This is super personal to me because it almost killed me. I’ve told this story on reddit, but it bears repeating:
tl;dr lost my doctors due to an insurance change 4 weeks in to a 6 week open heart surgery recovery…
In 2018, my company was in the process of being sold. No big deal, above my paygrade, nothing for me to worry about.
Then I got sick right after Thanksgiving. Really bad heartburn that lasted 5 days. It wasn’t heartburn. I had a heart attack. 12/3 I had open heart surgery, single bypass, and that started a 6 week recovery clock.
On 1/1, the sale of my company closed and we officially had new owners. I also officially lost all of my doctors because the new employers don’t do Kaiser in Oregon. They do it in WA and CA, but each state has to be negotiated and they never had presence here.
1/2 I start working with Aetna to find doctors, hospitals, etc. Beyond the cardiologist I need a new pharmacist, podiatrist, diabetes care and a general “doctor” doctor.
Fortunately, my new employer is a big enough fish, they have their own concierge at Aetna and she gets me into the Legacy system.
On 1/3 I start developing complications, but I don’t know it at the time. It starts with a cough. All the time. Then, when I try to lay down, like to sleep, I’m drowning, literally choking and gagging.
The concierge and I try to get an appointment, we’re told 2-3 months. For a dude still recovering from open heart surgery? Best they could do is 2 weeks. 1/14.
I can’t lay down to sleep so I buy a travel neck pillow and sleep sitting up.
I get to see the new doctor at the “official” end of the 6 week recovery. He doesn’t know me or my history so he wants to run tests.
I’m sitting at home playing video games and waiting on test results when the call comes… Congestive heart failure. Report to the ER immediately.
My heart developed an irregular heart beat, which caused fluid build up in my chest. They admitted me and were getting ready to pull fluid off me.
“What happened to your foot?”
“I dunno, what happened to my foot? I can’t feel my feet.”
Remember when I said I was sitting around playing video games, waiting for test results? Yeah, my foot was touching a radiator and I didn’t know it. 3rd degree burns, first four toes. Pinkie was spared.
So I’m in the hospital a week. I lose 4 liters of water per day. 50 lbs. of water. No wonder I was drowning. Regular bandage changes.
So now I’m facing two procedures. Electrocardio version to fix my heart, skin grafts to fix my toes.
This whole time the new insurance covers 80% until I reach the out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Then it will cover 100%.
The old insurance? ER visit for heart attack, hospital admission, 8 days in the hospital, open heart bypass… $250.
So we hit the out of pocket maximum almost immediately. My wife had a problem with her foot running through the Seattle airport. The doctor who did her toe amputation was decided to be out of network so that was another $1,100.
I was never unemployed through all this. I had enough vacation and sick time banked to cover it. Cobra didn’t apply. Buying my old insurance wasn’t an option, it was far too expensive without employer backing. Income is too high for assistance (thank god) and I took steps to max out my HSA account, which is good because we drained it twice.
Three 1 week hospital stays (2 for me, 1 for my wife), multiple ER visits, two more major medical procedures… That would be enough to break most people even with good insurance.
So if you read any of that, let me ask you something… Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
So, a couple of things… Kaiser is a membership hospital, if you aren’t a member, you don’t get in and as of 1/1/2019, I wasn’t a member anymore. :(
There is this thing called “Continuity of Care” but that only applies for services I had under the old hospital that aren’t available under the new one.
Because the new hospital DOES have a cardiac department, continuity of care didn’t apply.
Lastly, the Hippocratic Oath is largely a myth. ;)
“According to a 1989 survey, barely half of U.S. medical schools used any form of the Hippocratic Oath and only 2% used the original. In a 2011 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, about 80% of practicing physicians reported participating in an oath ceremony, but only a quarter felt that the oath significantly affected how they practiced.”
This is always what I think of when I hear arguments that our health care is “free market”. If it were, you could fire AETNA and go back to Kaiser. But that’s not the case, so insurers aren’t really beholden to satisfying their users, because their users aren’t their customers.
Yes exactly, anyone is free to set up a competing business, and incumbant players are free to make that as hard as possible while also being free to provide poor service because there is no viable competition.
and to top that up, OP could had just bought an additional care package by paying by his own pocket in the health clinic that he initially was. Completely free to do it if he wanted to pay 3 times the price. People don’t understand that in the so called free market there are actually unwritten rules set by the ones in power. They think that they would somehow be benefited from the lack of regulations while the regulations should be there in order to protect them from the greed of the mega-corps.
Registered to vote, told this story to the Bernie Sanders campaign, told it again for 4 days at the HLTH 2023 conference in Vegas. And I’ll keep telling it until something changes…
I hate to say this, but you are asking for meaningful change in a trillion dollar industry. It’s not going to happen through stories, public awareness, or by any other peaceful means.
So what, they should just give up? No. Change will happen as more and more people resist the status quo.
