Today, former president Barack Obama returned to the White House at President Joe Biden’s invitation to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare.
I looked up my Republican former marine Lt. General seditionist, Rep. Jack Bergman, and found he voted FOR the resolution, which might mean his Democratic opposition is having an impact and/or tRump is losing his hold on the party? Here's the list of "Nays":
If Jack Bergman is coming to even a smidgeon of sense, I will be grateful while also totally stunned. I lived in the U.P. when he was elected, and I know that none of the letters my husband and I wrote to him seemed to have any affect. May you and the rest of the Democratic opposition not lose heart!
Bergman is a carpet bagger (in reverse), bought a cabin in the U.P. to run for office, lives in Louisiana. We have an EXCELLENT Democratic candidate for Congress this year, Dr. Bob Lorinser from Marquette, MI! Not only 30 years providing medical care, he and his wife served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 10 years!
I’m not surprised to see Gaetz listed here. In other news yesterday I heard his stupidity on full display as he tried to gut our Defense Secretary on “wokeness”. He did everything in his power to try and suggest racial slurs on Defense Institute policies. Made my blood boil! What will it take for these creeps to be stopped from their tryouts for Faux News air time?
Gaetz and Cawthorn must be. bruthas from another mutha! These boys definitely don’t belong in anywhere near Congress. They belong in pre-school where they are given the basics of being nice.
I will mention that to my in-law, whose type 2 diabetes was causing him to lose 10% of his weight each year, which had been normal when first diagnosed. After a few years it was inject insulin or waste away.
I also watched that clip. Although Gaetz's questioning was ridiculous and uncivil, I didn't think Sec. Austin acquitted himself very well, at least partially because Gaetz wouldn't let him speak. But Austin's answers seemed pretty wishy-washy to me. In answer to why Picketty was allowed to speak at the War College, the obvious answer is that Picketty is one of the leading scholars in the world and it's important to hear all interesting ideas at an elite academic institution. Of course, Picketty's lecture had nothing to do with the withdrawal from Afghanistan or any of the other issues Gaetz mentioned. And Austin could have noted, with regard to N. Korea, that despite Trump's assertion that "the nuclear problem was solved" (because he and Kim had fallen in love), N. Korea had moved ahead with their nukes program, largely out of control of the U.S. Did Gaetz think we should have nuked N. Korea? (Think? Gaetz?)
Just makes it easier for those men in TN to get their child porn at home and in the neighborhood. Let's see if we hear any concerns from Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and Marsha Blackburn (who said she was so concerned about children while trying to paint Judge Jackson as easy on people who collect and share it). Can you picture those 14 year old girls getting pregnant and having no way to avoid annual repetitions? The life expectancy and quality of life will be less than dogs that are kept for only breeding purposes.
The fact that such mandates could even be conceived by the elected representative of TN constituency is so very repulsive proves that the native characters depicted in the movie Deliverance are actually those people who have been elected to public office by those very same totally bizarre inter-bred "people"
Side Bar:
The "actor" in Deliverance who so infamously yelled, "...squeal like a pig..." was, in fact not acting at all!
And I believe he remains, even today, as the duly elected republican Governor of TN
You wrote "In other words, they want to allow children to marry." Actually, what they want is to allow adult men to marry children. We all know that it won't be adult women marrying male children. Nor is it likely that many children in question will be given choice in the matter.
I believe that new legislation is referred to as the Tennessee licentiously lasciviousness pedophile's public predispositioned proclamation for perverts bill. Eh!?
And they want to remove any bars on gun totin’. And make TN public schools charter schools, under the direction of Hillsdale College from MI (bc apparently TN universities don’t have the expertise). HC is a fave of the DeVos family.
Which explains a lot of the ignorance and lack of knowledge in too many of our poorer, southern states. With all the inpouring of federal tax support (accumulated from taxes collected in higher income/educated states) I have to wonder why we try.
Most of America daily prays that Tennesseans some how begin to comprehend the direct negative consequences of their negative voting history...that they actually realize the good they choose to deprive themselves instead of consistently voting, (or not voting at all, ever), to remain enslaved in the R's trumpeting hell!
It remains incomprehensible why A SCUM BAG like Burchett could even be elected to the urinal duty janitorial position of Tennessee's prison.
Watching and listening to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) during Judge Jackson's committee hearings, and now the TN proposal to allow girls to marry at age 14 makes me wonder about the mental capacity of that state. Legislation to obtain their child porn easier, seems to me. I'll be waiting to hear how concerned Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Lindsay Graham, Tom Cruz, and Ms. Blackburn are about that situation. I expect absolute silence.
Actually, the TN proposal has no minimum age limit. Saw an exchange earlier today in the legislature between a legislator and a proponent which made this clear.
Make sure your fellow Tennesseans know and vote him out of office. I've been a loud voice posting facts against representatives/one senator in my state who need to be out of office.
Thanks for list of nays, MaryPat Sercu. I am not surprised that Trump supporter Scott Perry is on that list. Perry is my PA 10th District Representative. Guess what, he's a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. He also is one of those who signed and continues to believe the Joe Biden stole the election from Perry's god Trump. What kind of soldier and patriot is Scott Perry? He must be defeated.
I guess I made a bit of progress moving to MO because my rep, Wagner, voted in favor while my old rep from IN-9, Hollingsworth, voted against. Another good reason not to enable or tolerate carpetbaggers who only move to get a seat. Thanks for posting the list MaryPat.
That's the spirit, MaryPat. When and if a Democrat influences a Republican that will be the day; If it does happen once in while, I'd like to know about it. No one influences Manchin and Sinema, they know who they're servicing; it's called self-serving.
Our Dem candidate IS really giving Bergman a run for his (blood) money though. More and more I am seeing local candidates (county commissioner, state rep) announcing they are "moderate Republicans." Which is code for "not trumpers." I know these folks from working on other boards with them, and they are decent people. Feels like the tide is turning away from the orange thug, if only in rural northern Michigan.
The challenge facing our democracy is the fact that these Republicans were legitimately elected by their constituents, as were most of their party who, as HCR puts it today, are engaged in culture wars which are 'pushing today’s right wing toward authoritarianism,' including taking away the health care that the ACA has brought to many Americans. This is the Achilles heel of a democracy that allows the election of people who are intent on destroying it. How do we meet that challenge?
I have to add that we must question "legitimacy" these days. There is so much propaganda, voter suppression and rigging that I don't believe very much of anything today.
Being saddled with a bad Congress critter is like being in a bad marriage. People must realize that they get to be who they are, that no one can force them to accept being anyone else. Divorce that critter.
Actually the FACT is the republicans during the last thirty years have NEVER been legitimately elected.
Gerrymandering, targeted voter suppression state legislation, Citizens United dark money, bastardization of historical facts in schools, etc., etc., etc.
The R's are crooks, that can only lie, greedy, their god is the dollar bill, those who control the R's can only be white, bigoted, moneyed, old, gluttonous men enslaved by the Great Deceiver to destroy American democracy instilling authoritarianism rule.
For example look at what weaseled his way into the Florida representative chair:
Matt Gaetz is the R's poster boy, as a child molester & close associate of the former king of molesters Epstein...
But Gaetz was elected by those in his district. And though we disagree with its results, gerrymandering is legal, following State laws. As for Citizens United, the SCOTUS said its contributions are legal, as if they came from individuals, protected by the First Amendment.
All that you recognize as evil was accomplished legally, including Florida's new statutes, effective 7/1, limiting reference to gender issues in schools and giving parents input as to what books are permitted there and how history is taught. Democracy has its Achilles' heels at which Republicans aim their arrows ... with existing law to back them up! With luck, we'll end up with a benevolent autocracy to replace our flawed democracy which is destroying itself.
I will never give up protecting the freedom & equal rights of EVERY American in these United States of America!
I must say that the methodology of deception used by the R's nationwide to manipulate the gerrymandered surgically sliced voter boundaries to prevent the increasing homogenization of NON-WHITE populations into fairly representative geographical areas.
This increasing trend is diluting the voting power of the historically populated areas of the lily-whites now, more and more, living in fear of becoming the minority and loss of their misplaced self-appointed superiority over non-white people. The inhuman cruelty inflicted by whites upon nonwhites is ending and such reality is unimaginable to the R's,
Of course I agree with you. But that's why local voting for State legislators is crucial. They are the ones who make gerrymandering legal in their State, and this SCOTUS isn't likely to interfere with them. Tip O'Neill said that "all politics are local" and it's true today.
"The R's are crooks, that can only lie, greedy, their god is the dollar bill, those who control the R's can only be white, bigoted, moneyed, old, gluttonous men enslaved by the Great Deceiver to destroy American democracy instilling authoritarianism rule."
Obvious to you, obvious to me, but their constituents actually believe what they're doing and saying is the truth. They area validating "Brave New World" and "1984."
Or their constituents don’t care or pay attention even when they are the victims of policies that negatively affect them. Or they believe the lies of their representatives.
Or perhaps they've given up, living in places where they can't see what difference their votes make. A lot of people are expending most of their energy just trying to get by, make a living, stay out of trouble that's looking for them (not the other way round). So easy for too many of us to look down on them, because we can't see the path they walk. If we can't here them, what hope is there that the people who supposedly "represent" them can?
Yes, can’t hear and can’t see. There is that saying, “I see you.” And hear you. We are often in other worlds in the same room. And then there’s “the room where it happened” and happens. You do have a point. And TFG spoke directly to some of them.
I, like a majority of American voters do understand the plight of the underprivileged and pray for ways to make America the home of the free EQUALLY for all Americans.
It seems that, "... they can't see what difference their votes make..." is because they have voted into office republican bigoted idiots like mat gaetz, marjorie T. greene, lauren boebert, etc., etc., etc.
Voting intelligently this November 8, by taking the time required to KNOW & UNDERSTAND the legislative issues, incumbents, and candidates will substantially improve the quality of their living life.
Both of those books were required reading during my junior and senior years (1980-82) in the Chicago public high school I attended, and I often consider the eerie similarities at play today, with the added horror of having seen and experienced all the double-speak/standard women further have had to contend with. Much work to do!
Diana, I’ve referenced those two treasures many times in the last months. We are in times so surreal that when people say, “Stranger than Fiction” I think about the predictions of books and authors who really do see into the future. Now.
Some Republicans are undoubtedly so bereft of meaning in their lives that it will put them in a happy place to be able to say they never once voted with the Democrats.
They are a classic and potentially tragic beacon for the adage that you can’t distribute poison unless you have it in you.
