This pandemic has shown us clearly the vulgarity of our healthcare "system." Highest costs in the world, yet not enough nurses or doctors. Many millions uninsured, while insurance company profits soar. The struggle continues. Healthcare is a human right. Medicare for all.
For example, every media outlet should include that Delta CEO Ed Bastain asked the CDC to reduce the recommended quarantine time from 10 days to 5 for vaccinated people because of workforce impact. That’s not a health decision. The media needs to frame it that way every time.
Unfortunately the big money corporate donors like the status quo. Why not they always win, and the people always lose. The government works for the wealthy only, government is to serve the wealthy. The people, the lower incomes don’t matter at all. So they have tried to hamper any voting changes that would strengthen the voting power of the people because if the people had their full voting strength then they might raises taxes on the wealthy. The big money donors want the Republicans in charge because they are able to control them fully. Scottie
When Congress returns: Its first priority must be to save American democracy from the big lie, big anger, and big money (plus an end-note on Joe Manchin), by @RBReichhttps://t.co/z8SrC03CAr
Trump wants SCOTUS to read Bennie Thompson’s Washington Post interview.
Not a headline I thought I’d ever read, but here we are. Trump is still trying to argue the Committee has no legislative purpose, even though it’s been affirmed by multiple courts.https://t.co/9GMWOroqQL
Closing 7 of 8 polling places in Lincoln County Georgia, in deep rural Georgia, doesn't make it more convenient for people to vote. So, it's probably just a coincidence that it's a heavily black county with no public transportation, right?
— Larry Middleton – Keep pushing… 💙🇺🇸🌻 (@l78lancer) December 28, 2021
The bill, which declares a “state of emergency,” contains no way to appeal a book’s banning, and requires any public school employee who fails to remove the book to be fired.
What annoys me about many “look at this extreme legislation some state legislator has proposed” stories is that they don’t usually give any sense of if the bill has support and a real chance of becoming law. Which is actually kind of important. https://t.co/EEthDGtdQi
The US and the rest of the world have to understand that China took over Hong Kong. They were going to get it back anyway, but the idea that the wealthy financial center was not under their complete control and advocated for more civil rights with a Democratic government is something that the Chinese government could not tolerate. The problem is they got away with it in Hong Kong and now they want to do it to Taiwan. The US claims they would defend Taiwan, but Biden already said no troops. No troops means no defense. Scottie
Trying to win the next election instead of protecting the people is what the right wing is doing. Instead of joining with the administration to get people vaccinated and to promote safe practices like mask wearing, the right fights to block and stall all these attempts so they can claim Biden has failed. Scottie
The ones getting rich are the ones doing the price gouging. The price of oil is world wide and has fallen. The price of gas in the US has come down. Anyone who thinks that the US being a net exporter of oil means the US is energy independent is misinformed at least and more likely an idiot. Scottie
What good is a privately developed and funded vaccine that Trump claimed credit for if none of his death cult members are brave enough to take it? Not much more use than the tests, which Trump death cultists will refuse too. When the 46th administration took over, they discovered that the previous one had ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN FOR VACCINE ROLLOUT. NONE. ZIP. ZERO.
Shocking and appalling, yet hardly surprising from the camp that wanted to “let them get infected” and “slow down the testing”. “Operation Warp Speed” was a name given to a project that drug companies were working on since 2003. They just modified what they had a bit to address the current strain.
The first vaccine out of the gate wasn’t even part of OWS. In fact, it was primarily developed in Germany with funding from the German government. See “Biontech”. The Last Occupant did what he does best, slap a name on something and claim it as his own. he certainly has no plan to distribute the vaccine. Then Stupid Henry Payne blames Biden because MAGAts refuse to get vaccinated and get sick. Scottie
No plan? By the way, the best way to avoid getting COVID is to get the vaccine. Something right wingers are against but still want to scapegoat President Biden for not doing enough.
President Biden To Announce New Covid Plan, Free Home Tests The administration is readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals. By Susie Madrak — December 21, 2021
President Joe Biden will address the nation today on how his administration plans to confront the massive surge in coronavirus cases, including readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals, setting up new federal testing sites, deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators and buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public. Via the New York Times:
The measures, outlined to reporters Monday night by two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, come as coronavirus caseloads are rapidly rising around the country, particularly in the Northeast, fueled by the highly infectious new Omicron variant — just as Americans prepare to gather for Christmas.
