McCrory: Sweet Schadenfreude.

Pat McCrory

Pat McCrory.

There are times schadenfreude is ever so sweet, and this is one of them. Pat McCrory, that eternal bigot, is now whining that his bigotry is interfering with him finding a job. It turns out that a lot of people aren’t terribly interested in hiring an attention-pandering bigot. Who knew?

In an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, McCrory complained that his decision to champion HB2 — the infamous “bathroom bill” that banned transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice — was hurting his career prospects.

“People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot,’” McCrory explained to the newspaper. “Which is the last thing I am.”

Unfuckingbelievable. He still clings to this insistence that he’s not a bigot, oh no, why he’s a champion superhero, protecting peeing people!

McCrory said that while he’s been considered for part-time teaching positions at some universities, campuses have been reluctant to hire him over fears that he might spark a backlash among students, who would then respond with disruptive protests.

“That’s not the way our American system should operate – having people purged due to political thought,” he complained.

Oh no, don’t be dishonest, Pat. This isn’t a case of thought crime. You did much more than have an unpopular, stupid, bigoted political thought. You drove the bigoted HB2 at any and all cost, even when your own constituents stood against it, and you were costing your state millions upon millions of dollars. That’s different from having a political thought. Our ‘American’ system should not be stuffed to the rafters with incompetent bigots, either, but it is, and people have the right to oppose them, which they did. You lost your job through your own actions, and you have not taken one step back on your draconian views.

McCrory’s complaints echo similar comments he made recently during a podcast interview in which he claimed that “if you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil.”

Oh For Fuck’s Sake! You godsdamned piece of shit masquerading as a human being! Such a fucking liar. This has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness, nor thought police, nor a ‘new’ definition of gender, and you are a fucking bigot, a terrible, toxic, venomous one, and yes, you are on the side of evil. Someone should have, at some point, taught you there are consequences to both speech and actions. There are *four* pages on Affinity, all posts about McCrory’s evil legislation, and yet all he can manage to do is whine about what a victim he is. And here I thought it was only us SJW snowflakes who did that. Tsk.

Via Raw Story.

Somebody Else’s Babies. Updated.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that massive knob of white supremacy combined with super-stupidity, is at it again, this time tweeting about the badness of “someone else’s babies”, by which of course, he means any non-white babies. I’ll be going between two articles here, one from Raw Story [RS], and one from Think Progress [TP].

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has long been a friend to the European far right.

He’s hobnobbed with the leaders of hardline anti-immigrant parties across Western and Central Europe. He’s touted his “friendship” with Norbert Hofer, the 2016 Austrian presidential candidate for the Freedom Party, which was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi officer. And he’s made no secret of his support for French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, leader of the nativist party National Front.

After meeting with Geert Wilders and Frauke Petry — anti-immigrant demagogues from the Netherlands and Germany, respectively — in September 2016, King even tweeted a photo with the aphorism, “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.”

@FraukePetry Wishing you successful vote. Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end. @geertwilderspvv 18/9/16.

But on Sunday of this week, King embraced language that is incendiary even by his corroded standards. In a tweet once again supporting Wilders — who is in the final days of his latest bid to become prime minister of the Netherlands — King said: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

The tweet also quoted from “Voice of Europe,” an “Anti EU / Pro Europe / MAGA” account that frequently promulgates messages deriding Muslim immigration and endorsing far-right European leaders such as Wilders.

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.  [TP]

Rep. Ted Lieu shot right back:

Dear Representative Steve King: These are my two babies. –Representative Ted Lieu. 12/3/17.

After King posted the tweet — and former KKK leader David Duke retweeted it — Twitter moved in to mock, deride and chastise the congressman for spreading propaganda from one of Europe’s most virulently racist public figures. [RS]

You can read much more at Think Progress and Raw Story.

Aaaaaand, we have an update, in the water is wet and Steve King is still a white supremacist knob category! He has now defended his Nazism on television:

Asked by New Day host Chris Cuomo to defend the comments on Monday, King doubled down on his view that “western civilization” must be defended. Pressed on whether he believes “a Muslim American, an Italian American, Jewish American, [are] all equal, all the same thing,” King hesitated.

