Indigenous Roundup: Avenger Missiles, No Clemency, Decampment.

Courtesy Gary Dorr.

Mobile Avenger Missile Launcher Appears at Standing Rock.

A first-hand account of the terrifying deployment of an anti-aircraft device pointed at people.

Later, a veteran buddy looked it up to be sure, matched it up with our pictures, and based on his experience noted:

“My suspicion is that the Avenger Missile Systems deployed to Standing Rock are a cost-effective alternative to having an Apache Helo flying overhead when they need it. The Avenger system has Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) Capabilities. The civilian plane and helicopter probably don’t have FLIR and that is when they need an Apache Helo to “monitor” situations under darkness and record for evaluation later. Instead of calling up the Apache, they can have Avengers on-site for instant intelligence day or night. The Avenger system also has video capabilities. It costs them far less to have an Avenger system on the ground 24 hrs a day than to deploy an Apache Helo occasionally. The security ground forces have Night Vision but the Avenger has FLIR and a laser rangefinder along with video capabilities. The FLIR will be at least a plate-sized round lense mounted on the weapon rail on the left side (driver side) if there is one. Just a suspicion. If I am correct, there should be more info to request in a FOIA. The sheriff’s Department can’t all have TS Sec clearances so if they brief them all using Avenger footage, it should be low hanging fruit that would be unclassified.”

[Read more…]

There Goes Medicaid…

Well, it didn’t take long for Trump to destroy what little healthcare this country has, and millions of people are going to find themselves uninsured, and yes, that will be a death sentence for too many people. One person is too many. Yesterday, I was reading about the possible scrubbing of websites, the disappearing of crucial information, and replacing it with fake data, in order to make killing healthcare look like a reasonable thing to do.

Today, I’m reading about medicare. Well, what’s left of it. Medicaid will no longer be a federal program, it’s been converted to a block grant program, putting states in charge of administration. This is not good news.

Even then, we knew what a promise from Donald Trump is worth. Which is why it should come as no surprise that the Trump administration is now planning to strip health coverage from millions of low-income households.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway confirmed on Sunday that Trump’s proposed Obamacare replacement would convert Medicaid into a block grant program. This would take its administration out of the hands of the federal government and put states in charge, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Further details are, presumably, forthcoming. But in the meantime, there’s plenty of research out there on prior Medicaid block grant proposals. When the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed a 2014 block grant plan crafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) (then the chair of the House Budget Committee), it found that would result in a 26 percent cut to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by 2024. It’s difficult to figure out exactly how many people would lose coverage as a result, but here’s a rough guess from the CBPP report:

The Urban Institute similarly estimated that the 2012 block grant proposal would lead states to drop between 14.3 million and 20.5 million people from Medicaid by the tenth year. (That would be in addition to the 13 million people who would lose their new coverage or no longer gain coverage in the future due to repeal of the Medicaid expansion, with the number rising as high as 17 million if all states take up the expansion.)

At a minimum, block granting Medicaid will cost millions of vulnerable Americans their health insurance. Some of those people will die preventable deaths as a result.

The Trump administration is just a few days old. It has a nearly empty cabinet and a scant policy agenda. Its health care plan is mostly a giant blank. But President Trump, through one of his top surrogates, has made one thing clear: His promise to defend the coverage that low-income Americans currently have was a bald-faced lie.

Think Progress has the full story.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere A Sign…

Some of the older people will recognize that title. From Bored Panda, some grand signs from the marches against Trump.

“But Nobody Told Him That.”

Three of the half-dozen octogenarian protesters who set up shop near the senior citizens’ residence where they live in downtown Washington, D.C., during Saturday’s Women’s March. CREDIT: Alan Pyke/ThinkProgress.

Nasty, Brave Women came out all over the world to march, and even those who were unable to march found a way.

…These women would love to be joining the march. But they had a hard enough time convincing their landlords to let them go even as far as this spot in Thomas Circle. They are in their 80s and 90s, veterans of many cycles of American political harmony and social discord. The management at their building were terrified these seniors might get hurt even walking three hundred feet to the circle.

That concern wasn’t going to stop 83-year-old Harriet Fulbright from demonstrating her dissent against Trumpism.

“Damnit, I feel strongly about making our views and feelings known,” Fulbright said. “I’m here because I’m very worried.”

Like her fellow senior sign-wavers, Fulbright remembers the mass upheaval of the Vietnam era and the paranoia which government surveillance and sabotage of dissenters inspired.

