Republican Cruelty Demonstrated by their opposition to Obamacare

by | Jun 17, 2021 | Health, Politics

When it comes to Obamacare, the Republicans repeatedly demonstrated cruelty towards the American people.  Even though the concept originated with Republican Mitt Romney, they repeatedly tried their best to block it because, in my opinion, they didn’t want President Obama receiving credit for a national health insurance law. They created an array of bogus scare tactics such as “Death Panels’, and it’s a government takeover of healthcare, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth because, per the law, all insurance is provided by PRIVATE companies.

Apparently, Republicans couldn’t care less if millions of Americans are forced to live without health insurance. When Trump was President, and they controlled both houses, they never came up with an alternative to Obamacare. That didn’t stop Trump from repeatedly promising the best health care bill ever will be ready to go in two weeks. In my opinion, that was the biggest broken promise (out of many) from Trump. Of course, his loyal followers will never hold him accountable for that failure.

Republicans recently tried to destroy the Affordable Care Act law forever, with a Texas case, supported by 17 Republican State Attorney Generals, which advanced to the Supreme Court. Thankfully, on June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court announced a 7-2 decision, rejecting the lawsuit, because they didn’t have legal standing. I’m sure the 21 million Americans on Obamacare are breathing a sigh of relief, knowing they can keep their health insurance.

Let’s acknowledge that Obamacare has flaws which need to be fixed, but that’s very doable. The main reason everyone should support the Affordable Care Act is it provides insurance to around 20-21 million people, who prior to this law, often went without health insurance. But the law did a lot more than fill in a desperately needed gap in coverage. Even though most people (around 85%) still obtain health insurance through their employers, the law has a major impact on everyone. Check out the following positive changes which apply to all Americans.

  • You can no longer be denied health insurance because of Pre-Existing Conditions, and it also eliminated the Pre-Condition Penalties. By the way, it’s estimated that over 40% of Americans have pre-existing conditions.
  • The unemployed can buy quality health insurance.
  • Those who are Self-Employed can buy quality health insurance.
  • Those who have jobs where their employer doesn’t provide health coverage can now buy it.
  • Women cannot be charged extra for their premiums, which was typical before Obamacare.
  • The Affordable Care Act prohibits employers from imposing annual or lifetime limits on benefits and caps out-of-pocket spending. If you get a serious illness, such as cancer, this one is huge.
  • Children can stay on the parent’s policies up to the age of 25.
  • Medicaid was expanded.
  • For Medicare recipients, Obamacare closes the so-called Prescription Drug Doughnut Hole.
  • The next one is so important, I’m going to highlight it with a different color. Insurance companies and doctors all agree on the critical importance of preventive care, which often discovers health problems before they become serious, major issues.
  • Thanks to Obamacare, preventive care is free to the patient.

Do not listen to the never ending bogus, phony Republican claims about Obamacare. And don’t believe  what I wrote. I encourage you to do your own research, something which rarely happens in Trump World. I’m confident you’ll learn that even with its flaws, Obamacare is having a major positive impact on America. If the Republicans don’t like the law, why don’t they come up with a better alternative? As mentioned above, they had a golden opportunity to create their own health care law during the first 2 years of the Trump Administration, but they did nothing. I think they just don’t care. They instead concentrate their efforts on taking away health insurance from approximately 21 million Americans. That is cruel and despicable.

The Democrats HR1 Bill is Another Idiotic Bill from a Party Which Often Demonstrates Stupidity

by | Jun 7, 2021 | Life, Politics

America is in big trouble. We need two strong political parties which act as a counterbalance to the other. That would hopefully result in common sense compromises to solve problems and/or resolve issues. This is what the majority of Americans want from their representatives in Washington, DC. At this point in time, the Republican Party has numerous bigots, racists, people who are anti-science, and those who have no interest in facts or the truth. To compound matters, they are a Trump CULT, worshipping an egomaniac, a pathological liar, a criminal, and an imbecile. They will do everything Trump wants, even if it is suicidal for the party.

