See now that's a lie, because you implied that guy knows his politics, which is a positive claim that turns on the authenticity of his claim. Now you're running away from it because it's increasingly clear he doesn't know shit and you look like a sock for defending him.
Maybe you should change your original comment to "spreading lies about politics means you're paid to do so" which isn't really what I said either, but would at least be close enough to avoid looking completely illiterate.
I couldn't say how it works because public health insurance is basically invisible when you're using it. When I see the hospital it's for them to assess when I should be booked into surgery.
I have a hernia affecting my upper gi. Negative symptoms are easily treatable with medication, however over a long time (like 10+ years) it may cause other issues in the surrounding area, some that could be precursors to cancer, disease, etc.
That's all I know tbh, I haven't really cared enough about it to find out what the deal is. Maybe they have a quota for how many of these types of surgeries they can perform in a year based on their budget, and more life threatening stuff eats away from that quota. This would make sense as to why they aren't able to give me a timeframe until I'm high enough on the waiting list that more serious injuries aren't likely to push me back.
Aus.
I'm waiting for minor surgery. Basically every 6 months or so they make me come to the hospital to talk to a nurse or doctor or whatever, it's pretty pointless. Ends with them saying "yep you need surgery" then I go back to waiting. No idea when I'll actually get it done, should be any year now.
If I got private insurance I'd have to wait a year before cashing out, so I'm fine not paying anything and waiting a bit longer. If I had known I'd be waiting as long as I have I might have opted for private, but there isn't any solid timeline given for waiting times.
Everything outside of that is quick and easy. Go to gp, get referral, see specialist. No roadblocks at all, but the specialists likely cost a couple hundred bucks. Medication is pretty cheap, usually $10-20 for a month's supply of anything you need.
That's so true almighty knower of politics. Please show me where your knowledge comes from in the above link. You'll find the document is organised into many numbered and lettered sections, so just let me know which section supports this guys unfounded assertion about a $1.6 billion budget for an "influence campaign".
I find this pearl clutching over manufactured consent highly obnoxious and borderline archaic. The days of top-down narratives fueled by restricted access are laughably simple compared to the fractured global media ecosystem of today.
Whatever opinions planted in the mind by manufactured consent are dwarfed a thousand-fold by internet echo chambers that owe no allegiance to the state. To be clear I do not think they cannot align with state interests, only that alignment is selfish, non-ubiquitous across vast swathes of the media landscape, and not the result of a power imbalance in favour of the state.
Unless you want to conflate the two in which case I would ask whether you think the .ml instance "manufactures consent" against support of western interests.
Ironically enough, China is one of the few places where manufactured consent is still able to be effective because of the authoritarian stranglehold they maintain on their media by banning access to outside sources and replacing them with state sanctioned alternatives. Same with Iran, Russia, North Korea, etc. It's weird ml's complain about manufactured consent while simping for countries that do it more than anywhere else.
I sure hope you were paid to read that, because why else would you waste your time following a 700 page bill that hasn't been passed yet? At a glance it isn't about astroturfing, it's about sanctioning and charging melign actors as criminals, plus a whole ton of stuff from monetary policy to IP protections. It's basically outlining the entire geopolitical strategy towards China, which is probably why it's spent over a year being bounced around 20 different subcommittees.
Idk where you got that price tag seeing as the link you provided contains no budgeting information, but you should ask your handler if that figure is for the entire bill, or for an "influence campaign" specifically. While you wait to hear back from them for that talking point, would you mind showing me where in the bill this influence campaign is outlined?
Caring about stuff isn't a binary, it doesn't hinge on whatever insane purity test you think it does.
It isn't just that he "knew" a sex trafficker, it's that he tried to help a sex trafficker white-wash his reputation for sex trafficking. It's not guilt by association, it's guilt by his specific actions.
Isn't that the guy who was giving Epstein advice on dealing with his reputation as a sex offender?
Is there a legal test for excessive force?
If you do everything right, and don't fuck anything up, it just works 💁♂️
That's awesome. I mean that article is trash, but at least it's relevant. It's about a completely different bill (HR 1157) than the one linked above (HR 7476), but that's okay, for now we can chalk it up to platform9469's mistake rather than malicious intent. The latter will be evident after reading the bill, which is only a few pages long.
It's sad, and quite telling, that you felt the need to link an op-ed rather than the bill itself, but we can use it as an opportunity to teach some media literacy.
From the trash op-ed:
What other purposes? Activities financed by the bill are detailed in section 2.e in 7 parts, including the "influence campaign", anti-corruption and anti-crime initiatives, security services(?), and economic development including offering alternative financial assistance for key infrastructure projects.
There's a lot on that list that will cost a lot more than posting shit on social media. Calling it an "influence campaign" hardly does it justice, this is a wholistic expression of a countries soft power into regions that will benefit from it. That $1.6 billion will go towards more than any terminally online ml has ever imagined.
Speaking of money, let's see what this opinion slop you posted says about that:
Well now, that's just a straight up lie. CNN doesn't even share it's expenses because it's a subsidiary of WB which groups CNN with other networks they own together in their expense reports, so idk how this Harvard genius figured it out. Estimates I've seen floating around put their annual expenditure at 1.2 billion. This bill allocates $325 million per year. We don't even know what this clown thinks the real CNN number is because he doesn't bother providing one.
He vaguely gestures towards the GEC and USAID so he can frame things as extra bad while saying basically nothing. He's probably happy that Trump deleted the GEC and USAID a few months later.
The slop slinger then brings up a "vision document", which as far as I can tell is like fan-fiction for military people, as an example of what this could all look like. A horrible story of honest Chinese capitalists being astroturfed and robbed of their business opportunities. It's a pity none of the language in the bill describes anything like this. Instead of tearing down the ops, the bill details providing alternative options for a wide range of things to whatever organisations need them so they don't need to rely on Chinese support.
He ends with something I thought was pretty funny, contemplating the potential for what he imagines the plan is to backfire by eroding trust in anti-china information by virtue of people being aware that the US has an interest in spreading it. Ignoring the fact that China does the exact same thing and we have multiple instances of ml's, plus myriad other leftist slopulists, who eat that shit up without a thought.
So yea, it didn't take you much effort to dig up some rando headline with a vestigial op-ed attached to it, but it didn't get you anywhere. You actually have to read shit and understand it, not just blindly follow every contrarian sock with a world-view throwing headlines at you.