Good news, in my opinion. Nate Raymond (Reuters) reports:
The U.S. Justice Department on
Thursday announced charges against 601 people including doctors for
taking part in healthcare frauds that resulted in over $2 billion in
losses and contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic in some cases.
Good. Doctors should be charged. I
got into an argument about this last winter. Donna, this woman who
thinks she knows everything, was insisting that the crisis was the
result of patients and the drug companies. I said, “And doctors
too.” And she nearly ripped my head off. I was anti-science, I was
some fringe conspiracy theorist.
She just tore into me. I was like, “uh, doctors are part of the problem if they’re prescribing it.”
She thinks she’s that science queen
even though she never took science classes. She’ll toss out her degree
but it’s art history. And it’s a bachelor of arts. But she listens
to all these podcasts so that apparently makes her an expert
on science. Meanwhile, I’m an RN but, hey, whatever.
And to be clear, these aren’t science podcasts that she listens to. They’re gaming podcasts. But, hey, she knows everything.
If you’re wondering why I talk to her,
she lives across the street. And I did use her real name: Donna. I
don’t care if she reads it at this point. (And, it’s Donna. Not Dona
of The Third Estate Sunday Review before someone e-mails
mistakenly thinking I was writing about Dona. I love Dona, nothing but
good things to say about her.)
Patrick Martin (WSWS) offered a take on the candidate everyone’s talking about:
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America,
defeated the fourth-ranking member
of the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives,
Congressman Joseph Crowley, in Tuesday’s primary election in the 14th
Congressional District of New York.
There
is no doubt that the vote for Ocasio-Cortez reflects the mounting
opposition in the working class to the
corporate-controlled politics of both the Democratic and Republican
parties. There is a growing radicalization among working people,
powerfully expressed in the wave of teachers’ strikes earlier this year
and now seen in the broad opposition to the Trump administration’s
persecution of immigrants.
The
defeat of Crowley demonstrates the popular hostility towards the
Democratic Party establishment. In a district
with a population of more than 700,000, where the incumbent won 83
percent of the vote in 2016, a leader of the congressional Democrats
received barely 11,000 votes. Given its outlay of $3.4 million
(according to the Federal Election Commission), the Crowley
campaign spent more than $300 for each vote.
Despite
the repudiation of Crowley, however, the politics of Ocasio-Cortez and
the DSA offer no way forward for
the working class. There is not a hint of socialism in her program (the
word itself does not appear on her web site), and both the candidate
and the DSA have sought to downplay their connection. Anyone who
suggests that her victory marks a shift to the left
by the Democratic Party should be told, in no uncertain terms: Curb
your enthusiasm!
The
DSA is not fighting for socialism, but to strengthen the Democratic
Party, one of the two main capitalist
parties in the United States, which shares responsibility with the
Republican Party for all the crimes committed by American imperialism
around the world and against the working class at home.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Thursday:
Thursday, June 28, 2018. A US helicopter has crashed in Iraq . . .
ADDED:
This AP report dated June 28, 2018 appears to be from March. Apparently, there was no crash today. My apologies. Snapshot continues below as it appeared this morning.
Another helicopter crash in Iraq today. Lolita C. Baldor (AP) reports that the US helicopter was carrying 7 service members and that "The helicopter is used by the Air Force for combat search and rescue, and was in transit from one location to another when it went down Thursday afternoon near the town of Qaim in Anbar Province."
At this point, the fate of the seven service members is not known.
Maybe it'll serve as a reminder to a real ugly subfaction?
Somehow, in the immigration dialogue taking place, service members were brought up, specifically, their separation from their families. In response, some really pompous and stupid voices sprang up saying they were children whose parents had gone to Iraq and it was not the same thing because their parents returned.
How entitled and self-obsessed do you have to be?
Not every parent returned.
And while you may have hoped your parent would return, when someone ships off to war there is always the possibility that they will not return.
The idiots advancing that nonsense did no one any favors.
But maybe their smug attitudes made it clear why they cannot take to the streets over the ongoing wars? They don't see death as a possibility and they don't care about the deaths of the Iraqi people.
ADDED:
This AP report dated June 28, 2018 appears to be from March. Apparently, there was no crash today. My apologies. Snapshot continues below as it appeared this morning.
Another helicopter crash in Iraq today. Lolita C. Baldor (AP) reports that the US helicopter was carrying 7 service members and that "The helicopter is used by the Air Force for combat search and rescue, and was in transit from one location to another when it went down Thursday afternoon near the town of Qaim in Anbar Province."
At this point, the fate of the seven service members is not known.
Maybe it'll serve as a reminder to a real ugly subfaction?
Somehow, in the immigration dialogue taking place, service members were brought up, specifically, their separation from their families. In response, some really pompous and stupid voices sprang up saying they were children whose parents had gone to Iraq and it was not the same thing because their parents returned.
