Trump has just spoken from the White House on a matter of grave importance – the looming coronavirus pandemic saying . . .

“Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low . . .” and that we will soon have a vaccination for it. Those are lies. The administration has done virtually nothing but gut the CDC and the NIH, the risk is very severe and there will not be any vaccinations for at least 18 months.

It would be good if we had a President that people could believe – especially when so many lives are at risk – but Trump has lied so many times on so many subjects that trusting his word has become foolish.

The cherry on top of this sundae of dishonesty and incompetence is that we now have Mike Pence in charge of coordinating the government’s response. Good grief. As a reminder, Mike Pence is a dummy – a science-denying religious zealot whose political rise was fueled by his role spewing nonsense on talk radio. Heaven help us.

Here are two sources of coronavirus information for Virginia residents:

Centers for Disease Control

Virginia Department of Health

VDH reports, “No cases have been confirmed in Virginia at this time.”

Still, it doesn’t matter.  If the Dems ran a monkey with a machine gun, I’d vote for him as the lesser of the two dangers.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/484515-gop-senator-worries-trump-administration-is-lowballing-coronavirus-funding

Yesterday, during his India presser. Mr. Trump chided Chuck Schumer for stating that he didn’t think the $2.5 Billion supplement to help fight the coronoa virus the administration is asking for was enough. Now Richard Shelby is saying basically the same thing. Will Trump react the same way?

I vote NOPE. Because Shelby is a Republican.

Rush to slip RGGI past public view

That is a new way to generate graft under the guise of saving the planet.

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/dont-confuse-changes-federal-health-spending-national-health-spending

Tip of the hat to Bobrsmith for pointing me to this work on Medicare-for-all done by the Urban Institute. They have studied several Medicare-for-all options.

One plan can be called the Cadillac Plan. It would be far more generous than current Medicare. It would cover dental, hearing, vision and long term care that Medicare does not cover. It would eliminate premiums and co-pays. And, it would cover every person living in this country bringing in 25.6 million legal residents and 10.8 undocumented residents. This Cadillac plan would increase National spending by $7 Trillion over 10 years increasing it from $52 Trillion to $59 Trillion.

They also worked with a Chevy plan. This would essentially extend current Medicare benefits, premiums and co-pays to all people legally resident in this country. Even though this plan covers 25.6 million people with no coverage currently it will REDUCE National spending by $2 Trillion over those ten years.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money

Even the study by the Mercatus Center says there is an overall savings in an M4A program. “Even the Mercatus Center, a right-wing think tank, recently found about $2 trillion in net savings over 10 years from a single-payer Medicare for All system. Most importantly, everyone in America would have high-quality health care coverage.” Interesting.

Continue reading “Can 22 studies ALL be wrong?” →

A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change

The link is to a summary of the report issued by The Center for Climate and Security (CCS) which is a non-partisan security policy institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, with a distinguished team and Advisory Board of military, national security, intelligence and foreign policy experts.

Continue reading “For the skeptics….” →

School year 2021-2022 start day falls on the same day as Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year and the beginning of the High Holy Day season. The VB School Board spent about 30 seconds discussing and voted to force students and staff of the Jewish faith to choose between missing the first day of school or not attending synagogue. This is not acceptable.

Continue reading “An easily solved conundrum” →