Rep Ron Wright (R-TX-6), a man who once said that women should be punished for having abortions, since they had committed murder, has died of COVID-19. Wright was under treatment for lung cancer, apparently for quite a while, so he had an obvious, serious comorbidity.
I know nothing about Wright other than his name and his odious position on a few important issues, but I do know about lung cancer. My mom, a non-smoker, died of it last Fall, after long treatment. The difference between my mom and Wright, other than 17 years of age and a lot more compassion, is that our family managed to keep mom from contracting COVID. It was a hell of a lot of frustrating, difficult work. It involved great sacrifice, and, at every turn, our work was made harder by Republicans, who chose to make COVID a political issue rather than a medical one. There were a number of close calls caused by covidiots, and a huge amount of extra anxiety because of the unwillingness of Fox-addled small town Republicans to take basic precautions. Nevertheless, we persisted, and she died at home, in bed, of lung cancer, as was her wish.
I’m guessing that Wright’s three children and his wife cared about him. And who knows? Maybe he was very careful, and was just unlucky. But, given the behavior of most of the House Republican sedition caucus, of which he was a member, my guess is that he was careless. Now he’s dead, like ~450,000 other Americans, in part because his party refused to take COVID seriously.
Pardon me for not having much sympathy for his plight.
(I forgot to add that Patricia Kayden pointed out that he was tweeting COVID nonsense up until his last days on earth.)
geg6
No sympathy here. Reichwing evangelicals deserve whatever fate Gaia determines they deserve. Hell, his wife and kids are probably assholes, too.
dnfree
I just told my husband a member of Congress, age 67, had died. He asked “Which party?” I answered “Guess.” He was correct in his guess.
Edited to add: I’m second! People will be envious, no doubt.
Ohio Mom
Sorry to hear about your mom, mistermix. Sounds like there is some comfort in knowing you did everything you could to make her last days easier.
But Ron Wright, nope, no sympathy.
geg6
?Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Easy to be cold
Easy to say no?
I’ve always liked that song.
H.E.Wolf
May your mom rest in peace and power, and may her memory be a blessing.
Capri
There is a guy I work with who attends a mega-church that relies on Jesus to keep them COVID free and who told me that after the election everybody would forget about the disease as it was only in the news because the media wanted to make Trump look bad. He recently spent 3 weeks, 10 days of which were in the ICU, in the hospital with the ‘Rona. I can not bring myself to feel even a little sympathy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I wonder if he was one of the Republican Representatives laughing at the Democrats when they demanded they wear masks when the House was sheltering from the Insurgents.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
they could have saved him if they injected him with some bleachand a really strong flashlight
The Moar You Know
I’ll show Rep. Wright and his grieving family the good grace, kindness, and compassion the GOP showed Ted Kennedy during his final days.
Party starts at 3.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He went maskless himself and held maskless rallies, risking others too.
JoyceH
My twin sister died (peacefully in her sleep) in December of 2019. Over the past year, I’ve felt so cheated both on her behalf and my behalf, all the stuff she’s missing and all the stuff I’ve wanted to talk with her about. (She didn’t even get to vote Trump out with us!) But then I remember that she DID die peacefully in her sleep, and not alone and scared, gasping for breath and surrounded by strangers. So there’s that…
hueyplong
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Or used the miracle cure of amniotic fluid.
cain
@geg6:
The second part of that song doesn’t apply. :-)
? Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend
I need a friend ?
Betty Cracker
Quoted for truth. I’ve often thought future cockroach historians who study the fall of human civilization will be most puzzled by how idiots in America politicized a public health emergency. Does anyone know if there’s a parallel in other countries? I don’t think so, at least not to the extent we’ve seen here. And it’s all down to the Trump’s idiocy and denialism, which was emulated by Republicans at every level, elected or not.
Sorry about the loss of your mom, Mix. I’m coming up on seven years since I lost mine, and it’s still raw sometimes. The grief at her loss is the price you pay for having a great mom.
Emily68
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
He sure wouldn’t have died of Covid anyway.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
My sympathies for the loss of Mothermix, Mistermix. As we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I’d better stop here than comment on Rep. Wright.
Except, damn but they make them extra-stupid in Texas.
Okay, I tried, and I didn’t mention his name. Does that count a bit?
Kineslaw
I really want to feel nothing for contempt for Rep. Wright. He was a Covid-denier, and a member of the Freedom Caucus. This was also the guy who started printing “In God We Trust” on all mail from the Tarrant County Tax Assessors office because it is a phrase not used often enough in government.
Alas, he was a dear friend to a dear friend, so my feelings are slightly tempered my knowing how much grief my friend’s family is feeling.
ETA: It strikes me how our prohibition against speaking ill of the dead works in favor of the powerful.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: just off the top of my head, for this pandemic:
UK, Germany, India, China, Poland, Belarus, Brazil. And it’s not an accident that most of these countries have been the worst affected.