It may seem slow, it may be painful, it may feel like it's never going to actually work but you've got to keep going because one day and all of a sudden it will.
Of course they shouldn’t give up! I’m just saying, that’s not going to be enough.
It may seem slow, it may seem painful, it may feel like it’s never going to actually work but you’ve got to keep going because one day and all of a sudden will.
You’re deluding yourself. The wealthy will NEVER part with that much money willingly.
That’s why I partnered with a company called Savvy Coop and was invited to the HLTH 2023 conference in Las Vegas last week.
I had many good meetings with providers and health companies telling my story and our team was maybe a dozen or so patients with multiple medical conditions.
It’s getting out there. I’ll be on a podcast tomorrow.
Yeah and Sanders dropped out and we got fucking Biden. And people defend Biden because he’s not Trump. Nothing’s going to change now that Trump took over the Republican party, because why the fuck should Democrats try to do better? All that matters to voters is that Democrats are not Trump.
I feel bad for him, really I do. And I’m sorry to hear your story as well.
I’m just frustrated that Biden is the best we can do against Trump now, and nobody seems to care because he’s not Trump. We need to do better than this, but every time I bring up the Democrats’ shortcomings, the response I get is always “Doesn’t matter because Trump exists!” or they assume I’m a Trump supporter.
I’m afraid that now that Trump exists, Democrats are just going to stop trying to do anything like universal healthcare. Hell, they couldn’t even be bothered to codify Roe.
Trump is splintering his party though. Progress can’t happen as long as he’s around, Democrats have to pick up “moderates” (on the US Scale) and that puts everything else on pause. Pushing a progressive agenda now would just amplify Trump and potentially pull those moderates to him.
If we need more parties and more voices, then we need voting reform. FPTP always devolves down to two primary parties. Any secondary party would just be spoiler candidates.
Ain’t that the truth. As it stands now, I get called either a Nazi or a Libtard depending on who I’m talking to. It’s frustrating. Both sides will accept mediocrity as long as the other side doesn’t win.
And that’s why it suits the Democratic Party to tone down the progressive wing and focus on attracting moderates. If Donald breaks his party in two, then we’ll have a repeat of Perot in 96 or Nader in 2000. In both cases there were plenty of votes for the alternative candidate just in a few key districts that would have totally flipped those respective elections had they gone to the first-party candidate more closely aligned with them.
I read that with EU dates and thought it was weird to wait from Nov to March to get your heart looked at, and then March to Jan to actually have the operation. ISO 8601 FTW.
Really sorry for you both and your toes though, that sucks. Glad you’re still with us!
She has had multiple problems with ill fitting shoes and infections. She was running through the Seattle airport to make a transfer for a flight, got rubbed the wrong way, by the time he trip had ended the damage was done, the infection went to the bone and the toe couldn’t be saved.
She just had too much going on, her mother had died so it was a super fast emergency trip from Portland to Kansas and back.
I couldn’t go because I was still on my back from the heart surgery, so it was just her and our adult son.
Someone at some point should have told you this, but it rarely gets communicated until its too late. If you have peripheral neuropathy, even if you are not a diabetic, you should be doing nightly foot inspections with the aid of a mirror.
It drops the likelihood of acquiring an amputation by around 70%. Pretty much all my patients who have had amputations acquired them because they didn’t know about a foot wound before it became infected and spread to the bone.
Simply flashing your feet at a mirror kept propped next to a nightstand can significantly improve your overall health outcomes.
This is the kind of story libertarians can’t imagine because they simply lack an imagination. We don’t choose when we get sick. Your companies merger should have had no impact on your ability to get healthcare. What an absolutely insane thing to read.
Radical Israeli settlers, who intentionally build communities in the West Bank, routinely harass and assault their Palestinian neighbors. The settlers attack their herds, burn their property, beat them, and even kill them. This violence, paired with many more subtle techniques to pressure Palestinians to give up their land, has reached unprecedented levels in the month since the terrorist group Hamas’s massacre in southern Israel on October 7. At least 15 Palestinian communities have been fully displaced.
It has been going on for years
The IDF supported that shit too.
And not support like “we think this is a good idea” but escorting them while they steal land so the rightful owners can’t fight back.
Imagine living everyday knowing someone can just show up and take your home while backed by a foreign military. And if you object in the slightest way, you’ll likely be killed and posthumously labeled a terrorist and an anti-semite.
By “reading Hamas fairy tales” do you mean reading and quoting this Vox article by Zach Beauchamp, a Jewish reporter who attends weekly services at synagogue?
My wife and I are well to do in the US, with a good household income that probably puts us in the top 2% or some shit. And to maintain the sort of life that used to be considered “middle class”, we need all of that income for our family of 4. Which means that we both work. We would have liked more kids. But there is only so much time to go around. Fuck are we supposed to do, have another kid and hire a nanny? Fuck is the point of that, we wouldn’t even be parenting.
