Bitchy

I don’t see an end in sight unless democrats cave and I firmly believe that they need to hold firm on their position. I don’t have a lot of confidence that they will because, they’re democrats and democrats don’t have backbones, political instincts, or the will to win for working people even if it means (like in this situation) keeping the gravy train going for private, for-profit insurance companies.

I posted the following on my FB page a few weeks ago to break down what democrats are really fighting for:

Secondly, understand that democrats are holding firm on one single piece of funding in order to allow the rest of the republican’s highway robbery of the working class to continue unabated: they want to maintain the premium subsidies for Obamacare. Have you stopped to think about that for a minute? Democrats are holding out for taxpayer money to keep flowing into the coffers of private insurance companies so that 15 million people don’t find themselves unable to afford the monthly cost of insurance, which includes a 20% “administrative cost”. Medicare’s administrative cost is 4%. IF ONLY democrats had a blueprint for a more cost effective way to deliver healthcare. OH RIGHT – Medicare, duh! Also, there’s the VA, which is even more efficient than Medicare. In fact, almost half of Americans are ALREADY covered by the Medicare, Medicaid VA combination: the least healthy half. I referred to Obamacare as a “better than nothing piece of crap” when it passed and I was right.

Well, I ended up doing a little digging after I wrote that post so let me share some details about the state of the ACA which I referred to as a piece of shit right before it passed. Before I can get to the current state, I have to back up and explain 2 key provisions in the original bill. The first provision subsidized premiums for households whose incomes were between 100% – 400% of the poverty line. For an individual, 400% was an income of about $43,000 a year and for a family of four, it was an income of $88,000 a year. As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, Biden increased the subsidies so that a family of three making $103,000 a year would qualify. That makes sense, because you can’t fucking afford to pay for health insurance in America if you’re feeding and housing three people on $103,000 a year. That expansion was supposed to expire in 2022 but Biden extended it for another three years so it’s going to expire at the end of this year.

This shutdown fight is about that expansion, not the original subsidies but I’m going to get back to the shutdown shortly.

The other significant provision in the ACA when it was passed, was a backstop guaranteeing that insurance companies wouldn’t take any losses on their plans in the exchange. That meant that if they had to pay out more claims than they had collected in premiums (plus their 20% “administrative” fee), taxpayer money would cover those losses. In 2014, little Marco Rubio inserted a poison pill into an omnibus spending bill that killed that backstop. Since insurance companies aren’t ever, ever going to lose a single dollar because that would defeat the whole purpose of their existence, this meant that those costs would manifest themselves in premium increases.

One more thing to remember about the original bill; it increased the length of pharmaceutical patents by 50% so instead of 8 year patents, they now get to charge a premium for their exclusive drugs for 12 years before a generic can be made available. This increases the cost of insurance, since insurance companies are paying higher prices for those drugs for 4 years longer.

Now back to the shutdown and the expansion of subsidies. The result of Biden’s expansion, which republicans want to kill is that we have nearly twice as many people receiving subsidies as we had in 2014 when the ACA went into full effect. When we talk about 15 million people losing their coverage because the steep premium increases will make it unaffordable, we’re mostly talking about the people who couldn’t afford coverage in 2014 because it was too expensive, but they didn’t qualify for any subsidies and then got insured in 2020 because they could get subsidies. In 2014, they made too much to qualify for subsidies, but not enough to actually afford to buy insurance. They have never made enough money to afford insurance. If you clicked on that first link I posted in this piece, you know that my beef with this piece of shit legislation is that it did nothing to actually bring down the cost of health insurance.

I fell down a rabbit hole of articles and data in an attempt to try and figure out what the exact impact of the ACA was on healthcare costs over the past week and I couldn’t do it. Covid really skewed everything. There were data sets that claimed that the ACA slowed the rate of increases and there were data sets that showed that the ACA doubled the rate of increases. Neither made sense to me and I ultimately concluded that covid made it impossible to get a clear picture.

Reason and logic tell me that there’s no way that the ACA slowed down premium increases, especially after I looked at earnings reports and stock price trends for the big 6 insurers. If you recall, all of the stock prices went up on the day the legislation was signed. We injected trillions of taxpayer dollars into this industry and did nothing to bring down actual costs. In fact, the big pharma patent extensions did the opposite.

If you’re as big a nerd as I am, and you’re interested in digging into some interesting facts about our health coverage as it compares to other countries, this data is really illuminating and will give you a pretty good idea of how to actually bring down costs.

So what’s my point here? It’s the same point I’ve been making for 15 years. We deserve better than this. This piece of shit bill that has done nothing but raise the cost of healthcare for everyone in the country is not what we need to be fighting for. Yes, we need to demand that democrats hold the line on this but funneling more and more taxpayer money to private corporations is not something that we should be applauding because at the end of the day, it’s the same pig that republicans have been raising for decades. Democrats just put some lipstick on it to fool you into embracing it.

You need to be vocal about not being willing to vote for any democrat who isn’t prepared to, on day one die on the Medicaid (it’s more comprehensive than Medicare) for all hill. We need to move everyone intoMedicaid and then turn Medicaid into a VA system that employs all of the doctors and negotiates with pharmaceutical companies. This is a much more efficient use of our resources than what we’re doing now, where we’re spending the most money on healthcare per capita and have the worst outcomes.

I have not watched cable news in about 15 years and yet, I’m a news junkie. Why is that? Because I realized that cable news kept me disinformed. Something awesome happened around 2003 in response to the Bush/Cheney presidency. Independent media emerged in response to the horseshit that the mainstream “trusted” news sources were peddling. Remember this years long turd from the New York Times? It wasn’t just The Times. They were all doing it. Phil Donahue was fired from MSNBC for opposing the Iraq war.

The only good thing that came from that horrendous presidency, is that the mainstream media was exposed for being nothing more than stenographers for the establishment. Unfortunately, the majority of the generations that were consuming news at the time didn’t notice. But a decent percentage of us did, and upcoming generations totally knew it and never experienced disillusionment with mainstream media because they grew up knowing it was propaganda.

