health

Define ‘Reality…’

by MyBaconPress

I hear there’s a war that’s not a war over there in Iran. It’s over but it’s not really over. We have a cease fire but we keep shooting and so do they, which is not what I think ‘cease fire’ means. Trying to make a deal with an unstable madman leading an untrustworthy and undependable government is a very difficult thing – but Iran keeps trying.

It’s clearly an important war – just so long as you don’t CALL it a war. We MUST prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. You know, like the ones they swore off as contrary to Islam in 2004, when they issued a fatwa that called it contrary to Islam to build, maintain, or use nuclear weapons. They seem to take their religion pretty seriously, likely part of the reason Christians don’t really get it.

These days, Christianity seem more like an a-la-cart religion. They like to choose the parts that work for them and ignore the rest. I mean, have you SEEN their new golden idol? They were very careful to note that it was NOT a golden idol before they dropped to their knees and supplicated the thing. It seems they STILL haven’t figured out that this particular object of worship ain’t grantin’ favors or answering prayers without a little taste for his own beak and, even at that, ONLY for the richest of the rich. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

Meanwhile, Israel is over there killing people in Lebanon at a, well, a Biblical rate. We’re in on that war, too. We’re not as directly involved. We just supply weapons to Israel and keep Lebanon’s protector, Iran, busy. Our unstable national embarrassment likes to say that he has solved <pick a number of> wars. (He just makes up the number. You can, too.)

So he has “solved” some unknown countless number of wars nobody knew anything about but can’t solve any of the current conflicts we can ALL see. You remember the wars he said he would end on Day One because it would be so easy? Sometimes, I suspect he hasn’t got a clue…

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It’s said on the left that 47 will do whatever the last person he spoke to convinces him to do. One example is in fruit-flavored vaping pods, which contain nicotine and are used in e-cigarettes. The US stopped selling them because the flavors made the nicotine products more attractive to kids and more people thought we should not be trying to hook children to nicotine than thought we should.

The cigarette companies, for example, really want to sell fruit-flavored vaping pods. It turns out, their product kills their customer base. They must recruit new addicts on a daily basis or there’s a real risk of losing market share. Why, yes, now that you mention it, that IS, actually and honestly, killing people for profit, a staple of Capitalism. Kids are easiest to hook and fruit-flavored vaping pods are a great tool for exactly that.

A representative from RJ Reynolds tobacco company met with President Pedo on Saturday, May 2, in Florida. It seems likely that the required bribes were paid or promised, though I have no specific information to that effect. The next thing we knew, the Dotard was demanding the FDA authorize the sale of the fruit-flavored vaping pods. For reasons we don’t know, the FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, dragged his feet a little. He didn’t authorize the sale until Tuesday.

Word is, there’s been a whisper campaign against Markary originating in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s possible, Markary isn’t insane enough for this team. According to Politico, Makary has “alienated a range of HHS officials and interest groups, including anti-abortion activists, opponents of vaping regulation and some drug manufacturers. He clashed with Chris Klomp — HHS chief counselor and the director of Medicare — over several matters including personnel decisions, according to a senior HHS official granted anonymity to discuss the interpersonal dynamics.”

Now the White House is scrambling to find someone worse. Markary, apparently, had that thing, that… what do you call it? Um, integrity? Is that the word? Yeah, that’s it. Markary had some. Not a lot, mind you. One does not last a year with Team Evil if they have much integrity, but he had some – and it was still too much. Out he goes. A newer, more loyal but dumber commissioner will be found – the US will take yet another embarrassing step into self-imposed darkness. Lovely…

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Speaking of the FDA, there’s a drug out there called metformin, and it’s the leading Type 2 diabetes medication. AS the leading Type 2 diabetes medication, lots of people are taking it. It seems to work. NOW, scientists are on the verge of figuring out HOW metformin works. Doesn’t that seem odd to you? It does to me.

“Here, this drug seems to do what we want it to do.”
“Great! How does it work?”
“Oh, we don’t know. We think it probably has something to do with the liver.”
“Well, if you don’t know how it works, how can you be sure it isn’t affecting some other part of the body?”
“Look, do you want the profits or not?”
“Of course. I understand the corporate priority. I was just curious.”
“I’ll tell you what, if metformin causes some long-term problem down the road, we’ll come up with a new pill for that, too. How does that sound?”
“Well, um, profitable. Okay, then!”

Now there’s a new theory that metformin works by increasing glucose in the gut and not by affecting the liver. A “theory.” Don’t get me wrong. It’s important that a drug does what it’s supposed to do. I just think it might be nice if we knew HOW it does what it’s supposed to do before we start giving it to thousands of people…

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Once a reality TV personality, always a reality TV personality, I guess. Sean Duffy is, ostensibly, our Transportation Secretary. Obviously, doing THAT job is verboten in this regime so he sought something else to do. He went on a road trip with his wife and nine children. They made a TV show out it. I’ll bet you buttons to beans you and I paid for it. “Reality.” That’s what they call it.

