The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government.
Indeed, reality will never conform to ideology. Not in agriculture, not in science, not in economics, not in health care. Personal stories about how adherence to ideology is harming real live people can break through the trance that has too many still in its spell. Tell those stories everywhere and every time you can!
Just quote Joni Ernst--she knows that we're all going to die. No need to think that science could or should help keep people healthy and alive. The administration is filled with folks who have their own theories, based on ideology, that will save us money if they're put into practice...and if some die because science is ignored, well, that's the fate of all of us, isn't it?
If she were truly Christian, she might recall what scripture says about bearing false witness and sacrificing the vulnerable for power. Judgment Day doesn’t come with campaign ads or spin doctors. When she’s asked to account for trading truth for political gain, I doubt ‘it polled well’ will cut it at the pearly gates.
‘Forgive them NOT father, they know full well what they do.’
There must be some special Award for Most Clueless on the Concept out there we can assign her. Seriously, she might as well have tittered and said "let them eat cake." Best protest sign I saw on Substack: "Election Day in Iowa is November 3, 2026. We all have to go sometime."
It's dismissive. We are talking about when and how, and whether it is a preventable or inevitable death. Why even bother with doctors? Why stop a murder? It's the cruel narcissism of a bully
My husband spoke to a college friend the other day who lives in a small town in Indiana, and he DIDN'T KNOW some of the shit that is happening in Washington!! And he's not MAGA.
It would be appropriate coming from her. When the bakers got their ovens hot, they poured in a slurry of flour and water, it caked the oven floor, and they baked the loaves on it. That's the "cake" Marie Antoinette meant.
Just need to point out your misspelling. It’s CUNT….and in my mind it has nothing to do with religion. (far as I’m concerned all religion is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo cleverly sold to the weak of mind)
Ernst has jumped on the felon train because she is ill prepared for the office she holds - when the tough comments and questions land in her lap she musters up her condescending tones and her pastor cap. Being a US Senator means you put the Constitution before self and party and whatever book of mumbo jumbo you subscribe to. It means “you work for we the people.” OUR tax dollars pay for YOUR salary and benefits. Ernst and her lot need to be reminded of this every single day.
Oh yes; Losing bigly. I'm still getting social media posts (shared by that ilk_) crowing about how much the maga cuts are "saving" America huge amounts of wasted money by cutting. Hard indisputable facts and figures - with citations have to gathered and shared widely. All of us need that certifiable information at our fingertips and shared.
I don't do that because of what was written in the Bible. I do that because it is the right thing to do.
I'm reminded of a story: There was an awful flood, and a man climbed to the roof of his house for safety, and prayed "O, Lord, please save me."
A neighbor came by in a rowboat, and said "Hop in, neighbor!" and the man said "No, my Lord will save me." The waters rose, and a few hours later, a SAR boat came to his house. "Hop in, sir" and he replied "No, my Lord will save me." By now, he was straddling the peak of his house, and a rescue helicopter lowered a rope. "Climb up, sir". His reply, "No, my Lord will save me."
He slipped off the roof and drowned. Finding himself at the Pearly Gates, he cried "O, Lord, why did you not save me." The reply was "My son, I sent you a row boat, a motor boat, and a helicopter. Why did you not use them?"
Some contend these days that God is lost. Not true of the Eternal One. God is waiting for us to defy evil and stand in the Light and Truth of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I belong to a congregation that has become increasingly Progressive focusing on love and forgiveness while ignoring Jesus' words in Matthew 5:17: "Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill." [NRSV] Law includes the 10 Commandments and the prophets are the ones sent by God to NK/Israel and SK/Judah to repent and return to God. NK was obliterated by Assyria in 722 BC and Judah was taken into exile by Babylon in 3 waves culminating in 587 BC and destruction of Solomon's temple. Jesus came to fulfill God's covenant with Abraham, Moses, and David: many people, a royal dynasty, and a worldwide blessing.
Holy Scripture is Truth but those holding with Progressive Theology would contend we must love and forgive and there is likely no hell. That as Bonhoeffer would contend is "cheap grace." Thank you for placing this passage in the dialogue.
but both groups- those who believe that a loving God created a place of eternal torment for those whose conduct, or beliefs, did not match His standards, and those who believe we must love and forgive without the incentive of avoiding eternal torment - have the same action consequences: kindness and help to all.
"41 “Then He will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." The reference to the left hand is interesting. Then, and now, the left hand has been used to wipe the but. Cutting off a thief's right hand Immediately made one an outcast.
They are the chronically violent Romans in the Gospels. The GOP adherents wear their crosses around their necks, and claim to be guided by the teachings of Jesus, but people who have actually read the Gospels see them for who they are : worshipers Nero, Caligula, Tiberius. (Or any other Roman despot) Christian Nationalists do not care who rules, as long as they can dominate.
Wow thank you for stating where we can find directions for how we ALL are supposed to behave. Preacher's kid here who found it very easy to pick out who was just mouthing the words & putting them into action as we were directed to do.
The best retort at her “town hall” was “but that does not give you the right to kill me.” She is channeling her inner Nazi - SS guards thought the same thing - “well, they were going to die anyways.” She is patronizing and is a misanthrope. Run her out of office!
Problem being Democrats now: slogans need to be too long. It’s not just Big Bad causes death, it’s Big Bad causes _premature, preventable_ death. Too long, too klutzy, but Joni can’t argue with it.
Kazz, no one has mentioned that this is the “castration senator.” Doesn’t anyone remember Ernest’s campaign slogan about strength? Castrating large farm animals. She’s the first version of Kristi Noem—cruelty rules.
Kazz, while I never use the c word, I would agree that she is not Christian. That claim makes her pseudo apology even worse. I wish upon her a disease that advanced research might have cured, but alas, we cut the money. Too bad that hell doesn't exist because she deserves a long slow burn.
i think some people are so self centered and tone deaf that they do not have a problem sleeping at night. Her place in history....well, that is different.
Hell takes on all kinds of scenarios Michele. Bad people living on earth with terrible diseases, family tragedies, business failures & such while asking "what have I done wrong". Sounds like hell to me!
Oh, i agree. I was thinking of the fiery hell that we find in Christianity (and maybe other religions as well). I really think that many people live in incredible hell right here in earth.
The idea that the bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding, given the following: Mark 7:9-13 and Matthew 15:4-7 "We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath (I grew up with the blue laws - where'd they go -- capitalism!), worshipping graven images, practicing sorcery. Together with 6 Catholic judges on the Supreme Court, any notion of separation of church and state is totally absent. So what is more moral - helping people, providing care and food and medicine, or helping them because they (Joni) thinks the creator of the universe will reward them??
I'm not looking for a reward. I am simply doing what my heart & soul tells me is correct. It is comforting to know there were long-ago people who held the same ideas & wrote them down for guidance to others in the future.
I don't see it as an awful word, but it is a fantastic cuss word (also more socially acceptable everywhere else in the world).
Unfortunately, calling her a cunt is truly an insult to women's genitalia the world over, even if it fits so clearly. None of us want our butts compared to that piece of work.
The fave sign I saw at the March protests was "I'd call Elon a cunt, but he lacks the depth & warmth".
EssBee…. A seriously appropriate response….. as an 89 yr old woman, a very serious and hard word for me… I like the Elon response, lacks “the depth and warmth”….. Thank you…
Lol... You are a poet Ess. We'll have to invent some appropriate foul names for these creatures. I agree; I always recoil from using genitalia, male or female, as I don't find those apt enough nor fitting in that implies some human feature as foul, which they are not.
I have always had problems with the c word even though I think it is a very ancient Indo-European word. i have run out of swear words to describe the monsters who are running the show. I refuse to call some of them by their names because that gives them some kind of human recognition that they do not deserve. I realize that some object to this.
This line of thought about Joni Ernst reminds me of the movie, "The Book of Eli." For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's about a dystopian world where one thug in particular is searching for a book he's never read, the King James version of the Holy Bible. All copies of this book had been destroyed in a purge because it was considered dangerous, the cause of the catastrophe that destroyed the modern world. The thug had never read it. He enslaved, raped, murdered the innocent immigrant and the outspoken critics in his quest to find this book. After all, billions of people had blindly followed it, fought for it, killed for it, and died for it. He wanted it because "it is a weapon." This book, he reasoned, was his path to true power (lowercase "p"), control, and wealth. But the one surviving copy of the book was written in Braille, a language only 2 blind people could read. The blind woman is his bitch, his slave, his personal prostitute (tRump + Ernst?). The blind man? Eli could recite the book from memory, even if he didn't always understand its meaning. He was its protector (all who oppose tRump's agenda). ...
If I didn’t know who Joni Ernst was, her name alone irks me so. Where do these people come from?
In my stand-up last evening, I rambled on about being a boomer from the generation of love and peace but now, I hate everyone including my grandparents for immigrating here. If they had only stayed put, I’d be a European.
Cheeses creepers.
Wanna hear more? Just say the word.
Ok you do. So in my house I conduct the smell test with my underwear. I sniff ( I picked sniffing up from my cats who sniff everything) my underwear and if they don’t smell like S_ _ t I put them on again.
In a Methodist church open mic, I strode to the stage and confidently announced that God mad a mistake sending the wrong primate tribe up the evolutionary trail. Not a peep in the house. I explained that the bonobos was first chosen but man grabbed the tickets and ran like hell. The church pastor called me the next morning and told me they were a family oriented congregation and my shit was inappropriate. Well he didn’t use that word, mind you. I apologized and told him I wouldn’t do it again. But I lied.
Before the elections, I again strode to the mic with my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums “ in hand and read my short story, “My Cat Babe and Donald Trump have Something in Common.” Oh my God, a riot nearly broke out and one of the women jumped up and screamed at me to stop saying, “This is a church.” The following is the story of what happens when Babe gets access to the oil in my frying pan.
My Cat Babe and Donald Trump Have Something in Common
Recently, I prepared to have a spaghetti dinner but I couldn’t find the bowl that I normally use. I looked high and low for the bowl. I walked through every room in my house searching for it. I opened every kitchen cabinet. I even went into the basement on the unusual chance that I decided to eat my pasta in my unfinished basement. No bowl. Could I have put the bowl somewhere during a sleep walking episode? I never considered I had a sleep walking problem but one shouldn’t leave out any such possibilities. Nothing. The bowl was gone. Then, as I sat back in my studio with my feet up on my desk, I looked up at a shelf and there was the bowl. After eating my pasta one evening, I had placed it there so one of my cats couldn’t get at the remaining tomato source and olive oil. Babe has a voracious appetite and he will eat anything he can get his paws on. And if he had gotten hold of my pasta dish, he would have had another diarrhea episode around the house. And cat diarrhea is no fun to wipe up.
This all reminds me of the need to keep private citizen Donald Trump away from the White House least he again, crap all over the institution as he did the first go ‘round. He was so unfit and unstable that certain military chiefs had to insure he couldn’t get his hands on the nuclear codes during his last days in office. Those who were and are his supporters conveniently forget these moments. But I will never forget how much this Trump crapped all over America.
Every word out of his mouth was a lie. He befriended our enemies and made life difficult for our friends. He hired the worst creeps into administrative positions. He likely gave up national secrets to Putin. He encouraged an insurrection when he didn’t get his way to be re-elected. He deregulated as much as possible and in case you forget, regulations are put in place to protect its citizens. He reduced taxes for the wealthy corporate community and now that we have runaway debt, the republicans are doing a blame game on the democrats. Par for the course.
Let’s not forget that Trump has something in common with my cat, Babe, who was found almost newborn and dying in my driveway on a cold December morning a few years ago. He’s a wonderful cat now. But if he gets anywhere near some remaining oil in the frying pan or anywhere near my pasta bowl, he will lick it up until he splats diarrhea all over the floors of my house — just like Trump will do if he is re-elected by those who think he has their best interests at heart.
By the way, he doesn’t have their interests at heart. He has no heart. A narcissistic personality disorder reveals that truth.
Bill, that pastor may have been aware of bonobo's legendary sexual promiscuity. For them sexual activity appears to have replaced aggression as the main driver for social relations. They are indeed worthy of the old taxonomic name of the chimpanzee, P. satyrus - which refers to the myth of apes as lustful satyrs.
Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobos rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction. Like us, they seem to like it and that's not going to go down well in puritanical circles.
If he were catholic, he would only be attentive to his alter boys. I was sent to Catholic grade school per my mother’s desire as a practicing Catholic. They were all so strange behaving. They even expelled me in 7th grade for refusing to get a haircut. And my revenge is a skit for stand-up.
In 4th grade, Mrs Henigan put me under her desk for talking in class. ( this part actually happened) She then put her chair back in place and continued teaching as if nothing happened. Except that I was now under her desk. So I began looking up at her fat thighs opening and closing thinking, “Man, I was just punished and put in a position of looking up at Mrs Henigan’s vagina. So what could she do if I touched it? Pretend I didn’t. Or scream. Or call the principal, Fatber Emerling, who is the dude who eventually expelled me.
The dialogue:
Mrs Henigan: “Father, Billy Katz just touched it. What should I do?”
Father Emerling: “How did Billy Katz get to touch it?”
Mrs Henigan: “I put him under my desk for talking in class,Father.”
Father Emerling: “Well Mrs Henigan, you march little Billy Katz right down to my office right now so I can put him under my desk.”
I too am a lapsed Catholic. My punishment was having to study the poems of T.S. Eliot. My favourite subject in school was geology which they somehow managed to teach without broaching the sticky topic of evolution.
I readily agree that democrats or the DEMOCRATIC party not democrat party (which shows how stupid you are following the line of bull) needs a going over. I believe in criticizing these folks. We can be our own worst enemy. But compared the MAGA party, there is no comparison. Your party is destined to destroy everything that remains good in this nation.
If we are not just scratching for survival, we live enriched, complicated lives, with extended tools and knowledge and alternatives to being battered by the elements (most of the time) of by injuries and disease. Our legacy includes capable minds and hands, and a huge store of accumulated learning. When we play by reality's rules, we can fly, we can send thoughts across space, we can heal from things that would have killed us a century, maybe even a decade ago. and much, much more. It seems like pretty sweet deal, even though uncontrollable misfortunes still occur. Why not make it as sweet as we can? Somehow greed jams the works, the urge to dominate, and exploit. It never seems to go away.
Nature seem to (largely) our friend when we play by her rules, and (also largely) our foe when we don't. And reality may offer alternative paths, yet never negotiates. It is indifferent to how we might portray it, or whatever alternative reality we might prefer.
Well said, JL, and playing by Nature's rules requires that we accept what's non-negotiable. We humans can be more discerning and less distracted by intoxicants -- false securities like ego, greed, power, you-name-it. It's a huge shift we're all living through now, that the truth of death and dying is being hurled at us through government actions to end so much we've relied on (that living well and longer is a common, non-partisan value).
Nature is not amused. We never have, nor ever will, "conquer" nature, but we can get to many places (even to the moon) when we pay enough attention to the "rules". The "pecking order" likely served a purpose in animal societies based primary on "instinct". A baby sea turtle wakes up on a beach and must negotiate life with no instruction, but we behaviorally "evolve" primarily from what we learn. The invention of numbers and writing, the management of fire, the lever, the Magna Carta, all altered human experience and history. And we turn out to have a capacity for self-awareness, including empathy and conscience, from which our societies benefit. That's all in OUR nature, along with the older Hobbsean notion that might makes right.
