Two recent updates from the oldest Dem congress members: Steny Hoyer of Maryland has announced that he will retire with this term. He's 86 and was first elected to Congress in '81 Maxine Waters of CA has announced that she's seeking another term. She was first elected in '91 and will be 88 during the November election. She's putting herself ahead of what's good for America and the Democrat party. She says that she has more to do. You had 35 years, how many more do you need? Pelosi (85) and Davis (84) have announced their retirement. The only other 84+ is Jim Clyburn and I haven't heard his plans.
America isn't going for socialized medicine. We can also debate how the Horns are going to win the CFP for the next 20 straight years. Both situations are not impossible but highly unlikely and not worth discussing. When polled Americans say they hate the current system. But when people are asked about their personal healthcare, presumably insurance and care, they are generally satisfied with it. It reminds me how people hate Congress but they give their Congressman a decent grade, especially if they support the same party.
Blackjack is rarely blackjack now. They've changed a small rules to create a large advantage for the House. Yes, they had an advantage before but its much, much worse today. From my understanding, you can only get older (better) rules when you start playing $100 blackjack in Vegas. While I enjoy reading and watching tales of the blackjack card counters take down casinos, they've ruined blackjack for the rest of us. It should be criminal to call these new tables blackjack. Crazy looking back on it, but my parents in the 70s/early 80s had no problem with me playing blackjack all day on Atari. Maybe that wasn't a good idea in hindsight.
I would flip your statement of "no ACA plan pays MD Anderson." MD Anderson has rejected ACA plans because they cannot pay enough to cover MD Anderson's costs. I'm not an expert about ACA plans but I assume they're prevented by law from paying more than a certain amount. Either by legal limits or in practice due to lower revenue. Also I would be careful about her joining a Medicare Advantage plan. Go with traditional Medicare to give her more options even though it will cost you more. She can always switch to MA plans later on. Its not the same the other direction. If your broker is only pushing Medicare Advantage, find someone else.
Quality would drop because staff would be let go. The insurance through your work pays healthcare more than medicare pays. You take away the incremental difference and people will lose jobs. Also all hospitals will start to resemble the county hospital that honesty most here on this forum would look to avoid. If you have a job that provides you with decent/good insurance, you don't want Medicare for All. If we went to Medicare for All, below are my high level thoughts on the quality impact. I'm not talking about money. Poor - better care because today most doctors avoid Medicaid patients. The poor struggle to find care. They would now be on equal footing and will have more options. Lower to middle class - about the same, maybe better. Middle to high class - worse. This group currently has the best insurance through their jobs. They will now see the lower two groups taking more doctor times. nothing inherently wrong with this but its a reality. High to uber wealthy class - same to better. They will join (and pay through the nose) private concierge and priority care. This group always has law carve-outs to protect them and come out ahead. I'm not opposed to changes. I think that all children should be covered for free by the govt. Workers shouldn't be penalized with expensive health plans just because they had kids. Besides as a society I think we owe it to get kids to adulthood as healthy as possible. Just like how we decided to give free schooling. Parents could still opt for private healthcare for kids just like with private schooling.
could you imagine how fast the impeachment hearing would start from the GOP if Obama had written this? But he did wear a tan suit one day and he's black. So there's that.
I don't understand why any witness engages with Mace. If she asks a question, answer any other question to burn out the clock. She will get upset but that will help run out her time even faster. Or reply that you don't understand the question. Or answer it as if she said that African Americans instead of Somali. Flip it into that she's asking if non-whites should be citizens.
I'm also part of the crowd that doesn't understand the appeal of sports gambling. I've placed bets at sports books and even won a few large parlays, but I've never experienced the appeal of sports gambling. I can play craps for hours, and sports? nah. And now that you add to the obvious fact that players, coaches, and refs are aware of lines, and there are cases where they act on the lines, it's practically a fixed game now. Now the fix may be on your side. You can get lucky. I don't agree much with Texas politicians, but I'm aligned with Dan Patrick that we don't need gambling here.
Then quality of care will then drop. Doctors and hospitals will need to decrease staff to accommodate less revenue. And not just office staff but direct care. Someone above made a comment that the rest of the world has solved healthcare so why can't we. It's a bit simplistic to say that they've solved it when there is most likely 180 systems for the 180 countries. There isn't 1 solution out there, and each one of them has their deficiencies. Not to mention that the US indirectly subsidizes the rest of the world's healthcare since our model creates new drugs and treatment. And now that the US govt is out of research as of 2025, healthcare is even more dependent on the US capitalist system. I don't have the magic answer either. No one does. I've never even heard the Medicare for All side define if they mean traditional medicare or medicare advantage. They're not the same. Personally I think Medicare Advantage sucks.
