Below are two positions taken by a left leaning columnist and a right leaning columnist that essentially say the same thing. SOMETHING, mind you, Dennis tapped into some time ago in his article entitled, “AMERICA’S SECOND CIVIL WAR.” Here are the other two articles mentioned in these audios:
Before beginning I just wish to say that California is working against the clear Constitutional mandates that the Federal government controls and protects its borders… and the Trump administration is working against the Constitution in its trying to fight against California’s legalization of marijuana. NOTE! If you are for the state of California choosing to legalize pot, but against the state defining marriage as between one-man and one-woman… you are a confused individual who makes choices on emotion and not Constitutional foresight/understanding. When Walsh and Prager discuss “arresting California lawmakers,” in my minds eye the legal standing ta do this is Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution — which reads:
“The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government…“
I have been warning about this for years in regard to The Golden State… California is setting itself and our country up for a world of hurt.
NEW YORK TIMES:
AMERICAN GREATNESS:
* Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic of Time Magazine. His works include the novels, “As Time Goes By,” “And All the Saints” (winner, 2004 American Book Award for fiction) and the “Devlin” series of thrillers; as well as the recent nonfiction bestseller, “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace.” A sequel, “The Fiery Angel,” is scheduled to appear in 2018.
CONSERVATIVES: “Once we start tearing down traditional family structures that have generally served humanity well and proven themselves over thousands of years of human experience, who knows what will happen then.”
PROGRESSIVES: “Stupid bigot. It’s not like we’re trying to normalize incest or anything.”
PROGRESSIVES (3 years later): “You know what would be fun? Normalizing incest.”
Documents discovered by the Daily Caller have revealed that the Antifa group present at the Berkeley anti-conservative riots have connections to the pedophile group known as the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
The Antifa group known as the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), have led several anti-right riots, including the one against provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and were behind the plans to disrupt Ann Coulter’s Berkeley appearance before it was canceled.
According to the Daily Caller, BAMN’s parent organization, the Revolutionary Workers League in Detroit, has worked directly with NAMBLA. Additionally, BAMN’s co-founder, Eileen Scheff is a member of the Revolutionary Workers League, and an admitted member of NAMBLA. Reportedly, she describes NAMBLA as being the victum of a “witch-hunt.”
Driver argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of BAMN as recently as 2013.
Driver’s former law partner, Eileen Scheff — who has represented BAMN on multiple occasions, including at the Supreme Court — has been a self-described “member of NAMBLA.” The bulletin identified Scheff as an RWL member.
“As an activist in the legal and political struggle for lesbian/gay rights and for freedom of sexual expression, I am here to support NAMBLA and to demand that the witch-hunt against it must be stopped,” Scheff said at a 1991 NAMBLA conference. “The media and police are targeting NAMBLA because it stands for the rights of young people to have consensual sex with whomever they want.”……….
The DAILY WIRE explains the rejection by normal people of Leftist ideals:
A new poll from CATO Institute demonstrates in living color just why President Trump won the 2016 election. According to the poll, 71% of Americans “believe that political correctness has done more to silence important discussions our society needs to have.” Only 28% of Americans think political correctness has bettered society.
That’s an amazing statistic, and shows just why the Left was bound to fail in 2016. They continue to maintain that intersectionality is a path to glory — that a philosophy that prizes shutting down certain viewpoints based on ethnicity and class will help them cobble together a winning coalition. But broad majorities of Americans reject that view. What’s more, Americans who reject that view seem most likely to keep their views to themselves, possibly skewing political polls: 73% of Republicans and 58% of independents say they self-censor in order to avoid political blowback.
President Trump ran on an anti-PC platform. He won on that platform. This poll shows why.
[….]
But there is some good news: people aren’t quite as offended as they seem to be on others’ behalf. A vast majority of blacks and Latinos don’t find typical “microaggressions” particularly offensive.
This means that if Americans saw each other as individuals, rather than as stereotypes of political views they hated, they’d be more likely to calm down and engage rather than increasing the vitriolic tenor of today’s politics. But that would mean moving beyond reactionary politics — and that would, in turn, require the Left to stop promoting the regime of political correctness and intersectionality. That seems unlikely, given the poll result that 61% of Democrats say it’s hard for them to be friends with Trump voters. But the more Democrats alienate Trump voters, the more they’re setting up Trump’s re-election effort.
The Politicization Of Everything: Want to watch football? There are players protesting the flag. Turn on a Hollywood awards ceremony? There are actors making political statements. Want to go to the bathroom in peace? Well, first, we need to know if you’re okay with sharing it with someone who feels like the opposite gender today. You’re just a regular person telling an off-color joke you heard? Better be careful; that could turn into a front page scandal if the wrong group gets offended. Want to buy a Halloween costume for your kid? Well, you better make sure it’s someone of the same race or people will be upset. Want to go on a date? If you date someone of the same race, you may be racist. Ready to marry your honey? Then you better support gay marriage or you’re a homophobe. I can remember a time in America where you could just live your life without paying attention to politics at all if you wanted and that was a good thing. Remember that old saying? Never discuss race, religion or politics in polite company? Well, because of liberals, you don’t have a choice anymore.
