“This is some of what we must do to reform our dysfunctional healthcare system”

We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. There is no rational reason as to why we are not the healthiest nation on Earth

Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of serving as chair of the US Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions (Help). As I leave that position, let me reflect upon where I think our country should be going in healthcare, and the obstacles we face.

We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. There is no rational reason as to why we are not the healthiest nation on Earth. We should be leading the world in terms of life expectancy, disease prevention, low infant and maternal mortality, quality of life and human happiness. Sadly, study after study shows just the opposite. Despite spending almost twice as much per capita on healthcare, we trail most wealthy nations in all these areas.

If we’re going to reform our broken and dysfunctional healthcare system and “Make America healthy again”, this is some of what we must do.

Medicare for All

Healthcare is a human right. The function of a rational healthcare system is to guarantee quality healthcare to all, not huge profits for the insurance industry. The United States cannot continue to be the only wealthy nation that does not provide universal healthcare. It is not acceptable that, while spending almost 18% of our GDP on healthcare, millions of Americans delay going to the doctor and 60,000 Americans die each year because they can’t afford the care they need.

Lower the cost of prescription drugs

As Americans, we should not be paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for life-saving medications. It is absurd that while the pharmaceutical industry enjoys huge profits and benefits from US taxpayer research, one out of four Americans cannot afford to purchase the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe. We must cut prescription drug prices in half by making sure that we pay no more for medicine than the Europeans or Canadians.

Paid family and medical leave

Workers should not have to go to work when they are sick. Mothers and fathers should have ample time to stay home with their newborn babies. A parent should not get fired when they stay home with a sick child. We must guarantee at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave to every worker in America.

Reform the food industry

Large food corporations should not make record-breaking profits making children addicted to processed foods, which make them overweight and prone to diabetes and other diseases. As a start, we must ban junk-food ads targeted to kids and put strong warning labels on products high in sugar, salt and saturated fat. Longer term, we can rebuild rural America with family farms that are producing healthy, nutritious food.

Raise the minimum wage to a living wage

Millions of workers should not have to worry about how they’ll pay the rent or buy food for their kids. Working-class Americans live far shorter lives than the rich because of the stress of trying to survive on a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. Stress kills. Stress makes us sick. We must raise the minimum wage to at least $17 an hour.

Lower the work week to 32 hours with no loss of pay

People will live longer and healthier lives if they can spend more time with family and friends and have the opportunity to enjoy their leisure time. Advancements in technology, automation and artificial intelligence must benefit workers, not just billionaires on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.

Combat the epidemic of loneliness, isolation and mental illness

Too many Americans are struggling with intense anxiety and “diseases of despair” – alcoholism, drug addiction and even suicide. Not only do we need to greatly increase access to mental healthcare, we must rebuild our sense of community and create a culture in which we better enjoy and appreciate each other as human beings. We must also take a very hard look at the impact smartphones and social media are having on our mental and physical health.

Address the climate and environmental crisis

Every American is affected when the Earth’s temperature rises and the air we breathe is polluted. Climate crisis and extreme weather disturbances will cause more widespread suffering and disease, economic disruptions and population dislocation. Air pollution is a major risk factor for respiratory and heart disease, cancer and other health problems. The fossil-fuel industry cannot be allowed to continue making us sick, shortening our lives and destroying the planet.

Create a high-quality public education system

Life-long education is a human right and should be obtainable for all in a wealthy nation like ours. Health, life expectancy and economic wellbeing are often tied to educational attainment. Instead of spending $1tn a year on the military we should make certain that all Americans, from childcare to graduate school, are able to enjoy free, high-quality education and job training.

Let’s be clear. The way forward to creating a healthy society is not radical or complicated. Many of the components that I’ve outlined already exist, in one form or another, in numerous countries throughout the world.

Our real problem is not so much a healthcare crisis as it is a political and economic one. We need to end the unprecedented level of corporate greed we are experiencing. We need to create a government and economy that works for all and not just the wealthy and powerful few.

Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chair of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/31/bernie-sanders-healthcare-reform-opinion

It’s Topical Entertainment!

New Year’s Twilight Zone Marathons (we’ve got 3 separate ones here, on lifeline cable, even! -A.)

The weather outside is frightful, but The Twilight Zone is… also frightful.

By Josh Weiss Dec 27, 2024, 1:24 PM ET

The weather outside is frightful, but The Twilight Zone is… well, also pretty frightful on occasion. But we can’t think of a better way to ring in 2025 than with SYFY‘s annual New Year’s marathon featuring three uninterrupted days of back-to-back episodes from Rod Serling‘s classic and groundbreaking anthology series between December 31 and January 2.

“It’s interesting, because The Twilight Zone has never been off [the air]. It’s always been there. It’s never died,” Rod’s elder daughter, Jodi Serling, told SYFY WIRE while speaking about her father’s lasting impact. “It’s because the message that he’s sending is so apparent today. Everything that he predictively wrote about is coming back to us. It’s just an honor to know that his legacy will continue to live on forever. He was such a humble kind of guy, I don’t think he realized what an impact that he was going to make on our society.”

“When the original Star Trek debuted, when I was 10, I recorded it on reel-to-reel audio tape in case it never aired again. You couldn’t watch a show whenever you wanted to. There was no way to revisit the shows you loved unless they were in syndication and then they’d be cut up,” adds Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, during a separate conversation. “We live in a blessed age where you can watch anything you want, anytime you want. I really love these marathons, because I’ve heard from so many people that they just leave the TV on and glance over. It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the one with Talky Tina! That’s The Howling Man!’ The great thing about Twilight Zone, is that it’s also a family show. You can literally sit down with your kids, and it may scare them, but you know that they’re not going to see something inappropriate. They know what they’re signing up for. I really love the fact that there are Twilight Zone marathons. I think it’s terrific.”

For More on The Twilight Zone (snip)

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/syfy-the-twilight-zone-new-years-marathon-2024-25-how-to-watch

BEST OF 2024: Dr. Peter J. Hotez – MR Live | 12/31/24

This is a must watch video. It totally destroys the anti-vaccine groups and the Idea that vaccines cause autism. This is a medial Scientist researcher with the greatest knowledge in the field of study and he has an autistic daughter. He knocks down and shows proof of the lies of the anti-vaccine people. He explains how it all became a political issue and power, and how it is killing people. Hugs

The 10 Weirdest Ways Animals Have Sex

Before I post the video, let me tell you all what is going on. My health first. I am very tired only wanting to lay in bed, sleeping or just laying there. At first I thought it was a depression thing, but when my blood work showed I was again anemic that may explain some. All I want to do when up is watch videos and I struggle to read news or do other tasks, feeling like every movement is too much and just wanting to sit here un moving. The second issue I have is I recently expanded the memory of my oldest computer, a built I like better because it is expandable. Pride go before the fall. I felt I understood the motherboard well enough and the system architecture to simple look for and buy the cheapest priced ram the system could handle.

I am humbled to admit I got my butt handed to me as after installing the cheapest four sticks equaling 64 GB of ram which is the max the system can handle I dumped and started the computer. Yes it seems all four sticks and ran at the higher speed. Grand. But then as I loaded Windows and other programs … problems happened. I got almost everything done and then had sudden BOD … the blue screen of death that I have not seen in my own systems ever. I diligently tracked every error, researched every error code and security event. What I got made me realize I had not done enough work understanding my system and the unbuffered ram.