“They contribute differently to our culture and civilization.” the Iowa Republican responded. “Individuals will contribute differently, not equally to this civilization and society. Certain groups of people will do more from a productive side than other groups of people will.”

Full story at Think Progress.

Oh, White People…

@beeredblackman via Instagram.

@beeredblackman via Instagram.

Really? FFS. I’ll let Michael Harriot at The Root do the talking.

In the latest case of tone-deaf whiteness, a craft-beer lover in Birmingham, Ala., posted the above picture to Instagram.

Really?

Some people believe (and by “some people” I mean me) that most white people—and people in general—have tasteless jokes and stereotypes that they are comfortable enough to perpetuate in private or around their friends. But someone went out and brewed a beer, had labels printed up and bottled a beer whose name appropriates a movement meant to save lives. Even worse, some brave retailer looked at all of this and said, “Yeah, I’ll sell it for you.”

Regardless of one’s position on the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it is indicative of the reality of toxic privilege that we live in a world where people are comfortable enough to do this unchecked. Ralph Marion is the guy who shared the pic to Instagram on Feb. 15, and to his credit, he thought the name was uncalled for. He explained to Mic:

“They made a parody of a very serious issue,” Marion said, explaining that there are a lot of beers that “sometimes toe the line of being insensitive but are still funny.” …

“I just find this being clueless of the times that we are living in right now and how it could make people feel,” Marion said of the #Black Stouts Matter beer name.

[…]

OK, my beloved Caucasians, I will explain it one more time. This time, I’ll say it slowly:

You. Don’t. Get. To. Have. Everything.

I know the conquering, pillaging spirit embedded in many of you won’t allow you to hear this, but there are some things in the world that are off-limits, and this is one of them. There are dead sons and daughters in your jovial little joke. There are 400 years of tears entangled in your cute pun. If you call it anything else, it will taste the same, and if it’s good, people will still buy it. Aren’t those the “free market” principles you so proudly declare?

Or maybe you can just call it white tears, which is what you’d cry if a black person did anything equally offensive.

I’ll add that this is a callous attempt to make money off off other peoples’ grief and misery, while appealing to evil bigots. That does not make you clever, and it certainly doesn’t make you smart. Some white people (you know who you are) are a complete and utter embarrassment. Stop that shit.

Via The Root and MIC.

Dudebro Is As Dudebro Does.

Via Twitter.

Via Twitter.

A wall street dudebro was caught on camera, humping the little girl statue facing down the wall street bull. Real nice, dude, getting happily rapey on a statue. I definitely don’t want to know what this asshole does with people. As The Mary Sue notes, the little girl statue was not universally liked by any means, but it seems dudebro was sufficiently threatened by an infantilized representation of women that it was necessary to do a hump grind.

…And yet, thanks to this Wall Street jerk, I find myself reevaluating the statue. Clearly, his masculinity was so threatened by the presence of this corporate-sponsored, deliberately infantilized depiction of female autonomy that he had to immediately establish disgusting dominance over it. Is this actually making Wall Street bros uncomfortable? Does it frighten them with a suggestion that women will one day overwhelm and unseat them from their positions of power? I mean, I can get behind that sort of thing!

More seriously, though, this statue and incident illustrate two equally essential requirements: we must demand and expect better from our feminism, while also anticipating and preparing for the worst from our patriarchal world.

The Mary Sue has the full story.

Sunday Facepalm.

facepalm_estatua1

Today, we have the Compleat Batshit Sweepstakes! Who will win? Will it be Rick Wiles, Cindy Jacobs, Wayne Allen Root, or Lance Wallnau? This is also the S word alliteration contest: pick the winner: from Wallnau, we have sabotaging, sniping and snarling enemies, and from Wiles, we have a slithering cabal of seditious snakes. I think, on pure word performance, Wiles has to take the trophy on S alliteration. The overall winner in the Batshit stakes I will leave up to the reader.

