During my recent hospitalization there was an amusing period where I was whisked from my 11th-floor penthouse room back down to the 6th-floor ICU for… something. They were never very clear and neither was I.

Anyway, that didn’t even last a day, no treatment was administered, and I was whisked back up to the 11th floor to the very same room I had just left. Apparently this doesn’t ever happen and many were amused by my privilege.

On the wall facing one’s bed in Piedmont hospitals there is a whiteboard where the staff can update the date, the names of the staff, and other data, including the plan of care and the treatments appertaining thereunto. It’s very useful for those of us who might be still reassimilating into this multiverse.

When I arrived back in my penthouse room, of course, they weren’t expecting my return to that room — communication/updates could be slow, is all I’m saying — and so I had the following nice message greet me.

Welcome to 11B! it chirrupped, and I was touched.

However, as I pointed out to my nurse (Thomas), Welcome to 11B! is not a treatment plan. He laughed in agreement and looked up what treatments they were mulling over. He wrote them on the board, and I wish I had photographed them because 1) I can’t remember what they were; and 2) they never happened anyway.

Which brings me to my point: The [[[Republican Party]]] finds itself heading into the midterms with the most unpopular [[[President]]] in history — not to mention the most incompetent and most venal— and very likely to lose control of at least one house of Congress if not both.

Are they hunkering down and pointing out the success of the [[[Current Administration]]] and its policies? Are they touting their own laws that they passed? Are they proposing at least a chicken in every pot?

You might very well think that, but I could not possibly comment.

Just kidding, I am absolutely going to comment.

Here’s Senator Tommy Tuberville [R-AL] on the floor of the Senate:

That’s right, boys and girls, the most important thing you need to consider when you enter the polls to vote for the future of this great nation is that your pilot might find it fun to dress like a wolf cub when he goes to Burning Man. OOGA BOOGA! VOTE [[[REPUBLICAN]]]!

This is just a single example of what appears to be the only platform any [[[REPUBLICAN]]] is running on: fear and anger against anyone who is not white, Xtian, straight, nationalist, and mostly male. It’s the inverse of Welcome to 11B!— discomforting, alarming, and completely empty of anything of value. It is not, in fact, a treatment plan.

In other words, stampeding the amygdalas is all they’ve got.

One would like to assume that the leader of this great nation of ours is able to grok How Things Work, because our experience in our own lives is that people who do not grok How Things Work have a tendency wreck Things so that they no longer Work.

Oh well.

Here is the man announcing… something?

(Click to see the original post and hear the man say those words.)

Let’s see if I can explain why this “idea” doesn’t work.

First, let’s be clear about why he’s pitching this “idea.” The [[[Republican Party]]] is way behind on every social policy you can think of. Their only defense at the moment is amgydala-stampeding — cOmMuNiSm KENNETH, tRaNs PeOpLe, WOMEN WARFIGHTERS WITH LOW TESTOSTERONE!!!!! — so this “idea” is a kind of sop thrown out there so they can say that they care about the healthcare issues that the rest of us encounter in this great nation of ours.^[1] 

Here’s how you know they’re lying.

We can ignore all the stupid stuff, the “two weeks,” the idiotic “name,” et al. Instead, let’s dissect the premise, that we’re going to kill off health insurance companies by giving the citizens of our great nation of ours cash that they can, and I quote, “buy their own healthcare,” and “will save a lot of money.”

First of all, the idea of killing off health insurance companies is a great idea (and obviously a ploy to engage the amygdalas) although I think I would prefer easing them out of the business so as to avoid massive disruptions.^[2] But [[[Turmp]]]’s alternative, to “give us cash” so we can buy our own “healthcare”?

Let’s grok how that’s supposed to work.

First, how much money are we talking about? I’m going to throw out a number, but you can substitute any number you like and the results will be the same. I’m going to suggest that [[[Turmp]]]’s minions would say that one’s deductible on one’s health insurance policy is a good place to start. So let’s say $5,000, which is above mine but below some others’ policies.

So I get $5,000 for my annual healthcare.

Stop right there. We know what a “deductible” is, right? It’s the amount that insurance companies require you to pay out of pocket before they will cover greater expenses. In other words, major healthcare expenses like surgery, long-term care, meds, are all your responsibility now. But you’ve got $5,000 for all that, right?

