Trump, after shaking down ABC for $16,000,000 with a frivolous lawsuit over an on-air comment that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape (the judge in that case said as much, it is only an idiosyncrasy of New York State law, he explained, that differentiates “sexual assault” — no penis in vagina proved — and “rape”) and CBS for the same amount for doing what every TV station does — editing an interview, has also sued the NY Times and, the other day, the BBC.
The faltering, insanely litigious president ridiculously claimed, through his army of low rent Roy Cohns, that the BBC unfairly and viciously edited segments of his infamous January 6th speech to a crowd that stormed the Capitol moments later to make it falsely look like he had urged them to storm the Capitol.
Here are the highlights of his long harangue to the rioters on January 6th. You be the judge if there is a way to edit this incendiary speech where he is not telling the crowd he’s riled up for over an hour, with detailed lies about a “stolen election” he knew he had lost, to hit the Capitol, he promised he was going down there with them, “and we fight like hell or we won’t have a country anymore.”
You have to love the generally spineless NY Times’ last line in its report on this Hitlerian move on the part of Putin’s pliable puppet, Donald J. Trump, now suing the British Broadcasting Corporation, an outfit almost as despicable in his squinty eyes as our own Public Broadcasting Service. Here’s the Times, at its best:
The president also has a defamation lawsuit pending against The New York Times, which accuses the news organization of trying to undercut his 2024 candidacy and disparage his reputation. The Times says the lawsuit has no merit.
Medicare, the health care partnership between private insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the government to protect the health of people over 65 (or with certain disabilities) is promoted as the solution to health care coverage for Americans of all ages. At 69, and dealing with Medicare now for a few years, I find this idea appalling, especially since the only solution to protecting the health of the old and the sick is a single payer system that cuts out all the parasitic middle men who profit off disease and our legitimate fear of death.
Citizens of a democracy deserve decent health care as a right of citizenship, like in every other wealthy economy (and formerly Iraq, Libya and other third world “shitholes”). But, lest I forget, America is exceptional.
Every year, between October 15 and December 7 (a day that always lives in infamy now, thanks to Medicare) purchasers of Medicare insurance are urged to shop on the marketplace and find the best suited plans for themselves. You can compare prices and, in some cases, actual coverage. It is no fun navigating the website, shopping for the best “deal” that should be provided to you automatically as a lifelong tax payer. Each of us should get the best deal available from our government, the one we fund, the one that is supposed to watch out for our best interests.
The economic reality is that, in a consumer society, if you need a few pills, you will pay 50 cents each. If you buy a billion pills, the price is 3 cents each. This is simple capitalism, economy of scale. The more you buy, the less each one will cost you [1]. Medicare buys a trillion pills a year, but is prevented, by a right wing/corporate law signed by Dubya, from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies based on that economy of scale leverage.
And so old people are forced to enter this kind of virtual mall, after October 15th of each year, where you can search for the best deals before the annual December 7th final deadline comes crashing down and you can choose nothing until the following October 15th rolls around because, fair is fair and rules are rules.
Part D of the alphabet soup that is Medicare is the prescription drug plan and every Medicare recipient must choose a Part D plan (or get it included in the problematic, loophole-ridden, insurance company sponsored Medicare plans known as Medicare Advantage). Prices for Part D vary wildly. In 2024 I chose the cheapest drug plan available, Aetna Silverscript, for $31 a month. Then:
You see profit margins here that would make Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk insanely jealous. Over 100% price increase in 2025 and then, a tic below another 100% price increase the following year. All perfectly legal here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, as long as you get a letter from that corporation informing you that your premiums will double and you will get only slightly less coverage.
A billionaire named Mark Cuban set up a company called CostPlus that will mail you prescription drugs, at 15% above cost plus handling and mailing. You can calculate the approximate cost on their website. The four generic prescription drugs I take will cost under $100 every three months, less than $400 for the year. No deductible, no insurance, just the prescriptions. I signed up online. There is a form for my doctor to submit to them, and the drugs will be shipped to me every ninety days.
I called Aetna to cancel my Part D with them, after visiting the marketplace and seeing annual prices, under our American “freedom of choice”, from $1,000 to $3,000 for the identical drugs (cost of drug copays plus premiums). My once modest $31/month plan was now up there with some of the most expensive. The woman I spoke to at Aetna was lovely, but she was not a trained disenrollment specialist, she explained, and so couldn’t take my cancellation order. She gave me another number to call to speak to a “Medicare disenrollment specialist”, and after checking, at my request, confirmed it is a 24/7 number.