We’ll start with the master of hyperbolic bullshit, Rick Wiles, who is on quite the tear over the Satanistic Cabal of Pedophile Baby Sacrificers. (Why Lucifer comes into this, I don’t know. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. – Psalms 137.9).

Rick Wiles dedicated his radio program yesterday to warning that a secretive pedophile ring is working to destroy President Trump before he can expose their murderous global network.

Wiles said that Trump is “besieged by a slithering cabal of seditious snakes” who are attempting to carry out a coup against him at the behest of the “perpetual war and pedophilia party that has ruled America since they assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.”

Huh. I really think someone is confused, because conservatives have always been the ones in favour of war. Pedophilia too, actually. I did not listen to the broadcast, that’s simply asking too much, so I don’t know if he expounded on this “perpetual war and pedophilia party” business, or how they managed to assassinate Kennedy. It really is true, isn’t it, that conspiracies never die. They just get twisted about now and again.

They’re fighting like cornered animals to prevent their pedophile network from being exposed. … It’s about the darkest, most disgusting, vilest corruption you can imagine. And if the American people ever find out the truth about their politicians and their celebrities in Hollywood and their TV idols and their favorite TV anchormen and women, and they find out all these great famous people and they find out that they’re just child molesters—not only molesters, but child murderers, sacrificing children to Satan. When they find out, they will drag their bloody carcasses down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., with meat hooks! They’ll have meat hooks in their carcasses.

Bloody carcasses! Meat hooks! Meat hooks in their carcasses! Jesus Fuck, the bloodthirstiness of some christians is truly frightening. At least you know where all the projection is coming from, although that’s not at all comforting. Honestly, I’d think that if such a cabal existed, and were descended from the amazing perpetual war and pedophilia party, they’d just quietly carry out another assassination, rather than attempt to ‘destroy’ the Tiny Tyrant, which I read here as discredit. No one at all has to work at discrediting the Tiny Tyrant or his regime, they are bumbling about, doing a fine job of that themselves. The full story is here, complete with soundcloud.

Up next, in the Seriously Eeeuuuuw! category, is Wayne Allen Root, with his praise of just how very much Trump loves business…

[Read more…]

Call It What It Is, Class Warfare.

Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System

Wikimedia. Click for full size.

Steve Rosenfeld has a good article up at Raw Story, about the insidiousness of the new, so-called healthcare plan. Definitely recommended, just a bit here:

It’s important to note what Republicans are not talking about. While their messaging is emphasizing premium increases under Obamacare and how the program’s insurance exchanges are suffering from lack of competition, the GOP is not discussing who is making undue profits in American health care. Nor are they discussing the simplest reform that would address the maladies they cite, allowing Obamacare states to create interstate pools where risk and costs could be shared among greater numbers of people and insurers.

While the politics of the Obamacare repeal effort are only beginning, what’s clear is its GOP sponsors are tinkering with the rules governing one-sixth of the economy in a manner that appears to be a giant transfer of wealth upward. These Republicans can talk about “free markets” and “individual choice” all they like, but there’s a better phrase for it: class warfare.

Republicans are poised to unleash a wave of health insecurity and economic hardship on poor, working- and middle-class Americans, as well as on the nation’s system of medical providers, public health institutions and social safety nets. On social insurance listservs and discussion forums Wednesday, there was a debate about what to call the GOP bill: The Deplorable Care Act? The Unaffordable Care Act? Trumpcare? The I Don’t Care Act? No matter what one chooses, this is class warfare and it will be painful.

If you aren’t rich, you’re going to find yourself getting poorer, and constantly caught between a rock and a hard place, none of which concerns the Regime in the least. All that matters to them is that the rich get richer, and the most basic of rights be reassigned to privileges available only to those who can pay for them. Go have a read!

“Why Should Men Pay For It?”

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the implementation failures of the Affordable Care Act, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill. questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the implementation failures of the Affordable Care Act, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.

At a hearing markup on Wednesday, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) suggested that one reason Republicans object to Obamacare is that men have to pay for plans that cover maternity services, such as prenatal care.