Something about today’s moment is scarier than the demagogues before, both losers like Barry Goldwater and winners like Richard Nixon.

“This is new. Nixon was not my favorite,” Fulbright said, with a wry grin, “but I’m more worried now.”

Mamie Chesslin, 83, nodded along with that comparison from her wheeled scooter. As a former Department of Justice attorney who spent her career enforcing environmental laws, Chesslin knows better than most just how much federal agencies influence the future — for brighter or dimmer.

“I honestly wonder how we’re going to survive it,” Chesslin said. “He’s pathological in a way we haven’t seen before. The world doesn’t stop because of Donald Trump, but nobody told him that.”

Ms. Chesslin is right on the money. She puts that sharp mind right on the big, huge problem: Trump thinks he can do anything he wants, and he’s surrounded himself with people who tell him that’s right. He’s also surrounded by people who have enough power to try and make that a reality.

“I’ve been astonished and delighted by the reactions from younger people today,” said Tina Hobson, 87, who helped rally the group to defy the well-intentioned concerns of the residence staff. “Instead of an intense, anxious day, it’s been a lot of fun.”

[…]

“When you get to this age you remember what life was like before Roe vs. Wade. You can tell the stories,” she said.

“None of us thought we’d be doing this again.”

At a mere 59 years of age, and the unwanted product of pre-Roe life, I never thought we’d be doing this again, either. Yet here we are. Stay strong, stand up, shout out. Resist.

Via Think Progress.

ACA Repeal: Catastrophic.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its estimate of how many people will become uninsured if Republicans move forward with their likely plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the numbers are brutal. Thirty-two million people would lose their health insurance by 2026, and premiums would double in the same time frame.

Americans would also see a sharp and immediate drop in insurance rates. According to the CBO, “the number of people who are uninsured would increase by 18 million in the first new plan year following enactment of the bill.”

The CBO examined a bill pushed by Republicans in the previous Congress, the “Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015,” which would phase out provisions of the Affordable Care Act that help make health insurance affordable — including subsidies for plans purchased on Obamacare exchanges and the law’s Medicaid expansion. It would also immediately repeal provisions, such as the law’s individual mandate, which are intended to bring people into the insurance market.

At the same time, this bill would also leave in place certain regulatory reforms, such as the requirement that insurers cover people with preexisting conditions.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I faced doubled premiums, that would be the end of healthcare coverage for me, and as someone who needs to have spinal and neck injections every 3 months, well, that would stop too, because I know damn well I couldn’t cover the procedure out of pocket. That would leave me in massive pain with no respite, because without the injections, I don’t get pain med scrips.

Nevertheless, partial repeal would lead to a massive expansion of the uninsurance rate. Indeed, many people would be unable to obtain insurance at any price. As CBO explains, “roughly 10 percent of the population would be living in an area that had no insurer participating in the nongroup market.”

A Massachusetts study found that “for every 830 adults gaining insurance coverage there was one fewer death per year.” If this figure is applied to the 32 million who will lose insurance if key provisions of Obamacare are repealed, it means that about 38,500 people will die every year who otherwise would have lived in Republicans succeed in their plans to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act.

Yeah. All that shit about death panels? Well, now we know for sure who doesn’t care about people dying, but that’s hardly news. Naturally, rethuglicans are attempting to discredit and dispute the report, but they are still offering nothing but vacant looks towards anyone who expects details about the so-called replacement plan.

Republicans have indeed suggested several possible replacements for the Affordable Care Act, such as dismantling state insurance regulation, giving states more leeway to deny Medicaid coverage to people who are now eligible, and tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy. To date, they have not settled on a specific replacement plan, however, and the ideas they have floated so far would insure only a fraction of the people currently insured under the Affordable Care Act.

So, what we have to look forward to in this brave new world? Taxes, Pain, Death.

Via Think Progress.

“Jade Eggs”

A gynecologist, Dr. Jen Gunter, is taking Gwyneth Paltrow to task for hawking yet more crap at inflated prices. In this case, it’s ‘jade eggs’, which are claimed to do so much more than provide exercises of the kegel kind, oh yes! Goodness, there’s an intuition factory down there, and it requires feeding and care. This nonsense made me think back decades ago to a joke Roseanne Barr did about men thinking a uterus was a magical tracking device.

I read the post on GOOP and all I can tell you is it is the biggest load of garbage I have read on your site since vaginal steaming. It’s even worse than claiming bras cause cancer. But hey, you aren’t one to let facts get in the way of profiting from snake oil.

