If I had to guess at where the PACT act is headed, it’s perhaps a face-saving amendment and a vote this week where it passes with almost the 84 votes that it had the first time. I’m not sure about the amendment — I hope this turns into a vote on the exact same bill, because I think there are probably at least 10 Republicans who know how shitty it looks to make vets dying of cancer serve a “fire watch” on the Capitol steps. (FWIW, Politico thinks the amendment won’t pass.)
Anyway, the next chapter in the Republican abuse of veterans is going to be “What’s the big deal, it passed?” This is basic abuser logic, and expect Cruz and the rest of the liars to seize on it after the PACT act passes. This is shameful shit, the election is less than 100 days away, and anyone interviewing one of the vote switchers needs to keep asking them why they chose to abuse veterans, and be ready to refute their transparent lies.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Welshing on promises to the troops – it’s the Murican Way!
Litlebritdifrnt
Hello folks. I know I haven’t been posting much lately but I have had things going on. Anyway on Thursday I am going into the hospital for a needle biopsy to see if the thing that is growing in my lung is actually cancer. I have not had surgery for 41 years (and that was only a sinus op) so I am a little nervous to say the least. Anyhow, hopefully everything will be okay but they are a tad concerned that my lung might collapse and you know things go down hill from there. Anyway, I am going to make sure my DH has all my log in details so if the worst comes to the worst you all know what happened instead of you just wondering where I had gone. If the biopsy says it is cancer then obviously we can talk about chemo and stuff but until then we have no idea which way to go. I have no symptoms, I am not losing weight ( in fact I am getting fat because I am eating so much), I am not coughing or spitting up anything so me and my Doc are basically just trying to figure out what this little nodule is. Anyhoo until then I am just going to be lurking as ususal and will let you know what is going on when I can. Love you all and hope to see you again on the other side.
Elizabelle
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wonderful to see you, and hope whatever is in that lung is benign.
Immanentize
There is no amendment. If you are referring to “mandatory” versus “discretionary” spending designation, that is another Republican prevarication. It is cooked up to make this about a budget issue, not petulance. The “mandatory” language was in the bill the 84 30+ Senate Reps* approved. The only change was a taxation line that could have rendered the bill unconstitutional (especially these days) which dealt with whether a certain thing was tax exempt or not taxable.
*I do wish Hillary had called the terrible people of the GOP “reprehensible” instead of “deplorable.”
skerry
@Litlebritdifrnt: Sending warm thoughts and best wishes your way
mvr
@Litlebritdifrnt: As someone with a 46 year old nodule in my left lung, and as you probably know, not all nodules turn out to be or cause problems. I hope yours is one of those and if it isn’t that the problems caused are manageable.
WaterGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: Hopefully this will be the most uneventful surgery imaginable. Sending you all the good thoughts
Do you stay overnight or is it outpatient? How soon should we expect to hear from you or your husband afterwards?
Because you know we’ll all be saying, “have we heard from Litlebritdifrnt yet?”
Cacti
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best wishes for a happy result.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Litlebritdifrnt: We’ll be thinking of you and hoping for good news
Suzanne
@Litlebritdifrnt: Many hugs and best wishes for a good outcome.
Baud
@Litlebritdifrnt:
🤞
Ohio Mom
@Litlebritdifrnt: Good to see you again though not under these circumstances! Crossing fingers and toes for you that what they find is benign.
I don’t know much about lungs but I am sure a collapsed one can be fixed, my cousin had that happen to him (long story) so don’t worry about that.
Keep us posted, we are all pulling for you.
Baud
@Immanentize:
Apparently, Toomey fooled Kevin Drum.
zhena gogolia
@Litlebritdifrnt: We love you too — we’ll be thinking of you.
frosty
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best of luck; I’m pulling for you.
Ohio Mom
@Immanentize: Hah! Most of them wouldn’t have known what “reprehensible” meant. Would have gone over their heads.
Old School
@Litlebritdifrnt: I hope everything goes smoothly and things are back to normal soon.
OzarkHillbilly
@Litlebritdifrnt: Here’s hoping it is benign. As to collapsing your lung, it’s a painful inconvenience but not much more. The surgery… for me anyway, was somewhat horrific but afterwards I got that first wonderful shot of morphine. It didn’t really kill the pain, but it became a beautiful pain, glorious even. I was in the hospital for 6 days with a chest drainage tube and a vat to hold what came out of me. A pain in the ass, and a pain in my side.
Hopefully, you can avoid the indignities of it.
Tony G
From the point of view of the people who own this country, “the troops” (in earlier eras “the grunts”, “the GIs”, “the doughboys”, etc.) are expendable laborers, bodies to be thrown into the trash when they’re no longer useful. This is nothing new, but in earlier eras the people in charge would at least go through the motions of pretending to care about them. Trump’s legacy is that he proved that you can be as openly evil as you want to be without paying any price.
