Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Everybody saw this coming.

Come on, man.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Bark louder, little dog.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

This really is a full service blog.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson: the bland and smiling face of evil.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

No one could have predicted…

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Fight them, without becoming them!

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / President Biden Remarks on Medicare, Social Security and Health Care Costs 1:15 pm (LIVE)

President Biden Remarks on Medicare, Social Security and Health Care Costs 1:15 pm (LIVE)

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This post is in: ,

Speech for President Biden, as prepared by me:

Medicare, Social Security and Health Care are good  great  essential and life-saving.  If you elect Republicans, they will take them away from you.  Gleefully!  Any questions?

I wonder if President Biden will make any changes to my written remarks.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  2. 2.

    Nina

    Don’t know if Biden will mention it -social security will be allowing people to self attest for gender marker changes rather than requiring paperwork from state courts.  A subtle change but a great relief for the people it effects.

    Implementing X gender marker but that will take time and coding

  4. 4.

    piratedan

    J6 tomorrow, if the quality and the content is the equivalent of the last hearings this will continue to be bad news for Republicans.  If what Riggleman (a helper during the beginning stages and now has a book out) has been stating has any foundation in truth, it’s been alluded to that multiple members of Congress were aware of what was going to happen and planned their actions accordingly, i.e. delays in the process to give the mob more time and in providing logistical help to certain members of the mob revealing locations and and access points.

    If THAT becomes public knowledge, how many people will feel that this is a bridge too far for continued representation in Congress?

    Are they following the money?

    Will this be a conclusion session leaving the rest of the threads to be pulled by the DOJ?

    Will we see that this was a plan, coordinated between the WH, MOC, certain elements of the government and RW dark money and militias?

  8. 8.

    Cameron

    Given the various indicators (some more obvious than others) by Republicans that they want to damage the social safety net, the President’s comments are most welcome.

  10. 10.

    glc

    So, elsewhere on the internet, Retraction Watch’s site is offline because their host’s Apache server is down.

    Wonder what that’s about.

    “Thanks for your patience as they work through the issue.”

    (Does this need a trigger warning?)

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @Old School: And yet we did, so ironically were self-training for knocking the shit out of real asteroids. NASA has their workforce, pre-trained.

    I feel that way cycling downtown in traffic–I am competing in a real-life Frogger game.

  14. 14.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Want some Schadenfreude? Here’s an update on just how bad things are for TFG in the stolen documents Special Master thing. I’ve been watching a lot of this guy’s video lately. As I understand it, basically their claims to possible ownership of the documents have put them in a bind where TFG has to respond in a way that waives his Fifth Amendment rights and stipulates to committing the crime.

  16. 16.

    Betsy

    I’m so glad to see Dems finding the issues that 75% of the public agrees strongly on and then flogging the s**t out of them.

    I wonder how long the President has wanted to have this happen on a national scale before he became President.

    It’s almost like he really knows what he’s doing.

    PS Thinking of Betty C and our other Fla-west-coast jackals in advance of the storm. 🤞

  32. 32.

    Montanareddog

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Chris Kise is supposed to be the competent lawyer who is being paid the big bucks retainer, right?

    If correct that he is being sidelined, the obvious explanation is that Trump has really got himself in a legal bind this time and, as usual, is pschologically-incapable of hearing the truth.

  33. 33.

    Soprano2

    I listened to an episode of Jon Favreau’s “The Wilderness” on the “Pod Save America” feed this morning. Interesting stuff, it was voters in VA who were Biden-Youngkin voters and some election analysts. Geminid, you especially would be interested in listening to it. The gist was that the main issues for the voters were how much things cost, although they don’t blame the government for inflation, and schools being closed too long because of Covid. McAuliffe trying to make Youngkin into a mini-Trump fell flat, because superficially Youngkin wasn’t like Trump at all. They thought Youngkin was more of a “regular” Republican, and thought Democrats shouldn’t get too much power for too long. None of them bought into the CRT crap, though. The analysts talked about how McAuliffe didn’t run on any of the things that Northam and the Democrats got done, which they thought was a strategic mistake. They said you can’t turn every Republican into a mini-Trump unless that person seems like that to the voters. I thought it was a constructive exercise. I hope some Democrats running for office listen to it!

