Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
If commenter Starfish only knew how accurate this comment is:
I saw this video earlier today, and I was convinced that this is John Cole’s life.
Sigh:
That is my existence of every minute of every day.
I laugh in people’s faces when they ask me if I ever get lonely living “alone.”
Things have just been super hectic around here. Between work related issues and the house (which is coming along and I will have an update on Friday), it just seems like by the time I get to where I can move forward with something it’s almost nine pm. Just everything seems to be happening at 78rpm and I am still rolling along at 33 1/3.
Had to do my what seems like a daily pilgrimage to Lowes today, and on the way home I was thinking that I am still in the anger phase of this post-election, with a stunned disbelief. I just drove along thinking “I can’t believe this guy went on national tv, made fun of a disabled person, millions of people saw it, and they voted for him anyway.”
Don’t get me wrong, he’s done SOOOO many things like this, but today this is the one I was fixated on.
On top of that, I just can’t keep up with the news. I quit watching cable tv and honestly have not even TUNED to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or even any of the broadcast news shows or Sunday programs since the election, and have basically just been reading newspapers and websites. And it’s impossible to keep up with what Trump is doing because 95% of the stuff that comes out of his campaign is just pure bullshit. And it’s by design:
Gingrich explained that Trump diverts the media with “rabbits,” or unimportant stories to throw them off from pursuing real stories. As an example, Gingrich referenced the media’s five or six day long focus on Trump’s irritation and possible internal feud with adviser Kellyanne Conway’s over her critical remarks about Mitt Romney’s potential nomination as U.S. Secretary of State.
“[The Apprentice] was a remarkably popular show,” Gingrich told Fox News host Jenna Lee during the interview. “[Trump] understands the value of tension. He understands the value of showmanship. And candidly, the news media is going to chase the rabbit. So it’s better off for him to give them a rabbit than for them to go find their own rabbit. He’s had them fixated on Mitt Romney now for five or six days. I think from his perspective, that’s terrific. It gives everyone something to talk about.”
“He does not think of this as chaos. He thinks of this as creativity,” Gingrich added.
And most of the idiots are happy to play along.
Oh, and Rosie has an eye infection, so there goes another 100+ bucks tomorrow to fix a dog that just lies around grumping at me all day and bitching when I walk by her.
Feh. I can’t wait for this god damned year to be over. I think I am just going to go play CIV 6.
Here are bakers creating loaves of Cuban bread at my favorite bakery in Tampa:
See the little strips of green protruding from the ends of the loaves like serpents’ tongues? Those are palm leaves, which give Cuban bread its distinctive pattern. How I missed this bread when I lived up north for a few years!
This particular bakery prints the following list of ingredients on its long bread sacks: Water, flour, salt, lard and yeast. If you don’t consume it all within 24 hours, the loaf will petrify to the point that it can be used for household demolition chores.
Open thread!
Romney should be holding up a newspaper with today's date on it pic.twitter.com/zZNBpABJcN
— Gray Connolly (@GrayConnolly) November 30, 2016
Trump & Mitt ate: young garlic soup & sautéed frog legs, diver scallops w/ caramelized cauliflower, prime sirloin, lamb chops. Thanks, pool
— Emily Ngo (@epngo) November 30, 2016
Pathetic. At least there’s a crumb of glee knowing that PEOTUS Gimme-My-KFC probably didn’t enjoy his frog-legs-and-sirloin plutocratic parody dinner. From the Washington Post:
… Stephen Pagliuca, who worked with Romney at Bain Capital and has socialized with Trump, urged advisers to the president-elect to press Trump to name Romney for the State Department job…
Pagliuca, a co-owner of the Boston Celtics and a Democrat, said he knew something that others didn’t. When he golfed with Trump at a Boston-area course some years ago, Trump had talked at length about how much he admired Bain Capital, a private equity firm that Romney led until 1999.
Today, as Pagliuca and other Romney backers see it, Trump, 70, and the 69-year-old Romney had far more in common than many realize: Both came to prominence as risk takers and dealmakers, and both have spent much of their lives seeking to emulate and outdo the success of their fathers. Trump’s father, Fred, was a New York City developer, and Romney’s father, George, was a governor of Michigan who unsuccessfully sought the presidency…
One of these things is not quite like the other, though it’s true that Romney has always fretted about not coming up to his sire’s standards. Also, much as it irks me to give him any credit, Romney is an actual billionaire and has prior governing experience — as if that last would mean anything to Accident-Elect Smallgloves. I can certainly see him hungering to demonstrate for the world that he’s more alpha than the Mormon on the White Horse…
And, of course, Romney is willing to debase himself in hopes of becoming the GOP John Kerry. Which may or may not work out for him:
This is a stunning 180 from Mitt Romney on Trump. "He continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together." pic.twitter.com/vn0qEDDJdf
— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) November 30, 2016
At least Romney, while spineless and untrustworthy as an ally, is neither full-bore crazy (Bolton) nor corrupt to the bone (Giuliani). Cold comfort, eh?
Open Thread: Will <em>Mitt</em> Be Donald’s New Best Friend?Post + Comments (299)
Two valued community members raised good points yesterday in comments:
the blue states can build their own plans. Romneycare might be the model, and some states might try something else; perhaps some sort of single payer system. I suppose they will pretty much have to.
