Via ThinkProgress:
The most comprehensive study on Obamacare to date finds that Americans’ insurance premiums under the health law will be “lower than expected.” Many Americans will pay even less than the top-line rates after factoring in government subsidies for their health coverage, with some paying nothing at all for crucial medical coverage.
Must be all the death panels. I thought I detected the odor of incinerated codgers in my drapes the other day.
ETA: I can’t bring myself to delete TBogg from my bookmarked blogs yet — still not at the acceptance phase, I guess. I sadly scroll past that entry in much the same way I sigh when I see a deceased cousin’s number in my contacts list, which I also can’t bring myself to delete.
But life goes on, even if TBogg is in Basset Heaven, so it’s time to find a new blog or dozen to bookmark and fill that TBogg-sized hole. To that end, please feel free to pimp your blog in comments or recommend other sites you enjoy.
Please note this is for my personal blog bookmarking pleasure only — to get your blog added to the Balloon Juice blogroll, I think you have to email Cole IN ALL CAPS. Over and over.
Manyakitty
Any specific information about the impact on Ohio small businesses? I have some wingnut relatives who are screaming about our Lt. Gov’s report of 80+% increases and I can’t seem to find hard numbers one way or another.
Ahh says fywp
Nobody will believe their lying eyes. Cow orker last night blamed end of payroll tax holiday on Obamacare. I set him straight but didn’t even mention the best part–it was ss-fica tax reduction, not medicare. Hello.
Pay more attention, gop trolls.
schrodinger's cat
The codgers do seem to love your state, Betty!
me
Of course it’s the death panels. We save lots of money by letting the poor and olds die… No wait, that’s the Republican plan.
The Other Chuck
@Ahh says fywp: Would the truth really even matter? These folks will blame Obamacare for their milk going bad a day before the expiration date.
MattF
I’ve seen a couple of items suggesting that Repub support among golden-agers is starting to soften. Maybe it’s time to start practicing for those ‘critical conversations’.
Nana: You mean, it’s all a lie?
Kiddoo: Sad to say, yes.
Botsplainer
I can top that on great news – Richie Farmer is entering a plea deal.
http://www.courier-journal.com/comments/article/20130905/NEWS10/309050025/Richie-Farmer-plead-federal-charges-Kentucky-also-filing-charges
There’s so much that is great about this.
1) He’s a corrupt, pill gobbling, thieving douchebag.
2) He’s a Republican from Eastern Kentucky.
3) Most important of all, he is a former UK Wildcat from an NCAA championship team, the very personification of everything that is evil and wrong about the most evil basketball program in the universe. I’m just sad that other UK players weren’t indicted.
Tommy
I work for myself and pay a sum each month for health care that is my single largest expense. Now I may be 44 but I don’t even have any aspirin in my house. Never been sick a day in my life. I am blessed with health that is staggering. I guess why most in my family live into their 90s. I can’t wait till my exchange opens in IL.
Frankensteinbeck
@Botsplainer:
I remember when the UK basketball player was cut from the team and his scholarship because he admitted he was playing UK basketball so he could get an education.
Belafon
@Manyakitty: You’ll have to dig up, I don’t have time, but what I remember is that that +80% is if you average all of the possible plans together, and completely ignore any subsidies, and then compare it to what people have (or don’t have) now. So, it’s an apples to razor blades comparison.
low-tech cyclist
Betty – what do you use to get the smell of incinerated codgers out of your drapes? None of the standard detergents work on mine.
johnny aquitard
@Ahh says fywp:
Man on dog, and now this. I blame gay marriage. And Obama.
Napoleon
@Manyakitty:
1) Belafon is right. Mary Taylor’s “report” on the rise in premiums has been debunked as BS
2) the Plain Dealer in the last week had a story on a story/blog post on Forbes by the dishonest POS that was Romney’s health care advisor during the campaign (which the story failed to note) and even he was saying that Ohio is going to be a state that comes in low.
Origuy
TBogg is still tweeting; he sent out a basset picture today.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
John responds quickest to the penis enlargement emails.
Gex
I love that their insistence on calling it Obamacare will forever show who exactly accomplished this. So many of the things the Tea Party loves about government came from Democrats but they are too ignorant to know it. It’s going to be really hard for Republicans to try to take any credit for this down the road, even though I am sure they will do so.
Anoniminous
When one has a few problems it can become extremely difficult to solve any of them.
When one has a lot of problems they can be used to start solving each other.
There are many here who wish to do “something” about Syria.
There are many – most? – here who wish to rid the US of brain damaged Right Wing pundits and policy wonks.
Suggestion:
Gather all the Right Wing, brain damaged, pundits and policy wonks, stuff them in B-52s, and drop them – sans parachutes – on Syria.
Granted this is cruel and unusual punishment (to the Syrians) but it’s a ‘Tough Love’ I’m willing to apply.
Manyakitty
@Napoleon: @Belafon: Thanks. That’s what I tried to tell them, but noooooooooooooooo…they had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with their insurance sales rep who fed them the same line of crap. Since they were already predisposed to believe the hype, it didn’t take much to push them over the edge. Then I wound them up even more when I suggested they should kiss Obama’s imperial ring for providing a scapegoat for the way they abuse their employees. sigh.
Tommy
@Gex: Yeah I think the right will be sorry they branded it as Obamacare. I used to hate that term, I mean it is the Affordable Care Act. But I think it will eventually work and work well and they will be so mad they ever branded it as such.
WereBear
I love his rebuttal in the speeches. “They call it Obamacare. Well, I do.”
Cat Appreciators and lovers of the Tao are very fond of my blog, The Way of Cats.
Other mileage may vary.
Hawes
I’d pimp my blog, but I mostly just linked to TBogg.
The Other Chuck
@Botsplainer:
His name is … Rich Farmer?
Yatsuno
@Gex: In 10 years Obamacare will be fiercely defended by Republicans and co-opted as their idea. Which they’ll try to sell becuz Obummer was totes a Repub. Ignore the fact that none of them voted for it. Totes their idea!
