Fallon Ashby

I will now impart all of my profit killing resources onto you, in case you don’t know them. I think most of you know them, now. But just in case you don’t.

THIS IS US-CENTRIC. I’M SORRY. 

1. GoodRx - this thing has an app now, so you can look up the best places to get your expensive medicines at the lowest possible prices without insurance on the go, and you no longer have to print coupons because you can just hand over your phone or tablet. Times have changed for the better with GoodRx. Definitely use it before trying to fill your scrip, because it will tell you the best place to go. (You can do that on the website, too.)

2. NeedyMeds - Needymeds is basically the clearinghouse of drug payment assistance. They have their own discount cards, but also connections to many patient assistance programs run by drug companies themselves. They are good assistance programs, too.

3. Ask your county - This is not a link. This is a pro tip. Most county social services will have pharmacy discount programs for people with no and/or shitty pharmaceutical coverage. You can often just find them hanging around at social services offices; you can just pick one up and walk off with it. 

4. Ordering online - There are a few safe online pharmacies. I keep a little database in a text file on my computer. Most of them are courtesy of CFS forums, my mother or voidbat, so a lot of that is a hat tip to other people, but if you’re in need of a place to get a drug without a prescription … first I’ll make sure you 100% know what you’re doing for safety reasons and then I’m happy to turn over a link. 

5. Healthfinder - A government resource that helps find patient assistance programs in your area. This might also point out the convenient county card thing. RxHope is something a lot of people get pointed to via Healthfinder that’s a good program.

Do a Google search for “patient assistant programs” + (your med), or search the manufacturers website. Sometimes the info is online; other times you have to call.

Even some of the big name pharma companies have this. It’s certainly not all companies, or all meds, but it is worth a shot.

Before Obamacare, I lost insurance and couldn’t pay for my mood stabilizers (kiiiiinda important to have those when you’re bipolar.) I was on generic Lamictal, but I went to the official Lamictal website, filled out a form with a valid prescription, and they mailed my meds to me every month for free.

On the eve of his election to the House of Representatives, Montana Republican Greg Gianforte beat up Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the “Guardian" newspaper.

What prompted the violence? Jacobs had asked Gianforte for his reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s report showing that the House Republican substitute for the Affordable Care Act would result in 23 million Americans losing their health insurance.

Then, in the words of a Fox News team who witnessed the brutal attack: “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him. … Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on top of Jacobs, he began yelling something to the effect of, ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken…. To be clear, at no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte, who left the area after giving statements to local sheriff’s deputies.”

After the attack, Jacobs was evaluated in an ambulance at the scene and taken to Bozeman Health Deaconess Hospital. Several hours later he left the hospital wearing a sling around his arm.

Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Donald Trump’s reaction? In Sicily for the G-7 summit, he praised Greg Gianforte’s election as a “great win in Montana.”

For years, conservatives warned that liberals were “defining deviancy downward” by tolerating bad social behavior.

Donald Trump is actively defining deviancy downward in American politics. He’s making America meaner.  

Last year, Trump said of a protester at one of his campaign rallies: “I’d like to punch him in the face.” 

In a different era, when decency was the norm, House members would not seat a thug like Gianforte in the chamber. In the age of Trump, it’s okay to beat up a reporter.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative former talk-show host in Wisconsin, says “every time something like Montana happens, Republicans adjust their standards and put an emphasis on team loyalty. They normalize and accept previously unacceptable behavior.”

Gianforte’s attack on Jacobs was shameful enough. Almost as shameful was Gianforte’s press release about what occurred, written immediately afterward by his campaign spokesman, Shane Scanlon:

“Ben Jacobs entered the office without permission, aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began asking badgering questions. Jacobs was asked to leave. After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground. It’s unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ.“

It was all a blatant lie, as confirmed by the Fox News crew that watched the whole thing. But under Trump, blatant lying is the new normal. 

And a “liberal journalist” is the enemy.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, says that “by casting the press as the enemy of the American people, Donald Trump has contributed to a climate of discourse consistent with assaulting a reporter for asking an inconvenient question.”