On the other side of the ledger are the Democrats, who mean well, but can’t think their way out of a paper bag. They come up with one dumb policy after another. They are the party which came up with the idiotic slogan to “Defund the Police”. Are you serious? They also impeached Trump over one phone call, while never utilizing the 10 accusations of Trump Obstructing Justice, provided by the Mueller Report. How stupid can one party be?

The other problem with the Democrats is their inability to come up with focused legislation, which deals directly with a specific issue. Unfortunately, they try to change the world with every bill they craft. A good example is the infrastructure bill, which America needs badly. Instead of concentrating solely on roads, bridges, rail, and the Internet, they threw in the “kitchen sink”. Guess what? They did it again with HR1, the bill they crafted to counter the Republican Party’s attempt to thwart democracy by imposing numerous voter restrictions.  The Republicans enacted a series of laws which did serious damage to voter rights. But the biggest threat to our democracy are their laws which give a state legislature the ability to overturn the results of an election. Every American should be terrified of that dangerous component of the Republican Party’s pathetic attempt to stay in power and thwart our democracy.

Back to the idiots in the Democratic Party. Instead of crafting a bill, with a laser like focus on the most important issue, they once again tried to change everything which is wrong in the world with their HR1 bill. They should instead focus primarily on blocking the ability of a state legislature to overturn an election.  Thank you Joe Manchin for voting against it.

Here are some of the idiotic components of the Democratic bill.

  • H.R 1 would prevent election officials from maintaining accurate voter lists and make it harder for them to determine if voters are registered in multiple jurisdictions. This increases the likelihood that voter rolls are outdated, inaccurate, or contain ineligible voters.
  • The bill would dramatically expand automatic voter registration.  People who never give their consent could be added to voter rolls. H.R. 1 goes so far as designating colleges as automatic voter registration agencies. Are they crazy?
  • The bill would prohibit some commonsense voter ID rules and allow convicted felons to vote.
  • It enables same day registration during early voting and on election day.
  • Provisional ballots cast outside a voter’s precinct must be counted. What are they thinking?

In sum, what the Democrats are doing with this proposed bill, is trying to take the voting process and verification protocols away from the states, thereby giving it to the federal government. I understand why they want to do that, but it’s a mistake. Even if it passes, which is unlikely, I’m confident the Supreme Court would vote it down. They should instead concentrate on a very focused bill, which doesn’t allow state legislatures to overturn an election, or in any way, prohibit citizens from registering and voting. They need to incorporate some commonsense oversight which most people will agree with, as well as the Supreme Court.

Almost 2/3 of Republicans Believe Trump Won the Election

by | May 20, 2021 | Politics

Trump was recently caught in yet another major lie, when he claimed the Arizona voting database was illegally deleted. The AZ Republican, who is the head of the election commission, was outraged by the allegation. He said the 180 people assigned to the commission, work hard and have integrity. He showed the existing voter database to reporters, which literally destroyed Trump’s newest LIE. Come on! Who could possibly be dumb enough to believe someone could delete the state’s voter database and nobody would notice? Only Trump supporters could believe such a stupid lie, and incredibly, they do.

If you’re someone who wants to see proof or evidence before you believe an allegation, you should be terrified at what’s happening in our country. Millions of Americans believe the election fraud allegations coming from the former President of the United States, whom rational people know is a pathological liar.

Let’s examine a number of facts which occurred after the election.

  • The votes in Georgia were counted 3 different times and there were no significant discrepancies.
  • The votes in AZ were counted twice and there were no significant discrepancies.
  • Sydney Powell and Rudy G. lost all 64 court cases, many of them presided over by judges whom Trump appointed. Why did they lose every case? Because when they were no longer in front of the TV cameras and were required to provide evidence of mass voter fraud, they produced ZERO EVIDENCE.
  • Sydney Powell, Trump’s attorney, recently said the following in a court of law. The voter fraud allegations were a BIG LIE. Who could possibly be dumb enough to believe it.

