Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The National Guard is not Batman.

Books are my comfort food!

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

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

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Everybody saw this coming.

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

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

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

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

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

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

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

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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Fox News Says Young Women Shouldn’t Vote Because They’re All On Tinder

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All right, Fox News, thanks for yet another gem showing how out of touch conservatives  are. Don’t believe me? Watch this delightful clip from host Kimberly Guilfoyle:

That’s right. All young women are too stupid and lacking in life experience to be on juries. And they’re all on Tinder. Also, black people are all criminals. And white men are just the best. Because every group is a monolith!

Team Blackness also discussed more on Gamergate, additional updates on the Mike Brown case in Ferguson, and Indiana’s brilliant plan to cut tens of thousands off of food stamps.

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Unclear on the Concept

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Remember, even though it sounds like Democrats are going to get shellacked in 2014 (but you can stop it- go vote!), there is always the 2016 Republican primary to look forward to for all the lulz. Let’s see who can come up with the most mangled metaphor/saying. That should entertain us for a while before I find someone else to call an asshole.

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Forbes wants death panels for the poor

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Now that I’ve gotten your attention, it is actually a Forbes writer who wants to block grant Medicaid and allow states to conduct explicit cost effectiveness decisions for what treatments Medicaid will fund. Those decisions will lead to numerous early deaths.

an advisory board recommended that Arkansas’s Medicaid program cover Kalydeco, a cystic fibrosis drug whose…net cost to the state Medicaid program will only be $239,000 per patient year….the state is being sued on grounds that its policy violates a federal statute requiring state Medicaid programs to pay for all medically necessary treatments. This case illustrates some deep flaws in current Medicaid policy….

The WHO considers a medical intervention to be “not cost-effective” if it costs more than three times a nation’s per capita GDP per year of life saved. With U.S. GDP per capita currently at $51,749, it is pretty obvious that $239,000 lies pretty far outside the bounds of what WHO would deem cost-effective. If the WHO criteria are viewed as legitimate enough for entire nations to decide what tax-financed national health programs should cover, why should it be illegitimate for state Medicaid programs to adopt similar thresholds?

I’ve written about Kalydeco before as it is an excellent case study of specialty drug pricing and policy implications.  Compared to the next best alternative, it is an amazing treatment in both prolonging life and dramatically improving the quality of life.  It is also on patent and will be a quarter million dollar a year drug for life.  Until it is off patent, treating a CF patient from birth to eighteen is a five million dollar tab.  Most insurers will pick up the cost and then aggressively do everything possible to get that patient to be someone else’s problem next year.  Medicaid entities are the payers of last resort and will pay as well.

We could have a discussion about the legitimacy of cost effectiveness decisions if this country did not have a massive fact free freak out stoked by Connover and his ideological ilk about Medicare paying for a doctor to discuss end of life treatment possibilities with patients.  A Republican proposal inserted into PPACA’s draft stages to allow people to make more fully informed decisions while not asking experts to donate their time became death panels.  PPACA established research centers that were forbidden from applying long division on comparative effectiveness research to determine cost effectiveness.  All of one political party opposed cost effectiveness decision making or even knowledge creation the last time this was up for debate, and a significant chunk of the other party was either squeamish or fearing for their political lives about introducing a hard no based on cost or effectiveness into the system.

Now we could have this type of discussion if there are other no’s introduced into the system.  If Medicare/Mediciad was allowed to negoatiate, if Medicare/Medicaid was allowed to tell a provider that their drug was to be off the formularies entirely at a price point, if the specialty drugs could be reduced in price to a point where there is no longer massive rentier profits.  Now if we could have those policies in place where the cost effectiveness decision was based on at least the average cost of a treatment and not the rentier/monopolostic profits of a treatment, then that is a disucssion that could be worth having.   Until then, cost effectiveness decisions for extreme outlier cases basically means a death sentence.

Cystic Fibrosis is a quarter to half a million dollar a year diagnosis.  Hemophilia is a multi-million dollar a year diagnosis.  Does Chris Connover want to say “tough luck, you lost the genetic lottery, go die quietly in the corner…” to a hemophiliac and his family?  I will post the bail money after he is punched in the face if I am allowed to watch the conversation.

