.
Not us Dems, of course — but this guy:
"Very, very quickly": On the campaign trail, Trump said he would "immediately repeal and replace Obamacare" https://t.co/b5ylLq8QTC pic.twitter.com/Q3xufUF2nI
— POLITICO (@politico) March 24, 2017
"You gave us absolute power but the mean minority party won't fix things" may be the lamest political messaging I've ever heard.
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) March 24, 2017
it's a marathon, not a sprint
[takes half a step and falls crotch-first onto fire hydrant]well, I gave it my all
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) March 24, 2017
People want Trump to fix Obamacare. Does he truly think they'll just blame Obama if he undermines their coverage and cackles while it burns?
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 24, 2017
Trump’s wrangling of the House GOP would likely be easier if he’d won the popular vote, had a mandate & was popular.
— Matt Browner Hamlin (@mattkbh) March 24, 2017
Trump has told people close to him that he regrets going along with Paul Ryan's plan to push health care first https://t.co/WZM7qpUueP
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 24, 2017
It looks like Trump's first infrastructure proposal is a high speed bus lane that will go right over Paul Ryan
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) March 24, 2017
Trump would actually be right to blame Paul Ryan because Ryan made a shitty mess of this (Ryan can also blame Trump for being a dingus)
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) March 24, 2017
"The President gave his all in this effort." — Paul Ryan. Thoughts and prayers?
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) March 24, 2017
Notion Trump put everything he could into this is is absurd. Obama spent a year, wooed GOPers and Dems, held summits, gave SOTU-like speech
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 24, 2017
GOP aide on CapHill: "I'm starting to think that while we're pretty good at winning elections, we're not great at the whole governing thing"
— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) March 24, 2017
What’s that again, Donald?…
President Trump: I never said repealing and replacing Obamacare would be easy.
Really? Let's check the tape: pic.twitter.com/3Pk675UAqn
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 24, 2017
Frankensteinbeck
Yes, and he’s well justified in doing so. His entire campaign was a paean to ‘Everything that’s wrong is because of minorities.’ Half the whites in America lapped that UP and came running, begging and clawing, for more.
Yutsano
C’mon NYT. Even you idiots aren’t that naïve. ZEGS needed this massive tax cut first so his real tax cut target wouldn’t kill the deficit so badly.
Suzanne
Governance is hard, people. Maybe y’all should have elected someone who’d done it before, douchebags. Oh well.
Frankensteinbeck
@Yutsano:
Never underestimate how much Ryan has been yearning his whole life to destroy Medicaid. He really is a cartoon villain.
JWR
Just reviewing tonight’s Shields and Brooks, (AKA Dumb and Dumber), on the PBS Newshour, (Link), and just had to find the transcript..
Shorter Brooks to Dems: “Keep your powder dry!” Friggin’ idiot! (Though I’m afraid my dear, sweet DiFi will take Brooks’ advice seriously, just as she did with Alito.) Also, DemocracyNow! had a pretty good segment today on the case of the “Frozen Trucker”, and if Gorsuch’s ruling in that case isn’t disqualifying, then nothing is.
Goku
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s not going to work when people and their loved ones start losing coverage. They’ll blame the ones in power, just like coaches get the blame most of the time when teams have several shitty seasons in a row and vice versa. It’s human nature to blame those in charge
Gator90
Can’t sleep after the way that ballgame ended. Hope it was the perfect capper for Ryan’s day.
amk
amk
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku:
Maybe, but he does have plenty of reason to think otherwise. ‘What’s the matter with Kansas’, and so on.
amk
If only russians could vote ….
Goku
@JWR: David Brooks is a moron that no one takes seriously, except the Very Serious People. Bobo is so shallow, taking Gorsuck’s kabuki theater performance as any reliable indicator of how he would be as a justice is asinine. Actions speak louder than words. Just look at the trucker case. Holding a hearing for this piece of shit but not Garland is undignified and an insult to the Senate
Kropadope
It must be getting uncomfortable in Congress right now, cuz it looks like these guys can’t even pass gas.
ETA: And that’s what this bill was. It was a vapid emanation with more than just a hint of shit.
amk
@Frankensteinbeck: That bs meme is already losing its ‘color’, probably even with his racist base.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
No one who’d done any thing close was a big enough ass for them. They wanted massive asshole. And they got what they wanted.