The Declaration of Independence is a refutation of that position. Lincoln spoke of an eternal battle between 'the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings" and endorsed the former. Our hour upon the stage comes with choices, but bullies and bullying appears to reject centuries of the benefit of learning in human terms. It now even threatens to be a means of ending our species forever, as one of those that failed to sufficiently adapt to the requirements of nature; should we not wise up.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge about the impact on our nation’s weather systems and more, Professor. It’s helpful to know how far this administration’s current and proposed cuts are increasing affecting our country in real time, especially as we enter hurricane season. How far are they willing to go in their attempt to make the country believe that reducing federal staffing and research for the weather forecasts and alerts we have depended on for decades, and by shifting some funding to the states, will be beneficial to everyone, rather than simply making everyone in our nation suffer because they want to give their corporate and billionaire buddies further tax breaks?
Sagan gave the commencement speech at my Ph.D. graduation. It may have been the last speech he ever gave--he died only a few months later. I can't remember any of the specifics of what he said, only the sense that we were all blessed to have heard him.
Nicely put, J L. Yes, nature's rules. My garden helper has just published a book about gardens, outer and inner. I did some editing for her and I wanted to cry because I know what is happening now in this country makes realizing working with nature unlikely. The answers are there, but greed, hubris, power gets in the way.
Ernst blamed the crowd's ignorance when, in fact, she failed to understand that "people will die" was a polite way of saying "you will be killing people."
One thing Trump has done by replacing curious, hard working critical thinking individuals with lazy, arrogant, cynical sycophants is these latter are now at the surface. No longer are these self satisfied” experts “ hidden from sunlight in darkened bars and street corners ranting on and on about such matters as curing Covid with bleach.
I hearbye order the weather to be nice from now on. Plants will grow and there will be no more weather disasters. I have spoken and the weather will obey.
I can’t help but think of the “Cargo Cults” that arose on some islands in the Pacific after WWII. The isolated islanders who had become accustomed to airdropped pallets of food and supplies meant for troops began building airstrips to encourage the sky to continue dropping food. The islanders appreciated the airdropping g of pallets of food without understanding the underlying origins or reasons for the food falling from the sky.
We see the same thinking in Trump and his MAGA minded government: bountiful harvests, people living longer, cleaner environment. Ergo we don’t need scientists or science.
Trump is still mad that NOA contradicted his Sharpie effort to make the map of hurricane’s path consistent with one of his public misstatements. Revenge is his version of ketamine.
Trump is all about revenge. But MAGA voters are by and large unaware of or at least suspicious of the underlying science that allows us to have clean air, water, and plentiful
Food ….not to mention the physics of our weather systems and our climate, which can be explained by science and then prepared for by individuals, communities, state and national governments. Trump’s revenge comes in the form of poisoning voters’ minds against science and scientists, which then encourages voters to go along with Trump’s destruction of the institutions of science that inform our government policies.
And yet his approval rating continues to grow the economy to can. You continues to move forward on an even keel with less inflation than the last four years. Gas prices are down a buck 50 to 2 $ a gallon egg prices are down 60%. The border is closed men cannot participate in women’s sports without violating the law and illegal aliens and illegal. Criminal aliens are being arrested and deported if possible. And your problem is?
Let me see if I can make you aware of the outside world for just a brief moment here’s a couple of postings from a few days ago
Here’s a link, you might enjoy of Jake, Tapper and Alex Thompson meeting with Stephan A Smith. On the cover-up and denial of reality regarding the Biden administration, including the lawfare.
And then I have a couple of statistics to share with you if I can copy and post them here. Only 16% of of voters believe that the Democrats have strong leadership where they believe that 40% of Republicans have strong leaders. 19% of democrats view the party as the party of getting things done versus 36% the Republicans is getting things done and this is from a Democrat poll
Your reply to my comment suggests I was talking about economic issues or approval ratings, or the cognitive abilities of presidents. It wasn’t. It was simply commenting on President Trump’s dislike of science that conflicts with his beliefs and his seemingly incessant attacks on scientists within government and at university institutions, especially Harvard. And every occasion is taken to denigrate scientists by firing them, withholding funding for science, and allowing RFK to claim the science that gave us such things as the polio vaccine, is fraudulent and/or unhealthy, eg., causing autism, even though there is no creditable evidence to support that claim. Such spurious attacks on science and scientists send the message to voters at large that science is a waste of money and deserving of budget cuts.
I’m not sure what you mean by “growing the economy” . The Dow has dropped 5.5% since January 20, 2025. And Indeed Hiring Lab reports “it remains uncomfortably difficult for unemployed people to quickly find a job”. And internship postings are down 11% from where they were in 2022 and 2023. If I were a new college grad, I’d be very concerned.
Trumps pathetic ego Trumps everything. His family picked that name. Protected by a mountain of money, and now has adoring cult, he glories in bullying others.
Reality may hit the southern coastal states this summer. They have experience with what competent weather forecasts and hurricane warnings have looked like, as well as FEMA responses afterward. We shall see how they feel when they may not know what is coming, and there is no FEMA to help with the recovery.
Let's face it: what we're dealing with here in this country is a massive case of defective thought processes compounded by stupidity, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. FDR's Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, hit the nail on the head about what government is:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
We have 340,000,000 people in this country. That's why 1,000,000 have net worths of at least $10 million and 902 are billionaires. If there were only 3,400,000 people there wouldn't be such wealth held by the few. We're in this together. The people have earned and deserve to have health care, education, housing, employment, and more. But, the MAGA folks are more interested in outlawing abortion and crushing immigrants, women and gay rights advocates, etc. Our war is with ignorance, stupidity and prejudice.
There’s a new statement about the Democrat party, that you don’t want to hear but, you need to hear…The Democrats used to be a party, now it’s a mental health disease. Not my saying, but growing in popularity. And there’s a reason why. Get over yourself. Having to do with wealth in this country it's called capitalism .It’s goal is where people can achieve as much as they want. And you can look to the basis of all this wealth by the 40 years of Democrat control in Congress. And frankly, Richard, your war is with each other and yourself. No even minded, intelligent individual would buy what you’re trying to sell. This election was not lost because people Believed your rhetoric, in my most humble opinion.
this country is so great that even the haters like many here refuse to leave in search of a delusional nirvana. Some of the “Things” that you think people DESERVE…have to be earned in this country. NO PLACE ON EARTH OFFERS YOUR DREAM OF ALL THESE THINGS PEOPLE ‘DESERVE”….FOR FREE..
This country is the leader of the free world for a reason.
By the way, the people have healthcare that they choose. We don’t have a single payer system like Obamacare, which only involves 12 1/2 to 13% of the population
We are not a socialist country either. There are many that that have free healthcare for all , and people are “free” and are certainly welcome to go and become citizens of the country or those countries.
The people have an education system that is unfit for use and is a relative failure.
It has especially failed our youth who can’t even read or write, or are competent in math skills… and know little about history As I mentioned to you once before back in 1979, we were number one of the world in education and now we are 40th all under Democrat control. See if democrats believe in choice. In fact, if you want to hear the word, oligarch again or oligarchy, you’re talking about the education system in this country that refuses to allow for free choice in education, and will not fund it so instead, people are mandated to learn the dictum and the one-sided views of their teachers, without having an opportunity to see what else is out there in the world. And this is especially hurtful to our youth, who are malleable to say the least.
And I just love when you come out with this imagination that Americans are against immigrants. If not, it was so sad I would be able to stop laughing until I was in my grave… we are all immigrants. Many of us are citizens. The majority of this country are supportive of all legal immigrants. But NOT illegal immigrants, who Chose, in many cases to sneak into this country to take advantage of the system, without paying the price of waiting like everyone else for the quota to be fulfilled that was set, by the way Richard by Congress.
Democrats believe in choice , or so they say…except in the case of free speech, Healthcare, education, cars, straws, trade, smoking, except for of course cannabis , plastic bags, food, and lightbulbs.
I believe I even mentioned to you that it seems like 95% of Harvard and other Elite school professors are Democrats/liberals, including the vast majority of public education instructors as well.
In the case for abortion, as you put, it is now give it back to the states for them to choose what they want, and some states will choose to allow it in some states will choose not to. Some say it is killing a human being. But as you realize here, people can live with where they want , so if that’s so important to them, they can live in a state that allows it. In many areas of government states have different rules and people who like the rules in the state stay there and those that don’t tend to leave
You might want to see where people are leaving now.
Oh, and I scoff at your commentary about racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and the other imaginary phobias that you might have… there are people on all sides of that issue and most people believe in equal treatment, not special treatment.
And there is a huge difference!!
I want to continue to analyze your post, but that really pretty much sums it up.
I made my case above. Not all of us can earn a Ph.D. and a J.D. from Harvard, as I did. While I am a confirmed atheist, I subscribe to what Jesus is alleged to have said in Matthew 25: 34-46 - "even as you do it unto the least of these." Without the people, there would be no multi-millionaires and billionaires. We're all in this together. As Frances Perkins stated, government should be for all the people. That means, in my opinion, that health care, employment, education, housing and more is an entitlement by virtue of one being a human in our particular society. I don't apologize for the position. Will some "take advantage" of the situation? Of course, just as there are some billionaires who have no difficulty watching people starve to death. Sadly, we don't live in a perfect world.
Well, I started commenting but got interrupted. Nobody wants to take anything away from the impressive accomplishment of a juris doctorate and a PhD from the University, such as Harvard. However, Harvard has lost some of its status/credibility due to its lack of protection of Jews and its failure to denounce in action, creased antisemitism
And of course that doesn’t apply to your accomplishments
However, I am able to disassociate your opinions from your degrees.
And you were absolutely correct about without the people there would be no millionaires. However, to become a millionaire, there are risks you must take that many aren't willing to take.. there’s effort that’s needed to be expended that Many are not willing to expend. There is also sacrifices that many are not willing to sacrifice. And there is also a modicum of luck and good fortune. In fact, I have a number of different sayings that I’ve learned over the years hanging on a wall of my office
This particular one says “ happy are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make those dreams come true”. Almena created equal, but not all men pursue the same goal especially those monetary goals.
So in a capitalistic society, those who work hard and smart, provide produce extra effort, and are willing to take risks are rewarded by money, which, of course, that affords you amor let’s call it a comfortable life.
Frances Perkins was right, but your definition of right the and right delineated in the preamble to the constitution limitations, such as those in the preamble to the constitution are two totally disassociated things.
We have a government role we have education for all your healthcare for all we have jobs for all we have all those things for people based on certain qualifications to attain those jobs have prerequisites.
Government of this United States should be equal to all persons, regardless of race, religion, sex, national origin, etc. Put the key word that the Democrats seem to dismiss ignore or the words equal
Equal means exactly that it does not mean special it means equal
As far as billionaires who don’t care according to you about watching someone die, keep in mind that 99% of those people we’re not always billionaires so you should be careful as to defining these people as billionaires.
I would suggest to you that it’s not the billionaires you need to worry about as far as caring about the death of people it’s the criminal element that doesn’t care not the billionaires.
Finally, as I said earlier, the Nirvana you’re looking for does not exist. Every country has its strengths and its weaknesses. This country has been one of the most benevolent in the world, but we can’t even pay our bills and the debt that we now old is greater than the entire defense budget of the United States. Alas, we can no longer be the world’s defender, and we could no longer be the feeder to all.
And I’m sure you’re familiar with the test looks like the one I’m gonna ask you do you know who contribute for the taxes paid by the taxpayers of the United States? Do you know how much of the total income tax is paid by the top 1% of this country? And follow it all down the list because I will tell you this and there’s a statistic that you should know to make sure you have balance when you evaluate things The bottom, 50% of wage earners in this country pay 3% of the total income tax
"A rose by any other name is still a rose." A tax paid out of earnings is still a tax on one's income, aka an income tax. Workers' compensation, Social Security, Medicare, taxes paid on necessities, all take a large portion of workers' incomes and constitute a large portion of the taxes that governments at all levels collect. They're taxes on income. Most are regressive, meaning that they're paid by those least able to afford it.
Just so you know, the number the top 1% of income earners in this country pay 40% of the taxes top 20% pay 70% of the taxes And this may surprise you, but I've always been surprised that there's a cap on Social Security. I know why there Is a cap, but I don't agree with it. No matter what you earn, you should pay Social Security accordingly
Respectfully, I would like to challenge your idea that reality will never conform to ideology.
First, we need to believe in something. As Barack Obama once said, “Putin has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t have to get anyone to believe anything. All he has to do is convince enough people not to believe in anything.”
Beyond that, it’s important to believe in the right thing.
An “ideology” is a system of ideas based on one of two ideas. The first is the moral idea that the intrinsic value of every human being is equal to the intrinsic value of every other human being, and the second is the immoral idea that “we” are—or sometimes just “I” am—more important than “them”.
The founding principle of a moral ideology is some version of “treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot.” The founding principle of an immoral ideology is some version of “do unto others before they do unto you.”
In other words, reality will never conform to an immoral ideology, and a moral ideology conforms to reality.
"“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.” Following yesterday's letter, Professor concludes with this key reminder. Trump and MAGA sets policies based on ideology and inform them to their voters by lying. Fox News is their main channel. Voters learn the truth when too late to do anything but "die."
Well, he wrote that's not true and I totally disagree with your assessment as well
If you'd like to make specific affirmations of exactly what you're talking about, I would love to hear what they are
You also ought to probably better understand the word Maga, because obviously people talk of it as a dirty word if the liberals had come up with the words, Maga, you would be worshiping them at the altar of freedom
I'm surprised that anyone would use them in a derogatory way because they simply say make America great again and anyone who finds fault that probably should not be here
Linda, you do realize that this country was founded on the reality of ideology. Freedom of speech, FREEDOM OF RELIGION , which implies… freedom of thought aka ideology
And I agree that many people are too deeply immersed in ideology… however, in the name of freedom, it’s their life and they can do whatever they feel is right for them.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, sir, but it doesn’t change the facts.
Have you investigated how many pompous condescending and incorrect postings are are here in this thread? I am simply responding to the misguided messages, close mindedness, and refusal to make themselves aware of news that they are not getting. I have posted many links that are confirming what I am saying. The stories here are all but one-sided views/opinions with one-sided links.
You might want to watch a right leaning cable news network to get the other side of the story.. that you are NOT getting here, Internet even aware that you’re not getting it.. and if you’d like to know why Fox News has an example has 65% of cable news viewership you might better understand what I’m saying here. Fox News has work your shift Melvin, CNN and MSNBC combined. And has surpassed ABC News. Lies, deceit, and cover-up can only last so long before people realize they are being lied to.
Last week, people in a northeast Pennsylvania town near me were shocked and upset by an ICE raid at a local restaurant. However, with the political nature of the area being what it is, this is what the majority voted for.
Deporations. Disappeared people. Arrests and detentions without warrants. Masked, unidentified men manhandling people.
Did the town's residents think the felon didn't mean it? Did they think it wouldn't happen in their community? Were they not paying attention? Do they not care as long as its not them -- yet?
Wait until your rural hospitals close and critically ill or injured people don't survive the long trip to an urban one. Wait til your parents and/or in-laws have nowhere to go because their Medicaid was stopped. Wait til you need medical care but either can't afford it or go broke getting treatment.
You voted, knowingly or unknowingly, for this abject cruelty. Shame on you if it was intentional. If it wasn't, you'd better start paying attention and speak up for the defenseless. Otherwise, you're going to be next. You're already in the crosshairs.
Don’t understand why the medical establishment isn’t up in arms. Not only will our health care be a skeleton, their livelihood will be on the chopping block. Do any still subscribe to the Hippocratic oath?
Why is your ire directed towards doctors who've been cut off at the knees and seen research programmes slashed? I'm not sure what the Hippocratic oath has to do with it, but how about targeting with emails and protest these physicians who've abandoned their conscience and their constituents: Senators Marshall, Cassidy, Rand Paul, Barrosso.
Congressmen/women: Des Jarlais, Neal Dunn, Mark Green, Andy Harris, Ronny Jackson, John Joyce, Mike Kennedy, Rich McCormick, Marianne Miller-Meek, Greg Murphy, Bob Onder.
