Father, Husband, Brother, Friend.

Joined August 2008
Photos and videos
Rob retweeted
Dear @SecretaryWright: Some deep questions for your deep thoughts: -Did you know the sun still shines during winter? -Did you know that solar panels rely on sunlight rather than warmth? In fact, solar panels can operate even more efficiently during the winter.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright: "Solar is irrelevant in the winter" (this, dear reader, is false)
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MAYBE the House will impeach him, but there's no way the Senate will convict him, regardless of the charges and the evidence. We learned that in 2021.
We must impeach and remove Donald Trump. And we will. #NY12
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Rob retweeted
Yesterday Donald Trump tripled the size of his personal political army inside the government. Illegally. And almost no one noticed. Here's what happened: He signed an order converting ~8,000 of the most senior career officials in government into employees he can fire for any reason, or no reason at all. These aren't rando's. They're the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees. Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him. A president normally gets ~4,000 political appointees. People he can bring into government and fire at will. I was one of them at DHS. You serve at his pleasure, full stop -- so if you're gonna speak truth to power, you're prepared to quit (or get fired if he doesn't like it). The rest of the federal government is PROTECTED from firing if they tell the truth. But Trump just stripped those protections. Adding 8,000 more people to his personal army. Overnight. Without asking Congress. With the stroke of a pen, those people now serve at the pleasure of the president. They're "his" people, whether they like it or not. And the chilling effect is real. An official who can be fired this afternoon for "subversion of presidential directives" (the order's own words) doesn't need to be hand-picked to know what's expected of him or her. The threat does all the work. By the way, this order is illegal. The law only lets Trump reclassify jobs when "necessary" in exceptional circumstances. And this blows an 8,000-person hole in the merit hiring / firing system created by Congress. Without permission, Trump has created a whole new category of stormtroopers inside the Executive Branch. If this doesn't get challenged in court, you're going to see the U.S. government become a very different place. Here's the full story: bit.ly/4dQN5N2
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Stephen Colbert was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his advocacy for free speech and speaking truth to power. A fitting honor for a champion of our democracy. RETWEET to congratulate Colbert on this honor!
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Rob retweeted
Pete Hegseth: “The single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘Our diversity is our strength.’” Actually, the single dumbest phrase in military history is “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.” Pete said this to West Point’s Class of 2026, which is 21% women and 40% non-white.
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Rob retweeted
Explainer: If you need care and you can't afford your deductible, you will have to borrow money to pay for it. Typically the healthcare provider will loan you the money. Why ? They want to get your insurance company's money. Now, by definition, the hospital is a subprime lender. Not only is the patient in a huge financial hole, across their similarly situation patients, so is the hospital. They know they won't collect however much your deductible is. And that's just for your in-network deductible, nor does it account for your family max out of pocket I don't know the % of bankruptcies this causes What I do know is that the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars for patients and hospitals, starts with the plans offered by insurance companies. They know damn well when someone picks a plan and they can't afford the deductible. And to them, it's not a bad thing. If you can't afford your deductible, the chances they pay anything from your premiums, go way way down So patients go broke or can't afford care. Hospitals have huge uncollected debt, so they make it up elsewhere And then they aggregate those amounts, among others, and use them to get payments from state and federal programs. See how all that works together ?
“Did medical bills single-handedly account for more bankruptcies than anything else? No. This is an exaggerated half-remembering of a series of studies, authored by (among others) Elizabeth Warren, that were themselves exorbitant exaggerations.” - @asymmetricinfo
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Rob retweeted
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May 25
I'm not a huge fan of Musk because of DOGE, but let's face it. The man is a visionary and his brilliance is off the charts.
Product >> Brand
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May 25
This is what the USA has evolved to? Yikes?
