TrumpCare his first Big Disaster!

Trump's got a big problem when it comes to his promise to lower the cost of health care. Trump supporters actually think he's going to lower prices with better health care:

Here's Trump's never to be forgotten health care promise, and his plan to go with high deductible health savings accounts (HSA):



Trump supporters talked about that promise. Here's just an example:



Lowering the price can't be done unless we go to a single payer system. But even then, while the cost generally would decrease by removing the middleman insurers, we can only slow the rate of medical increases.

I dare the Trump administration to not just match the trend lines in the graphs below showing a decline in the uninsured, but show us a reduction in the actual cost of insurance. He won't be able to do it, and Americans will soon realize they were duped by our con man president.

Trump thinks Health Savings Accounts (HSA) will lower premiums. But they're high deductible insurance policies, which no one can afford, and everyone hates so much on the exchanges. Check out the difference between the deductibles on the ObamaCare exchanges and "off exchange" private insurance policies. It runs counter to Trump's promise:

Remember these graphs and what they represent. Once the Affordable Care Act is repealed, it's never coming back, but premium rates and uninsured Americans will skyrocket. On a human level, preventable deaths with increase dramatically and health based bankruptcy's will be solidly at the top of the list, threatening the solvency of middle-class Americans. Can they take another hit?

Note: Paul Ryan's bogus "patient centered" plan, controlled by insurance companies, is based on people buying "only what they can afford," basically à la carte. In insurance lingo, that's called a junk policy. My conservative friend in Milwaukee is sold on this idea, arguing since he won't have to pay for someone else's vasectomy or pregnancy, he will save money. Care to make a bet insurance companies won't allow their bottom lines to take a hit? It also ignores the fact that no matter what's covered in the junk policy, the cost of treatment isn't any cheaper, so don't expect to save any money.

Example: Before the ACA, my insurance plan had a drug "option," which really wasn't an option at all. I never used it and it cost $500 a year. When I tried to remove it, I was told I could never add it back into the policy. That's choice in the private sector? So this love of the old way of getting insurance is a mystery to me.

Bros for Bernie handed Wisconsin over to Trump!!! While Voter Suppression decreased Dem. Turnout!!!

So, Democratic voters didn't feel motivated and never bothered to vote, that was the difference?

Or was it voter suppression...kind of a big topic nationwide just before the election? Isn't it odd how voter suppression worries just magically disappeared now that the Republicans won?

The Nation's Ari Berman has this glaring reminder:

There were 25 debates during the presidential primaries and general election and not a single question about the attack on voting rights, even though this was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. 

Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in 2016—including crucial swing states like Wisconsin and Virginia—yet we heard nary a peep about it on Election Day except from outlets like The Nation. This was the biggest under-covered scandal of the 2016 campaign.

For example, 27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID. Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives, according to Daniel Nichanian of the University of Chicago.

Thanks Bros for Bernie!!! Berman didn't mention this amazing fact: Those Bros for Bernie voted their conscience and went with opportunist Jill Stein, handing Wisconsin over to Trump:

Ryan thinks Trump's win earned him a Mandate. Wrong!

When Republicans win, it's always a mandate according to guys like Paul Ryan. He says Trump has apparently been given a mandate.

MSNBC's Steve Benen pointed how wrong he is:

House Speaker Paul Ryan gave the president-elect credit for a win that defied political odds and helped Republicans down ballot. “What Donald Trump just pulled off was an enormous political feat,” Ryan said in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, adding that he “just earned a mandate.”

1. While the Trump obviously won the election, he also lost the popular vote. In other words, the nation was given a choice and more Americans chose Hillary Clinton ... it does undermine Paul Ryan’s claims that voters handed Trump a mandate.

2. Four years ago this week, Paul Ryan was asked, “Does Barack Obama now have a mandate?” The Wisconsin congressman replied, “I don’t think so.”

Remember, Obama had just won a second term with relative ease. Obama not only won the popular vote, he became one of only six presidents in American history to top 51% of the popular vote twice. In Paul Ryan’s mind, however, Obama didn’t earn a mandate, while Donald Trump, who received fewer votes than the Democrat, did.

