Landmark Study Shatters Liberal Health Care Claims

During the health care debate, liberals argued that government had a moral duty to enact legislation that expanded health insurance among lower-income individuals. This was rooted in the assumption that obtaining health insurance translates into improved health. But a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine dramatically undermines this assumption and shatters the rationale behind the law’s Medicaid expansion.

In 2008, Oregon expanded its Medicaid program, but because the state could not cover everybody, lawmakers opened up a lottery that randomly drew 30,000 names from a waiting list of almost 90,000 and allowed them to apply for the program. This created a unique opportunity for health researchers, ultimately allowing them to compare the health outcomes of 6,387 low-income adults who were able to enroll in the program with 5,842 who were not selected.

Contrary to liberal assumptions, researchers found that those who enrolled in Medicaid spent a lot more on medical care than those who weren’t able to enroll, but didn’t significantly improve their health outcomes.

Specifically, researchers found that those who received Medicaid increased their annual health care spending by $1,172, or 35 percent more than those who did not receive Medicaid. Those with Medicaid were more likely to be screened for diabetes and use diabetes medication and to make use of other preventive care measures. The study also examined health metrics including blood pressure and cholesterol.

Ultimately, the authors concluded that, “This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured health outcomes in the first two years, but it did increase use of health services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.”

So, the study suggests that expanding Medicaid is one way of reducing financial pressure on low-income groups, but it’s costly and does not improve their health.

Another interesting finding was that though medical spending increased among Medicaid enrollees due to more prescription drug usage and doctors’ visits, the study “did not find significant changes in visits to the emergency department or hospital admissions.” This undercuts another favorite talking point of liberals, which is that expanding insurance actually saves money by reducing costly emergency room visits.

Of course, this is just one study, and the authors offer some caveats. Among others, the study measured an average of about 17 months of health outcomes, so longer-run results may differ. Also, the study applied to Medicaid, rather than private insurance. But given that it had a sample size of over 12,000 and was so well designed, its conclusions will reverberate.

As the authors explain, “our study provides evidence of the effects of expanding Medicaid to low-income adults on the basis of a randomized design, which is rarely available in the evaluation of social insurance programs.”

Starting next year, millions more Americans will become eligible for Medicaid as a result of President Obama’s health care law. As Cato’s Michael Cannon put it, “There is no way to spin these results as anything but a rebuke to those who are pushing states to expand Medicaid. The Obama administration has been trying to convince states to throw more than a trillion additional taxpayer dollars at Medicaid by participating in the expansion, when the best-designed research available cannot find any evidence that it improves the physical health of enrollees. The OHIE even studied the most vulnerable part of the Medicaid-expansion population – those below 100 percent of the federal poverty level – yet still found no improvements in physical health.”

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MSNBC’s Al Sharpton Ludicrously Claims Small Biz Backs ObamaCare

The “journalists” at MSNBC continued to fawn over ObamaCare on Friday’s Morning Joe, even in the midst of startling criticism for the bill from David Gregory, liberal host of Meet the Press. The discussion over the president’s massive health care overhaul came after reports that the IRS official in charge of the agency’s unfair treatment of conservative groups during its targeting is now leading the IRS’s efforts to implement ObamaCare.

Gregory pointed out that the Medicare surtax that is funding “Obamacare across the board” is “a lot of money.” “You may not know how it helps you,” he noted, “but you know what it's taking away from you.” Of course, dutiful defenders of Obama like MSNBC Politics Nation host the Rev. Al Sharpton and Huffington Post’s Sam Stein were on hand to defend ObamaCare [see video below the page break].

For his part, Stein seemed to be just fine with the burdensome tax, because it redistributes money into the pockets of “other people.”

David's point – hold on, there is a surtax issue that everyone is going to feel. But that surtax, that money goes to subsidize people's health care. While people will feel a tax issue a lot of other people are going to feel the money in their pocket to buy health care.