Goku
@JWR: David Brooks is an idiot that no one takes seriously. He’s a shallow man that thinks Gorsuck’s kabuki theater performance is a reliable indicator of how he would rule. Actions speak louder than words, look no further than the Trucker case. It’s undignified and an insult to the Senate that Gorsuck’s getting a hearing and Garland didn’t
Goku
David Brooks is an idiot that no one takes seriously. He’s a shallow man that thinks Gorsuck’s kabuki theater performance is a reliable indicator of how he would rule. Actions speak louder than words, look no further than the Trucker case. It’s undignified and an insult to the Senate that Gorsuck’s getting a hearing and Garland didn’t
amk
The kenyan spent 18 months dotting most of the i’s and crossing the t’s and these feckless feckers couldn’t even hack it for 18 days.
Goku
David Brooks is an idiot that no one takes seriously. He’s a shallow man that thinks Gorsuck’s kabuki theater performance is a reliable indicator of how he would rule. Actions speak louder than words, look no further than the Trucker case. It’s undignified and an insult to the Senate that Gorsuck’s getting a hearing and Garland didn’t
Goku
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t think country is as far gone as Kansas is, and even some Rs there have acknowledged that taxes need to be raised a little. Reality has a funny a way of changing minds when it effects people personally and can no longer be ignored
Major Major Major Major
@JWR:
Gorsuch was just mimicking his god Scalia.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku:
Yeah, but the point is that it took a lot of suck for a long time for enough conservatives to finally admit that maybe there were answers to their problems beyond ‘screw over everyone poor in the hopes the Other gets hurt more than me.’ It’s not an infinite pass, maybe, but I won’t blame anyone who thinks Republican voters will embrace an obvious lie painting their problems as caused by liberals/blacks/gays/women.
Major Major Major Major
I wonder if this will be the moment Trump turns on Ryan. Trump just bumbled his way into destroying his Speakership and killing his dream of destroying Medicaid. Next up: calling him unfit to lead his chamber, drain the swamp!
Calouste
If the shitgibbon had been president during the 60s, the moon program would have gotten as far as flying a kite. If he had been president during Pearl Harbor, the U.S. would have surrendered to Japan before the month was out.
JWR
@Ruckus:
Such a perfect summation.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: Trump ran as the country’s only hope. No one knew the system like he did and only he could fix it. He makes winner deals. He just wins so much we will get tired of winning.
So, if Trump’s nonsense and incoherent and contradictory brags about all the stuff he’s going to get done turn into dog shit, he’ll whine and try to blame it all on the black guy who wrecked everything?
Trump’s a fool. It won’t work. Especially if his base gets hurt badly. A few racists and hard core general purpose bigots will gladly die in impoverished agony as long as one of their own is in the WH. But most will curse Trump for betraying them. There’s a reason Truman’s ‘the buck stops here’ sign has become a touchstone for successful administrations and Congressional sessions. Those in power get credit when things go well, and blame when they go badly. The closer to home the pain is for the population, the quicker and more reliably the blame gets aimed at those who are in power.
John Revolta
I hope Obama’s okay. I would’ve broke two or three ribs laughing by now if I were him.
Ruckus
@JWR:
Let me use swear words and I’m good to go.
amk
Goku
@Frankensteinbeck: Again, I don’t think the US as a whole is as far right as what Kansas has become. 2016 was a bizzare election with a lot of converging factors that likely won’t be replicated again. Hillary will likely never run for public office again and millions of people are awake now to what Trump and the Republicans are.
Grassroots activism has been very important not only for the morale of liberals but for helping kill the AHCA. Trump is such is a fuck up and liar that even Republicans and Trump supporters are taking notice and disapproving. A cloud of treason hangs over the White House and perhaps over Capitol Hill as well. No one’s going to but that line of bullshit
amk
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Yes. He ran on white supremacy. He ran on calling Mexicans rapists and the threat of Muslims and how Chinese are stealing our jobs. He ran on wiping away all signs that Obama was ever president. He ran on women being fat bitches who should stop complaining when a man mistreats them. And Republicans loved it, and still love him. They do absolutely hate loser stink and cowardice (although they have weird definitions of it to our eyes), so hopefully there are limits and they really will turn on him, but the whole Republican party will not merely accept but demand obvious lies that make everything minorities’ fault. It’s very hard to figure out where the limit of that is, because they’ve already taken it into bugfuck crazy town.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku:
This is my best hope. I think even the majority of Republicans will never accept that there is any answer other than ‘everyone but white men shut up’, but they need more than just the majority of Republicans. If all the politically apathetic people get pissed off enough, we can drown them in votes.
