#American health care is a hostage negotiation and we are the hostages

[ihavenoideahowtodream]

I just stood in line at the pharmacy for a whole hour. Thankfully the last half I was able to sit in a chair. There was a lady in front of me who had waited 4 hours to get her daughter’s meds so her body wouldn’t reject her kidney transplant. Another lady had been here 4 days in a row and the line was too long for her to wait. Another lady left half way through the line telling her friend that she hadn’t taken the meds for three days a fourth wouldn’t hurt her.

I’m so goddamn tired. Especially sitting there thinking at least it’s warm unlike my house where my furnace was fucked cause my landlord never serviced the damn thing.

America needs health care reform so fucking bad.

There was one tech working there.

[disregardcanon]

amc iwtv abigail (2024) au 

The year is 2024. The location is Paris. A team of professional criminals are hired to kidnap the “daughter of a wealthy businessman” and hold her hostage for a large sum of money. 

This team includes: 

The “mastermind” 

The medic in charge of anesthetic doses and taking care of the kid 

The getaway driver

The hacker

The muscle

The ex army 

These roles are played by

Santiago as the mastermind

Madeline as the medic 

Estelle as the getaway driver

Daniel as the hacker

Celeste as the muscle

Now you may ask, why these particular choices? Here's the explanation

The “mastermind” of the team thinks that he’s far smarter than he is, doesn’t view abigail the child vampire as either a threat or a creature with feelings, starts out sadistic and only gets worse until he’s the real villain of the piece after becoming a vampire toward the end of the movie. This is all very Santiago to me. 

The medic is the one who develops a bond with Abigail, the child vampire. In the movie, this character has a son that she’s trying to get the job money for so that she can reconcile with him too. While I wouldn’t want that to be the exact backstory, it does work for the framing. A Madeline who went into health care to help her ailing younger sister and try to get her foot in the door for a medical transition. Who was able to transition but had that kill her career and then had to resort to working for crime bosses. She ends up nicking some of their supplies to try to help her sister and has a very traumatic firing. Without that income and those supplies her sister dies and she loses access to her hormones, so she decides to do something.. Drastic. To try to get back on her feet. What other option does she have, really?

Estelle is the getaway driver because she blows up on a motorcycle and I think that’s funny 

Old Maniel. This character in the movie is a young woman from a wealthy family who hacks for the fun and the thrill. I love the idea that publication of his vampire memoir destroyed his journalistic career in the 80s. After that, he still had to make do somehow, right? Hacking got the job done. He’s doing one more big job to send home an enormous paycheck to his girls, maybe write a book about it that’ll be published post mortem and keep paying their bills. Sure, whatever he gets on paper won’t make him look good, but it’ll be something. He doesn’t expect that vampires involved in his past situation would be so close to the ones plotting this situation.

Celeste as the muscle because if Estelle is there she has to be too. 

I liked the ex army character but he doesn’t really line up with anyone I have in mind so. He has been tragically cut. Such is life

ONTO THE PLOT!

Santiago brings the group together. No one tells anyone else their real name. 

Then, they kidnap their mark from her luxurious Paris apartment. Everyone feels a little weird about the mark being a kid when no one was informed of that, but like.. It’s a bit too late to turn back when the kid’s knocked out in the back of your car, right? And like… she’s not a kindergartener or anything. She’s probably like… 13? A bratty little teenager with a rich dad. That’s kind of justifiable, right? 

(It’s not.) 

They get to a giant villa in the countryside and meet up with their contact, a white American woman named Antoinette. She tells them about how they just have to keep the mark in the house overnight while she “negotiates terms” with the father. She confiscates all their electronic devices for the “safety of the operation” and gives them almost no information. After some prodding she gives them all fake names from twilight. Then, she leaves them alone in the mansion for the night with the bursting liquor cabinet.

We get some character setup after Estelle tries to do a cold read on the others and madeline calls everything she says out as bullshit. Then estelle’s like well if that was so bad how about you try it? And then madeline reads the CRAP outta her. Then celeste asks for one and it’s spot on. Santiago’s like here’s 50 bucks if you can say ONE true thing about me. And she’s like you were an undercover cop who decided that you liked being able to hurt people even more easily and never wanted to go back to having some level of rules on you. And he’s like WELL YOU’RE A DUDE! And she’s just like wow! How original! You figured out that I Transed My Gender. Can you tell me literally one other thing about me? And he. Can’t. Because he’s not as smart as he thinks he is! 

Daniel has been weirdly quiet during this, so she turns to him and she’s like hey gramps do you want one? And he’s like i would literally rather die. She’s figured out that he used to be a journalist from a few of his conversational ticks but she doesn’t point it out, because he asked for no reading and she has some manners. Unlike SOME people! She’s blunt but she’s not a total asshole. 

Then, Madeline goes up to check on the mark who should be waking up from the anesthetic soon. She IS! The girl plays up being scared and hurting and madeline’s like. Well the blindfold is a LITTLE over the top. I have a mask on. This is fine. She won’t be able to ID me from a lineup like this, probably, 

So she takes the mark’s blindfold off. Now that the thing is off, the girl doesn’t seem scared at all. It’s like it was just a game and she’s done with it now. No “who are you” no “what are you doing” no “are you going to hurt me?” Just a staring contest with a middle schooler. 

In the briefing, they told them that the mark’s first language was English. That’s the language that Madeline starts with. 

“Who are you?” Madeline asks.

The girl smiles. “I’m Claudia.” 

“Your whole name.” Madeline clarifies. The kid must be someone powerful’s daughter if she’s this assured of her own safety. 

“Just Claudia,” the girl tells her, “I’m not on good terms with either of my fathers right now.” Well. That gives Madeline some information at least. The girl has two fathers who are separated. 

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Madeline assures her, because it feels like something she should do. It’s what she’d planned to do, coming up here. 

“I know,” Claudia tells her, “you can’t hurt me.” 

Madeline feels her breath catch in her chest. “We can’t?” 

“You can’t.” 

“And how do you know that?” Madeline asks.

“I just do.” 

Madeline laughs. “Any other insight you want to give me?” 

Claudia smiles brightly. “Sure. Can you tell Daniel Molloy that I didn’t like his book?” Madeline feels fear curl up even sharper in her gut. A fearless child named Claudia, two powerful fathers, and Daniel Molloy. She lives in Paris. She is very familiar with that man’s “memoir” from the absolutely exhausting American tourists obsessed with retracing the steps of the “real life” vampires chronicled in the book that killed a promising journalistic career in the 80s. 

Is someone punking them? She doesn’t even let herself consider the crazier option: that everything in that book was real. 

After whatever THAT interaction is, madeline corners santiago to make him give her more information. Who is this kid’s dad? Does she actually have two? Does he have any real clue who this kid is? Why does she seem unphased by being kidnapped? Why doesn't she seem like a kid at all? 

He’s less than helpful, so Madeline brings her findings to the entire group. How the girl doesn’t seem phased at all by being kidnapped. How she claims she’s not on good terms with “either father”. “Just Claudia” and her strange request for Daniel Molloy. 

“Okay, yeah,” the elderly hacker says, closing his laptop and standing up, “that’s my bullshit threshold. I’m getting the fuck outta here.” 

“What?” Estelle asks, “but we are so close to getting our money?” 

“I am not waiting around for one of Claudia’s dads,” he declares. 

She frowns. “Do you know them?” 

“Know them?” he asks, “uh yeah, I know them. One of them, at least. He’s not a man you wanna mess with.” 

Celeste rolls her eyes. “Come on. What could make him so frightening? Truly?” 

He just stares at her. “He’s a vampire.”

Estelle bursts into laughter, “Oh, what a funny old man you are! Who is he really?” 

“A fucking vampire!” he repeats with wide, terrified eyes. 

“Ah,” Santiago says, “you’re the Daniel Molloy. I should have known.” 

Celeste frowns. “Who?” 

Estelle giggles. “He wrote the gay vampire memoir! He always said it was real.” 

“It was!” the guy tells them, “every fucking thing I wrote there was real. Every word. And no one believed me.” Santiago snorts. 

The old man turns towards him with a deadly look in his eyes. “You think that’s funny?” 

“Yes,” Santiago assures him, “I do.” 

He points to a nasty, mottled scar across his neck. “Her father did this to me. I almost died. Still think it’s funny?” 

“Yes,” he assures him, “with every word you speak it just gets funnier.” 

“Whatever, man,” the old man mutters, “I’m getting out of here before she starts picking you fuckers off.” Then he turns to the driver. “Can I have the keys?” 

“No! I’m not giving you the car keys!” Estelle declares, “we will need them to leave in the morning.” 

He laughs. “None of you are making it to morning. I’m getting outta here while there's still some sun.” 

“Then you will be walking,” Estelle says firmly. 

“Whatever,” Daniel says, waving off the comment, “I’ll take my chances with the walk to town.” 

The old man staggers out the door and into the dying evening sun, leaving his cut of 50 million dollars on the table. 

“Well,” Celeste says, “more money for the rest of us.” That brings each of their counts up to 12 million dollars. Certainly enough for Madeline to give her sister a proper funeral and pay for HRT for the rest of her days. 

Santiago goes to “speak” to Claudia, which is just an excuse to try to intimidate her and be mean. She lets it “slip” that she’s the daughter of a famous crime boss who has people killed by decapitating them: Lestat de Lioncourt.

He comes to give the group that information and they decide they'll take their chances. Like... sure. That makes… some sort of sense? If her father is a terrifying crime boss that could explain some of her behaviors. She’s still worried, but she tries not to let those consume her. 

Claudia isn’t a vampire. She’s just… a smart young woman. Older than she looks, surely. Stunted growth, perhaps? That can happen with neglect. Perhaps she split from her fathers because of something along those lines. An undergrad student, perhaps. The team made an assumption concerning her age and Antoinette just let them go with it. 

(Madeline tries not to let her mind settle too long on “Antoinette” from the book- the mistress whose position was always so precarious until she just… disappeared from the story entirely.) 

