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[ericpmoss]

Another indicator of the sickness of America.

[ericpmoss]

this woman can write about cycling as few can

Fundraiser for Jacquie Phelan by Jacquie Phelan : Charlie Cunningham Medical/Rehab

Jesus Christ this is sad. We live in the richest nation ever, and last night some fuckwad billionaire that serves burnt coffee told us that "we" can't afford universal healthcare. Fucking parasite telling us we're just not working hard enough.

[choke]

Another indicator of the sickness of America.

Here are a couple of older articles on DarkMatter

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/24/...pies-for-hire/

Deep Pockets, Deep Cover – Foreign Policy

And this.....not the same subject but related.....

A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers To Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be The Future Of War.

[ericpmoss]

Something more upbeat...

Ignore the nonsense clickbait title, because the guest being interviewed has FAR more interesting stuff to talk about.

[ides1056]

read this, and look at the photographs

he would not like to be called a genius, but this is what it looks like

[ericpmoss]

Pelosi will block any attempt at single payer healthcare.

[thollandpe]

A conservative with serious bona fides explains why he can't abide by the current President's actions:

What I've Gained by Leaving the Republican Party (I'm more willing to listen to those I once thought didn't have much to teach me.)

Wehner quotes John Buchan, "While I believed in party government and in party loyalty, I never attained to the happy partisan zeal of many of my friends, being painfully aware of my own and my party's defects, and uneasily conscious of the merits of my opponent."

Maybe this belongs over in the Kennedy 2020 thread.

TH

[ides1056]

I don't need to see photographs of his junk to know this guy has balls.

No thank you, Mr. Pecker – Jeff Bezos – Medium

[ides1056]

read this, and look at the photographs

he would not like to be called a genius, but this is what it looks like

Don McCullin Is a War Photographer. Just Don’t Call Him an Artist. - The New York Times

forgot the link

[jclay]

Pelosi will block any attempt at single payer healthcare.

It's damned infuriating but not surprising; her support would be the surprise.

As to the voters: I guess the population wants to pay more for a system that's got a substantial smorgasbord of defects not found in other western health care systems. Go figure. But I'm starting to feel emotionally better for not trying to convince folks who obviously haven't done any homework or critical thinking to realize that maybe they ought to. Maybe we need Trump. Seriously. I have long said that we'll consider change when the car is in the ditch, upside down, on fire and the survivors are limping down the shoulder. And maybe we need a Trump to speed us through the crash; I mean, this stuff [I]WILL[I] come to a head. It's unfortunate, stupid really, but, there you go and history seems to support the notion.

[Dallas Tex]

It's damned infuriating but not surprising; her support would be the surprise.

As to the voters: I guess the population wants to pay more for a system that's got a substantial smorgasbord of defects not found in other western health care systems. Go figure. But I'm starting to feel emotionally better for not trying to convince folks who obviously haven't done any homework or critical thinking to realize that maybe they ought to. Maybe we need Trump. Seriously. I have long said that we'll consider change when the car is in the ditch, upside down, on fire and the survivors are limping down the shoulder. And maybe we need a Trump to speed us through the crash; I mean, this stuff [I]WILL[I] come to a head. It's unfortunate, stupid really, but, there you go and history seems to support the notion.

Interesting. If you’re serious, I agree this is the moment because potus doesn’t give a rats ass about either party.

Healthcare is a tough thing. On one hand, can you imagine how much it would even the playing field if Ford didn’t have to buy every employees healthcare every month!!??

But on the other hand, I get not wanting to put 1/5 of the economy in the hands of the the shitshow that is Washington.

Does anyone think that you’re average American would accept rationing?

[ABiCi]

Interesting. If you’re serious, I agree this is the moment because potus doesn’t give a rats ass about either party.

Healthcare is a tough thing. On one hand, can you imagine how much it would even the playing field if Ford didn’t have to buy every employees healthcare every month!!??

But on the other hand, I get not wanting to put 1/5 of the economy in the hands of the the shitshow that is Washington.

Does anyone think that you’re average American would accept rationing?

Your system already rations healthcare. It's just that it rations it to those who can afford it rather than those who need it.

[9tubes]

I don't need to see photographs of his junk to know this guy has balls.

No thank you, Mr. Pecker – Jeff Bezos – Medium

Yeah, but ya have to appreciate the irony of a guy who complains about lack of privacy while running a company that works very hard to spy on everyone in America.