I did enjoy Keith Olbermann’s rapier wit during the Bush years. When Rachel Maddow took over his slot on MSNBC, I tuned in because I was a big fan of every iteration of her show on Air America Radio. She cohosted a show with Lizz Winstead, founding writer of the Daily Show and champion of women’s reproductive rights. She also cohosted a show with Chuck D of Public Enemy, a fierce fighter for progressive causes and equal justice. Maddow was a true progressive who really understood that the corporate takeover of our government was the reason for 90% of our country’s problems. She understood that a combination of republican neocon ideology and the military industrial complex were responsible for getting us into and keeping us in Iraq and Afghanistan. She knew that big Pharma is the reason why Americans can’t afford life saving drugs. She was a big supporter of then congressman Bernie Sanders.

So I watched her on MSNBC, not because I expected her to do the same type of show that she had done on Air America. At that point, I was acutely aware of the main stream media’s role in propagandizing the American people on behalf of the establishment. I watched because I believed that she would do what she could do within the constraints of working for corporate media to actually inform viewers. In the beginning, that’s what she did. Her shows were definitely not as informative as what I was getting from independent media, and she never really told me anything I didn’t already know but she was raising issues for “normies” that wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.

As time went on, she was doing fewer and fewer stories about things that directly impact working people’s lives and focused more and more on DNC propaganda. Her show became the same old, same old partisan horserace hackery that everyone else was doing. I stopped watching entirely and listened to the podcast once or twice a week. The end for me; the moment when I realized that she was the most insipid person on cable news came during the 2016 presidential primary. She did one of her 40 minute monologues about a Supreme Court decision that vacated former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s conviction on corruption charges. Basically they said that if someone lavishes gifts on a politician, and then that person gets state contracts, there’s no corruption unless there’s video evidence of a bag of cash being handed over while the politician clearly states that the donor will receive a lucrative contract in exchange. Disgusting, and definitely worth a 40 minute segment.

Less than a week later, Maddow had Andrea Mitchell on to discuss an allegation that Bernie had made against Hillary (remember, this was the primary). Bernie accused Hillary of illegally laundering money to her campaign through state democratic organizations. Bernie was lying. What Hillary was doing was not illegal anymore. It was not illegal because of another Supreme Court ruling. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court removed the aggregate cap on donations that an individual can make in an election cycle. The maximum amount that a single donor can make to a candidate of a party is $2,700 per election cycle. There was also an aggregate cap that capped the total amount that somebody could give during an election cycle. The Supreme Court removed that cap. That’s what made it possible for George Clooney to throw a $350,000 a plate fundraiser for Hillary. That $350,000 donation would get distributed to state democratic entities all across the country and then sent back to Hillary’s campaign. This is now perfectly legal because of SCOTUS, but it’s definitely corrupt just like Citizen’s United. So Bernie lied to try and get the media to talk about the McCutcheon ruling.

You would this was right in Maddow’s wheelhouse since she had just spent forty minutes on how the Supreme Court legalized corruption, right? Nope. She did a four minute segment with Andrea Mitchell about how Bernie lied, never mentioning the Supreme Court or uttering the word “McCutcheon” once. She didn’t even explain what I did about how the money gets laundered around and around. She just spoke about the ‘Hillary Victory Fund’ that the DNC set up and emphasized that they had also set up a ‘Bernie Victory Fund’, failing to mention that he never touched it. Way to outsmart Bernie and keep your audience in the dark Rachel. Bravo!

It was disgusting and insipid, and it’s an excellent example of how the “liberal” corporate media exists to manipulate liberals just as much as Fox News exists to manipulate conservatives. That’s when I decided that she had gone from being someone I respected to being the most insipid person on cable television. Yes, more insipid than Tucker. Why? Because while Tucker is a prolific liar, he does fundamentally believe in republican ideals. As one of the heirs to the Swanson frozen food fortune, he’s all for fucking the working class over in order to protect his inheritance through as many tax cuts as he can trick his viewers into supporting. He grew up believing that trickle down makes the world work. She knows better and decided to sell you out to the establishment that she knows has been robbing you for decades, just so that she can collect a fat paycheck for herself.

There’s absolutely no reason to fall for this crap anymore. There are a myriad of independent outlets, just like Air America Radio (long defunct) where Maddow once earned my trust.

For podcasts, there’s The Majority Report with Sam Seder. He’s another Air America alum. He has the best analytical mind I’ve ever come across and he’s totally unemotional about politics. There’s Indisputable with Dr Rashad Richey. He’s excellent on matters of racial justice. There’s The Young Turks. They will teach you to decode politician speak better than anyone else and they will teach you to spot how the main stream media is manipulating you. There’s Unbossed with Nina Turner. She will inform you on how establishment democrats are enriching themselves at your expense, while still giving you hope that we can undo this mess. Lastly, in the podcast category, there’s This Is Revolution. This one will make you the most uncomfortable if you’re switching from msm news but the more I’ve listened, the less uncomfortable I’ve become and the more they’ve won me over on some of their perspectives. They will give you the best world history lessons you will get now that the world no longer has the amazing Michael Brooks to educate us.

I do read the New York Times and The Washington Post every single morning because I think it’s important to stay on top of the corporate spin and they do occasionally do some good investigative journalism. I go to The Hill and Politico to get unvarnished establishment propaganda and to learn about who is turning on whom. There was a period of time when they were peddling fluff pieces full of effusive (unearned) praise for Mayo Pete and stories about Kamala Harris’ blunders. That made it clear that Biden was floating trial balloons in regard to replacing his veep in the next election. But to get the information that the msm won’t give me, I go to The Intercept, Pro Publica, and The Lever every single day. They have earned my trust the way Maddow once did.

I do, of course fact check everything I read. I actually fact check articles that sound good to me more than I fact check anything else. Trust but verify is my approach to news.

It’s bullshit. There is no debt ceiling crisis. Not really.

Let me debunk some shit that literally none of the mainstream media media will educate you on.

