Let It Burn!

Firefighters (Shutterstock www.shutterstock.com).

Firefighters (Shutterstock).

A decision by newly elected President Trump to freeze all federal government hiring has Forest Service employees wondering if they will be able to bring in emergency help during fire-fighting season, reports the Missoulian.

On Monday, Trump issued an order stating, “no vacant positions existing at noon on January 22, 2017, may be filled and no new positions may be created, except in limited circumstances.”

“The Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may grant exemptions from this freeze where those exemptions are otherwise necessary,” the order continued.

According to National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) Council President Melissa Baumann, Trump’s decision may make the Forest Service’s job tough with hiring for permanent firefighting positions beginning next week at job fairs.

“We all had a hard time just trying to get hold of the executive order itself yesterday,” Baumann explained. “We’re waiting to see where the chips fall.”

Baumann added that the Forest Service hired about 11,000 seasonal workers in 2015, with at least 6,200 of those being firefighters or having firefighting-related duties. Additionally, many were hired as trail maintenance workers and forest rangers.

[…]

“By the time you get your undersecretary and all those people in place, you’re 60 to 90 days behind the scene and off schedule,” Duran explained. “I’m pretty sure they’ll give a (public safety) exemption, but you still won’t be able to staff up in a timely manner. In California, firefighting is already year-round. And in most other places, it’s getting year-round, too.”

According to Wildfire Today, “from the mid-1980s through 2015 the average number of acres burned has grown from about 2  million acres a year to around 8 million.”

This bit of governmental idiocy will not only put the populace, land, and wildlife at risk, it will put firefighters at risk as well. I have no doubt this will have a very negative and potentially dangerous effect on other important public sector jobs. Places all over are being ravaged by weather, and the additional disasters they bring, and that fucking idiot Donny can’t deal with those, either, as Mississippi is still waiting for emergency relief and assistance from the Twaddler-in-Chief, having been hit by severe storms, tornadoes, and floods. Naturally, Donny promised to “expedite the recovery process”, but so far, hasn’t done shit. You’re on your own, people.

Via Raw Story, one, two.

Voter Fraud? No. Updated.

President Donald Trump talks with reporters n the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President Donald Trump talks with reporters n the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

There was no voter fraud. This is simply more smoke out of Donny’s arse, in an attempt to ameliorate his wounded ego over having lost the popular vote. This obsession is unfortunately not slowing down the ongoing shredding of the government, but Donny is prepared to waste a considerable amount of money nursing his fixation.

Two days after he told congressional leaders that he would have won the popular vote if it were not for three to five million illegal votes, President Trump announced on Wednesday morning that he’ll push for a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD.” [Tweets at the link.]

Trump’s tweets conflate registration lists with fraud. There are innocuous reasons why a state’s voter rolls might be less than totally accurate. People move to another state without informing their former secretary of state’s office, and hence might be registered in more than one place. Others people die but don’t get removed from the rolls. Neither of those occurrences constitute fraud, however. Fraud is casting a ballot illegally either by voting more than once or impersonating another voter.

The notion that voter fraud exists on a significant scale is one of the Trump administration’s “alternative facts.” According to a Washington Post analysis, out of the more than 135 million voters cast in the 2016 presidential election, just four cases of voter fraud were found — and three of the culprits voted Republican.

Trump’s tweets conflate registration lists with fraud. There are innocuous reasons why a state’s voter rolls might be less than totally accurate. People move to another state without informing their former secretary of state’s office, and hence might be registered in more than one place. Others people die but don’t get removed from the rolls. Neither of those occurrences constitute fraud, however. Fraud is casting a ballot illegally either by voting more than once or impersonating another voter.

The notion that voter fraud exists on a significant scale is one of the Trump administration’s “alternative facts.” According to a Washington Post analysis, out of the more than 135 million voters cast in the 2016 presidential election, just four cases of voter fraud were found — and three of the culprits voted Republican.