The 500 million tests that the administration intends to purchase will not be available until January, the senior officials said, adding that the government intends to create a website where people can request that tests be sent to their homes, free of charge. It was not immediately clear where the tests would come from.
The plan for new federal testing sites will debut in New York City, where several new sites will be running before Christmas. And Mr. Biden intends to invoke the Defense Production Act, officials said, to accelerate production of tests. Scottie
No way; the job of the States’ governments is to keep the virus alive and flourishing, just to spite Biden. Why would they shut it down? The states can make mask and vaccination mandates that the Federal government cannot. Red states screamed when the federal government told them how to get rid of the virus. With state government put in charge, it’s going to be a circus. The red states were working against Biden to solve the virus problem so they could blame Biden for the failure, by putting it back on them and offering to provide them resources, when they fail it wont be Biden’s fault but their own. Scottie
We have this issue at home. Ron’s recliner was taken by Odie. Odie refused to leave the chair when asked by Ron. About four feet away was Odie’s chair in front of the window. I started sliding Odie’s chair over to Ron’s recliner and Odie would move to his chair, get pets, and then I would slide Odie’s chair back in front of the window and give him more attention. Turns out Odie loves this game. He wouldn’t move out of the recliner unless the game was played. Ron had to give in and learn to play the slide chair game to get his chair back. Scottie
Far too many elected officials view the elected office as a golden ticket to personal wealth. They don’t see it as a service, but instead as a right. Scottie
“The fact that many will no longer even meet with ethics investigators reflects a troubling trend in American politics in which improper behavior is no longer a political liability” https://t.co/I3HLkbTCSL
Dr Levine discusses why debates over trans rights are so toxic, and how the climate crisis will widen health disparities
Rachel Levine: ‘The health equity lens is critical as we fight for environmental justice.’ Photograph: Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
This year has been excruciating for many Americans who have been battered by Covid, extreme weather disasters and political discord, but for one individual 2021 will be remembered for having propelled her into national prominence.
Rachel Levine has shattered not one but two major glass ceilings this year. In March, she became the first openly transgender person to win confirmation in the US Senate after Joe Biden nominated her as assistant secretary of health.
Then in October she was sworn in as the first openly transgender four-star officer as an admiral and head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. At that exalted rank she gets to wear the blue uniform of the corps, which though non-military is one of eight uniformed services.
It’s been a heady 12 months, having been plucked from relative obscurity as health secretary for Pennsylvania on to the national stage. Levine’s meteoric rise is all the more impressive given how few openly trans federal officials there are in American public life.
In an interview, Levine told the Guardian that she was touched not only by the honour and privilege of her new roles, but also by the “profound responsibility that I take very seriously”.
She added that she would be looking to make an impact “both in terms of my advocacy through the LGBTQ+ community and also through the policy changes we can make across health and human services and the administration”.
As the new head of the 6,000-strong commissioned corps, tasked with leading the federal government’s response to a multitude of health crises, Levine now finds herself in the thick of several raging disputes. Most poignantly for her, as the highest-profile trans official in the country, she is at the centre of the debate around appropriate treatments for individuals considering gender transition, especially adolescents.
A graduate of Harvard and Tulane Medical School, she was trained as a pediatrician and specialized in adolescent medicine at Penn State. As such she has both personal and professional skin in the game.
Levine said her starting point when thinking about trans youth was how at risk they are. “Transgender youth are very vulnerable,” she said. “They are vulnerable to being bullied, to discrimination and harassment.”
Sensitive and supportive medical care has overwhelmingly positive outcomes, she said. “There is so much evidence that trans youth, when they are supported by their family and community and receive the standards of care treatment, they have excellent physical and mental health outcomes.”
By contrast, “trans youth who are not accepted, do not have support from family or community, do not have access to the standard of care treatment, have big mental health issues. So we need to empower transgender youth, we need to nurture them, not discriminate against them.”
In May, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced through its civil rights office that section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bans discrimination on grounds of sex, would henceforth include sexual orientation and gender identity. The decision, which is being challenged by religious groups, requires health providers in receipt of federal funds to offer gender transition treatment.
Levine said a priority for next year would be to roll out that rule change across the nation. “We are going to work to promulgate and distribute that for health insurance throughout the US,” she said.
Much of the toxicity around the trans debate, Levine believes, is whipped up by partisan posturing. “A lot of this is political. There are those who are using these issues as wedge issues in the upcoming election.”