Over the last five years, 29-year-old Martina Big has transformed her body with countless cosmetic procedures and tanning injections. Now, she says she’s the ‘proud owner of black skin’ and identifies herself as a black woman. (See my TRANSRACIAL PAGE)
I actually wrote the show and stated this:
At about the 4:20 mark it is mentioned that “race and color is much more than skin deep, its heritage, pedigree, tradition, history, struggle…” (rough quote). May I proffer something… all that can be said of the transgender movement. Being a male or female is much more than estrogen shots deep… it is heritage, pedigree, tradition, history, struggle… NOT only that, but there is only “one race,” the human race. The differences between ethnicity is much smaller than differences between the sexes. Genes turned on or off that produce melanin, maybe more fat around the eyes, etc.
Women have ovaries, have breasts, produce milk, have a uterus, different chromosomes, produce estrogen, etc., etc. THIS gap is much larger than merely ethnicity. As an Irish descendent my history of slavery (hunted down by Brits and sent to the America’s) and being under barbarism is almost as bad/deep of a wound. And? That history has zero reflection on my attitude today. Like it didn’t with Frederick Douglas (read his speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”).
“THE DAILY CALLER caught up with Gesualdi, who says his experiences reveal how humorless the Antifa protesters are and how dangerous they can be — especially when there are no alt-right protesters for them to fight against.”
….“As a comedian I am obviously a big free speech advocate, which is why this recent wave of protests bother me,” he says. “Though most of the protesters have good intentions and show up simply looking to exercise their free speech rights, many come for the sole purpose of starting fights and causing destruction. That’s not how we solve problems in America.”
“What I do is bring a bit of absurdism to the venue, to hopefully keep things lighthearted while also showing how ridiculous it is to characterize these protests as if they are the battlegrounds of a civil war,” says the comedian. “These kids may think they are badass street soldiers fighting against the forces of evil, but it’s hard to maintain that narrative when you’re being heckled by a peanut vendor.”
Gesualdi says that unlike the last time, the protest site was “almost devoid” of right-wing voices, many of whom were chased off by the large Antifa turnout, or because they were warned not to go by the organizer.
“I saw one group of people being chased into the police station by a group of leftists,” he says. “There’s actually a great video of this on LiveLeak, which pans over to me hawking my wares.”
The comedian says that the normal Berkeley protest crowd was peaceful, with “lots of people laughing, asking for pictures, etc.” A trio of Juggalos — fans of Insane Clown Posse — even treated Gesualdi to a bottle of Faygo and he got to sing along to “I’m Gonna Let It Shine” with older hippies.
“It was only when I got too close to the Antifa camp that things started to go south,” he says, describing how he was attacked by two separate black-clad groups.
“One group of Antifa-types took issue with the tiny American flags attached my vendor’s tray of snacks,” he described footage that was captured on his video. “Declaring them symbols of colonialism and white supremacy, they ripped them off and burned them in front of me. I was surprised they were so brazen about it, and parts of the crowd even cheered as the flags burned.”
Gesualdi was confronted by another set of Antifa later on in the day, when one of them declared him a “troll” and encouraged the group to accost him. “Knowing this could end badly I attempted to walk away from the situation, but they followed behind, ringing a cowbell for some reason. Very intimidating.”
He speculates that the reason he was targeted was because few right-wing voices had come out for them to attack, so they were happy to go after him. “They lobbed some rotten tomatoes at me, but thankfully, none of them could throw worth a damn. They blared rape whistles in my ear and got some tomato juice on my shirt, but stormed off in anger when I just ignored their nonsense and kept trying to sell them bags of popcorn.”
Gesualdi says that what really surprised him about the protest was how many people there were going on about the “evils of capitalism.”
“They seemed too much like a stereotype of the classic clueless communist who knows capitalism is evil but isn’t really sure why,” he says. “One young man tried seriously explaining to me that people didn’t want to pay because they were socialist, though I actually had commenters from socialist countries tell me that of course they pay for their food and that kid was a clueless idiot.”
“Others told me to cease my selling and ‘seize the means of production.’ I will have to look into seeing if the state is willing to acquire me a free peanut factory.”
Gesualdi says he won’t let the bad experience deter him from going to future rallies if it allows him to keep exposing their absurdity, but he worries that Antifa will paint a target on his back if he becomes a regular face.
“The Berkeley police were nowhere to be seen on both occasions I’ve gone and I honestly believe it’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed at one of these things,” he says.