WTAF…
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May 25
Great writeup, but Dodger Stadium was also built against a hill,
"Like the team itself, the Polo Grounds is an absurd and lovely thing. It is the only ball park built against a cliff, "Coogan’s Bluff", so that a patron could walk downhill to his seat. It had a crazy name and crazy dimensions. In shape, it was closer to a bowling alley than a ball field. Straightaway sluggers loathed the field because a really noble smash to center, good for a homer in any other park, only amounted to a loud and discouraging out. I liked it best when we came into the place from up top, rather than through the gates down at the foot of the lower-right-field stand. You reached the upper-deck turnstiles by walking down a steep, short ramp from the Speedway, the broad avenue that swept down from Coogan’s Bluff and along the Harlem River, and once you got inside, the long field within the horseshoe of decked stands seemed to stretch away forever below you, toward the bleachers and the clubhouse pavilion in center. Everything about the Polo Grounds was special, right down to the looped iron chains that separated each sector of box seats from its neighbour and could burn your bare arm on a summer afternoon if you weren’t careful. Far along each outfield wall, a sloping mini-roof projected outward, imparting a thin wedge of shadow for the bullpen crews sitting there: They looked like cows sheltering beside a pasture shed in August." Roger Angell. "The Polo Grounds."
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May 25
I would never buy a used car from Kevin Hassett.
contemptible smirking liar
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May 25
No, I don't believe that Kamala can win a Presidential election. I'm not sure if she can even earn the 2028 nomination. Ditto for Vance. Neither of them resonate with enough people.
🚨 NEW 2028 POLL: Kamala Harris is leading JD Vance in a new TPSI presidential matchup survey. Harris: 47% Vance: 39% That’s an 8-point lead heading into the 2028 conversation. 👀 Do you think Kamala Harris could really win the White House in 2028?
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May 25
I"m all for releasing the Epstein files, but I don't get why that involves Rubio. He's the SOS, not the AG.
Why do you think Marco Rubio doesn’t want to release the Epstein files? 1. Because he knows Trump is guilty 2. Because he’s a wuss and is afraid he will lose his job. 3. He doesn’t want people he knows exposed 4. All of the above
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May 25
I wish you were a U.S. Senator. Our country needs you.
Answer: if you don't price it high enough the insurance company PBM gets their vig, it goes no where. They don't want theowest price. They want the most profitable price The PBMs control the formulary for 80pct of the market. If you don't price it high enough to get them rebate money, they will not make it available to patients.
Rob retweeted
HOLY CRAP Trump actually accomplished a miracle. Here is what he got out of Iran: - Reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98% - Limit uranium enrichment to 3.67% purity (far below weapons-grade) - Cut the number of installed centrifuges by roughly two-thirds - Only enrich uranium at one declared site (Natanz) - Stop enrichment activities at Fordow and convert it into a research facility - Redesign the Arak heavy-water reactor so it could not easily produce weapons-grade plutonium - Ship out or dilute excess enriched uranium Allow extensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Permit continuous monitoring of nuclear facilities and supply chains - Accept “snap” inspections under expanded monitoring rules - Avoid building new heavy-water reactors for years - Stay within strict limits on uranium stockpile size and centrifuge development for set periods ranging from 10–25 years Ooops, sorry! That was the JCPOA that Obama signed with Iran, only to have him tear it up, kill 140 kids, get hundreds of Americans injured, 13 killed, and gas prices to surge 50%.
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May 25
Trump lemmings like Lawler just repeat what they're told to say. It doesn't matter to them whether it's true of not.
Biden was not president when Trump's tax returns were leaked Trump was the lying by Republicans like Mike Lawler is utterly shameless
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Rob retweeted
Capitalism is the solution in healthcare. But, there is a reason we have anti-trust laws. There are reasons why we have the @FTC We are at a point in time where the big vertically integrated carriers and providers are abusing their market positions. Neither agency has done shit to stop them over the past decade There is a bill, the Break Up Big Medicine Bill from @HawleyMO and @SenWarren. I have talked to democratic senators who have said they will support it if more republican senators do. They want to match 1 dem to 1 rep. Totally dumb shit. So they say nothing. Other than Josh, not a single republican senator I have talked to has the guts to stand up for it. Period. They won’t give a reason. They just won’t do it. If you want less government in healthcare, it can’t happen until these conglomerates are broken up If you want single payer or M4A , it can’t happen until these conglomerates are broken up Quit bitching and call your senator and tell them to grow a spine and support this bill
This free market BS is ridiculous!! Capitalism (the basis of free market BS) is not the correct solution for social services. EVER! Once a social service system is implemented with a profit motive rather than a people motive, it is lost. Case in point, health insurance.
