All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Tendrin]

Trump administration opens door to let states impose Medicaid work requirements

The GOP war on the poor continues. A complete lack of understanding what Medicaid is and who receives it.

I am both a caretaker and chronically ill.

The GOP is attempting to murder me again.

[Kevinroc]

Trump administration opens door to let states impose Medicaid work requirements

The GOP war on the poor continues. A complete lack of understanding what Medicaid is and who receives it.

The GOP knows who benefits from Medicaid. They just don't care.

They'll let adults suffer and die, they'll let children suffer and die, but they can't wait to give more tax cuts to the ultra wealthy.

[worstblogever]

Update on insane Missouri Governor Eric Greitens... he's not just a kook with a mini-gun. He's also a hypocritical "family values" Republican. And he just didn't cheat on his wife, he allegedy tried blackmailing his mistress by threatening to release nude photos of her taken while she was in bondage:

Missouri’s newly elected Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, who ran in part on a platform of family values, on Wednesday admitted to having an extramarital affair three years ago with a married woman, but denied allegations that he blackmailed her. He assumed office last January.

St. Louis network KMOV News 4 first reported the allegations after obtaining a tape in which the woman apologizes for having a sexual relationship with Greitens to her now ex-husband. The woman cut Greitens’s hair and immediately “had a big crush on him.” The flirtation escalated into a meeting at his home, she said.

In the recording, she describes a sexual encounter with Greitens in 2015 that began consensually, but soon made her uncomfortable. He put a blindfold on her and tied her hands to a set of rings at his home, and took a nude photo of her:

Woman: “He stepped back, I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said: “you’re never going to mention my name, otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere.”

“I was just numb. I just stood there and didn’t (expletive) know,” the woman said.

Greitens is admitting to the affair, not denying the kink in the encounter, but denies the comments that amount to blackmailing the woman.

[Iron Maiden]

I have no doubt this sort of heinous and heartless practice goes on in hospitals from coast to coast, we're just not hearing about it enough, if at all. And things are only bound to get worse, with Trump and the GOP hellbent on killing Obamacare, scores of poor and desperate people, deprived of healthcare will have no choice but to flood emergency rooms when they're sick, leading to future instances, if not outbreaks like what happened in Baltimore.

I've worked at hospitals for over 20 years but not in admisssions, etc. I was a records clerk. I lived in Gary, Indiana for many years and worked at one of the hospitals in the city. Gary is in the northern section of Lake County. As the population left the northern cities, hospitals were built in the south. Mostly these newer hospitals were owned by the same corporate entity so it didn't really matter where the patient was admitted. In other words, a poor person who lived near the Southlake campus wasn't transferred to the Northlake campus because it gained you nothing. The hospital as a corporation still loses money in caring for the indigent (more on that later). But there was one hospital that had just one campus in one of the more well to do neighborhoods of Lake County and they were known to patch 'em up in the ER and then transfer. Part of the reason they had the patients in the first place was because the wait in the ERs in the northern section of the county was notoriously long. The poor and uninsured tended to use ERs as a clinic. So they would get in their car and drive to an ER that was less busy. I can't recall specifics but I thought rules were put in place to eliminate patient dumping so I am surprised to read this about Baltimore. There are penalties that come into play for this practice

Later when I worked in the IT department I was put in charge of creating the "DISH" report. This report was submitted the state to show how much money our two campuses lost on the care of indigent patients. It was called known as Disproportionate Share and the state had a fund where they would divy up the money among qualified healthcare systems. Gary had two of those systems (I've worked for both other the years) and typically the Northlake campuses of both lost money and would qualify. Eventually, the Northlake campus of one of the systems closed because it was no longer sustainable. Even the DISH money didn't help. So right now the city of Gary only has one ER and many just drive to another city's hospital to avoid the wait. East Chicago and Hammond are nearby and have hospitals. They are also part of a multi-campus healthcare corp . And the one hospital left in Gary is always in the red but is supported its sister hospital in the southern half of the county. There are always rumors that it may also become unsustainable and may close.

