Bloomberg is going to be in the next debate. But he won’t be in the next caucus. Barring a brokered convention I think he waited a little too long to get into the race and it is hurting him. Especially when he gets attacked in the debates and then no one can vote for him. Seems like he is in the debates just to be a punching bag. But we’ll see when we get to the convention.

Bloomberg's campaign is sending conflicting signals.

On the one hand, he's saying he can beat Trump.  What that implies is he doesn't have confidence that anyone else still in the DNC race can.  After the debate, it's unclear whether he can even win the primary, much less the general against an incumbent president.

He was a Democrat up until 2001.  Then he was a Republican 2001-2007.  He became an Independent after that until 2018.  Now he's a Democrat again?  He really has no party loyalty or identity at this point. 

He claims to fight for the voters, yet his policies in office banned over-16-oz soft drinks, made gun control stricter, and raised taxes which drove the average worker to live outside the city.  In 2013, the average worker spent 1/2 their income on housing alone.

Prior to 2020, Bloomberg bragged that stop and frisk was one of the most effective gun control policies in New York.  Now, he's apologizing for stop and frisk because he finally sees that targeting people based on apparent race was discriminatory.  Even the Supreme Court said that, but it took until he was running for President to admit they were right and he was wrong.

At this point, he seems to be unable to find a talking point that doesn't make him look bad -- or at least unable to compete with Trump's record.

Bloomberg would be a bad news for everyone except the ultra rich.

I am rooting for Bernie. As much as I love the Supreme Court appointments so far my concern now is that gutting the welfare system would trigger a crime wave. Weening people off means building a successful economy, and right now the numbers are still based on lies.

Theres a moron in fb posting about berns free healthcare and he wants it. Even after a few people who lived in the UK shared their stories and hate free healthcare, he still wants it.

Thats like going to a steak house and asking people eating the chicken how it was. Multiple replied it sucks, get the steak. Then he forces the entire steakhouse to serve only the chicken to all diners.

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Theres a moron in fb posting about berns free healthcare and he wants it. Even after a few people who lived in the UK shared their stories and hate free healthcare, he still wants it.

Thats like going to a steak house and asking people eating the chicken how it was. Multiple replied it sucks, get the steak. Then he forces the entire steakhouse to serve only the chicken to all diners.

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I don't know if Bernie knows anyone on Medicare, but it's NOT FREE.  Why do supplemental insurance plans exist?  Why are there "Part B" supplemental insurance products?  Ever look at Medicare's deductibles and co-pays?

This is the "plan" Bernie wants us to all be on ... because -->>  FREE!!!

https://www.medicare.gov/your-medicare-costs/medicare-costs-at-a-glance

Theres a moron in fb posting about berns free healthcare and he wants it. Even after a few people who lived in the UK shared their stories and hate free healthcare, he still wants it.

Thats like going to a steak house and asking people eating the chicken how it was. Multiple replied it sucks, get the steak. Then he forces the entire steakhouse to serve only the chicken to all diners.

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Ask him if he knows that you have to pay for Medicare. This year it costs $144.60/month. And the coverage is not that great compared to his employer provided insurance. Ask him if he wants that $144.60/month taken directly out of his bank account or government check because the federal government doesn’t take personal checks or credit cards. Here is the link that explains the costs and how bad the coverage is. Tell him to look over the document and compare it to his current policy.

https://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/11579-medicare-costs.pdf

If he wants to supplant his Medicare coverage to be the same as his current policy he needs to spend as much as $150/month for a Medicare Supplement Plan. That is $295/month for Medicare and supplement that he is not currently spending which will come directly out of his account whether he gets paid or not. And Medicare does not include prescription coverage, dental insurance nor vision insurance. Those are at least another $100+/month if he wants them. That is the definition of single payer. And that is what he wants? He is an idiot.

I am going to keep going on this because I’m not happy with Medicare that was forced on my wife. Currently, I pay the above mentioned $295/month Plus I pay $75 for Medicare Part D for prescription drug coverage. So far that is $370/month. BTW, I pay for the best Part D you can buy. The total for all of the copayments for this year will be $4,800. That’s another $400/month just for copays. That is a total of $770/month for Medicare Parts A, B and D. And she currently does not have dental nor vision care because the plans are not readily accepted here in Hawaii. I am going to purchase them after I move. It looks like Medicare is going to cost close to $900/month for my wife for this year.

If you have diabetes or another common condition with expensive drugs you are guaranteed prescription copays in the thousands per year. As it is, because of a sliding scale and the cost of her drugs, the copays are in the thousands for the first 3 months and then drops down to much lower as certain maximum amounts are met. The total for her this year is about $4,800 for the year.

