The Grim Reaper Party

BREAKING NEWS:

The Republican National Committee has voted to cease using GOP (Grand Old Party) as a designation for the Party. It has adopted, instead, the initials GRP for the Grim Reaper Party as more fitting for its actions during recent decades.

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In June, 2012, a Supreme Court decision upheld most of the Affordable Care Act, but allowed governors to refuse an expansion of Medicaid in their states. No state with a Democratic governor refused the expansion. Many states with Republican governors did. Charles P. Pierce points out that because of 

the fanatical refusal of Republican politicians, specifically Republican governors, to associate themselves with anything that had anything to do with President Barack Obama . . . these governors violated one of the fundamental tenets of state government that date back to the dawn of human greed: they refused FREE MONEY!(1)

Here’s a map showing the latest state of play of Medicaid expansion:(2)

Pierce goes on to cite a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research:

Our analysis provides new evidence that Medicaid coverage reduces mortality rates among low-income adults. Our estimates suggest that approximately 15,600 deaths would have been averted had the ACA expansions been adopted nationwide as originally intended by the ACA. 

GRP!

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The New York Times reported this week that, embracing regulation of exhaust emissions, 

[f]our of the world’s largest automakers have struck a deal with California to reduce automobile emissions, siding with the state in its fight with President Trump over one of his most consequential regulatory rollbacks.(3)

This victory in the fight against air pollution and greenhouse warming is only a rearguard action, however, since Trump plans to plow ahead with his desire to “all but eliminate an Obama-era regulation designed to reduce vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming.” 

I have written before(4) about the dire health consequences of air pollution, so there is no need to go over the preventible deaths associated with it. Since there can be no argument here about the automobile industry fighting against regulation, that excuse for rolling back emission standards won’t fly. What we have left is (once again) a Trumpian determination to undo the work of the Obama administration without a moment’s concern about the health of our citizens and the state of the planet. So what if more people die—and the planet burns?

GRP!

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Congressional opposition to U.S. support for the brutal Saudi/UAE war in Yemen has been growing in the past few years. It has underpinned the work of a network of peace, human rights, and humanitarian aid groups who are moved to end what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The war has killed thousands of civilians through air strikes and put millions at risk of famine. William D. Hartung(5)

Congress had passed resolutions that would have prevented “the sale of billions of dollars of arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”(6) But Trump, after shedding crocodile tears about “the conflict’s toll on innocent civilians,” vetoed the resolutions. The United States, Trump declared, is “working to bring the conflict in Yemen to an end.” 

Probably by facilitating the Saudi bombing of the Yemeni population out of existence.

GRP!

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And finally, to bring it all home again, there’s Attorney General William “I will lie about the Mueller Report” Barr deciding that it’s time the federal government recommenced killing people:

The federal government will resume executing death row inmates after nearly two decades without doing so, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.                                                                      Attorney General William Barr directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five inmates convicted of murder and other crimes. The executions have been scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020.(7)

Maybe Trump can get his pal Crazy Roy Moore to nail one of his Ten Commandment plaques to the wall of the Oval Office. You know, one of those plaques that reads, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Then Trump can be reminded to have have his administration adhere to the suspension of governmental killing. 

Oops, sorry. We all know that Trump never reads anything.

Let the killings begin!

GRP!

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UPDATE:

Shortly after I posted this, the following showed up on Yahoo News:

Arizona is poised to resume executions after a five-year hiatus brought on by an execution that critics said was botched, a subsequent lawsuit challenging the way the state carries out the death penalty, and the difficulty of finding lethal injection drugs, Attorney General Mark Brnovich said.(8)

Needless to say, Brnovich is a Republican.

GRP!

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(1) https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/15-000-americans-died-republican-205000693.html

(2) https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/resources/primers/medicaidmap

(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/climate/automakers-rejecting-trump-pollution-rule-strike-a-deal-with-california.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

(4) Here: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2017/04/aliens-amongst-us.html

and here: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2019/05/death-un-donne.html

(5) https://lobelog.com/trumps-emergency-sale-to-saudi-arabia-must-not-stand/

(6) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/politics/trump-veto-arms-saudi-arabia.html?searchResultPosition=1

(7) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/25/william-barr-orders-first-federal-executions-in-nearly-two-decades.html

(8) https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/official-arizona-resume-executions-year-hiatus-64598112