SiubhanDuinne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Oh, we’ve been hoping to hear from you, and it’s great to see your nym! I wish you the most boring and uneventful procedure ever, and look forward to seeing more of you around these parts. Hugs across the Pond!
Soprano2
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wishing you all the best, hopefully it’ll be benign and not a problem. I’m waiting for a call to schedule a stress test. When I went for my regular checkup last week I mentioned I’d had a few weird incidents – jaw pain that was probably my old TMJ acting up and a day full of weird lightheadedness. Doc decided to do an EKG, and he discovered I have something called left bundle branch block in my heart, which may or may not be a serious problem. I’m hoping it’s not, but I won’t know until they do the test.
waspuppet
That is the thing Democrats never, ever do. Republicans will say “Fine whatever it passed” and Democrats (with a big assist from the Axioses and Politicos of the world) will let them get away with it. Meanwhile, we’re still the Spitting on Troop Coming Home From Vietnam Party.
Old School
@Immanentize:
There is an amendment. The proposal is to let Toomey get a vote on his proposed amendment to the bill, have it get voted down, and then pass the bill.
Miss Bianca
@Litlebritdifrnt: Hoping for the best for you, glad to see you back.
SFAW
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Best wishes, and hoping that it’s nothing bad.
eclare
@Litlebritdifrnt: Fingers and paws crossed for you here. I hope you get some good news!
Benw
@Litlebritdifrnt: hoping for the best result! Looking forward to seeing you back
Uncle Cosmo
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best of luck with the procedure. Hope it goes smoothly (do I recall correctly that there was some complication there? hope not) and that it turns out to be nothing worth
writing homeposting here about.Mike in NC
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best wishes to you.
p.a.
@Litlebritdifrnt: 🤞🏻💪🏻
Barbara
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best wishes, that the procedure will go well and that the node will not be cancer.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: hoping for the best!
Uncle Cosmo
Naah, “reprehensible” is the kind of love-tap worthy of a Swinefeld episode, as in “repulsive characters behaving reprehensibly”. I’d hold out for despicable.
O. Felix Culpa
@Old School:
I tremble at offering explanations on behalf of the venerable Imm, but I think his point was that the Vile Repubs ™ said that a nonexistent amendment was their reason for voting no. So the lying liars lied. Again. As usual.
Soprano2
@Old School: I wish they wouldn’t do that, I wish they would just bring the exact same bill up again. Voting on an amendment gives the R’s cover to say “see, all we wanted was a vote on our (bullshit) amendment, we actually care a lot about the troops and didn’t vote against this bill in a fit of pique that Democrats revived their reconciliation bill after we thought we killed it”.
Ben Cisco
@Litlebritdifrnt: Sending wishes for a favorable outcome!!
Barbara
@Tony G: Without wishing to start an argument, some of the recent reading I’ve done suggests that one of the biggest differences between WWI and WWII in terms of tactics and strategy was that by WWII, England and France — democratic countries — could no longer count on the willingness of “grunts” to self-immolate for the benefit of their “betters.” Whereas, Germany and the USSR could still get away with that, mostly by making the risk of refusal to face suicidal combat situations worse than even certain death in battle.
I am not suggesting that the people who own this country care about the troops, but that we have progressed such that as a society we are not willing to send them into combat situations with complete indifference to whether they live or die.
realbtl
@Uncle Cosmo: Too many would still have to look despicable up. I’d stick with “assholes.”
Redshift
@Litlebritdifrnt: Fingers crossed for a good outcome. I had a needle biopsy a few years back, and while it has the same annoying recovery time as any surgery, it is pretty minor.
Redshift
@Soprano2: I’m okay with them allowing a vote on an amendment as long as it doesn’t pass. “We only voted against helping dying veterans because we didn’t get our pointless procedural vote, and then we fist-bumped about it” still looks pretty dickish.
Especially since I doubt anyone but Toomey said at the time that was the reason for their no vote, and some of them accidentally told the truth that it was because they were butthurt over the Manchin deal.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Soprano2:
@Redshift: Being a Pennsylvanian, the prominence of Toomey’s name in this little incident makes me so happy that (a) he is retiring from the Senate and (b) it seems very likely that he is going to be replaced by Fetterman.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I’ve asked Drum directly if he actually read the various versions of the bill. They are easy to read and comprehend, but I found it tricky to find the various versions and then confirm that what I was looking at was the version as labeled. The .gov website is great about providing current versions, but terrible at providing full-text of earlier versions.