Maybe in the reality of a taxpayer funded government worker but in MY reality, a nationwide road trip would require a long-term loan just for the effing gas…

When You Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible…

by MyBaconPress

I wouldn’t live a life that caused people to want to celebrate if I got murdered in the streets. Early Wednesday morning, in the middle of Manhattan, a man named Brian Thompson was shot and killed by a gunman. Mr. Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company. The shooter is still at large, so nobody can speak to his motivations with certainty. But the truth is, when I heard the person who got shot was the CEO of a health insurance company, my first thought was, “Someone who got a claim denied.” Wasn’t that your first thought? (Tell the truth.)

I don’t mind saying: I felt pretty badly about the fact that I didn’t feel more badly. There was even an element of “Well, that’s no surprise. The real surprise is why it doesn’t happen more often.” But I wasn’t proud of myself for a) dismissing other possible motivations so easily and b) maybe even feeling like one was struck for the little guy there, like it was a kind of justice. Who died – or is going to – because some bureaucrat sitting behind some desk someplace looked an some actuarial table and pressed the “Denied” button? (UnitedHealthcare is said to deny around one-third of all claims.)

Then we found out the shooter took the time to write “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose” on the bullets. That’s close to the name of an insurance industry book that teaches insurance companies how to deny claims, ‘Delay, Deny, Defend.’ Now I’m more certain that this is related to insurance denials – and I feel better about a Small-Folk “evening the score” than I feel badly about a human being getting gunned down in the streets. Oh, also? I feel a little more ashamed of myself for nurturing the schadenfreude.

Then, I saw a meme. It said, “I have seen at least 30 different news stories about one billionaire insurance company CEO’s death today. Wouldn’t it be great if every person who died today because an insurance company denied coverage got the same attention?” Okay, then. At least I’m not alone.

In fact, I’d say this is indicative of the failing nature of our health care system and, really, free market capitalism, in general. We all know that insurance companies like this exist only to add cost and extract money from people unfortunate enough to end up needing medical care. Just think about THAT for a second. One of the slogans of the United States of America is that we live in the richest, greatest country on the planet. And yet, we fear illness and think of the process as ‘unfortunate enough to end up needing medical care.’

The vast majority of Americans live one serious illness from ruin. Now, from all indicators, we’re all moving into a fascist free-for-all that promises to pit Joe Six-pack against corporate interests at every turn. That is, economically, things are about to get MUCH worse, not better. So I suspect we’re going to see more of this kind of thing going forward. In fact, I’ve been struck by how many people are rallying…around the shooter.

There are online sleuths, people who take pride in helping law enforcement find bad guys. As a group, they seem to have collectively decided to stand down. Only one stood up and offered some information – and that person was attacked by other online sleuths. To me, it looks, largely, like the rank and file people – those of us who have been victimized by some insurance company somewhere so, you know, most Americans – stand on the side of the shooter.

John F. Kennedy (the good one, not the jerk currently in Congress) said, “When you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable.” I think the vast majority of the country rooting for the shooter in this case is shades of that coming to pass. Now that our government has been handed over to the One Percent (the collective net worth of Trump’s cabinet nominees is estimated at around $340 billion dollars) and Project 2025 is a blueprint of how to attack the poor and defenseless, we can expect these out-of-touch rich prigs to inflict damage after damage.

Worse, they’ll do it blindly, because they really ARE out-of-touch. Because they really DON’T understand how decisions which don’t have any serious effect on them, nonetheless have devastating consequences to the largest numbers of Americans. Elon Musk, the wealthy, silver-spoon opportunist who has never invented anything in his life, has already warned the Small-Folk that they’re just going to have to suffer some “temporary hardship.” Not him, mind you. He’s going to get tax cuts and deregulation that makes HIS life oh-so-much easier. But you? Oh, yeah, YOU have to suffer. Suck it up, buttercup.

I can’t say when things explode. That part is always elusive in history. People put up with a lot of crap, just trying to get by. But everybody has a limit. Everybody has a moment. The One Percent have succeeded in rolling back FDR’s New Deal, which means all glory to the wealthy and the Small-Folk need to just do as they’re told and be grateful for the crumbs they get.

It’s a good thing we live in a bloodthirsty, brutal, and vicious society that’s already struggling mightily to survive on a day-to-day basis, pissed off about the inequities of America, and armed to the teeth. I mean, what could go wrong? I don’t think, long term, this shooting will prove to be an isolated event.

Right now, there are a large number of people who chose to support Trump, because they didn’t believe he’s actually going to do the things he promised he was going to do. As he DOES do those things – to them – and the work-a-day Joe’s lives are impacted, they’re going to wake up and get mad.

MAGA is a different story. MAGA was perfectly happy to kill their loved ones to keep Trump from looking bad about his horrific mishandling of Covid-19. They may well prove to be blindly loyal enough to kill themselves to protect their Precious, too. But one of the primary hallmarks of MAGA is selfishness. Killing their loved ones was one thing, a necessary sacrifice. Killing themselves?

