StraightUp is a name my friends gave me because it's how I like my whiskey.


First of all, most of the money earmarked for PP goes to treating women on a broad range of health issues that our shitty healthcare system fails to cover. Secondly, abortion services are one of many provided by PP but it's not funded with federal money, except for limited cases such as rape. Federal money goes to all the other health services they provide. Some people don't trust PP to be honest about that. I guess just like everything else it comes down to trust.

One thing I know for sure is that they treated my daughter's UTI when she got too old for my policy to cover, she couldn't afford insurance on her own and the POS company she worked for was always certain to cut her hours to escape the legal obligation to provide her with insurance. She was in pain and right-wing America had no answer. Planned Parenthood did.


I never said I hate corporations. In fact, over the course of my career I co-founded three of them. Don't get confused... Just because I don't think trickle-down is good for America doesn't mean I hate corporations.

I do see what you're saying about the pork and I agree in principle but so far I am finding no mention of PP being a part of the pork for this rescue bill... (It's not a stimulus bill). I see all the chatter on right-wing, rumor-mill media but I'm not finding it anywhere in the proposed bill and the fact checkers are saying it's a false claim.


You make a lot of erroneous assumptions.


zzzz

Yes... the U.S. is too big. The "one-size fits all" isn't working. Show me any country our size or bigger, with our level of diversity and I'll show you a failure to represent the people. China, India, USA, Indonesia... They're all too big.

The U.S. should break up into smaller sovereign nations to give people better representation. There are only two problems that stand in the way...

1. The ruling class likes the control they have over a 300 million people.
2. The American people don't have the guts to separate.

Muahahaa!!!

Obviously, they're trying to help the young and the struggling. But I'm betting you're in favor of giving all the money to the wealthy so you can grovel at their feet, shine their shoes and hope they'll drop a few coins for your trouble. What do they call it? Oh yeah, trickle down.

First of all, you're responding to a post that doesn't even mention the economy. But since you brought it up, I may as well point out that technically, this economic crisis *IS* created by the moneyed groups. Covid-19 doesn't trade stock. You can't blame Covid-19 for buying up all the toilet paper either. In both cases it the blame goes to paranoid people who buy and sell based on fear and suspicion. This is what drives Wall Street.

So, I agree that we can't put ALL the blame on Trump for what's happening to the economy because he can't really control the wild reactions that people have to a pandemic (although his poor handling of the crisis doesn't exactly help to ease the paranoia).

But by the same token, one can certainly see the stupidity of measuring a president's success by something as fickle as the stock market, like Trump has been doing since he took office. The indices and the unemployment rate were the only two flags he's been waving and neither of them mean anything. The unemployment rate only counts the people claiming unemployment benefits. Count all the people without jobs and you're looking at 37%. That's BEFORE the pandemic.


Established businessmen will tell you how much the people need THEIR business but it's actually the other way around. Business depends on consumers. Without consumers they die. And with the U.S. economy being 80% consumer driven, it's idiotic to continue believing this trickle-down nonsense, which is only a scheme to protect old business from new ones. It would be far better to give ALL the money to the people and let the pandemic weed out the weak businesses instead of protecting them. That way new and improved businesses can take their place, as long as the people have money, the demand will be there.

First of all, Trump isn't in Congress and secondly, if your going to be the expert on it you might want to consider spelling it with a capital "C" because it *IS* a proper noun. And in case you do catch the joke, let me just point out that there are a lot of legislators in Congress who are incredibly successful capitalists and most of them are far businessmen than Trump could ever be. They just know that business and government are not the same thing.


That's what some businessmen with an interest in corrupting our republic will tell you. They're hoping enough of us will be dumb enough to fall for it. It's that simple.

Look, government and commerce are completely different animals. One has a very simple bottom line, which gives almost every decision a default value, the other has no bottom line at all. This is why business decisions are increasingly being automated... money is easy to calculate. Governing a democracy on the hand has no bottom line. Feel free to post me an algorithm to drive King Solomon's decision on the baby and two mothers, if you feel like proving me wrong.

I do realize that many politicians fail, so I understand the frustration, but I just wish people would think about it a little more before they start redefining the role to suit the underqualified.


I hate to remind you but Obama inherited an economy in its worst state since 1929 and war debt not seen since WW2. Under his presidency, our economy recovered and drove it's way to the heights that we see Trump taking bows for. There's no way a rational person can dismiss this elephant in the room. We all know what the hatred toward Obama is about.