In the wee hours of the morning I decided to make the last aggravating December 7th related call of the year and get that particular pile of steaming scats off my plate. When I called the 800 number it came up like so:
Who the fuck is Valley Organized Physicians? Fuck if I know, but they answer the phone “Medicare”. The person I spoke to patched me through to a disenrollment specialist named Kevin. Kevin and I wound up talking for almost an hour. He somehow had instant access to every prescription drug I’d bought in the last three years. His job, apparently, was to sell me a Part D plan, as I learned when he read me the complete list, suggesting that some, if not many, would be hard to get without insurance.
Kevin warned me that unless I enrolled in a Part D program with creditable coverage that met the minimum standards of Medicare, I’d be subject to a potentially large lifetime monthly fine that would add several dollars, or even a hundred or more, to my monthly premium in perpetuity should I need Part D coverage in the future.
I told Kevin I had no idea what “creditable” meant in that context and he explained. If the prescription drug program you enroll in is not recognized by Medicare, it’s not creditable and you will pay a monthly fine for the rest of your life if you cancel a creditable plan at any time during your years on Medicare. Way to watch out for the old and vulnerable, you fucking corporate psychopaths, I thought. But since Kevin was being so nice, we continued to amiably bat the ball back and forth.
Kevin laid out the worst case scenario to make me understand the risk I was taking by going with a non-creditable plan. Say in five years you decide you need Part D, for some expensive medication, let’s say (which, admittedly, Part D might not cover, but exceptions can sometimes be made for medical necessity). Well, currently the penalty is 39 cents a month times twelve (since you can only fix this once a year). That penalty number keeps going up. So in five years time, Kevin told me, I could be looking at a penalty of maybe $50 a month, maybe $100.
I pointed out that if I realized it was a mistake to opt for CostPlus and bought a Part D plan at the next available date (October 15, 2026) I’d pay $4 a month penalty for the rest of my life. Meantime, Aetna had increased their premium price for their basic plan 100% one year and 100% the following year. I asked him how it was possible that an insurance company can double its rate year after year with no regulation by Medicare.
Kevin had an answer worthy of a Republican congressman speaking to a FOX audience, there are many factors, market forces, which are impossible to regulate, or predict, or even consider, he told me. In other words it’s hard to say and above our pay grades to understand or do anything about. I told him it was not hard to say that costs for Aetna had not increased 200% in two years.
I expressed dismay that Medicare imposed no regulations on what private insurance companies could charge. He agreed that it was not unreasonable for me to be dismayed, but that there was a reason, somehow, beyond our feeble human understanding, apparently, that corporations can’t be regulated but consumers must be charged lifetime penalties for not buying creditable plans from approved insurance companies providing benefits consistent with the minimum standards of Medicare Part D.
Kevin told me to look for a zero cost Part D plan, then checked and said there were none available in my area. He tried to sell me a $35 a month plan, from Healthspring Assurance, which, with the drugs, would cost me only about $720 a year. He agreed there was no guarantee that Healthspring wouldn’t double its premium next year, but that’s why there is a period to compare prices once a year and the requirement of a letter informing the customer that the price was about to double.
He was trying to help me out, he said, after explaining he could have disenrolled me as soon as I called, but he was warning me of the potentially dire consequences of uncreditable disenrollment. I said that in dollars and cents, the difference between $300-400 a year for generic prescriptions, and even the bargain price of $720, would seem to more than offset the penalty for a year or two.
Eventually, after a long chat, he told me he would disenroll me. There was no confirmation number, no proof we’d ever had a conversation of almost an hour (except on my phone, but again, who the hell is Valley Organized Physicians?), I’d get a letter from Aetna confirming I’d been disenrolled, he told me. We bid each other a polite goodnight.
We got off the phone, it was now 4 a.m., and my head immediately fucking exploded. Every narcissist I’ve ever known has told me I’m too sensitive. Maybe the despicable freaks are right about that. I was unable to tune down my outrage enough to get to sleep, the pill I took at 5:00 allowed me to finally drift off around 6:30 a.m. for a few hours of sleep. I’m too sensitive, goddamn it, and it’s messing with my health.
Dig the Nazi haircut on the first lying motherfucker.
And notice what power Stephen Colbert displays in dissecting Trump’s incoherence. It explains why his firing was key to Shari Redstone getting her 8 billion dollar deal signed off on by the Trump administration’s loyal FCC.