The heated exchange happened during a lengthy markup session for the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Shimkus was responding to a question from Rep. Michael Doyle (D-PA), who asked a different colleague which mandates in Obamacare he took issue with.

“What mandate in the Obamacare bill does he take issue with?” Doyle asked. “Certainly not with pre-existing conditions, or caps on benefits or letting your child stay on the policy until 26, so I’m curious what is it we’re mandating?”

“What about men having to purchase prenatal care?” Shimkus butted in. “Is that not correct? And should they?”

Here’s a thought, you dimwitted dipstick – men are involved with the process of pregnancy. If you’re truly deadset on not paying for prenatal care, then perhaps you should propose a healthy penis penalty – everyone who is using one has to pay into a healthcare fund for reproductive care, including parental leave. After all, if you’re not going to pay attention to where you’re shooting that tarse, and refuse to take responsibility, I don’t see why women should have to bear the full cost. While you’re at it, increase that penis penalty by another ten percent – this can go into a fund providing accessible and affordable contraception, something else that really cuts down on costs, but you manage to be against that one, too. Oh, let’s tack on another ten percent – it could go to opt in sexual education classes, for everyone!

The fact that prenatal care, which results in healthy women and infants, is an excellent preventative act, and it’s certainly much cheaper to practice than the catastrophic costs involved when there is no care, and things go very wrong, doesn’t seem to matter to republicans. The most obvious practicalities can’t seem to penetrate the density of their ignorance and entitlement.

You can read about the whole mess, in-depth, at Think Progress.

Facts Be Damned. Oh, And Fuck Women.

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House on January 31. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House on January 31. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

One of the uglier aspects of the ‘new’ Muslim ban is a focus on ‘honor killings’, even though that’s not a massive problem here in uStates, but it’s a convenient thing to rail about when you’re attempting to incite a racial panic. Just how much the Regime does not care about victims of honor killings is highlighted by the fact that the Violence Against Women grants are going to be eliminated, even though roughly 1,500 women are murdered as a result of domestic violence per year. It should not be ignored that both Trump and Bannon have been accused of domestic violence. Nor should Trump’s attitude toward women in general, which is incredibly ugly. The reasoning behind the ban is nothing more than slimy white nationalism, and there isn’t all that much to cover the shit over, they simply don’t care. Well, that’s not quite fair. They do care about any possibility of having this ban legally overturned as well. As usual the problem does not just rest with the Regime’s legislation and executive orders. It also lies on the shoulders of all those Regime voters and supporters.

I am sick to death of people wringing their hands over these poor, poor Trumpians who start crying when the chickens come home to roost. No, I do not have sympathy for them, because they have none for anyone, they were firmly and flatly in favour of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, and any of them who claim they weren’t, they are liars. Trump’s whole fucking campaign was nothing but a constant litany of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, as well as a paen to the might of white, and a psalm sung to the filthy rich.

The whole excuse of “well, some of them just wanted to throw a brick at the establisment” is a fucking lie, too. One Big Lie. If those people truly wanted to buck the establishment, Trump would have been dumped and Sanders would have ended up in the white house, and we would be moving towards a properly socialized government. That would have been tossing a brick at the man. Voting for Trump? For fuck’s sake, how could you possibly get more establishment? The excuse of “they thought he was a good business man!” won’t wash either. Trump’s constant failures over the years were not a secret. His incompetency was out there for all to see, during the whole campaign. The regime voters chose to ignore it. The excuse of “oh hey jobs”? No, doesn’t wash either, because what all those white Trumpians meant by that was “stomp all over those brown peoples!”. They never have anything to say when you point out that they don’t want to work cleaning toilets and peoples’ houses.

No, no more fucking excuses. The assholes who voted in the regime who are now crying? They’re only crying because they weren’t supposed to get bitten on the arse. They wanted all those others to get fucked over. Anyroad, back to the fucked up, shit-caked ban…

President Trump’s second Muslim ban, signed on Monday, includes a provision directing the Department of Homeland Security to collect and make public “information regarding the number and types of gender-based violence against women, including so-called ‘honor killings,’ in the United States by foreign nationals.”