Fact #1: No corporate owned politician will allow the debt ceiling to be breached. Why? Because their owner/donors have literally everything to lose. Approximately 90% of our politicians are wholly owned subsidiaries of corporations. That includes Biden and McCarthy. The other 10% are funded entirely by grass roots donations. All but one of those are progressives. The progressives don’t want the debt ceiling to be breached because they’re progressive and the mere discussion of tanking the world economy (that part of the media narrative isn’t bullshit) is unconscionable.

Fact #2: Anytime there’s a “debt ceiling crisis”, the president has all the power. It doesn’t matter if the opposing party controls both chambers of congress. Unless the opposing party has a super majority in both chambers, the president has 100% of the power in this situation. Why? See fact #1.

If the president refuses to negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, congress is completely powerless. They have to raise it. Their owner/donors won’t let them tank the economy.

There is no crisis unless the president creates one. That is an empirical fact.

When Obama, and now Biden agreed to negotiate with republicans, they created a crisis. And they did it by breaking a stated tenet of the US government; we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Yes democrats – I understand your compulsion to blame McCarthy for this but you’re just wrong. Let me repeat: the president never has to engage in negotiations because the terrorists have no leverage.

Have you ever asked yourselves why democrats never deploy the same tactics that republicans win with? Do you think it’s because they’re the “good guys”? If you do, that’s a pretty flawed opinion because “good guys” should be doing everything they can to do good things.

No, democrats are getting paid to lose. They’re getting paid to lose by the same owner/donors that pay republicans to win. They have been cast in the role of well meaning but hapless in the political theater that we’ve been treated to for the past four decades.

Remember when democrats “tried” to pass a $15 federal minimum wage under reconciliation and the senate parliamentarian said “no”? Remember? Remember how they gave up after that because, what could they do? Raising the minimum wage was something democrats really wanted to do but their hands were tied, right? Oh wait, would you look at that; twenty years earlier, when the then senate parliamentarian stood in the way of W’s tax cuts for the rich, republicans fired him and passed the tax cuts.

Huh. Maybe democrats just didn’t know they could do that because none of them have been in office for that long? No, come to think of it, Biden was in the senate when republicans fired the senate parliamentarian.

Hmmmm. Maybe there’s another explanation I haven’t thought of that doesn’t involve democrats profoundly sucking. I’d love it if someone can point me to that explanation.

Make no mistake: this debt ceiling crisis is 100% Biden manufactured and you are definitely going to end up on the losing end of these unnecessary negotiations.

I am flummoxed as to how anyone can still buy into this “good guy” and “bad guy” narrative that has been created in order to get voters to enthusiastically vote against their own self interests. If you’re not looking long and hard at your primary candidate options, you’re part of the problem. If you have even dismissed a candidate because “they’re not viable”, you have bought into the corporate media narrative that keeps you voting against your own self interest.

I don’t vote for a corporate owned democrat until I don’t have a choice. When it’s general election time and my options are between a democrat and a republican, I vote for the democrat because I know that they will be slightly less shitty than the republican. Slightly. That’s the reality.

I just wish that the rest of the electorate would wise up and put me in that unpleasant situation less often.

I know I’ve been slow to post about Jordan Neely’s murder. That’s because I needed time to process the facts and my feelings about what happened. My process generally involves challenging myself on my initial opinion until I land on an opinion that includes the facts and my values.

First, let me say that since we don’t have all the facts yet, I’m not advocating for a first degree murder charge (yet). Right at this moment, we don’t have any witnesses who have claimed that Jordan assaulted anyone. That might change and I will form a different opinion if that happens. I certainly won’t take the choke holder’s word for it. The good news is that there are cameras on the subway so we’re not going to have to rely on witness testimony to see what happened.

The opinion I hold on the forefront of my mind in regard to this incident is that my heart aches for him. He lived a heartbreaking life that ended the way his mother’s did: by being choked to death. When he was 14 years old, his mother was strangled to death by her live-in boyfriend, who stuffed her body in a suitcase and tossed it along a highway like trash. When Jordan was 18, he has to testify against his mother’s murderer. What happened to his mother broke him and that’s all I can think about.

My opinions about the incident are eclipsed by my heartache for him, as should anyone else’s.

Now back to the day he was murdered. I watched the video shot by the reporter on the train because I believe that watching is the least we as the public can do. I saw him in a chokehold for over 2 and a half minutes. He was already in the hold before the video started. I’ve heard that he was in that chokehold for 15 minutes. I don’t know that to be a fact so I’m only going to speak to the 2 1/2 minutes that I personally witnessed.

There’s a reason why the majority of police departments don’t allow chokeholds; they kill people. We all know this, so using a chokehold on another person is completely inexcusable Full.Stop. Using a chokehold on someone means that you don’t care if they die so the choker in this instance is trash.

Knowing that he served as a marine for 4 years makes this even worse. He was ostensibly trained on chokeholds and knew what I had to research to learn. If you do a chokehold “correctly” a person would be rendered unconscious in 8 – 10 seconds. It is still dangerous to do it “correctly”. This asshole had Jordan in a chokehold for at least the 2 1/2 minutes that I witnessed. What we know right now absolutely warrants a manslaughter charge. I am reserving judgement on a murder charge, but even if we have confirmation that Jordan didn’t assault anyone, that’s going to be a difficult charge for the prosecutor to make. We have to start prosecuting these vigilantes because encouraging them by letting them walk with no consequences creates a world that no one should have to live in.

Before he was murdered, Jordan said, “I’m tired already. I don’t care if I go to jail and get locked up. I’m ready to die.” He said he was hungry and thirsty. That doesn’t sound like a dangerous person to me. That sounds like a desperate person who is slowly being killed by society. That sounds like a person who is literally crying out for help. The asshole wanna-be hero in this story has an outsized penchant for fear. He should not be applauded for that.

The right wing media loves to report that Jordan was arrested 42 times. That’s forty-two opportunities that New York City missed to help this man. It was actually many more than 42 opportunities. He was on NYC’s outreach workers’ list of the “top 50”, meaning that that he was among the unhoused who are urgently in need of help. Here’s what they neglected to do during their numerous attempts to help him: give him a home. Providing the unhoused with permanent shelter works. It works. Let me show you again that this fucking works. If the city you live in has tried it and it didn’t work, it’s because of corruption, misuse of funds and crony capitalism. When the money isn’t siphoned off to pay back owner/donors, housing the unhoused with no preconditions works. It works for everyone. Every last member of society benefits by housing the unhoused.