Just remember, they not only follow Trump they follow Mitch McConnell who has vowed to obstruct everything Biden proposes just as he vowed to obstruct Obama. Unless voters realize that the battle cannot be won with just one election in 2020, every election determines how many troops are recruited for the next confrontation. Look at these parents being cultivated to undermine elected school boards. City Councils are training grounds for state legislatures, etc. Citizenship is not just a border issue. It is a long-term responsibility requiring constant attention to what is happening and where.
Under-rated comment. The movement has admittedly spread perniciously and is clearly plumbing the lowest depths of people’s beings.
Being alert to it all ruins one’s psyche and health.
Being aware that you feel a certain numbness after a while is alarming and dispiriting.
At the macro level, that’s why we desperately need a DOJ that understands this and is working furiously to indict obviously guilty and *highly recognizable* figures. Besides the legal implications, a few sturdy convictions would have a chilling impact on those who feel invulnerable.
My heart cares only a little bit that 750 cases have been made agains riot participants.
My morale and energy would soar if say, a Mark Meadows and a Matt Gaetz were convicted and imprisoned. For a start.
It’s an old ticker and getting a Trump conviction might push me into heart attack territory. 😊
Serious point though. Unless things change, we are going to surrender to the authoritarians simply because we lost morale and they feel they’ve hootenanny away like bandits. An Orban-style “democracy” looms on the near horizon.
I think it would help if we could set the word "deplorable" aside altogether. Then nobody would feel the need to alude to that.old saying and leave the end off, pretending not to have said anything.
This is no surprise, but it's maddening nonetheless.
"When asked to choose between protecting their country or domestic extremists, every single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee chose the extremists." Every. Single. One.
I am now going to be looking at the Office of the Clerk of House of Representatives more often to see how people are voting. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes
My representative Doug LaMalfa voted NO on this resolution. I live in a blue bubble surrounded by rural red. We've tried to replace him, but haven't yet.
I would be more in favor of Health Care entirely run and managed and paid for by the government, like Canada, at this point than the mishmash of corporate greed and high costs that the ACA and our current approach provide to us.
For example, an MD here gets paid a LOT more than their counterparts world wide and our health outcomes are often worse.
The overall system problem in health care is not just extending coverage to people who did not have it before.
The whole health care system is focussed on maximizing management bonuses for Insurance company executives and making sure the AMA continues to pay off the people in Congress that keep MD salaries high.
For example, NAFTA sold out all skill in America for outsourcing (engineering especially) EXCEPT Doctors were not permitted to be outsourced in that agreement because the AMA paid off a bunch of Congress people to keep Doc's out of that lower cost doom loop.
So, an MD in Mexico cannot take the job from an MD here.
But, an engineer in Mexico certainly can.
The ACA did nothing to lower health care costs for Americans. In fact, for working Americans (see my other post) it INCREASED total cost through increased premiums.
The systemic problems in health care are not addressed by the ACA. Just one tiny bit of the problem (somewhat extended coverage) is addressed.
That (important) component is important but fawning over the ACA too much obscures the real structural problems in America's health care system.
AND NOW, as I write??? We, the US are allowing HEDGE FUNDS to buy up all of our hospitals. YEP, all across America, Hedge funds, those same entities that completely destroyed American manufacturing here, are now buying hospitals.
Let's see how that works out for us. $1000 per stitch the next time you cut your finger?
So, let's not lose sight of the huge problem that exists in the USA around health care relative to sane countries like Greece, Canada, and England and Norway and Sweden and.....welll.......the list is long.
When it comes to health care in the US, competing ideas can be true at the same time. I agree with many of your points. Our health care system is indeed a corporate wreck. We would be much better off with a full national health care system like those in Israel, Canada, etc. At the same time, as long as we don’t have the political ability to create that, improvements like the ACA are lifesaving for millions of people including my own brother.
Mike. I have. Had it not been for umbrella coverage when I left a job several years ago. I would not have coverage. Given I have several pre-existing illnesses, including cancer, I wouldn't be here today.
Looks like it Is becoming a matter of how to survive until becoming eligible for Medicare. ACA helped, as mentioned above, but don't forget that those who are attacking that legislation also have Medicare itself in their crosshairs. Things may get worse before they get better, at which point those who consistently vote for opponents of democracy will have recognized that they've been hoodwinked.
Not to speak for Mike, but he was responding to an earlier statement that ACA itself should be expanded and built on. I agree: the ACA is a lifesaver when no other resource is available. But the built-in loopholes and the fatal flaw (focus on private insurance companies), result of unfortunate "compromises" (needed to get something past the reactionary right) makes it a poor scaffold for developing a truly effective national health care system. ACA is what we've got now and it has brought us closer to that ideal (it helped save my brother's life, too, and one of my adult children). Yes, we do need to ensure that it continues. But we urgently need to start now to build a more integrated and less fragmented health care system with real safeguard against the abuses that are still part of the system.
My brother should not have had to risk bankruptcy while fighting the piecemeal system we have, with billing systems so complex they are unmanageable ON TOP OF trying to manage his treatments. for stage 4b cancer that was first discovered in his brain (and led to a long series of radical treatments. There's a whole story there, but that much gives an idea of what people go through. My brother made it, and still has his house, but oh, god, no body should have to go through that. He was lucky in having an oncologist who fought for him, both medically and helping him negotiate the financial and insurance hoops.
We have to change that. Speaking just for myself, but knowing that many people experience this: For an outpatient surgery, I got different bills for almost every different prodecure involved, because of contracting out. Holy cow. I am with a different system now, and though they also use contractors (necessity for small hospitals without means to have all services on site), they have made arrangements to roll those in with hospital charges (not hidden - they are clearly identified, but not separate). This is a small local example of "single payer", which is widely misunderstood. There are many ways to structure how single payer works, including some that include private insurance. But they all include universal health care, and eliminate the economic stress of becoming ill or having an accident. AHC is a spot holder, but its biggest contribution is, I think, helping people understand that universal health care is a positive public good, not something that takes away choice.
That is not yet a consensus in the US. When it is, a rational medical and healthcare delivery national system can go forward. Germany or Australia have good models for the US
Thank you, Annie, for your excellent comment on the importance of building a system that meets real human needs, in place of the present smokescreen of ideological abstractions that mask unbridled greed while destroying livelihoods and lives.
But a fair healthcare system must be so devised as to bolster individual responsibilit and avoid abusive dependence.
Not an easy balancing act.
But then, devising and maintaining living, parasite-free institutions can never be an easy act.
Please don’t blame MDs for rising healthcare costs. Most of them are also pawns in this corrupt game between insurance companies, for profit hospital groups, pharmaceutical companies, and the government.
I am observing a fact that MD's are paid very, very well and especially when comparing US MD's to Canadian and other countries with effective health care for everyone.
Observing one of the components of overall cost, MD talent, is not bad. And, for example, Anesthesiologists routinely make upward of $400,000 per year in the US.
MD's are also protected from being outsourced to India or Mexico or wherever in most cases.
The total cost of health care is made up of many components. Management bonuses at Insurance companies, profit, expensive equipment AND MD pay.
I have a daughter who, years ago, paid top dollar for medical school and then had seven years afterwards where, quite frequently, she was obliged to fill in for a nursing shortages. Until she was about 35, her top gross income was $34,000 a year.
Fortunately we were able to pay for her med school and provide a cushion during her years of residency and specialization. She got married and later had three children after she was able to practice medicine. Many others are burdened with a massive debt.
I know. I have a relative who had 3 children by the time he graduated from law school and the loan "agencies" just piled on interest and then compounded that. After providing documentation and correspondence showing the errors being made by the "agencies" he just gave up. I expect he will die and leave the unpaid debt and no one will fault him.
I notice just how much (how little) everyone seems to be paid when costs are charged to Medicare. It is no wonder people in some places find it near impossible to locate doctors who will take Medicare patients. Between the paperwork required and the pittance paid it is difficult to understand how medical school loans are ever paid off.
Any newly minted MD can sign up for the National Health Service Corps, spend 3 years in a medically underserved area and get a $100K repayment of med school debt.
Those poor docs NEED their 2nd & 3rd vacation mansions with year round staffing, humongous boats, expensive snooty private clubs, etc., etc., etc. Eh!?
The systemic problem is bigger than healthcare. For example, most US doctors pay the full freight of the seven plus years of college education with large, hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans at higher interest rates. Plus they go through three years of residency at modest wages and long hours. This drives if not requires doctors to seek highest paid positions which are in our more prosperous cities.
Compare this with Cuba and many nations where medical students attend at free tuition and housing assistance enabling them to graduate and start working with no debt. Then these nations pay doctors all effectively the same regardless of where they work and live. This promotes doctors to work in either urban or rural areas with regard to income. And hospital and clinics in other nations are more evenly invested in for more equal quality facilities.
Docs in Germany also emit having paid nothing. They emit into a highly effective German health care system where health care is also free.
And, yes, our health care system, at least my own limited experience in it, is pretty foul.
I once hauled, together with three other guys, around 1300 bales of hay, 80lbs each, right before I went to college. My left side started hurting pretty bad the day after we were done.
I spent the next two years going to 12 different docs asking each of them if maybe I had hernia (no lie, no exaggeration). After many horrible tests and Xrays that were, not needed, and all the docs scratching their head in puzzlement......
I finally went to an old country surgeon in Austin, TX and asked him to cut me open and just have a look.
He laughed and said "Stand on this stool". "Turn your head and cough".
"Young man, you have a big old hernia down there. We can fix you up at your next Christmas Break".
TRUE story without a lot of the details. This odyssey cost me and my family around 3500 dollars BEFORE the surgery back when my entire college edcuation cost $10k.
My subsequent encounters with health care have not been better or more encouraging.
Now? I just diagnose myself and walk in and tell my Doc what the issue is. Then, if he wants to disagree, he can, but, I don't let them flail around.
The thing that burns me most about health care in America. Go to the doctor, Dr says “what’s the matter? (Translation: Diagnose yourself)” then the facility charges you over a hundred dollars (at least) for his asking the question and agreeing with your best guess!
Another reason why travel and education are critical. To learn and know that USA is not number one. I’ve needed healthcare in countries outside of USA and often had no bill for excellent and timely services. The idea that USA leads the world is another delusion. We need to work to continually improve. Not wave flags.
Same here, Irenie. Our family has often sought medical care in Italy, from emergencies with our kids, through cast care for a broken arm for a kiddo including X-rays, through minor surgery for me. Our cost for all of this: zero. And we are not participants in ASL, the Italian health system. It’s funny, Italian provincial hospitals look impossibly old fashioned, not fancy at all. But the health care is outstanding, even on a remote island. I’m not talking about just Rome and Milan.
Further, the same is true about Italian schools. They have a national curriculum, not a million local ones. When our kids were in Italian schools, it was clear to me that Italian kids are two years ahead of their American counterparts, and they have one more year of high school than we do. They have access to trade schools for kids who don’t want to go to university. And university itself is very inexpensive.