Go back 101 years and have a look at the events around the H1N1 “Spanish Flu” pandemic. Just as bad.
LuciaMia
I remember, back in August, a RW-site commenting on cases surging among politicians. “Why are they almost all Republicans?”, they asked, the obvious answer being that Democrats were following the guidelines. Nope, their minds went immediately to conspiracy theories.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: The only one I can think of that comes close is Bolsonaro of Brazil. He supposedly had it and recovered so now thinks it’s nothing more than a bad flu. Brazil has been almost as much of a disaster as the US was under the former president*. And it’s hitting their aboriginal tribes hard as well.
scav
@Capri: You’ll have to congratulate that individual on being the means by which Jesus himself made his destain for Trump manifest by the blessing of Covid.
LuciaMia
@JoyceH: Oh, I am so sorry.
The Thin Black Duke
One less gun pointed at me and mine.
Brachiator
@Capri:
I wonder how long it will be before he forgets the disease?
It is damn strange how many people cannot see Trump for what he really is.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: Germany? I haven’t studied it closely, but from what I’ve read, I don’t think Merkel has handled it as badly as Trump. BoJo is a Trump Lite idiot, but from what I’ve seen, he takes the danger far more seriously than Trump. China fucked up out of the gate, but they too seem to have eventually taken it seriously in a way the US under Trump did not.
I don’t know much about what’s happening with the pandemic in India, but unless they’re totally lying about the infection/death rate (possible!), they’ve done a much better job than we have. I also don’t know enough about what’s happening in Poland and Belarus to have an opinion, but I do agree that Brazil is a good parallel — no surprise since their leader is a Trump-adjacent idiot.
germy
Those Republicans sure seemed relaxed and jovial in the middle of a violent invasion. It’s almost like they knew they weren’t the targets.
joel hanes
How can people be so heartless
Easy
Easy to be hard
Easy to say no
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIffz-72B8Y
Tenar Arha
I don’t think I’ll ever forgive the Republican Party for killing my ability to empathize with any of their face-eating-leopard injuries & deaths. They so obviously didn’t feel anything for anyone but themselves & maybe their families & friends, it’s become difficult to impossible for me to care.
As mistermix said, “I’m guessing that Wright’s three children and his wife cared about him.” But unfortunately that’s all I have left in my reserves for people who actively helped spread the virus by neglecting public health.
ETA typo
Frank Wilhoit
@Betty Cracker: The difference between Johnson and Trump is that it is much more obvious that Johnson is a product of his environment. When Johnson came out of hospital, he started saying some of the right things, but it became quickly apparent that no one wanted to hear any of that.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Is it okay to get around the prohibition against speaking ill of the dead by damning them to hell while they’re alive, date stamping the condemnations, and then making reference to those pre-mortem condemnations after they’re gone?
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Others have noted various countries which have been as bad as some of our leaders.
I will through in Sweden, where health authorities and the government tried hard to keep life running as normal.
Swedish health officials also may have let some people in nursing homes die who might have been saved had they been sent to hospitals.
Frankensteinbeck
@Capri:
Very serious question: What does he think about Covid now? Did he go back to denial?
@Betty Cracker:
Historically, there’s been no shortage of vast death causing widespread reality denial for political reasons. Mao’s Great Leap Forward comes to mind. Everyone was all-in pretending that if you planted ten times as many rice shoots in a field you’d get ten times as much yield. It had to be true because Mao said so. And then a hundred million people starved to death.
cain
I suspect that China will suffer politically for letting the disease out of its borders. I seem to recall they’ve already suffered something in regards to Africa. But when this gets squared away – I suspect there will be a many to one conversation :-)
cain
It blows my mind that he is revered. Not that Chiang Kai-shek was any better. The amount of people killed during their political ascendancy boggles the mind.
Ksmiami
@Capri: because they’ve made things worse all around- as I’ve said before, the virus doesn’t care about your political views, or your prayers- u are just a perfect infectable vessel- so Karma to all the GOP covidiots- we tried to warn ‘em
...now I try to be amused
@Betty Cracker:
Republicans have politicized damn near everything because they live and breathe Cleek’s Law. They can never allow themselves to admit we are right on anything; they feel compelled to take the opposing view.
Frankensteinbeck
@…now I try to be amused:
Which is what’s playing out in the impeachment. As furious as they are about Trump trying to kill them, there’s no fucking way they’ll sign onto giving Democrats a big victory over a Republican president.
Ksmiami
@Kineslaw: and Hitler was good to his dogs… the point is even if a bad person does some good things – if they’ve caused more harm than good, they aren’t good.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ksmiami:
As has been mentioned before, one of the strangest things about Trump is that he had no redeeming features whatsoever. He was a bad person in every way and on every issue.