I had brunch with a very dear friend who I absolutely adore yesterday. He’s had encounters on the subway with unhoused people who were having a mental health episode. Those encounters scared the shit out of him so he doesn’t feel that the choker (I REFUSE to use his name) did anything wrong. I can see that perspective, but I don’t share it.

I’m not a fearful person by my nature. I actually rarely have strong split second emotions, and I never have. In any given situation, my brain goes to assessing what’s happening based on what I know.

During that brunch, my friend told me about his friend who lives (or works – I can’t remember which) on the upper west side. His friend does a good amount of humanitarian work so he’s certainly a kind person. He told my friend that when the city put some of the unhoused up in a hotel on the upper west side in the early days of the covid pandemic, he personally witnessed a crime spree. As it happened, I was very familiar with that situation. Our then mayor made the decision to move some of the city’s unhoused people into some of the plethora of empty hotels across the city. One of those hotels was The Lucern, located on the Upper West Side where the primary demographic is fine, white liberals. Here’s what those fine, white liberals did (I encourage you to read the article). They started a Facebook page to band together. They got so much backlash, that they made the page private because that’s what you do when you’re right and righteous; you hide. They insisted that crime was going up in their neighborhood and they saw that crime everywhere. The problem is that the crime they saw was entirely imaginary. They had to imagine crime so that they could tell themselves that they are good people. My friend’s friend imagined crime that wasn’t happening. This is why I always find anecdotal evidence completely worthless. Anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence of anything except what a person thinks they see with their own eyes. It’s total bullshit that I won’t entertain because data is what I rely on to inform myself.

I have also experienced encounters with unhoused people in the middle of a mental health crisis on the subway. I’ve never been afraid. Maybe that’s because I understand that people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims of crime than they are perpetrators of crime, and that they’re legitimately frightened all the time. Or maybe it’s because I know that half of our population is two paychecks away from being unhoused and that being unhoused is not a result of a moral failing.

Our culture is seriously diseased in this regard. We fundamentally believe that the unhoused got that way because of something they did so they deserve this. We believe that despite the fact that the vast majority of us are justifiably feeling screwed by our government that only exists to fellate the 1%. I don’t know where the disconnect is in regard to applying what we know to the unhoused. I used to be bothered by the idea of giving an unhoused person money, just to have them spend it on drugs or alcohol. That no longer bothers me. I would medicate the shit out of myself if I had to live on the streets too and so would you.

We see the unhoused as trash that we don’t want in our neighborhoods. We don’t look at them when we walk past them.

And that’s why Jordan Neely was killed and why some applaud him for doing the killing. He was just taking out the trash that we’re afraid of and want to remove from our consciousness.

Here’s what I do when I’m on the subway with someone who is having a mental episode: I either walk away or I feed them. Before the pandemic, I always kept a few protein bars in my purse for just these occasions. I had fallen out of that habit until this happened. I went to Costco yesterday and stocked up. A desperate person is not going to harm you if you treat them like a human being and make even the smallest gesture to help.

Can you imagine what living in a society where you’re invisible all the time and the only interaction you have with other humans is one where you’re seen as trash?

When you see an unhoused person, look at them and say, “Hello”. That simple act of seeing someone as human can help to diminish mental health episodes. If I have food or water on me, I give it to them. The leftovers that are packed up for me after I have a meal seldom make it home with me (don’t forget to ask for utensils when they’re packing up your meal!)

These are human beings with very human stories. Please let that thought be the first one you have when you see an unhoused person.

And please, I beg you – don’t let your fear turn you into the type of person who applauds murdering vigilantes. I promise you that this won’t turn out well for you.

This one is going to be short and to the point. You can all relax about the Georgia runoff. Warnock is going to win, and it’s not going to be close.

It wasn’t going to be close yesterday, but now that Catherine Cortez Masto has won her senate seat it’s not going to be remotely close. Voting for Walker was easier for people who were already in the voting booth to vote for other republican candidates. But showing up just for Walker is something many voters won’t do. Now that democrats have held the senate, there’s even less incentive for even the most “democrat” hating republican to take time out of their day to show up for an abusive, abortion happy pathological liar. The balance of the senate is no longer at stake. I just don’t see them turning out in big numbers to vote for Walker.

This is going to be a very low turnout election. The only caveat to my prediction is that lower democratic turnout could happen, although I think that’s less likely. If you have friends in Georgia, please tell them to make sure to show up.

Other than that, relax and enjoy overeating day. This one won’t be the nail biter you think it’s going to be.

This post is going to be short and sweet. I’m not going to break down individual election results.

A week or two ago, I shared on my Facebook page that I didn’t see a red wave coming. Admittedly, my evidence was less than compelling but the combination of early voting numbers and the results of the abortion vote in Kansas in August left me feeling that there was going to be no red wave this year.

There should have been. The party that wins the White House almost always loses big in the next election. The fact that it didn’t happen this time is more significant than any other pundit will tell you.

Unfortunately, I can’t yet unpack precisely how this is significant moving forward because I need to wait for the demographic numbers to see who actually voted in each state. But I do know that this is monumentally significant.

In terms of the practical implications of how these toss up races land, virtually nothing will change even if republicans keep 50 seats in the senate. We get to keep Social Security for at least two more years and absolutely no major piece of legislation will pass in the next 2 years.

I don’t really like predicting election results. Literally no one is better at it than a coin toss would be. That said, I was actually pretty spot on this year mostly because I don’t predict races where I don’t have any clear indicators. I never commented on Wisconsin or Arizona. I nailed everything else I called this year. Once I knew that Fetterman recovered from his stroke, I knew that he was going to win with absolute certainty because he ran a masterful campaign. I knew Warnock was in trouble. I didn’t know if he was going to win or not, but I knew that it was going to be way closer than it should have been, given his opponent. The media kept trying to make the governor’s race here in NYS sound like it was going to be close. I never thought it would be.