On Tuesday night, ESPN confirmed what people had been assured was not a satirical piece from The Onion, though it would have been a great one — announcer Robert Lee had been pulled from calling a college football game because it just “felt right” at the time, so soon after a woman had been killed while protesting white supremacists in Charlottesville.
In an email to reporters, ESPN said it all came down the simple coincidence of Lee’s name. We know that Merriam-Webster is quick to correct President Trump on Twitter whenever he goofs up, so we hope someone there is paying attention to Reuters’ feed today………
FOX NEWS has a story to catch the listener up on the issue, and one must take not that I stuffed the CNN bit in-between Prager’s commentary.
NEWSBUSTERS discusses the upcoming D.C. policy regarding gender and I.D.
If you like your pronouns, you can keep your pronouns.
Well, you could. But not any longer. Now, you must use whatever pronoun somebody else wants. We are now all supposed to guess who might want to be thought of as another gender. Or, act like idiots and ask gender pronouns of everyone we meet.
Perhaps we need a database, readily accessible from our phones, that lists all the new gender possibilities (a large database) and then you can run down the list every time you meet someone new. “Hello, possibly human person, do you consider yourself a he, she, it, ze, zir, they or some other made up word to express your inner issues?”
Gosh, I wish I was joking. But new pronouns are all the rage. D.C. (which stands for District of Columbia, not the opposite of AC) is now issuing genderless driver’s licenses. CNN reported June 28: “They would become the first people in the United States to choose X as their gender marker instead of male or female on driver’s licenses and identification cards.” X, as we all learned in movies, marks the spot. In this case, the spot that is the most gender insane in the U.S.
Lefty media love this craziness. “On May 31, AP released its 2017 Stylebook. The new Stylebook contains changes on the language used around gender, LGBTQ people and ‘they,’ as a ‘singular, gender-neutral pronoun,’” wrote the Washington Blade.
Citylab gave readers “A Guide to Using Gender-Neutral Pronouns” way back in 2015. “Rule No. 1: Don’t assume you know someone’s gender just by looking at them,” readers were told.
For timeliness, there’s an 8-month-old Canadian baby that has no official gender. Let’s look at the loons from Jezebel to explain how insane this is: “The baby, named Searyl Atli Doty, was born in November in a house rather than a hospital and did not have a medical official inspect their genitals to determine their biological gender. One of the baby’s parents, Kori Doty, a non-binary trans person, wants Searyl to discover their own gender—and not having a specific gender on any of the baby’s records is integral to that discovery.”
“Discover their own gender.” Boy, that’s going to be one well-adjusted kid later in life.
And now, the lefty women’s site Refinery 29 explained, “THE EASIEST WAY TO KNOW IF SOMEONE PREFERS TO BE CALLED ‘HE,’ ‘SHE,’ OR ‘THEY.’” That’ was part of the video feature, “TRANS 102.”
The video is important to watch because governments in New York and Canada are working on making mis-gendering someone a crime. Yep, lefty governments are that demented. And the alt-left can’t even agree on how many genders there are — New York’s 31 or Facebook’s 58? Or some other number bigger than a bread box…..
Dennis Prager reads from GATESTONE’S article, entitled: “Australia: The Madness Continues.” The whole hour was on the West’s suicide, but this section is for all my fellow patriots to the Western ideals down-under. We are at war with trying to conserve simple common sense designations.
I will first post a serious challenge/worry that the MSM (mainstream media) will be using as “special cases.” BUT FIRST, why is this not a good way to write law? That is, write law using special cases. Being that I am “conservative” and lean towards this bias, I will use some examples from these similar thinking people. The first zeroes in on a separate issue, but in regards to writing laws, it is the same:
…Proponents of gay marriage fail utterly to comprehend the idea that laws are made with society, not the individual, in mind. That is why they also fail to grasp the idea that law is predicated upon averages, not outliers. Interestingly, both libertarians and progressives suffer from this lack of understanding…
…But more often they try to undermine the link between marriage and childrearing by pointing to outliers—marriages in which couples choose not to have children or cannot have them because at least one partner happens to be infertile. But this argument only reveals the weakness of the progressive understanding of the law. Put simply, rules that are justified by the average case cannot be undermined by the exceptional case, otherwise known as the outlier. Thus the old maxim, “Hard cases make bad law.”…
Mike S. Adams, Letters To A Young Progressive (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 81, 82.
The following two media files are the same analogy of car insurance explained by Dennis Prager, but two different times:
PREEXISTING CONDITIONS
With the above in mind, here is my first response via Facebook to a thoughtful post:
This is a thoughtful and understandable challenge by a single mother who is on a fixed income… she asks a question about her child with a malady and what the change in “pre-existing” is according to the current bill (remember, it will go through the senate, then most probably “conference,” reconciliation [by this time the CBO will have gone through the bill then — which will be tweaked from the one we are speaking to currently], and then be re-voted on)…
…here is her concern:
✦ My child’s digestive and respiratory issues caused by her being born prematurely and her grief depression caused by her farther dying when she was 5 are all considered pre-existing. As a single mother on a fixed income, her health care is an issue I do get very excited about!
