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Just a little lick of love, every day

Just a little lick of love, every day

Jesus' favorite

Jesus' favorite

Just a few drops under the tongue every morning before session, senator

Just a few drops under the tongue every morning before session, senator

The world, after all, isn't black and white, good and bad, dumb bifurcation. It's a madly, endlessly cascading swirl and swoon, scream and sigh.

The world, after all, isn't black and white, good and bad, dumb bifurcation. It's a madly, endlessly cascading swirl and swoon, scream and sigh.

Microdosing for Republicans

I used to think it was so simple, that the most obvious, overarching problem facing fundamentalist Christian Americans, pseudo-macho politicians andpuny, big-stick dictators alike was largely one of gross sexual ineptitude, all that angry old-male megalomania and grim saber-rattling stemming merely from gloomy carnal repression and warped Puritanical anxiety, all resulting in a desperate need to compensate, to prove their value and their sad macho mettle in pretty much any way possible.

Buy some guns, get a Hummer, forsake your soul to a megachurch, start a war with Iraq, worship Fox News, whine about female empowerment, never think for yourself, turn Republican and fear and hate upon just about everything that doesnt conform? Just for starters.

To be sure, all those were certainly hallmarks of the Bush era, and it led to the concomitant trope that if only the repressed conservatives of America would free themselves from the tepid chains of fundamentalist Christian panic and, you know, get well and happily laid once in a while, theyd surely calm the hell down and the world would might survive a few more generations.

Ah, youth.

I dont quite believe that anymore, and not only because my understanding of the world has become more sophisticated, or because all those brittle conservative males have become any less oppressed, or any less ignorant of god.

Exactly the contrary. Its because the modern political world white conservative males in particular have taken a turn for the worse, the darker, the more spiritually hostile. As the world these men inhabit contacts and shrivels, as their influence decreases, their actions only turn more ruthless, their souls more dim.

Translation: There is no longer any room for quaint notions about sexual oppression and getting laid. No more jokes about furtive gay hookups in the bathroom, senator. The tepid sexual anxiety that was at the root of so much damning scandal for the GOP and fundamentalist Christianity in the 90s and 00s has given way to something far more gruesome, and far more devastating. And Trump is leading the charge.

So, what now? If vile Trumpism is no longer only about old white guys compensating for raging feelings of inadequacy, if all their hateful trolling not just pushback against their own increased cultural irrelevancy, then surely they are on the verge of true and violent collapse, threatening to take us all down with them. And so maybe what these lost boys really need, is a far more intense sort of... cracking open, before its too late.

They need to see Earth from space. They need to volunteer in a slum in India. They need to imbibe large amounts of peyote and spend a week in a sweat lodge in the desert, crying out to the ancestors. They need to drop ayahuasca with master shamans in a Brazilian jungle, and have a personal reckoning with the One True Mother. They need to witness their own bloated egos explode into a million fractal shards and reassemble into the shape of a giant, undulating butterfly with wings of blood. Hey, its a start.

Too much to ask? Of course it is. So maybe they could just dive into the latest trend of, say, microdosing. Maybe some intrepid D.C. interns could, I dont know, spike the congressional coffee with sufficient micrograms of LSD, psilocybin or MDMA, just a little bit, every single day, for the next few years. And the entire White House, too. And see what happens.

After all, microdosing is in. Its the freshest, most viral pathway to heightened awareness. It reportedly reduces depression, aids creativity, tickles the animas synapses just so; it just might be the magic elixir, the thing mystics have known for millennia and science is now beginning to understand, the idea that hallucinogens (and, increasingly, various strains of THC), even in tiny, barely perceptible doses, can soften the egos roughest edges, aid in perception and generate feelings of delight and ease. Whats not to like?

Of course it makes sense. Of course millennia of deep hallucinogenic experience across myriad cultures and millions of humans would translate directly to the notion that a small bit of same, every few days, could help a person, you know, reconnect. With spirit. With nature. With the planet. With his or her fellow man.

Could it maybe, just maybe, help the viciously maladjusted, spite-filled modern GOP relocate the one human quality thats most lacking in Trumpland today: empathy? Of course it could.

Longshot, I realize. And of course, Trump himself is way too far gone for any such transformation. Never has an American president been so sadistically, so enthusiastically lacking in basic concern for humanitys well-being. Never has an American leader been so entirely bereft of warmth, fundamental decency or moral literacy. And never have so many Republicans gleefully followed him right into the bleak abyss.

But then again, who knows? Its worked for anxious moms. Its worked for business types, yogis, teachers, mechanics, doctors, writers, students, athletes and authors, ancient masters and modern intellectuals, gurus and saints and gods.