I suspect when MAGA is asked to just forget about the Social Security they’ve paid into for so long, when they realize their gardener isn’t coming anymore because he got deported, when they lose their health care and can’t see a doctor anymore, when the price of eggs goes up, not down, when they lose their homes to some clever wall street type, when their granddaughters start dying in botched back-alley abortion attempts, they’ll start to wake up and get angry, too.

I’ll tell you this: I suspect the shooting of Brian Thompson and, more importantly, the ho-hum attitude people have displayed over the shooting (are we actually rooting for the shooter to get away with it?) represent an opening salvo in the impending culture wars. Trump isn’t even President, yet, and the shooting has already begun. This is going to be ugly…

Doing The Right Thing – And Not…

by MyBaconPress

I guess the right is viewing it as a flip-flop but if you didn’t know Ole’ Sleepy Joe was going to pardon his son, Hunter, you were living in a dream world. (And, as it happens, MAGA is starting to discover the world they’re expecting is, in fact, a dream. A pipe dream, to be sure, but that’s still a dream…) I’m glad Joe did it.

I’m not defending Hunter’s actions. He broke the (very minor) law and a punishment was recommended that was in keeping with how these things are handled. So, first, there’s a “how these things are handled,” suggesting Hunter Biden is not the only guy to check off the box that says he’s not buying a gun while being a drug user and, as a rule, people don’t go to jail for it. Well, unless they’re the son of a President currently under attack by political opposition.

When MAGA heard Hunter was going to get the same thing other people get for the same offense, they were outraged and insisted on something worse. You know, because of how much they hate, hate, hate abuses of the law. So, Hunter found himself in deeper trouble than he should have been in – for political reasons. Why, it’s almost as if the cons were weaponizing the law…

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I was born in the LA basin and I don’t remember ever seeing a truly blue sky until I was about eight years old – when we moved out of the LA basin. There was a time in this once-great nation when the air pollution in some cities was so bad, people were dying of smoking-related diseases – even though they had never smoked. The air quality was so bad, there was a concern it would cause birth defects. There was a river near Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River. It was choking with chemical contaminants. It was said that if you accidentally fell into that river, you went straight to the hospital – and God help you. It had spontaneously burst into flames.
“Wait, did you just say a river burst into flames?”
“Yes. A river burst into flames because of chemical contaminants.”

Cons like to pretend these issues should be handled on a case by case basis. As it happens, that had been the way various cities and states had been forced to handle it prior to 1970. The case-by-case approach had created a mish-mash of rules that made it hard to know the law in any given area – and that made it difficult to enforce the law. Mindless human activity, combined with very mindful corporate activity had damaged the environment so badly, it was becoming unsafe to breath the air, drink the water, or dig in dirt.

So, in 1970, Republican Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. The idea was to pull together responsibility for the various environmental efforts from around the country and set common standards. He even spoke of the need in his State of the Union Address from January of that year. Remember, this is a Republican speaking:

“Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

Clean air, clean water, open spaces-these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.”

Yes, there is still work to do. Corporations are forever finding ways to pollute as “cost cutting measures.” But we came a LONG way in cleaning things up. The EPA has the power to clean up areas that had become SO polluted they couldn’t sustain human life anymore, the so-called Superfund sites. (Look up Love Canal.) The companies that DID the polluting – when it wasn’t the military – often just walked away. Too costly to clean up their mess, you know. So the EPA forced them to.

Hmm, the EPA has the power to force corporations to clean up after themselves? Oh, the huMANity! But…but…what about the cost?!? What about maximizing shareholder value? What about the plight of the CEO, who might have to try and get by on only $350 million dollars a year if he has to clean up after himself? Maybe less. Oh, weep for the struggle.

All of that probably explains why corporations haven’t been too keen on the EPA since the day it was formed. As a result, corporations have wanted the EPA gone pretty much since the day it was formed. Fortunately, they have Donald Trump, now.

He hasn’t even taken power yet and his people are already gleefully attacking the agency, working to weaken it’s ability to do it’s job if they can’t get rid of it entirely. They plan to attack scientists who disagree with Trump, who knows nothing. They plan to eliminate protections from political interference with the agency’s work. They don’t LIKE that the EPA knows about – and works to prevent – climate change.

They think if they can make the EPA stop warning about climate change, climate change will just…go away. They think this because they randomly decided climate change is a fraud – even as summers get hotter and hotter and winters get wetter and wetter and storms get stronger and droughts last longer. LIVING the reality of climate change isn’t enough to convince some people climate change is real.

So, here we go. The thing is, climate change IS real. Denial won’t change that. With these actions, efforts to protect the environment will fall off and corporations (and you can bet your ass on this) will start dumping toxic wastes and other contaminants all over the environment as quickly as possible. Sure, it kills everything and everyone, but it saves money. Get your priorities straight, people!

I guess if we’re looking for “bright” sides, what I can come up with is, now that MAGA is sidelining the EPA, humanity will likely NOT survive long enough to suffer many of the other extremes I hear MAGA threatening.
“That’s a bright side?”
I suspect it’s a bright as we’re going to get from this crowd…