So on the heels of my prescient prognosticating, let me blow up all of my credibility by attempting to forecast a presidential election two years out, with absolutely NO idea about what will be happening in the country or the world when that election happens. What I’m trying to say here, is that you would be foolish to read anything I’m about to say in any context other than light entertainment.

Trump is going to officially announce that he’s running for president again in the next week or so. It doesn’t matter who else runs in the republican primary; Trump will be the nominee unless he drops dead in the next 2 years. He has a solid (roughly) 35% of the republican electorate squarely behind him. They are as immovable as a 4 year old who loves their meth addicted, domestic partner abusing, unemployed daddy. No other republican has a high enough profile to successfully run against him except for DeSantis (or DeSanctimonious, as Papa has referred to him). DeSantis has already declared that he’s too scared to run against daddy. That could still change, and I hope it does because I really need the entertainment value of watching 2 republican “stars” viciously tear each other apart. This matchup in particular would be as down and dirty as politics have ever gotten. It would be white walkers vs dragons.

So Trump will be the republican nominee. Biden is going to run again and democrats will go along with that even if they have to Weekend At Bernie’s him to cross the finish line. Despite the leaks we’ve been seeing in the media over the past year, he’s going to keep Kamala on the ticket even though she’s been an unmitigated disaster. Democrats aren’t bold enough to drop a sitting VP. Sorry, Mayo Pete – you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Unfortunately for you, by the time it’s your turn, the only demographic that doesn’t think you’re oily will be a tiny sliver of the electorate.

Trump is going to lose. He’s going to lose because instead of running a populist campaign like he did in 2016, he’s just going to keep whining and crying about his imaginary victimhood. That is just not an appealing campaign strategy. He’s going to lose. Biden isn’t going to win, so much as Trump is going to lose. I really believe that Trump is the only republican candidate who Biden wouldn’t lose to.

So there you have my preposterous two-year-out election prediction. I stick by everything I’ve said about Biden, Trump, Harris, and Mayo but anything can happen over the next 2 years so I’m just having fun with this.

I know that democrats have been chomping at the bit to see Trump indicted. I also know that most of you are watching each new development in the multiple investigations into Trump’s crimes and telling yourselves, “this is it!” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t believe that Trump is ever going to be indicted for a damned thing by the federal government (more on that later).

I understand how good it feels to believe that he’s going to end up in prison. Believe me, I understand but I believe it’s a fantasy. A lovely fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. Many a meme perpetuating this fantasy can be found on my Facebook page. I’ve started to realize that not making it clear that these posts are happy place fantasies is antithetical to what I’m trying to do here. When I started this brand, my goal was (and is) to get people to think about politics in a completely different way than the way they’ve been thinking about it for the past 40 years. Politics is not sports. You don’t pick a team and stick with that team through thick and thin. What we’ve gotten with that approach is that corporate bank accounts have gotten thick, while yours has gotten thin.

This happened because virtually no politician is fighting for you, and it’s time that we all realized that so that we can make more meaningful choices in order to undo everything that has been done really, since Reagan.

Perpetuating this fantasy about Trump being locked up suggests that democrats are going to do something about it, which simply isn’t believable if you divorce yourself from that team mentality and apply a basic tenet of life that everyone on the planet knows to be true: follow the money.

This shouldn’t be difficult to work through since the Roe decision just happened. Democrats never bothered to codify Roe into law for one primary reason: it’s an issue that they fundraise on heavily. You can tell yourself all the sweet little lies you want to make democrats the “good guys” on this, but they’re not true. Democrats had two chances to make it happen. That’s a fact. But they wanted to keep fundraising on Roe and to get elected on the basis of being champions of women’s reproductive rights. Don’t believe me. Believe your own lying eyes:

I know that fantasies are more fun and probably better for your short term mental health, but it’s time to stop the fantasizing because those fantasies have become toxic to your own self interests.

Nancy Pelosi made it clear where democrats stand on prosecuting people in power when she didn’t want to “look back” at W’s crimes. That’s where they stand ideologically.

In terms of where their motivations lie, it’s clear in the tens of thousands of fundraising emails that we’ve all gotten on the basis of “getting Trump”. Do you honestly believe that democrats are going to take that gravy train off the tracks? Really?

If democrats were serious about indicting Trump, they would have put handcuffs on more than just one person who ignored their copious subpoenas. They would have made an effort to motivate Trump’s allies to show up by making it clear that there’s a jail cell waiting for anyone who doesn’t show up, and that they can plan to occupy that cell until they’re ready to appear before their committees. Putting one person in handcuffs for ignoring a subpoena after several people had already done it is purely performative, and you know it.

If you divorce yourself from your team mentality, you know that what I’m saying is true because you’ve witnessed it with your own eyes. It’s time to stop with the fantasies and start making electoral decisions by following the money like your life and livelihood depend on it because they do.

The only caveat to this might be Georgia. It’s possible they might go rogue and hand down an indictment, but I really don’t see this happening on a federal level. If it happens, I’d be elated to eat crow and profess how very wrong I was.

I’m not saying that you won’t see fantastical and fun memes about Trump being locked up on my Facebook page. They’re fun. But I do pledge to make it clear that these are fantasies of a perfect world, just like Law and Order is a fantasy of a functional justice system and West Wing is a fantasy about how government should work. I watch both, but only because I like to fantasize in order to ease the angst of reality.

I know that I’ve been a little slow to react to the Roe decision. That’s because I was in a state of blind rage. I’m still in a state of rage, but my blindness has subsided and I’m thinking clearly now.

This is the very first blog post I wrote twelve years ago. Please take three minutes to read it because today, at this point in time, there’s no denying that what I told you all those years ago is 100% true. 

My rage toward the democratic party has been building for years, and it came to a head when Roe was overturned. Why? Because republicans aren’t pretending not to be monstrous. They tell you they’re monstrous every single day. They told you that their goal was to overturn Roe, and they did. They’re not giving the electorate false hope about anything. They promise hate and oppression, and goddamned it, that’s what they’re delivering. 

