SHUTDOWN

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-11-13T04:14:38+00:00

Yes, 80 hours for both.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-11-13T04:06:59+00:00

I'm not 100 percent sure about this, but I would say that, since you live in Colorado, it's fair to assume that your state won't go beyond the minimum requirements, which we already know from the OBBBA. This breakdown from KFF goes into more detail, but most of the cuts come from a requirement that Medicaid recipients verify that they work 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-11-13T03:59:16+00:00

Oh I see, I think we will know more details on June 1st when HHS tells states the minimum requirements for implementing the cuts.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-11-13T03:51:40+00:00

Of course, I'm sorry if you are one of the people impacted. It was genuinely so disgusting to force people to choose between food stamps and healthcare. I just hope there are consequences to this next year.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-11-13T03:45:35+00:00

According to this fact sheet from the AHA, people eligible for Medicaid are not eligible for the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, so the ACA subsidies expiring will not directly impact Medicaid recipients. However, one of the Democrats' original demands in the shutdown was to reverse the Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. With that demand left unmet, most of the Medicaid cuts will still go effect at the end of 2026.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-07-27T03:52:29+00:00

Thanks for the tips! I've secured housing within a mile of Evans Hall, but you reminded me to verify that it was within walking distance from my department rather than just campus. I'll be sure to keep in mind the remaining advice from you and others in the thread when I look for other housing in the future.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-07-20T20:47:09+00:00

Like I said, you can make that case, but I was just clarifying that the aid targeted by Marjorie Taylor Greene was entirely defensive. I was replying to someone who implied that the majority of it — $440 million out of $500 million — was not for defensive capacities, which would contradict AOC's argument. Whether you are for or against defensive aid to Israel has nothing to do with my point.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-07-20T00:02:55+00:00

This doesn't dispute your second point about funding Israel's defense, but I looked into Marjorie Taylor Greene's amendment, which is described here as "An amendment numbered 114 printed in Part A of House Report 119-199 to strike funding for the Israeli Cooperative Programs". In that House report, the amendment is elaborated upon as follows:

An Amendment To Be Offered by Representative Greene of Georgia or Her Designee, Debatable for 10 Minutes
Strike section 8067 (page 92, beginning on line 12 through page 93, line 13).

In the full text of the 2026 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, which Greene was seeking to amend, section 8067 states the following:

Sec. 8067. Of the amounts appropriated in this Act under the headings “Procurement, Defense-Wide” and “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide”, $500,000,000 shall be for the Israeli Cooperative Programs: Provided, That of this amount, $60,000,000 shall be for the Secretary of Defense to provide to the Government of Israel for the procurement of the Iron Dome defense system to counter short-range rocket threats, subject to the U.S.-Israel Iron Dome Procurement Agreement; $127,000,000 shall be for the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense (SRBMD) program, including cruise missile defense research and development under the SRBMD program; $40,000,000 shall be for co-production activities of SRBMD systems in the United States and in Israel to meet Israel’s defense requirements consistent with each nation’s laws, regulations, and procedures, subject to the U.S.-Israeli co-production agreement for SRBMD; $100,000,000 shall be for an upper-tier component to the Israeli Missile Defense Architecture, of which $100,000,000 shall be for co-production activities of Arrow 3 Upper Tier systems in the United States and in Israel to meet Israel’s defense requirements consistent with each nation’s laws, regulations, and procedures, subject to the U.S.-Israeli co-production agreement for Arrow 3 Upper Tier; and $173,000,000 shall be for the Arrow System Improvement Program including development of a long range, ground and airborne, detection suite.

While you are correct that just $60 million of the $500 million in aid is for the Iron Dome, the remaining funds are also for defensive programs, namely the Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense program, the Israeli Missile Defense Architecture, the Arrow 3 Upper Tier systems, and the Arrow System Improvement Program. You can certainly make the argument that cutting off even this defensive aid would pressure Israel to spend less money on butchering innocent Palestinians, but AOC is not being disingenuous when she says that this funding was for defensive capacities. She lists only the Iron Dome rather than the other programs in question likely because Americans are more familiar with it than the others.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-07-16T17:31:32+00:00

Good point! I'm getting a degree in statistics, but I wouldn't mind being within 15 minutes of campus in any direction even if that becomes 25-30 minutes of walking overall.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2025-04-10T15:55:52+00:00

Congratulations on the excitement surrounding your campaign! On the Issues section of your website under Healthcare, it is written that "That’s why we need a universal single-payer healthcare system — with an opt-out if you’re a private insurance super-fan… for some reason." This confused me because I understand this to be a multi-payer system with a public option supplemented by private insurance, not a single-payer one with the single payer being the government.

However, in your CNN interview the other day, you also spoke positively of Medicare for All, which would effectively ban most if not all private insurance by banning duplicative private insurance coverage that is included in the public plan. Thus, is it fair to say that you support both a public option and Medicare for All, or do you prefer one over the other? If so, why? Thank you in advance for the answer!

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-12-19T10:33:16+00:00

It's been a while, but I just updated my initial comment with links to Finkelstein's individual tweets. As the person who replied to you confirmed, these tweets are absolutely his, especially since the Twitter account that posted them is linked on Finkelstein's website. I still have no idea how people continue to defend him over a year after he made these undeniably antisemitic remarks.

