Well, That Didn't Work...Or: Brainstorming With The Trump Pandemic Response Team

So, pretending that something isn't happening doesn't make it stop happening?

Shocked! Shocked to find this out!

Imagine the medical possibilities if only it were true! An entire new field of, well, let's call them "alternative" treatments.

Your doctor says you have cancer, but you tell him you don't. And just like that, you don't have cancer! Same for diabetes, heart disease, STD's, indeed everything!

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Damn shame, too.

I know! We stop counting the number of people who contract the disease.

Sure, the bodies will continue to pile up, but that's a small price to pay for peace of mind.

How about touting a "cure" that doesn't work and may actually kill people?

Tried it already. Anybody else?

We'll pretend that it's over!

And?

Tell everybody to just go back to work, or school, or church, or wherever they want.

With masks?

No. Masks are optional.

Why?

Because...uh...FREEDOM!

I like it!

Shouldn't we listen to the experts? I mean, like that Fauci guy?

Fuck him. Goddamn busybody.

Remember, in this case, we're the experts.

Oh, right.

Priorities

You might think that if you lived somewhere where the mill or factory had closed, your first priority would be some sort of retraining program so you could find a new job, perhaps in a newer technology that isn't going to disappear next week, or next year.

Wrong. Your first priority is to make sure that no woman can have an abortion.

You might think that if you had no healthcare, your first priority would be to support any plan that made healthcare more available and more affordable, so you wouldn't put off treatment until it was too late, or go bankrupt over hospital bills.

Wrong again. Your first priority is to make sure that no one from Latin America makes it into the United States--with or without papers.

And you might think that maybe, just maybe, we have way too many guns in the hands of unstable people, and keeping everyone, stable or not, away from military style firearms and unlimited ammo is a sane idea.

Silly you. How can you be so wrong?!

Finally,  you might think that if you lived anywhere affected by climate change, which in essence means if you live anywhere on earth, your first priority would be to insist on any and all efforts to save our sorry asses from the worst effects.

Also wrong. Your first priority is to support any and all Israeli efforts to punish the Palestinians and make the Middle East even more unstable. Because Jesus is coming back for the End Times and the Rapture, and who really cares about the environment? Greta Thunberg? That LOSER? Fuck her! We're going to party with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!

Thinning The Herd

For a group of people who don't believe in evolution, conservatives sure do love social Darwinism.

You start with the young. Weaken--or take away entirely--their public schools, hot lunch programs, Head Start, after school activities. Close as many public facilities as possible. Make getting gunned down at school a distinct possibility. Living with that constant fear in the pit of their stomachs will get them ready for adulthood. If they survive to adulthood. Remember to repeatedly tell them that nonsense about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps!

Then there's the sick. Take away as much health care as you can. Make it impossible for people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance. Let the drug companies charge whatever they want. Encourage people to go broke from paying hospital bills. Hey, it's their choice: that expensive, necessary surgery or food and housing. And you have to make choices in this life!

Finally, the old. Gut their pensions. Starve Social Security. Plenty of greeter jobs at WalMart, you lazy old fucks!

If you're a heartless Republican (or Libertarian) prick, dreaming sweet wet dreams of Ayn Rand's river of bullshit and the glories of the Free Market, it's really not that hard to do these things.

Poor people are such a drag. They had every opportunity in this greatest nation on the face of the earth to make enough money to pay for private schools, gold plated healthcare, and a happy and long retirement. And they just didn't do it.

Better off dead, you know?

Gee, I Guess No Republican Woman Has Ever Gotten An Abortion, Huh?

To white male conservatives, women are essentially chattel.

Breeding stock. The "weaker" sex.

Too, uh, emotional, to control their own reproductive systems.

So men must control them.

And since the right to a safe abortion takes some of that control away, abortions must be outlawed.

That has been the sole thrust of large segments of the Republican Party for the last 40 years or so.

All those slobbering evangelicals screaming their fool heads off about Roe v. Wade.

They care, oh they care so deeply, about those fetuses.

Doctors are murdered, clinics are bombed, women are terrorized--all for those magic fetuses.

(Of course, once the child is born, unless he or she is white and rich, the good folks over at the GOP couldn't care less about them. Day care, family leave, Head Start,  good public schools, health care, subsidized lunches, after school programs? Nah. That's all handouts. That's all socialism.)

Since 99.9% of this vileness comes from the Republican Right, it raises the question asked in the title of this post; "Gee, I guess no Republican woman has ever gotten an abortion, huh?"

And if you believe that, well...

Fortunately, there is a solution and it's really pretty simple: if you are a female, and are against abortion--don't have one.

And if you are male, and against abortion--shut the fuck up. Mind your own goddamn business.

See. Simple.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One....Part 2

An idiot walks into a NATO summit...