You want more kids? Give people more time. Which means LESS WORK and BETTER CHILDCARE OPTIONS.
I hope you don’t have children that you’re forcing to be babysitters. I know people who did that growing up, their relationship with their parents is… not good.
What are you talking about?
I'm 6 years older than my sister and when we were younger, I have babysitted her every day after school until my parents came home a few hours later. That's just not a traumatic thing at all.
My parents had nine kids. The eldest still doesn't talk to them, ten years after he left. Our two experiences must mean that the average reality is somewhere in between. Resentment sounds about right. /s
Isn't it neat how we can have different experiences? Just because you are happy with your specific situation does not mean that certain actions won't tend to cause resentment in the average home.
I think you'd agree that there is a stark difference between "babysitting your one sister" and "babysitting 8(!!) Children". Yet, the comment I replied to just said broadly "letting one sibling babysit will traumatize that child and they will hate their parents" which I refuted as not being the universal truth the comment made it out to be. "Don't cover your toddler's nose" or "don't let a toddler's head fall back or forwards" are such truths. "Babysitting leads to resentment of parents" isn't.
Also, babysitting and "caring for" are different things. While I absolutely agree that you should not be in a parenting role as sibling and being responsible for the upbringing of your younger siblings, babysitting usually means "watch for a few hours and keep the status quo so the child doesn't starve or kill itself while the parents are away", nothing more.
Besides, you closed your reply implying that I'm the outlier here because my experiences aren't doing what would happen in "an average home". Now don't get.me wrong here but isn't my home a little more average than your's? Like... Going by the numbers in the very post above.
the comment I replied to just said broadly "letting one sibling babysit will traumatize that child and they will hate their parents"
It's funny, i thought the exact opposite; your comment was saying that kids babysitting kids will never cause resentment, and the comment you replied to was obviously saying that kids baysitting kids is a bad habit to get into, but not terrible in moderation.
I am well aware that my family situation is an outlier, i just understood your comment to mean that kids babysitting kids will never cause resentment, so one counter example was enough to make my point, which was that you need to be careful about choosing to have enough kids so they can 'parent themselves'.
Yeah, my last sentence sounds wrong in hindsight. Should have said "That is just not a traumatic thing to me at all" or "That was not a traumatic thing at all.
I absolutely agree that a line should be drawn where you expect children to prematurely... well... mature and be parents/adults.
In my case, I was 12 or so and my sister was 6, so we both came home from school and were alone until our parents got home from work. They never expected me to make her do things or something. When we hadn't done our homework when they got home, the consequence was that the homework needed to be done still and we couldn't go out and play. That's it. My job was to make sure my sister got a warm meal (reheated; pre-cooked by my parents) and basically didn'T die. They asked us to do certain things while they were away (vacuum the living room or something) but they never really made a fuss when we failed to do it. They just made us do it later then.
The problem is that a child is the responsibility of the parents, and the parents alone. Could you have said no if you wanted to? You should have been able to, every time.
I personally take offense in strangers who tell me how my family life which I'm rather fond of "should have" been. You have no right to stamp your ideas of family onto me and my relatives. Period.
Oh? So uranibaba did not postulate their opinion on how responsibilities in a family "should be" and formulated them as absolute rights or wrongs? Did we read the same comment?
Uranibaba did not postulate an opinion. He stated a fact:
“a child is the responsibility of the parents, and the parents alone”
Parents created the child. So they are the ones responsible. It’s the same reason parents can be held legally accountable for the actions of their children. Just because parents can force someone else to raise their children doesn’t mean it’s ok.
He also indirectly told me how my parents "should have" handled the situation. No knowledge on what was on, nothing. But a "uhm, you know that your parents were wrong, don'tcha?"
I'm a freshly baked father myself and have noticed how easily many people just blame parents with wholesale statements and without the slightest bit of knowledge about how being a parent is and how raising a child actually works, yet everybody claims to be an expert.
I think we need to clear something up here. The term in question was "babysitting" not "raising". Just as I would not expect someone to "raise my children" when I hired a babysitter, why would that term be different when siblings do it?
I was 12, my sister was 6 and we were home alone after school until my parents came home from work. That's "babysitting" to me.
The fact that ppl just assumed I meant something completely different and started the judgement train speaks for itself.
I apologize for offending you, but your earlier comment seemed to imply that a child should reasonably share a parents responsibility of their children.
My oldest daughter is a bit over 6 years older than our baby. I might ask her to do something similar to what you are describing. Most people on here seem to think helping the family out equals trauma because birthing someone automatically means you retain full responsibility for them existing. It’s more complicated than that and I think the thing people are mad about is choosing to have kids in a way that you expect them to take care of each other.
