My colleague @JerryMoran and I will not support the MTP to this version of BCRA #HealthcareBill — Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) July 18, 2017 Not just the motion to proceed, but the healthcare bill itself. At least in this current version, it’s dead. Mind you, these senators won’t back it because it’s not “conservative” enough. Stay […]
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recently cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar and launched an embargo, stating that they wanted the media outlet Al-Jazeera shut down, and support for the Muslim Brotherhood ended. Or, more colloquially, and good for a belly laugh, “stop supporting terrorists”, which coming from any of those countries […]
But don’t count them out, they’ve HATED Medicaid and Medicare since the 60s. No one knows why. So, they’ll be back with something equally mean and stingy in some other form.
My bag weighs a ton. Anyone else have this problem? I have laptop, lunch with freezer compartment, gym clothes, cables, chargers, earbuds, contact lens crap, small purse with cards and stuff, pens, small notebook, nice sandals (I sure hope the hot glue keeps them from breaking again), gum, toothbrush, tooth paste, bobby pins, coconut milk hair conditioner, lube (wait, how did that get in there again?), iPhone, other phone that needs to be mailed to kid who is hard on phones…
I need a shoulder massage.
Thanks to the people at Fort Pitt Coffee who gave me the clear duck tape to repair my broken sandal after I pulled it apart when my heel fell into a crack in the pavement.
In the latest version of the healthcare bill, the tax cuts for the wealthy have been removed. I’m not surprised that the financial backers of Republican house and senate members have dropped their demands for this. It seems unlikely that the incredibly wealthy power brokers who funded the Republican juggernaut were really all that concerned about tax cuts. I mean, sure, they were going to ask for it and Republicans were only too willing to give it them as a thank you present.
But the people who own Republican legislators spend millions and millions of dollars at fundraisers every year. They probably spend more of their money trying to get politicians elected than they would hope to benefit from a tax cut.
So what is it they really want? Is it purely ideological? Do they simply think that government has no role in healthcare? Are they zealots for the invisible hand of unfettered capitalism? Do they feel entitled and take for granted that they’ll get everything they demand because it’s worked so well so they’ll keep demanding more and more until we cry uncle? Or is there an end game here that we’re missing?
I just want to remind everyone that there are places in the world where people work for very little money, where drinking water isn’t always clean, where parents can’t afford the fees to send kids to school because the public school system is fractured or non-existent and where sick people die regularly because they can’t afford treatment. Think Bangladesh or Indonesia.
Oh, those poor people, we think as the latest cyclone sweeps them out to sea. Tsk-tsk, so glad we don’t live in a country like that.
But you know, to the super wealthy, regular Americans indistinguishable from Bangladeshis. We’re all lazy slackers who weren’t clever enough to figure out how to exploit other suckers for profit. Listen closely to Donald Trump and how he talks about a rich person and not a poor person in charge of the Treasury and you’ll get an idea of how he and his peers think about the rest of us.
They won’t care what happens to you. It’s your own fault if you fall in hard times. So, we better start looking after our own interests. It’s not a matter of money. It’s just that they don’t want the responsibility. We’re on our own and they have better things to do with their time and money.
Then there’s Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, who has claimed that “there’s not one” woman in America who is unable to afford contraception. Together, these hires represent a familiar Trump administration strategy: putting people in charge of government programs whose goal is to dismantle them.
The influence of the Trump administration’s anti-contraception views is very apparent in a draft regulation, recently leaked to Vox, that would drastically expand the number of employers allowed to opt out of birth control coverage in their insurance plans.
If enacted, the rule will allow any employer, even large, publicly traded corporations, to refuse to cover birth control simply by citing a moral objection.
This could result in hundreds of thousands of women losing contraceptive coverage. As the American Civil Liberties Union has pointed out, the rule makes a shamelessly bad-faith argument, asserting that no woman would go without coverage, since she could always rely on Medicaid or Title X — even as both of those programs are being targeted by the administration for funding freezes or cuts.
Young women should take some organic chemistry, find an old RV, drive it out to the desert…
I’m teaching myself how to play my guitar with Yousician. It’s more like playing Guitar Hero except with real fingering and frets and stuff. Looking forward to my own sing-along.
First Aid Kit:
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Paul Waldman at WaPo breaks down the revised Republican health care plan. To summarize, it’s still a catastrophe for the poor, sick, self employed, elderly, women, children, the disabled, you get the idea. But they cleverly took out the tax cut for the extremely wealthy. I guess the optics on that looked pretty heartless, cruel, selfish, greedy, evil, well, you get my drift.
How much you wanna bet they just add the tax cut to the tax reform package?
They just might pass it this time. I know, I know, the good guys are supposed to win but we are outnumbered. And anyway, last November should have been proof enough that the universe is playing a sick joke on us. So… there’s that…
Just a reminder that if you vote for a Republican for the senate because of his position on abortion, what you’re really signing onto is sticking a knife in children who are already born.
And addicts.
And seniors in Medicaid funded nursing homes.
Those Republicans have got your number, they’ve conditioned you good and you’re willing to kill a lot of people to serve their agenda.
So, it’s murder either way.
Just sayin’.
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Omg, he’s chatting up the First Lady of France:
What she should have said:
“Thank you. While you’re here we can introduce you to a good workout for a man of your age and fitness level. Maybe a seniors class. “
Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]
Everyone will tell you radiotherapy is fatiguing. Oh, gods, it bloody is! I still have idiots in my feeds making up nonsense about how "the left" and Bernie Sanders "ignore" race and gender issues or want to pretend they don't exist or something. These are often accompanied by pictures of either Hillary surrounded by black people or […]
