Today is the primary election day in Nebraska. Unlike most years, there must be a half dozen candidates for each office, and most are Republicans of various stripes.
The state is conservative, the candidates tend to be, at minimum, very conservative, and it brings on curious charges against fellow candidates who slip a little from the orthodoxy of conservatism.
For example, a PAC with no Nebraska connection ominously reports one Republican candidate for US Senator donated to Democrats running for office! The horror! Implied, maybe he’ll also actually work with Democrats as co-partners in governance of America, too, if elected. Wow!
And he says he always will vote to raise the debt limit. You know, Congress votes to spend money, but the debt ceiling or limit is the amount the US Treasury is authorized to raise to pay for what the US Congress already voted to spend. Remember the Senator Ted Cruz US Government shutdown? That was what that was about.
He also thinks the Affordable Care Act has some good qualities. (Always called Obamacare in this state, where many drink the Kool-Aid of birtherism and don’t accept the legitimacy of the President’s administration.) As someone with a pre-existing health issue, I would have benefited from ACA had it become law a few years earlier than it did, so I’m inclined to agree.
In the commercial, the candidate, for the reasons above, is accused of that ultimate sin in this state: Liberalism! (His general positions seem fairly conservative to me, not that different from the herd.)
So far, I don’t have any favorites.
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Both of my cats have a bad habit of retrieving things from the trash. Andy in particular lets me know he’s ready for supper by knocking over a wastepaper basket in the dining room. Bad kitty!
Dougy prefers another wastepaper basket, the one across from my computer desk.
I keep tossing a mailer from my US Congressman, Adrian Smith. Dougy keeps retrieving it from the trash. He wrestles on it. He chews it. He claws it. He wiggles in delight at being a cat on it. He sits on Adrians’s face with his poochy-cute buttocks. He defends it against Andy who wants to sit on Adrian’s mailer, too!
It is a good, sturdy piece of printing on heavy varnished stock. Must have cost you and me a nice chunk of cash from Adrian’s office expenses account to produce and mail with his franking privilege.
I could run it through my cross-cutting paper shredder and be done with it. Or I could leave it out for the boys to fight over, no harm done. Best of all, it gets some use, if not the use Adrian intended.
I confess: As someone with granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA or Wegener’s granulomatosis, a form of vasculitis, the disease that recently killed Harold Ramis), I am biased against the Republican position on the Affordable Care Act. Because I have this horrific precondition — thank God, in remission since 2005! — I went five years without adequate insurance, then without any insurance. I came too early to benefit from ACA.
As someone with a precondition, I look at the Republicans and their anal attacks on ACA and ask over and over, “Why don’t they want all Americans to have affordable health care? What are they doing to make the ACA workable? What is their plan? Why haven’t we heard their plan since before the ACA passed? What special interest stuffs bucks in their pockets and why?”
Finally, I ask, “How many people like me with our potentially fatal preconditions and hassles getting affordable health care, if any were available, changed their registration from Republican to Democrat or — in my instance — Independent?”
May is Vasculitis Awareness Month. I am a weggie, someone who has the form of vasculitis formerly known as Wegener’s granulomatosis. I don’t yank underwear as some people interpret my user name to mean. Frankly, had I been an underwear yanker, I’d have known not to use that user name when I set up this account!
As a weggie, I have a disease that may kill me directly or indirectly in time. As sure as the sun rises, though, I will die because of the disease and its effects on my kidneys and lungs, vascular system, any and every part of my body. I may never have a flare (a return to an active state). Or I may have a flare today. I may live to be a 100. Or I could be dead within a few months. That’s the kind of disease this is.
Congressman Adrian Smith of Nebraska’s 3rd District
As a weggie, I can whine about my fate. Or chose to live as full a life as I can. I’ve chosen the latter. To that end, I revile the Republican opposition to some form of affordable health care.
Selfish I know, to want to live. Read Paul Ryan’s hero Ayn Rand. She saw selfishness as a virtue, but perhaps preferred euthanizing people like me, wasting less money keeping the weak “takers” alive, thus making more money available to the billionaire plutocrats.
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I probably should have my e-mail address removed from Senator Johanns’ update list. I read these things, and I boil! So, when I found the following in my in box, I read it, hoping against hope I could handle it without feeling compulsion to respond back:
Senator Johanns e-Update
November 14, 2013
I asked to hear from you last week about how Obamacare has impacted your families. I received stories from more than one thousand Nebraskans, the majority of whom relayed details about their increased premiums and cancelled plans. When I spoke before the Senate today, I highlighted a story from one family in Boelus, Neb.