She goes to speak with Claudia again to put her worries to rest. This will prove to her that this isn’t a preternatural middle school student but a shrewd university student. 

When Claudia sees her, she starts speaking French. It sounds atrocious. 

Madeline doesn’t bother responding in her mother tongue. 

In English once again, she says, “Your French is bad.” 

Claudia sticks with her atrocious French. “Really? You’d think a girl would get better after 80 years.” Four twenties, she claims. 

Madeline chuckles and permits the girl a response in French. “Four twenties, you say? I will believe you’ve lived one of them, at least.” 

Claudia grins as she switches back to her mother tongue. “Not buying the little girl act?” 

Madeline scoffs. “You only acted as a little girl before we caught you. The moment you were here, you showed your true colors.” 

“I’m a hundred year old vampire,” Claudia tells her, "a hundred twenty one to be exact."

Madeline laughs. “No, I think you are a cunning college student conning your father out of money.” 

Claudia grins, maneuvering her cuffs to be slightly more comfortable. “However would I do that?” 

“Stage your own kidnapping,” Madeline posits, “then scare the attackers into leaving and pocket the money."

“How would I do that, exactly?” Claudia asks. She sounds intrigued, excited to hear Madeline tell her back her own genius plan. 

“You’re pretending to be the vampire Claudia from Molloy’s delusional diary,” Madeline tells her, “you hired another woman to pretend to be the vampire Antoinette. Recruited a few people that you thought would be susceptible to strange suggestions in addition to the father of the delusion itself so they’d leave. Then you get 25 million to yourself at the end.” 

Madeline turns her head to finish her point and notices something.

She’s not in cuffs anymore- 

Claudia’s canines slide down like a trick door, turning into fangs. 

“I like you,” Claudia tells her, “I think I’ll kill you last.” 

This is where “you should watch the movie if you haven’t yet” comes into full effect. The action is GREAT and I am just going to give you a brief play by play. The house seals itself into a special trap until the sun comes up. Claudia kills Estelle first- detaches her head from her body and drinks her blood. The three survivors band together for a while to try to evade her and stay alive. 

The stakes rise as they try to talk about what awaits them outside of this death mansion. Santiago decides that he straight up hates her for “letting her sister die” and having the gall to Be Trans About It. 

They “capture” Claudia who spends the whole time taunting them and turning them against each other. Santiago is needlessly cruel. Claudia “escapes” and Madeline realizes that she was never trapped in the first place. They engage in a Flirtatious Bonding Moment TM before the group splits again. Madeline and Santiago run off and Celeste gets left behind.

Then, Celeste gets turned into a vampiric puppet that Claudia uses to scare the shit out of them before the woman's body dies. It seems like Claudia has all of the murders in the bag until a door to a hidden room opens up and fucking Antoinette is behind it. And guess what! She WAS the mistress! She gives them some pathetic backstory bits about being a scorned lover turned by one of Claudia’s fathers a hundred years ago. Lestat, the one who turned her to be his lover, planned to kill her as a peace offering to his husband as they reunited at the temporary return of their runaway daughter. Said runaway daughter decided that she wanted to start again, completely on her own, and requested that Antoinette be allowed to live in her service since Claudia can’t make a vampire on her own. Both fathers agreed, as it made them feel better for their daughter to have someone as she ventured off into vampiric adulthood away from them. Antoinette has been forced to play errand girl to her ex-lover’s daughter for 80 years. The ex-lover that was going to kill her to return to his husband’s good graces. 

So yeah. Antoinette wants to turn someone she thinks can help her defeat Claudia and then get rid of her keeper and find out how to escape somewhere that loustat can’t find her afterwards. Compassionless, mainly competent Santiago seems like a very good choice!

He is. At least… he like, takes to the gift? Pretty immediately? But he kills Antoinette because he doesn’t want to share and then Madeline realizes that she’s 100% safer with Claudia. She’d been thinking that might be the case for a while, but now she’s certain. 

Madeline tries to get away from him to find Claudia and makes it to her, but they realize quickly that his size advantage is.. .real bad for her in a fight. Especially since Madeline’s like, 100% dying. He shifts the odds one more time by trying to make Madeline into a vampiric puppet like he saw Claudia do. Thankfully his hubris got the better of him and it doesn’t work. Madeline’s able to fight against it and restrain him. 

Restraining him is just a temporary fix, though. Madeline is bleeding out and Claudia is trying to bring her back from the brink with her blood, but with a volatile Freshly Turned Fledgling and a dying human that claudia doesn’t WANT to die… the odds aren’t looking great for her.

That is until her father finally does come. Lestat de Lioncourt appears in all of his vampiric glory. The moment he arrives he’s separated Santiago’s head from his body. 

“You’re late,” Claudia says primly.

He huffs. “Late? I wasn’t aware I was welcome until you were losing a fight with a fledgling!” 

“A fledgling that your fledgling made,” Claudia says, “so really, it was your fault.” He smiles ever so slightly. 

“If you had allowed me to kill Antoinette years ago, she never could have moved against you,” Lestat tells her pointedly. 

Claudia shrugs an acknowledgement. “I wanted a companion. She worked alright."

He snorts. “That's what I thought when I made her, but Antoinette was a poor replacement for your father."

Claudia frowns. “Where is Daddy Lou?” 

“Home,” Lestat tells her. 

“What? He didn’t come help?” she sounds devastated that her father might have been reading the paper while she was being hunted. 

“He closed his mind off from you,” he says, “per your request, ma petite.” 

She moves her hand up to her elbow to rub gently at the viscera coating it. “Asking that of him mighta been… harsh.” 

The man smile ever so slightly. “Perhaps. If you were to reopen your mind to him-” 

“No,” Claudia tells him, “just havin’ your presence in there is bad enough.” 

He flinches. 

“But..” Claudia says, “maybe you could just… keep an eye on me, just in case?" A slight smile. “And you can both come round every once in a while, I s’pse.” 

Lestat’s eyes drift over to the mortal dying on the floor. “Would you like assistance with this.. Cleanup?” 

Madeline feels her heart stop in her chest. What does that mean, exactly? 

“You can’t kill her,” Claudia says firmly. 

Lestat turns his gaze toward back to his daughter. “And why is that?” 

“She saved my life,” Claudia tells him, “and I like her. She’s interesting.” 

“Hm,” he says appraisingly, “you are without a companion.” A companion. What, exactly, does that mean? 

Claudia’s eyes widen. “Are you offering to make me one?” 

“You cannot create one on your own,” he says, “and I will not be “coming round”- he uses air quotes, like a douche bag- “until I am invited. So. Yes. I am offering.” 

Madeline tries to wrap her head around this offer, a vampiric eternity with the most interesting person that she’s met in years. Someone who understands the horror of having a body that makes people make all the wrong assumptions. 

Claudia takes her hand. “Well, what do you think? How's forever sound?” There’s nothing in this world for Madeline, anymore. A dead sister and a world that doesn’t want her. 

Why not join someone who might understand? It’s not like she has anything to lose. Her sister is dead and all she’s working towards are a funeral, a tombstone, and her own hormones. Why not live the way that she wants for once?  “I say,” Madeline tells her, “turn me. Now.” Forever isn’t too scary when there’s someone you trust it with.

[theatreofthelivingmind]

usa american here.

I do want try a few techniques to see if anything would alter turnout.

On the other side, trump is leading a tribe of deplorable insurrectionists. If trump goes to prison, the other republican candidates are all polling, less than 10%? 2 things in our favor.

I've been viewing the 2 parties as: one party talks about what can be accomplished,the other party is mired in disinformation. A bit reductive but for brevity's sake that's what I am going with.

To the party talking about what they have accomplished, what they would accomplish if...what if the dems were given a super majority in the senate? What could get done with a super majority plus presidency, for one party? A new reproductive rights national law? New ways to help what still exists for the affordable care act? Raising the minimum wage nationally? Immigration policy? What else would be on a list if there was a super majority? Or even a regular majority?

Not looking to get into political discourse or commentary. Wishing i could turn the comments off (sometimes especially, the comments section in my brain)

A few of my guiding principles:

i always felt like nationalism was a few steps more extreme from patriotism. There should always be room for debate and questioning. There should be some monitors to see if people are negotiating in good faith. One side does seem to take hostages and doesn't negotiate in good faith.

The other guiding principles: overlooked coalitions. Overlooked allies and majorities. I always thought reproductive rights groups would have natural allies with people needing hrt or consistent medical care. Which, not to be reductive, is most everyone I know.

I keep hoping for a redirecting of budgets. Budgets from war and policing given back to caring for marginalized communities. Health care and Mental Health care. Probably throw in dental and eyes as these are all care most humans need.

Taxing the ultra wealthy to pay for health care. Taxing wall street to pay for public services. A new housing for all policy.

If we have goals for the election, new reproductive rights laws...how has each side been doing as far as when Roe v. Wade is on the ballot?

Trying to have ways to sleep at night. I would not blame anyone for not trusting the cis stem. But I do think there is hope, and change is possible.

sorry but i want to hit every american talking about not wanting to vote democrat anymore with hammers. lol

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The secrets of hospital bills

Today, the New York Times published an analysis of hospital pricing in the US, comparing prices charged to uninsured people, to Medicare, and to different insurers, revealing that these prices can vary up to 900%, often to the detriment of large insurers.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/22/upshot/hospital-prices.html

This represents a marked contrast to the story we are often told about health-care pricing in America — that large insurers use their might to negotiate lower rates from price-gouging hospitals. That might be true sometimes, but often, it’s not.

And as the Times points out, it’s not necessarily the insurers who pay those inflated prices — many insurance plans are actually run by large employers, and only administered by the insurance company. So when Cigna turns down a treatment, it’s actually your boss doing it.

That may be a nice fiction for your boss to maintain in order to deflect your ire the coverage you’re denied — but it also means that when Cigna allows a hospital to gouge it for your care, it’s your boss that pays for it — not Cigna’s shareholders.