Medicare is far from free and far from cheap. And there is another thing to take into consideration. When you have private insurance they pay for your costs. Pretty much without question. Certain rare diseases may cause them to bring your case in front of a death panel which then decides whether they are going to pay for your rare disease or not. But with Medicare there are no death panels. Just a federal employee that has the power of pay or no pay as they see fit. Worse than a death panel. If they make a mistake and decides not to cover something that might be a normal covered item, they screw you. It takes months and months if not years for hearings in order to convince them they made a mistake. Even then, they have no obligation to pay because they are the government in charge of your life. And whether you like it or not you agreed to let them control your life.

Ask him if he knows that you have to pay for Medicare. This year it costs $144.60/month. And the coverage is not that great compared to his employer provided insurance. Ask him if he wants that $144.60/month taken directly out of his bank account or government check because the federal government doesn’t take personal checks or credit cards. Here is the link that explains the costs and how bad the coverage is. Tell him to look over the document and compare it to his current policy.

https://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/11579-medicare-costs.pdf

If he wants to supplant his Medicare coverage to be the same as his current policy he needs to spend as much as $150/month for a Medicare Supplement Plan. That is $295/month for Medicare and supplement that he is not currently spending which will come directly out of his account whether he gets paid or not. And Medicare does not include prescription coverage, dental insurance nor vision insurance. Those are at least another $100+/month if he wants them. That is the definition of single payer. And that is what he wants? He is an idiot.

Yes, he's an idiot.

He preaches "Democratic Socialism", but in reality, his plans fall under a "Socialist Democracy."  Ever notice how all the big communist countries label themselves Democratic or "The People's Republic"?

One current example of how Leftists use Democratic to make Socialism less harsh-sounding is North Korea:

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

That's "Democratic Socialism" in action.


People's Republic:

As a term, it is associated with socialist states as well as communist countries adhering to Marxism–Leninism,
although its use is not unique to such states. A number of republics with liberal democratic political systems
such as Algeria and Bangladesh adopted the title, given its rather generic nature, after popular wars of independence.
Nonetheless, they usually mention socialism in their constitutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_republic

If you have diabetes or another common condition with expensive drugs you are guaranteed prescription copays in the thousands per year. As it is, because of a sliding scale and the cost of her drugs, the copays are in the thousands for the first 3 months and then drops down to much lower as certain maximum amounts are met. The total for her this year is about $4,800 for the year.

It sounds like prescription drug costs are the real issue. If I would only have to pay $300 a month for meaningful health insurance then I would have the option of quitting my day job and growing my small business. The reasons Democrats and the establishment media are going after Bernie is that Big Pharma owns or is closely related with all major news networks and has invested heavily in both parties to make sure this monopoly continues, as well as the various subsidies they enjoy. The United States has never been a pure capitalist system, not even close. In a capitalist system "Too Big To Fail" would just be "Fail"

It sounds like prescription drug costs are the real issue. If I would only have to pay $300 a month for meaningful health insurance then I would have the option of quitting my day job and growing my small business. The reasons Democrats and the establishment media are going after Bernie is that Big Pharma owns or is closely related with all major news networks and has invested heavily in both parties to make sure this monopoly continues, as well as the various subsidies they enjoy. The United States has never been a pure capitalist system, not even close. In a capitalist system "Too Big To Fail" would just be "Fail"

I felt the same way at first. At $300/month plus add another $150/month for prescriptions and dental and vision. Still not a bad deal, right? Except that Medicare Parts A & B is not insurance. It doesn’t work the same way as insurance. So it is not the same concept as the healthy pays for the unhealthy. And whatever is left over is profit for the insurance companies. The government has to control how much is paid to doctors and for prescriptions in order for Medicare to work. And of course the government cannot profit off its citizens. The problem with this way of paying for healthcare is that it stifles innovation and the research and testing that goes into developing new drugs and new procedures and equipment to do new procedures. Without someone paying for it, it won’t occur. Then we will eventually fall into a 3rd world healthcare system like Canada and England. The world benefits from our ability to come out with all these new things. That is why there is such a disparity between our prescription costs and say Canada’s. The U.S. subsidizes the costs so we can have the best most innovative drugs available. If we go to a similar system you can kiss all this new innovation goodbye or things that would have been developed in your lifetime might not become a reality until many years after your life. This is a Socialism type system for providing healthcare. They control what drugs, procedures and equipment you are limited to.