And this is Italy, not on anyone’s list of the best-governed, most efficient countries in the world. We are doing it wrong.
I was once chatting with my neighbor congressman, talking about our kids’ broken arms, and mentioned what happened to him in Italy with his cast care. His wife’s response: weren’t you terrified to have to get health care there? Umm, no. It’s a developed country with better life expectancy and health outcomes than ours. His response: how can they do that for free? Congressman, they have universal health care there… If those making decisions and legislating on these issues are so ignorant, what hope do we have?
So interesting. Travel is essential. Some Americans must think every country outside the USA is what they would consider a third world country. Ha! Many Americans would disagree and some purposely cross the borders for care. Or are lucky to travel and see for themselves.
We are both blessed and cursed by our geographic isolation. It’s expensive for Americans to travel, and our own country has so much to offer. It’s not like in Europe, where you can drive a few hours and enter a place with a different language and culture. I know this shows my Eurocentric bias, but it’s the continent I know best after our own. I don’t know what it’s like for Asians, South Americans, or Africans. I imagine that for Australians, it’s just like we are.
Maybe, just maybe, since we’re not really United, we’re just too big. It’s as if the South has decided to secede from the Union again. But this time they want to keep what they like and sabotage or dump what they don’t. Hmmm…long list. Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Voting Rights.. education in jeopardy, climate. Health care? I bet they like a policy when it helps them. Or maybe they aren’t attentive enough to know. At one point many citizens didn’t want “Obamacare” but ACÁ was ok. Epidemic of ignorance.
And government? Maybe “they” seceded and I wasn’t paying attention.
I've also wondered if we've gotten too big to function with any kind of effectiveness or humanity. Sometimes I daydream about the west coast states being a separate country --don't jump all over me, please -- I said daydream. I know it won't happen; I know there are good reasons for it not to happen. But the thought lingers. . . .
It’s not just the south, sadly. Yesterday, here in Ohio, the legislature considered our very own don’t say gay bill. If Roe is overturned, I expect abortion to become illegal in Ohio. I have two LGBTQ kids who live in the state and this just makes my blood boil. Which it would, even if it weren’t personal, but it is.
Thank you, dear KR, for reminding our classmates “it’s not just the south.” Many of us LFAA subscribers who comment regularly and come here for democratic nourishment live — some born and raised — “down here.”
Additionally, I too have an LGBTQ kid and other family members. My blood boils with yours.
The South is not a monolith, and any one who follows what's going on down there can see the many voices and forces straining against each other (yes, race, but many other factors as well, poverty, a failed education system, all the things you list, Irenie). A self-selected group of "elites" are using well-worn techniques to maintain control of voting access and that makes it seem like what they are doing is an inevitability. Right wing elements in other states are using similar tactics. I don't believe it is inevitable. Take a hard look at any of those states: even in mainstream media, you can see the evidence of change. It just ain't going away.
It occurs to me that as any assemblage is beginning a change from one state of being to another, there is a period of what seems like chaos, but could as easily be a normal sorting out of priorities, on a massive scale. I admit to being very concerned about where we are right now. It didn't begin with Trump and the pandemic: it's obviously been going on for a long while.
But changes in American society are profound right now because of the influence of those two additional factors. Neither of them are as simple as they are treated by much of the media or by our own attempts to make them things we can wrap our minds around (I struggle with that- but the complexity of the consequences and our responses still boggles me).
This isn't a regional issue. And in most places it isn't even a straight-forward "state's rights" issue. We all know that so-called state's rights actually refer to the power of that elite. And yet in all of those states, there is pushback that can be built on. No state is fully "blue", and none is fully "red". We have to give up that misconception, and one way to do it is to call out media when they treat what is happening through that very narrow lens. Ditto politicians riding that trope. We speak out loudly and insistently, but with clarity and calm. Name-calling and judgement are not useful tools: they backfire every time. Think: how would you feel if just the fact that you are associated with certain concepts meant that you are automatically considered ignorant or uneducated, or incapable of having an opinion that might be rational within your circumstances? Would you feel like exploring ways to find common ground or exploring how labels limit discussion? My guess is nope. But that is what we are doing everyday on this forum, and in the papers and other places of public discourse.
I am feeling more optimistic right now, because I am seeing some of those things being talked about openly and with compassion. On both sides. The thing we need to resist is the temptation to walk away, to "secede" from the conversation. We have to be willing to set aside our own discomfort (and fear), so we can hear what underlies the thing we most fear.
Listening to each other is a place to start. Especially knowing the diversity of this nation and the impossibility/futility of categorizing people by geography and/or political beliefs. So secession isn’t the answer. Nothing that simple. I say in jest.
Same in Greece. That is why Greece has a stable Democracy. Greeks are well read and schooled in critical thinking. Even the ones way out in the villages.
KR, it seems USA is too big, too diverse to meet the needs of all citizens. I’ve always thought it unwise and inaccurate to compare school and other systems in small countries that have much smaller and more homogeneous populations with our system that covers not only so many different states and areas, but the huge and diverse population. I hear “Why can’t USA be like xxxx?” Finland, Denmark etc. Not likely. Every state added to the Union presented unique problems and challenges, from geography to country of origin, section of country, language, religion or none, and then more than two bigger challenges we have not met: First People here first!!! And people brought to America as slaves, stolen from their own homes and countries. Or another: not Christian. There’s more of course. But there’s not enough understanding, compassion and empathy, respect and acceptance for differences and similarities. It’s always been here, but TFG helped bring intolerance out in the open. He’s made it ok to hate. We are so challenged to find ways to connect, to accept, share and above all to care. But we must continue to try! Onward!
"Just got this bill for my ER visit. $969 cut in half and paid by Blue Cross. My copay is $50. I was there for an hour and treatment consisted of re-gluing an incision that opened and bled. Unbelievable!
As well. Preceeded by 50 years (in my time working) of diddling with everything except what would help (a) bend the curve for spiraling health costs, (b) pave the way for increased access to health care (including medical services) for all Americans, and (c) improve the health status and longevity of America's people, regardless of their economic or social status. My wording, but the essential intents in launching the Affordable Care Act, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As enacted, the ACA, got stopped at increased coverage to slow spiraling costs by increasing the size of the risk pool and establishing a means for insurance companies to not go bankrupt if they head high proportions of risky insurees. That's also what Mr Obama and Mr Biden refer to as building upon the ACA and it's progenitor, the Massachusetts Health Care model (a conservative idea and model) in place when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts.
As I understand it, even under ACA, states can set up their own alternative healthcare insurance systems. It’s probably time to get to work on Plan B if we really believe the Republicans will repeal the ACA.
The ACA did 4 hugely significant things for Americans: kids may stay on their parents’ plan to age 26. Eliminated gender-based insurance rates (women paid more). Eliminated lifetime caps on health insurance. Eliminated denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Also, the income based subsidies made it possible for many people to pay their now-low premium and still have some cash to pay deductibles - people who previously could not afford care.
And Medicare MUST be continued and improved upon. After earning my master's degree, working 40 years and saving diligently, I still couldn't afford the recent cancer removal found on a diagnostic for something else, nor the prescriptions I take. And many people require medical care and continuing health care.
Moreover, Democrats MUST win the midterms so that America can take the lead in addressing climate change. Republicans do NOT trust science, nor do they acknowledge our duty to act as stewards for the environment. Republicans do not value the role of government, but only seek to reduce it.
It is hard to "trust" science, because, unlike religion where things are clear and nailed down, science is never clear and nailed down and is always evolving.
Hence, trust science is not even an appropriate phrase.
A better phrase is: Based on the data we have now, we can conclude (xyz) OR, based on the lack of data we have now we cannot conclude (xyz).
Saying things like "trust the science" is only something a non-scientist would say.
I was at an international seminar in Europe when the ACA was being debated, the first time. I had people from all over the world asking me "why don't Americans want healthcare?" Right here in Maine, I have a neighbor who's told me flat out "healthcare is a privilege not a right."
If we let government slip back into the hands of Republicans, that's on us.
I agree. I also am very worried about their rigging and suppressing of votes. They have flat out said that if all Americans are allowed to vote there is no way they could win. Thus their changes in procedure to access of voting. How do we stop that madness?
We are moving toward Blatanism, in which republicans no longer cloak their evil deeds with political correctness. I'm waiting for a politician to show their stripes by stating something like, "I hate blacks."
Did you happen to see (on Twitter) where Josh Mandel, the Tr**p-backed Senate candidate in Ohio, in trying to show that he is not a racist (despite some pretty damning statements in the past), filmed a campaign ad which begins with him walking across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL, I assume, in an attempt to demonstrate he isn't a racist. Okay. At one point in the ad, a photo of Mandel among a group of other soldiers (who all are Black) appears. If you look closely, you can see Mandel has been photoshopped into the picture. At least his FACE has been photoshopped. His hands?? Not so much. Oops. God, these people are beyond clueless. If you have access to Twitter you can see it for yourself...it goes by pretty quick:
That photo is appalling pandering. But it appears it isn’t photoshopped. Looks like they applied a darkening filter - to make the other soldiers look Blacker, I suppose. Mandel is foul. I fear for my state. Mandel and Vance are so revolting they can even make Trumpian Timkin look acceptable by comparison. 🤞 we can achieve another D senator here.
My hope, too! Tim Ryan , present Ohio Democratic Congressman, is running for the Senate, and he is heads and shoulders above Mandel and those other Republican jokers.
This began under Giingrich's Contract On America and Tom DeLay's hard-nosed pushing of the egregious gerrymandering of Texas districts. Before then, folks had enough shame to try to hide their misdeeds under rocks. With those 2 events, they started turning over the rocks on their own and crowing about their misdeeds.
Every time I see a photo of Brett Kavanaugh, my first impression is of a smug, entitled drunken frat boy. Maybe it’s just the chubby baby cheeks, but that’s what I see.
We were lucky enough to live in Maine for about 15 years. We operated a small business and the state offered us health insurance called "Dirigo". It made operating our business possible - a hospitality business that over the years had brought thousands of visitors to Maine who put a lot of money back into the state's economy.
Then, thanks to the now busted Eliot Cutler, Paul LePage was elected governor. Dirigo health insurance became a footnote in history. This and a couple of other personal issues sent us packing - back to MA. Where we were able to find affordable health insurance. It was called "Romneycare". Ironic, eh?
I see that LePage has returned to haunt you. I wish you luck. He is a monster.
The problem with that, and a lot of GOP thinking, is that you pay more when you pay later. We end up with folks in the ER, the most expensive form of medical care. The GOP would rather spend $1k to apply a tourniquet after you've lost half your blood rather than spend 1₵ to prevent the cut. (Or something like that)
Also, they would rather anyone who can’t afford the expensive treatment die, preferably first going into heavy debt. Remember this is the party who wants to go back to the original Constitution, before those pesky amendments ending slavery and ensuring rights for the mudsills.