Democrats, on the other hand are deeply fucking dishonest. They passed a republican healthcare plan (that they could have passed sixteen years earlier) that guarantees insurance companies a 20% profit margin by backstopping losses with your money. And they called that a giant victory for the American people. Seriously? No fucking first world country would even consider moving into the heaping pile of shit that is the ACA. As crappy as it was coming out of the gate, it was designed to be easily eroded. And guess what? In 2014, that’s exactly what first term senator Marco Rubio did. He dealt a massive blow to the ACA. And guess what? Democrats swallowed the pill and voted for it because what else could they do?

DRATS! If only they weren’t so hapless. Oh well, at least they’re well meaning and that’s good enough for me! That was sarcasm, just in case that didn’t come through. 

This well meaning but hapless act that democrats have been subjecting us to for the past thirty years is tired, and it’s not helping anyone in the country. You can’t credibly be one of two major parties in America and be this fucking hapless. One fucking win in the past 20 years, and that was successfully passing RomneyCare? Are you fucking kidding me?

Actually, that’s a lie. Democrats have been stunningly successful at one thing; beating back progressives. After AOC caught them off guard, they’ve pulled out all the stops to prevent a progressive from winning a primary. Please read that article. It’s important to understanding the context for what I’m trying to tell you. Remember the 2020 primaries when Bernie earned more votes than anyone else in the first three primaries? You know, and then Biden won his very first primary ever (after running for president THREE times)? Remember? And then everyone who Biden lost to in the first three contests dropped out on the eve of Super Tuesday (after they had already made their ad buys) to endorse Biden? Because obviously, all of that losing was a clear indication that Biden was in the best position to win the general which he eked out by a 44,000 vote margin (don’t give me that electoral college crap because that’s just one more thing that democrats haven’t even attempted to fix) That was the point when democrats made it clear that they didn’t have any more use for democracy than republicans do.

I could go through a multitude of different examples (criminal justice reform, not ending the filibuster in 2009, skyrocketing child poverty, etc) but I won’t. You know what they are because you can’t come up with a way that democrats have improved any aspect of your life in the past 30 years, and neither can I. If you can come up with one, that’s not “proving me wrong” because one thing in thirty fucking years does not inspire the kind of cultish loyalty I’ve been seeing since Roe died.

We lost Roe because democratic lawmakers are ashamed of their stance on abortion and didn’t have the guts to codify it into law. This right here, is when Roe was doomed. And yeah, it was the Clintons that did it. When democrats ceded to the notion that abortion is bad, women all across the country were well on the way to losing bodily autonomy. Rhetoric is everything. Because democrats agreed that abortion is bad, they didn’t have the will to make it the law of the land. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

They’re more than fucking happy to fundraise and run on the issue though.

Look at how many democrats supported the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion. That included Jimmy Carter, by the way. That means that poor women on Medicaid can’t get all of the fucking healthcare that they need. That was a massive fucking blow to poor women because 1/3 of all abortions in 1974 were paid for through Medicaid. We spend copious amounts of money to kill men, women, and children all around the world and in our own country but ensuring that women have access to reproductive rights is something to be ashamed of?

Biden definitely supported the Hyde Amendment in 2009, when the ACA explicitly excluded coverage for abortion, and Obama was fine with that.

There is nothing wrong with abortion. Nothing. Abortion is healthcare, it’s family planning, and it mitigates poverty. There’s absolutely fucking nothing to be ashamed of and you’ll be shocked to hear that in many countries, women aren’t ashamed of their abortions. It’s the goddamned rhetoric that democrats helped to create that makes American women ashamed of abortion.

Every time you’ve ever defended abortion rights by going to ‘rape’ or ‘incest’, you have helped to further this toxic rhetoric. I’m guilty of having done it in the past. No more. In fact, the argument should be, “You’re lucky that we’re not trying to make abortion mandatory for every woman in America so that you can see how liberating abortion actually is”.

My rage turned blind when my email and my phone were blowing up with requests for my money from democrats who definitely promise to do something about Roe, if I just chip in! I guess we just weren’t paying them enough to guarantee women’s reproductive rights in the past, so it’s time to kick in now. How fucking shameless are these fuckwits?

And then there was social media. Some douche who calls himself “defiant” despite the fact that he’s perpetually spouting establishment talking points had the audacity to blame Susan Sarandon for the loss of Roe. In his defense, he’s a paid shill now so he’s not being a moron for free anymore. I’ve seen a lot of pro bono morons since Roe was overturned.

To be fair, I’ve also seen people who see what I see and understand that electoral politics isn’t the solution here.

And now we move from the rage part of this post, to the solution proposition part.

Voting isn’t going to do the trick here. AOC is literally the only person in the Democratic Party coming up with any ideas. Who the fuck donates money in response to an email that proposes no solutions to work on with your money? That was $12M that establishment loyalists lit on fire in the first 24 hours after the official announcement of the SCOTUS decision. Okay, maybe I’m not done with the rage part of this post. Democrats had five weeks to come up with something from the time the leak happened, and the announcement was made. They didn’t. They’re just completely befuddled. But hey, they’re well meaning so go ahead and ignore how hapless they are and keep voting!

Okay, moving on. We need to put pressure on companies to get out of the states where abortion is severely limited or entirely eliminated. You know that long list of companies who very generously offered to pay for travel expenses for their employees who would like to get a safe abortion? Because what woman doesn’t want to discuss her healthcare decisions with her employer? We can start with those companies because they think that they’re going to get brownie points for doing absolutely fucking nothing. Specifically the ones who sell consumer goods. Like Apple. They have a big campus in Austin. Let’s all use Twitter to force them to leave Texas unless they overturn their anti-healthcare law. Here’s a partial list of companies to target. If they’re a B2C company, we can apply pressure thanks to Twitter. Tweet. Make your friends tweet. Don’t wake up one day and forget to tweet because you’re in the acceptance phase of this process or because you forgot. Schedule tweeting time on your calendars.

