Those pedo accusations trigger something in certain people that is both repulsive but also quite interesting to see. People who spent decades equating homosexuality with pedophilia while spouting death threats at men/boys who showed any interest in their teenage daughters – now suddenly are well-educated on the various nuances and caveats of adults having a proclivity for sexual activities with minors. It’s not pedophilia if she’s had her period. It’s legal in Alabama if the parents consent. Juliet from Romeo and Juliet was 13.

Gross. Gross. Gross. But also not surprising in the least little bit. They are the people who think about gay sex more than the gay people actually having said gay sex. So, it just makes sense that they’re also the ones raping minors and/or supporting rape.

An added layer to this shit storm is that the actual deadline for signing up is December 15th because that’s when open enrollment ends. After open enrollment, whatever plan you choose (or if you choose to go without), you’re stuck with until next year (caveat being that there are some qualifying events like divorce or job change where you’re allowed to alter your selection).

So, here we are 3 weeks (actually less than 3 weeks now) out from having to make a final decision, and we’re getting inconsistent as well as contradictory information from the federal government. These decisions take a lot of time for us to make, the rules made by the federal government should have been clear and in place well in advance of open enrollment season.

The monthly payment for my current plan is going up close to 50% (comparing non-subsidized price btw), but also comes with higher out-of-pocket expenses (copay, deductibles) and higher maximum out of pocket (lower is better). So, we’re getting much less while paying substantially higher rates. Keep in mind, I’m only comparing the unsubsidized cost of the plans, but many people on ACA plans are receiving tax credits (i.e. subsidies) that cover all or part of their current plans. So for those folks who won’t get that tax credit anymore, double the cost is probably understating how much more expensive it will be.

This unprecedented rise in expense means a lot of us are looking at the risk versus reward aspect of whether it makes sense to even have health insurance. That’s an extremely difficult decision to have to make, then on top of that, for those that decide to stick with an ACA plan, choosing a plan is itself a monumental task with all the considerations and variables you have to keep track of. It takes a lot of time, research, effort and now in the final days of open enrollment, we’re not even in a position to make these decisions based on a solid foundation of information – the rug could be pulled and a wrench thrown in at any moment.

Maybe I’m being overly negative, but it also won’t surprise me when these systems go down or have technical issues on the final day(s) because of extreme volume of use due to so many of us having to wait last minute.

One of many troubling issues with all this and the way it was handled is that these cuts were made too hastily. My former employer is a federal contractor whose income was some mix of federal, state, and private. Had there been sufficient time to reallocate staff and resources towards state and federal private funding, they/we would have had time to change our strategy and pursue those other lines of funding – likely avoiding the massive monthly layoffs that have been going on in 2025. But that takes time, which was not something anybody had with the sudden, drastic, and unprecedented cancellation of federal contracts that did not leave any room for a smooth transition It was just lost jobs and shattered lives with little to no benefit for working class people.

It may just be my circle, but my friends and colleagues who managed to keep their jobs pretty much all complain about how they’re dealing with burnout now because they have an untenable workload but also the work environment is so stressful because everybody’s still under threat of more layoffs. This is happening both in federal work as well as private industry.

Eat a piece of broccoli once and nobody labels you a vegan. But a man sucks a dick once, and suddenly he’s gay? C’mon, now.

I get the joke that’s trying desperately to be made here, but I feel like this misses the mark.

For one thing, there’s a big difference between “sleep with” and a blowjob. But also, the alleged Bubba blowjob incident wouldn’t have happened after 2016, let alone specifically on the date listed.

A lot of anti-trans people struggle to define “woman”. Honestly, it seems like most of them struggle with anything beyond “boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” level of understanding.

And yet so many of those same people have expert-level understandings of the various nuances of terminology used to define the rape and sexual assault of minors. They even have a well-defined litmus test to determine which forms are acceptable versus which ones are unacceptable.

Terribly weird, if you ask me, which you probably aren’t but I’m saying it anyway.