  40. 40.

    sdhays

    @Montanareddog: This guy is apparently a serious lawyer, although an awful, awful person (not surprising). I wonder if he’s being sidelined because he’s been telling Trump that he’s f*cked (not something Trump wants to hear) and isn’t coming up with non-legal strategies to keep Trump out of court (and jail).

    Roger Stone is probably going to end up lead council, officially or not.

  41. 41.

    glc

    @WaterGirl: It’s technical – science retractions.

    Definitely good guys, within their tightly focused sphere of interest. The deterioration in the world of academic publishing is not something that can really be dealt with piecemeal but they shine some light on it.  The recent COVID literature has given them some additional material to work with, but the situation would be much the same without that.

    At the moment I’m just taking note of their service outage as something this community is familiar with. Presumably they’re not the only ones affected, just the only one I’ve noticed. No idea if the service provider is experiencing internal or external issues.

  42. 42.

    geg6

    @WaterGirl: ​
     
    I’m always confused by this. I have to buy insulin for Lovey. It’s not very expensive. About $24 per vial. I have no idea how much a human uses, but I give Lovey a jab twice a day (don’t ask me how much…it’s the #11 line on the syringe). I use a vial up in a little over a month. The vet prescribed a name brand, but told me to take it to Walmart and ask for the less expensive Novolin (sp?) because they had the best prices. Do humans use a ton more insulin?

  44. 44.

    The Moar You Know

    Do humans use a ton more insulin?

    @geg6: 2-3 vials.  Cost thereof is all over the place.  Fast-acting versus intermediate acting.  There is probably a veterinary version as well that would be cheaper than human-rated stuff.

    But the average diabetic is spending about $5,000/year on insulin, from what I’m reading.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: I thought tbat McAuliffe may have been complacent, and some friends agree. His campaign certainly could have been better. And Northam and the Democrats in the General Assembly did accomplish a lot of good things. I’m not sure why McAuliffe did not make the most of this.

    Youngkin and his team, on the other hand, ran a tight, shipshape campaign that made the most of a narrow path to victory. Voting analysis seems to show that Youngkin brought out some Republican voters who would not come out for trump. That could have made a difference in a 2 point win.

    Youngkin was widely despised by people here, and his attractiveness as a candidate underestimated. As veteran journalist Jeff Shapiro on the Richmond Times-Dispatch observed, Youngkin was a newcomer to politics and had a blank canvas that he painted in to his advantage.

    His emphasis on Critical Race Theory, bullshit that it was, proved to be a shrewd tactic. Youngkin used it to rally the base like other Republicans have used abortion and guns, but without the blowback  those two issues generate among suburban voters. Youngkin probably would have lost had it not been been for his success at keeping those two issues in the background.

    I was just talking politics with my landlord and told him I thought that foungkin Youngkin’s win was an anomaly and that Virginia is still trending blue. I guess we’ll find out next year when when both houses of the General Assembly are up for election. Right now Republican have a 52-48 majority in the House of Delegates, and the Democrats a 21-19 majority in the state Senate.

  46. 46.

    Montanareddog

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Can I plead the giant patch over my left eye as an excuse?

    No excuse necessary! I hazard that every single commenter on this here blog regularly fluffs a Copy/Paste. At least, it was not something embarassing previously copied to your clipboard.

    I hope the eye surgery has been successful.

  48. 48.

    Soprano2

    @geg6: No, it’s about the pen delivery system. That’s what costs so much, and they keep changing the pens and formulation slightly so they can patent it yet again. When they do that everyone quits making the old pens and only makes the “new, improved” pens. You can get vials for humans and use regular small syringes, that’s what my husband does for the short-acting insulin. That’s the other thing, there is short-acting and long-acting insulin now. You take the long-acting once a day either morning or night depending on what your doctor says; you take the short-acting with meals as needed.