Let me give you a real life example. When I talk about Medicare, I am talking only about parts A & B. Supplement plans and Part D (Drugs) is provided strictly by the insurance companies per government guidelines. When my wife was first diagnosed with diabetes she had to keep all these little vials of insulin in the frig along with boxes and boxes of needles. She had to give herself 3 injections per meal. When these new innovative drugs came out along with a new innovative delivery system she was so happy to only have to take 1 injection per meal with an additional one per day and one per week. The drugs come in pens now. So no need to keep boxes of needles around along with lots of little vials of insulin. But then she got Kaiser. And they run things like socialism. They control everything like doctor pay, hospital costs and prescription costs. This stifles them. She had to go back to keeping boxes of needles and vials on insulin and taking 3 shots per meal and she no longer had access to all the latest and greatest drugs. All because Kaiser keeps their costs for her healthcare down by denying her access to the latest and greatest. At least she is back to her having access to the latest drugs again now that we are back to a free market Part D insurance. And with that comes no boxes of needles and no vials and the convenience of her using a pen to deliver her new drugs. And of course she only has to inject herself 4 times a day instead of 9 times. It may not sound like much but it is. But of course with this comes a cost to my wife and I. Believe it or not my wife’s Medicare parts A & B plus Part D including all of our deductibles and copays is a wash with what our private insurance costs were. The only difference is that instead of having a high monthly cost with private insurance we have a lower monthly cost but much higher deductibles and copays that vary widely from month to month. And private insurance is much easier to deal with than the government. All of this is just my experience. Yours may vary and probably will.

While I thought my wife’s insurance costs would go down with Medicare, the fact that she was forced onto it by the government and the varying costs per month are what I am most pissed about. Like I said, the costs are close to being a wash between our private insurance and Medicare. But when you include all these years of SS and Medicare coming out of my paychecks then the costs for me are actually higher. In other words we paid into the system for 40 years for the privilege to have the government force us to pay about the same for healthcare. Socialism at work.

I felt the same way at first. At $300/month plus add another $150/month for prescriptions and dental and vision. Still not a bad deal, right? Except that Medicare Parts A & B is not insurance. It doesn’t work the same way as insurance. So it is not the same concept as the healthy pays for the unhealthy. And whatever is left over is profit for the insurance companies. The government has to control how much is paid to doctors and for prescriptions in order for Medicare to work. And of course the government cannot profit off its citizens. The problem with this way of paying for healthcare is that it stifles innovation and the research and testing that goes into developing new drugs and new procedures and equipment to do new procedures. Without someone paying for it, it won’t occur. Then we will eventually fall into a 3rd world healthcare system like Canada and England. The world benefits from our ability to come out with all these new things. That is why there is such a disparity between our prescription costs and say Canada’s. The U.S. subsidizes the costs so we can have the best most innovative drugs available. If we go to a similar system you can kiss all this new innovation goodbye or things that would have been developed in your lifetime might not become a reality until many years after your life. This is a Socialism type system for providing healthcare. They control what drugs, procedures and equipment you are limited to.

Let me give you a real life example. When I talk about Medicare, I am talking only about parts A & B. Supplement plans and Part D (Drugs) is provided strictly by the insurance companies per government guidelines. When my wife was first diagnosed with diabetes she had to keep all these little vials of insulin in the frig along with boxes and boxes of needles. She had to give herself 3 injections per meal. When these new innovative drugs came out along with a new innovative delivery system she was so happy to only have to take 1 injection per meal with an additional one per day and one per week. The drugs come in pens now. So no need to keep boxes of needles around along with lots of little vials of insulin. But then she got Kaiser. And they run things like socialism. They control everything like doctor pay, hospital costs and prescription costs. This stifles them. She had to go back to keeping boxes of needles and vials on insulin and taking 3 shots per meal and she no longer had access to all the latest and greatest drugs. All because Kaiser keeps their costs for her healthcare down by denying her access to the latest and greatest. At least she is back to her having access to the latest drugs again now that we are back to a free market Part D insurance. And with that comes no boxes of needles and no vials and the convenience of her using a pen to deliver her new drugs. And of course she only has to inject herself 4 times a day instead of 9 times. It may not sound like much but it is. But of course with this comes a cost to my wife and I. Believe it or not my wife’s Medicare parts A & B plus Part D including all of our deductibles and copays is a wash with what our private insurance costs were. The only difference is that instead of having a high monthly cost with private insurance we have a lower monthly cost but much higher deductibles and copays that vary widely from month to month. And private insurance is much easier to deal with than the government. All of this is just my experience. Yours may vary and probably will.