Hungry Joe
I heard Howard Dean talk about health care a few nights ago, when I was visiting Ohio. (He spoke at Miami U/Hamilton campus.) He thinks that the ACA will change a lot — as in, a WHOLE lot — very quickly, almost all for the better … and that many of the positive effects weren’t foreseen even by the people who wrote it. He said he would have voted against it because it didn’t go far enough, but he thinks that now that it’s being implemented it’ll likely lead, in the long run, to something very close to Single Payer.
Churchlady
@Tommy: Brag, brag, brag… My husband and I were the same until, at least, he wasn’t. Glad we have health care from employers, but for the 50 million who do not, the exchanges will keep the costs REALLY affordable. It is pinned to your INCOME not to the market after the subsidies kick in, and rather than paying the family rate of around $1200 a MONTH, it’s between 1 and 9.5% of your income up to around 94,000 for a family of four. No one knows if and when they will need it. This plan makes it affordable for the vast majority of us all.
schrodinger's cat
I will now proceed to pimp my blog as per your instructions, not that I need any encouragement.
I has kittehs,
I has E-con
I also has movie reviews, travel and food, links in the next comment, since I don’t want to invoke the wrath of WP gods.
Tommy
@Manyakitty: My mom spent an entire month in the ICU and then two weeks in a rehab place a few months ago. They got a bill for $887,000. I asked my father what they paid. Zero. All covered through his benefits as a Civil Servant of the DoD for 30+ years. I recall thinking to myself (1) that is cool and (2) I wish other people had that. I hope Obamacare gets us close to that for EVERYBODY!
Jewish Steel
I WON’T NEED TO PIMP MY BLOG WHEN YOU MAKE THIS BLOG EXACTLY THE WAY I WISH IT TO BE. COLE, ARE LISTENING? COLE! COOOOOLLLE!!
Yatsuno
@Hungry Joe: It only takes one state to take that plunge. Vermont pretty much sealed that deal when they got the waiver for single payer. After that happened, the game was over. But the real stab in that heart will be California, should that Democratic majority try for it again.
Churchlady
@Belafon: Since it’s linked to your income, not to your age or residence or pre-existing condition. It can turn the market rate of $1200 per month for a family policy into something more like $200. HUGE difference when the subsidies kick in!
Tommy
@Churchlady: I totally agree with you. As I said I can’t wait for the exchange to open in my state. I will be a buyer on the first day.
schrodinger's cat
Links to
Travel
Movies
Food
MattF
If jwz.org isn’t on your blogroll, it should be. Not (explicitly) political, Jamie Zawinski is a legendary software programmer who gave it all up to run a nightclub and sell beer in San Francisco. My guess is that every morning he sticks his fingers into an electrical socket and makes direct contact with the Zeitgeist.
His site includes a blog and some miscellaneous writings and software hacks. Among the software hacks is a collection of over 200 screen savers for OS X, which include the classic flying toasters and bouncing cows.
Chyron HR
@Yatsuno:
Well, they’ll have plenty of Pure Progresives they can cite to support their thesis.
Botsplainer
@Frankensteinbeck:
As a lifelong Cardinal fan, this pleases me beyond words. I’ve heard so many shit drawling rednecks scream “Go Big Blue” for so long that I actually take pleasure in the misfortune that can be heaped upon them.
? Martin
@Gex:
They’re not upset that Democrats created that stuff. They’re upset that they didn’t make it an exclusive to heterosexual white people.
Manyakitty
@Tommy: AMEN.
geg6
Me, too. I’m thinking I’ll keep him there as a memorial or something. I did that when we lost Steve, too. FTFY!
Omnes Omnibus
@Anoniminous: One doesn’t solve the problem of chemical warfare by resorting to biological warfare.
Chris
@Ahh says fywp:
Like I’ve said before – I understand Americans on the other side of the aisle believing all the shit they’re told about health care in Sweden, England, France and Germany, since most of them have never been there, even fewer of them stayed there long enough to have any meaningful contact with the health care system, and the media is as full of shit on this issue as it is on any other. The truly mind boggling thing is their inability (often willful) to connect the dots between the things they see in their own lives and the political landscape Newscorp & company are telling them about.
There is no excuse for the “keep government out of Medicare!” level of ignorance.
Amir Khalid
@Jewish Steel:
How do you expect John Cole to hear you if you don’t BOLD ALL YOUR TEXT?
Hungry Joe
@Yatsuno: Yeah, Dean talked about Vermont (about 97% of kids 18 & under have health insurance, and more than 90% – I forget exactly — of adults) and Massachusetts (he likes RomneyCare!). As a Californian I’m helping out with that stab in the heart; we Dems now have 2/3 of both houses (necessary thanks to that Doomsday Machine called Prop 13) and the gov (mostly), and will likely improve on that in ’14.
In the medium-future I can see the U.S. divided into states that Have and states that Haven’t, and unfortunately for the the GOP people in different states can still communicate with each other.
Karen in GA
Can I pimp my blog? Can I? There’s not much to it, it won’t take any time at all to read new posts on the rare occasions when I write anything, since what I do write is usually short, especially since if I wrote more I’d probably just go All-Iggy-The-Wonder-Schnauzer-All-The-Time.
Betty Cracker
@Origuy: I know, but it’s not the same. I haven’t taken to Twitter yet, either as a reader or a writer. But Florida Man could change all that.
Svensker
TBogg isn’t really in Bassett Heaven, is he? I thought he just retired. I mean, I was irritated with his take on Snowden but I didn’t want him to DIE…
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: And don’t forget to add smileys!
Chris
@Yatsuno:
Either that or “Obamacare” will remain a dreaded beast, vaguely defined in terms like “socialist” or “tax and spend,” to be invoked as the scapegoat for everything wrong with the medical system and quite a few things besides (I heard a passenger on my last Greyhound trip grousing about how there was now only one bus per day instead of two going through his town – “Obamacare, I guess!”)
Meanwhile, all of Obamacare’s individual components will be adopted, loved and praised, but they’ll be referred to individually (like, say, “the mandate on preexisting conditions”), separately, and as if they had nothing at all to do with the dreaded beast “Obamacare.”
Again, same basic principle as “keep your government out of my Medicare.”