My niece, a PA, and her husband, a physchologist, moved to Canada in April. They saw this coming and worked with an immigration attorney in Canada to escape legally. They have a trans child in lived in rural Pennsylvania. Our loss and Canada's gain are well deserved. Too bad for the uneducated and unhealthy in America.
A long term look at what we have done in bringing down the climate threats and other damage prevention, and what should be possible is shown at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSDchDM61GI
I met Dr. Tom English, about a dozen years ago and met people that worked with him on starting to get the nuclear waste under control (something my son now works on keeping up with as the old containers fail), and the California Clean Air Act that I could see reducing the smaze, smog , and invisible gasses that created so many asthmatic problems. A lesser known nuclear waste problem in the Coldwater Creek area of Saint Louis Conty Missouri (that makes me shudder, and should give everyone a peek at what neglect can do, from the degradation of controls to leaving uranium purification powdery waste to just blow in the wind and contaminate the water is at https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/06/02/nuclear-waste-st-louis-manhattan-project
From frequent talks with him before and after presentations, I learned about industrial waste recycling and recovery of valuable (otherwise toxic materials) from electronic waste (some practical benefits that really were worth it, if not as essential as adapting to keeping the climate healthy.
Though he has made or been witness to more ecological improvements and reduction in nuclear waste control, his passion is in the demonstrable ability to keep climate change from being far worse. The link includes multiple presentations on different topics, interspersed with periods of questions from the audience, which to me helps cover a huge amount of ground with far more understandable summaries of all the accumulating evidence, and demonstrations of how we have adapted and need to keep adapting to the actual conditions.
We now have very much better weather and climate monitoring tools to see where more effort can provide better pay offs. One part about warmer climate doubling the tree devastating bugs in Canada is noticeable in the recent past and present wild fires in Canada.
I’m in a bit of a rush so not so well at editing the important stuff or even my own version of more personal challenges I suspect many more are dealing with, such as the following.
I have trouble keeping up with the VA clinic cancellations and changes in Primary doctors, seems 4 have been cancelled and I haven't been able to see the same new (seemingly temporary primary physicians) 4 our of 4 times. I don't blame the physicians for the turmoil in the VA, but would like to see them back on track sometime before the little problems become big problems. The hard-won improvements since the 1980s seem to all being trashed by this administration so bent on extending the devastating revenue shortfalls from continuous tax cuts for the exponentially wealthier that I see as the major cause of another potential great depression, and climatic failure to keep the planet as healthy for humans as we should be capable of.
And our knowledge at the time made us believe all the operating plans & cleanup plans were safe. Boy, did science set us straight! Wait! The facts have been decided to be exaggerations & risk was low. Why then, are there huge fences & security guards that watch for headlights that stop near the fences of Hanford?
I don't disagree, it will never be safe enough to not need the fences and security, but they have been for decades now, doing the best they can to keep making it a little safer all the time. It can't be left unattended either, they found they have to chemically separate as much as they can (as I understand it) to make vitrification work well enough at some points along the way. It seems a very thankless job, that takes great care and skill to do it safely and effectively. We will need to keep training new people to replace the ones that need to retire at some point.
If there are areas where they are now making greater efforts to keep the spent fuel and massive amounts of productions waste safe, I'd appreciate knowing where they are doing so. I do have some ideas on who to ask and who to trust, as well as others who are extremely technically competent (many now retired), but who followed all the rules Adm Hyman Rickover taught them. But they sometimes seem unaware of the newer replacements that are not bad people just under trained and inexperienced compared to the people they have replaced. To me we need another Rickover (who never wanted to see Civilian Nuclear power since they would never keep it up to his standards). Instead we got people like Rick Perry, who wanted to get rid of the Department of Energy (which he was appointed to head), and didn't realize it was responsible for our nuclear arsenal NRC, etc. We may need some for defense or deep space probes but it isn't worth the other costs and risks for most of our power.
Personally, I don't want to see any new nuclear power with all its long term waste problems and over dependence on grids in place of as much resilient and more local Solar and Battery (or other practical energy storage such as Pumped Hydro). The last time I talked to Robert F Hemphill Jr. he told me he had been able to get the wholesale price of his early grid-scale solar and battery installations down to 8 cents per kWh, and was seeing long term contract bids going below 2 cents per kWh. There will never be nuclear power in that range.
There is enough use for well planned grids as long as their cost and upkeep makes sense to move energy from whee it is something like the surplus solar energy I believe San Diego had to pay to ship to Arizona in place of contract holders that have obsolete gas generators that cost more to operate and maintain.
I look at as the old Central Steam Heating Plants we used to have on military bases. Who would design such systems today
Remember the new houses built much more communications, telephone, etc wiring built 20 or 30 years ago. Now we have Wi-Fi, and fiber-optic that drastically reduces the need for hard wires running everywhere.
I live in Western WA, just a short drive to Hanford in Eastern WA. The joke for years is about the glow- in- the - dark tumbleweeds & rabbits. Cleanup, as it is, will never provide a clean environment.
It took a lot to get it started but the people I talked to are dedicated to doing it right no matter how restrictive the budgets have been. One problem is the aging out of some that have years of experience, and the effort it takes to try to capture all they have learned so that the newer people can continue to not only use all they have learned through experience, and keep improving as much as they can. One problem is the old single wall storage tanks are corroding so they are moving the contents to newer double walled tanks that are safer and can be inspected more easily.
Doctors were removed from the drivers seat of medicine decades ago. We are working stiffs now. Employees. Those who mention our country homes and apathy for our patients don’t have a clue. The 70’s have passed, and with it the privilege and wealth in the medical profession. I will put on my faded scrubs now, and head off to my rural critical access hospital in my 25 yo toyota.
Administrators don’t have an oath. Only fealty to corporate overlords.
I could not thank the doctors, nurses and aides who were there for me and for my husband when he was dying of a particularly aggressive kidney cancer attacking his bones.
I don’t know where you sit. Maybe plastic surgery? Derm? The trench doctors are all employees! ED docs, primary care, internal medicine, critical care. There are more surgical specialties, but nowadays most surgeons taking call at hospitals are also employees. There were 10-12 independent primary care in practice. Now all employees. The world has changed. Doctors are not calling the shots, care is getting worse.
What you say is mostly true, and my docs are likely employees, but some own interest in companies that they set up in related fields, surgery centers, etc.
Has to be difficult to speak out when some dipshits of Orange dude decide to invade your private lives, online activities & remind you 'they' know where your family is.
Ms. Franklin, I was born and raised in Carbondale in north east Pa. When I was growing up the town was still a community of people from many backgrounds. Many of my friends who grew up there and some who still live there share your sentiment. It is sad and scary. Some of my friends are risking much to actively protest against Trump and his band of arrogant sycophantic thugs.
Would it be better if Trump were running things? All his players are equally dangerous. Trump's role is to let each run riot over the part of the government where they can do the most damage: Miller shaving immigrants' rights and heads; Vought stripping budget and staff. Trump's has collected a whole gang of such misguided fanatics. One need only think of Hegseth and his passion for lethality. Chaos and ruin seem to be the goals, financed by us, of course. These people aren't cheap.
Only the worst the worst are approved by Trump. This is likely a product of Trump's twisted character and not under orders of Vladimir Putin, but it might as well be.
Why are you surprised the FEMA director doesn't know there is a hurricane season when the scumbag president doesn't know that tariffs are a tax on consumers? .Or maybe he knows and it's lying?
I am not surprised by the stupidity of these folks. I am surprised or questioning how did he pass the Senate confirmation process. I guess, I shouldn't be. As my husband said, "Rubber stamp senate"
How did any of the Idiot Cabinet get confirmed? By a bunch of Republican traitors who let January Sixth and Trump/Vance into power. Look at all of them. Not one is up to his job. Not one.
Purobi, these questions should be asked over and over. But we must follow up with truthful answers.
Donald is the monkey on a leash, meant to distract and entertain the street crowd, while the organ grinders and their pickpockets rob the crowd blind.
There are two organ grinders: the Tech Bros lust for power through wealth and the Theo Bros lust for power through control.
The crowd is largely oblivious to what is happening to them as they applaud the spastic antics of the monkey accompanied by the sounds from the organs. The two organ grinders seem to be playing the same tune, but there is discord between them.
The Tech Bros are running a short con, amassing all the world's wealth to themselves by stealing privileged information about everyone and legislating transfers of wealth to themselves from everyone else through the government.
The Theo Bros are running a long con, seeking to force everyone to live by their lists of "should-nots" and "must-nots" – or die. They have been promised that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess." Once that happens, Jesus will return from Heaven and scoop them up to their mansions on gold-plated boulevards. To paraphrase Joni, "the earth will be destroyed anyway, so why bother to save it now?"
Neither organ grinder cares how many in the crowd die. In fact, that's kind of the point. The fewer people there are, the less obstacles to their goals.
He's "acting" so he has not had to go through the confirmation process. It's the Felon's (or, rather, Stephen Miller's) tactic for avoiding confirmation hearings.
That the Republican fantasy doesn’t work is a well proven factor. Good thing we’ve invented the wheel because going around and around which, adding a few more arounds, doesn’t facilitate progress or reaching ‘promised’ (“going to be the very best”) destinations -just messes ( which after -per elected- the Democrats clean up).
That’s fact.
But facts are not Republican guides, nor rules guardrails. So…here we are again going round and round (again 🙄🤦♀️).And oh yes the mess, the clean up after this regime , will be yet another Democratic job.
That’s Fact.
Ho hum.
I have reduced my emails unsubscribing from dozens. Thanks for all your efforts, accomplishments, consistency. Carry on.
I maintain my/our protest -since the late 60’s-the left side-will prove the facts again. I look forward to jailed ,well proven, liars.
Heather concludes -- speaks throughout -- quite sadly, mournfully for us (all of us). U.S. and the world.
Science, education, reality-based reporting all ought to be at top form across the U.S. They are not. People like Joni Ernst -- and too many ignoramuses, MAGA cultists, cynics like her -- speak to the pathetic ideology and entertainment sloganeering and sensationalism that have taken over.
Michael Lewis ("The Big Short," and much more) in an interview two days ago was wondering about this tyranny of vulgarity that has ascended the U.S. He was pondering how it is, specifically, that the corporate rich keep paying themselves obscenely lavishly -- and couldn't care less how further behind their own employees fall. These masters of multi-billionaire-dollar bonuses for themselves "persuade themselves that they’re solely responsible for their good fortune – that they don’t really owe anybody anything.” “They’ve been told over and over, you’re in this place because you won the competition.”
They did. They first mastered those training grounds for elite vulgarity -- testing. Then they forgot, he says, "all the accident that was involved, all the help they got, all the gratitude they should feel.”
“They did. They first mastered those training grounds for elite vulgarity -- testing.”
Politely disagreeing. They were born to wealthy families and/or their parents had connections to the people who could help them get what they needed to succeed.
Jan, my former boss referred to them as members of the Lucky Sperm Club.
However, I think both you and Phil can be correct, and in fact, are. That the net worths of the top .01% of our population have skyrocketed to stratospheric levels is the result of LSC members exploiting their generational wealth. But there are only so many "Old Money" families.
Yet, we have witnessed a staggering expansion of the top .01%. These new arrivals came from somewhere, but not from Old Money. We must assume they are people who are devoid of humanities and humanity as Phil suggests, who played the "greed-is-good" game and "won." Still, it's a hollow victory.
If we went into specifics, Jan, we'd see many, many more from families like Vance's.
Schools favor the progeny from families without much money, as those from the wealthy, in that schools for testing narrow values to just a few coldly rational and nothing more.
This is particularly and more grievously true in that schools -- to give testing full dominance -- have gotten rid of humanities. Nothing in the schools anymore teaches to see "others" in any of the ways Michael Lewis, for one, wishes for more personal accountability.
Doesn't exist, Jan, when "the human" gets studiously, systematically reduced to numbers, groups, categories, and the linear chronological only.
Phil...I so appreciate Michael Lewis. I think his Brief But Spectacular piece was from 2015, but it all still stands.
His book The Fifth Risk is good. Having worked for NOAA I was happy he covered them. Although NOAA does a lot more than weather for the American people.
Once again thank you for your wisdom. In our local paper a woman Trump supporter wrote that she worked hard for what she has and insinuated that most anyone can succeed if they are good Christians and willing to work for it. I guess if you are rich and powerful then you are entitled .
Joni Ernst's correct but brain-dead statement leaves out the fact that the majority of people do not go from being alive to being dead without interacting with the health care system -- for diagnosis, treatment, cure or care.
The 1960's brain drain saw Brits with advance degrees in many fields, especially the sciences, emigrate to America. Now Regime47 is pushing Americans with advance degrees in the sciences to leave America for European countries where their expertise is appreciated. Shorter: Trump & Co are leading the US to a new Dark Ages.
I guess we wouldn't be humans then. We have seen a lot of progress since the war. What is known as the post-war consensus delivered rising standards of living for most people for many years. We've seen the end of colonialism and now its last vestiges seem incongruous to most of us. People's mores have changed, especially in the field of minority rights and most developed countries have legislation that protects them. We also seen incredible progress in technologies (biotech, genetics, computer science, physics and astronomy, for example) that are outstripping our capacity to understand and regulate.
Reaction set in during the Reagan/Thatcher years. Now we have huge levels of income inequality in developed countries that most closely embraced the neoliberalism of Hayek and the Chicago School. That has brought with it a whole host of other social problems as emphatically shown in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's 'The Spirit Level'. Now there's widespread distrust of government and this and the advent of social media has created the conditions for a news ecosystem that disseminates conspiracy theories and rubbish and a rampant anti-intellectualism that threatens all that post-war progress.
And since we all are going to die, maybe she could die first, say tomorrow, and come back for 10 minutes to tell everybody how wonderful it is and then die again, this time forever.
But they sure claim Jesus when the afterlife is mentioned. As to life here, you are on your own, unless you are rich and powerful. That “afterlife” thing (the possibility of hell) would slow down some of the evil deeds if they truly believed it. As a man said in 2000, when repubs lied and trashed opponents in the S Carolina primary, we can go to church on Sunday and get forgiven for what we do on Saturday. Never heard a more “un-Christian” statement. They are full of crap.
JDinTX, I assume from your handle that you're located in Texas. If so, then you are surrounded by Baptists. That brand of evangelicals includes an interesting tenet in their dogma: "Eternal Security." The tagline is "Once Saved, Always Saved."
Thus, if one has at some point in one's life run down to the altar in a Baptist church, shed a few tears and prayed to "give one's heart to Jesus," then asks to be dunked in the church's baptistery, one is handed a virtual get-out-of-hell-forever card. This card entitles the bearer to live like an absolute hellion Monday through Saturday, then renew the get-out-of-hell-forever privileges on Sunday.
Extra bonus if you are Catholic: You can have sex (a mortal sin if you are not married to that heterosexual person) on Friday night, but confess it on Saturday (to a celibate, sainted and eager listener) on Saturday, and be absolved of that impurity, so that you can eat a piece of God's body on Sunday. Growing up Catholic was a dizzy and terrifying experience.
My impression is that most of the time there's not a whole lot going on in there.
Meanwhile, the crazy stories keep coming. Reuters reported that David Richardson, acting head of FEMA, told staff yesterday that he didn't know the United States had a hurricane season. Boy, is he going to be in for a surprise in the coming months. He's a former combat soldier whom one assumes spent a lot of time out of the country. He replaced another guy who contradicted Trump by saying that he didn't think FEMA should be abolished - essentially saying out loud what most people in the administration were thinking.
Meanwhile, there's a story circulating that Musk was spreading his seed with Stephen Miller's wife, Katie (otherwise known as the Bride of Dracula). Snopes has taken it upon itself to go down this rabbit hole.
