[Cyclist]

Er... No, actually.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I'm not sure I want to thanks, Malc. My mental health isn't particularly good and the world is a scary enough place as it is.

While bits of America are breaking down, the country as a whole is still functioning, sort of. But some things really *do* need to change. I have become (almost) addicted to reading /antiwork on Reddit. It's where Americans bitch about their bosses, their jobs, their pay and conditions. What a lot of those poor buggers have to put up with isn't even legal in civilised countries. They have enough to put up with without unaffordable healthcare and fascists infiltrating the police and various arms of government. I do actually feel sorry for them. It must be hell living in the Land of the Free. The American Dream has turned into a nightmare

Are these the same people who have embraced communism because they think under communism you dont have to do any work?

WTF?

[Nigredo]

My anarcho-crank correspondent has some pretty out there takes, but his predictions that we'll see (if not quite a full blown civil war) at least one or two states secede from the union by the next century seem increasingly likely to happen.

[Cyclist]

Aye, I've heard that too. California being the obvious one.

[MisterMuncher]

I think we're more likely to see the red bits of more populous States like California or Washington break away from the blue bits first, if only to negate those states in the senate.

Also on the cards already is the idea of disenfranchisement for those who move between states/payment of a poll tax for same, to counteract any "libruls" moving into Real America

[Andy McDandy]

Not many of the states can support themselves easily on their own. California's the most obvious example of one that can. Many of the red states are heavily invested in one economic sector or reliant on central government spending.

[MisterMuncher]

Of course they are. You know that, I know that, the politicians probably do, too, but there's no money to be made not indulging the fantasy they could go it alone (and that they would have military supremacy because "all the bases are in red states".

[Bones McCoy]

Of course they are. You know that, I know that, the politicians probably do, too, but there's no money to be made not indulging the fantasy they could go it alone (and that they would have military supremacy because "all the bases are in red states".

There are several good reasons why the bases are in red states.
Few of them say anything positive about those states.

[MisterMuncher]

It's like a when manufacturer of goods not related to the military like to advertise their products as using "military grade" materials and components.

"Built by the lowest bidder who could still grease the right palms" isn't much of a win.

[Cyclist]

Didn't see this last night. Y'know, grown-ups go to bed sometimes.

You also ignored the Affordable Care Act (2010) which expanded eligibility for Medicaid and has made a huge difference to people's lives.

Have you heard of a "bright orange shitgibbon" called Donald J Trump, with his almost pathological hatred of Barack Obama, and everything Barack Obama did while in office?

While the shitgibbon and his cronies stopped short of cancelling "Obamacare", they tinkered with it enough to make it pretty much useless. While it wasn't much before, after the shitgibbon's pals had finished with it it was a bag of shite. Oh, and "affordable" is relative.

Your faith in American institutions set up to help the poor is quite touching, and shows the huge gap in your knowledge of the world around you.

[The Weeping Angel]

Didn't see this last night. Y'know, grown-ups go to bed sometimes.

You also ignored the Affordable Care Act (2010) which expanded eligibility for Medicaid and has made a huge difference to people's lives.

Have you heard of a "bright orange shitgibbon" called Donald J Trump, with his almost pathological hatred of Barack Obama, and everything Barack Obama did while in office?

While the shitgibbon and his cronies stopped short of cancelling "Obamacare", they tinkered with it enough to make it pretty much useless. While it wasn't much before, after the shitgibbon's pals had finished with it it was a bag of shite. Oh, and "affordable" is relative.

Your faith in American institutions set up to help the poor is quite touching, and shows the huge gap in your knowledge of the world around you.

You might be interested in reading this

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... mp-policy/

It has been overshadowed by months of Democratic infighting and the searing national debate over Jan. 6, but the Biden administration is quietly erasing one of the cruelest legacies of Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a genuine achievement, in both symbolic and practical terms.

On Thursday, the administration rejected Georgia’s proposal to impose work requirements and premiums on Medicaid recipients. This was effectively the last nail in the coffin of Trump’s zombie attempt to make Medicaid more cumbersome and bureaucratic, in hopes of knocking as many people off health coverage as possible.

When Biden took office, nearly 20 mostly Republican-controlled states were in the process of crafting work requirements for Medicaid, on which 76 million Americans rely.

That erases a legacy of the Trump administration, which had invited states to submit proposals to impose such requirements. Proposals were eventually approved for 12 states — all with Republican legislatures, governors or both — while a half-dozen others were pending when Trump left office.

In the most visible case, under Arkansas’s 2018 requirements, nearly 17,000 people lost health coverage. That wasn’t necessarily because they weren’t working. It was mainly because it was so difficult to satisfy all the reporting requirements.

Which is a feature, not a bug, of work requirements. By forcing recipients to prove they’re working and navigate a bureaucratic maze to stay in the program, the state gives itself an excuse to kick off those who make a paperwork mistake or miss a reporting deadline.

Biden’s reversal began just after he took office. In February, the administration informed states that it was preparing to withdraw approvals for work requirements granted under Trump.

One by one over the following months, those approvals were either rescinded by the administration, held up by court challenges, or delayed by state governments that expected the policy reversal (in Utah, officials suspended requirements due to the pandemic). Georgia was the last state where approval for this policy was still in force, though Republican states may still wage court battles.


Now, Medicaid work requirements are all but dead in all those states.


Legacy of cruelty
Trump’s effort to impose Medicaid work requirements was part of a much larger campaign to undermine and roll back our country’s fitful advance toward universal health care. This constituted an even broader legacy of cruelty, and arguably outright betrayal.

That’s because Trump campaigned in 2016 as a corrective to Paul Ryan-style Republicans who had treated destroying the social safety net as a quasi-religious calling. Trump vowed that “everybody’s got to be covered,” and insisted no one would die on the street, uninsured.

But once in office, Trump embraced GOP anti-safety-net zealotry by going all in on the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Driven by hatred of Barack Obama, he endlessly raged that the ACA was a “disaster.”

That culminated in the 2017 repeal attempt, which fortunately failed. Stymied in that effort, which would have taken coverage away from millions on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, Trump sought to weaken the safety net via other administrative means, such as these Medicaid work requirements.

And so, in erasing those requirements, Biden is also erasing a larger hangover of Trumpian cruelty.

The ACA is expanding
This legacy is being erased in another way. Under Biden, the same ACA that Trump tried to destroy is expanding and moving toward realizing its potential. A record number of more than 13 million people have signed up for 2022 coverage on the exchanges.

A key reason for this is that the covid-19 rescue plan that Biden signed in March expanded the number of people eligible for ACA subsidies and beefed up subsidies for those already eligible. As Margot Sanger-Katz details in the New York Times, this is a real achievement: It substantially reimagines and expands the ACA amid a pandemic, meaning the ACA is rising to an emergency occasion.

Still, this achievement is at risk. The ACA expansion in the rescue package expires at the end of next year, and while Democrats want to extend it in the Build Back Better bill, a certain West Virginia senator remains opposed. That would be a policy and political disaster for Democrats.

“If Democrats aren’t able to extend it, millions of people will get notice of huge premium increases right before the
midterm election,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told us.

Making progress
In short, the pandemic has not dimmed the GOP desire to roll back that ACA expansion and undermine Medicaid, even as we face a new covid surge. But now, with the Georgia decision, work requirements are effectively dead — as long as a Democrat remains in the White House.

Biden has made serious mistakes with the pandemic, in particular the failure to secure enough covid tests when need has exploded. But he’s making progress in getting more Americans covered, replacing the Trumpian impulse to impose suffering for the sin of being poor with the principle that every American ought to have access to health care.

“Biden has quietly been moving us closer to universal coverage, picking up on a cause Democrats have been pursuing since the early 20th Century,” Jonathan Cohn, author of an excellent history of the ACA, told us. “A big part of that has been undoing the legacy of Trump.”

[RandomElement]

Having been to Oakland and Berkley CA. The homelessness and mental heath issues are horrifying and this is in one of those states full of liberal lefty tree huggers.

When I mean horrifying I have been there since the start of Covid and I still think about it now, occasionally. People yelling in the streets at random people, just pissing where they want to obviously in need a mental health care.
It's just a vicious circle: Have a mental health issue--> lose your job (There is little or no job security depending on the state)-->no health insurance --> no medication-->metal health issue get worse-->no chance of a job to get health insurance to get much needed medication, and this may not be available due to having a pre-existing condition.

[Cyclist]

@The Weeping Angel

That is bloody good news. Well spotted.

[Arrowhead]

Happy Insurrection Day, everybody!

[Spoonman]

[Bones McCoy]

Ahmaud Arbery: Jogger's murderers sentenced to life in prison

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59912361

There are signs of the courts slowly redressing some of their previous imbalance.
But this caught my eye.

Defence attorneys had argued for some leniency for the men, with attorneys Bob Rubin and Laura Hogue saying their clients were good men devoted to family, community and country who committed "one bad act".

"As thoughtless or reckless as these actions may have been, they are not evidence of a soul so blackened as to deserve life with no parole," said Mr Rubin.

Emphasis mine: Some cunts just can't help themselves. Unfortunate turn of phrase or "vice signalling" to the court?

[RedSparrows]

I'm more interested in the process it takes for c.10% on average of the US population to stop thinking that. How, and what comes next?

Morons.

[Arrowhead]

I'm more interested in the process it takes for c.10% on average of the US population to stop thinking that. How, and what comes next?

Can only think it must be something like Facebook rather belatedly cracking down on all of the QAnon/Alex Jones bullshit.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I give you the Liberal Redneck.

[mattomac]

It seems Ted Cruz let slip that he thought the terrorist attack on capital building was a terrorist attack and is now saying he was misquoted.