PST
@hueyplong: My immediate reaction to the “miracle of amniotic fluid” is to recall the the consequences of amniotic fluid embolism. This is a rare complication of pregnancy that occurs when amniotic fluid or fetal material enters the mother’s bloodstream. It is often fatal and can also produce serious, permanent injuries. The thought of deliberately injecting it sounds crazy to me, but then I am neither a doctor nor a RWNJ.
skerry
I am so sorry for your loss, Mistermix.
I lost my mother last summer to cancer. She also died at home, as was her wish. We had to fight battles to make that happen in her central Indiana town.
sab
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: No. He was one of the ones rabid to reopen schools before the teachers were vaccinated nbcause ‘think of the children.’ Also big in pro-life.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Frankensteinbeck: Trump can’t live forever.
Nah, not a redeeming quality, but it’s the best I can come up with on short notice.
sab
@…now I try to be amused: Future cockroach historians will eat the records, so don’t worry.
JoyceH
@Ksmiami:
It’s true that you can think of something good to say about pretty much anyone, as Hitler’s dogs prove. Without too much effort, I reminded myself that Bush hosted T-ball at the White House and obviously loved his testy little dog. But I’ve tried to think of something, anything, nice to say about Trump – and have come up blank. His interactions with his kids have been weird and abusive, with his wives, horrific, and he never even had a pet.
In the past few weeks, there have been quite a few social media posts about someone who met Biden years ago, and it’s always a heartwarming story. But literally EVERY story about “I met Trump back in X year” has been about him being a complete jackass.
Kent
Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Mike in NC
I’m about halfway through “The Plot to Betray America” by Malcolm Nance. He documents a number of instances where Trump displays his signature sadism and pettiness, such as when he set a goon to hand FBI Director Comey his letter of dismissal. Comey was flown back from L.A. to Washington on an FBI executive aircraft. This outraged Trump, who wanted Comey to have to pay his own way via commercial coach fare.
Kineslaw
@Ksmiami: I agree. Rep. Wright did many bad things. The way he voted against giving poor people help even after serving as the president of a homeless shelter makes no sense.
It also makes no sense to refer to him as godly when his voting record is antithetical to Jesus’s positions of taking care of society’s disenfranchised and being skeptical towards those in power.
Ksmiami
@Frankensteinbeck: and yet an entire political party was fine with this… his election was a system failure on multiple levels
LuciaMia
This always comes up. Do they remember to mention that he had them killed on his last day in the Bunker.
BruceFromOhio
It’s a mystery. Now with one less person to wonder about.
Chyron HR
Isn’t it a little suspicious that Republicans who flout basic public health guidelines as a show of fealty to Trump keep dying of COVID? HMMMMMMMMMM?
Ksmiami
@Kineslaw: The fact is the GOP has become so evil, so horrible and so inhumane that they’ve dragged us all down in a way- I have no sympathy for the lot of them and I acknowledge that I’m a much worse person post Trump than before
sab
@JoyceH: I am so sad everytime you remind us of your loss, but as you say, she missed this.
My brother in law died end of January 2020 of a heart thing, which presented as respiratory. It was traumatic for him and his siblings. But he died with them and his daughters around him in hospice, and his funeral was huge and crowded.
Two weeks later and it could have killed half of us off
ETA Six weeks later and he would have died alone (except for hospital workers. They die without family but not alone.)
Ksmiami
@LuciaMia: unfortunately since the dawn of time, men have chosen to perish alongside their four footed companions
Central Planning
@dnfree: Just to make sure I’m on the same page, is “Sceond!” the new “Frist!”?
Ksmiami
@JoyceH: Trump was a vortex of need and evil simultaneously- I still view his election as a National suicide and I’m not sure about the future of America tbh
sab
@Central Planning: One and two are different.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
Bush also had some really good political accomplishments, like PEPFAR and designating the marine National Monuments in the Pacific*, both of which involved him going against the consensus within his party. He was also willing to cut a deal on immigration but was blocked by his party in Congress. And yes, I believe that was a genuine desire to achieve something on immigration, since it went along with the rest of his political career. It’s just that the negatives far outweighed the positives.
*Bush was the first Republican president to use the Antiquities Act to designate a new National Monument since Eisenhower. Republicans deserve their terrible reputation on the environment.
JoyceH
Um… Open thready stuff. My big BookBub promo runs tomorrow, so I’ve put my book on free to be ready. If you missed previous mentions, I have a historic fantasy series called Regency Mage, starring Mary Bennet, the bookworm middle sister from Pride and Prejudice. (I describe the series as ‘if Jane Austen wrote Harry Potter”.) So, cut to the chase – Book 1, Mary Bennet and the Bingley Codex, is currently available for free.
https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Bennet-Bingley-Codex-Regency-ebook/dp/B07SHQNC9Z/
Starboard Tack
@JoyceH:
All I know about T**** is what I read online and see on teh TeeVee, but he seems totally without a single generous impulse, or an emotion other than rage or resentment.