I have not forgotten growing up in the 1950s when "Red China" was a blank space, a hole in the map of Asia, a void in America's collective mind. A reality so disliked, so shameful that it could be neither named nor thought. Not even when that "human wave" of the "Peoples Liberation Army came pouring across the North Korean border, drove back the UN (and US) armies, led Douglas MacArthur to rattle nukes and President Truman to fire him... And, after battling back and forth, truce bisected the peninsula... And look then at today's hard, uncontrollable, unwelcome reality north of Panmunjom...
All this at a moment in time when the only genuine existential threat in our world affects the entire planet, and with it, the entire human population, regardless of labels"bad", "good", regardless of wisdom or idiocy.
Meanwhile, the huge territory that is Russia suffers ruin, the kind of ruin that can take longer to repair than the rebuilding of shattered cities...
And when the dictator goes the way of all flesh, when the regime crumbles and seeks new forms -- always supposing we are still there -- when we have struggled to cope with global famine, when the Xi regime has consolidated its windfall gains beyond the Urals, there will still be a vast territory and a major population to bring back into the human fold.
This time, we have to look beyond today's disease, to a world in which we can all live together. And that means action NOW to look beyond war, beyond disease, beyond surgery and drugs, to recovery, health for Russia as well as Ukraine. We should know by now that pandemic disease, physical, mental, knows no frontiers.
This all means something painful to contemplate: the demands of PEACE and HEALTH, which are even greater than those of war and disease.
It must mean a steadfast commitment to universalism, a worldwide drive to end, not diversity, but exceptionalisms. And that in turn must mean no more punitive "treaties" that are no treaties at all, like the Versailles Treaty and the Trianon Treaty, no more exclusion of the defeated, treated as unpersons, uncountries.
Can we begin to envision this?
We are damned well going to have to.
And as I'm not talking of some airyfairy imaginary world, it means we're going to have to learn new ways of getting our act together, new ways of living with endemic discord, disease, violence, accepting realities we've preferred to deny and sweep under the rug, because where realities are denied there's not a hope in hell of dealing with them.
Let's take a hard look, then, at where so many generations of thoughtless automatisms, posing, posturing and mendacity, political, social, economic,
have led.
Doesn't that make a priority of healing our own disease before we declare the territory of fellow humans to be a forever-off-limits lepers' colony?
Writing immediately after WW2, Ananda Coomaraswamy commented that economic wars bring suffering worse than military ones -- no prisoners are taken. And now we've moved into new combinations of war both military and economic. Oligarchy against human beings, against our democratic institutions, against life itself.
America's -- and thus the world's -- ingrained ideology is one of dog-eat-dog competition for its own sake. Yet even the fiercest African wild dogs don't prey on one another, so why should humans have to?
Time to move beyond neo-Darwinist nonsense to something less unnatural, something that meets the needs of living together.
Peter, I hear your wisdom in this. Is it not the basic wisdom of every “religion” before it gets co-opted by dogma? And the real existential threat of environmental degradation is at the root of the upheaval, I think. Supporting and propping up a privileged patriarchy that is killing us. But our ability to come together, to change our thinking to save ourselves, seems slim to me. ( A lesson I learned watching the Pandemic play out) The amplified autocracy-machine/smash-the-system activism is a weapon peace-loving people don’t know yet how to counter. We have built our Western economic system on advertising consumer goods. It’s evolved into a monster of mindless, unsustainable consumption, and -with the rise of social media-, pysop-mind-manipulation. When was the last time most of us have had a long, pondered thought? This forum is one respite from quick-click thinking, but most of daily life is quick, shallow thought, mostly reactive. Without deep, contemplative thought, humans have no chance of coming together for more than selfish, short-term reasons, I fear. “We are in for a bumpy ride”, to quote Bette Davis in “All about Eve”. As for Darwinism, I feel Darwin got it completely upside down. We are not at the top, be are at the bottom. All other beings on this beautiful blue marble know how to live sustainably, except us.
Brilliant. And here’s a ramble. The way to Peace is not through War. Or deprivation for the majority through political power. Your roadmap is a start. When we stand with signs”War is Not the Answer” we must continue to work for the answers. The list is long. The health of the planet begins with environment and it’s humans who make those decisions. And health care for all is part of that list, not an afterthought. Too many humanitarian policies are in constant jeopardy of reversal and disappearing depending on party in power. This great experiment needs a new start. How? It’s the world, not one nation.
Excellent. As i was reading posts, i was thinking about environmental degradation and how that is the ultimate threat. As one of our friends says, humans are the most invasive species. My spouse was lamenting this situation just this week. I pointed out to him that we are lucky in a way because we have no direct descendent and we are older. We are still trying to take care of our almost half acre lot organically and we support as best we can, local farmers. In the meantime, I see so many Amazon trucks delivering who knows what all over. On TV the ads are about drugs that once you've heard the side effects, you wonder why anyone would take them and buy this or that consumer good. And to think it only took humans a relatively short time here in the US to destroy fish runs, water sources, forests, etc. Everywhere greed seems to prevail which means we will not solve the environmental crisis.
I like how you emphasized the word MAN in humans. I suspect our demise as a species and world will be because of gender inequality. The male gender has dominated and controlled the world for thousands of years. Nearly every war throughout history has been wrought by men. The only time when there was equality, peace, harmony and cooperation was in the hunter/gatherer era. That era subsided when agriculture became the new technology and labor was needed so women were dominated and required to produce labor. And…..here we are today. But I am hopeful. Women and other marginalized groups are striving for equality and the continual spotlight I am seeing on that gives me hope.
The reality is that the idea of white men could end up becoming extinct if more interracial relationships take place. They would produce biracial babies so it would take the color “white” out of the equation. Also, the Census would be affected. See, the Repubs and evangelicals know this and it frightens them. That is why they they have come up with the Draconian laws to prevent abortions, to deny women access to decent healthcare. They would rather keep marginalized people “in their current place” in America. If these couples or women (they can get inseminated without the man, you know) choose to have a baby girl rather than a boy, they most certainly can. It is semantics in the making. Women can become legendary Amazons.
Your points couldn't be clearer nor more significant.
1. The ACA must endure and be improved upon!
2. Abortion IS a constitutional right!
3. The right wing is/has been embracing authoritarianism!
4. "What's there to oppose in a nod to democratic values and diplomacy when Ukraine" is defending itself "against an invasion and brutal occupation."
5. The resolution to affirm the House's "unequivocal support" for NATO is a must!
6. The 63 Republicans should be ashamed of themselves!
I stand in favor of all the above!
The 63 Republicans are the lead traitors.
I looked up my Republican former marine Lt. General seditionist, Rep. Jack Bergman, and found he voted FOR the resolution, which might mean his Democratic opposition is having an impact and/or tRump is losing his hold on the party? Here's the list of "Nays":
https://mobile.twitter.com/mkraju/status/1511450233095569411?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1511450233095569411%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-3436626717505448391.ampproject.net%2F2203172113000%2Fframe.html
If Jack Bergman is coming to even a smidgeon of sense, I will be grateful while also totally stunned. I lived in the U.P. when he was elected, and I know that none of the letters my husband and I wrote to him seemed to have any affect. May you and the rest of the Democratic opposition not lose heart!
Bergman is a carpet bagger (in reverse), bought a cabin in the U.P. to run for office, lives in Louisiana. We have an EXCELLENT Democratic candidate for Congress this year, Dr. Bob Lorinser from Marquette, MI! Not only 30 years providing medical care, he and his wife served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 10 years!
https://www.votedrbob.com/allaboutbob
Donating to Dr Bob & his savy Team. Soliciations double as informative updates on his campaign as Dr Bob covers both MI peninsulas.
Wonderful!!! Thank You Bryan!!
I’m not surprised to see Gaetz listed here. In other news yesterday I heard his stupidity on full display as he tried to gut our Defense Secretary on “wokeness”. He did everything in his power to try and suggest racial slurs on Defense Institute policies. Made my blood boil! What will it take for these creeps to be stopped from their tryouts for Faux News air time?
I saw where Gaetz's reasoning for voting against lowering the cost of insulin for diabetics was that they needed to lose weight. Such a nice man.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/05/matt-gaetz-insulin-cost-increases-waistlines/9467445002/
Gaetz and Cawthorn must be. bruthas from another mutha! These boys definitely don’t belong in anywhere near Congress. They belong in pre-school where they are given the basics of being nice.
:: Head explodes in fury ::
I will mention that to my in-law, whose type 2 diabetes was causing him to lose 10% of his weight each year, which had been normal when first diagnosed. After a few years it was inject insulin or waste away.
Which shows his abysmal ignorance about diabetes. I know too many insulin-dependent diabetics for whom obesity was never a factor.
Watching that guy giving Gen. Austin (not to mention Secretary) a nasty time, The word sophistry came to mind. Also, 'punk'
I confess my thoughts were much darker.
Gaetz is a poster boy for a large swath of Amurca.
That is a problem.
I also watched that clip. Although Gaetz's questioning was ridiculous and uncivil, I didn't think Sec. Austin acquitted himself very well, at least partially because Gaetz wouldn't let him speak. But Austin's answers seemed pretty wishy-washy to me. In answer to why Picketty was allowed to speak at the War College, the obvious answer is that Picketty is one of the leading scholars in the world and it's important to hear all interesting ideas at an elite academic institution. Of course, Picketty's lecture had nothing to do with the withdrawal from Afghanistan or any of the other issues Gaetz mentioned. And Austin could have noted, with regard to N. Korea, that despite Trump's assertion that "the nuclear problem was solved" (because he and Kim had fallen in love), N. Korea had moved ahead with their nukes program, largely out of control of the U.S. Did Gaetz think we should have nuked N. Korea? (Think? Gaetz?)
My Rep, Tim Burchett, voted no. I’ll tell ya, in Congress Tennesseans got nothing.
Good to see Oregon's only Republican Congressperson vote yes on this no-brainer piece of legislation 🙂
I'm more worried about the GOP state legislators in Tennessee, who have proposed eliminating minimum age requirements for marriage. It's now 17. In other words, they want to allow children to marry. https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-bill-proposes-eliminating-marriage-age-requirements-1695209
Just makes it easier for those men in TN to get their child porn at home and in the neighborhood. Let's see if we hear any concerns from Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and Marsha Blackburn (who said she was so concerned about children while trying to paint Judge Jackson as easy on people who collect and share it). Can you picture those 14 year old girls getting pregnant and having no way to avoid annual repetitions? The life expectancy and quality of life will be less than dogs that are kept for only breeding purposes.