For me, this always went under "caring for each other" which is something children should learn and practice. Besides, we always had a grand old time. They always made absolutely sure there was food to be warmed up, so that was.taken care of. After that, I'd play computer games upstairs, she'd watch cartoons downstairs and then shout for me when she heard someone coming. Then we'd tell our parents how we practiced piano or some shit and they knew what was up, yet let us go on.
I am you. I have two kids and fucking hell our expenses are getting out of control. Fortunately we spaced them out enough that only one is in day/preschool. But it’s still basically impossible to justify my wife being employed with only our youngest kid’s expenses. Looking at $2.5k per month of childcare expenses for one kid makes me want to give up.
My state, Oregon, passed a leave law that is currently saving our lives. Extra 4 weeks of leave that can be taken intermittently. We are financially fucked the moment we are out of our state leave. For reference I have an MS in ME and work in manufacturing. And my wife is one of the highest paid dental assistants I’m aware of.
Not to mention better healthcare! Healthcare costs are the primary reason US citizens go bankrupt. Kids get sick, adults get sick, and if one of the adults in the house gets sick and can’t help bring in money for the kids then the entire household essentially goes from upper/middle to lower or bankrupt. If a kid gets very sick, oftentimes one of the parents has to stop working to argue every single claim that insurance would be paying but doesn’t, and call every department of every doctors office or hospital to get an itemized bill and get it lowered to a reasonable cost rather than them asking for a blank check. I’m afraid of having a sick kid and losing my job to their healthcare organization (note: not their healthcare directly, but calling insurance asking them to pay for life saving care, then calling hospitals asking why a small bandage is $1200), losing my house to bankruptcy after healthcare costs, and losing any semblance of future career due to time off and losing myself.
Absolutely. Taking healthcare costs off our backs would go a long way. The birth of my first kid absolutely wiped out the savings I had built up since getting out of school, and that was WITH insurance coverage. Six years of careful planning and saving just flushed down the toilet in an instant. There's just no financially-responsible way to manage the risk of a hospital bill that could range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands depending on what does or doesn't go according to plan, not to mention the following 18+ years of unknowns. It's kind of a wonder that people are still having as many kids as they are these days.
Not to mention insurance won’t tell you what they cover until you have someone done. “Do you cover this” could mean they cover 10%, 70%, or 100%, and they don’t even know what their system will approve. This is with good insurance. Unless you are apart of the top 5% then everyone can be wiped from you very quickly without notice. Eat the rich anyone?
Not that we had much choice along the way, but you're right, we were almost completely in the dark about how much anything was going to cost as it happened. Various groups were mailing us bills for the full amounts even before insurance had settled their portion. Nobody in the entire insurance and billing game is on your side.
It was a shock to my system to hear Americans setting aside 10k+ for delivering a child. What the fuck? For a country that claims it wants kids it sure as hell doesn’t act like it.
Here is the Canadian version: you go to the hospital, you deliver, you get the after care, then you go home. Cost to you: $0 (unless you came in an ambulance, then expect somewhere between $150-400?)
In the US ambulance can cost another $10k. They are local companies that have good connections with the local police stations, and the only way to contact them is through the police, and you can only get whichever has the best relationship with the police. I say police because to get an ambulance is the same emergency number. There is usually no competition and they can charge whatever they feel like and insurance may not cover much if anything. For an ambulance, there is literally no way to know how much you need to pay, because insurance determines if you were really experiencing an emergency or if you could have driven, and being unconscious isn’t enough to determine an emergency in many cases.
So much freedom. Freedom to die from preventable causes. Freedom to experience bankruptcy often. So much freedom.
The one thing even Americans who have health insurance don’t realize about single payer healthcare systems, is that we don’t worry about it.
We don’t consider it when switching jobs, we don’t think about it when we’re sick, we don’t worry about medical bills… we just go to the doctor/hospital, and worry about getting better or dealing with the work implications of taking time off.
The weight for that piece simply doesn’t rest on our shoulders or minds at all.
You’ve been tricked and brainwashed you into thinking what you have is normal, and it’s disturbing how many of you think it’s a reasonable way to continue.
I’m American and trust me, in no way does it feel normal even after living with it my whole life. Simply hearing what you describe - not thinking about it - feels so deeply right and reasonable that it reminds me just how much weight of “this is not normal” we carry around.
You’ve been tricked and brainwashed you into thinking what you have is normal, and it’s disturbing how many of you think it’s a reasonable way to continue.
That’s so fucking crazy sounding. It also sounds wonderful. My parents almost lost our house due to medical expenses, and yes they had insurance (here’s the best part - my dad was a disabled veteran). So support the troops, yay!
Because of that experience, I’ve developed a lifelong almost PTSD about insurance and medical bills - afraid that it will happen again to me now that I’m an adult. I obsess over it. It’s terrible.
I’m so jealous of those who never have to give it a second thought.