The one I heard enough that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was the scripted official response was along the lines of “I know which one my life was better under.” These are also the same folks who parroted the “How come eggs is so darn expensive?” only to pivot directly into understanding that the president doesn’t control the egg prices, which are controlled by complex market conditions that they’re now fully able to articulate, the moment Trump was sworn in. Weird, huh?

Now they’re struggling to understand why coffee and beef are so expensive and why every time they go to Walmart it’s always out of this and that almost as bad as it was back at the start of the covid epidemic. Gee, who was president then, too? Starting to see a pattern here.

If you pay for sex you’re a sleazeball.

Do you mind giving a little more feedback on why you feel that way?

Taken at face value, as stated, it sounds like you’re 100% against prostitution and making a value judgement against people who hire sex workers.

Keep in mind, I have never paid for sex, and I’m not coming at you because of your opinion. Just curious, is all, since I’m more of the opinion that what consenting adults do in their own privacy is their own business as long as it’s not hurting anybody. And I do understand that a lot of times, sex workers are being exploited. But then I also think about situations like the disabled guy (IIRC it was something terminal) who hired sex workers because he felt he couldn’t/wouldn’t find a willing partner otherwise due to the circumstances of his disability. Plus, I’m a bit biased, as I lived with a sex worker as a roommate for a couple of years, and while nobody’s perfect, he was a much nicer and better person that a lot of random folks I know.

Keep in mind the context of this conversation is “What if all American’s cancel their insurance.”

Although the premise of this conversation is regarding all Americans, cancelling insurance is only relevant to the subgroup of people who are currently paying for insurance. That excludes a huge chunk of the population right off the bat, including the people you mentioned who can’t afford insurance (but also don’t qualify for other options like Medicaid). There’s nothing for them to cancel because they are already uninsured, they don’t play much of a role in affecting change in this scenario.

On the topic of bankruptcy, the differences between the options isn’t super important in this context. The majority of people filing for bankruptcy don’t get their debt wiped for free, it’s still a costly and risky option to rely on, and it’s far from being a practical, immediate, and acceptable alternative to maintaining health insurance. Would relying on bankruptcy work for a single person, relatively healthy, with no kids or dependents, few or no assets and low income? Sure. Does that work for the majority of people, who have dependents and/or health issues, own things, and make a typical income, no not really.

But, isn’t there an alternative?

No, there is no practical, immediate, and acceptable alternative available.

You just go, accept the debt, and eventually file bankruptcy.

That’s not really a viable option for most people in the USA.

Bankruptcy in the USA is expensive in and of itself, comes with a lot of limitations, and still requires you to sell your property (if you’re wealthy) or continue to pay off the debt (if you’re working class). No way I can cover all the cons and reasons that’s not an option for most people, but basically it’s a huge gamble and is liable to leave you in a worse off financial situation than if you’d just maintained insurance.

Also, most people’s medical care comes from primary care, urgent care, pharmacies (i.e. non-emergency care). These are places where you pay up front or you don’t get service / prescriptions / care – particularly if you are uninsured. These places do not have to provide service if you can’t pay.

For emergency room care, there is a minimum standard of care that they must provide regardless of ability to pay, but it’s (hand waving here) basically just patch you up enough to temporarily stabilize you so you can be pushed out the door. Overwhelmingly, people who’ve been to the emergency room require follow-up care (not provided by the emergency room), and that follow-up care is similarly pay up front or no service. The emergency room also isn’t going to manage all the routine stuff unless/until it’s at a life altering point, and if you wait that long to get treatment for those types of things, you pretty much always end up much worse off in the long run.

So again, this is not really an option for most people or most ailments.

This is not coming from a mean spirited place, but “what if all American’s cancel their insurance?” Well, it will never happen unless there’s a practical, immediate, and acceptable alternative available. So, we can feel free to play through the scenario in our heads, but if I’m going to go day dreaming, I’m going to dream about stuff that’s way more fun to think about than health insurance (like what if I had superhero powers or what if I won the lottery jackpot).