No kidding!! Blackburn…hold me back from strangling the living daylights outta her!
Yikes!
The fact that such mandates could even be conceived by the elected representative of TN constituency is so very repulsive proves that the native characters depicted in the movie Deliverance are actually those people who have been elected to public office by those very same totally bizarre inter-bred "people"
Side Bar:
The "actor" in Deliverance who so infamously yelled, "...squeal like a pig..." was, in fact not acting at all!
And I believe he remains, even today, as the duly elected republican Governor of TN
You wrote "In other words, they want to allow children to marry." Actually, what they want is to allow adult men to marry children. We all know that it won't be adult women marrying male children. Nor is it likely that many children in question will be given choice in the matter.
I meant what you wrote. Thanks for clarifying.
I believe that new legislation is referred to as the Tennessee licentiously lasciviousness pedophile's public predispositioned proclamation for perverts bill. Eh!?
Agree. Thanks for clarifying.
😪😰🤢🤮🤢😰😪 ... this too must pass ...!!
OH! Yes!
That bill has come to my attention.
I believe it is called the Tennessee licentiously lasciviousness pedophile's public predispositioned proclamation for perverts bill.
EGADS!! Child abuse and pedophilia will increase in Tennessee. Evangelicals have nothing else to do but to destroy young people’s lives?
Horrors.
And they want to remove any bars on gun totin’. And make TN public schools charter schools, under the direction of Hillsdale College from MI (bc apparently TN universities don’t have the expertise). HC is a fave of the DeVos family.
Which explains a lot of the ignorance and lack of knowledge in too many of our poorer, southern states. With all the inpouring of federal tax support (accumulated from taxes collected in higher income/educated states) I have to wonder why we try.
YIKES...hell on Earth, Eh!?
Ugh ugh UGH
Most of America daily prays that Tennesseans some how begin to comprehend the direct negative consequences of their negative voting history...that they actually realize the good they choose to deprive themselves instead of consistently voting, (or not voting at all, ever), to remain enslaved in the R's trumpeting hell!
It remains incomprehensible why A SCUM BAG like Burchett could even be elected to the urinal duty janitorial position of Tennessee's prison.
Simply, because he has an R after his name.
Watching and listening to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) during Judge Jackson's committee hearings, and now the TN proposal to allow girls to marry at age 14 makes me wonder about the mental capacity of that state. Legislation to obtain their child porn easier, seems to me. I'll be waiting to hear how concerned Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Lindsay Graham, Tom Cruz, and Ms. Blackburn are about that situation. I expect absolute silence.
Ha! Ha! Did anyone accuse him of being soft on child pornography?
Actually, the TN proposal has no minimum age limit. Saw an exchange earlier today in the legislature between a legislator and a proponent which made this clear.
😟
Make sure your fellow Tennesseans know and vote him out of office. I've been a loud voice posting facts against representatives/one senator in my state who need to be out of office.
Boebert is not representing my district, but I am ashamed for Colorado
Thanks for list of nays, MaryPat Sercu. I am not surprised that Trump supporter Scott Perry is on that list. Perry is my PA 10th District Representative. Guess what, he's a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. He also is one of those who signed and continues to believe the Joe Biden stole the election from Perry's god Trump. What kind of soldier and patriot is Scott Perry? He must be defeated.
😡
SP diagnosed "Shell Shock" derived from a diet consisting entirely of roasted salted southern nuts...
Note that Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and Elise Stefanik voted FOR the resolution.
Hmmmm
I guess I made a bit of progress moving to MO because my rep, Wagner, voted in favor while my old rep from IN-9, Hollingsworth, voted against. Another good reason not to enable or tolerate carpetbaggers who only move to get a seat. Thanks for posting the list MaryPat.
Having been in the military may have been the one and only reason, MaryPat.
That's what I am thinking Fern. No cause to celebrate here. He must go.
That's the spirit, MaryPat. When and if a Democrat influences a Republican that will be the day; If it does happen once in while, I'd like to know about it. No one influences Manchin and Sinema, they know who they're servicing; it's called self-serving.
Our Dem candidate IS really giving Bergman a run for his (blood) money though. More and more I am seeing local candidates (county commissioner, state rep) announcing they are "moderate Republicans." Which is code for "not trumpers." I know these folks from working on other boards with them, and they are decent people. Feels like the tide is turning away from the orange thug, if only in rural northern Michigan.
Thank you. I had not seen your post before I requested the list!
The challenge facing our democracy is the fact that these Republicans were legitimately elected by their constituents, as were most of their party who, as HCR puts it today, are engaged in culture wars which are 'pushing today’s right wing toward authoritarianism,' including taking away the health care that the ACA has brought to many Americans. This is the Achilles heel of a democracy that allows the election of people who are intent on destroying it. How do we meet that challenge?
I have to add that we must question "legitimacy" these days. There is so much propaganda, voter suppression and rigging that I don't believe very much of anything today.
Being saddled with a bad Congress critter is like being in a bad marriage. People must realize that they get to be who they are, that no one can force them to accept being anyone else. Divorce that critter.
Jack...
Actually the FACT is the republicans during the last thirty years have NEVER been legitimately elected.
Gerrymandering, targeted voter suppression state legislation, Citizens United dark money, bastardization of historical facts in schools, etc., etc., etc.
The R's are crooks, that can only lie, greedy, their god is the dollar bill, those who control the R's can only be white, bigoted, moneyed, old, gluttonous men enslaved by the Great Deceiver to destroy American democracy instilling authoritarianism rule.
For example look at what weaseled his way into the Florida representative chair:
Matt Gaetz is the R's poster boy, as a child molester & close associate of the former king of molesters Epstein...
But Gaetz was elected by those in his district. And though we disagree with its results, gerrymandering is legal, following State laws. As for Citizens United, the SCOTUS said its contributions are legal, as if they came from individuals, protected by the First Amendment.
All that you recognize as evil was accomplished legally, including Florida's new statutes, effective 7/1, limiting reference to gender issues in schools and giving parents input as to what books are permitted there and how history is taught. Democracy has its Achilles' heels at which Republicans aim their arrows ... with existing law to back them up! With luck, we'll end up with a benevolent autocracy to replace our flawed democracy which is destroying itself.
Jack!
Wow!
We will NEVER agree.
BUT!
I will never give up protecting the freedom & equal rights of EVERY American in these United States of America!
I must say that the methodology of deception used by the R's nationwide to manipulate the gerrymandered surgically sliced voter boundaries to prevent the increasing homogenization of NON-WHITE populations into fairly representative geographical areas.
This increasing trend is diluting the voting power of the historically populated areas of the lily-whites now, more and more, living in fear of becoming the minority and loss of their misplaced self-appointed superiority over non-white people. The inhuman cruelty inflicted by whites upon nonwhites is ending and such reality is unimaginable to the R's,
Eh!?
Jack.
Of course I agree with you. But that's why local voting for State legislators is crucial. They are the ones who make gerrymandering legal in their State, and this SCOTUS isn't likely to interfere with them. Tip O'Neill said that "all politics are local" and it's true today.
"The R's are crooks, that can only lie, greedy, their god is the dollar bill, those who control the R's can only be white, bigoted, moneyed, old, gluttonous men enslaved by the Great Deceiver to destroy American democracy instilling authoritarianism rule."
Absolutely the best sentence of the entire MONTH!
:-)
INDEED!?
This, George, I can agree with!
Attempted like
The scary part is that they are so obvious.
Obvious to you, obvious to me, but their constituents actually believe what they're doing and saying is the truth. They area validating "Brave New World" and "1984."
Or their constituents don’t care or pay attention even when they are the victims of policies that negatively affect them. Or they believe the lies of their representatives.
Or perhaps they've given up, living in places where they can't see what difference their votes make. A lot of people are expending most of their energy just trying to get by, make a living, stay out of trouble that's looking for them (not the other way round). So easy for too many of us to look down on them, because we can't see the path they walk. If we can't here them, what hope is there that the people who supposedly "represent" them can?
Too true Annie ...
Yes, can’t hear and can’t see. There is that saying, “I see you.” And hear you. We are often in other worlds in the same room. And then there’s “the room where it happened” and happens. You do have a point. And TFG spoke directly to some of them.
Annie:
I, like a majority of American voters do understand the plight of the underprivileged and pray for ways to make America the home of the free EQUALLY for all Americans.
It seems that, "... they can't see what difference their votes make..." is because they have voted into office republican bigoted idiots like mat gaetz, marjorie T. greene, lauren boebert, etc., etc., etc.
Voting intelligently this November 8, by taking the time required to KNOW & UNDERSTAND the legislative issues, incumbents, and candidates will substantially improve the quality of their living life.
DO IT!
NOW!!
most don't even vote, ever...
Both of those books were required reading during my junior and senior years (1980-82) in the Chicago public high school I attended, and I often consider the eerie similarities at play today, with the added horror of having seen and experienced all the double-speak/standard women further have had to contend with. Much work to do!
😢
Diana, I’ve referenced those two treasures many times in the last months. We are in times so surreal that when people say, “Stranger than Fiction” I think about the predictions of books and authors who really do see into the future. Now.
Some Republicans are undoubtedly so bereft of meaning in their lives that it will put them in a happy place to be able to say they never once voted with the Democrats.
They are a classic and potentially tragic beacon for the adage that you can’t distribute poison unless you have it in you.
Just remember, they not only follow Trump they follow Mitch McConnell who has vowed to obstruct everything Biden proposes just as he vowed to obstruct Obama. Unless voters realize that the battle cannot be won with just one election in 2020, every election determines how many troops are recruited for the next confrontation. Look at these parents being cultivated to undermine elected school boards. City Councils are training grounds for state legislatures, etc. Citizenship is not just a border issue. It is a long-term responsibility requiring constant attention to what is happening and where.
Under-rated comment. The movement has admittedly spread perniciously and is clearly plumbing the lowest depths of people’s beings.
Being alert to it all ruins one’s psyche and health.
Being aware that you feel a certain numbness after a while is alarming and dispiriting.
At the macro level, that’s why we desperately need a DOJ that understands this and is working furiously to indict obviously guilty and *highly recognizable* figures. Besides the legal implications, a few sturdy convictions would have a chilling impact on those who feel invulnerable.
My heart cares only a little bit that 750 cases have been made agains riot participants.
My morale and energy would soar if say, a Mark Meadows and a Matt Gaetz were convicted and imprisoned. For a start.
It’s an old ticker and getting a Trump conviction might push me into heart attack territory. 😊
Serious point though. Unless things change, we are going to surrender to the authoritarians simply because we lost morale and they feel they’ve hootenanny away like bandits. An Orban-style “democracy” looms on the near horizon.