No, you’re absolutely right. I didn’t mean crazy to sound negative - it’s just something I cannot even imagine…to never have to think about this thing that I constantly think about. It’s wild. And I really do wish it could become a reality.
Sadly, the brainwashing has been so effective that those who buy it never noticed that those gaslighting people into believing that no government system (eg, single payer) could ever work are the ones (Republicans) doing their best to ensure that government remains as broken as possible.
More people believe that our system is fucked than those who think this kind of system is normal.
We're just faced with so many hurdles, gerrymandering, red states that exist only because of minority representation have more power over larger population areas (districts by size and not population, electoral college) ... The majority of the country is merely surviving and the apathy sets in. I remind people that voting fascists out is the only way things are going to change and often the response is "Well, I tried that once and it didn't work." So they stop showing up to vote. Or they buy into the 'both sides' BS and post lame memes on Facebook and Reddit.
A lot of us really are painfully aware of how fucked it is.
“In a 2018 US poll, about a quarter of respondents said they had or were planning to have fewer kids than they would ideally like to have. Of those, 64 percent cited the cost of child care as a reason. Ballooning costs — of child care, housing, college, and more — are an issue around the world”
In 2009, after decades of falling birth rates, it began offering six months of paid parental leave, reimbursed at 60 percent of a new parent’s salary — then recently increased that share to 80 percent. The government has introduced a cash benefit and a tax break for parents of young children, and has invested in child care centers.
They’re giving money but you’re taking a 20% pay cut with massive increases in cost. Math doesn’t really work that way. You’d probably need an extra $50k/year to even consider it.
Costs keep going up and income keeps going down.
At the end of the day it’s a good thing. Less humans = less consumption = slowing the trashing of our planet.
When it takes two people’s income to live in the middle class, there is no time for children until much later. The trend is to have children at 30, when you are starting to make a decent income.
Laura Passaglia, the Sonoma County Superior Court judge who presided over the trial, barred Hsiung from showing most evidence of animal cruelty, depriving him of the ability to show his motives for entering the farms.
I hate this but I think the judge is trying to keep the crimes seperate. The trial is not about what illegal things the farm was doing, it was a trial about this person breaking the law when they broke into the farm. I don’t know what the laws are exactly where this is but a lot of the time animals are owned which puts them in the category of property but with special protections. So the judge is looking at it from you broke into someone’s property to take video or whatever of someone treating their property poorly. I hate this because without doing this it’s incredibly hard to get evidence while going through the process legally. It’s usually setup in a way that gives ample opportunity for the offender to hide any wrong doing before inspection or other laws that hinder the animal rights people. If a police officer showed up without a warrant and walked in and collected evidence it probably couldn’t be used to prosecute them in court anyway so this is a bit like that. The judge might take the mitigating factors into consideration but the trial is still about them breaking into property illegally. The whole truth is primarily focused on the break in. Also this is pure speculation and I’m talking out of my ass, so would need someone who actually knows something to varify
California law is supposed to allow a necessity defense, the fact is they knew the farms were abusing animals (they had undercover people find employment with them and see first hand, which is legal and not trespassing) and they found the same abuse on the day.
You’re definitely allowed to break into a car to rescue a baby. You might also be allowed to break into a hot car to save a dog, in which case you should also be allowed to break into a poultry farm to save abused animals.
They didn’t deny they broke in, but said there was good reason. The judge refused to allow the reason to be heard, and furthermore refused to file briefs from legal experts. What’s more, the prosecutors declined to proceed with the various theft charges, instead opting for a misdemeanor trespassing charge and suping that up with a felony conspiracy charge. Making a felony out of a misdemeanor and not allowing the defense to be heard points to a coordinated attempt targeted solely at the leader of this campaign group.
Yeh, that sounds fucked. Thanks for filling me in. Also if I spent half the time reading the article and listening as I do getting carried away and writing a long winded reply I would probably be able to make a better assessment. Thank you again
You don’t get to break into a car and rehome the baby or dog. They trespassed, broke in, and stole property. If they don’t like the practice, laws, or enforcement of existing laws there are legal ways to change those things. Vigilante Justice isn’t the answer and this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
You can find the practice of the slaughter house reprehensible and still maintain a life as a functional law abiding citizen while working towards progress at the same time.
And yet, the prosecutors here explicitly dropped the charges for breaking and entering and theft. They only went for trespass.
This is because they successfully argued against the other crimes in other trials, and convinced juries that the animals weren’t actually worth anything because they were dead or half dead.
The prosecution intentionally went for the weakest charge, then inflated it into a federal charge, and the judge intentionally didn’t let them defend against it. That reeks of collusion, and a disgustingly biased judge.
The practice of slaughtering isn’t at issue here. The issue is the welfare of the animals while they’re alive.
this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
He did not plead innocent to the crime. He admitted to doing the thing that was a statutory offense. However, in fair court proceedings, you should be allowed to give “special reasons” - that is, you should be allowed to present to the court that it was necessary to cause a lesser harm in order to prevent a greater harm. If the court had considered this and ruled against him, that would be one thing, but they didn’t even allow anyone to listen to that argument. That makes the ruling objectively wrong.
