Here are my views on what is happening to healthcare for women in the United States, It is yet another way in which the MAGAt Republicans are making us a second class nation, as validated by objectively verifiable social outcome data. I do not understand how any woman can vote for the MAGAts, and yet I suspect millions will. It is like voting to become a hand maid.
The United States is now in the throes of a strange and benighted trend that is negatively affecting half the population because in the Republican controlled states politicians, not physicians, are making the medical decisions for females. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as of July 7, 2022, across the entire United States there were only 17 federal physician-legislators (3.1 %, 17/541) and 86 state physician-legislators (1.1 %, 86/7552. 1 So it is irrefutable that the laws being passed to control women are being passed by non-medically trained politicians. It started on 24 June 2022 when the extreme far right majority on the Supreme Court issued the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that abandoned almost 50 years of precedent established by the Roe v Wade decision and took away the national right to abortion, leaving it up to the individual states as to whether they would permit legal abortion. Almost immediately 14 states, in perhaps the most blatant example of the Great SchismTrendI have ever reported on in the columns, took […]
Thom Hartmann, Commentator - Raw Story / Commentary
Stephan:
I have been telling you for years to not get involved with the Medicare Advantage scam. It is an insurance company grift that is sucking billions of your tax dollars out of Medicare. Thom Hartmann lays out the truth very clearly.
Credit: Zanyar Ibrahim / Unsplash
They’re competing unfairly with Medicare, and you and I are paying for it. It’s obscene.
When George W. Bush and congressional Republicans (and a handful of bought-off Democrats) created Medicare Advantage in 2003, it was the fulfillment of half of Bush’s goal of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, dating all the way back to his unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978 and a main theme of his second term in office.
Medicare Advantage is not Medicare. These plans are private health insurance provided by private corporations, who are then fully reimbursed by the Medicare trust fund regardless of how much their customers use their insurance. Thus, the more they can screw their customers and us taxpayers by withholding healthcare, the more money they make.
With real Medicare, if your doctor says you need a test procedure, scan, or any other medical intervention you simply get it done and real Medicare pays the bill. No muss, no fuss, no permission needed. Real Medicare always pays, and […]
I think it is morally disgusting that tens of thousands of Palestinians, particularly women and little children who have no connection with Hamas, are being murdered by Israelis using American bombs,bullets, and missiles. It makes you and me complicit in this evil. Senator Bernie Sanders seems to be the one person in Congress who has had enough and he is moving to stop it and, thank heavens, getting to support. I don’t understand why Joe Biden doesn’t seem to get this, but he doesn’t based on his behavior. Kamala Harris does seem to get this moral error. Traitor Trump sees fellow fascist Benjamin Netanyahu as a comrade.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) talks with reporters in the U.S. Capitol Credit: Tom Williams /CQ-Roll Call / Getty
Demanding that the Biden administration follow the lead of several close U.S. allies in recent months, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday announced his intention to take action on the Senate floor to stop the flow of American weapons to Israel.
The Vermont independent said in a statement that he plans to file Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) regarding the sale of offensive weapons to the Middle Eastern country, which for nearly a year has bombarded civilian infrastructure and blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians and pushing the enclave into famine.
The JRD is the only congressional mechanism that can prevent weapons sales from moving forward, and after months of demanding the Biden administration end military support for Israel, Sanders said that “Congress must act to save lives, uphold U.S. and international law, and stand up for U.S. interests.”
As scientists focus more on the matrix of life, we are learning how little we understand about how the matrix works. Here as an example of the point I am making is the latest on the migration of birds. Understanding the matrix is so important because it shows us how to foster wellbeing of Earth’s ecosystems, and how much damage is done when we don’t make that a priority.
For migrating birds, fall brings difficulty and danger. To reach warm winter climes, many birds must fly hundreds or thousands of miles, expend immense amounts of energy and successfully dodge storms, skyscrapers and other potential threats.
Still, scientists have long assumed that a basic trade-off made migration worth the gamble: Once birds arrived at their wintering grounds, they wouldn’t need to work so hard to stay warm, saving substantial amounts of energy. “But nobody ever tested this,” saidNils Linek, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
Now, Dr. Linek and his colleagues have done so. Their findings, based on a partially migratory population of German blackbirds, challenge the conventional wisdom. Even in the depths of winter, blackbirds basking in balmy southern Europe or northern Africa did not spend any less energy than those riding out the cold in Germany, the scientists found.
“It’s sort of shocking that there isn’t this net benefit,” said Scott Yanco, an animal ecologist at the University of Michigan and an author of the paper. (Dr. Yanco conducted […]
The corruption of the Supreme Court christofascist majority becomes ever more blatant. These six people are restructuring the laws of the United States in service to a convicted rapist, convicted felon, and traitor. It is destroying the respect Americans have for their legal system at the highest level. And none of these is ever held responsible for anything. History is going to record these six people as the worst individuals to ever serve on the court.
Christofascist Chief Justice John Roberts Credit: Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
Chief Justice John Roberts has been exposed, wrote legal observers Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. He may pretend to be the deliberate, moderating force on the Supreme Court, but behind the scenes he has become as reactionary as the rest of the court’s right wing.
This became clear after the court handed down its radical decision giving former President Donald Trump a presumption of immunity for “official acts” in office, reversing all lower judges who considered the matter, all while leaving unclear guidance about how exactly to define an official act, they wrote.
Their feature followed a New York Times expose on how the court arrived at its decision — while the liberals were trying to moderate the opinion, and far-right Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch privately wanted to punt it until after the election, “It was Roberts who decided […]