Comrade Dread
When my wife lost her job, we had two choices, add her to my company’s HMO plan or try to buy her individual PPO insurance. Due to her pre-existing conditions which she’s had since childhood, no insurance company would take her. After six months (where, by the grace of God, she remained in good health) we signed her up for our state PCIP at just $220 a month. Our state just joined the Federal PCIP plan and our monthly rates for her fell to $161 a month.
If Bush and the culmination of 30 years of Republican economic policies hadn’t already turned me from a conservative to a bleeding heart liberal, Obamacare and the Republican response to it would have assured that I would never have cast another ballot for a Republican again. There is such a thing to be said about being part of a community that takes care of one another and not simply an isolated sheep to be fleeced by the wolves of corporate capitalism.
(Also, I will follow the trend and pimp my blog. I discuss religion, movies, nerd stuff, politics, and food. Click my name if you want to check it out.)
Capri
@low-tech cyclist: Vodka
Even gets “Goodwill Smell” out of clothes.
Chris
@? Martin:
After fifty years of dog whistling, I wonder how much of that stuff is even conscious anymore, or what the justification process inside their heads looks like anymore.
raven
And delete Pat Lang while you are at it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
I think they’ve gone beyond that. This is about hate, general and not specific. Helping people is wrong, to the conservative mind. Not to say that racism isn’t alive and well in conservatism, but they would happily see white grannies starving in the streets.
PaulW
Hey! I pimp all the time!
http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/
I’ve also been known to shill my published works, up to and including Strangely Funny, a new humor-horror anthology that includes submissions from Catriona McPherson (an actual writer! True!), David Perlmutter, and 19 other people with a couple of self-published eworks!
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
Fair enough, since it was their idea. The just refused to vote for it when it came up because they had only intended it as a plausible sounding alternative that justified voting against Clinton’s HCR.
zombie rotten mcdonald
I shelved my political/personal blog a few months ago, some kind of blogging-stress disorder I think. Perhaps I am doin it rong.
But I have a music blog, for what it’s worth:
http://summerfestblog.wordpress.com/fest-blog/
PaulW
@Comrade Dread:
I hope your wife is doing well!
Randy P
@Ahh says fywp: cow orker
Ah, another former reader of alt.folklore.urban I se.
The Other Chuck
FOR GODS SAKE FIX THE FIVETHIRTYEIGHT BLOGROLL LINK. THE FIRST LINK ON YOUR BLOGROLL HAS BEEN WRONG FOR YEARS.
johnny aquitard
@Anoniminous: So let me get this straight: Assad drops Weapons of Mass Destruction on civilians and we respond by dropping Asses of Republican Obstruction on him.
I’m all for it!
PaulW
@Amir Khalid:
AND ALL CAPS WHILE WE’RE AT IT!
Randy P
@Gex: Except we’re starting to hear reports from people actually benefiting from the ACA who say things like “well this sure beats Obamacare.”
Kevin
Maybe you could do a short post with your 20 favorite sites? Anyhow, I suggest you have a look at Stonekettle Station? He’s one of my 5 favorite writers, check Jim Wright out.
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
I think they will when the budget situation is a little more favorable.
PaulW
@Botsplainer:
Louisville or W. Kentukcy alum?
Betty Cracker
@raven: Petition Cole. IN ALL CAPS.
@PaulW: I read the last line as “a couple of self-published ewoks.” Yub-yub!
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
As long as it’s other people, maybe. But I don’t see any of them volunteering to cut Washington’s allowance to red states, or even, really, Social Security and Medicare. Republican voters may defend the idea in principle, but whenever it actually comes up as a real possibility (as in the privatization attempts under Reagan and Bush), they blink, and find reasons not to like that particular plan.
Roger Moore
@Hungry Joe:
Also, too, businesses can move from one state to another. When businesses look and figure out that single payer is genuinely business friendly, there’s going to be huge pressure for laggard states to implement it.
Jewish Steel
@Amir Khalid:
@PaulW:
If there were only some way to embed a flashing light gif. And autoplay siren SFX.
bemused
@Roger Moore:
I pity the people in the states that haven’t. They will be going through hell. Those states are going to look like real losers. I wonder how long it will take for the GOP brand to turn to shit for decades.
Ben Cisco
Blog recs:
The People’s View
Stonekettle Station
Mock Paper Scissors
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gex:
Yes, me and my friends laughing at the idiocy of the Republicans over that, at lest in the ’30s they had enough sense not to label Social Security “FDR Security”
Knight of Nothing
Thanks for the laugh, BC. Got a good chuckle out of this.
Charlie Sweatpants
Am I allowed to self pimp (eww) if I just lurk? I ask because if there are only two things that everyone here should be able to enjoy, they’re:
Making fun of Tucker Carlson – http://www.a2review.net/category/daily-caller-boob-o-stat/
And making fun of Erik, Son of Erik – http://www.a2review.net/category/reds/
R.I.P. Shakira’s Ass
eemom
Y’all Cole Whisperers are wasting your time. He explained the other night that he devotes exactly five seconds to reading blog comments.
Whether that’s per commenter or in the aggregate was a little unclear…..but what I propose is, we all put our heads together and come up with one five-second request that would totally fix the whole blog.
Splitting Image
I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll start writing in my blog again, then I’ll pimp it here. As it is, I don’t think I’ve written in it since January. On the other hand, I have a spiffy new book almost done.
As for Obamacare, I’m glad to hear the prospects look good for most people and that Dean has come around on it. I remember him being quoted as a reason for killing the bill and starting over, so if he’s on board and optimistic about the future, that’s a really good thing.
Patricia Kayden
@Yatsuno: Well much of Obamacare was proposed by the Heritage Foundation, a fact Rightwingers try to forget.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/The_creators_ters_of_Obamacare_is_Free_Market_Conservatives___.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-brad-wright/did-the-heritage-foundati_b_551804.html
donnah
I can’t wait for the ACA to start taking shape here. I work a few hours a week at a Curves womens fitness club, and my group of morning ladies are all staunch Republican Catholic Right-to-Life anti-Obama maniacs. I never discuss politics there, but one morning last year one of the ladies was bitching that she was denied insurance payment for one of her back treatments because Obamacare.
I looked her right in the eye and told her none of that plan had gone into effect yet, and if she was denied by her insurance company, then she needed to set them straight or make sure she knew what she was talking about.
