A song for all those special snowflakes in Congress:
Most Republicans in swing districts are steering clear of in-person town hall gatherings this week, hoping to avoid the anti-President Trump protesters determined to make them the star of a viral YouTube video.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
As I said in the other thread, even the ones not running scared, ie Roy Fucking Blunt here in Misery (he’s got his 6 years thanks to Twitler), are avoiding the state like the plague.
Of course RFB avoided the state like the plague anyway, this just gives him more reason to stay in his:
http://bluenationreview.com/does-roy-blunt-even-live-in-his-own-state/
It’s really too bad Kander couldn’t eek out a win. Just shows you how blood-ass red this backass state has gotten in the 20 years I’ve lived here.
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Missouri and Kansas are getting worse and worse. Wait till they get rid of illegal immigration, and food prices rises. Eventually, reality is going to set in so hard that they are going to have take stock of their loyalites especially when they are suffering and their representative is sitting in a mansion in D.C.
Jeffro
Dave Brat running to the farthest, reddest corner of his district to try and hold a town hall…and STILL being greeted by a couple hundred well-prepared protesting constituents warms my heart so incredibly much.
We’ve got ’em on the run folks (and this is such fun!) – be happy warriors!
cain
BTW folks, I lost my kitty yesterday, I had checked in with the vet because she was becoming really frail. Turns out she had cancer and she was very dehydrated. While in emergency care, she decided that it was time for her to move on. She was my fixture for the past year where I had a lot of personal problems (separation, job loss, trump) and she was my companion through all of that. I took the loss pretty hard yesterday, but I’m doing a lot better today other than the fact that I miss her and still see her things around the house. But you know, life goes on. Thanks for reading.
jacy
@cain:
My condolences. it’s never easy to say goodbye.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cain:
Misery residents woke up the day after Election Day to discover they’d moved to Kansas overnight and never had to leave the comfort of their recliner.
I work right up the street from the wingnut legislature. They’ve had a hard on for Kansas for years now. The only thing stopping them was our moderate Republican governor who happened to have a “D” after his name. With a wingnut’s wingnut now in the Governor’s Mansion, the race is on to out-Kansas Kansas.
They’ve implemented a phase out of the corporate entity tax, like KS did, and already the effects are reverberating thru edumacation budgets throughout the state. So-called right-to-work (for less) legislation has passed.
Of course they pride themselves on having one of the lowest state gas taxes in the country all the while everybody here bitches about the roads and bridges.
Yup, just call us Eastern Kansas now.
Kelly
Greg Walden is the only Oregon Republican in Congress representing a lot of east side farmers, timber industry and a fairly high percentage of retirees in the Rogue river valley. Not my district but I thought if he showed up close enough I go collect some of those sweet Soros bucks. A couple weeks ago he only listed a telephone town hall but somehow he found time for a personal appearance in Ontario, OR. Ontario is as far from Blue Oregon as you can get. Didn’t know it was happening but I ain’t driving all day each way, in the winter. It’s a farming community that sets their clocks to Idaho time and is pretty much Idaho politically. Even there the ACA came up and he basically promised he’d keep all the good parts whilst venting out all that Obama stink. The good farmers were also very concerned about labor given Trump appears to be doing exactly what he said he’d do. They voted Trump 72 to 22. Walden said it’ll all work out.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cain:
In all the sadness right now, thanks for sharing the news. Take a New Orleans mindset to her passing and celebrate her life and what she gave to you in good times and bad times despite leaving a cat-shaped hole in your heart.
As fellow animal nuts, we like to share in the joy as well as the sorrow of having these creatures in our lives for an ever so brief period. Losing them is never easy and it never gets easier. I know as humans we’re wired somehow to believe in an afterlife so I always imagine our pets are out there somewhere, either waiting for us or floating along supported by the love we gave them during their lifetime. And the loving memories we carry with us until we’re gone.
There will come a day, I promise you, when the thought of her brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.
“Don’t be sad that it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Vin Scully
JPL
@cain: I’m glad that you shared that with us, and I’m so sorry. hugs
Thoroughly Pizzled
Also determined to, well, not lose their health insurance and not die. Might be another priority of theirs.
MattF
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You can now say honestly, ‘I live in a State of Cognitive Dissonance’.
MomSense
@cain:
So, sorry. Sending a big hug to you.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Kelly: wonder how many people in his district rely on the OHP.