While I thought my wife’s insurance costs would go down with Medicare, the fact that she was forced onto it by the government and the varying costs per month are what I am most pissed about. Like I said, the costs are close to being a wash between our private insurance and Medicare. But when you include all these years of SS and Medicare coming out of my paychecks then the costs for me are actually higher. In other words we paid into the system for 40 years for the privilege to have the government force us to pay about the same for healthcare. Socialism at work.

Thanks for your candor!
Look into Part "C".  I know you intend to leave Hawaii,
but here HMSA  part "C" is much better coverage, and basically
a "wash" with her present "out-of-pocket" monthly costs with
Kaiser.

Thanks for your candor!
Look into Part "C".  I know you intend to leave Hawaii,
but here HMSA  part "C" is much better coverage, and basically
a "wash" with her present "out-of-pocket" monthly costs with
Kaiser.

The example I gave above with insurance costs were first private insurance then Kaiser and now Medicare with a Supplement Plan F using private doctors. So she is no longer with Kaiser. I just gave the example to show how well off she was with private insurance then Kaiser and now Medicare with Plan F with private doctors.

Thanks for the suggestion on Part C. Unfortunately, with all the care she needs the Plan F Supplement was the best fit for her along with a separate Part D plan. With the expensive prescriptions she has the Part C would cost us a lot more as they don't cover the expensive prescriptions in the same way the Part D plan does.

Watching the Dem debate. Lots of fireworks the first hour. You’ll see the clips later tonight or tomorrow. Pretty funny stuff. I am not sure why Bernie Sanders yelling and acting mad is a good look for him? Buttigieg actually looks and sounds sane compared to Bernie and Joe. Bernie keeps interrupting people and yelling over them. They are trying to run against Trump rather than trying to run on their merits. Klobuchar is even attacking Bernie for alienating the base. Joe is sounding old and out of it.

Big statement of the night? Bloomberg admitted he bought the elections of 24 seats in the house that put Pelosi into power. Just can’t make this stuff up!

I don't know if Bernie knows anyone on Medicare, but it's NOT FREE.  Why do supplemental insurance plans exist?  Why are there "Part B" supplemental insurance products?  Ever look at Medicare's deductibles and co-pays?

This is the "plan" Bernie wants us to all be on ... because -->>  FREE!!!

https://www.medicare.gov/your-medicare-costs/medicare-costs-at-a-glance

That's pretty much what I have been trying to fathom why people have latched onto stuff like this that Bernie spews.  I get why the millennials and younger seem to latch onto these ideas, but why older also seem to do so.  It is my understanding Bernie has a pretty good following in the 55+ age range. 

And healthcare isn't a basic human right.  It is a service.  Now if some people are getting denied opportunities that are afforded to others, I can see that, but I don't think that is happening. 

Watching the Dem debate. Lots of fireworks the first hour. You’ll see the clips later tonight or tomorrow. Pretty funny stuff. I am not sure why Bernie Sanders yelling and acting mad is a good look for him? Buttigieg actually looks and sounds sane compared to Bernie and Joe. Bernie keeps interrupting people and yelling over them. They are trying to run against Trump rather than trying to run on their merits. Klobuchar is even attacking Bernie for alienating the base. Joe is sounding old and out of it.

Big statement of the night? Bloomberg admitted he bought the elections of 24 seats in the house that put Pelosi into power. Just can’t make this stuff up!

It's fuel for the TDS insanity machine. . . Why people think he will be good for the US in any way shape or form is baffling to me. 

OMG, Joe was on a roll and he just stopped and said, “Why am I stopping? No one else is stopping.” Then he said something about Catholic school training. Man he is looking dazed and confused. And angry.

This second hour they are kinda ignoring Bloomberg and Steyer. I have not heard much from either of them this second hour. Next up? Personal questions. Oh I gotta see this....

It's fuel for the TDS insanity machine. . . Why people think he will be good for the US in any way shape or form is baffling to me.

What is really baffling to me is why the panel is letting Bernie get away with his communist agenda? He yells his communist crap and they just sort of accept it. They challenged him a little but just let him off the hook. Terrible softball questions.

OMG, Joe was on a roll and he just stopped and said, “Why am I stopping? No one else is stopping.” Then he said something about Catholic school training. Man he is looking dazed and confused. And angry.

Showtime (at least I think) has a show about the circus that is the Democratic conventions/caususes/etc.  They interviewed Biden on that and whoa is that guy either way out of touch with reality, completely deluded, or both.   

Showtime (at least I think) has a show about the circus that is the Democratic conventions/caususes/etc.  They interviewed Biden on that and whoa is that guy either way out of touch with reality, completely deluded, or both.   

What is the biggest misconception about you? What is your motto?

Joe: I think I have more hair than I do. I’ll make sure there is a black woman in SCOTUS.