She has personal experience of being targeted by such hostility. Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, was rebuked during Levine’s confirmation hearing for his “harmful misrepresentation” of transgender surgery as a form of genital mutilation.
Jim Banks, a Republican congress member from Indiana, was temporarily suspended from Twitter in October for willfully misgendering Levine. In a tweet, he said: “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man”.
In addition to such politically laden hatred, Levine thinks that fear plays a large role in driving much of the transphobic agenda. “People fear what they don’t understand and have experience of. I’m hoping that my appointment, and my being open and out and working for the nation’s public health, will lead to less fear and more acceptance. That’s my goal.”
How does she cope with the virulent personal attacks? She said that as a pediatrician, treating sick children, she learned how to compartmentalize.
“I sublimate that. I take those challenges and I throw them into my work, and it motivates me even more.”
The transgender debate is just a small part of Levine’s daily workload. There is no shortage of health crises piling up on her desk, not least the gathering storm of Omicron and the resultant battle to get millions of Americans boosted.
Within the fight against Covid, Levine said she was especially ardent about addressing the health inequities that have been exposed by the pandemic. “Covid-19 like nothing else has shown the depth and breadth of health disparities in the United States, particularly among individuals of color,” she said.
She is also passionate about directing the resources of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps towards dealing with the health consequences of the climate crisis. As the crisis deepens, she said, the US is likely to be affected by the spread of vector-borne diseases such as those carried by mosquitoes.
Already vulnerable communities are being assailed by extreme weather conditions. Life-threatening heatwaves have been found to disproportionately affect communities of colour.
Levine highlighted the plight of many agricultural workers. “Farmworkers shouldn’t have to risk their health, even risk dying, due to extreme heat just to put food on their family’s table,” she said.
“Minimum-wage workers shouldn’t have to decide between cooling their homes with electricity or paying for medication. Families across the country shouldn’t have to worry about safe drinking water.”
Levine said that as the dangers of the climate crisis gather pace, the role of federal government was to help vulnerable communities build resilience. “The health equity lens is critical,” she said, “as we look at climate change and fight for environmental justice.”
I want to thank Ali for sending me the link to this article. Scottie
I went to Catholic school where I was told I was BORN IN MORAL DEBT TO GOD so I think it’s okay if all schoolkids learn that the people who did slavery in America were white?
Those who stoke hatred, pollute our planet, and undermine our democracy are counting on our cynicism and waiting for us to throw our hands in the air in resignation.
Which is why we have to keep up the fight even when feeling deeply discouraged.https://t.co/Eih8MWkQIn
Ever notice how the deficit is suddenly a big problem when working people are in need, but it isn’t even mentioned when we pass a $768,000,000,000 defense budget? Funny how that works.
God forbid we give 3% less to the military and save humankind.
What is the point of throwing $768 billion at the military when there's no war, at a time when millions of families are going hungry — and continue to lack the care they need to survive, let alone thrive? https://t.co/3eOE2K367S
We need to remove capitalism and capitalist goals from government and government policy.
FOX is not news, they are not journalists. They are propagandists for predetermined narratives.
Instead of admitting they backed a loser, conservatives make losers the hill they die on.
Patriarchy wants submission.
I gotta say, CDC’s new isolation guidance probably couldn’t have come at a worse time.
I understand the science behind the decision, but ending isolation without a testing requirement makes zero sense to my admittedly non-medical brain. https://t.co/qXiy3bJ0tZ
Far too many people / groups are desperate to get another military action going. How can they justify ever increasing defense budget and killing anything that helps the public if there is no fighting? Scottie
I wish this was true, the public might get its needs met. No the ones that control the media, all the media, is corporations. Very large companies that have merged and leveraged all the media in the US. That is why main stream media always sides with ideas that promote wealth going to the upper income class and keeps the government from serving the public. Scottie
It is normal to work on bring back up bills that fail if the party in charge wants them. What the right can not seem to accept is that other people have their ideas and wants also, and those people, who out number the negative right, want the items in the bill. The big money doesn’t want the people to have what is in the bill, and so the corporate media pays right wing cartoonist to make cartoons that insult and belittle the BBB bill. Scottie
Doesn’t work that way when they run out of hurricane names. The just start a new list. Scottie
Another in a series of throwing out any RW trope, hoping it would stick. Say no to masks and vaccines and then blame Joe for the ongoing pandemic. What an insightful plan… for those who chose to be blind. Scottie
The right wing media keeps repeating a lie knowing their viewers will never check to see it is a lie. Nothing has changed at the border, the US has not been invaded, the hoards of brown people have not taken over the Southern US locking up all the white people. Scottie
For the last eighty years Republican administrations have been behind most American sponsored regime changes across the globe with disastrous consequences. It figures they are finally turning their attention to the United States. US armed services are so well funded that they have to HUNT AROUND for things to do with all that largess. Scottie
For something that is like a cold it sure is putting a hell of a lot of people in hospitals who are very ill and dying. I know the maga refuse to look around the US and in their minds the US is the best country but someone should clue them in the rest of the world is dealing with this also. Is their Covid actions Biden’s fault also? Scottie
Schmeck is also hoping for an invite to Mar-A-Lago. The money beg launched for him yesterday on a Christian crowdfunding site has so far raised $6125. Twitter wags have been pressuring Oregon outlets to find out why he left the police force.