Stein’s redistribution of wealth argument wasn’t even the most offensive, though. Sharpton dismissed Gregory’s claim that “costs just keep going up,” touting the “certainty” that Obamacare brings to small segments of the population. Mika Brzezinski even offered a helping hand to Sharpton’s passionate defense of the bill.

GREGORY: Costs just keep going up.

SHARPTON: But there is certainty for people that had preexisting conditions and couldn't get insurance that are now insured.

BRZEZINSKI: Exactly. Young people.

SHARPTON: There is certainty for young people that are now covered that would not have been covered.

BRZEZINSKI: There's preventative care now.

SHARPTON: Preventative care. There's certainty in a lot of areas that people were left out.

What Gregory was trying to point out, and Sharpton dismissed, was the “uncertainty” that millions of Americans and small business owners now face with rapidly-increasing taxes and health care costs under Obamacare.

Then Sharpton declared, with his typical lack of evidence, that small business owners “have come forward and supported Obamacare.” Well, this argument is simply false. As NewsBusters pointed out on Monday, even the ObamaCare-favoring Washington Post admitted that “Small-Business Owners Dread” the new taxes under Obamacare (even though they stuffed the story in the back, on page A15).

We expect Al Sharpton to spout his liberal views day in and day out on MSNBC, but we should expect better than outright lies, especially from a man of the cloth.

View the transcript after the jump:

MSNBC
Morning Joe
05/17/13
7:33 a.m. Eastern

DAVID GREGORY: But here's what else people know about Obamacare. They may not know exactly how it helps them. They do know this: if they're employed, if they’re a salaried employee, and they get their pay stubs...when they get their paycheck on Fridays, what do they see is a new line item. And it's called the Medicare surtax. And it's a lot of money. It's new taxes that we are paying to fund Obamacare across the board. You may not know how it helps you but you know what it's taking away from you.

(...)

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Let me say Vern, quickly. I want to follow up on that point, because we have a lot of people in Washington talking about Obamacare, a lot of people in Manhattan talking about Obamacare. I don't know what they're saying on the subways about this, Donny, we were talking about what they were saying on the subways. I can tell you what they're saying, though, small business owners across Pensacola, northwest Florida, middle America, Iowa: they're saying this is going to cost my small business a lot of money.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Not small businesses...

SCARBOROUGH: And the regulations are going to be high. And we're going to have to also cut some of my best employees to below 30 hours or else I can't afford to stay in business. This – and this is all going to hit, Vern, in 2014.

CONGRESSMAN VERN BUCHANAN: Yeah. I think a lot of people when they hire an employee, this is the thing that gets missed. Twenty years ago you hired an employee, paid him $50,000, there was a 22 percent cost – additional costs in hiring that employee in terms of benefits. Today it's 42 to 44 percent someone was telling me the other day. At the heart of that is the whole thing on health care. I get questions all the time where someone has 72 employees, they say “I'm going to have to cut back to under 50.” So there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of angst out there, and just the cost of health care in general is completely and totally out of control for anybody in small business. It's not unusual for someone to say they're paying $2,000 a month for their family of four for health care today.

GREGORY: Costs just keep going up.

AL SHARPTON: But there is certainty for people that had preexisting conditions and couldn't get insurance that are now insured.

BRZEZINSKI: Exactly. Young people.

SHARPTON: There is certainty for young people that are now covered that would not have been covered.

BRZEZINSKI: There's preventative care now.

SHARPTON: Preventative care. There's certainty in a lot of areas that people were left out. And a lot of small businesses have come forward and supported Obamacare. I think that – I understand the Republicans’objection. They lost it. And I think that –

SCARBOROUGH: I'm not just talking about Republicans. I'm talking about – you know, I don't know if you know...I know that Democrats own small businesses too.

SHARPTON: They do.

SCARBOROUGH: Democrats are concerned about this as well.

SHARPTON: And many of those small businesses supported Obamacare for some of the reasons I named and other reasons. And I think that it is very important that we understand that a lot of Americans want to see all Americans in a position to be insured that were not insured before we had this legislation.

BRZEZINSKI: Anybody at this table not think, or on the panel not think, that Americans should have access to health care? All of them?

