I paid a brief visit to Electric City Weblog yesterday, just for old time sake. It’s not as busy as it once was. Most of the posts are written by Dave Budge, and there is little dissent in the comments. (The only “dissenter” I saw was David Crisp, a Democrat who thinks in that frame of mind, and so is allowed to comment there. His bomb has long been defused.) Others are Craig Moore, Lt. Col (R) Rich Liebert (does that title tell us anything about his attitudes?), Mike Mikulski and Aaron Flint, all reliable right wingers.
"The Perfesser"Rob Natelson writes there now and then. His posts are so predictable that I’ve come to believe that he suffers from a myopia brought about by constant reinforcement of his own views, a process of self-indoctrination that we are all susceptible to. He is incapable of seeing beyond his own prejudices, and does not leave that nest to engage in debate.
Gregg Smith still writes there, though not so much as Budge. who dominates the site.
Travis Kavulla, now a Montana office holder, is apparently absent. (Kavulla is now in a position of power, and is a truly dangerous man. He has no self-edit ability. Given his chance now he will put his ideas in action without laboratory trial, awareness of untoward effects, or respect for wisdom of the past. He is quite sure he is right about everything. This is the definition of a “radical.”)
Electric City Weblog is now, officially, what it was always meant to be, a right wing circle jerk.
Both the media and schools are largely in left-wing hands – and the content reflects this fact. But consider the stark contrast between the two. Schools, unlike the media, largely target impressionable youth. Schools, unlike the media, are heavily tax-supported. Schools, unlike the media, usually can’t go bankrupt. And finally, schools, unlike the media, have a very high switching cost. Even with a voucher system, changing your kid’s school would remain a much bigger deal than changing the channel.
In short:
Aimed largely at impressionable youth (Media: no, Schools: yes)
Tax-supported (Media: no, Schools: yes)
Can’t go bankrupt (Media: no, Schools: yes)
High switching cost (Media: no, Schools: yes)
It’s a good question.
Kavulla: Portrait of the radical as a young manHere’s what is interesting – this is not up for debate. There is no question in their minds that the media and schools are “largely in left-wing hands,” and so there is no burden of proof. Without that burden, there is no need for discipline, and they are free to go off in any way they please without fear of being called out for lack of rigor. It’s not a “good question.” It’s a joke.
And it nicely sums up our media culture (understanding, at least here, that the “left” is an imagined monster that hardly even exists in this country). I watch The Daily Show each night, and only because it is funny. They often skewer FOX News, calling them out for their obvious mistakes. It doesn’t matter. The people who watch FOX news do not watch The Daily Show, and so are immune to any hosing down with reality. FOX does exactly what it is meant to do – agitprop, which requires intellectual isolation to be effective.
And so in this manner to has Budge, who has banned dissenters from ECW, created a vacuum where he, Natelson and Smith can spout their nonsense without detractors.
It’s apparently all he ever wanted – intellectual isolation, preaching without dissent from the congregation.
______________________ Disclaimer: This site is no way affiliated with Electric City Weblog, The Perfesser, Budge or Kavulla. Any opinions expressed are those of the author and not of the management of Piece of Mind, Inc. “The Perfesser” is registered trademark of Rob Natelson.
______________________ PS: This isn’t a terribly well-written piece, getting absorbed in personalities as it does, but I had it in my mind at the outset that what is happening at ECW, where they are cloistering and talking amongst themselves fairly typifies the nature of discourse in the country as a whole, and especially among right wingers who like to talk about “Econ 101” for the rest of us as they are daily confronted with the failures of their ideology. It is comfortable to fall into a self-affirming group in that situation. ECW is just a blog, like this one.
The scene was one of horror, with shocked men holding their heads in sorrow and women shrieking in rage and anger. Bodies were strewn about. It was yet another incident in the ongoing war of terror … not the bombing in the Moscow airport, which we are allowed to know about, but an American bombing of Afghan civilians, which we are not allowed to know about.
Since The Pentagon does not do body counts, we do not know the death toll. I heard the words of the interpreter – survivors expressed their outrage at the American invaders, wanting only that we go home. Given a choice between Taliban and Americans, they choose … the one that does not drop bombs on them.