There are several compelling reasons, including enabling President Project 2025 to make unilateral, “plenary” decisions on everything in government (illegal demolition breaking a promise, another mass firing spree, $40,000,000,000 to his fascist buddy in Argentina, $172,000,000 for Kristi Noem’s two private jets, $250,000,000 for the Marie Antoinette Ballroom, $230,000,000 for him, restitution for the Biden witch hunts), since he alone is up and running, having ordered MAGA Mike to shut everything down and keep lying that the Democrat (sic) party is to blame. Trump’s criminal behavior can’t be questioned (see 6-3 Trump v. US), not the destruction of the east wing of the White House, not the international war crime of murdering now at least 34 unarmed noncombatants he has designated narco-terrorists, also not the release, pardon and hiring of countless heavily armed January 6th rioters, in masks, employed by ICE to act as Trump’s lawless shock troops in American cities.
Number one on this grotesque giant baby’s list of concerns is delaying/preventing the release of the infamous Epstein files. Recall that Kashyap Pramod Patel reassigned 1,000 FBI agents to 24 hour shifts to search for and delete Trump’s name from the files, proving the Orange Polyp had absolutely nothing to hide. Adelita Grijalva, vote number 218 in the House to get release of these files, elected a month ago, has had to sue Mike Johnson and the Hump administration to get sworn in so she can represent her majority Hispanic constituents.
MAGA Mike, a brazen liar as relentless and prolific as the man he loves, has spouted a series of angry talking points, making as much sense as his demented, mad boss. He blames Pelosi, Democrats and a series of demons, as evil as the personal ones that keep the cherub-faced liar up sweating at night. PBS, who his boss defunded in the “clean budget”, notes, of Johnson’s month of stonewalling the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress:
On April 2, Johnson swore in Republican Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, both of Florida, less than 24 hours after they won their special elections, during a pro forma session.
Johnson says the circumstances were unique because the House had unexpectedly gone out of session that day. Patronis and Fine had already arranged for their families, friends and supporters to be in Washington.
Fuck that twerp puto.
Meantime, in a cosmic bit of timing, the memoir of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein sex slave who ended her life at 41 (demonstrating once more that the harm of being raped lasts forever) came out the other day. Here’s a slice:
Giuffre writes, quote, “In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated — and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied. I believed that I might die a sex slave,” she said. Virginia also details how she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times, beginning when she was 17. Virginia also said she was beaten and raped by a “well-known prime minister.”
Virginia Giuffre died reportedly by suicide earlier this year in Australia at age 41. Nobody’s Girl was completed just before she died. In the book’s foreword, her collaborator, Amy Wallace, describes an email from Virginia shortly before she died that read in part, quote, “The content of this book is crucial as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders. It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness. In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released,” she said.
I hope to God that the “well-known prime minister” was not fucking Bibi Netanyahu (oy! it appears to be former prime minister Ehud Barak…). Could things get any worse for the Jews right now? Could there be more fuel for antisemites? If a Jewish prime minister was one of Epstein’s “partying,” girl beating, minor-raping buddies, how much worse for the Jews would that be? Not bad enough we have an actual fucking Jewish Nazi, psychopathic vampire Stephen Miller, in charge of vilifying, humiliating, terrorizing and harshly punishing people guilty only of being brown, speaking Spanish and being hardworking day workers. As Mafia strongman Meyer Lansky observed, “it’s hard to be a Jew.” Dig it.
This was posted on the Trump Whitehouse’s official Twitter feed after the No Kings protest, allegedly, allegedly:
Just kids having fun in the days leading up to Halloween.
Nobody can fail to see the good humor in this AI video posted by the Big Guy in response to the fake No Kings demonstrations. Trump dropped this on his “social media” platform Truth Social, a name that speaks for itself. Few national leaders in world history would have had the courage and honesty to respond to hateful protesters in such a clearly good natured and playful way. It shows the man’s tremendous self-confidence, I say. Check it out.
George Soros distributed all these signs to the 7,000,000 Americans who turned out for the second No King’s Day today, setting a record for the largest national protest in the US (all paid for by one guy). Oddly, not one demonstration-related arrest was reported in New York City, war torn Portland, Washington D.C. etc., in spite of all the MAGA hype about No Kings being a Hamas, Antifa, violent criminal Hate America rally.
