REPUBLICANS IMPEACHED BILL CLINTON FOR LYING ABOUT A BLOW JOB.
That is all.
A Quick Message Before Tomorrow’s Partial Release of the Mueller ReportPost + Comments (158)
This post is in: Dolt 45
REPUBLICANS IMPEACHED BILL CLINTON FOR LYING ABOUT A BLOW JOB.
That is all.
A Quick Message Before Tomorrow’s Partial Release of the Mueller ReportPost + Comments (158)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Clown car, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
“Tongue so firmly in cheek as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice” (R.A. Lafferty)
OK, I've accomplished all that any man can dream of. I'm the king of the world! https://t.co/QCpwAt0sfS
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) April 17, 2019
I just noticed that it's the FOURTH ANNUAL cruise specially catering to people who hate me. Not only have I achieved something amazing, I have staying power.
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) April 17, 2019
This is incredible and I want someone to go and report on it: https://t.co/JEEntBBSNh https://t.co/WHeB8SXhJZ
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) April 17, 2019
You haven’t really made it until an entire cruise ship is devoted to dissing you.
— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) April 17, 2019
You're a job creator!
— Arkenor (@Arkenor) April 17, 2019
The boat sinks.
— TonyD (@Dogger55) April 17, 2019
Open Thread: Another ‘Honor’ for Professor Krugman!Post + Comments (47)
This post is in: Impeachment, Open Threads, Trump Crime Cartel, Trump-Russia, Assholes, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
Attorney General Bill Barr will hold a news conference Thursday morning at the Justice Department, at 9:30 a.m. He's expected to take questions about the release of the redacted Mueller report. Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein will be there as well.
— Carrie Johnson (@johnson_carrie) April 17, 2019
Yeah this is pretty transparently a spin job, since they'll be filling a huge knowledge vacuum. https://t.co/0FbmQAsoQc
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) April 17, 2019
Trump has also said he may do a press conference after. Obviously, if the report is released in the press conference, nobody will have had time to read it.
New: Once the redacted version of the Mueller report has been released to the public, the Justice Department plans to make available for review by a limited number of Members of Congress and their staff a copy of the report without certain redactions. per new court record.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) April 17, 2019
Minutes after the Justice Department announced that Attorney General Barr will be holding a press conference tomorrow about the release of Mueller’s final report, just saw Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walk out of the Justice Department building. Never seen him here before.
— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) April 17, 2019
US Justice Dept. says "a limited number of Members of Congress and their staff" will have access to "a copy of the Special Counsel’s report without certain redactions" https://t.co/lg7RLQHyTr#MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/tP4AcZfwQl
— Mike Scarcella (@MikeScarcella) April 17, 2019
Justice officials have had numerous talks with White House lawyers about Mueller's conclusions in recent days, talks that have aided Trump's legal team as it prepares rebuttal @MarkMazzettiNYT @maggieNYT @npfandos @ktbenner https://t.co/NM1BLfpDhM
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) April 17, 2019
I am wondering if what is released will be the marked-up redacted 400 pages or a rewrite by Barr. Also if the text will be searchable or if it will be one of those inert pdfs.
Set Your Alarm – AG Barr To Hold Press Conference 9:30 Eastern Thursday MorningPost + Comments (118)
This post is in: Meetups and social events, Open Threads
For those who don’t read Balloon Juice on the weekend…
From commentor PirateDan:
Since I will be in Seattle on business for two weeks, I thought it might be nice to see if anyone was interested in using that as an excuse to stage a Seattle Area meetup that Friday or Saturday (or even Sunday) (May 3rd, 4th or 5th).
I know bupkis about Seattle, so I would defer to the locals as to when and where, if there is a when and where. I will have a rental set of wheels so I can be lured where the whimsy takes the group, as long as there is parking…
What say you, Seattle jackals?
REPOST – Readership Capture Open Thread: Seattle Meet-Up, First Weekend in May?Post + Comments (19)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs
I subscribe to Paul Goble’s blog, “Window on Eurasia – New Series.” Goble worked in the United States State Department while the Soviet Union was breaking up. He worked particularly with Estonia and the other Baltic States, which had been made Republics of the Soviet Union after World War II, although that status had never been recognized by the United States and most other countries.
After he retired from the State Department, he taught in Estonian universities and wrote a summary of media, translated from Russian and Estonian, for a mailing list. That summary became the blog. He watches a variety of publications for separatist leanings, of which there are many in Russia. Russia contains many nationalities and many languages, peoples not always happy to be part of that larger state, but not able to break away.
It’s a different view of Russia than we get from Big Media, which focuses mainly on Vladimir Putin, not even on the politics among his government and the oligarchs. The focus on Putin tends to make him look all-powerful, but he is subject to a great many political currents and challenges from rivals. For now, he is in a relatively stable position. Here are a couple of stories that Goble has been following.
Continuing Anonymous Bomb Threats
For the past couple of years, anonymous bomb threats have been made by phone, letter, or email to many cities in Russia. The Russians have not been able to find the source of the bomb threats, which disrupt civil and governmental functions.
On a single day [in March] the Regnum news agency reports, anonymous and unconfirmed bomb threats were made against 661 facilities, forcing the evacuation of “almost 24,000 people,” one of the largest one day totals ever there or in any other Russian city over the last three years (regnum.ru/news/polit/2597506.html).
