeal to the major powers to send scientists.

Those who go will become a new target in the 30-month-old conflict and the strife means the noxious potions will have to be moved out of Syria to be destroyed.

The US-Russia plan sets a target date of mid-2014 for completion, but few people believe it is achievable.

"No operation this big has been carried out before and certainly not in a war," said Dina Esfandiary, a disarmament specialist with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The Syrian government has declared one list of chemical sites and weapons. It has until Friday to send more information to the OPCW. "The first obstacle is it is very difficult for us to know for certain whether Assad has declared all his stockpiles," Esfandiary told AFP.

"The inspectors will then become perfect targets in a situation of civil war. Anyone who wants to derail the process — and I am sure a lot of people will want to do that — will be able to target them as they visit the various sites."

UN investigators have already been the target of snipers in Damascus.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a consultant and former commanding officer of Britain's chemical and nuclear defence force, said that destroying the chemicals in Syria is not an option in the middle of a war... 


There are actually two United Nations missions in Syria regarding the chemical weapons.

September 29, 2013 11:26 AM (Last updated: September 29, 2013 11:53 AM)

...The United Nations has said (click here) the experts are investigating seven alleged chemical weapons attacks and expect to wind up their work on the ground on Monday.

They hope to have a comprehensive report ready "by late October".

The UN mission is separate from a team of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inspectors due to start work in the coming days to destroy Syria's chemical arsenal.

The alleged attacks being probed include a March 19 incident in Khan al-Assal, in Aleppo province of northern Syria, that both the regime and rebels reported, each accusing the other of responsibility.

Other sites being investigated include the Sheikh Maqsud neighbourhood of Aleppo city, allegedly the site of an April attack, and Saraqeb in the northwest province of Idlib on the border with Turkey....

When are the peace talks beginning in a way that will result in a ceasefire so NGOs can do their work, too? There is a huddle to accomplishing any shared governance as the group representing the oppositional forces aren't speaking for the actual rebels.

The reality is that the oppositional forces in Syria are taking on the characteristics of Libya's dynamics. They are many, not consolidated into one group and carry questionable outcomes to their policies for governing. Basically, the rebel forces Senator McCann is backing aren't really capable of governing at all. There needs to be an end to the pretense of American Neocons to continue their charad. As a matter of fact the Senate needs to investigate this mess. How is it the USA has gotten involved with rebel groups who are not interested in democracy and is providing weapons and otherwise to those that seek to destabilize a government without another to come to bear?

September 26, 2013
Syrian Opposition Groups Stop Pretending
The pretense (click here) that the so-called Syrian opposition-in-exile speaks for those inside the country, never firm to begin with, was further exposed late on Tuesday, in a two-minute video statement called “Communiqué No. 1,” which was issued by eleven armed rebel groups that are influential in northern Syria. Their message was simple: the Western-backed hotel revolutionaries jetting from capital to capital, claiming leadership in the political National Coalition and an interim government-to-be, don’t speak for them—and they won’t listen to them. The new coalition, which has yet to announce its name, also said it wants Islamic Sharia law to be the basis of any future government, and that the various opposition parties should unite within “an Islamic framework.... 

I am beginning to believe Israel and the USA rather have anarchy in these nations rather than stability. 

It is time for Senators McCann and Graham to explain to the USA Senate why they believe they have the best idea for the use of the USA military in destabilizing governments based in "I don't like him (Assad)." If the American people are suppose to accept Acts of War dictated by the Legislative Branch of the USA government, there better be good reasons why this war mongering existed in the first place.

This is another Iraq. So far the Republican Neocons are responsible for TWO illegal wars. Iraq and the burgeoning impetus into Syria. TWO. The rebels are being armed by the USA. The rebels don't even know what they are going to do to govern except instill Sharia law. How convenient, the Quran has a 'Default Setting' for governing in Islam. 

The USA needs to review it's militiary budget for further cuts. The world does not need a push button arsenal.
 
Just a minor adjustment to the image of Rep. Meadows. He is from western North Carolina, the Smokey Mountains, where Eric Rudolph lived undetected for five years (capture 2003) after bombing abortion clinics for two years (1996-1998) killing two people and injuring 150.

I'm just sayin'.

