|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 17:57:35 GMT
It would be so nice if the people supporting Trump here would be the first to suffer pain under his fascist regime.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 14:16:11 GMT
Yup. But supposedly this only happens in countries with socialized medicine. Happening right here in the US with its profit-based medicine, too. An issue we’ve noticed here is that lots of practices are going concierge, which means you don’t have to wait for an appointment - IF you can afford the big annual membership fee. I feel lucky to have found a PCP I like who is not fresh out of med school and who works in a regular non-concierge practice. But scheduling can be quite a ways out. A few years ago I left my GP of 25 years because he went to concierge and I always ended up seeing the PA. At times it seemed like a revolving door of PAs. Moved to Methodist and have been happy there. When I first moved it was easy to get appointments quickly but in the past year that hasn't been the case. I see her every 6 months and book my appointment when I checkout after a visit. This year (Nov) I got sick and needed to reschedule and the earliest with my doctor was April! Ended up seeing the PA a week later. I don't have any issues with long waits for appointments with my ob/gyn & mammogram (also Methodist), dermatologist or dentist and can get in within 1-2 weeks. Even the 2 eye specialists I see can get me in within a month at the satellite office near my house - and earlier if I'm willing to drive further. We were fortunate that the waits weren't bad with DH's health issues last year. He had his heart attack Feb. 23, heart valve replacement March 24 (delayed by 2 weeks due to cancer discovery) and then kidney removal surgery on April 21. Those were scheduled quickly but follow ups with oncology have been a pain with scheduling and them cancelling a few appointments on us. He has been declared cancer free, but they continue to see him every 3 months. Even with those waits, we are very happy to be here with the quality of medical care we have. The issues we’ve had with specialists and long wait times have been in for GI docs (6 months) and mental health practitioners (finding one DD is comfortable with who takes our insurance and is accepting new patients with a history of suicide attempt is near impossible). I have friends who have similar complaints about orthopedic surgeons. IDK.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 13:39:07 GMT
“Silencing right-wing voices.” 🤣🤣🤣 Yes, it’s a satire site. Entertainment mode, indeed. 🤣🤣🤣
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 5:04:18 GMT
Okay, you really ARE afraid of dissenting facts and opinions. 🤔 You want to talk about this from the Atlantic? What do you think? You ok with this? It seems Miller is hatching a plan of creating a “red state army” to invade blue states and round up undocumented individuals and deport them. Now I’m not a fan of the current situation but this is just fundamentally wrong. So what do you think? If trump is elected and does this are you ok with it? ” Trump’s ‘Knock on the Door’“The former president and his aides are formulating plans to deport millions of migrants.” Confrontations over immigration and border security are moving to the center of the struggle between the two parties, both in Washington, D.C., and beyond. And yet the most explosive immigration clash of all may still lie ahead. In just the past few days, Washington has seen the collapse of a bipartisan Senate deal to toughen border security amid opposition from former President Donald Trump and the House Republican leadership, as well as a failed vote by House Republicans to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly refusing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Simultaneously, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, supported by more than a dozen other GOP governors, has renewed his attempts to seize greater control over immigration enforcement from the federal government. Cumulatively these clashes demonstrate how much the terms of debate over immigration have moved to the right during President Joe Biden’s time in office. But even amid that overall shift, Trump is publicly discussing immigration plans for a second presidential term that could quickly become much more politically divisive than even anything separating the parties now. Trump has repeatedly promised that, if reelected, he will pursue “the Largest Domestic Deportation Operation in History,” as he put it last month on social media. Inherently, such an effort would be politically explosive. That’s because any mass-deportation program would naturally focus on the largely minority areas of big Democratic-leaning cities where many undocumented immigrants have settled, such as Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, and Phoenix. “ What this means is that the communities that are heavily Hispanic or Black, those marginalized communities are going to be living in absolute fear of a knock on the door, whether or not they are themselves undocumented,” David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me. “What he’s describing is a terrifying police state, the pretext of which is immigration.”How Trump and his advisers intend to staff such a program would make a prospective Trump deportation campaign even more volatile. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, has publicly declared that they would pursue such an enormous effort partly by creating a private red-state army under the president’s command. Miller says a reelected Trump intends to requisition National Guard troops from sympathetic Republican-controlled states and then deploy them into Democratic-run states whose governors refuse to cooperate with their deportation drive.Such deployment of red-state forces into blue states, over the objections of their mayors and governors, would likely spark intense public protest and possibly even conflict with law-enforcement agencies under local control. And that conflict itself could become the justification for further insertion of federal forces into blue jurisdictions, notes Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.From his very first days as a national candidate in 2015, Trump has intermittently promised to pursue a massive deportation program against undocumented immigrants. As president, Trump moved in unprecedented ways to reduce the number of new arrivals in the country by restricting both legal and illegal immigration. But he never launched the huge “deportation force” or widespread removals that, he frequently promised, would uproot the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States during his time in office. Over Trump’s four years, in fact, his administration deported only about a third as many people from the nation’s interior as Barack Obama’s administration had over the previous four years, according to a study by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Exactly why Trump never launched the comprehensive deportation program he promised is unclear even to some veterans of his administration. The best answer may be a combination of political resistance within Congress and in local governments, logistical difficulties, and internal opposition from the more mainstream conservative appointees who held key positions in his administration, particularly in his first years. This time, though, Trump has been even more persistent than in the 2016 campaign in promising a sweeping deportation effort. (“Those Biden has let in should not get comfortable because they will be going home,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site last month.) Simultaneously, Miller has outlined much more explicit and detailed plans than Trump ever did in 2016 about how the administration would implement such a deportation program in a second term. Dismissing these declarations as merely campaign bluster would be a mistake, Miles Taylor, who served as DHS chief of staff under Trump, told me in an interview. “If Stephen Miller says it, if Trump says it, it is very reasonable to assume that’s what they will try to do in a second term,” said Taylor, who later broke with Trump to write a New York Times op-ed and a book that declared him unfit for the job. (Taylor wrote the article and book anonymously, but later acknowledged that he was the author.)Officials at DHS successfully resisted many of Miller’s most extreme immigration ideas during Trump’s term, Taylor said. But with the experience of Trump’s four years behind them, Taylor told me Trump and Miller would be in a much stronger position in 2025 to drive through militant ideas such as mass deportation and internment camps for undocumented migrants. “Stephen Miller has had the time and the battle scars to inform a very systematic strategy,” Taylor said. Miller outlined the Trump team’s plans for a mass-deportation effort most extensively in an interview he did this past November on a podcast hosted by the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In the interview, Miller suggested that another Trump administration would seek to remove as many as 10 million “foreign-national invaders” who he claims have entered the country under Biden. To round up those migrants, Miller said, the administration would dispatch forces to “go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids.” Then, he said, it would build “large-scale staging grounds near the border, most likely in Texas,” to serve as internment camps for migrants designated for deportation. From these camps, he said, the administration would schedule near-constant flights returning migrants to their home countries. “So you create this efficiency by having these standing facilities where planes are moving off the runway constantly, probably military aircraft, some existing DHS assets,” Miller told Kirk.There is more to the story but a paywall went up before I coukd get the entire story. x.com/murshedz/status/1756497105408196779?s=61&t=j45uMgNk1i8O0YllKF58nwHas anyone asked Miller how these officers will determine who is an immigrant to be deported? Will they just arrest any brown person who doesn’t have proof of citizenship on them and ship them off to an internment camp to be sorted out later? Anyone who speaks Spanish? What about people who have paperwork showing that they’ve been processed by DHS and are awaiting an asylum hearing? They’re here legally at that point. Are they deported, too? These questions don’t matter to Trump supporters because the human beings affected don’t matter to Trump supporters. Internment camps in Texas. JFC. These disingenuous “concerns” about Biden’s age and mental fitness are designed to depress voter turnout as various “concerns” about the Clintons did in 2016. When people turn out to vote, Republicans lose. They know this. If they can convince people that Biden isn’t worth showing up for, they think they have a chance. Our choice this year is between someone who respects our democracy and the rule of law, and someone who thinks he is the law and an ultimate, unquestionable authority. Everything else is a distraction. This has nothing to do with “dissenting opinions” (such a bullshit euphemism for all the nonsense posted above) and everything to do with whether our country continues to exist as a free, democratic republic. That’s the only choice.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 1:40:48 GMT