It’s almost as if Republicans are playing some kind of “heads I win, tails you lose” sort of game and Ryan’s so-called principles shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Hillary, Democrats should not appease, go along with Narcissist Trump and Authoritarian Republican Party! Obstruct!

Republicans did what they set out to do; rub a Trump victory in our face. That was the real agenda:

Humble winners?

The biggest mistake Hillary Clinton and the Democrats could make now is agree to get along with a right wing authoritarian megalomaniac and the anti-American pro-business Republican Party.

Liberals, progressives and Democrats cannot agree to abandon any of the issues and progress the country had made over the last century. If we do, we can expect even lower future election turnouts.

The country is about to do what no other industrialized country in the world would do, go with supply side trickle down voodoo economics. We've seen it fail in every Republican state, despite massive spending cuts that never seem to be enough.

But this also means the end of net neutrality and an affordable internet, block granting Medicaid for the poor, and making the alt-press the go to media source.

Declare a revolution.

Election 2016 Moments to Remember....

First Lady?

Sheriff Clarke suggests we need "all guns firing at Mrs. Bill Clinton right now."

Misogynist Sheriff David Clarke is a real piece of work. His assertive disrespect of Hillary Clinton as a professional and a person shines through when he condescendingly calls her Mrs. Bill Clinton. What an asshole and throwback. Here's Clarke's "ballsy" stand against a woman he knows he'll never have to confront in person. Upfront with Mike Gousha:



And as a law enforcement leader, we'd have to assume he knew what he was doing when he intentionally incited some gun carrying goons somewhere in the country to take aim and shoot at Hillary Clinton. He really thinks we'll believe it was an accidental turn a phrase?

Lock him up, lock him up, lock him up...in his short-staffed jail with no water:

Feingold has edge in Senate Race.

Russ Feingold's chances of winning back his senate seat have improved since the last Marquette University poll:

11-3-16: A Public Policy Polling survey of Wisconsin voters finds that Russ Feingold leads the Senate race in the state 49/44. (margin of error 3.3%)

Just before that and overlapping the Marquette poll, a Real Clear Politics Poll revealed to a Fox News audience...

Feingold did defend his vote against the Patriot Act, but failed to call out big government Republicans and Johnson as the party of intrusive government - big brother prying into our private information and personal lives. Feingold's position of limited government took a beating by big government Johnson this time around because he loves the idea of surveilling law abiding Americans.

And if we took one big issue like common sense background checks for gun purchases, something Feingold did not emphasize in his closing ads, the race might not be so close. According to PP Polling:

By a 24 point margin voters say (Johnson’s) opposition to background checks legislation makes them less likely to vote for him, and by a 20 point margin voters say his opposition to prohibiting known terror suspects from buying guns makes them less likely to vote for him. 

84% of voters in the state support requiring background checks on all gun sales, to only 11% who are opposed to them.
76% of voters support prohibiting individuals convicted of committing a hate crime from buying a gun, to just 13% opposed to that.
74% support prohibiting anyone convicted of stalking or domestic abuse from buying a gun, to only 15% opposed to that.
80- 92% of Democrats in support, 74-84% of independents, and even 65-76% of Republicans.

The Horror that is Trump!!!

Just to document for historical reasons the utter helplessness most American feel watching the Trump campaign, I brought together a few bleak assessments that hit their target. But first on the lighter side...

...from what I remember about this video routine below, the three guys here have used other large face masks as their signature, because it gets a lot of laughs. This was also done sometime early in Trump's run for the presidency, so give the kids credit for their vision and odd choreography.



First up, this dystopian Trump critique by Think Progress:

The question is whether our elected officials will still be allowed to govern in a way that displeases Republicans. It is also whether, given the conservative justices’ hostility to voting rights claims, our elections can be skewed in ways that prevent Democrats from prevailing even when they enjoy majority support.

The terrible legal theories (like) striking down child labor laws and the minimum wage, for example, aren’t all hypothetical ideas. They are actual decisions that the Supreme Court handed down in the darker moments of its history.