I watched that report last night on Al Jazeera. We are conditioned, of course, and as always, to automatically disbelieve anything said about us by those characterized as enemies. So even though the report was aired on Link TV here in the home of the brave, it will not be noted elsewhere. Only those of us with minds freed up a bit will lend it any credence. The rest will not even see it, and so will be spared the resulting cognitive dissonance.
The dispatcherMurder is murder. I don’t care if the murderers are highly trained American pilots. Murder is murder. It is not “first degree” murder, as these young pilots are deeply indoctrinated in American ideology, and so think they are performing a necessary task. But it is not “manslaughter” either – that is, they are deliberately putting people in harm’s way, and so are responsible for the resulting carnage (which, fortunate for them, they never have to witness). Forgiving the naïveté of youth, real responsibility lies up the line in the command centers that order the air strikes. These are more seasoned veterans, likely more world-wise, and surely aware of the dangers of bombs launched from aircraft into civilian-occupied areas.
Will there ever be another Nuremberg? Will state-sanctioned murderers ever again be brought to justice? I doubt it, at least not in my lifetime. Far from being brought to justice, one of them recently received the Republican presidential nomination. He is some kind of “hero” because the people he dropped bombs on imprisoned him and (gasp!) possibly even mistreated him.
I am not a pacifist. I believe in the necessity of self defense, and just war. I want to be on the “just” side of the conflicts, those engaged in self-defense. They are the ones who do not have the stars and stripes on their uniforms.
I was recently listening to David Marsh on satellite radio – I really like the guy, as I rarely leave his show without having heard something new and different. Marsh is the sole extent of the sourcing that I will do for this post. I’m just putting it up because it has explanatory power.
Dave Marsh: rock critic, historian, anticensorship activist, talk show host, and “Louie Louie” expertNPR is a perfect complement to the liberals and intellectuals who support Obama and the Democrats. It’s mild, and full of programming that has no political significance. Its news is identical in content to the corporate networks, but has better production values than other radio news outlets. The only times I listen to NPR are when Terry Gross has something interesting going, and of course, for Car Talk and Wait Wait… . I think that Garrison Keillor fills up six hours of weekend programming. It seems much, much longer than that.
NPR was founded in 1970, and has from time-to-time over the years offered independent news and views. But it’s independence was untenable for two reasons: One, congressional oversight, and two, corporate funding. These are enough to keep it bland and unoffensive.
And this, according to Dave Marsh, is the purpose of NPR. The year 1970 is significant because there was an outbreak of democracy going on, and local radio played a significant role in spreading information for organizing purposes. All large cities had independent channels, and many mid-sized ones as well. Since 1970, even with rocky early years, NPR has sucked up all of the bandwidth oxygen from radio. We now have Pacifica, with three outlets, left out of the hundreds of local stations that existed in 1970. It’s flagship show, Democracy Now!, which started in 1996, now broadcasts over 900 outlets, but most of them are insignificant, and its audience reach is limited.
Rebel radio ... step aside! It's Garrison Keillor!I don’t know how much credence to put on that narrative – I don’t know that NPR was specifically intended to put an end to rebel radio. I do know that its fund raising drives suck up a lot of energy and money from liberal-leaning groups and individuals, and that me-too news is not exactly a prize investment.
The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. (Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the U.S. and Australia, 1995) [This is the opening citation in Potter’s book.]
One of the nagging questions about health care “reform” is “Why now?” Health care reform has been one our primary concerns for decades. The problems we face now were minor when Clinton proposed his plan in the early 1990’s. It was a festering problem in 2004 when John Kerry avoided it. Why now?
We drove into Denver last night to hear Wendell Potter discuss the issues. Potter was a PR executive for CIGNA, but also a man with a conscience who, in the end, did the right thing, the costly thing. He walked away from CIGNA and turned against his former employers. He became an advocate for true reform.
He answered the question, though I did not like the answer. I paraphrase: Wall Street is making severe demands of health insurance companies. They have to deliver excellent returns to investors, or the investors flee. In 1993, when Clinton proposed his plan, the “medical loss ratio” (“MLR” – the amount that insurance companies pay out in actual medical expenses for clients) was around 95%. Most companies were not-for-profit.