On the Mark Twain quote, it's sometimes tempting to make historical comparisons between the Trump regime and other autocratic regimes in the past - most often the nazis in Germany. I find these parallels an unhelpful distraction especially as there are sometimes more relevant contemporary comparisons i.e. with Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey. Even then, they scarely help with the utter chaos of the Trump administration which largely stem from his politics of resentment.
My living companion has a 55 yo son on Medicaid. He had a traumatic brain injury when he was 26.. He is in a group home that cares for three residents. It employs a total of five part and full time employees. All supported by Medicaid. They are probably safe. But thereg probably won't be a place for the next unfortunate who suffers a head trauma or is born with a fistula that leads to a brain hemorrhage. Medicaid is a block grant program. It is tightly administered by states already. You cut funding you cut services. Period. And yes, people will die. But they will suffer before doing so. And that suffeeing will have compounding social and economic costs. It will affect the whole of society. Assuming there is one. Is this the sort of Meet Your Maker moment the female Congresscritter thinks we should all look forward to ??
Ricardo, I asked the Duck (Go Duck Go, no more Google for me) for "synonyms for 'pretty slim,'" I didn't have a lot of success. In this case, "pretty" is a modifier, which in this case means to either weaken or strengthen the word it is modifying. In JD's case with saying that it is highly unlikely that the Senator from Iowa could ever think of others.
The insolence of Senator Ernst’s comment to her constituents — “we are all going to die” — ignores the serious issue of cuts to Medicaid, which the senator has direct influence over. That everyone is going to die no one questions, it's how well we live that is the concern. Cuts to Medicaid will severely jeopardize the standard of health and quality of life of those receiving its support and likely shorten lives. Ernst needs to address that head on. Why she equates the issue with the tooth fairy is a mystery. Apparently, that inane fantasy was top of mind as she publicly ducked a matter critical for her constituents.
Joan, maybe we should take her health insurance away, that we pay for, and see for how long she last, after all, as everybody else, she'll die anyway one day.
Miselle, you cannot shame someone who is incapable of shame. Ernst demonstrated that she is incapable of shame when she made the sarcastic follow-up video.
The best we can hope for is that a flood of phone calls would harass and distract her — still worthwhile objectives.
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
yes, for so many. I wish it were mandatory reading for Fox viewers (assuming any of them can read). That statistic about the mention - this week! - of Biden 49 times !!!! and Medicaid once ... so depressing, so hope-draining.
Three infographics show how Republican cuts to Medicare will hurt your community and who to hold accountable.
We mapped where the Republican cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Food stamps would hurt the most people in every county in America. This was overlaid with the number of children and seniors living in poverty in those counties. Then we added the Congressional districts including key swing districts. Hold MAGA reps accountable for cutting your benefits to pay back Elon Musk: Start with these key swing districts
I don't believe the criminal-elect has any ideology other than to remain out of prison and to enrich himself through blatant corruption. The GOP ideology is to continue to weaken and destroy any thought of representative democracy by eroding the guardrails of our system, accelerating the extreme concentration of wealth, and dividing and misdirecting our attention to every hot-button issue that polarizes voters.
Joni Ernst simply reminded us of the GOP "Tea Party"/MAGA party line "Let them die." MAGA voters are perfectly fine with that philosophy until it comes for them and their families. While I often think that you get the government you deserve, I also know that voter suppression, gerrymandering, "Citizens United", and the Electoral College all work together to make democracy more improbable in the United States. As real education is politicized, facts, evidence, and science give way to so-called "patriotism" and prayer, the United States gets closer to turning the film "Idiocracy" from a comedy to a speculative documentary of life in America.
Here is the propaganda that the republicans have swallowed (From Project 2025 Plan for Economic Reform for Trump's Second Administration by Lois Alercon):
“Project 2025's vision for healthcare economics combines market principles with targeted assistance, aiming to create a sustainable, efficient system. By reducing federal involvement, encouraging private-sector competition, and granting states more control over Medicaid, Project 2025 proposes a healthcare model that values choice, efficiency, and innovation. While this approach may differ from current systems in countries like the UK or Canada, it seeks to balance public assistance with private initiative, creating a system that meets the needs of a diverse population without overhelming the federal budget.
The ultimate goal is a healthcare environment where Americans have access to affordable, quality care, supported by competition and local decision-making rather than centralized control.
Advocates believe that by drawing from the best aspects of other systems while avoiding their pitfalls, Project 2025 can create a healthcare model that serves the nation well into the future.”
THIS is what they hold as their truth , to the detriment of all of US!
They are simply, and blindly following the script written for them by Vought, Theil and others.
Blather like the wordsmiths have been hoodwinking those who have surrendered their thought processes to Fox. Just let the private sector take care of things for you, So we can have the government for our own pleasure. Good luck with that. Guess who runs the private sector.
The health care system has enough problems so more from the arses will cost lives. Says someone sitting in an ER unit. The medical community should be up in arms, the ones I know are not
Kari, my comment states the obvious, but I can't help writing. The flaw in the P2025 plan, and frankly in the existing U.S. healthcare system, is the attachment of corporate profit to human healthcare.
Good health is not a privilege, but a human right, as implied in three-legged stool enshrined in The Declaration of Independence: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If one is sick or prematurely dead, one cannot have life or be free or happy.
A human right cannot be upheld in a for-profit system. In a for-profit system, the human right of good health becomes a privilege enjoyed by those who can afford it and denied to those who can't. This is immoral.
The error in the P2025 authors' thinking and in the thinking of half of Americans, is that government is a business. It is not. Business exists to create a profit. Government is not a profit-making enterprise. Government isn't even a "thing." Government is simply a METHOD of pooling citizens' resources to accomplish objectives that benefit everyone and could not be accomplished by individuals on their own. While government should be run in a businesslike manner, it is not a business.
When a populace is healthy, everyone prospers. That makes healthcare a government function, not a corporate enterprise.
Maybe if we started teaching Civics in schools again, people could understand this simple principle.
YES please! Bring back Civics, 20th Century History, shop classes, Home Economics to give students a chance to do more than learn by rote what it may take to become an engaged citizen.
Kari, I wish I knew the answer. I know there is no "quick fix" or immediate solution, and frankly, I hold little hope that a long-term solution can be achieved.
Ignorance produces a downward spiral from which there's little hope of recovery, especially when the ignorant people are also lazy.
At the end of my comment, I recommended teaching Civics. How do we do that? We first must stop private interests, abetted by paid-for legislators, from embezzling taxpayer dollars and funneling them to private and parochial schools that do not have public interest in mind.
Privately operated schools, disingenuously claiming to be interested in "scholastic achievement," are really designed to keep "undesirable" students out and ensure that provincial parents can prevent their children from encountering others who are different in any way.
Church-affiliated schools are similar, with the added goal of indoctrinating and thereby proselytizing youths in the hope of perpetuating the religions that own the schools.
Neither type of non-public school is meant to foster cultural harmony or civic responsibility. They are bastions of isolation that instill inflexibility and suspicion at an early age. How can a culture expect to survive when it creates such sharp division among its youth?
Until that system of divisiveness is eliminated, there will be no fertile ground where the seeds of tolerance and understanding can be sown.
When the doctrines of science and the ideology of idiots collide, the result is a weaponized government with the power to destroy everything others have given their all to create. When asked about the importance of science, a child said that it is better to figure things out than to make things up. Posted on T during the first moronic term of the head useless leader.
Also any moron knows that science has the last word on nothing and religion has the last word on everything. No questions asked and no opposition tolerated. Science is all about answering questions, if we have the consciousness of the lowest forms of life.
Fox has the job of entertaining and distracting with propaganda, and our population of fools and sycophants. Some are ignorant, some are the evil in our midst dressed up as fellow humans, the “leaders” are the opposite of what we teach our children to be. Some of us recognize propaganda and reject it, many slurp it up like hogs at the trough. One of those hogs is chump, others are the butchers waiting with their cleavers…. I fear this is word salad at 2am.
No, JD, it makes a lot of sense. "...science has the last word on nothing and religion has the last word on everything" is far more than salad. If you do not question, you never get answers, only doctrine.
To think that all of these draconian cuts (and hidden last minute provisions that will make Trump immune to prosecution) are made to enrich billionaires makes me sick.
Indeed, reality will never conform to ideology. Not in agriculture, not in science, not in economics, not in health care. Personal stories about how adherence to ideology is harming real live people can break through the trance that has too many still in its spell. Tell those stories everywhere and every time you can!
Just quote Joni Ernst--she knows that we're all going to die. No need to think that science could or should help keep people healthy and alive. The administration is filled with folks who have their own theories, based on ideology, that will save us money if they're put into practice...and if some die because science is ignored, well, that's the fate of all of us, isn't it?
*trigger warning - offensive language*
That Joni Ernst is a C*NT
If she were truly Christian, she might recall what scripture says about bearing false witness and sacrificing the vulnerable for power. Judgment Day doesn’t come with campaign ads or spin doctors. When she’s asked to account for trading truth for political gain, I doubt ‘it polled well’ will cut it at the pearly gates.
‘Forgive them NOT father, they know full well what they do.’
There must be some special Award for Most Clueless on the Concept out there we can assign her. Seriously, she might as well have tittered and said "let them eat cake." Best protest sign I saw on Substack: "Election Day in Iowa is November 3, 2026. We all have to go sometime."
It should be a billboard !!!!! all over the state.
She has tripled down now with a tweet. She's disgusting. Vote her out, Iowa.
"We're all going to die" reminds me of "be the next one on your block to have your boy sent home in a box."
Perfect - but we know what we’re fighting for!
It's dismissive. We are talking about when and how, and whether it is a preventable or inevitable death. Why even bother with doctors? Why stop a murder? It's the cruel narcissism of a bully
Country Joe and the Fish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W7-ngmO_p8
Unfortunately much of Iowa has its nose buried in FOX News and Newsmax. This state is throughly and completely indoctrinated by Christian nationalism.
My husband spoke to a college friend the other day who lives in a small town in Indiana, and he DIDN'T KNOW some of the shit that is happening in Washington!! And he's not MAGA.
Wish we could send them all to the asteroid belt. ... don't want to pollute another planet.
Now I read that maybe the tweet was spoofed? Can anyone confirm that she tweeted or posted some kind of obnoxious tweet to the "libs"?
It would be appropriate coming from her. When the bakers got their ovens hot, they poured in a slurry of flour and water, it caked the oven floor, and they baked the loaves on it. That's the "cake" Marie Antoinette meant.
There is no way that she'll win. Even right-wingers don't like to be ridiculed and here "apology" did exactly that....
Someone should remind her that live babies of 150 years ago had about a 50% chance of surviving to age 5. Is she okay with going back to that?
Just need to point out your misspelling. It’s CUNT….and in my mind it has nothing to do with religion. (far as I’m concerned all religion is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo cleverly sold to the weak of mind)
Ernst has jumped on the felon train because she is ill prepared for the office she holds - when the tough comments and questions land in her lap she musters up her condescending tones and her pastor cap. Being a US Senator means you put the Constitution before self and party and whatever book of mumbo jumbo you subscribe to. It means “you work for we the people.” OUR tax dollars pay for YOUR salary and benefits. Ernst and her lot need to be reminded of this every single day.
A day it's too long Girl, they need to be reminded every minute of the day. That might help.
Our tax dollars probably cannot compete with the dollars of Joni Ernst big donors. Republicans are all about lining their pockets.
Actually, I bet the Big Ag donors are losing bigly.
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/joni-ernst/summary?cid=N00035483
Grassley, the other senator, has lost his ag subsidies.
Daniel, I had forgotten that Gassy was the other senator. He should have been put out to pasture long ago. Gassy and the Hearse.....great pair.
Oh yes; Losing bigly. I'm still getting social media posts (shared by that ilk_) crowing about how much the maga cuts are "saving" America huge amounts of wasted money by cutting. Hard indisputable facts and figures - with citations have to gathered and shared widely. All of us need that certifiable information at our fingertips and shared.
Yup, one could say, Sen. Ernst is “Cuddling Under Nutty Trump.”
Or, ‘Curdling’ under insane wannabe tyrant-king.
Matthew 25: 36 to the end. Unless some Republicans vote against this bill there isn’t a single Republican Christian in the Senate.
Amen and amen. I was coming here to say that. There is a hot place in Hell reserved for Ernst and all christian nationalists like her.
Matthew 25:41-46, New International Version
41 “Then He will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help You?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
I don't do that because of what was written in the Bible. I do that because it is the right thing to do.
I'm reminded of a story: There was an awful flood, and a man climbed to the roof of his house for safety, and prayed "O, Lord, please save me."
A neighbor came by in a rowboat, and said "Hop in, neighbor!" and the man said "No, my Lord will save me." The waters rose, and a few hours later, a SAR boat came to his house. "Hop in, sir" and he replied "No, my Lord will save me." By now, he was straddling the peak of his house, and a rescue helicopter lowered a rope. "Climb up, sir". His reply, "No, my Lord will save me."
He slipped off the roof and drowned. Finding himself at the Pearly Gates, he cried "O, Lord, why did you not save me." The reply was "My son, I sent you a row boat, a motor boat, and a helicopter. Why did you not use them?"
Reply: "I was waiting for You."
Those are the people that watch FOX.
Love that story!!! Like something Ernst would say! FOFLOL!
The first time I read that fable it was in Ladino. If you have never heard of that language google it
As my mother always said, “God helps those who help themselves.”
Some contend these days that God is lost. Not true of the Eternal One. God is waiting for us to defy evil and stand in the Light and Truth of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I belong to a congregation that has become increasingly Progressive focusing on love and forgiveness while ignoring Jesus' words in Matthew 5:17: "Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill." [NRSV] Law includes the 10 Commandments and the prophets are the ones sent by God to NK/Israel and SK/Judah to repent and return to God. NK was obliterated by Assyria in 722 BC and Judah was taken into exile by Babylon in 3 waves culminating in 587 BC and destruction of Solomon's temple. Jesus came to fulfill God's covenant with Abraham, Moses, and David: many people, a royal dynasty, and a worldwide blessing.
I've repeatedly called MAGA Mike's office and said he has fallen under the spell.of Satan-- that Mike worships greed and power and the deadly sins.
I have a big smile after reading this.
Holy Scripture is Truth but those holding with Progressive Theology would contend we must love and forgive and there is likely no hell. That as Bonhoeffer would contend is "cheap grace." Thank you for placing this passage in the dialogue.
but both groups- those who believe that a loving God created a place of eternal torment for those whose conduct, or beliefs, did not match His standards, and those who believe we must love and forgive without the incentive of avoiding eternal torment - have the same action consequences: kindness and help to all.
And Bonhoeffer also stated that we need a Christianity without the Religion.
A blessing - thank you 🙏
"41 “Then He will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." The reference to the left hand is interesting. Then, and now, the left hand has been used to wipe the but. Cutting off a thief's right hand Immediately made one an outcast.
They are the chronically violent Romans in the Gospels. The GOP adherents wear their crosses around their necks, and claim to be guided by the teachings of Jesus, but people who have actually read the Gospels see them for who they are : worshipers Nero, Caligula, Tiberius. (Or any other Roman despot) Christian Nationalists do not care who rules, as long as they can dominate.
Pilgrim, they are all maga cultist in the "republican" senate.
Wow thank you for stating where we can find directions for how we ALL are supposed to behave. Preacher's kid here who found it very easy to pick out who was just mouthing the words & putting them into action as we were directed to do.
The best retort at her “town hall” was “but that does not give you the right to kill me.” She is channeling her inner Nazi - SS guards thought the same thing - “well, they were going to die anyways.” She is patronizing and is a misanthrope. Run her out of office!
