Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Fight them, without becoming them!

You cannot shame the shameless.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

This really is a full service blog.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Happy Hogmanay!

Late Night Open Thread: Happy Hogmanay!

by | 125 Comments

This post is in: ,

… with apologies to those readers who’ve been in 2016 for the last many hours.

The year just ending had plenty challenges, and some most excellent bright spots also. Here’s hoping 2016 is more fun and less horrible for everyone, and that we all meet this time next year to celebrate the new incoming Democratic President’s immanent arrival…

new years hobart style trollhattan 2016

(Courtesy commentor Trollhattan)

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  3. 3.

    PurpleGirl

    K. Happy New Year. It’s 11:55 by my computer’s clock. Waiting on NY1’s broadcast of the ball drop.

    Love the pictures of the fireworks in Hobart. Spectacular.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I suspect you mean “imminent.” But, depending on the awesomeness of the newly-elected Democrat, “immanent” might work as well :-)

    /still a pedant

    The very happiest of New Years to you, AL, your fellow front-pagers, and Juicers everywhere!!

  7. 7.

    CaseyL

    @JPL: it did! It hatched!… not quite sure what the hatchling is supposed to be. A dragon, or possibly an alligator… definitely not a bird.

  18. 18.

    SIA

    Bonne annee all! Last year of President Barack Hussein Obama’s phenomenal presidency. It’ll never be the same. I started reading BJ in 2007. Heady days.

  20. 20.

    PurpleGirl

    Finally looked at the Google doodle. It is cute. I like their animations.

    NY1 is just panning the crowd now, with some shots from a building top. Ghod, Times Square and Broadway is just packed. Now for all those people to leave and get home…. hoo boy, I’m happy to be home and not worrying about getting home.

  21. 21.

    FlyingToaster

    Well, WarriorGirl insisted upon watching the TV shows (“I’m gonna Dance!”), and is now crying in despair.

    It was all talking, no music. Sad, horrible, boring talking. Bleccch.

    Now she knows; and will stop asking to stay up until midnight.

  23. 23.

    SIA

    My poor terrier mix HATES firecrackers and they’ve been going on for hours. At least he has his thunder jacket.

  24. 24.

    redshirt

    @SIA: That makes me sad. A year from now and some change, Barack Hussein Obama will no longer be President of the USA.

    What an amazing accomplishment. We really did it.

  25. 25.

    JCJ

    @JPL:

    I was, like you, waiting for the egg to hatch on the google doodle. I liked how it had different results when I checked – an alligator, then turtles, then a duck! Now I can sleep. That was too much excitement for me for one night!

  26. 26.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Best to all for the night. Had to wake up someone for the countdown who had fallen asleep a bit after 11pm sitting up on the couch.

  27. 27.

    PurpleGirl

    @FlyingToaster: I’m sorry Warrior Girl was disappointed. Warrior Girl should have been in NYC, or at least someplace that gets NY1. A few minutes before the ball drop the station announcers stop talking and go to Times Square alone and focus on the ball drop.

    ETA: And the Empire State Building its own light show with changing colors on the top floors and the spire. Neat.

  28. 28.

    SIA

    @redshirt: it makes me sad too. It was the first time I ever worked on a campaign. He is extraordinary. Wish he’d declare martial law and set himself up as prez for life like some of the wingnuts predicted.

  29. 29.

    Royston Vasey

    Happy New Year from New Zealand. Though it’s almost done for the day (being 6:26pm)

    RV in NZ

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    G finally didn’t have to work on New Year’s Eve (what with being laid off and all) but we couldn’t think of anything to do other than our tradition of eating pizza and watching “CQ.” Still barely 9:30 here on the Left Coast.

  33. 33.

    PurpleGirl

    @efgoldman: Lots of reasons why I like NY1 and the way they do things. ABC should have changed the format of their New Year’s Eve show a long time ago. Dick Clark was irrelevant for a long time.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    Thick sirloin steak along with leftover red wine sauce from the Xmas dinner. Buubly in the freezer.

    Neighbors have a tent set up in their yard, along with about 45 chairs. Only 7:40, so still (relatively) quite.

  38. 38.

    dogwood

    @redshirt:
    Politics aside, it’s always hard for me to imagine a new president. It usually takes me a few months to transition from viewing the new one as candidate, to seeing him (or maybe her) as the actual president.

  39. 39.

    realbtl

    Happy New Year all. I just got back from 1st Night Kalispell. Good food, great music and rather warm – 17 – for NW MT. No wind so all was good.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    “Drunk History” marathon. Apparently the show’s producers beat me to the idea of casting Olivia Spencer as Harriet Tubman. (You haven’t missed it, it’s the episode that’s on next.)

  41. 41.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Happy New Year from my part of the the world to all you shitheels, bastards, assholes, and completely decent people. You can choose.

  43. 43.

    max

    @efgoldman: I don’t know whether it was stupid, sad, or humorous that ABC kept promoting it as “Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve.”
    I mean, poor old Dick had an aging picture in his attic, I’m sure, but he’s long since shuffled off….

    Obvs, it should be Zombie Dick Clark’s New Years Rotten Eve.

    max
    [‘It’s always Halloween when ol’ Dick’s around now!’]

  46. 46.

    F

    “I can play amateur politics at home with my 9-year-old, I don’t need to do it at the professional level.”

    Ben Carson’s ex-campaign manager.

  49. 49.

    FlyingToaster

    @max:

    Obvs, it should be Zombie Dick Clark’s New Years Rotten Eve.

    That would have been an improvement.

    I was hoping some music channel would have, oh, music, with a 5 minute break for the ball drop.

    And WTF is having Sinatra sing NYNY instead of everybody singing Auld Lang Syne (out of tune, not knowing the words, and drunk)?

    Truly, abysmally pitiful.

  55. 55.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @redshirt:

    A year from now and some change, Barack Hussein Obama will no longer be President of the USA.

    He better be, his term doesn’t end until Jan. 20, 2017.

  61. 61.

    fuckwit

    And the arrival of a DEMOCRATIC majority in the Senate and a DEMOCRATIC majority in the House, the return of Speaker Pelosi, and at last having a competent government.

  65. 65.

    mclaren

    While Mayhew churns out feel-good bullshit designed to convince the gullible dupes in the Balloon-Juice commentariat that all is for the best in the best of all possible American health care worlds, the reality is of course drastically different.

    Here are my favorite health care stories from 2015:

    “Fifty hospitals in the United States are charging uninsured consumers more than 10 times the actual cost of patient care, according to research published Monday,” The Washington Post, 8 June 2015.

    All but one of the facilities are owned by for-profit entities and the largest number of hospitals — 20 — are in Florida. For the most part, researchers said, the hospitals with the highest markups are not in pricey neighborhoods or big cities, where the market might explain the higher prices.
    Topping the list is North Okaloosa Medical Center, a 110-bed facility in the Florida Panhandle about an hour outside of Pensacola. Uninsured patients are charged 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care.
    Community Health Systems operates 25 of the hospitals on the list. Hospital Corporation of America operates 14 others.
    “They are price-gouging because they can,” said Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, co-author of the study in Health Affairs. “They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.”
    He added: “These are the hospitals that have the highest markup of all 5,000 hospitals in the United States. This means when it costs the hospital $100, they are going to charge you, on average, $1,000.”

  67. 67.

    mclaren

    And here are some more of my favorite health care stories of 2015:

    “She has health insurance, but can’t pay her medical bills. She’s not alone,” scpr.org, 8 April 2015.

    Like more and more Americans, Celisa Flores, 34, recently obtained a high-deductible health plan through her employer. The plan, through Anthem Blue Cross, covered her and her son, and she thought it carried a $5,000 deductible.
    At the time, the deductible “didn’t seem like a huge deal to me, because we never go to the doctor,” says Flores, of Costa Mesa.
    Even after her car was totaled in a hit-and-run in July 2014, she avoided going to the doctor. Flores visited a chiropractor for several months, until the pain drove her to seek more care.
    That’s when her financial nightmare began.
    An MRI revealed that Flores’ femur had detached from her hip in the accident, and she needed surgery.
    She says she paid $3,000 upfront for the surgery. But after that, the bills kept coming – separate ones for the anesthesia, more MRI’s, and x-rays.
    “Every time I think I’ve got them all now, here comes another one,” says Flores.
    Then came the unpleasant surprise: She discovered that under her family plan, her deductible wasn’t $5,000, it was $10,000. (Confused about health insurance terms? Check out KPCC’s glossary.)
    To make matters worse, she discovered that the physical therapist she was seeing – at a cost of $300 per week – was out of network.

    “Why Most Americans Do Not Understand Their Medical Bills,” cheatsheet.com, 8 July 2015

    Medical providers typically use various codes on billing statements, such as CPT, HCPCS, or ICD-9 codes. This is simply the information required by insurers, so it is not intended to be patient-friendly. When Elisabeth Rosenthal, who frequently reports on America’s health care woes, called a laboratory billing office seeking an explanation for her bill, she was told that revealing the meaning of the codes would violate patient privacy. Rosenthal explained that she was the patient in question, but it made no difference. The response: “I’m sorry, this is what I’m told, and I don’t want to lose my job.”

    “Texans Charged More Than 650% The Going Rate Of Medicare For ER Services: New Study Reveals Out-of-Network Charges In Texas for Life Threatening Emergencies Among The Highest In The Nation,” Texas Association of health Plans, 7 October 2015.

    “‘America’s Bitter Pill’ Makes Case For Why Health Care Law ‘Won’t Work’,” NPR radio report, 5 January 2015.

    “Even insured consumers get hit with surprisingly large medical bills,” CNN Money, 19 February 2015.

    After Pam Durocher was diagnosed with breast cancer, she searched her health insurer’s website for a participating surgeon to do the reconstructive surgery.
    Having done her homework, she was stunned to get a $10,000 bill from the surgeon.
    “I panicked when I got that bill,” said the 60-year-old retired civil servant who lives near Roseville, Calif.
    Like Durocher, many consumers who take pains to research which doctors and hospitals participate in their health insurance plans can still end up with huge bills.

  69. 69.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @mclaren:

    While Mayhew churns out feel-good bullshit designed to convince the gullible dupes in the Balloon-Juice commentariat that all is for the best in the best of all possible American health care worlds

    If that’s all you’ve gotten out of Richard’s posts, you’ve either not read them, or failed to understand them.

  72. 72.

    mclaren

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    If that’s all you’ve gotten out of Richard’s posts, you’ve either not read them, or failed to understand them.

    Of course — I’m stupid or ignorant or unable to read. And the Washington Post and the Boston Globe and NPR and The New York Times are all just making shit up. Mayhew is right that the ACA is working beautifully and medical costs are dropping, while all the major news outlets are lying, all the medical experts are getting it wrong, and all the health care newsletters are reporting complete nonsense.

    Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the gullible ignorant dupes Mayhew has been scamming — Bill in Glendale. Thank you for showing us all the stunning level of self-delusion and ignorance in which liberals who cheer about the current state of America’s medical-industrial complex live.

  75. 75.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @mclaren: I think you just proved my point, Happy New Year.

    ETA: I should note that my preferred health care system would be single payer.

  78. 78.

    SarahT

    @mclaren: Please eat shit. “Obamacare” saved my life, and the lives of 3 friends who were also refused insurance due to “pre-existing conditions” (ie, pregnancy. Just, wow). So sorry that we didn’t just go die quietly while waiting for single payer in the USA. Oh yeah – happy fuckin’ new year to you and your purity pony.

  81. 81.

    mclaren

    And here are yet more of my favorite article about U.S. health care in 2015…articles Richard Mayhew will never mention, and does not want you to see:

    “Stunning” Rise in Death Rate, Pain Levels for Middle-Aged, Less Educated Whites, 3 November 2015.

    “The Scourge of Managerialism” – Generic Management, the Manager’s Coup D’Etat, Mission-Hostile Management Rolled Up, as Described by Some Men from Down Under, 29 October 2015.

    “Dilemma over deductibles: Costs crippling middle class — Rather Than Pay So Much Out-Of-Pocket, Many Skip Checkups, Scrimp On Care,” USA Today, 1 January 2015.

    “Many people with health coverage can’t afford to use it,” Newscut.com, 22 September 2015.

    “Lifesavers or kickbacks? Critics say patient-assistance programs help keep drug prices high,” Modern Healthcare site, 7 March 2015.

    “Beware of Drive By Doctoring Fraud,” Consumers Digest, March 2015.

    As one of the above articles remarks about the greedy corrupt CEO of a medical devicemaker forced to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for selling grossly defective equipment, Richard Mayhew’s

    …immensely positive spin suggests that he, like many other health care oragnizational leaders, live in some sort of bubble into which no negative karma is allowed to penetrate. Thus convinced of their own innate goodness, they can provide no check on continuing manifestations of corporate greed, most likely with the solace of the own fortunes they build up.

  87. 87.

    mclaren

    @SarahT:

    I’m glad the ACA saved your life and the lives of your friends. Wouldn’t it be great if more people could use the insurance they get through the ACA because they wouldn’t lose their life savings due to sky-high deductibles and co-pays?

    By all means scream and howl at me for criticizing America’s broken for-profit medical-industrial complex. When the limitlessly increasing premiums you’re forced to pay for your shitty for-profit health insurance under the ACA become too high for you to afford, don’t come whining to me…you’ve already told me and everyone else who is critical of that grotesque scam to “please eat shit.”

  88. 88.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @mclaren: No one here has ever claimed that our health care is perfect. RM has only offered people technical insight into how our system currently works. If that I beyond your understanding, it is on you.

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    @SarahT:

    mclaren has many interesting opinions about how all cancer patients should roll over and die rather than undergo treatment, including my 51-year-old brother who died of lung cancer this summer. So, yes, mclaren can go fuck himself with a rusty pitchfork.

  90. 90.

    SarahT

    @JordanRules: Right back atcha, honey ! And a happy, HEALTHY 2016 to all intelligent, sensible, compassionate, and truly human beings on this site & around the world. And thank you, john cole + infinity, for making this place !

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    Happy New Year, or happy 12:24 AM, from the Nation’s Litterbox.

    Spawn the Elder is having a friend sleep over, so Mr. Suzanne and I are watching “The Man in the High Castle”. I enjoy this far more than being around drunks.

    My resolution for this year is to go paperless! My printer was broken, so we bought one with a document scanner. So let’s see how this goes.

  93. 93.

    SarahT

    @mclaren: don’t you get it ? Without insurance we WOULD have lost everything, including our LIVES ! GAH – done with your trolling. Piss up a rope.

  96. 96.

    SarahT

    @Mnemosyne: Thank you ! And I stupidly (ok, drunkenly) replied, despite it all, duh. New Year’s resolution : Do NOT waste time responding to morons on my fave blog. Happy 2016 to you !

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve got one. I am going to work on it this weekend. I hate paper! I hate clutter! Aaaahhhhhhh.

    @SarahT: Don’t get too upset. Maclaren occasionally says something helpful and interesting, but she buries it under heaps of histrionics and condescension and generalized douchieness. And I am a mega-douche, and she makes me look like a sweet pea in comparison.

  102. 102.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Suzanne: I hope your trash collection is more shredder friendly than here, we have to put it in paper bags. We don’t get paper bags at the market anymore.

  104. 104.

    PurpleGirl

    @FlyingToaster: I didn’t mean WarriorGirl should come to NY for the ball drop but find a place where you get NewYork1 — the Time Warner news channel — and watch it on NY1. Their tradition, such as it is, is to have the announcers stop talking several minutes before the ball drop and after it. (Ihad turned off the computer and then come back online.)

  111. 111.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:
    I can recall once that mclaren said something useful. Once. And trying to find that one bit of something is like looking in acre of manure and seeing what looks like the virgin mary. Very, very rare and even then it still stinks.

  120. 120.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: I’m kinda surprised about the lack of fireworks here this year.

    ETA: This makes Nikki a happy dog.

    ETA2: Happy New Year, NotMax!

  122. 122.

    VFX Lurker

    @SarahT:

    “Obamacare” saved my life, and the lives of 3 friends who were also refused insurance due to “pre-existing conditions” (ie, pregnancy. Just, wow).

    I am sincerely happy than the Affordable Care Act saved your life and those of your friends.

    Me, I’m a cancer survivor. No chemo required, fully covered by my parents’ insurance, and asymptomatic for years. Despite my good health since the cancer, I received my first rejection letter for private individual coverage in 2006. Another insurer accepted my application, but charged me three times what a normal person would have been charged. I accepted their offer, because I did not want to be uninsured. I received two more rejection letters from two other insurers in 2007 and 2010.

    In 2010, I formed a general partnership with my own spouse to apply for guaranteed-issue group coverage. If either of us had died, the survivor would have lost coverage.

    I am grateful for the Affordable Care Act. I have a Canadian spouse, and he does prefer the health care system in Canada. However, neither of us want to move to Canada solely for health coverage reasons. Our best career opportunities and our home are here in Los Angeles. The Affordable Care Act means we get to live where we want.

    The Affordable Care Act even offers a “Waiver for State Innovation,” allowing states to implement single-payer in 2017. Vermont killed its single-payer plan for 2017, but there’s 49 other states who might try single-payer. You’d think someone on this thread would appreciate that, but I get the impression that this person is more interested in trolling than actually implementing single-payer.

    I’m going to see if I can get Troll-B-Gone working again. Wishing everyone a great 2016!

  123. 123.

    Zinsky

    Happy New Year everyone! Let’s work hard this year to elect Democrats, send Donald Trump into retirement and make America less stupid!

Comments are closed.