In California, where this happened, it actually does. Did you read the whole article?
DxE had obtained a legal opinion from Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC College of Law, San Francisco, saying that the activists had a valid defense for their actions because California law allows defendants to argue that they were providing aid to suffering animals out of necessity.
Furthermore, motivation is taken into consideration in many other cases across the US. For example, it is acceptable to break into someone’s car to save a baby locked inside. It may even be acceptable to break into a car to save a dog. In which case, it should be acceptable to break into a poultry farm to save abused animals.
The judge here refused to even allow this defense to be considered. She also refused to allow an amicus brief from another legal expert. This was all apparently part of a coordinated plan to slip through an overall unjust conviction and put the leader of this campaign group in jail - the local county is heavily in bed with these farms.
So I stand by my assertion, she is a bitch, and furthermore I think she is grossly unprofessional and should be disrobed.
Seems like to a certain extent the media and the public are humoring the Republicans about Hunter, because there’s a sense that allowing him to be treated extremely harshly in some way justifies throwing the book at Trump.
But that isn’t the case.
TRUMP is actually being treated with kid gloves. He staged an insurrection (potentially a coup), and should have been behind bars ever since. Actually if he had been treated fairly he’d have been indicted for the obstruction of justice charges laid out in the Mueller report.
With zero evidence, Republicans have been digging into Hunter Biden for years and they found ZERO evidence to support the allegations that they were investigating.
They stumbled into minor tax issues, and Hunter lying about his drug addiction on a firearms permit.
And then, when Hunter got treated like any other person facing such minor charges, the Republicans flipped out decided that Hunter didn’t deserves JUSTICE. No. These Republicans are out for some misplaced revenge.
Imagine how much shit would be found if any republican politician had their affairs laid bare and scrutinized as hard as they’re scrutinizing Hunter. Or any Democrat, for that matter.
My in laws were railing about it. I reminded my FIL that he purchased multiple guns while an active user of weed, and therefore committed the same crime as Hunter, so he should be charged too. He said it’s different and changed the subject.
I’m going to quibble with you about the public humoring Republicans as some sort of trade off, because I don’t think that’s it. I think the vast majority of the public just doesn’t give a shit about Hunter or Joe Biden. Is Hunter being unfairly targeted for political prosecution? Who gives a shit? Probably, but I have my own bullshit to deal with. Hunter is well-connected and wealthy. He’s not on my team. His troubles are not my troubles. If they find something and throw the book at him, OK. If they find nothing and he was put through hell because his dad was President, OK. Sucks to be that guy, I suppose.
Trump has done irreparable damage to America, and continues to attack our democracy and justice system. He is an existential threat to every American citizen. He belongs in prison, and I hope he dies behind bars while the world recovers from his reign of terror.
If that makes his buddies want to prosecute Hunter Biden as payback, that’s what happens when assholes have power. I’m already not voting for those assholes. What else does anyone expect us to do? We’re not storming the capitol building over the Bidens.
It’s not that we’re humoring the Republicans, it’s that this is their one and only game, and we’re bored. Right now, it’s Hunter Biden’s guns and fake jobs. It was Hillary’s emails and Benghazi. Obama’s birth certificate. John Kerry’s swift boat. Bill Clinton’s affair.
The amazing thing is that they’ve definitely tried it on Joe Biden, and the best the could come up with was smelling women’s hair. That man has been in politics for 53 years, and they haven’t been able to get even a hint of scandal to stick to him. The best the can do is Hunter.
At this point, the GOP is going out of their way to torture Hunter and ruin his life and image.
Deplorable behavior, I just wish the other half of this country would realize this is barbaric, uncouth, and not what this country stood for - because as it stands, we’re teetering between a more socialist capitalism and fascism.
I talked to my grandfather, he isn’t long for this world but he was clear headed when we talked - Asked him about fascism, as a WW2 vet. He has voted R most of his life, but thankfully he sees the writing on the wall at this point. It did take a little emotional damage though, his second great grandchild was just born - if things keep progressing in this fashion, what life will it have? Not the America he reminisces about, and not the good parts of the more modern times.
Hunter is starting to punch back and will have his day in court. Someone hacked his cloud account and put that stuff on a laptop Hunter never owned. And the more we learn the more it seems like Giuliani knew that and may have had an active role in setting it up.
I have worked as a freelance for around 14 years, from home. My husband, a developer, always had told me that he couldn,t work without his colleagues around. Then the pandemic come and he had to work from home for more than two years. He loved it. No distractions, no commuting (I think that is the worst), better environment to concentrate in silence....he didn,t want to go back to an office. Like never ever.
