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NEWS FLASH

President Obama To Sign Student Loan And Transportation Legislation Today | President Obama today will sign into law legislation that will prevent student loan interest rates from doubling as scheduled, as well as provide transportation funding that will save and create millions of jobs. House Republicans had bogged down the transportation funding over demands that the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline be approved, but they dropped that demand last week.

Health

Fox News Medical Contributor: Doctors Will Resent Being Forced To Cover Fat And Lazy People Under Obamacare

By Igor Volsky on Jul 3, 2012 at 4:31 pm

Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel appeared on Fox Business Tuesday afternoon and expressed strong resentment for having to provide more health care coverage to sicker Americans in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare.

During a discussion about how medical providers will respond to the law, Siegel argued that some physicians won’t accept newly insured patients with pre-existing conditions who “eat all the wrong foods” and “gain weight” because “they are not paid enough”:

TOM SULLIVAN (HOST): Right now you can say I don’t accept Medicare or Medicaid? Right?

SIEGEL: Tom, that the untold story. There has been no consideration to the fact that many physicians do not take insurance. Many surgeons don’t take insurance…The more Obamacare floods the gate, the less they will take insurance. If they’re not getting paid and an insurance company says, I have to cut somewhere.

They are forcing me to cover all pre-existing conditions, which sounds great. Let’s take care of everybody’s pre-existing condition. You lie on the couch for 30 years, you never exercise, you gain weight, you eat all the wrong foods, you get diabetes and now you have Obamacare. But the fact is, doctors don’t have to play ball with it. If they are not paid enough they won’t play ball with it.

Watch it:

In reality, only a small minority of doctors in higher-income areas refuse to accept insurance. Most providers participate in Medicare and Medicaid and will continue to do so under the Affordable Care Act.

The law increases incentive payments for primary care physicians in Medicare, general surgeons in rural and underserved areas, and some mental health services. Primary care physicians in Medicaid will also receive a payment bump in 2013 and 2014. ACA also invests in preventive care and wellness initiative to encourage people to lead healthier life styles.

NEWS FLASH

Fistfights Break Out At Syria Opposition Meeting | The head of the Arab League said ahead of a meeting the organization hosted in Cairo that the Syrian opposition must set aside differences and present a unified face against Bashar al-Assad’s government. Those hopes, however, were dashed when, far from coming together, fistfights reportedly broke out at the meeting. “This is so sad,” said one opposition activist. “It will make the Syrian opposition look bad and demoralize the protesters on the ground.” The main Syrian rebel group — the Free Syrian Army — had already denounced the meeting.

By Ali Gharib on Jul 3, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Justice

Republican Congressman Will Not Be Romney Surrogate Over Immigration Issue

By Josh Israel on Jul 3, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)

Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)

As Mitt Romney continues to avoid expressing a clear position on immigration policy, one Republican Congressman is tiring of the Romney campaign’s vagueness on the issue. Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) told BuzzFeed this week that presidential candidates should “put out your proposals and let voters judge them on their merits.”

He said he will not act as a surrogate unless the campaign provides some specifics on how to protect undocumented immigrants who came to to the country as children:

I’m not willing to participate in any Hispanic outreach efforts without seeing more details on a permanent solution for these kids … Right now, his Hispanic supporters and Hispanic surrogates don’t have the ammunition to combat the Obama attacks on him.

Last week, Romney reportedly told supporters that he will not moderate the hard-line anti-immigrant positions he took in the primaries as he does not want to be viewed as a “flip-flopper.” But his current path seems likely to risk the support of Hispanic Republicans like Rivera.

LGBT

The 11 Most Pro-Gay U.S. Senators

By Josh Israel and Adam Peck on Jul 3, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Patty Murray (D-WA)

Senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Patty Murray (D-WA)

In recent days, ThinkProgress has identified the most pro- and anti-LGBT members of the U.S. House of Representatives. While in this Congress anti-gay forces have been relatively quiet in the Senate — only Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has proposed an overtly anti-LGBT bill or resolution — Senators in support of equality have proposed sixteen bills pro-LGBT bills since the start of 2011. Eleven Senators have sponsored or co-sponsored at least ten of those measures.

Senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI), John Kerry (D-MA), and Patty Murray (D-WA), tied for the honor of most pro-LGBT Senator: they put their names on 13 of the 16 bills each. Akaka, a fourth-term Senator who will retire at the end of 2012, authored the Health Equity and Accountability Act of 2012 (a bill to improve tracking of health data for LGBT people and other minority groups). Murray, a fourth-term Senator, spells out on her LGBT issue webpage that “Equal protection under the law is a fundamental right in our country. No one should suffer discrimination because of their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” And Kerry, now in his fifth term in the Senate, is chief sponsor of the Reconnecting Youth to Prevent Homelessness Act of 2011 (which seeks to help at-risk LGBT youth) and the HOME Act of 2011 (which protects LGBT citizens from housing discrimination).

Eight other Senators — seven Democrats and one independent — signed on to at least 10 pro-LGBT proposals, putting them just behind Akaka, Kerry, and Murray. They are:


Read more

Economy

How Income Inequality Threatens American Meritocracy: An Interview With MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

By Jeff Spross on Jul 3, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Economic inequality has shot upwards since 1979, as the top one percent of income earners went from earning ten times as much as the bottom 90 percent to earning 20 times as much. And the top 0.1 percent and 0.01 percent have pulled away to far more dramatic heights. In his new book Twilight of the Elites, MSNBC host Chris Hayes argues this change in the country’s economic landscape is one of the key causes of the breakdown of American meritocracy:

CHRIS HAYES: The argument that I make in the book is that inequality is bad because of what it does to the people at the top of the social pyramid. That it actually makes the people at the top of the social pyramid worse… It just is impossible, in practical terms, to separate equality of opportunity from equality of outcome. The latter subverts the former almost as what I call in the book a kind of iron law.

Hayes recently sat down with ThinkProgress to discuss the book and its implications. Watch it:

The narrative core of his thesis carries personal significance for Hayes: When he was eleven, Hayes entered Hunter College, an extremely selective high school in Manhattan. The school prides itself on determining admission with a single test, irrespective of an applicant’s parents, income, essays, or connections. “An almost nobly austere vision of meritocracy,” as Hayes puts it.

Yet students applying to Hunter arrive at the test with vastly different advantages in terms of their parenting, their family’s economic resources, their community’s resources, and the quality of their previous education. Even more telling is the test prep industry that has grown up to ready prospective students for admission — assuming they can afford the cost of the prep courses. “The majority of students getting in now are products of the test prep industry,” according to Hayes’ interviews. The lesson is that economic inequality inevitably destroys the American vision of an equal and meritocratic starting line.

Election

Right Wing Blogosphere Revolts Against Romney Over Mandate

By Zack Beauchamp on Jul 3, 2012 at 3:39 pm

ThinkProgress noted that the GOP leadership can’t seem to make up its mind about whether the individual mandate is a tax (as the Supreme Court says) or not (as lead Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom suggested). While the leadership dithers, the base’s backlash against Romney putting down the “it’s a tax” club builds.

In National Review, Michael Walsh writes a post entitled “Spineless Jellyfish Terrorize Great Nation!”

Nothing like getting Election 2012 off-message from the start, and running up the white flag before the fight has even begun. Shades of the McCain campaign — first, starring in the Steve Schmidt role is Mr. Etch-a-Sketch himself, the ineffable Eric Fehrnstrom.

Breitbart heir Joel Pollak threatens the campaign with an out-and-out revolt:

The Tea Party has been ready to rally to Romney’s side over the Obamacare decision, overlooking his past in order to use him as the vehicle for repealing Obamacare and toppling Obama. But if Romney won’t fight for conservative principles, the Tea Party is going to start looking elsewhere–fast. No one wants to live through the frustration of October 2008 all over again. No one wants to watch another conservative capitulate to Obama.

