Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

People are complicated. Love is not.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

White supremacy is terrorism.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Not all heroes wear capes.

No one could have predicted…

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

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Archives for November 2013

We Need a Plan C

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This is a big deal:

The European manufacturer of an emergency contraceptive pill identical to Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, will warn women that the drug is completely ineffective for women who weigh more than 176 pounds and begins to lose effectiveness in women who weigh more than 165 pounds.[…]

But American manufacturers do not currently advise American customers of weight limits for levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives.

Because the Food and Drug Administration prohibits generic drug manufacturers from changing product information unless the brand name manufacturer makes a change, companies that manufacture generic versions of Plan B One-Step cannot update their packaging information unless Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the exclusive manufacturer of Plan B One-Step, acts first. […]

The average weight for women in the US over 20 is 166 lbs.

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Resentment

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Yesterday I linked an excerpt from a book, about white male rage, and in that excerpt was the following:

They’re every white guy who believed that this land was his land, was made for you and me. They’re every down-on-his-luck guy who just wanted to live a decent life but got stepped on, every character in a Bruce Springsteen or Merle Haggard song, every cop, soldier, auto mechanic, steelworker, and construction worker in America’s small towns who can’t make ends meet and wonders why everyone else is getting a break except him. But instead of becoming Tom Joad, a left-leaning populist, they take a hard right turn, ultimately supporting the very people who have dispossessed them.

They’re America’s Everymen, whose pain at downward mobility and whose anger at what they see as an indifferent government have become twisted by a hate that tells them they are better than others, disfigured by a resentment so deep that there are no more bridges to be built, no more ladders of upward mobility to be climbed, a howl of pain mangled into the scream of a warrior. Their rage is as sad as it is frightening, as impotent as it is shrill.

***

Second, the extreme Right is extremely patriotic. They love their country, their flag, and everything it stands for. These are the guys who get teary at the playing of the national anthem, who choke up when they hear the word America. They have bumper stickers on their pick ups that show the flag with the slogan “These colors don’t run.”

The problem is that the America they love doesn’t happen to be the America in which they live. They love America—but they hate its government. They believe that the government has become so un-American that it has joined in global institutions that undermine and threaten the American way of life.

Just read this on facebook from a guy I know from the military:

“After having to spend almost $200 on work boots,the hell happened to the America I grew up with. Are people and ceo’s that stupid. We are selling out at an alarming rate. Try finding american made anything without paying arm an leg.We need to make a stand an take our country back/ I use to wear only Levis’s. After buying some that ripped in 2 weeks I bought something else.The country we have sent our manufactoring jobs to also owns most of out debt.I remember when made in USA meant something. I remember when I joined military an heard star spangled banner, it had a whole differnt meaning. I also think you need to be a citizen to own a buisness. Take a look who owns motels,subways,gas stations and even kfc. This is America or it was. There should be no second langauge. People use to think it was honor to come here. Now we hand money out at airport.There should be a limit to time in office. Also no trust fund babies.”

This guy isn’t a white supremacist, but there are a whole lot of people who feel that way.

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“Suspending” voting rights is a new twist

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We talked about how Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has set up a special election system in Kansas where some people may to vote in all elections, some people get to vote only in federal elections and some people get “suspended” and can’t vote at all.

Kobach is not a fringe figure on the Right:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the author of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration bill, ensured on Tuesday that the Republican Party platform will also have his fingerprint. During a meeting of the GOP platform committee in Tampa, Fla., Kobach called for the party to officially back increased border fencing and the E-Verify employment verification system, and to go after two immigrant-friendly initiatives: in-state tuition for some undocumented young people and so-called sanctuary cities. Those measures were in the 2008 Republican platform but had been dropped from the draft this year, Politico reported.
“These positions are consistent with the Romney campaign,” Kobach said. “As you all remember, one of the primary reasons that Governor Romney rose past Governor Perry when Mr. Perry was achieving first place in the polls was because of his opposition to in-state tuition for illegal aliens.”

The ACLU has filed a challenge in state court:

TOPEKA, Kan. – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit challenging Kansas’ two-tiered voter registration system. The petition charges that eligible voters are being divided into separate and unequal classes, in violation of the Kansas Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that states could not impose a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for those who register to vote using the federal form. Voters declare under penalty of perjury that they are citizens when they register using the federal form.
Kansas has implemented a dual registration system to prevent people who use the federal form from voting in state and local elections unless they show additional documentary proof of citizenship. Voter registration for thousands of Kansans is already being held in “suspense” – essentially limbo – because of the new documentation requirements.
The ACLU petition charges that state officials have, without statutory authority, “unilaterally established an unprecedented and unlawful voter registration system that divides registered voters in Kansas into two separate and unequal classes, with vastly different rights and privileges…based on nothing more than the method of registration that a voter uses.”
“It makes absolutely no sense that someone would be qualified to vote for president, but not for governor,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “This case is about people who have done everything they are supposed to do – complied with all legal requirements for voter registration – but are arbitrarily being denied the right to vote in state and local elections simply because of the form they used.”
The lawsuit, Belenky v. Kobach, was filed in the Third Judicial District in Topeka on behalf of Equality Kansas and individual voters. The petition charges the dual system not only deprives Kansans of voting in state and local elections, but also denies them election-related rights such as signing petitions.