Yarrow
@cain: Condolences. It’s so hard to lose your beloved pet companion, especially when they have been with you through so much.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Oh, wow, I live that Vin Scully quote!
Best wishes, Cain. I was there a few years ago with job loss, divorce…. I hope you have a support group of people who care about and love you.
hovercraft
An Alternative Strategy for Democratic Success: Growing a New Electorate
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 22, 2017 10:30 AM
We often hear that the problem Democrats are facing is that they not only lost the presidency in 2016, but are getting trounced at the state and local level. Much has been written about that challenge, but we rarely dive into the weeds about solutions or shine a spotlight on successes.
What if I was to tell you about a county in a red state where Democrats won almost every slot on the ballot in 2016 (some for the first time in decades) and Clinton won by over 160,000 votes, after Obama’s margin was less than a thousand in 2012? That is exactly the story Andrew Cockburn tells us about Harris County Texas (Houston and the surrounding suburbs).
Cockburn credits the work of three women for those results: Michelle Tremolo, Ginny Goldman and Crystal Zermeno—two of whom met while working for the now-defunct organization ACORN. They created an organization called the Texas Organizing Project (TOP). Given that Texas has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, the first order of business for TOP was to find out who was not voting.
Digging deep into voter files and other databases, Zermeno confirmed that Texas contained a “wealth of non-voting people of color.” Most of them were registered, but seldom (if ever) turned up at the polls. The problem, she noted, was especially acute with Latinos, only 15 percent of whom were regular voters. In her detailed report, she calculated precisely how many extra voters needed to turn out to elect someone who would represent the interests of all Texans: a minimum of 1.1 million. Fortuitously, these reluctant voters were concentrated in just nine big urban counties, led by Harris.
The next step was one that is too often skipped. TOP wanted to learn why 4 million registered voters of color (likely Democrats) in Texas don’t show up at the polls. They conducted a series of focus groups and, armed with the results, began organizing them to have an impact on local concerns, predominantly criminal justice issues. Starting with the 2012 election, they began mobilizing both volunteers and paid staff to work in their own neighborhoods with relentless efforts to get out the vote. As a result, in that year Latino turnout in Harris County increased by 5%. In 2016, the success wasn’t limited to Harris County.
East Dallas County, a band of suburbs to the east and south of Dallas, comprises House District 107 in the state legislature. Despite a Latino and African-American majority, Republicans have been carrying the district for years, albeit with narrow margins. This time, however, thanks to an intense registration and organizing drive by TOP and other groups, including labor unions, Victoria Neave, the Democratic candidate, ousted her Republican opponent by 836 votes.
Much of the effort to understand what happened in the 2016 election has rightfully focused on how Democrats can win back white voters in the so-called “Rust-Belt” states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those are important questions to answer going forward. But what might be effective in those states isn’t necessarily a formula for the rest of the country.
It is worth noting that Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio was about the same size as his margin in Texas (both around 8%). That is on the heels of Romney winning Texas by almost 16 points in 2012. As TOP learned, they need about 1.1 million of the 4 million registered non-voters of color in that state to produce a majority and turn Texas blue. The same dynamics are true in states like Arizona and Georgia. If those three states were to vote Democratic, they would provide about the same number of electoral votes (65) as would be captured by Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
As TOP organizers are quick to point out, demographics isn’t destiny. But in some states like Texas, there is a “shadow electorate” to be mobilized. Here is the formula that drove their efforts:
By relentlessly appealing to that shadow electorate, and gradually turning them into habitual voters, TOP could whittle down and eliminate the Republican advantage in elections for statewide offices such as governor and lieutenant governor, not to mention the state’s thirty-eight votes in the presidential Electoral College. In other words, since the existing Texas electorate was never going to generate a satisfactory result, TOP was going to have to grow a new one.
In summary, the formula for Democratic victories in some states is to win back voters the party has lost. In other states, it’s all about growing a new electorate.
@cain: For places like Missouri and Kansas we need to see if we can win some of these people back, but I fear that may be futile, it is important to keep democrats in those states engaged. The GOP basically gave up on California and allowed the state party to become a nest of rabid wingers who have lost the ability to appeal to the state at large, creating an ever smaller more insular party. In other states the key is to bring in new voters, remember what happened in the rust belt was something that was expected to happen based on changes in demographics and the voting patterns over the last 20 years, it just happened a couple of cycles earlier than expected. Which means we have to accelerate our engagement in in the south, NC, GA, and AZ must be focal points, we need to get the millions of non voting citizens there to register and come out to vote. Harris County, Texas of all places gives us hope and a road map.
eclare
@cain: Oh, I’m so sorry for your kitty. Thank you for the update.