You see the problem.

The [[[Republicans]]] will argue that since you’re not paying health insurance premiums to the for-profit companies, you’re practically rich now. They’re lying, as usual. The amount coming back into your paycheck is still not enough to cover expenses, and that $5,000 you’re getting is tax revenue. In other words, you already had that money.

Let’s review how insurance works. It’s a risk pool, which means we all bet that we’re going to get sick at some point. The insurance company is betting that we won’t. Many of us will, some of us won’t, but a significant number will have extensive healthcare needs. By pooling our money, by putting all our $5,000 chips into the pool,  the lucky among us will “lose” our bets, i.e., the money we paid in premiums never comes back to us because we didn’t get sick, but overall we as a nation benefit from not having people die unnecessarily or lose their houses because they did get sick.

But Dale, I hear you expostulate, isn’t that what we’re doing now, pooling our money and doling it out to those who need it? Sure, except for a) a not insignificant amount of our dollars go for profit, which of course is the raison d’être for these companies anyway; and b) these companies can just decide not to honor the bet, denying your claim for coverage for your cancer surgery or your MRI or your meds. Instead of that, let’s do what societies who are societies do to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. In other words, not a [[[Republican Party]]] healthcare plan.

[[[Republicans]]] find this icky. They want us all to be rUgGeD iNdiViDuALiStS KENNETh and tough it out on our homesteads with our tradwives and spawn. Or die.

All the evidence, both for economics and healthcare, points to universal healthcare as being more effective than our current for-profit system, which again^[1], we are the only nation that suffers under. You’d think that a party devoted as the [[[Republican Party]]] says they are to lowering government expenses would hop on that. It’s almost as if they are beholden to the profit-makers. Or something.

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^[1] And only in this great nation of ours. Everybody else on the planet has universal healthcare.
^[2] See the “Grok How Things Work” theory, above.

The other day I had to go to Kroger at 5:08 to grab a pound of mushrooms, an ingredient for the meal I had already started prepping. It was, as you may imagine, packed with hordes of real people stopping by after work. Lines to checkout and self-checkout were down the aisles. It was a zoo.

As I threaded my way through the store, a lady in an electric cart eased out of an aisle that I was about to turn into. She apologized for being in the way, but I just smiled and said, “No problem — we’re all in this together, right?” She laughed and acknowledged as much.

Except… not really. We’re not all in this together. Republicans do not believe we’re all in this together. Republicans believe that more than half of us are not “us.” Republicans believe in “us,” but that “us” is rigorously defined as not “them.”

You know “them.” The poor, the hungry, the stranger, the victims. Them. Republicans don’t believe in “them,” at least not in a way that would convince Republicans to govern in ways that benefit “them.”

Here’s one quick, egregious, example: [[[Turmp]]] has refused to disperse funds from FEMA to “blue” states. They talked back to him, so he’s simply not going to release funds that Congress has appropriated for the relief of U.S. states and their citizens after disaster, because they’re not “us.”

That’s at the macro-criminal-grift end of the scale. At the individual level, people are finding their rent assistance, their food assistance, their health assistance, all being cut off because of Republican fury at “them,” the “takers,” the ones getting “fReE sTuFf” KENNETH from the gOvErNmEnT KENNETH.

“THEY” MUST BE PUNISHED, to the point that it is now mainstream (as in “out in the open”) Republican dogma that they must abolish Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. “They” are too much of a drag on the budget, you see. Ignore the additional $60 BILLION that Republicans are about to “reconcile” into the current budget, and don’t you dare bring up the $1.5 TRILLION Department of Defense budget Republicans are now putting into the next budget. That money is for “us.” Not “them.”

(You will notice that they don’t seem to be all that eager to punish those that are in on the game at the macro-criminal-grift end of the scale. [vid. sup.])

Republicans will object to this framing, of course. It should be obvious, they cry, that Republicans are the virtuous ones, the law-abiders, the righteous Xtianists, the patriots. Those others?

Well, they’re… you know. Poor. Uneducated. Different in ways that all right-thinking people should be repelled by. Them. “They” don’t deserve whatever money we as a society might give “them” to pay rent, buy groceries, have childcare or medical care. “They” should have made better life choices, right? But my “life choice” of not having bought mushrooms earlier in the day, requiring me to be polite and accommodating to my fellow shoppers, is not at all the same thing as the trap of being poor in these United States, even if Republicans want you think they are the same.