The hard reality is that healthcare without some kind of medical coverage (insurance, medicare, medicaid, etc) in the USA is not practical. Younger and healthier folks, people without kids or other dependents, and things like that can make do without, and many do.

However, there’s already a huge pool of people who get free or significantly reduced cost coverage via programs like the VA (for veterans), Medicare (for seniors), and Medicaid (for poor and disabled). Another giant pool of people receive heavily subsidized health insurance via their employers, because the employers pay some or all of the premiums. Although that group often complains about the cost and quality, many/most of them still know that it’s very risky to go without and that there’s at least some level of return on investment there that makes it still worth it. Then sandwiched in with that group are the young adults who are on their parents’ insurance so they don’t really pay for it themselves anyway.

While those groups are full of people who are like minded and want to see reform, you’ll never see significant push back and willingness to stop paying from those groups. So, it’s really only a relatively small block of Americans who are bearing the entire brunt of their health insurance costs and who could potentially get by without it, who would also be willing to. And that pool isn’t likely large enough to affect significant change on its own. You’ll basically get half the country telling them to get a job (completely ignorant of the reality of the situation), another third of the country telling them that it’s a choice they made and others shouldn’t have to pay for it, and the bulk of the remainder that aligns ideologically but who aren’t in a position to drop their healthcare coverage.

Keeping in mind that I’ve obviously glossed over a lot of details and caveats because at the end of the day this is just a long assed comment and not a dissertation.

Truthfully, Mamdani’s win wasn’t really surprising to me nor were many of the other results. I suppose, as others have pointed out, it was the margins that were a bit unexpected.

I’m still not feeling super confident about the longer term picture. This election cycle wasn’t even a mid-term election and from what I can tell anecdotally, non-political people and folks roughly in the center still weren’t / aren’t particularly energized or motivated to vote. So, I get the feeling (and I’m happy to be wrong, btw) that this was energized Dems/left versus a more tepid round of solid Rep/right voters this time. I feel like next year, when the center is more engaged and/or more people have polarized based on the economy (for working class) … that’s the point where one party or the other is going to start paying the price.

“Nobody knows what the rules are anymore”

That’s the one I experience so much these days. It really does seem like even the professionals being paid to enforce the rules don’t know what the rules are anymore. When things have reached that degree of chaos, how am I supposed to know what I have to do?

And it just keeps on happening over and over.

Go to the DMV (driver’s license office), talk to three different people, and you’ll get 3 different interpretations on what paperwork needs to be provided and what forms need to filled out. Head over to the post office after being told you just need to show your ID to do a change of address, and suddenly the clerk acts like they have never done a change of address before but either way they’re certain you need to provide 3 forms of ID and proof of residence at the new and old addresses. Only thing is, none of that is true, so when you try the same thing at a different post office, everything goes through just fine. Insurance is supposed to cover a relatively minor medical procedure, but you call ahead of time to confirm. The doctor’s office even gets advanced approval. After everything is said and done, you spend the next 5 months filling out a plethora of forms, calling doctors office and insurance company weekly, jumping through hoops, being told the last person you talked to didn’t give you the right forms so now you have fill out the exact information on another form that’s virtually identical. And the list goes on.

Absolutely no reasonable person protesting on Saturday expected the federal government to lie down immediately and just give up, turn democratic and liberal, enact single payer healthcare and stop needlessly sending people to places like “Alligator Alcatraz” without due process. If that was your expectation, you are stupid. I still think you’re great, of course, but you are either willfully ignorant or woefully naive.

A lot of naysayers who are supposedly “on the same side” are poo-pooing all over this with statements like “it was pointless” and “it achieved nothing”. Be ignorant like MAGA if you want, it’s a free country.

My small, rural, southern town that held a protest was planning for around 150 people to attend. Last I heard, the official number of attendees was around 300. It might not sound like much, but that was an enormous surprise to pretty much everyone. We even had a Trump supporter drive around dozens of times blasting his horn and doing the most pitiful attempt at rolling coal you’ve probably ever seen. It was great!