Goku
@jl: Exactly and Trump is a fucking idiot who steps on his own dick all the time; he’s surrounded by equally idiotic and delusional yes men. He will never learn and will never take responsibility for his mistakes. President Infallible is what I call him. The vast majority of voters will not take kindly to his sidestepping for any and all accountability. That will sink him
efgoldman
@jl:
My granddaughter knows more about how government works that he does; she’ll be four in August.
And she’s capable of learning. Asks questions, absorbs information. She already knows basic arithmetic (no asterisks) which neither of today’s principle Klowns do, and she’s reading, which the assistant president certainly can’t do.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: You do have a point. I don’t think there is any way, say, half of Trump’s support stays with him. He will lose all of it except the the racist hard core by trying to blame the black guy for all of his failures/ And I think pretty much anything he tries will be a failure except tax cuts and deregulation that helps the filthy rich and corporations, and no one else.
The real question is, who will they turn to next? But I think we really only need to consider the marginal Trump voter. HRC won by 3 million votes, and lost the presidency by 100K to 200K votes in 3 rustbelt states and Florida.
I hope the Democrats can find better candidates than HRC and Sanders for next time. Need younger people and more convincing and realistic moderate progressive agenda that can inspire people and give them some hope..
Mnemosyne
Well, since I overshare here anyway, I’ll overshare something scary that happened to me today — I had to be Heimliched because I started choking on my lunch at the conference. Thank God my tablemate knew what to do. I’m still pretty freaked out, though, and not sure if I’m going to be able to sleep.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
I think a large majority of Republicans will pull a ‘conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed’, where ‘conservatism’ means ‘racism’ and always has. But they’re easily shamed. They feel no guilt, but they loathe being publicly made fun of, and Trump makes them look bad. Bush League had similar problems, at the end. As you note, we don’t really need to pull many voters away. Hillary faced a perfect storm, and the whole reason Republicans are this insane is that the demographic timer keeps ticking. Trump, losing by 2.8 million votes, is a great example of how their power is a mile wide and an inch deep. A mere increase in the number of people who bother to vote, which is a believable result of the unprecedented wave of activism and protests since Trump’s election, could break Republican power permanently. Or… they might go back to sleep. It’s so damn hard to know.
danielx
@Yutsano:
Or….one might imagine that this is Absolutely Classic Donald Trump:
– when things go wrong…
a) it is (has to be!) somebody else’s fault and failure, because Donald Trump does not and cannot fuck up, because he’s Donald Trump, and
b) this is really a victory for me, Donald Trump, and who cares about those congressional looooozers anyway?
c) and about those congressional looooozers, Democrat and Republican alike – you are going to get yours. Somehow I’ll get even. You think you’re more popular than me? Wait til I get done tweeting about you!
Of course the congressional folk in question are going “you know, Donald, gonorrhea is more popular than you. You’re gonna be gone in a while, and we’ll still be here. Who cares what you tweet about us?”
jl
@Mnemosyne: Glad you are OK.
Scary and humbling that most of us can remember a close call with a ridiculous death. Once I suddenly got the hiccups and almost inhaled a wad of gum I was chewing. thought I was going to choke to death for a very long few seconds.
piratedan
first of all… apologies for what seems like it may well be a TLDR comment…
It still shocks me that NO ONE in the media has ever asked the GOP what is so fucking awful about the ACA that the GOP simply couldn’t attempt to fix. You know, make modifications to the law in some way that they could call it an improvement somehow, or at least fake it, its not as if the media wouldn’t slather all the fuck over them like they always do. . you know, like Social Security, Medicare, the EPA and countless other government programs that have evolved over the years. It’s called governing, they should fucking try it. Instead no one has come out and simply spoken the honest truth about this, its some weird counter-cult-of-personality thing that they’ve had going on with the Dems for the last half of a century now where these guys are out of fucking ideas, unless you count ideas as slut shaming, gender role rigidity, legislating for the wealthy for profit as ideas. This whole tiring tirade of pettiness is all so they can supposedly retroactively disenfranchise the Presidency of a guy who fucking saved the western world from financial ruin and killed Bin Laden and it simply seems to fucking infuriate them to no end that it drives them into these legislative conniptions.