Jesus almost certainly enjoyed a great deal of hallucinogens, if he wasn't one himself. Buddha was a walking indica cookie. The gurus who channeled the Vedas, the most ancient, most mystical spiritual literature on human record? Come on.

So then, a humble call-out to the D.C. interns, the disgruntled White House staffers, the furious FBI agents, the beleaguered reporters, the miserable wives and daughters of congressional Republicans, et al. Let us happily conspire to perhaps start dosing the most hateful and morally egregious among you with various (increasingly legal) compounds of wow, and see what transpires.

And of course, save a good amount for yourself, too. We're all in this together. That's what the mushrooms tell me, anyway.

The rest is here:
Microdosing for Republicans - SFGate

But the complete argument for revoking Kushners clearance is actually much broader.

Kushner and the White House would have had little credibility if theyd denied the claims in the Washington Post and Reuters reports, but the fact that they havent seriously challenged them should be read as confirmation. If Kushner had not requested illegal access to secure Russian communication facilities he would have every interest in refuting reporting to the contrary. That he has not done so suggests an awareness that such an explicit denial might ultimately be contradicted by evidencea secret recording of the meeting, or the testimony of ousted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who is the target of an FBI investigation.

So the intelligence end-run reporting is almost certainly true, and it is thus also almost certainly true that Kushner lied on his clearance form. That these contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak didnt simply slip his mind. And that, knowing all this, he nevertheless encouraged his father-in-law to fire the FBI director.

The threat to security is at least twofold. First, by seeking the channel in this way, Kushner implicitly revealed that there are things he was happy telling the Russian government that he didnt want the U.S. government, then under Barack Obamas control, knowing. Nobody with such motives, if they were known to the government, would ever have received a clearance. Second, by telling lies to the U.S. government that the Russian government may have had the capacity to expose, Kushnerjust like Flynnwas vulnerable to blackmail.

Again, Paul Ryan seems not to care about any of this, much as he and other leading Republicans, like Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, dont care that Trump went to Europe and vandalized the Western alliance. This kind of enabling behavior defines the Republican Party today, and is often and correctly interpreted as part of the endless collateral damage Republicans will tolerate in pursuit of tax cuts. But the focus on Ryans motives, rather than his actions, reduces his abdication of duty to a partisan or ideological calculation. Something appropriately left in the realm of politics.

But its much more severe than that. Trumps election was a catastrophically destabilizing event in and of itself, and people like Ryan were complicit in it. But to an under-appreciated extent, the amount of damage Trump would ultimately be capable of inflicting was a question for Congress as much as Trump himself. America cant unelect Trump, or annul his presidency, but it would be straightforward for the countrys other political branch of government to signal to the world that it would never allow a U.S. president to permanently upend the foundation of trust underlying the post-war global order without good reason. If a presidents advisers have malign intent with state secretsin many cases secrets shared between nationsnothing says Congress has to tolerate it. If the president himself is reckless with those secrets, or with his foreign policy in general, nothing in the Constitution says Congress must sit on its hands. Quite the contrary.

Instead, Trump returned to the U.S. in a wake of outraged howls from allied countries, and amid news reports that his top adviser tried to subvert U.S. intelligence agencies with the help of a Russian spy, and the top Republican foreign policy guy in Congress said the presidents first trip abroad was executed to near perfection, while GOP leaders shrugged off Kushners mind-boggling improprieties.

What theyre telling the world is that if another figure like Trump emerges promising to upend U.S. alliances and run a rogue, untrustworthy administration, one of Americas two political parties will welcome him, and help him get away with it.

Read more:
How Republicans Are Helping Trump Destroy the U.S.'s Global Credibility - New Republic

Robert E. Moffit 4:25 p.m. ET May 29, 2017

Congressional Budget Office(Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo, epa)

Obamacare is wrecking individual and small group markets. This year, premium cost increases in the individual markets are averaging 25%, and the thousands of dollars in deductibles are breathtaking. Many middle-class folks in these markets are stuck paying the equivalent of a second mortgage.

Washingtons inflexible regulations are also helping to jack up health care costs, pricing younger and healthier persons out of the market, and thus driving costs even higher. This costly experiment in government central planning has resulted in shrinking enrollment, sharply declining competition and narrow medical networks.

Theres nothing new here. In the 39 states with federal exchanges, HHS reports, average monthly premiums rose from $232 to $476 from 2013 to 2017.

Congressional Republicans promised to fix this mess, and the Congressional Budget Office has given their bill a mixed review. The fiscal news is positive, with CBO estimating the legislation would cut the deficit by $119 billion over 10 years. But the insurance coverage news is negative, with CBO estimating that 23 million fewer persons would have health insurance in 2026.

The GOP should be skeptical of CBOs coverage estimates. It has been an abysmal performance. For example, CBO projected initially that 21 million persons would enroll in exchange plans in 2016. The actual enrollment: 11.5 million.

