Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
A land puppy and a water puppy meet…
Their friendship was sealed.pic.twitter.com/Jh1vUYscgn
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) August 19, 2019
I loved this and wanted to see if there was a youtube version – and found out puppies and seals have been kissing for years. And each one is more adorable than the next.
Here’s a little respite from the crazy today.
Open thread
As we all know, the best way to knock down a false rumor is to tweet it to your 450,000 followers, 95% of whom hadn't heard anything about said rumor. Because you definitely don't want anybody talking about you replacing Pence on the ticket, no sirree. https://t.co/h3udwbbhMn
— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) August 21, 2019
"Pence chief of staff Marc Short said, 'The Vice President has enormous respect for Nikki Haley, and she was an excellent ambassador for the Trump-Pence agenda during her one year at the UN.' (Haley served as UN ambassador for just under two years.)" https://t.co/m3UIPSBOc1
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) August 24, 2019
A point & mock diversion from all the potentially deadly battles. If fighting amongst themselves wasn’t absolutely a feature of every mad autocrat’s court, I’d blame this minor fooferaw on would-be macher Nick Ayers. Politico:
… While the two could hardly be more different — Pence is a 60-year-old social conservative, she is a 47-year-old daughter of Indian immigrants — those close to them say they have long had a warm relationship. Haley traveled to Indiana in 2012 to help Pence with his gubernatorial campaign, then returned three years later to headline a state GOP dinner while he was embroiled in a competitive reelection race.
The two also shared an adviser in Nick Ayers, a prominent consultant who spent four years as executive director of the Republican Governors Association. And their offices gave them access to the same pool of powerful donors who fund races for governor.
The recent divisions have been fueled partly by the rumors that Haley could replace Pence on the ticket and the fact she took so long to address them. Some top Pence aides said they think Haley or an ally was behind the Wall Street Journal op-ed, which a representative for the former ambassador denied…
Further complicating the dynamic between Pence and Haley is the role of Ayers, who remains close to both. Senior Republicans want to see whether the 37-year-old operative, who stepped down as Pence’s chief of staff at the end of last year to return to his native Georgia, picks one over the other.
Former colleagues of Ayers, who has deep ties to the donor class, say he hasn’t chosen sides. He speaks with Pence and Haley regularly and was seen with both at the Aspen retreat, which was hosted by the RGA. A few weeks later, Ayers and Pence appeared together onstage before a national group of young conservative leaders.
The skirmish offers a potential preview of what’s in store for the GOP after 2020 — a fight over the direction of the party. Pence has been the president’s most unwavering ally since he joined the ticket in 2016, even when Trump’s policies and personal conduct veered far from the principles Pence had long been known for. Haley, who endorsed Marco Rubio in 2016 and was critical of Trump during the campaign, has shown a willingness to break from the administration. She has urged the GOP to be more inclusive, representing potentially a new direction for the party…
TL, DR — In their hearts, none of these people expect Trump to win reelection, even assuming he makes it to 2020, so they’re already prepping to carve up the remnants of the GOP for their own profit. Good news for us Democrats, as far as I’m concerned.
It is extremely funny that Pence smirks and stoically mugs through all of Trump's vapid blaspheme bulls*** but is absolutely seething about being snubbed by a fellow opportunist. They all hate themselves. https://t.co/1Ammbr4Jk3
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) August 24, 2019
GOP Clown Car Open Thread: The Pence v. Haley UndercardPost + Comments (110)
Our river is high — not quite at flood stage, but it’s higher than normal for this time of year and has over-topped a dam located upriver, which happens occasionally and isn’t a cause for alarm, they tell me. The dam acts as a filter, keeping pieces of the flooded swamp from floating past our house. Now that it’s underwater, we see stuff like this go by:
Islands on the move in the flooded river. pic.twitter.com/kFwu9xHvvq
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) August 26, 2019
That’s nothing, though: Several of my relatives live on the Suwannee, which is a much more formidable river than our glorified creek. I’ve seen massive TREES float past their houses when the river is high.
I’m not worried about the water level — unless that storm off the Lesser Antilles heads our way. Things could get interesting then, but we should be okay since we’re on stilts. No point worrying about it in any case.
Speaking of climate change, Trump said many awful things in a surreal news conference this morning, including, when asked about his plans to address climate change, that Americans getting rich on oil and gas is more important than “dreams” and “windmills.”
