Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

He really is that stupid.

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

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

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Archives for November 2018

File load error in your favor (North Dakota Edition)

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Healthcare.gov went live this morning.

There is an unusual situation in North Dakota right now. One of the insurers, Sanford Health, did not file the correct rates with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS is currently suppressing Sanford plans in North Dakota until a new file can be prepared and loaded.

We saw this last year in New Mexico when Christus made an error in their file loads. The pragmatic implication is that there will be two sets of subsidy calculations performed. The first one goes from now until the corrected file is loaded. These subsidies will be based on the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Dakota two Silver plans. The benchmark is higher but the Silver spread is smaller than the second set of subsidy calculations. These calculations will go into effect when the revised rates are loaded. At that point, Sanford will have the Silver benchmark at a lower level.

Pragmatically, if you live in North Dakota and know that you want a Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan or a Medica plan and you are getting subsidized, go look now. Your rates are going to be cheaper.

If you know that you just need minimal hit by a meteor coverage with a Bronze plan, go shop now. Your rates will be lower.

If you know that you need/want a Sanford plan, then you need to wait.

If you qualify for a CSR silver plan and you don’t care which insurer you choose, then wait as the cheapest CSR Silver plan will be cheaper in the near future.

This is an odd little edge case that can work in your favor.

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Getchya Fresh News Here!

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The New York Times reported today on a story you saw in Balloon Juice more than a month ago, based on accounts in Finnish media. A wealthy Russian businessman was buying up properties along an important Finnish sealane. The Finnish authorities raided those properties, which had some of the look of preparing for military action. Finnish government and business websites were then hit with a DDoS attack.

Anyhow, welcome to the party, New York Times!

And open thread!

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Fucking Vote

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Pelosi is a smart politician but this is dumb:

Appearing on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that “up until today, I would’ve said, ‘If the election were held today, we would win.’ What now I’m saying is, ‘We will win, we will win,'” Pelosi announced.

My reaction to this isn’t superstition, either: there are a lot of people for whom voting is a major chore, because the Republicans want it that way. If these prospective voters think the House is in the bag, they’re not going to take hours out of their day to trudge to a far-off polling place, stand in line, and be miserably cold and/or wet.

We will win IF EVERYONE VOTES. Jesus, it’s so simple, but even the best Democrats could fuck up a god damned ham sandwich.

Also, my voting plan was executed two weeks ago when I voted absentee because I’ll be out of town next week.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

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On the Road and In Your Backyard

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Good Morning All,

On The Road and In Your Backyard is a weekday feature spotlighting reader submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, please share your part of the world, whether you’re traveling or just in your locality. Share some photos and a narrative, let us see through your pictures and words. We’re so lucky each and every day to see and appreciate the world around us!

Submissions from commenters are welcome at tools.balloon-juice.com

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

 

So Halloween night is not going well as I didn’t sync my new IP address in my password db before I left home and all are asleep so I can’t find out. Short way of saying, these aren’t the pictures I’d planned to run. We’re Wisconsin-bound, not Africa-bound.

I’m off my game, no lie. Friday will be one year since my mom died and the past couple of weeks, I’ve been out of my mind. I expect that will clear up as I get past that first anniversary.

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Late Night Pulped Friction: Whitey Bulger (Probably) Died As He Had Lived

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The parenthetical in the title is because the first breathless news reports out of Bulger’s home town said that the corpse was ‘so badly beaten as to be unrecognizable’ — exactly the suspiciously B-movie detail that *would* finish a novelization of Whitey’s career. But the sordid truth seems to be that the old man was killed by a professional thug from the Massachusetts sticks, apparently in the hope that one more murder would bump up his own status among the other lifers.

And just as Bulger survived to be a very old man by playing various law enforcement agencies for a bunch of grubby bureaucrats equally torn between envy of their targets and burning hatred for their interbureau rivals, the circumstances of his death have left many questions that will bedevil the FBI and the US Bureau of Prisons.

The Boston Globe, no suprise, is going all out on Bulger’s life and death. (If it weren’t for the Red Sox victory parade, Whitey would probably have had the entire front page to himself.) And who could blame them, given such material?

James “Whitey” Bulger’s life played out like any number of the violent Hollywood movies it spawned, reflecting a Boston that is no more, when bookmakers and gangsters peopled the taverns of the city’s working-class neighborhoods; when the locals wouldn’t dream of turning in the neighborhood hoodlum; when gangland murders were commonplace; and when the FBI was so hellbent on taking out the Mafia that it helped gangsters like Mr. Bulger kill rivals and rise to the top of the Boston underworld.

Mr. Bulger, one of America’s most manipulative criminals who eluded prosecution for decades because he was protected by corrupt FBI agents, was killed Tuesday in a federal prison in West Virginia. He was 89 and was serving two life sentences for 11 murders.

Mr. Bulger was charismatic and vicious, well-read and heartless. He persuaded a Jesuit priest to serve as his parole sponsor, torched the Brookline birthplace of John F. Kennedy during antibusing strife, kept house with two women in different locations at the same time, and routinely took naps immediately after shooting people in the head. He loved animals, crying over a puppy being put down, yet secretly buried at least six of his victims, denying their loved ones the bodies…

In his teens, James Bulger ran away with the circus, and when he returned home he took up with a much older woman who was a stripper in a traveling burlesque show. The stripper scandalized Mr. Bulger’s mother by sending him postcards from the road.

Mr. Bulger’s propensity for rule-breaking graduated to crime. He was a tailgater — stealing off the backs of trucks that took goods from the freighters on the South Boston waterfront.

In a neighborhood where hardly anyone had a car, he had one. When he wasn’t driving around town with his Jayne Mansfield-lookalike girlfriend Jacquie McAuliffe, Mr. Bulger often scouted for opportunities — not necessarily for crime, but to buff his credentials as a hoodlum with a heart of gold.

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Go sign up

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Open Enrollment on Healthcare.gov and almost all of the state based marketplaces just opened up. California has been cranking for a couple of weeks now.

Go sign up if you need insurance.

Folks who are currently covered by individual market policies, you are being auto-assigned similar plans to whatever you currently have. You really should go to your account and make sure that this is what you want. Even if you love your plan, premiums will change. Make sure you get what you want instead of just what you have.

Premiums will change due to normal circumstances. Reinsurance waivers are bringing premiums down significantly in some states. New entries into markets are offering new choices that may crush the Silver Gap that led to hugely discounted net of subsidy premiums. Some insurers got smart and figured out how to offer no premium plans to subsidized buyers.

All of this means you need to look and shop. Perhaps you’ll stick around with what you have, but look around to be sure that you’ll not regret your choice in February.

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