We also need to target Hollywood. A very significant number of shows you watch are filmed in Georgia. Here’s a list you can start with. You need to tweet every actor who appears on every show in Georgia until their twitter feeds are full of nothing but calls for them to boycott Georgia. If you see that stupid peach at the end of a show you just watched: TWEET. Get to tweeting. We need to shame actors into taking a meaningful stand here.

There’s only one thing that misogynistic politicians love more than subjugating women: MONEY. I can assure you that Brian Kemp and Greg Abbott will immediately reverse course if subjugating women costs them money.

I promise that this will work. Losing Georgia’s film and television industry will cost them billions of dollars in revenue. Kemp will reverse course. And please don’t give me the “but this will hurt people who work in that industry”. Yes it will, but that’s far fewer people than 51% of the whole fucking country. We’re at war now, and it’s time to act like it and accept that we have to do whatever it takes to win back bodily autonomy for half of our country.

The only good thing that’s happened in the past several years has been the gains that the labor movement has been making. No politician helped with that. Obama never put on his walking shoes and joined any picket line to support workers who are fighting for better working conditions. And he’s the one most of you lionize. No, we’re not going to vote our way to a solution here.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying: in general elections, you still have to vote for the hapless democrat on your ballot to mitigate the suffering by putting tiny speed bumps on that road. During the primaries, you need to fight like hell to unseat your incumbent democrat for a progressive grass roots candidate. Your incumbent probably sucks. More than 90% of incumbent democrats suck. Your representative is not likely to be the exception.

But electoral politics is not going to solve our problems. We have to.

I never, ever ask this but I need you to share this post repeatedly. Email it to your friends and post it on your social media over and over again. Less than 3% of your connections see any given post.

We can fix this if we have enough people putting pressure on red states.

Generally speaking, I am not an expert on foreign affairs which is why when a foreign affairs issue arises, I take a few days to listen to different perspectives from people who I consider to be knowledgeable and reasonable in this area. “knowledgeable” and “reasonable” are conclusions I make by observing someone’s track record. If they’re right more than they’re wrong and if they admit to it when they’re wrong, I consider that person knowledgeable and reasonable. Sounds crazy I know, but I like the old school meritocracy we used to have before people just decided of they “like” someone based in a “feeling”. 

It doesn’t take me long to figure out all of the moving parts of the immediate situation at hand. That’s not to say that I always manage to gather all of the historical events that got us here. I sometimes miss those but I’m aware of my shortcomings in this regard. I’ve been soaking up as much information and historical context as  I can on the Russia/ Ukraine situation and I’ve changed a number of my opinions over the past week as a result of what I’ve learned. 

Now I’m going to share where I’ve landed for now. I’m almost certainly going to learn more in the coming weeks, which means that I will probably rethink some of this, but here are my thoughts today in regard to where we are right now.  

It’s clear that this invasion is not going the way Putin expected it to go. He really believed that  Russian troops were going to be able to sail into Ukraine and take all of the major cities in a day (maybe two). He also believed  that Russian troops would be “greeted as liberators” (to quote Don Rumsfeld). Basically, he thought it was going to go the way Crimea went. 

Because it didn’t, he has already lost in spectacular fashion. To be clear, I’m 100% positive that Russian troops will eventually take every city in Ukraine if they press on, but they’ve already lost on so many levels. 

First off, the mystique of the powerful Russian army had been badly damaged. Social media has effectively dispelled that myth by posting pictures of bombed out tanks and Russian troops surrendering. So that’s pretty bad for Putin. 

Next, this invasion has turned Zelinsky into an international hero. He has expertly used social media to his advantage. That video of himself on the streets of Kyiv as Russian troops are barreling toward them was remarkable. By contrast, Putin is so scared and paranoid that he never walks down any street in any Russian city for any reason on any normal day when nothing is gong on. It’s true. He’s always cocooned by his security detail in very controlled environments. Zelinsky looks like a fucking superhero by comparison. And then there’s the heartfelt appeal he made to the EU for help. No experienced politician could have brought powerful people with competing interests to tears and motivated them to action  the way he did. Ukraine’s entry into the EU has been fast tracked thanks to Zelinsky. The more heroic Zelinsky is, the more of a supervillain Putin has become. 

Lastly, Putin has accomplished the opposite of what he set out to accomplish. 

Before I get into my take, I want to share a really great analysis that I ultimately ended up disagreeing with. In this episode of This Is Revolution, Pascal Robert makes some great points in defense of Putin’s actions by giving historical context and a perspective I didn’t have. 

I encourage you to listen to the whole episode. I promise it will make you smarter. I ended up rejecting his argument because I don’t consider Putin to be a legitimately elected leader of Russia, and am therefore not compelled by Putin’s ideas for Russia. Also, I do believe that Zelinsky was legitimately elected so what may or may not have happened to lead up to his election is irrelevant since he’s a more legitimate leader than Putin is in my mind. 

Let’s leave the “denazification” nonsense behind us and focus on Putin’s real goals. He’s been against NATO for decades. He ultimately wants to see NATO disbanded completely, but his goal since 2014 has been to make sure that Ukraine is never admitted into NATO. This stated goal is really a proxy for keeping Ukraine from officially becoming part of the “west”. He wants Ukraine to be part of Russia again. That’s really what he wants. He wants to bring back the Soviet Union without the “union” part. Think of the Soviet Union like the United States.Yes, it was one block but each individual “state” had some autonomy. He has no use for that part so he wants all of what used to be the Soviet Union to become Russia. For the past several years, I have been moving more toward the idea that NATO should be disbanded. Ironically, what Putin has done here makes a great case for the need for NATO so he’s managed to strengthen NATO.  

I don’t find Putin’s “[insert name of country he wants to invade and occupy here] is ethnically Russian” argument compelling at all. Quebec manages to live with Canada, and New Yorkers somehow coexist with Floridians so “ethnicity” does not a legitimate claim make in this instance. 

Putin wants his legacy to be that he brought the band back together. That’s it. That’s why he’s doing all of this. 

