The President’s Weekly Address and Helping Colorado

This week, the President made his weekly address from Colorado where fires are devastating communities and putting many more at risk. He thanks the firefighters risking their lives to help contain these fires and the volunteers helping those who have lost their homes or are evacuated from them. At the end of this post, I include links to some of the organizations on the ground helping Coloradans to cope with this disaster. Help out if you can.

Thursday Open Thread [6.28.12]

Obamacare survives and it is a win for the good guys! Certainly Obamacare is not the end of the line, but am hoping that progressives will finally look at this as an opportunity to launch an effort to make Obamacare better. The AP-GfK took a poll recently that noted that if Obamacare was overturned, Americans did not want their government to give up on reining in health care costs and issues. To me, that looks like opportunity, for a public option, for single-payer -- as long as it gets closer to better control of costs and getting better outcomes for it. But it is time to step up and push for useful revisions to Obamacare before the wingnuts sell everybody on something stupid like buying cheap insurance (that really isn't insurance) from Texas.

Supreme Court ACA Watch Open Thread

Today is supposed to be the last day of this Supreme Court session so all of the breathless press vamping waiting on the ACA decision officially turns into lots of breathless punditry sometime after 10AM today. I'm posting this thread for everyone to have a place to start posting your own prognostications and links to people who are doing a good job at discussing the issues involved.

So Who DIDN’T Think This Was Coming?

On Sunday, the NJ wrote a long piece detailing the some of the multiple fights going on between the Governor's Office and the Office of the Treasurer. The article is an interesting inventory of some of the BS swirling around the Treasurer's office, but when I finished reading it, I wondered who -- exactly -- was surprised that Chip Flowers and the Governor were butting heads over turf?

Metropolitan Government and Why The NJ Is Wrong About It

The editorial page of the NJ features a piece from John Sweeney that attempts to advocate for Metropolitan Government for Wilmington and New Castle County. He also takes the opportunity to blame the public sector unions and Democrats for why it won't work here. Let's take this apart abit so we can see how Delaware's newspaper of record is failing its readers again.