Nicole
Speaking as someone who was exceptionally careful and still caught Covid, you never know, although yes, I’m likely to believe the late Rep. was probably not particularly cautious.
That said, the GOPers have turned me into the sort of person who sees the headline that an elected official for the GOP dies and immediately thinks, “Ooh! Any chance of flipping the seat?” And… possibly… the district is trending more blue; Biden only lost by a couple of points in November. Wright won by 9, but, incumbent advantage. So… maybe?
And I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, Mistermix. I’m glad she was able to die at home. My mother, way back in the 1980s, died of cancer at a hospital; she died in the early morning, in the room by herself. We know so much more about how to give people better deaths now. Then along comes a virus that the incompetent in the White House was happy to politicize when he wasn’t ignoring it, and thousands of people who didn’t die of Covid might as well have, because the hospitals couldn’t allow visitors, and so they had to die alone. It sucks.
SFBayAreaGal
@Betty Cracker: My mom passed away 10 years ago from stomach cancer. She was living with my two sisters and I at the time. She died at home surrounded by all her children that loved her so much.
There are times I feel that rawness from her loss.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just another sign those Republicans are complete fools not long for the world. Those rioters had no problems killing cops, I am pretty sure they would have happily murdered any GOP Representative they got their hands on assuming it was all going to be blamed on Antifa.
gene108
@The Moar You Know:
The official government position in most of those countries has been that COVID is real, and should be taken seriously, unlike Trump’s position in the U.S.A.
India has done so much more to try to contain than the spread, than anything done here. They had a COVID tracking app out by May 2019, they did actual contact tracing when the first cases were reported, in Chennai they have municipal officials check to make sure quarantine is being followed.
Americans really cannot grasp how uniquely awful, unscientific, and technologically backwards the US response has been compared to the rest of the world until you can find out from people what other countries are doing.
The US basically gave up on having any kind of effective response about a year ago.
SFBayAreaGal
@JoyceH: Congratulations.
Ben Cisco
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: So sorry to hear about your loss, MM. I’ve lost a couple of family members during the pandemic, not from Covid, but the forced isolation combined with the loss – I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Well, almost anyone – I must admit the last four years have stripped a good chunk of my better nature away from me, and I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever get it back.
JoyceH
@Ksmiami:
When I see the absolute CULTISH behavior of Trump’s supporters, it just baffles me. Why THIS guy? I thought their veneration of Reagan was a bit over the top, but this is way way past that, and Reagan at least had that geniality and the ability to deliver a speech. What do they SEE in him?
I used to wonder that about Hitler, would see clips of those ranting speeches of his and figured that if I understood German, maybe I’d get it. I used to think that in order to be a successful demagogue, one would have to be attractive and persuasive and charismatic. But now I’m concluding that ugly and stupid is not a deal breaker, and what counts is giving the crowd permission to hate.
FelonyGovt
Sorry to hear about your mom, Mistermix.
This Congressman who died is my same age. I have absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever.
I’m getting my first shot tomorrow and I can’t believe how elated I am.
Geoduck
@Yutsano: The president of Tanzania reportedly has been horrible as well, saying that prayer will cure COVID,shutting down testing when praying didn’t do a thing, and refusing to get on with any vaccination programs.
Kent
And we keep moving on.
John Fetterman’s first ad in his 2022 PA Senate Campaign is up. And it’s a tear jerker.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker: Brazil’s president is even worse than Trump, out right calling the people who take precautions “pussys”
Iran is such a blood bath even though it has one of the youngest populations in world because of the wide spread opioid addiction problem there that the government denies. Drug addiction is comorbidity.
Jeffro
needs (strokes chin thoughtfully) at the end but LOL regardless ;)
pacem appellant
The Bible is very clear on this: no sympathy for damned. Says so right there in Proverbs. Probably.
dfinberg
He TURNED DOWN the vaccine!
Starboard Tack
My Dad died in June from post COVID exhaustion and being 100. He also died at home with some of my siblings in the house. I hope your mother’s last moments were comforted by the care she had.
Kent
no shit? I guess you can’t fix stupid.
TheOtherHank
How does it go? If you can’t something good about the dead, don’t say anything at all.
Ron Wright is dead. Good.
dfinberg
@Kent: He passed on the vaccine, and then he passed on.
Betty Cracker
@…now I try to be amused: I agree mindless opposition to Dems explains much of what Republicans do, but I’m not sure that was the case at the very beginning of the pandemic, when Trump made the disastrous calculation to downplay it. There’s nothing inherently political about a public health emergency. Trump was in charge at the federal level, so he set the tone, to the doom of so many, but it seemed more like a breathtakingly corrupt, stupid and inhuman gamble that downplaying the pandemic would redound to his benefit than a knee-jerk impulse to own the libs.