I have a neighbor like that. Been backyard neighbors for over 25 years. We haven’t spoken in 2 1/2 years and that’s okay with me.
I have next door neighbors who fit that deplorable description. If you can’t say something nice…
I think it would help if we could set the word "deplorable" aside altogether. Then nobody would feel the need to alude to that.old saying and leave the end off, pretending not to have said anything.
Good point…taken.
Yup
This is no surprise, but it's maddening nonetheless.
"When asked to choose between protecting their country or domestic extremists, every single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee chose the extremists." Every. Single. One.
https://www.politicususa.com/2022/04/06/every-single-house-judiciary-committee-republican-votes-against-bill-to-fight-domestic-terrorism.html?fbclid=IwAR1O6kGRT4Bm9G1w9HFgwjw7ApioQvWAFzwVOf-0xDSDlpgHi8A3Qhp3I7A
They're taking care of their voters.
And of their corporate contributors.
Who are they? Names.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that there is overlap with the list Patti posted below of 63 Republicans Representatives who voted against the defense of NATO an democracy bill, and this bill a year ago against Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Bill, again 63 Republican Representatives. https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-63-republicans-who-voted-against-anti-asian-hate-crimes-bill-1593542
This is important. I wonder how many other votes have the same 63. Is this the infamous Sedition Caucus I wonder? Or just the House side of the bunch.
WOW. I hadn't thought of that - or noticed.
I am now going to be looking at the Office of the Clerk of House of Representatives more often to see how people are voting. https://clerk.house.gov/Votes
https://mobile.twitter.com/mkraju/status/1511450233095569411
Thanks.
Cheney did not vote?
This list is of people who voted AGAINST supporting defense by NATO. Cheney voted for, as did some other Republicans.
MaryPat posted a link with the names of the 63 traitors. See above. I had asked the same question before I saw her post.
My representative Doug LaMalfa voted NO on this resolution. I live in a blue bubble surrounded by rural red. We've tried to replace him, but haven't yet.
Those are the authoritarians in our midst. Who let the dogs out?
Rowshan,
I would be more in favor of Health Care entirely run and managed and paid for by the government, like Canada, at this point than the mishmash of corporate greed and high costs that the ACA and our current approach provide to us.
For example, an MD here gets paid a LOT more than their counterparts world wide and our health outcomes are often worse.
https://www.beckersasc.com/benchmarking/how-physician-pay-in-the-us-compares-to-other-countries-11-findings.html#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20physicians%20in%20the,their%20counterparts%20in%20other%20countries.
The overall system problem in health care is not just extending coverage to people who did not have it before.
The whole health care system is focussed on maximizing management bonuses for Insurance company executives and making sure the AMA continues to pay off the people in Congress that keep MD salaries high.
For example, NAFTA sold out all skill in America for outsourcing (engineering especially) EXCEPT Doctors were not permitted to be outsourced in that agreement because the AMA paid off a bunch of Congress people to keep Doc's out of that lower cost doom loop.
So, an MD in Mexico cannot take the job from an MD here.
But, an engineer in Mexico certainly can.
The ACA did nothing to lower health care costs for Americans. In fact, for working Americans (see my other post) it INCREASED total cost through increased premiums.
The systemic problems in health care are not addressed by the ACA. Just one tiny bit of the problem (somewhat extended coverage) is addressed.
That (important) component is important but fawning over the ACA too much obscures the real structural problems in America's health care system.
AND NOW, as I write??? We, the US are allowing HEDGE FUNDS to buy up all of our hospitals. YEP, all across America, Hedge funds, those same entities that completely destroyed American manufacturing here, are now buying hospitals.
Let's see how that works out for us. $1000 per stitch the next time you cut your finger?
So, let's not lose sight of the huge problem that exists in the USA around health care relative to sane countries like Greece, Canada, and England and Norway and Sweden and.....welll.......the list is long.
When it comes to health care in the US, competing ideas can be true at the same time. I agree with many of your points. Our health care system is indeed a corporate wreck. We would be much better off with a full national health care system like those in Israel, Canada, etc. At the same time, as long as we don’t have the political ability to create that, improvements like the ACA are lifesaving for millions of people including my own brother.
I have a friend who was about 4 years short of Medicare when she left her job, and it saved her.
Lots of folks have benefitted from ACA.
Mike. I have. Had it not been for umbrella coverage when I left a job several years ago. I would not have coverage. Given I have several pre-existing illnesses, including cancer, I wouldn't be here today.
Count me in that group. The ACA allowed me to retire before Medicare would kick in. And I really needed to retire!!
Looks like it Is becoming a matter of how to survive until becoming eligible for Medicare. ACA helped, as mentioned above, but don't forget that those who are attacking that legislation also have Medicare itself in their crosshairs. Things may get worse before they get better, at which point those who consistently vote for opponents of democracy will have recognized that they've been hoodwinked.
Not to speak for Mike, but he was responding to an earlier statement that ACA itself should be expanded and built on. I agree: the ACA is a lifesaver when no other resource is available. But the built-in loopholes and the fatal flaw (focus on private insurance companies), result of unfortunate "compromises" (needed to get something past the reactionary right) makes it a poor scaffold for developing a truly effective national health care system. ACA is what we've got now and it has brought us closer to that ideal (it helped save my brother's life, too, and one of my adult children). Yes, we do need to ensure that it continues. But we urgently need to start now to build a more integrated and less fragmented health care system with real safeguard against the abuses that are still part of the system.
My brother should not have had to risk bankruptcy while fighting the piecemeal system we have, with billing systems so complex they are unmanageable ON TOP OF trying to manage his treatments. for stage 4b cancer that was first discovered in his brain (and led to a long series of radical treatments. There's a whole story there, but that much gives an idea of what people go through. My brother made it, and still has his house, but oh, god, no body should have to go through that. He was lucky in having an oncologist who fought for him, both medically and helping him negotiate the financial and insurance hoops.
We have to change that. Speaking just for myself, but knowing that many people experience this: For an outpatient surgery, I got different bills for almost every different prodecure involved, because of contracting out. Holy cow. I am with a different system now, and though they also use contractors (necessity for small hospitals without means to have all services on site), they have made arrangements to roll those in with hospital charges (not hidden - they are clearly identified, but not separate). This is a small local example of "single payer", which is widely misunderstood. There are many ways to structure how single payer works, including some that include private insurance. But they all include universal health care, and eliminate the economic stress of becoming ill or having an accident. AHC is a spot holder, but its biggest contribution is, I think, helping people understand that universal health care is a positive public good, not something that takes away choice.
Health Care must be an American right...not a cost. No American must suffer not having good universal health care!
That is not yet a consensus in the US. When it is, a rational medical and healthcare delivery national system can go forward. Germany or Australia have good models for the US
This should have occurred 200 years ago!
Thank you for your expanded comment and clarity around the issue.
Thank you, Annie, for your excellent comment on the importance of building a system that meets real human needs, in place of the present smokescreen of ideological abstractions that mask unbridled greed while destroying livelihoods and lives.
But a fair healthcare system must be so devised as to bolster individual responsibilit and avoid abusive dependence.
Not an easy balancing act.
But then, devising and maintaining living, parasite-free institutions can never be an easy act.
individualism, independence, mutual respect, wisdom, compassion, Love.
Including all of those with pre-existing conditions who were unable to get medical insurance coverage pre-ACA.
Agree.
Please don’t blame MDs for rising healthcare costs. Most of them are also pawns in this corrupt game between insurance companies, for profit hospital groups, pharmaceutical companies, and the government.
amk.
I am observing a fact that MD's are paid very, very well and especially when comparing US MD's to Canadian and other countries with effective health care for everyone.
Observing one of the components of overall cost, MD talent, is not bad. And, for example, Anesthesiologists routinely make upward of $400,000 per year in the US.
MD's are also protected from being outsourced to India or Mexico or wherever in most cases.
The total cost of health care is made up of many components. Management bonuses at Insurance companies, profit, expensive equipment AND MD pay.
So, that is not blaming. That is just observing.
I have a daughter who, years ago, paid top dollar for medical school and then had seven years afterwards where, quite frequently, she was obliged to fill in for a nursing shortages. Until she was about 35, her top gross income was $34,000 a year.
Fortunately we were able to pay for her med school and provide a cushion during her years of residency and specialization. She got married and later had three children after she was able to practice medicine. Many others are burdened with a massive debt.
I know. I have a relative who had 3 children by the time he graduated from law school and the loan "agencies" just piled on interest and then compounded that. After providing documentation and correspondence showing the errors being made by the "agencies" he just gave up. I expect he will die and leave the unpaid debt and no one will fault him.
I notice just how much (how little) everyone seems to be paid when costs are charged to Medicare. It is no wonder people in some places find it near impossible to locate doctors who will take Medicare patients. Between the paperwork required and the pittance paid it is difficult to understand how medical school loans are ever paid off.
Any newly minted MD can sign up for the National Health Service Corps, spend 3 years in a medically underserved area and get a $100K repayment of med school debt.
Nothing is free in this mans' free world.
Sure.
Those poor docs NEED their 2nd & 3rd vacation mansions with year round staffing, humongous boats, expensive snooty private clubs, etc., etc., etc. Eh!?
Lots of good docs out there. But, lots of them up here do have Lake Houses worth millions.
And lots of them don't.
The systemic problem is bigger than healthcare. For example, most US doctors pay the full freight of the seven plus years of college education with large, hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans at higher interest rates. Plus they go through three years of residency at modest wages and long hours. This drives if not requires doctors to seek highest paid positions which are in our more prosperous cities.
Compare this with Cuba and many nations where medical students attend at free tuition and housing assistance enabling them to graduate and start working with no debt. Then these nations pay doctors all effectively the same regardless of where they work and live. This promotes doctors to work in either urban or rural areas with regard to income. And hospital and clinics in other nations are more evenly invested in for more equal quality facilities.
We are designed to fail.
Docs in Germany also emit having paid nothing. They emit into a highly effective German health care system where health care is also free.
And, yes, our health care system, at least my own limited experience in it, is pretty foul.
I once hauled, together with three other guys, around 1300 bales of hay, 80lbs each, right before I went to college. My left side started hurting pretty bad the day after we were done.
I spent the next two years going to 12 different docs asking each of them if maybe I had hernia (no lie, no exaggeration). After many horrible tests and Xrays that were, not needed, and all the docs scratching their head in puzzlement......
I finally went to an old country surgeon in Austin, TX and asked him to cut me open and just have a look.
He laughed and said "Stand on this stool". "Turn your head and cough".
"Young man, you have a big old hernia down there. We can fix you up at your next Christmas Break".
TRUE story without a lot of the details. This odyssey cost me and my family around 3500 dollars BEFORE the surgery back when my entire college edcuation cost $10k.
