Cheers and Jeers is a weekday post from the great state of Maine.
That Time We Scored An Interview Coup
Ten years ago this week, after months of negotiation and rigmarole, we spoke with an actual pre-existing condition at 3am behind a pillar in an abandoned parking garage. To this day C&J remains the only media outlet brave and tenacious enough to get a verified (and very pissed off) Pre-C's reaction to the March 23, 2010 signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by President Barack Obama. With a stroke of his pen, the Democratic party—with zero help from Republicans—immediately put the entire pre-existing condition community out of business.
For the sake of posterity, today were reprint that historic interview as a reminder of what Democrats achieved ten years ago this week, and what Republicans are moving heaven and earth to bring back. Enjoy.
Continued...
C&J: My special guest this morning is one of America's most prolific pre-existing conditions. It graciously agreed to join us to talk about the historic health insurance bill that the president signed into law yesterday, and its impact on the pre-existing condition community. Welcome.
Pre-existing Condition: Thank you. I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.
So what kind of pre-existing condition are you, exactly?
Well, originally I was childhood acne, but I've been cross-trained as a variety of other pre-existing conditions: polyps, cysts, arthritis, diabetes and so on.I'm just a few credits shy of being certified as a C-section pregnancy, but that's kinda worthless at this point.
Yesterday the president signed the insurance overhaul into law, including a ban on pre-existing conditions like you. What does that mean for you and your fellow PCs?
Uhhhh...Hello??? Unemployment is what it means. We'll be cut out of children's health insurance this year, and then we'll be completely gone by 2014. No severance, no gold watch, no nothin'— just a snide "Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out." Decades of faithfully getting people denied the coverage they paid for and this is the thanks we get? If John McCain hadn’t run such a shitty campaign none of this would've happened.
So, yeah, we pre-existing conditions are really pissed off and demoralized today. I have a co-worker—a bunion—that's so despondent she's actually healing. We can't even look at her.
So what are ya gonna do, go back to school?
Maybe. Or I might do some traveling. There are one or two banana republics where I might be able to score some freelance work. But mostly I think I'll just be spending a lot of time together with my bathrobe and The Price Is Right.
Republicans in Congress and several state attorneys general have promised to repeal the bill, which would keep pre-existing conditions like you gainfully employed. Are you hopeful they can save your job?
Well, considering that our worlds never intersect because they’ve all got gold-plated insurance that looks the other way when it comes to my kind, it's really nice to know that they're looking out for us. We'll be watching. Thumbs up, guys!
When you look back on your career, what's your fondest memory?
Oh, lord, that's tough. Anytime you can throw a wrench in the works it's a fond memory, y'know? I did have this one lady with severe lupus back in 2004. It looked like the insurance company was gonna have to do a major payout—they were practically writing the check—but I worked straight through an entire weekend and then it hit me Sunday night: ingrown toenail,1986. And that was all we needed. Coverage denied, Martha!
Y'know, when the CEO seeks you out on a Monday morning to give you a high-five and stuff a Franklin in your pustule, you know you've made a real difference in his life. Sorry, I don't usually tear up like this. I'll be okay. Go on...
No waffling here: dogs or cats?
Neither. But I do breed viruses and uninsurable goiters.
Finish this sentence: In the kitchen I make a mean...
...accident happen and then I make sure the victim doesn’t get covered because of me.
If you could be granted one wish, what would it be?
That yesterday never happened. I think I'm done here. Somebody get this microphone off me...
Thanks for your time and I hope we never meet again.
Thanks. And screw you, too, healthy boy.
Update: We tried to reach Pre-existing Condition for an update, and were told it was unavailable for comment but very excited about working with Republicans to orchestrate a comeback. Naturally, we wish it none of the luck in the world.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Note: Go back and wash 'em again.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Passover: 14
Percent of white men with and without college degrees, respectively, who approve of the job Trump is doing, according to new Monmouth polling: 42%, 64%
Percent of all women in the same poll who approve: 43%
Number of previous times when the U.S. economy has "come to such a sudden, violent stop" as it has this month, according to AP: 0
Length of the national lockdown enacted Monday in the U.K.: 3 weeks
Portion of adults who still sleep with a comfort object, according to some internet site: 1-in-3
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 beast governments and 1 miraculously not-vanishing killer virus). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The quarantine continues…
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CHEERS to Democrats…on the attack! Whoa—when it comes to passing a coronavirus stimulus package, our leaders on Team D are fed up with the opposition's bullshit and obstruction. While it hasn't quite devolved into Charles Sumner v. Preston Brooks territory, it's still getting heated. In no particular order: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) tore into Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Moscow), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) tore into Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Moscow), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tore into Bloomberg Business' Jonathan Ferro. But for my money nothing is more gratifying than watching one of the brightest bulbs in the House go after one of the dimwittiest in the Senate:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Monday dropped the hammer on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) after she went on an angry rant against Democrats who rejected the Senate GOP’s stimulus bill. […]
“Susan Collins can keep her crocodile tears,” she wrote. “She voted and fought HARD to strip pandemic prep funding. She helped drive the lack of preparation that we had leading up to this.” Ocasio-Cortez then pointed to a Daily Beast report about the role that Collins played in 2009 in removing a proposed additional $870 million in funding for pandemic preparations from the economic stimulus package that was passed in response to the Great Recession. […]
“She’s defending an utterly corrupt bill to shower public money on friends and donors. Susan Collins is not a moderate. She just plays one on TV.”