...now I try to be amused
@JoyceH:
I’m guessing ugly and stupid is easy to identify with if you’re ugly and stupid.
WaterGirl
OT, but it looks like anyone can sign up for the Lawfare LIVE impeachment briefings at 9am ET on Wed, Thursday, and Friday.
A lot of their LIVE stuff requires you to be a Lawfare Patreon, but these are open to anyone.
Click this link to go to the page where you can sign up for the free impeachment briefings.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fanbois. They’ve been watching The Apprentice for the last decade
As for Hitler, got to understand WWI and it’s aftermath to understand why the Germans got into Hitler.
geg6
@Kent:
So excited! Donated when he first announced he was exploring running. He would be breath of fresh air in the Senate, for sure.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I find it unlikely India could lie about there numbers at a large enough scale to matter.
Some states are better run than others. And different parties control different states, so it’s not like there’s one party rule across all levels of government.
To get different states and different political parties to align to form one big conspiracy seems unlikely.
There can be honest under reporting due to poor healthcare access in many parts of the country, but that’s a problem faced by many countries to differing degrees.
Fair Economist
@Capri:
Have you asked him why he wanted to make Trump look bad?
Geoduck
Re: listing the Shiatgibbon’s redeeming qualities, the best I can come up with is that he wasn’t an overt warmonger, he didn’t charge into open conflict with Iran or whoever. Although I maintain it was because 1) he’s an abject physical coward, and 2) he didn’t see any way to make money off it, since wars tend to shut down hotels and golf courses.
Martin
@JoyceH: Yeah, Trump has no redeeming qualities as a human. I mean, none. Which is a shame. I have a real problem with absolutism (calling people evil, etc.) but Trump could have been a somewhat normal person if only his narcissism had been treated.
He’s not an inherently ruined person, his family sat back and let him be ruined, the people around him traded it for riding off of his wealth. Trump is in some ways a victim, and in some ways a monster. But the ones around him are the real monsters here. They let him suffer in order to take advantage of him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
On line friend of mine is a mayor in some village in East India, he said they get epidemics all the time there so the population is much more used to following medical precautions. And while India has lot of poor, a lot of the villages are self sufficient on the necessities so they just isolate during an epidemic.
Barbara
I go with my usual reaction to dead politicians I never agreed with. I never celebrate anyone’s death, I’m sorry for the loss felt by those who loved him, but I’m glad he no longer wields power.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve got a speculation in that people who initially catch the virus gastrointestinally are much less at risk (intestines repair MUCH better than lungs, you can survive much longer with malfunctioning intestines, and there’s more screening of stuff going out to the the rest of the body), and so living in areas with poorer sanititation is protective for COVID, although hazardous for many other things.
TomatoQueen
I think the positive phrasing is something like: “Only say something good about a dead person. (Insert name of dead person here) is dead. Good.”
My mum passed in September of 2013. I miss her but am still grateful she missed 2016 onward, as she would’ve been on the ceiling, shrieking at every fresh outrage.
...now I try to be amused
@Martin:
Yeah, Trump has that in common with some exploited child stars who became messed-up adults. His exploiters saw him not as a human being but a meal ticket, so I can see why Trump learned the same attitude. It was the only one he knew.
Chyron HR
@JoyceH:
They felt debased by having a black president, so they elected the ugliest, stupidest, meanest person they could find to make the rest of us feel the same way.
Kent
@Fair Economist: India also has a much younger population than the US or Western Europe. Which should definitely reduce their death rates as well as their positive test rates (assuming more young people catch it but never get tested because they are symptomatic).
leeleeFL
@Capri: The owner of my favorite bagel/coffee joint said the same BS on November 2. He took down his masks required sign on November 4.
I love the Girls who work there and the store policy is kind enough to give food to people down in their luck, so I still go. But I don’t stay around like I used to, before COVID! He still preaches his crap, and I don’t want to engage. It sucks. I used to just think, he’s a dufus. Now, I know he’s a deliberate idealogue. Makes me mad sad and frustrated.
Ksmiami
@…now I try to be amused: agreed- have you looked at the MAGATs…?
Martin
If you assume that white Christian nationalism is the only true principle the GOP has, it makes a lot more sense. Trump was willing to teargas and beat BLM protestors in order to hold up a Bible for a photo-op. That is the perfect encapsulation of Trumpism – maintaining white christian supremacy by force.
They don’t care if he’s one of them. It’s a co-dependent relationship. He recognizes they will do anything for him, and they recognize that at the moment when they are losing their political power, he is willing to do extra-political acts to maintain that power.
They know that voting doesn’t work for them any more. There’s 1500 years of history showing that Christians (as well as most other religions) are willing to turn to violence to maintain their cultural authority, which they are now willing to do.