Blame it all on our screwy healthcare system in the US. Bu that does not excuse what happened in Baltimore.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, and in 2017 on this date, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled former Oklahoma State Senator Don Barrington, whose biggest claims to fame are introducing a law in 2015 to ban hoodies, presumably as a response to people protesting the death of Trayvon Marin, as well as opposing a bill to potentially legalize marijuana because his church told him to. His voting record also features him trying to stop Common Core standards in education, trying to restrict abortion including supporting state Personhood bills, voting for a law to prevent minors from buying emergency contraceptives, preventing the passing of a minimum wage, allowing for open carry everywhere in the state, voting for “Stand Your Ground” in Oklahoma, trying to restrict collective bargaining rights, voting for harsher Voter ID restrictions, and trying to pass a unnecessary ban on Sharia Law. Barrington was forced out of office by term limits in 2016, and seeing as how he’s now into his seventies, he seems unlikely to re-emerge as a candidate for higher office. We’ll set aside his CSGOPOTD profile at this time and go ahead and take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 636-25, since this was established in July 2014.)


Gerald Gay
Welcome to the 636th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today we’ll be discussing Gerald Gay, a former engineer who worked for oil companies (go figure he’s a Repulican) and three-term member of the Wyoming House of Representatives who came along, but during the 2010 Tea Party Wave (when else?). Gay was adamant that he hated same sex marriage to an extent where he repeated it like a mantra in his 2014 re-election campaign, including a campaign video where he was dressed up like Yosemite Sam’s homophobic brother, or something. We’re honestly surprised he never changed his surname. We also can’t say he’s too level-headed about people on government assistance, as Gay also sponsored legislation to drug-test welfare recipients during his time in office, the 4th Amendment and the track record of these bills actually finding anyone abusing drugs be damned. How else do you shame the poor?

Well, it seems Gay was also obsessed with people who aren’t white men abusing the system wherever possible, because when he was asked by Better Wyoming what his thoughts were on the pay equality gap between men and women, he went on a bizarre, ill-informed rant about how it was necessary because women call in sick too much:

”That’s a fact of life, you know, and it’s the nature of Wyoming’s business and also the nature of gender politics. Men and women have different ways of going about taking time off — moms for maternity leave and that sort of thing. Women are always going to take their full maternity leave, and there’s the dependability issue about whether they’re going to show up for things.

Historically women tend to take every sick day that’s available with them, and that’s a gender thing. They look at how many sick days you get in a year. Say you get 12 sick days a year. If they go for two years and they’ve only taken three sick days, they’re going to cash in the remaining 21 sick days. That’s a gender thing and it hurts getting [the gender wage gap] rectified. Some of the misuses and abuses that go on there, and it’s predictable, it’s statistics that are written in stone. As long as you have people who behave differently on it between the two genders, it hurts the chances of getting that gender wage gap shrunk all the way down. We’ll make small progress on it, but they won’t make it go away.”

Gay didn’t back down, or apologize, and in fact, when reporters asked him to clarify, dug the hole deeper, indicating those women might be faking their illnesses:

“Women in the workforce traditionally take a disproportionate amount of their sick days off for other reasons than sick days.They take Junior to the hospital or go see Johnny’s soccer game.”

So of course, Gerald Gay accepted responsibility for his comments… HA! Of course he didn’t. He blamed the media for taking him out of context, because that’s what the “party of responsibility” like to do when they’re recorded being total ***holes. The ironic part was that Gay himself had repeatedly taken days off in the legislature for medical reasons of his own, and missed plenty of votes.

All that sexism may have been the deciding factor for voters in Wyoming’s District 36, who voted for his opponent, Democrat Debbie Bovee by 212 votes. GASP! A woman! Why, we hope she doesn’t fake illness to avoid legislating! Not nearly as much as we hope Gerald Gay never even sniffs elected office again.

[Ragged Maw]

Trump administration opens door to let states impose Medicaid work requirements

The GOP war on the poor continues. A complete lack of understanding what Medicaid is and who receives it.

Does the GOP really have people with some half-baked vision of some utopian paradise based on some poorly thought out Randian regurgitation of Darwin’s ideas? As if we’d have flying cars and nanite enemas by now if only America didn’t have to waste tax dollars helping the “inferiors”.

[Malvolio]

The GOP knows who benefits from Medicaid. They just don't care.