LOL - Are you for real? Yeah, Trump just decided to do America a favor and be president pro-bono. Wow.


Ugh... zzz.

It's so funny how politics completely changes the attitude people take. It wasn't so long ago that the Democrats were doing the same thing, suggesting massive spending bills to bail out the economy and the rabid right were calling it communism. Now it's Trump, so all the rules change. Spending bills are necessary now because there's a Republican in charge. LOL

Pelosi and the Democrats put the brakes on the bill because they want assurances that the money will help the People not just line the pockets of the wealthy like the 2017 tax cut did. It's very simple... They want to add a few sentences like... "the money will not be used to buy back stocks". If they were working with sensible Republicans (that apparently don't exist anymore) it would be a one-day session, then send the bill to Trump. But the problem is the Trump Republicans are trying to take advantage at your expense. If you paid any attention to what the administration has actually done instead of parroting what they "say" they've done, you would know this.

Trump is a well-known con-artist. I wouldn't trust him to "help" us if my life depended on it and I am glad Pelosi is there to defend us from the next big scam.

Yes, it is... literally. Trump (the millionaire) beat all those other Republican candidates because the people got tired of being screwed by Republican politicians and they're too stupid to know how to choose better politicians so they decided a businessman would be better. That makes as much sense as asking a car mechanic to perform your open heart surgery because you don't trust doctors, which would also be insane.

Business and government are not any more the same than a car and a human body. Both take money to maintain, both require energy to operate, but a sane person would not assume those similarities are enough to qualify a car mechanic as a surgeon or vice versa


Milosia2 is the only one making any sense on this moronic thread.


LOL - I've never quite figured this one out... It's become quite common for uptight deplorables to throw that out there but is it because they know it's more insulting to people who think for themselves or is it because they really don't understand how independent thought works and they can't imagine it's possible for people to have original thoughts?

Both things happened. You are trying to say because one thing happened the other didn't. Not all of us are idiots blade. Also, a huge reason why Ziemer left is because Trump refused to listen to him.

I also noticed that after you dismissed CNN, MSNBC and the NYT as "commie propaganda machines" you failed to list you own source, which for all I know is just your ill-informed opinion.


Streamlining is a cheery synonym for slashing. When a company outsources jobs to overseas labor markets, do you know what they call it? Streamlining - without having to pay American wages they can produce more for less = streamlining. In this case, the streamlining means we can save money by cutting our defense against disease which I know for a fact was never a priority on the right. We're paying for that now.


Yeah, not a big surprise.


Sure... why get a doctor to operate on your heart when there's a car mechanic in the house?


the WHO was sending test kits to underdeveloped nations without the facilities to develop their own. It's not their fault the Trump administration cut our own capacity down. We can't expect the WHO to baby us because we don't know WTF we're doing.


Yup, that's the kind of thing we can expect from a hobbled agency.


Yes, because the federal government, including the CDC and the FDA, is being managed by idiots in the Trump Administration. Thank God for the local governments and the business sector that have done outstanding work to protect us, if not for them... things would be much worse.

OK. I understand. So, let the virus runs its course and save the shelter for the sick and the old. I totally get that. I mean look at China. They reported zero new cases today. The virus ran its course. Italy will be next. So far, that is the only way any country got from any number of cases to zero. And chances are, there will be an aftershock as the sheltered are released without immunity.

It may come to that.

But the problem is we have a lot of old people in this country. Old people who are loved. We have sick people too. I have an old mother and my brother has an autoimmune disease. It would be really cool if we had more faith in science because we really do have the minds to shortcut the pandemic to immunity and save these people that we love so much. But the odds of doing that get worse by the hour because this stuff spreads... it's exponential. That's why we should all just minimize the spread to give those minds a chance to save my mom and my brother.




I agree with you regarding any kind of lock down for any kind of reason. It's a very last resort thing in my mind. But I think this is a rare occasion where it's worth considering. I'm an anti-Federalist bro... That actually makes me more Libertarian than the nationalists and their Trumpian brethren. But I'm also a Realist and a Humanist. And ALL those arrows are telling me we should keep our asses home for a bit.


Oh, I get it... It's not a question of understanding, it's a question of priority. I am not unaffected by the market but I know this virus will have to sustain much longer than it did in China for industry here to be hurt that badly. People need to calm down about the economy and worry more about the virus.

