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Paying The Stupid Tax

7/7/2025

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Paying The Stupid Tax

The Stupid Tax: What you have to pay when you do something stupid

Last week, Sunday, June 29, I paid the Stupid Tax.
I was washing the kitchen and bathroom floors as I do early every Sunday morning while my mate is out attending Sunday service. My modus operandi is to cram all the furniture, chairs, trashcans, magazine rack, stepping stool, toilet paper holder,

...etc., everything except the kitchen table, into the family room so that my mop can swish over the entire territory of the floors.
Now, when one becomes a person of a certain age, one is constantly being reminded - by doctors, health advice columns, AARP magazine - of the danger of tripping and falling, and of the importance of being mindful when walking.
I am always mindful when walking. Except for that one time last Sunday morning when, while weaving my way through the furniture I'd sardined into the family room, I lost focus of the task at hand, which was to make it to back from the family room to the kitchen without tripping and falling.
I'm not sure which out of place item I caught my foot on. All I remember is going down, twisting one knee, landing on the other, and thinking, Oh, $%&#, $%&#, $%&#, that was SO STUPID!!
I iced my hurting knee - my left knee - for about five minutes whilst bemoaning my stupidity before deciding to cut to the chase and go to the ER. The nice medical staff there x-rayed my knee, informed me that nothing was broken, but, just in case I'd torn something that wasn't visible on the x-ray, like a ligament, a meniscus, or some other of the various tissues that surround the kneecap,

...they trussed me up in this ankle-to-thigh knee immobilizer, which eased the pain and which I was to wear 23 ½ /7. (Permission was granted to take it off while I showered, but not while I slept).

However, I was not to lie around too much, but should continue to be up and hobbling around in my knee immobilizer.
The nice ER doctor also informed me that if my knee still hurt after eight or so days I should seek treatment. Today was the eighth day, so I sought treatment.
Now, I digress here, but a few days after my ER visit I had an already-scheduled wellness check up, not with my doctor, who'd retired, but with another doctor who was just temporarily filling in for my retired doctor. He called himself a "floater."
Dr. Floater was very nice, and quite thorough with the wellness end of the visit and he was patient with all my questions. However, he advised me not to keep that immobilizer on my knee, but rather to try walking around without it, bending the knee, doing some stretching, and not wearing the immobilizer to bed.
So I took off my knee immobilizer, tried walking around, stretching, bending, and not wearing the immobilizer to bed. I was in so much pain.
And so I mostly disregarded the floating doctor's instructions and mostly followed the ER doctor's instructions, only because my knee felt so much better in the immobilizer than out of it.
And yet I was afraid not to follow the floater doctor's instructions because, I thought, what if he was right and I shouldn't be wearing the immobilizer all the time? Or what if the ER doctor was right and I should be wearing it all the time? I didn't know what else to do but split the difference and wear the immobilizer some of the time and not wear it some of the time. I figured, whichever advice was wrong, I'd at least only do 50% of the damage.
Anyway, today being my eighth day of knee pain, I was free to seek treatment, which I did at a local orthopedic walk-in clinic. The very nice nurse practitioner who saw me decided to do another, more comprehensive set of x-rays of both my knees. The x-rays suggested that MRI's were in order not only of the hurting knee (the one I twisted), but of the non-hurting knee (the one of fell on), which exhibited some "boney changes," which made me think of skeletons.

It might end up taking a week or so before my MRI can be scheduled. And then I'll see a joint specialist at the end of the month. And in the meantime, per the nurse practitioner's instructions, I'll be wearing my knee immobilizer all the time. And paying the tax...well, I guess until further notice.

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If You Thought It Was Such An Awful Bill, Why The #$%& Did You Vote For It?

7/2/2025

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If You Thought It Was Such An Awful Bill, Why The #$%& Did You Vote For It?

Yesterday the Republican-majority U.S. Senate passed Donald Trump's gargantuan domestic agenda bill - which Trump not too vainly named his "Big Beautiful Bill" - by the narrowest of margins. 50 Republicans voted for the bill and all 47 Democrats plus 3 Republicans voted against it. Vice-President JD Vance was called in to break the tie and pass the bill, 51-50.