Problem being Democrats now: slogans need to be too long. It’s not just Big Bad causes death, it’s Big Bad causes _premature, preventable_ death. Too long, too klutzy, but Joni can’t argue with it.
Kazz, no one has mentioned that this is the “castration senator.” Doesn’t anyone remember Ernest’s campaign slogan about strength? Castrating large farm animals. She’s the first version of Kristi Noem—cruelty rules.
Ugh, seems these cretans are actually attracted to doing harm. Like flies to sh*t.
Kazz, while I never use the c word, I would agree that she is not Christian. That claim makes her pseudo apology even worse. I wish upon her a disease that advanced research might have cured, but alas, we cut the money. Too bad that hell doesn't exist because she deserves a long slow burn.
Don’t worry Michelle, she has to live with herself, sleep at night, and suffer her place in history.
i think some people are so self centered and tone deaf that they do not have a problem sleeping at night. Her place in history....well, that is different.
Hell takes on all kinds of scenarios Michele. Bad people living on earth with terrible diseases, family tragedies, business failures & such while asking "what have I done wrong". Sounds like hell to me!
Oh, i agree. I was thinking of the fiery hell that we find in Christianity (and maybe other religions as well). I really think that many people live in incredible hell right here in earth.
The idea that the bible is a perfect guide to morality is simply astounding, given the following: Mark 7:9-13 and Matthew 15:4-7 "We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath (I grew up with the blue laws - where'd they go -- capitalism!), worshipping graven images, practicing sorcery. Together with 6 Catholic judges on the Supreme Court, any notion of separation of church and state is totally absent. So what is more moral - helping people, providing care and food and medicine, or helping them because they (Joni) thinks the creator of the universe will reward them??
I'm not looking for a reward. I am simply doing what my heart & soul tells me is correct. It is comforting to know there were long-ago people who held the same ideas & wrote them down for guidance to others in the future.
thank you for saying that ... I do not use that word often - it's an awful word to be used in awful times.
Thus, perfect time to use this word towards quite a few people.
My congresswoman would be one - propaganda Beth is a willing c.nt.
I don't see it as an awful word, but it is a fantastic cuss word (also more socially acceptable everywhere else in the world).
Unfortunately, calling her a cunt is truly an insult to women's genitalia the world over, even if it fits so clearly. None of us want our butts compared to that piece of work.
The fave sign I saw at the March protests was "I'd call Elon a cunt, but he lacks the depth & warmth".
EssBee…. A seriously appropriate response….. as an 89 yr old woman, a very serious and hard word for me… I like the Elon response, lacks “the depth and warmth”….. Thank you…
Nice one!
🤣🤣🤣
Lol... You are a poet Ess. We'll have to invent some appropriate foul names for these creatures. I agree; I always recoil from using genitalia, male or female, as I don't find those apt enough nor fitting in that implies some human feature as foul, which they are not.
I have always had problems with the c word even though I think it is a very ancient Indo-European word. i have run out of swear words to describe the monsters who are running the show. I refuse to call some of them by their names because that gives them some kind of human recognition that they do not deserve. I realize that some object to this.
Can I add Susan Collins to that list, please?
Suzy Q of I am concerned all talk and no walk.
This line of thought about Joni Ernst reminds me of the movie, "The Book of Eli." For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's about a dystopian world where one thug in particular is searching for a book he's never read, the King James version of the Holy Bible. All copies of this book had been destroyed in a purge because it was considered dangerous, the cause of the catastrophe that destroyed the modern world. The thug had never read it. He enslaved, raped, murdered the innocent immigrant and the outspoken critics in his quest to find this book. After all, billions of people had blindly followed it, fought for it, killed for it, and died for it. He wanted it because "it is a weapon." This book, he reasoned, was his path to true power (lowercase "p"), control, and wealth. But the one surviving copy of the book was written in Braille, a language only 2 blind people could read. The blind woman is his bitch, his slave, his personal prostitute (tRump + Ernst?). The blind man? Eli could recite the book from memory, even if he didn't always understand its meaning. He was its protector (all who oppose tRump's agenda). ...
If I didn’t know who Joni Ernst was, her name alone irks me so. Where do these people come from?
In my stand-up last evening, I rambled on about being a boomer from the generation of love and peace but now, I hate everyone including my grandparents for immigrating here. If they had only stayed put, I’d be a European.
Cheeses creepers.
Wanna hear more? Just say the word.
Ok you do. So in my house I conduct the smell test with my underwear. I sniff ( I picked sniffing up from my cats who sniff everything) my underwear and if they don’t smell like S_ _ t I put them on again.
In a Methodist church open mic, I strode to the stage and confidently announced that God mad a mistake sending the wrong primate tribe up the evolutionary trail. Not a peep in the house. I explained that the bonobos was first chosen but man grabbed the tickets and ran like hell. The church pastor called me the next morning and told me they were a family oriented congregation and my shit was inappropriate. Well he didn’t use that word, mind you. I apologized and told him I wouldn’t do it again. But I lied.
Before the elections, I again strode to the mic with my book, “Donald’s Vanity Tantrums “ in hand and read my short story, “My Cat Babe and Donald Trump have Something in Common.” Oh my God, a riot nearly broke out and one of the women jumped up and screamed at me to stop saying, “This is a church.” The following is the story of what happens when Babe gets access to the oil in my frying pan.
My Cat Babe and Donald Trump Have Something in Common
Recently, I prepared to have a spaghetti dinner but I couldn’t find the bowl that I normally use. I looked high and low for the bowl. I walked through every room in my house searching for it. I opened every kitchen cabinet. I even went into the basement on the unusual chance that I decided to eat my pasta in my unfinished basement. No bowl. Could I have put the bowl somewhere during a sleep walking episode? I never considered I had a sleep walking problem but one shouldn’t leave out any such possibilities. Nothing. The bowl was gone. Then, as I sat back in my studio with my feet up on my desk, I looked up at a shelf and there was the bowl. After eating my pasta one evening, I had placed it there so one of my cats couldn’t get at the remaining tomato source and olive oil. Babe has a voracious appetite and he will eat anything he can get his paws on. And if he had gotten hold of my pasta dish, he would have had another diarrhea episode around the house. And cat diarrhea is no fun to wipe up.
This all reminds me of the need to keep private citizen Donald Trump away from the White House least he again, crap all over the institution as he did the first go ‘round. He was so unfit and unstable that certain military chiefs had to insure he couldn’t get his hands on the nuclear codes during his last days in office. Those who were and are his supporters conveniently forget these moments. But I will never forget how much this Trump crapped all over America.
Every word out of his mouth was a lie. He befriended our enemies and made life difficult for our friends. He hired the worst creeps into administrative positions. He likely gave up national secrets to Putin. He encouraged an insurrection when he didn’t get his way to be re-elected. He deregulated as much as possible and in case you forget, regulations are put in place to protect its citizens. He reduced taxes for the wealthy corporate community and now that we have runaway debt, the republicans are doing a blame game on the democrats. Par for the course.
Let’s not forget that Trump has something in common with my cat, Babe, who was found almost newborn and dying in my driveway on a cold December morning a few years ago. He’s a wonderful cat now. But if he gets anywhere near some remaining oil in the frying pan or anywhere near my pasta bowl, he will lick it up until he splats diarrhea all over the floors of my house — just like Trump will do if he is re-elected by those who think he has their best interests at heart.
By the way, he doesn’t have their interests at heart. He has no heart. A narcissistic personality disorder reveals that truth.
Bill, that pastor may have been aware of bonobo's legendary sexual promiscuity. For them sexual activity appears to have replaced aggression as the main driver for social relations. They are indeed worthy of the old taxonomic name of the chimpanzee, P. satyrus - which refers to the myth of apes as lustful satyrs.
Despite the frequency of sex, the bonobos rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction. Like us, they seem to like it and that's not going to go down well in puritanical circles.
Great anecdote, by the way!
If he were catholic, he would only be attentive to his alter boys. I was sent to Catholic grade school per my mother’s desire as a practicing Catholic. They were all so strange behaving. They even expelled me in 7th grade for refusing to get a haircut. And my revenge is a skit for stand-up.
In 4th grade, Mrs Henigan put me under her desk for talking in class. ( this part actually happened) She then put her chair back in place and continued teaching as if nothing happened. Except that I was now under her desk. So I began looking up at her fat thighs opening and closing thinking, “Man, I was just punished and put in a position of looking up at Mrs Henigan’s vagina. So what could she do if I touched it? Pretend I didn’t. Or scream. Or call the principal, Fatber Emerling, who is the dude who eventually expelled me.
The dialogue:
Mrs Henigan: “Father, Billy Katz just touched it. What should I do?”
Father Emerling: “How did Billy Katz get to touch it?”
Mrs Henigan: “I put him under my desk for talking in class,Father.”
Father Emerling: “Well Mrs Henigan, you march little Billy Katz right down to my office right now so I can put him under my desk.”
I too am a lapsed Catholic. My punishment was having to study the poems of T.S. Eliot. My favourite subject in school was geology which they somehow managed to teach without broaching the sticky topic of evolution.
Hey Bill, I heard a very interesting very interesting evaluation of the Democrat party this morning
There used to be a democrat party, now they are the party of mental health disease.
I readily agree that democrats or the DEMOCRATIC party not democrat party (which shows how stupid you are following the line of bull) needs a going over. I believe in criticizing these folks. We can be our own worst enemy. But compared the MAGA party, there is no comparison. Your party is destined to destroy everything that remains good in this nation.
If you had only known how bad the diarrhea would be for these 107 days…
Great story, please give Babe some love from me, in whatever form he prefers.
So, not bat-shit crazy, but cat-shit crazy. Got it. 🐈
Do you wanna hear more?
If you do you will have to pay me. Hee. Hee.
(High five)
Bill, thanks again for clarifying 47’s actions by comparing him to Babe. Love it!
If we are not just scratching for survival, we live enriched, complicated lives, with extended tools and knowledge and alternatives to being battered by the elements (most of the time) of by injuries and disease. Our legacy includes capable minds and hands, and a huge store of accumulated learning. When we play by reality's rules, we can fly, we can send thoughts across space, we can heal from things that would have killed us a century, maybe even a decade ago. and much, much more. It seems like pretty sweet deal, even though uncontrollable misfortunes still occur. Why not make it as sweet as we can? Somehow greed jams the works, the urge to dominate, and exploit. It never seems to go away.
Nature seem to (largely) our friend when we play by her rules, and (also largely) our foe when we don't. And reality may offer alternative paths, yet never negotiates. It is indifferent to how we might portray it, or whatever alternative reality we might prefer.
Well said, JL, and playing by Nature's rules requires that we accept what's non-negotiable. We humans can be more discerning and less distracted by intoxicants -- false securities like ego, greed, power, you-name-it. It's a huge shift we're all living through now, that the truth of death and dying is being hurled at us through government actions to end so much we've relied on (that living well and longer is a common, non-partisan value).
Nicely said, JL. We must be grounded in reality, and in reality, we cannot impose our rules on Nature's.
Nature is not amused. We never have, nor ever will, "conquer" nature, but we can get to many places (even to the moon) when we pay enough attention to the "rules". The "pecking order" likely served a purpose in animal societies based primary on "instinct". A baby sea turtle wakes up on a beach and must negotiate life with no instruction, but we behaviorally "evolve" primarily from what we learn. The invention of numbers and writing, the management of fire, the lever, the Magna Carta, all altered human experience and history. And we turn out to have a capacity for self-awareness, including empathy and conscience, from which our societies benefit. That's all in OUR nature, along with the older Hobbsean notion that might makes right.
The Declaration of Independence is a refutation of that position. Lincoln spoke of an eternal battle between 'the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings" and endorsed the former. Our hour upon the stage comes with choices, but bullies and bullying appears to reject centuries of the benefit of learning in human terms. It now even threatens to be a means of ending our species forever, as one of those that failed to sufficiently adapt to the requirements of nature; should we not wise up.
Hey, your theory of never conquering nature …tell that to some of the climate control people… aka climate change …they could use a dose of reality…
Thank you for sharing your knowledge about the impact on our nation’s weather systems and more, Professor. It’s helpful to know how far this administration’s current and proposed cuts are increasing affecting our country in real time, especially as we enter hurricane season. How far are they willing to go in their attempt to make the country believe that reducing federal staffing and research for the weather forecasts and alerts we have depended on for decades, and by shifting some funding to the states, will be beneficial to everyone, rather than simply making everyone in our nation suffer because they want to give their corporate and billionaire buddies further tax breaks?
Well, the debate now is was the head of FEMA joking or did he really not know about hurricane season. Good luck to anyone experiencing a disaster.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent."
Carl Sagan
Sagan gave the commencement speech at my Ph.D. graduation. It may have been the last speech he ever gave--he died only a few months later. I can't remember any of the specifics of what he said, only the sense that we were all blessed to have heard him.
Carl was a genius. Entranced by his voice & enthralled by his books that remain on my shelves. You were so fortunate Betsy!
I wish that I could have met him. His books had a large influence on my life, especially The Demon Haunted World. RIP, Dr. Sagan.
Nicely put, J L. Yes, nature's rules. My garden helper has just published a book about gardens, outer and inner. I did some editing for her and I wanted to cry because I know what is happening now in this country makes realizing working with nature unlikely. The answers are there, but greed, hubris, power gets in the way.
They are only concerned about money when others needs are mentioned. Now tax cuts for them is A-OK.
She is the deepest shame and embarrassment of Iowa. Her disdain for her own constituents is stunning. This is how far out of touch the GOP is.
Those ideas won’t save $$. They’ll just funnel more of it to Trump and his pals.
I called contacted Ernst and agreed, we will all die. And when we DO, and we face her savior, we will be judged.
How will Jesus judge her?
Ernst blamed the crowd's ignorance when, in fact, she failed to understand that "people will die" was a polite way of saying "you will be killing people."
AND, we can all certainly pray to her lord and savior, that doesn't cost a dime.
If we're all going to die, I think our leader should set a good example and demonstrate how its done
One thing Trump has done by replacing curious, hard working critical thinking individuals with lazy, arrogant, cynical sycophants is these latter are now at the surface. No longer are these self satisfied” experts “ hidden from sunlight in darkened bars and street corners ranting on and on about such matters as curing Covid with bleach.
I hearbye order the weather to be nice from now on. Plants will grow and there will be no more weather disasters. I have spoken and the weather will obey.
Chris, don't forget to cancel all those nasty tornadoes that the Democrats send to our beautiful states every year, please...
Get rid of the Jewish Space Lasers that start forest fires.
Good remainder!!!!
I will take it under consideration in 2 weeks and then I'll take it under consideration in another 2 weeks and then....you know the drill.
We know Chris TACO. 😝
You mean then ones David Richardson, FEMA, was 'unaware' of- the season that produces them?
He's a real peach.
Agreed. Replace Lysenko with Navaro and Soviet Agriculture with American Economy and watch history repeat...
When you have a cult the beliefs of the cult leader are the only truths.
I can’t help but think of the “Cargo Cults” that arose on some islands in the Pacific after WWII. The isolated islanders who had become accustomed to airdropped pallets of food and supplies meant for troops began building airstrips to encourage the sky to continue dropping food. The islanders appreciated the airdropping g of pallets of food without understanding the underlying origins or reasons for the food falling from the sky.
We see the same thinking in Trump and his MAGA minded government: bountiful harvests, people living longer, cleaner environment. Ergo we don’t need scientists or science.
Trump is still mad that NOA contradicted his Sharpie effort to make the map of hurricane’s path consistent with one of his public misstatements. Revenge is his version of ketamine.
Trump is all about revenge. But MAGA voters are by and large unaware of or at least suspicious of the underlying science that allows us to have clean air, water, and plentiful
Food ….not to mention the physics of our weather systems and our climate, which can be explained by science and then prepared for by individuals, communities, state and national governments. Trump’s revenge comes in the form of poisoning voters’ minds against science and scientists, which then encourages voters to go along with Trump’s destruction of the institutions of science that inform our government policies.