And Martin:
There’s an opportunity now in California, however. The 6th largest economy on earth and 1/6 of the US economy. Dems have supermajorities in both chambers and have the governorship. We’ve twice passed single-payer and Brown has indicated he’d support it if the finances work out. If there is going to be a widespread national privatization effort, CA now has renewed incentive to make it go. Yes, its hella complicated as Richard has noted, but CA also has the most actively managed exchange in the country, one of the most competitive health care marketplaces in the country, and some of the best health policy folks around Kaiser Family Foundation.
The big problem with both of these cases is that state healthcare policy will interact with federal healthcare policy. That means some type of waiver will be needed. That could be a major blockage.
However, the core point is very strong and very valid. Blue states if they want to take care of their own citizens while allowing the Red States to race to the bottom can do so. If there are massive high income tax cuts, there will be fiscal space from high income Blue state taxpayers to fund local social insurance programs. California has the size and the expertise to make a go at something that could work. My bet is that they would go multi-payer in a tightly regulated market and build from the fairly successful Covered California exchanges with higher subsidies and tweaked eligibility but that is a guess purely informed by speculation before my first cup of coffee.
The next big challenge is getting traditional Blue States with super majorities in the Legislature back to Trifectas by retaking governorships so experimentation can move forward with motivated stakeholders. But that is a discussion for a different day.
One understandable and widespread reaction to the recent election of a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue has been a vow not to “normalize” Trump. I share that impulse and even created a “Not Normal” tag here at the blog to catalog the mounting horrors. But what if a focus on Trump’s unfitness for office plays into his (teeny, tiny) hands?
Matt Yglesias makes that case at Vox, and he goes beyond the now-familiar argument that focusing on things like Trump’s Twitter antics pulls media attention off issues such as the Trump U fraud payout, influence peddling, Wall Street grifter cabinet picks, etc.
Yglesias discusses how politicians in other countries have faced down and defeated authoritarian clowns, noting that they do so on policy rather than character issues since the latter can have the opposite of the intended effect. Here’s an excerpt that cites the work of Luigi Zingales, who chronicled the rise and fall of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a man who shares many traits with Trump:
“How, then, did Berlusconi get elected and reelected? He created an unlikely coalition between the business elite, which supports him for fear of the alternative, and the poor, who identify with him because he appeals to their aspirations. In a country where corruption and lack of meritocracy has all but killed the hope of intra-generational mobility, citizens chose to escape from reality and find consolation in dreams. Berlusconi adeptly fosters the illusion that he can turn everyone else into billionaires. His political career is something like Trump’s Apprentice program, only on a national scale.”
In a post-election op-ed, Zingales revisited these themes and observed that the two politicians who beat Berlusconi in elections — former Prime Minister Romano Prodi and current Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — had two important things in common: “Both of them treated Mr. Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders, not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste.”
Yglesias also notes the uneasy truce Trump has struck with the Republican establishment, which is wholly dependent on the shit-gibbon’s willingness to support the GOP’s broadly unpopular agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy, dismantling Medicare, overturning Roe v. Wade, etc. He rightly notes that the precarious nature of this alliance presents an opportunity, arguing that Democrats in Congress should stick a crowbar in any cracks they find and exert all possible force to break it.
It’s a fairly convincing case for how Democratic politicians should oppose Trump and present themselves and their agenda as alternatives. But, as many of you have noted in various ways in comments here, the nonstop shit-show that will be the Trump administration is going to require fortitude, focus and the ability to multitask on many fronts from Trump’s opponents, politicians and peanut gallery alike.
I don’t ever want the idea that an unhinged clown like Trump will soon be in charge of an army of flying death-robots to seem normal. The prospect of Trump’s vile spawn leveraging our highest political office for their personal gain should continue to strike us as outrageous for the next three years, eleven months, three weeks and three days.
Can’t we walk and chew gum here, opposing Trump on policy grounds and pointing out that, yeah, we’ve never had such an unqualified, venal, corrupt pig in the White House before? Yes we can.
PS: Breaking news: Pelosi beats back challenge, retaining leadership over the House Dems. Good. We’ll need her experience and vision to successfully oppose the Pig Party.
[Photo via HuffPo]You know what's messed up, that I had to call the hospital to make sure the anesthesiologist would be in network for my daughter's birth.
— Loren Adler (@LorenAdler) November 28, 2016
What normal person not entrenched in this issue would think to do that naturally, when you know the hospital is in network?? https://t.co/fnp7M40UyF
— Loren Adler (@LorenAdler) November 28, 2016
Loren is a healthcare wonk. He knows this shit cold and he is right, no one in their right mind would think to call the in-network hospital to see if the anesthesiologist would be in-network if a laboring mother to be needed/wanted an epidural.
As other wonks in the tweet stream noted, the best that he could hope for is the hospital to give him a non-binding informational advisory that their anesthesiologists were or were not in network. And even here, the information is incomplete. Many carriers will offer a number of different networks in the employer and individual markets. Some carriers will tell providers that they are in seven of the twelve networks offered. In those cases, the office manager or the billing clerk might be able to tell an interested patient who is trying to effectively shop for planned care whether or not Dr. Smith is in-network for them. Here the system may not be working but it is not flailing around completely in a fireball of fail.
However not all carriers will do this. Instead they’ll send Dr. Smith seven contract amendments for the seven current networks that they want Dr. Smith in. They will never send him the other five narrow network amendments to sign or reject. So when a patient is trying to conform to the system that we impose on them, the billing manager will honestly say “Yep, we take all plans from Mayhew Insurance….” and three months later as the claim is submitted and everyone expects an in-network charge, the patient gets whacked with an out of network bill.
Our provider information systems are designed to fail in a Kafka-Goldberg-Dilbert menage a trois.