The whole mindset is grotesque. “Us” vs. “them,” where “them” is anyone who isn’t Republican, “those people” who haven’t earned the right to live. For a pithy and short previous take on the topic, see here.

…and by “them” I mean the [[[Republican Party]]], of course.

Here’s the headline:

And here’s the story.

You may wonder, if you are of sound mind if not body, why would the [[[Republican Administration]]] want to stop the National Park Service from going public with safety issues? As one park ranger said, “These reports alert others in the park of such things as rockslides, flash flood, and other, as well as reminding them about common sense safety.”

So, class, let’s review the steps in [[[Republicans]]] governance:

1. Kneecap a government service (but never the military).
2. Complain loudly about the degradation of said service as an example of how gOvErNmEnT nEvEr WoRkS KENNETH.
3. Privatize it. Sell it off to your rich buddies so they can make you pay for what used to be a public service.

Got it?

1. Kneecap the service: The [[[Republican Administration]]] has already cut National Park Service budget by over $700 million, necessitating layoffs, closures, etc.
2. Complain loudly: This current move to keep the NPS from reporting deaths is sly. Those deaths will then be trumpeted — without context — by the Dept. of the Interior as evidence that NPS employees are not up to the task of keeping the public safe.
3. Privatize it: Keep you eyes open and your ears peeled. It’s coming. They’re already sniffing around a lot of public land for mining, etc.

Another day, another [[[Republicans]]] scam.

update: It’s worse than you think.

 

Note: This post is meant to mock the amygdala-based lifeforms among us. Details of the plot and the plotters may emerge that obviate any true facts I might have used at this time. We regret the [future] error.

As soon as Ka$h Patel, unfortunate director of the FBI, announced that they had ThWaRtEd A pLoT KENNETH to obliterate the bouncy-house kickwrassling shindig on the lawn of the White House with drones, the rightwing Wurlitzer^[1]  cranked up and immediately began feeding the amygdala-based lifeforms their daily ration of fear and anger: Only the evil liberals in our nation would want to murder the thousands of people at the bouncy-house kickwrassling shindig on the lawn of the White House KENNETH.

Only not.

It soon emerged that the actual terrorists were five (so far) of the saddest MAGAts you have ever heard of. They lived in widely distanced states, communicated online, and in general gave the sense that they were middle school boys playing some war-based RPG. In fact, the FBI “caught” them when the youngest dweeb’s mother overheard him talking to his fellow conspirators and called the local cops.

Their first problem was that they had no drones and apparently had no plans to obtain any. They seemed oblivious that drones are banned from the airspace over D.C. or that entire systems are in place to destroy any drone that strays.

It gets better. Their plan included a daring Jack Reacher escape along the Potomac, but it lacked some crucial details. What details, you ask?

Details like how to a) hang around and shoot important people as they fled the drone massacre; b) what to do about the entire Secret Service, DC police, etc, who probably would be loitering about; c) how to get to the river undetected more than three miles away; and d) how to escape to the abandoned church they designated as their safe house. (We will omit the problem of how they thought they were going to get close enough to carry out a) in the first place.)

It was magnificent. It rivals the best efforts of the Current Administration.^[2]

So, I hear you ask, why would such diehard MAGAts want to snuff out the Current Administration?

As it says in the image, it was pretty simple, at least in MAGAt terms: They believed [[[Turmp]]] when he said he would root out all those baby-eating Demonrats™ and expose them as the Epsteiniest of the Epsteiners. They voted for him so he could finally, finally expose these demonic libtards for who they really were. (There was also some pretty virulent antisemitism.)

Oops, as pundits are increasingly saying. Once these boys realized that [[[Turmp]]] never intended any such thing for the very basic reason that he is all over those Epstein files, their sense of betrayal led them to each other and to come up with a plan to eradicate the evil from our nation once and for all.

Oops.

It depends on Shonda Rhimes‘s writers room, of course, but I can see their indictment and trial being a bit of a PR problem for more than one Individual. It will be delectable.

Or, in an unsurprising plot twist, they’re offered jobs in the Current Administration.

—————
^[1] See here.

^[2]See the Reflecting Pool, Iran “war,” flu outbreaks, ad infinitum