Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

He really is that stupid.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

All hail the time of the bunny!

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Innocent people do not delay justice.

When we show up, we win.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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Archives for 2014

Freedom of Speech! Tyranny! Oppression!

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A long-time columnist at a major publication is fired for exercising his First Amendment right to talk about the Second Amendment. Tea Men, to the outrage cave! Oh, wait:

Mr. Metcalf began his journalism career with a column in Shooting Times, a more technical gun publication, explaining the patchwork of gun laws across America to readers, while teaching at Cornell. Since then, he said, he has written for dozens of gun magazines within the group now owned by InterMedia, culminating with the back-page column in Guns & Ammo.

In the column that led to his dismissal, he said that too many gun owners believed that the constitution prohibits any regulation of firearms. He noted that all rights are regulated, like freedom of speech. “You cannot falsely and deliberately shout, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” he wrote.

“The question is, when does regulation become infringement?” he continued. Mr. Metcalf ended the column arguing that requiring 16 hours of training to qualify for a concealed carry license was not an infringement.

Remember: hating gays and blahs is constitutionally protected speech under the landmark A&E vs Duck Dynasty Supreme Court decision, which held that the First Amendment has strict application to all reality shows about ignorant rednecks with a Q score above 10. But, as legal scholars will recall, Metcalf’s writing falls under Scalia’s carefully crafted exception (known now as “the Bushmaster clause”) for criticism of the Second Amendment.

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Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen

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Here’s a goodbye message to Liz Cheney, using cultural signifiers easily comprehended by her core demographic. I’m sorry to see her go, but there is a bit of justice in the fact that some gay bashing ratfucking put the final nail in her already well-assembled coffin. Though I sincerely hope that her children are fine, since we can’t choose our parents, I’ll bet you a shiny quarter that this is a lie:

“Serious health issues have recently arisen in our family, and under the circumstances, I have decided to discontinue my campaign. My children and their futures were the motivation for our campaign and their health and well-being will always be my overriding priority,” Cheney said in the statement.

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Medicaid leak-through

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On Saturday, I noted that there was a Medicaid enrollment file issue.  Approximately 100,000 people on the Exchanges had thought they had enrolled in Medicaid  or CHIP but the federal files had not properly transferred to the states to process the enrollments.  At least half of the people impacted lived in either Ohio or Pennsylvania.

Ohio has expanded Medicaid but Pennsylvania has not.  So how is Pennsylvania impacted?

No state has ever had every person who was eligible for Medicaid (expanded or not) enrolled in Medicaid.   Some states aggressively outreach to everyone that they can enroll and have a very high percentage of eligible people enrolled in Medicaid.  Aggressive outreach can include enrolling people who are participating in other low-income programs such as SNAP or LIHEAP, community organizers conducting enrollment fairs and follow-ups after taxes are filed.  Other states don’t aggressively chase after people who eligible.  Instead, they count on people trickling in.

The launch of the Obamacare open enrollment period between October 1st and the end of March, 2014 is a massive shock to all enrollment systems and decision schemas.  People who were not covered have been going onto the Exchanges because there has been a massive push to get people who were not covered to get them covered.

Quite a few people have gone online and never thought that they were Medicaid eligible as that was for poor people and not them.  And once they entered their information, quite a few people, even in non-expansion states, were shocked to find out that they were Medicaid eligible.  The same scenario also played out for CHIP enrollment especially as CHIP has much more generous income restrictions than Medicaid.

This is how 25,000 or more people in Pennsylvania, a non-expansion state, are newly Medicaid eligible.

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Monday Morning Open Thread

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obamacare the same boat davies
(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)
.
Couple upbeat opinions to start the week. Noam Scheiber, at TNR, thinks “Obamacare Actually Paves the Way Toward Single Payer“:

… In the heat of the political back-and-forth with Republicans bent on the program’s destruction, this whole Obamacare adventure can feel a little hopeless. But when you look at the big picture, the underlying political logic is clearly toward more generous, more comprehensive coverage over time. Once the previously uninsured start getting insurance, the natural upshot of cataloguing the law’s shortcomings isn’t to give them less insurance, as my colleague Alec MacGillis pointed out last fall. It’s to give them more. Republicans are in some sense playing into the trap Obamacare laid for them.

Medicaid expansion is a case in point. Under Obamacare, uninsured people who earn up to 138 percent of the poverty level (just under $16,000 for a single person in 2013), can qualify for Medicaid, at least in states that opt into the law.3 This has a few key political consequences, as Pollack notes. First, it transforms the political constituency for the program. Historically, Medicaid has served extremely poor, frequently minority, patients who either don’t vote or support Democrats when they do. That meant the GOP had no hang-ups about squeezing it. But there will likely be millions of white working-class voters on Medicaid in the coming years. (Even in some conservative states, like Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia.) Once that happens, something tells me Republicans will become more charitably-disposed to the program….

Jon Chait, at NYMag, says that “After Obamacare Is No Longer Doomed, It Will Become A Scandal“:

Obamacare — actual, real, Obamacare, with doctors and cards and everything — has been operational for nearly a week now. It has been … extremely boring. It does not look like Stalinist collectivization. There aren’t even any beheadings. It looks like regular medical insurance, except several million more people now have it than before…

Obamacare is a gaping wound in the Republican psyche, representing not only the rise of a majority moocher class but a potential symbol of a successful Obama presidency. Health-care reform, George F. Will has ludicrously if representatively declared, amounts to Obama’s “single” achievement. If it lives, it will vindicate his presidency as a liberal Reagan, rather than the reprise of Jimmy Carter (or George W. Bush) Republicans wish him to be…

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Apart from watching the GOP clowns attempt the rhetorical equivalent of juggling flaming torches during a pie fight, what’s on the agenda for the “real” workday start of the new calendar year?

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Starting the year off right

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It’s building code these days to put a one way valve on the main sewer line leaving the house so that if the city sewer backs up, it doesn’t flood the house.  Irony abounds when the valve gets frozen stuck and the house can’t shed its sewage, thereby backing it up into the house.  Three hours of clearing the blockage and sanitizing in the house.  When the blockage finally cleared, I connected the hose to the spigot outside and cleaned the sewage off my back patio.  Then, flushed (pun intentional) with victory, I took a long shower and we went to the movies.  Anchorman 2: The Legend of Ron Burgundy Continues is a laugh a minute, and sometimes more.  I found it a little relentless.  A little wearing.  I also forgot to disconnect the hose from the spigot.  Right about midnight, I heard a sound like a gunshot, and then lots of water rushing.  We got the house water turned off pretty quickly, but the PEX tubing has definitely burst inside the wall.  We have a plumber coming over tomorrow morning to fix it.

I blame Obama.

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Your Nightly Pet Post

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Sometimes, on a Sunday night after a long week, we just need some me time:

stevebutt

Lily says “HI!,” though:

lilysayshi

And screw you to all the people who hate the blankets my grandmother made. You get two dogs and then you will realize it isn’t about a fashion statement, it’s about the rotating pile of dog blankets in the washer and dryer. Some look better than others.

Regardless, fuck you anyway. My grandmother made them and I like them. So there. You have cooties. And whatever other childish bullshit I can think of right now.

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