Tag Archive | rants

The Killer of The United Healthcare CEO Is A Folk Hero

Dec7

What most of you who are whining about the rule of law are missing is that the United States of America is a failed state. It fails to function as a society for the majority anymore at all. This is why both left and right wing working class people are cheering on the assassin of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

To be clear, I am not advocating that people do what this man did. But the fact that he did it tells me an immense amount about the condition of the United States of America today and the most key finding is that the US is a failed state.

Trump never going to jail is proof of that. Trump’s reelection is proof of that. His open plan to turn the government against everyone except his billionaire friends is proof of that.

America, as some idea of a “shining city on the hill” doesn’t exist and never has. And now it never will.

America is exactly what historians have called a “failed state” for every other corrupt country that imploded in history. And failed states always die.

I predict there will be no America as you know it by 2040 at the latest, likely sooner.

And more than the CEO of United Healthcare will die in this implosion. A lot of people, regular working class people are going to die from unnatural causes over the next decade plus. Trump’s “deportation camps” (aka concentration camps) are going to kill tens of thousands via sheer neglect and willful cruelty. And when the ACA is repealed, health insurance companies will kill even more Americans in their pursuit of profit. None of this will end by politely asking them to stop. Your oppressor won’t take his boot off your neck just because you beg.

Finally, let me remind you that over Mr. Thompson’s nearly 30 year career with United Healthcare, that United Healthcare is directly responsible for over half a million deaths due to insurance being too expensive or care being denied.

Nearly 60,000 Americans die PER YEAR from lack of health insurance or denial of coverage from insurance companies. (The actual number may be even higher.)

That’s 1.8 million deaths over 30 years. United Healthcare’s share of that 1.8 million deaths is at least 450,000. At least, if not more. Mr. Thompson ran a company that has killed more Americans than were murdered in the Rwandan genocide.

Think about that. PROFIT does not excuse murder. Mr. Thompson and the entirety of the for-profit health insurance system are mass murderers. Every single person working for health insurance companies is complicit in mass murder. Every single one.

I don’t care if people don’t like that statement either. Just because we’ve made it “legal” doesn’t make it moral or ethical. Mass murder in pursuit of profit is immoral and a time will come for that bill to be paid. And history teaches us that the oppressors often pay in blood, both yours and theirs.

Consequently, I repeat, the United States is a failed state and failed states always die. Within 15 years, the USA will have gone the way of the USSR and other corrupt failed states.

Watch and see.

I No Longer Trust You

Nov29

This is an expansion of something I did as a series of posts on BlueSky.

Occasionally, I think about the poet, Renee Vivien, and what LGBTQ people went through to live as themselves in the past. Second photo is a copy of one of her poems called Prolong The Night. Its words shout to me of the pain that existing in patriarchal cishet society must have carried.

Make no mistake but conservatives are coming for all LGBTQ people. You won’t save yourselves by throwing trans people under the bus first. Now that he’s elected, Project 2025 is loudly proclaimed by his entire administration as their guiding document. If they win, the idea of freedom dies.

I used to believe that Americans were better than this, that they’d try to rise above this hate, these lies, this violent murderous intent that oozes from every corner of the GOP. But I no longer believe that. Even those few that voted against Trump still harbor that ugly hatred of LGBTQ people.

But I’m reminded of the voyage of the MS Saint Louis, a passenger vessel that, in 1939, with more than 900 Jews aboard, was turned back by the United States to Europe. Those people were taken in by other countries than Germany but it didn’t matter because Germany overran France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and more, and many of those 900 still ended up in concentration camps and died. America turned its back on those refugees and then incarcerated its own Japanese-American citizens. I wondered if America had changed since the 1940’s and I now have my answer. You have not and I have no faith in any of you anymore.

I hadn’t planned on being laid off in Dec 2023 but I was, and forced into retirement because, as the saying goes, the same people that want us to work until age 70 are the same ones who won’t hire us after age 50. And while I still run rings around younger software engineers, I’ve been forced out.

