It’s kinda like whack-a-mole. Maybe whack-a-whacko? According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, 72% of the country opposes shutting down major activities of the federal government as a way to stop the Affordable Care Act from being put into place. Despite this and despite the fact that there are enough votes in the House to pass the “clean” continuing resolution to […]

Remember that time President Bush canceled an overseas trip because Democrats shut down the government? Yeah, me neither. Photo credit: Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog President Obama had scheduled a trip to Indonesia and Brunei over the next few days but, because Republicans insist on holding the government hostage to exact some sort of concessions from President Obama and […]

Such utterly blatant pandering ought to be below ANY politician. Even tea partiers. It was a VERY busy couple of days at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. First, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann made an utter spectacle of herself, diving in front of cameras to slather herself in patriotic, anti O-BAH-mah rhetoric with elderly WWII vets as a […]

What IS it about Texas Republicans??? I posed this Q&A on Twitter this morning: Q: If a bad guy says, "Come closer and I'll shoot this guy" and someone comes closer, who do you blame for the guy getting shot? A: Obama. — Chris Savage (@Eclectablog) October 3, 2013 This is, at its most basic level, the situation in Congress […]

The conference united more than 700 entrepreneurs, visionaries and activists who believe in Detroit’s future. If you needed a boost of optimism about where Detroit is headed, you should have been at TEDxDetroit. The one-day conference held October 2 at Cobo Hall’s new Grand Ballroom overlooking the Detroit River wasn’t just sold out. It was overflowing. Overflowing with great ideas […]

Trying to be nationally relevant, Governor? [Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog] In what may be one of the nauseating media efforts I’ve seen in a while, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has embarked on an internet tour to lecture Washington, D.C. lawmakers and President Obama on how to “end the gridlock”. He sent out this […]

Hallelujah All photos by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog As I wrote back January (has it been that long?), the Detroit City Council set itself up to be the punchline of a bad joke when it rejected an offer by the State of Michigan to make the fabulous Belle Isle our state’s newest state park. However, in his best […]

Gerrymandered from reality Everything is working out as well as it possibly could for people like me who wanted to see the Tea Party get the fight over Obamacare they wanted. Speaker John Boehner hoped to focus his caucus on negotiating about over the debt limit, as public overwhelmingly believes that raising it should be tied to spending cuts. Tea […]

That was a day we will all remember President Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, photo by Congressman Keith Ellison Well, I looked out the window the morning, Day Two of Obamacare, and the sky was still UP and the sun was rising. IN THE WEST! No, wait [turns around] IN THE EAST! Despite warnings of the […]

So, I got an email from my employer this morning. They went through what I’m assuming is the normal process of having the Department of Labor analyze the health insurance plan they offer to us, their employees. The verdict: “affordable”. I can keep my employer-based insurance. I can keep my doctors. I don’t need to go to Healthcare.gov to sign […]

For millions of people who are uninsured or can’t afford to buy insurance on their own, the day has come: You’re somebody. If you’ve lived without insurance or, like me, pay exorbitant rates because you buy individual insurance or have a pre-existing condition, October 1, 2013, is a day to celebrate. It means you’re no longer a nobody in the […]