An idiot tries to "fix" health care...

An idiot starts a trade war...

An idiot insults all of our allies...

An idiot kisses up to any dictator who smiles at him...

An idiot separates children from their parents, with no plan for re-uniting them...

An idiot shits all over the Constitution while stuffing his own pockets...

An idiot appoints bunglers, fools, racists, crooks, and corporate whores to help him "run" the government...

An idiot...(fill in the blank)

Very Rich People Don't Really Like Democracy Much

Don't get me wrong, now.

They LOVE this country.

Not enough to pay more taxes, of course.

Not enough to worry about inequality. No.

Not enough to fight for health care and a quality education for all.

Not enough to be concerned about voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Not enough to be angry when the cops gun down another unarmed black or brown person.

No, that's not the kind of "love" we're talking about.

The kind of "love" they mean is "tough" love. Where they tell the rest of us to stop complaining about these issues and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps...because this is the "best country on the face of the earth" and "God loves the USA" and "poor people are lazy" and "welfare cheats are stealing from us all" and "food stamps make people dependent and obese" and "health care isn't a right" and "corporations and wealthy people are hideously overtaxed" and all of the other nonsensical bullshit they're so fond of spewing.

That's the kind of love they understand.

The wrap yourself in the flag, wave your Bible, and bitch about the "takers" kind.

The Opioid Crisis Explained

Try to follow along now. This gets complicated.

There's money to be made in keeping as many of you as possible stoned on opioids.

Lots and lots of money.

The doctors make money, the pharmacies make money, and the drug manufacturers make money. Boy, do they!

Lots and lots of money.

That's how you end up with hundreds of millions of pills being dispensed in West Virginia, for instance.

And that's just one small, relatively insignificant, state.

So a few hundred thousand, even a few million people O.D. and die.

So what?

There's always more people in pain.

And by golly, do we have ways to treat their pain!

This is America. And, like the man said, America is a business.

And business is all about the Benjamins.

So, repeat after me:

There's money to be made in keeping as many of you as possible stoned on opioids.

I guess it isn't that complicated after all.

Let 'Em Die

So now, after all these years, we finally get to see what the Republican version of healthcare, let's call it Trump(Doesn't)Care, looks like:

If you're rich, here's some more! Big surprise there.

If you're middle class, thanks for your vote, but you're more or less on your own. Good luck!

And if you're poor, well, if you get sick, better find some money from somewhere, or better still, just die quickly.

Tired of winning yet?

It's always a treat to watch billionaires and millionaires take things away from poor people.

Education, health care, a living wage, safe workplaces, primacy over your body, clean air and water--whatever.

Most of the people who do this are proud to identify as "Christians."

That's really very funny when you stop to think about it.

The Good News

The good news is that even though we have only twice as many guns per hundred people more than the next closest nation, we have four times more gun deaths per hundred people than the next closest nation!

So, though we may trail other nations in health care, public education, support for the arts, mass transit, and various other signs of advanced civilization, we remain incredibly efficient killing machines.

America, fuck yeah!

Today's Quiz

Get your pencils ready:

If and when the Supremes destroy the Affordable Care Act, A) how are the insurance companies going to react to losing all of those paying customers? and B) how will the Republicans explain to some of their supporters why they don't, and perhaps can't, have insurance anymore?

300 words or less, and remember punctuation and spelling are always important.

Extra credit: who do you think will win in the fight between Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and all those old Cubans who got run out of their own country 50 years ago on one side, and every U.S. corporation licking its chops over doing business in Cuba on the other?

Why Don't The Koch Brothers Want Us To Have Affordable Health Care?

I mean, after they've poisoned all of our air and water with their various industries, we're going to need it.

It seems like the smart play would be to support health care reform wholeheartedly.

Then, when we're all gasping for air, dehydrated from lack of clean water, and dying from the various forms of cancer that the Koch brand of "free, unregulated markets" inevitably create, they could say, "hey, we may have poisoned you and your family, but at least we did everything we could to make sure you had a little medical care!"

But no, they're happily spending hundreds of millions of dollars hiring people to lie about Obamacare.

So, the big question is, why?

Since money and power are obviously what really matter to Dave and Charlie, where's the profit for them in denying people affordable health care?

Or is it just that they hate some things so thoroughly--Obama, democracy, people who aren't rich, the very idea of being governed--that they're doing this one as a freebie, just for shits and giggles?

Let's call it merely another case of evil people being evil, and leave it at that.

Maybe Someday...

Maybe someday...

The hillbillies will realize that they're being played for saps by the billionaires who've bankrolled the Tea Party.

People will wake up to the indisputable truth that "socialized" medicine is cheaper and more effective than the nonsensical system we have.

Poor whites will figure out that the poor blacks and the poor browns aren't their enemies.