And yet his approval rating continues to grow the economy to can. You continues to move forward on an even keel with less inflation than the last four years. Gas prices are down a buck 50 to 2 $ a gallon egg prices are down 60%. The border is closed men cannot participate in women’s sports without violating the law and illegal aliens and illegal. Criminal aliens are being arrested and deported if possible. And your problem is?
Let me see if I can make you aware of the outside world for just a brief moment here’s a couple of postings from a few days ago
Here’s a link, you might enjoy of Jake, Tapper and Alex Thompson meeting with Stephan A Smith. On the cover-up and denial of reality regarding the Biden administration, including the lawfare.
And then I have a couple of statistics to share with you if I can copy and post them here. Only 16% of of voters believe that the Democrats have strong leadership where they believe that 40% of Republicans have strong leaders. 19% of democrats view the party as the party of getting things done versus 36% the Republicans is getting things done and this is from a Democrat poll
All done on CNN.
Your reply to my comment suggests I was talking about economic issues or approval ratings, or the cognitive abilities of presidents. It wasn’t. It was simply commenting on President Trump’s dislike of science that conflicts with his beliefs and his seemingly incessant attacks on scientists within government and at university institutions, especially Harvard. And every occasion is taken to denigrate scientists by firing them, withholding funding for science, and allowing RFK to claim the science that gave us such things as the polio vaccine, is fraudulent and/or unhealthy, eg., causing autism, even though there is no creditable evidence to support that claim. Such spurious attacks on science and scientists send the message to voters at large that science is a waste of money and deserving of budget cuts.
I’m not sure what you mean by “growing the economy” . The Dow has dropped 5.5% since January 20, 2025. And Indeed Hiring Lab reports “it remains uncomfortably difficult for unemployed people to quickly find a job”. And internship postings are down 11% from where they were in 2022 and 2023. If I were a new college grad, I’d be very concerned.
https://youtu.be/TBAE7HeA-ls?si=TCQlPcNX6NsDZBcR
Trumps pathetic ego Trumps everything. His family picked that name. Protected by a mountain of money, and now has adoring cult, he glories in bullying others.
By Cult you mean 75 million voters, correct?
Nailed it.
Xweet "Physics is bunk" on a smart phone.
🎯
Reality may hit the southern coastal states this summer. They have experience with what competent weather forecasts and hurricane warnings have looked like, as well as FEMA responses afterward. We shall see how they feel when they may not know what is coming, and there is no FEMA to help with the recovery.
My line of thinking exactly--some people have to experience rock-bottom before they wake up to reality....
But only if it affects their immediate family!
Let's face it: what we're dealing with here in this country is a massive case of defective thought processes compounded by stupidity, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. FDR's Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, hit the nail on the head about what government is:
"The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to facilitate the means by which all the people under its jurisdiction can access the best possible life."
We have 340,000,000 people in this country. That's why 1,000,000 have net worths of at least $10 million and 902 are billionaires. If there were only 3,400,000 people there wouldn't be such wealth held by the few. We're in this together. The people have earned and deserve to have health care, education, housing, employment, and more. But, the MAGA folks are more interested in outlawing abortion and crushing immigrants, women and gay rights advocates, etc. Our war is with ignorance, stupidity and prejudice.
There’s a new statement about the Democrat party, that you don’t want to hear but, you need to hear…The Democrats used to be a party, now it’s a mental health disease. Not my saying, but growing in popularity. And there’s a reason why. Get over yourself. Having to do with wealth in this country it's called capitalism .It’s goal is where people can achieve as much as they want. And you can look to the basis of all this wealth by the 40 years of Democrat control in Congress. And frankly, Richard, your war is with each other and yourself. No even minded, intelligent individual would buy what you’re trying to sell. This election was not lost because people Believed your rhetoric, in my most humble opinion.
this country is so great that even the haters like many here refuse to leave in search of a delusional nirvana. Some of the “Things” that you think people DESERVE…have to be earned in this country. NO PLACE ON EARTH OFFERS YOUR DREAM OF ALL THESE THINGS PEOPLE ‘DESERVE”….FOR FREE..
This country is the leader of the free world for a reason.
By the way, the people have healthcare that they choose. We don’t have a single payer system like Obamacare, which only involves 12 1/2 to 13% of the population
We are not a socialist country either. There are many that that have free healthcare for all , and people are “free” and are certainly welcome to go and become citizens of the country or those countries.
The people have an education system that is unfit for use and is a relative failure.
It has especially failed our youth who can’t even read or write, or are competent in math skills… and know little about history As I mentioned to you once before back in 1979, we were number one of the world in education and now we are 40th all under Democrat control. See if democrats believe in choice. In fact, if you want to hear the word, oligarch again or oligarchy, you’re talking about the education system in this country that refuses to allow for free choice in education, and will not fund it so instead, people are mandated to learn the dictum and the one-sided views of their teachers, without having an opportunity to see what else is out there in the world. And this is especially hurtful to our youth, who are malleable to say the least.
And I just love when you come out with this imagination that Americans are against immigrants. If not, it was so sad I would be able to stop laughing until I was in my grave… we are all immigrants. Many of us are citizens. The majority of this country are supportive of all legal immigrants. But NOT illegal immigrants, who Chose, in many cases to sneak into this country to take advantage of the system, without paying the price of waiting like everyone else for the quota to be fulfilled that was set, by the way Richard by Congress.
Democrats believe in choice , or so they say…except in the case of free speech, Healthcare, education, cars, straws, trade, smoking, except for of course cannabis , plastic bags, food, and lightbulbs.
I believe I even mentioned to you that it seems like 95% of Harvard and other Elite school professors are Democrats/liberals, including the vast majority of public education instructors as well.
In the case for abortion, as you put, it is now give it back to the states for them to choose what they want, and some states will choose to allow it in some states will choose not to. Some say it is killing a human being. But as you realize here, people can live with where they want , so if that’s so important to them, they can live in a state that allows it. In many areas of government states have different rules and people who like the rules in the state stay there and those that don’t tend to leave
You might want to see where people are leaving now.
Oh, and I scoff at your commentary about racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and the other imaginary phobias that you might have… there are people on all sides of that issue and most people believe in equal treatment, not special treatment.
And there is a huge difference!!
I want to continue to analyze your post, but that really pretty much sums it up.
I made my case above. Not all of us can earn a Ph.D. and a J.D. from Harvard, as I did. While I am a confirmed atheist, I subscribe to what Jesus is alleged to have said in Matthew 25: 34-46 - "even as you do it unto the least of these." Without the people, there would be no multi-millionaires and billionaires. We're all in this together. As Frances Perkins stated, government should be for all the people. That means, in my opinion, that health care, employment, education, housing and more is an entitlement by virtue of one being a human in our particular society. I don't apologize for the position. Will some "take advantage" of the situation? Of course, just as there are some billionaires who have no difficulty watching people starve to death. Sadly, we don't live in a perfect world.
Well, I started commenting but got interrupted. Nobody wants to take anything away from the impressive accomplishment of a juris doctorate and a PhD from the University, such as Harvard. However, Harvard has lost some of its status/credibility due to its lack of protection of Jews and its failure to denounce in action, creased antisemitism
And of course that doesn’t apply to your accomplishments
However, I am able to disassociate your opinions from your degrees.
And you were absolutely correct about without the people there would be no millionaires. However, to become a millionaire, there are risks you must take that many aren't willing to take.. there’s effort that’s needed to be expended that Many are not willing to expend. There is also sacrifices that many are not willing to sacrifice. And there is also a modicum of luck and good fortune. In fact, I have a number of different sayings that I’ve learned over the years hanging on a wall of my office
This particular one says “ happy are those who dream dreams, and are willing to pay the price to make those dreams come true”. Almena created equal, but not all men pursue the same goal especially those monetary goals.
So in a capitalistic society, those who work hard and smart, provide produce extra effort, and are willing to take risks are rewarded by money, which, of course, that affords you amor let’s call it a comfortable life.
Frances Perkins was right, but your definition of right the and right delineated in the preamble to the constitution limitations, such as those in the preamble to the constitution are two totally disassociated things.
We have a government role we have education for all your healthcare for all we have jobs for all we have all those things for people based on certain qualifications to attain those jobs have prerequisites.
Government of this United States should be equal to all persons, regardless of race, religion, sex, national origin, etc. Put the key word that the Democrats seem to dismiss ignore or the words equal
Equal means exactly that it does not mean special it means equal
As far as billionaires who don’t care according to you about watching someone die, keep in mind that 99% of those people we’re not always billionaires so you should be careful as to defining these people as billionaires.
I would suggest to you that it’s not the billionaires you need to worry about as far as caring about the death of people it’s the criminal element that doesn’t care not the billionaires.
Finally, as I said earlier, the Nirvana you’re looking for does not exist. Every country has its strengths and its weaknesses. This country has been one of the most benevolent in the world, but we can’t even pay our bills and the debt that we now old is greater than the entire defense budget of the United States. Alas, we can no longer be the world’s defender, and we could no longer be the feeder to all.
And I’m sure you’re familiar with the test looks like the one I’m gonna ask you do you know who contribute for the taxes paid by the taxpayers of the United States? Do you know how much of the total income tax is paid by the top 1% of this country? And follow it all down the list because I will tell you this and there’s a statistic that you should know to make sure you have balance when you evaluate things The bottom, 50% of wage earners in this country pay 3% of the total income tax
"A rose by any other name is still a rose." A tax paid out of earnings is still a tax on one's income, aka an income tax. Workers' compensation, Social Security, Medicare, taxes paid on necessities, all take a large portion of workers' incomes and constitute a large portion of the taxes that governments at all levels collect. They're taxes on income. Most are regressive, meaning that they're paid by those least able to afford it.
Just so you know, the number the top 1% of income earners in this country pay 40% of the taxes top 20% pay 70% of the taxes And this may surprise you, but I've always been surprised that there's a cap on Social Security. I know why there Is a cap, but I don't agree with it. No matter what you earn, you should pay Social Security accordingly
Respectfully, I would like to challenge your idea that reality will never conform to ideology.
First, we need to believe in something. As Barack Obama once said, “Putin has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t have to get anyone to believe anything. All he has to do is convince enough people not to believe in anything.”
Beyond that, it’s important to believe in the right thing.
An “ideology” is a system of ideas based on one of two ideas. The first is the moral idea that the intrinsic value of every human being is equal to the intrinsic value of every other human being, and the second is the immoral idea that “we” are—or sometimes just “I” am—more important than “them”.
The founding principle of a moral ideology is some version of “treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot.” The founding principle of an immoral ideology is some version of “do unto others before they do unto you.”
In other words, reality will never conform to an immoral ideology, and a moral ideology conforms to reality.
Well said, James!
"“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.” Following yesterday's letter, Professor concludes with this key reminder. Trump and MAGA sets policies based on ideology and inform them to their voters by lying. Fox News is their main channel. Voters learn the truth when too late to do anything but "die."
Science is true, whether you believe it or not, as Neil deGrasse Tyson pointed out.
Well, he wrote that's not true and I totally disagree with your assessment as well
If you'd like to make specific affirmations of exactly what you're talking about, I would love to hear what they are
You also ought to probably better understand the word Maga, because obviously people talk of it as a dirty word if the liberals had come up with the words, Maga, you would be worshiping them at the altar of freedom
I'm surprised that anyone would use them in a derogatory way because they simply say make America great again and anyone who finds fault that probably should not be here
"Put 'em Back the Way they Was."
https://youtu.be/D8zf3-IlEqk
Linda, you do realize that this country was founded on the reality of ideology. Freedom of speech, FREEDOM OF RELIGION , which implies… freedom of thought aka ideology
And I agree that many people are too deeply immersed in ideology… however, in the name of freedom, it’s their life and they can do whatever they feel is right for them.
As do most of the people here….
"Rick, you do realize you're a truly pompous, condescending ass, don't you?"
Get a life, man.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, sir, but it doesn’t change the facts.
Have you investigated how many pompous condescending and incorrect postings are are here in this thread? I am simply responding to the misguided messages, close mindedness, and refusal to make themselves aware of news that they are not getting. I have posted many links that are confirming what I am saying. The stories here are all but one-sided views/opinions with one-sided links.
You might want to watch a right leaning cable news network to get the other side of the story.. that you are NOT getting here, Internet even aware that you’re not getting it.. and if you’d like to know why Fox News has an example has 65% of cable news viewership you might better understand what I’m saying here. Fox News has work your shift Melvin, CNN and MSNBC combined. And has surpassed ABC News. Lies, deceit, and cover-up can only last so long before people realize they are being lied to.
Here’s an example. And it’s getting worse
https://youtu.be/TBAE7HeA-ls?si=TCQlPcNX6NsDZBcR
Fox News has more viewership. …..Sorry somebody was talking in the background…., than cnn and msnbc combined
If you read my book you would understand my response
Who is actually running our country? Miller and Vaught? FEMA Director does not know there is a hurricane season? How did he get confirmed?
Last week, people in a northeast Pennsylvania town near me were shocked and upset by an ICE raid at a local restaurant. However, with the political nature of the area being what it is, this is what the majority voted for.
Deporations. Disappeared people. Arrests and detentions without warrants. Masked, unidentified men manhandling people.
Did the town's residents think the felon didn't mean it? Did they think it wouldn't happen in their community? Were they not paying attention? Do they not care as long as its not them -- yet?
Wait until your rural hospitals close and critically ill or injured people don't survive the long trip to an urban one. Wait til your parents and/or in-laws have nowhere to go because their Medicaid was stopped. Wait til you need medical care but either can't afford it or go broke getting treatment.
You voted, knowingly or unknowingly, for this abject cruelty. Shame on you if it was intentional. If it wasn't, you'd better start paying attention and speak up for the defenseless. Otherwise, you're going to be next. You're already in the crosshairs.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Getting closer to that moment JL.
Don’t understand why the medical establishment isn’t up in arms. Not only will our health care be a skeleton, their livelihood will be on the chopping block. Do any still subscribe to the Hippocratic oath?
Why is your ire directed towards doctors who've been cut off at the knees and seen research programmes slashed? I'm not sure what the Hippocratic oath has to do with it, but how about targeting with emails and protest these physicians who've abandoned their conscience and their constituents: Senators Marshall, Cassidy, Rand Paul, Barrosso.
Congressmen/women: Des Jarlais, Neal Dunn, Mark Green, Andy Harris, Ronny Jackson, John Joyce, Mike Kennedy, Rich McCormick, Marianne Miller-Meek, Greg Murphy, Bob Onder.
I do that but I know medical people who are proud magats. Guess that colors me mad
I read yesterday that applications for Canadian medical licenses from American physicians is up 750%. Brain drain indeed. Yet the AMA is silent.
My wife just now told me that she read something similar.
My niece, a PA, and her husband, a physchologist, moved to Canada in April. They saw this coming and worked with an immigration attorney in Canada to escape legally. They have a trans child in lived in rural Pennsylvania. Our loss and Canada's gain are well deserved. Too bad for the uneducated and unhealthy in America.
How sad. I hope you're able to visit often. Hugs.
They need a spokesmodel like Dems do. Don’t blame any who leave. Most of us can’t
The health care system is swamped with work and is short staffed. They are bemoaning the terrible government, especially Kennedy.