This ain’t Etch-A-Sketch, Mitt. Go hard or go home.

Scott Johnson nods:

What can we learn from this? I offer a multiple choice question

(a) Romney is not the ideal candidate to don the mantle of opposition to Obamacare.

(b) Romney’s political instincts are lacking on a key campaign issue.

(c) Romney’s campaign requires an overhaul.

(d) Romney isn’t much of a Power Line reader.

(e) All of the above.

And prominent right-wing blogger Patterico calls it “dumb, dumb, dumb.” So a banner week for the Romney campaign’s base turnout efforts, then.

Alyssa

Anderson Cooper And A New Era of Celebrity Coming Out

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 3, 2012 at 3:37 pm

I was on the road yesterday when Anderson Cooper, in response to an Entertainment Weekly cover story about celebrities who are coming out in increasingly casual ways, came out in an email to Andrew Sullivan. Gawker publisher Nick Denton, reflecting what seem to be sour grapes about not getting the story himself, has already complained that Cooper didn’t make a big enough deal of his coming out, as if a long and thoughtful email to the biggest blog at a major publication doesn’t constitute a significant enough event.

Celebrities’ lives are funny things: we enter them midstream and assume we know an enormous amount about these people who create selves they put out for our consumption, whether it’s old-school rooting for Rosie O’Donnell to find the right guy or the entire sector of the magazine industry that’s supported by speculation about what it means to Jennifer Aniston that she’s divorced. That intense attention and sense of ownership creates an opportunity for stars to either make major news events out of their lives or for them to slip new relationships or new information about themselves seamlessly into the news cycle. Cooper could have as easily just taken his boyfriend to an Oscar party or walked the red carpet with him and acted as if everyone already knew he was gay, as if the proper name of the person he’s seeing is the news, and not the fact that the person he’s seeing is a man.

There’s no question that we’re still at a point where the availability of out, happy, successful, and clearly-identifiable gay role models is important to young people, and where coming out is still changing hearts and minds by forcing people to confront whether they really feel differently about people like Cooper now that audiences know they’re gay. But I wonder if we’d be a lot better off with more casual celebrity coming-out stories that build room for flexibility and growth into the narrative. It would be awfully nice if people like Cynthia Nixon or Lindsay Lohan could go from relationships with men to relationships with women and have the news be the specific person rather than their gender. For some people, coming out is the stating of an immutable fact about themselves. For others, it’s a matter of a specific relationship. Not all coming out stories are the same, and the same formula of magazine covers and talk show sit-downs, won’t make sense for all people in the public eye. Knowing that there are famous, successful gay people among us is a first step. Recognizing that their experiences, as with the experiences of civilians, aren’t all identical is second, and critically important.

NEWS FLASH

Navy Decides Against Using Image Of Muslim Woman For Target Practice | The Navy decided not to use a cardboard cutout of a Muslim woman for target practice, reports the Virginian-Pilot, which first published a photo of the target last week. The hijab-wearing, gun-toting woman was part of a new training range for Navy Seals at Virginia Beach. Both her image and the Quran verse on the wall behind her have been removed after the Council on American-Islamic Relations wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday, stating the target “sends a negative and counterproductive message to trainees and to the Muslim-majority nations to which they may be deployed.”

NEWS FLASH

SCOTUS Springs Another Leak | Paul Campos at Salon cites a “source within the court with direct knowledge of the drafting process” who tells him that Chief Justice Roberts’ chambers authored most of what eventually became the dissenting opinion signed by the four most conservative justices in the Affordable Care Act case. This contradicts the two unnamed sources in Jan Crawford’s piece this weekend, which claims that Justices Scalia and Kennedy were the primary authors of the dissent, but largely confirms Crawford’s main conclusion that Roberts flipped his vote midstream. Ultimately, however, the minor details of who authored what is of secondary importance. The biggest revelation of the Salon piece is that the Supreme Court now appears to have sprung a second leak.

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