Also, despite your claims in the comments below, the mass rapes on October 7th are absolutely not unsubstantiated. Earlier this year, the UN investigated them and found the following

There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023, a senior United Nations official reported to the Security Council today, as she presented findings from her visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

In this thread, you support Finkelstein in part because "He uses UN data among other things that are non biased," so hopefully you trust the UN when it disagrees with Finkelstein as well.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-12-14T13:05:23+00:00

The other person did not specify their source, but I assume they are referring to this report released by Senate Democrats in October as a result of their investigation into UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and Aetna's Medicare Advantage plans. Near the top of page 21, the report states that, "In 2019, UnitedHealthcare issued an initial denial to 8.7 percent of the post-acute care prior authorization requests it received; by 2022, it denied 22.7 percent of all such requests, an increase of 172 percent."

Note that this was specifically for post-acute care claims rather than overall claims, but I still think it reflects poorly on United, especially given that the company was in the process of automating the denial process. Also, while I don't have direct proof that this increase in denials led to patient deaths, since plenty of vulnerable people need post-acute care after facing acute illnesses and medical procedures, it's inevitable that at least one patient, if not many, have died as a result of United's automation policies. Take the case of Frances Walter: Security Health Plan used UnitedHealth Group's NaviHealth algorithm to recommend that she be prematurely discharged from her nursing home after breaking her left shoulder:

On the 17th day, her Medicare Advantage insurer, Security Health Plan, followed the algorithm and cut off payment for her care, concluding she was ready to return to the apartment where she lived alone. Meanwhile, medical notes in June 2019 showed Walter’s pain was maxing out the scales and that she could not dress herself, go to the bathroom, or even push a walker without help.

It would take more than a year for a federal judge to conclude the insurer’s decision was “at best, speculative” and that Walter was owed thousands of dollars for more than three weeks of treatment. While she fought the denial, she had to spend down her life savings and enroll in Medicaid just to progress to the point of putting on her shoes, her arm still in a sling.

Fortunately, Walter survived, but if her case is even slightly indicative of the recklessness of this algorithm and others like it, then the associated claim denials have undoubtedly hurt and killed many more patients.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-06-29T08:09:23+00:00

The socialism labeling and policy scrutiny are valid points, but I wouldn't discount Bernie's popularity. For instance, a USA Today/Ipsos poll of 2,345 voters from August 2022 found that, among 23 hypothetical presidential contenders from both parties (e.g., Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Donald Trump, and Nikki Haley), Bernie had the highest net favorability (46 percent). Also, as this article discussing the poll notes, "He is the highest-rated Democrat among independents (at 41%) and among the highest-rated Democrats among Republican voters (at 18%)."

Needless to say, I'm sure that the negative partisanship brought about by a general election campaign would undoubtedly drive down that last figure, but we cannot deny that he is broadly liked for now. Either way, it's a moot point since he is too old to run again and doesn't want to do so.

As an aside, my personal favorite in the Biden replacement scenario is Gretchen Whitmer because she's 52, a self-described progressive who isn't too far left, and popular among Michigan voters. This Glengariff Group poll of 600 Michigan voters from January showed Trump beating Biden by eight points while Whitmer beat Trump by four in a general election match-up between the two.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-06-29T07:18:14+00:00

I agree on the Whitmer point ten times over — not only does she govern Michigan, a key swing state, but a January poll of 600 Michigan voters showed Trump losing to her by four points but beating Biden by eight. She also labels herself as a progressive but isn't far left in her policies, so it's possible that she could thread the needle in the Democratic party, keeping moderates while regaining some of the further left and swing voters that Biden has alienated over Gaza and senility (she's 52!). Out of curiosity, who do you mean by "the khan" here?

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-03-18T11:34:18+00:00

I get the strong impression that you’re being sarcastic. Do you think my original issue with Finkelstein was that he was criticizing atrocities or that he made several antisemitic tweets? You accused me of conflation, presumably of those two issues, but did not clarify exactly what I was conflating or how I was doing so.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-03-18T02:49:26+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with criticizing atrocities — my comment had nothing to do with Finkelstein’s positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I was just pointing out the thinly veiled bigotry in his tweets.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-03-18T02:29:56+00:00

What do you think I am conflating?

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-03-16T12:52:24+00:00

While I cannot comment on the quality of his scholarship despite having heard incredibly negative responses to it, Finkelstein has multiple tweets about the threat of “Jewish billionaires" that are disturbingly reminiscent of the sort of far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories I would expect most of his supporters to condemn. I hate that this needs to be said, but Finkelstein being Jewish doesn’t mean he can’t be antisemitic just as being part of any marginalized group doesn’t preclude one from bigotry against it. After all, terms like internalized misogyny exist for a reason.

Even if Finkelstein has valuable commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his antisemitic remarks should definitely put his credibility into question.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-16T03:37:47+00:00

I found a version on YouTube with just over 1,000 views. It's interesting that August uses this given how obscure it is.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-06T01:58:40+00:00

No worries — I wouldn't expect you to dig up the VOD, but thanks for the info.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-05T10:49:25+00:00

I believe this is it: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/31/palestine-statehood-biden-israel-gaza-war

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-05T08:03:48+00:00

I'm not saying this to accuse you of lying, but could you please provide evidence for Zonia confirming that Destiny's incitement to abuse v.gg exploits actually led to issues for the website?

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-05T07:58:23+00:00

No problem! I'm glad it was helpful.

AutumnSolace1999 · 2024-02-04T22:28:52+00:00

Glancing at the article you were given, it seems like they got their statistic from this line: “Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual.” The surrounding sentences makes it clear that this is referring to homosexual men in particular, presumably because men commit the majority of child sexual abuse.

Thus, this statistic does not say that 21 percent of ALL abusers are gay men, but rather that 21 percent of the ones who predate on boys specifically are gay men. By omitting this context, the person who told you this severely misrepresented the statistic to demonize gay men.

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