This Week’s Takeaway

My two cents on the political stories floating around each week.

• Today Louis C.K., one of my favorite comedians, admitted to sexually harassing several women.
  –TAKEAWAY: Goshdangit, I just can’t even with this….
• Former DNC Interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile has slightly modified her criticism of the 2016 primary and the DNC (‘it wasn’t rigged but it had cancer’) doesn’t matter now because her book has sold out on Amazon.
  –TAKEAWAY: She’s all about the Benjamins. Who wants to bet she ends up on Fox News as one of their token “liberal” pundits? 
• While Congressional GOP members are dropping accused pedophile Roy Moore like hot potato, fellow Alabama GOP members think it’s not a problem.
  –TAKEAWAY: Alabama GOP thinks that ANY Democractic candidate is worse than a pedophile.
• Enrollment on Healthcare.gov is surprisingly robust with new enrollment up 30%.
  –TAKEAWAY: Trump and his lackeys are so incompetent they aren’t even able to sabotage Obamacare effectively. 
• Ret. General and Former NSA to Trump Michael Flynn is publicly worrying about the fate of his son regards the Russian Collusion investigation by Mueller.
  –TAKEAWAY: The pressure is getting to Flynn and he will flip soon, if he hasn’t already.
• Trump has had his lips glued to the Chinese Leader’s ass for the last couple of days in complete opposition to his own positions on trade with China since forever and trade agreements like the TPP are moving forward without the US.
  –TAKEAWAY: If anyone doubted that the US has lost it’s preeminence on the world stage, this proves it conclusively. The world will now be led by China and Russia. 
• Trump’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn admitted in an interview that the current tax bill in Congress is based on “trickle down” economic theory–ya know, the kind that doesn’t exist and the GOP is openly admitting that their wealthy donors will stop donating if they don’t pass this tax bill.
  –TAKEAWAY: The GOP cares more about giving money to the wealthy than it does the actual welfare of the US economy.
• Trump’s bodyguard for the past several decades said that Trump was offerred Russian escorts when he traveled there.
  –TAKEAWAY: Does anyone believe that Trump turned down EVERY Russian offer of escorts? The Pee Tape is real. 
• GOP Congresscritters were getting really frustrated with Carter Page’s testimony before Congress because he was incapable of giving a yes or no answer, or really any answer that made any sense whatsoever.
  –TAKEAWAY: The guy that the Russians thought was too stupid to be turned and used was, in fact, that stupid and useless.

Sources:
HT http://www.bobcesca.com/
HT https://www.balloon-juice.com/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/07/us/politics/document-carter-page-russia-investigation-transcript.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/carter-page-international-man-of-mystery/545159/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-bodyguard-testifies-russian-offered-trump-women-was-turned-down-n819386
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/09/gary-cohn-trickle-down-is-good-for-the-economy.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gary-cohn-tax-cut-ceos-donors_us_5a049571e4b0f76b05c4249e
http://www.newsweek.com/brazile-clinton-steal-2016-election-sanders-706766
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/donna-brazile-dnc-not-rigged-but-there-was-a-cancer-1091141187992
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/woman-says-roy-moore-initiated-sexual-encounter-when-she-was-14-he-was-32/2017/11/09/1f495878-c293-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/928756267425943553
https://twitter.com/Dpugel/status/928673017143676928
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/08/politics/michael-flynn-son-special-counsel-russia-investigation/index.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexcapri/2017/05/22/the-tpp-moves-forward-without-trumps-america/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/arts/television/louis-ck-statement.html

This is what Tyranny looks like

Our Glorious 5th Estate is so focused on Trump’s insults to the grieving families of our soldiers that they’re ignoring why those soldiers died in the first place.

What REALLY Happened in Niger

An explanation of what really happened to American soldiers in Niger and why Congress should investigate. To read this in Storify or just read my transcript below.  All content below from the Twitter feed of @laurasessions10

THREAD 1. What happened in Niger.

2/ While everyone is so busy talking about the president’s handling of his call to the widow of the soldier killed in Niger….

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3.you ‘re all missing the important part of that story…the part about what happened that night in Niger.

4. The story that is emerging is so much worse than anything that happened in Benghazi

 5. but the same GOP Congress that investigated Benghazi with a fury seems to have little or no interest in this story.