As Omaha goes, it’s a good location, but I wouldn’t pay that much for a house there.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 1:38:42 GMT
I’m so very sorry. Losing a furry family member is hard.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 1:37:55 GMT
I expected a wait to see a new derm but they got me in the next week, earlier this summer, with a PA. Gyn same, with NP. Oncologist can generally fit me in next week or two though those appts are now only once a year. Primary Care is easy to schedule as well. Every specialist we've needed since we've ever needed specialists have been within the month if not the week, except we did have to wait about a month 15 years ago to see a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Iowa. I'm sorry for those living in areas that seem to be very short on specialists. That would be frustrating. I guess I have been fortunate to always be near plenty of providers. Funny thing is - we have long waits here, in the city with the largest medical center in the world. Lots of people come from smaller cities/towns and even other countries to see specialists here. The result is that people who live here often can’t get a timely appointment.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 11, 2024 1:12:18 GMT
I think the fact that he is so old makes him unfit. He is clearly struggling and I don't say that as a political move, look at him. He is a shell of the person he was. Hr has had a long distinguished career. He cannot possibly do this job until 86 years old. I think if Harris had to step in and run the country I am completely comfortable with that. However, as a candidate I don't think she can win on her own. Not for any reason other than our ridiculous political climate that would never vote for a woman, let alone a woman of color. I hate it. And no I don't think Trump is fit for office. I wish we had an entirely different group of candidates. It really disturbs me that this is what we have to pick from. I will still vote Biden bc never Trump. IMO, unlike Trump, if Biden is truly unable to fulfill the duties of his office at some point, I think he will step aside. Trump will never willingly relinquish power, and he will not install cabinet members who are willing to use the 25th amendment. I wish we had younger candidates, but since we don’t, I feel like we have to take age out of the equation. Trump is a fascist wannabe and he’s already shown what he is willing to do to keep power. Biden is a longtime public servant who shows respect for our institutions and laws. That’s what people need to pay attention to.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 23:14:48 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 22:51:13 GMT
My husband was a Marine and does not support Trump. One of his big concerns with another Trump presidency is that so many currently serving DO support him. He feels it’s likely they’d turn their weapons on US citizens if Trump asked them to.
(And despite what the 2A folks think, your personal home arsenal isn’t going to protect you from our military.)
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 22:47:49 GMT
Yup. But supposedly this only happens in countries with socialized medicine. Happening right here in the US with its profit-based medicine, too. An issue we’ve noticed here is that lots of practices are going concierge, which means you don’t have to wait for an appointment - IF you can afford the big annual membership fee.
I feel lucky to have found a PCP I like who is not fresh out of med school and who works in a regular non-concierge practice. But scheduling can be quite a ways out.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 18:05:57 GMT
IDK about window tint, but maybe a pretty piece of fabric or oilcloth tacked to the inside (with pretty side facing out) would do the trick?
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 14:46:21 GMT
There it is. I would say it’s also about deflecting concerns about Trump’s age/health/mental acuity, though honestly, those are the least concerning things about him.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 1:16:53 GMT
Well, voting for one of them means you won't be living in autocracy under an insane, sociopathic dictator. Does that make the other sound more appealing? I know which way I will vote. But it's a sad for America that these two old fuckers are the best candidates that we can scrounge up for the office of the Presidency. Agree 100%. Would love to see some new blood. But here we all are. Republicans acting like Trump is meaningfully younger and in better health than Biden is pretty funny, though. They’re both old guys, full stop. They both make gaffes in speeches. But only one of them wants to be a dictator.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 10, 2024 1:06:06 GMT
Can your skills transfer to a different field? Or can you work for yourself in some way?