So I’m working towards a different career, with a different goal – enough financial stability to let me leave this rotting corpse of a nation and settle myself elsewhere. To those of you choosing to stay and fight, may Inanna bless you, protect you, and save you from what’s to come. I no longer think America is capable of avoiding an era of darkness that could put both Stalin and Hitler to shame. And I expect trans people to be just the first of many sacrifices on the altar of fascist scapegoating.

But as for me, I am tired. Years and years of this only to watch Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic Party turn their backs on us during the final weeks of the election have proven to me that, just like in the 1930’s, Americans will turn us in to the fascists as soon as they demand it. Americans have always been fundamentally moral cowards and they still are.

If you’re cisgender, I now automatically no longer trust you. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Seth Moulton, Colin Allred, Sherrod Brown, and so many more have proven to me that you’re never to be trusted. That you’ll turn on marginalized people if it’s your path to power. Do I trust a few cisgender people? Yes, I do, but they’ve been there for me. I’ve seen what they’ll do versus your own silence when all you needed were words to fight back. You don’t have the guts to fight back tooth and nail, when the violence really begins because you couldn’t even muster words when that was all that was needed.

So don’t come into my comments proclaiming that you’re different, that you can be trusted, that you’ll protect us. Because I know, with certainty, that as soon as the fascists point their guns at you, you will turn on us again. LIberals are joking that half of America turned out to be people they wouldn’t trust with the location of Anne Frank. Well, sad to say, Anne Frank wouldn’t be safe with you liberals either, and you just proved it.

All that Democrats had to do was fight back in September and October of 2024, yet you didn’t. You kept trying to change the subject. You kept trying to gloss over the existence of trans people. You wouldn’t stand up for 0.6% of the population. Hey, to the rest of you LGB people? They won’t stand up for you either. You’re a Jew? You’re just 2.4% of the population and they won’t stand up for you either. In fact, Trump might just deport you all to Israel, to help hasten this “end times Armageddon” madness on the right.

But in the end, I now know you’ll turn tail and run, hide, or do anything except protect those targeted by the far right. Don’t object because your actions, or rather, your lack of actions when it could have mattered, have already convicted you.

There’s A Lot of FAFO Happening In America Since The Election

Nov20

A little review of the sort of things happening in America now that Trump won and so many people voted for him.

In the first week after the election, people were searching for “what is a tariff” but after a few days of that, Americans, with their usual hindsight, began researching “can I change my vote”. No, you damned fools, you can’t change your vote once submitted. You get to live with your stupid choices.

Speaking of living with stupid choices, here’s a sample of what’s happening. And notice that the guy who voted to “kill Obamacare because it sucks” but whose life depends on the ACA, still blames Democrats that Republicans gave the ACA the name Obamacare.

These people who voted for Trump voted for outright cruelty, they voted for a rapist, a convicted felon, a liar, a fraud, a thief, an outright racist, a man so stupid he thought you could nuke a hurricane, and then these Trump voters wonder why decent people want to have nothing to do with them?

FAFO – that’s short for Fuck Around, Find Out. 76 million Americans fucked around and are now all going to find out, when Trump repeals the ACA, when he cuts Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

But here’s a really good one. Employees bemoaned when their boss said no Christmas bonuses this year. They got upset so he held a meeting. He explained that he is the one paying the tariffs, not China. And he needs to buy supplies from China right now because nobody in America makes those supplies at all and once the tariffs start, his production costs will rise.

And speaking of tariffs, Nissan, in bright red Tennessee, laid off 9000 workers just a few days after the election. Trump’s policies will hammer them, despite assembling their cars in the US, because they import the parts from Japan. Sorry suckers, I mean MAGA, you voted for this, so you deserve to get every single horrible thing Trump promised to happen to you!

It’s even affecting families.

Relationships all over the country are strained because 76 million of YOU PEOPLE voted for a human monster.

It’s a lot of people finding they aren’t welcome around decent folks these days.

Kids are even telling parents off.

Women are divorcing husbands now, because they voted for Trump and Trump and the GOP want to do away with no-fault divorce.