PST
@Litlebritdifrnt: By coincidence, I was scheduled last week for a biopsy of a nodule in one of my lungs discovered by accident during a CT taken for other purposes. However, the interventional radiologist decided that the darn thing was too small to reliably poke a needle into, so the medical team decided to wait three months and take another CT. If it’s cancer, it will grow, and they’ll be able to hit the target more easily. If not, it won’t grow, and we can all relax. The logic is impeccable, yet I am still somehow uneasy about the strategy. Anyway, warm wishes and best of luck to you with your procedure, Litlebritdifrnt.
Mai Naem mobile
@Litlebritdifrnt: good luck with the procedure and hope the growth turns out to be a minor inconvenience.
Joe Falco
Cruz will clutch his pearls and angrily accuse the reporter of being a biased liberal mouthpiece for the Media instead of answering any question of why he and other Republicans treated veterans’ healthcare like political football. Still, it’s good if any reporter can get their reaction to the question on the record.
JustRuss
Have you met our media?
Chief Oshkosh
@Immanentize: Sure would be nice if the Democrats provided that simple line in every press conference about this issue. It took me an hour to figure out from the source materials. It is SO fucking simple, but even Tester was mealy-mouthed about this. Instead of just saying that a small textual change was made, show the fucking godammned text! Don’t tell me; show me!
ETA: Actually, I’m not 100% sure I found the single line that was changed. I think I did. However, I definitely found the two occurrences of the “not to be discretionary spending” and “must be one of the Mandatories” verbiage that I believe was in the original bill that 84 Republicans voted for.
RobertB
@Barbara: acoup.blog is a good place for everything military history related.
His take on WW1 was that even the smart people on both sides of the war in France couldn’t solve the problem of keeping an offensive moving after breaking through the initial defensive lines. That the massive shelling needed to disrupt the defenses left terrain that couldn’t be crossed quickly with supplies and reinforcements. So the offense would fizzle out, and the defenders would push the exhausted offense back. Rinse, repeat.
That’s not to say what you’re saying about command’s take on ‘grunts’ is wrong. France ended up with a mutiny on their hands, when the troops had had enough of getting killed for no apparent purpose. They stayed at their posts and defended, but would not attack.
J R in WV
@Litlebritdifrnt: My Wife had pretty major lung issues some time back, had a lobe that had gone necrotic removed through a tiny incision. She is still kicking around OK, so I expect you will also come through OK and willing to kick ass….Wishing you the best from the forested hills of West Virginia!
ETA so it makes more sense…
Mr. Bemused Senior
In the voice of Daffy Duck.
Spanky
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best of luck to you! Over here we’re waiting to hear the results of a breast biopsy, so I can relate to the angst of waiting.
Joe Falco
@JustRuss: I would trade a hundred reporters of our media for one of the British journalists that confronted Cruz about Cruz’s opposition to gun control.
Tony G
@Barbara: Yes, you’re certainly right. As I understand it, during World War Two, the U.S. certainly made more of an effort to preserve the lives of U.S. servicemen than was the case in Germany or the Soviet Union (and certainly more than was the case in Japan, which wasted hundreds of thousands of lives in banzai charges and in kamikaze attacks). So, yes, the U.S. was not the worst, and I didn’t mean to imply that it was. Another difference in the World War Two era was that the background of the men who were in combat was relatively egalitarian (with the glaring exception of the racial segregation — which ironically had the effect that Black men faced less risk of combat). The sons of Prescott Bush and Joseph Kennedy, for example, famously served in combat in the Pacific. By the time of the Vietnam War it was fairly easy for the sons of the rich and powerful to avoid combat (George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Bone-Spurs Trump being three famous examples). And the advent of the all-volunteer military in 1973 (which benefited me an my sons personally) meant that, with some exceptions, the affluent are not part of the military. My only point (which I didn’t express very well) was that it’s always been easy for the people in charge to wave the flag and express support for “the troops” without doing much materially to help them. This horrific GOP opposition to the “burn pit” fading is the latest manifestation of that. Thanks.
Ken
They need to use git, or some other revision control system. It would also record who made each change, which would solve that recurrent problem where no one is sure just how that special tax break for major donor X got into the bill. Though maybe they don’t want that problem solved….
RaflW
“Anyone interviewing one of the vote switchers needs to keep asking them why they chose to abuse veterans, and be ready to refute their transparent lies.” This would be amazing. And so out of character with the press we have in America.
I just think about the times when a Brit comes over here – or brings on a US pol – and asks repeated, substantive follow-ups. It’s gorgeous. And while it should make US reporters blush with embarrassment, they just … don’t (rare exceptions do occur, sure).
geg6
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Same.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Sending all the positive vibes I have your way.
HumboldtBlue
@Immanentize:
Jon Stewart tries to talk some sense into a Newsmax host and Newsmax viewers about PACT Act.