The GOP doesn’t seek to built a libertarian dystopia from nothing; it largely seeks to revive doctrines that once commanded a majority on the Supreme Court and are now discredited. Of course, in a world where only Republicans get to name justices, liberal decisions of any kind are unlikely to last very long. One of the primary functions of the Supreme Court is to maintain that uniformity. But it cannot do so if it has been wholly discredited by partisan efforts to rig its membership.

That democracy is the rule and judicial intervention is the exception, no longer has a home within the Republican party. They abandoned it in their Ahab-like obsession with killing Obamacare. They abandoned when they demanded that religious conservatives be given broad immunity to the law, even if that immunity strips other people of their rights. They did it to strip President Obama of his lawful authority, even when that authority is explicitly given to him by federal law.

Here's the Huffington Post:

Why Are Tough-Minded Working-Class Voters Still Rallying Behind 'Con Man' Trump?Fact checkers have found Trump to be the most dishonest major party candidate they’ve ever encountered. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has given a Four Pinocchio rating to an astonishing 63 percent of the 91 Trump statements it has examined – a Four Pinocchio rating means a statements was totally false. In contrast, 14 percent of Clinton’s statements received Four Pinocchios.

Mitt Romney and many others agree that Trump is the greatest con man ever nominated by a major party. Indeed, Trump has been compared to some of the great demagogues of history, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who spectacularly and falsely stated that a horde of Communists worked in the federal government.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria:

"Donald Trump is different. Not just because he is obnoxious, tacky and vulgar, or that his business dealings show him to be a scam artist. He is different because of what he believes. Donald Trump is not a normal candidate. He is a cancer on American democracy,"

It's interesting to note how Democrats represent so many more people, and yet are in the minority:

According to the voting reform group FairVote, “the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes.”

A ThinkProgress analysis determined that nearly 171 million Americans are represented by Democratic senators, while only about 150 million are represented by Republicans.

New Meme: Because Democrats not perfect, and will always be under investigation by Republicans, they shouldn't run for office.

We already know Republican low information voters are easily manipulated, but will they buy into the idea that phony and constant investigations into all things Democratic precludes liberals from ever running for office? 

Yes, without a doubt. Our right wing authoritarian anti-government, anti-two party system overlords think threats and vilification will do the trick. Only if Democrats let them.

The best description of this upside down thinking came from Judge Jeanine Pirro. Remember, the relentless Republican attack of overblown suspicions based on "appearance" based guilt and phony outrage automatically disqualifies Democrats from running for office:

Pirro laid out the case for why Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cannot be allowed to move back into the White House. 

"We cannot have a country led by a president subject to ongoing criminal investigations, potential indictments and never-ending hearings. We cannot have a president under that level of scrutiny, that inevitably leads to even more questions and more investigations," she said. "Irrespective of what happens to her-- whether she's indicted or even guilty-- it doesn't matter. Her guilt is a moot point. She cannot take the oval office."

Thankfully Pirro put the world on alert too. A Clinton presidency should not be taken seriously, and is illegitimate, like Obama. This theme is getting old but works with the deplorables. And the anger about the Clinton's making lots of money...how anti-free market is that?

"How do you think the world is going to look at the United States when a woman under federal criminal investigation, who's lied repeatedly to the American people, is elected? Do you think they'll take her at her word? How many countries already own her through the Clinton family 'charitable' foundation-- which was used to raise a minimum of $100 million for her husband. How many countries like Morocco own her because they gave $12 million for five minutes with Bill Clinton? Just think: We can even have our own world joke. 

It's time to vote for the person who believes in the Constitution--the only one who will bring changes--the one who doesn't give a darn about political correctness-- the one who knows how to create jobs, and wants to make America great again." 

What, this guy....

GOP low information candidate Mike Gallagher out to lunch on Health Care.

Republican candidate in the 8th district against Democrat Tom Nelson, Mike Gallagher, must be drinking what Dumb Ron Johnson is drinking. How can two people get the whole health care issue so wrong and still be taken seriously by voters?

Here's a clip of Gallagher on WPT's Here and Now. I will show just wrong he is about health care, point by point, beneath the video:



1. Gallagher: "It's that relationship between a doctor and their patient. That is at the essence of our health care system."