Meanwhile, the variations in prices are simply wild. If you get a colonoscopy at University of Mississippi Medical Center, it costs $1463 if you’re with Cigna, $2144 if you’re with Aetna, and $782 if you’re uninsured.

$782!

The percentage differences are even more pronounced with small-dollar items, like a pregnancy test at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania:

$18 if you’re with Blue Cross PA.

$58 if you’re a Blue Cross NJ HMO customer.

$93 if you’re a Blue Cross NJ PPO customer.

$10 if you’re uninsured.

There’s so much more of this. Hospital and insurance spokespeople told Sarah Kliff, Josh Katz and Rumsey Taylor that all of this was not nearly so bad as it looks, that it was taken out of context, that there’s an innocent explanation — but were unable to provide that explanation.

The reality is that it’s much worse than it looks. The data-set they were reporting on is fragmentary, drawn from the minority of hospitals that deign to comply with a bipartisan order (started under Trump, affirmed by Biden) requiring hospitals to provide this pricing data.

These are the hospitals with the least to hide, the best of the bunch, and they’re so bad. There’s repeated stories of parents being horribly gouged on rabies shots for their children, for example.

All of this puts the lie to the story of health-care as a market. A parent whose child is in need of urgent care following a wild animal attack doesn’t shop around for a deal. There’s no “demand elasticity” in rabies shots for children.

But even if a heart-attack patient in an ambulance was interested in shopping for a bargain on their care, they would be stopped cold. Hospitals and insurers treat their pricing information as trade secrets, and refuse to disclose it, even when legally obliged to do so.

That secrecy extends to your employer, who is unable to see prices even when shopping for an insurer for thousands of your co-workers. In 2018, Larimer County, CO tried to get the insurer who covered its 3,500 employees to disclose its negotiated hospital prices.

They raised the issue up to the insurance company’s CEO, who personally told them to fuck off, pay him, and forget about ever finding out how that money was being spent. They put the contract out for rebid. Of the six insurers who bid, five refused to disclose prices.

A former Blue Cross exec told the Times that they put “gag orders in all our contracts,” ensuring that no one would ever know whether they were getting ripped off.

Six months after the order that legally required hospitals to post prices, the Times contracted the ten highest-grossing noncompliant hospitals. NYU Langone told them to fuck off (“We will not be providing a statement or comment”).

They got bafflegab from Cedars Sinai: “We do not post standard cash rates, which typically will not reflect the price of care for uninsured patients.”

Penn Medicine made a funny: “Penn Medicine is committed to transparency about potential costs.”

This is not a market. Markets have prices and shoppers (not hostages). This is a racket. If you doubt it for an instant, tune into Arm and a Leg, a podcast that reveals health care’s crooked billing practices and explains how to resist them.

https://armandalegshow.com/

When I moved to America, a number of friends counselled me to take out catastrophic injury insurance and skip regular health insurance, and show up at doctors’ offices and hospitals with cash in hand, ready to bargain.

They swore up and down that they were paying less in cash money for treatment than I would pay in deductibles and co-pays for my insured coverage. It looks like they were right in many cases. But this is no way to run a healthcare system.

For one thing, it leaves people with chronic conditions out in the cold. For another, it allows the system to continue to rot, transforming into a financial institution first and a way to treat patients as a distant second.

America doesn’t have market healthcare. It has racket healthcare. The fact that Americans defend this system is frankly bizarre. Unless you’re a shareholder in this rotten system, it has absolutely nothing to redeem it.

It is a crooked enterprise that wastes trillions and delivers precious little care.

Image: Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[mrssarablack]

Have Empathy

(img: covid-19 memorial in DC. Each empty chair was a person.)

I keep hearing this call that we should not feel anything but empathy for the President right now. That it’s sad and a crying shame he has been infected with covid-19. I’m sorry but no. Everything that lead to him contracting the virus was by his own design. His actions and downplaying of the virus and the call for the GOP to follow him blindly caused this. It was inevitable. So, no.... If anything clinched this as a blatant “no” in my mind it has been his actions since he has left Walter Reed Hospital.

No, I do not feel sorry for him. I do not care that he or anyone in the GOP is sick. I care that the fallout now includes officers of his security detail, extended families of people who attended the event that turned into this super spreader moment. I have empathy fore the fact that this virus is so devastating that 215,909 people have died in this country that probably didn’t need to succumb to it in the first place. I can empathize with the people who don’t have jobs or have lost business that were probably their biggest dream, and now don’t know what is going to happen next. I can empathize with my fellow citizens who  won’t have (a) family member(s) at their table for the upcoming holidays. These are the things I have empathy for regarding this pandemic. But empathy for captain orange: no. 

There’s no way, when he hasn’t shown empathy for us. Not when he left the hospital after a PR photoshoot, and a reckless car ride where, no, the people cheering him on from the sidewalks were not in danger, but all the secret service men forced to participate in the car with him were. Not when from there he was discharged and we witnessed a dramatic display of doubling down when he removed his mask like he'd defeated it after tweeting “don’t be afraid of covid.” The thing is, in that moment he was still contagious. The room he entered where people were waiting and taking pictures of this moment were deliberately put at risk of infection for pure hubris. 

But this is what really clinched it for me, that I have no empathy for our President. He followed, yesterday, with a tweet saying: 

“I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business. I have asked Mitch McConnell not to delay, but to instead focus full time on approving my outstanding nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett."

Take that in. 

200,000 people have died. The unemployment rate in this country is at 7.9%, both of these figures don’t account for the fact that both the virus and the unemployment rate have disproportionately affected black and POC citizens. Now, with the threat of a second wave (if you can even call it that, we never really got out of the first wave due to the leadership we've had) parts of New York and other areas of the country now including the White House shutting down for a second time and the man meant to take care of us just held our well being, our health, hostage for votes. Held hostage for the thing he wants right now: a new judicial appointment that also likely won’t be good for us either. 

He later semi-recanted in a tweet that he would sign a bill to get stimulus checks calling out Nancy Pelosi directly, and a separate statement saying he would also help small businesses and the airlines, and movie  but that still shows he’s holding the relief hostage. The positioning of his proposed twitter “deal” is just a power grab to make it look like he alone can make these decisions. If the democrats tell him no, then they’re clearly the bad guys in this. It’s simply a ploy, all the while we struggle, so he can promote his own agenda. 

The thing is, a person who is capable of empathy is not a person who would do these things. A person with real empathy would feel some sort of remorse upon finding out they are infected. They would worry about who they had come in contact with. Who they had potentially infected. They wouldn’t do the things Trump has done. So, I’m left with anything but that for him in return. I’m capped there is no more benefit of the doubt left. His colors are showing. 

For all the words I’ve written. I find myself speechless. Not from shock, at this point I can say, “I can’t believe this,” but after everything this President has shown us, the truth is I do. I do believe this is happening. I do believe it was expected behavior and I don’t have empathy for a man so cold that he can’t empathize with his people: not even the ones who actively support him and probably need that help as much as the majority of the country he has dubbed an enemy to him. 

Instead, I empathize with the people. We’re leaderless. We need better and all I have is a sentiment that everyone has heard perpetually since he was elected but 100x more since the pandemic and his dreadful response hit, and that is (say it with me): VOTE. I do not believe a single person in this country hasn’t made up their minds. The “on the fence” people are the ones who have never seen this country work for them and the one thing we have to fight it, they’ve lost faith in. Yes, the government is working against us. Yes, there are historical and racial reasons for that being true but if you care about anyone stuck here and you have the right to vote: VOTE. Don’t abstain while saying, “It doesn’t matter” because you actively choose to believe that and act upon it promotes that being true. Self fulfilling prophecies on a national scale. We cannot change our world if we choose not to use our voice. Yelling in the streets, peacefully protesting, rioting, while vital for furthering a movement, they do not replace the fundamental way things get decided, which is, again, voting. So, please, if you are upset and want change, don’t con yourself out of a simple task and just do it. We can’t take more of this. Vote. 

[melnchly-a]

i was debating posting this but here are a range of things to think about re: police and reform. 

i’m seeing a lot of “abolish the police” posts, and while i know exactly where that’s coming from, it’s also a simple-seeming answer to a deep and complex problem, and one that’s likely to cause more problems than you’re likely thinking. (in the absence of police, it’s likely - - though certainly not guaranteed - - that those who can afford it will invest more heavily in private security for businesses/personal protection/etc, whether that need is warranted or not. in the event of situations occurring that would have required police presence, you would likely see more federal law enforcement/military presence. worst-case, imagine a country led by someone like our current president where the only option is to send in federal agents and believe me, you don’t want that.) neither do you probably actually want to call for a mass exodus of police of their own volition. i can tell you right now the ones you want out wouldn’t be leaving. you’d be left with departments entirely composed of people with no qualms about excessive force. you WANT those people staying on the force, and you WANT them to have the resources they need to report on fellow officers when needed. 

it’s also just not likely to happen in any widespead way. not in our current society. if you want to create real change, there are other things that need to be addressed, campaigned for, and fixed. things which will not be fixed if we’re trying to focus on overly simple answers for deeply complex problems.

this isn’t to disagree with the notion of reallocating funding to benefit schools/public services/etc. i think that’s entirely necessary. but there’s more to the story than simply cutting funding. 

police need to address and apologize for excessive use of force and abuse over the history of policing. if not for individual officers who may or may not have participated, than for the historical precedent as a whole. pretending there isn’t a problem isn’t a help to anyone. 

as i’ve said multiple times in the past, police unions and those who negotiate with them make it notoriously difficult for departments to get rid of officers with complaints against them. the department in minneapolis is headed by a black chief of police who had sued his own department based on issues of race in the past. he should have been able to get rid of officers like c.hauvin with no issues and yet....obviously, that man was still on the force. there need to be ways for a.) departments to fire problem officers without someone over their heads reinstating them and b.) ways for officers to report on their fellow officers without repercussions. i can tell you right now that those methods don’t currently exist in any wide-spread or efficient/effective form.