DONNY DEUTSCH: David's point – the argument becomes very simple for the Republicans, it costs more money.

SAM STEIN: David's point – hold on, there is a surtax issue that everyone is going to feel. But that surtax, that money goes to subsidize people's health care. While people will feel a tax issue a lot of other people are going to feel the money in their pocket to buy health care.

GREGORY: The question is though, do you trust the government to administer the program?

SCARBOROUGH: Yes, do you trust the government to administer the program? And that's come out this past week. And also, those people may have more money in their pockets but if their small businesses shut down or they have to get rid of them because they have to cut below 50 employees, then suddenly it ends up hurting them more than helping them. It's a terrible balancing act and I think it's going to be following the White House throughout 2014. And they're going to have to make some adjustments on the fly.

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VA chief Shinseki vows backlog in veterans’ claims will end by 2015

By Molly K. Hooper - 03/24/13 02:41 PM ET

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Sunday defended the administration’s efforts to aid former servicemembers, even as he was forced to acknowledge his agency would not clear a backlog of pending disability claims until the end of 2015.

Shinseki – who has known of the ballooning problem since his confirmation in 2009 – said it will take nearly three more years to process the hundreds of thousands of claims, in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We have put in place a robust plan to end the backlog in 2015. That's in our commitment,” Shinseki said.

Shenski also said President Obama was determined to help speed up the process.

“The president's been very clear. Veterans are a top priority with him and ending the backlog is a foremost in his mind. He has made that very clear,” he said.

According to recent reports, at least 70 percent of the disability claims take 125 days to process. CNN host Candy Crowley noted the number of backlogged claims was 164,000 in October of 2009; today it is 630,000.

Crowley pressed Shinseki on the agency’s efforts to tackle the problem.

Shinseki said a lack of funding was not the issue, noting that his department has received 40 percent in budget increases over the past four years, while most other agencies have taken hits.

He instead pointed to the massive amount of paperwork that needed to be transferred to digital formats, the need to sync with Department of Defense (DOD) records and the addition of more veterans who qualify for disability claims as reasons for the backlog.

The longtime Army veteran emphasized the VA’s efforts to end the backlog by the end of 2015, however noting a “new tool” to help in the process.

“We have today an automation tool that we didn't have two years ago, and it is called the Veterans Benefits Management System, it has already been fielded to 20 of our regional offices. We will be in all 56 regional offices by the end of this year,” Shinseki said.

The VA Secretary acknowledged that the wait would still be too long, but said the agency has “put three million claims out the door,” noting that “there are going to be a few that are complex enough to run longer than we would like.”

“We can go and take those numbers and drill down into them, but again our commitment is we're going to end the backlog in 2015. This has been decades in the making, 10 years of war. We're in paper, we need to get out of paper, we still get paper from DOD and other agencies. We have commitments that in 2014 we will be electronically processing our data and sharing it,” Shinseki added.

Asked if Shinseki was “satisfied” with his performance over the past five years at the helm of the VA, the secretary responded: “No veteran should have to wait for claims as they are today. We have a fix for this, we're open for business, and we will end the backlog in 2015.”

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President Obama Nominates Two to Serve on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Obama nominated Patricia E. Campbell-Smith and Elaine D. Kaplan to serve on the United States Court of Federal Claims.

"These nominees have dedicated their careers to serving the public good," said President Obama. "And in so doing, they have displayed an unyielding commitment to justice and integrity. I am confident that they will serve the American people well from the Court of Federal Claims, and I am honored to nominate them today."

Patricia E. Campbell-Smith:  Nominee for the United States Court of Federal Claims

Patricia E. Campbell-Smith has served as a Special Master with the United States Court of Federal Claims since 2005 and as Chief Special Master since 2011.  In that role, she presides over litigation pursuant to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.  Previously, Campbell-Smith served as a career law clerk for the Honorable Emily C. Hewitt of the United States Court of Federal Claims for seven years.  From 1993 to 1996 and again from 1997 to 1998, she worked at the law firm of Liskow & Lewis in New Orleans, where she focused on environmental regulatory law, patent infringement litigation, and toxic tort litigation.  From 1996 to 1997, she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Sarah S. Vance, and from 1992 to 1993 she served as a law clerk for the Honorable Martin L.C. Feldman, both of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Campbell-Smith received her J.D. with honors in 1992 from Tulane Law School and her B.S. with honors in 1987 from Duke University. 