Kelly
@cain: Condolences. I think fondly of my old dog Alice every time I mow her favorite sunny spot. Scattered her ashes there.
Riley's Enabler
@cain: Aww, cain – I’m so sorry for the loss of your dear girl. I’m just so sorry. I hope time eases the pain and better memories take hold. Jedi hugs.
Kelly
@Amanda in the South Bay: Almost certainly a bunch. Also folks in Bend, his biggest city are a bit miffed he can’t find time to see them.
hovercraft
@cain:
I’m so sorry about your kitty, I know how tough it is to lose a companion.
Virtual hug.
Just One More Canuck
@cain: My condolences – we lost our beloved Scully over three years ago and I still tear up when I think of her. It took almost a year, but we found Elsa the wonder goof (thank you Petfinders, and thanks to the person here who mentioned it in a post)
Steeplejack (tablet)
@cain:
Sorry for your loss. Happy trails to your kitty.
scav
I’m somehow reminded of the days of yore when actual news anchors on actual TV reverently covered empty fields where a deeply meaningful and important Tea Party protest failed to materialize.
StringOnAStick
@cain: I’m so sorry for your loss. They give us so much, and only ask for our love in return. Sometimes that love means making a hard choice, but it is the merciful thing to do for them. I’m still struggling with the loss of my best kitty ever, and hoping it gets easier for both of us.
CaseyL
@cain: I’m so sorry. It’s particularly hard to lose a fur person when they’ve helped you through rough times. Condolences.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From Benen:
an Ingraham-Fiornia primary? Is it possible to OD on popcorn? I wouldn’t have thought anybody could make Carly Fiorina look like old Mike Castle, and Ingraham is all O’Donnell’s nutty combined with the charm and kindness of wasp’s nest
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Speaking of Special Snowflakes, check out the twitter feed of NYU professor Michael Rectenwald. He’s a RWNJ and went on a Twitter tear about Milo, results were hysterical.
Chip Daniels
@hovercraft:
This is terrific.
I’m sick and tired of being told how we need to chase after the white Trump voters, when there is a wealth of people of color who already hate Trump, and just need to be mobilized
TaMara (HFG)
@cain: [[[hugs]]] and condolences from me and all the four-footers here, snoozing away in my office.
TaMara (HFG)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That’s perfect.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Too funny and quite on-point…I’ll be there in ‘popcorn rehab’ right with you! Would love to see good ol’ “Nazi salute” Ingraham get crushed by Hillary’s running mate, if I had my pick.
Ian G.
It’s times like this that I almost wish I lived in good ol’ Pete King’s district (I think they hand you a “Blue Lives Matter” bumper sticker with your deed when you purchase a house there) instead of the Kathleen Rice’s district next door. Being represented by all Dems makes taking out my annoyance on my representatives that much tougher. Oh well, I can still express my displeasure over Schumer’s friendship with Netanyahu.
Amir Khalid
@cain:
I’m so sorry.
Words of condolence never seem like enough to offer to the bereaved, do they? But I do know I’d feel like part of me was missing if I lost Bianca. And that’s where you are right now. Just hang in there.
Woodrowfan
I am so sorry Cain…. :(
Jeffro
@Jeffro: PS speaking of ol’ Dave Brat, what kind of Randian psycho says something like this to his constituents:
Which doesn’t even make any fucking sense, Dave Brat. Because the GOP Congress and Republican President Trump are not talking about implementing some new regulation and balancing that cost against X number of jobs…they’re talking about letting companies pollute more, when the economy is already doing fine and unemployment is low, so that what – we can get even richer and THEN put clean water/air regulations BACK in place??!? When we’re rich enough to have earned clean air and water, is that right Dave Brat?
Looks like I have a second Swing Left district to go help out in – my pleasure!
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@cain: I’m so sorry. We love them so much, and it hurts so when they leave us. I am glad you had time with her.
Chris
Bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk…
Mnemosyne
@cain:
I’m so sorry. Cats are very, very good at being stoic, so don’t feel too bad that you didn’t see it sooner, especially since feline cancers are very hard to treat.
rikyrah
@cain:
So sorry for your loss ??
Patricia Kayden
@cain: ((cain)). So sorry to hear about your kitty’s passing. Hope you have many good memories of your kitty and that that eases your loss a bit.