body cams, dash cams, and other oversight tools need to a.) be “sold” more effectively to the police as measures of protecting BOTH themselves AND the citizens they serve. there ALSO need to be real consequences for tampering with these, turning them off, etc.

police need more training and they need higher-quality recruits. understaffed departments lead to issues you’ll see in places like flint, where it can take three hours or more for police to respond to a call. not because they’re (most of the time) doing anything wrong, but because there aren’t enough of them in comparison to the total population. this could include decisions like requiring college or college-like degrees, but that would also mean higher pay for police officers. which i realize isn’t a popular idea at the moment, but is a fact of those requirements. (furthermore, many city police in small to mid size cities, not to mention suburban police, don’t have adequate crowd-control training. this is not an excuse for the way police have been handling crowds in recent days, but it is something that has come up in discussions. many of them are reacting with excessive crowd-control measures where lesser measures were needed.) this training should absolutely include recognizing police brutality in the past, the racism in the system as a whole, recognition and response to explicit and implicit bias, recognizing mental health issues, etc. training is a problem every law-enforcement officer i’ve spoken to in the last few weeks, in an attempt to understand what’s happening, has brought up. the people i’ve spoken to have dedicated their lives to establishing mental health education for police, who have actively removed aggressive or racist officers in the past, etc. they’re just as frustrated and angry with the reactions police are displaying as you and i are. and they’re actively doing things to try to help. unions, government, etc make that more difficult than it should be. 

many police, particularly in large cities, don’t live in the cities/neighborhoods they’re policing. (many smaller, particularly suburban, departments require that their officers live in the town they work in.) sometimes this is because they can’t afford to (nypd officers start at around  $42,500/year - about $3,541/month or  $885/week BEFORE tax -  in a city where the median rent for a studio apartment sits at about  $2,700/month. these officers can obviously make more as they spend more time on the force, but that’s the stated starting salary according to their website. the salary after 5 1/2 years is $85,292). this means they don’t know the areas/people/etc they’re policing, are more likely to make snap judgments based on false information, etc. it wouldn’t solve everything, but rules for employment regarding residency could mean better policing in cities and their neighborhoods. 

for a profession that includes seeing things like scenes of murders, assaults, suicides, and wellness checks that lead to decomposing bodies, mental health care for police is abysmal. i mean it’s....bad in the u.s. in general, but it’s notoriously bad for active-duty military, veterans, and first responders...including police. this isn’t to mention that officers who self-report mental health problems are often put on leave rather than given the resources they need. this means compounded stress, trauma, etc, going unaddressed in a highly dangerous and stressful profession.

police DO handle more than they likely SHOULD be handling, including things like wellness checks, nonviolent domestic disputes, etc. more often than not, they’re doing so without specialized training for those situations. these should absolutely be divided out into unarmed (or lightly armed, i.e. with pepper spray etc), specially trained units. you’re still going to want armed police units to exist in the u.s. - - i can tell you for a fact that in my fairly quiet suburban hometown ALONE there have been active shooter/barricade/hostage situations that could not be deescalated without use of force, despite attempts to do so.

qualified immunity needs reform. you can read more about that here. this allows not only for officers to get away with police brutality, but for all public officials to get away with a wide range of crimes. 

we need to campaign for citizens to be integrated into police oversight. police are paid by taxpayer dollars, and they are meant to serve and protect the people. again, this is an issue for your local government and police unions. when you’re communicating with gov’t officials, make it clear that you want something like this implemented. 

and, yes, there need to be strong and immediate consequences for excessive use of force. 

i’m not saying any of this to make it seem like police brutality or the racism inherent in the law enforcement and justice systems doesn’t exist. it does, and it needs to be addressed. what i am saying is that addressing that is a more complex problem that requires deeper thought for successful reform. Black people, particularly men, are at leas 3x more likely to experience police brutality, and that needs to end. 

tl;dr, some things to be aware of, petition for, etc: 

charging and convicting police brutality as a crime (with the understanding that this means it should be treated as any crime in a court of law)

holding all first responders accountable for their actions.

allowing and enabling officers to respond to police brutality they’re witnessing, including training on how to intervene, better reporting methods, policies that would not punish them for reporting, etc 

reform in police unions

better police training in general

national standards for police training (believe it or not, these don’t currently exist)

better mental health care and mental health policies for police and other first responders 

citizen involvement, including in oversight

voting in state and local elections for officials who have plans to respond to these issues, and who are actively listening to their constituents 

reallocation of funding so that the funding is more equally spread to education and community support

Some Sources/ Further Reading: 

“How to reform American police, according to experts” from Vox

Police officer salary and benefits, NY Gov

“Adopt minimum national police use-of-force standards and train cops for interaction” USA Today

“‘An Impossible Situation’: How Chief Arradondo Has Struggled To Change The Minneapolis Police Department” CBS Minnesota

“What We Should Expect of the Police: Experts Weigh In On Recent Police Violence,” Center for American Progress

Police Reform, The Flip Side

The Center for Policing Equity

[lucybellwood]

"American law and policy have long forbidden the transfer of weapons to nations and military units engaged in gross violations of human rights, especially — as a 2023 update to the United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy makes clear — when those violations are directed at children. It is difficult to conceive of more severe violations of this standard than young children regularly being shot in the head, newborns and their mothers starving because of blocked food aid and demolished water infrastructure, and a health care system that has been destroyed. For the past 12 months, it has been well within our government’s power to stop the flow of U.S. military aid to Israel. Instead, we fueled the fire at almost every opportunity, shipping over 50,000 tons of military equipment, ammunition and weaponry since the start of the war, according to a late-August update from the Israeli Defense Ministry. This amounts to an average of more than 10 transport planes and two cargo ships of arms per week. Now, after more than a year of devastation, estimates of Palestinian deaths range from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. The International Rescue Committee describes Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be an aid worker, as well as the most dangerous place to be a civilian.” UNICEF rates Gaza as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.” Oxfam reports that in Al-Mawasi, the area Israel has designated as the humanitarian safe zone in Gaza, there is one toilet for every 4,130 people. At least 1,470 Israelis have been killed in the Oct. 7 attack and the following war. Half of the hostages who remain in Gaza are reportedly dead. And, while American officials blame Hamas for prolonging the war and hindering negotiations, Israeli news outlets consistently report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sabotaged cease-fire talks with both Hamas and Hezbollah while recklessly escalating the conflict instead of reaching an agreement that could achieve many of Israel’s stated war aims, including the release of Israeli hostages. Was this ghastly outcome for the Palestinians and Israel worth corrupting the rule of law in our own society?"

If reading this sort of thing makes you sick to your stomach and desperate to do something, consider showing up for one of Jewish Voice for Peace's daily Power Half Hour for Gaza Zoom webinars. It's a space to share feelings of grief, rage, determination, and compassion, then channel those emotions into calls or emails to representatives and other governing bodies. I can't recommend it highly enough.

In their own words, what volunteer health care workers saw in Gaza. “Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die.”

[cksmart-world]

  The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

by Christopher Smart

March 12, 2019

DESTROYING LOGIC, CANADA'S BAD EXAMPLE

& THE COOL INLAND PORT

Inland Port and Apple Pie

Here at the crossroads of the West, our political brain trust has come up with something called the Inland Port, where trucks and trains and planes from all over will bring cargo to Salt Lake City for distribution. The huge operation will spur the economy but somehow will not cause lots of air pollution or other environmental impacts. The Inland Port is as American as Apple Pie. It has something for everyone — drama, intrigue and comedy, too. Magnanimously, the Utah Legislature usurped the land for the port from Salt Lake City and set up a powerful governing board with special interests that has the public's best interest at heart. It will guide development and set taxation and make the port totally cool. Oddly, Mayor Jackie Biskupski feels cheated and is suing lawmakers for being shitheads. The City Council, by contrast, is negotiating with lawmakers for the very best crumbs legislators will give. Meanwhile, environmentalists are waving red flags at lawmakers, who understand that sustainability is a fad touted by the quiche-and-white-wine set. It's all quite entertaining. It reminds the staff here at Smart Bomb of an E Ticket at Disneyland: there's Futureland, Corruptionland, Poison-Airland, Litigationland and even something like the Electric Light Parade, where excitable legislators form a Conga line and dance around the Capitol Rotunda to Colonel Bogey's March.

Canada's Bad Example

You've got to love those Canadians. They are so friendly and even send their troops to help us out of messy wars. And don't forget the time they rescued American hostages when the Ayatollah took over in Iran. Of course, the Canadians aren't perfect. They have backward ideas on health care and gun control. Their government pays for all their expensive medical procedures and you can hardly find an AR-15 in Montreal. The Canadians are very sensitive, too. Right now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on the ropes for something that wouldn't even make the nightly news here. His attorney general quit when Trudeau allegedly pushed her to look the other way on corruption allegations concerning one of the country's top engineering firms. BFD. Our president is now the subject of 17 different investigations. BFD again. And we couldn't care less about hush money paid by our president to porn stars and Playboy bunnies. But can you imagine what would happen if Trudeau planned to build a multi-million dollar high rise in Moscow while running for election? They'd probably roll out the guillotine and chop off his head. Fortunately, President Trump doesn't live in Ottawa. Down here in the states we're far more... what's the word... cosmopolitan. Yeah, that's it. We're just a lot more sophisticated.

Let's Throw a Constitutional Convention

Here's a grand idea: Let's convene a Constitutional Convention and do a make-over of the document that has guided this country since 1776. Why do it? Well, because, according to Utah's Republican lawmakers, the country is a mess. This is a chance to fix it real good. For starters, let's do away with the First Amendment. All it does is cause problems for those in power. And we could write a ban on abortion right into the new Constitution — no more baby killing. Then, lets pen a balanced budget amendment so that we can never borrow money from ourselves ever again — no matter what. And We also should do away with affirmative action — it's just discrimination in reverse. Our new Constitution would ban discrimination altogether so that minorities would no longer have to worry about things, like jobs, housing or getting shot by police. We would make socialism illegal, too, of course. That would keep us free from things like Social Security and Medicare that are ruining the country. And no more taxing for public education or highways. There are just so many reasons to convene a Constitutional Convention and get this country on a righteous path once and for all. Brilliant. What could possibly go wrong.