A long term look at what we have done in bringing down the climate threats and other damage prevention, and what should be possible is shown at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSDchDM61GI
I met Dr. Tom English, about a dozen years ago and met people that worked with him on starting to get the nuclear waste under control (something my son now works on keeping up with as the old containers fail), and the California Clean Air Act that I could see reducing the smaze, smog , and invisible gasses that created so many asthmatic problems. A lesser known nuclear waste problem in the Coldwater Creek area of Saint Louis Conty Missouri (that makes me shudder, and should give everyone a peek at what neglect can do, from the degradation of controls to leaving uranium purification powdery waste to just blow in the wind and contaminate the water is at https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2025/06/02/nuclear-waste-st-louis-manhattan-project
From frequent talks with him before and after presentations, I learned about industrial waste recycling and recovery of valuable (otherwise toxic materials) from electronic waste (some practical benefits that really were worth it, if not as essential as adapting to keeping the climate healthy.
Though he has made or been witness to more ecological improvements and reduction in nuclear waste control, his passion is in the demonstrable ability to keep climate change from being far worse. The link includes multiple presentations on different topics, interspersed with periods of questions from the audience, which to me helps cover a huge amount of ground with far more understandable summaries of all the accumulating evidence, and demonstrations of how we have adapted and need to keep adapting to the actual conditions.
We now have very much better weather and climate monitoring tools to see where more effort can provide better pay offs. One part about warmer climate doubling the tree devastating bugs in Canada is noticeable in the recent past and present wild fires in Canada.
I’m in a bit of a rush so not so well at editing the important stuff or even my own version of more personal challenges I suspect many more are dealing with, such as the following.
I have trouble keeping up with the VA clinic cancellations and changes in Primary doctors, seems 4 have been cancelled and I haven't been able to see the same new (seemingly temporary primary physicians) 4 our of 4 times. I don't blame the physicians for the turmoil in the VA, but would like to see them back on track sometime before the little problems become big problems. The hard-won improvements since the 1980s seem to all being trashed by this administration so bent on extending the devastating revenue shortfalls from continuous tax cuts for the exponentially wealthier that I see as the major cause of another potential great depression, and climatic failure to keep the planet as healthy for humans as we should be capable of.
Off to our Tuesday morning protest, for now.
And our knowledge at the time made us believe all the operating plans & cleanup plans were safe. Boy, did science set us straight! Wait! The facts have been decided to be exaggerations & risk was low. Why then, are there huge fences & security guards that watch for headlights that stop near the fences of Hanford?
I don't disagree, it will never be safe enough to not need the fences and security, but they have been for decades now, doing the best they can to keep making it a little safer all the time. It can't be left unattended either, they found they have to chemically separate as much as they can (as I understand it) to make vitrification work well enough at some points along the way. It seems a very thankless job, that takes great care and skill to do it safely and effectively. We will need to keep training new people to replace the ones that need to retire at some point.
If there are areas where they are now making greater efforts to keep the spent fuel and massive amounts of productions waste safe, I'd appreciate knowing where they are doing so. I do have some ideas on who to ask and who to trust, as well as others who are extremely technically competent (many now retired), but who followed all the rules Adm Hyman Rickover taught them. But they sometimes seem unaware of the newer replacements that are not bad people just under trained and inexperienced compared to the people they have replaced. To me we need another Rickover (who never wanted to see Civilian Nuclear power since they would never keep it up to his standards). Instead we got people like Rick Perry, who wanted to get rid of the Department of Energy (which he was appointed to head), and didn't realize it was responsible for our nuclear arsenal NRC, etc. We may need some for defense or deep space probes but it isn't worth the other costs and risks for most of our power.
Personally, I don't want to see any new nuclear power with all its long term waste problems and over dependence on grids in place of as much resilient and more local Solar and Battery (or other practical energy storage such as Pumped Hydro). The last time I talked to Robert F Hemphill Jr. he told me he had been able to get the wholesale price of his early grid-scale solar and battery installations down to 8 cents per kWh, and was seeing long term contract bids going below 2 cents per kWh. There will never be nuclear power in that range.
There is enough use for well planned grids as long as their cost and upkeep makes sense to move energy from whee it is something like the surplus solar energy I believe San Diego had to pay to ship to Arizona in place of contract holders that have obsolete gas generators that cost more to operate and maintain.
I look at as the old Central Steam Heating Plants we used to have on military bases. Who would design such systems today
Remember the new houses built much more communications, telephone, etc wiring built 20 or 30 years ago. Now we have Wi-Fi, and fiber-optic that drastically reduces the need for hard wires running everywhere.
I live in Western WA, just a short drive to Hanford in Eastern WA. The joke for years is about the glow- in- the - dark tumbleweeds & rabbits. Cleanup, as it is, will never provide a clean environment.
It took a lot to get it started but the people I talked to are dedicated to doing it right no matter how restrictive the budgets have been. One problem is the aging out of some that have years of experience, and the effort it takes to try to capture all they have learned so that the newer people can continue to not only use all they have learned through experience, and keep improving as much as they can. One problem is the old single wall storage tanks are corroding so they are moving the contents to newer double walled tanks that are safer and can be inspected more easily.
I live on the other side of the state from St. Louis. The local coverage has been horrifying and the state is just ignoring it.
If Kennedy had a good idea, it is buried in bull schitt
Doctors were removed from the drivers seat of medicine decades ago. We are working stiffs now. Employees. Those who mention our country homes and apathy for our patients don’t have a clue. The 70’s have passed, and with it the privilege and wealth in the medical profession. I will put on my faded scrubs now, and head off to my rural critical access hospital in my 25 yo toyota.
Administrators don’t have an oath. Only fealty to corporate overlords.
Thank you for being there.
I could not thank the doctors, nurses and aides who were there for me and for my husband when he was dying of a particularly aggressive kidney cancer attacking his bones.
The businesses are profit driven. Changed everyone’s focus over the years. Docs are in business like never before, from where I sit
I don’t know where you sit. Maybe plastic surgery? Derm? The trench doctors are all employees! ED docs, primary care, internal medicine, critical care. There are more surgical specialties, but nowadays most surgeons taking call at hospitals are also employees. There were 10-12 independent primary care in practice. Now all employees. The world has changed. Doctors are not calling the shots, care is getting worse.
What you say is mostly true, and my docs are likely employees, but some own interest in companies that they set up in related fields, surgery centers, etc.
I've been wondering about that too. For a long time. Doctors could have power but would rather have a country house.
Mine are part owners in related service fields. They work hard so no biggie if they don’t side with the magat evil.
Has to be difficult to speak out when some dipshits of Orange dude decide to invade your private lives, online activities & remind you 'they' know where your family is.
Indeed, we all are under threat, some more than other. Escape, fight, resist. Whatever works for you..
That's the nature of a cult my friend.
Republicans always think the leopards won't eat THEIR faces.
Absolute truth.
Martha- Paragraph 3 in your post: all are true!
Ms. Franklin, I was born and raised in Carbondale in north east Pa. When I was growing up the town was still a community of people from many backgrounds. Many of my friends who grew up there and some who still live there share your sentiment. It is sad and scary. Some of my friends are risking much to actively protest against Trump and his band of arrogant sycophantic thugs.
Absolutely true
Would it be better if Trump were running things? All his players are equally dangerous. Trump's role is to let each run riot over the part of the government where they can do the most damage: Miller shaving immigrants' rights and heads; Vought stripping budget and staff. Trump's has collected a whole gang of such misguided fanatics. One need only think of Hegseth and his passion for lethality. Chaos and ruin seem to be the goals, financed by us, of course. These people aren't cheap.
Only the worst the worst are approved by Trump. This is likely a product of Trump's twisted character and not under orders of Vladimir Putin, but it might as well be.
That guy Hegseth cannot seem to stay out of the news and that may ultimately be his downfall.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/02/gabrielle-cuccia-ona-reporter-fired-hegseth
For the sake of this country, I hope this "Heggshell" guy breaks in pieces ASAP.
Ha Ha Ha!
Exactly
I think Hegseth would have been forced to resign in disgrace if the usual leaders would have analyzed his verbage.
Why are you surprised the FEMA director doesn't know there is a hurricane season when the scumbag president doesn't know that tariffs are a tax on consumers? .Or maybe he knows and it's lying?
I am not surprised by the stupidity of these folks. I am surprised or questioning how did he pass the Senate confirmation process. I guess, I shouldn't be. As my husband said, "Rubber stamp senate"
Look out, cause Miller is going to be even worse now that his wife has left him for Musk. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/stephen-miller-breaks-silence-about-family-life-amid-rumors-that-his-wife-left-him-for-elon-musk/articleshow/121577556.cms
Did Katy Miller leave her marriage or her job in the WH? I am still trying to figure that out.
Snopes isnt sure, either. https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/02/stephen-miller-wife-musk/
She’s probably agreed to be one of his baby incubators for the money.
Baby # 14? Since we really do not know the details, we will have to wait until someone talks.
How did any of the Idiot Cabinet get confirmed? By a bunch of Republican traitors who let January Sixth and Trump/Vance into power. Look at all of them. Not one is up to his job. Not one.
Please, if any of you can argue otherwise, do it.
Insanity is now Republican orthodoxy.
Purobi, these questions should be asked over and over. But we must follow up with truthful answers.
Donald is the monkey on a leash, meant to distract and entertain the street crowd, while the organ grinders and their pickpockets rob the crowd blind.
There are two organ grinders: the Tech Bros lust for power through wealth and the Theo Bros lust for power through control.
The crowd is largely oblivious to what is happening to them as they applaud the spastic antics of the monkey accompanied by the sounds from the organs. The two organ grinders seem to be playing the same tune, but there is discord between them.
The Tech Bros are running a short con, amassing all the world's wealth to themselves by stealing privileged information about everyone and legislating transfers of wealth to themselves from everyone else through the government.
The Theo Bros are running a long con, seeking to force everyone to live by their lists of "should-nots" and "must-nots" – or die. They have been promised that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess." Once that happens, Jesus will return from Heaven and scoop them up to their mansions on gold-plated boulevards. To paraphrase Joni, "the earth will be destroyed anyway, so why bother to save it now?"
Neither organ grinder cares how many in the crowd die. In fact, that's kind of the point. The fewer people there are, the less obstacles to their goals.
And was there a Democrat that stupid.
He's "acting" so he has not had to go through the confirmation process. It's the Felon's (or, rather, Stephen Miller's) tactic for avoiding confirmation hearings.
It's OK if you are a Republican - same as it ever was.
How did he grow up in the US and not know there is a hurricane season? Did he never watch the news?
That the Republican fantasy doesn’t work is a well proven factor. Good thing we’ve invented the wheel because going around and around which, adding a few more arounds, doesn’t facilitate progress or reaching ‘promised’ (“going to be the very best”) destinations -just messes ( which after -per elected- the Democrats clean up).
That’s fact.
But facts are not Republican guides, nor rules guardrails. So…here we are again going round and round (again 🙄🤦♀️).And oh yes the mess, the clean up after this regime , will be yet another Democratic job.
That’s Fact.
Ho hum.
I have reduced my emails unsubscribing from dozens. Thanks for all your efforts, accomplishments, consistency. Carry on.
I maintain my/our protest -since the late 60’s-the left side-will prove the facts again. I look forward to jailed ,well proven, liars.
How did SO many ill-suited get confirmed??
He's lying bigtime
He’s “acting” director. No hearings, yet
Because he is an ass kisser to the orange dude.
Heather concludes -- speaks throughout -- quite sadly, mournfully for us (all of us). U.S. and the world.
Science, education, reality-based reporting all ought to be at top form across the U.S. They are not. People like Joni Ernst -- and too many ignoramuses, MAGA cultists, cynics like her -- speak to the pathetic ideology and entertainment sloganeering and sensationalism that have taken over.
Michael Lewis ("The Big Short," and much more) in an interview two days ago was wondering about this tyranny of vulgarity that has ascended the U.S. He was pondering how it is, specifically, that the corporate rich keep paying themselves obscenely lavishly -- and couldn't care less how further behind their own employees fall. These masters of multi-billionaire-dollar bonuses for themselves "persuade themselves that they’re solely responsible for their good fortune – that they don’t really owe anybody anything.” “They’ve been told over and over, you’re in this place because you won the competition.”
They did. They first mastered those training grounds for elite vulgarity -- testing. Then they forgot, he says, "all the accident that was involved, all the help they got, all the gratitude they should feel.”
“They did. They first mastered those training grounds for elite vulgarity -- testing.”
Politely disagreeing. They were born to wealthy families and/or their parents had connections to the people who could help them get what they needed to succeed.
Legacy humans
Jan, my former boss referred to them as members of the Lucky Sperm Club.
However, I think both you and Phil can be correct, and in fact, are. That the net worths of the top .01% of our population have skyrocketed to stratospheric levels is the result of LSC members exploiting their generational wealth. But there are only so many "Old Money" families.
Yet, we have witnessed a staggering expansion of the top .01%. These new arrivals came from somewhere, but not from Old Money. We must assume they are people who are devoid of humanities and humanity as Phil suggests, who played the "greed-is-good" game and "won." Still, it's a hollow victory.
If we went into specifics, Jan, we'd see many, many more from families like Vance's.
Schools favor the progeny from families without much money, as those from the wealthy, in that schools for testing narrow values to just a few coldly rational and nothing more.
This is particularly and more grievously true in that schools -- to give testing full dominance -- have gotten rid of humanities. Nothing in the schools anymore teaches to see "others" in any of the ways Michael Lewis, for one, wishes for more personal accountability.
Doesn't exist, Jan, when "the human" gets studiously, systematically reduced to numbers, groups, categories, and the linear chronological only.
Thanks for mentioning Michael Lewis. He is another voice for sanity and knows of what he speaks. Sorry I missed that interview…
Here it is, JD:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=michael+lewis+on+what+i+learned+by+studying+the+elites&qpvt=michael+lewis+on+what+i+learned+by+studying+the+elites&FORM=VDRE
TY
Thank you so much, will check it out
Phil...I so appreciate Michael Lewis. I think his Brief But Spectacular piece was from 2015, but it all still stands.
His book The Fifth Risk is good. Having worked for NOAA I was happy he covered them. Although NOAA does a lot more than weather for the American people.
Once again thank you for your wisdom. In our local paper a woman Trump supporter wrote that she worked hard for what she has and insinuated that most anyone can succeed if they are good Christians and willing to work for it. I guess if you are rich and powerful then you are entitled .
Joni Ernst's correct but brain-dead statement leaves out the fact that the majority of people do not go from being alive to being dead without interacting with the health care system -- for diagnosis, treatment, cure or care.
The 1960's brain drain saw Brits with advance degrees in many fields, especially the sciences, emigrate to America. Now Regime47 is pushing Americans with advance degrees in the sciences to leave America for European countries where their expertise is appreciated. Shorter: Trump & Co are leading the US to a new Dark Ages.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/04/trump-academic-freedom/682648/?gift=p4GRqRxyScAXMvm0CnpQyRSVqryu-4pu59Cx8Y7T2UQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
But they sure claim Jesus when the afterlife is mentioned. As to life here, you are on your own, unless you are rich and powerful.
“Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy’d the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And, while we dream on this,
Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?”
― Matthew Arnold
Haven’t read that in years. TY for posting. 🫶🏽
Something tells me that selling the Christian after-life as a replacement for the welfare net is not going to be easy.
Remember Russell, it's a cult. They will believe.
I didn't detect a whole lot of sympathy for Joni Ernst's appeal for stoicism at that town hall. It's going to be a tough sell.
As Joe Hill wrote,
“You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye)
In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high)
Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay)
You'll get pie in the sky when you die (That's a lie!)”
Love this, just think what humans could do if nobody cared who got the credit
I guess we wouldn't be humans then. We have seen a lot of progress since the war. What is known as the post-war consensus delivered rising standards of living for most people for many years. We've seen the end of colonialism and now its last vestiges seem incongruous to most of us. People's mores have changed, especially in the field of minority rights and most developed countries have legislation that protects them. We also seen incredible progress in technologies (biotech, genetics, computer science, physics and astronomy, for example) that are outstripping our capacity to understand and regulate.