Mike in NC
@cain: Condolences
Brachiator
Reminder: Some Kind of NASA Announcement Scheduled for today:
Little Green Men, perhaps?
Mnemosyne
@cain:
Also, too, I read a really interesting study once that came to the conclusion that grief is grief, whether it’s for a human or for a pet. The intensity is the same, but grief for a human usually lasts longer because the relationship is more complicated.
Aleta
@cain: I’m so sorry for your loss.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@cain: I’m so sorry.
Raoul
They are in a trap of their own making. They have woefully misread the worries of the American people. They’ll tell you they hate the ACA, in no small part because the GOP blamed every systemic problem with health care on ‘Obamacare.’
But of course people hate the sense of no control and capriciousness of health insurance. ACA made that better! (Not good enough, but better). Now that the GOP has the Congress & presidency, they can still try to blame Obamacare but they own it, and have zero useable policy ideas to fix it.
Speaker Ryan’s pathetic twitter stream is full of slogans but offers nothing.
The petard, it is beginning to tighten. Let’s keep pulling on the hoist!
ruemara
@Chip Daniels: We don’t need to be mobilized unless you want to volunteer to drive souls to the polls. We need help voting. We need funds to get IDs. I swear, it’s like liberalism hasn’t learned much from 2016.
Help, help. We’re being SUPPRESSED. Come see the racism in the structure of the system!
WE aren’t unmotivated. WE were taking this shit seriously from the first. WE have a record of voting Dem at about 90%. WE would like white liberals to stop saying we’re not motivated as if this were squats versus burpees at the gym and start saying YOU will step up to help US use our right to vote.
Edited to add:
My deepest condolences, Cain. A beloved friend is hard to lose but I think we never really lose them. They always check on us when they move beyond a body.
Eljai
@cain: Sorry for the loss of your kitty friend. She sounds like she was a wonderful companion.
scav
@Brachiator: please pleas please plese please, and not even necessarily green. Enormous ones with antennae and exoskeletons would also work. Hyperintelligent color of blue?!
D58826
Only somewhat OT. Seems that AG Sessions wants to roll back the trans/student rules that Obama put in place. No surprise there. But Sec of Ed. DeVos wants to keep them. Any speculation on what seems like an out of character stand by DeVos?
Ian G.
@Jeffro:
You know, I tend to agree with (some) conservatives who say that technological progress will best solution to mitigation of environmental problems. After all, what is wind and solar but technological innovation?
It’s too bad that this libertarian ideal ends up tossed out the fucking window when the right gets in power in favor of endlessly propping up dying industries like coal (yeah, I know). Ironically, coal may be too far gone to be saved thanks to that wonderful free market teamed up with technological innovation.
Denali
@Amanda in South Bay,
How is the situation with your roommate working out? Hoping for the best.
Humboldtblue
@cain:
Well that sucks and I’m so sorry.
A Ghost To Most
@cain: Sorry for your loss. As a life-long cat whisperer, I have felt that feeling too many times.
Time to hit the pound, and find a new friend?
Spanky
@cain: That sucks, and I’m sorry she’s not there for you anymore. I know you’re thankful to have had her during a dark period in your life. You gave her the best life she could have had, and I don’t think it’s anthropomorphizing to say that they’re grateful for what we do. But damned if they’ll show it.
efgoldman
@D58826:
My speculation is that she doesn’t have the first fucking idea what the rules are or who they protect; likely somebody asked a question and it sounded like she should have said “yes” so she did.
Because she’s never been a politician or educator, she never learned the non-answer answer – the political equivalent of “go ask your father.”
Calouste
@D58826: The in-character stand for DeVos would be that she has no clue what it is all about.
pamelabrown53
@cain: #4.
So sorry to hear about the loss of your kitty. My thoughts and sympathies are with you at your time of grief.
Maybe, this will bring a brief smile to your face: yesterday, a repair man came to replace one of the inner panels in one of my bedroom’s french door. (Inner blind broken). My hairless kitty, a sphinx, was lying on her throw on the bed and the guy said: “I’ve never seen one of these. Can I pet your dog?” You should have seen his demeanor change when I told she’s a cat.
MomSense
@ruemara:
Well said.
liberal
@hovercraft: that’s the kind of thing we need to be doing everywhere.
GregB
@D58826:
Did compassionate fascist Ivanka have the day off? She was supposed to push Dictator Tot Don in the right direction.
Also, this story helps to make T’s most damaged cabinet secretary a little more decent and likeable.
