So Let Them

The efforts to kill the ACA in the US has been a slow motion airline disaster.  Every day has pushed and pulled the country inexorably toward the Far Right Party's undoing of quasi-universal kinda health care for millions.  They're going to succeed in this effective mass murder because there are no 'moderates' left in their Party.  Those are just extremists who don't cave to depravity until later.


And health care is not something you can just walk away from and say 'screw them' because the result will be the ruination of millions of lives.  People will live and die with untreated treatable illnesses.  They will be driven to poverty because unlike a car or a sofa, humans will pay every last penny (and then some) to get help for loved ones.  It's not now nor has every been a 'marketplace.' 


It's like expecting a junkie to negotiate with a pusher.  Can we bring these costs down?


But.  If they're going to do it - let them.  Here's why. 


First, they are cowards of the first order, meaning that their final bill will sunset the closure in the future.  The ACA will live on for a few years.  Their thinking is that this will protect them from an immediate backlash from humans.  Wrong. 


For the millions who depend on the ACA, it's death - even in the future - will be a wakeup.  Even some of the real zombies will realize that the care that's keeping Uncle Skeeter alive is going to disappear.  They finally have medical care and know what it's like to get fixed up and not lose the house doing it. 


So it could get reinstated before the sunset arrives.  But what if the Far Rightists have so disfigured democracy that this doesn't happen?


There are two types in the Far Right Party.  The first is the Monsters.  They love their Ayn Rand and want to take the social safety net out and burn it.  This is the Paul Ryan Wing.  They make up numbers out of the air to look like they've done the math, but it always adds up to tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts for everyone else.  They've been selling the death of ACA as a blessing of freedom, meaning the freedom to become poor, sick, and dead.


The lives of millions of Americans mean nothing to them.  They're in government for one thing:  their own interests.  And it serves them well to be insanely cruel toward the non-wealthy.  They make the middle class bear as much of the tax burden as they can get away with.  They pull as much away from the poor as they can.  Monsters. 


The other group is the Idiots.  Certainly the Leader of America is the head of the Idiot Wing.  The Idiots think that whatever pops into their heads is the right thing.  Leader goes around saying that the new health care will cost less and provide coverage for all.  And their Zombies believe them - because in the Zombiesphere, that's a cannon of truth.  Anything King Idiot says is truth.


These people believe in stuff like Creationism.  How can you show them facts that prove they're being sold out for a penny a pound when facts don't exist for them? 


But there is a chance the shock of an impending collapse to their newfound medical care will move them.


Both Far Right groups are owned, right down to Paul Ryan's running shoes, but the wealthy.  The American Rich seem to treat dollars like precious eggs.  They need to have them because they are valuable to just have - not even spend.  If you let poor people have a bunch of eggs, they might break them.  People with lots of eggs know how to protect them and not break them. 


So it's important to have all the eggs together in the safe hands of the wealthy.  Government shouldn't take eggs away and give them to the poor, even in the form of medicine.  Think about the eggs!  They have to come first!


But, sadly, what will likely have to happen is that the ACA will go away and people will start to suffer.  That's when the Liars and the Monsters won't be able to make up phony numbers or tell whoppers anymore.  People's lives will start reverting to the way it used to be, when so many could not get the medical help they need for a price they can afford.  If you had only ever eaten bread and water and suddenly everything changed and you had three square healthy meals a day, why would you ever choose to go back? 


You wouldn't, unless the old bread and water was being sold to you as BETTER FOOD FOR EVERYONE CHEAPER.  The Monsters and Liars should be prosecuted for every needless death and sued for every bankruptcy they cause in the time until people get their medicine back. 


I hope the impending loss of coverage, if it happens (not hoping for it), will move people enough to throw these bums out.  But if they can dissemble their way out of getting the political axe, then the real suffering they cause will start.  And you can't tell people they're not suffering when they really are.


So let them.

Thanks a Bunch

It's staggering that the Far Right Party in Washington is still trying to take health care away from millions of Americans.  Like their leader, they may be 'the dog that actually caught the car it was chasing.' 


Since its inception, they've been saying they want to kill it.  In the 30 seconds Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a majority in the House, they passed this weakest-possible version of universal care - which still leaves millions uninsured, but whatever, right?  That was against the scorched-earth opposition of the whole Far Right Party.


Now that that party has successfully Gerrymandered and lied its way back to majority status in both houses (as we know, they actually got fewer overall votes in both houses - and the presidency) they have what seems to be the opportunity to take the ACA out behind the sheds and put a bullet in it. 