According to numbers from a Department of Justice-sponsored study conducted in 2014, there are less than 30 such “honor killings” in the country each year. The killings — which are “perceived by the perpetrator to be a way to restore honor to the family in the face of a perceived damage,” according to the report — are sometimes “motivated by a radical and dark interpretation of Islam,” as Fox News wrote in late 2015.

The inclusion of the “honor killings” provision in the new Muslim ban marks the second time in a week the Trump administration has outlined a plan to use federal resources “to whip up as much racial panic as possible,” as Matt Yglesias of Vox puts it. The first instance was Trump’s vow to create the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement office, or VOICE, during his speech to Congress last week, even though immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

In a similar vein, the number of “honor killings” in the U.S. stands in stark contrast to the roughly 1,500 women who are murdered as a result of domestic violence in a given year. But according to numerous reports, Trump’s budget proposal will eliminate the Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women grants. Those grants had a $480 million budget last year and funded 25 grant programs helping domestic violence victims, according to Mother Jones. Trump and chief strategist Steve Bannon have both been accused of domestic assault.

[…]

But the “honor killing” provision is just the latest example of Trump trying to portray Islam in a violent light. Despite the fact that a person in America is much more likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than a Muslim terrorist, the Trump administration has signaled it wants a federal counter-terrorism program to stop focusing on violent white supremacists and any other extremist groups not comprised of Muslims. And after the Department of Homeland Security released a report last month undermining the administration’s core rationale for the Muslim ban  — “citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity,” it found — the administration tried to downplay the report.

“The president asked for an intelligence assessment,” the a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal. “This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.”

Right. An accurate assessment is provided, but the Tiny Tyrant doesn’t want that, and neither does shadow tyrant Bannon. They want shit shoveled onto a platter, and shaped into the form of whatever they asked for, providing them with a basis for the regime.

Think Progress has the full story.

Also see: The mass deportation of African immigrants that isn’t getting media attention. Nobody noticed.

Republican Logic: A Living Wage? No, No.

Rep. Dan Shaul (Facebook).

Rep. Dan Shaul (Facebook).

A Missouri representative is rushing to kill off a minimum wage hike, on the basis that certain jobs weren’t ever meant to provide a living wage, so hey, you can keep paying people shit wages. It’s interesting, if depressing, to read all the twists and turns republicans use to justify being corrupt, villainous assholes, with a pointed interest in keeping people poor. Well, some people.

A Missouri Republican introduced legislation that would stop Kansas City from enacting a higher minimum wage — because he said workers weren’t meant to live on those wages.

Rep. Dan Shaul (R-Jefferson City) wants the statehouse to quickly pass his bill that would prohibit cities and counties from paying a higher minimum wage than what is set by state law, reported the Kansas City Star.

The bill contains an emergency clause that would allow it to go into effect as soon as the governor signs it, and the newspaper reported Shaul’s bill is moving quickly through the legislative process.

“The minimum wage wasn’t meant to be a living wage,” Shaul told the Star. “I’m all for family sustainable wages, and I certainly don’t want a family to have to work two or three jobs to get by. But grocery store baggers and fast food work isn’t where you should be working to sustain your family.”

Right. Because if the jobs you can manage to get might be as a grocery clerk or working in a restaurant, well, you should have known better, you stupid peon! Those aren’t proper jobs! Get a good, white person type job, er, white collar job! That way, you can call it a career, and get by just dandy. All that cost of living jazz, well, that doesn’t mean anything. House payments? Pfffft, get a proper job and you can get a loan! Being in debt up to your neck is the American way, you bet. Or you know, you should have just been born rich. It seems the concept of choice is a rethug Shibboleth.

Full story here.

Trump’s Blame Shifting: False Flag!

Tucker Viemeister.

Tucker Viemeister.