I have never thought that he was crazy. In fact, I’ve always thought of him as an evil genius but I think that his narcissism combined with his intolerance of hearing any advice that may stand in the way of making his legacy fantasies come true have made him crazy. 

He’s backed into a corner now, which makes him very dangerous. The US and the EU (as well as a number of other countries in the world) have done precisely the right things so far. I thought that Biden and the EU were playing softball in the beginning, but that changed very quickly. Removing Russia’s access to SWIFT and seizing all of the assets of Russian oligarchs’ assets is exactly the right amount of pressure to apply here. 

All of the talk about no-fly zones and arming an insurgency in Ukraine is insane and inane. A no-fly zone doesn’t just mean that we say, “You can’t fly here” so Russia doesn’t. It means shooting down Russian planes and starting a world war with Russia. As Putin was quick to point out when things started going bad for him; he’s got nukes. We don’t want a war with Russia. 

Arming an insurgency that could last years is equally moronic because it means that more people on both sides will die. As I said, Ukraine is going to fall to Russia if Russia presses forward. That’s just a foregone conclusion. These sanctions and seizures are going to work because they’re putting pressure on the people who need to be pressured. Yes, average working class Russians are also suffering but the pain is (unlike most sanction situations) being shared by the obscenely wealthy and powerful. 

If Putin takes Kyiv tomorrow, he won’t be able to hold it because the Russian economy can’t hold on. When Switzerland joined the party and agreed to freeze Russian assets in their banks, that was the last nail in Putin’s coffin. The fact that China seems to be backing away is very bad news for him. The last ally he has left is Saudi Arabia. That’s just not going to save him. 

This talk of “taking Putin out” is beyond insane because it ignores all of the (let’s just go back to here) history of the past 100 years. When we depose foreign leaders, things go very wrong for us. No, Russians need to deal with Putin themselves. Or not, but it’s up to them. 

Nothing would make me happier than to get rid of Putin but I’ve learned lessons from the past. He can’t be gotten  rid of from the outside. No, that needs to happen from the inside or not at all and anyone who suggests otherwise needs to take a look at almost the entirety of the middle east to see how getting rid of their leaders has worked out. 

As far as the rest of the world goes, we need to find a way to offer Putin an exit ramp that allows him to save face. It’s the only way out that I can see. I don’t think that any part of Ukraine should be on that exit ramp. Ceding more territory is just going to empower him the way Crimea did. I don’t know that that exit ramp looks like. Zelinsky already stated that he doesn’t plan on pursuing membership in NATO. I’m 100% certain that Macron was tasked with doing exactly that during their meeting and that Putin didn’t take what was offered. I don’t know what can be offered or what he would accept, but I do know that cornering him even more isn’t likely to turn out well unless there’s a coup within his intelligence agencies and military that would stop him from launching nukes. 

No, I haven’t lost my mind. I’ve just rethought the whole situation based on current conditions. Mandates are not going to move as significant a number of people as we need to move at this point. The vast majority of people who were ever going to get vaccinated have already done so. Keeping up the pressure doesn’t make sense to me at this point. 

I think that we need a new strategy now based on what we know. It seems to me that our only issue with the unvaccinated is that they’re flooding the hospitals and taking or delaying care from other people. We know that they’re not more able to spread the virus than vaccinated people are so we should stop acting like this is a factor. Don’t get me wrong, I still viscerally feel like, “Fuck you for not getting vaccinated”, but my plan deals with those feelings. 

I want to drop all of the vaccine mandates. I don’t want to exclude the unvaxxed from restaurants, businesses, jobs, or anything else. Stay with me. I’m about to drive this home in a way that will make you less angry than you are right at this moment. I don’t want to stop the unvaccinated from doing anything other than costing someone else their lives. 

So here’s what I propose: Step one is getting rid of this paper bullshit system that Trump started, and that Biden failed to fix. Paper cards are a joke. There’s too much room for forgery. We need to go to a 100% digital system. New York and California both have digital vaccine passports. Ours here in New York was created by IBM. I’m guessing that IBM has been to all 50 states, offering licenses to this product. California might well be using the same product, but that doesn’t matter. My point is that everything should be digital. Every American should be required to have their digital “passport”. For people who don’t want to get vaccinated, they will have to sign a statement vowing not to show up at a hospital for covid (or for the deniers, – flu-like) symptoms. Their passport will reflect that decision. 

Don’t get me wrong, I will never advocate for denying care to anyone, especially in America where we already have an unacceptable amount of denying care. I also don’t believe that the remedy for stupidity should be the death penalty. The only times I’ve truly rejoiced over a story where a vaxxhole does from covid has been when they were in influencer. My hope is that their deaths will maybe get some of their victims to a vaccination center. But it doesn’t make me happy when someone who has been duped by a grifter or political ideologue dies. 

The cold hard fact that we have to accept is that people are going to be denied care when we have covid surges. I simply want to manage the situation so that someone doesn’t die of a ruptured appendix because no hospital within a 100 mile radius can get them into surgery. I want to make sure that no one has to delay their chemotherapy sessions because a hospital is overrun with covid patients. 

Now, I know that people are fucking hypocrites and that despite their pledges not to show up in the ED, they’re going to anyway. Signing the pledge not to show up at the ED won’t necessarily mean that you must be turned away. Some of those hypocrites will (and should) get treated. But those passports will allow us to allocate healthcare in a more fair way than the first-come-first-serve shitshow we’re employing now. Hospitals can go up to 80% or even 90% capacity before they start turning people away. Once they’ve reached a certain threshold, they should turn away anyone who pledged to see their decision not to get vaccinated through to its natural conclusion.

Anyone who doesn’t have a completed passport will be treated as unvaccinated, and therefore subject to being turned away from hospitals when the situation warrants it. It’s time that people understand that they have to make active decisions with active consequences. 

Mask mandates would, of course, remain in place. Masks are our most effective tool for slowing the spread. I don’t support dropping those mandates until we’ve officially moved from pandemic to endemic. 

So that’s my solution. It solves the problem that advocates on both sides have. If you want me to STFU about your vaxx status, you have to pledge not to fuck shit up for the rest of us. 

Pretty simple, right?