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Discussion: National Day Observations

I’m making an executive decision. Happy Mel Brooks day!  He is 100 years old today. 1900 more to go!

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Discussion: Pithy, Witty Politics

He's got every angle covered

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Discussion: National Day Observations

All right we have:

National Camera Day

National Darts Day

National Waffle Iron Day

All today. I’d like to pick one but I’m kinda waffling between them. I know I should get to the point, but it can be hard for me to focus. 

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Discussion: What Is Your Pet Peeve?

I live in Jersey City now and park on the street. This means moving the car when the street sweepers pass though. Parking here is very tough; sometimes in the evening I drive around for half an hour or more looking for a space. Imagine my visceral and emotional response when I see a car (purposely?) talking up two parking spots.  Either the driver is a selfish mutt or they're a selfish mutt and they're saving a space for when hubby gets home. 

Last week I had had enough. I had a pen and paper, so I left a note on their windshield that said, "You selfish prick, how many spaces do you need?" Did that change anything? No, but it made me feel better. 

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: but which party win? GOP. DNC, or the NSDNC?

 !

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: but which party win? GOP. DNC, or the NSDNC?

mtierney said:

when you have reached retirement age, after paying into the system for decades,  and are then on the “receiving” end, will you ask yourself that question?

fyi, I am on the receiving end of Medicare. I'm not retired because unlike yourself, I missed the cutoff for full retirement at 65 and I need to wait to collect SS. Another screwing that people born after the midpoint of the Baby Boom have been subjected to.

Here's the thing, I don't look resentfully like you do at other Americans getting "free stuff" from public funding. At various points in my life I got "free stuff" like public school, college grants and loans. I received free tuition for grad school at Rutgers, paid for by the taxpayers in NJ. Let's not even get into every other "free benefit" we get, from highways, to parks, to assurances of clean water and safe food.

But after I was gainfully employed, my family and I paid taxes to NJ, Maplewood, NYC, NYS as well as the federal government. A lot of taxes in fact.

but that's how it's supposed to work. The healthy, employed people work and pay taxes. The young, the old, the sick, the disabled get "free stuff" to help them get a start in life, or a more comfortable end, or a dignified present.

Your disparagement of people who rely on what you contemptuously call "free stuff" is really small-minded and mean.

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Discussion: What Is Your Pet Peeve?

I'll chime in here about helmets.  A helmet saved me from a serious head injury if not worse.  I crashed into an aluminum light pole and even with the helmet, it really rung my bell.  Will never ride without a helmet.

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: but which party win? GOP. DNC, or the NSDNC?

mtierney said:

The blame game by Democrats,  who are so fractured by their TDS that Socialists are taking over their party without much effort. NYC’s new mayor is prime example of what the future  holds for the DNC!

I had one complaint about Mayor Mamdani, when he campaigned, animal related but since you are using him as a "prime example' here's something I think everyone will agree with, if you read to the end.

YES: Mamdani plans to cover 30% of NYC in trees by 2040 — starting with the neighborhoods that need it most.New York City released its first-ever Urban Forest Plan, and the way it's structured tells you everything about who this administration is governing for. Instead of planting trees wherever someone calls 311 or makes a big donation — which is how it used to work — Mamdani's plan starts with the neighborhoods getting hit hardest by extreme heat. Low-income communities of color currently have just 19% tree canopy coverage, compared to 26% in wealthier areas. That gap isn't aesthetic. It's a matter of life and death.Heat kills more than 500 New Yorkers every summer. Black New Yorkers die at twice the rate of white New Yorkers. And the neighborhoods with the least shade are almost always the same neighborhoods with the least wealth, the least air conditioning, and the least political power. Mamdani is starting there on purpose.The plan divides the city into more than 400 zones and commits to hitting every viable planting spot in the highest heat-risk neighborhoods first — with the goal of completing the most vulnerable areas by the end of 2027. Every community board district gets serviced on a regular rotation after that. No neighborhood gets skipped. No donation required.NYC's 7 million trees already provide $260 million in annual benefits — removing over 1,100 tons of air pollution, saving energy equivalent to 8,000 homes, and reducing stormwater runoff by 69 million cubic feet. A tree planted today does more work in 20 years than it does now. This is infrastructure that gets better with time.THANK YOU, Mayor Mamdani

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: but which party win? GOP. DNC, or the NSDNC?

joanne said:

Once every three weeks, I use Ajovy self-injector to prevent and to control my chronic migraines.  In the US, I’d pay $US 340.47 per shot (in my dollars that would be just under $500.   Every 3 weeks.  Just so I can safely move around my house, and not look drunk, if I leave the house. 

In $Aus I paid $7.50 this week for the same medication. That’s $USD 5.17c.  Which nation is better looking after its people and helping productivity???

GoSlugs said:

Taking people's health care away will probably be a wake up call for many. Democrats hard fought to let people keep their health care but, ultimately, they just didn't have the numbers to defeat the fascists. In 2028, if polls are any indication, that will change.

Voters, you know.....

In the words of the director from the Coen Brothers movie, Hail Caesar! "Would that it were so simple."

I have health insurance through my job. My health insurance plan has a deductible of $3,500 which, compared to the deductible I had when I was on "Obamacare" isn't too bad. A deductible is basically an amount of cash you have to pay for healthcare yourself first before the insurance company will cover the costs it agreed to.

I was prescribed a drug that costs $500 for a month's worth of doses. The doctor's office sent the prescription to my insurance company and at first they refused to cover the cost of that drug until I had a follow-up for some other treatment I'm doing, so I have the follow-up without buying the prescription drug and my test numbers are heading in the right direction so we go back to my insurance company and they say they'll cover the cost, but only after I've spent my deductible. 

Now, with various other doctor visits this year, I've spent about $1,300 of my deductible so far this year, leaving over $2,000 left that I have to spend myself before they'll cover my prescription (which even when covered I'll have to pay something for), and if nothing else happens that requires anything medical, I would have to pay $500 for the next 4 months or so before I'm fully covered for this prescription. It's June already, so it would be October before the price of the prescription becomes affordable. That means I have October, November, and December of cheap drugs until January comes, my insurance plan resets, and then I'm back on the hook for a $500 drug again until that deductible is paid off.

Meanwhile, next year my insurance plan's rules could completely change and I might no longer qualify for coverage for that drug anyway. And what's worse is that any one of our other American MOLers can and likely will chime after this and list all the possible ways to either get around this Byzantine system, or say it never works that way, which just makes the system worse - because then you realize that there really is no system here, it's just dollars flying back and forth (mostly forth) and people getting sicker.

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Discussion: The Rose Garden and White House happenings: but which party win? GOP. DNC, or the NSDNC?

I watched an HBO documentary, The Welcome Table, discussing inevitable migration due to climate change. It discusses the impact of the relentless oil drilling in the Amazon impacting the indigenous people in Peru, climate change and disasters in Brazil and Australia. There was a beautiful town in Calabria, Italy that like many in Southern Italy was abandoned, and government services eliminated. The mayor Mimmo Lucano, opened the town to African migrants revitalizing the land and creating a welcoming economy. The government sentenced him to a jail term but he is internationally considered a visionary.

It is worth watching and I'm hoping the message will soften our hearts and feed our imagination. We will have to find generous solutions People of both parties will have to set up a welcome table if we are to survive.

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