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May 24
Kid Rock isn't going to "cut off his nose to spite his face." Second, if he doesn't release any new music, it won't be a loss to the world.
Lol!!! Is that what he calls it?
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Rob retweeted
If you want more doctors doing house calls, not selling their practices and going to work for the big HC conglomerates, make public med school free. A little gov intervention, so that rather than having 100s of thousands in debt guiding their decisions , they can do primary care or be a family physician and spend as much time with patients as they want. They can take cash. They can take chickens. If you had 250k after almost a decade of school, do you think that would impact your decisions ? And if you own a big HC conglomerate, does knowing they are drowning in debt impact your decision and how you compete and contract with them ? Fuck yeah it does. You pressure them till they have to sell out to you in an acquihire. They can’t afford to survive on their own and every huge HC company takes advantage of them About 32k students enter med school and DO school a year. 75k for a grant each. Thats 2.4b annually for each class. That’s it. You want better healthcare for everyone. That’s the place to start.
They can open up their own practice and do whatever they want. No one is stopping them. This is exactly how the direct primary care business has grown so quickly.
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May 24
We need more people in power who treat our planet this way. Thank you @algore.
May 24
Twenty years ago today, An Inconvenient Truth made its debut in movie theaters across the U.S. I’ll be honest: I was skeptical that my slideshow about the climate crisis could become a successful movie. But thanks to our immensely talented director, Davis Guggenheim, Jeff Skoll, who made the ultimate decision to make the movie, and the incredible team behind the film — Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns, Lesley Chilcott, Ricky Strauss, Diane Weyermann, and so many others, the film was a huge success, and opened the eyes of millions around the world to the threat posed by the climate crisis. While I wasn’t sure that there’d be widespread public interest in a science-based slideshow, I have never doubted humanity’s ability to solve this crisis. We know we must act, and Mother Nature is making that clearer and clearer every day. We’re already feeling the rapidly worsening impacts of a warming planet. Those impacts are evidence that our cause is even more urgent than it was 20 years ago. And as a result, the global movement for climate action has grown into the largest morally-based movement in the history of the world. We also know now that we can act. Indeed, in the past 20 years, we’ve made tremendous progress: The world came together in 2015 to forge the historic Paris Agreement, which despite the recent U.S. withdrawal, continues to drive global action and ambition. Incredibly, last year, renewables made up 86% of all the new electric power installed around the world. In the U.S., renewables were 92% of all new power capacity! Electric vehicles are now 25% of all new car sales worldwide and the sales of gasoline-powered vehicles have been declining since they peaked in 2017. Unfortunately, however, the crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying the solutions — solutions that are now way cheaper than the dirty and dangerous fossil fuels still spewing heat-trapping pollution into the sky as if it is an open sewer. So, while this is a natural occasion to reflect on the 20 years since the movie came out, I’m focused much more intensely on what we need to do now in order to shape what our world will look like in the next 20 years. I’m still presenting my updated slideshow all over the world, training grassroots climate leaders and working with partners in 194 countries and territories who are creating change in their communities, in their workplaces and schools, and in their nation’s policies. From what I’m seeing and hearing, I have no doubt that we will win this struggle. But it is still not clear that we will win it in time to avoid catastrophic damage and the dangerous negative tipping points that the climate scientists have long been warning us we must prevent. Will we muster the moral courage and political will to solve this crisis? Well, if you ever doubt our ability to do so, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource. It’s up to all of us to renew it. Photos: Still from An Inconvenient Truth, 2006. Climate Reality Project training in Nashville, TN, 2026.
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