[…]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said:

“I would urge the President to knock this off; this is the greatest democracy on Earth, we’re the leader of the free world, and people are going to start doubting you as a person if you keep making accusations against our electoral system without justification,” Graham said, according to CNN. “This is going to erode his ability to govern this country if he does not stop it.”

Erode his ability to govern? He doesn’t have any ability to govern in the first place. He has no knowledge, is not interested in acquiring any, no attention span, and is mostly concerned with watching television and twitter. His only concern has been, and remains his ego. At the very least, people should be concerned about the mass amounts of money this idiot is going to spend chasing phantoms so he can make himself feel better.

Full story at Think Progress.

In what can only be described as a Trumpian twist, Donny was angrily tweeting about the so-called voter fraud, in which, he specifically called out being registered in more than one location:

As it turns out, The Angry Tweeter’s chief nazi, Bannon, is registered to vote in two different places. I guess that will be declared okay now.

Oh Gods. More Assholes.

Credit: Youtube.

Credit: Youtube.

The Charlotte Observer reports that Sen. Dan Bishop, a Charlotte Republican, has proposed a new measure that would make it a crime to “threaten, intimidate, or retaliate against a present or former North Carolina official in the course of, or on account of, the performance of his or her duties.”

The measure came in response to a video in which several protesters followed Ex-Gov. McCrory down a street in Washington, D.C. while chanting things like “Shame!” and “Anti-gay bigot!”

“If Gov. McCrory were a former official of the District of Columbia, this incident might have been a crime punishable by five years in prison,” Bishop in an official statement. “So should it be in North Carolina. This is dangerous. Jim Hunt, Bev Purdue and other governors never faced riotous mobs in their post-service, private lives, without personal security.”

Chanting “Shame!” and “Anti-gay bigot” are not dangerous. They might be embarrassing, yes. And a shameful bigot like McCrory certainly would have his little ears burning, but it’s still not dangerous. Five years in prison? Unfuckingbelievable. Is there any redeeming feature to self righteous rethuglicans? Just one? Because I never see one. People are fighting for basic human rights and the rethug answer? Prison! If there are any repubs who think they are chock full of redeeming features, you’re staying awfully quiet.

At no point in the video did any protester physically touch McCrory or make any threat against the former governor.

And since issuing threats to public officials is already a crime, the scope of Bishop’s bill would likely depend on how it defines “harassment” and “retaliation” against current or former government officials.

And there’s the heart of it. In the new Fascist States of America, you should not have the right to criticise. So much for those vaunted frozen peaches.* Full story here. *Free Speech / Freeze Peach / Frozen Peaches.

And in Louisiana, all that matters are blue lives, the rest of us can just go to hell or prison, whichever comes first:

Following suit with the Trump administration’s law enforcement platform, police in Acadiana, Louisiana have used the state’s new “Blue Lives Matter” law. Louisiana is the first state to enact such a law, which aims to protect the conduct of police officers by slamming people who resist arrest with hate crime charges.

“We don’t need the general public being murdered for no reason and we don’t need officers being murdered for no reason. We all need to just work together,” said the St. Martinville Police Chief, Calder Hebert in defense of the new law. “Resisting an officer or battery of a police officer was just that charge, simply. But now, Governor Edwards, in the legislation, made it a hate crime now.”

CBS News correspondent David Begnaud clarified on Twitter that the police chief’s language was inaccurate, according to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ communications director. However, the Blue Lives Matter provision has already been used to charge someone with a hate crime.

If the response to protesters at Donald Trump’s inauguration is any indication of what’s to come from police, any Blue Lives Matter law that seeks to slap felony hate crime charges on people for resisting arrest is just another component of a serious crackdown on dissent.

Based on Louisiana’s Blue Lives Matter law, anyone who resists arrest or uses physical force against an officer can now be charged with a felony hate crime, a serious offense that will only further criminalize those most affected by abusive policing. Hate crimes are punishable by ten years to life in prison.

Again, the only answer: prison. And that’s for lawful dissent. Dark days. Full story here.

Insufferable Assholes.

Texas Rep. Tony Tinderholt (Facebook).