But then the company he worked for said that everybody had to go back to the office because that is what's the company wanted. My husband and the rest of his department got very angry. In three months, all the 10 people in it had gone to other remote works. The day my husband said he was leaving in three weeks was the last day of his immediate boss. So he gave notice to a higher boss, that had a big tantrum because he thought it was a workers plot.
It wasn,t, but seems that nobody has to be forced into the office if they can do better work elsewhere. Because they leave if they can. As a consequence they lost all their senior developers and two middle managers. My husband now is happy, works from home and travels to the office for meetings and things like that a two or three days every three months. He works for a big international company with people in remote in several countries. His prior company is struggling really hard to finde people to work for them. It is up to them: expert people on remote or junior people wanting experience to go remote later on other job.
I on a 4/10 schedule, mostly work from home except 1 day a pay period.
While I'm not actively looking for a new job, I won't turn away a fully remote position that meets my requirements, so I keep my resume posted on various job sites.
I get hit on by recruiters about 2 - 5 times a day looking for someone to fill my specific niche role or similar, for a contract term and/or fully onsite position. I always reply, "I don't even consider looking at a position unless it is a permanent FTE and fully remote".
I may not actually find a replacement job, as I'm happy where I'm at, but I figure I can at least help out all the other jobseekers out there by letting the headhunters know, that there are qualified people out there that won't except any offer that isn't fully remote.
expert people on remote or junior people wanting experience to go remote later on other job
This is what it's shaping up to be. Also, junior people understand that there is no real loyalty on the part of the company - they will replace or lay off staff at a moment's notice. And there is a real salary penalty for staying as studies have recently shown. (Also common sense and anecdotes from most everyone you know). Those junior people willing to be in the office will leave in a year or two for a WFH job elsewhere with a salary bump. If RTO /fulltime in the office companies want to keep them, they will have to compete salary-wise with WFH companies.
ETA: Here's a very interesting article on the permanent shift to remote work.
In 2022, 34 percent of workers over age 15 reported working at home vs. 69 percent in the workplace, dipping slightly from the previous year. [...] The pandemic spike in working from home was limited to college-educated workers, especially those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, about 54 percent of whom worked at home in 2022.
Left-leaning justices have long argued that the criminal justice system should primarily try to determine whether a criminal defendant has actually committed a crime — and that there should be adequate safeguards to ensure that someone who is wrongfully convicted can challenge that conviction.
Meanwhile, justices on the Court’s rightward fringe have long argued that the primary purpose of the criminal justice system is to reach final judgments concerning an individual’s guilt. Under this view, this need for finality can even overcome a claim that a prisoner is innocent.
I really can't emphasize this enough: fuck the right.
There is not enough housing in the US and shithead know nothings keep it that way with NIMBY and gentrification attitudes.
People who say that young adults who live in their parents basement are bums are bums themselves.
I build homes and the privileged loser fuck heads who got housing got it from inheritance or getting lucky with their jobs.
The housing market is so fucked up and it’s been under attack by not only the greedy shit head realtors but industry makers and policy makers, investors and Air BnB.
It’s almost as if rich people want the poor to always be on their toes so they can be manipulated.
Housing is a fucking RIGHT. We need to make sure the elites understand that.
Keeping the proletariat occupied with their day to day needs is one of the core goals of the capitalist system. If you are constantly treading water, with barely enough to not starve or become homeless, you have little capacity to think about why you have crumbs and your boss just posted pictures of his yacht on social media.
Don’t forget about other rich ass-hats who buy houses above asking, just to tear them down and build another ungodly McMansion, taking away what affordable houses remain.
A beautiful 50 year old house sold on my block for $250,000k two years ago. At 1600 sqft, and some renovations from the previous owner, it was a wonderful starter home. A college buddy of mine tried to buy it at asking $230k and we joked that we’d be neighbors.
But instead, someone bought it, destroyed it, rebuilt it, and sold it for $900k.
Now, that same house just sits there with a “For Rent” sign. It’s appalling.
I’m really enjoying all the right wing women getting offended by this. Like, no shit these men don’t respect women, they never did. You’re not different or special just because you’re a giant pick-me, and conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women. Cry more about the situation you put yourself in.
“Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. ... They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. ... Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. ... Male violence acts directly on the girl through her father or brother or uncle or any number of male professionals or strangers, as it did and does on her mother, and she too is forced to learn to conform in order to survive. A girl may, as she enters adulthood, repudiate the particular set of males with whom her mother is allied, run with a different pack as it were, but she will replicate her mother’s patterns in acquiescing to male authority within her own chosen set. Using both force and threat, men in all camps demand that women accept abuse in silence and shame, tie themselves to hearth and home with rope made of self-blame, unspoken rage, grief, and resentment.”
