I think “how we got here” is more because of the massive and powerful opposition to health care reform by the Powers That Be, not because of regular people being grateful that we made a small amount of progress in spite of them.

These limp dick positions just provides political cover for poor policy

If you want to criticize me for my position on the issue, my position is that we should have universal healthcare at least on a par with the other developed countries.

My post was me griping about how pretty much impossible it has been to do anything about health care in this country for decades, and even the little we’ve gained is still under threat of being taken away. It took decades to get even the protections of the ACA passed (not allowing them to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions being IMO the most important one, which IS an improvement that has saved a lot of suffering and my life, among others, followed by expansion of Medicaid, which has also saved lives).

So yes, I did say things were even worse before the ACA and they were. That’s a fact, whether you want to admit it or not. If they repeal the ACA, it will cause more suffering and death. That’s a fact.

If you want to see how it was before the ACA, watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”. You’ll understand how the ACA is an improvement, regardless of its flaws and failure to be The Ideal One True Universal Healthcare we wish for.

Trying to get something, anything, passed to improve the HC situation took decades of fights. Read the history of it. Did you know Nixon tried to get universal coverage done back in the late '70’s, but Ted Kennedy decided to make the perfect be the enemy of the good and led the effort against it, killing it (before he died he said that was his biggest regret). He and the unions calculated that if they killed it they could deny Nixon a win (sound familiar?) and get single-payer next time there was a Dem president, which of course they couldn’t. Clinton tried to do it, HRC led the effort and they were inundated with massive opposition. It got nowhere, not even close.

Next up, Obama. However imperfect it is, it was a significant accomplishment to get the ACA done. It was hoped it could continue to be improved and worked on going forward. Instead it’s been a constant battle just to keep it from being repealed.

Reads about how Taliban take women’s rights away and shut them in the houses with no windows so men won’t be tempted to do bad things to them

🤔 Gets ideas about things we could do with CEOs so Luigi’s won’t be tempted to do bad things to them

Hell, he might be right (I doubt it but you never know). BUT better than either of those options would have been if he’d announced by 2023 that he would not be running for reelection (like he campaigned on!) so the Dems could have had a full field and competitive primaries. That would have given them the best chance to win (but would they have? kinda doubt that too).

I DO agree with his understatement that his Garland decision was a mistake. Not just a mistake, a disaster!

If your package manager is apt, you can get a list of all the packages you have installed with

apt list --installed

There’s also a command to automatically reinstall all your apps from the list, I don’t remember offhand, but I usually just do them manually from Synaptic.

As other commenters have said, some people keep their /home on a different partition so you can reinstall or install a different distro without losing all your configurations (always back it up first anyway of course). But another thing I’ve done a lot is just have a different disk or partition with all my data files on it (called ‘data’ of course :p ), and I put a link to it in my home directory. So when I reinstall the OS I do have to backup my home dir and then copy it over to the new install home dir, but it’s small and just has my dotfiles and things.

Also on the data partition I have a backup subfolder where I keep a copy of any system config files that I’ve edited (usually found in /etc/), such as my pulseaudio config, so I can restore those.

And you can always try out different distros in a virtual machine or with a live USB before making the commitment of installing one on your hardware.

I’m thinking of the woman who said over the phone in response to her claim being denied, “deny, delay depose, you’re next” or something close to that. She was talking to a regular employee at the health insurance company and was immediately arrested and charged, could get something like 10 years in prison. So you don’t have to be a high-level employee.

edit: rechecked the details and found:

Boston was ultimately charged with threats to conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism, with a bond set at $100,000, as first reported by local station WFLA. That’s a second degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

It’s about to get a shit-ton worse.

“However, our members often have to make split-second decisions, and they cannot control the outcome of every situation,” Nelson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, when someone resists law enforcement, they increase the risk of harm to themselves or others.”

He had to make a split-second decision?!! About what? Cannot control the outcome? You mean the outcome of you deciding, with all the time in the world, to throw an old man to the ground on his face so hard it broke his neck and smashed his eye socket? What outcome was not totally under your control here? You had total control over a fragile old man. Resists law enforcement? total bullshit. god I hate these stories, I really need to stop myself from reading them. It’s not like I can do a damn thing about it but get upset. Fuck them all.

Because he didn’t want Biden/Dems to get the credit for passing it on their watch.

Wait, I think I’ve figured it out! All minorities need to get jobs at health insurance companies ASAP! That way any magats who threaten or attack you will be prosecuted as terrorists going after the health insurance companies.

Trump no longer needs the “little people” now that they’ve voted him into office. He’s now openly all in with the billionaires and won’t bother to pretend he gives a fuck about all the little magats any more.

This thing is on the way, dammit. I’ve been seeing a lot of reports on its spread, where they say the udders of cows have receptors for both human and bird flus, and if both are present they can exchange genes and mutate a lot. Only a matter of time for human to human. And it’ll likely be a lot more deadly than COVID. 😢

Pre-ACA it was even worse. Watch Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko”.

I guess the worm didn’t eat all of it.

Mike johnson photobombing in from the side, trying to be included.

Another quality-of-life lowering thing caused by Walmart/Amazon that’s obvious but they didn’t go into, is that once Walmart and Amazon have eliminated so many local businesses, everyone is forced to shop at them. Even if we don’t want to, we have nowhere else to go–we can’t just boycott them and still get stuff we need.

Walmart decides what you will and won’t have access to buy. They’ve pared down the variety of brands and offer a subset of items by those brands minimum, for their efficiency of ordering and stocking items, including groceries. Then the brands stop making the items that Walmart decided not to stock, so they’re gone. There are still a few other grocery stores but most have them have merged into a few mega-grocery chains with the same issues as with Walmart.

So even if you’re OK with going to Walmart your choices are limited (those of us old enough to remember things we used to be able to buy that are long gone these days may notice this more). So what it’s come down to is you get what Walmart offers you, or you order it from Amazon or Temu. There are still a few places to get real things of good quality, but they’re harder to find, never local stores, so you have to order online sight unseen, and of course it’s an expensive and time-consuming process compared to being able to just go to the store and grab something.

Ubuntu was my entry to linux as well, 19 years ago. But Ubuntu of today is not the Ubuntu of 15-19 years ago, and not in a good way.

When first coming from Windows, starting with Mint is the safest bet for a good transition because things will work pretty much as you expect them to, and there’s a very helpful forum if you have any questions. But I always say to try several distros and Desktop Environments to see how you like them. Everyone is different and it’s all a matter of preference.

I suggest that once you’ve got whatever distro you decided on up and running, install a virtual machine software such as Boxes (very simple) or Virtual Box (a little more complicated but with more options). Then just download various distros and make VMs for them to try them out easily. Have fun!

At least with this one they’re only killing themselves and their own kids.