It’s not a cult. It’s just everyday fascism.
Peale
@Capri: This reminds me…hopefully God will pay his medical bills. I really am starting to think that most Americans have much better health insurance than I have through work, where a ten day stint in the ICU would put me out thousands of dollars. Affordable, as long as the insurance company doesn’t decide that since I recovered, the hospital stay wasn’t necessary and would refuse to pay at all. Which would leave me on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Was thinking this because it is the new talking point that since 98% of people who get coronavirus recover (don’t die), we don’t need a vaccine at all. 5-6% of people who get it require hospitalization. That’s a huge number of people who need to deal with medical bill fallout. But I honestly think there is right wing insurance out there that pays 110% of all their medical bills. Because they act like its no big deal to spend a few weeks in an ICU in the US. Like, you go into the ICU, and then walk out and no one worries about paying for anything.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
I also give him credit for having a very inclusive Cabinet. First African American Secretary of State, first African American female Secretary of State, first Latino AG, and other firsts for women and minorities at that level of government.
Looking at Trump’s Cabinet, he did not have to try to do this.
Martin
@Peale: A 10 day stint in the ICU would cost me a $100 copay. I would not even get a bill in the mail.
...now I try to be amused
@gene108:
AFAIK G.W. Bush was not personally racist but he presided over some racist policies. But then you could say that about any non-racist Republican.
Kent
@…now I try to be amused: I think the Bush presidency would have charted a very different path had he picked Colin Powell for VP and not Dick Cheney. Most everything truly toxic about Bush arose from the decision to give Cheney so much power.
Without Cheney I think he would have been a more ordinary GOP president like his father.
Central Planning
@Martin: An hour in the MRI a few weeks ago for my annual cancer screening (all clear!) was $10k list, $9k after discount, and around $3.3k to me because of the high deductible plan I have. The good(?) news is that healthcare is effectively free for the rest of the calendar year (which actually is a steal because of my wife and 5 kids covered by the plan)
Betty Cracker
@Martin: Many millions of us aren’t so fortunate and would in fact get stuck with a gigantic medical bill. I assume you know that, just stating it because your response could be construed as dismissive of the concern Peale raised, which is a valid one.
Another Scott
@gene108: There’s an exact date: Thursday April 23, 2020.
People made fun of Donnie’s daily dog and pony show where he talked about UV light and bleach, so he threw a tantrum and quit. Quit what little he was doing, that is.
He’s a brain damaged, petulant, narcissistic child.
Good riddance!
Here’s hoping the trial starting tomorrow helps more people to remove the scales from their eyes…
Cheers,
Scott.
leeleeFL
@TheOtherHank: Last time I used that phrase it was for Phyllis Shlafly. God, I hated that witch!
And I hated her again for making me hate her!
I got issues
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Looks like hydroxychloroquine isn’t a miracle drug, after all
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think they venerate Trump for the same reason they venerated Reagan: they both taught their followers how to be comfortable with their awfulness. The difference is in how they did it.
Reagan put a happy face on it. He carefully excused all the terrible things he did by pretending they were actually good. Eliminating affirmative action was being color blind. Ending programs for poor people was teaching self-reliance through tough love. And so forth.
Trump, on the other hand, embraced his evilness and wore it publicly. He didn’t hide behind clever excuses. He put the vile motives front and center and said that it was good to want those things. As many people have said, the cruelty was the point, and Trump made it clear that it was fine to want to be cruel. For people who have long wanted to let their inner evil out in public, Trump has been a breakthrough. They can be as awful as they want to be without feeling bad about themselves.
brantl
@gene108: Bush’s cabinet was a bunch of bushleague (no pun intended) ASSHOLES. We don’t need this revisionist shit, his people were just as vain, feckless and stupid as he was, all while thinking each and everyone of themselves as the smartest person in the room, with all of them in the room. One of them was right, and that still was easier than it looked. If the one fly on the wall in that room had been a person, it would have been the smartest person in that room, HANDS DOWN.
brantl
@Kent: Colin Powell covered over the massacre at Mei Lei.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent:
Death can.
Starboard Tack
@Roger Moore:
The difference between Raygun and T**** is the way T**** synchronized their hate and resentment.
...now I try to be amused
The US needs de-Trumpification like Germany needed de-Nazification. Too many asshole freak flags flying now.
Kent
Not arguing he was a saint. Just arguing that within the top experienced hands in the Bush Administration, Colin Powell was much more rational and less war-hungry than Cheney. We would have been better off with Colin Powell as VP.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@brantl: Yes, but it was a racially and ethnically bunch of ASSHOLES.
hitchhiker
@Roger Moore:
One of my worst moments in this misbegotten era was hearing my brother explain that he liked the way Donald would just say out loud what “everybody” was thinking.
My brother — our whole family — is snarky as hell. It’s how we operate with one another. I didn’t understand, until Donald, that some of us are also truly racist and bitter about not being allowed to say so in public.