My subsequent encounters with health care have not been better or more encouraging.
Now? I just diagnose myself and walk in and tell my Doc what the issue is. Then, if he wants to disagree, he can, but, I don't let them flail around.
The thing that burns me most about health care in America. Go to the doctor, Dr says “what’s the matter? (Translation: Diagnose yourself)” then the facility charges you over a hundred dollars (at least) for his asking the question and agreeing with your best guess!
Yes.
Another reason why travel and education are critical. To learn and know that USA is not number one. I’ve needed healthcare in countries outside of USA and often had no bill for excellent and timely services. The idea that USA leads the world is another delusion. We need to work to continually improve. Not wave flags.
Same here, Irenie. Our family has often sought medical care in Italy, from emergencies with our kids, through cast care for a broken arm for a kiddo including X-rays, through minor surgery for me. Our cost for all of this: zero. And we are not participants in ASL, the Italian health system. It’s funny, Italian provincial hospitals look impossibly old fashioned, not fancy at all. But the health care is outstanding, even on a remote island. I’m not talking about just Rome and Milan.
Further, the same is true about Italian schools. They have a national curriculum, not a million local ones. When our kids were in Italian schools, it was clear to me that Italian kids are two years ahead of their American counterparts, and they have one more year of high school than we do. They have access to trade schools for kids who don’t want to go to university. And university itself is very inexpensive.
And this is Italy, not on anyone’s list of the best-governed, most efficient countries in the world. We are doing it wrong.
I was once chatting with my neighbor congressman, talking about our kids’ broken arms, and mentioned what happened to him in Italy with his cast care. His wife’s response: weren’t you terrified to have to get health care there? Umm, no. It’s a developed country with better life expectancy and health outcomes than ours. His response: how can they do that for free? Congressman, they have universal health care there… If those making decisions and legislating on these issues are so ignorant, what hope do we have?
So interesting. Travel is essential. Some Americans must think every country outside the USA is what they would consider a third world country. Ha! Many Americans would disagree and some purposely cross the borders for care. Or are lucky to travel and see for themselves.
We are both blessed and cursed by our geographic isolation. It’s expensive for Americans to travel, and our own country has so much to offer. It’s not like in Europe, where you can drive a few hours and enter a place with a different language and culture. I know this shows my Eurocentric bias, but it’s the continent I know best after our own. I don’t know what it’s like for Asians, South Americans, or Africans. I imagine that for Australians, it’s just like we are.
Maybe, just maybe, since we’re not really United, we’re just too big. It’s as if the South has decided to secede from the Union again. But this time they want to keep what they like and sabotage or dump what they don’t. Hmmm…long list. Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Voting Rights.. education in jeopardy, climate. Health care? I bet they like a policy when it helps them. Or maybe they aren’t attentive enough to know. At one point many citizens didn’t want “Obamacare” but ACÁ was ok. Epidemic of ignorance.
And government? Maybe “they” seceded and I wasn’t paying attention.
I've also wondered if we've gotten too big to function with any kind of effectiveness or humanity. Sometimes I daydream about the west coast states being a separate country --don't jump all over me, please -- I said daydream. I know it won't happen; I know there are good reasons for it not to happen. But the thought lingers. . . .
If you do, I’ll move there in a heartbeat.
It’s not just the south, sadly. Yesterday, here in Ohio, the legislature considered our very own don’t say gay bill. If Roe is overturned, I expect abortion to become illegal in Ohio. I have two LGBTQ kids who live in the state and this just makes my blood boil. Which it would, even if it weren’t personal, but it is.
Thank you, dear KR, for reminding our classmates “it’s not just the south.” Many of us LFAA subscribers who comment regularly and come here for democratic nourishment live — some born and raised — “down here.”
Additionally, I too have an LGBTQ kid and other family members. My blood boils with yours.
The South is not a monolith, and any one who follows what's going on down there can see the many voices and forces straining against each other (yes, race, but many other factors as well, poverty, a failed education system, all the things you list, Irenie). A self-selected group of "elites" are using well-worn techniques to maintain control of voting access and that makes it seem like what they are doing is an inevitability. Right wing elements in other states are using similar tactics. I don't believe it is inevitable. Take a hard look at any of those states: even in mainstream media, you can see the evidence of change. It just ain't going away.
It occurs to me that as any assemblage is beginning a change from one state of being to another, there is a period of what seems like chaos, but could as easily be a normal sorting out of priorities, on a massive scale. I admit to being very concerned about where we are right now. It didn't begin with Trump and the pandemic: it's obviously been going on for a long while.
But changes in American society are profound right now because of the influence of those two additional factors. Neither of them are as simple as they are treated by much of the media or by our own attempts to make them things we can wrap our minds around (I struggle with that- but the complexity of the consequences and our responses still boggles me).
This isn't a regional issue. And in most places it isn't even a straight-forward "state's rights" issue. We all know that so-called state's rights actually refer to the power of that elite. And yet in all of those states, there is pushback that can be built on. No state is fully "blue", and none is fully "red". We have to give up that misconception, and one way to do it is to call out media when they treat what is happening through that very narrow lens. Ditto politicians riding that trope. We speak out loudly and insistently, but with clarity and calm. Name-calling and judgement are not useful tools: they backfire every time. Think: how would you feel if just the fact that you are associated with certain concepts meant that you are automatically considered ignorant or uneducated, or incapable of having an opinion that might be rational within your circumstances? Would you feel like exploring ways to find common ground or exploring how labels limit discussion? My guess is nope. But that is what we are doing everyday on this forum, and in the papers and other places of public discourse.
I am feeling more optimistic right now, because I am seeing some of those things being talked about openly and with compassion. On both sides. The thing we need to resist is the temptation to walk away, to "secede" from the conversation. We have to be willing to set aside our own discomfort (and fear), so we can hear what underlies the thing we most fear.
Listening to each other is a place to start. Especially knowing the diversity of this nation and the impossibility/futility of categorizing people by geography and/or political beliefs. So secession isn’t the answer. Nothing that simple. I say in jest.
This time we let them go and forget about it.
Same in Greece. That is why Greece has a stable Democracy. Greeks are well read and schooled in critical thinking. Even the ones way out in the villages.
KR, it seems USA is too big, too diverse to meet the needs of all citizens. I’ve always thought it unwise and inaccurate to compare school and other systems in small countries that have much smaller and more homogeneous populations with our system that covers not only so many different states and areas, but the huge and diverse population. I hear “Why can’t USA be like xxxx?” Finland, Denmark etc. Not likely. Every state added to the Union presented unique problems and challenges, from geography to country of origin, section of country, language, religion or none, and then more than two bigger challenges we have not met: First People here first!!! And people brought to America as slaves, stolen from their own homes and countries. Or another: not Christian. There’s more of course. But there’s not enough understanding, compassion and empathy, respect and acceptance for differences and similarities. It’s always been here, but TFG helped bring intolerance out in the open. He’s made it ok to hate. We are so challenged to find ways to connect, to accept, share and above all to care. But we must continue to try! Onward!
We will praise ourselves to death.
A recent text from a dear friend of mine:
"Just got this bill for my ER visit. $969 cut in half and paid by Blue Cross. My copay is $50. I was there for an hour and treatment consisted of re-gluing an incision that opened and bled. Unbelievable!
"The systemic problems in health care are not addressed by the ACA. Just one tiny bit of the problem (somewhat extended coverage) is addressed."
Remember who was responsible for hamstringing the ACA in the first place. Remember its original ambitions.
As well. Preceeded by 50 years (in my time working) of diddling with everything except what would help (a) bend the curve for spiraling health costs, (b) pave the way for increased access to health care (including medical services) for all Americans, and (c) improve the health status and longevity of America's people, regardless of their economic or social status. My wording, but the essential intents in launching the Affordable Care Act, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As enacted, the ACA, got stopped at increased coverage to slow spiraling costs by increasing the size of the risk pool and establishing a means for insurance companies to not go bankrupt if they head high proportions of risky insurees. That's also what Mr Obama and Mr Biden refer to as building upon the ACA and it's progenitor, the Massachusetts Health Care model (a conservative idea and model) in place when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts.
(https://pnhp.org/news/the-fundamental-flaws-in-the-massachusetts-and-aca-model/)
As I understand it, even under ACA, states can set up their own alternative healthcare insurance systems. It’s probably time to get to work on Plan B if we really believe the Republicans will repeal the ACA.
I like Kotlikoff’s Purple Plan. It does a lot more than cut administrative costs. It caps cost at 10 or 11% of GDP. It should be attractive to Republicans because Democrats haven’t endorsed it (yet). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/01/18/the-republicans-healthcare-answer-the-purple-health-plan/
The ACA did 4 hugely significant things for Americans: kids may stay on their parents’ plan to age 26. Eliminated gender-based insurance rates (women paid more). Eliminated lifetime caps on health insurance. Eliminated denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Also, the income based subsidies made it possible for many people to pay their now-low premium and still have some cash to pay deductibles - people who previously could not afford care.
And the hedge funds often sells the land the hospital sits on. No more local hospital.
Actually real estate investment trusts (REITs) are the publicly traded companies that buy and sell land and hospitals in America.
So creepy. Donated by local farmers 100 years ago...
And Medicare MUST be continued and improved upon. After earning my master's degree, working 40 years and saving diligently, I still couldn't afford the recent cancer removal found on a diagnostic for something else, nor the prescriptions I take. And many people require medical care and continuing health care.
Moreover, Democrats MUST win the midterms so that America can take the lead in addressing climate change. Republicans do NOT trust science, nor do they acknowledge our duty to act as stewards for the environment. Republicans do not value the role of government, but only seek to reduce it.
Anyone highly schooled in the art of "Belief" is skeptical of anything the white man at the front of the church does NOT say.
And, therein lies the problem.
Do they not trust science, or do they merely find it inconvenient?
It is hard to "trust" science, because, unlike religion where things are clear and nailed down, science is never clear and nailed down and is always evolving.
Hence, trust science is not even an appropriate phrase.
A better phrase is: Based on the data we have now, we can conclude (xyz) OR, based on the lack of data we have now we cannot conclude (xyz).
Saying things like "trust the science" is only something a non-scientist would say.
I was at an international seminar in Europe when the ACA was being debated, the first time. I had people from all over the world asking me "why don't Americans want healthcare?" Right here in Maine, I have a neighbor who's told me flat out "healthcare is a privilege not a right."
If we let government slip back into the hands of Republicans, that's on us.
I agree. I also am very worried about their rigging and suppressing of votes. They have flat out said that if all Americans are allowed to vote there is no way they could win. Thus their changes in procedure to access of voting. How do we stop that madness?