Me: That is the essence of a single payer plan, where every doctor and every hospital is our doctor and our hospital...where we make our own decisions. But Gallagher isn't pushing that at all. Instead, he's all about putting insurance companies in charge, so they can tell us what doctors and hospitals to see, and what they will or won't cover, and how much. 

2. Gallagher: "ObamaCare is failing because we've inserted a bunch of DC special interests and government bureaucrats into the middle of that relationship." 

Me: Nope, wrong again, except for insurance special interests. Government bureaucrats are not in the middle of anything, but they are there to make sure marketplace enrollees get their subsidies, and that's good. Gallagher would put insurance special interests exclusively in charge, while still having government bureaucrats in place to supplement premiums, but nowhere near the amount in the exchanges. 

3. Gallagher: "We shouldn't force someone to buy health care against their will, particularly when that coverage doesn't actually protect them." 

Me: Wow, not a clue. Those who don't buy insurance end up raising premiums for everyone else, proving Gallagher has never done his research. On the second point "coverage doesn't actually protect them"...is he crazy? The whole Republican argument is based on the idea there's too much coverage, and that people should be able to buy just what they want and can afford. He's confused?

4. Gallagher: "We need to allow farmers, church groups, small businesses to band together in order to create more creative coverage options."

Me: Think about what kind of convoluted nightmare he's talking about. The time, the effort, the paperwork, the legal process of forming that group, adding new membership and keeping track of them, and maintaining and updating their billing system. What a hoop to jump through, just to buy a group policy to lower premiums ever so slightly.  

Election Closing Ads....

Late Breaking News:

Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Sunday a recent review of newly discovered emails did not change the agency's conclusion reached in July that no charges were warranted in the case of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

The two political ads that stood out over the last two days are below.

The first is a cartoon takeoff of the Simpson's, where Hillary and Bill Clinton are moving their historical baggage into the White House. Of course it's all nonsensical GOP political attack baggage they just can't get over. As I've mentioned in a previous post, this is sedition, explained away in this happy little cartoon. Republicans are powerless to stop this from happening, so the tantrum continues:



Clinton put out this ad going after Trump. Simple and to the point, the clips use here are Trump's calmer moments:

Wisconsin's Voter Suppression scheme goes national again, while an unhappy Rep. Robin Vos whines about record early voter turnout.

Wisconsin is again getting bad national press over our voter suppression laws:

This election cycle, 14 states have new voter ID laws, with eight of them limiting what kind of identification voters can use. Some people say the photo ID laws make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in voting booths, but are the new provisions targeting certain groups unfairly? NBC investigative correspondent Ronan Farrow reports for TODAY.

Note: The really loud hum starting off the clip (for 23 seconds-sorry) was a technical problem at MSNBC's site.



Rep. Robin Vos admits to Voter Suppression Tactic: In a surreal political move, Rep. Robin Vos came out swinging against the highest early voter turnout ever, as if that was a bad thing.

Wisconsin hit record early voting Friday in the wake of a federal court order allowing expanded absentee balloting, and the GOP leader of the state Assembly called for restricting the practice to make early voting more uniform across rural and urban areas.Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said:

"We're probably going to have to look at it again to make sure that everybody in the state has the same chance to vote. It shouldn't be up to an unelected judge to have the final say."

Judge Peterson did away with early voter restrictions because they didn't make sense.

Peterson also found requiring early voting to occur at only one location was unconstitutional because it put a greater burden on voters in Milwaukee and other large cities, where many minorities live. It is much easier for a small town to accommodate voters with a single location than Milwaukee and other urban centers, he wrote.

Protest Sign "Republicans Against Trump" nearly used to assassinate Trump in Reno?

Trump, our brave no nonsense "tell it like it is" leader, was scurried of stage like a frightened rat in a moment that no one could have predicted; a protester carrying a threatening sign. A Fox News Alert breathlessly described the chaos:

“It was like he was running forward to get to the front,” said a man who declined to give his name. “He was saying ‘excuse me, excuse me’, working his way to the front.”

Below is the humorous twitter storm that followed:

One popular loony toon actually tweeted this poster to mark the historical event:

Republicans talk Sedition while voters describe Trump as "strong," "straight forward," "savage," "he believes what he says is real" when he's wrong!!!