And those of you who claim you voted for Trump because of “the price of eggs”? Fuck you. Trump has no plan to reduce costs and his tariffs and deportations will cause inflation to skyrocket, especially in terms of food. Who did have a plan to tackle grocery price gouging? Kamala Harris. But you couldn’t bring yourself to vote for a Black woman, could you? You voted for a monster who can’t even smear bronzer on his face right.

Oh! One more thing about tariffs – they’ll cause the foods we import, like coffee and chocolate, to skyrocket in price.

Hillary Clinton was being nice when she called you people “deplorables”. You are all truly 100% human garbage. You’re human garbage. You’re scum. You’re exactly how Nazi Germany happened. And if there is a God, when you face him, I am 100% sure he is going to say “I never knew them” and turn his back on you just as you turned your back on millions of at-risk Americans.

May every one of you Trump voters burn in hell.

P.S. Even the Bible, if you ever bothered reading it, tells you that just “confessing the name of Jesus Christ” does not save you. You’re outright told that the demons in hell confess that name and it doesn’t save them. So no, Billy Graham and all those evangelical pastors lied to you again and you fell for it, as usual. So when I say “may you burn in hell”, I’m quite confident that your stone cold, dead hearts will burn in hell and not arrive at the pearly gates.

Trump’s (And Putin’s) Goal Is To Destroy The Federal Government

Nov14

Trump selects Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead HHS, top US health agency

Trump appears ready to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head HHS. Nothing in your grocery stores can ever be trusted to be safe ever again.

I’ve been thinking so bear with me here. I said years ago (2015, when Trump first ran) that he was Putin’s man and that Putin was trying to engineer the same strategy against the US that the US had engineered against the USSR – support dissatisfied factions within the US, fund them, arm them if need be (easy in the US), and try to shatter the country into independent states (Balkanize it).

The goal, in my opinion, is to remove the United States as a nuclear threat on the world stage without an open war. The weapons lesson from the USSR is that the rest of the world will pressure small independent states to give up any nukes on their soil. That’s what happened to former states of the USSR.

Why does that come into play right now? Trump is nominating absolute morons to head government departments, plus Musk is leading a group whose goal is to cut 2/3rds of the government’s work force.

What does that mean? It means that the federal government will ultimately be viewed as incompetent and untrustworthy at anything. And what does that accomplish? Blue states, like California or New York will likely respond with their own agencies for environmental, food safety, labor, and other issues. But if the blue states do that, where will they get the money? They’ll threaten to stop sending federal taxes to Washington. And if they do that, then the “United” part of the United States is effectively over.

From there, it’s a short step to declaring outright independence because those states won’t need Washington anymore. In fact, if I were Putin and California declared its independence, I’d be among the first to recognize it. And then I’d whisper in Donny Numbnuts ear to “let them go” and “rule over the part that loves you”. California might even play the China card, forming a defense pact with China against Washington.

And from there, you slowly but surely end up with a denuclearized, Balkanized North America. Nobody would want a nuclear armed Wyoming. Nobody in their right mind would want a nuclear armed Missouri or Arkansas. And even as right wing as it is, Texas might see this as their shot at getting out from under Washington once and for all. The northeast would likely secede and form immediate ties to Europe and Canada.

We already know Michael Flynn plans to get rid of all but one of the 17 US Intelligence agencies. The United States will be effectively blind in terms of intelligence even if Trump does leave office in four years. And remember, Trump has already, since being elected, questioned whether the 22nd amendment even applies to himself.

In 2016, I said you were watching the death of America. Now we’re watching the corpse being eaten by maggots. Stop thinking this can be saved. It can’t. The future is going to lie in the blue independent states of North America, and most of the red states are going to be third world hellholes.

So, Trans Leftists, Does that Green Party Ticket Look So Cozy Now?

Nov3

I’m sitting here amused, terribly amused. I’ve had multiple laughs at all the transgender ideological purists who insisted that voting for Stein and Ware was the only moral choice. However, not only did Green Party candidate Butch Ware throw trans people under the bus, but Stein isn’t contradicting him, which makes her complicit. And then, he talks about limiting access to abortion at 16 weeks. What a winner. Such a champion of women and trans people. Note that while Stein says she supports reproductive freedom, she’s said nothing about Ware’s comments. That silence is deafening this close to election day.