They'll let adults suffer and die, they'll let children suffer and die, but they can't wait to give more tax cuts to the ultra wealthy.

And the schmoes who voted for Trump don't seem to understand that people on Medicaid are not simply lazy, but rather are unable to work, or unable to find work.

[worstblogever]

Quinnipiac Poll out today:

56% of Americans give Trump a "D" or "F" grade on the first year of his presidency.
By a 52% to 35% margin, the country would rather see Democrats in control of the House after 2018 and 53% to 36% for the Senate (+17 is a remarkable advantage).
Polling on separate issues... across the board, those polled support the Democrats' stance on every major issue. EVERY ONE.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Quinnipiac Poll out today:

56% of Americans give Trump a "D" or "F" grade on the first year of his presidency.
By a 52% to 35% margin, the country would rather see Democrats in control of the House after 2018 and 53% to 36% for the Senate (+17 is a remarkable advantage).
Polling on separate issues... across the board, those polled support the Democrats' stance on every major issue. EVERY ONE.

I'd love to hear how the talking heads on Faux News spins THAT. Even more interesting will be seeing Baghdad Betty (Sarah Sanders) twist herself into a pretzel defending her boss when the press corps brings up those horrid numbers. And how will Eddie Munster, Turtle Boy and the GOP bigwigs respond to the poll?

[mojotastic]

Senate and congress election will be taking place in March in my country.

And i was stunned with what i found yesterday, there is this guy running for congress and one of the big ideas he has is to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Oh give me a break, WE dont need to get in trouble with the arabs, there are also bigger concerns that moving our embassy, for one most of our roads are in bad shape that why is really expensive to move goods in the country.

[TheInvisibleMan]

The Idiot continues to do what he does best

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.7f5708021baf

President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from sh**hole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met Wednesday.

[ouroboros]

As mentioned by kidfresh512, Trump's own word's indicted him in that Access Hollywood clip with the camera rolling. There also was the People reporter that he shoved against a wall and forced his tongue down her throat in his daughter's bedroom at Mar a Lago with a pregnant Melania downstairs.

And I don't think many daughters have had their fathers express a desire to date them. Or would want to hear that esp in their teen years.

(1) The Stoynoff allegation is an example of harassment that I find easy to believe. However, I don't fault Ivanka if she chooses not to believe it, but I do fault liberals for jumping down her throat, just so they can stay on-message.

(2) As I said on this threat months ago, the "pussy tape" is evidence of exactly nothing. No point in arguing it again.

(3) I see you have no response to my suggestion that Trump's remark was his idea of a joke. If so, it would be a stupid, vulgar joke from a stupid, vulgar narcissist. But it's easy for me to surmise that Ivanka just might blow it off as a bad joke, since she has no reason-- not even with the harassment charges-- to conceive of her dad as some modern version of the Emperor Caligula.

[ouroboros]

1. The plaintiffs may have had no choice but to take whatever deal Trump's attorneys offered them. When you're facing the prospect of going broke trying to fight the legal team of a billionaire, you may decide to take an out of court settlement that includes a gag order just to survive.

2.It wasn't just Trump suggested he would date Ivanka. (And of course, date is a euphemism for ****.) There was also that Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous clip where Trump speculated on what Tiffany's breasts would look like when she grew up. And she wasn't a teenager at the time. She wasn't even in grade school. She was one year old. One year old! Who does that?

(1) I don't have a problem so much with the plaintiffs taking a deal, as with people considering that their case has been proven in spite of their taking the deal.

(2) Who does that? A narcissist with no taste, obviously. But so far he's not been successfully branded with the Roy Moore charge, and there might be a reason for that.

[ouroboros]

That may be because some aspects of traditional courtship are coercion. Especially with how courtship can be portrayed in film. I hope she is ready for the responses she's gonna get though. After all she believes in the "right to pester."

I think that the context of her remarks is confined to pestering for the purpose of finding sexual partners.

[worstblogever]

On the heels of the GOP tax plan/scam getting Wal-Mart's ownership $7.8 billion in tax breaks, they have announced they are closing 63 Sam's Club stores and laying off thousands of workers so "they can compete with Amazon".