Meadows wouldn't know what good government was if it bit him in the arse.

The last Republican to be in the House was Charles Taylor. Taylor was a Right Wing Nut, too. Taylor came to the House a lawyer of reasonable means, but, was voted out of office the wealthiest member of Congress. 

These legislators don't govern, they just craft give aways to cronies. 

The American Conservative Union (click here) doesn't have a rating on him yet. Schuler was the House member that retired before Meadows was elected. Schuler had 45 out of 100 rating. Taylor had a 92 out of 100 rating. Extremist. The ACU doesn't rate Speaker Boner because he hasn't been casting votes.

So good of you to notice.

MIAMI — Forecasters say a tropical depression (click here) is moving over the central Atlantic far from land.The National Hurricane Center in Miami said early Sunday that the depression has maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph) and could become a tropical storm later in the day.
The storm is about 1,000 miles (1,605 kilometers) east-southeast of Bermuda and is moving northeast at 9 mph (15 kph). Forecasters say there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

Evidently, Western North Carolina US Rep. Mark Meadows is the instigator in regard to government shutdown.

(L to R) U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shake hands as U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) looks on, during the "Exempt America from Obamacare" rally, on Capitol Hill, September 10, 2013 in Washington, DC. Some conservative lawmakers are making a push to try to defund the health care law as part of the debates over the budget and funding the federal government. 

He is one of those Republicans that believe deconstruction of the government is vital to his purpose. He is an anarchist.

He plays with words to victimize. In a discussion of the supposed IRS Scandal he stated Lois Learner in taking "The 5th" was not a patriot. He stated if she was telling the truth and not breaking the law there was no reason to "take the 5th." He doesn't care about the law or the people, he cares about making trouble. He complained that "The Tea Party Investigation" was changed to "Advocacy Group Investigation." It is silliness intended to undermine credibility. That is his tilt. There is no credibility in anything that goes on.

In the case of the Affordable Care Act he states there is no credibility in verifying the income of people receiving the subsidy. He won't stop saying these things. The validation is already set up across the country, it is called Social Services. There are verifications for food stamps, Medicaid and any other local, state or federal programs. It has long been established and there is no reason to believe there is widespread fraud for decades.

The movement by men and women such as these Tea Party Freshman has been ongoing in seeking to make The Affordable Care Act the center of their political clout and defunding every aspect of it, including the IRS budget, since they came into office. 

The real question to Mark Meadows is, why defund vital agencies of the government if you are worried about fraudulent subsidy applications? What the House is currently doing is to CREATE INEFFICIENCY so the Affordable Care Act appears to be the worst legislation on the planet. If a Congressman or Congresswoman is that concerned about the credibility of income reporting to receive a subsidy, they should be funding agencies sufficiently to catch cheaters. That is not what the US House is doing, they are defunding vital agencies so the capacity to do their work creates inefficiency. They are incompetent legislators in that they are very savvy in committing crimes against the people. It is malpractice of his legislative capacity to seek to cause the USA government to become ineffective. It creates the opportunity for crime and extends the need for lawyering within the country.

He knows what he is doing and seeks to do more of it. He is unethical in his performance as a legislator and incompetent in his ability to carry out his responsibilities to the people. He thinks he is slick, but, in fact he is criminal in the content of his focus. These are the Republicans of North Carolina. They have fought to create dysfunction in that state's government for decades and this is how they do it. North Carolina is becoming the worst state in the country to live in and now Meadows is attempting to bring that focus to the federal government. They don't want government, they want guns.

"The South shall rise again." 

This is still yet another example of "How to create bad government." It is a choice in case no one thought it wasn't.

By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung 
Published: May 21

...A close reading (click here) of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency....

Everything is politics and not governing. Petraeus had ambitions and misused his power. He victimized every agency of the government other than himself. He was making decisions from within the CIA to enhance his political ambitions. Little Tin Gods. They can do no "W"rong. Obama needs to rid his administration of traitors. He needs to get rid of Bush appointees.

The Republicans of both Houses are seeking to create bad government. It is a strategy. You might call it treason, if nothing else it is completely unethical. Dangerously unethical. 

Who wants bad government? Why have government if it is bad in the first place?