It's frightening to think the US could be ruled by the paranoid masses of disenfranchised voters in rural and suburban areas who continue to get the short end of the stick by their own Republican politicians. Their resentment has all but blinded them to the hard cold facts that conservative small government policies have disenfranchised them, ignored them, and made them unimportant.

In fact, the politics of resentment is proof Republicans haven't done anything to help their own rural constituents like urban Democratic politicians have. So instead of blaming their own Republican representatives for short changing and ignoring their concerns, rural and suburban voters were egged on by their elected officials to blame the Democrats for actually serving their big city constituents.  

Scapegoating is the rule now under Trump. Win or lose, Trump has made anger and resentment a battle cry for sedition. Yes, sedition. Making that case was Thom Hartmann in this editorial:

Lately conservatives haven't even bothered to sound like they respect the will of the people. A growing number of Republicans now say if the next president is a Democrat - AKA Hillary Clinton - these Republicans say they're not going to her let her put anyone on the Supreme Court.

John McCain and Ted Cruz have said as much in recent in recent weeks. Republicans have now moved from obstructionism to outright sedition.

What they're doing now with the Supreme Court is insurgency by other means - it's political terrorism - and it's yet another example of how their party has moved outside the mainstream of American politics into the fantasy-land of reaction ... it's just one way that they're laying siege to our court system - and our democracy.

We saw this coming when Republican voters bought into just two simple words that replaced policy and representative democracy; "freedom" and "liberty." Who needs long policy explanations or problem solving when "freedom" and "liberty" is all that's needed?

Check out the amazing crowd comments below, from those who admire Trump for being wrong sometimes but firmly believing in his wrongness, it'll blow your mind. It's a pass Democrats will never enjoy:

I think the comments below, from the article "9 Republican Women Attempt to Explain Why They (Still) Support Trump," says it all. Alternet:

The most shocking statement came from Jane Biddick, who has supported Trump since the primary:

"I heard that he said something about groping women, and I’m thinking, Okay, No. 1, I think that’d be great. I like getting groped! I’m heterosexual. I’m a woman, and when a guy gropes me, I get groping on them! I grope them back. Groping is a healthy thing to do. When you’re heterosexual, you grope, okay? It’s a good thing. Try it. I wonder if Nixon groped Pat."

Jane Biddick followed up her support for groping and being groped by adding she hadn't... 

"...even gotten on to see exactly what Trump said, because I think that’s stupid. Unless you want to write Jesus Christ in as your vote, you might as well forget it. Since December, I’ve done very little reading. I’ve heard little snippets here and there on the radio, and I don’t watch TV. I’m just going on what I have at the gut. If Trump really did something that made me feel like he was compromising what I thought was good for the country, I’d get right on and I’d start reading. But all I hear is people are saying he likes to grope women. I’m sorry, that just hasn’t given me any doubt about my vote."

Merchon Andersen is also sticking by Trump "We have become so wussified. Pretty soon, saying hello to someone is going to be considered harassment." 

Allison Doyle also seems to have turned a blind eye to the unpleasant Access Hollywood video, saying, "I haven’t listened to the recording of what he said in 2005, because I feel like it’s so irrelevant. It was 11 years ago. We’re not voting for someone based on their character." She went on to criticize Bill Clinton as "scum," though he is not running for president this election, and that is of course a judgment on his characer. She didn't mention Melania Trump's response to her husband's "locker-room talk," but instead said, "I’ve never heard about Trump cheating. I know he’s had multiple marriages—which, in today’s society, who doesn’t?" 

Trump's Breitbart Presidential Campaign Crooked, Rigged.

It looks like the FBI has a major legal problem leaks from supposed "retired" agents.

The Guardian's 'The FBI is Trumpland' article wrote this:

Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.

Federal law and longstanding FBI policy prohibit employees from trying to influence elections. Since Comey’s letter, FBI agents have leaked information about a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

Here's hoping Rudy Giuliani gets an FBI visit real soon over the following amazing admission. Giuliani hedged on saying anything at first, but ego stepped in and he blurted this out:

“I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it, and I can’t even repeat the language that I heard from the former FBI agents.”

