Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

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

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2014

Archives for 2014

About last night…

by | 42 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

What does last night mean for PPACA?

These are initial, pre-coffee thoughts and not all of the data is in.  I’m also venturing away from technical comments and towards general political punditry which is not my strength, so please apply an appropriate discount to everything.

  • Medicaid expansion is dead for at least the next two years.  Utah and Wyoming will probably get waivers and that will be it. (90% confidence)

Not expanding Medicaid inflicted absolutely no cost on the veto players in any state that I can see.  Larger Teabagging majorities are opposed to Medicaid expansion for Those People.  The invisible portion of the Republican primary process is coming to an end sometime in the next hour or two, so no one who thinks they have a shot in 2016 can thread a needle for expansion.

  • Arkansas may stop the private option expansion (60% confidence)

From my understanding, Arkansas needs 75% reauthorization and the governor’s signature every year for the private option.  I don’t think either condition is in place for next year.  This will destroy the financial stability of hundreds of thousands of people AND destroy the financial base of the Arkansas rural hospital system as those hospitals were replacing charity care and uncompensated care DSH payments with Exchange payments.

  • At least 1 week of government shutdown will happen by next October (85% confidence)
  • Employer mandate will go down (80% confidence) as well as medical device tax (97% confidence)

From a policy point of view, the Employer mandate is probably the least important pound of flesh for Republicans to claim.  It does not do much for coverage, and it produces bad business level incentives as well as locking people into really crappy insurance that their job provides when they would be better off on the Exchange.  This is a probably a good piece of policy.  The Medical device tax has bipartisan opposition because medical device makers sit in too many districts and are raising a big stink.  The only question is whether the revenue losses are offset.  I would hope that as part of the negoatitations, the rest of PPACA is Halbig proofed.  If it is, then Don Taylor would be right in that there is a window to talk health policy on both sides of the aisle.  I don’t think that will be the case.

  • PPACA will work in states where the states want it to work.  It will be a clusterfuck in Republican base states.
  • At least one Republican base state will start preparing Wyden Waivers for 1/1/17 which makes everything on Exchange an HSA style system with no EHBs.  (60% confidence)
  • Risk adjustments are at risk as they need appropriations

PPACA has three risk transfer mechanisms. Reinsurance and Risk Corridors are temporary stabilizers, and risk adjustment is a permanent program. The goal is to help insurers figure out what a stable market risk pool looks like by transferring money from low risk/healthier than average plans to high risk/high disease burden plans. The problem is that the way PPACA is written, money can come into the Federal government, and it can go out for 2014 payments, but it is questionable if it can go out in 2015 and 2016 without an appropriation.
 

  • My hangover will subside by late afternoon (98% confidence, 100% hope)

About last night…Post + Comments (42)

Let’s Not Forget the Most Important Thing

by | 18 Comments

This post is in: 

Andrew Cuomo is safe: safe as houses, blue-chip stocks, or a bet on a warm day in July. In much the same way as swallows return to Capistrano, or searchers return to Google, Mario’s Kid bucked the tide last night and returned to his seat as governor. He did so by running the least inspiring, most self-centered campaign in modern memory. After greasing up the Working Families Party with a set of well-polished lies, New York’s foremost navel-gazer and non-contender for the Presidency spent a jillion dollars in advertising while sitting at home gagging on whatever canned delight Sandra Lee put on the table. By which I mean, he did fuck-all for the down ticket, though the Times puts it more gently:

But after winning his primary in September, Mr. Cuomo proved to be a less-than-energetic campaigner for Senate Democrats, sparing in his endorsements and rarely stumping for embattled incumbents or hopefuls. And on Tuesday, it seemed likely that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party would lay heavy blame at the feet of the governor, who was easily re-elected to a second term.

Yes, Andrew is safe, and the New York State Senate is safely in Republican hands, and all is well in the money party. Gazing in my crystal ball, I see a wedding to Ms. Lee, a less-than-energetic Presidential run, a Cabinet seat in the Clinton Administration and, finally, retirement after a few years as a board member at Goldman-Sachs. Unless Andrew chokes on a Corn Nut in one of Sandra’s Kwanzaa Cakes, he will live a long, safe life untroubled by the messy business of campaigning for anyone but himself. He is the kind of Democrat that brings us election nights like last night, and there are far too many of his kind in the party.

Let’s Not Forget the Most Important ThingPost + Comments (18)

Let the Post-Mortems Begin

by | 138 Comments

This post is in: 

There’s going to be a long, sad, and ugly discussion about this election, but I think we all have known and will know the essential problem: Democrats do not turn out in off-year elections. Here’s one example from my neck of the woods. In the NY-25 race, Democrat Louise Slaughter is fighting for her political life in what should have been a gimme race. At this moment, Louise is up 605 votes of the 190,697 votes cast, with 2,500 absentee ballots left to count. In 2012, 322,760 people voted — 120K more voters than in 2014. There was one interesting down-ticket race, which was for State Senate. In that race, the Republican won by 15K votes with a total of 89K votes cast. In 2012, the Democrat won a close race where 134K votes were cast.