In Texas, Beto is trying, but the propaganda machine is a juggernaut
We are moving toward Blatanism, in which republicans no longer cloak their evil deeds with political correctness. I'm waiting for a politician to show their stripes by stating something like, "I hate blacks."
Did you happen to see (on Twitter) where Josh Mandel, the Tr**p-backed Senate candidate in Ohio, in trying to show that he is not a racist (despite some pretty damning statements in the past), filmed a campaign ad which begins with him walking across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL, I assume, in an attempt to demonstrate he isn't a racist. Okay. At one point in the ad, a photo of Mandel among a group of other soldiers (who all are Black) appears. If you look closely, you can see Mandel has been photoshopped into the picture. At least his FACE has been photoshopped. His hands?? Not so much. Oops. God, these people are beyond clueless. If you have access to Twitter you can see it for yourself...it goes by pretty quick:
https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1511360397244350472?t=yiitt6S2czNUmsOft1753A&s=19
That photo is appalling pandering. But it appears it isn’t photoshopped. Looks like they applied a darkening filter - to make the other soldiers look Blacker, I suppose. Mandel is foul. I fear for my state. Mandel and Vance are so revolting they can even make Trumpian Timkin look acceptable by comparison. 🤞 we can achieve another D senator here.
My hope, too! Tim Ryan , present Ohio Democratic Congressman, is running for the Senate, and he is heads and shoulders above Mandel and those other Republican jokers.
As much as I'd love to crow about this, it looks legit, although it may have been filtered in other ways:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/josh-mandel-photoshop-hands-ad/
Mandel = POS
"Blatanism"
This began under Giingrich's Contract On America and Tom DeLay's hard-nosed pushing of the egregious gerrymandering of Texas districts. Before then, folks had enough shame to try to hide their misdeeds under rocks. With those 2 events, they started turning over the rocks on their own and crowing about their misdeeds.
Dems need to blast this in their messaging.
Matt Gaetz voted against capping insulin, and says people should just lose weight.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/rep-matt-gaetz-votes-against-capping-insulin-prices-says-people-should-just-lose-weight/
See: NYT video of Matt Gaetz grilling Sec. of Defense over Defense Institute in yesterday’s paper.
Every time I see a photo of Brett Kavanaugh, my first impression is of a smug, entitled drunken frat boy. Maybe it’s just the chubby baby cheeks, but that’s what I see.
Maybe it's the "greasy kids' stuff."
Elect a dem majority
We were lucky enough to live in Maine for about 15 years. We operated a small business and the state offered us health insurance called "Dirigo". It made operating our business possible - a hospitality business that over the years had brought thousands of visitors to Maine who put a lot of money back into the state's economy.
Then, thanks to the now busted Eliot Cutler, Paul LePage was elected governor. Dirigo health insurance became a footnote in history. This and a couple of other personal issues sent us packing - back to MA. Where we were able to find affordable health insurance. It was called "Romneycare". Ironic, eh?
I see that LePage has returned to haunt you. I wish you luck. He is a monster.
Thank you, Bill! I’ve lived in maine all my life and I am terrified of a return to the Lepage years.
The problem with that, and a lot of GOP thinking, is that you pay more when you pay later. We end up with folks in the ER, the most expensive form of medical care. The GOP would rather spend $1k to apply a tourniquet after you've lost half your blood rather than spend 1₵ to prevent the cut. (Or something like that)
Also, they would rather anyone who can’t afford the expensive treatment die, preferably first going into heavy debt. Remember this is the party who wants to go back to the original Constitution, before those pesky amendments ending slavery and ensuring rights for the mudsills.
Can’t ❤️ this.
They seem to lack the foresight to see that it's their base supporters that they would be killing off.
They don't care, mainly because they are going all out on voter suppression anyway.
Take “seem to” out of your sentence.
Done
Oh, I think they're perfectly aware of that -- they just don't care. All they care about is keeping power tightly grasped in their hot little fists.
Wee, there's that Hippocratic oath thingy...
At the end of every line of the "Republican version" of the oath should be added, "...as long as they can pay."
Sadly true, Bruce.
You are so right, lin. We must be very vocal about what we expect from the people who represent us in Congress.
lin,
Amurcans are big fans of Republicans. So, it is on us, exactly as you say.
Hate to say it, but I'm losing faith in Americans.
Russia needs to be expelled from the UN and cut off from all international bodies. They need to be treated the way North Korea is treated.
Yes, TC, BUT...
A gigantic BUT.
I have not forgotten growing up in the 1950s when "Red China" was a blank space, a hole in the map of Asia, a void in America's collective mind. A reality so disliked, so shameful that it could be neither named nor thought. Not even when that "human wave" of the "Peoples Liberation Army came pouring across the North Korean border, drove back the UN (and US) armies, led Douglas MacArthur to rattle nukes and President Truman to fire him... And, after battling back and forth, truce bisected the peninsula... And look then at today's hard, uncontrollable, unwelcome reality north of Panmunjom...
All this at a moment in time when the only genuine existential threat in our world affects the entire planet, and with it, the entire human population, regardless of labels"bad", "good", regardless of wisdom or idiocy.
Meanwhile, the huge territory that is Russia suffers ruin, the kind of ruin that can take longer to repair than the rebuilding of shattered cities...
And when the dictator goes the way of all flesh, when the regime crumbles and seeks new forms -- always supposing we are still there -- when we have struggled to cope with global famine, when the Xi regime has consolidated its windfall gains beyond the Urals, there will still be a vast territory and a major population to bring back into the human fold.
This time, we have to look beyond today's disease, to a world in which we can all live together. And that means action NOW to look beyond war, beyond disease, beyond surgery and drugs, to recovery, health for Russia as well as Ukraine. We should know by now that pandemic disease, physical, mental, knows no frontiers.
This all means something painful to contemplate: the demands of PEACE and HEALTH, which are even greater than those of war and disease.
It must mean a steadfast commitment to universalism, a worldwide drive to end, not diversity, but exceptionalisms. And that in turn must mean no more punitive "treaties" that are no treaties at all, like the Versailles Treaty and the Trianon Treaty, no more exclusion of the defeated, treated as unpersons, uncountries.
Can we begin to envision this?
We are damned well going to have to.
And as I'm not talking of some airyfairy imaginary world, it means we're going to have to learn new ways of getting our act together, new ways of living with endemic discord, disease, violence, accepting realities we've preferred to deny and sweep under the rug, because where realities are denied there's not a hope in hell of dealing with them.
Let's take a hard look, then, at where so many generations of thoughtless automatisms, posing, posturing and mendacity, political, social, economic,
have led.
Doesn't that make a priority of healing our own disease before we declare the territory of fellow humans to be a forever-off-limits lepers' colony?
Writing immediately after WW2, Ananda Coomaraswamy commented that economic wars bring suffering worse than military ones -- no prisoners are taken. And now we've moved into new combinations of war both military and economic. Oligarchy against human beings, against our democratic institutions, against life itself.
America's -- and thus the world's -- ingrained ideology is one of dog-eat-dog competition for its own sake. Yet even the fiercest African wild dogs don't prey on one another, so why should humans have to?
Time to move beyond neo-Darwinist nonsense to something less unnatural, something that meets the needs of living together.
HERE ENDETH THE MORNING RANT.
I crave patience...
Peter, I hear your wisdom in this. Is it not the basic wisdom of every “religion” before it gets co-opted by dogma? And the real existential threat of environmental degradation is at the root of the upheaval, I think. Supporting and propping up a privileged patriarchy that is killing us. But our ability to come together, to change our thinking to save ourselves, seems slim to me. ( A lesson I learned watching the Pandemic play out) The amplified autocracy-machine/smash-the-system activism is a weapon peace-loving people don’t know yet how to counter. We have built our Western economic system on advertising consumer goods. It’s evolved into a monster of mindless, unsustainable consumption, and -with the rise of social media-, pysop-mind-manipulation. When was the last time most of us have had a long, pondered thought? This forum is one respite from quick-click thinking, but most of daily life is quick, shallow thought, mostly reactive. Without deep, contemplative thought, humans have no chance of coming together for more than selfish, short-term reasons, I fear. “We are in for a bumpy ride”, to quote Bette Davis in “All about Eve”. As for Darwinism, I feel Darwin got it completely upside down. We are not at the top, be are at the bottom. All other beings on this beautiful blue marble know how to live sustainably, except us.
Brilliant. And here’s a ramble. The way to Peace is not through War. Or deprivation for the majority through political power. Your roadmap is a start. When we stand with signs”War is Not the Answer” we must continue to work for the answers. The list is long. The health of the planet begins with environment and it’s humans who make those decisions. And health care for all is part of that list, not an afterthought. Too many humanitarian policies are in constant jeopardy of reversal and disappearing depending on party in power. This great experiment needs a new start. How? It’s the world, not one nation.
'The way to peace is not through war.' This NYT op ed is sobering and heartbreaking. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/opinion/vietnam-refugees-factories-us-military.html
Excellent. As i was reading posts, i was thinking about environmental degradation and how that is the ultimate threat. As one of our friends says, humans are the most invasive species. My spouse was lamenting this situation just this week. I pointed out to him that we are lucky in a way because we have no direct descendent and we are older. We are still trying to take care of our almost half acre lot organically and we support as best we can, local farmers. In the meantime, I see so many Amazon trucks delivering who knows what all over. On TV the ads are about drugs that once you've heard the side effects, you wonder why anyone would take them and buy this or that consumer good. And to think it only took humans a relatively short time here in the US to destroy fish runs, water sources, forests, etc. Everywhere greed seems to prevail which means we will not solve the environmental crisis.
“Humans are the most invasive species.” Truer words have never been spoken! Really, it should begin reading like this: “HuMANs…”
I like how you emphasized the word MAN in humans. I suspect our demise as a species and world will be because of gender inequality. The male gender has dominated and controlled the world for thousands of years. Nearly every war throughout history has been wrought by men. The only time when there was equality, peace, harmony and cooperation was in the hunter/gatherer era. That era subsided when agriculture became the new technology and labor was needed so women were dominated and required to produce labor. And…..here we are today. But I am hopeful. Women and other marginalized groups are striving for equality and the continual spotlight I am seeing on that gives me hope.
The reality is that the idea of white men could end up becoming extinct if more interracial relationships take place. They would produce biracial babies so it would take the color “white” out of the equation. Also, the Census would be affected. See, the Repubs and evangelicals know this and it frightens them. That is why they they have come up with the Draconian laws to prevent abortions, to deny women access to decent healthcare. They would rather keep marginalized people “in their current place” in America. If these couples or women (they can get inseminated without the man, you know) choose to have a baby girl rather than a boy, they most certainly can. It is semantics in the making. Women can become legendary Amazons.
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