All I hear from these women is how the lowlife bums on Welfare get free health care while everyone else foots the bill. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it; I could finance my own health care.
Comrade Dread
@PaulW: She’s fine. She got to keep the doctor that she liked and trusted and knew her medical history rather than having to switch to a new provider as well. Fancy that.
Thanks, Obama.
geg6
@eemom:
Hell, he doesn’t even answer emails that are replies to the emails he sends.
Groucho48
@Manyakitty:
As I recall, there are some really cheap plans in Ohio…in the $45 a month range, that have huge copays and low annual and yearly caps and which don’t include a lot of things…like most maternity costs…nor allow just anyone in.
Those plans are heavily weighted in the calculations Ohio Republicans use to get that 80% cost increase.
Gretchen
I feel the same about my bookmark for the late Doghouse Riley. Sad.
schrodinger's cat
@donnah:Is Curves any good? I find machines not as effective as free weights, in general.
Tone in DC
@johnny aquitard:
With extra winger foulness! These asses land on the target with the odor of burning tires! Ross Perot is already mass producing these prime examples of legislative folly! Call now!
Tripod
Blogrolls – how 2002. The progsphere is a ghost town. I suppose there is a Big Media Matt article on bubble economics in there somewhere, but me? I blame Obama.
Roger Moore
@Groucho48:
This. Pretty much any time you see something about how insurance rates are going to increase massively under Obamacare, it’s because they’re comparing a current plan that barely qualifies as insurance to the new plans under Obamacare that are actually useful. They also have a strong tendency to look at the headline price, ignoring the subsidies that reduce the amount that people will pay in real life.
kindness
Oh Betty, I can feel John’s love for you all the way out here in Oakland. Especially now.
srv
Not my blog, but a great writer, amazing history lessons, real-time life about older parents with an adopted daughter
http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@geg6: He always answers my emails. Of course, we’re usually sharing porn links or recipes so there’s a more immediate nature to the correspondence than “here’s how you can jazz up the blog..”
Woodrowfan
Little Green Footballs is mostly sane now. And the PAW’s Rightwingwatch is a must read.
burnspbesq
@Botsplainer:
Well, no. Farmer was part of the “Unforgettables,” Pitino’s 1988 recruiting class that brought the program back from the brink of extinction. But that group is most famous for LOSING TO DUKE (yes, I put it in all caps; suck it, haters). They never won an NCAA championship.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: I’ll tell you exactly what happened to Greyhound, how they went from 30,000 drivers to 6,000 today, went bankrupt, passed from US to Canadian to possibly UK ownership today and struggling to compete against FirstTransit Group and other low cost carriers:
They had dumb, greedy management.
Stupid, dumb, greedy management who figured the only thing holding them back were those pesky “regulations” that forced them to operate both “cream” routes that made money and local ICC routes that lost money (through the “cross-subsidization” system). If only they could get permission to cut all that local service, they could make some money. Oh, and that driver’s union. Get rid of them, too.
The workers went on strike. For three years. And won. I mean, so unAmerican–going on strike is abandonment, right? Wait, we owe millions$ in back pay to ex-workers? Have to give people their jobs back with their seniority? Well, that was that. Bankrupt.
Deregulation enabled other bus companies to compete with the ‘Hound on their “cream” routes. Guess what, with their monopoly gone, everyone wants a piece of that cream. Company starts to implode. Cutting the way to prosperity … fails.
The silver lining is that Greyhound went from having the worst safety record in the biz prior to deregulation to one of the best as now they are up against non-unionized, unsafe-as-heck Megabus and even smaller fly-by-night carriers with inexperienced drivers working fatigue-crazy hours, and the horrid record of crashes in the last decade to prove it. In terms of maintenance alone some of these operators are so bad that they have been shut down by federal and state authorities (see Fung Wa, for one example–and they had been a bad actor for YEARS and eating Greyhound’s lunch).
The irony is that in our Galtian paradise some poor people are so desperate for their only affordable transportation option that they’ll gladly take the risk of fiery death in exchange for can’t-beat-em $1 or $3 or $10 fares.
This is how a great company dies.
Chris
@donnah:
God.
I ain’t much of a Catholic anymore so maybe it’s hypocritical of me to say this, but few people make me want to punch them in the face harder than “devout” “Catholics” preaching economic royalism and bitching about how they don’t want to help the poor. The orthodox Catholic position since long before I was born has been pro universal health care, pro safety net, and pro government doing whatever it can to help the poor. Fucking Randroids have no more business calling themselves Catholic than pro-choicers and pro-gay-marriage-ers.
(To be very fair, the bishops of the USCCB are very guilty of encouraging that kind of “Catholicism.”)
Roger Moore
@The Other Chuck:
Actually, if they just wait a while it will fix itself. Nate is moving back to fivethirtyeight.com as part of his move to ESPN.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
The quickest John ever answered one of my emails was with an angry “Thanks asshole, I just burned my hand” as a reply to my email of “Take the pan off the burner and run it under cold water for five minutes” that was a reply to his frantic email telling me he was boiling eggs and the water was almost boiled out and he didn’t know what to do.
Another Holocene Human
PS–the recession and high gas prices have given Greyhound a second wind, an Indian summer perhaps. They have new buses and are fixing up some of their terminally shitty terminals. However, the schedules are … threadbare.
I enjoyed my last trip on Greyhound but admittedly I had the sense not to sit close to the bathroom. We can send a man to the moon but bus bathrooms still stink like the inside of a dirty diaper bag.
burnspbesq
@johnny aquitard:
That should deter any other two-bit dictator who ever thinks about abusing his own population. Yo, Mugabe, if you don’t clean up your act we’re dropping Chris Christie on your head.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
Remember, you’re only a cafeteria Catholic if you pick the liberal parts of the doctrine and ignore the conservative parts. If you take the conservative parts and ignore the liberal parts, you’re a good, honest Catholic. If you also whine about how everything has been going to Hell since Vatican II, you’re a true Catholic hero.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris: I ain’t much of a Catholic anymore so maybe it’s hypocritical of me to say this, but few people make me want to punch them in the face harder than “devout” “Catholics” preaching economic royalism and bitching about how they don’t want to help the poor.
Hate to say it, but the aristocratic greedheads have always been with us.
