President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Some posters should get their anxiety or bipolar medications while they still can.

 

Well, not all of them, certainly. But I might lament your combustion.

Might.

 

Yeah ... no. I was wrong.

 

Yeah, well, I'm not going there in depth. But I've worked group homes with severely disabled kids, with no hope for most of them ever getting out of their beds or wheelchairs, and that stuff will make you sit in your car and cry. ... Then you somehow do it the next day, and then you do it the next week ... So, yeah, some people get lucky, but plenty of others fall through the cracks, and their futures are bleak, and it's incredibly worse if they can't get the care they need.

 

Caring. Empathy. Depth ... I've sensed that in you.

Or maybe not.

 

Yeah. There's a lot of tragic stuff out there. Kids with no light at the end of their tunnel.

And yet, there's love. And, there's value and dignity to their lives. And, somehow, moments of joy, and laughter.

 

Let's talk about feeding tubes.

I spent a good chunk of last Saturday volunteering at a softball tournament put on by my college roommate. He had multiple teams who paid entry fees (the city was nice enough to give him use of four fields at no charge), a home run derby contest (10 pitches for $10), two separate raffles (one for donated prizes, one split the pot) and concessions run out of a trailer borrowed from the local Coke bottler (everything a dollar, from candy bars to sports drinks to nasty looking hot dogs out of the crock pot).

All of this was to raise money for his wife's ongoing medical bills. Long story short, her intestines are paralyzed, incapable of moving food. Maybe someday she won't need a feeding tube, but that involves a lot of costly treatments (which she will have either way). Chronic condition. She's stuck with this the rest of her life, however long that is.

Thing is, this wasn't a one-time fundraising deal. He puts this on every year. And does a fundraising auction in the fall. And runs multiple Facebook groups that basically come down to sharing his wife's story and asking for money. It ebbs and flows with the seasons, but if you averaged it out of the course of the year I'd guess his scrounging and organizing adds up to the equivalent of a 10-15 hour a week job for him, on top of his real job as an IT guy for an area school system. (She can't work). I hate to say thank God they're childless but he probably would have dropped dead from exhaustion if there were kids added to the mix.

All of that was with the highly imperfect Obamacare in place (minus a Medicaid expansion because good ole Alabama), but it was at least something, a floor of support. Now? If her lifetime benefits get capped they're fucked. If he ever loses his job under this new law (and it certainly can't help that he has to go to Cleveland with her once or twice a year for extended stays) they're fucked.

 

Well, not toward you, lol. You're a condescending asshole.

 

Lighten up, Hillary ... next thing you know, you're gonna want to have "a conversation."

 

But, but FREEDOM!!!!

 

Well, with trump and the Christian Right in charge that love will be have to be stronger because those kids lives will be shorter.

 

And it's a disgrace in this country, the richest nation on the planet, that some will die because they don't have enough money.