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 9, 2024 22:22:14 GMT
I was irritated about the college student thing at first but I do see the point other peas are making. Back in the day, parents’ cable TV didn’t go to college with the child. They had to get cable of their own. Same with internet service.
My oldest pays for her own stuff but the younger one is still in college. She’s chosen to just go without Netflix and I assume she’ll do the same for Disney. Kids her age mostly watch YouTube and TikTok anyway. Kind of like how I only had an antenna in college and would try to catch up on cable shows at my parents’ over the summer when reruns were on.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 9, 2024 21:49:17 GMT
Better just senile than senile and fascist.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 9, 2024 16:09:44 GMT
Good for California. Texas will never do this, of course, because god forbid anyone be inconvenienced to keep plastic from destroying our waterways.
(Yet in the “good old days” they want to return to, plastic bags were not a thing. You got paper bags or used your own shopping bag or just carried your stuff.)
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 9, 2024 16:08:42 GMT
We still have the thin plastic bags here for no charge. When I get a grocery pickup, they use the thicker bags. They are nice to use, but I only need a few. I’ve actually gone into the store vs using the pickup service because I don’t want more of the thicker bags. I do reuse the thin bags on a daily basis for pet waste. When we lived in Belgium, you either brought your own bags or bought a reusable bag. A lot of people would just bring their cart to the car and load bags from there. It wasn’t a big deal and I just bought bags for pet waste instead of using grocery bags. Our biggest use of plastic bags is pet waste and I don’t know how to get away from it. We just don’t have a woodsy area or a large enough yard to let it decompose naturally, so it has to go into our trash. Compostable poop bags are pretty widely available. You may actually be using them and not realize it.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 9, 2024 1:15:51 GMT
Sigh...some people...where does their hate and violence come from. However, the net gaim may be there, i dont know, but the surge in Colorado is becoming unmanageable I know. The Feds need to be providing more assistance. Texas gets lots of federal money to manage immigrant waves. I apologize that our governor is using that funding to send them to you instead.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 21:23:10 GMT
That's the smell I get, too, and I haven't breastfed any babies for 20 years. yeast maybe? do you have any redness/irritation as well? No, I'm familiar with yeast rash. There's no rash with this. It just smells like old sweat.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 21:21:26 GMT
Oral arguments are over. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand they will be ruling against Colorado. It’s just a question if it will be a 9-0 ruling. Marc Elias is pondering this from Kavanaugh. It appears he doesn’t know our history and what the Framers felt about the public’s ability to pick a president. One of the reasons for the Electoral College was the lack of trust in the people electing a qualified president with a moral compass. The states have diluted the “electoral college” so it doesn’t work the way it was intended to work. Kavanaugh… ”What about the idea that we should think about democracy? Think about the right of the people to elect candidates of their choice, of letting the people decide because your position has the effect of disenfranchising voters to significant degree.” x.com/marceelias/status/1755642910429659307?s=61&t=j45uMgNk1i8O0YllKF58nwThe election of trump and fact he will be the Republican nominee for President kind of proves the Framers were right to have concerns about the voters ability in selecting a president. That also sounds like a great argument against a couple of small, non-diverse states having so much control over who ultimately ends up on the ballot. </tangent>
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 21:10:29 GMT
Abortions are expensive and painful, I literally cannot wrap my head around this argument. One "educated woman with a masters degree" is not data. There are women who use abortion as birth control, but where are the numbers? If a small subset of women are idiots does it necessarily follow that NO woman should have the right to bodily autonomy? The forced birth movement insists that any woman who wasn't raped or whose life wasn't imminently threatened by the pregnancy was "using the abortion as birth control" because they don't want to be "inconvenienced" by the pregnancy. So it's hard to get real numbers. It would probably be accurate to say that many women choose to have an abortion when their primary method of birth control fails. But that's not at all the same thing as what is implied - that millions of women are just too lazy and careless to use birth control and have abortions instead.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 21:07:05 GMT
I had a man on Twitter tell me it was easy to avoid pregnancy - women just need to "keep their legs closed during the two days per month they can get pregnant." This is the kind of catchphrase that comes in through the ears and goes out through the keyboard, completely bypassing the brain. I have no more interest in trying to educate a dumb@$$ like that on social media than I have in hitting myself on the head with a hammer. Who am I to think that I can accomplish what his 9 years of school didn't? I guess I hope to wake up someone who didn't have the benefit of any sex or reproductive education in school - as happens in many red states these days.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 17:23:20 GMT
Meanwhile, this “invasion” has been a net positive for our economy over the past 10 years. I thought Republicans liked a better economy?