How entitled and self-obsessed do you have to be?
Not every parent returned.
And while you may have hoped your parent would return, when someone ships off to war there is always the possibility that they will not return.
The idiots advancing that nonsense did no one any favors.
But maybe their smug attitudes made it clear why they cannot take to the streets over the ongoing wars? They don't see death as a possibility and they don't care about the deaths of the Iraqi people.
Good morning. Americans are still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq after 17 years of war, with no real end in sight, because nobody wants to "lose" the war. The Supreme Court is about to be absolute s**t. Mitch McConnell is an utter rat. Nothing matters. Eat @nihilist_arbys.
On the topic of dying, SPUTNIK notes, the US government has now admitted to "unintentionally killing 939 civilians since the start of the operations in Iraq and Syria" and that the "London-based NGO Airwars has estimated the US and its allies are responsible for at least 9,600 civilian deaths."
Staying with violence, the United Nation's has published their Annual Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. At least 717 children were killed in Iraq in 2017. The report notes:
Over half of all incidents were the result of air strikes, shelling, sniper fire and rockets, resulting in 390 child casualties. Improvised explosive devices were the second leading cause (24 per cent), followed by targeted attacks on children (10 per cent), including three boys who were killed and two who were injured by unidentified parties for their alleged association with ISIL.
Deaths don't matter much to Kurt Eichenwald, nor do facts. Kurt takes time off from talking to underage male porn performers to whine yet again.
Years democratic cry-baby protest voters came out/stayed home
2001: gave us bush, Iraq war.
2010: gave us tea party, first step toward blocking garland nomination years later.
2016: gave us trump and SCOTUS GOP majority for rest of my life.
Screw you narcissistic idiots.
Screw you, Kurt. You should be in prison for you actions with boys. Thank goodness that at least THE NEW YORK TIMES fired your ass when they found out you were paying one of these boys. The useless Anthony Kennedy is retiring. A right-winger. And it's time to act really stupid apparently. No one has to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. The Democrats could block any nomination for a year or more.
That's today. 2010? "First step toward blocking Garland nomination years later"? He's so stupid. And Garland was not a good nominee. Whining about him? Barack Obama should have nominated someone of substance. Having decided to go with the corporatist Garland, it's on Barack. He knew how to horse trade. That's all he had to do. But he didn't do that. The failure of his nominee is on him.
2001?
Was Kurt trolling for young boys while he wrote that Tweet? Who stayed home in 2001? There wasn't a presidential election in 2001. He may mean 2000. Regardless, the Democrats own the Iraq War. Not only because Barack Obama failed to end it, despite his promise to do so, they also own it because they voted for it. Every Democratic Party presidential ticket since the start of the Iraq War has contained at least one person who voted for the Iraq War.
Kurt wants to spew and apparently couldn't find a photo of a young bow to aim his stub at so instead he tries to spew over the American people.
Kurt's big problem is that the American people didn't turn out for the Democratic Party.
Because he's a piece of crap, he slams the American people. He doesn't take even one minute to ponder when the Democratic Party turned out for the American people. They didn't stop the Iraq War, despite all the promises -- Nancy Pelosi in 2006, Barack Obama in 2008.
Kurt needs professional help. He is not healthy, obviously. You don't hunt around online for young boys if you're healthy. You don't fork over thousands of dollars to them and 'forget' to inform your employer when asked about your relationship.
The Democrats in Congress could have stood for the American people at any point. They didn't. Give people a reason to turn out and they will. Give them empty words that you never fight for and why should they bother?
Where is Medicare for all? Where is the forgiveness of student debt? Where are any of the things that Americans want?
These are the things that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran on, as Bruce A. Dixon (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) reminds:
Ocasio-Cortez campaigned on single payer health care and free college tuition. She denounced the latest massacre in Gaza. She says ICE ought to be abolished, and the day before the election she was at a South Texas immigrant detention center. She’s a young working class Puerto Rican woman who reportedly refused corporate cash and was working a real job, waiting tables at the beginning of her campaign.
On that platform, she won the primary this week. Alistair Farrow (UK SOCIALIST WORKER) observes, "The victory comes despite the Democratic Party repeatedly letting people down."
Whether she will win in November's general election (and whether, if she does, she will fight for what she believes) is not known at this point. But what is clear? That if you give people a reason to vote, they will show up.
Today is Post-Traumatic Stress Awareness Day:
Today is #PTSD Awareness Day. It's not only veterans who suffer from it, but regular people and journalists. For me, it started in Iraq after I covered a multiple suicide bombing. As the death and destruction piled up over the months, it got harder to function outside a war zone
Of the estimated 2.7 million American Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, an estimated 20 percent have PTSD and/or depression and about half never seek treatment. In order to bring greater awareness to the issue, the US Senate designated June 27th as #NationalPTSDAwarenessDay.
The following community sites -- and a few non-community ones -- updated:
