Republican idiocy

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Submitted by scharrison on

Today's the big day:

Cue the late-night "refreshing" of election results pages...

Robeson Board of Elections member resigns over yard signs

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Yeah, you're not supposed to do this:

Olivia Oxendine, a Republican, said Wednesday she has sent a letter of resignation to the state board. The effective date of her resignation will be the day the state board confirms it has received her letter.

A complaint was made against Oxendine earlier this month. The complaint, heard by the county Elections Board during its Aug. 14 meeting, charged Oxendine with having multiple signs from the Dan Bishop campaign in her yard. Photos of the signs were attached to the complaint charging Oxendine of a violating state law.

I'm not even going to speculate why a Lumbee would be so enamored of a bigot like Dan Bishop. But that alone should prompt a psychological evaluation...

Breaking the chains: Trump's trade war will have lasting and devastating effects

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And it's become obvious the President doesn't understand that:

President Trump said on Tuesday that Chinese manufacturing would “crumble” if the country did not agree to the United States’ trade terms, as newly released data showed his trade war was washing back to American shores and hurting the factories that the president has aimed to protect.

The president has continued to insist that pain from the trade war is falling primarily on China, not the United States. On Friday, he said American companies were leaving China in response to his tariffs, a development that put the United States in an “incredible negotiating position.” And he said any business that complained about financial pain from the tariffs was suffering from bad management, not the trade war.

"Blaming the victim" has become so common with this bumbling fool that we hardly even notice it anymore. But we should, because it exposes his inability to recognize a mistake when he's made one, a character flaw that puts our country at risk on almost a daily basis. In order to understand what his reckless trade war is causing, follow me below the fold for an ecological analogy:

Tuesday Twitter roundup

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The real value Twitter can bring to the table:

As opposed to the robotic posting of multiple hourly Tweets with the same message...

Tuesday Twitter roundup

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The cost of GOP shenanigans:

And issuing a tax cut while the Budget is still in limbo is negligent, to say the least.

Briana: The tale of American guns and foreign deaths

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I guess you could call this trickle-down economics, albeit of a deadly form:

She preyed on the parish of Clarendon, carrying out nine confirmed kills, including a double homicide outside a bar, the killing of a father at a wake and the murder of a single mother of three. Her violence was indiscriminate: She shot and nearly killed a 14-year-old girl getting ready for church. With few clues to identify her, the police named her Briana. They knew only her country of origin — the United States — where she had been virtually untraceable since 1991.

Briana, serial number 245PN70462, was a 9-millimeter Browning handgun.

As many of you already know, I served in the Army for several years. I taught weapons and tactics to foreign military and Guard/Reserve/ROTC here in the States. A few years after I left the service, I purchased a couple of weapons, a Russian Makarov pistol and a Chinese (Army issue) SKS 7.62 assault rifle. I did not have a weapon safe to store them in, but I did have trigger locks on both. I simply couldn't imagine anyone breaking into my home, but they did, in the middle of the daytime. And yes, over the years I have lost sleep worrying about what those weapons may have been used for. I wish other Americans worried about that too:

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Submitted by scharrison on

Another one bites the dust...

Tuesday Twitter roundup

Submitted by scharrison on

Somebody has to act:

The NC GOP needs to get with the program on common sense gun regulations. People are tired of thoughts and prayers.

Association Health Plans are still a bad idea

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You're probably better off with no insurance at all:

These types of plans were nixed under the Affordable Care Act, which required all insurance policies to contain 10 essential benefits and disallowed so-called “skinny” plans that provide little beyond basic catastrophic coverage, if that.

Association health plans were green-lighted again under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in October 2017, which was seen by many as a way of undermining former President Barack Obama’s ACA. But the plans also come with a host of caveats. They make some observers nervous because in the past association health plans have produced substandard policies that left some patients with big bills or skyrocketing premiums.

All insurance "pools" are a rarefied version of a Ponzi scheme, but these association health plans are even more so. There's simply not enough money in the pot to pay off all the losers if there's even a slight bump in the percentage of catastrophic health treatments, and the fact these "skinny" plans don't cover well care visits or other prophylactic measures actually increases that likelihood. Instead of fast-tracking boondoggles like this, which will likely only be tempting to those who make over the ACA subsidy threshold, the NCGA should be expanding Medicaid to cover those in the gap. And before approving AHPs, they need to wait and see how the courts and Federal government decide this issue:

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