It’s Sunday!

Happy Luigi Mangione Maybe Shot Health Insurance Villain Brian Thompson Day to everyone who celebrates. Yes, that was actually on December 4th. I’m a few days late. So? I’ve been busy and shit!

I only mention it but:

• Brian Thompson’s total compensation package in 2023 was $10.2 million. That’s a metric fuck-ton more than the vast majority of us peasants will earn in this lifetime or the next six or seven.
• 7% or 25.3 million Americans did NOT have health insurance in 2023 – couldn’t afford it…had no access to it. 
• America leads the world in bankruptcies from health care expenses. Sucks to be us, eh? 

The purpose of a healthcare corporation (any corporation) is to make their shareholders wealthy. That’s it. In the healthcare insurance biz, you do this by being absofucking miserly to the extreme. You become Scrooge on steroids. You don’t give a good goddamn whether people suffer horribly and die wretched, needless deaths just as long as your bloody shareholders get solidly enriched. That’s just what CEO Brian Thompson did.

Every month we pay our high health care bills. We expect that to mean something when we get sick and need care…right? Apparently the C suite assholes at UnitedHealthcare who deny 33% of claims, don’t see it that way. 

Here’s something nasty that I just found out – my home away from home, my healthcare/surgical safe space, Mass General is in the top ten of Massachusetts employers with workers who need SNAP to get by. Yeah, Amazon and Walmart are WAY ahead of MGH on the list but still! Almost 1,000 out of 80,000 - 82,000 workers (~1.19%) aren’t paid enough to get by.

In better news, nearly 1,000 acres of land near near Yosemite National Park have been returned to the Southern Sierra Miwuk people. 

More than 150 years ago, state-funded militias forced the indigenous people from their settlements beneath the towering cliffs of Half Dome in a little-discussed, brutal chapter of Yosemite history. Those who resisted were captured, even shot or hung. (source) 

Land back – about damn time.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has told Somali residents to call 911 on migrant arresting, mask wearing ICE agents. They’re to report it as kidnapping. And so it is. ICEholes are hiding their identities, don’t give a fuck whether or not the person they’re attempting to abduct is a citizen, a criminal, or in the country legally or not. All they care about is the bounty and getting rid of someone with brown skin.

Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity.
~ Albert Einstein 

Race

A concept used to describe a group of people who share physical characteristics, such as skin color and facial features. They may also share similar social or cultural identities and ancestral backgrounds. There are many racial groups, and a person may belong to or identify with more than one group. (source) 

e.g., White, Black, Asian, Native American

Ethnicity 

A term that refers to the social and cultural characteristics, backgrounds, or experiences shared by a group of people. These include language, religion, beliefs, values, and behaviors that are often handed down from one generation to the next. (source) 

e.g., Castillian, Guatemalan, Italian, American, Canadian, Kenyan, German, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Tongan, etc. etc. etc.

Nationality 

The country you are a legal citizen of, which is determined by a legal relationship with a state, such as by birth or naturalization.

I am a citizen of the United States of Insanity. My cousin holds dual citizenship here and in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.  I have friends with dual citizenship here and in the République française. Lucky bastards.

Race = how society reads your body.
Ethnicity = your cultural/heritage roots.
Nationality = your passport.

The difference between race and ethnicity is not always clear-cut.

RFK Jr., a man so unqualified he makes Karoline Leavitt look like Margaret Thatcher.
~ Randy Rainbow