Why hasn't that happened? 


First, it's so much easier to destroy than to build.  Because of the success of the ACA, millions of citizens have lifesaving care that they never had before.  So killing the ACA will literally impoverish, sicken, and kill millions of Americans.  For the Far Right Party that's not a bug, it's a feature.  Immiserating folks who aren't rich is half their party's mission. 


But to the folks out there in not-Washington, that's a big deal.  The Far Rightists thought it would be easy to end the ACA and thought it would be scrapped by February.  But they overplayed their hand when they agreed to 'repeal and replace.'  Because millions of people are saved by the ACA every day, they choice was to do the 'replace' thing to show a façade of caring about the unwealthy. 


If they'd gone ahead with 'repeal' without 'replace' as they'd intended, it would have been a shock.  Even though their nefarious plan would sunset ACA over several years, there still would have been a massive backlash .  Image you're on a countdown to losing health care over three years.  Especially if a loved one was dealing with a serous health issue.  'Dad can't go to treatment any more after 2020.'  There would be riots.


The only way to avoid that and still inflict cruel misery on America was to design a 'replace' that looked like it was a real plan but was actually a removal of coverage for millions - and then hope nobody notices.  That worked in the House - they put together a plan savagely cutting 22 million from care and making everyone else pay many times their current premium.


Oh, and it gives the rich a huge tax cut.  That's the other half of the party's mission. 


But the Senate hasn't managed it yet.  All the baked-in cruelty is just too obvious.  And it's easy to attack the ACA when you know you won't win.  It's hard when you may win and what you're doing is horrific.  They've been pulling the trigger click-click-click for years - now the gun is loaded.  Will they take the shot?


It's shocking to think that many of them want to.  Their ideology is so ghastly that lots of them would happily savage millions of lives and give rich people a raise.  Several would not.


Which is no great badge of honor for them.  Oh, so you don't want to cause millions of preventable deaths, huh?  Do you want a medal or a statue, Sunshine? 


Seriously, the media is calling these three or four Party loyalists "moderates" and "centrists."  Bullshit.  The Far Right Party has taken 100,000 steps to the right over the past decade.  A few have only taken 99,000.  They're still fascists who support the whole agenda of right wing ideology - but take one step back.


There are no Moderates or Centrists in the Far Right Party.  They all want to have the poor and middle class pay the entire tax bill and their rich sponsors pay nothing.  They're going to kill our grandkids because they've stopped the American fight against climate change.  And disenfranchising minority voters is what they do for fun on weekends. 


These are bad people.  And after brooding on the topic, they decided not to support what must surely be one of the worst legislative initiatives in American history.  It's like a mass murderer coming into your house and saying:  "It's okay - I decided not to kill you today."


Thanks a bunch.

J'Accuse

Back at the height of the Cold War, American and other NATO allies used to track Soviet activities partly by what the Soviets accused NATO of doing.  AT the bargaining table, the Soviet negotiator would accuse the US of destabilizing an African country (for example) by supporting one party over another.  Or they'd accuse them of parking surveillance subs off their coast and listening to their communications. 


And of course those were the things the USSR was doing.  It's a form of projection.  I'm angry so I accuse you of being angry.  I'm cheating at cards so I think you're cheating, too.


Which brings us to Don Jr.'s emails.  I won't go into the whole story - that's well-trodden ground.  But I do want to note one thing:  the smoking gun (or at least one of them) was in the email.  Why did the Leader Party make so much noise and fuss about the Clinton email server?  Because their worthless guilty souls were laid bare in their own email servers. 


Let's watch where the accusations go.  They are clearly accusing others of the crimes they've committed.    The Leader is more "Crooked" than his opponent could ever be.  The focus on email is a 'tell.'  There is more in there. 


What other accusations has he made to lead up to further criminality?

Integrity

What is the definition of 'Integrity?'  Here's a couple from the internet:


"The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness."


"Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility." 


You know where this is headed, right?  Has there ever been an American federal government with less of this stuff?  All three branches are run by majorities who have none of it. 


Honesty.  The entire Executive Branch lives in a world of fascist make-believe.  Congress operates on the notion that they can lie to the rubes all the time about everything because they've worked the system to a 97% reelection rate in the House.  What do they care what anybody thinks?  The Supreme Court has a Leader Follower majority because of a stolen seat.  President Obama's choice - Merrick Garland - should be the deciding vote on the court.  Nope. 