 

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Late Night Open Thread: Team SJW

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A little follow-up to the epic rant TomL wrote about earlier. Of course, Chris Kluwe looks like what the #GamerGaters believe to be a “real” gamer, i.e., a young white male. Kat Stoeffel, at NYMag‘s ladyblog The Cut, explains why “It’s Not Censorship to Ignore You“:

…There’s something obviously illogical about free-speech panic among white Americans in 2014. Thanks to online publishing and social media, the barrier to entry for free public speech is lower than ever. What I suspect truly bothers free-speech reactionaries is that the same, democratized new media that allows them to publish free-speech rants has opened public discourse up to a lot of people they’re not used to hearing from — women, people of color, and those Gamergate calls “social justice warriors,” in particular. Some of the people who historically controlled the media uncontested might not like what these people have to say, but these newcomers are nonetheless very popular. And when a “social justice warrior” chooses to wield the “block” button against a troll, it’s not his freedom of speech that’s in danger, it’s his entitlement to be heard…

I can only imagine the embarrassment it would cause lawyers for Edward Snowden, Pussy Riot, and Ai Weiwei to see the First Amendment taken up by rando amateurs rationalizing their misogyny. But suppressing free speech is also an ironic charge for feminists to encounter. For them, free speech isn’t a privilege to be defended to its pathetic death. It’s a risk they’re willing to take at the cost of critical invective (much of which they engage) and violent threats (which they shouldn’t have to engage). Feminists take the risk of speaking up in order to call attention to problems that would otherwise go unaddressed, like rape and sexual harassment and discrimination. These problems are so real, grave, and empirically widespread they force women to overcome their own long-standing self-censorship. “Maybe there’s nothing scarier to white dudes than censorship,” a friend recently mused, “because they face so few actual problems.”

Asking men to be quiet long enough to listen to women still feels like a tall order. Perhaps we could start by agreeing that it’s not censorship for women to say, “That blog post about your ex was vile.” Or, “Your video game sucks.” And, especially, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Many, many years ago, brilliant cartoonist Jules Feiffer had one of his skittish male characters explain to his about-to-be-ex, “Men don’t hate women! Men need women! Men hate needing!” Whenever I see (mostly at second hand) a self-described MRA [men’s rights activist] ranting about SJWs [social justice warriors, aka, people — especially women — by whom the MRA feels threatened] I think of that character.

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Ebola in the Big Apple

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First things first. I now have a real personal problem in that every time I hear or read the word Ebola I mentally hear the old Ricola commercials.

I’m sure I first heard it on TDS or Colbert or John Oliver, but I can’t remember. Can’t remember the source of that joke about stopping the flights to Texas, either, so I’m just straight up lifting shit without attribution all over the place. Dork thug life, I’m living it.

Second, this:

Other than when Cuomo opens his yap, every single person I have seen on the tube talking about this has been calm, in control, delivered facts in a reassuring way that will tamp down the hysterics from everyone but the usual suspects (Trump, etc.), and just on top of things. I like that. I wish the first case had flown into NYC instead of Dallas and I would not have had my “Ebola hysteria” hysteria (freaking out over a fear of people freaking out and reacting to one case of Ebola). By the way, it drives me insane when they call this an Ebola outbreak. It’s an Ebola case.

Finally, I know he is a hero because of the work he does with Doctors Without Borders and has more guts than I do going to far off places and dealing with really awful stuff, and bless him for that, but seriously, why?

cmonman

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus Thursday, setting off a search for anyone who might have come into contact with him.

The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center and placed in isolation at the same time as investigators sought to retrace every step he had taken over the past several days.

At least three people he had contact with in recent days have been placed in isolation. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which dispatched a team to New York, is conducting its own test to confirm the positive test on Thursday, which was performed by a city lab.

While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually, and had been preparing for this moment for months, the first case highlighted the challenges involved in containing the virus, especially in a crowded metropolis. Dr. Spencer, 33, had traveled on the A and L subway lines Wednesday night, visited a bowling alley in Williamsburg, and then took a taxi back to Manhattan.

***

Speaking at the news conference, city officials said that while they were still investigating, they did not believe Dr. Spencer was symptomatic while he traveled around the city on Wednesday and therefore had not posed a risk to the public.

“He did not have a stage of disease that creates a risk of contagiousness on the subway,” Dr. Mary Bassett, the city health commissioner, said. “We consider it extremely unlikely, the probability being close to nil, that there will be any problem related to his taking the subway system.”

Bowling, dude?

At any rate, granted NYC has more time to prepare for realistic Ebola cases, but if this doesn’t show the difference between health care and preparedness and professionalism in red states vs. blue states, you just aren’t paying attention.

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Early Voting

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I went and voted early yesterday morning after stopping by the Democratic HQ and finding it to be closed yet again. I wish I could explain how bad the GOTV was here for Democrats, but I’m pretty sure you will have a firm idea of how bad it is on election day. It’s not the guy who is running the HQ as he is doing everything he can, it’s just resources are very limited and he has the office in Wheeling and Wellsburg that he is staffing. I finally got a call from them to do some phone banking, but he wants me to do it on Saturday and I couldn’t come up with an excuse quick enough that wasn’t “Umm, football,” so he is going to call me tomorrow and I will try to arrange a time to do some phone banking next week. Meanwhile, we do have money for nonsense like this:

I have no idea how much that ad buy cost, but every single penny would have been better spent paying people to do GOTV and man offices. It doesn’t seem so long ago that there was this community organizer type who managed to get that done in West Virginia despite knowing he stood no chance to win. Currently, it appears that the Democrats in WV are trying to out pro-life and out pro-NRA each other while scratching Big Coal’s itchy parts.

And that is what it is like being a Democrat in WV- you start every election cycle motivated and then the candidates you like lose the primary or the person you will only vote for because they are a Democrat runs unopposed. Then the general election cycle starts, and you notice that the Democrats are starting to sound like Republicans. Not like Bob Dole era Republicans, but slightly to the left of Mitch McConnell Republicans. Fortunately, though, that is balanced by crazy insane people on the right who make them look liberal by comparison. My representative, David McKinley, who was what I thought passed for a reasonable Republican is now guzzling the kool-aid and proudly running campaign commercials when he touts his 50 votes against Obamacare as a reason to vote for him.

There used to be a good alternative from Republican and Republican lite called the Mountain party, and they fielded a candidate named Jesse Johnson for Governor several times who I actually voted for in 2008 when Manchin was a lock for re-election. He wasn’t perfect, but he was ok on a good range of issues. Sadly, the Mountain Party seems to be in a rebuilding phase (although they never really built anything), so you can’t even field a good protest vote.

Regardless, I like to vote early because then it gives the Democratic candidates I intend to support several fewer weeks to piss me off and become more unmotivated to pull the lever than I already am. No matter how stupid Tennant’s future ads are or how insulting they are to the intelligence of her Democratic base, I’ve already voted for her, so what’s the point in getting upset? it’s sad, but true.

I voted mainly for Democrats when I could, and I voted for two of the three ballot measures. The first was for bond for the Brooke County educational system and the second was for a levy to fund the animal shelter in Brooke County, which is woefully underfunded and just depressing. We got rid of the game warden that euthanasia was the cure to everything and there is a committed group of people working to make things better, including my friend Harry (the vet with the farm I talk about all the time), so the money will be well spent and is a worthy use of taxpayer money in my mind.

The third ballot measure was a revision to the state’s constitution that would alter the nature of tax exemption status for certain charitable organizations:

Nonprofit Youth Organization Tax Exemption Support Amendment

“To amend the State Constitution to exempt from property tax certain properties in this state owned by nonprofit youth organizations and built at cost of at least $100 million whether or not the property is used for the nonprofit youth organization’s charitable or nonprofit purpose to help raise funds for the benefit of the nonprofit youth organization. If approved, the Legislature would be required to enact laws that would protect local and regional businesses from unfair competition and unreasonable loss of revenue caused by the nonprofit organization use of the tax exemption.”

Voting “FOR” means you are in favor of the amendment and would allow the nonprofit youth organization to use the property for other purposes without losing its currently available charitable use property tax exemption. Before taking effect, the Legislature would have to pass laws that define the types of use of the property and that protect non-tax-exempt businesses from unfair competition.

Voting “AGAINST” means that you are against the amendment and would not allow for the property tax exemption if the property is used for non-charitable purposes.

The genesis of this ballot measure involves an 11,000 acre plot of land owned by the Boy Scouts that is used for various Boy Scout activities- retreats, knot tying, gay-shaming, etc. I’m just guessing- I have no idea what Boy Scouts do, but I do know that they are funded by the Catholic and Mormon churches and require an oath with a pledge to God and they have made clear they do not accept agnostics and atheists. So that, on top of their gay bashing, historical racism, and the fact that they were founded by a fascist who was a fan of Mussolini, they could be setting themselves on fire for all I care, just so long as they don’t hurt anyone outside their group or do permanent damage to the environment. The BSA just seems so outdated in a modern society- they’d be better off teaching the kids how to eat correctly and to cook, or how to balance a checkbook and to learn how to type, how to respect women, how to shop on a budget or make minor repairs to clothing, how to tie a tie, the basics of computers, how to garden, learning a foreign language, etc. Those are applicable life skills these days, not tying knots or starting a fire with a flint or making a lean to. Other than the fever dreams of Glenn Beck’s advertisers and Alex Jones, those are really no longer necessary skills for young men to have. For all I know, they do do some of those things.

The Boy Scouts want to rent/lease the land for profit for non-charitable uses, but as they are a charity, are currently not allowed to do so. Basically, they want to make money and retain their tax free status. I have a problem with that, because they have tax free status for a reason, and that reason is that they are ostensibly a non-profit charitable organization. Apparently, though, there is a new scouting badge called “Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too,” because this has left them undeterred and they have gathered the support of almost everyone in the legislature. That in and of itself sends up a red flag, because in my experience is that unless something is completely innocuous (let’s make today Coonskin Cap day or let’s issue a statement that child rape is bad), when everyone in the legislature is in favor of something, it’s most likely a really shitty idea.

The kicker, though, is that granting them this exemption not only unfairly lets the scouts double dip, but also hurts legitimate local businesses who may be able to provide the same services, but did not have the benefit of creating their business in a tax-free environment. That seems extremely unfair even though the measure states that lawmakers will have to do something about it (“Before taking effect, the Legislature would have to pass laws that define the types of use of the property and that protect non-tax-exempt businesses from unfair competition.”). As I have watched the WV legislature in action, I have no faith that this would happen, and if something did pass, I’m sure the usual corporate whores (COAL COUGH COUGH) and other monied interest will manage to get a little something, too. So basically, it’s this:

Boy Scouts: We’re a charity, but we’d like to make some money and have it not be taxed.

People with common sense: So then you wouldn’t really be a charity, then, would you. You’d be a for profit business in the business of leasing land and making money.

Boy Scouts: No, we’d still be a charity, we’d just like to make some money and not have it taxed.

People with common sense: So then you wouldn’t *REALLY* be a charity in this capacity, then.

Boy Scouts: No, we’d still be a charity.

People with common sense: Oh piss off you morons.

Even worse, in order to do that, we’d have to modify the state constitution, probably establish some way to regulate this, all while counting on the legislature to take care of the businesses who would get hosed for… being businesses that pay taxes, and then adding layers of legal code that would almost certainly include more corporate giveaways. So, for all those reason, I voted no on it.

Although in total honesty, all of this is post hoc justification for my decision to vote against it, because the moment I saw the measure and looked into it my reaction was “Oh, fuck the Boy Scouts.” So there’s that.

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Today’s Worst Person In The World

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Via memeorandum, this letter to Dear Prudence:

Dear Prudence,

I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?

—Halloween for the 99 Percent

You gotta love the “are clearly not from this neighborhood” bit. Wonder how she knows that?

At any rate, you sociopath, the reason you feel terrible is because you are a terrible person. But don’t worry, you just momentarily had a bit of self-awareness, and I’m sure that will soon pass. The burden of being aware that you are a horrible person will go back to the rest of us who have to deal with you as you obliviously run red lights in your Mercedes coupe and do other obnoxious things.

Around here, lots of kids come from all over the area to trick or treat. This is the only real town around in between Wellsburg and Wheeling, so lots of kids who live in less pleasant areas and areas where you just can’t trick or treat safely (farms, really rural areas, etc.) come here on our official Halloween celebration. We have street lights and sidewalks and the town cop drives around and the Volunteer Fire Department places trucks with their lights on to assist with the safety. The church hosts a party in the basement and there is a costume judging contest and the kids win awards for their costumes and bob for apples and the like. My fraternity boys and other fraternity boys are stationed on corners to make sure the kids who are unattended by adults are safe, and lots of parents walk with their kids from house to house and stand by the curb as the kids ring the doorbell. My favorite part is always when they meet the dogs and Tunch/Steve, and inevitably dozens of them remark how big the cat is (something that has not changed whether it be Tunch or Steve) and there are always two or three sweet little girls who want to pet Lily, and she just sits there daintily and lets the kids clumsily pet them and pull on her ears or tail by mistake.

brothersathalloween

All in all, it’s a good thing. It’s a community thing. It’s a nice diversion for both kids and adults. And I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you all that I give them lots of candy (the good shit- chocolate bars and Reese cups and the stuff they want, not apples or popcorn balls or other stuff) because I want to be one of the “good candy” houses so they keep coming back. Lots of retirees who make in a year what this bitch above probably makes in a week spend their meager savings to hand out candy because, well, that’s what you do on Halloween.

No one worries about where the kids are from or whether or not you’re giving candy to the poors or whether it’s a charity you didn’t sign up for, because THEY ARE FUCKING KIDS.

You suck as a person. You may have made it financially, but you have failed in every other aspect of life. If you were a guy, I’d kick you in the junk, but I probably don’t need to. Your pathetic existence is probably miserable enough. I’ll probably never think about you again, but you are trapped with yourself until death. Sorry about that.

Not really. Asshole.

FWIW, Prudence’s response was much more measured.

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