Destroying Logic To Save It

We had to destroy the village in order to save it. No, Utah Congressman John Curtis didn't coin that, but he understands the logic. See, there is this thing called checks and balances outlined in the U.S. Constitution and it's real important, the congressman says. Nonetheless, he joined his Republican colleagues in the House, who would not deny President Trump “emergency” funding for The Wall — money Congress had earlier refused to allocate, even though the president said it would stop rapist and drugs from pouring in from Mexico. “I voted against  the legislation because it was largely a partisan bill that dealt only with this one-time instance rather than a serious attempt to permanently rein in executive authority,” he said in a Salt Lake Tribune epistle. “They did not send me to Washington to be a rubber stamp...” Well, that clears that up nicely. Over in the Senate, Mike Lee has a new proposal up his sleeve so “the president can’t act like a king.” It’s just what Curtis was wishing for. Of course it won’t help out now. But at least Lee and his Senate Republican colleagues can talk about that, rather than consider the thousands of women and children fleeing the dangers of lawlessness in Central America who are seeking asylum at ports of entry along our southern border. Yes, immigration officials and facilities are overwhelmed. It is an emergency — that much is true. But why not save face with a little hocus-pocus now to get out of the terrible fix terrible fix there in regarding the emperor’s clothes.

That's a wrap for another week here at Smart Bomb, where the staff keeps track of Fox News, so you don't have to. Speaking of which, the Democratic National Committee has announced it won't allow Fox to a host any of its presidential debates. That's fine and dandy, but how do they plan to reach all those people who don't read? You're right, Wilson, we shouldn't even think about it for another year or so — the election is 18 months away. With that, Wilson, can you and the band take us out with a little something that won't offend Laura Ingram or Sean Hannity: You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies / One day you'll be in the ditch flies buzzin' around your eyes / Blood on your saddle / Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth / You're an idiot babe / It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe...

[newstfionline]

U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials

By Andrew Jacobs, NY Times, July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure--and the Americans did not threaten them.

The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution’s wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.

“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Overall, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.

During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.

“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” Ms. Kickbusch asked.

Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.

A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

[thedeskside]

11 Resilience-Building Habits for Stressed Healthcare Workers

The pandemic has pushed healthcare workers to their limits. Burnout was already a serious problem in the industry, but after a year-long front row view of COVID’s devastation, burnout levels are on the rise and traumatic stress is taking a toll. And yet, healthcare workers must find a way to keep showing up and doing one of the toughest jobs around. The big question is, how?

Practicing healthy habits are the key to building up your resilience skills, say Drs. Hendel and Goulston, and with greater resiliency you can thrive despite the long-term challenges of the pandemic.

Do frequent self “check-ins” to recognize when your stress levels are rising. When you’re busy and under pressure to perform, it’s easy to go on “autopilot.” Therefore, periodically pause and do a quick self-assessment throughout the day. Consider your emotional state (Do I feel friendly and engaged, or edgy and aggressive?) as well as your physical state (Is my body calm and at ease, or is it holding onto tension?). “Take 20 or 30 seconds to scan your body and identify areas that may be holding onto tension or stress,” says Dr. Goulston. “For example, you might be carrying tension in your jaw or shoulders. When you notice an area that is tense, gently release the tension. Over time it should become easier to recognize when stress begins to take hold—and to do something about it.” Ground yourself when you start feeling overwhelmed. Grounding is a great way to reduce anxiety and arrive in the here and now. Dr. Hendel advises that you use it anytime you feel carried away by anxious thoughts or feelings, or triggered by upsetting memories and flashbacks.

Find a comfortable place to sit (or stand). If sitting, rest your hands on your legs. Feel the fabric of your clothing. Notice its color and texture.

Next, bring your awareness to your body. Stretch your neck from side to side. Relax your shoulders. Tense and relax your calves. Stomp your feet.

Look around and notice the sights, sounds, and scents around you for a few moments.

Name 15-20 things you can see. For example, the floor, a light, a desk, a sink.

As you keep looking around, remind yourself that “The flashback or emotion I felt is in the past. Right now, in this moment, I’m safe.”

Pause and take a few deep breaths. We tend to hold our breath whenever we are stressed, but this only exacerbates feelings of anxiety and panic. Instead, use “box breathing” to calm yourself and heighten your concentration. Box breathing is the technique of taking slow, deep, full breaths. Here’s a tutorial for when you’re feeling triggered. Slowly exhale your breath through your mouth. Consciously focus on clearing all the oxygen from your lungs. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose for four slow counts. Hold your breath for four more slow counts. On the next four counts, exhale again through your mouth until your lungs are empty. Hold your breath again for a final slow count of four beats. Try the 12 words exercise to process traumatic stress. This powerful tool helps you tap into your feelings when you feel “stuck” due to trauma by gently visiting key words one at a time. Paradoxically, naming a feeling that you’re having and letting yourself fully experience it actually lessens tension more than it increases it. As Drs. Goulston and Hendel say, “If you can name it, you can tame it.” You can do the 12 words exercise on your own, in therapy, or as part of a group exercise. If doing it on your own, imagine a trusted friend or loved one gently and empathetically guiding you through the exercise. If you are in a group, the moderator can lead the exercise by speaking each word to the group, or to a single person in the group. You don’t have to cover all the words at once. You can focus on just one or two words, take a break, and start on a new word later.

STEP 1: Read the following words out loud: Anxious, Afraid, Overwhelmed, Fragile, Depressed, Frustrated, Angry, Ashamed, Alone, Lonely, Exhausted, Numb. STEP 2: Pick one of these words that most captures what you’re feeling when you’re greatly stressed and then focus on it. STEP 3: Imagine feeling this feeling at its worst. STEP 4: What does this feeling make you want to impulsively do? STEP 5: Imagine saying what you want to do to a person who loves you, and picture them smiling with love and compassion and saying back to you, “I understand.” STEP 6: Imagine feeling their love taking some of the pain away. STEP 7: Imagine them asking you, “What would be a better thing to do?”

Reach for something that anchors you in the present moment. Carry a small reminder of what you love about your life and focus on it if you feel triggered and need to center yourself. It might be a photo of your kids or pet, a small rock you picked up on a scenic nature hike, or a special necklace. Think of the gratitude you feel for your life whenever you look at this token. Keep something that makes you laugh nearby. Humor is a great way to alleviate stress. Tape a clip of a funny cartoon to your work area or carry a small notebook with jokes that make you laugh every time you read them. Use calming affirmations to give you strength and peace. Written positive statements can give you a lift when you feel yourself sinking. If self-talk is not for you, imagine a supportive other saying these to you in your mind’s eye. A few examples:

I am great at my job, and my training and skills are empowering.

I feel energized and ready for anything the day has in store for me.

I accept myself as I am. I am enough.

I am safe in this moment.

Let your feelings out (when possible). At times you may find you need to step away from your duties for a few minutes and give those intense emotions some “breathing room.” Try to move to a different room so you can cry or discreetly express your feelings. Sometimes you need to release the stress that’s built up in your body, and finding a private place to let the tears fall or vent for a few minutes can lighten your stress and enable you to get back to work.

Play a mind game. “If there is no way to speak to someone else and you need comfort in the moment, imagine talking to someone who loves you,” says Dr. Goulston. “Imagine that they are listening and lovingly holding and encouraging you. As you hear them talking and walking you through it, you will feel their love and belief in you. This kind of mental pep talk can be a bridge until you are able to speak your feelings to somebody in person.” Head outdoors for a few minutes. If at all possible, try to get outside for a few minutes of fresh air during your shift. Take deep breaths, stretch your arms and legs, and take in the gifts of nature around you. And if possible, find someone else who is on a break and invite them for a 10-minute walk so the two of you can blow off steam.

Rediscover the simple pleasures around you. Traumatic stress can make the world appear and feel dangerous, with threats lurking around every corner. That’s why it is important to stay immersed in the joys of life. Focusing on simple pleasures promotes healing and helps you enjoy your life in the process. For example:

Get lost in a good book. Don’t just read a few pages before bedtime. Really allow yourself to indulge. Set aside 30 minutes after work or in the morning before starting your day to escape into a captivating story.

Take a walk. Even if it is only five minutes long, commit to taking a walk every day. Chances are, by the time those five minutes are up, you will want to keep going.

Find a creative outlet. Think gardening, playing a musical instrument, putting together a puzzle, or even coloring in an adult coloring book.

          Don’t just turn to these strategies when you feel stress or anxiety rising in your mind or body. Intentionally practice them daily—even if you are feeling calm and in control. Over time they will become second nature.

          “Resilience isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have,’ it’s a ‘must-have,’” concludes Dr. Hendel. “And it will continue serving you long after the pandemic is over.”

Diana Hendel, PharmD Dr. Diana Hendel is the coauthor of Why Cope When You Can Heal?: How Healthcare Heroes of COVID-19 Can Recover from PTSD (Harper Horizon, December 2020) and Trauma to Triumph: A Roadmap for Leading Through Disruption and Thriving on the Other Side (HarperCollins Leadership, Spring 2021). She is an executive coach and leadership consultant, former hospital CEO, and author of Responsible: A Memoir, a riveting and deeply personal account of leading during and through the aftermath of a deadly workplace trauma. As the CEO of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital, Hendel led one of the largest acute care, trauma, and teaching hospital complexes on the West Coast. She has served in leadership roles in numerous community organizations and professional associations, including chair of the California Children’s Hospital Association, executive committee member of the Hospital Association of Southern California, vice chair of the Southern California Leadership Council, chair of the Greater Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, board member of the California Society of Health-System Pharmacists, and leader-in-residence of the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership at California State University Long Beach.