Then the for-profits moved in.
Most of the not-for-profits are gone now, and the industry is driven by Wall Street. MLR now hovers around 80%. Insurers are looking for new and better ways to squeeze more profit out of this system. Their long-term plan is to force us all into crappy high-cost high-deductible policies, and sell junk insurance for the more destitute (these are plans that cover some in-system doctor bills, but not hospitalization). But they know that the fallout for this will be more pressure for true reform, even single payer (or at least a public option).
So they went to Obama and the Democrats for “reform.” That’s why it finally became a campaign issue. The lobby called “AHIP” (America’s Health Insurance Plans) wanted it.
AHIP went into the game knowing exactly what they needed, and got it. One, they want a private mandate – the ability for force us to buy their products. Second, they wanted no government competition, no public option. In the reform charade, the Kabuki theater that Obama, Baucus, Lieberman, Nelson and the other Democrats put us through in 2009, it had already been decided that there would be no public option and a private mandate. The insurers bought Obama, and Obama delivered.
That’s why we finally got reform. Wall Street decided it was time.
____________________
Potter is at heart a journalist who lost his way, finding his way back after decades of public relations. He watched the health care debate unfold, and understood the forces at work. Phrases like “death panels,” “government takeover,” and “job killing” are professionally crafted, the specialty of the PR industry. They are planted in the dialogue, and then spread like viruses. They are short and memorable, and pack emotional punch. That is usually all that is needed to win a debate in our shill-infested environment. (Isn’t it interesting that the Democrats can never manage to come up with a good hard-hitting name for the things they supposedly favor? S-CHIP anyone?)
Potter is on a book tour now, which is why he was in Denver. Most of his talk was Q&A, and there were very good questions.
Here’s his take on what is unfolding right now: While the health insurers got most of what they wanted out of Obama’s bill, there were some unpleasant features that they want eliminated. One, they want the 80% cap on medical losses eliminated. (As outrageous as that number is, it merely froze them in time – that’s where they were already at.) There’s also a provision in the law that mandates basic benefits that must be covered, basically outlawing junk insurance. They have bought the companies that sell the junk, and so want that provision gone.
There is also a provision in the bill (coupled with the private mandate) that prohibits insurers from denying coverage for “preexisting conditions” starting in 2014. Right now these poor schmucks are being sent to state exchanges that are adversely selected and prohibitively expensive. (Potter did not talk about this, but surely the “reform” that now exists is useless – about 8,000 people nationwide have taken advantage of the exchanges.)
“This legislation will set into motion several key reforms. First, it will eliminate the possibility that individuals can be denied coverage because they have a preexisting medical condition. Second, it will require insurance companies to sell coverage to small employer groups and to individuals who lose group coverage without regard to their health risk status. Finally, it will require insurers to renew the policies they sell to groups and individuals.”
Those words are from Bill Clinton’s signing statement for HIPAA, the portability act passed in 1996. The insurers merely countered by making portable insurance unaffordable. I do not believe that there is a real fix in Obamacare for preexisting conditions because there were no cost controls. Nonetheless, expect that the preexisting condition mandate scheduled to take force in 2014 will disappear. Already the PR industry is hard at work – they are saying that we who have preexisting conditions are actually people who wait to buy insurance until we get sick. That’s how they are selling the repeal. It invokes the notion of freeloading, and so has emotional punch.
Anyway, Potter’s message was that current bill that passed the House, the title of which actually contains the PR-written catchphrase “jobs-killing”, is a smokescreen. Of course it won’t pass, but the real negotiating is going on elsewhere. AHIP is under incredible pressure to produce more profit for the investors. Expect that the few actual reforms that were included in reform will disappear.
And Obama will not stop them. He’s no friend of Jack.
__________________
The final siege will take place here ... care to join?But all hope is not lost – single payer is on the table in Vermont and California. It has a reasonable chance of passage in Vermont, but AHIP is watching closely and has far more clout than the legislators in that small state. The threat of a good example is real – Canada didn’t willy-nilly overhaul their system – it started in the provinces. Because it worked, it spread like a virus, and the insurers were booted.