Texas Rep. Tony Tinderholt (Facebook).

A short while back, I read about one Tony Tinderholt, and his quest to imprison women and strip their right to vote, if they had an abortion in Texas. (I can’t believe dude goes with that photo. Really.) Apparently, Tony hasn’t given up on his dream, because you know, it’s all about responsibility, yes. That horrid abortion availability, it just makes people terribly lax about sex, after all, you can just fit a termination in between the mani-pedi and lunch at the club, right?

In an interview with the Texas Observer, the Republican lawmaker explained that women need to know there are “repercussions” for their actions.

It’s always right up front. Women. Women must…Women need…Women should. There’s never a word about how men need to know there are repercussions for their actions. There’s never a word about how Men must…Men need…Men should. It’s women who end up pregnant, so naturally all the responsibility rests on them. Nary a word about all the semen six guns out there.

“Right now, it’s real easy,” Tinderholt said. “Right now, they don’t make it important to be personally responsible because they know that they have a backup of ‘oh, I can just go get an abortion.’ Now, we both know that consenting adults don’t always think smartly sometimes. But consenting adults need to also consider the repercussions of the sexual relationship that they’re gonna have, which is a child.”

There hasn’t been a backup of “oh I can just go get an abortion” ever. It’s never been that simple, even when it was much easier and accessible, like it was in the 1970s. All medical procedures cost money, and most of them are inconvenient. A termination is seldom a blithe, off the cuff decision. Most people who are capable of getting pregnant and don’t want to be take steps to see that doesn’t happen. Unfortunately, shit happens. Now I note it’s a case of ‘they’ and ‘consenting adults’. Interesting how in Tony’s world, the law he wants would not put ‘they’ in prison, nor would it strip ‘their’ voting rights.

The repercussions of the sexual relationship, a child. I don’t know anything about Tony’s personal life, but I think he needs a proper sex investigator following him around, because god knows, he wouldn’t want to commit the sin of having sex for fun or anything. When you’re done having sproggen, no more sex!

House Bill 948 has been named by Tinderholt as the “Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act” and will likely draw another costly lawsuit for Texas taxpayers to fund in court. Under this bill, there would no longer be any exception for women who are abused, raped or have fetal abnormalities. If a teen is raped by her father she would be forced to carry the child under this law under penalty of jail.

Tinderholt explains that the women should be forced to carry the child because he’s “a firm believer that God creates children in his own image, regardless of how that child is brought into the world, it’s created in his image, and how can someone want to destroy that?”

Oh, I can think of all manner of reasons someone might want to rid themselves of a blastocyst. My decision to do that is no more germane to public opinion than a decision to have spinal shots or to kill a tumor. It’s a private medical procedure, which isn’t anyone else’s business, especially not that of an asshole god botherer, who thinks they have a divine right to intermeddle. I don’t believe in any gods, but the idea of beings created in the image of various gods is an amusing one. Given that christians believe there are two distinct genders, and made in god’s image is amusing, too, but they seldom think that far. I’m surprised Tony the Asshole doesn’t go full court biblical, with rapists made to fork over money to the victim’s father, then getting to legally shackle the victim to them for life. Why not go full hog? Of course, that only applies to single virgins.

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. — Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Tinderholt said that since he announced the bill he and his family have received death threats and Department of Public Safety officers have been outside of his home for days for his own protection. DPS won’t confirm that.

I imagine Tony is quite proud of that. Asshole. Full story here.

Moving on to Ohio, and one Bruce Jones:

Bruce Jones (Facebook).

Bruce Jones (Facebook).

An Ohio township official refuses to apologize for calling a woman mentally ill during a contentious Facebook argument over the Women’s March.

Bruce Jones, the fiscal officer for West Chester Township, shared a post by conservative blogger Matt Walsh about the march Saturday that challenged women to name a right men have but they don’t — besides the right “to kill their kids,” reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.

One of the official’s Facebook friends told Jones she faced inequality every day and complained that he had “mansplained” women’s rights to her.

That’s when Jones launched an all-caps tirade.

“YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING TO CENSOR ME BECAUSE I’M A MAN! YOU are ILL!” Jones responded. “Now be off – back to the asylum.”

If someone had the ability to censor you, sir, you wouldn’t be able to have all caps tirades published on the ‘net. Also, this is more of a “you’re an asshole” issue than a “you’re a man” issue. I know lots and lots of men who are fine people and not assholes. Most women do.

The township official, who’s up for re-election in 2019, complained about liberals’ “obsession” with equal rights.

“They’re obsessed with equality above all else, as if they’d recognize it though it’s all around them,” Jones wrote. “Something happened to them and now they’re jaded, broken people with varying degrees of mental illness, impairing their ability to be rational.”

When you’ve had to fight, every step of the way, from the mists of time, yes, you can get preoccupied with rights, especially as assholes like yourself are so damn determined to never step off your privilege perch and see reality from a different perspective. Calling women names and impugning their rationality is not new. The ancient Greeks and Romans were doing the same thing. So y’see, it’s been a long fucking time. We’re tired. And more than a bit pissed off.

Jones then complained that “servicemen” had given their lives to ensure the woman’s right to “Affirmative Action, free access to judicial recourse, child abortion on demand, and organize protests where you drag your (living) child around, dressed like a vagina, while carrying a sign, “F__k Trump.”

Oh look, an old, white guy who doesn’t know jack shit. Women have fought in wars from time immemorial, and in many cases, led. You want to complain that women can’t recognize what’s all around them, while you don’t recognize chauvinistic sexism falling from your own brain. Affirmative action? Oh my, does that ever say it all. Abortion on demand? No, I’m afraid not. By the way, no one is busy aborting children. All the children I saw at various marches were enthusiastic participants, happy to be involved with their parents. Children aren’t stupid, y’know, most of them knew what they were doing there. I didn’t see people dressed as vaginas, that would be a somewhat awkward costume to march in. Lots of people in pink pussy hats, yes. Y’know, pussy like in cat, you dumbfuck. I also saw lots and lots and lots of signs, many of which were brilliant, and the majority of them were much more clever than “fuck Trump”, although there’s nothing at all wrong with saying “fuck Trump”. Most signs didn’t, and I have to say that wouldn’t be my choice, because Trump is a serial sexual assaulter and a rapist. Most people wouldn’t want to be in grabbing distance, let alone give any impression they might fuck him.

Full story here.

Oh FFS Roundup.

President-elect Donald Trump speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

 CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

Trump’s team is worried. Seems they finally figured out they won’t be able to focus Donny at all. Instead of even pretending to do anything presidential, the Angry Tweeter in Chief spent most of his first weekend in office angrily tweeting, and siccing Spicer on the press, to present those alternative facts.

[Read more…]

Just the Alternative Facts, Ma’am.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks in the press briefing room at the White House, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks in the press briefing room at the White House, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

During his first appearance before the press as President Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer attacked the media for accurately reporting that Trump’s inauguration was attended by a relatively small crowd. […] In the latest sign that the Trump administration plans to wage war on reality, Spicer refused to accept that attendance for Trump’s inauguration was smaller than for President Obama’s in 2009.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period,” Spicer said. “Both in person and around the globe.”

He blamed “floor coverings [that] were used to protect the grass on the mall” for making it look like there was lots of empty space. In fact, there was just lots of empty space.

“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said of the reporting.

It’s official – reality is shameful and wrong, oh my yes! I’m starting to think we’d be better off with Nixon’s head in a jar.

Neither Trump nor Spicer said a word about the fact that earlier Saturday, about 500,000 people were marching in the streets of D.C. in response to Trump’s inauguration, or about twice as many as turned out for Trump’s ceremony the day before .

I like reality. Reality is good. This slice of reality is excellent! It is shameful Pendejo Trump refuses to face it. As Spicer was close to a full tantrum over this, Stepford Kellyanne came to the rescue, with alternative facts:

During an interview on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked Conway why Spicer felt the need to berate the press over the weekend for accurately reporting that Trump’s crowd sizes were dwarfed by the attendance at President Barack Obama’s 2008 inauguration.

“Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck,” Conway scoffed. “They’re saying it’s a falsehood and our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.”

I don’t think the people who prefer facts, truth, and reality are the ones being dramatic. Melodramatic is a good descriptor of Pendejo Trump, and his supporting soap opera.

“Wait a minute,” Todd interrupted. “Alternative facts! Four of the five facts that he uttered were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods.”

Conway tried to deflect, but the host pressed on: “You sent the press secretary out there to utter a falsehood on the smallest, pettiest thing. And I don’t understand why you did it.”

“I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or the other,” the Trump aide opined. “You can laugh at me all you want. You are, and I think it’s actually symbolic of the way we’re treated by the press. I’ll just ignore it. I’m bigger than that. I’m a kind and gracious person.”

Actually, you can estimate those numbers very well, and Pendejo Trump knows that all too well, which is why he shut down the people who do those estimates every year. This isn’t about proof or absolute numbers. It is very much about just how thin and tender Pendejo Trump’s skin is, and it doesn’t bode well.

Additionally, Spicer tried to claim that floor coverings and magnometers were to blame for the poor turn out:

“This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the [National] Mall,” Spicer said. “That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”

This is not true, either, and so easily refuted. It was the U.S. Secret Service who put paid to the magnometer story, but I guess they are all liars too, you betcha!

Via Think Progress and Raw Story. Also see .

Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as “the truth” exists. … The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs. – George Orwell, 1943.

Reality Check.

Credit: Bigstock.

Credit: Bigstock.

The inaugural speech was dark, ominous, painting a picture of a disintegrated America. The inaugural speech was also a lie. All of it. This should not come as a surprise; if there has been any consistency about Trump, it’s been that he lies, constantly. It’s in Trump’s interest to paint such a picture, and it’s also necessary for his plans for fascism – reality is not his friend. Fortunately for us, Think Progress has a nice point by point refutation of all Trump’s inaugural claims.

During his inaugural address on Friday, President Donald Trump painted a bleak picture of an America beset by violent crime, drugs, and lack of education. He presented himself as a savior who will “fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down.”

[…]

But as was the case during Trump’s similarly dire Republican National Convention speech, many of the claims he used to paint his picture of “American carnage” were false. In other instances, Trump referred to real problems, but didn’t mention that he has no plan to fix them.

[…]

Here are some of the ways in which Trump tried to deceive the American people about the state of their country during his first speech as president.

Jobs

“Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed… We will bring back our jobs,” Trump said.

But during the Obama years, the economy has actually been adding jobs each month at a steady pace: it added jobs for 75 straight months, the longest streak on record. There were 2,157,000 more jobs added over the last year, and 11,250,000 created over Obama’s presidency.

Head over to Think Progress for the full reality check.

Budget Slasher Horror.

Pennywise

© Jorgel007, via http://welcome2creepshow.tumblr.com/

Trump is preparing his own slasher flick, featuring The Budget. Most Trumpoids won’t care, they will most likely cheer this massacre on, but those of us who cherish things like art, social justice, education, the environment, because our earth sustains us, and other commie hippie stuff are in for a very bad ride. As per usual in the rethug agenda, anyone who isn’t rich is gonna get screwed.

Incoming President Donald Trump’s administration is already working on preparing his budget. And it looks like it will be far more extreme than anything the Republican Party has proposed so far.

The blueprint Trump’s team is working with as it crafts the plan would cut federal government spending by $10.5 trillion over a decade, according to The Hill’s sources.

[…]

To get such deep cuts, the Trump budget contemplates completely eliminating a number of programs, particularly at the Departments of Energy, Justice, State, Commerce, and Transportation.

On the chopping block, according to The Hill, would be the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; the Department of Justice’s Legal Services Corporation and Violence Against Women Grants; funding for the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity, and Office of Fossil Energy, among others.