Elaine D. Kaplan:  Nominee for the United States Court of Federal Claims

Elaine D. Kaplan serves as General Counsel of the United States Office of Personnel Management, a position she has held since 2009.  Previously, she was Senior Deputy General Counsel at the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) from 2004 to 2009 and Of Counsel at the law firm of Bernabei and Katz from 2003 to 2004.  In 1998, Kaplan was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the head of the United States Office of Special Counsel and successfully completed a five-year term in that position.  From 1984 to 1998, Kaplan worked at NTEU with increasing levels of responsibility.  She began her legal career as a staff attorney in the Solicitor’s Office of the United States Department of Labor.  Kaplan received her J.D. cum laude in 1979 from the Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. in 1976 from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

The first stop on President Obama's trip to the Middle East marks the first time the President has visited Israel since taking office, and comes as its citizens celebrate the 65th anniversary of a free and independent State of Israel.

On the third anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lays out some of the ways in which the health reform has lowered costs.

We will be posting regular updates from the road and livestreaming several of the President's events on whitehouse.gov/live

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Claims That There Is No Research About The Effectiveness Of Ex-Gay Therapy Are True

Christopher Doyle

Advocates of so-called ex-gay therapy (often referred to as sexual orientation change efforts, or SOCE) are not pleased that the New Jersey legislature is seriously considering a ban on the treatment for minors. The increasingly vocal Christopher Doyle, who works with the infamously disavowed therapist Richard Cohen, penned a reaction for Christian Post asking, “Where is the tolerance” for people who are ex-gay? But his post actually helps outline many of the reasons nobody humors ex-gay therapy.

For example, he reiterated the canard that sexual abuse causes people to be gay:

That’s right, even if your child was sexually abused by a pedophile such as Jerry Sandusky and develops homosexual inclinations as a consequence, he/she may not be able to receive Sexual Orientation Change Effort (SOCE) therapy from a highly educated and skilled professional counselor, social worker, or psychologist. Why, you ask? According to the office of Massachusetts State Representative Carl Sciortino (D), because SOCE is an “archaic vestige of homophobia” and should be banned.

This argument is actually just an inverse of conservatives’ tired claim that gay men are more likely to be pedophiles. Because boys are often the victim of abuse in high-visibility institutions like the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America, or athletic teams and their abusers are male, conservatives conclude that the perpetrator must be gay, even though pedophilia has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Likewise, ex-gay advocates claim that any boy who was once abused by a man and later realizes he is gay must have somehow been swayed or corrupted by the abuse itself. There is nothing to reinforce this conclusion, however, except conservatives’ ability to prey on the vulnerability of these traumatized young people.

Doyle goes on to claim that there is no research available about the outcomes of ex-gay therapy for adolescents:

The problem with this conspiracy is this: There is NOT ONE scientific study that contains any hard data on the outcomes of SOCE for adolescents. Not one!

So when I contacted the offices proposing a ban on SOCE therapies and asked them to cite studies that show “harmful” outcomes for adolescents, they could only point me to position statements from liberal trade organizations, which are known for their one-hand clapping viewpoint, strictly pro-gay and anti-ex-gay. If these organizations were made up of objective scientists that looked at all the evidence, such legislation would not be allowed anywhere.

Doyle unsurprisingly demonstrates a complete ineptness for understanding scientific rigor. His claim is not entirely wrong: there is not one scientific study that contains any hard data on the outcomes of SOCE for anybody. That’s because all of the studies on ex-gay therapy have found that it doesn’t have any effective outcomes — even studies done by researchers who are trying to advocate for the practice.

