Mon: When You Lie Down with Dogs, You Don't Get Paid.

MAGA Mike's FIrst Action Proves He Loves Rich Guys

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough hammered new House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for tying Israel aid to spending cuts for the IRS in a new spending bill.

House Republicans released a new spending bill Monday that includes $14.3 billion in emergency aid for Israel offset by cuts to IRS funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, and the "Morning Joe" host bashed Johnson for jeopardizing Israel's security to help wealthy tax cheats evade consequences.

"Did anybody ever hear Mike Johnson holding up a bill under Donald Trump because it wasn't paid for?" Scarborough said. "In all of the $8 trillion, he just opened the door, 'Here, just drive the trucks through,' of debt – $1 billion, $2 billion, Mike Johnson, $3 billion, $5 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion, $8 billion Mike Johnson and Donald Trump gave America in debt, and suddenly, he won't even help Jews protect themselves. It is so gross, and, making it even grosser, he says, 'This is what we're going to do – we'll protect the Jews if you protect the billionaires. We want billionaire tax cheats to get away with stealing more money from the American people. We'll let you protect the Jews, Joe Biden, but you have to let us protect our donors, our billionaire donors that are tax cheats.'"

"I've never, truly, heard of a dumber plan to start a speakership than to put Jews' lives in danger so you could protect billionaire tax cheats, and he knows, he knows this is never going to pass," Scarborough added. "They're not going to let billionaires continue to cheat on their taxes. He knows this, yet that's what he said. 'We'll let you, Joe Biden, protect the Jews, let Democrats protect the Jews, but you have to let us Republicans protect billionaire tax cheats.' It's just so grotesque."

Medicare Disadvantage Plans Routinely Deny Coverage for Necessary Care

For decades, Rose Stone counted on the Alliance HealthCare System in rural Holly Springs, Mississippi, for her medical needs. But after she retired and signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan, she was surprised to learn it didn’t cover her visits to nonprofit Alliance, the only health-care provider within 25 miles. Stone had a choice: use her own money to keep seeing her regular doctor or drive out of town to see a physician she didn’t know but whose costs were covered.

“It was a mess,” Stone told NBC News. “I didn’t go to the doctor because I was going to have to pay out-of-pocket money I didn’t have.”

Some 31 million Americans have Medicare Advantage plans, private-sector alternatives to Medicare introduced in 2003 by Congress to encourage greater efficiency in health care. Just over half of Americans on Medicare are enrolled in one of the plans offered by large insurance companies, including UnitedHealthcare and Humana.

Problems are emerging with the plans, however. Last year, a federal audit from 2013 was released showing that 8 of the 10 largest plans had submitted inflated bills to Medicare. As for the quality of care, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a non-partisan agency of Congress, said in a March report that it could not conclude Medicare Advantage plans “systematically provide better quality” over regular Medicare.

Even worse, because the plans routinely deny coverage for necessary care, they are threatening the existence of struggling rural hospitals nationwide, CEOs of facilities in six states told NBC News. While the number of older Americans who rely on Medicare Advantage in rural areas continues to rise, these denials force the hospitals to eat the increasing costs of care, causing some to close operations and leave residents without access to treatment.

'Deny, deny, deny': By rejecting claims, Medicare Advantage plans threaten rural hospitals and patients, say CEOs

Does a Pro-Labor President Have Anything To Do With This?

All three agreements involve a roughly 25 percent wage increase over the next four and a half years, plus other significant concessions. Autoworkers are a much smaller share of the work force than they were in Detroit’s heyday, but they’re still a significant part of the economy.

Furthermore, this apparent union victory follows on significant organized-labor wins in other industries in recent months, notably a big settlement with United Parcel Service, where the Teamsters represent more than 300,000 employees.

And maybe, just maybe, union victories in 2023 will prove to be a milestone on the way back to a less unequal nation.

Some history you should know: Baby boomers like me grew up in a nation that was far less polarized economically than the one we live in today. We weren’t as much of a middle-class society as we liked to imagine, but in the 1960s we were a country in which many blue-collar workers had incomes they considered middle class, while extremes of wealth were far less than they have since become. For example, chief executives of major corporations were paid “only” 15 times as much as their average workers, compared with more than 200 times as much as their average workers now.

Not a Good Look for Israel Part 1 - Lebensraum

An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

“We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report. “What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again.”

A mass displacement, Abu Rudeineh said, would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”

The proposal comes as Netanyahu reportedly lobbied European Union nations last week to take in Gazan refugees, but was rebuffed, according to the Financial Times.

The document is dated Oct. 13, six days after Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people in southern Israel and took over 240 hostage in an attack that provoked a devastating Israeli war in Gaza. It was first published by Sicha Mekomit, a local news site.

In its report, the Intelligence Ministry — a junior ministry that conducts research but does not set policy — offered three alternatives “to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron war.”

The document’s authors deem this alternative to be the most desirable for Israel’s security.

The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out.

Not a Good Look for Israel Part 2 - Bombing a Refugee Camp, Where You DO Have to Live Like a Refugee

A massive blast has been reported at the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry claims Israeli aircraft dropped six bombs on the residential area.

The Israel Defense Forces has not yet commented.

The QOP's War on Women Doesn't Include Hanging Witches -------- Yet

In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.

Nearly four centuries later, the state and region are still working to come to grips with the scope of its witch trial legacy.

The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.

The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group's leader.

Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.

While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those caught up in witch trials throughout the 1600s have largely been ignored, including five women hanged for witchcraft in Boston between 1648 and 1688.



“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. "We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”

For now, the group has been collecting signatures for a petition but hopes to take their case to the Statehouse.

Among those accused of witchcraft in Boston was Ann Hibbins, sister-in-law to Massachusetts Gov. Richard Bellingham, who was executed in 1656. A character based on Hibbins would later appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The Scarlet Letter,” published in 1850.

Another accused Boston witch, known as Goodwife Ann Glover or Goody Glover, was hanged in the city in 1688. A plaque dedicated to her is located on the front of a Catholic church in the city's North End neighborhood, describing her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts." It's one of the few physical reminders of the city's witch trial history.

The witch justice group helped successfully spearhead a similar effort in Connecticut, home of the first person executed for witchcraft in the American colonies in 1647 -- Alse Young. The last witchcraft trial in Connecticut happened in 1697 and ended with the charges being dismissed.

Related video: Effort to Clear Names of Those Accused of Witchcraft in Massachusetts (Dailymotion)

Connecticut state senators in May voted by 34-1 to absolve 12 women and men convicted of witchcraft — 11 of whom were executed — more than 370 years ago and apologize for the “miscarriage of justice” that occurred over a dark 15-year-period of the state’s colonial history.

The resolution, which lists the nine women and two men who were executed and the one woman who was convicted and given a reprieve, passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 121-30. Because it’s a resolution, it doesn't require the governor’s signature.