Trump is worse than a little sprog. Whenever something bad happens, he immediately looks for someone to blame, anyone except who is actually responsible, like white supremacist scum. In regard to the recent acts of anti-semitism, which are increasing, Trump decided to imply that while sad, they could, y’know, be a false flag operation, done to make someone else look bad. Apparently, the Tiny Tyrant hasn’t figured out that no one needs to make the current nazi infested government look bad, they are doing a fine job of that themselves. Not in the least bit surprising, various white supremacists are also spreading the false flag bullshit. Just in case this is needed: the false flag crap is just that, it’s a lie.

President Donald Trump received a lashing online after suggesting that his supporters were being framed for anti-Semitic bomb threats.

Trump on Tuesday suggested to attorneys generals that threats targeting Jewish community centers and attacks on Jewish cemeteries could be false flag operations. When speaking about the acts, which he called “reprehensible,” the president said “the reverse can be true,” according to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. “Someone’s doing it to make others look bad,” Trump added.

“He just said, ‘sometimes it’s the reverse,’” Shapiro recalled. “‘It’s to make people or make others look bad.’ He used ‘reverse’ two to three times in his comments.”

The Anti-Defamation League quickly released a statement calling on the president to clarify his remarks.

You can see many of the responses here.

In case that wasn’t enough idiocy, Anthony Scaramucci is trying to pin the blame on democrats, citing Breitbart as his go to source for this claim. Seriously, can we stop the world, I want the fuck off.

A senior adviser to President Donald Trump suggested Democrats may be to blame for dozens of threats recently against Jewish community centers.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital hedge fund and a former employee at Goldman Sachs, sent out a pair of tweets questioning the possibility that Trump’s anti-Semitic supporters may be behind the threats, reported The Hill.

[…]

Scarmucci, a top Trump fundraiser tapped as White House public liaison to government agencies and businesses, linked to a Breitbart News article Tuesday morning on a Project Veritas investigation of “trained provocateurs” at GOP rallies.

“It’s not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are. Don’t forget @TheDemocrats effort to incite violence at Trump rallies,” Scaramucci tweeted.

A reporter called him out for his baseless claim, and Scarmucci doubled down.

Via Raw Story. Same response here: the only thing making Trump look bad is Trump and his crew of henchtoadies.

Tiny Rallies.

The Tiny Tyrant hasn’t been feeling validated enough lately, so he called for Trump fans to have rallies to make ‘merica great and all that shit, BIG HUGE MASSIVE MORE MASSIVE THAN EVER BEFORE rallies. The result was on the teeny tiny side.

Full story here.

People Without Healthcare – It’s A Good Thing!

twilight-zone-its-a-good-life

Anyone else starting to feel like we’re trapped in It’s A Good Life?

A handful of GOP lawmakers are now taking up Klein’s charge — with one of them even claiming that a Republican plan that leads to a higher national uninsurance rate would be a good thing.

“If the numbers drop,” Rep. Mike Burgess (R-TX) said Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I would say that’s a good thing.” He went on to argue that more people without health care would be a positive thing for the United States because it would mean that “we’ve restored personal liberty in this country.”

When your only choice is no choice, Mr. Burgess, there’s no liberty, personal or otherwise, involved.

Burgess’ prediction that Republican health plans will lead to a drop in the national insurance rate was echoed by Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) in an interview with Bloomberg this week. “Not everybody is going to have health care” under a Republican health plan, Ross said. “Some people just don’t care enough about their own care.”

Oh, all people care about their own [health] care enough. The problem would be more basic, such as not having enough money to afford care, or being stuck in a job with no benefits. And all those corporations who now have a fucktonne of ways to avoid providing benefits such as health insurance? That’s thanks to asshole republicans like yourself, Mr. Ross.

Bloomberg also shares some details about the health policy ideas that are starting to gain traction among Republican lawmakers. While the full contours of the GOP’s “replacement” for Obamacare remain elusive, the details we do know off confirm that yes, Republicans are indeed pushing ideas that would lead to fewer people receiving care.

Oh well, there’s a surprise. Let’s look at some details.