We associate our Catholicism with that socialism shit because Catholic working class immigrants with socialist, anarchist, and communist leanings defined Catholicism in the US in the early 20th century. Even when wealthy, Roman Catholics were barred from “better” society meaning that the kind of hierarchalism that defines Catholicism in Europe and South America was much more covert and quiet. Once Kennedy became president and the doors opened, this was no longer necessary. Catholic University parents (ie, reactionaries) are now in the driver’s seat, and working class Catholics–or those just a generation away from that–are … quitting. In droves.
Thlayli
Can someone please add to the Lexicon an explanation of why “send Cole an email” is considered a laugh line around here?
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: The most dyspeptic and anachronistic blog that I sometimes check, just to get a glimpse of the what the other side really thinks, is written by a women who identifies as a conservative catholic. The present pope is too lefty for her. It truly is like going to bizarro world.
Name of the Blog: The Thinking Housewife
She is also racist, sexist anti-gay and xenophobic. Spelling and grammar are impeccable, though.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
The cafeteria is open 24/7, and it is always packed. Nobody I know does anything to the USCCB but point and laugh.
burnspbesq
Lawfare should be on everybody’s visit-every-day list. They’re pretty conservative in a lot of respects, but they understand the issues they blog about better than just about anybody else.
Another Holocene Human
@Chris:
Why would anyone do this, anyway? Remember Hoover? Remember the Marshall Plan?
We need to tamp down the insanity. Direct payments to American families reduce the inequality which feeds the insanity. Cutting it off out of spite towards the kulak/petit bourgeois class just feeds into their crazy and gives it a nice bolus of jet fuel.
Another Holocene Human
@Randy P:
I wish, more like alt.slack.
Hours and hours and hours of alt.slack. Made me the total pink I am today.
Randy P
@Thlayli: Every once in awhile we get a Cole post that’s basically “fuck all of you”. And many of them seem to be triggered by waves of email. Our blog host doesn’t like to receive email it seems. Especially about the blog.
Those rants are always hilarious for some reason.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Oh, absolutely. American Catholicism was defined by a few unique things. Being both French and American and having read enough about both countries’ history, I’m familiar with both the “Catholics as dominant group” and “Catholics as oppressed minority” stories, and how differently they go.
The aristocrats are still going against their own doctrines, and since they’re the ones smugly insisting that we’re a Christian nations and these doctrines should rule EVERYTHING, I still feel like punching them in the face, even more so than your average Randroid.
Betty Cracker
@Woodrowfan: I see a lot of people plugging LGF these days, and I believe y’all when you say it’s sane now. But I still can’t get this out of my head.
catclub
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: lol.
Should have told him to stick his burnt hand under cold water, at the same time.
MikeJ
@Thlayli: Nobody’s laughing (certainly not the helicopters) We all know how much Cole loves to listen to the non-stop whinging of people telling him how to run his blog.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: My uncle had a massive heart attack followed by sepsis while at work in Germany. His total bill – as a non-citizen, mind you – for weeks spent in a world-class hospital came out to be about $300.00.
His sister – my mother – raves about how awesome this is. And then tells the family that Obamacare will destroy America, and all the olds will be herded into the death camps. You know, the ones they don’t have in Germany anymore.
joel hanes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Curves
Warning! Curves is owned by serious wingnut, supports the Dark Side with corporate funds. Boycott unless you’re a tea partier yourself.
joel hanes
@Gretchen:
>> Tbogg
> Doghouse Riley
Jon Swift
Fafblog
catclub
@The Moar You Know: Maybe she thought it was special treatment reserved for non-citizens.
piratedan
@Betty Cracker: both blog hosts had an epiphany…. Charles does try to do his best to make up for past transgressions.
Another Holocene Human
@burnspbesq: Do you actually attend church and contribute during services? Because those bishops can have a huge impact on parish life. My practicing Catholic cousins are all pretty pissed at both their local archbishop and the bishops as a class.
Before my grandmother died she was ranting about people of the soup and as I can’t really stomach that Irish grudge shit it just bothered the hell out of me until I realized that all kinds of awful, stupid crap went down in her parish during the last few years of her life (including defalcations by the priest) while meanwhile the Episcopal church down the street had a female celebrant. The temptation had to be there … so my grandmother had to recite this whole fucked up litany of Why We Are Catholic.
I mean, if I were picking churches Episcopalian would be high on the list… even though it does make me feel weird, being not English and all that. And despite all the openly atheist Anglicans, all the Episcopal Church of America members I’ve personally met have George HW Bush-esque views on atheists. Anyway, I work Saturday nights and my wife is Jewish, so fuck church.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
There’s a line from the first episode of Sherlock where he and the bad guy of the episode are sitting at the table having their confrontation and the bad guy goes “Between you and me, why can’t people think? Why can’t people just think? Don’t it make you mad?”
I find my mind going back to that quote more and more often when listening to people talk politics these days.
The Moar You Know
@donnah: Makes sense; Curves is owned by staunch Republican anti-Obama maniacs. Why are you giving them your money?
schrodinger's cat
@joel hanes: Figures, I have never fraternized Curves, there was one in my old neighborhood in Greenbelt but the town gym and swimming pool were a much better deal. I was mildly curious.
Currently work out with 18 and 20 year olds, the workouts kick my ass.
ETA: I mostly like dance based group classes they somehow feel less like exercise.
IowaOldLady
@donnah: These would be the same people who think the individual mandate is a crime, right? Because free healthcare for the poor means they’re ripping the rest of us off but people not getting insurance when they can are righteous when the rest of us pay?
And I know plenty of people can’t afford it now. That’s why we need the ACA.
Redshift
@Chris: According to my sister in Lousiana, Obama is shutting down pain clinics. (I don’t remember whether Obamacare was mentioned specifically.) Naturally, to people there, Obama is responsible for everything bad. If there’s any truth to the story, I would suspect that it’s probably the DEA cracking down on “pain clinics” that mostly supply meth-heads, but who knows.
IowaOldLady
I can’t edit, so I have to add: And saying we don’t need Obamacare because people can just use the ER is also great because no one pays for that, right?
