A week of Kamala Harris losing the elections, mud being thrown at Spanish politicians and insurance companies hiring companies to decline medical procedures

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live in Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news. 

My newsletter has evolved into this beautiful news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler.

Today I’m sharing my feelings about Kamala Harris losing the elections, the people of Paiporta, Spain throwing mud at politicians and insurance companies hiring companies to decline medical procedures. 

Onto the news… 

News that made me feel like white supremacists don’t even know what’s good for white supremacy

Trump winning the election was very upsetting for a lot of people who wanted to see a Black woman become “head” coloniser. Honestly, I get it. Kamala would have been so great at being the top spokesperson for the ruling class. She would have slain. She would have slain so many people and people would have kept going to brunch because imperialism is so brat when a Black woman does it. Also, she would have been much better at slaying than Trump. Have you seen her resume? She was top cop of California – which is something that you can only accomplish by being great at white supremacy.

But then, it doesn’t matter that Kamala worshipped at the two pillars of white supremacy, anti-immigration and pro-genocide. The white supremacists refused to vote for her because she’s a Black woman.

That’s the thing about white supremacists; they are willing to bite their noses to spite their faces. You could give them a billion dollars, but if a Black person is delivering it, they will say no thank you, I’d rather vote for a racist standup comedian turned politician who couldn’t name the three branches of government if you told him the three branches of government.

Barack Obama gave white supremacists mass deportations, and he bombed the Middle East more than a Brooklyn comedian bombs in a Manhattan comedy club, but that wasn’t good enough for the racists.

It doesn’t matter how much you cater to the white supremacists.  They don’t want you leading a country they stole and murdered people for unless you are one of them. Now the white capitalists are willing to let a Black face do their bidding only if the Black person proves themselves to be fully on board with the colonial project which Kamala did, but the white working class will never accept being “ruled” by a Black person. Ever!

The white working class knows this country was built for white people. A truth that they are willing to fight for, even if it jeopardises this whole project. The ruling class knows that DEI is the only way to maintain the project. They know if they don’t pretend to give Black people a stake in this fucked up racist soup, Black people will revolt. That’s why Nixon spearheaded Black capitalism. Yes, Nixon also supported Black businesses!

There is no space for Black people in white supremacy – and we shouldn’t want that space. Our dreams shouldn’t be that one of us one day will have the powers to nuke the Middle East.

Of course I get it. Trump is much scarier than Kamala because he emboldens white supremacists domestically. Trump didn’t come from a vacuum; he is a product of this country. If you want to destroy a product, you destroy the company that makes the product, don’t just change the PR manager. Yes, PR managers are what I call United States presidents.

News that made me feel like some people deserve crowns

The politicians of Spain were greeted how any politician should be treated when they visited flood damaged Paiporta, Spain – with mud and insults! 

It’s been very difficult to find anything that brings me joy recently and I didn’t know citizens attacking their so-called leaders would be it. I only wish New Yorkers would do the same to Eric Adams. If you live in New York and you don’t mind carrying a bucket of mud around until we spot Eric Adams, please message me. 

The people of Paiporta were devastated by global climate change-fuelled floods that killed over 200 people and left the town in ruin. Given that global climate change is politicians’ fault, so it makes sense that people would fling mud instead of cheers at them. What makes this extra exciting for me is that the king and queen were some of the people attacked by the crowd! I mean, capitalism is feudalism’s child, but having the audacity to crown yourself a feudal lord in 2024 should earn you mud on your face. 

A specific part of this incident that made me chuckle was the woman who kicked a politician’s car as it sped off. Someone give that woman a crown! I mean don’t make her queen because power makes people evil. The crown will be a gift that she can place on her nightstand to remind her of how much of a badass she is. 

The citizens who tossed objects at the officials called the officials murderers because the government had done nothing to help them after the devastation from the floods. Of course the government didn’t help; the government’s job is to make people suffer to benefit corporations. How does providing clean water and support to devastated peasants serve corporations? It doesn’t! 

Not only did the government not provide support after the flooding, it didn’t warn the citizens about the floods until two hours after the floods began. If I sent someone an invitation to an event after it started, I would not show up to their home the next day and expect a cheerful reception. However, politicians believe people have been so brainwashed that politicians will do atrocious things to people and not expect them to fight back. Well, mud on his coat proved to the king that sometimes the peasants do fight back “wielding shovels and poles.” 

My love for the people of Paiporta only increased when I read the following quote from a man whose home was blocked by washed away cars: “The government forces that could do something, either from the regional government or the national government, have not done anything to help us. It’s us, the citizens and volunteers, who are doing all the work.” This man recognises that only we can save us, not politicians. Give that man a crown so he can throw it at the next politician who shows up at his doorstep. 

Apocalyptic movies always try to trick us into believing that we would all turn on each other when the government falls, but natural disasters always prove the opposite. From Hurricane Helene to the floods in Spain, people are proving that mutual aid is our future and government should be our past. So start collecting mud and wielding shovels comrades.

News that made me say don’t try to lick Joe Biden

Insurance companies are hiring companies such as EviCore to decline treatments recommended by doctors. At this point, anyone who has ever had health insurance knows the purpose of insurance companies is to make money for the shareholders and not pay for healthcare. If you are one of those people who still thinks insurance is for healthcare, welcome to capitalism you sweet innocent human. Let me explain to you how things work in this place. 

One thing you have to understand, you sweet innocent human, is that a lot of things don’t have a purpose in our world other than to make money. Things like insurance companies, sugar-free candy, and Joe Biden. These things actually don’t provide a service: they are there to harm us in order to make money for some doofus who likes to wear Hawaiian shirts on his yacht in December. The way you check whether something doesn’t have any purpose other than to make money is to lick it. Actually, tThis only applies to sugar-free candy. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LICK JOE BIDEN! I don’t know if proudly arming genocide is contagious but I don’t want you to get genocider. 

So how do you check whether something doesn’t have any purpose other than making money? Just think about what would happen if we were to get rid of it. If the answer is that people will lose their jobs if someone stops digging ditches that engulf people’s families, then the answer is we don’t need it. Yes, we all need a job in this miserable world, which is why I’m constantly telling everyone we should all get together and abandon it. However, digging ditches that swallow people is a job that doesn’t need to exist. This is exactly what people who work at Evicore, a company that helps insurance companies make money by declining necessary healthcare, do. 

EviCore uses an algorithm that increases denial rates of doctors’ requests. The EviCore algorithm can increase the likelihood of requests being declined by increasing how many requests are sent to in-house doctors. The algorithm itself doesn’t reject requests because “only other doctors can reject requests.” Yes, EviCore hires doctors to reject requests from other doctors. Doctors who work at Evicore took the “do harm” oath. Nonetheless, innocent human algorithms are not just for maintaining fascism and genocidal denial. They are also for making sure you don’t get the healthcare you need. 

Insurance companies like Cigna are claiming the reason why they employ a company like EviCore is to keep costs down by denying inappropriate requests so “customers receive safe and necessary medical treatments.” Now we all know that insurance companies are about as honest as anyone who speaks on the podium at a Trump or Kamala rally.

However, if you need more proof that insurance companies see a pinata filled with money when they see their customers, when EviCore “saves” money for insurance companies, EviCore keeps that savings or “in some cases” shares it with the insurance companies. I see no reason why EviCore would be incentivised to reject as many requests as possible. Could it be the pile of money created by the pool of tears from suffering patients?

See ya later,

Marcela