Plus. you have to be daft if you add in the realities of American politics – no 3rd party candidate matters. If you vote third party, you’ve wasted your vote. I don’t like this but it will take constitutional amendments to remove the winner-take-all system that sits in place now, and constitutional amendments to take much of the procedure for voting out of the hands of the states before we can move beyond two parties.

Anyway, you do have that right to waste your vote, and most of my friends are white and cishet, so they have all that privilege too. But let’s examine the reality.

1. A vote for any third party candidate ensures that the killing in Gaza continues. That’s a fact. Don’t tell me you “care” about Palestinians if you voted third party. The only thing that third party voting does is to salve your own conscience, so don’t come at me with how much you care about ANY marginalized group. If you cared, you’d take a path that could create a change.

2. A vote for Trump is already predetermined because Trump has publicly said he wants Netanyahu to “finish the job” and he thinks that land would make great condos not far from the beach. Again, don’t tell me you care about Palestinians if you voted for Trump.

3. That leaves a vote for Harris, which has a possible range of impacts. Most likely in the short term, the killing in Gaza continues. In the longer term, however, Kamala Harris might be convinced to force Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. This is the only path that has that possibility. Yes, it’s not even the most likely outcome but it IS a possibility.

Ergo, the only vote that really cares for the Palestinian people is a vote for Harris-Waltz. Of course then we have to work on Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Democratic Senators and Congresspersons, but at least it’s possible. Any other vote is a guarantee for the genocide to continue without end or get even worse.

So you never convinced me that voting for Stein was really about caring for the Palestinian people. You just screamed “genocide” irrationally as if that would change my mind. But if we do look at this rationally, we discover that the only vote that possibly could help the Palestinian people is the vote for Harris.

And now… now we have Butch Ware throwing trans people under the bus and Jill Stein refusing to discuss it, which makes her complicit. And Ware then throws women under the bus saying he supports restrictions on abortion. He’s either a wanna be Republican or incredibly incompetent and I’m not sure which is funnier, sadder, and more frightening.

As it turns out, your “purity politics” vote turned out to be rotten clear to its core. And I could have told you that before you wasted your vote. In point of fact, I did tell you that. I told you repeatedly Stein was a “professional candidate” and she runs for president periodically to raise campaign funds to live off during non-campaign years. I’ve pointed out that she’s close to Putin, who is killing Ukrainians, about whom you don’t seem to give a damn.

Consequently, I am greatly amused at your choice and the fallout from your choice to support the Green Party because they’re not “genocidal”. Well, guess what? They side with the GOP in hating trans people. Good move, huh? And Stein hasn’t directly contradicted Ware on women’s reproductive rights either, has she? So the Green Party is no friend to women either.

I’d ask if some of you felt the least bit of shame for supporting Stein, but your egos are too big for that. Too “ideologically pure” despite what Ware and Stein just did to trans people and to women. Too full of hate for any result except instant perfect justice which never happens in the real world. Real justice gets messy, takes time, and is uncomfortable.

Was Harris a perfect candidate? Hardly, and I freely admit that. But she’s miles better than Trump will ever be, and, she’s open to change. Further, as Black women have repeatedly taught me, it’s important to minimize harm even if we can’t stop all harm. And a vote for Harris is the vote that minimizes harm for the most number of other marginalized groups, both here and abroad.

But I think we’ve now established that voting for Stein is a shitty vote. And now it’s your shitty vote that you have to live with. You can ignore me. I wonder if you can silence your own conscience over what your precious “Green” Party thinks of trans people and of women. Oh, by the way, this same criticism and analysis applies to those of you that didn’t vote “because of Gaza”. You may never be able to vote again.

At his point, I’m confident in concluding that voting for the Green Party or not voting at all was pretty fucking stupid.

https://www.advocate.com/election/jill-stein-running-mate-transphobia