With the AHCA, and the future fixes, premiums will fall dramatically. If you are caught without insurance for 63-days, you will pay about 30% more, but again, the overall payment will be much lower. Due to Obama-Care imploding (the latest example out of the many is Iowa having zero insurance coverage options, in other words, if you are a single mother on a fixed income in many states, you have zero options.
This was and is untenable. One of the GOP’s goals is to allow cross state competition for insurance groups that will increase pool sizes and lower costs dramatically. This has been illegal. Also, tort reform would be the single most beneficial thing that could be done… This is hard because injury lawyers are the first or second largest donors to the Democrat Party, so until we get enough conservative and other Republican’s to take this part of the issue seriously, the Democrats will continue to stand in the way of effective ways to lower your cost and increase your coverage options.
ADDENDUM 1 Just to add to make what I said clear (wanting clarity to reign). If you have not had insurance for 63-days — and AFTER this point you get an illness, this is when “pre-existing” kicks in. You see, I run a warehouse, and while the owner (a close friend) could afford the rise in his premiums, and I had insurance through my wife, the responsible young man who made $12 bucks an hour had insurance through Blue Cross on his own, lost his insurance because of Obama-Care. When he could find a policy again, it was more expensive. Two years after this it was more than twice as expensive as he was paying before O-Care. And he made the least in the warehouse. Why was it so expensive? His plane included pregnancy tests, Pap smear, mammogram, etc.
This way, through this legislation, the premiums should drop (esp. through more free market options in the future), but the cost won’t be a burden to poorer responsible people who have health insurance.
I just wanted clarify the above, as, I feel for you. Your concern is real! The call at the end of this interview is similar to your case (via my YouTube upload):
ADDENDUM 2 Sorry, one last thing, and this is to help you get through the weeds of Main Stream Media and all the other sources you will come across — yes, even me. The best non-partisan summary is this:
➤ States may opt-out of requiring premiums to be the same for all people of the same age, so while individuals with pre-existing conditions must be offered health insurance there is no limit on the cost of that insurance. A new $8 billion fund would help lower premiums for these individuals.
So even with the “ding” against “pre-existing” cases, there is money set aside for people just like you… if your state chooses to participate. BTW, this is called Federalism light… it is more Constitutional than the previous plan. Something we should all be moving towards.
The above Kellyanne Conway Tweeting of a WASHINGTON POST OP-ED by Cathy McMorris Rodgers:
Hearing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional monologue this week about his son’s condition and his family’s experience in the moments after his birth, I had a flashback to the day my son was born and we learned he had Down syndrome.
My husband and I had a lot of questions about Cole’s future. Whether he’d have health care shouldn’t have had to be one of them. When you’re facing years of doctor’s appointments, you want to know that having a preexisting condition, such as an extra 21st chromosome or a heart defect, won’t prevent you or your loved ones from accessing the care you need.
Protections for children such as Cole Rodgers and Billy Kimmel have long existed, as they should. And despite what people are saying, House Republicans aren’t seeking to strip these protections — or anyone’s protections — away.
[….]
To me, protecting people with preexisting conditions isn’t just good policy — it’s a personal mission.
All across the country, families like mine have real concerns about the future of health care, and they are why we’re focusing on results and working on these reforms. Obamacare is wrong for America. It has failed, and it’s only getting worse — making health care more expensive and less accessible. To stand by and do nothing would be irresponsible. The AHCA is a monumental step forward that trusts the American people — not the federal government — to make the best decisions for themselves and their families….
She does state elsewhere that for two years premiums will still rise, but that this is a “PART 1” of a three-part “fix,” and from all I have read, they will not rise nearly as fast as under O-Care.
OTHER NATIONS OFFER HEALTH-CARE…
…EXCEPT THE FASCIST GOP…
Here is another challenge, albeit not so thoughtful:
The United States Government is stupid… every civilized nation on the globe offers citizens health care…this country can’t and won’t because of greed and big business! Fuck Trump and the fascist GOP!
Just a quick note… Hitler’s Germany offered single-payer health care… speaking of “fascists.” Here is my FB response, I will add something a bit later:
Canada, the UK, Norway, etc., Are all moving toward free-market health-care as their single payer systems fail… I have read quite a few books on this over the years (a classic I recommend is “Code Blue: Reviving Canada’s Health Care System”) dealing with the issue, it is a bit more complicated than your “erudite” synopsis. For instance, to exemplify my point a bit, here is some commentary by the guy who is the founder of the Canadian model of health care, which the UK also used for their model:
“Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.”