It used to be that candidates and elected officials had a duty to answer reporters’ questions. We assumed that answering questions from the press was part of the job. We thought democracy depended on it. 

But we’re now in the era of Donald Trump, who calls the press the “enemy of the American people.”

It was never the case in the United States that candidates or elected officials beat up reporters who posed questions they didn’t like. That was the kind of thing that occurred in dictatorships. 

But “Trump has declared open season on journalists, and politicians and members of his Cabinet have joined the hunt.” says Lucy Dalglish, the dean of Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

More generally and menacingly, Trump has licensed the dark side of the American psyche. His hatefulness and vindictiveness have normalized a new meanness.

Since Trump came on the scene, hate crimes have soared. America has become even more polarized. Average Americans say and do things to people they disagree with that in a different time would have been unthinkable. 

“I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,” says Rep. Mark Sanford, a Republican Representative from South Carolina.  “I’ve talked to a number of people about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”

This is not only dangerous for our democracy. It’s also dangerous for our society. “There is a total weirdness out there,” says Sanford. “People feel like, if the president of the United States can say anything to anybody at any time, then I guess I can too. And that is a very dangerous phenomenon.”

She used her platform to expose their ignorance and hate. 

What happened during this hour changed the course of Oprah show history forever.

Oprah says she and her producers believed they would be exposing ignorance and confronting hate, but they were wrong.

That was the show that changed the way Oprah thought about TV and how in should be used for good.

i went to the local shakespeare festival (and by local, i mean on the other end of the state) and during the day i convinced my mother to go hiking with me because we were in the center of like four national parks

so we end up hiking this trail that sort of jack-knifes down the mountain and I end up climbing partway up a tree on the edge of the trail to see further out, so my smartass mother asks “legolas, what do your elf eyes see?”

and i, in my smarmy glory, go “they’re taking the hobbits to isengard!”

which is funny enough as is, but then the entire mountainside of hikers hidden in the trees goes “THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD-GARD-GARD-GARD-GARD! THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD, TO ISENGARD!”

it seems we’ve been thrown back into the days when we wake up every morning with fear over where the terrorists will strike next and worry ourselves to exhaustion over our safety and the safety of our loved ones and people at large. 

Donald Trump gave a speech Friday at South Carolina’s Boeing facility, where the new 787 “Dreamliner" was unveiled. He said the plane was “built right here” in South Carolina, and that “our goal as a nation must be to rely less on imports and more on products made here in the U.S.A.“

That’s pure fantasy. I’ll let you know why in a moment.

He also called for “a very substantial penalty to be paid when they fire their people and move to another country, make the product, and think that they are going to sell it back.” And said he’ll lower taxes and get rid of regulations that send our jobs to those other countries. "We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped by those four magnificent words, ‘Made in the U.S.A.’”

Trump doesn’t seem to know anything about global competition, and what’s really holding back American workers.

In fact, almost a third of Boeing’s Dreamliner comes from abroad.

And not from low-wage countries. In fact, the Dreamliner’s components come from countries with high taxes and high regulations, good wages, strong unions, excellent schools including technical education, and universally-available health care.

For example:

1.The Italian firm Alenia Aeronautica makes the center fuselage.

2. French firm Messier-Dowty makes the aircraft’s landing-gear system.

3. German firm Diehl Luftfahrt Elektronik supplies the main cabin lighting.

4. Swedish firm Saab Aerostructures manufactures the access doors.

5. Japanese company Jamco makes parts for the lavatories, flight deck interiors and galleys.

6. French firm Thales makes its electrical power conversion system.

7. Thales selected GS Yuasa, a Japanese firm, in 2005 to supply it with the system’s lithium-ion batteries.

Oh, and the first delivery of the Dreamliner is scheduled to take place next year – to Singapore Airlines. Currently there are 149 orders for it from worldwide customers including British Airways and Air France.

In other words, contrary to Trump, the Boeing Dreamliner is made all over the world and will be sold all over the world.

Trump’s “America First” economics is pure demagoguery. We get a first-class workforce by investing in Americans’ education, training, infrastructure, and healthcare – and rewarding them with high union wages.