For any rational human being, the above would be far more than adequate to move on with their lives and disregard the big lie. Yet in Trump World, despite zero evidence, they continue to believe one of the biggest conspiracy theories of modern life. And I mean zero, not some evidence. It gets even scarier as Republicans are implementing policies around the country, based upon a false premise.

Let’s examine what happened from another perspective. And that perspective is someone who idolizes Trump and believes every one of his lies. For a moment, pretend you are one of them. You would have to acknowledge that the Democrats, whom Trump and his supporters routinely describe as bumbling, fumbling, incompetent buffoons, suddenly managed to secretly and efficiently organize and carry out their strategy of changing millions of votes in a national election. How did they magically become so skilled? If the Democrats suddenly becoming super-efficient and incredibly organized wasn’t farfetched enough, they haven’t found a single person who admitted they participated in a scheme to change votes from Trump to Biden.

Please allow me to repeat my question. If one believes the election fraud story, how did every single Democrat across the country, who participated in the scheme, remain silent? That never happens.

Let’s examine some other aspects of the 2020 election. In every one of the states Trump and his supporters complained about massive voter fraud by the Democrats, the election process was controlled by REPUBLICAN state legislators.

But if the facts outlined above aren’t enough, please answer the following two questions.
1. If the Dems magically controlled the ballot boxes, how did Trump manage to get 11 million more votes in 2020 than he received in the 2016 election? As an aside, Biden won the election by more than 7 Million votes.
2. If the Democrats somehow skillfully and secretly manipulated millions of votes, how did so many House Republicans and Senate Republicans surprise everyone by getting elected or re-elected in 2020? There were a number of Republican House and Senate candidates, who won despite the polls predicting they would lose by a significant margin.
3. Why is Trump claiming voter fraud only in the states he lost?

Obviously, requiring proof or evidence is no longer a component of being a modern-day Republican. As a result, you will see polices implemented in Republican controlled state legislatures across the country, only because the former pathological liar in the White House claims something happened. America and our democracy are in big trouble.

Propaganda vs. the Truth

by | Apr 30, 2021 | Politics

I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I’ve been an Independent my entire life, so I understand the importance of having two strong parties who play the role of counterbalancing each other. That’s the key to maintaining American Democracy. When Reagan was President, he would negotiate with the Democrats, based upon facts everyone accepted. If Reagan received 60% of what he wanted to achieve, he considered that a victory. In order to negotiate like that, you need to start with established facts. The policies they invoked to deal with those facts is what made the parties different and America a great country. Each party obviously formulates different strategies and that’s healthy for our democracy. Unfortunately, what I described above with Reagan, is no longer happening.

In a democracy, nothing is more important than the truth. Unfortunately, during the past 4 years of Donald Trump, Fox, and an All White Republican Party, they created an alternate reality, where they totally ignored diversity of opinion and documented facts. As a result, the truth became a casualty of their alternate reality. The GOP based their policies and goals upon an array of lies and conspiracy theories, which many members of the party incredibly believed. 

I’m not sure whether that was conscious or unconscious. What we do know for sure is they adopted the philosophy of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. During the 1930s, Goebbels learned if you repeat a lie enough times, many people will believe it.  We know that facts, the truth, and research aren’t important or utilized by large numbers of people who will believe almost anything which jives with their view of the world. Trump, Fox, and the Republican Party invested heavily in that form of propaganda because it works. That led to a series of lies and conspiracy theories which seriously damaged our democracy big time.

