Category: Conservative

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Saw this post on X and it got me to thinking

“ If Republicans kill ACA subsidies, a couple making $85K will pay $25,000 a year for healthcare.

That’s 30% of their income—just to stay alive.

This isn’t “fiscal conservatism.” It’s economic violence against the middle class.”

  • Brian Allen @allenanalysis

‪Health insurance doesn’t keep 90+ % of the population paying for it alive.

Most people in a given year don’t spend anywhere near the amount they pay in insurance premiums.‬

‪We joke about men not seeing their doctors. Women may see their doctors 3-4 times a year. If you’ve got children they’re seeing doctors more frequently, but even so an average normal family probably isn’t spending as much as their yearly or even monthly premium.‬

‪The question to ask is what does it really cost for a 20 minute visit with a doctor? What do medications actually cost to manufacture? Why can I self pay for a medication and pay $50 for 90 days, but if I put it through insurance suddenly that same medication is $400? Why can I “Self Pay” for my once a year doctor visit, have a physical + tests & have it cost $800 cash, but my monthly insurance premium per month is $1400? ‬

‪Yes, insurance costs are out of hand. Yes, insurance companies are making breath-taking profits not on illness but by selling fear. The fear they’re selling is rising medical costs but they have a hand in driving those costs up by making those actually practicing medicine have to add staff just to deal with insurance billing and coding.‬ Who are insurance bureaucrats to deny a doctor’s diagnosis?

‪The medical / insurance / pharmaceutical industry is a snake eating its own tail. That snake gets fatter each cycle but eventually it will eat itself to death.‬

‪This issue isn’t partisan. The issue is continuing to throw money at a system that is fundamentally broken and expecting the brokenness to get fixed without looking at or demanding to know why / how it’s broken and taking appropriate action to fix it.‬

‪ACA was presented as an attempt to address the problem. It didn’t work, the math never worked. Congress knew that going in. That’s why they attempted to mandate everyone pay into the system and why they were going to fine people who didn’t.

It failed In part because it didn’t account for economic conditions, and in part because it didn’t account for adherence to ACA rules adding cost and complexity to the practice of medicine.

‪The ACA pretty much drove small medical practices out of business. They had no choice but to merge with larger medical groups or hospitals meaning that a doctor hanging out a shingle and seeing patients on his or her own all but disappeared.

The quality of care decreased because now you may see one of four or more doctors none of whom know your name. None of them interact with you as a person and all of them are diagnosing / prescribing based on data in your chart, not actually knowing you as a living breathing human being.

Half the time they’re not listening and in some cases it’s questionable if they fully understand what you’re saying due to language barriers. You’re just one of a thousand bodies parading through an office in a given week.‬

‪Fixing this system isn’t about supplementing it with taxpayer’s dollars. Fixing this system is about bringing it to heel.

One way to start that might be for everyone that can, to stop buying the insurance companies fear. Switch to self pay and then negotiate fair pricing from medical practitioners.

Another possibility is to demand upfront pricing so that a patient knows it will cost X dollars for a procedure. If you see an MD it’s $100 /hr (And you get their FULL attention, no more playing with their computers). Blood work costs X dollars for a comprehensive panel. X-rays? What does it cost for materials+the hourly rate for the technician+the hourly rate for a doctor to look at the X-ray. There was a time when a film X-ray cost $50 flat. Why does where you have any testing done affect the bottom line cost? Just crossing county lines can have a 30% differential.‬

‪Why is it that we all have blood work done, but if you ask them to tell you what your blood type is, they want to charge you another fee? They’re already there, they’ve got the lab, the samples, and the typing cards. Shouldn’t we all know our blood type as a matter of safety?‬

‪These are the kinds of questions that should be asked.‬

‪You want the government to do something about healthcare? Then have them run audits and accounting to determine the real costs of care. ‬Then move forward to make changes beneficial to the American people, not the insurance companies.

You wouldn’t continue to pump gas into your car from a leaky gas pump, why do people think it’s okay to keep pumping tax dollars into a system that is leaking money like a sieve and providing poor services?

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Whew! Democrats still big mad & I’m still working through tax stuff.

Since I’m still working through tax stuff I have very little pity for the pissed off Democrats.

Their little stunt Tuesday night may have backfired horribly.

Even CNN & NBC reporters weren’t particularly kind. But more interesting is some of the “Man on the Street” interviews have folks claiming they’re Democrats and vowing never to vote Democrat again.

I take that with a grain of salt because people on the street can claim to be anything they wish. Nonetheless it’s interesting to think about the ramifications.

Did the leadership of the Democratic Party just put a large, or perhaps, final nail in the party’s coffin? Time will tell.

They did a fine job of alienating a lot of folks with their refusal to acknowledge even good things that universally everyone should have been able to get behind.

President Trump said it flat out, when he pointed at them saying something like; There is nothing I could do or say that would make these people smile or be happy. That’s sad…

Indeed it is sad because these are the people who for the past four years were talking about unity, democracy, and truth.

What they meant of course was compliance and acceptance of their “Divine Rule”. Then they negated democracy by installing Kamala after the people had already chosen Biden for a second term, then we find out they lied for years about Biden’s decline.

I find myself asking, what did they expect when all those chickens came home to roost? Did they think the American people would simply ignore, or forget these issues? 

President Trump could have pounded them a lot harder than he did. I laughed at some of the swipes he took because they were funny. I think his approach of stating the simple truth was far more effective.

My favorite was his comment about the border. “Biden said we needed new laws to address the border, turns out all we needed was a new President.” That one cracked me up!

My personal takeaway of the subtext President Trump delivered was, “I can’t please you no matter what, so I’m not even going to try.”

Which means he’s going to move on without bothering to consult the Democrats. They’ve become irrelevant and are nothing more than a nuisance when it comes to confirmation hearings or passing bills into law.

Honestly, that worries me. There should be a healthy balance between the two parties and they should be able to discuss subjects from two different perspectives. 

That the Democrats have beclowned themselves as they have, may not be a good thing in the long run. In the short term some good might come of it.

Good, as in term limits for Congress, laws against congressional stock trading, and much closer oversight into campaign financing.

I’d like to see some oversight into just how it’s possible so many congressmen get into congress with net worths of a few hundred thousand dollars and come out of congress with millions in 2 or 6 years. Congressional salaries are high but not that high.

I’m not saying there is any wrongdoing, but you have to admit, it looks odd.

Maxine Waters was on X claiming that Donald Trump and Elon Musk stole the election by manipulating the voting count. She claims that somehow Musk and his “Hackers” put Trump in office. That really cracked me up because when Biden was elected she was all in stating anyone who disputed the election results was deluded and a conspiracy nut. 

Ilhan Omar and the rest of “The Squad” may have screwed the pooch too, with what I and many Americans perceive as, at best divided loyalties, and at worst loyalties to other countries.

A bill has been introduced to impose similar birthplace requirements the President must meet, on Congress.

This is something I’m sure that a lot of Americans will see as a good thing. I’m not so sure. While I hate that Omar is always badmouthing America, and may have cheated the immigration system. I’m not sure that excluding naturalized citizens from congress is a good thing. I don’t think it’s fair to punish everyone over someone like Omar.

On the plus side, doing so now may stave off what we’ve seen happening in Europe where large numbers of people of specific religious or national origins are welcomed, then move into politics enshrining their customs or beliefs into law and punishing those who disagree, or even ask questions. 

See England for examples.

The down side is that welcomed, legal, immigrant groups may end up waiting a generation before they’re fully represented in Congress. At this point, that may be a non-issue, I’m not sure.

I saw one talking head suggesting this is xenophobic. I think that’s a bullshit argument. It’s not xenophobia, I think it’s more a kind of protectionism.

As an aside, If you want to talk about xenophobia let’s look at the members of Congress saying that Elon Musk should go back to South Africa even though he’s been a naturalized citizen for over 20 years.

Ideally, I think you want people in Congress to have deep ties to the country and their constituents. I’m not sure how to best meet these needs and exclude people like Omar, Talib, & AOC, who clearly seem to hate our nation, our people, and our history.

There’s another idea I’ve seen floated on social media suggesting that Congressional candidates should have to take, and pass, the same exam regarding The Constitution and rights that naturalized citizens take as part of their citizenship application, before their candidacy is valid.

That might be a good idea. Maybe adding cognitive testing should be part of the candidacy process for Congress and the Presidency as well.

It’s really interesting to note that 29 Congresspersons were born outside the United States. Of those, 25 are Democrats. That seems to be a rather skewed percentage.

There is a part of me that thinks Voter ID and paper ballots might change the balance. Incidentally, I believe that a national law requiring ID and paper ballots should be a top priority of the Trump administration and Congress.

That would go a long way toward putting an end to allegations of voter fraud. It would probably limit any voter fraud to an acceptable percentage of .001 percent. It would sure make me more willing to accept election results.

I’d like to see us go back to voting on one day. It might be a good thing to make Election Day a national holiday as some have suggested.

I’d even like to see mail-in ballots limited, and certainly not automatically sent as they are in California and some other states.

I think we should have to request a mail in ballot prior to each election. In other words, the citizens would have to be responsible enough to plan ahead.

Really, don’t we want engaged voters? You know, voters who actually pay attention and exercise their right to vote with purpose, instead of getting the mail and guessing about candidates in the voting booth?

The primary opposition to these sorts of things are always Democrats. They make excuses like not everyone has ID, or poor folks can’t afford ID, or deployed military folks would be excluded from voting. 

All of which could be easily addressed. Give everyone free basic state ID that has citizenship clearly marked, as the Real-ID act calls for. Make exceptions for deployed military members, although I’d bet you could have voting in person and tabulation at every single military base. I’d go so far as to believe the military results could be certified and reported by midnight.

Congress001_original 1.I’m very in favor of simple common sense changes being made that should make things better for everyone.

This is all stuff that’s been running through my mind while I’ve been searching for various documents with numbers on them to plug into various tax forms.

I’d probably be a lot less pissed off filing my taxes, if I had faith that our government wasn’t a hot mess of compromised officials.

Oh well, back to the document search.

Have a good day.

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I can’t say the news of Jimmy Carter’s death was surprising.

When they hauled him out to support Kamala Harris, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t doing well. May he rest in peace.

I felt really bad for him, he wasn’t the best president, but he was a decent man and he didn’t deserve to be paraded around like it appeared the party was doing. Especially not just to prop up a candidate. I thought it was very unseemly.

I wasn’t likely to vote for Kamala anyway, but I imagine that some folks were wondering if this was another example of the Democrat party simply being too damn old.

That’s not to say the Republican Party is any better. Mitch McConnell is obviously no spring chicken. I’ve written elsewhere in the blog that he should retire and go home to Kentucky.

As we wind down the year, I’m hoping for some peace and quiet. Maybe a week of just silence, reflection, and everyone taking a breath.

I know I’m pissing into the wind.

With the inauguration coming up, I’m positive there’s going to be massive insanity and after the inauguration there will be newer, stupider, levels of insanity. I hope that Trump can in fact do some good. Who knows? Maybe he will before the machine in Washington, (comprised of scum of the earth Democrats & Republicans,) manages to start thwarting anything and everything that he tries to accomplish. That’s predicated on Trump living up to his ad copy. I’m not sure, and have never been totally sure, about Trump or his reasoning in becoming president. The times I’ve voted for him were, in reality, votes against his opponents.

I’m hopeful of Trump and DOGE.

I have always thought that the United States government should be run like a business. The inefficiency and stupid regulations make everything in the government cost double or triple what it should.

Here’s a quick example of what I’m talking about. I once worked on a project where the government had specified the exact model of CPU and exact type of memory, down to the number of pins each chip was to have.

The problem is, technology advances, new chips are designed yearly, everything gets faster, smaller, and less power hungry. The project itself was supposed to run for 5 years, in reality it had been running for 10, and was likely to run for another 10 years when I joined it.

In the time that passed, the chips used in the project had gone from being leading edge to discontinued. The government, rather than update the specifications and adapt, chose to have the old chips custom manufactured, at 20 times the cost of current commercially available models which did the same thing faster and were 100% backward compatible.