Like everything from the White House of Mirrors and Lies, I don’t know if it is spin or total bullshit.
satby
@cain: Condolences on the loss of your beloved companion cain. You gave her a happy life filled with your love, and she went when she did to spare you the trial of having to decide if it was time. So sorry.
The Moar You Know
@cain: When my kitty went it was VERY fast. Total kidney failure. She did not suffer, which is really all I cared about at the time. I could bear the suffering of the aftermath for the both of us.
We’d been through everything together and I could truly say she’d been my best friend. And she was utterly devoted to me. Would wait outside in the rain, under the eaves, just to meow at me when I got home from work. What cat does that?
Eight years on and I still miss her. A lot.
Got a pup these days and I ask my growing list of animals in Heaven to help me with the little man. He’s dumb, stubborn and brave and needs all the help he can get (and so do I). I’m going to keep having animals in my life until the prospect of me dying first becomes likelier than them passing before I do. They make us better people.
ruemara
@D58826: I speculate that fiction isn’t too hard for propagandists. There is no reason to believe a hardcore Dominionist like DeVos is supporting transrights. This isn’t who she is.
Yarrow
@ruemara:
According to the article posted by hovercraft above, that Chip Daniels was replying to, Texas has a large number of people of color who are registered but didn’t vote:
The organization referenced in the article has been methodically working to increase their voting percentages and has made great strides. It’s a great success story.
john b
@Brachiator:
see:
NASA Watch figured it out from context and google
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Blue wooden box, perhaps it can go back to October 2016 and deliver a beat down to one James Comey?
Tokyokie
@jacy: Sorry to learn of your loss. I’ve had — and lost — several kitties over the years, and it’s never easy to say goodbye (although we always have favorites, and some are harder to part with than others). I prefer not to be in the vet’s treatment room for the moment a cat who’s been part of my life for years takes its last breath, because I don’t want that to be my last memory of it. But now I’m tearing up thinking about leaving my beloved Neyle, who had irreversible kidney damage, on the steel table at the vet’s with a forlorn look on his face. (OK, I’m probably projecting, but it still affects me.) Hopefully you can find another animal to be part of your life.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Brachiator:
germy
TenguPhule
@cain:
Claim of facts not in evidence.
They will die of starvation, their last bitter gasp a curse on the Democrat liberal atheists who are obviously responsible for their distress.
TenguPhule
@Kelly:
They can pick their own damn crops then.
germy
@Brachiator: Maybe our president is Charlie X (from the original Star Trek)
Mary G
@cain: She hung in there for you as long as she could. I am sorry for your loss.
hovercraft
@GregB:
She’s already had a hard week, yesterday she managed to persuade Twitler to round up his two “blacks” and toddle on down to the Black Museum, and say some words about tolerance. And she should get bonus brownie points for bringing Carson and Omarosa along, see the great diversity of the administration America.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
or maybe executives of your company with different last names could go abroad a’gathering emoluments, so we don’t have to include a security detail, and Uday and Qusay can fold towels in NYC where it’s cheap to keep an eye on them
Mike J
@Brachiator: Three earth sized planets in habitable zone of Trappist 1, looks like they may have water,
Belafon
@ruemara: Latinos in Texas vote at half the rate they do in CA, and the turnout in Dallas was 59% while in my mostly white county nearby was 76%. There is something to be said for motivation as well. And, if you read the article, it talks about TOP getting people motivated to vote as well as providing them ways.
Patricia Kayden
@D58826: Pleasantly shocked by Devos then. Didn’t expect that from her. Perhaps something has clicked in her head from that bruising confirmation process.
Brachiator
From Gizmodo:
When I was a kid, our science books noted that ours was the ONLY solar system with planets. The only one. Don’t look nowhere else ’cause there’s nuthin.
So now, 3 planets in the habitable zone. Kinda like the Friend Zone of the universe.
Patricia Kayden
@TenguPhule:
“Thanks Obama!” will be their last hoarsely whispered, angry words.
D58826
@GregB: Ivanka and her daughter had tickets to SCOTUS courtesy of Justice Kennedy
Amanda in the South Bay
@Denali: thanks, she’s stable for now. Just praying that her new med (vraylar) works and kicks in soon.
Oatler.
I’m still reeling from the Laurie Penny “Lost Boys”essay I read just this morning. Jehosephat, it’s magnificent.
scav
@Brachiator: I love that they’re close enough to hover, visible, in the sky. All the illustrations are confirmed!