He also bizarrely blamed President Obama for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and pitched his roach and bedbug-infested Doral shithole as the site of the next G7. But since I’ve become accustomed to open corruption, contempt for science and treason, this is my pick for weirdest news item of the day:
The White House had to clarify a baffling statement President Donald Trump made Monday in which he suggested that his wife, Melania, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had developed a friendship.
“Kim Jong Un, who I’ve gotten to know extremely well, the first lady has gotten to know, Kim Jong Un — and I think she’d agree with me — he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential,” Trump said during a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron following the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham clarified shortly after that, saying the first lady “hasn’t met” the North Korean leader.
“President Trump confides in his wife on many issues including the detailed elements of his strong relationship with Chairman Kim — and while the first lady hasn’t met him, the president feels like she’s gotten to know him, too,” Grisham said.
Grisham is lying, obviously; that’s her job. So what the fucking fuck? As someone pointed out on Twitter, the only plausible explanation for this is that Trump got the Third Lady mixed up with Ivanka, who, unlike the Third Lady, actually did tag along on the “historic” waddle across the DMZ. Gross!
Open thread!
Thought I’d share some (late) lunch joy by cleaning out a couple of browser tabs I’ve been meaning to share with the Jackaltariat.
First up in the catalogue of awful…
Nothing says more about a society than how it treats its most vulnerable. Which is why this, from Pennsylvania coal country last month, says all you need to know about a certain kind of Republican* values:
Wyoming Valley West School District, one of the poorest districts in the state as measured by per-pupil spending, is located in a former coal mining community in Northeastern Pennsylvania, known affectionately by locals as “The Valley.”
When officials there noticed that families owed the district around $22,000 in breakfast and lunch debt…
…school council president Joseph Mazur thought that this would be a good next move:
…the now-infamous letter to about 40 families deemed to be the worst offenders in having overdue cafeteria bills — those were children with meal debt of $10 or more.
“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch,” said the letter signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District. “This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care.”
Just to drive the point home, the guy behind the move, school council president Mazur went on to refuse an offer from a guy in Philadelphia who wanted to pay off the whole debt. Mazur was eventually forced to reverse course.
Next up, an even more grotesque example of cruelty for cruelty’s sake from July. I believe some commenters pointed out this incident, and I’ve been meaning to vent rage about it ever since, but here it is:
At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple’s youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.
“The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad,” her mother, Tania, told NPR through an interpreter. “And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, ‘You said [you want to go] with mom.’ “
*Luzerne County, in which the relevant school district operates, went 58-39% for Trump in 2016.
Image: Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565-7
I have bad ankles. They hate me. My messed up right ankle was the proximate cause of my retirement from soccer refereeing.
I use the following system to determine if I need to see a medical professional for diagnosis and treatment:
| Maximum Symptoms | Initial Treatment Location | Initial Total Cost |
| Bones poking out | Emergency Room | $600 |
| No weight bearing and hearing a “POP” | Emergency Room | $600 |
| No weight bearing for 2 days | Orthopedic Urgent Care | $300 |
| “POP” + significant swelling and pain | Orthopedic Urgent Care | $300 |
| Significant Pain, minimum mobility by Day 3 | Orthopedic Urgent Care | $300 |
| Consistent pain, impaired flexibility for 5+ days | Specialist appointment | $200 |
| 10 days of impairment | Specialist appointment | $200 |
| Typical Twinge | Home (RICE + ankle brace) | $5 |
I’ve never had bones poking out of the skin. Things have gone “pop” a few times too many. Most of my first line treatment is to use some of my stored durable medical equipment to immobilize the injured ankle, and then apply ice, NSAIDs and elevation. Usually that is enough to get me to a point of reasonable restored functionality after a couple of days. Any treatment modality beyond home treatments also have significant non-cash costs of taking time off from work, co-ordinating appointments, arranging for changes in child care responsibilities with my wife and then actually waiting at the office. Those costs, for the insurance that I have, are usually at least equal to if not greater than my out of pocket cost sharing for anything other than an emergency room visit.
Why does this matter?
We need to think about the introduction of technology that lowers the hassle costs of the moderate and low level treatment cases.
Let us imagine that there is a tele-medicine service that has a total cost of care of $100 per instance and very low self-administration costs. If that tele-medicine service is good enough to resolve most of the orthopedic urgent care cases and the specialist cases, we should expect total net costs of treating my ankles to decline significantly as the instance cost goes down dramatically.