It’s likely many other programs will be cut as well, even if they aren’t eliminated entirely. […] But if the House Republican budget is any guide, programs that serve the most needy are likely to be in danger. That proposal derived 62 percent of its cuts from low-income programs, such as food stamps and Pell grants, even though those programs account for just 28 percent of non-defense spending.

Think Progress has the full story.

A Shameful Justice System.

Pearl Pearson Jr., a deaf man who was charged with resisting arrest after not listening to officers' instructions.

Pearl Pearson Jr., a deaf man who was charged with resisting arrest after not listening to officers’ instructions.

A deaf man from Oklahoma has been cleared of charges that he resisted arrest because he allegedly failed to hear police officers’ orders.

Pearson was originally pulled over by troopers in February of 2014, and was slapped with a misdemeanor charge for resisting arrest after not obeying officers’ instructions.

[…]

Pearson claims that he tried to inform the troopers who pulled him over that he was deaf, and he says that they proceeded to beat him after pulling him from his vehicle. His 2014 mug shot clearly shows a swollen eye and other injuries that he alleges came from his encounter with police.

[…]

The district attorney cleared the troopers of any criminal wrongdoing in the case, but charged Pearson with a misdemeanor of resisting arrest.

Yes, of course you did, after all, beating the shit out of people is just another day at work, right? Perfectly okay that, and to insist on preferring charges against a deaf person. Makes perfect sense if you’re a regressive, backwards asshole.

Attorneys for Pearson had successfully argued Pearson needed special interpreters for his trial. Pearson learned sign language during segregation, which means his way of communicating differs from traditional American Sign Language, or ASL. District Attorney David Prater, who appeared for the state in person at the hearing requesting interpreters, did not object to the request.

Pearson’s attorney, Scott Adams, says prosecutors told him they were dismissing the case due to the costs associated with the special interpreters for court. The case was scheduled to go to trial next week.

Online court records indicate the case was dismissed without cost to Pearson, though he has had to pay for his own defense attorneys.

Court documents filed by prosecutors say the cost of Pearson’s misdemeanor trial could meet or exceed $40,000.

“It is the District Attorney’s responsibility to be a good steward of the taxpayer’s money,” Prater wrote.

Oh, right. So that’s what it is, deciding on what to do with taxpayer money, sort of an accounting thing, not a justice thing. Mr. Pearson won’t see any justice for being beaten by cops; he’ll still have to pay his lawyers, and if it weren’t for the need to pay special interpreters, you would have gladly wasted a lot of money persecuting him for no good reason. Perhaps with some of that 40k you saved, you should put out some public service announcements: Danger! Don’t Be Deaf Around Cops! Danger! Especially Don’t Be Black and Deaf, No!

Via Raw Story and KOKH.

ACA Repeal: Catastrophic.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its estimate of how many people will become uninsured if Republicans move forward with their likely plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the numbers are brutal. Thirty-two million people would lose their health insurance by 2026, and premiums would double in the same time frame.

Americans would also see a sharp and immediate drop in insurance rates. According to the CBO, “the number of people who are uninsured would increase by 18 million in the first new plan year following enactment of the bill.”

The CBO examined a bill pushed by Republicans in the previous Congress, the “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015,” which would phase out provisions of the Affordable Care Act that help make health insurance affordable — including subsidies for plans purchased on Obamacare exchanges and the law’s Medicaid expansion. It would also immediately repeal provisions, such as the law’s individual mandate, which are intended to bring people into the insurance market.

At the same time, this bill would also leave in place certain regulatory reforms, such as the requirement that insurers cover people with preexisting conditions.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I faced doubled premiums, that would be the end of healthcare coverage for me, and as someone who needs to have spinal and neck injections every 3 months, well, that would stop too, because I know damn well I couldn’t cover the procedure out of pocket. That would leave me in massive pain with no respite, because without the injections, I don’t get pain med scrips.

Nevertheless, partial repeal would lead to a massive expansion of the uninsurance rate. Indeed, many people would be unable to obtain insurance at any price. As CBO explains, “roughly 10 percent of the population would be living in an area that had no insurer participating in the nongroup market.”