Shame on our Media for not putting these asshats to the fucking question.
Secondly, the whole issue with the GOP, in addition to being inept and petty, are also duplicitous bastards who can’t even have the basic decency of not relying on a foreign power to help them get into power. While no one can see the end game as of yet, what really happens if their entire fucking house of cards comes down and we find out just how fucking deep this thing runs (and how far we suspect it runs). If what we’re seeing is true from the information that Adam is sharing than this means…
Starting from Putin himself… there’s been an ongoing campaign to manipulate and subvert US policy for quite sometime by the following mechanism… how many of these Putin is actually controlling or bankrolling remains to be seen, but we have…
The Right Wing/Alt Right media.. Breitbart, Drudge, Fox, etc… all supposedly taking their queues from the likes of Russia Today and Wikileaks for anything and everything potentially damaging to the Dems. Those guys build the bubble of alternate facts and spin to keep the rubes in suspension. A smaller element of the Left Wing Media, The Intercept, Ed Schultz, Jill Stein etc, throwing shade from their end of the political spectrum.
They wheedle their way in by maneuvering Trump, who appears to be incredibly susceptible to a combination of money, sex and flattery to do their bidding. The GOP, happy to ride whatever wave deposits them on the beach of power, looks the other way thinking that its all good until the tide goes out. How deep does the rot run? If the Dems are able to successfully prosecute this… how far down the rabbit hole does this go?
I think we can safely suspect DT himself, Pence strikes me as too stupid to have been included.. but who else… Manafort, Page, Stone, Bannon and then it starts getting murkier… Guilliani, Christie, Conway, Preibus… and then even scarier imho… Ryan, McConnell, Ailes, Murdoch, Hannity
Do we have the political will to cut this cancer out? If we do, how do we expect Putin to react if we remove his tendrils?
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, those ‘I would have died if someone wasn’t there to save me’ moments scar you. It’s very hard to let go.
Goku
@Mnemosyne: Well, look at the bright side, you’re not dead :D
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I definitely had a panicked thought of, Are you fucking kidding me?! but luckily I was able to signal that I was in distress and she was able to help me. Within about 10 minutes, we were able to make some morbid jokes. Still, it was really goddamned scary for all of us.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t think anything will suddenly break GOP power to win elections. It will be long slow pollitical trench warfare, with dangerous reversals for quite a while. I think it will be gradual. Sad, but the country is just not producing new white reactionary bigots fast enough anymore.
Which is why the Democrats have to start tapping their younger talent and producing better primary and general election candidates.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
I am very lucky that she knew exactly what to do. Everybody take and practice a basic first aid class — you never know when it will come in handy!
Mnemosyne
@Goku:
Well, that I know of. I’ve seen way too many “Twilight Zones.”
jl
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t mean to make light of it. Scary when it happens. I was scared when I hiccuped in mid-chew and suddenly couldn’t breath. And for a few seconds, I thought, damn, I am going to effing die because I hiccuped gum? Damn.
Goku
“I think we can safely suspect DT himself, Pence strikes me as too stupid to have been included.. but who else… Manafort, Page, Stone, Bannon and then it starts getting murkier… Guilliani, Christie, Conway, Preibus… and then even scarier imho… Ryan, McConnell, Ailes, Murdoch, Hannity
Do we have the political will to cut this cancer out? If we do, how do we expect Putin to react if we remove his tendrils?”
It’s scary but if this scandal is widespread enough, than much of the US’s right wing could be taken out and kept out of power for several decades. It seems like an impossible dream, but stranger things have happened
Mnemosyne
@jl:
No, it’ll probably help me to make light of it. Like I said, after about 10 minutes we were making morbid jokes about how awful it would have been for me to be stuck haunting the Embassy Suites. But those “what ifs” are going to bother me in the middle of the night for a while.
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
I think Hillary was a great candidate, but… well, like I said, perfect storm. Any one of a dozen things would have tipped the scales the small amount necessary for her to win. Blatant political interference by the FBI. A news media that did its best, nonstop, to portray Hillary as crooked while ignoring her policies (or any policies.) Sanders laying an extensive groundwork to convince anyone with purity pony leanings that the whole Democratic Party betrayed them and should be punished. Successful voter suppression in key states. And so on. I do wonder who’s up and coming, but the thing I’ve noticed is that Democratic up-and-comers are generally not given a spotlight.
piratedan
and my apologies for all of the profanity in my earlier post… its just that these kinds of topics tend to burn out my conversational filter and all of that bitterness just comes flowing out onto the keyboard.
jl
@Goku: I think best to concentrate on what we know, and likely casual chain of events that could lead to what we know so far. We got three Trump flunkies on foreign money take. Looks like two more are running to be first to dish out more dirt. It all revolves around the massive flows of dough for Trump real estate deals from shady soruces in various ex Soviet republics and whatever the heck was going on with the Turkish money.