Here's the lead up with Rachel Maddow, and Giuliani's jaw dropping Fox News admission that supposed "former" FBI agents slipped him the leak. Talk about rigged:



Creating fictions and conspiracy theories is a Breitbart feature, and Trump's campaign took off on it. Here's a great analysis of the whole Trump campaign that we can someday look back on and say, we were warned:



We really did know what was happening at the time of this election, but few people supporting Trump listened. Here's a little of Charlie Sykes on Trump:

Recycled Republican candidate Kapanke longs for days before Affordable Care Act, when fewer Wisconsinites had Insurance.

At a recent debate, former state Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse, tossed out more misinformation that conservative voters would naturally think was right. WPR:

Kapanke favors ending the federal ACA. Even before the recent announcement ACA premiums were going up, he didn't believe the program worked. 

"We need to go back to where Wisconsin was prior to Obamacare where we did have 90-plus percent of our people covered with some kind of health care insurance."  

That was deceptive and wrong. 

A Kaiser Family Foundation report suggests 93 percent of the state's residents were insured through either employer-based insurance or government programs in 2015, up from 91 percent in 2013 before the ACA began. 

Let's Get It Straight: I'm tired of hearing Republicans brag about how Wisconsin was a leader in insurance coverage. The reason we covered so many Wisconsinites? We opened BadgerCare up to those making up to 200% of the federal poverty level, which Scott Walker and his band of plundering Republican pirates threw overboard immediately:

Scott Walker canceled Medicaid coverage for 77,000 people who have incomes above the poverty line. It (once) allowed people making up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level to be covered by BadgerCare ... the governor ... roll(ed) BadgerCare eligibility back to 100 percent of the poverty line.

And that's why back in 2013, Wisconsin's insured fell to just 91%. Now it's at 93%, thanks to enrollment in the ACA's Marketplace. But those stuck between 100%-200% are still having problems getting health care on their tight budgets: 

Oddly, this is the Republican mantra now, repeated below by Dumb Ron Johnson. Russ Feingold of course had to explain why that was a bad idea to the drooling GOP mob hoping to lose their own health care someday:

Warning: Free Market Health Care System will see Consolidation & Skyrocketing Premium Increases!!!

This whole health care debate about repealing the Affordable Care Act for private free market competition is a ruse to distract from the anti-competitive multi-layered problems and abuses private insurers and medical providers are using right now. 

It’s an early look at what will happen if Republicans turn health care into an unregulated private sector profit making machine. And since most people have employer provided health care, they don’t know any of this is happening.

Keep in mind, if medical errors were a disease, it would be the third major cause of death in the US..

Under that backdrop, check out what one market dominant hospital system is doing to not just shield themselves from lawsuits, but prevent businesses from negotiating away increased premiums. This is where hospital consolidation nationwide will take us. WPR: 

San Francisco Bay Area companies say Sutter Health, the largest medical system in Northern California, is strong-arming them into a contract that would help the hospital system secure its power over prices and potentially raise the cost of medical care for their employees in the future. Dozens of companies have received a letter, via their insurance administrators, asking them to waive their rights to sue Sutter. If they don't, a fact sheet says, the companies' employees who get care through Sutter's network of hospitals, doctors and medical services will no longer have access to discounted in-network prices.

"In both choices, Castlight and our employees lose," says Jennifer Chaloemtiarana, general counsel for Castlight Health, a tech company in San Francisco.

As an employer that pays its employees' medical claims, Castlight doesn't like the idea that it will never be able to challenge Sutter over its prices in open court … waiving that right would only help strengthen the power of Sutter's "already dominant" provider network.

Economists have long argued that Sutter uses this power to charge more for its services. Sutter's hospital prices are about 25 percent higher than other hospitals around the state, according to a recent study from the University of Southern California. Having a very strong, dominant provider system will reduce choice.

Wasn't "choice" the whole reason why we have to go to a privatized health care system? Guess that was wrong. 

