Tired 🌊 | Heading for bluer skies though probably won't give up this dump for a while | Sometimes plays Devil's advocate.
Iowa, USA
Joined January 2017
- Tweets32.1K
- Following10.5K
- Followers9.5K
- Likes2K
Pinned Tweet
Healthcare versus the the holy bonds of matrimony:
Came across this comment on another social media site. What does this tell you about the U.S.?
I have had the same thoughts over the years.
cc: @ChuckGrassley @SenJoniErnst
Iowa Heretic retweeted
This political cartoon was published in Life magazine on March 10, 1919, just four months after World War I ended. It was drawn by American cartoonist Rollin Kirby.
The cartoon shows a wealthy war profiteer dismissing a wounded veteran who has lost a leg.
The message is a criticism of those who profited from the war while the soldiers who fought it returned home with permanent injuries, trauma, and uncertain futures.
Although the U.S. government provided disability benefits and rehabilitation programs, the system was fragmented and widely criticized for failing veterans.
In 1921, Congress established the Veterans Bureau to improve their care.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Rebecca was sold into sexual slavery before she could walk. Her father - a Lockheed Martin contractor with CIA connections - gave her to a man she calls "Mr. E" as a newborn baby. Mr. E ran a child pornography ring, and Rebecca became his product. From birth to age seven, she was drugged with ketamine, flown across the country, and passed between groups of men who filmed themselves doing things to her that would make a courtroom go silent.
Her mother wasn't a victim in this. Her mother was part of it. She beat Rebecca unconscious and sexually abused her herself. The woman who gave birth to her helped deliver her into hell.
In the interview, Rebecca says it out loud, and the room stops breathing. They violated her with objects. They shoved a loaded gun in her mouth. They forced a loaded gun inside her body. She was three. They filmed everything.
But that's not the detail that breaks her. She watched children die. During these filmed sessions, other kids were murdered in front of her. Their deaths were turned into content - sexualized, recorded, distributed. And after, the men would look down at her and say: if you ever tell anyone what happened here, you're next.
They choked her until she passed out. They suffocated her until her body stopped fighting. They dragged her to the edge of death again and again because watching a child almost die was entertainment to them. She says she learned what dying felt like before she learned how to read.
At seven, they threw her away. She wasn't rescued. No one came for her. She simply got too old for their taste. Seven years old and already used up.
She's 53 now. Fifty years later, and not one person from that network has been investigated. She looks into the camera and asks the only question that matters - how did every single one of them walk free?
This woman spent half a century carrying the memory of children being killed in front of her. She was drugged, filmed, violated with weapons, and discarded before she understood what a childhood was supposed to look like. And the people who did it? They're still out there. Living normal lives. Untouched.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
We keep hearing again that Russia supposedly needs security guarantees. Even though no one has attacked Russia for many decades. Since the Second World War, Moscow has not gone through even one decade without starting a war or using military force against another country.
So when the Russians now talk about a security architecture for themselves, or about security guarantees for Russia – they are hardly talking about real security. And peace.
What they really want – is to freely interfere in the affairs of other countries, and to use force whenever they want, and to make sure that no one can support liberty inside Russia because Putin wants to keep his personal power forever and pass on his imperialist and, in many ways, simply fascist views to the next generations.
From a speech at the Danish Folketing. (3/3)
Iowa Heretic retweeted
In 1944, thousands of Japanese on Saipan hid in caves, sure the Americans would torture them if they came out. Many families chose the cliffs instead.
An 18-year-old American Marine from East Los Angeles walked up to those caves at night, alone, and called to them in Japanese.
His name was Guy Gabaldon. He was a Mexican American kid who had grown up partly in the home of a Japanese American family, the Nakanos. That is where he picked up his Japanese. When the war came, the Nakanos were sent to internment camps. Their twin sons, Lane and Lyle, joined the U.S. Army anyway and served in the 442nd.
Fifty years later, he still said it plainly: "These were Americans."
On Saipan, Gabaldon was a scout with the 2nd Marine Regiment. Right after landing, he slipped off on his own and came back with prisoners. His commanding officer, Capt. John Schwabe, threatened him with a court-martial for leaving his post.
The next night, he came back with about fifty.
After that, they let him go out alone.
He crawled to the cave mouths in the dark and promised the people inside water, medical care, and that nobody would hurt them. Night after night, ten or twenty at a time, they followed him out.
On July 8, by his own account, about 800 came out in a single day. Schwabe remembered that day too. It was the day they tagged him the Pied Piper of Saipan.
Not everyone listened. At the cliffs, he begged a mother not to kill her child. He watched her throw the baby and jump. He was still talking about it fifty years later.
His Navy Cross citation says that on Saipan and Tinian he brought in "well over one thousand enemy civilians and troops."