Moreover, Doyle is attempting to reduce major medical organizations to “liberal trade organizations.” Perhaps he’s bitter on behalf of his partner Cohen, who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for ethical violations in 2002. The American Psychological Association’s 2009 report and resolution against ex-gay therapy was based on a metastudy of 83 peer-reviewed studies from 1960–2007, and few of them were found to be methodologically sound. Among the key findings though were 1) that treatment doesn’t change orientation, 2) it does contribute to distress (through self-stigma, shame, isolation, and rejection), and 3) in contrast, clients whose sexual orientation was affirmed experienced a measurable benefit.

The only argument that Doyle has is that no research has disproven ex-gay therapy. Of course, science does not prove negatives, it just rules out hypotheses that don’t produce results. There is currently no research available disproving the idea that drinking lots of 7-Up cures an in-grown toenail, so perhaps Doyle should pursue some junk science that doesn’t propagate shame and rejection.

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Don’t Be Fooled By California’s Premium Claims

As I wrote earlier, California is going to be a major test case for the implementation of President Obama’s health care law. Though major insurers have decided to opt out of the state’s subsidized insurance exchange, the authority tasked with managing the program is now touting number of choices it is bringing Californians at a competitive cost.

“The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions,” Covered California, the entity running the exchange, announced in a press release. But the suggestion that, at worst, premiums will be rising 2 percent, and at best, falling 29 percent, is misleading.

Earlier in the press release, Covered California explains:

It is difficult to make a direct comparison of these rates to existing premiums in the commercial individual market because in 2014, there will be new standard benefit designs under the Affordable Care Act, and the actual change in an individual’s premium will depend on the person’s current insurance coverage.

What this means is that the federal government is now requiring all individuals to carry insurance policies that offer a slew of benefits dictated by the secretary of Health and Human Services, regardless of whether they would prefer to purchase policies with lower premiums and fewer benefits — or to go without insurance altogether. California, essentially, is saying that the exchanges will give participants more benefits for their money so the cost of the new offerings should be compared to more comprehensive plans. But what if individuals don’t want more coverage? For many young and healthy individuals, insurance on the exchanges will be a much more costly option than what they have now.

In 2012, the average individual insurance plan cost Californians $177 per month, according to online insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com. Yet the report put out by Covered California lists the average “silver” plan on the exchange as costing individuals $321 per month. That’s an 80 percent increase — or even more for those who still have the freedom to go without insurance and currently pay $0 in premiums. That freedom will disappear come January.

In 2014, the penalty for not purchasing an insurance policy that meets HHS standards is $95, or possibly a few hundred dollars, depending on taxable income. Either way, for individuals who do not qualify for generous subsidies, the mandate penalty will be a lot lower than the thousands of dollars it would cost to maintain HHS-acceptable insurance for the year. One of the key questions determining the fate of Obamacare will be whether young and healthy individuals decide to actually purchase insurance, which is necessary to offset the costs of forcing insurers to cover older and sicker individuals and those with pre-existing conditions. If there aren’t low-cost options available to entice the young and healthy crowd, Obamacare is going to run into a lot of problems.

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Landmark Study Shatters Liberal Health Care Claims

During the health care debate, liberals argued that government had a moral duty to enact legislation that expanded health insurance among lower-income individuals. This was rooted in the assumption that obtaining health insurance translates into improved health. But a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine dramatically undermines this assumption and shatters the rationale behind the law’s Medicaid expansion.

In 2008, Oregon expanded its Medicaid program, but because the state could not cover everybody, lawmakers opened up a lottery that randomly drew 30,000 names from a waiting list of almost 90,000 and allowed them to apply for the program. This created a unique opportunity for health researchers, ultimately allowing them to compare the health outcomes of 6,387 low-income adults who were able to enroll in the program with 5,842 who were not selected.

Contrary to liberal assumptions, researchers found that those who enrolled in Medicaid spent a lot more on medical care than those who weren’t able to enroll, but didn’t significantly improve their health outcomes.