There are reasons why the Republican Party is an All-White Party. Many members perceive themselves as victims of a culture with rapidly changing demographics, which is oppressing and/or threatening their way of life. In their minds, the liberal elite and people of color are oppressing them everywhere they turn, so they cling to Fox as the face of real America. Their goal is to take their country back. Please note, there is nothing wrong with Fox having a conservative point of view. My problem with Fox is they are Trump’s propaganda machine.  In doing such, they promulgated an array of lies and conspiracy theories, which has nothing to do with a healthy, conservative point of view. Keep in mind the majority of white Americans voted for Trump, while Biden was elected by a multi-racial coalition. In their minds, there’s no way white people legitimately lost the election to that multi-racial coalition, so it must have been stolen. I’ll return to this aspect later in the article.

Ignoring the truth has immense consequences which go beyond politics. In a normal world, fighting the Covid-19 pandemic would never be a political issue. One would expect SCIENCE and Unity to dominate our approach to Covid-19. All Americans should have united to fight this horrible virus and use what we learned from scientific research. But that’s not what happened. Let me to remind you how Trump framed the pandemic in political terms.

  • The virus is a Democratic hoax
  • The virus is under “Tremendous Control”
  • Everything will return to normal by Easter Sunday
  • Inject BLEACH as a prevention measure for Covid-19
  • If you get the virus, take hydroxychloroquine
  • Instead of being a common sense, health & safety logical approach to the pandemic, Trump turned the wearing of a mask into a constitutional personal freedom issue
  • COVID-19 will disappear the day after the election

Millions of Trump supporters believed the hogwash he cited above. Is anyone surprised that almost half of all Republicans refuse to get the Covid vaccination? But it does not end there. Remember the absurd story that Hillary was running a child pornography ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC pizza parlor? One guy from North Carolina believed that story and drove several hours in his pickup truck, along with his AR-15 rifle, to Washington, DC. In his mind, it wasn’t a political mission, he was making a valiant effort to save those children. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn that child pornography story about Hillary was completely false until it was too late. In DC, he found out there was no basement and no children in the pizza parlor. He fired one shot with his AR-15, which thankfully didn’t strike anyone. He spent the next 3 or 4 years of his life in prison because of his ill-conceived rescue mission. I know, you’re probably asking yourself how anyone could believe such an absurd story. You can ask the same question about the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

Please do not think this guy is an isolated case. There are millions of Americans, just like him, who believe virtually any conspiracy theory which mirrors their view of reality. Of course, the current big lie is Trump won the election, but it was stolen from him by the Democrats. Yes, the very same Democrats Republicans describe as incompetent buffoons. Somehow, those incompetent buffoons managed to efficiently steal a national election. Really?

In their alternate reality, they never allow facts to get in the way of what they want to believe. Trump supporters lost all 62 election fraud court cases where they presented zero proof of any widespread conspiracy. Many of those court decisions were made by Trump appointed judges. Trump’s attorney, Ms. Sydney Powell, recently stated in a court of law the stolen election allegation promulgated by Trump, was a big lie. Besides, she said, who could be dumb enough to believe that? Even though Powell admitted, in a court of law, it was a big lie, that admission will not change the mind of many Republicans, who are addicted to Trump and accept whatever he says as the gospel. They are currently formulating voter suppression laws around the country, which are based on the flawed premise of an election which was fraudulent. Obviously, the truth doesn’t matter in their alternate reality.

I’m sure virtually every person involved in that horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol January 6th, believed Trump won the election. Recent national surveys revealed that over 60% of Republicans believe the big lie about the stolen election. Even more incredible, over 50% of Republicans believe it was left wing liberals, as opposed to Trump supporters, who launched the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Conspiracy theories have no limits or boundaries.  The nonsense of Fox, Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, and Qanon, are often mindlessly absorbed by right-wingers. Incredibly, many of them actually believe Democrats are Satanic-worshipping cannibals and pedophiles, and they are running a global sex trafficking ring. Sounds very much like the Hillary Pizza Parlor child pornography ring, doesn’t it?

I wish I had a solution which would stop this dangerous form of insanity, but I don’t. America is in big trouble and our only hope is the majority of Americans will continue to research the facts, respect and accept the truth. We need two strong, political parties making decisions based upon facts, not lies.