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Open thread

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It looks like the blog is all mine today, which means that I can talk about whatever I want.

So, um. Here is a picture of the sprout.

Sylvia

Dr. Mrs. Dr. F. Jr. (DMDFII) has picked up three habits that have me very worried. One, she wakes up routinely around 3:30 these days. We can get long blocks of sleep if we work around it and she does not really much fuss or cry for attention. At weird hours she just is just wide awake and wants to check things out. Two, when she’s up DMDFII is a very active kid. At two and a half months she already rolls over, she has started repeating back basic noises and she LOVES attention and activity. Three, when she does get worked up holding her tight or comforting her does not do much, but she quiets right down when you hold her up to a window so she can see what is going on. Something about the outside world really fascinates her. It was the same with her bjorn carrier: once she was big enough to face forward she found the walks totally captivating.

To summarize, I have a hyper, nocturnal baby who is physically precocious and has a serious need to know what is happening outside the house. It should be a few weeks before she figures out how to work a doorknob.

At the moment we are thinking about investing in either 1) a walled compound, or 2) a corgi.

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Healthcare update

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We will have plenty more to say about the big picture, but one more time I want to hear how the Affordable Care Act is working for you. Have you tried to sign up through an exchange? Let us know how it went and whether like John Boehner you left your exchange rep on hold for 35 minutes so you could complain about the website on twitter. Nothing cuts through BS like a representative sample of actual experiences.

Also, open thread.

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Don’t Say That You Love Me, Just Tell Me That You Want Me

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I missed this last week, but a  little Libertarian/Republican spat is brewing in Arizona:

These days Barry Goldwater, Jr. is on an unlikely crusade. In March, the former California Republican congressman founded Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, or TUSK, after Arizona’s largest electric utility proposed a hefty new fee on solar customers and a plan to lower net metering rates, which dictate how much electric utilities pay solar customers for excess energy sold back to the grid. “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice,” Goldwater said in a statement on TUSK’s website. So he cobbled together a ragtag coalition of libertarian-minded conservatives, solar industry advocates, and business groups to wage a colorful guerrilla campaign. […]

The utility, Arizona Public Service (APS), donated a bunch of money to the usual Republican suspects, and spent more than $3 million on an ad campaign. Still, that money isn’t getting the job done in Arizona and elsewhere:

Conservative think tanks like Cato and the Heritage Foundation have been silent on the issue of net metering and “energy choice,” the preferred buzzwords that conservative solar advocates use to describe their support for net metering. At the state level, powerful conservative organizations like ALEC, the Heartland Institute, and Americans for Prosperity are waging an aggressive fight against green energy, pushing forward model legislation to repeal renewable energy standards and cut state subsidies for solar power. So far, however, these efforts have been thwarted, even in Republican-led states like North Carolina, Idaho, and Louisiana.

In Georgia, Tea Party activists broke their longstanding ties with AFP over the solar issue, citing an individual’s right to choose his or her own energy source. The result was the emergence of the Green Tea Coalition, a strange political coupling between Tea Party Patriots and Sierra Club environmentalists that successfully lobbied state regulators to increase solar mandates for utility giant Georgia Power. […]

All the Solyndra talk in the world isn’t going to sway even the most ardent teabagger from saving a few bucks on their power bill.

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Not all dollars are equal

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I saw this article in the Politico:

key player in the Obamacare website’s creation acknowledged Tuesday that up to 40 percent of IT systems supporting the exchange still need to be built.

“It’s not that it’s not working,” Chao told lawmakers at an Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearing. “It’s still being developed and tested.”Financial management tools remain unfinished, he said, particularly the process that will deliver payments to insurers.

A Health and Human Services source said the health plans can receive the payments consumers make when they enroll. The system isn’t yet ready to deliver federal subsidies to insurers.

 

First, Politico undercuts its own lede.  The financial segment is not live in the production environment but it never was scheduled to be live until December.  The first subsidy was not scheduled to be sent to the insurance companies until late December if everything works correctly.  More importantly, this is not a system failure point as most insurers could get by for a while without Federal subsidy flows.

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