Mark Goulston, MD, FAPA Dr. Mark Goulston is the coauthor of Why Cope When You Can Heal?: How Healthcare Heroes of COVID-19 Can Recover from PTSD (Harper Horizon, December 2020) and Trauma to Triumph: A Roadmap for Leading Through Disruption and Thriving on the Other Side (HarperCollins Leadership, Spring 2021). He is a board-certified psychiatrist, fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA NPI, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. He is the creator of Theory Y Executive Coaching—which he provides to CEOs, presidents, founders, and entrepreneurs—and is a TEDx and international keynote speaker.

This is a guest post.

[billyagogo]

The Shutdown Prophet

New Post has been published on https://newsprofixpro.com/moxie/2021/02/11/the-shutdown-prophet/

The Shutdown Prophet

Illustration by Oliver Munday

In a merciful twist of fate, Juan Linz did not quite live to see his prophecy of the demise of American democracy borne out. Linz, the Spanish political scientist who died last week, argued that the presidential system, with its separate elections for legislature and chief executive, was inherently unstable. In a famous 1990 essay, Linz observed, “All such systems are based on dual democratic legitimacy: No democratic principle exists to resolve disputes between the executive and the legislature about which of the two actually represents the will of the people.” Presidential systems veered ultimately toward collapse everywhere they were tried, as legislators and executives vied for supremacy. There was only one notable exception: the United States of America.

Linz attributed our puzzling, anomalous stability to “the uniquely diffuse character of American political parties.” The Republicans had loads of moderates, and conservative whites in the South still clung to the Democratic Party. At the time he wrote that, the two parties were already sorting themselves into more ideologically pure versions, leaving us where we stand today: with one racially and economically polyglot party of center-left technocracy and one ethnically homogenous reactionary party. The latter is currently attempting to impose its program by threat upon the former. The events in Washington have given us a peek into the Linzian nightmare.

Traditionally, when American politics encountered the problem of divided government—when, say, Nixon and Eisenhower encountered Democratic Congresses, or Bill Clinton a Republican one—one of two things happened. Either both sides found enough incentives to work together despite their differences, or there was what we used to recognize as the only alternative: gridlock. Gridlock is what most of us expected after the last election produced a Democratic president and Republican House. Washington would drudge on; it would be hard to get anything done, but also hard to undo anything. Days after the election, John Boehner, no doubt anticipating things would carry on as always, said, “Obamacare is the law of the land.”

Instead, to the slowly unfolding horror of the Obama administration and even some segments of the Republican Party, the GOP decided that the alternative to finding common ground with the president did not have to be mere gridlock. It could force the president to enact its agenda. In January, Boehner told his colleagues he’d abandon all policy negotiations with the White House. Later that spring, House Republicans extended the freeze-out to the Democratic-­majority Senate, which has since issued (as of press time) eighteen futile pleas for budget negotiations. Their plan has been to carry out their agenda by using what they call “leverage” or “forcing events” to threaten economic and social harm and thereby extract concessions from President Obama without needing to make any policy concessions in return. Paul Ryan offered the most candid admission of his party’s determined use of non-electoral power: “The reason this debt-limit fight is different is we don’t have an election around the corner where we feel we are going to win and fix it ourselves,” he said at the end of September. “We are stuck with this government another three years.”

Last Tuesday, House Republicans shut down the federal government, demanding that Obama abolish his health-care reform in a tactically reckless gamble that most of the party feared but could not prevent. More surreal, perhaps, were the conditions they issued in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling later this month. Lifting the debt ceiling, a vestigial ritual in which Congress votes to approve payment of the debts it has already incurred, is almost a symbolic event, except that not doing it would wreak unpredictable and possibly enormous worldwide economic havoc. (Obama’s Treasury Department has compared the impact of a debt breach to the failure of Lehman Brothers.) The hostage letter House Republicans released brimmed with megalomaniacal ambition. If he wanted to avoid economic ruin, Republicans said, Obama would submit to a delay of health-care reform, plus tax-rate cuts, enactment of offshore drilling, approval of the Keystone pipeline, deregulation of Wall Street, and Medicare cuts, to name but a few demands. Republicans hardly pretended to believe Obama would accede to the entire list (a set of demands that amounted to the retroactive election of Mitt Romney), but the hubris was startling in and of itself.

The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. (Obama could, theoretically, threaten to veto a debt ceiling hike unless Congress attaches it to the creation of single-payer health insurance.) To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic. But it turns out to be the perfect tool for the contemporary GOP: a party large enough to control a chamber of Congress yet too small to win the presidency, and infused with a dangerous, millenarian combination of overheated Randian paranoia and fully justified fear of adverse demographic trends. The only thing that limits the debt ceiling’s potency at the moment is the widespread suspicion that Boehner is too old school, too lacking in the Leninist will to power that fires his newer co-partisans, to actually carry out his threat. (He has suggested as much to some colleagues in private.) Boehner himself is thus the one weak link in the House Republicans’ ability to carry out a kind of rolling coup against the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Boehner’s control of his chamber is tenuous enough that, like the ailing monarch of a crumbling regime, it’s impossible to strike an agreement with him in full security it will be carried out.

The standoff embroiling Washington represents far more than the specifics of the demands on the table, or even the prospect of economic calamity. It is an incipient constitutional crisis. Obama foolishly set the precedent in 2011 that he would let Congress jack him up for a debt-ceiling hike. He now has to crush the practice completely, lest it become ritualized. Obama not only must refuse to trade concessions for a debt-ceiling hike; he has to make it clear that he will endure default before he submits to ransom. To pay a ransom now, even a tiny one, would ensure an endless succession of debt-ceiling ransoms until, eventually, the two sides fail to agree on the correct size of the ransom and default follows.

This is a domestic Cuban Missile Crisis. A single blunder could have unalterable consequences: If Obama buckles his no-ransom stance, the debt-ceiling-hostage genie will be out of the bottle. If Republicans believe he is bluffing, or accept his position but obstinately refuse it, or try to lift the debt ceiling and simply botch the vote count, a second Great Recession could ensue.

When Linz contemplated the sorts of crises endemic to presidential systems, he imagined intractable claims of competing legitimacy—charismatic leaders riding great passionate mobs, insisting they alone represented the will of the people. The present crisis is a variation of that. Republicans insistently point to polls showing disapproval of the Affordable Care Act—a kind of assertion of legitimacy via direct referendum, implicitly rebuking Obama’s counter-argument that the presidential election settled the issue of repealing the Affordable Care Act. But the Republican position rests more heavily on the logic of extortion rather than popular mandate. “No one wants to default, but we are not going to continue to give the president a limitless credit card,” warned Republican representative Jason Chaffetz earlier this year. Obama “will not permit an economic crisis worse than 2008–09,” wrote former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, and thus “has no choice but to negotiate with GOP leaders.” Republicans argue that Obama bears all responsibility for avoiding a national catastrophe; Obama argues that both sides bear an equal amount every day—and that this particular mess is not his to clean up.

How to settle this dispute? Here is where Linz’s analysis rings chillingly true: “There is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the Constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate.” This is a fight with no rules. The power struggle will be resolved as a pure contest of willpower.

In our Founders’ defense, it’s hard to design any political system strong enough to withstand a party as ideologically radical and epistemically closed as the contemporary GOP. (Its proximate casus belli—forestalling the onset of universal health insurance—is alien to every other major conservative party in the industrialized world.) The tea-party insurgents turn out to be right that the Obama era has seen a fundamental challenge to the constitutional order of American government. They were wrong about who was waging it.

The Shutdown Prophet

Read More

[easyfoodnetwork]

Trump Is Holding the New Stimulus Bill Hostage, and Restaurant Workers Will Suffer for It

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

The president says he’ll resume negotiations “immediately after I win” the election

At the end of September, House Democrats passed a new version of the HEROES Act, a revised bill that would not only provide new stimulus checks now that everyone has used up the $1,200 they got (or didn’t get) in May, but would also include $120 billion in grants for restaurants, bars, and food trucks. Though it is a potential beacon of hope for the restaurant industry, as well as other sectors, President Donald Trump has asked his “representatives” (presumably meaning Republican members of Congress) to stop negotiating a new stimulus bill, tweeting that talks would resume “immediately after I win” the election.

Should he win, Trump said, “We will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business,” but lambasted the $2.2 trillion HEROES Act. And while there was little chance that the bill would have passed through the Senate as is, Trump has chosen to use the stimulus package as a hostage scenario, and it’s working Americans — like restaurant and food supply workers — who will suffer.

Earlier this week, the Independent Restaurant Coalition urged the Senate to pass the HEROES Act, stating the grant program “would deliver critical aid to 500,000 independent restaurants and the 11 million workers they directly employ.” Employment has been “down by 2.3 million since February” in the restaurant industry, which, according to the IRC, is a higher number than any other industry. By dangling the possibility of aid as a pitiful reward for another Trump victory, the president is prioritizing his own fame and power over the needs of millions of people, like he always does. This is the disheartening culmination of months of frustration and sadness for the restaurant industry.

At this point, what the hell are we supposed to do? For months, businesses have been left without guidance or aid, with owners and workers calculating the risk of operating during a pandemic. Some workers are afraid for their own health and safety but have been working anyway in order to pay bills. Ordering takeout isn’t enough, tipping 40 percent isn’t enough, giving to GoFundMes isn’t enough, yelling at senators and governors isn’t enough. That’s not to say there’s no use in trying, but this isn’t a problem anyone can solve on an individual level — not restaurant owners, not employees, not customers.

“[Trump] shows his contempt for science, his disdain for our heroes — in health care, first responders, sanitation, transportation, food workers, teachers, and others — and he refuses to put money in workers’ pockets, unless his name is printed on the check,” Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. And don’t forget to tack on his aggressive assault on the Affordable Care Act, which many restaurant workers rely on in, especially in an industry without many health care offerings.