Supreme Court decisions should be considered stolen goods.


And "moral uprightness?"  Are you kidding?  The pack of them - the New Junta - are fighting among themselves to figure out the best way to transfer billions of dollars from people's health care to wealthy campaign donors.  How is that moral?  Leader is foul and narrow and stupid and malicious.  And those with Leader Oversight responsibilities in Congress won't say or do a thing because Leader will sign any reverse-Robin Hood crap they put in front of him.


Integrity.  Leader was sued multiple times in his (ongoing) business life.  He stiffed workers and cheated the suckers at his 'university.'  Everything he's done since losing the election and being granted the job anyway has betrayed his Leader Followers. 


American politicians have never been known to be angelic in their moral uprightness and honesty.  But I can't remember a time when the word Integrity was only a punch line.  Would the word ever even come up if it were not part of a dark joke? 


The entire government is pay-for-play now.  Putin played it just right.  US democracy has been revealed as having rotted out from the core.  He can now say confidently that American democracy is no more real that Russian or even Iranian democracy. 


Thanks to the Putin-Comey axis, the truth about American democracy is playing out real-time.

Are We Done Here?

It's the Fourth of July and I'm wondering what the hell to write that's not another indictment of what the American's Oligarchy/Kleptocracy is doing to them.  It's hard to say that the American people are doing it to themselves.  Most Americans are rightly appalled at what the governing party is doing.  They never voted for this. 


So I'm not going to do that today.  Instead, let's look at the vote in the House Appropriations Committee to force Congress to debate and decide on the many wars that the US military is fighting. 


It's interesting that there are "wars," not "war."  Back when Congress used to declare war - you know, like it says in the Constitution - there could be many fronts and distant battles, but only one war.  There's a whole expression about it:  "lost the battle, not the war." 


Not true today.  The US has deployed forces in 135 countries to fight, well, something.  We don't really know.  But we do know that there was an "Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress meekly handed George W. Bush after the 9-11-2001 attacks.  The AUMF essentially said:  'go blow up anybody who looks funny over in the darker parts of the world.' 


Okay, it didn't use exactly those words, but that's been the effect.  The people we were authorizing force against 16 years ago are not in any way the same people we're killing today.  ISIS was the result of, not the target of, the violence we brought to (primarily) Iraq and Afghanistan.  It was the bloody mess that was made of the revenge tour after 9-11 that caused the incredible and so far endless cycle of killings that America is spearheading.


Sorry, right, I said good news.  Even extremist Republicans (there are no other kind) supported Rep. Barbara Lee's amendment to do away with the AUMF.  There.


Their about-face might have something or a lot to do with the madman they installed as president having the power to use the US military any way he wants under the AUMF.  It's not (just) the fact that the American Leader has the 'nuclear codes' that makes the situation so dire.  It's that he has an elaborate and active military that is operationalized globally and will do whatever he tells them to do.


It's not the 'nuclear football' he kicks around with him that is so troubling.  He likely has enough self-branded properties around the world that a nuclear war would necessarily obliterate several of them, and be bad for his self-interest in general.  I mean, out of the billion or so people who would get wiped out,  probably a thousand or more of the dead would have been rich enough to stay at his properties or eat his steaks. So no dice for the nuclear war.


But regular war?  Bring it on.  And it doesn't have to be a big Vietnam-style affair where Eric and Don Jr. would need to get deferments like their old Pop (how are those bad feet holding up on the golf course, Leader?).  It can be the execution of anyone on the planet anywhere for any or no reason.


Obama gave us that.  Drones have killed thousands with no judicial oversight.  Just a signed note from Berry Hussein O. 


So, stay positive, right.  The time may be nigh for an end to the blank cheque.  Tear that baby up.  So if Leader wants to drop some drone knowledge on a bad guy, Congress has to say first.  That won't be much of an improvement given the Gerrymandered mess in the House, but at least it won't be Leader making the call all by himself, or with the help of his friend Vlad. 


Good news, right.  ISIS is about finished.  The ideology and resentments that drove them won't be going away any time soon, but their ugly dreams of a bloody Caliphate are nearly over.  Surely, the unrestrained US military campaign against anyone bearing a Koran has to be done as well.


We live in a world where NASA has to issue a public denial of running child sex farms on Mars.  No need to go back and re-read that - you read that right.  So accusations that used to be far far beneath public denial are no longer so.  And presidents used to have to lie to Congress to get approvals for the use of the people's military.  Let's be done with that and pretend it's a Happy Birthday USA.