Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

So many bastards, so little time.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

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

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Republicans in disarray!

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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

He really is that stupid.

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Archives for 2014

Pop, Pop Culture

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For those of you who haven’t heard of them, the Duggars are like the Christian Kardashians, with more kids but less bling and plastic surgery. They belong to a far-right religous whackjob movement called Quiverfull, where predominantly (exclusively?) white Christians try to out-reproduce the rest of us so they can ultimately implement their own version of Sharia law, except that the women wear long denim skirts and buttoned-up shirts instead of burkas to keep from inciting rape in the vulnerable male population. The Duggars’ show on TLC features submissive Michelle, who keeps pumping out babies (19 at last count) even though she and her husband Jim Bob have been told that the next one could bust open poor Michelle’s worn-out uterus.

Since the older members of Michelle and Jim Bob’s brood are past the age of consent, the Duggar franchise is expanding to the topic of marriage and the inevitable reproduction. The Quiverfull code for young couples is that they can’t hold hands until they’re engaged, and they can’t kiss (or fuck, obvs) until they’re married. Once they are married, in Michelle’s words, “Duggar women don’t get headaches. You always need to be available when he calls.” (That link is to a Dan Savage piece on the Duggars that is well worth reading.)

The oldest Duggar, Josh, is already married and the father of 3, and he’s holding down a job at the Family Research Council, an anti-gay hate group (naturally). Since Josh is obviously dull and predictable, it’s up to one of the younger Duggars to get some press attention, and 22 year-old Jessa has done so. Jessa got married recently, and the tabloids have picked up a post from what appears to be a parody blog which claims that Jessa and her new husband were so hot for each other that they retreated to a side room in the church and consummated the marriage. That seems a bit far-fetched, but I just wasted a few precious minutes at that blog and it definitely straddles the line between parody and plausibility. If you’re looking for a diversion from the depressing election news, you might enjoy it.

That said, whatever you might think of the Duggars, I’m sure all 7 of the voting-age kids and their parents went to the polls and voted this week, which is more than you can say for a hell of a lot of people who don’t think that a woman’s role is to submissively allow her uterus to function like a clown car.

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Woman Enough

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I’ve got CNN’s sucky app on my phone, and sometimes I’ll see a breaking news alert that disappears as soon as I pick the phone up, before I can read the whole thing. That happened a little while ago, and all I saw was “Loretta Lyn…” — so I assumed Loretta Lynn had died.

I had a sad about that because I like her. But as it turns out, Loretta Lynn is just fine; in fact, the octogenarian recently inked a multi-album deal, according to Rolling Stone.

The “Loretta Lyn…” breaking news message was actually about Loretta Lynch, the US Attorney in Brooklyn who President Obama is supposedly going to nominate to replace Eric Holder as US AG, according to CNN. From what little I could find online about her, Ms. Lynch sounds like a great choice.

So here’s a Loretta Lynn classic to celebrate the nomination of someone who almost shares a name with the First Lady of Country Music.

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The KKK’s New Diversity Plan?

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Well, this may be the most amusing diversity initiative we’ve seen in a while. Jon Abarr, a member of the Montana KKK is apparently recruiting for a more inclusive group:

“The KKK is for a strong America,” Abarr told the Tribune. “White supremacy is the old Klan. This is the new Klan.” Abarr says that his views on race have been evolving, and that he is prepared to walk away from his decades of work with white supremacist organizations in Montana and Wyoming. This new Klan, Abarr said, will dedicate itself to fighting the federal government and its attempts to establish a “new world order” under a single, worldwide government.

Response from the Klan, not surprisingly, has been skeptical:

“That man’s going against everything the bylaws of the constitution of the KKK say,”said Bradley Jenkins, imperial wizard of the United Klans of America to the Tribune‘s Kristen Cates. “He’s trying to hide behind the KKK to further his political career.”

If there is one group that prides itself on lack of diversity, it’s these guys. You don’t want to lose what’s special about you, do you, you special snowflakes?

Team Blackness also discussed college ladies practicing their rape faces in the mirror, ACLU’s mobile justice app, and the disappearing black middle class.