I could make this a post on the system and what I learned. Going cheapest for me is going to cost me. I need to go back to a two stick mode with buffered memory. The reason is that the CPU can see the dual channel two stick configuration as one big stick. With four it has to run through the memory controller system to read each stick as a separate entity and compare try to manage the flow and errors of each. When the errors become too great or do an act that the system deems threatening, it shuts everything down. So I am going to spend more money on a new set of buffered 2 stick memory which should solve this issue and I can get back to being online with everyone and not spending weeks of every online time searching for and reading tech pages and specs reports. Now to the video. Love and hugs to all. Hugs

True Facts: How A Species Gets A Name!

“Bilderberg Group changes itself for the modern world – and return of Trump”

Charlie Skelton

(I wasn’t going to post any news today, but in my interest of world peace, and everyone’s interest in things that are happening, this story is important, and it’s not likely to be in the commercial breaks of the game or whatever. If it comes up again, and/or where regular people see it in regular fashion, something will have already happened. Right now, it strikes me as something of which to be aware. Save reading it till tomorrow, if you like. I just want it here for the record. -A)

The former head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has been named the new co-chair of the influential Bilderberg Group, which convenes a yearly transatlantic policy conference and has long been the subject of conspiracy theories around the extent of its power to shape global events.and/or

After a turbulent decade at the helm of the alliance’s military, Stoltenberg now takes over at its pre-eminent discussion forum: a fiercely private four-day event frequented by prime minsters, EU commissioners, bank bosses, corporate CEOs and intelligence chiefs.

Stoltenberg’s first Bilderberg was back in 2002, a few years before his second tenure as Norway’s prime minister. His decade as secretary general of Nato saw further visits, and he even gave the keynote speech at the group’s Saturday night banquet in Turin in 2018. His appointment as Bilderberg’s co-chair cements the group’s role at the heart of transatlantic strategy.

In February, Stoltenberg will also take over as chair of the Munich Security Conference, another important defence and diplomacy symposium. With a fellow Bilderberg veteran, the former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, replacing Stoltenberg at Nato, it marks a concentration of control at the top of the Atlantic alliance at a critical time.

Stoltenberg’s tenure at Nato was dominated by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which had begun in earnest not long before he took office in 2014. Stoltenberg oversaw what he recently described as “the largest reinforcement of our collective defence in a generation”, noting proudly that “defence spending is on an upward trajectory across the alliance”.

A number of his new colleagues at Bilderberg have been benefiting from this uptick.

Several of the group’s 31-member steering committee have senior roles in the defence industry. The billionaire former Google boss, Eric Schmidt, chaired the recent National Security Commission on AI, and is now busy launching a kamikaze drone company aimed at the lucrative Ukraine market. Meanwhile, the hugely wealthy Swedish industrialist Marcus Wallenberg is chair of defense manufacturer Saab, which enjoyed a 71% boost in orders in the first nine months of 2024, largely due to the war with Russia.

The tech luminary and Donald Trump insider Peter Thiel founded the fast-growing robotics company Anduril and the booming surveillance and AI giant Palantir. His loyal lieutenant Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, was voted on to the board of Bilderberg a few years ago. Karp, who claims his company is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine”, recently told the New York Times that the US will “very likely” soon be fighting a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran.

In some respects, the geopolitical mood today is not so different from how it was in the 1950s, when Bilderberg was born. (snip-MORE)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/25/jens-stoltenberg-bilderberg-group-trump-presidency

Yesterday’s News Today

but it’s vital timely stuff that is still fresh today-

Wodin’sday White Wedding …

I am worn out and going to bed.

First I want to acknowledge that I still 11 tabs of comments I did not get to yet today. They are saved for tomorrow. I know Ali and Randy understand my situation so I want to clue the rest in before I go to bed, and yes I am very tired.

I went to bed about 5 PM last night after eating some beef stroganoff that Ron insisted I eat before going to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. So I tossed and turned until Ron came to bed hours later.

Then because we are a couple that love each other and like sleeping together we snuggled, me spooning him first and while he slept I did not. Then he woke and he wanted us to roll over so we did, now he was pressed tight to me … and again he fell asleep. Then about 11:45 he woke up and wanted to stop cuddling which I agreed with. He fell asleep.