My issue begins with the very start of your post on jade eggs specifically that “queens and concubines used them to stay in shape for emperors.” Nothing says female empowerment more than the only reason to do this is for your man! And then the claim that they can balance hormones is, quite simply, biologically impossible. Pelvic floor exercises can help with incontinence and even give stronger orgasms for some women, but they cannot change hormones. As for female energy? I’m a gynecologist and I don’t know what that is!? How does one test for it? Organically sourced, fair trade urine pH sticks coming soon to GOOP for $77 I presume?

Queens and concubines, eh? Why would a queen need (or want) to impress an emperor? Besides getting her political classes all mixed up, citing concubines is on the really fucked up side. Perhaps Ms. Paltrow’s friends could chip in and purchase a dictionary for her, or some history books.

From the blather about jade eggs on Goop:

practice – there was not as much information about it then as there is now. But it made intuitive sense to me: The word for our womb, yoni, translates as “sacred place”, and it is a sacred place – it’s where many women access their intuition, their power, and their wisdom.

:Stifles scream: Oh gods, I can’t even say how much I loathe this sort of nonsense. No. No, no, no. I have a uterus, yes. It is by no means sacred, there’s no little altar in there, and it is not possible to access intuition, power, or wisdom from it. Pushing this absolute bullshit is not helpful, it’s not empowering, it’s simply reducing women down to parts, and misogyny and sexism already do that well enough. Dr. Gunter wasn’t impressed, either:

If the word for womb is yoni I hate to break it to you, but the uterus and vagina are different structures. If you are using the Sanskrit, while I admit I am no language scholar, it seems that yoni means the entire female reproductive tract and you should say that. Terminology aside, the vulva, vagina, cervix, and uterus are not intuition repositories and neither are they sources of “power” or “wisdom.” If fact, I find that assertion insulting. Do you really mean a woman who does not have a uterus is less effective? Is a woman without a vagina less intelligent? Is a woman who had a vulvectomy due to cancer less creative?

Dr. Gunter also takes on some of the very real physical problems involved:

As for the recommendation that women sleep with a jade egg in their vaginas I would like to point out that jade is porous which could allow bacteria to get inside and so the egg could act like a fomite. This is not good, in case you were wondering. It could be a risk factor for bacterial vaginosis or even the potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.

Regarding the suggestion to wear the jade egg while walking around, well, I would like to point out that your pelvic floor muscles are not meant to contract continuously. In fact, it is quite difficult to isolate your pelvic floor while walking so many women could actually clench other muscles to keep the egg inside. It is possible the pained expression of clenching your butt all day could be what is leading people to stare, not some energy glow.

Overenthusiastic Kegel exercises or incorrectly done Kegel exercises are a cause of pelvic pain and pain with sex in my practice. Imagine how your biceps muscle (and then your shoulders and then your back) might feel if you walked around all day flexed holding a barbell? Right, now imagine your pelvic floor muscles doing this.

Good advice, and people should keep in mind that Ms. Paltrow’s first concern is making money, regardless of what she says. She isn’t going to come rushing to the side of women who end up seriously ill because of the crap she hawks.

Dr. Gunter’s full post is here.

Repeal of ACA and Native Lives.

Mark Trahant has an in-depth article about the problems of no healthcare. In related news, Trump’s Health and Human Services pick is busy trying to fan the stench of corruption away from himself, but the stink is speaking loudly:

Washington (CNN)Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.
Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN.

Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.

Full story at CNN.

The Republican Strategy.

Mike Coffman. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jack Dempsey.

The Republican Strategy? In two words: run away.

Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) tweeted Friday that he was excited to return home to Colorado this weekend, but things didn’t go very well when he got there.

On Saturday, his open meeting to chat with constituents at the Aurora Central Library was overwhelmed by voters particularly concerned about the fate of their health care if the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) is repealed — a plan Coffman supports — without a replacement put in place. Rather than meet with most of them or even address them, he left the event via a back door and escaped in a waiting vehicle.

You can read the whole shameful mess at Think Progress. Well, I certainly find it shameful, but I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives simply don’t feel shame, much like they have gaping black maws where there should be empathy.

Healthcare Specifics.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, flanked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. John Barrasso CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen.

Or, rightly said, lack of healthcare specifics. The dirty work done in the small hours specifically gutted these features of ACA:

1. Protect people with pre-existing conditions.

2. Let young adults stay on their parents’ plan.

3. Maintain access to contraceptive coverage.

4. Ensure Medicaid expansion stays in place.

5. Protect children on Medicaid or CHIP.

6. Protect veterans’ health care.

Think Progress has all the details on each one of these, and how the rethuglicans just yanked the rug out from under everyone.