IdahoFlanuse
@cain: So sorry for your loss. It is hard to lose a beloved companion. Hold on to the thought that one day the memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.
Vhh
@germy: Well,I prefer to thinkof Trump as Zaphod Beeblebrox in the Hitchhiker’s Guide ….
Villago Delenda Est
@cain: She’s stretched out working on her tan in a permanent sun beam. Purring up a storm.
germy
@Vhh: “Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe”
Villago Delenda Est
@germy: He’s more like Trelane. Spoiled brat.
rikyrah
Happy Birthday, Betty Cracker :)
lollipopguild
@rikyrah: Betty is 29.
rikyrah
DeVos and Sessions had a disagreement over removing the protections over transgender rights.
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) February 22, 2017
rikyrah
He’s always lying: If you want to learn about Trump and his very shady business dealings with Sater, Russia, Ukraine, this thread is IT.
— meta (@metaquest) February 22, 2017
Villago Delenda Est
@lollipopguild: And has been for the last 20 or so years!
Gravenstone
@Brachiator: Seven earth type exo-planets surrounding a nearby white dwarf. Planets are believed to possibly contain water and therefore may be able to support life (as we understand it). All those in favor of immediately launching Trump and his merry band of miscreants towards those planets, signify by saying Aye.
rikyrah
New emails shed light on EPA chief’s industry ties
02/22/17 12:49 PM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump chose so many top administration officials who were hostile to their agencies’ core mission that the nominations almost seemed sarcastic. The president chose Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education despite her opposition to public schools; he chose Andy Puzder to lead the Department of Labor despite his opposition to workers; and Trump chose Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA despite his overt hostility towards environmental safeguards.
Pruitt, who clashed with the EPA during his tenure as attorney general of Oklahoma, spoke to the agency’s employees yesterday, and by some measures, the new administrator’s remarks were not well received.
But while Pruitt settles into his new office, we’re not yet done scrutinizing the work he did before he reached the EPA. The New York Times reported this morning:
Gravenstone
@D58826: There’s probably money to be made for her or her supporters. It’s always about money with that crowd.
rikyrah
The GOP’s Dangerous Advantages
by Martin Longman
February 22, 2017 11:43 AM
Ed Kilgore looks at the polling data and the landscape for the 2018 congressional elections and makes the point that Trump isn’t as unpopular as you might like to believe and that, even if he were, the Republicans are not yet vulnerable to a 2010-like shellacking in the next midterms.
Ed’s right.
I wrote about this in a very pessimistic piece we published on February 10th. My conclusion was that we’ve arrived at a point where the Democrats can win the popular vote and lose the presidency, win the popular vote and lose seats in the Senate, and win the popular vote and not gain control of the House. The first of those just happened for the second time in the last five presidential elections, and the latter two are more likely than not to happen in 2018.
As a result, the Republicans don’t fear accountability as much as they should, and certainly are less subject to external pressure than the Democrats.
The concern I expressed is that “the Republicans’ advantages are currently so great that we cannot get any accountability…and, soon, there’s a real risk of a breakdown in public order when people finally realize that our country is no longer even passingly representative.
rikyrah
Republicans Could Have Blown Up Obamacare Yesterday, But Didn’t
by Nancy LeTourneau
February 22, 2017 1:04 PM
If Republicans really wanted to send Obamacare into a death spiral, they had the perfect chance to do so yesterday. In order to understand the opportunity they let pass them by, we need to dive into the weeds a bit to understand a court case on a little known funding mechanism for making health insurance affordable on the Obamacare exchanges.
It was understood by the framers of health care reform that the exchanges might not initially draw enough business from mostly healthy young people to offset the costs of insuring those with more chronic medical conditions. In order to keep premiums down and make plans more affordable, the law included subsidies to health insurance providers for covering low income participants. The problem was that there was no funding mechanism for this provision included in Obamacare. So the administration applied other funds from the Treasury.
In 2014, House Republicans sued the Obama administration over this and a federal district judge ruled in their favor, but stayed the decision to allow the administration time to appeal the ruling. That appeal was still in the works when Trump was elected. Immediately following the election, Republicans asked the court to pause its proceedings until February 21st (yesterday), presumably to give the new administration the opportunity to weigh how to handle the lawsuit.