In fairness to the administration, note that all of the pro-Hamas, antifa, America-hating signs are identical (since they were bought and given out by one man, George Santos, er, Soros, George Soros!). A pathetic attempt to manufacture some kind of false show of distaste for the delicious and incredibly great Donald J. Trump.
From a local No Kings demonstration in Queens, NY (a mile from where Trump grew up):
Identical Soros signs in Chicago:
On the other hand, millions of Americans, in numbers never seen before, love the delicious Donald J. Trump and are very creative in expressing that love.
Millions are expected to participate in over 2,500 No Kings rallies across the United States tomorrow. MAGA has been all over corporate media speaking in one voice. They are all calling this a Hate America Rally by paid operatives, carrying identical signs (proof of conspiracy), all terrorists, the worst kinds of violent criminals (and pedophiles, it goes without saying), in fact, the fake rally is pro-Hamas and anti-fascist! Paid protesters hired by George Soros (soon to be under IRS investigation along with other Marxist Democrat donors) and Hamas (Qatar funding this one too?), stupid, angry people who irrationally hate good old American fascism as much as they hate Jesus Christ, Civil War Heroes of the South and even Charlie Kirk.
Trump played his part today, masterful five dimensional chess to those who love him. The hate America, anti-fascist, pro-Hamas wing, that deluded 65% of our country, may look at this inspired move differently, but you be the judge.
People who find gas chambers funny, text “I love Hitler,” applaud rape and slavery, chide those who would ever trust “the Jew” and unironically use words like “nigger” and “faggot”, resent very much being called Nazis. After a massive trove of their Nazi approving texts was leaked, more than one, by way of apology, accused nefarious enemies of doctoring the texts to make the group of Young Republicans look bad [1].
NEW YORK — Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.source
It’s easy to understand their sensitivity, since these are things often associated with actual Nazis and, even though these young “Republicans” believe the “Holocaust” was obviously faked, being called Nazis makes them the victims of vicious people who use such sick, judgmental terms. Vicious Jews like me, but what can you expect? Jews irrationally hate Hitler, Hitler Derangement Syndrome, yo. Anti-fascism is anti-American terrorism, as anyone but a “woke” Jew, “nigga,” “faggot,” “retard,” woman, Democrat or libtard cuck can understand.
Lawrence O’Donnell, always with an intelligent and unflinching take, tells the story:
[1] from the Politico article linked above
“I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language found within the more than 28,000 messages of a private group chat that I created during my campaign to lead the Young Republicans,” he [chat participant Peter Giunta — former chair of the NYS Young Republicans] said. “While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored.”
“While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored.”
I’m sure you do, and are, Giunta, and brilliant Nazi blame shifting if-pology, you adorable Nazi fuck.
Trained in the bare-knuckle arts of New York City real estate, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff think of themselves as deal guys working for the ultimate deal guy. Their approach is simple: Get to a yes first, and hash out the details later. The two have spent a lot of time together over the past few weeks, crisscrossing Miami, then the country, and now the world, in pursuit of peace. The rebuilding of Gaza is also in their sights.
“The experience that Steve and I have as deal guys is that you have to understand people,” Mr. Kushner said. “You have to be able to kind of get the bottom line out of them, and then see who do you think is playing games, and how much room do you have to push things?”
He added: “A lot of the people who do this are history professors, because they have a lot of experience, or diplomats. It’s just different being deal guys — just a different sport.”
I have no idea why the New York Times is suddenly blowing this corrupt nepo-baby clown, and it’s frankly a bit sickening, but watch the fabulously rich boy genius’s brilliant bit of whining as he snippily answers questions about the last time he and his genius Nobel Prize recipient father-in-law made permanent peace in the Middle East, in spite of facing, according to the seasoned, streetwise “getting to yes” diplomat/deal maker, the recalcitrance of angry, self-pitying, deluded Palestinians perennially too stupid to act in their own best interests (compare — MAGA voters), presumably why they did not participate in the negotiations.
Here’s one of America’s greatest arrogant super-wealthy mediocrities (no offense to the mediocre intended) humbly bragging about having made lasting peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords. The first few minutes of this asshole’s responses are priceless, made hilarious by the chyrons that contradict his every talking point.
Why the New York Times took this opportunity, with everything else going on at the moment (including the scandal of peace-loving DJT not winning the Nobel Peace Prize!), to daintily fellate pardoned felon/Ambassador to France Charles Kushner’s well-born son Jared, you’d have to ask the editorial putz who approved the article. Could it have been a friend of Bari Weiss, new $150,000,000 CBS editor-in-chief?