In the board game Monopoly, there comes a point late in the game when so much power has acceded to one player that he can easily overwhelm all the others. We are probably at that point in the health care game, when our best hope is that a tiny state might boot the for-profits. But it might be our green sprout, our lifeline, a sliver of light in our darkest hour before dawn.
From: Lindsey Jackson, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana To: Blue Cross Blue Shield Montana clients
In today’s world, planning health care expenses can seem like an overwhelming task. However, by proactively managing your health care and thoroughly understanding your insurance benefits, you can feel better about how you choose to spend your health care dollars.
Toward that end Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana is pleased to present Health Insurance Essentials education sessions through our Blue University℠ team; this is a select group of our staff dedicated to educating our members about how to most effectively use their benefits while navigating the sometimes confusing waters of the health insurance industry.
Beginning January 18, 2011, Blue University℠ will be hosting the Health Insurance Essentials program throughout Montana to help you learn how to:
Wisely use health insurance benefits
Access the right provider network
Proactively manage health care costs
Sign up today for one of the sessions below. If you have questions, call Lindsey Jackson at 406.437.5369 or send her an email at Lindsey_Jackson@bcbsmt.com.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana | 560 N. Park Avenue | Helena, MT 59604 | 1.800.447.7828 | http://www.bcbsmt.com
An independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, an association of independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans. Registered and SM service marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a registered mark of BCBSMT, serving the residents and businesses of Montana.
Suggested new logo for BCBS of MontanaMemo
To: Lindsey Jackson, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana
Re: Your offer to provide “Health Insurance Education”
Dear Ms. Jackson:
Thank you for your generous offer to provide me and former fellow Montanans with “education” regarding what you do for a living, which is screw us personally and mess up our health care in general.
I have another view of who is in need of education, and offer the following:
1. For-profit health insurance is bad public policy. Health insurance profit and quality patient care are at odds with one another. 2. Due to the profit motive, health insurers seek to avoid any client that might potentially be unprofitable. 3. Because of #2, health insurers created the term “preexisting condition.” 4. Because of #2, health insurers created “rescission.” 5. Because of #2, health insurers invest heavily in politicians so that laws contrary to public policy are passed. Hence, Obama’s health care “reform” package. 6. Because of #2, people with “preexisting conditions” (a term created by insurers) are forced into high-risk pools where generally they have to spend $12,000 or more before insurers pay $1. 7. Because of the high cost of adversely selected pools, people don’t buy in. Hence, millions of people who might get sick are uninsured, and you have conveniently avoided them. (That’s bad public policy.) 8. Because of #2, health insurers dumped senior citizens on government. 9. Because of #2, health insurers created the hugely profitable “Medicare Supplement”, where you pay 20% of approved Medicare expenses often at a higher price than Medicare charges for the other 80%! 10. Because of #2, health insurers created the hugely profitable Medicare “Advantage”, a subsidized programmed subtly designed to remove profitable clients from Medicare, leaving Medicare with the sick ones. (We spend our working days pining for the day we can get on Medicare and away from you. When finally we are able to join Medicare, there you are again. Weird!) 11. Because of health insurers reluctance to pay claims at all or in full, doctors and hospitals over-bill, hence driving health care costs upward and upward. 12. Because of greed and the profit motive, health insurers often skim 20% or more off the top of each health care dollar for their private use. 13. Because health insurers fear real competition, they convinced their in-pocket politicians to remove any kind of public option from health care “reform”, and want to force private citizens to buy their crappy products.
Hence, because of private health insurers, the United States has the worst health care system of the 34 industrialized democracies, with massive expenses, poor outcomes, and millions of uninsured.
You did this to us. You are leaches on our system. Your bosses are probably sociopaths. We can’t get rid of you because you are politically entrenched in our corrupt political system. You are part of the corruption.
So, how’s my education going, Lindsey? Want me to come lecture, or is the conference really for the purpose of blowing smoke up people’s asses?
Most sincerely,
Mark
PS: Lindsey, why don’ you write me?
______________ PS: It is true that BCBS of Montana is technically “not for profit”, meaning its overhead is 14% instead of 20%. However, its agents and executives are driven by the same motives and play in the same arena as the for-profits, and so are the same animal with a lighter coat.
