https://twitter.com/KHNews/status/1100496650454425600?s=17

Kaiser Health News (@KHNews) Tweeted:

More than 42% of the 9.5 million people diagnosed with cancer from 2000 to 2012 drained their life’s assets within two years, according to a study published last year in the American Journal of Medicine. via @annagorman KHN/@NPR https://t.co/cNinEMGYFK

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/united-methodists-vote.html

«But in the United States, the vote poses a significant risk for a denomination that struggles to attract young people. United Methodists have one of the oldest religious populations in the country, with a median age of 57.

….

“This feels like one generation locking down the church for the next,” said William H. Willimon, a retired bishop of the United Methodist Church and a professor at Duke Divinity School. “That’s a death sentence.”

….

Six in 10 United Methodists in the United States believe homosexuality should be accepted.

….

“The wound may one day be healed by the grace of God,” she said, “but the scar left behind will be visible forever.”

For many, the church’s slogan, “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors,” now feels shattered.

….

The denomination has split about a dozen times in its history, notably over slavery and race.»

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/votes/116/house/1/94

Party-line vote in NC.

To be clear: EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN thinks it’s ok for the President to declare an emergency to get what he wants after Congress has said “No.”

Remember this in future when a Dem President declares gun violence or climate change to be a national emergency.

https://twitter.com/JKMH/status/1100511998268166145

This is a good point.

«Why are people aligning divorce and a bunch of other “sins” with being gay? Wtf? The whole “we all sinners” weak argument does not help the cause for lgbtq inclusion. #GC2019»

https://medium.com/@teamwarren/the-best-president-money-cant-buy-1adfbe01a344

I’m really liking Warren. I said in the past that she doesn’t have the foreign policy chops she needs, and I’m still a little iffy on that[1], because I believe foreign policy has only gotten more important in the last two years, but… I like her.  Here’s a related earlier post of mine: https://herereadthisarticle.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/the-five-types-of-trump-voters/

I think she might be able to get some mileage out of the concept of members of the super-wealthy getting in a snit and withholding donations just because she won’t make special time for them.

[1] If she builds a good team, though, that can make up a lot. We’re not electing a person, we’re electing a team (although the person is the team-builder).

«But I believe the biggest risk in this election is failing to empower the millions of people who feel the squeeze of an economy rigged against them and the deep frustration of a failing political system that produced Donald Trump in the first place.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/23/republicans-big-gut-check-vote-tuesday/

“Banana Republicans.” I bet Max Boot will be voting Republican some time in the next 8 years, but this is still good.

«If Republicans support this unconstitutional power grab, they will have completed their transformation from the party of Reagan — a party devoted to conservative principles — to the party of Trump — a party devoted to no principle other than a desperate desire to propitiate a capricious would-be tyrant in the White House. They might as well get rid of the elephant and make their party symbol a curved yellow fruit, because they will have become banana republicans. I am worried about the Democrats’ drift to the left, but I can never imagine voting again for a Republican Party that represents a clear and present danger to democracy in the United States.»

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/us/robert-kraft-trafficking-florida.html

While the Methodist Church (my church) debates the morality of homosexuality….

«Beyond the lurid celebrity connection, however, lies the wretched story of women who police believe were brought from China under false promises of new lives and legitimate spa jobs. Instead, they found themselves trapped in the austere back rooms of strip-mall brothels — trafficking victims trapped among South Florida’s rich and famous.

“I don’t believe they were told they were going to work in massage parlors seven days a week, having unprotected sex with up to 1,000 men a year,” said Sheriff William D. Snyder of Martin County, whose office opened the investigation. “We saw them eating on hot plates in the back. There were no washing machines. They were sleeping on the massage tables.”

The women were shuttled from place to place — not only to nearby parlors but also across the state, said Sheriff Snyder. Sheriff’s deputies in Orange County, Fla., became involved in the investigation when women from the state’s Treasure Coast region were traced back to the Orlando area.

….

“I would never consider them prostitutes — it was really a rescue operation,” the sheriff said, training his anger at the men whose demand for sex kept the massage parlors in business. “The monsters are the men,” he added.

….

When social workers urge victims like that to come forward to police, they say, “‘No, you don’t understand. They’re trying to find my little sister back home. They’re trying to find my daughter,’” Ms. Cusack said.

….

That such a lucrative trafficking network existed near the ritzy enclaves of Jupiter Island, home to the likes of golfer Tiger Woods, and Palm Beach, home to President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, seemed unfathomable to some of the gawkers who posed for selfies — and in some cases cracked off-color jokes — on Friday outside the Orchids of Asia massage parlor in Jupiter, the enterprise that officials said Mr. Kraft had visited.

But Palm Beach was also the place where a well-connected billionaire financier from New York, Jeffrey E. Epstein, was accused a decade ago of molesting dozens of underage girls — some of them runaways or foster children who are vulnerable to sex trafficking.»

Power and asymmetric sexual relationships. I believe this is what got Jesus (and God) so upset.

«Sheriff’s deputies identified the spa’s owner and another nearby property under her name. They searched online forums where users posted about sex acts performed at the massage parlors. Based on the evidence they collected, they obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance.

That approach was far more labor-intensive than past investigations, in which undercover deputies would go into the parlors and arrest women for prostitution, said Sheriff Snyder, a former Republican state representative who helped write Florida’s law against human trafficking.

“I made this decision that we had enough of that: Let’s go after the traffickers,” he said. “I feel, on some level, extremely dissatisfied that I can’t do more. I know that we don’t even make a dent.”»

Sense of scale. Not even making a dent. But gay people getting married and adopting children! That’s serious.

«By then, however, some of the women they had identified as victims had been moved elsewhere. New women had taken their place.»

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/22/mark-harriss-son-irony-trumpism/

«People didn’t speak up before because they didn’t have to. Now they do. Morality does not demand that we denounce the people who raised us for supporting lower taxes on the wealthy. It might, however, demand that we denounce the people who raised us for putting children in cages, or rubbing shoulders with anti-Semites, or destroying democracy itself.»

Reuters: North Carolina judge rules voter ID, tax cap amendments unconstitutional.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-north-carolina-amendments/north-carolina-judge-rules-voter-id-tax-cap-amendments-unconstitutional-idUSKCN1QC03G?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews

Well, well, well.