Outside the Trump flunky circle who are involved in the cash flows, the damage will be the GOP’s attempts to cover it up, some of which have been very corrupt and very transparent and very public, like Nunes’ bizarre stunts.
lgerard
I took a little stroll around the internets and stopped for a second at The Stupidest Man on The Internet’s place
The trumpp nuts there are convinced that today was all part of his master plan and they are WINNING
absolutely delusional
Goku
@lgerard: Wasn’t Jim Hoft the guy who said that protesters on highways should be run over and that the drivers should face no consequences?
frosty
@Mnemosyne: I Heimliched my toddler choking on a piece of sausage. To this day I don’t know if it was as serious as I thought or if it really needed to be done but he’s in college now so I’m not gonna worry about it.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t want to get into the HRC/Wilmer feud. I supported HRC for the general and worked for her. I thought she was a bad electoral politician, and her poor skills as an electoral politician was a substantial part of the perfect storm that she faced. She would have been a very good president. Far more progressive than the fools calling her a corporate sellout.
But, look, we need to let that go. Neither HRC nor Sanders, personally, is the future of the party. I think they both represent factions of he party that have important things to contribute. I heard a clip of HRC announcing that she is back, but I don’t see her having much influence unless she can better articulate a coherent message that inspires people.. And anyone who, almost 4 years before the next election is insisting that only Bernie can save us is a damned fool.
lgerard
@Goku:
One of his many great hits
My favorite was when he mistook the closed captioning at one of Obama;s speeches for commands to the audience to applaud…he hung on to that one for a while
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
A fine sentiment, and I will drop the subject.
frosty
@Mnemosyne:
My wife had the same thing happen when she flipped a kayak. At the last possible moment, after seeing all the girls and women she had been all her life, she thought “This is so stupid, because I know how to get out of this.” She did a wet exit and hit the surface.
Millard Filmore
@frosty:
My sister never let her toddler (young 20s now) eat an un-cut hotdog. She always cut them up first. A sausage like a hotdog is the perfect size to get stuck in throats. This must be widely known in some circles since my sister did not have personal experience with this problem.
amk
@Frankensteinbeck:
One of my few Obama grouses is that he didn’t mentor or groom one or two young ones for presidency.
Goku
@jl: Bernie will likely die within the next few years honestly
Goku
@lgerard: Total piece of shit, Hoft is
frosty
@Millard Filmore:
I thought it was cut small enough. It wasn’t (I think).
Villago Delenda Est
@Millard Filmore: Didn’t they see Field of Dreams? Burt Lancaster knew all about that!
Mnemosyne
@frosty:
Spare a thought for my poor spouse, who was on the receiving end of a don’t freak out, but something bad almost just happened text since I’m away at this conference.
NotMax
@danielx
a/k/a The Tachmonite Gambit.
Dolt 45 has a lot in common with the Westboro whackaloons. From their woebegone credo:
Would provide a link but they keep nuking/suing sites exposing the whole Tachmonite nonsense and don’t readily have a current working one at hand.
Ruckus
@jl:
My fun is that I often start hiccuping whenever I start to eat. Bite of food, the hiccups. Have to stop and breath slowly, evenly and somewhat deeply for anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. I’ve never actually choked but there have been a few close calls early in this fun part of my life when I’d take a bite not expecting the hiccups and I’d try to swallow. Oops. This getting old shit isn’t for sissies.
I’m trying to think of what to write down for a friend to read at a mutual friends memorial on Sunday. Airline tickets were running around $800 and up, hotel on top of that so I decided that I can’t go. I’d really hoped to be there for his wife who has cancer and to say goodby to a great friend. He died on the table having a bypass. It’s a shit deal anyway you look at it.
Frankensteinbeck
@NotMax:
Honestly, it’s the credo of your average serious asshole. You can hear it preached by any alcoholic, abuser, or narcissist.
frosty
@Mnemosyne: Those are the worst. Long before texts I bailed from work and drove home for a call like that.