See also: right-wing women who are obsessed about trans women being rapists, drag queens and bathrooms. Obviously trans women raping women is incredibly rare. But they're a 'safe' and acceptable target for victimised and often traumatised women. Women who are too weak to criticise or attack the men who actually hurt them. Eg. JK Rowling is a victim of sexual and domestic abuse. The perpetrator was her husband. Instead of attacking straight men, she spends all day going on about trans women.
You see this kind of psychology in most (quasi-)fascists. It's sadomasochistic. Kiss the boot of those who opress you, hold those you hold to be below you in contempt and treat them accordingly. Of course, in reality right wing women have common cause with all the people they hate. Just like most right wing men have more in common with a poor black trans sex worker, than a billionaire.
As you say, it's hard to feel sorry for them. They're sabotaging themselves, their gender and their class. They're actively hurting those who could be their allies. It's partly self-preservation, but it's also vanity. They lie to themselves that they're not (fellow) victims.
Yeah I would feel sorry for them, but as a trans woman I stood up for women as a whole. I’ve demanded equality my whole life. Conservative women respond by acting offended I consider myself their equal, ignoring that I consider them their husband’s equals
There’s the “sad world theory” here: Some people don’t care how good or bad their life is, they only care whether others have it worse. There are enough of those people that they’re an actual social problem.
So in this case, the theory is that they’d rather be slaves to their husbands as long as they can look down on trans people. That’s preferable to being equal to their husbands and also to trans people.
conservative men only put you on a pedestal when they can use it to insult liberal women.
Also when they want to keep "known predators of white women" (anyone who isn't a white Christian) out/away. Though statistically they have no reason to fear the "competition", they are already the biggest predators themselves..
I think so. If you recognize that women aren’t just neatly categorized as either a Madonna or a whore and they can want to look hot while also still being a full human being worthy of respect, then sure.
I’d go so far as to say that being a whore and being a human being deserving of respect are not mutually exclusive. Being a whore doesn’t inherently have to be a bad thing.
Yes. In believe so in many different forms. I don’t think extremely toned shirtless guys on magazine covers are disrespectful. It is just puritanical thought process that pushes the rhetoric that it is bad. Is employing women disrespectful? Not at all. There can be completely clothed women, completely nude women, a mixture of everyday people… which surprise, women who are found attractive do exist in. If someone doesn’t like something, they can not purchase it for their home. Note that when you looked at the not so covered man sexily draped across a poster/calendar/movie/book cover you don’t look down on all men because of it. They aren’t being disrespected. If someone thinks it is to revealing they think, that guy shouldn’t have done that. They are shunning the individual, not the whole gender/sex. So why would it be different for women?
Did you read the article? The point here is that there is a division in conservative circles, so talking about conservative men as a single group is missing the point.
The same division, presumably, exists among conservative women (albeit bearing in mind that in the USA men are more conservative than women) so there will be an alliance between pearl-clutching Christian women who decry the debauchery, and women who are feminist but for whom feminism culminated with the third wave, for whom objectification exemplified in a mildly raunchy calendar is something to, at worst, roll ones eyes at.
So by all means enjoy the division in conservative ranks, and hope that it splits their base and ruins their chances of victory, but at least understand what is going on properly. What you think of as “respecting women” is probably not what conservative women think of as respecting women; you’re judging and understanding their beliefs through your own lens, in a way that makes you misunderstand quite badly.
Do you have to practice being that condescending or is it a natural ability? First, there’s no such thing as a conservative man who actually respects women, so this “division” is really just a disagreement about how they want to be disrespectful - via mildly titillating pictures, or via religious control.
Second, I spend huge amounts of time in ex-fundie communities, and both religious and secular conservatism are basically the topic of conversation. I know what conservative women consider to be “respect,” and was applying their standards to this subject. Even by their absolute bottom of the barrel expectations, men are letting them down in this case. The only men on “their side” still view women as property and are only really upset because they think women should only be showing their bits to the man who owns her.
I know what conservative women consider to be “respect,” and was applying their standards to this subject. Even by their absolute bottom of the barrel expectations, men are letting them down in this case.
Do you think the conservative women who appeared in the calendar agree with you? I would guess they don’t. So it seems to me your understanding of the spectrum of opinion is clearly missing something.
Maybe your views on this are out of whack because of spending “huge amounts of time” in a community with a view of conservatism skewed by their unique experiences? That’s not a knock against doing so or against those people, just that fundies have particularly extreme experiences of politics and religion which is bound to mean you hear a lot of outliers.
so this “division” is really just a disagreement about how they want to be disrespectful - via mildly titillating pictures, or via religious control.
I am not conservative but I don’t think looking at mildly titillating pictures of women is disrespectful, and I think that’s an opinion which is pretty common across the political spectrum in the West.
Well since my original comment was exclusively addressing the women who were offended by the calendar, I thought it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t talking about the women who participated, but please, feel free to write a few more paragraphs showing me that you either didn’t read or didn’t understand what I wrote.
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