Schwabe recommended him for the Medal of Honor. He received the Silver Star. Sixteen years later, after Hollywood made a movie about him, the Navy upgraded it to the Navy Cross.
He died in 2006 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
I am Japanese. Those caves were full of my people, frightened, starving, and certain that the Americans were monsters.
An American teenager walked toward them in the dark and offered them water.
On this Veterans Day, Japan should know his name.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
no, really, it helps to explain the situation which has been so shrouded in mystery. people suspected as much, as they suspect that myriad politicians protected Epstein , so it is good to know definitively.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Joyce, after years battling 4 cancers and caring for my dying wife with Parkinson’s and Dementia, I learned that compassion isn't wishing suffering away. It's saying, “I'm here. You're loved. You don't have to face this alone. I'll be right over”💙
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Like always, Iowa senile citizen @ChuckGrassley, breaks all the rules, all the decorum, all the bipartisan norms to CHEAT.
If Democrats did what Grassley is doing, old Chuck would be having another hissy fit. But when HE cheat, it's all ok.
Vote Grassley OUT!
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is blowing up the committee's bipartisan norms to jam through Trump's court picks in the lame duck, ahead of the GOP losing their Senate majority in Jan. huffpost.com/entry/live-upda…
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Thank you, Juliet!
Here’s the full transcript of the reverse edit of the CBS 60 Minute interview. There’s NO PAYWALL so anyone can read it. CBS completely rearranged the interview. I just went through and pointed out what was cut and what wasn’t. substack.com/@decodingfoxnew…
Iowa Heretic retweeted
If Trump and Hegseth can find $47 BILLION tax payer dollars to wage war in Iran, another $400 million on the Qatar jet, $927 MILLION on the gold ballroom, $16 Million on the reflecting pool, etc. WE HAVE ENOUGH MONEY for Medicare for ALL at reasonable rates.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
The new Congress should really focus on sending Trump single subject bills that clearly benefit the American people and force him to veto them.
Hell, name them after him, he’ll sign every fucking one without reading it.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
LMAO
This is top notch trolling by Massie.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Voters weighed in . Nobody wanted the ballroom. Nobody wanted the "blue today, green tomorrow " reflecting pool . Nobody wants the Arc de Trump. people.com/trump-s-triumphal…
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Vance says “The reason we lost is the war.” Yeh. But also tariffs, driving up prices well before the war. Unleashing ICE & CBP in a cruel assault on immigrants who aren’t “the worst of the worst.” There’s the unprecedented corruption. Trump added $2.2 billion to his net worth & surrounded himself with billionaires. There’s disruption of the social safety net, with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and ACA subsides. And Trump’s complete cluelessness - his ballroom, the reflecting pool, adding his name to the Kennedy Center. And finally his obsession with John Husted’s butt.
Iowa Heretic retweeted
For those who say it’s time for universal care. I am all for it. It would be nice if we could find a way to reduce the cost of care and make it available to everyone, for anything.
But it will take work to get there. Other countries with Universal Care make “Most Things available to All People”. It’s not perfect.
In our country, we make “Everything available to Most People”.
The question for this country, unlike others, is how we can make the best possible care and therapies, regardless of cost, to everyone ?
Read @AbdulElSayed ‘s book on Medicare for All. He wisely had more questions than answers. Medicare for All ? Global Budgets ? Or something else ?
It’s a difficult path from where we are to “E4E” Healthcare. ?Everything for Everyone)
My hope is that we can put together a Simpson Bowles type, Blue Ribbon Commission. One that includes representatives of all stakeholders. From all different type of patients. Including rare disease parents. Rural and Urban Hospitals. The most expensive hospitals that offer unique care. Pharma companies that offer everything from genetics to Cell and Gene Therapies. You get the point
Some people think we can just tell all those working in the healthcare system what to do.
That’s the fastest way for this to fail. We need to be as close as we can to being on the same page. And we need to figure out a non partisan manner of running our American version of Universal Care.
No reason we can’t start now
Iowa Heretic retweeted
During Bill Nye's 10-year college reunion in 1987, he went to great lengths to meet with Carl Sagan at Cornell. Sagan's assistant told Nye, "Okay, you can talk to him for five minutes."
In their meeting at the space sciences building, Nye explained that he was interested in developing a science television program. "I mentioned how I planned to talk about bridges and bicycles and so on—stuff that, as an engineer, I'd been interested in—and [Sagan] said, 'Focus on pure science. Kids resonate to pure science rather than technology.' And that turned out to be great advice."
Iowa Heretic retweeted
Can someone please explain to me how the United States managed to live for 250 years, become a great nation, build a great economy, rise to the status of a nuclear superpower, and put men on the Moon — all without a monstrous ballroom nearly twice the size of the White House itself?