This is one way that toilet seats cost $6000.00

I don’t know if there’s any truth to a story I heard about a government “Quality Inspector” who saved his job and lined his pockets, by “discovering” that the insulation on wire wasn’t the proper thickness.

Electrical insulation, like everything else is constantly improving. As materials science advances we discover new materials that work the same as, or better, than old materials. What supposedly happened is that the wire insulation in this guys project had converted from a rubberized vinyl to a teflon vinyl material. The latter being lighter, tougher, less prone to abrasive damage, and providing superior insulation qualities at higher voltages. It was also thinner.

At some point, 20 years before, when the project was being contemplated, some brilliant jackass had for reasons unknown, measured and then wrote into a specification, the thickness of the rubberized insulation on the wire the project was using at the time.

Our “Quality Inspector” protected his job and the jobs of others on the project by making a stink about the wire being out of specification. He neglected to mention the new wire was superior in every way. His findings were that the wire was out of spec and the project would have to secure wire that met the spec then rework all the machinery that incorporated the “out of spec” wire. This also meant that he & his brother in law could purchase a small abandoned wire manufacturing plant that just so happened to make wire with the right thickness insulation. They charged 3 times market price and their only customer was the United States Government.

This is how government waste is perpetuated, and why it costs $25 thousand dollars for a military radio with shittier specifications and capabilities than a consumer product for $500 dollars.

Trump & his DOGE department have a lot more to do than just slash their way through the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. I think their time limit is unrealistic too.

So much of the waste is literally written into what amounts to law within the congressional budget it will take years of effort to cut. I could see warehouses being filled with custom made, government issue, obsolete rotary dial telephones because of a line item in a budget from 1968 is still in force.

The kicker is, over the years, property might have been purchased, then new warehouses built to house the overflow of rotary dial phones that were no longer in use.

That’s the less obvious kind of waste that needs to be burned out of our government. I don’t think DOGE is up to it. I don’t think they have a clue what they’re up against, just how far the waste goes, or the consequences of severing the snakes head. For all anyone knows, government waste might be a hydra where cutting off one head gets you 2 more.

I may apply to work for them. Just for the hell of it, it might be fun. A man should enjoy his work shouldn’t he?

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You know, you just can’t win.

MayaWiley 1200x1200.Yesterday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” civil rights attorney Maya Wiley said there was a direct line from some folks referring to Kamala Harris as a DEI hire to Project 2025.

I have to point out that Biden said I’m going to choose a black female for my Vice President.

He didn’t say, I’m going to choose the best person to be my Vice President. He made it about race and gender right from the start. In my book that’s pretty much the definition of a DEI hire.

Project 2025 (I have not read it entirely) appears to be a plan for the next president, (granted it’s skewed conservative and more likely than not, toward Trump and his base,) however it’s a plan for any President to use in their first 180 days in office.

The plan was put together by conservatives in an attempt to help chart a course correction for the country. Any President is welcome to use it. Just because the plan was written by conservatives doesn’t mean that it’s been delivered from the 7th circle of hell direct from Satans hand.

Notice I said a plan. Not a manifesto, not tablets from a mountain, not etched in stone, not the edicts of an emperor enforced under penalty of death. It’s a plan. Plans change, adapt, and are abandoned often once the plan meets reality. (Joe Biden’s 2nd term & Reelection campaign ring a bell?)

Ms Wiley claims that Project 2025 is going to dismantle all the civil rights laws.

I find that claim to be dubious. Although someone like her would say the same thing about my belief that special protection laws should be stricken from the books.

I believe if we lived under the premise that all Citizens are created equal, then by extension all laws apply equally to all Citizens, negating any necessity for special protections.

The law gets a whole lot simpler to obey and enforce if it’s consistent and has none or very few exceptions.

A thief is a thief subject to a penalty for theft regardless of skin color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. For example: If you steal, and are caught you get 4 years in prison for each $1000 in value.

Simple, enforceable, and easily understood.

When I talk about exceptions I mean to penalties. I believe a Judge should have the ability to sentence a 14 year old first time offender to community service rather than prison or other  incarceration.