A Massachusetts study found that “for every 830 adults gaining insurance coverage there was one fewer death per year.” If this figure is applied to the 32 million who will lose insurance if key provisions of Obamacare are repealed, it means that about 38,500 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived in Republicans succeed in their plans to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act.

Yeah. All that shit about death panels? Well, now we know for sure who doesn’t care about people dying, but that’s hardly news. Naturally, rethuglicans are attempting to discredit and dispute the report, but they are still offering nothing but vacant looks towards anyone who expects details about the so-called replacement plan.

Republicans have indeed suggested several possible replacements for the Affordable Care Act, such as dismantling state insurance regulation, giving states more leeway to deny Medicaid coverage to people who are now eligible, and tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy. To date, they have not settled on a specific replacement plan, however, and the ideas they have floated so far would insure only a fraction of the people currently insured under the Affordable Care Act.

So, what we have to look forward to in this brave new world? Taxes, Pain, Death.

Via Think Progress.

Day One-ish.

Trump humps flag. Twitter.

Trump humps flag. Twitter.

Trump has disclosed to The London Times that his first day of working as president will be Monday, January 23rd, because I guess now presidents of whole countries don’t work weekends.

“One of the first orders I’m gonna sign — day one — which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and getting it mixed up with lots of celebration,” Trump told the London Times.

Stephen Colbert had something to say about that one:

Via Raw Story.

We Freed the Slaves, Say Thank You!

Gov. Paul LePage (YouTube/screen grab).

Gov. Paul LePage (YouTube/screen grab).

Supreme asshole bigot LePage is at it again, this time saying that Rep. John Lewis needed to show more gratitude to white people. C’mon, boy, tap those shoes and tip that hat, yeah? All the racist goons are delighting in slamming Rep. Lewis and all people of colour.

The Portland Press Herald reports that LePage slammed Lewis for questioning President-elect Donald Trump’s legitimacy during a regular appearance on a local talk radio show, and he said Lewis needed to show more gratitude to past white presidents who worked to free black people from slavery.

“John Lewis ought to look at history,” the governor told the George Hale and Ric Tyler Show on the Bangor-based radio station WVOM. “It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”

Christopher Cousins of the Bangor Daily News writes that LePage is simply incorrect when it comes to the history of Jim Crow laws, however, as Hayes agreed to “an informal deal after a contested election that gave him the White House in exchange for promising to pull Northern troops out of the South,” which thus “allowed Jim Crow laws to take root.”

As usual, white bigots who just can’t keep their mouths shut also can’t manage to check a few facts first. How about a “fuck you, go back to school” instead of a thank you? I think that would suffice.

LePage, who this past summer was caught on tape calling a Maine lawmaker a “son of a b*tch socialist c*cksucker,” also criticized the American left for being “so hateful” and “trying to bully us out of believing our constitution.”

:Laughs: Oh, there really isn’t any need for commentary, bigoted cons always manage to swallow both their feet before anyone can get a word in edgewise.

Via Raw Story.

Germans Aren’t Buying Chevy, Not Fair!

Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedia Commons.

Trump is busy threatening German automakers, because they aren’t completely focused on uStates. He seems to think that all automakers who want to sell their cars in the States, must manufacture their cars in the States, too. Oh gods, he’s such a fucking idiot. Anyroad, he’s threatening to tack on a 35% border tax on all vehicles imported to uStates.

“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax,” Trump said in remarks translated into German.

Trump goes on and on, threatens more, remembers to threaten Japan’s Toyota, too. Trump doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he’s doing, so he ends up at the default: melting down and having a tantrum. Here’s a great example of just how very bad of a businessman Trump is:

Trump called Germany a great car producer, saying Mercedes-Benz cars were a frequent sight in New York, but claimed there was not enough reciprocity. Germans were not buying Chevrolets at the same rate, he said, calling the business relationship an unfair one-way street. 

Let that one soak in a while. The sheer idiocy is stunning.

Via Reuters.