I’d consider this election a worst-case for my area. There were no interesting national elections to turn out Democrats, but Republicans were energized to win back that State Senate seat. So perhaps in a more normal year only 1/3 fewer voters would turn out instead of the 37% fewer this cycle. Still, I’m looking at a House race where in 2012 the Democrat beat a well-financed, popular Republican by 55-45, and she’s barely winning against a no-money nobody today. So unless your Democrat wins 60-40 in a presidential year, don’t expect their off-year race to be a no-brainer.

Let the Post-Mortems BeginPost + Comments (138)

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

by | 49 Comments

This post is in: , ,

… The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Jamelle Bouie, at Slate, “Michelle Nunn lost her Senate bid. But no one in Georgia sees it as an ending“:

Ayisha Cissé was one of the few people left after Michelle Nunn conceded Georgia’s U.S. Senate race to her Republican opponent, David Perdue, thanked her supporters, and left the hotel ballroom that—for most of the night—was host to a large celebration of the campaign.

Cissé was disappointed with the results, but she was also hopeful for what might come next. “This was historic,” she said. “When you’re making inroads, you’re walking a middle road. Michelle inspired a lot of people, especially in a state primed to reject someone of her gender and her values.”

This sentiment was typical of the people who witnessed Nunn’s final address, which might have had something to do with the nature of Nunn’s remarks. Nunn had started her remarks with a concession to Perdue, but she didn’t quite give a concession speech. Instead, she claimed a partial victory. “We have laid the groundwork for the future,” she said. “We have shown the people of Georgia what a two-party state looks like.”…

… Over the course of a year, the Nunn campaign and its allies successfully capitalized on Georgia’s rapid demographic change, registering tens of thousands of new voters and bringing them to the polls. In the process, they turned a lean GOP election into a genuine tossup, forcing a real effort from the state and national Republican parties. Indeed, when all the votes are tallied, Nunn will have outperformed Democratic candidates in the 2004 and 2010 Senate races, and will have likely matched President Obama’s performance in 2012. And while we can’t quite say Democrats will have the advantage in 2016—though, with a more diverse electorate and the higher mobilization of a presidential race, it’s possible—we can easily predict another competitive election…

“Redistricting is on the horizon,” says Rep. Stacey Abrams, the Georgia House minority leader and head of the New Georgia Project, which made news as an unprecedented registration effort aimed at Georgia’s minority communities, but is focused on the long term. Specifically, Abrams—and the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church—see Georgia’s rapid demographic change as a chance to construct a genuinely interracial political culture…

***********
Apart from vowing that we will fight again, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Wednesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (49)

A Diversion

by | 323 Comments

This post is in: 

I need a diversion, so I am about to play some X3 Albion Prelude, which someone on twitter recommended. BTW- I have a vent server that can handle up to 15 people, so if you all are ever gaming or want to game and want to chat while we kill things, send me an email.

At any rate, I went to Kroger today in Steubenville (right behind the rape High School for those of you who were following that story), and when I walked in there were no carts. No big deal, I went outside and brought a couple in. There were a bunch of really old olds there just sort of milling around because there were no carts with the typical “SOMETHING HAS CHANGED AND I AM CONFUSED WHERE ARE THE CARTS GET OFF MY GRASS” look A couple of them grabbed the carts, but there were still a few without carts. I walked in, and the manager was about 20 feet in by the produce (I was having a raspberry craving today for some reason), and I told said “Excuse me, there are no carts in the front and a lot of elderly people looking for them.”

The manager then started in with a full-throated explanation- “People keep stealing them and we ave ordered a hundred more and I have a bunch of people outside…” and he just kept going and going and following me as I walked away, paying no attention to my nonverbals, and followed me, still talking, offering more explanations and excuses, until finally I just snapped and looked at him and said “I’m sorry if I mistakenly gave you the impression that I wanted to have a discussion about this, but I just wanted to tell you that you are out of carts.”

And then I walked away. I was in a shitty me because A.) I am me and B.) I hate Steubenville and C.) the whole football worship in front of the Steubenville Big Rape building pissed me off and D.) Office Max, the whole reason I was in that shithole city, only had about five desk chairs to choose from, but then I started to feel guilty that I may have been rude. I’m not a really good judge at whether or not I am being a dick so I just sort of default assume I am, and I have little to no internal monologue before things seem to come out of my big fat mouth, but my mom says it was not rude. I wasn’t snotty while I said it, just matter of fact and I said “I’m sorry” to start.

What do you think? Was I a dick?

And seriously. Rick Scott.

A DiversionPost + Comments (323)

Non-politics thread

by | 151 Comments

This post is in: ,

Let’s do something fun in this thread. Top five cover songs of all time. Top five 70s movies of all time.

I’ll do

1. For The Good Times (Al Green)
2. Cracklin’ Rosie (Shane Macgowan and the Popes)
3. Got To Get A Message to You (Percy Sledge)
4. Love In Vain (Rolling Stones)
5. Top Of The World (Shonen Knife)

and

1. Chinatown
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3. Annie Hall
4. The Converation
5. The Godfather

Non-politics threadPost + Comments (151)