These days, it’ll be my sons. And I’m hoping it will be something as simple like the one my Dad handled: “You lunched the transmission? I think I’ve got a co-worker with a TR-4 who has an extra. I’ll see if I can buy it and ship it to you.”
And he did.
frosty
@NotMax:
Well, isn’t that special.
frosty
@Ruckus:
I’m sorry to hear you can’t make it. This is one of the hard parts about getting older: you start losing people and sometimes you can’t be there. I hope you can come up with something heartfelt to be read at the memorial.
NotMax
@frosty
But wait, there’s more.
mai naem mobile
@Mnemosyne: A few years ago I was driving and eating strawberries. I wasnt paying attention to the size of the strawberries. I would just grab one from the container that was in the passenger seat. Anyhow, I stuck a big one in my mouth and tried to swallow it and started choking. Keep in mind I am driving. Thank fully I was driving on a street not the freeway. I moved into the yellow lane and managed to swallow it but I had visions of dying choking whIle driving. Scared the shit out of me.
SgrAstar
@Mnemosyne: Holy cow!!!!!! Glad you’re ok.
mai naem mobile
I just saw a reporter tweet saying that the Inspector General is looking into Lumpy’a admin pulling the outreach for Obamacare towards the end of 2017 enrollment.
Ruckus
@SgrAstar:
Agreed!
SgrAstar
@Mnemosyne: Holy cow!!!!!! Glad you’re ok. @amk:
Oh, but he did. The Obama 2008 crew were just so darn young. Since the campaign, my fellow organizers have gone to law school, gotten PhDs, and are burrowing into think tanks, media, grass roots organizing, congressional offices…you name it. And, they’re barely 30 now. In 10 years they’ll be running the progressive machinery everywhere. They are super smart and super committed; I really expect them to do great things. That’s the real Obama legacy. :)
ReplyReply
amk
Ruckus
@frosty:
I usually just stand up and talk, if I try to write it out it feels like someone else wrote it and I’m not involved. This time I won’t be but it’s the best I can do.
magurakurin
@jl:
this. so, so, so much this.
Ruckus
I think Matt is trying to say that drumpf is a douchebag, deluxe edition. Could just be the way I’m reading it.
Amir Khalid
It’s not unusual for a POTUS to be seen as a lame duck with three months left in his term, but Trump looks like becoming one after only three months in office.
Pangloss
@Amir Khalid: Both could be true.
Amir Khalid
Interesting item, this, from the Beeb’s daily sports gossip report:
TriassicSands
I think what disgusts me the most about the Republican approach to health care, apart from the fact that they don’t care if anyone other than the wealthy has coverage, is their idea that people don’t need comprehensive coverage.
Everyone knows what coverage they need today, but no one knows what they’ll need tomorrow. And the further out the time frame goes the less certain anyone can be of what coverage is and isn’t important.
There are a few things that are gender specific like pregnancy and prostate problems. But the most important aspect of insurance is understanding that it is the people who aren’t collecting who are paying for the people who are. Some people will never be major users of the health care system. An apparently healthy 42-year-old man who has no warning signs and suffers a massive, fatal heart attack will never get back the money he paid out. But if he survives the initial MI, he will flip the equation and never pay in enough to cover the costs of his treatment, hospitalization, and rehabilitation for that one event. The obvious solution to having a responsible health care system is to ignore individual differences and design the system with everyone all in from the beginning with no attention given to the fact that women don’t get prostate cancer and men rarely get breast cancer.
Amazingly, Antonin Scalia never understood how insurance works. He made some extraordinarily ignorant statements about health insurance during the oral arguments in the PPACA case. I don’t know how a supposedly intelligent person can get to where Scalia was and be so poorly informed. Unless, of course, his ignorance was willful, which is always a possibility with any right wing Modern Republican.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: They’re still bitter about their football team moving to LA.
EBT
@NotMax: If they were perfect they could spell “Hachmonite” correctly. Also The Westboro Baptist Church is a den of pedophiles and drug dealers.
EBT
@TriassicSands: But that is the thing, what is the actual actuarial risk of offering prostate cancer coverage to the AFAB? Zero from how I understand it. Just because it’s in the list of what your policy says is covered doesn’t mean that you are actually paying for it.
owlface
Unlurking a bit to say: I now have cancer and it’s serious. (I learned there are in fact not-that-serious cancers.) And before today I was weighing my options. Like is there such a thing as a medical refugee and could I qualify as one?