For 2020 campaign purposes, I suggest we just refer to her as Susan Slush Fund.
P.S. A special comment from Esquire’s Charlie Pierce as Hillary Clinton goes rock ‘em sock ‘em on the Chucky-Doll-in-Chief:
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CHEERS to a whole lotta chillin' going on. Showing that their leader is taking the you-know-what-demic more seriously than ours is, India has ordered its population of 1.3 billion to shelter in place for the next three weeks. Even though they've so far been relatively (and astonishingly) unscathed with only 520 reported cases, they're taking the drastic step so they can exemplify the word that bounces off Trump's ears like a ping-pong ball on titanium: proactive…
"You have seen the worldwide situations arising from the coronavirus pandemic in the news. You have also seen how the most powerful nations have become helpless in the face of this pandemic," Modi said in a live televised address to the nation on Tuesday evening ahead of the deadline. […]
"What the experts are saying is that social distancing is the only option to combat coronavirus.
That is to remain apart from each other and stay confined to within your homes. There is no other way to remain safe from coronavirus.
If we have to stop the spread, we have to break the cycle of infection," he said.
You thought the balcony musicians were entertaining in Spain and Italy? Wait 'til you see the Bollywood numbers.
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Brief Sanity Break
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End Brief Sanity Break
Begin Day-Long Earworm
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CHEERS to walkin' the walk. On March 25, 1965—a few weeks after "Bloody Sunday" during which police set upon peaceful civil rights marchers with fire hoses, clubs and dogs—Martin Luther King, Jr. led thousands of marchers to the State Capitol in Montgomery for a rally. It looked something like this (that's Congressman John Lewis second from the left, and we’re wishing him a fresh round of positive thoughts as he continues chemo for his effing cancer):
The marchers got three things out of it: Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a permanent place in civil rights history and, much less publicized, aching arches.
CHEERS to smiles for miles. The giddy goblins who put together the annual list of the happiest countries on earth have released their latest (pre-pandemic) list. You can already surmise that the cranky old US of A, whose Founding Fathers only gave us the right to pursue happiness as opposed to actually having it, did not come in first place. Nor did we come in second place. Or third. Or fourth. Or…oh, screw it, this is taking too long:
For the third year in a row, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world. Other Nordic countries dominate, with Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden all making the top 10.
The secret to their success? “They are all very high trust societies,” John Helliwell, professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia, and one of the report’s authors, told HuffPost. “Any individual who feels that sense of belonging and high trust, which is more common in the Nordic countries than elsewhere, is much more sheltered against adversity of many types,” he said.
The World Happiness Report, now in its eighth iteration, ranks the happiness of 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be and is based on data from Gallup World Poll studies.
And where does the United States fall on the happiness list? Um…[scroll scroll scroll]…[scroll scroll scroll]…Number 18. Upon hearing about the report (because he never reads), President Trump vowed to take decisive action by announcing during his daily disinformation press conference that he's changing our national motto from “E pluribus unum” to “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Oddly, I trust him on that.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 25, 2010
JEERS to Fox's Very Serious People. You could fill a book the size of War and Peace with all the cocky—and wrong—obituaries for the healthcare bill that were made by the conservapundits. As I said last week about the lies that were told in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, words matter, and these guys need to be called out again and again and again. So take it away, highly-influential Weekly Standard guy Fred Barnes—enlighten America with what you said two months ago:
"The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.... Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite [Scott] Brown, but they won’t fly.... ObamaCare went into the emergency room in Massachusetts and didn’t make it out alive."
Actually, it did, Fred. But surgically removing your foot from your mouth? Dammit man, they're doctors, not miracle workers.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Bonnie. This is Bonnie. She’s from Chicago. She’d like you to know about the woman whose ass she could’ve kicked. And I think you’d like to know about the woman whose ass she could’ve kicked:
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Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we’ve found President Biden’s secretary of State.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Both the butt of jokes in many rom-coms and a cause for genuine curiosity at Daily Kos, there’s always been a bit of mystery swirling around the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool.
—Danielle Gonzalaz, HuffPost
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