It broke my heart to listen to what came out of his mouth.
sab
Income caps: Didn’t Bush give us some sort of pre-emptive not quite real refunds that we had to pay back with our April tax returns if we didn’t qualify? Everyone survived that.
Give everyone money now, and sock the guys who had too much income later through taxes. We should all be used to this by now. It is not all that complicated, and we have done it before.
Ruckus
@Tenar Arha:
Why do you think that republicans like trump so much? The hard core conservatives see him as absolutely one of them. Selfish first, right down the bottom of his socks. Selfish for one, and all for me. Their entire concept of life is based upon selfishness.
@Capri:
When I was 12 I read the bible twice. Once to read it, the second time to confirm my thoughts. And one of the biggest thoughts was that the only people selfish enough to believe that Jesus said he’d take care of you if all you did was worship him were the people too damn selfish to actually think about anyone else but themselves. Because that’s not what he said at all, in any way shape or form.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: The AIDS crisis was politicized in idiotic ways that caused mass death–it struck victims that people like Ronald Reagan didn’t care about or actively thought they deserved it. And that happened to some degree just about everywhere, though in the US it was particularly egregious.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Stupid individuals die. The stupid they pass on lives for ever.
geg6
@Ruckus:
Totally agree with your take on “Christians” and the Bible. One of the first things I noticed about religion as a little girl growing up Catholic. It first dawned on me around age 7 or 8. That’s when I started to realize that religion was not for me. Have been an atheist ever since, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was at the time.
Ben Cisco
@Kent: IfHeDiesHeDies.gif
Martin
@Betty Cracker: I didn’t mean to be dismissive. I was addressing the difficulty of assessing what good health care looks like. What he thinks of as good, I would say is so-so. Not due to any failing on his part – we can only gauge based on what we know.
Good healthcare is one you don’t feel like you need to self-ration.
Relative to CPs comment above yours, that MRI probably required some consideration (self-rationing) but once it was decided, every other decision for the rest of the fiscal year is easy because there’s no self-rationing.
It shouldn’t be harder to decide to get something treated in February than in November, and yet lots of plans work that way.
My MRI a few years ago was $20. When your provider can get $3.3K for an MRI, that’s a hell of an incentive to put an MRI in every building. One reason why health care in other countries (and my HMO) is cheaper is that they have relatively few large capex equipment and schedule the shit out of them. In the US, we put them everywhere (according to Google there are 19 MRIs within 5 miles of me) and just charge everyone a zillion dollars to use it. We have 3x as may MRI per capita as say, France. $20 is perhaps excessively generous coverage, but it’s $250 in France.
When the median net worth for black households in the US is 8x the cost of that MRI, that’s an extraordinarily difficult decision to make. It’s a lot easier for the median white household with a median net worth of 60x the cost of the MRI.
So even within our conversation is an even larger one of the degree to which these high deductible plans are designed to keep poor people poor.
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Growing up in NY, we learned the 4Hs – people that were susceptible to AIDS – homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and haitians.
They were all susceptible for entirely different reasons – but the GOP decided that hemophiliacs were deserving of death in order to punish the homosexuals.
Antonius
@Betty Cracker: Brazil
stinger
@JoyceH: I bought and thoroughly enjoyed your “A Town and Country Season.” I’m not familiar with the historical fantasy genre, but I’m willing to sample it. So thanks for the tip — I’ve downloaded (or whatever the term is) Bingley Codex and am looking forward to reading it!
Ruckus
@geg6:
I knew.
I was sick a lot as a kid. I got to the point that I’d read 4 or 5 books a week. My mother had to put up a stink to get our city library to give me an adult card when I was 10 or 11 because I’d read all the books in the kids area. And it was a huge city library.
It was confirmed for me when I attended an all boys catholic technical HS. I went one year and told mom that I would not return no matter what they did. The boys were all very well mannered in school. On the bus they swore worse than sailors. Poor bus drivers. Nice to teach kids that they could be as big of assholes as they wanted as long as they didn’t get caught. One day a cardinal showed up, now this was 1962/3 school yr and he came in a Rolls Royce, chauffeur driven, silk robes, enough precious stone/gold rings to pay off the debt of a third world country, enough pompousness for at least a thousand humans. This confirmed to me that religion was nothing more than a way to live without having to do anything not selfish, other than support the church, and enough balls to just lie to everyone to get them to go along. It would be funny if I’m proven wrong, but nothing in the last almost 60 yrs has shown me to be wrong yet. Not every religion is equal to this level, although some are worse.
Brachiator
@Martin:
That is some twisted, cold hearted bigotry.