Reaction set in during the Reagan/Thatcher years. Now we have huge levels of income inequality in developed countries that most closely embraced the neoliberalism of Hayek and the Chicago School. That has brought with it a whole host of other social problems as emphatically shown in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's 'The Spirit Level'. Now there's widespread distrust of government and this and the advent of social media has created the conditions for a news ecosystem that disseminates conspiracy theories and rubbish and a rampant anti-intellectualism that threatens all that post-war progress.
Love your first paragraph…
I'm going to hope Pope Leo speaks to that on June 14th.
It could have been so bad, thanks Pope Leo
And since we all are going to die, maybe she could die first, say tomorrow, and come back for 10 minutes to tell everybody how wonderful it is and then die again, this time forever.
St Peter is waiting, with a smirk
JD, I wish we could read his mind about his plans for Joni Ernst......then we'll have a smirk....😝
Their behavior is proof that their “belief” is as shallow as the most fragile Humpty Dumpty. Unfunny joke
Yes JD, once in the while they accidently drop their masks and the truth about what they really are is revealed. It turns my stomach upside-down.
But they sure claim Jesus when the afterlife is mentioned. As to life here, you are on your own, unless you are rich and powerful. That “afterlife” thing (the possibility of hell) would slow down some of the evil deeds if they truly believed it. As a man said in 2000, when repubs lied and trashed opponents in the S Carolina primary, we can go to church on Sunday and get forgiven for what we do on Saturday. Never heard a more “un-Christian” statement. They are full of crap.
And now the Trump Jesus will pardon your earthly sins.
Hahaha, surprise
JDinTX, I assume from your handle that you're located in Texas. If so, then you are surrounded by Baptists. That brand of evangelicals includes an interesting tenet in their dogma: "Eternal Security." The tagline is "Once Saved, Always Saved."
Thus, if one has at some point in one's life run down to the altar in a Baptist church, shed a few tears and prayed to "give one's heart to Jesus," then asks to be dunked in the church's baptistery, one is handed a virtual get-out-of-hell-forever card. This card entitles the bearer to live like an absolute hellion Monday through Saturday, then renew the get-out-of-hell-forever privileges on Sunday.
Damn, some surprises in store I’ll bet
God knows what you have done & think Monday through Saturday. My belief.
Extra bonus if you are Catholic: You can have sex (a mortal sin if you are not married to that heterosexual person) on Friday night, but confess it on Saturday (to a celibate, sainted and eager listener) on Saturday, and be absolved of that impurity, so that you can eat a piece of God's body on Sunday. Growing up Catholic was a dizzy and terrifying experience.
Always seemed like a scam to me
The EU seems to have recognised the opportunities made possible by Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/04/france-eu-us-based-scientists-come-to-europe-emmanuel-macron-ursula-von-der-leyen
Seeee!!!! the scumbag president is creating a trade imbalance with the EU. Lets solve it by imposing a 351% tariff...
He's somehow got it into his head that the raison d'etre of the EU is to topple the US economy with aggressive trade policies.
That's only one more symptom of what's going on in his head Russell.
My impression is that most of the time there's not a whole lot going on in there.
Meanwhile, the crazy stories keep coming. Reuters reported that David Richardson, acting head of FEMA, told staff yesterday that he didn't know the United States had a hurricane season. Boy, is he going to be in for a surprise in the coming months. He's a former combat soldier whom one assumes spent a lot of time out of the country. He replaced another guy who contradicted Trump by saying that he didn't think FEMA should be abolished - essentially saying out loud what most people in the administration were thinking.
Meanwhile, there's a story circulating that Musk was spreading his seed with Stephen Miller's wife, Katie (otherwise known as the Bride of Dracula). Snopes has taken it upon itself to go down this rabbit hole.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/02/stephen-miller-wife-musk/?utm_source=mail.snopes.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=stephen-miller-s-wife-taco-skywriting-claims-adam-sandler&_bhlid=5d4fc1ef97e3353a281b074059c3c89d514bf763
I just remembered (strange for me) this:
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." - Mark Twain
"Why are people leaving Russia, who are they, and where are they going?"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65790759
The Riddle Russia website offers invaluable insights into what's going on in Russia.
https://ridl.io/what-do-russian-men-think-about-mobilisation/
On the Mark Twain quote, it's sometimes tempting to make historical comparisons between the Trump regime and other autocratic regimes in the past - most often the nazis in Germany. I find these parallels an unhelpful distraction especially as there are sometimes more relevant contemporary comparisons i.e. with Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey. Even then, they scarely help with the utter chaos of the Trump administration which largely stem from his politics of resentment.
My living companion has a 55 yo son on Medicaid. He had a traumatic brain injury when he was 26.. He is in a group home that cares for three residents. It employs a total of five part and full time employees. All supported by Medicaid. They are probably safe. But thereg probably won't be a place for the next unfortunate who suffers a head trauma or is born with a fistula that leads to a brain hemorrhage. Medicaid is a block grant program. It is tightly administered by states already. You cut funding you cut services. Period. And yes, people will die. But they will suffer before doing so. And that suffeeing will have compounding social and economic costs. It will affect the whole of society. Assuming there is one. Is this the sort of Meet Your Maker moment the female Congresscritter thinks we should all look forward to ??
I think the prospect of her thinking of others is pretty slim.
JD, is it in the English language a world that expresses much less than "pretty slim".
As you can tell, still trying to learn. ;-)
Ricardo, I asked the Duck (Go Duck Go, no more Google for me) for "synonyms for 'pretty slim,'" I didn't have a lot of success. In this case, "pretty" is a modifier, which in this case means to either weaken or strengthen the word it is modifying. In JD's case with saying that it is highly unlikely that the Senator from Iowa could ever think of others.
To put it more bluntly: English is weird.
Thanks for the lesson Ally.😅
😇
Ricardo, "pretty" is one of those words that appears everywhere in English conversation and means something different in almost every usage.
In JD's sentence, I might substitute "rather." The prospect of Ernst thinking of others is rather slim.
However, if I wanted to more accurately describe the chance of Ernst thinking of others, I would describe it as mighty slim.
If I wanted to hit the probability on the nose, I would write "slim to zero."
Thanks Dale. 👌
Zip
The insolence of Senator Ernst’s comment to her constituents — “we are all going to die” — ignores the serious issue of cuts to Medicaid, which the senator has direct influence over. That everyone is going to die no one questions, it's how well we live that is the concern. Cuts to Medicaid will severely jeopardize the standard of health and quality of life of those receiving its support and likely shorten lives. Ernst needs to address that head on. Why she equates the issue with the tooth fairy is a mystery. Apparently, that inane fantasy was top of mind as she publicly ducked a matter critical for her constituents.
Sen Jod baldly stated what all of their ilk think - they can take whatever they want and taunt you to stop them. So America, what’s it to be?
Yes Constance, "That everyone is going to die no one questions, it's how well we live that is the concern."
Joan, maybe we should take her health insurance away, that we pay for, and see for how long she last, after all, as everybody else, she'll die anyway one day.
Joni (and a duck) cannot strut, they can only waddle. She is what she has always been, an embarrassment when she tries to strut.
And that “apology” while taking a stroll through a cemetery??? Shameful!!!
Unreal that a US Senator would think that a taunting stroll through a cemetery was appropriate. What strange, nasty political party the GOP is. Smdh.
I would suggest that everyone reading today take a moment to call or email her and SHAME her.
Miselle, you cannot shame someone who is incapable of shame. Ernst demonstrated that she is incapable of shame when she made the sarcastic follow-up video.
The best we can hope for is that a flood of phone calls would harass and distract her — still worthwhile objectives.
We can try. Sometimes it is persistance that makes someone change their mind.
Becky, it's not the GOP anymore, it's the maga cult.
You’re right. The GOP is gone, replaced by hateful, traitorous MAGA cult.
Thanks for your reply 👍
unf**kingbelievable. Mockery is not a good look
Call. Write. Email. Unrelentingly.
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to your own reps, as well as those in other states on a specific committee important to a topic you’re sharing. Use your voice and make some “good trouble.”
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Thank you. Thank you for your optimism and hard work. We will prevail.
Thank you so much for your work, Heather. You are the first source that I turn to every day to understand better what is happening.
yes, for so many. I wish it were mandatory reading for Fox viewers (assuming any of them can read). That statistic about the mention - this week! - of Biden 49 times !!!! and Medicaid once ... so depressing, so hope-draining.
Nope. They call her writing "propaganda". I have tried. A lot.
I'm still waiting for JKF, jr to return!
And people keep saying 'don't live in the past.'
Three infographics show how Republican cuts to Medicare will hurt your community and who to hold accountable.
We mapped where the Republican cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Food stamps would hurt the most people in every county in America. This was overlaid with the number of children and seniors living in poverty in those counties. Then we added the Congressional districts including key swing districts. Hold MAGA reps accountable for cutting your benefits to pay back Elon Musk: Start with these key swing districts
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/02/15/hold-maga-reps-accountable-for-cutting-your-benefits-to-pay-back-elon-musk-start-with-these-key-swing-districts/
Trump kills Medicare Telehealth Services: How far will you have to go to stay alive? Check this map.
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/03/02/trump-kills-medicare-telehealth-services/
Trump steals from Medicare to pay crypto billionaire donors: Follow the money
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/05/02/trump-steals-from-medicare-to-pay-crypto-billionaire-donors-follow-the-money/
Thank you Professor Richardson.
I don't believe the criminal-elect has any ideology other than to remain out of prison and to enrich himself through blatant corruption. The GOP ideology is to continue to weaken and destroy any thought of representative democracy by eroding the guardrails of our system, accelerating the extreme concentration of wealth, and dividing and misdirecting our attention to every hot-button issue that polarizes voters.
Joni Ernst simply reminded us of the GOP "Tea Party"/MAGA party line "Let them die." MAGA voters are perfectly fine with that philosophy until it comes for them and their families. While I often think that you get the government you deserve, I also know that voter suppression, gerrymandering, "Citizens United", and the Electoral College all work together to make democracy more improbable in the United States. As real education is politicized, facts, evidence, and science give way to so-called "patriotism" and prayer, the United States gets closer to turning the film "Idiocracy" from a comedy to a speculative documentary of life in America.
Here is the propaganda that the republicans have swallowed (From Project 2025 Plan for Economic Reform for Trump's Second Administration by Lois Alercon):
“Project 2025's vision for healthcare economics combines market principles with targeted assistance, aiming to create a sustainable, efficient system. By reducing federal involvement, encouraging private-sector competition, and granting states more control over Medicaid, Project 2025 proposes a healthcare model that values choice, efficiency, and innovation. While this approach may differ from current systems in countries like the UK or Canada, it seeks to balance public assistance with private initiative, creating a system that meets the needs of a diverse population without overhelming the federal budget.
The ultimate goal is a healthcare environment where Americans have access to affordable, quality care, supported by competition and local decision-making rather than centralized control.
Advocates believe that by drawing from the best aspects of other systems while avoiding their pitfalls, Project 2025 can create a healthcare model that serves the nation well into the future.”
THIS is what they hold as their truth , to the detriment of all of US!
They are simply, and blindly following the script written for them by Vought, Theil and others.
Blather like the wordsmiths have been hoodwinking those who have surrendered their thought processes to Fox. Just let the private sector take care of things for you, So we can have the government for our own pleasure. Good luck with that. Guess who runs the private sector.
So, the 'middle' guy keeps making money while we aren't approved for medical treatment? Guess that is the Project 2025 premise.
The health care system has enough problems so more from the arses will cost lives. Says someone sitting in an ER unit. The medical community should be up in arms, the ones I know are not
Kari, my comment states the obvious, but I can't help writing. The flaw in the P2025 plan, and frankly in the existing U.S. healthcare system, is the attachment of corporate profit to human healthcare.
Good health is not a privilege, but a human right, as implied in three-legged stool enshrined in The Declaration of Independence: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If one is sick or prematurely dead, one cannot have life or be free or happy.
A human right cannot be upheld in a for-profit system. In a for-profit system, the human right of good health becomes a privilege enjoyed by those who can afford it and denied to those who can't. This is immoral.
The error in the P2025 authors' thinking and in the thinking of half of Americans, is that government is a business. It is not. Business exists to create a profit. Government is not a profit-making enterprise. Government isn't even a "thing." Government is simply a METHOD of pooling citizens' resources to accomplish objectives that benefit everyone and could not be accomplished by individuals on their own. While government should be run in a businesslike manner, it is not a business.
When a populace is healthy, everyone prospers. That makes healthcare a government function, not a corporate enterprise.
Maybe if we started teaching Civics in schools again, people could understand this simple principle.
YES please! Bring back Civics, 20th Century History, shop classes, Home Economics to give students a chance to do more than learn by rote what it may take to become an engaged citizen.
Thanks for sharing your thoughtful and enlightening comment. How do we get that wise message across to the Repubs?
Kari, I wish I knew the answer. I know there is no "quick fix" or immediate solution, and frankly, I hold little hope that a long-term solution can be achieved.
Ignorance produces a downward spiral from which there's little hope of recovery, especially when the ignorant people are also lazy.
At the end of my comment, I recommended teaching Civics. How do we do that? We first must stop private interests, abetted by paid-for legislators, from embezzling taxpayer dollars and funneling them to private and parochial schools that do not have public interest in mind.
Privately operated schools, disingenuously claiming to be interested in "scholastic achievement," are really designed to keep "undesirable" students out and ensure that provincial parents can prevent their children from encountering others who are different in any way.
Church-affiliated schools are similar, with the added goal of indoctrinating and thereby proselytizing youths in the hope of perpetuating the religions that own the schools.
Neither type of non-public school is meant to foster cultural harmony or civic responsibility. They are bastions of isolation that instill inflexibility and suspicion at an early age. How can a culture expect to survive when it creates such sharp division among its youth?
Until that system of divisiveness is eliminated, there will be no fertile ground where the seeds of tolerance and understanding can be sown.
Mapping the fatal cost of Republicans gutting FEMA and NOAA as hurricane season approaches
https://thedemlabs.org/2025/06/02/republicans-gut-fema-noaa-as-hurricanes-approach-mapping-the-cost/
When the doctrines of science and the ideology of idiots collide, the result is a weaponized government with the power to destroy everything others have given their all to create. When asked about the importance of science, a child said that it is better to figure things out than to make things up. Posted on T during the first moronic term of the head useless leader.
Also any moron knows that science has the last word on nothing and religion has the last word on everything. No questions asked and no opposition tolerated. Science is all about answering questions, if we have the consciousness of the lowest forms of life.
Fox has the job of entertaining and distracting with propaganda, and our population of fools and sycophants. Some are ignorant, some are the evil in our midst dressed up as fellow humans, the “leaders” are the opposite of what we teach our children to be. Some of us recognize propaganda and reject it, many slurp it up like hogs at the trough. One of those hogs is chump, others are the butchers waiting with their cleavers…. I fear this is word salad at 2am.
No, JD, it makes a lot of sense. "...science has the last word on nothing and religion has the last word on everything" is far more than salad. If you do not question, you never get answers, only doctrine.
That quote made sense to me. Thanks Ally
Nope, not a word salad! Thank you!
I appreciate that. Me and kitty Lulu have a midnight date most nights
Nothing lights my hair on fire like smug religious blather vs. science, research, and creative problem solving.
My hair is about gone…. Red state idiots are a constant source of fuel.
😂
"Stalinism," Mao Tse Tung Thought" and "Fascism" are one and the same.
Same blather, dressed up for the freak show
To think that all of these draconian cuts (and hidden last minute provisions that will make Trump immune to prosecution) are made to enrich billionaires makes me sick.
We can name hurricanes Musk 1, etc. and tornados as Elon 1, etc.