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”
“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”
But that is why most insurance companies backed O-Care to begin with, as a way to weed out competition. Private practices could not compete, other option (that allowed for groups of private citizens to form their own catastrophic care groups became illegal), etc… So greed plays a part, but not the way you think. Here are a couple of short examples of Econ 101 to make my point on my site: BAM! WHAT IS CRONY CAPITALISM
Here Is My Addition Here On My Site
SCANDINAVIAN SOCIALISM
One can read and listen/watch all the media on my main post about “
Economics 101
In an excellent Bloomberg article entitled, “Booming Sweden’s Free-Market Solution,” the myth is dismantled in toto by Anders Aslund. Here is a snippet:
…From 1970 until 1989, taxes rose exorbitantly, killing private initiative, while entitlements became excessive. Laws were often altered and became unpredictable. As a consequence, Sweden endured two decades of low growth. In 1991-93, the country suffered a severe crash in real estate and banking that reduced GDP by 6 percent. Public spending had surged to 71.7 percent of GDP in 1993, and the budget deficit reached 11 percent of GDP.
TURNING POINT The combination of the crisis and the non-socialist government under Carl Bildt from 1991 to 1994 broke the trend and turned the country around. In 1994, the Social Democrats returned to power and stayed until 2006. Instead of revoking the changes, they completed the fiscal tightening. In 2006, a non-socialist government returned, and Finance Minister Anders Borg, with his trademark ponytail and earring, has led further reforms. Sweden successfully weathered the global financial crisis that started in 2008, and the Financial Times named Borg Europe’s best finance minister last year.
Before 2009, Sweden had a budget surplus, and it has one again. For the past two years, economic growth has been 4 percent on average, and the current-account surplus was 6.7 percent in 2011. The only concerns are the depressed demand for exports caused by the current euro crisis and an unemployment rate that is about 7.5 percent.
Sweden’s traditional scourge is taxes, which used to be the highest in the world. The current government has cut them every year and abolished wealth taxes. Inheritance and gift taxes are also gone. Until 1990, the maximum marginal income tax rate was 90 percent. Today, it is 56.5 percent. That is still one of the world’s highest, after Belgium’s 59.4 and there is strong public support for a cut to 50 percent.
The 26 percent tax on corporate profits may seem reasonable from an American perspective, but Swedish business leaders want to reduce it to 20 percent. Tax competition is fierce in some parts of Europe. Most East European countries, for example, have slashed corporate taxes to 15-19 percent….
Finland is joining military exercises with other Scandinavian countries, as well as several members of NATO, in late May, Finnish media report. The maneuvers called Arctic Challenge will span 12 days, starting May 25, and include nine countries and close to 100 planes. The drills, over Sweden and northern Norway, come amid increased tensions between Russia and its Baltic and Nordic neighbors.
Sweden and Switzerland, which like Finland are not members of NATO, are expected to join the exercise, along with NATO members Norway, the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Finland plans to send 16 F-18 Hornet fighter jets, while the other countries will supply Gripen “multirole” fighters, F-16s, Eurofighters and Jet Falcons, as well as transports and tankers, Russian news agency Sputnik reported. The Norwegian armed forces said the purpose of the Arctic Challenge exercise is to “learn to coordinate efforts in complicated flight operations conducted in cooperation with NATO.”
Russia has ramped up military activity along its borders with northern Europe, causing consternation in several Baltic and Nordic countries and pre-emptive actions to head off — or prepare for — a possible military crisis. Latvia, which reported a Russian submarine near its coast in mid-March, is beefing up security on its eastern border, while Finland recently began a letter campaign notifying some 900,000 reservists of their duties in a potential crisis. Sweden also intercepted four Russian planes flying over the Baltic Sea in March with their radios off. Russian jets have been intercepted in other instances while flying in European international airspace….
I also pointed out that this promise went back to the Cold War, and was not known about till a Swedish defense think-tank/security firm uncovered the agreements in 1994. The original story’s link has been lost, but it is here on FOI’s site. FOI’s “about us” page has this:
FOI is one of Europe’s leading research institutes in the areas of defence and security. We have 1,000 highly skilled employees with various backgrounds. At FOI, you will find everything from physicists, chemists, engineers, social scientists, mathematicians and philosophers to lawyers, economists and IT technicians…. The Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence Material Administration are our main customers. However, we also accept assignments from civil authorities and industry. Our clients from the defence sector place very high demands on advanced research, which also benefits other customers.