Several Republican proposals would increase the amount that insurers could charge older Americans. A bill would increase the age band from 5 to 1 (above the current range of 3 to 1). … Republicans hope to base tax credits on a person’s age rather than on their income. Such a proposal could simultaneously be wasteful and merciless, since an age-based formula could allow wealthy individuals who can afford to pay their own premiums to still receive a government subsidy — while also denying low-income Americans the assistance they need to purchase insurance at all.

Once again, we see the rethug battle plan, which never fucking changes: everything for the rich, everyone else, eat shit and die, after all, it’s your own fault if you ain’t rich.

Another idea that is reportedly gaining steam among Republicans is a proposal to “do away with the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that all Americans have health coverage or pay a fine, and replace it with rules that let people choose not to buy insurance, instead paying higher premiums or penalties if they need it later.”

Though the details of such a proposal are sparse — just how much higher would premiums be if someone delays buying health insurance until they get sick? — such a proposal risks driving up the cost of care for people who are already insured, or, worse, collapsing entire insurance markets altogether.

The reason why the Affordable Care Act penalizes people who do not carry insurance is because of the risk that people will wait until they are sick to become insured and then drain all the money out of an insurance pool that they haven’t paid into.

Because Obamacare forbids insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions, insurers cannot simply refuse to cover people with expensive conditions. If the ratio of healthy people to sick people in a given insurance plan tilts too heavily towards people with expensive conditions, however, then the plan will need to jack up premiums in order to cover the costs of its most expensive consumers.

That risks setting off a “death spiral,” where healthy people leave the plan due to rising premiums, which forces the insurer to raise premiums even more, which causes even more healthy people to leave. Eventually, the entire insurance pool collapses.

Obamacare solves this problem by requiring people who don’t carry insurance to pay higher income taxes, thus giving them an incentive to enter an insurance pool while they are still healthy. Republicans reportedly want to eliminate this provision and, instead, charge a penalty to people who wait too long to buy insurance.

It’s far from clear, however, that such a mechanism would be sufficient to ward off death spirals. Imagine a hypothetical consumer, for example, who has to choose between paying $200 a month now, or to pay nothing now — but with the caveat that they will be charged $1,000 a month if they are later diagnosed with a catastrophic illness. Many people are likely to decide that they should pay nothing now and hope for the best, especially since, even in the worst case scenario, they will still have the option to buy insurance when they need it most.

Alternatively, Republicans could set the penalties for remaining insured so high that insurance would be unaffordable for someone who waits until they are seriously ill to buy insurance. That would have the virtue of helping to ward off a death spiral, but at the cost of many people’s lives.

Golly, those rethug ideas are just genius, aren’t they? At this point, I’m surprised they are still pretending to “replace” ACA, when what they actually want is to simply eliminate it with no replacement whatsoever. It does look they are edging closer to admitting that’s what they do want. This is just one reason to keep up the pressure on all the Town Halls these assholes are trying to duck.

Full story at Think Progress.

Rotten Peaches.

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Giulio Bernardi

There are reasons some white people are seriously disliked, like oh…being a fucking Nazi. Even non-Nazis, when white and hetero, can be the most oblivious, obnoxious assholes, with their heads buried so far up their privilege they may as well be blind. That tends to put people off. White people can’t become a minority fast enough for me. More Turtle Island, less America. That’s a good thing. As I’ve often said, if some white people are in such an uproar over uStates not being white enough, fine, there are options: emigrate. Go buy an unoccupied island. Whatever, move, leave, go found Naziland and be happy forever, far removed from decent people.

Spencer’s whine goes on for a while, combined with a desperation laced insistence that he and his Nazi buds are the thing, oh yes they are! All the young white dudes just love him! If there’s amusement to be found, it’s in the fact that Spencer was thrilled to be at CPAC, noting that no one was punching him. It didn’t take long, after his being escorted out for him to start trash talking CPAC. CPAC is deserving of trash talk, but not from Nazi Spencer, whose increasing desire to be another Adolf is becoming a an umbrous stench wrapped around his ankles and tripping him up at every turn.

Via Raw Story.