The Veg-O-Matic took Butte, Montana by stormI was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Pitchman,” about the Popeil’s, a name that any of us in the Boomer generation know well. Ron Popeil was both an innovator and a salesman, with his success attributable in equal portions to each. His Veg-O-Matic was a huge hit, and in reality a very useful product. The Pocket Fisherman was crap, but as Ron said, intended as a gift, and not to use.
The Pocket Fisherman, a piece of crap, the angler's version of right wing economicsIt is fascinating, as is all of Gladwell’s writing. What kept popping into my mind as I read was that there was not a word about tax structure, disincentives, or politics in the piece. Ron Popeil gets a psychic payoff from his life and work. His best work happened during the 1950’s, when the top tax rate was 91%.
I’m just sayin’ – the right wing has twisted economics into a Randian pretzel. They don’t know jack about people. There is a small percentage that is driven by financial return, nothing more. They are always with us, called by various names, including “Wall Street” and “the financial sector.” They are our facilitators, but not our innovators. They need to be put in a cage, handed green eye shades, but never let out into real sunlight. When they become our masters, when their needs become our driving force, we have … what we have – boom and bust, bubble and pop, and grand inequality of wealth.
____________ Oh-oh: I realized while on the treadmill that this post is classic confirmation bias. Perhaps the Catholic Church can use my services in finding that elusive second miracle for JPII. How easily I fall into it.
My bias is this: That right-wing economics takes that behavior of a small minority of us, sociopaths, and presumes that we all not only should, but want to behave that way. It then seeks to look to government as stifling our natural impulses to behave as they think we should. I am always in search of evidence.
I once had a teacher – an ex-marine nun (believe it!), who shook my young psyche by claiming that the fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped so many gods was not an outdated practice – that we could find the same thing going on currently with The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. Each of these minor gods is worshiped in the same way that the Greeks might have done so with Hermes and Hera – important, but not like Zeus, the big guy.
The search for miracles is confirmation bias on steroids. I wonder if the church employed Natelson and Budge in the process. It’s also comical. If this God of theirs were so powerful, why is he so sneaky about imparting evidence to us?
Says that Assange (!) has blood on his handsSarah Palin says that Julian Assange “… is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands,” who should be “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.” Read … murdered. Mike Huckabee at least has the decency to call for a trial before executing Assange. Vice President Biden says that Assange is a “high-tech terrorist.” The incendiary word “terrorist” automatically sanctions murder.
First we try him, then we hang himPresident Obama allows for compilation of a list of “high value targets” – people who can be summarily executed on sight. The fact that the list includes American citizens troubles people. The absurdity of limiting outrage only to American citizens escapes people.
Says that Assange (!) is the terrorist hereIn a sane and normal world, Palin and Huckabee are charged, tried, and if convicted, serve time. President Obama is impeached, but not until the clown Biden is first removed, to keep him out of that office.
But this is not a sane world. We are so deranged by the constant onslaught of agitprop that we think of incendiary or illegal violence or threat of violence by American patriots to be acceptable, while the same behavior by official enemies, once “communists” and now “terrorists,” is somehow crazed.
And the scale of violence in our eyes is so small – I mentioned in another post that American pilots commit massacres daily “while texting.” It was hyperbole, but only to point out that we think that our pilots massacring people is normal and acceptable. The fact that we do our murder and mayhem on high and from afar, by fighter jets and B52’s and long-range missiles and by use of drones does not remove us form culpability for our behavior.
And yet, when there is blowback, as with 9/11, it is them! They are the terrorists.
Violence comes home to roost, attitude precedes action, actions follow rhetoric, agitprop inflames psychos to murder, and we’re shocked! Shocked.
Radio is a one-way only mediumLike everyone, I’m sickened by the shootings in Tuscon. The apologists of the right wing are out in force now, distancing themselves from the shooter and attempting to draw equivalencies between far right and center-right, aka “the left.” But Jared Loughner is just an anti-government guy.
There are always a few on the fringe who cannot manage their anger. So set aside the fact that it happens so regularly in this country, and not others. What is going on here?