The economy has no direct correlation to the virus anyway... the people react to to the virus... the market reacts to the people. Put it this way... a virus doesn't carry American Express. And dude... people were buying up toilet paper the minute they thought OTHER people were going to buy up toilet paper. It's the same basic instinct that drives the stock market. It's like the deal we made with God when we thought we were big enough to evolve into capitalism and God said...

"ok, so you wanna to flood your village with gold... fine. Only one thing... you will be forever enslaved to the idiocy of supply and demand."

- straightUp 12:7

Why don't you look it up instead of just calling people liars because they mention facts you don't like?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/03/18/coronavirus-did-president-trumps-decision-disband-global-pandemic-office-hinder-response/5064881002/


Dude... just because you're not prone to die from it doesn't mean you can't spread it. WTF is wrong with you? Hasn't this been explained to you hundreds of times already?

I sure hope you're not running around spreading filthy disease to people who CAN die from it just because you happen to feel fine.

So tired of hearing this tripe from people who never actually do the research. So, you didn't like Obama... whatever. The fact is. Trump cut funding for the CDC. The fact is Trump dismantled the global health security department in the NSC. The fact is Trump ignored the warnings from the experts on biodefense and medicine when they told him as recently as last year that the potential for a pandemic was a high security risk.

All you have is "uh... it's ovomit fault because he hated the US"

This is exactly why we think Trump supporters are the most retarded people on the planet.

You defy their projections? Is that your way of saying that people are overreacting?

Not a bad idea. LOL

I would be careful about this... When Trump first announced this act, it gave me pause... I thought for a good long 5 seconds that Diaper Donny might have a human side. Then I remembered how predators like to take advantage of desperate people and offering money is a common technique for luring people into traps... People need to keep in mind that Trump is a professional con-man. It's the one thing he is actually good at.

So, when a con-man becomes president and takes YOUR tax money which was supposed to go to our defense systems against disease and hands it to his billionaire buddies instead so they can play the stock market and suddenly a pandemic comes along it's time to pay attention. When he starts handing some of our money back to help us deal with the very situation that our money was supposed to help prevent, it's time to get downright suspicious.

Well, that's what he SAYS... But if you actually consider what he DOES, it's a completely different story.


He already has. Thank God for the local governments and business community for doing such an outstanding job considering the abysmal response of the federal government under Trump. He screwed this up before it even happened by cutting CDC funding and shutting down the global health security office. Are we not allowed to point that out Carol?


They call him that because people like YOU, who IGNORE the facts make THEM furious.


All they would have to do is NOT degrade the system like Trump did and our response would have been much more effective, which for a pandemic is exponentially critical. I don't think any of the other presidents would have been so slow in responding when the outbreak first happened, either.


gracious? intelligent? Are we talking about the same guy?


Why?


Kudos? For having five children with three different women? Heck, that happens all the time in the ghettos.

I'm pretty sure Kevyn DOES care and that's WHY he posted what he did. Anyone who CARES will consider the fact that Trump has made a bad situation worse. There is nothing political about that. If he was a Democrat I would be saying the same thing and Kevyn probably would too.

The only people being "political" at this point are the people spinning their wheels trying to defend a president who is responsible for weakening our defense against the threat of a pandemic. If you were to put politics aside for a moment you might actually see where Kevyn is coming from.

I agree with the need to unite in these trying times and one way to do that is to vote Trump out this November (if the "wartime" POS hasn't figured out a way to stay in office).

What the American people need now is faith. And I don't mean throwing our hands up and hoping that God will take care of us; I mean faith in our ability as humans to mitigate the situation. This faith is being bolstered by the courageous and sacrificial actions we see in local governments and in the business sector. But the federal government under Trump has been a glaring exception, starting with the fact that in his 3 years in office so far, he has weakened our defense against the threat of a pandemic.

Every budget proposal he initiated made drastic cuts to the CDC, forcing the House to intercede. After his predatory 2017 tax cuts, there wasn't even enough money left in the Treasury for the House to reallocate.

Trump also dismantled the the National Security Council's global health security office. I bet you didn't know that. Just last year, Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, warned Trump that the threat of a pandemic should be considered a high priority and Trump ignored her and proceeded to cut all budget allocations that would have helped us prepare for the pandemic that Trump wasn't counting on. And if that wasn't enough to drill the message Trump shut down the global health security office. Trump's actions caused Borio and pretty much the entire staff of medical and biodefense experts to leave the White House.

So, yes - pointing out the flaws is an act of responsibility, even if that flaw is Trump.