Initially after the end of World War II, Sweden quietly pursued an aggressive independent nuclear weapons program involving plutonium production and nuclear secrets acquisition from all nuclear powers, until the 1960s, when it was abandoned as cost-prohibitive. During the Cold War Sweden appeared to maintain a dual approach to thermonuclear weapons. Publicly, the strict neutrality policy was forcefully maintained, but unofficially strong ties were purportedly kept with the U.S. It was hoped that the U.S. would use conventional and nuclear weapons to strike at Soviet staging areas in the occupied Baltic states in case of a Soviet attack on Sweden. Over time and due to the official neutrality policy, fewer and fewer Swedish military officials were aware of the military cooperation with the west, making such cooperation in the event of war increasingly difficult. At the same time Swedish defensive planning was completely based on help from abroad in the event of war. Later research has shown that every publicly available war-game training, included the scenario that Sweden was under attack from the Soviets, and would rely on NATO forces for defence. The fact that it was not permissible to mention this aloud eventually led to the Swedish armed forces becoming highly misbalanced. For example, a strong ability to defend against an amphibious invasion was maintained, while an ability to strike at inland staging areas was almost completely absent.
In the early 1960s U.S. nuclear submarines armed with mid-range nuclear missiles of type Polaris A-1 were deployed outside the Swedish west coast. Range and safety considerations made this a good area from which to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on Moscow. The submarines had to be very close to the Swedish coast to hit their intended targets though. As a consequence of this, in 1960, the same year that the submarines were first deployed, the U.S. provided Sweden with a military security guarantee. The U.S. promised to provide military force in aid of Sweden in case of Soviet aggression. This guarantee was kept from the Swedish public until 1994, when a Swedish research commission found evidence for it. As part of the military cooperation the U.S. provided much help in the development of the Saab 37 Viggen, as a strong Swedish air force was seen as necessary to keep Soviet anti-submarine aircraft from operating in the missile launch area. In return Swedish scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology made considerable contributions to enhancing the targeting performance of the Polaris missiles.
After a friend posted something asbout the house passing the American Health Care Act (AHCA), his own flesh and blood… his mother… wrote:
American Health Care Act (AHCA),
If their legislation is so great why did they vote themselves exempt from it? Good enough for us – not ok for them…?
I respond,
Yes, this is a great example of misinformation via the MSM [the Left]. But the reason that separated the two is explained well in this article…. BUT BEFORE THAT EXCERPT, which is more in-depth, let’s go barney style first:
NYT CORRESPONDENT FALSELY REPORTS HOUSE MEMBERS VOTED TO EXEMPT THEMSELVES FROM GOP HEALTH CARE BILL
A New York Times correspondent falsely reported Thursday on Twitter that members of the House of Representatives unanimously voted to exempt themselves from the Republican health care bill.
A day earlier, reporters noticed that a provision in the American Health Care Act would exempt lawmakers and their staff from losing some of the repealed Obamacare provisions. In response to the criticism, House leadership announced they would vote separately on the issue.
The House voted 429-0 to pass a bill rectifying the mistake, preventing lawmakers from being exempted. But the New York Times‘ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, apparently misunderstood the vote…..
HERE’S WHY CONGRESS EXEMPTED ITSELF FROM THE NEW HEALTHCARE BILL
Last week, Vox dug into the Republican healthcare bill and found a provision that would exempt Congress and its staff from many of the bill’s effects.
This provision was bad “optics,” as they say in Washington.
But instead of taking it out — like you would usually do with a provision you aren’t wedded to and can’t defend politically — the House passed the American Health Care Act with the exemption intact after first passing a separate bill that would repeal the exemption that would be created by the AHCA if both bills became law.
There’s a reason for this mess, and it’s not about Republicans in Congress not wanting to be subject to their law.
It’s about Senate procedure.
Republicans are attempting to pass the AHCA through a process called reconciliation. This process, created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, allows the Senate to pass certain bills relating to the federal budget with just a simple majority. There is no need to get 60 votes — and, in this case, some Democratic support — as there is for other legislation.
A variety of complex rules govern what matters may and may not be considered through reconciliation.
One of those is that reconciliation must be conducted pursuant to reconciliation instructions passed by both chambers of Congress. That happened earlier this year — Congress sent reconciliation instructions to two Senate committees (finance; and health, education, labor, and pensions) that were designed to allow those committees to write bills making changes to healthcare policy.
The problem, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, is that Congress’ healthcare is governed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and that committee was not sent any reconciliation instructions.
Therefore, if a reconciliation bill makes changes to the way Congress gets its healthcare, it might become subject to a 60-vote threshold because it addresses a matter that is supposed to be the purview of a committee that doesn’t get to participate in reconciliation this year.
Here I add some information I came across a day later:
ADDENDUM 1 And also from FACTCHECK.ORG, there was this updated insight that confirms the above:
….Indeed, Republican Rep. Martha McSally of Arizona proposed a stand-alone bill to strike the exemption of Congress from state waiver provisions should the AHCA be enacted into law. From the House floor, McSally said that “due to very arcane Senate procedural rules within the budget reconciliation process,” the MacArthur amendment “does not and cannot apply to members of Congress.”
“I believe that any law we pass [that] applies to our constituents must also apply equally to members of Congress,” McSally said. “Individuals who are stewards of public trust must abide by the rules that they make.”
