It’s open enrollment time, and as I worked on my forms for open enrollment, I took note of the differences in costs for each health care insurance plan. Yes, I have a day job, and as I surveyed the plans offered by my employer, I found that there were only two plans offered this year. Your employer may offer more.
I see that there is a PPO insurance plan, which is traditional insurance that most of us are familiar with. With a PPO, we have in-network and out of network providers with their corresponding costs. We have the discouragement enhancing…
I’ve heard both sides of the debate on the filibuster. One point that has been amplified in the discourse on the filibuster is that the minority should be heard. They say that the minority would be ignored without the filibuster. Yeah, I get that.
I find it odd that in all this talk about how terrible things will be if we kill the filibuster, that few are willing to discuss the fact that former Senate leader Mitch McConnell had tabled nearly 400 bills. Many of those bills had bipartisan support in the house, and still, they never saw the floor…
I am aware that conservatives believe they are being censored. I happen to disagree with their view that they are being censored in the news and on social media. If I want to get conservative views online, I know where to find them. They have plenty of access on Facebook and on Twitter. All they need to do is steer clear of promoting violence and I can find them.
I can find the Proud Boys, the 3%’ers, and the Oathkeepers online. There is some competition among search engines and if Google won’t find them for me, I can use another…
I just caught this article on NPR yesterday. It was quite by accident as I wasn’t really looking for it. That’s how serendipity works, you know? You’re just minding your own business and then something novel passes the corner of your eye. NPR had run this story, “Top Republicans Work To Rebrand GOP As Party Of Working Class” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it since I had read it.
The photo at the top of the article shows quite a smug of a man with an earpiece in one ear. That’s Representative Jim Banks of Indiana. Banks wrote a…
In recent months there has been a lot of talk about ending the filibuster to get Joe Biden’s plans passed into law. There has been quite a bit of gnashing of teeth in between claims that passing the various acts proposed and/or proposed by the Biden Administration without a single Republican vote is “partisan”. Yeah, I remember how 400+ House bills were stacked up at Mitch McConnell’s desk when Trump was president. Senate Republicans had a good long laugh over that one. And now Senate Republicans are telling us that we’ll regret it if we get rid of the filibuster.
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I’m still smelling the fear of the GOP in their slew of bills designed to chip away at voting rights. It’s not the first thing I enjoy in the morning, but lately, it’s been hanging around in the air, waiting for a good rain to wash it away. So I had to read this article this morning when I saw it on Twitter, “Why Not Fewer Voters?” from the National Review. …
Wow. Mitch McConnell is really letting loose on the big businesses that are pulling their business, like travel and events, out of Georgia. He’s really unhappy that big business should have anything at all to say about the new election laws being put forth in 47 states, especially in Georgia. Never mind that the GOP lawmakers in Georgia were really upset about losing their precious majority in the US senate or losing the White House. Say, how about how they narrowed the score in the House? How about all the seats they did win? Oh, wait. …
So the infrastructure bill that Trump wanted to do, but didn’t find the time to do it, is now in the hands of President Joe Biden. I can recall Trump talking about infrastructure during his campaigns. As I recall it, he wanted to go big on infrastructure. He really did seem to think it was important. But apparently, infrastructure was not as important as seating more than 200 partisan judges across the country. I guess using the judiciary to curb progressive excess will create more jobs than building what we need to get to work and keep working. …
The Republican response to the 2020 election is resounding. According to the Harvard University Brennan Center for Justice, “ As of March 24, legislators have introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states. That’s 108 more than the 253 restrictive bills tallied as of February 19, 2021 — a 43 percent increase in little more than a month.” Clearly, the GOP is on the march to restrict voting rights, and that march is gathering momentum and is filled with fear.
“Oh, but this is all about election integrity. We want everyone to vote that has the right to vote.”…
As I survey the political landscape after the Rally of Sedition on January 6th, I see that conservative Trump supporters are doubling down. They are digging their heels further in resistance to Joe Biden as president. They truly believe that the election was stolen and that they deserve to be heard. But after all this, and four miserable years of Donald Trump as president, those people we saw at the Capitol a few months ago, seem hardly aware of what they are fighting for.
There seems to be a general trend that can be discerned over the last 60 years…
Husband, father, worker, philosopher, and observer. Plumbing the depths of consciousness to find the spring of happiness. Write on.