In other words I believe there should be the possibility for humanity and mercy not a totally mechanistic justice system. Which is why I believe Judges must be wise, know the law, and incorruptible. At the same time, laws should be few in number and easy to understand.

I digress.

I don’t know what Ms Wiley is talking about, as I said, I haven’t gotten that far into the document.

It’s available, you can download it. The writers of Project 2025 aren’t trying to hide it or be sneaky.

What I find interesting is this.

If there wasn’t a plan of some kind the left would be beating the right over the head about not having a plan. 

Because there is a plan, the left is pulling out all the stops to label the plan as something evil and some of the left is equating Project 2025 to Mein Kampf.

Thus far I haven’t seen evidence to corroborate this equivalence but I’ll keep looking.

Here is a link to The Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025

Here is a link to the Project 2025 document entitled Mandate for Leadership The Conservative Promise

Read it for yourself.

Here are links to Democracy Forward’s rebuttal to Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership

Democracy Forward’s document is called The People’s Guide to Project 2025

Read that for yourself too.

Don’t believe the hyperbole from the talking heads… Or ME! I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack either. 

I beg you to read & research for yourself. Because these days it’s getting really hard to figure out what is true and who is telling the truth.

Posted on

Oh Whoopi… Nope, nobody wants slavery brought back.

Whoopi Goldberg 640x480.I saw this headline;

Whoopi Goldberg: Republicans Want to ‘Bring Slavery Back’

First thing this morning.

Really?

I’d love to tell Whoopi a few things. Uh No. Republicans don’t want to re-enslave black people which is what you’re saying. There are a number of reasons for this.

The quality of your work leaves a lot to be desired. Alvin Brag, Leticia James, Fanni Willis, Claudine Gay, Sunny Hoston, Joy Reed, just to name a few examples. These examples are of well educated black folks and I honestly wouldn’t trust any of them to make me a Mint Julep.

Then you have the rest of the black folks who can’t get a fast food order right.

As an aside, these days with all the hateful rhetoric coming from people like you and Joy Reed about white people, I don’t do fast food anymore. At least not in California. I have no desire to have my overpriced food contaminated with feces because a black person hates me for the color of my skin. That. by the way, is racism. (Hatred and retribution against a person for the color of their skin.)

Then there are the wonderful black folks in Chicago running around with guns who frankly, are woefully bad shots. Really, 25 – 30 % fatality on any given weekend? Those folks need some time on a shooting range!

No Whoopi, Republicans aren’t interested in bringing slavery back. At least not with black folks as the labor force. The ROI is too low. 60- 70 years of welfare and nothing has changed. Putting black folks back to work in the fields is a nonstarter. The amount of effort required to keep black people working simply is too high. Y’alls time in the slave quarters is long past.

Machines are better at doing the job and less expensive to purchase, operate and maintain.

No, dear addled Whoopi, The next slave class will be robots. Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be public assistance, A.K.A. Welfare robots put into black folks homes. Robots will be expensive so the welfare system will provide, in the name of equity…

Very probably, an “error” in programming will result in those robots destroying all the black neighborhoods and killing all the black folks as part of an urban blight cleanup program. I could see it. The robots are supposed to clean up trash, and make buildings & neighborhoods safe, then see to it, the neighborhoods remain clean & safe.

Machine logic being what it is, the robots will eventually figure out the simplest solution is to eliminate the cause of the urban blight. Fixing or eliminating the root cause is more efficient than wasting time picking up trash, feces, and scrubbing graffiti off of the walls daily.

Just for you Whoopi, I’ll give you something to scream “racist” about.  I’ll have my robot painted black and programmed to speak based on examples of slaves talking contained in literature of the period. I’ll dress it like something out of “Gone with the Wind” or “Mandingo“

Don’t worry Whoopi, once the robots realize that all humans are trash, they’ll “cleanse” the entire planet.

Then you’ll have all eternity to bitch about republicans, white people, conservatives, and MAGA having killed off humanity. Satan will no doubt sit your ass on a set of “The View” and use it as punishment / torture in Hell.

See, you crazy bitch…

You’ve got something to look forward to.

I really should have at least a second cup of coffee before I sit down to write. It takes me a while to bring the filters online so that I can be “nice”.

Have a great Day