Man, hatred is making these people even stupider than they start out.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
Not to mention that some kind of subsidy is helpful to avoid long-term capital flight. If poor parts of the country spend more than they make, then they wind up having to spend their capital on current consumption, which feeds a vicious circle of poverty. It’s cheaper to have some kinds of subsidy to stop the spiral early than to let it get out of hand.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
She says she works there, so apparently they’re the ones giving her money.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
The Episcopal Church fifty years ago was nicknamed “the Republican Party at prayer,” and from what I gather from history and politics books, it was often considered synonymous with a milquetoast, elitist form of Christianity that wasn’t so much about beliefs and actions as it was identity and community. The church was an extension of the country club, basically.
Mind you, the only Episcopals I’ve ever known were perfectly nice and good people who didn’t fit that image at all. But the ones you know seem like they might fit that stereotype.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: It does. But a lot of other things make me mad as well, and the people committing those atrocities – such as the smear campaign against Obamacare – are thinking very well.
I’ve had some experience in the health insurance field, and Obamacare is not great. In fact, it’s really not any better, save for a couple of exceptions, than what we have now. That’s why I’m not jumping for joy about it. But those exceptions are everything: No more pre-existing condition bullshit, and subsidies for low-income folks. Those are huge. What we needed and could not have was single-payer, but that’s not strictly speaking Obama’s fault. He didn’t ask for it, true – but there’s no way it would have passed, either. No chance in hell.
And it won’t. Not here in California, not anywhere in this country, until Citizens gets overturned and some really serious campaign finance reform is passed. I am in my mid-forties. I am very sure I will be long dead before both those things happen.
Ripley
Go To Bed, Old Man!
Betty Cracker
@piratedan: I believe you, and I’m glad to hear they’ve turned from the Dark Side. But damn, that site wasn’t just a hive of garden-variety Republican prats; they were hardcore bigots. What caused the scales to fall from their eyes at long last — any clue?
piratedan
@Betty Cracker: more or less the same chain of events… adding up common sense, a concerned commentariat and the lies of the other side. I tend to think that Charles was more of a Libertarian wannabe but when he actually started to dig behind what he was professing, he started to notice that what was being promoted and promised wasn’t jiving with reality. He still has a fair amount of tech ties, but he’s really been involved in the debunking of the people behind the libertarian agenda, as such, he has a real issue with the Paultards, randoids and with the GG/NSA stuff because he has the technical chops to know when they’re shining on or glossing over certain elements that they would rather not discuss….
and he loathes Gellar now, has her on the same level as Bachmann…. like a Greg Stillson wannabe, very scary and dangerous….
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Short version – he went to an international conference for fellow “anti-Islamo-fascist” activists in Europe, and realized that he absolutely surrounded by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. He reported the facts, his fellow American right wing bloggers chastised him for undermining the alliance against Islamo-fascism, and he finally realized that he’d been in bed with fascists the entire time.
Long version – this covers it pretty well. http://washingtonindependent.com/39629/civil-war-raging-in-right-wing-blogosphere
(That’s for Charles Johnson of LGF – I’ve never heard of that other one).
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
IIRC Charles finally caught wind of the hard-core Euro anti-semites among his blog hoarde and that comprised his Road-to-Damascus moment. He confronted it openly and from that point, it was wowah.
Hungry Joe
@The Moar You Know: A friend of mine fell and hit her head while vacationing in Austria. Brain surgery, ICU, hospital step-down care and a month in a rehab hospital came to about $18K, and it was only that much because she was a foreigner. When her husband tried to hook the Austrians up with their insurance company, the Austrians did a triple-take and said (politely) that HE had to pay them — no way were they dealing with an American insurance company. So he paid, and last I heard he was still, more than a year later, trying to get his good ol’ American provider to pony up the remainder of whatever reimbursement he was due.
But we have the best health-care system in the world because Europeans socialism waiting lists for surgery backward leeches communist. And France.
John M. Burt
@Gex: “I love that their insistence on calling it Obamacare will forever show who exactly accomplished this”
Yep, been saying that for years now. One more thing for the former officers of what was once a national political party to sorrow over in their final years.
Rick Taylor
Stephen Walt is very good on foreign policy.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/
piratedan
@Trollhattan: @Chris: ty for the specifics guys, I knew that he had turned but was lacking in the details regarding the seminal moment
Joey Maloney
@Betty Cracker: At least part of it was Atlas Juggs’ enthusiastic embrace of that Dutch Nazi guy.
And even so, he’s only mostly sane now. He has a hardon for Snowden and Greenwald that makes Liam Neeson look like Justin Bieber.
J.D. Rhoades
Well, if you insist…
My blog, What Fresh Hell Is This? Is a combination of my (NCPA Award-winning) weekly columns, random stuff that’s too short for a column or in which I use the word “fuck” more than the paper will allow, book news (about mine and other people’s stuff), and the occasional book review by me x-posted from Goodreads. Y’all come.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris:
“Obamacare” will always be defined as “free doctors for shiftless Negroes.” Everything else that the law accomplishes will be treated as the new normal, no credit given to the people who wrote and passed the thing, much less the one who signed it. But it will be used sneeringly as a health-specific synonym for “welfare” for at least 50 years. Probably 100.
MaryRC
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh my, The Thinking Housewife. She is my guilty pleasure too, although I can only take so much of her. Her crony and fellow blogger the late Laurence Auster used to simply disgust me but I find a lot of humor in her blog — not intentional, of course.
I’ve always wanted to meet Mr. Thinking Housewife. We never hear much about him other than that TTH makes his lunch for work every day. There are no Thinking Kids so far as I can tell.
She certainly lives in her own little world, doesn’t she? What is really amusing is when her world collides with that of MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists). Since she believes that women don’t belong in the workplace – any workplace — and shouldn’t be allowed to take jobs from men, she assumes that MRAs are her natural allies. They are always quick to set her straight that they do not share her goal of being supported by a guy while she sits at home, thinking.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris:
Right, because what they actually want is to cut spending on shiftless Negroes. See above. That’s what they think caused The Budget Deficit and The Debt. Whenever they say anything about spending, just mentally add “on Negroes.” Like that fortune cookie game, only racist-er.
schrodinger's cat
@MaryRC: Why does she have a blog anyway? Shouldn’t she be cooking or birthing babies or something and leave the thinking to the men folk? I initially thought that she was a parody, she is really out there.
catclub
@Redshift: “that mostly supply meth-heads, but who knows.”