6. Here’s what we know so far…These soldiers went to a meeting in an area near the border with Mali a well known hot spot for ISIS

7 Our soldiers were not backed up by US Military air support- backed up by the French, who were not authorized to intervene or even fire

8. Our soldiers were given faulty intel… that said

9 “it was unlikely that they would meet any hostile forces.” Of course, they walked into an ISIS ambush-chaotic and they took three lives

10 It took the French 30 minutes to arrive. When they did they were not authorized to help.

 11. So, a dozen of our Green Berets fought a battle with more than 50 Isis fighters, without help, for 30 minutes.

12 Finally, a rescue helicopter arrived, but it was not a US military helicopter.

13 No, we apparently outsourced that job to “private contractors.”

14 So, these contractors landed and loaded the remaining troops, the injured and the dead.  Here’s where this gets really bad…

15 Because they were not military, they never did a head count. That is how Sgt. La David Johnson was left behind.

16 That’s right…they left him behind.

17 According to the Pentagon, his locator beacon was activated on battlefield, which indicates that he was alive when they left him there

18 They recovered his body 48 hours later but are refusing to say where.

19 According to his widow, she could not have an open casket. This means that he was mutilated after being left behind on the battlefield.

20 This is what led to the nonsense we’re obsessing over. This is the real story.

21 As usual, you’re allowing it to be about Trump’s distraction, but this is Benghazi on steroids

22 The Trump Pentagon gave these men bad intel, no support, outsourced rescue people and then,,,

24 He tweeted attacks on many but never mentioned this Only after pressure from the media did he acknowledge these men and their service.

 

Our Dictator in the Making, aka Putin’s Useful Idiot

Herr Drumpf has declared China and Russia to be our friends because (the FBI says) they hacked the DNC’s emails (and modified some of them) in order to sow discord in the party’s convention.  While I’m irritated that a handful of emails were ugly they’re not game changers or smoking guns and the DNC has reacted appropriately to smooth things over.  I’m much more concerned with the fact that Putin is purposely interfering with our Presidential election, which is unprecedented in our country’s history to my knowledge.  What’s worse, it appears to be working because our Media, which can’t resist a controversy, is blowing the email story out of proportion and because Herr Drumpf, who relies on Russian oligarchs for money (the same oligarchs that put and help keep Putin in power), is saying that he would essentially abandon our NATO partners to Russia’s encroachment.   Either Herr Drumpf is actively working for Russian interests or he’s their Useful Idiot.  And you know we’re headed for some serious trouble when the best we can hope for is that a Presidential candidate is a Useful Idiot for an expansionist Russian dictator.

 

h/t Ashby at BobCesca.com

What is wrong with these people?

I haven’t ranted in quite a while so I guess I’m overdue.  My spleen cup overfloweth and thus I must vent.  I signed up for health insurance through the online marketplace (yes, I mean Obamacare, but technically it’s called the ACA….but you can also call it Romneycare mainly because it tickles the shit out of me that it was a Republican idea to begin with and they have been calling it the “Eeek!  Soshulizm!” plan).  But I digress.

I signed up the first year it was available for myself and my son.  For a year I paid our Healthnet insurance premium every month.  I don’t qualify for a subsidy to help pay for it.   In addition to the monthly premiums I paid full price for everything.  This included my prescriptions that I HAVE to have and the medical care for when I totaled my car, which included an ambulance ride that cost more than the fucking ER bill and full price for the crutches that are gathering dust in a closet as we speak.  Welcome to the Middle Class in America where you have enough to live in Suburbia and not receive any help from anyone ever but you’re always one disaster away from homelessness.

I got married in late October 2014 and the plan was for me to go on my husband’s health insurance and that I continue to buy my son’s plan through the Marketplace.  My husband, though I love him dearly, has one massive flaw.  He is a procrastinator of the worst kind. Since I also do this (but nowhere near to the same degree) it can cause problems.  But I didn’t procrastinate this time.  I bugged the ever livin bejeebers out of my husband to get the form, fill it out and take it in to work.  Well, he didn’t get it done until late Nov or early Dec.  AFTER the 30 day window.  The 30 day window we knew nothing about.  To say that I wanted to strangle him would be an understatement.

By December 2014 I said to myself, “Self, why am I paying Healthnet money?”  Then I received a letter saying that the shitty plan I had was going away and that I would have to pay Healthnet even more money for a worse plan.  The only other equivalent plan through the marketplace was also with Healthnet and it would cost $100 more per month AND they raised the annual individual deductible from $3,500 to $10,000.  If I didn’t meet the deductible the year before with ALL my son’s and my out of pocket expenses, I estimated that I  would have to get terminal cancer to meet the new deductible.

So I said “Self, let’s not do this any more”.  I cancelled my health insurance and prayed that nothing would happen to me before my husband’s employer has open enrollment in the Fall of 2015 and I kept the Healthnet plan for my son.  I called Healthnet up in December to set this all up. They made it VERY difficult to keep my son on his own plan.  Apparently the concept of insuring a child without an adult on the plan is hard for their very tiny brains to process.  They also made me wait until open enrollment for the Marketplace which was in January.

The communication between Healthnet and the Marketplace sucked balls.  Neither side really knew where the other stood.  They Marketplace kept telling Healthnet that I was on the plan even though I repeatedly corrected this with both parties.  I had to use the 800 number to communicate with the Marketplace, which took many hours to accomplish, because it wouldn’t let me log in for over a month, so I couldn’t even review my plan’s set up or other choices online even if I wanted to.   While I was doing this open enrollment thing I started getting letters from Healthnet that they were terminating our coverage for non-payment.

I called them up, explained to them again that I was not paying because I had cancelled my plan and I had been paying for my son who I was currently trying to enroll in a new plan.  February came along and it seemed to get straightened out for my son but not for me.  I was still getting letters that my plan had been cancelled from lack of payment.  I gave up telling them that I had cancelled with them back in December.  Clearly they had a problem and I had only so much energy for outrage.  Nevertheless, my son was taken care of.  He had the new plan–even received his card in the mail.

Then on March 1st, unbeknownst to me, they cancelled my son’s health insurance for lack of payment.  Except I had paid for February and I had until March 31st to pay for March before they could legally cancel his plan.  I didn’t even know anything was going on until they sent me an invoice in late March demanding payment.  Why?  If you’ve already cancelled it, why ask for money?  Well, ultimately I’m glad that I got the notice and I immediately paid for March and April online.  So, as of that point I was totally caught up.

Well Healthnet took my money and never updated my son’s eligibility.    Apparently the Billing Department is in East Timbuktu and the troglodytes there only speak Swahili and the Eligibility Department is on the moon and the miscreants there only communicate via clicks and glottal stops.    I was given further proof of their complete inability to internally communicate on even the most basic level a couple of days ago.  I got another letter saying that my son’s coverage had been cancelled for lack of payment.

So I called them.  Here is how the conversation went:

Me: “Why have you cancelled my son’s plan?”

Lady: “Oh we cancelled it on March 1st.”

Me:  “Yes, I have a letter in my angry, clenched hands here that says exactly that.  Why was it cancelled then when I had the entire month of March to pay and I had already paid for the month before?”

Lady: “I don’t know. I do see the payment for February”

Me:  “Good.  Do you see that I made a payment which covers March and April?”

Lady: “Yes, in the amount of $—-.”

Me:  “So I’m paid up to date?”

Lady:  “Yes”

Me:  “So my four year old son is without healthcare coverage because ‘you don’t know’.  Do you have any idea how frightening that feeling is for a mother?  If something were to happen to him, you know and I know that the quality of the care that he receives is directly proportional to how much I and his healthcare plan, which he no longer has, can pay.”

Lady:  “M’am, I don’t know why they cancelled it. Please hold.”

Me:  [silently fuming]

Lady:  “I’ve sent an urgent notice to the Eligibility Department to re-instate him today.”

Me:  “Okay, thank you.  Can you have them call me once it’s done.”

Lady:  “They don’t call customers.  They will mail you a letter.”

(Guess the clicks and glottal stops don’t translate well over the phone)

Me:  “No, that would take too long and who knows what could happen in the meantime.  I want to know right away.  Can they email me?”

Lady:  “Maybe, I will ask them to email you. But it will either be a letter in the mail or email.”

Then this was followed by my thank you’s and her have a nice days–all that polite bullshit we say but don’t mean in any way shape or form.  Who knows what will happen now.  I’m betting I’ll get another termination letter before the end of the month, even though the bill for May has yet to arrive.    Fuckers.

We need an intervention

We need an intervention