Does anyone not think that Russia is funding an information campaign to convince Trump to forcibly take over Greenland? Russia wouldn't even want Greenland or Denmark to agree to it, they want a conflict in NATO.
Yes. There is no law that prevents them from banning you or limiting your bets to small amounts if they identify that you're better than average gambler. It's like how casinos can prevent you from playing blackjack if they identify that you're good at counting cards in blackjack. They can't have you arrested because you didn't break a law but they alter betting amounts, ban you from blackjack or even trespass you from the casino itself. They do accept that people win and can even win large amounts but they don't want someone who looks to naturally have an edge over them.
Medicare for All would almost certainty remove all healthcare costs for employers and there's no chance that they would have a new or increased tax placed on them. Politicians would tell you that it's up to the employer to pay their employees more now that healthcare costs are zero for the employer. And if your employer doesn't give you a corresponding raise, then that's your problem to work out.
One of the major drivers of healthcare increases are the massive increase of medicare patients over the last 10 years as the youngest baby boomers are quickly approaching 65. Doctors and more importantly hospitals at best break even with medicare patients and often perform services at below cost. The result is that younger (<65) people and their insurance have to pay more in their healthcare to cover the old people on medicare. The CMS website tells me that medicare recipients grew from 53m in 2013 to 68m in 2024. The move from traditional medicare to medicare advantage also has pros and cons for total costs as well. Moving everyone to Medicare creates some interesting efficiencies but Medicare would be much more expensive for everyone if it became the default.
My dad ultimately couldn't understand or always control his TV. This was mainly due to dementia. He didn't live with me so it was frustrating when he wanted me to drive 30 minutes to help him change the channel. And then he would promptly switch the channel to something else in the next commercial break and couldn't find his way back. I discovered that his cable service had a remote control app for your phone and it didn't require that the user physically be in the house. From across town, I could switch channels, play a recorded show, record a show, etc. The only areas that I couldn't control was turning on the TV or the volume.
Crazy how no one publicly touts any positivity of sports gambling but we keep expanding it every year. Instead of entertainment being the reason for sports, sports are now largely used to move money out of the pockets of gamblers and into the gambling companies. I'm not anti-gambling but it's not a good idea that we all have casinos and sports books in our phones and the TV channels spend as much time on lines and odds as they do other sports stories.
The Noriega invasion/arrest also benefited from an earlier time when there were limited media options. It wouldn't surprise me if we cut off Panama's communication methods during the invasion.
I'm not a fan of Maduro but grabbing him would be no different from Putin grabbing Zelenskyy or Xi deciding that he disliked Philippines' actions and taking their President. There's always the time immemorial idea that if you're powerful enough that no one will stop you, special rules apply to you. Didn't Saudi Arabia hold the Lebanon PM against his will with zero repercussions. And we know about Saudi's murder of the journalist, or Russia shooting down commercial flights. There's also the precedent of the US invading Panama in '89 to depose Noriega. I believe that was several weeks before Noriega surrendered and we had actual US casualties.
CNN had an article that Trump spoke to the GOP House and Senate members at a kick-off for 2026 initiatives and elections. He apparently called out Massie as being unreliable. What a consensus builder.
The plans are all concepts within Trump's brain which are swarming with beta-amyloid plaques. I imagine that Trump is at a mental standpoint that Stephen Miller can "remind" Trump of Trump's masterful plan even if Trump never entertained the thought. Does any Western oil major want much to do with Venezuela even with cost protections. Ultimately any cost reimbursements or long term stability is at risk depending on who the US & Venezuelan President will be. I don't think any CEO would have confidence that the US policy wouldn't drastically change quickly. If Trump makes a deal with an oil company, why should any future Dem president honor it, if not look to reverse any past reimbursements? Perhaps this wouldn't happen but a CEO has to consider it. Not to mention if future Venezuelan leadership nationalizes the industry again since this was forced on them and the US decides to let it happen.
From all indications, Greenlanders are happy with their semi-autonomous status with Denmark. Now perhaps if there were serious negotiations, which would never happen with Trump, they could require entry as a state and bypass the territory status. This would give them 2 senators and 1 rep for <60 K residents. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to be a lowly territory without power. There’s also a question of who actually owns most of Greenland. Does the Denmark or Greenland govt claim ownership? The Danish monarchy? do private individuals own it?