American businesses will remember that it was a growing, vital middle class that made our economy the envy of the world.

Red State voters will begin to wonder if there's some correlation between not funding public education and being really, really stupid.

Men will awaken to the fact that women should have the fundamental right to control their reproductive systems.

Folks will read all of the Second Amendment and learn that, contrary to what the NRA says, it does not give carte blanche to gun owners.

Every American citizen will ask themselves why the Koch brothers, and like minded billionaire scum, don't want us to have access to affordable health care, or unions, or protection against corporations, or an EPA, or...

Grover Norquist, Wayne La Pierre, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, Rand Paul, all of the Fox "News" kids, and everyone else who spreads lies, bile, and hatred to make a buck, will be kicked to the curb, and/or laughed into irrelevance. Then they can all go off to Clown College, where they really belong.

Maybe someday....but don't hold your breath.

Groundhog Day

You've got to hand it to the Republicans, they are nothing if not persistent.

Like a particularly avid suitor, they just won't take "No" for an answer.

They got their asses handed to them in the general election. They lost the presidency badly. They lost seats in the Senate. And, make no mistake about it, if they hadn't gerrymandered every district in each state they control, they would have lost the House, too.

Yet they immediately re-introduce the exact same measures the voters overwhelmingly rejected in November.

Well, maybe not "exact". In some cases they've made them worse. Because that's the way the modern Republican mind works, I guess.

Never underestimate their ability to take a bad idea, and fine tune it until it is truly awful.

It doesn't matter what the voters want, because being a Republican in the 21st Century means that you really don't trust democracy.

So, scream all you want about the need for gun control, minority rights, gay marriage, universal heath care, a woman's right to control her own body, and the sanctity of Medicare and Social Security.

You might as well be talking to the wall.

The truth is, we're all Bill Murray, and we get to live through this crap again. And again. And again.

The Best Health Care System In The World

Did you hear about the lady who was charged $83,046 by a Chandler, Arizona hospital to treat a scorpion bite?

Sounds fair, right? After all, as the opponents of "European style socialized' medicine are so fond of reminding us, "we have the best health care system in the world."

Of course, in Mexico, which for those of you who went to school in Arizona, is not in Europe, pharmacies charge about $100 per dose for scorpion anti-venom.

But we're not in Mexico, dammit!

So watch what happens through the magic of the "free market" and unfettered capitalism:

The American importer, using the efficiency of the best economic system ever devised, sells that same $100 anti-venom to its distributors for $3500. Per dose. Because, uh, well, because they can. Hey, people gotta eat!

The distributor then sells it to hospitals for $3780. Per dose.

And the hospital charged the lucky patient $39,652. Per dose.

Throw in the emergency room expenses and, voila, the total is $83,046.

For what pencils out to about three grand worth of treatment.

The lady's insurance company, no dummies they, agreed to pay only $57,505. Because somebody has to draw the line against soaring health care costs...(yes, I am being sarcastic again.)

I'm sure that everyone will agree that we'd be crazy to tamper with a system that works so well.

[The hospital involved has announced that they are lowering their charge for the venom to "just" $8000. Per dose. I guess going from grotesquely ridiculous to merely ridiculous is how we measure progress around here.]

It Really Doesn't Matter

It really doesn't matter that:

Willard Mitt Romney has proven himself, over and over and over again, to be a clueless, incompetent boob.

Or, that he has shown, repeatedly, that he couldn't care less about anybody but himself and his rich friends.

Or, that he has shown, repeatedly, that he doesn't understand anything about foreign policy, or the limits of military intervention.

Or, that he has shown, repeatedly, that he has a fundamental  misunderstanding of what made this country great economically and what might make it great again. (Hint: it wasn't outsourcing and vulture capitalism.)

No, despite all this there are tens of millions of people who will vote for him simply because he's white.

They will respond to the various dogwhistles of Rush Limbaugh, Fox "News", Karl "Calling Me Turd Blossom Is Actually An Insult To Turds" Rove, and the billionaire Republican backers who love America so much that they are willing to spend hundreds of million of dollars to destroy democracy, if it lowers their taxes a little.

Because, well, you know. The other guy is black. And he only wants to help them.

That's the way they think and nothing, no leaked tapes, no idiotic responses, no campaign gaffes, no mountains of evidence, will change their minds.

So, it occurs to me that old people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to lose their Medicare.

And middle class people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to lose their Social Security.

And working class people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to have their jobs shipped overseas.

And uninsured people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to go broke paying medical bills.

And poor people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to lose the safety net.

And women who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve to have no say in what they do with their bodies.

And young people who vote for Romney/Ryan deserve no future but mountainous student loans, minimum wage jobs, and perpetual war.

Because, in the immortal words of one of America's Latter Day Patron Saints, Forrest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does."