Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Stand up, dammit!

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

This fight is for everything.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

People are complicated. Love is not.

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Archives for 2014

Thursday Evening Open Thread

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Problem is, the .001% have 99.001% of the microphones. On the other hand, there’s a lot more of us…

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Chill & dank & rainy here, but at least we’re in a good takeout-delivery reception area. Apart from high-caloric consolation, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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La Lucha Continua…With A Sideways Reason To Keep Fighting From The (A) Good Doctor

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Serendipity works sometimes.  My friend David Dobbs publishes a near-daily newsletter of three or four fascinating essays or articles to read.  (You can sign up here.) Today he took me to a writer I’ve only occasionally glanced at in the past, Sadie Stein, (may have to change that)  for a piece that comes to a climax with a vision of a young, fictionalized Joyce Carol Oates, TA-ing her first class.  Trust me; it’s worth a look. (It’s over at the Paris Observer, itself a venue I chance upon more than seek out — might want to change that too.)

Contemplating the various joys of full-body immersion in student fiction was fun, enough so that I clicked through to Stein’s archive, and there, just below the bon-bon of a post to which David had directed me, I came upon her entry for Tuesday.  Mostly (though not entirely) she hands the microphone over to William Carlos Williams, and a poem, which, thus acknowledged, I herewith steal:

Election Day

Warm sun, quiet air

an old man sits

in the doorway of
a broken house–

boards for windows
plaster falling

from between the stones
and strokes the head

of a spotted dog

George_Wesley_Bellows_-_Man_and_Dog_(1905)

The dog and the man deserve better.  The struggle continues. It will not end easily, as Tuesday’s results remind us.  But to mix references and speakers of very different histories, the arc of the moral universe is long.  But that we can conceive of the idea of justice allows us to bend that arc towards the just end.  (And yes, I’m feeling my Anselm just a bit today.)

Image:  George Wesley Bellows, Man and Dog, 1905.

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Congress Shall Have the Power…

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During yesterday’s post-shellacking presser, President Obama mentioned that he would seek Congressional authorization for the ongoing campaign against ISIS instead of continuing to coast on the fumes of the post-9/11 AUMF:

“The world needs to know we are united behind this effort and that the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he would begin a dialogue with congressional leaders when they come to the White House on Friday.

Better late than never. The timing is interesting, though. It’s not likely that forcing the Repubs to take a position on this would have affected the midterms, but I don’t understand why it made sense to let them have their cake and eat it too, with McCain and Co. screeching for more bombing and arming of elusive “moderates” on the one hand and the GOP peanut gallery criticizing the administration’s strategy and results on the other.

Well, in any case, the legislative branch is supposed to weigh in on this kind of thing — it’s right there in their pocket Constitutions, I think — and now they’ll have their chance. It’s not only the right thing to do, it might also result in a scrap between the GOP’s neo-con and libertarian factions. I’ll be rooting for injuries in that contest.

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Why Can’t Artie Lange Enjoy A Good ‘Ole Slave Rape Fantasy?

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Do you enjoy your comedy with misogyny and racism? Then perhaps Artie Lange is for you. The comic, a frequent guest on The Howard Stern Show, tweeted this sexual scenario using ESPN’s First Take moderator Cari Champion, who is black:

“Here’s the scenario I’m using to jerk off to chick on First Take I’m T. Jefferson & she’s my slave. She beats the shit out of me & runs free,” he wrote, later adding, “Then I cum & she’s free! Happiest ending ever!”

Because it’s never too soon for slavery sex fantasies, are we right? Lange has since been banned from ESPN and dropped from @midnight. Lange apologized for the tweets, sort of. He went the route of “PC groups are ruining comedy, but I’m sorry if I offended Cari Champion.”

Team Blackness also discussed a Florida man who was jailed for feeding the homeless, Harvard University’s anal sex class, and a look at some of our newly elected Republican officials.

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The Obama PPACA agreement zone

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Here is the transcript from President Obama’s press conference yesterday. I want to highlight the healthcare related segments:

Following the elections, congressional Republicans are pushing once again for major reforms to your health care act.

OBAMA: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: In the past, you’ve said you hope some good ideas, that you don’t want to undermine the bill. Can you tell us what specific ideas you’re ruling out?
….
On health care, there are certainly some lines I’m going to draw. Repeal of the law, I won’t sign. Efforts that would take away health care from the 10 million people who now have it and the millions more who are eligible to get it, we’re not going to support. In some cases, there may be recommendations that Republicans have for changes that would undermine the structure of the law, and you know, I’ll be very honest with them about that and say “look, the law doesn’t work if you pull out that piece or that piece…..”

QUESTION: (inaudible) the individual mandate one of those lines that came across?

OBAMA: Yeah, the individual mandate is a line I came across because the concept, borrowed from Massachusetts, from a law instituted by a former opponent of mine, Mitt Romney, understood that if you’re providing health insurance to people through the private marketplace, then you’ve got to make sure that people can’t game the system and just wait until they get sick before they go try to buy health insurance. You can’t ensure that people with preexisting conditions can get health insurance unless you also say, while you’re healthy, before you need it, you’ve got to — you’ve got to get health insurance…..

So the core aspects of the law are off the table. This will produce a shutdown

QUESTION: Keystone XL pipeline, they will send you legislation on that. They will ask you to repeal the medical device tax as a part of a funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act….

Obama:… — OK — medical device tax — you know, I’ve already answered the question. We are going to take a look at whatever ideas — let me take a look comprehensively at the ideas that they present. Let’s give them time to — to tell me. I’d rather hear it from them than from you

The agreement zone that Obama is sketching out is one that does not significantly alter the three legged stool of private market near universal health insurance. Those three legs are community ratings, subsidies and participation enforcement mechanism. He is laying down a hard marker on the individual mandate but I think the Democratic policy wonks who we know he listens to would be willing to trade an individual mandate for other participation enforcement mechanisms like the Medicare Late Enrollment Penalty scheme or very narrow open enrollment windows and much tighter qualifying event triggers as long as they do the same thing. Those are the three non-negoatiable items from his point of view, and since he has both a veto pen and at least a third of one chamber, those are enforcable views.

Notably he does not care too much about the medical device tax. That is a trading chip with low value. It is enough to cover the big blind.

Also of note is no mention of the employer mandate. The Urban Institute argues that getting rid of the mandate does also nothing to change coverage while screwing some workers and adding administrative burden and perverse incentives to employers:

Our analyses as well as that of others find that eliminating the employer mandate will not reduce insurance coverage significantly, contrary to its supporters’ expectations. Eliminating it will remove labor market distortions that have troubled employer groups and which would harm some workers. However, new revenue sources will be required to replace that anticipated to be raised by the employer mandate.

The National Federation of Independent Business and other conservative groups also want to get rid of the employer mandate. The question that could provoke significant conflict would be whether and how to replace the lost revenue. If there is no replacement, this is an easy policy and political win for everyone. The Republicans get a pound of flesh, their supporters are happy, while Democrats get a ‘mend don’t end’ moment as well as better coverage for low wage employees on the Exchange.

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