This big stinker of a bill will, among its other iniquities, further enrich the rich, further impoverish the poor, cancel climate, clean energy and environmental initiatives, ban AI regulation, raise consumer energy costs by billions, cut back food assistance for those who need it, and cause 17 million Americans to lose their healthcare, all the while raising the national debt by a dangerous $3 trillion.
But in truth I'm less outraged that Trump's despicable "Big Beautiful Bill" passed, than that it was passed by Republicans who knew that the bill was bad, who even spoke out about what a bad bill it was and how it would harm their constituents as well as the whole country...then voted for it anyway! And then - and here's the real punchline - they spoke out against the bill again after they voted for it!
There was Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times condemning the bill's proposed Medicaid cuts.

He made his point with a heart-wrenching story about a mother of five with an 8-year-old daughter who needed a feeding tube and other expensive treatments to survive. "“Without Medicaid," the mother informed Senator Hawley, "we would lose everything — our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.”
And then Hawley voted for the very bill that he railed against in his Op-ed, the bill that will cut that child's Medicaid and send her family into destitution. When asked to comment on his vote Hawley said that going forward he was going to do everything he could to stop health care being taken away from working people - even though he voted to take health care away from working people!
There was Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski who opposed the bill for its new work requirements for Medicaid recipients and its cuts to SNAP, the Federal food assistance program.

But then Senate Republican leaders offered Murkowski to write into the bill an exemption for her state from the Medicaid work requirement and SNAP cuts, and also threw in a goodie bag of other benefits and exceptions that would apply only to Alaskans. Ms. Murkowski accepted the bribe, voted for the bill, and then afterwards had the gall to say that she didn't like the bill, struggled with the impact its Medicaid and SNAP provisions would have on the most vulnerable people in the rest of the country, but that she had to look out for the interests of Alaskans. She even added that she hoped the bill - that she herself voted for! - wouldn't make it through the House vote.
There was West Virginia Senator Jim Justice who warned that Medicaid cuts in Donald Trump's bill could cause the loss of many rural hospitals and boomerang politically for Republicans.

Then he voted for the bill.
There was Wyoming Senator Ron Johnson who proclaimed that he couldn't accept a bill that left the our national debt in excess of $1.9 trillion.

Trump's Big Beautiful Bill will bring on a national debt in excess of $3 trillion. Ron Johnson voted for it anyway.
Afterwards Johnson said of the bill he voted to pass, "I don't like it...But at some point in time you have to recognize reality."
Right. And the reality that's there for anyone to recognize is that any one of those four Senators who were so publicly vocal about the evils of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill could have sunk the bill with their vote. It would have taken only one more vote, only one more Republican following their conscience, doing what they knew was the right thing, to deliver the American people from the suffering that Trump's bill will bring down on so many of us. And that they know will bring down on so many of us.
But not one of them could bring themselves to join the three lone Republicans who dared to cross Donald Trump and vote their conscience: Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky,

...and Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced that after his term was up he wouldn't run again,

...obviously recognizing the reality that crossing Donald Trump would be the end of his political career, a reality that other Republicans have unfortunately had to recognize.

Which answers the question of why the Republican Senators who knew that Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill was garbage and had the power to dispose of it voted for it anyway, and why the Republican members of the House of Representatives who've spoken out against the bill because they, too, know it's garbage, will also likely vote for it: Because those Republicans are less worried about the welfare of their constituents and our nation than they are terrified of Donald Trump's wrath and vengeance.

And of those hypocritical, cowardly Republican Senators who publicly condemned Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill but then took one for his power-hungry appetite I ask: So what do you expect now? A purple heart?

References
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-big-beautiful-bill-vote-07-01-25

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-josh-hawley-condemns-medicaid-cuts-says-ll-vote-anyway-rcna215987

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5378970-medicaid-cuts-senate-republicans/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/us/politics/murkowski-republican-bill.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5378124-jim-justice-medicaid-trump-bill/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-races-final-vote-trumps-megabill-after-weekend/story?id=123336634

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Paying The Stupid Tax

​Paying The Stupid Tax

If You Thought It Was Such An Awful Bill, Why The #$%& Did You Vote For It?

​​If You Thought It Was Such An Awful Bill, Why The #$%& Did You Vote For It?

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Paying The Stupid Tax

If You Thought It Was Such An Awful Bill, Why The #$%& Did You Vote For It?