Back to What Healthcare?

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a health care news conference to oppose Republicans’ effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

In a classical villain move, the rethugs met in the middle of the night to kill off healthcare. PZ has posted about this, and Think Progress has a comprehensive look at what went down.

I’m just going to focus on the fear, the terror, the despair. Every single fucking person who voted for that sick fucker Trump, every single fucking person who didn’t bother to strike a valid vote against him, ever single fucking person who bleats about voting republican because, there simply are not enough deeply nasty words for you. There isn’t anything out there compared to the bone deep ugly inside of yourselves. Rotten to the godsdamn core, all of you who brought this about. :spits:

And one more fucking time: The Affordable Care Act, which has now been gutted out of fucking spite, is the same thing as Obamacare.

Amelia

@keithellison As a breast cancer survivor, this is a death sentence for me.

***

Ron Krasnow

As a Stage 3 cancer survivor I’m ineligible for life insurance and soon won’t be able to afford health insurance. Is this how “great” feels?

***

Mike T

I have cystic fibrosis. If the ACA is repealed people like me will lose coverage. People like me will die. #SavetheACA

***

Regular Sized Renee

As a veteran my health insurance is covered under the ACA.

***

Jen ish

I have a chronic disease. #SaveACA means I can be self-employed with coverage and schedule work around my illness. Without it? Who knows.

***

Cindy Baldwin

2. Without the protections in the ACA, I will run out of health insurance in 1-2 years thanks to the reinstatement of lifetime limits.

***

Ange

@SenSchumer so my pre-x condition of cancer will screw me and a recurrence will kill me…

***

Just the tiniest sample of those millions of people who will now find themselves in untenable and intolerable situations, thanks to all those who voted in mega-assholes who think running on spite and hate is a fine fucking thing.

Via Raw Story.

Healthcare Repeal in Trouble.

It would seem that one thing needs to be made very clear in any post about healthcare – the snidely nicknamed Obamacare is the same thing as the Affordable Care Act. It would appear that some Trumpoids think they are different. Now that’s all cleared up, resistance to the rethuglicans’ spite move is surfacing. This is a good thing, but whether or not it will be enough to smack some sense into the spiteful heads, that remains to be seen. This insistence on dismantling workable healthcare should be waking people up, because there is absolutely no reason to do it. None. There’s even a really great reason to leave it be, along with the little fact that it would be good thing to allow millions of people to keep their healthcare.

Republicans in Congress are hoping to make a big political statement this month by rushing to repeal Obamacare [Affordable Care Act]. Considering that Republicans are about to control the White House and two chambers of Congress, that legislative goal may seem like it’s firmly within reach. But the GOP’s repeal effort is actually in serious trouble.

Republicans’ Obamacare [Affordable Care Act] strategy — known as “repeal and delay” — is losing support from several moderate lawmakers who don’t want to move forward with repeal before the party has landed on a replacement plan. If they hold out, there’s no way Obamacare repeal can move forward.

On Monday evening, five GOP senators introduced a measure that would essentially slow down the repeal effort working its way through Congress.

[…]

GOP leaders are attempting to unite their party behind “repeal and delay” because they need more time to figure out what to do next. Republicans have yet to agree on a real health care reform plan to take Obamacare’s [Affordable Care Act] place. So they want to make a political statement now and work through the policy details later.

But there’s broad consensus that “repeal and delay” would wreak havoc on the insurance industry. Major lobbying groups like the American Medical Association, Republican governors whose states are benefiting from Obamacare, and prominent conservative think tanks have all come out against this approach, saying it’s too risky and threatens to jeopardize too many Americans’ health insurance.

President-elect Donald Trump has also come out against “repeal and delay.” During a little-noticed 60 Minutes interview in November, Trump said that repealing and replacing Obamacare needs to happen simultaneously.

So, slightly positive news, but the real problem lies in the conservatives’ idea of healthcare. Some of their replacement ideas have been truly horrible, and anything they are likely to come up with will amount to red tape nightmare of no practical use. It would be very nice if the incredibly hard of thinking republicans could grok the saying if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Via Think Progress.

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There Goes Medicaid…

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“But Nobody Told Him That.”

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“Jade Eggs”

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The Republican Strategy.

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Healthcare Repeal in Trouble.

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Mobile Avenger Missile Launcher Appears at Standing Rock.

A first-hand account of the terrifying deployment of an anti-aircraft device pointed at people.

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