Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Come on, man.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

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

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

“Look, it’s not against the rules anywhere, but a black woman with power was dating and there has to be something wrong with that.”

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Archives for June 2015

Tears, get ’em while they’re warm

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Maybe this one from the AFA makes sense in context.

For a different kind of tears, here is the Stonewall Inn on Pride Week.

Photo credit MICHAEL LUONGO
Photo credit MICHAEL LUONGO

***Update***

For those of you who were worried, as far as I can tell the greatest threat to my marriage is still whether ON the laundry basket counts as IN the laundry basket. It does, right?

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SCOTUSpalooza Update

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Here we go.

SCOTUS, 5-4, Kennedy with the decision, 14th Amendment holds there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.  Dissents from all four conservatives, including Chief Justice Roberts. (and as Cervantes reminds me, the question of states having to recognize same-sex marriages was also answered in the affirmative hell yes category.)

Kennedy: “States have contributed to the fundamental character of marriage by placing it at the center of many facets of the legal and social order.  There is no difference between same- and opposite-sex couples with respect to this principle, yet same-sex couples are denied the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage and are consigned to an instability many opposite-sex couples would find intolerable.  It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the Nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage.”

Kevin Russell at SCOTUSBlog:  “The majority bases its conclusion that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right on “four principles and traditions”: (1) right to person choice in marriage is “inherent in the concept of individual autonomy”; (2) “two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals”; (3) marriage safeguards children and families; (4) marriage is a keystone to our social order.”

Oh, and 8-1 decision, Scalia writing, that the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act is unconstitutional (that “three strikes” case).  That’s rather big too, but, hey.

That leaves lethal injection, the EPA ruling, and the Arizona redistricting ruling for Monday, still three major cases.  But we’ll go with that Kennedy decision for now.

Have a nice day.

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What’s next

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Now that King v. Burwell was decided as it should also have been decided, with rejection and Muntzian laughter, what’s next for healthcare reform.

Legal

There are two sets of legal challenges still out there that could have significant impact on PPACA.  The first is a challenge against the funding of the Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies.  The law authorized the money to be paid, but it was fuzzy if these funds were automatic funding (like Social Security) or discretionary funding.  The Obama administration has been paying these funds as if they were automatically funded.  To me, this sounds like a political dispute that the courts won’t want to touch.

The second set of legal challenges are the far more common set of challenges.  “What does that actually mean…”  For instance the law requires all insurance plans to offer reasonable access to all needed providers.  Is a single PCP with an open panel 22 miles away from what someone lives, reasonable access?  Is the CMS guidance sufficient to fulfill the law?  I have no idea, let’s go to court.

Medicaid Expansion

Forty percent of the states still have not expanded Medicaid.

Costs
From a system perspective, Obamacare is part of the policy/economic mix that broke the second derivative of cost increases. This is a massive win at the federal fiscal level. However, part of the win is probably the proliferation of high deductible health plans which make people cut back from needed care. And so far, our pricing per unit of service is still way too high. As commennter Keith G notes:

Now that Obamacare has what seems to be an extended shelf life, we can turn our attention to the next health care battle. Life-saving pharmaceuticals are still priced too god damn high for Americans. This needs to stop. While I can afford the Obama care premiums every month, what I can not afford are the $1000 per prescription (x3 drugs) cost of my monthly stay alive drug supply.

Luckily I have AIDS….

We need to get higher actuarial value coverage to more people and bring down the costs per unit of service at the same time.  Some of that will happen with narrow networks, some of it is happening with Accountable Care Organizations, some of that is happening to market pressures.  We need to get the Federal Trade Commission more involved with a preliminary stance that most consolidation deals are a net negative to consumers.

Continued Expansion

In the Medicaid expansion states, we’re at about 80% of the probable maximum expansion.  We need to get to 100% of probable maximum expansion and hopefully do a Michigan and blow by the coverage expansion goal.  In the non-Expansion states, we’re probably at 40% maximum coverage.

Wyden Waivers

Section 1332/State Innovation/Wyden Waivers should be the next big set of discussions.  These waivers allow states to meet Obamacare coverage and affordability goals through state customized plans with very few constraints.  The Feds will pick up the cost of state experimentation.  In a rational political universe, this should be extraordinarily attractive to conservative states as they get to try conservative healthcare solutions (besides dying quickly of course) with federal money.  In reality, most of the action on 1332 waivers is coming from Blue states.

Drinking their milkshakes

Peter Suderman (husband of McMegan, and general libeterian dude-bro) had a good point about conservative healthcare policy in a recent Politico article:

Republicans have already lost, because when it comes to larger health policy goals, the party effectively doesn’t have any beyond the repeal of the Obamacare. In the long term, Republicans can’t win this fight because they don’t know what winning means….Obamacare, in other words, was ClintonCare’s second act—the culmination of more than 15 years of work and consensus building. To put it another way: Republicans never started working on health policy; Democrats never stopped.

Policy victories will go to the Democrats on health policy for a very simple reason; they are the only ones with any political backing who are engaged in examining pro-active policies.  Republicans can veto and say no, but they can’t advance active changes because their policy translation apparatus from a few wonks to actually writing legislation is broken.

 

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Whitewashing And Lee University

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While we’re all waiting on SCOTUS to gay marry all of us to various inanimate objects, here’s David Brooks pretzelicious defense of General Robert E. Lee, who yeah owned a bunch of slaves but you guys, it made him sad.

Like Lincoln he did not believe African-Americans were yet capable of equality. Unlike Lincoln he accepted the bondage of other human beings with bland complaisance. His wife inherited 196 slaves from her father. Her father’s will (somewhat impractically) said they were to be freed, but Lee didn’t free them.

Lee didn’t enjoy owning slaves, but he was considered a hard taskmaster and he did sell some, breaking up families. Moreover, he supported the institution of slavery as a pillar of Confederate life. He defended the right of Southerners to take their slaves to the Western territories. He fundamentally believed the existence of slavery was, at least for a time, God’s will.

Every generation has a duty to root out the stubborn weed of prejudice from the culture. We do that, in part, through expressions of admiration and disdain. Given our history, it seems right to aggressively go the extra mile to show that prejudice is simply unacceptable, no matter how fine a person might otherwise be.

My own view is that we should preserve most Confederate memorials out of respect for the common soldiers. We should keep Lee’s name on institutions that reflect postwar service, like Washington and Lee University, where he was president. But we should remove Lee’s name from most schools, roads and other institutions, where the name could be seen as acceptance of what he did and stood for during the war.

This is not about rewriting history. It’s about shaping the culture going forward.

So yes, he was a terrible awful traitor and fought to preserve slavery and stuff but he was a family man, so that’s probably okay.  There, I’m as solomonic as Bobo the wonder invertebrate here.  Robert E. Lee is just an historic version of Raymond “Red” Reddington fro The Blacklist, right?

I mean as far as Bobo columns go, this one is bordering on the coherent. But why in Jeebus’s name would you want to split hairs over this guy in particular as your “both sides did it” deep thought on the Civil War?

Somebody’s been watching Ken Burns to help his insomnia.

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Open Thread: Squid-Clouds of Butt-Hurt, “#SCOTUScare” Edition

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(JAHimes: “Congressman proudly representing Connecticut’s 4th”)

MomSense and some other commentors pointed out, late last night, that the SCOTUSBlog (“A private blog. NOT THE JUSTICES OR THE COURT”) tweetfeed had been starling-mobbed by not-very-observant wingnuts. The individuals behind the blog decided to treat their new correspondents with all the respect they deserved. One sample:

But the whole of politically-oriented twitter was a godsdamned festival…

show full post on front page

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Open Thread: Cue the Teensy Tiny Violin Orchestra…

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Easy laffs, since it’s been a long week. Annie Lowrey, at NYMag, reports that “Ann Coulter Wants to Know Why She Doesn’t Make You Mad Anymore“:

Nobody is paying attention to Ann Coulter, and she does not like it.

“They’re ignoring me now!” Coulter wails, sitting in a conference room at the National Press Club in Washington as a large crowd filters in to hear her promote her new book, ¡Adios, America!.

“I haven’t been on CNN yet, because I was made up, my hair was done, I was mic’ed up, I was walking to the set,” where Don Lemon was anchoring, she said. “He was doing a full hour on the Doogans or whatever their name is,” she said, referring to the Duggars. Given the interest in one Duggar son’s confession of molestation, the network ended up bumping her segment. “The next night, ‘We’re going to do all Doogans again.’ And then the next week, it’s the cop who yelled at a girl in a bikini! And then it’s Bruce Jenner!”

This is the lament of a woman who became a national political celebrity by stoking outrage — who rose up alongside the cable-television networks and conservative talk-radio, needling liberals and flattering conservatives with a potent mix of hilarity, bombast, and the occasional dash of racism. This is the lament of a woman who has written an outrageous book, one immaculately designed to piss off half of America, or more. This is the lament of a woman living in a time of outrage, outrage that spreads viruslike on Twitter, television, and Facebook. This is the lament of a woman who has found herself unable to capitalize on that outrage…

Coulter is now courting Donald Trump, Seeryus GOP Presidential Candidate. Speaking of things that will eventually inspire much snarkage on the Twitters…

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