“Among them,” the Russian news agency says, “were not only the customary trade centers or universities but also schools and hospitals and also administrative centers of districts, payment offices and business centers.” A day after these calls, an addition 17,000 people were evacuated. And this weekend, “this ‘process’ continued,” Regnum reports.
Targets included the Hermitage and St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Threats have also been received in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
Conflict Between Chechnya and Ingushetia
These two republics in the Caucasus have been in conflict for a decade or more. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, has offered a number of challenges to Vladimir Putin. Chechen separatists fought Russian troops twice since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin supports Kadyrov, who negotiated a peace with Russia and has granted him a fair bit of independent action.
Recently, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of Ingushetia, negotiated land swaps with Kadyrov. The deal strongly favored Chechnya, and there have been Ingush protests about the swaps. Moscow has sent FSB and other police support to control the Ingush protests. They have arrested opposition leaders. However, the Ingush opposition seems to be solidifying and spreading. Ingushetia’s interior ministry is confiscating guns from the population.
Kadyrov is now unilaterally marking the Chechen border with Dagestan, causing concern there.
It’s not clear what will happen. Speculation is that Moscow will replace Yevkurov. Some Ingush have picketed in Red Square in Moscow, and the issue has been brought up in the Duma. Moscow has ordered an end to border talks between Chechnya and Dagestan to prevent protests like those in Ingushetia.
Other Bits
Russia has a single aircraft carrier, and it’s not in good condition. It may never return to sea.
Over the last 25 years, “no language in the world has disappeared as quickly as Russian.” Eighty million fewer people speak Russian now than did in 1991.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.
by Betty Cracker| 347 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, Open Threads, Politics, Assholes
A new Atlantic piece lays out Bernie Sanders’ 2020 strategy, and guess what, you guys? We were right — it is about splitting the party in hopes of hanging onto the largest chunk:
The 2020 Race Is Going Just Like Bernie Sanders Wanted
The Vermont senator is starting to think he will not only win the Democratic nomination, but beat Trump and become president.“There’s a three out of four chance we are not the nominee,” Faiz Shakir, the current campaign manager, said he tells the senator, “but that one in four chance is better than anyone else in the field.”
The Vermont senator’s pitch is a mix of idealism and a shouting anger about the system, but at its heart is a hard-nosed math: he’s the only candidate with a sizable chunk of the electorate that won’t waver, no matter what, so a field that keeps growing and splitting support keeps making it easier.
He’s counting on winning Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was already surprisingly strong in 2016, and hoping that Cory Booker and Kamala Harris will split the black electorate in South Carolina give him a path to slip through there, too. And then, they believe, they’ll easily win enough delegates to get him into contention at the convention. They say they don’t need him to get more than 30 percent to make that happen.
So he’s eagerly gotten into fights, like one over the weekend with the Center for American Progress over a video produced by an affiliated website speciously accusing him of profiting off his 2016 run, and then he’s fundraised by citing the fights as evidence of the resistance to the revolution he’s promising.
So, how does Sanders propose to reunite the Democratic electorate after fracturing it? Easy peasy!
Doubters suspect a Sanders nomination could be the one sure way to give Trump a second term, but Sanders’s thinking is that he could get the same Democratic and anti-Trump votes as other nominee, plus all the people who would only vote for him.
Now, I’m Team Broken Glass, but I’m unclear on how waging a scorched earth primary results in Democratic voters resetting their default to “generic Dem” after the race is wrapped up. (See 2016, presidential election of.) There’s a breathtaking arrogance in that assumption, but hey, it explains the lack of outreach to non-Sanders supporters in the party, otherwise known as “the majority of registered Democrats.”
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Insurers are currently preparing their initial rate filings for 2020 right now. Submissions will be due in a few weeks. So what should we expect?
I think we should expect stability as the rule set if fairly constant going from 2019 to 2020. Insurers know that the only major potential policy shock is an adverse ruling from the 5th Circuit and the Supreme Court in Texas v Azar. That is a low probability event. Silver loading is allowed and common. CSR payments are slowly working their way through the court system but there will be no final judgement to trigger regulatory intervention. Essential Health Benefits have not been touched except at the edges. This is a policy stable year. It is the first policy stable year since 2016 policy year pricing season.
For the 2017 policy year, actuaries were trying to adjust to the loss of federal reinsurance and the Presidential election.
For the 2018 policy year, actuaries were trying to price in the possibility of repeal and replace as well as CSR termination.
For the 2019 policy year, actuaries were trying to estimate if they had overpriced 2018 and estimate the impact of Silverloading as well as mandate repeal.
For 2020, there is clarity about the bigger questions from 2019 but no new policy curve balls.
I expect more individual market insurers to enter new markets and expand their footprints.
Here are the major pricing pressures for the actuaries to worry about.
This will vary by state. States that publicize individual mandates will see healthier and bigger risk pools than states that either don’t have a state based individual mandate or have a state based individual mandate and absolutely no advertising about it.
States that have filed for 1332 waivers for reinsurance will see less premium pressure than states without reinsurance.
States that fully expand Medicaid to 138% Federal Poverty Level will see lower premium increases than states that have not expanded Medicaid. This will be most evident in Utah, Idaho, Virginia and Maine as the roll-out ramps up.
The short version of this post is that 2020 is the first “normal” operational year for the ACA exchanges over the past several years. We should see “normal” changes to premiums.