We need to address the growing problems with this failed law, which has led to millions of Americans being dropped from their insurance despite President Obamaβs repeated promises that they would be able to keep their current health coverage. Unfortunately, the President is still trying to tweak the law instead of accepting that the only real solution is its full repeal. The latest tweak came today with his announcement that cancelled policies could be reissued for one more year. But, many experts have said there simply isnβt time to reinstate policies cancelled by Obamacare. President Obama promised that if Americans liked their plans, then they could keep them. He didnβt say they could keep them for one more year. Letβs be clear, this isnβt a fix.
This law is broken and even its supporters are beginning to understand that. The President is simply trying to convince them to accept tweaks when the only real solution is a full repeal.
He posted this video on his e-mail as well.
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God help me, but I sent the good Senator yet another rant on the Affordable Care law:
Dear Senator Johanns:
Why don’t we forget the many millions who now don’t have to worry about getting health care because of a pre-existing condition, all those people under 26 years old who can continue on their parents’ health care insurance, those with major health issues who don’t have to worry about lifetime caps, or those too caught up in Republican and Koch brother distortions about the law to realize that the alternative proposed by the Republicans is nothing, nada, zero change to the shameful health care system in this country where one in four Texans (for the worst example I’m aware of) are without affordable insurance? As best I can tell, thatβs what your party stands for.
In the meantime, while you and your party are worrying the healthcare website bone to death, nothing is happening toward immigration reform (even the one your TP colleague Senator Rubio was involved in and the Senate passed…), a comprehensive job creation plan, long term funding for the US Government (which many in your party seem to forget pays them, courtesy of people like me the taxpayer, at least $174,000 a year – wasted money! – for doing damn little but obstructing any forward movement in anything), education (the cornerstone of our nation’s future), the infrastructure (may you NOT be on any bridge crumbling into the Mississippi!), or anything else that truly matters to anyone outside of the Congress and its bunker in Washington.
As someone who has a pre-existing condition (Wegener’s granulomatosis), I once had to accept crap insurance at over $1000 a month or go without. Since I, as a retiree, am not getting $174,000 a year for doing nothing but being disagreeable, I ended up going without insurance for 15 months because I couldn’t afford insurance to tide me over between the end of COBRA and my eligibility for Medicare. You don’t know anything about WG (most likely – it’s a rare disease), but going without coverage is a death sentence if you have a flare. I managed to stay in remission for the whole 15 months, but believe me, I sure wished I had one of those Congressional health plans waiting in case a flare came on or the ACA could have started before 2014! Last year this time, I had a series of illnesses that I didnβt see my doctor about because I was afraid Iβd end up in the hospital, unable to pay without destroying my retirement nest egg, which is less than two years of your salary. Frankly, I spent a lot of last fall in bed, suffering symptoms that recalled what I went through when I came down with Wegenerβs granulomatosis: I was frightened, prepared for death if it came to that, mad as hell at America and its odd priorities, as defined by the multimillionaire Republican candidate for President and the lying fellow running with him for Vice President.
The President, at least, compromised with your party to come up with the ACA, based on the Republican/Heritage Foundation model Governor Romney and the Massachusetts legislature implemented in that state. Your party, in the spirit of sedition, spoiled brat obstructionism, disloyalty to the people of America who didn’t have the Congressional health care plan or any other insurance for a variety of reasons, has done nothing but bitch, whine, moan and shut down the government for 16 days at considerable cost to the country in GDP, international prestige, in-country suffering.
Repealing the law is no solution, nor is stepping backwards to “let” people keep crap policies that don’t really cover their health care needs at any price. Iβm sorry the President was forced into accepting that trap – the extension of crap policies that donβt meet the law – your party so skillfully, willfully pushed him into.
There is considerable concern about the President’s “lie”, but it doesn’t approach the disturbing layer of disinformation, distortions, obstructionism, Koch brother sabotage of the law, and just plain lies coming from your side. I believe you are an honest agent (certainly I voted for you for Governor and wasn’t disappointed…!), but your party is bankrupt of ideas, morality, integrity, and any interest in doing the job we taxpayers pay you to do. I used to be proud to be a Republican, but am glad I changed my registration after McConnell announced the Republican Partyβs sole purpose was to make the President a one term president. I lost respect for Congress the day I realized he was, and your party is, dead serious about spoiling any chance of the President has of achieving his agenda.
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