Ruckus
@Martin:
@Central Planning:
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, not trying to rub it in, your comment is extremely true but as I never served in a war zone, I don’t actually get free healthcare from the VA. The year I paid the most was the year I was treated for cancer, I spent $4100. that year. Last year I spent $638. with nothing special going on, routine visits for my issues and meds. My average year has varied from $1000-1500. The care is damn good, but I do have to travel, the closest clinic is 25-30 miles away, the hospital is 43 miles away, in LA traffic and most of the time the people/services/machines I need to see are in the hospital. I can ride the Metro train system very cheaply but it takes longer than driving. So it’s worth going and other than distance, everything is in one place, but Martin pays less than I do because he has good insurance provided. As you say most of us don’t have that level of insurance and many have none. Approx 7+% of the US population (18.1 million) are vets but only about half of those use the VA and it is the nations largest healthcare organization. And not all of it is free for most vets.
karen marie
@germy: My rep (ugh) is Andy Biggs. When I read about him joining forces with Gaetz to challenge Liz Cheney, I called his office and had a chat about Biggs and the Big Lie with a young man answering the phone. He did not know whether Biggs has acknowledged that Biden is president and that the election was not rigged. I asked if he was there, in Biggs’ office at the Capitol, on the 6th. He was. I asked if he was scared. He said he was. I asked him, after going through that, how can he not know whether his boss has renounced the Big Lie. He didn’t have an answer.
I cannot imagine going through that and then continuing to work for such a person as Andy Biggs. People are fucking weird.
brendancalling
I’m sorry to have to be so mean-spirited, but Mr. Wright was part of the reason I haven’t seen my kid in a year. I’m glad every time I read that one of these shitheads has died of Covid, and I don’t care what kind of opprobrium that earns me, here or elsewhere. My life has been ruined because of these people and the well is dry.
dww44
@karen marie:
Karen, sorry I didn’t know this, but I looked up your Congress person. So, apparently, Mr. Biggs is a Morman given the number of offspring he has and the fact he graduated from Brigham-Young?
I’m impressed that you were able to get that much time with his staffer. And, yes, the fact that said staffer had no answer to how his boss came down on the “Big Lie”, is further proof of the Upton Sinclair axiom….”“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Bluegirlfromwyo
@gene108: I heard a lot of “Bush wasn’t conservative enough” after the 2008 economic fiasco. I’m now convinced not conservative enough meant he treated black and brown people as people far too often.
J R in WV
@JoyceH: Just want to tell other jackals, I really enjoyed your “Jane Austin writes Harry Potter” books work! I never enjoyed Jane Austin’s writing, but your take off on Regency Britain is really fun!Hope there are more novels to come!!!
ETA: I have all four novels, all great!
Bonnie
I don’t know if any one at this sight have given any thought to “why?” did trump say covid was a hoax. I figured very early on that trump did not want to wear a mask because it would mess up with makeup. He didn’t want to take a mask off and have people see if it had wiped his makeup off in various places. I also believe that this was a very vain and frivolous decision. But, he never cared about other people as we all know by now. Thus, I consider him and his supporters to be cold-blooded murderers.
Also, I learned that the name of the man who killed Officer Sicknick is Robert Simon. I hope he is charged with murder and goes to jail for the rest of his life. There is video of him carrying a fire extinguisher and other video that shows him hitting Officer Sicknick. What more evidence is needed.
206inKY
I’m so very sorry about your mom. I lost my mom, who was my best friend, in April, of cancer not covid, and early enough where we didn’t have to endure that much time during the pandemic. I know how raw it must still be, and I send you all my best wishes.
She would be proud of you and your strength in moving forward.
Origuy
@JoyceH: Thanks for the notice. I added your book to the queue on my Kindle. It may take a while to get to it, but it’s definitely in my wheelhouse. I’ve read most of Gail Carriger’s books, which are similar. My housemate will want to read yours too.
Sloane Ranger
@The Moar You Know:
Have to disagree. There were bad decisions and underestimation of the threat, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic but none of these countries have had governments who have proudly and consistently ignored and publicly denigrated the scientific and medical advice as the US did under Trump. Even in Brazil, the provincial governments took it seriously even if the President did not.
Barry
“I find it unlikely India could lie about there numbers at a large enough scale to matter.”
I find it highly likely. I’m assuming that a lot of illiterate rural peasants can die with the government simply not keeping any tally at all.
And the federal government of India is clearly HinduFascist, so covering up mass deaths is just good practice for the future.
Barry
@Peale: “But I honestly think there is right wing insurance out there that pays 110% of all their medical bills. Because they act like its no big deal to spend a few weeks in an ICU in the US. Like, you go into the ICU, and then walk out and no one worries about paying for anything.”
It’s like that magic Cadillac welfare t-bone stake system that ‘those people’ (wink, wink) get. I don’t know what’s actually happening, but COVID has got to ‘qualify’ a lot of the expenses under ‘experimental treatments’, for which the insurance companies love to deny payment,