Special K Keeps The Blues Away
But not the black-and-whites
Links are at the end, longing for a touch.
The title is a (paraphrase of a) line from the song, “U Don't Dans 2 Tekno” on Alabama 3’s perfect debut album, Exile on Coldharbour Lane.1 You may know the group from the theme song for The Sopranos, also on this album.
Yr. editor considered using a tune from it on the K-Hole playlist but ultimately chose otherwise.
“the drugstore and pharmacy chain has faced backlash from abortion rights activists and Democrats”
You probably know that Walgreens is refusing to sell abortion pills in states where they’re afraid somebody might yell at them. The chain historically has a horrible record on reproductive health, allowing individual employees the opportunity to refuse service to anyone wanting condoms or birth control pills or whatever so long as the employees claim they’re acting from religious belief. The opportunity to refuse service also seems to carry the right to say really shitty things to customers.2
As part of the IUD medication process, the teen’s doctor had prescribed her anxiety medication, a pain reliever and misoprostol, a hormone that softens the cervix to allow for easier insertion of an IUD, according to the Albuquerque Journal. While misoprostol is commonly prescribed to treat stomach ulcers, it can also be used to induce abortion.
The girl’s mother, who was listed as M.S. in the complaints, alleged that she was told by the pharmacist to pick up the prescription at another Walgreens store, even though it was available at the pharmacy. She said in the complaints that she told him that “he was discriminating against me, that he should be ashamed for judging us, that he didn’t know my daughter’s medical history or her complications or conversation with her doctor. That he didn’t know what the medication was for.”
“And he just looks at me and says, ‘Oh, I have a pretty good idea,’” she said, according to the complaints.
Fucking assholes, eh?
The reason I bring this up when you already know about it is a connection of which you’re probably not aware, between Walgreens and Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the most influential health care policy advocates during the past 20 years or so. (Zeke is ginormous asshole and bilious authoritarian Rahm Emanuel’s brother, and possibly an even more ginormous asshole.)
Along with doctoring and touting the private sector’s superiority to publicly-administered health care systems, Emanuel is a venture capital investor in health care startups, one of which, VillageMD, operates out of Walgreens locations as, now, a subsidiary of it.
Did I mention Ezekiel is also a medical ethicist? Well he is, teaching the subject at the University of Pennsylvania, along with health care policy, while he makes a pile of money from a company that routinely fucks with the reproductive rights of women.3
And yes, I wrote about Emanuel’s love of profit, his own and his investment opportunities, a while back (late last year) while touching on a subject addressed yesterday, that being the amazing degree to which private insurers are siphoning off public funds.4
Emanuel, who moonlights as a venture capitalist investing in health care-related startups — including the charmingly-named VillageMD, now part of the Walgreens vertical — is lightning quick to dismiss eliminating privatization in Medicare and Medicaid, and ignore studies from left and right showing that a Medicare for All plan along the lines proposed by Bernie Sanders and others will generate savings which dwarf the ones he suggests can come from reforming Medicare Advantage even with dental and vision care included.
Zeke addresses only glancingly the massive fraud routinely committed by the health insurance giants dominating the Medicare Advantage playing field. Of the top 10 companies in the business, five have been accused of fraud by the government (and a sixth, CVS, is under investigation), and eight have been caught overbilling short of fraud. As with our massive financial institutions, fraud is part of the business model. And these aren’t just one-time offenses; these top 10 players have been dinged dozens of times collectively.
Religious bigots shouldn’t be determining who can and can’t buy reproductive care products, and doctors who work developing health care policy along with making bank from teaching medical ethics shouldn’t be making even bigger bank through investments from unethical companies.
VillageMD, my ass. Walgreens, my ass. Fucking wanker. Fucking wankers.
Calm down, everybody
This was not meant to be an angry post. Don’t like to do my drugs when angry. Deep breaths. Life, and ketamine, requires calm.5
Shuffling stealthily from cabinet to crawl space to cupboard, one imagines, until expiring from lack of brains.
Death Comes to the Carnival
While we’re on the subject, the FBI are investigating the “suspicious” death of a passenger on the Carnival Sunshine en route to the Bahamas from one of the Carolinas.
Nobody speculates on what happened and at whose behest, but with two people in the room and one of them dead in suspicious circumstances . . .6
“DONALD TRUMP’S VP SHORT LIST IS A WHO’S WHO OF UNIQUELY AWFUL REPUBLICAN WOMEN”
Vanity Fair has the scoop, or a scoop, or someone’s thoughts about who’s atop the Duck L’Orange’s veep pile. Is there such a thing as a “uniquely awful” Republican of any gender? The iteration here would suggest not. I mean, they’re awful but there’s a bunch of them so how unique can they be? "Representatively awful" might be the better characterization.7
[B]ack in January, we learned that Donald Trump was reportedly considering GOP representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to be his 2024 running mate. As a stark raving lunatic—who, among other things, believes there’s some truth to what QAnon says about Democrats being Satanic cannibal pedophiles, has insisted there’s no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, and claimed the Clintons had JFK Jr. killed—the Georgia Republican is obviously a perfect complement to the most deranged president in modern history. But apparently, Greene isn’t the only certifiably insane candidate Trump has his eyes on.
That’s right, Axios reports that Trump is also mulling over Kari Lake as a VP pick. Like the 45th president, the former news anchor also has exactly zero government experience, although unlike Trump, she’s never actually won an election. But don’t tell her that! Since losing the Arizona gubernatorial race last November, Lake has insisted the whole thing was stolen from her; despite having her claims rejected by two different courts, she apparently believes the Arizona Supreme Court will rule in her favor. That defiance, in the face of utter facts, is presumably a large part of what Trump sees in her, in addition to liking that, per Axios, “she has shown she’s willing to defend him vociferously, no matter the issue or controversy.”
If Trump gets the GOP nomination, which isn’t unlikely, he won’t be dissuaded from a novelty VP pick this time round. One supposes George Santos in drag is an ask too far.
Comes the Music
I’ve heard of but not listened to Jenny O. til now, and I liked the album. Brenda Kahn I knew and liked from the early ‘90s, but this is a more recent album which I’d not heard and likewise like.
Jenny O., “Spectra;”8 Brenda Kahn, "Outside the Beauty Salon."9
That, Comrades, is all I got and it’s in some measure heroic
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Take care, be well.
On your comments about Zeke Emmanuel, Medicare Advantage, and the like as contrasted with Bernie Sanders' proposals, I don't suppose I have to remind you that the Republicans now control the House.