Obamacare was written as a gift to the health insurance companies. Ok, we aren't going to have single payer, and we aren't going to include a government option where the government acts as an insurance pool. What we will do instead is make the whole country one big risk pool and make everyone a customer of the insurance companies, and if they can't afford it we'll pay a lot of that cost for them. Along with that came some new restrictions on what had to be covered, and what could not be excluded.

This was a big boon to the insurance companies. A mandatory customer base, with premium shortfalls paid by the government? Sweet - what more could an industry ask for? (especially an industry that costs so much and adds so little in value).

Yet, of course, they wanted more. How about a mandatory customer base, except we don't have to pay for things we don't want to, like preexisting conditions? How about we get to jack the rates up on old people, who actually get sick, and leave the rates we have for young people? How about we find new ways to gouge our customers and give them nothing (certainly not healthcare) in return?

Now, it is gratifying to see, Democrats around the country, in CA and even in the Congress, are starting to make noise about single payer. It would thrill me to no end to see this sane, affordable, humane, policy arise in the US. Thanks to the m*f*ing insurance companies' bottomless greed, killing the golden goose.

I was reminded of this when I heard that the Stonewall Inn's national status is going to be "reviewed" by Trump.

What a f*cking robbery.

Why (oh why) is it necessary for every fleeing flunky from Faux News to get to continue to broadcast over (in some cases extremely more) legitimate networks? Is the country really clamoring for more Greta V. S.? We can't do without Megyn "White Santa and Jesus" Kelly?

If I'm NBC, I think "you know, we have an entire stable of up and coming talent, and we can employ people who haven't been lying their fool asses off for the last fifteen years". But then, I'm not NBC.

with several notable exceptions.

You can just see the confused, scared looks on our television talking heads' faces, as they think, "Well, before I was just nice to everyone, and no one got mad at me. That's the right strategy, isn't it? What could go wrong?"

When you see our politicians/whatever Jarvanka is up against European journalists for even five minutes, you instantly realize how hollow they are. Bush the Dumber was revealed instantly as an idiot by three minutes with a UK reporter (ok, that wasn't much of a secret). The German host that took Ivanka apart with two simple questions. The reporters that gave Orange Foolius such fits asking about his anti-semitic comments.

Our press is so bad, it allows this useless, substance-less layer of political crud to grow, made up of uninformed, stupid, and mendacious politicians, on top of our political discourse. In other countries, at least the reporters are smart and can scrub away that fatty rind by making them look as stupid as they are.

The deference, the member-of-the-court politeness, the lack of information on the issues . . . it's no wonder our populous is so cretinous in their voting habits.

I get evil, that makes sense to me. Some people just are. But could we at least expose and dispose of the stupid? Smarter evil politicians, please.

Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska has never endorsed Heath Mello for public office nor has Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska given Heath Mello a 100% rating, as some media outlets have erroneously reported,” the group said in a statement.

Because it refers to Planned Parenthood Voters of Nebraska, which is a FaceBook group, run by god knows who. Not the Planned Parenthood organization in Nebraska.

PPVN, for all we know, could be in on the smear of Mello and Sanders. As far as I know, PPVN has never been cited by anyone as an organization we should give two shits about.

https://www.thenation.com/article/why-was-heath-mello-thrown-under-the-bus/

I exaggerate (a little). There will always be jobs. But maybe not a lot of them, and certainly not with the same ratio of people to jobs as there has been.

Technology is a rachet, moving towards fewer and fewer jobs. Everything that can be done by a machine instead of a human is (usually) a cost savings, so there is enormous pressure that way.

How will we deal with this? With the "protestant work ethic" that the workers of this country take to heart (thanks to it being enforced by their capital bearing masters), we deal with this situation now by mocking people who don't have jobs, or don't have adequate jobs, and our government seems to be run by people who want to make the situation of the un- or under-employed even worse.

"there but for the grace of god go I" we say under our breath, as we continue to labor away at one of the ever shrinking pool of jobs.

At some point, the only answers are 1) minimum income - a living income no matter what you are doing, which maintains your life and health and makes your healthcare completely untethered to employment OR 2) a feudalistic/fundamentalist/fascist hellscape, with the 1% living better than royalty, and the rest of the population slaving for their comforts while being worked to death and given nothing (or very little) in return

1) is completely politically unthinkable in our current state
2) is completely shitty and horrible, but seems to be what we are hurtling fastest towards.


Could the country take the implications of 1) without having a complete mental breakdown? Cause, it's got to happen. It's the only alternative (in a world with few jobs) to complete dystopia.

Rule of law in this country. Oh sure, there are authorities that can slap you in jail at the drop of a hat. They've made ubiquitous things (e.g. smoking pot) illegal just for that purpose. So most anyone who goes against the crime syndicate or makes noise can be swiftly dealt with.

But the people running the mob, the real owners of the country....well, there is no law for them. They can commit treason (!) and there is no one left to impose consequences on them. It has led to the most blatant hypocrisy.

We are a country with one party rule now, both in spirit and fact. The media hold Democrats to a standard that is never required of Republicans, and Democrats seem to just take it. We are like Iraq under the Baathists.

With no rule of law, there is nothing to stop them.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
-Frank Zappa

Donald Trump, and three branches controled by the GOP, are the brick wall.

that's an important rule. I'm sure that if people were doing that, those posts would be flagged and removed.

The level of corruption just keeps going up and up - the head of the worlds largest private equity firm is telling Trump what to do, with no official governmental capacity.