Maybe we should clean our own house before we start on the Chinese. Yea, but do you know that inmates are also exploited in other countries? You live in one. Ah, wait until Mr. Ariall finds out about prison labor in the United States…. …roadside maintenance, furniture manufacturing, fighting fires…
The above is the republican right wing Christian mindset. Scottie
Is Rand Paul joking, or is this a Republican senator earnestly calling get-out-the-vote efforts “steal[ing] an election”? https://t.co/o0ViRqNr35
How to steal an A in a course: Attend every class, pay attention and take notes, complete all assignments and go to office hours to go over material and clarify questions about it, and rock the final exam.
Am I doing this right? If so I want to hear more ways to steal stuff https://t.co/zsqkDqpkAj
This is what the right wants, for their viewers to never question the BS they are pushing. Scottie
Really? Has this cartoonist been in a cave for the last century? Biden has been in government all his adult life. He has been a right leaning corporate Democrat the entire time. Yes in office he has moved more to the center left, but he is no progressive much less a socialist. What does that word mean in the US today, because the way the right has used it and gotten it in to the modern culture it doesn’t mean what it use to mean, a system of governing where the workers control the production and distributions of all goods and services. That is what scared the wealthy about socialist countries, but they don’t really exist anymore. Socialism now means using government to help the people by protecting them from abuses of the wealthy and large business / corporations. Again the right is against that, because it lowers profits when the workers can not be abused the public has rights. Scottie
No one is preventing anyone from having an opinion, or voicing it. But you kinda need to defend that opinion with something more substantial than your “feelings”. Man, the right wing are such whiny snowflakes. This obsession with Fauci is weird. Scottie
I think it is important to understand that the Biden term has seen three new variants so you have four viruses doing the killing work. I love how the right tells people to refuse the vaccines, then screams that Biden is at fault for people not being vaccinated. Get real. This is a case of the guy who started the fire blaming the fire department for things being burnt. Scottie
What a pack of lies Goodwyn jams into a single cartoon. The U.S. has never been “energy independent”; our refineries need foreign crude to produce the specific petrochemicals we need. Not all crude oil is the same, any more than all animal meat is the same. We need Saudi-grade crude to refine gasoline (these days, though, our main source of imported crude is Canada. We’re a net exporter of petroproducts, but that doesn’t make us “energy independen t.” Any more than a dairy farmer with a profitable operation is “food independent” because he sells more food than he buys.
The U.S. crime rate has gone up slightly this year. As happens every year, there are a few places with unusually large spikes. But violent crime fell sharply under Clinton (more than a tnird), declined more slowly under Bush (almost 20%), was relatively flat under Obama, and had a low-end notice under Trump.
And Biden makes less than 1% of the false statements that Trump did. If Biden’s a long-nosedPinocchio, trump’s proboscis would reach the moon. And Goodwyn’s would reach the top of Trump Tower.
But repugs are real quick with the “hold up a minute” when it comes to trump facing consequences for anything he does.
And this is in the media now because after the Biden’s were gracious with he and his kids some dimwitted, obnoxious little prick thought he was clever for saying it and hanging up. Now he’s rightfully getting dragged and whining like the little bitch he is. Of course he and his father’s business had no problem taking Joe’s handouts … think they’ll stand with their convictions and give it back? Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 
Shocking and appalling, yet hardly surprising from the camp that wanted to “let them get infected” and “slow down the testing”. “Operation Warp Speed” was a name given to a project that drug companies were working on since 2003. They just modified what they had a bit to address the current strain.