Now I’m like, “Twenty weeks of chemo? Bring it on!”
THANKS OBAMA!
Walking past the chemo bays today, everybody had some news feed on, watching Trump. It worried me because I couldn’t tell, from passing glances, what exactly had happened. Lots of Trump talking up random stuff and saying Paul Ryan worked very hard. Got settled, whipped out my tablet, and got the good news.
Amir Khalid
@owlface:
Good luck with the chemotherapy. I too hope the good news on Obamacare will give you strength to help see it through..
JWR
@owlface: A quick and speedy recovery for you, dear lurker friend!
Chyron HR
@Goku:
DAMN THOSE NEOLIBERALS! #Demexit
OzarkHillbilly
AP Analysis: Trump yet to meet promise of ‘so much winning’
Offered without comment but a smile that runs from ear to ear.
amk
@OzarkHillbilly:
Got screwed by his fellow thugs. The cherry on top of the sweetest of the schadenfreude.
HeleninEire
@owlface: Please be sure to unlurk some more and let us know how you are doing.
And good luck!
raven
@owlface: Good to hear you get to move forward.
raven
I wonder when Obama will comment?
JPL
@owlface: Hopefully, the twenty weeks passes by quickly. As HeleninEire mentioned, keep us updated.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
OBamaCare in 3 photos
(Photo #1)
(Photo #2)
(Photo #3)
amk
JPL
@raven: He is relaxing on some island, and writing his book. I feel like he doesn’t love us anymore. lol
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: He never did. If he had he would have become President for Life, instead we got Trumped.
satby
@owlface: Good luck and wishes for a full recovery!
TriassicSands
@owlface:
I’m sorry to hear that you been diagnosed with a “serious cancer.”
Not-that-serious cancers?
Offhand, I can only think of two cancers that immediately would seem to qualify as not-that-serious — basal cell and squamous cell skin cancers, though either one of them could result in disfiguring surgery if they progress too far. Testicular cancer has a very high cure rate, so maybe that might qualify, though the 2% who don’t survive might disagree if they could. Thyroid cancer also has a high cure rate. Another obvious candidate might be prostate cancer because it occurs mostly in elderly men and often progresses slowly. But in 2013 it killed more than 27,000 men.
There are certainly cancers that are worse and even much worse than others. Pancreatic, lung, brain, and liver cancers are probably at the top of that list. And there are cancers that have relatively good treatment success rates. But even those kill people and anything that can kill you has to be considered serious.
I’m curious which cancers would you identify as “not-that-serious?”
(Any I didn’t list above?)
And good luck with your disease. The most important thing you can do is find the very best facility to treat you. It makes a big difference. Don’t just walk into your local community hospital — especially if your cancer is one of the serious ones — and expect a great outcome. If you’re on Medicaid you can probably be treated at almost any of the major state university research and teaching hospitals. For example, in Washington State, where I live, the obvious choice would be the SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which is made up of the University of Washington Medical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
MomSense
@owlface:
Wishing you successful treatment and a full recovery. Please let us know how you are doing.
Iowa Old Lady
@owlface: Strength to you. May the chemo kick cancer’s butt.
Lurking Canadian
@amk: Somebody’s who is good at memes needs to make “Everybody needs to chill the fuck out. I have still got this.”
Central Planning
@owlface: good luck. I had non-serious testicular cancer two years ago. Just surgery and follow up testing is all I needed.
I know you didn’t ask for advice, but I would suggest you consider getting a therapist to talk through the feelings you will have dealing with your cancer. At the time I didn’t think I needed one, but looking back I think it might have helped to have someone to talk to about something so personal, and not knowing anyone who had cancer that I would want to talk to.
Jean
@Mnemosyne: I understand your experience and the lingering fears. My husband and I (and three other people) almost drowned in a riptide, but were saved by a stranger on the beach who had a boogie board and got us all out! It took me months to get over it.
WereBear
@Calouste: YES!
If you look back at accomplishments over the entire 20th century; the entire Republican party looks like the No Trumps jerks that they are.
Eisenhower did the interstate highway system. Nixon (!) started the EPA. I can’t think of anything else…
And if we started stacking up the bad ideas, we’d be here all night.
Aimai
@TriassicSands: thyroid cancer you sociopath.