Well I fretted but did manage to fall asleep about 11:45 pm or later … only to be woken by our rescue inside outside old cat that need lots of feedings started yellowing at the top of his small lungs. At 12:50 am. I got up. Ron who wakes up if I snort or cry out or hell even turn over wrong, sleeps through his cat’s cries. I feed him, the cat, not Ron. Then I returned to bed. I watched the clock. I was not going to get up, I was not going to get up, I was not going to get up … fuck it I got up. At 1:30 am. No sleep, grumpy.

About 5 am had some sloppy Joe mix Ron made the night before. It is not setting well with me. We have been having trouble finding one that tastes good but doesn’t make me thorw up.

Well I am online answering comments and doing my blogging stuff until Ron gets up at 6:30 am. I ask him if he wants to walk, he says no he wants me to go lay down, I am now two days without sleep. I go lay down at 7 am. I stay there until 7″30 am and can’t sleep, so get up and go to talk to Ron. He says I need to try longer. I do, At 9 am I get up and am determined to start my blogging day.

I am blogging and helping Ron. I do the dishes as Ron has been clearing the Florida Room junked up with stuff after Hurricane Ian we had nowhere else to put. An argument I made for a new shed that no one would listen to me on. We had a huge dresser packed with dishware, and we brought it in to be cleaned. We had a large stand up cabinet we emptied or more dishware and stuff we need so also brought that into the main house to clean.

So all day while I did laundry and helped Ron wash and dry dishes I did some blogging. It was all going great … Until this evening when Ron asked me several uncomfortable questions … Damn it!

Did you eat today he asked? Yes I joyfully told him I had the sloppy Joe mix you made last night, ate two buns so 4 sides. … he looked at me. Did it stay down. Well I stuttered … so far but it is trying hard to come back up. That was when he declared such mix off the menu until I can stomach better despite my counterarguments.

The rest of the afternoon went well, we worked on laundry and even the Florida room and moved / washed the stuff together for their new place in the house.

Then things took an ugly turn. At around 4:45 pm Ron decided I need to eat. I informed him (sounds better than saying I told him) I was not hungry. He got angry. Scottie he tried to sound authoritarian … you have to eat, you are losing too much weight and this is not good for you. I countered with I am not hungry and if I force my self I will be sick … But I relented and said OK how about a small salad. I love salads and in a small bowl even when I am really nauseated I can eat them.

But he had a better idea I liked right away. On the advice of our wonderful brother Randy Ron bought some yogurts for this situation. He gave me one and I did not complain … I knew better. I ate it. Not a flavor I like. I struggled it down anyway or else he was going to make something and watch me while I ate it.

Now it is nearly 6 pm here. I have not gotten to all the comments and pages I have opened … but I keep falling asleep at my desk. Not something I want to have Ron discover me doing. If he finds me asleep he will throw a huge fit that will take a lot more to solve than just going to bed. Plus my eyes keep blurring out and I clear them to realize I typed nonsense or worse. Night all. Hugs and loves. Scottie

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & the Existential Questions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

We now live in the midst of an artificial-intelligence boom, but it’s hardly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been subject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the early nineteen-fifties.

Source: Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & the Existential Questions We Would Need to Answer (1978)

Computer was a brick at midnight

Hi Everyone. I woke up at midnight and my blogging computer wouldn’t start. Totally dead. So I went back to bed. Got up at four and took it apart. Couldn’t find a problem, so I figure it is a power supply problem, as to get it started I had to hold the power reset button and the start button at the same time. Now the trick will be to watch it and not let it shut down. The good news is I did not lose anything. I have the Vivaldi set to remember the open windows and tabs for the last three days and they can be switched between computers through sync mode. I can replace the power supply if I have to, the only problem is the case is tight for the wiring, far too many wires in a small space crossing everywhere and each other. But I have replaced them before. Hugs