My first impulse today was to go back and reread Marshall McLuhan on the power of radio. McLuhan was a scholar and a fad of the 1960’s – he even made an appearance in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. His famous assertion was that “media is message,” or that content is not so important as the vehicle that delivers it. He broke down media into “cool” and “hot.” Cool medium requires high participation – say for instance, the television show South Park, with its cutout characters and so few people doing voices, requires us to fill in the details of personality for the characters. That takes real effort on our part.
Marshall McLuhanRadio, according to McLuhan, is a “hot” medium, one that “beat the tribal drum.” The reason is that we cannot interact with it (despite the three or four calls that talk radio hosts allow per show, it is a one-way medium). The host is spreading a message to a large audience, but on the receiving end there is one talker, one listener. It’s an intensely personal experience on the receiving end, all thinking done by the talker, and no response allowed by the listener.
Right wing radio listeners are remote and inaccessible to debate or reason, virtually intellectual slaves to the talk radio host. When he makes them angry, they have nowhere to go with that anger.
…the immediate aspect of radio [is] a private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber. The resonating dimension of radio is unheeded by the scripted writers, with few exceptions. The famous Orson Welles broadcast about the invasion from Mars was a simple demonstration of the all-inclusive, completely involving scope of the auditory image of radio. It was Hitler who gave radio the Orson Welles treatment for real. (McLuhan’s emphasis)
However, McLuhan believed that more advanced societies are less susceptible to the drumbeat of radio.
Highly literate societies, that have long subordinated family life to individualist stress in business and politics, have managed to absorb and to neutralize the radio implosion without revolution. Not so, those communities that have had only brief or superficial experience of literacy. For them, radio is utterly explosive.
In the U.S., the talk radio phenomenon is almost entire exhibited by the far right wing. “Left” talk radio doesn’t travel well or draw much audience. Could this be the reason for something painfully obvious at every Tea Party rally, every Sarah Palin speech, every fundamentalist religious gathering … that these are not literate people? Could the failure of left-wing talk be simply due to the fact that the left side of our narrow spectrum in the U.S. is more literate?
Fr. Charles CoughlinIt is what it is. Radio is a drum beat for a wild animal that needs to be kept in its cage. Since 1987, U.S. talk radio has run free, and the right wing has become angrier and more irrational and more powerful all at once. It is a monopoly – there is no discussion on talk radio – there is only one point of view. In 1949, the aftermath of World War II, and after a fierce right wing radio preacher named Father Charles Edward Coughlin performed much as Rush Limbaugh performs today, The FCC instituted the Fairness Doctrine. It was never a law, only a regulation, and a sensible one. It merely said that more than one point of view had to be carried on public airwaves. It wasn’t just Coughlin – it was all of fascism. The power of radio scared people. The Fairness Doctrine kept the beast in his cage.
There are many, many Jared Loughner’s running around today looking for signs or signals to act up. Indeed they are crazy. Most right wingers are not that – my impression is that they are over-matched. They are angry and looking for someone to be angry at. It’s an easy step for a politician or any other provocateur to channel that anger.
We need, once more, to revisit the wisdom of the past. The FCC in 1949 was way ahead of us.
Part of the new right wing majority in the senateI’ve been chuckling about this and scratching my head at the same time, to the point where I am now partially bald – so I’ve discovered. I do not often get to see the back of my head.
But why are the Democrats in the Senate only now talking about fixing the filibuster rules?
Here’s how it shakes out: The Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006, but there were two obstacles in place to stop any progressive legislation: the filibuster rule in the senate (which could have been changed), and a Bush veto. Consequently, the House of Representatives was free to do anything of its pleasing, as it had no real power.
The Democrats increased their hold on both House and Senate in 2008, but still allowed the Senate filibuster rule to be used to stop any progressive legislation. Again, the House was free to act as it pleased, as it had no real power.
The word for Democratic behavior in allowing the filibuster rule to stand is “complicity.”
Now that the Republicans have gained control of the House, it is being let back in the game. The filibuster rule in the Senate will be weakened, and Obama, for whatever far-fetched reason his aides can imagine, will sign some pretty nasty legislation. The pathway is being cleared.
There was a time to change the filibuster rule, but it has passed. That it is being done now, when it is too late? Again, the word, I think, is “complicity.”
Piece of Mindful 