We’re Right, Everybody Else is Wrong: It should come as no big surprise that Sutter Health arrogantly believes their critics are wrong, and all that fact-based research is biased:

"Recent academic studies have been one-sided and misrepresent the competitive environment of Northern California," said Bill Gleeson, vice president of communications for Sutter, adding that the studies "unjustly inflate the so-called market share of Sutter. There's competition all around." Gleeson says companies "can't accept deep discounts and make up their own rules."

Just another ugly wrinkle in the private insurance market that will only get worse if politicians let "free market" principles roll over the public welfare for money.

Trump will get even with Cubs too, especially after winning World Series for first time since 1908

Trump Promises No Premium Increases Under His Health Care Plan!!!

If Trump did manage to win, I want everyone to remember this flat out promise from Trump on doing away with premium increases:

“In the future if I’m president, there won’t be ObamaCare so you won’t have to worry about it,” Trump said of the premium increases.

Got that? Just so we’re clear, Trump said we won’t have to worry about premium increases. And just like Obama’s promise that people could keep their old plans, we'll have to scream bloody murder if Trump’s promise fails.

Trump wants to go back to the old system, just like Paul Ryan and Dumb Ron Johnson, who long for the good old days of  20% to 50% increases a year.

Believe it or not, here's Ron Johnson actually saying how he'd go back, an admission few Republicans would dare say in public. His debate opponent Russ Feingold ran with it:

Trump’s plan is like the GOP plan pushed by Paul Ryan. And guess what, according to analysts, it stinks. You were warned:

An analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that 21 million people would lose their health insurance under Trump’s plan. Only about 1 million people would gain coverage under his replacement, the study found … longtime Republican ideas ... allowing insurance to be sold across state lines, encouraging health savings accounts and making premiums tax deductible. 

“In the future if I’m president, there won’t be ObamaCare so you won’t have to worry about it,” Trump said of the premium increases. 

Trump Tower's Secret Servers to Russia no Big Deal for Trump Mob.

UPDATE: After Trump won the election, this appeared in The Guardian:

Republican voters are easily swayed by conspiracy theories, like the emails, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation...but Democratic voters have never sucked into that fear mongering political tactic. 

FBI Director James Comey's ridiculous irresponsible announcement may have changed all that. Hillary Clinton just released this interesting tweet:

The Hill: According to a new report from Slate, a computer scientist tracking malware and going by the name “Tea Leaves” has discovered a pattern of conversation that appears to tie a server registered to the Donald Trump organization to two Russian servers registered to something called Alfa Bank. Further research of the pattern of conversations revealed they would occur during office hours in both New York and Moscow

Computer scientists began looking into GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s servers in the wake of the hack into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that U.S. intelligence has blamed on Russian actors. “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” one of the unnamed academics involved said. 

NBC reported that the FBI is looking into former Trump campaign manager Paul

Manafort’s foreign business and political dealings … reports of his involvement with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

The group forwarded their findings to computer science expert Paul Vixie, who concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project” … the Trump and Alfa servers had something like a digital hotline connecting the two and hiding their existence.

Clinton’s campaign senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement, "This line of communication may help explain Trump's bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin and endorsement of so many pro-Kremlin positions throughout this campaign. It raises even more troubling questions in light of Russia's masterminding of hacking efforts that are clearly intended to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign. We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia's meddling in our elections."

Trump's not so secret Russian Partner Emerged, but no one cared: After confirming Russian involvement in the hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, it was a little unsettling to see Russian Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's video below touting a Trump presidency and threatening nuclear war if Clinton is elected.



And Trump's fascination with dictatorial strong men is just as crazy....



Trump's now famous "puppet" tantrum obscured the even more troubling back hand he gave to the 17 intelligence agencies that warned of Russia's involvement. US Navy Intelligence officer Malcolm Nance detailed Trump's connection, saying Russia would call a guy like Trump a useful idiot:



This Russian connection won't go anywhere for two reasons; it's too new - nothing like the familiar email fear fantasy; and the media that has never held Trump's feet to the fire for anything. If Clinton committed any of the Trump missteps, this would have been all over. If not for the fire breathing mob of Trump supporters and the media attempts to create a "false equivalence," this wouldn't even be close. Media Matters explains this false equivalence below: