Jennifer Edeburn

A number of replies to my post below ask “how do 20 measles hospitalizations = $35 million in cost?” The total cost of an outbreak goes far beyond hospitalizations alone. The majority of the expense actually comes from public health response efforts and not just downstream medical care for those that get really sick. For every confirmed measles case, public health teams have to conduct detailed case investigations, identify and notify contacts, and monitor those individuals for symptoms. Anyone who is unvaccinated and exposed often has to be quarantined or excluded from work or school for a period of time. That requires significant staffing, coordination, and resources. There are also broader economic impacts. People who are quarantined may miss work, parents may have to stay home with children who are excluded from school, and workplaces and schools can be disrupted. All of that adds indirect costs on top of the direct public health spending. So while only a small number of people may be hospitalized, every single case triggers a cascade of response activities and economic consequences. That’s why outbreaks can become so expensive so quickly - and why preventing even a single case through vaccination saves both public health resources and taxpayer money. Signed: someone who used to run a state health department, and actually investigated infectious disease outbreaks…

A measles outbreak in South Carolina (993 cases, 20 hospitalizations, 5 months) cost an estimated $35.5M- about 6.7% of the state public health budget! Vaccinating the same group? Just $66K–$134K. Every $1 spent on vaccines could’ve saved $536. Prevention isn’t just smarter- it’s dramatically cheaper. Put another way, more measles outbreaks means higher taxes - for everyone. 🤷🏽‍♂️ americanactionforum.org/weekly-checkup…

I think there's too little discussion in the United States that Trump may conduct war crimes in the war against Iran. Targeting civilian infrastructure to torture the civilian population into unrest is a war crime. Whatever the objective of the war, we will all live with the stain of that for decades to come.

Hey men, ever wonder why your mom or wife perform a freak out clean before people come over? It's because society judges her for a dirty house and not you.

TMZ did not suddenly get a conscience and decide to start using their paparazzi ruthlessness for good- they’re doing it because it’s PROFITABLE. No one harvest and sells outrage better than TMZ. This should be a blaring siren for the Trump administration: people are PISSED.

We can’t lose sight of this. Our President cut health care, cancer research, and food for hungry families. And then turned around to spend billions on war.

It’s not a “mixed picture”. If you go into the crosstabs, 8/10 WI Republicans say noncitizens are voting. 9/10 Dems say that’s not happening. Those aren’t just different opinions, they’re different realities. 4 cases of non citizen voting have been found since 2016.

We didn’t fight to work. Women have ALWAYS worked. We fought to get paid.

I think people on the left-of-center, including Normie Democrats, to some extent, need to return to a model where they create some degree of separation between the accumulation of power & what one does with that power. I'm not saying to be deceitful or arguing for *full* separation. Or even that one can't be fully transparent about ALL of one's values. It's just that you don't need to forefront *every* aspect of your ideological package during an election season. Pick & choose a few issues & hammer those home. I think Barack Obama is probably the best example of this. He is an "outlier" in terms of his stardom, but there are still things to be learned. His presidency was much more than his campaigns. And one can see real trajectories of change in terms of LGBTQ rights, Black Civil Rights, and women's rights across 2008-2016. From 2016 onward, we really adopted a different model, perhaps given the rise of social media, among other variables. We started putting a huge demand on our candidates to lay EVERYTHING on the table as a *campaign issue*. I don't think it's worked out well for us.

This is very false. I will not stand for the re-writing of 2016-2020 as a normal GOP presidency. He governed by Tweet, banned an entire religion from the country, told people to inject bleach and was impeached twice @JoePostingg

What am I missing here? Why do people keep telling me that a man with no history of helping "working people" is a champion of "working people?"

@aravosis Those who sign Cash on Delivery agreements. (Not claiming that it's a win to be reduced to this.)

Trump has now single-hardly killed the entire United States arms industry. Every country now knows that if you buy weapons from the United States, Trump could simply decide not to send them to you. Who in their right mind would buy weapons from us going forward?

A lot of leftist women also don’t care about it as we saw both in 2016 and 2024. Leftist women also make a lot of excuses for shitty things men do vs women, for example Hillary Clinton got a lot of pushback for a crime bill that Bernie sanders voted for. A lot of you are young, in the first world, and have not yet been oppressed for your gender, and it shows in your politics.

@JamesSurowiecki @AlphEatsCats @PolitiBunny Also true. Interestingly, I had to replace an SSN card for a child in order to get a Real ID driver's license and we brought ... his passport. Felt very circular. Also had to be done in person.

@AlphEatsCats @jheymoux @PolitiBunny Actually, I was making the point that you can get your birth certificate, marriage license, or SSN card just by showing your DL, but somehow a DL doesn't count as proof of identity under the SAVE Act.

For shits and giggles, I decided to see just how hard it would be to replace my birth certificate, Social Security card, AND my marriage license, since Democrats think women are too stupid to figure it out. Here's how it went: 1. Birth certificate: Contacted the health department of the county where I was born. They OVERNIGHTED a certified copy to me the next day - total cost, $14. 2. SS Card: Contacted Social Security on their site. They asked if I was sure I needed the card, since I 'won't likely be asked for it.' I went ahead and got it - took five business days to arrive - total cost, $0. 3. Marriage License: Went to the 'vital docs' site of the county where we were hitched. Filled everything out online, arrived in three days - total cost, $5. It cost less than $20 to obtain all three certified/legal documents, and it took less than five business days to receive them. Note: if I had lived where I was born or married, it would have been a day. Tops. Anyone telling you this is too hard or unfair is lying and hiding the real reason they want to stop Voter ID. I know you guys knew that already... lol

@AlphEatsCats @JamesSurowiecki @PolitiBunny An alternate reading is that you said he would be able to get one online. Most people do not think 'you can request one online' means you can fill out the form, it means that you can fill out the form and then you _get what you requested_. To which his answer was correct.

@jheymoux @JamesSurowiecki @PolitiBunny Well when I said you can request it online like she did he said and I quote “Nope”.

@AlphEatsCats @JamesSurowiecki @PolitiBunny OK, but he didn't deny _her_ experience, only said that he had evidence (which he does!) that for others it is not so easy. And that's the point. Even if only 0.5% that have to go in person, that's a lot of people. The stories of the 99.5% don't make it not a problem.

@jheymoux @JamesSurowiecki @PolitiBunny I’m opposed to the SAVE act for the same reasons as James, but he’s replying to a person who says they went to the SSA website and got a SSN card.

@JamesSurowiecki @AlphEatsCats @PolitiBunny I have also had this experience. Which just goes to show why all the "it was so easy for me" anecdata from others does not actually mean there is not a big problem with the SAVE act.

@AlphEatsCats @PolitiBunny Yes, I did all that, and then at the end it said I needed to go to an SS office to show my ID.

Just a reminder that DOGE failed at every possible level: * At the micro level, they misread, misled and straight up lied about many of the 'savings'. They'd announce '500m saved!' and it would be some contract where the money was 98% already spent and already wasn't being renewed. * At the macro level, they didn't impact spending at all. The government spent more in 2025 than 2024. * At the institutional level, they didn't even convince the GOP that deficits are a problem worth caring about. The GOP only signature bill in 2025 exploded the deficit by trillions of dollars. * At a personal level, Elon got run out of town with his tail between his legs. The most notable public facts about the Cracked Coders are that one of them was a mini-Hitler, one was called 'big balls', and none of them bothered to learn how the government actually works before they set it on fire. They gutted a bunch of important institutions, fired whole departments at random, decimated medical research funding, killed millions of people dependent on USAID, and still failed at every possible level.

What I really can't stand about the now trendy anti-woke rhetoric is that it's typically neither coming from any genuine place of either true regret for those that went overboard, nor a genuine place of wanting to return to a fact-based reality. Rather, it's just people following the herd once more, and finding good scapegoats according to their true biases. A liberal man that was always a bit of a sexist prick, for example, is going to criticize the excesses of MeToo before anything else. Just as a conservative man who was always an antisemite will default to immediately blaming Jews for woke. Is this moderation, or just more self-serving crankery for the social approval of peers? I think it's definitely the latter. Nobody has learned anything at all.

A president should not put his name on another man's memorial. He should not hang a banner of himself on the Justice Department. And he should not put his face on a coin. This is un-American.