OUR VIEW:

Republican health care bill indicted, again

To be fair, the CBO admits the uncertainty of its own estimates: Such estimates are inherently uncertain because of the ways in which federal agencies, states, insurers, employers, individuals, doctors, hospitals and other affected parties would respond to the changes made by the legislation are all difficult to predict.

Congressional Republicans should take a deep breath. While they should take CBOs report seriously, they must not treat CBO projections as Holy Writ. They should use the Senate version of their bill to fashion good policy that will further reduce costs and protect the vulnerable. They need to fulfill their promises and press ahead.

Robert E. Moffit is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

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Read more here:
Republicans, on CBO estimates, be skeptical - USA TODAY

New York Times

Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed New York Times RALEIGH, N.C. In Washington, efforts by this state's Republicans to cement their political dominance have taken a drubbing this month. On May 15, the Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina elections law that a federal appeals court said had been ... Cooper v. Harris - Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United States Supreme Court ruling wipes out Republican-drawn House districts in NCUSA TODAY all 57 news articles »

Read more:
Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed - New York Times

President Trump and House Republicans celebrate the passage of the GOP health-care bill in early May. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Republicans have had seven years to figure out how they want to replace Obamacare, and this is what they've come up with: a plan that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would lead to 23 million more people not havinginsurance and, in states that wanted to, sick people being burdened with much, much higher costs.

Maybe they needed eight years?

The real question here is why. Why weren't Republicans able to put a plan together that people actually, you know, like theirs is polling in the low 20s and why did it take so long? And the answer is pretty simple: Republicans are philosophically opposed to redistribution, but health care is all about redistribution. For a long time, they tried to wish that away, and it was only when that wasn't an option anymore that they moved on to Plan B: trying to pass the least redistributive billthey can before anyone noticed how much it doesn't redistribute.

That last part isn't working so well.

Now, if we could start from scratch, Republicans would like our health-care system to work the way Singapore's does. Everyone would have catastrophic insurance to protect against true medical emergencies and then use health savings accounts to pay for routine care out of pocket. It's not just that this would make people pay their own way as much as possible. It's also the idea that making them do so would make them shop around for the best deal.

There are two problems with this, though. First, as economist Ken Arrow pointed out long ago, picking the right medical care is a lot different from picking the right car. People don't know enough to be good comparison shoppers, and they're not going to scrimp when their health is on the line. But second and more importantly we don't have the low health-care costs you need to make all thiswork. Singapore's government, you see, has been able to keep costsdown because it owns most of the country's hospitals, it employs a lotof the doctors, and it subsidizes cheaper treatments to try to get people to choose them. The result is that they spend only about 5 percent of their GDP on health care compared with the 18 percent we do. Which is really all you need to know about why their system works for them but wouldn't for us. It's a lot easier to pay for their own health care when that costs three or four times less what it does here.

How have Republicans dealt with this? Well, for the most part, they haven't. They still want people to use HSAs, to pay higher deductibles, to have more skin in the game that will supposedly turn them from patients into consumers never mind that that would just price a lot of people out of the market altogether. That's actually a feature, not a bug. Health care is only a major priority for Republicans insofar as they can make it redistribute less money. So while conservative wonks might be focused on trying to make the health-care system more of a free market, conservative politicians are more interested in what that means for their tax cuts.

Just look at Trumpcare. It's only a health-care bill to the extent that it takes health care away from the poor and middle class to pay for a tax cut for the rich. Indeed, over the next decade, it would cut Medicaid by $834 billion and health-care subsidies by $276 billion, all to finance a trillion dollars' worth of tax cuts mostly benefitingwealthy investors.

But that was still too redistributive for the far-right House Freedom Caucus. They didn't just want to stop the rich from having to pay for the poor. They also wanted to stop the healthy from having to pay for the sick. So they added an amendment that would allow states to opt out of Obamacare's basicrules. Insurance companies wouldn't have to charge people with preexisting conditions the same as people without them, and could sell plans that didn't include essential benefits such as hospitalizations, mental health and maternity care. That would allow young, healthy people to save money by buying bare-bones plans, while older, sicker people would have to pay more for theirs since they'd be the only ones buying those types of comprehensive plans. The insurance market, in other words, would bifurcate. Healthy people would buy affordable plans that didn't cover a lot, and sick people would try to buy unaffordable ones that did until they couldn't. Republican Mark Meadows, who more than anyone else pushed for these changes, was reportedly reduced to tears when he found out that they'd mean a lot of people with preexisting conditions would lose their coverage, which makes you wonder what he thought they were doing.

The rest of the GOP sure knew.

Read the rest here:
Why Republicans are so bad at health care - Washington Post