McSally’s bill passed on May 4 by a 429-0 vote. Unlike a reconciliation bill, the McSally bill would require 60 votes in the Senate to pass.
So there are now two bills that the House sent to the Senate. The AHCA — for esoteric procedural reasons — would exempt members of Congress and their staffs from state waiver provisions. But then there’s a bill that would strike that exemption if the AHCA becomes law. Clearly, based on the unanimous vote for the McSally bill, there is bipartisan agreement that a health care law Congress passes should apply in the same way to members of Congress.
NOW, to the last, and the worst of them all… and I will link to the many articles refuting it with a couple commentaries from a few.
RAPE AS A PREEXISTING CONDITION
It is the — yes crazy — understanding that RAPE is a pre-existing condition. Dumb! [<<< my commentary]. Here is the first “non-partisan” [left-leaning] POLITIFACT notes this claim is… WAIT FOR IT…
~ MOSTLY FALSE! ~
And the WASHINGTON POST gives it their MAXIMUM debunking rating of FOUR PINOCCHIOS
I know… crazy huh? Someone told my wife — roughly this:
“I hope you never get raped… because that is a pre-existing condition.”
I sent her this post from the not Trump friendly REASON.ORG website… to which yesterday the last article makes clear their bottom line:
If Democrats and progressives would just stick to actual details of the AHCA, they would still have plenty of material to make Republicans look bad (and the same goes for traffic-thirsty bloggers). But once again, that’s not enough for them. In their zeal to portray Donald Trump and the current GOP as worse than Nazis, the actual details of the bill don’t matter—and if that terrifies a ton of sexual-assault survivors and terrorizes American women in the process, so be it.
Since yesterday the article has been updated substantially, which I will post a portion of:
Update | May 6, 11:30 a.m.: Since I posted this, several other media outlets have investigated the rape-as-preexisting-condition claims and come to similar conclusions as mine. Politifact declared the claim “mostly false,” and The Washington Post—which yesterday morning published an op-ed yesterday perpetuating the rape claim—ran a Fact Checker column today giving it Four Pinnochios. “The notion that AHCA classifies rape or sexual assault as a preexisting condition, or that survivors would be denied coverage, is false,” wrote the Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee. In addition, “almost all states (at least 45 to 48) have their own laws protecting survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.”
“It takes several leaps of imagination to assume that survivors of rape and sexual assault will face higher premiums as a result of conditions relating to their abuse,” Lee continues.
A person would need to be in the individual or small-group market (most Americans under 65 are on employer-provided plans), in a state that sought waivers, and in one of two to five states that did not prohibit insurance-company discrimination against survivors of sexual abuse.
In other words, this claim relies on so many factors — including unknown decisions by a handful of states and insurance companies — that this talking point becomes almost meaningless.
We always say at The Fact Checker that the more complicated the topic, the more susceptible it is to spin. Both media coverage and hyperbole among advocates are at fault for creating a misleading representation of the House GOP health bill. We wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios, but the out-of-control rhetoric and the numerous assumptions pushed us to Four Pinocchios.
What is also sad is that people do not read the bill outside it being put into political talking points outside the media or their organizations. I have already noted the following above:
➤ States may opt-out of requiring premiums to be the same for all people of the same age, so while individuals with pre-existing conditions must be offered health insurance there is no limit on the cost of that insurance. A new $8 billion fund would help lower premiums for these individuals.
But here is more of a response to the broader challenge at hand:
Myth #2: People with pre-existing conditions will lose their coverage or pay more.
In fact, people who have health insurance and want to make changes to their coverage during open enrollment or after a qualifying life event (birth of a child, job loss, marriage, death, divorce, move, etc.) cannot be charged more for health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
That said, if someone went uninsured and waited until they got sick to enroll in a health insurance plan, the MacArthur amendment to the AHCAgives states the authority to try to prevent that from happening.
One of the things a state could do, under this amendment, would be to allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions more money for their health insurance, if they’ve been uninsured for an extended period of time.
One of the authors of the AHCA has a congenetital heart issue, he says this in an op-ed:
The American Health Care Act (AHCA) that I voted for and passed in the House does just that:
It establishes a healthcare system built upon free-market and consumer-driven principles that will revive competition, increasing quality, drive down costs, and expand coverage.
Congressional members and staff are not exempt from the AHCA. The McSally Amendment made sure this legislation applies equally to everyone.
THOSE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS CANNOT BE DENIED COVERAGE. I HAVE A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION WITH MY CONGENITAL HEART DEFECT, AND I UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO MAINTAIN COVERAGE FOR OTHERS.
Low-income Americans are not losing coverage and will still receive coverage under Medicaid.