As the news cycle has shown, anything can happen in the month leading up to the election, so who knows if he’ll stand by this threat or move on to another in a day or two. But restaurant workers don’t have the time to wait out Trump’s game of political chicken.

This just sucks. That’s it, that’s the tweet.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3jB162Y https://ift.tt/3iJ5XOo

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

The president says he’ll resume negotiations “immediately after I win” the election

At the end of September, House Democrats passed a new version of the HEROES Act, a revised bill that would not only provide new stimulus checks now that everyone has used up the $1,200 they got (or didn’t get) in May, but would also include $120 billion in grants for restaurants, bars, and food trucks. Though it is a potential beacon of hope for the restaurant industry, as well as other sectors, President Donald Trump has asked his “representatives” (presumably meaning Republican members of Congress) to stop negotiating a new stimulus bill, tweeting that talks would resume “immediately after I win” the election.

Should he win, Trump said, “We will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business,” but lambasted the $2.2 trillion HEROES Act. And while there was little chance that the bill would have passed through the Senate as is, Trump has chosen to use the stimulus package as a hostage scenario, and it’s working Americans — like restaurant and food supply workers — who will suffer.

Earlier this week, the Independent Restaurant Coalition urged the Senate to pass the HEROES Act, stating the grant program “would deliver critical aid to 500,000 independent restaurants and the 11 million workers they directly employ.” Employment has been “down by 2.3 million since February” in the restaurant industry, which, according to the IRC, is a higher number than any other industry. By dangling the possibility of aid as a pitiful reward for another Trump victory, the president is prioritizing his own fame and power over the needs of millions of people, like he always does. This is the disheartening culmination of months of frustration and sadness for the restaurant industry.

At this point, what the hell are we supposed to do? For months, businesses have been left without guidance or aid, with owners and workers calculating the risk of operating during a pandemic. Some workers are afraid for their own health and safety but have been working anyway in order to pay bills. Ordering takeout isn’t enough, tipping 40 percent isn’t enough, giving to GoFundMes isn’t enough, yelling at senators and governors isn’t enough. That’s not to say there’s no use in trying, but this isn’t a problem anyone can solve on an individual level — not restaurant owners, not employees, not customers.

“[Trump] shows his contempt for science, his disdain for our heroes — in health care, first responders, sanitation, transportation, food workers, teachers, and others — and he refuses to put money in workers’ pockets, unless his name is printed on the check,” Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. And don’t forget to tack on his aggressive assault on the Affordable Care Act, which many restaurant workers rely on in, especially in an industry without many health care offerings.

As the news cycle has shown, anything can happen in the month leading up to the election, so who knows if he’ll stand by this threat or move on to another in a day or two. But restaurant workers don’t have the time to wait out Trump’s game of political chicken.

This just sucks. That’s it, that’s the tweet.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3jB162Y via Blogger https://ift.tt/36AKdlf

[khalilhumam]

In the upcoming presidential debate, can Biden pull a Reagan?

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/in-the-upcoming-presidential-debate-can-biden-pull-a-reagan/

In the upcoming presidential debate, can Biden pull a Reagan?

By Elaine Kamarck When former Vice President Joe Biden steps on the stage for his first debate with President Trump, some of us will harken back forty years to another presidential debate and the lessons it taught. On October 28, 1980, President Jimmy Carter met for the one and only debate with his challenger, former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Like Donald Trump, Carter was a first-term president whose path to re-election was challenging, to say the least. Carter’s average approval rating (over the length of his term) stood at a paltry 45.5%, the lowest of all the postwar presidents with the sole exception of—you guessed it—Donald Trump, whose overall average approval rating is 40%. It’s hard to imagine two more different men than Jimmy Carter, the humble and devout Christian peanut farmer from Georgia, and Donald Trump, the flashy real estate tycoon. But the circustances of their presidencies and the stakes in their debates are similar. In the last year of their first terms, both men faced crises for which they and the country they led were unprepared. For Trump, of course, it was the novel coronavirus. This virus and its associated policy problems, which required the careful coordination and implementation of disparate governmental authorities, would have been challenging for even the most experienced president. But it has proved to be overwhelming for a man who had no prior public sector experience. For Carter it was the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979, where 52 Americans were held hostage in the American embassy in Tehran from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981. This was America’s first major experience with Islamic radicals, and Carter’s attempts to negotiate went nowhere, as the formal government in power in Iran had little control over the radical students holding the hostages. In April 1980 Carter resorted to a daring military rescue operation which failed spectacularly, killing U.S. military personnel as aircraft crashed in the desert before ever reaching Tehran. For Trump, the coronavirus wiped out his biggest advantage: an economy with low inflation and low unemployment. As the country closed down over the virus unemployment rose, and as the virus drags on, millions of unemployed workers have begun to fear that they will never return to work. Carter’s election year was also marred by economic trouble. By January 1980 the country was in recession. On his watch the inflation rate soared into double digits and unemployment rose, an uncommon occurrence in economics. And while it could be argued that neither man was responsible for the catastrophes befalling the country, the country found their leadership lacking. Trump has been widely criticized not just for his lack of competence but for his lack of empathy for those suffering from the virus and his repeated attempts to downplay the seriousness of the virus. Carter was criticized for his response to the economic pain, which he made in a speech that was widely panned and became known as the “malaise” speech. Like Carter, Trump has found himself on the eve of the debates behind in the polls and virtually helpless to engineer an “October surprise” that would change the game. The Carter administration kept up its attempts to free the hostages, to no avail—the Iranian radicals simply wouldn’t cooperate. Similarly, the Trump administration has kept up its attempts to get past the virus but the virus won’t cooperate either. Early failures allowed it to run amok. And it keeps on killing, this time in red states, and a vaccine before Election Day remains an aspiration that serious public health experts and pharmaceutical companies say is not feasible. When an incumbent president is in this kind of trouble, they only have one option and that is to make the challenger even less palatable. The Carter campaign went for broke, dispensing political appointees across the country to argue that Reagan was dangerous: a racist and someone who would lead the country into a war, someone too radical to have his finger on the nuclear button. They were playing the only hand they had, trying to make the challenger out to be even worse than the incumbent. Trump has been doing this to Biden all year long, even when it looked like Biden would not be the eventual nominee. He has tried to paint Biden as old, weak, and not up to the job—hence “sleepy Joe.” And he’s tried to convince America that Biden will ruin the American way of life, especially in the suburbs. However, when Reagan took the stage on the night of October 28, 1980, America did not see a dangerous, radical war-monger. They saw an avuncular, kind man who could look right into your living room and ask the killer questions:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is American as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe? That we’re as strong as we were four years ago?”

After that debate the dam broke. On November 4 Reagan beat Carter by 9 points, winning all but six states and the District of Columbia. Next week, Joe Biden’s sole job in his first debate with Trump will be to show America that he is not a dangerous radical or a socialist. Biden must show that he is strong enough to do the job and steady enough to keep from becoming a “Trojan horse” for the radical left. In fact, he should come up with his own version of “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” If he can pull this off, Joe Biden has a good chance of following in the electoral tracks of Ronald Reagan.

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: Washington Grinds To a Halt, Leaving Americans’ Mounting Problems Unsolved

There are times when everyone in Washington puts their best face forward and projects optimism. As unemployment insurance drops out from under millions of Americans, evictions are no longer banned and even post offices have become an endangered species, this is not one of them.

Lawmakers are locked in bitter and increasingly personal negotiations over what comes next to help struggling Americans staring down a pandemic. No solution is in sight. A federal supplement to unemployment insurance expired a week ago, as did a ban on kicking renters out of homes they can’t afford at the moment. The postal service — soon to be the chief elections administrator amid the coronavirus pandemic — is a new battleground for lawmakers who are about to head into full-time reelection mode with their deliberate inaction looming in the background.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter.

The August recess is poised to start, when America’s elected officials will go home to ready the fall campaign season with face masks as the new yard signs. The optics of going home as health, economic and racial crises are entering a sixth month is the equivalent of pouring a bucket of iced water on a cardboard cutout of Lady Liberty.

Put simply: anyone telling you Washington cares about people like you is fibbing.

To be fair, lawmakers are exhausted. Senators on the ballot this fall have told McConnell to park colleagues in Washington so he can save his grip on the gavel beyond November’s elections. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is taking his first turn as the Administration’s leading hostage negotiator, and he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been schooled on the details of policy repeatedly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aren’t talking to each other. All the while, millions of Americans are in their first week of sharply reduced safety nets.

Meadows, a former House member who was a leader of the burn-it-down Freedom Caucus, signaled he was losing confidence in the potential for a deal before a self-imposed Friday deadline to find a fix. “Is Friday a drop-dead date? No,” he said. “But my optimism continues to diminish the closer we get to Friday, and [it] certainly falls off the cliff exponentially after Friday.”

Another bludgeon of honesty came during Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s interview on Wednesday with The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse. During a conversation between the two Capitol Hill veterans, McConnell offered this blunt assessment as to why he wasn’t part of the negotiations about the next round of pandemic relief unfolding among Pelosi, Schumer, Meadows and Mnuchin: “It eliminates sitting there and having to listen to Pelosi and Schumer’s talking points, which gets in the way of serious discussion.” It takes someone like Hulse to elicit that level of candor from the notoriously sphynx-like McConnell, but, in the words of the President, “It is what it is.”

There’s no easy fix to this moment. Washington dysfunction is running high. Distrust among the parties — not to mention between the chambers — is soaring. When lawmakers can’t agree on the fundamental need for postal workers to keep doing their jobs through snow, rain, heat and gloom, that signals a fundamental breakdown in what America expects of its government. When tens of millions of out-of-work Americans are told to trust Washington, that suggests Washington doesn’t see what its actions look like beyond the Beltway.

And when voters who don’t have a place to call home come Election Day are asked who should represent them in Washington, don’t count on them to side with the folks who let evictions start up again. It might be time to start recalibrating.

A version of this article first appeared in The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

By Philip Elliott on August 06, 2020 at 02:03PM

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1906.30 Supplemental: Missions Reviewed, “Past Tense” parts 1 and 2.