But, I know for a fact, I personally realized that there are way more of my neighbors than I thought who are politically aligned with me. I saw dozens upon dozens, maybe even hundreds of people in their cars honking, waving, blowing kisses, giving thumbs up. I guarantee you at least some of those folks drove down the local highway feeling like they were alone, outliers, and surrounded by haters, then they hit the first intersection in town and saw literally hundreds of their neighbors who agree with them politically. That’s empowering and that’s absolutely NOT pointless.

Am I correct in thinking that this whole anti-ice frog-thing is pure irony considering the MAGA Pepe frog thing from a decade (or more) ago?

Yay, Disney hate is finally mainstream! I’m basically inline with popular opinion by virtue of maintaining my firmly held beliefs I developed decades ago and held even when it was inconvenient and unpopular!!! It’s my time to shine for the short period of time this transient fad plays out!

Kidding and current events aside, Disney media has given me the creeps since I was a kid. The popular cartoon movies just felt like propaganda. I’m not saying everything Disney hits that note, but so, so much of it does.

Then I started meeting Disney adults and, while I understand that Disney has no control over how these people act and choose to represent them, all I can say is OH MY GOD. Crazy cat lady, bizarre couple who live in Christmas themed home decor and wardrobe year round, homeless person who’s still got money for meth and thinks he’s Jesus vibes all wrapped up into one with sprinkles on top.

Then they took over local news stations and started presenting “Disney” as news – entire segments dedicated to Disney intellectual properties disguised as “breaking news” kind of bullshit.

And finally they wrapped their slimy tendrils around the neck of super heroes and Star Wars and squeezed until blood poured out every pore while the corpse dried out and rotted.

So, thank you, I’ve had enough, and at least now maybe a few more people will see what kind of monster they’ve been supporting all along and decide to sever the ties.

I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve been traumatized by a Disney adult. So, while I haven’t truly been boycotting Disney, knowing the type of people who support them in general, I wanted no part in that. And then they had the audacity to besmirch Star Wars AND super heroes? FUCK THEM.

But in all seriousness, I was a kid when I realized that Disney stuff gives me really creepy vibes, and I haven’t quite shaken that since. I “cut the cord” years ago, so my network TV exposure is basically the channels I receive over the air, and ABC is one of a limited number of selections that I can receive out here in rural America. It’s super creepy and irksome that all the news reporters have to have that cheery, overly saccharine disposition to the point where they’re practically jovial as they deliver the news that dozens of children were killed in record breaking floods. And then after the next commercial break, they’re talking about the latest Disney movie or TV show like that kind of shit is actual news? No thank you.

So, I suppose the wall of text I’ve just written serves no purpose other than to recognize that Disney, like all companies in the USA, is basically just another automaton to weaponize by the federal government because the people that run them have no spine and honestly seem to believe that they’ll be spared if they make Empire happy. Good luck with that.

You have to be “my non-binary lesbian niece tells me I am being hateful when I remind gay people that they are sinners and real marriage is between a man and a woman but I don’t hate anyone it’s just what I believe and I feel like the government should force everyone to live by my personal flavor of Christianity’s moral standards even though I really don’t even do that myself” down the panic hole to believe this stuff, at a minimum, based on my experience.

My wake-up call probably should have been when a member of my own family insisted that Christians are the most prosecuted people in the USA (this was circa 2024).

Although it wasn’t all that long ago, at the time, I just chalked it up to being another of that person’s regrettable opinions. After all, it’s patently ridiculous to believe that it’s illegal to say Merry Christmas, that kids are being expelled from public schools for praying (but only Christian prayer, Muslims are still allowed to pray), and other non-sense like that. But, sadly, it’s more and more evident that vast swaths of the nation actually do not care that these beliefs are false, it’s real to them, so that makes it easy to view themselves as being persecuted.

Gay people, in general? No. But, gay people as in more than one gay person? Yes. Absolutely. Why else do you think we go around telling each other things like “Slay, Queen”?