I'm waiting for the story of how the pics made their way from his phone to the Enquirer. Did his girlfriend forward them to someone? Or did he use a service (e.g. Snapchat) without reading the (no) privacy policy and someone at the company used the photos in accordance with the user agreement?

[Corso]

Bezos: Smart enough to spin this away from his selfys, but dumb enough to take them in the first place.

[jclay]

Interesting. If you’re serious, I agree this is the moment because potus doesn’t give a rats ass about either party.

Healthcare is a tough thing. On one hand, can you imagine how much it would even the playing field if Ford didn’t have to buy every employees healthcare every month!!??

But on the other hand, I get not wanting to put 1/5 of the economy in the hands of the the shitshow that is Washington.

Does anyone think that you’re average American would accept rationing?

No country's health care is free but each country can choose systems that are more cost efficient or less. Each can choose systems that cover all of their peeps from cradle to grave or systems that don't.

The USA rations care, we just choose to pay about 50% more than Canada and W European countries for the privilege by retaining a Balkanized system that has coverage gaps and other defects you could drive aircraft carriers through.

What boggles my mind is the degree to which our country (people & politicians) refuses to even consider evaluating the systems of other countries to see if we might benefit from their ideas and experiences. We'd rather play tribal politics and holler "socialism", which is particularly comical when coming from folks in the military or on Medicare and the like, than buckle down, do some homework and consider that we might not be the only smart folks on the planet.

After WWII Japan sent practitioners across the spectrum of industry to Western countries to observe industrial methods in order to improve their own. That seems to have worked out rather well.

If you owned a NASCAR team that routinely finished well out of the money, and which was more costly to field, what would you do? Me? I'd visit and evaluate every team I could. I'd learn from others. What I wouldn't do is insist that my team was better than the ones that were beating me; and that's exactly what the USA is doing in the health care department.

Maybe we're discovering some serious downsides to our system of government and it's fruit basket turnover every four years.

As my father was fond of saying: Learn from others; you won't have time to make all the mistakes yourself. I didn't pay attention until in my 30s, and it cost me.

[ericpmoss]

I rather loathe both wings of the business party, but there'a a funny thing about Trump. He said several times before he took office that it was crazy that we didn't have single payer. He told the Australian PM that such a system made far more sense than what we have. He told a cabinet member (iirc) "Why don't we just extend Medicare to everyone?". Then.... the advisors literally pulled him aside, whispered to him, and he reversed course on everything.

The "liberal" candidates running in 2020 all said they were unequivocally for single payer when they announced, and then, within 24 hours, all but one of them backtracked -- Harris, Gillibrand, Warren. Booker already has a record of opposing affordable pharmaceuticals, personally blocking Bernie's bill to re-import drugs from Canada. A dozen Republicans voted for that bill, so it wasn't just something to appeal to the base. Anyway, Booker claimed it was over safety concerns, but failed to mention these were medicines that were produced in the US and exported to Canada. So he's full of shit. Tulsi Gabbard stood firm, and the MSM immediately started smearing her as a "Putin puppet" and so on, though that was mostly for not approving of regime-change wars.

Pelosi claimed she was going to be open to single payer for a moment, but was lying lying lying. She's also lying about the Green New Deal, and has already hamstrung the committees that would work on it, despite pretending to not even know what it was (another lie). So anyway, just about anyone the MSM pushes for 2020 is industry-approved and takes a $hit-ton of $ from corporate donors. Stay tuned to The Intercept to find out which ones and the details of their deception.

[j44ke]

Really interesting article adding a scholarly voice to the mayhem that is Virginia, a mayhem I grew up amongst and now feel like finally the chickens have all started to come home to roost on my generation of Virginia gentlemen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...=.d115597fff3c

[jclay]

I rather loathe both wings of the business party.

Ain't that the truth! And the totally hysterical thing is that there are actually living, breathing, presumably sentient people who think that the Democratic Party is socialist and not a party of big biz. Makes my head spin.

[Scott G.]

From the New Yorker, whistle blowers and Medicare fraud, like all good stories
it doesn't play out like you'd think.

The Personal Toll of Whistle-Blowing | The New Yorker

[bigbill]

Not illuminating journalism but the subject was a huge contributor to our knowledge of the oceans. Part of my life was spent with ocean engineering and deep exploration and this person was the father of it all.

La Jolla explorer-scientist Walter Munk, the 'Einstein of the Oceans,' dies at 11 - The San Diego Union-Tribune