However there is a limitation here. In the above scenarios, only medium intensity cases were served by the tele-medicine service at $100 per instance. Thankfully, those intermediate ankle injuries are fairly rare events at this point in my life. I will worry about them as I think those types of injuries significantly increase my probable future fall risk in twenty five to thirty five years. However, I frequently have little ankle tweaks. Most are merely twinges or slight rolls where nothing quite goes out of place but I could feel the loose ligaments let go for a smidgen of a second.
Right now, those twinges and micro-rolls aren’t enough for me to treat beyond perhaps an NSAID pain reliever at a few pennies per dose and a few doses per day. However, if the cost sharing of getting a professional to look at my ankle is near nil and the hassle costs are near nil, some of the minor injuries that I currently self manage will get checked out at a total system cost of $100. Given that I have many more minor injuries than intermediate injuries, the percentage of minor injuries that now generate low cost tele-medicine visits does not need to be too high in order to cancel out any savings tele-medicine generates from shifting some of the intermediate level ankle visits from in person visits to virtual visits.
This same logic applies to many claims that tele-medicine or virtual visits will save net money overall as it may be cheaper on a per-visit basis, but that very cheapness may move a significant number of very low acuity incidents from never being treated to being treated. Tele-medicine is likely to be cost-effective but being cost-saving is a far higher hurdle to clear.
Bad ankles, shifting demand and telemedicinePost + Comments (47)
Good Morning All,
Some more good stuff to share – have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Most dogs are rules lawyers:
Dogs, bruh…???????????? pic.twitter.com/JIX5o6iplS
— Rex Chapman???? (@RexChapman) July 20, 2019
“You told me not to jump in the pool. You *didn’t* tell me not to paddleboard.”
So are most Political Twitter Experts, especially at the ends of the horseshoe…
Somewhere there are dozens of influential Trump whisperers currently thinking “Do I attack the hurricane-nuke story’s creditbility knowing he could tweet support for it at like any second, or do I just immediately embrace the awesomeness of hurricane-nuking? MY GOD I DON’T KNOW” pic.twitter.com/SHXnlWRNUZ
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) August 26, 2019
“The Obama-Bush hurricane appeasement clearly failed, so I applaud him for trying something different”
“Well I don’t see *you* with plan for solving the hurricanes”
“So I guess you’re just fine with the hurricane’s wind, rain & floods?”
“Clearly you’re paid by Big Hurricane”
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) August 26, 2019
Now I’m waiting for Tom Cotton to explain that, actually, nuking hurricanes is a terrific idea that everyone should be for, and in fact he was the one who suggested it to the President.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) August 26, 2019
Turns out that every year cranks write to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking the US govt to nuke hurricanes. They grew so tired of it they created a webpage explaining why it is a terrible idea https://t.co/R2kKwCjDdy (h/t @profmusgrave) pic.twitter.com/Tnb97Q5Zox
— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) August 25, 2019
A feel-good story to start the week:
NEW: Steve King’s campaign is broke. Having been abandoned by his GOP colleagues, he has just 18k cash on hand heading into a primary fight. Via @lachlan https://t.co/h4DSpGqIMz
— Sam Stein (@samstein) August 25, 2019
… King has not received a single contribution this year from a political action committee associated with a sitting member of Congress. Corporate PACs and interest groups have also completely shunned him. Through the first six months of the year, King received just two contributions from third party political entities: $2,000 donations from PACs associated with two former members of Congress, Lamar Smith (R-TX) and the infamous Todd Akin (R-MO)…
King is dealing with that lack of resources as he faces very immediate threats to his incumbency. His 2018 Democratic opponent, former professional baseball player J.D. Scholten, lost by fewer than three points last year, and is making another run for the seat. This time around King also has a formidable Republican primary opponent, state senator Randy Feenstra, who has already scored endorsements from influential Iowans such as evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. At the end of July, Feenstra’s campaign committee reported having $337,314.30 cash on hand, compared to King’s $18,000…
Correction: This piece originally stated that individual donations to King were down considerably. In fact, they are roughly on par with previous cycles. The congressman’s financial troubles are due to a drop in corporate and political donations.
But there are still some sane people left in Iowa…
We have a HUGE opportunity to defeat Steve King!!!
Last cycle WE:
– moved the needle 24 points!
– got 25,000 more votes than there are Dems in #IA04This cycle, we picked up right where we left off. To help, consider donating whatever you can???https://t.co/jRduESrx7C https://t.co/FQZvMBtek7
— J.D. Scholten (@JDScholten) August 25, 2019
Monday Morning Open Thread: Rules LawyersPost + Comments (285)