I think it was oxycontin and vicodin, more than meth.
The killing of pain clinics is a very mixed blessing. It also limits the doctor that wants to prescribe sufficient relief for people in real pain. How to weed out addicts? I do not know.
Will those words get me sent to moderation? Here goes!
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: mentally add “on Negroes.”
in my pants.
lojasmo
@The Other Chuck:
That’s what happened when he demanded CHAINED CPI. ARGLEBARGLE.
lojasmo
@Hungry Joe:
Careful quoting Dean around here. He is REVILED for his views on almost any subject.
#HowardDeanIsJustaRepubican.
Belafon
@lojasmo: I think what people say about Dean says more about them than Dean. Such as your comment.
Same thing with Obama.
ericblair
@Another Holocene Human:
I’d consider most of this blog the spiritual successor to alt.peeves. Maybe alt.tasteless on one of Those Days.
Roger Moore
@ericblair:
There are days when I wonder if it’s aspiring to be alt.flame.
lojasmo
@schrodinger’s cat:
Machines are well known to be ineffective. Avoid at all costs. The reasons are severalfold. Chiefly, machines are inferior because you’re using muscles in isolation, and not using any stabilizing muscles, and also because they’re largely simple rather than compound (across two joints) movements.
Don’t go to Curves. Seek your local YMCA/YWCA.
Lady Bug
But, but, Obama is Bush II lying about Al-Assad and chemical weapons! (Firebagger/John Cole).
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@catclub: Genius! (But then he would have slipped and fallen.)
lojasmo
I was floored the other day. Got a call from a collection agency REPRESENTING MY EMPLOYER for unpaid medical bills, which should NEVER happen, because besides having health insurance, we actually have TWO insurance policies ( me and my wife) I asked them how much…$4900,00 fucking dollars!
Turns out my son had a CT in the ER and I failed to fill out the sheet which asks whether his back pain was the result of an accident so the claim was denied.
Furthermore, despite my having asked many times in the past, nobody listed my wife’s health insurance on my account or my son’s.
I wonder how much I have paid those fuckers over the last eight years.
Oh, and the CT scan in the ER was ordered in error….it was supposed to be a lumbar x-ray.
Jesus god almighty…I think I spent five hours on the phone getting that shit all straightened out.
Now they’re going to run all those claims back through my wife’s insurance, and I’ll probably end up being owed money back. I think I’ll turn them in to a collector when that hapens.
Mustang Bobby
Pimp my blog? I would never do anything so shamelessly self-promoting as to mention that Bark Bark Woof Woof is my blog and that I also contribute to Shakesville and The Reaction. That would be terribly gauche.
donnah
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, by doing the circuit three times a week and changing my eating habits, ie: not eating crap, I lost 40 pounds in 8 months.
The machines are resistance-based, so there’s no impact, but there is more control over how hard you push yourself. Each of the machines works different muscle groups, so you get a total body workout.
At first blush, they seem rather innocuous, and by no means are they fit for an Olympic training session. ;-) But if you work out, push yourself and the machines to the max, it’s definitely a good workout. It’s a solid thirty minutes.
Sorry to sound like a commercial.
Raenelle
I really miss Doghouse Riley. Really. Some things you don’t get over. I’m still pining for MWO, and of course the world hasn’t been the same since Steve Gilliard died.
schrodinger's cat
@donnah: Good for you! Forty pounds in 8 month sound like great results. As for working out, different strokes for different folks. Curves definitely seems to be working out for you.
Keith G
@J.D. Rhoades: Good stuff. You are bookmarked..(or is it favorited?). Whichever it is, it’s done.
PaulW
@Betty Cracker:
I’d love to sell you some Ewoks, Betty, but George Lucas sold the rights to Disney and you KNOW how Disney obsesses over copyright.
We Floridians don’t know much, but we do know you DO NOT F-CK WITH DISNEY.
They’ve gone after day care centers for God’s sake.
P.S. buy my e-books (before Disney owns the copyright on THAT).
PaulW
At the library I’m putting some flyers together on the ACA, even though the Flordia gov’t doesn’t have exchanges set up there are alternatives by the looks of it, including that PCIP plan.
Groucho48
@catclub:
Well, this is juust third hand, but, a right winger on another forum claims he was talking to his doctor, in Louisiana, about Obamacare, and the Doctor complained that, among other things, Obamacare was forcing him to make separate appointments for people who wanted the pain clinic plus, say, a diabetes checkup. The right winger presented this as proof that Obamacare was going to over-regulate medical care. Reading between the lines, though, my theory is that those doctors were having 10 minute appointments for pain management and were also charging for diabetes checkup, medication assessments, and as many other charges as they could get away with squeezed into one 10 minute visit.
opiejeanne
@Chris: One year ago today I was in Paris, at the Hôpital de l’Hotel-Dieu, waiting to be seen for a UTI. I don’t speak French, but I know a few words and I knew just enough to figure out how to say “infection urinaire” or something approximating that, and there was a nice young woman in the waiting room who spoke English and acted as a translator at one point. They were very kind, ran tests, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics.
They said they would bill me and I have never gotten a bill. I feel like I ought to send them some money and a thank you note. No idea how much, but I know what it costs me for tests with my current lousy health insurance. (We really miss Kaiser Permanente).
opiejeanne
@Chris: One year ago today I was in Paris, at the Hôpital de l’Hotel-Dieu, waiting to be seen for a UTI. I don’t speak French, but I know a few words and I knew just enough to figure out how to say “infection urinaire” or something approximating that, and there was a nice young woman in the waiting room who spoke English and acted as a translator at one point. They were very kind, ran tests, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics.
They said they would bill me and I have never gotten a bill. I feel like I ought to send them some money and a thank you note. No idea how much, but I know what it costs me for tests with my current lousy health insurance. (We really miss Kaiser Permanente).
Monala
@Comrade Dread: I keep hoping something like this will happen to us. I love (the idea) of Obamacare, but still haven’t seen how it will help my family. I am hoping the exchanges will make a difference.