Blueskies
@piratedan: Excellent analysis, piratedan. I wonder if Comey is part of the mess, or if he’s actually spurred to greater investigative heights in an attempt for fix his colossal boo-boo.
Blueskies
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, like that Obama guy. And before him, Clinton the Lesser.
Both of these guys guys gave great speeches at national conventions. Putting them there IS the nudge into the spotlight.
laura
@Ruckus: Ruckus, please sit a spell and think about your friend -you’ve probably got a storehouse of memories like how you met, shared experiences, lessons learned, impact on your life, or witnessing the impact in the lives of others. Sometimes, zooming in on a small but meaningful aspect, and then tzooming out to a broader statement about the connections between your lost friend and those he left behind can be a powerful statement even if you are unable to be present in making it.
Finally, you may wish to consider videotaping yourself in your tribute and sending it to the person who may be putting on the memorial.
I’m so for the loss of your friend and the difficult circumstances of his wife.
I hope this suggestion is helpful to you.
laura
@TriassicSands: Testicular cancer has at least two forms- the worst is almost unsurvivable, the treatable kind requires a punishing chemo regimen that is also a potential cause of death. The stench as it perspires out of the body is metallic even worse than brasso.
My beloved older brother survived it. It ravaged him, and the lasting effects of neuropathy are a constant reminder.
Owlface, get your game on! It’s a fight, and it’s winnable and we’re in your corner!
HeidiMom
@owlface: Best wishes for a full recovery, owlface! And we’ll be saying “Thanks, Obama” for a long time to come.
Ruckus
@owlface:
Good luck. Kick cancers ass. And an unwelcome to the club.
@TriassicSands:
I’d agree with owlface. And you to a degree. There are cancers with very high cure rates, at least if caught early enough. And the cancers you named fit. There are cancers with decent cure rates when caught early enough but a big problem is that they are rarely caught early enough. And there are cancers that have shitty cure rates no matter when they are caught. There are cancers that can be lived with for a decent amount of time even if caught fairly late because the cancers themselves are fairly slow growing, But every cancer can kill you so I understand your question.
The thing is, if you have cancer, it’s fucking serious. Serious because it can return, seemingly a lot easier than it did the first time. Serious because of what it can do to your body if it spreads. I don’t think one can say “I’ve been cured of cancer.” You can say “I’ve been treated and there is no detectable cancer. Now.” It can hide and it only takes one cancer cell to do that and come back with a vengeance. As well the treatments for cancer can range from nasty to incredibly nasty. None are fun or easy, all have side effects, some far worse than others. After all one is trying to kill parts of the body.
It changes you. Forever. No matter what the cancer, what the treatment, what the outcome.
Ruckus
@laura:
Thanks.
I sent off my remarks last night. I worked on what to say since I found out he passed away, although as I said I was hoping to say them in person because having someone else say them, even another friend really doesn’t convey what I’d like to say. When I do this in person I’m able to speak, well differently. For some people getting up in front of a group and saying even hello is beyond them. For me it always has seemed normal. To me writing it out is stiff, final, formal. And I’d bet anyone whose met me for more than a short while will say that I’m anything but formal. Writing this out just seems wrong, it needs to be said out loud. But in life we only get to do the best we can at any one time. There isn’t anything more than that.
Ruckus
@laura:
Treatments do improve over time as more is learned, as technology improves, as chemistry improves, as trials and new therapies evolve. Some of the early, very harsh treatments are no longer done or have improved dramatically. Look back 60 yrs at what medical treatments were like. Today is almost immeasurably better in most cases. Yes there are still barbaric best practices for many ailments but there are, in many cases far better treatments or even more, treatments at all.
No One You Know
@piratedan: I like the way you think.
It’s a shockingly clear, get-to-the-point manifesto for younger Republicans who aren’t so accustomed to”compartmentalized” thinking.
owlface
@Amir Khalid: thank you!
owlface
@TriassicSands: In particular, there are breast cancers that can hang around for many years and not do much. I have inflammatory breast cancer. It is cancer on jet fuel that’s made of crack. It got noticeably worse while I was waiting for chemo, and for a few weeks after I started chemo. Seems to have paused for now, though.
Anyway, I do have a talk therapist, even if often I am just too brainless to do much talk therapy. But she’s a treasure and I’m really glad to have her.
Thank you everyone for good wishes! Feels great to hear. :)
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Glad that you are okay