And finally, here are a repition of what is above, but for good measure:
1. The Upton Amendment: The Upton Amendment, named after Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mi.), adds another $8 billion on top of the aforementioned $100 billion to cover high-risk patients with chronic and/or pre-existing conditions. This amendment was put in place to help satisfy more moderate-leaning Republicans who felt the AHCA took too much away from their constituents.
Here is the final explanation to be clear:
….As the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts it, without community rating, “Insurers could increase premiums by unlimited amounts for people with a history of cancer, hypertension, asthma, depression, or other conditions.”
Likewise, lifting the essential health benefits requirement would allow insurers to offer plans that don’t cover chemotherapy, maternity care, prescription drugs, or other expensive treatments.
In other words, insurers could effectively turn away the sick by refusing to sell policies that cover the services they need at any price, much less an affordable one.
These concerns are wildly overstated.
First, the only people supposedly at risk of being denied affordable coverage by these waivers are the 7 percent of Americans who buy coverage in the individual insurance market.
Insurers have long been banned from discriminating against the sick in the employer-sponsored market, where a little less than 160 million Americans get their coverage. Those with pre-existing conditions who get their coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, or another government program have nothing to worry about, either.
Second, the House-passed American Health Care Act would only allow insurers to base premiums on the health status of an applicant if that person went without coverage for 63 days or more the previous year. Those in waiver states who maintain continuous coverage could not be medically underwritten — and so would be protected from egregious premium hikes.
Further, pre-existing conditions are far less common than Rep. Pallone and his fellow travelers claim. A 2010 congressional investigation found that, pre-Obamacare, insurers denied just one in seven applicants in the individual market because of a pre-existing condition.
That means that about 1 percent of the total non-elderly population has a health problem serious enough to even need those pre-existing condition protections.
Even if we add the entire uninsured population to the individual market and assume the same denial rate, the share of non-elderly people declined coverage because of pre-existing conditions would be less than 3 percent. That estimate is almost certainly high, as a number of the uninsured are probably eligible for coverage elsewhere, whether through work or a government program.
For this small share of the population that could potentially be priced out of the individual market because of pre-existing conditions, the AHCA includes several additional layers of protection. The House bill seeds a Patient and State Stability Fund with $130 billion over ten years to reduce premiums and out-of-pocket costs for these folks.
A last-minute amendment to the AHCA provides an additional $8 billion over five years specifically earmarked to help those with pre-existing conditions in waiver states who let their insurance coverage lapse for more 63 days or more pay their premiums. Insurers can consider these folks’ health status when determining premiums — but only for one year. After that, they’d pay the standard rate for their age.
Many waiver states will choose to direct at least part of that $138 billion toward high-risk pools — programs that offer subsidized coverage to those rendered uninsurable because of a serious medical condition.
By removing these most costly patients from standard risk pools, high-risk pools would help keep premiums down throughout the insurance market — and ensure that younger, healthier patients have affordable coverage options.
The AHCA has plenty of flaws. But it’s dishonest to argue that it abandons individuals with pre-existing conditions.
Liberal Media Claims Trumpcare Makes Rape A Pre-Existing Condition, It Doesn’t (Young Conservatives);
FAKE NEWS: No, The Republican Health Care Bill Didn’t Just Make Rape A Pre-Existing Condition (DAILY WIRE);
No. Rape Is Not A ‘Pre-Existing Condition’ Under The Republican Health Care Bill (CHICKS ON THE RIGHT);
No, Rape is Not a Pre-Existing Condition Under GOP Health Bill: Hysterical allegation vastly misstates impact of partial Obamacare repeal passed by House (POLIZETTE);
When the GOP Isn’t Murdering People, It’s Exploiting Rape Victims (NATIONAL REVIEW);
Just Stop: No, the AHCA Does Not Make Rape a Pre-Existing Condition (VICTORY GIRLS);
NY Mag Falsely Claims Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition In AHCA (NEWSBUSTERS).
As the Left gets more progressive, womanhood [and manhood] is being replaced with genderlessness — so claiming “feminity” and special protections for women is old-hat. The National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1988 in their official paper, National NOW Times, wrote: “The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.” But now “lesbian” excludes others who do not identifiy using such gender oppresive language. Lol…
David Menzies reports the British Medical Association has issued a “communication” guide instructing members to avoid the term “expectant mother” to avoid offending transgender people. MORE
No one knows why they marched. HA!! TOO FUNNY! Not Gay Jarred and Stephen Crowder dressed as trannies and marched in Washington D.C. What happens when you join the national #WomensMarch to find out what it’s really all about? We find out. Also, we went as undercover transgenders.
Keep in mind the “pink pussy hats” were a statement against Donald Trumps vulgarity. It reminds me of the Leftists breaking windown, punching people with “Make America Great Again” hats on, throwing water and soda on people walking into Deploraballs, burning cars, and the like… because they are worried Trumps presidency will turn violent against persons.