Once Trump was inaugurated, with Jeff Sessions confirmed as Attorney General, all the administration would have had to do is drop the appeal and the federal district judge’s ruling would stand, ending the subsidies. The result would have been chaos in the insurance market – leading to the very real possibility that companies would either significantly increase their premiums or pull out of the exchanges altogether.
laura
@cain: I’m so sorry for your loss. They come and steal our hearts and give us comfort and warmth in hard times.
We lost our Timmy, the Gentle King of Tabbies months ago and he ghost’s us almost every day. You, too, may find yourself feeling your kitteh’s presence though no longer here.
I wish you all good things including a new companion when you feel ready to invite one into your home and heart.
Jeffro
@Ian G.:
I know, right? I know they’ve sunk a lot of capital into fossil fuel extraction, but the writing’s been on the wall for a long time now. ExxonMobil and Shell and whatever should have been using their precious oil profits to advance solar & other clean technologies…just bop from one monopoly to the next, saving the planet while they’re doing it. But no, they want to burn every last dollar of carbon profits before making the switch. Life (and business) don’t work that way, and too much is at stake. It’s nuts.
Gravenstone
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Half an hour’s warning. Some very considerate aliens there.
Rhubarb
cain: So very sorry about your kittypurr.
Yarrow
Since this blog is full of animal lovers, thought you might want to see the Finnish president’s dog, Lennu:
That face!
Miss Bianca
@cain: Awww…sorry to hear it.
? Martin
We’re trying to get our rep to hold a town hall. Delivered petitions with thousands of signatures – nothing but silence. I don’t blame her for not wanting one, pretty much everybody I know will attend it.
Jeffro
@germy: it would not surprise me in the least to see Trump start to sic “his” voters on protesting progressives who are showing up at town halls. Not to beat them up – not yet – but these town hall protestors are a reflection on him and his presidency, and they’re going to make a few GOP congressmen weak in the knees.
So when he does…what will Ryan and McConnell and McCain say THEN?
hovercraft
@D58826:
Stop picking on her you liberal feminist bully!!
____________________________________________________________________________________
Never mind that Donald Trump has boasted about being a sexual predator, that he’s a misogynist with profoundly anti-woman policies nor that his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka not only continue to support him but have used their relationship to try to cash in big league. According to Fox News “feminist” Tammy Bruce, women should be supportive of the Trump women anyway…………..
……….Bruce seems to be obsessed with liberal “bullies.” She previously targeted the LGBT community which, she asserted, is a “gay Gestapo” and is “turning into a bunch of fascist bullies.” She was very critical of “thugs” in the LGBT community who got upset at Christian bakers who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding. And, as seen on last Thursday’s Fox & Friends, she has turned her sights on feminists who – you guessed it – are acting like a bunch of bullies
Cohost Brian Kilmeade immediately framed the very important Fox message right in his introduction: “It’s one thing to attack the president, but our next guest says the latest attacks on Ivanka and the first lady reveal just how anti-woman the so-called feminist movement has really become.” After introducing a grinning Bruce, he continued to push the propaganda with a typically leading Fox question: “In what way is feminism hypocritical?”
Bruce provided her feminist creds and spoke about the original intent of feminism to improve the lives of women but, she claimed, “It has now become a cudgel, it has become a dividing line for the left to use against women who, you either conform and pay allegiance to that agenda or you become the other.” (Sounds like Fox News, but I digress…) Those who become the other “must be punished,” she continued, “And so the attacks on, frankly, all the Trump women: the first lady, Ivanka, and even Tiffany, who is a perfectly lovely young woman, being shunned at a New York fashion week, dynamic.” Bruce added her trademark whine: “The left has turned into bullies.” …………….
…………….Bruce claimed that there are “multiple fronts in the attempt to de-legitimize and destroy the individuals which is now the entire Trump family, apparently, for daring to not conform, for daring to want to change the system.” Was she this concerned about Donald’s and Melania’s birtherism, which was an attempt to destroy then-President Barack Obama?………………….
Kilmeade closed the discussion by saying, “They don’t deserve what they’re getting.”
____________________________________________________________________________________
I’m supposed to feel bad for these fucking assholes who chose to get on this magic carpet ride and who’ve tried at every turn to profit off of it? Fuck that and them, welcome to the big league, enjoy your stay, and doan’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Pogonip
@pamelabrown53: I met a hairless cat once, at the cat show. He was lonely, and rubbed up against the bars of his cage, which was festooned with “Go Away” and “Don’t Touch” signs, and purred hopefully, and I was going to be good, and then he reached out and patted my arm. So I skritched his ears for about 15 minutes. (i hadn’t had occasion to handle a cat in months so I thought it unlikely I’d give him the sniffles.). He was the ugliest creature I’d ever seen other than a naked mole rat, which he somewhat resembled, but he sure was sweet.