The Defiant returns to Earth for a conference on the Dominion, beaming Sisko, Bashir, and Dax down.  There’s a surge from particles left in the hull by the Romulan cloaking device and the three end up in San Francisco all right…but in the year 2024. Dax is found by a media mogul named Chris Brynner, who helps her, thinking she’s been mugged. Meanwhile, Sisko and Bashir are found by security who assume they are homeless and sleeping in the streets and take them to a “Sanctuary District.”

 If you’re homeless it’s a walled compound where you are ostensibly sent for housing, food, medical care, and even job placement.  The system is utterly overworked however and they have instead become nearly defacto prisons; once you are in one you can’t leave on your own accord, and there simply aren’t enough resources for those hurt by a failing economy. Sisko and Bashir find themselves as one of three labels: “Dims,” who suffer from mental illness and can’t care for themselves; “Gimmies,” who are looking for help, but otherwise willing to work; and “Ghosts” who are there with criminal intent, generally preying on the other group. Bashir is horrified at the conditions, but Sisko points out that these districts, which were in almost every major city in the US in the 2020s, would lead to “The Bell Riots.” A Gimmie named Gabriel Bell would protect a group of hostages when tensions got too high and riots break out. Though Bell and others are destined to die, because the hostages survived, it would become a watershed moment in American history, and bring enough attention to the problems of homelessness and mental health problems that resources would finally be aimed at actually solving the problem. Sisko also realizes they are literally days away from the Bell Riots starting. Even worse, Sisko is involved in a scuffle between Ghosts and Gimmies, and a man dies…Gabriel Bell.  

In the future, O’Brien figures out how to use the particles on the ship’s hull to search through time for the three officers. Initially Starfleet tells them they can’t but then…Starfleet disappears. O’Brien and Kira realize history has changed, and they are all that’s left of Starfleet (some brilliant technobabble explains why they are shielded from the changes). They begin transporting back to various periods to find their friends.

Dax meanwhile is doing well, she has hacked her way through her benefactor’s internet access and gotten a “replacement” ID and credit cards, allowing her to search for Sisko and Bashir. She finds roughly where they are, but the riots have already broken out. Sneaking in through the sewers she discovers that Sisko has assumed the identity of Bell and is protecting the civil servants trapped inside while the homeless negotiate with the police. Several tense standoffs ensue both inside and outside. Dax realizes that she can use her influence on Brynner to allow the otherwise cut off homeless to tell their stories online…the pivotal event that will historically change society’s mind.

 Eventually the raid comes, and hundreds of homeless are killed in the district streets. Sisko keeps the hostages alive, but takes a bullet to the shoulder.  One of the guards who was there with him, disgusted with how it has all turned out, help Sisko and Bashir escape, telling them that “so far as I’m concerned, Gabriel Bell is dead.” They rejoin Dax, are contacted by Kira and O’Brien, and return to a restored 24thCentury.  As Sisko recovers from his bullet wound, Bahir shows him that Sisko’s picture now appears in historical documents from 2024 showing Gabriel Bell. Bashir asks him how the people of America in the 21stCentury could have let it get so bad. “That’s a good question,” Sisko says. “I wish I had an answer.”

Star Trek is always relevant. I remember watching this one 23 years ago or so, and thinking how glad I was we had a warning, so we would never let it get to the point where there were camps of homeless unable to get work because they had fallen out of an identity system, or mentally ill unable to get medical treatment so they were trapped in perpetual homelessness. I mean, look at this scene from this episode.

Oh, wait. That’s Seattle right now.

After a generation of pushing everyone to go to college when we didn’t have enough college level jobs so no one has a trade, and making all job applications online now so you can’t even apply without internet access, a computer, and an address, we have created the very situation Trek warned us about here. Yeah, I know, there’s the lazy and those who just don’t want work; the criminal and the grifters.  And with that 10% out of the way, let’s talk about the other 90%. The mentally ill who are self-medicating because they can’t get access to steady healthcare and have become addicted to various substances. The people who have had rent increases in certain areas double in the last decade while wages have stagnated. Kids whose parents have been laid off and are attending schools while living in their parents’ cars. Veterans who can’t get proper VA assistance dealing with God knows what every time they close their eyes. I don’t know that I have a solution for any of that, but Star Trek asks us to look it in the eye, and maybe if enough of us do, we can try something.

 Because it could be any of us. And whatsoever you do or do not do to the least of my brethren, it is as if you have done it to me. OK, that’s not a Star Trek quote, but I think you get the gist.

Star Trek is always relevant. And sometimes, it’s prescient. I really wish it hadn’t been in this case. We’re still five years from 2024; let’s see if we can break this trend, shall we? Though, to be fair, Star Trek has never painted a pretty picture of the 21stCentury.  After the Bell Riots, Trek history says there will be huge nationalist movements pushing genetic purity that will result in wars across Europe, Asia, and North America; whole populations targeted for genocide based on ethnicity or perceived eugenic flaws. Nuclear exchanges between ideological zealots will lead to WWIII from 2026 to 2053, leaving much of the world in a new dark age. Ecological destruction leaves huge swaths of devastated terrain. Finally in 2063, Zephram Cochrane will build the first human warp engine, getting the Vulcan’s attention and starting us on the road to recovery.

Trek does show us a bright future, but it says it gets a lot worse before it gets better.  It doesn’t have to be this way. We can stop it.  We know how.

Let he who has wisdom hear.

NEXT VOYAGE: Not letting up at all, DS9 throws ethical decisions about end of life decisions at us when an accident leaves Vedek Bareil on “Life Support.”

[narcisbolgor-blog]

Trumpolicy: Day 19

Washington (CNN)On day 19, the Trump administration is beginning to defend the travel ban.

The 9th Circuit Court began hearing oral arguments conducted via telephone on Tuesday. Three federal judges heard arguments in a case brought by attorneys general of Washington and Minnesota. The states want the travel ban suspension to remain in place. The Trump administration, citing terrorism concerns, wants it to remain in place.

NEW ON DAY 19 ...

IMMIGRATION

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly spoke before the House Homeland Security Committee Tuesday morning.

Kelly expressed regret about the order's sloppy rollout and said he should have delayed Trump's travel ban executive order "just a bit" to inform Congress.

When asked about concerns over specific individuals getting into the country, Kelly said the US won't know whether or not they are terrorists "until the boom," sounding a bit like Condoleezza Rice's warning that, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" in the lead up to the Iraq War.

A new Quinnipiac poll shows a narrow majority of Americans oppose Trump's entire executive order by 51% to 46%. Americans are even more opposed to indefinitely banning Syrian refugees, by a margin of 70% to 26%.

Starbucks has announced it will offer employees and their families free legal advice if they are impacted by the Trump travel ban.

With the national immigration conversation largely focused on the travel ban and the border wall, Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue are pushing a bill to cut legal immigration in half.

The Senate broke the filibuster of Sen. Jeff Sessions' nomination for attorney general and are expected to vote to confirm him on Wednesday.

OBAMACARE

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz face off Tuesday night to debate the future of health care in America.

At his weekly press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan pledged, "We are going to be done legislating with respect to health care and Obamacare this year," but acknowledge that implementation could take longer.

At his daily briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump is in favor of Medicare negotiating drug prices. On Obamacare timing, he said, "I think we can have this done legislatively sooner rather than later, but I think the implementation of a lot of the pieces may take a little bit longer."

What's behind Trump's shifting rhetoric on repealing Obamacare? Sources tell CNN that Trump's legislative affairs aides have helped temper the former businessman's expectations on how quickly Congress can get it done.

A new Monmouth poll shows that 25% of Americans call health care costs the top issue facing their family. This is up from just 15% who said the same thing two years ago, and outpaces concerns over job security or paying household bills.

Employers, many of whom are no big fans of Obamacare, are nonetheless worried that a Republican replacement plan may harm job-based healthcare coverage.

AARP is fighting attempts to charge older adults more for healthcare received through Obamacare.

The House Freedom Caucus is set to unveil its Obamacare repeal and replace plan.

After several tense town halls, House GOP leaders are telling members to increase security at the events.

IMMIGRATION/HEALTHCARE

STAT News profiles a cardiologist who works in rural West Virginia and happens to be a Muslim Iraqi immigrant. The community still trusts him with their lives.

ProPublica reports on the case of a Cleveland Clinic medical resident who was caught in the travel ban, due to her Sudanese citizenship. The Clinic and its lawyers arranged for her to return to the United States in what the author likens to "a clandestine mission that had the makings of a hostage rescue."

TRADE/TAXES -- The Wall Street Journal has a detailed piece looking at the merits of the border adjustment tax, and narrows in on the split emerging amongst conservatives and Republicans surrounding the proposal.

TRADE -- General Motors set a record in 2016 by selling 10 million cars for the first time ever. Which market got them over the hump? China.

INFRASTRUCTURE -- Minority Whip Steny Hoyer among those speaking at a Brookings session on how to pay for infrastructure. He warned against trying to solve America's problems in 24-month cycles.

ENVIRONMENT

The US Army Corp of Engineers has finished its review of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and will grant an easement allowing construction of the project to continue.

A group called the Center for Media and Democracy filed a lawsuit alleging EPA nominee Scott Pruitt violated Oklahoma's Open Records Act when he was Attorney General.

The Science Committee held a hearing called "Making EPA Great Again." A NOAA climate study was again questioned and defended.

LOOKING AHEAD...

LATER THIS WEEK -- OBAMACARE -- Sen. Jon Cornyn said off-camera Monday evening that the Senate would vote on HHS nominee Tom Price by the end of the week.

WEDNESDAY -- INFRASTRUCTURE -- Senate EPW Committee hearing on modernizing infrastructure.

WEDNESDAY -- OBAMACARE -- Sen. Mike Lee serves as a panelist on a Heritage Foundation roundtable titled "Congress Must Repeal Obamacare Immediately."

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