Specifically, researchers found that those who received Medicaid increased their annual health care spending by $1,172, or 35 percent more than those who did not receive Medicaid. Those with Medicaid were more likely to be screened for diabetes and use diabetes medication and to make use of other preventive care measures. The study also examined health metrics including blood pressure and cholesterol.

Ultimately, the authors concluded that, “This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured health outcomes in the first two years, but it did increase use of health services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.”

So, the study suggests that expanding Medicaid is one way of reducing financial pressure on low-income groups, but it’s costly and does not improve their health.

Another interesting finding was that though medical spending increased among Medicaid enrollees due to more prescription drug usage and doctors’ visits, the study “did not find significant changes in visits to the emergency department or hospital admissions.” This undercuts another favorite talking point of liberals, which is that expanding insurance actually saves money by reducing costly emergency room visits.

Of course, this is just one study, and the authors offer some caveats. Among others, the study measured an average of about 17 months of health outcomes, so longer-run results may differ. Also, the study applied to Medicaid, rather than private insurance. But given that it had a sample size of over 12,000 and was so well designed, its conclusions will reverberate.

As the authors explain, “our study provides evidence of the effects of expanding Medicaid to low-income adults on the basis of a randomized design, which is rarely available in the evaluation of social insurance programs.”

Starting next year, millions more Americans will become eligible for Medicaid as a result of President Obama’s health care law. As Cato’s Michael Cannon put it, “There is no way to spin these results as anything but a rebuke to those who are pushing states to expand Medicaid. The Obama administration has been trying to convince states to throw more than a trillion additional taxpayer dollars at Medicaid by participating in the expansion, when the best-designed research available cannot find any evidence that it improves the physical health of enrollees. The OHIE even studied the most vulnerable part of the Medicaid-expansion population – those below 100 percent of the federal poverty level – yet still found no improvements in physical health.”

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FIFA Investigates Claims That Nigera Banned Lesbians From Playing Soccer

Members of Nigeria's women's national soccer team

The Nigerian Football Federation has officially banned lesbians from participating in competition in the country, the chair of the Nigeria Women’s Football League announced Thursday. The move has drawn an inquiry from FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, since such a ban would violate its anti-discrimination policy.

Nigeria is one of several African countries that have moved to legally ban homosexuality, and Nigerian club officials have boasted of driving lesbians from the game before, but under the new policy, lesbian players will be disqualified from competition and won’t be allowed to join the national team, NWFL chair Dilichukwu Onyedinma said, according to Inside World Football:

“Any player that we find is associated with it will be disqualified.

“We will call the club chairmen to control their players, and such players will not be able to play for the national team,” said Onyedinma. She said the governing body will work with clubs to stop the practice.”

While outright bans on lesbians are obviously (and thankfully) rare, discrimination aimed at gay female athletes is hardly limited to soccer or to Nigeria. The push for LGBT equality in sports has largely focused on men while gay women athletes get ignored, since the stereotypical female athlete is often already presumed to be gay. As Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky wrote when American soccer star Megan Rapinoe came out ahead of the 2012 Olympics, “An openly gay female athlete almost isn’t news. A lesbian in the locker room conforms to a stereotype, just as a straight male athlete is a stereotype.”

But in both American and international sports, there is “an amazing division between lesbians and straight women in sports” that persists because straight women don’t want to be stereotyped as gay, Dr. Pat Griffin, a professor and advocate for LGBT rights in sports, has said before. That has led to discrimination against female athletes who actually are gay and a culture, particularly in American college sports, where both coaches and players are expected to “be straight, or at the very least, act straight.” It’s no wonder then, that many lesbian athletes wait until their careers are over to come out of the closet.

So while Nigeria’s ban is uniquely horrific, and while FIFA will hopefully help put an end to it, it is emblematic of a larger sports culture that remains tilted against LGBT equality not just for men but for women too.

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Woodward claims White House threatened him

Bob Woodward said Wednesday that a “very senior person” at the White House told the veteran journalist and author “you will regret” faulting the Obama administration for the present fight over sequestration.

“It was said very clearly: 'you will regret doing this,'” Woodward said on CNN’s "The Situation Room." “I’m not going to say [who], a very senior person. It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters you’re going to regret doing something you believe in.”