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Brace Yourselves- John McCain is Right

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For reasons I still do not understand, the Air Force has been trying to kill of the A-10 Warthog for, well, it seems like forever. Their latest bullshit excuse was that they needed to phase it out so that the maintenance personnel can be used to work on the F35. If that makes no sense whatsoever to you, good. You are a thinking human being. At any rate, the A-10 has an unlikely hero:

Sen. John McCain says the Air Force won’t be able to retire the A-10 Warthog ground attack jet now that he’s in line to become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain said Thursday the A-10 is the best close-air support aircraft ever made and there is “no doubt” Congress will prevent its retirement. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson has 80 of the twin-jet planes and trains A-10 pilots.

McCain says there’s no replacement for the jet’s close-air support mission and pointed to a June friendly fire in Afghanistan where a B-1 bomber mistakenly targeted American troops, killing five.

Even if he is just motivated to save the Arizona jobs, this is decidedly a good thing for soldiers on the ground.

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Choose three?

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Engineers often quip that ‘better, faster, cheaper’ is a choose two  trilemma.
Project managers quip that ‘on time, on budget and on-spec’ is also a choose two  trilemma.

Duke seems to be showing a better, safer and cheaper method of approaching some cancer care cases.

Duke University Medical System studied how providing pallative care to oncology patients changed care decisions and outcomes. The results were significant.

The study reviewed 2,353 inpatient encounters that included palliative care physicians, who focus on alleviating pain, side effects, and improving quality of life for patients and their families during serious illness. After the model was implemented at Duke in 2011, the analysis showed, there was a 23-percent decrease in the number of patients readmitted to the hospital within a week of discharge. Patient transfers to the intensive care unit also decreased by 15 percent, and patients were discharged from the hospital about eight hours sooner, on average. During the same time, hospice referrals increased by 17 percent.

From an insurance and cost point of view, anything that can be done to avoid intensive care unit admissions is probably a massive net cost savings. Readmissions for problems within a week of discharge is a massive red flag for quality of care concerns as well. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid is penalizing hospitals for readmissions thirty days after discharge, so a week is an indicator of a potential problem.

Duke is not using capital intensive super high technology to reduce costs. They are having highly trained people talk to patients, ask them what they want, how they are feeling, and then devising plans to make them feel better while achieving their goals. It is a shocking system change. Talking works.

There is significant evidence that when people feel that they have control and input over their medical decisions, they tend to use less intensive services as their goals are not always survival at any cost nor effort. Some may want that. Others may want to feel good for as long as possible and then be willing to accept death if they are in their homes with loved ones. Others will want something in between. The medical system seldom asks what end goals are, and suffering is prolonged while costs are accumulated.

Follow-up 1: A valued commenter passed along a fascinating review of pallative care for advanced oncology patients at non-Duke locations.  It was a good lunch time read.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

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gop candidate search non seq

(Non Sequitur via GoComics.com)

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Professor Krugman on the poor folks’ weapon, “The Uses of Ridicule”:

… Matt O’Brien has a lot of fun with Paul Singer, a billionaire inflation truther who is sure that the books are cooked because of what he can see with his own eyes:

… check out London, Manhattan, Aspen & East Hampton real estate prices, as well as high-end art prices, to see what the leading edge of hyperinflation could look like

Hyperinflation in the Hamptons; hard to beat that for comedy, although Matt adds value with the Billionaires Price Index.

But Singer will get very angry if you make fun of him; in fact, he denounces reporting that points out how wrong he and others have been as the “Krugmanization” of the media, a term I’ll adopt with pride. It’s yet another illustration of one of the remarkable revelations of recent years, the incredibly sensitive feelings of the superrich, who are so hurt at any suggestion that great wealth does not also go with great wisdom and great virtue that they threaten to take the economy with them and go home.

But we must make fun of such people — and not just because, I admit, it’s one of the pleasures of life… Making fun of billionaires who are clueless about economics, and lack the menschood to admit their mistakes, serves a couple of functions. It reminds the audience that being rich doesn’t mean that you know what you’re talking about; it also provides other rich people some incentive to think before they speak, and maybe even do some homework before preaching to the rest of us. I’m snarky for a reason…

Krugman also links to a classic Molly Ivins column, but you’ll have to click over for that.
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Apart from re-arming the snark cannons (catapults?), what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?

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