Post 1,026
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The Real Immigration Issue – Said Out Loud
With a noteworthy and continuing firmness, Congress has steadfastly stood tall for doing nothing to reform of our immigration system. That has left our proud Republican congresspeople free to whine, point fingers of blame, complain and demonize.
In the face of thousands of hopeful immigrants arriving daily, our courageous Speaker of the House, He Who Hates America, sent all representatives home for 3 weeks. The Republicans don’t want our immigration system fixed because they’d rather use our dysfunction to stoke their base against Biden and Democrats, even though it’s a challenge that is actually the responsibility of Congress, so they leave asylum seekers hanging. “The cruelty is the point.”
We do have a real and serious immigration problem, but it isn’t the one that is commonly talked about. Here’s the real immigration issue, said out loud:
Republicans don’t want any Hispanic, Black, Brown,
Asian or Muslim people in our country. *
.
After all, those people are so very inconvenient to straight, Christian nationalist, White Supremacist suburban and rural patriarchal posers.
Let’s be precise: This describes Republican extremists and Republican “moderates” (read: cowards). It certainly describes some others, too, especially the true believers of the wholly made up, hateful, bigoted, racist Replacement Theory.
Republicans still talk about people seeking asylum coming from the south, but nobody is complaining about White, European applicants seeking to immigrate – unless they’re from Ukraine and seeking asylum. They don’t want those people because allowing them in our country would help Ukraine in its fight for survival against Putin and Republicans are in the tank for Putin.
- Side note: I remember a time when Republicans
- were in the tank for America.
Our immigration problem isn’t about immigration. It’s about racism and White supremacy and delusional, hateful Christianity. Nothing more.
The Healthcare Ripoff
Read this from STAT, the healthcare newsletter from the Boston Globe:
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Wait, what? We’re paying full price for universal healthcare – actually, many times what other countries with universal healthcare pay – but “we’re just not getting it”? Are we really allowing ourselves to be ripped off like that?
Well, yeah, we are.
And our politicians, in the pockets of Big Pharma, insurance, big hospitals and more, don’t want to change a thing.
Please open your hymnal to page 2024 as we sing together all the verses of “That Sucks.”
Disappearing Spine Disease, or,
“What Do You Want Me To Say About Slavery?”
Definition
psycho-emetic [SI-ko-e-MET-ik] – noun
1. so stupid that it makes you puke
- Jax Dictionary
At a town hall in New Hampshire last Wednesday Nikki Haley was asked what the cause of the Civil War was. She went on a tear about states rights, limited government and more and never mentioned slavery!
When she was done windbagging, the questioner pointed out her astonishing exclusion of the obvious historical fact of slavery. This pretender to the throne responded by asking, “What do you want me to say about slavery?“
Yes, Nikki Haley really did ask that stupid question. That’s psycho-emetic.
We don’t want to keep her hanging, so to answer her question, what we wanted her to say about slavery is that it was THE cause of the Civil War. We wanted her to say how unfathomably horrible slavery was, how wrong it was and that millions of people still suffer from its consequences 159 years later. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked what color the questioner wanted her Republican chameleon outfit to be.
I just wish she had had the courage to say her truth: “I’m not going to say the obvious, that our Civil War was about slavery, the greed that slavery supported and the enormous cruelty it spawned, because if I did that I’d lose MAGA votes.” But she didn’t say that.
What she did do was to instantly disqualify herself for any job that calls for intellectual honesty, moral courage and the ability to speak truth. What she did do was to support the banning and burning of books that mention anything about race, discrimination and our horrifying history of slavery. What she did do was to tell us that she’s such a suck up that she would be unable to confront either foreign or domestic enemies.
No, Nikki, even if you’re from the South, you may not own human beings. That was the cause of the Civil War. It wasn’t about northern aggression. It wasn’t about states rights. It wasn’t about limited government. It was about slavery, you coward!
Poor Nikki Haley is just another carrier of Republican Disappearing Spine Disease. Have low expectations of her, because like the hymn about universal healthcare that we pay for but don’t get, this sucks.
And the hits just keep on comin’.
One Last Thing
- Definition:
re·ces·sion /rəˈseSH(ə)n/ – noun
-
1. a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.– Oxford English Dictionary
For our math challenged, “two successive quarters” means 6 months in a row..Republicans continue to say that a recession is less than a heartbeat away or that we are in a recession right now. Here are the facts (as in: observable reality):.- We have had nothing but growth in GDP, month after month, quarter after quarter for a really long time. The rate of growth slowed during the Trump-ignored pandemic in 2020.
- The S & P 500 returned 26% last year and the DJIA is at an all time high. Doesn’t sound very recession-y to me.
- Because there are business cycles, saying that a recession is coming is like saying that the sky will be dark. Sooner or later you’ll be right. Meanwhile, there is no recession.
- We keep making more jobs month-after-month, wages are higher for everyone who depends on a paycheck, insulin is just $35 a month instead of hundreds, they’re almost ready to replace the I-75 bridge over the Ohio River, and, and, and . . .
- If you’re one of the moaners saying that your economic situation is good, but that our national economy sucks, get over your slavish following of phony righty propaganda. They’re just feeding you mind crap, hoping for political advantage.
Which sucks.
Okay, This is the Real Last Thing
For a wonderful list of places/causes/ways to take action and make a difference to protect our unfathomably precious democracy – that task you’re going to focus on and contribute yourself to this year – check in with Mobilize.us. Consider this an addition to the list on this post.
- ________________________________________
- * Trump in Waterloo, IA on December 19:
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. All over the world they are pouring into our country. They come from Africa, they come from Asia, they come from South America.”
He called it a “border catastrophe.” He said, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
- That’s it plain and simple: Racist, xenophobic fear and hatred is what immigration reform – and Trump and MAGA – are all about.
- Today is a good day to be the light
- _____________________________
- Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
- Fire the bastards!
- The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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One Response to Immigration, Healthcare and Disappearing Spine Disease
Jim Altschuler December 20, 2023
Getting ripped off on our insurance coverage is actualy the D.C. national pastime. We The People have allowed this to happen by not replacing do-nothing and obstruc-tionist representatives to continue in those positions. All we had to do was to replace them with other people who actually want to act in our best interests. So incredibly sad.
Those same DCers are the ones cowtowing to Big Pharma and the insurance lobbyists so they get paid lots and lots of money while they continue to afford us minimal coverage. Hey! They don’t care about our health or how well we are doing in fighting our various maladies. Hell, they don’t care if we live or die; I’m guessing they would probably prefer it if we died since the only coverage for that is $255 from Social Security.
The bottom line, at the risk of redundancy, is to get involved, VOTE at the preliminary election in you state and especially VOTE in the November election!