In an op-ed published over the weekend, Woodward accused the Obama administration first of inventing the sequester, and then of “moving the goal posts” by saying any deal had to include new revenue along with the agreed upon cuts.

Democrats argue that the sequester was an last-ditch effort out from the 2011 debt-ceiling fight instigated by Republicans, and that since it was never meant to be implemented, it’s not moving the goal posts to try and replace it with spending cuts and additional revenue.

“I think if Barack Obama knew that was part of the communications strategy, let’s hope it’s not a strategy, but just a tactic he’s employing, he’d say, ‘look, we don’t go around trying to say to reporters if you in an honest way present something that we don’t like, you’re going to regret this,'” Woodward continued. “It’s Mickey Mouse.”

It’s the latest turn in the souring relationship between the White House and the former liberal hero.

Earlier in the day, on MSNBC, Woodward called the president’s sequester strategy “madness,” saying a stronger leader would merely circumvent the Budget Control Act.

And at the height of the 2012 election, the White House was on the defensive after Republicans seized on Woodward’s book, "The Price of Politics," as evidence President Obama was in over his head on the economy.

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NOM Claims Marriage Equality ‘Makes Fathers Irrelevant’

Jeremy Hooper noticed this audacious graphic the National Organization for Marriage is using to help promote its opposition to marriage equality:

Hooper’s own example that he and his husband have just been court-certified to adopt children is a compelling debunk in and of itself. That’s a family where fathers will be twice as relevant!

But it’s important to identify the distortion at root in NOM’s graphic. The first quote from President Obama refers to men who have children who they don’t support. The second quote refers to both men and women who have children they are raising as a family who deserve the same legal protections as all other families.

NOM believes it can make this claim because of studies that show children whose fathers have abandoned them do not fare as well as they grow up. Even though they do not ever even include same-sex parents, anti-equality groups conflate these “fatherless” studies to draw the same conclusions about lesbian couples (i.e. no “father”) who are raising children together. When ThinkProgress debunked such a usage, NOM’s own Ruth Institute attacked us, ultimately revealing another conflation: between “intact families” and “families with a mom and a dad.”

In other words, this graphic proves two distinct realities about NOM. First, the organization either has no real conception of what same-sex families look like, or they don’t care. Secondly, they are perfectly willing to lie, scapegoating the President in the process, to gin up support for their anti-gay positions.

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Republican Congressman Claims Hammers Could Be Outlawed Under Assault Weapons Ban

Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX)

A Republican congressman lambasted the push for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, stating on Friday that if lawmakers wanted to ban assault weapons, they would have to outlaw “hammers” and “machetes” as well.

Appearing on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told guest host Larry O’Connor that he “refuse[s] to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon,” said the Texas congressman. “It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes.”

O’CONNOR: I want to ask you a question about one of your colleagues, Rep. Peter King in New York. He’s a very passionate guy, a great defender, he’s a great patriot. But he’s on board with this assault weapons ban. He was actually on MSNBC yesterday, openly saying, “I don’t understand why anybody would need an assault weapon.” I personally get nervous whenever a politician is asking me as a citizen why I need my right, but can you answer that question for your colleague? He might need some help here. Why would anyone need an assault weapon as they’re defining it?

GOHMERT: I refuse to play the game of “assault weapon.” That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers.

Listen to it:

According to the FBI, in 2010, there were 8,775 people who were murdered with guns, compared to 540 people who were killed with blunt objects, a small minority of which were people armed with hammers. The exponentially-higher number of people killed by guns also includes many innocent people killed by indiscriminate gunfire, such as drive-by shootings. After all, there are no “drive-by hammerings.”

Still, hammers are not the only “weapon” that conservatives are equating with firearms in an attempt to undermine any gun control legislation. A state representative in New Hampshire, warned of another deadly weapon: credit cards. “Anything can be used as a deadly weapon, said Rep. Dan Dumaine (R). “A credit card can be used to cut somebody’s throat.”

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