Month: May 2017

 
From The Onion:

As the debate over Obamacare rages on and insurance costs continue to rise, Americans consider how best to improve the country’s healthcare system. Here are the The Onion’s tips for not condemning millions of Americans to sickness and death:

Read the thing you’re voting on, particularly if you’ve heard someone mention that it might end up killing millions of people.

Do your research: Find out if any of the people you are paid to represent are human beings who use healthcare.

Try to better understand the concerns of your constituents by dying a slow, painful death while bankrupting your entire family.

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From Andy Borowitz:

PARIS (The Borowitz Report)—On Sunday, the people of France annoyingly retained their traditional right to claim intellectual superiority over Americans, as millions of French citizens paused to enjoy just how much smarter they were than their allies across the Atlantic.

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From Yash Sirohiya:

The eagle has no idea where the tiny speck of land was that his handler is standing on or what it looked like among all of the other islands and buildings and people.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

• At Stinque, nojo gets granular on the Senate, where conservatives are working on the next step of Republican efforts to attack health care.
   
• Michael John Scott, at MadMikesAmerica, notes that House Republicans have voted for a health change for which they do not know the cost, and from which they do not know how many millions will lose their coverage. Politically, however, Michael believes those millions and their friends will generate a cost for Republicans.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger issues a call to action as a desperate Texas Republican hides from his constituents.
   
• In satire at The Onion, a Republican representative terrifies his constituents by assuring a meeting that he read every word of the health care repeal.
   
• It seems the Republican public victory celebration did it. At long last, Andrew Sullivan has given up on contemporary conservatism. Well, that’s news! driftglass, largely immunized by Andrew’s years of blame-both-sides writings, is unimpressed.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports satirically as Trump supporters across the nation join in celebrating the imminent loss of their health insurance.
   
• Green Eagle explains the economic policy news that ought to matter most.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post suggests the reason Congress does not act in your best interest.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony considers the contrast of our President’s difficulty in getting along with leaders who are chosen through free and fair elections with his comfortable ease in relating to tyrants.
   
• This one is unproven, but the fact that the report from Last Of The Millenniums is plausible, all by itself, says something significant. Did an administration noted for pettiness pressure Argentina out of awarding an honor to Jimmy Carter?
   
• Jonathan Bernstein, thinks it’s about time to think about the next presidential and who will carry the Democratic 2020 vision. 20-20 Vision. See what I did there?
   
• Professor PZ Myers watches Tucker Carlson, so we don’t have to. The O’Reilly replacement carries on the legacy, marshaling a new War On Atheism.
   
• At The Intersection of Madness and Reality, Rippa notes that Bill O’Reilly is gone, but the bigots at Fox News still live.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, former pastor and current atheist Bruce reacts after Franklin Graham slut-shames Duchess Kate Middleton for bearing her breasts on a private French beach. Why, wonders Bruce, do so many evangelicals obsess over their fear of women’s breasts.
   
• In California, The Fresno Bee is killing off its local arts and sports coverage. At Whatever, John Scalzi really doesn’t like it.
   
• Ever feel your cell phone ring when it really isn’t ringing? Turns out it’s a thing: phantom vibration syndrome. According to The Journal of Improbable Research, there is actually a study about it.
   
• This Week In Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’, our own St. Louis Post Dispatch reviews my President’s latest historical fantasy about the Civil War. Gosh, if only big-hearted Andrew Jackson, or deal-maker Donald Trump, had been President instead of that incompetent Lincoln fellow.
   

Trump and I, and the Greater Jihad

The clash of ideology that dominates our national life reflects two contrasting approaches to life itself.

We can struggle to win by making losers of those we encounter, or we can find ways to win together.

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From Infidel753:

The wingnuts are restless, and worse. And that’s a good thing.

The rank-and-file of the enemy are beginning to notice that, despite now controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency, their Republican champions aren’t getting very much done. For many, the recent spending bill seems to have been the last straw. Religio-wingnuts are furious that it preserves funding for Planned Parenthood (check out the comments thread at that posting too), as are their somewhat more secular comrades at RedState. Cuts to science, the EPA, sanctuary cities, etc. are gone or negligible, and there’s no money in there for the wall — even Trump is starting to realize Republicans got pwned. Limbaugh and RedState are disgusted.

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From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:

Long before it mastered the mass production of “fake news,” the Republican Party propagated its Ur-lie that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” Almost from the moment that Arthur Laffer first sketched his now-famous curve on a napkin in 1974, right-wing pundits, politicians, and propagandists have declared as an article of faith the belief that tax cuts incentivize so much economic growth that revenues to Uncle Sam will be at least as high as they would have been without the reduction in rates.

Unfortunately for the American people, four decades of supply-side snake oil have produced only mushrooming national debt and record-high income inequality.

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From Dave Dubya:

It is the essence of capitalism to take the most while giving the least. That is its ethos. This is why it needs regulation.

Trump is president for several reasons politically. Comey, Russia, Hillary’s baggage, etc. Missing from every analysis is the American people’s reverence for wealth and the wealthy. Mammon is our god, and the rich are our prophets. Make no mistake. Look at all the millionaire TV preachers who prove this statement. Look at the cult of celebrity behind famous people. Trump even told us “when you’re a celebrity, they let you do that”. And too many of we the people let him do it.

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From The Big Empty:

Oh, what the hell, I may as well say it: Elizabeth Warren will be elected president in 2020. And she will become the 21st-century’s FDR. All of her creds and instincts point to it. Not to mention a HUGE majority of Americans who are now desperately yearning for somenoe akin to the new FDR, a people’s president. Warren has all the right stuff to make that happen.

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