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 16:01:01 GMT
Link from Texas Tribune, legitimate news site. www.texastribune.org/2024/02/07/border-el-paso-fbi-investigation/A Tennessee man arrested Monday hoped to travel to the southern border with a militia group that allegedly plotted to go “to war with the border patrol,” believing that the country was being invaded by migrants. … The article does an accurate job of connecting the dots between Abbott and other GOP leaders terming migrants as an “invasion,” and the rhetoric we see from these self-styled militia members.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 8, 2024 12:42:51 GMT
In case you can't see the Bird App: "Republicans in Missouri have drafted an amendment to ban women for life from accessing Medicaid if that woman has ever had an abortion." Pro-Birth Party at work. Wow. Saying out loud that this is primarily a war on poor women.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 7, 2024 16:34:53 GMT
I haven't breastfed babies in almost 3 years and every now and then my underboob sweat smells like sour milk. WTF is up with that?! That's the smell I get, too, and I haven't breastfed any babies for 20 years.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 7, 2024 16:16:51 GMT
I truly feel for you, and I can understand how hurtful it must be. I would be devastated! I really hope you can all work things out. I have to say though..... I am really very shocked that you grounded an 18yo for...... what? Staying in their room and not talking to you, or grunting at you? That is honestly quite ridiculous IMO. I'm sorry, I know you said to be gentle with you, but that part of your post stunned me. It really was the wrong thing to do. I understand where you are coming from. But, I truly felt she was being disrespectful. She wouldn't treat any other adult like this. Imagine you are standing in the kitchen. She walks in. You ask her how her day was. She walks straight by you while looking at her phone. Grunts a "ok". IDK. I may be wrong, but after a constant reaction like this, it feels disrespectful especially after she's been asked to not do this. In my trying to be brief, there are also issues with her not doing her part around the house. One issue has been leaving her dirty dishes in the sink. I was on the phone the other day and at the sink. I happened to look down at the sink to see her dirty dishes at the same time she walked through to leave for practice. I called to her and pointed to the sink as she was leaving. She looked at me and kept walking. I'll think about what you said, though. Thank you. BTDT and it's infuriating. I totally validate you on that. Something a therapist reminded me of - in addition to echoing what all the others have said here that it's not about you - is that she is likely testing you to see how much of a turd she can be and have you still love her. She's probably not doing it intentionally, but it's a test nonetheless. Also, you are her safe space. No, she wouldn't treat another adult like that because it's not safe to do so. She is reasonably sure she can safely treat you like that. We see this all the time at school - parents tell us horror stories about the way their kids act at home, but that same child is a respectful, polite, model student with us. My kid was one of those kids, too. DH and I used to console ourselves that if she was going to act that way, better she do it with us than with a teacher or boss.
|
|
|
Post by Merge on Feb 7, 2024 15:31:10 GMT
As I hit my late 40's under boob sweat became a problem for me. I just use a spritz of regular spray deodorant there and no bad smells all day. I have underboob sweat, but it has never smelled. You are fortunate. Without deodorant, I get a sour smell there by the end of the day. Gross.
|
|