  49. 49.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: According to the podcast the only people the CRT stuff motivated were the base Trumpie voters; everyone else just ignored it, at least according to their analysis. So you could be right, that he brought out just enough Republican voters who didn’t vote for TFG to make the difference. You really should listen to that podcast episode, I’m sure you’d find it interesting.

  50. 50.

    oatler

    All these billionaire septuagenarians screaming and shitting on the world.  Maybe they’re an example of devolution to virus.

  51. 51.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: I probably would, but my phone has limited high speed data and I don’t listen to podcasts.. My friend Joan likes them, though so I’ll pass your recommendation on to her.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: trump seems to have depressed Virginia’s Republican voter in 2020 while energizing Democrats, and the reversion to the norm probably accounts for some of the 12 point swing between 2020 and 2021.

    Another factor was Independentsswinging. Research on Independents tends to show that most Independents consistently vote for one party or tbe other, but maybe 20% are actual swing voters. Virginia does not register by party, but Wason Center polls show about 33% of registered voters self-identify as Independent, so it could be that 3 or 4% of voters selected Biden one year and Youngkin the next. His style seemed designed to appeal to Independents.

    But I hear that Youngkin has developed a special, high tech fleece vest for when he runs for Presdent! It will change color depending on which side of his mouth he’s talking out of.

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    @geg6: Also, for humans, in addition to the two types of insulin, there are all the ancillary costs: needles or pumps (these are some disposable parts to pumps); blood sugar monitoring via test strips or wearable sensors (and sensors must be replaced often, the battery runs out); and various other meds taken in conjunction with insulin (you’d think I’d know the names of these meds since Ohio Dad takes at least one of them but I’d have to look at the cheat sheet in my purse).

    Yes, the cost of insulin is criminal but the other odds and ends are also overpriced.

  56. 56.

    Soprano2

    @Ohio Mom: We’re lucky with the sensors and monitor, Medicare pays for all of it for my husband. It makes it so much easier for him to monitor his blood sugar and adjust his insulin than it was when he was pricking his finger.

  58. 58.

    rikyrah

    @sdhays:

    This guy is apparently a serious lawyer, although an awful, awful person (not surprising). I wonder if he’s being sidelined because he’s been telling Trump that he’s f*cked (not something Trump wants to hear) and isn’t coming up with non-legal strategies to keep Trump out of court (and jail).

     

    Or, Dolt45 is telling him to break the law for him. And, he’s like…NOPE.

  59. 59.

    sdhays

    @rikyrah: Yeah, pretty much. I think this guy is probably laying out the legal options and Trump is like, “Those options all suck, who do we need to buy off/threaten? Why did I pay you $3m of other people’s money??”.

  60. 60.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl:

    Insulin – fucking highway robbery for decades.

    Yes, murderous highway robbery, also too. Those parasites should all be in jail for killing people for money. Nothing matters but the profit margins !!!!

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    @geg6:

    Do humans use a ton more insulin [than Lovey] ?

    How much does Lovey weigh compared to you? If lovey weighs 15 pounds, and you weigh 150 pounds, then your insulin bill will be 10 times Lovey’s insulin bill. At least.  I weigh 250, so mine would be nearly 20 times, talking real money now!

  62. 62.

    J R in WV

    The CNN story about Chris Kise is based upon rumor and speculation. “Two people familiar with the matter” is pretty thin sourcing. Of course, Trump is irrational, and so it may be true, Kise may be demoted, I’m sure he doesn’t care as he’s already been paid…

  63. 63.

    TriassicSands

    Medicare, Social Security and Health Care are good  great  essential…

    They are essential, but they are certainly not great or even especially good.

    Medicare is an 80/20 program and that 20% could result in bankruptcy for some people. There’s nothing good about that. What it takes to be great is to provide excellent care to everyone regardless of their incomes and leave no chance of financial hardship or ruin. Further, Medicare Part D is definitely inadequate, so not even good.

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