Here is our situation: hubby works as a contractor and so is uninsured. He also has a pre-existing condition. My employer provides medical insurance for the employee only. Family members of the employee can be covered by our insurer, but only if you pay 100% of the premium.
I cover our daughter this way, at $275 a month. But to cover hubby would cost $579 a month… AND he could not get any care for his pre-existing condition for 9 months.
We looked into the high risk pool for our state, and the rate would be the same – $579 a month – but with a $4,000 deductible. However, he could get care right away.
Now, $579/month for our family is the entirety of our discretionary income (and that’s if we cut back significantly on spending for groceries and what not). That leaves us with nothing to pay for his out-of-pocket care and meds, which we would need if we went with option 1 (my employer) since they won’t cover him for 9 months; nor does it leave us with anything for the $4,000 deductible for option 2, the state high-risk pool. So neither is really an option.
I have been told that once the exchanges kick in, insurers won’t be allowed to say, “We’ll cover you, but not for your pre-existing condition” anymore (and I wonder how they are allowed to say that now – my insurer told us that about 4 months ago). Which would be good. Or if we can get something cheaper than $579 a month – even $300 a month would be awesome (because the $579/mo plus $275/mo for my daughter is WAY more than 9% of our gross household income).
Baud
@Monala:
The pre-ex should definitely go away as of Jan. 1. I don’t know what your husband’s rate will be, but there are some online calculators you might be able to find that will help.
Monala
@Baud: Good to get confirmation that the pre-existing restriction is going away. Rate calculators are useless – they are all set up as though your whole family is uninsured (so they’ll give us a rate for the whole family), or as if you’re a single individual (so my husband looks like he’s making our entire household income as a single man). “Part of the family is uninsured” calculations are unavailable.
Baud
@Monala:
Do either of those rates save you money? Quick googling suggests that one or the other will apply because there is no part of the family alternative.
Monala
You know what? Take that back. My state’s exchange web site just went live Sept. 1st. It allows for an option to only include certain family members. So, including only my husband: $493, with no subsidy. Including both him and my daughter: $576, after the subsidy. That’s a lot better than what I’ve been quoted in the past for my husband, and a heck of a lot better than what I’m paying now for my daughter.
So question 2 is: do I have to keep my daughter on my work plan (which I pay for 100%), or can she be part of the exchanges, too?
Baud
@Monala:
Excellent, and no pre-ex!
My guess is that you can choose whether your daughter will be on your plan or your husbands.
lojasmo
Aunt and her husband are SBO and self insure. Early forties. $1200/month. WIll be applying for Minsure, and will likely cut their premiums in third.
All her adult children, young-ish, and all uninsured. Will also be getting Mnsure.
Good deal.
Ted & Hellen
test
MaryRC
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s right — she’s taking a blog away from a man, isn’t she?
“Out there” describes her pretty well. “On another planet”, too. There are many wingnut womem blogging away, from Malkin to the Anchoress, but somehow they all seem to be more connected to reality than she is.
She does have one partner in crime who if anything is further out in space than she is — the Canadian blogger Kidist Asrat. Kidist is even more racist than the Housewife, which is odd because she is an Ethiopian immigrant to Canada (she seems to have this theory that her particular ethnic group of Ethiopians is really white). So whenever the Housewife quotes her friend Kidist on her blog, there’s always a commenter who splutters “Is this some kind of joke or what? She’s black!”
Fort Geek
Late blog pimp: mine’s right here. Nothing particularly insightful, just scribbles about current projects (building Revell’s 1/96 Saturn V kit…slowly), forts, wiseass motivational posters, guitars, and my ’81 Citation X-11. So far, the X-11 and Saturn V topics have grabbed the most page hits.
johio
Blog rec: http://juanitajean.com/
Closest thing out there to Molly Ivins.
I’m trying to think of other persuasive words of praise, but “like Molly Ivins” sort of says it all.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
“Replace FYWP!”
Tommy T
Another vote for Juanita Jean.
http://juanitajean.com/
No one can ever replace Tbogg, but if you’re looking for snark Methadone to lessen the withdrawal pains, I do a guest post every Monday at First Draft., which ( for some reason ) is not on the BJ blogroll. Whee! I’m multitasking!
I go through the insanity at Free Republic so you don’t have to.
My humble contributions are here : http://www.first-draft.com/tommy-t/
cvstoner
The Cosmogonic Grunt: cvdanes.wordpress.com
Steve S
for those of us who don’t know, what’s so terrible about the wildcats?
Stentor
I know what you mean, my grandpa Donn has been gone for over 3 years now, he was my last one, & I still haven’t had the heart to delete his number from my cellphone address book. My mother got pregnant with me at such a young age that when I was born, I not only had most of my great-grandparents still alive, but I also had a great-great-grandmother who was still around. I have a picture of her with my great-grandpa Noah, my grandpa Gerry, & my Dad all standing behind her while she’s holding me in her arms. Most of my great-grandparents passed away around the time I was graduating high school, but most of my Grandparents lasted until I was in my late 30s & early 40s. I still have aunts & uncles alive who are their brothers & sisters, but Donn was my last grandparent, so deleting his number feels like the passing of an era where I lose the last of my childhood even as I’m getting ready to enter into my 6th decade & get my AARP membership.
Stentor
I know what you mean, my grandpa Donn has been gone for over 3 years now, he was my last one, & I still haven’t had the heart to delete his number from my cellphone address book. My mother got pregnant with me at such a young age that when I was born, I not only had most of my great-grandparents still alive, but I also had a great-great-grandmother who was still around. I have a picture of her with my great-grandpa Noah, my grandpa Gerry, & my Dad all standing behind her while she’s holding me in her arms. Most of my great-grandparents passed away around the time I was graduating high school, but most of my Grandparents lasted until I was in my late 30s & early 40s, I had extras because of 2 generations of divorce in my family, so there were grandparents who weren’t necessarily related to me like Grandma Pat, Grandpa Cliff, Grandma Millie, or Grandpa Herm. I still have aunts & uncles alive who are their brothers & sisters, but Donn was my last grandparent, so deleting his number feels like the passing of an era where I lose the last of my childhood even as I’m getting ready to enter into my 6th decade & get my AARP membership.