Pogonip
@Yarrow: Wow. Speaking of ugly animals…
rikyrah
Team Perez all the way.
Trump on DNC race: Ellison ‘predicted early that I would win!’
By LOUIS NELSON
02/22/17 08:14 AM EST
President Donald Trump offered his own take Wednesday morning on the race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, offering some self-serving praise for Rep. Keith Ellison, “the one who predicted early that I would win!”
Ellison (D-Minn.) is considered a top contender to be the next DNC chairman, along with former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, is also a candidate for the job and on Wednesday morning was endorsed by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
waysel
@Yarrow: Ya’ll had me excited for a minute, but, elephant in the room?: Latinos under constant fear of deportation may assume that registering and/ or showing up to vote is a great way to get singled out and targeted by INS.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Trump is such a piece of crap.
Chris
@Raoul:
And the fact that we’re cheated at every juncture.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I remember when Tammy Bruce was a lefty lesbian.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
So she has a tiny shred of a conscience.
Raoul
@D58826: Is she friends with Caitlin Jenner?
Raoul
@Ian G.: It seems like that elected doufus got his Wold Bank info sorta mixed up. In broad strokes, my understanding is that developing countries don’t have enough middle and upper income people to demand ‘luxuries’ like breathable air and non-stinking, not-on-fire rivers. As wealth rises and leisure time expands, people in this Worldbankian view wake up one day and say “ohmigosh, I want a tolerable environment, not just jobs.”
This seems to completely ignore the various indigenous movements that are pushing for sustainability and non planet-raping eco-development. Which is convenient, since the World Bank often likes to finance mega-projects that stomp all over grassroots, local, and sustainable projects.
In other words, the village has to be destroyed so that some day we can build a for-profit, disneyesque replacement.
The Lodger
@rikyrah: DeVos has a transgender relative? Because that’s the only way I can imagine she’d care, being R and all that.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
I’m assuming she’s still a lesbian, but like too many of our leftiest lefties, they get so used to criticizing the “democrat party” that they fall over the edge and join forces with the other side. Hell hath no wrath like a purist scorned, they become the most bitter and vitriolic of our critics because we refused to listen to and follow them.
SAD !
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Welcome to my nightmare. I’m just surprised more armed people aren’t going nuts yet.
Boatboy_srq
@hovercraft: I don’t see CA as “abandoned” by the GOTea, so much as the toxic stew the GOTea peddles elsewhere isn’t to CA’s collective palate. The policy planks are little different from what wins in KS and OH: CA voters just don’t vote for it in the required numbers.
Chat Noir
@cain: I’m so sorry for your loss. I went through that almost three years ago when I had to put my two littermates down within three months of each other. The hole in my heart for them is still there and I miss them every day but I can think about them both and smile. Cats are magic.
lurker dean
@cain: sorry to hear it cain, condolences, it’s never easy :o(
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: More money in being a right-wing sellout.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
I’m also assuming she has more in common with assholes like Peter Thiel than she does with liberals. White supremacy is more important than any other identity she may have.
Anonymous At Work
Why did Pink Floyd get no love? Song about running scared AND features neo-fascists engaged in bigoted violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uf_rTLqj0o
No One You Know
@cain: I’m so sorry. I too have senior cats, one of whom is sick, but not ready to go.
What comrade Scott said, also.
Greg
I’m not in a swing district. I’m in the district that sent Todd Akin to the house and then replaced him with a party chair. As far as I can tell Ann Wagner has never held a public event while in office. If she couldn’t handle talking to constituents in a relatively safe district during Teahadi times why would she start now? Speaking of, I need to go call her a coward again.
Trav
@cain: I’m so sorry.
J R in WV
@cain:
Sorry for your loss. Too bad you couldn’t be with her for those last scritches!
Rescue another kitty asap, please! It will do you AND the kitty so much good!
We started adopting 2 at a time, so as to never be without kitty love. Last time we adopted two, wife found a tiny kitten trapped in a culvert/bramble, so we wound up with three. The tiny one wound up the biggest one.
Kitties are love, no one can have too much love! (although you can have too many cats!)
Joy in FL
@cain: I’m so sorry. I know it is hard. My cat is my heart. Just want to express support to you.