CaseyL
@Litlebritdifrnt: Thank you for updating us! Fingers crossed the biopsy goes uneventfully, and the nodule is benign.
Kent
It would seem like another option would be for the House to just pass the already passed Senate version that has the technical “error” in it and then put the technical fix in the next omnibus budget bill or whatever. Meanwhile start implementing the bill. That could at least be a backup plan.
But doing it this way makes the GOP squirm and look like the shitstains that they are.
delphinium
@Litlebritdifrnt: Best wishes for a good outcome! Also for @PST and @Spanky.
Another Scott
@Immanentize:
I’ve thought for ages that the only thing that was wrong with her comment was that it was too broad. But in the full context, even that criticism doesn’t hold water.
Wikiville:
(Emphasis added.)
Maybe she should have said “too many” instead of “half”. Maybe.
But you know that no matter what she said, the GQP and their enablers would twist it up. They completely ignored the rest of her statement where she was reaching out to TFG’s supporters.
What she said was fine.
I hope Comey has nightmares every night for the rest of his life…
Grrr…,
Scott.
Litlebritdifrnt
@PST: Same with me, they originally found the nodule in 2019 with my first CT scan. I have had regular scans since then. It was in a place behind my ribs that they did not think they could get a needle to it and surgery was just too dangerous. Recent scan showed that it had grown a couple of milimetres, not a great deal, but enough that they could now get a needle to it while I was on the CT scan table, so they decided that the best thing to do was go ahead and if it needed treatment (ie chemo) it was best to get it started rather than wait for the next scan. Fingers crossed.
schrodingers_cat
@Litlebritdifrnt: Good luck! And keep us posted.
RedDirtGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: thanks for letting us know. Looking forward to getting the update soon : )
RaflW
@Tony G: I’m not as sure this is true as it once was. I was reading about Marco Rubio’s unhinged attack on gmail for their alleged bias in spamming R fundraising emails (turns out lil’ Marco’s vendor didn’t do some basic optimization that teh googz recommends) the cheerful embedded nugget was that Republicans are struggling with grassroots donors.
That, to me, is a pretty good signal of low enthusiasm/satisfaction with Rs.
NYT has more:
Yes, of course, Republicans will have plenty of dosh. The plutocrat class will provide (and far too many corporate givers :\ ). But small donor funds are useful as they tend to be ‘hard money’ and signal base sentiment
And all this was before these disgraces fist-bumped their scorn for ailing veterans.
stinger
@Litlebritdifrnt: Here’s hoping it’s nothing, and that you’re up and around — and commenting here — soon!
Elizabelle
Somewhat moribund thread, but for the arrival of Litlbrit, so: had you guys seen this story? WaPost on the Ohio
Hatfields v. McCoys– Wagners vs. Rhodens, eight of whom the Wagners voted (family meeting!) to kill. And did. Murdered the Rhodens in their beds; left a toddler and two infants — one a 5-day old newborn, alive next to their dead parents. One shooter has confessed; goes to trial end of this month. Whole thing was over custody of the toddler daughter, and a Facebook comment by a Rhoden sussed out by a Wagner.In Ohio, prosecutors allege scheme by one family to kill another
Childbearing begins in the midteens in this family. Two previous daughters in law abandoned their children to the Wagners, and fled for their lives. White shooters, white victims, white power tattoos on the 40ish grandfather.
Five of the Rhodens achieved peace in their final resting place on a bucolic hillside. Beautiful photo taken at sunset. Have to say, the Wagners may be very skilled at creating silencers for their guns.
WTF is up with the heartland?
WaPost allowed reader comments, and it sounds like a pack of jackals (in a good way) in there. Hillbilly Elegy has been mentioned. Also Reaganomics, Jim Jordan, and Walmart killing off the small town merchants.
Chilling read.
Alce_e_ardillo
@PST: It is less worrisome than it appears, to a healthcare provider standpoint. If it is benign, it wont matter when it is biopsied, and cancer generally metastasizes immediately or not at all. In any case by the time a tumor becomes apparent, years or decades may have passed. But I get the uncertainty.
Kristine
@Litlebritdifrnt: Adding my good thoughts to all the others.
Ken
My uncharitable reaction is that the Russia sanctions are working.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ken: I never even thought of that, but it’s possible
Elizabelle
@Ken: Yes. I do wonder about foreign money. But it’s all good! Just ask the Supremes. Money has a voice.
Kent
@Elizabelle: Good lord, what a story. I suppose these are the JD Vance people, right?
Kent
@Ken: That will be my future take as well.
Kent
Unless it comes from George Soros of course.
Elizabelle
@Kent: Oh yes. And candidate Vance gets mentioned a lot in the comments too.
rikyrah
@Litlebritdifrnt:
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Ken
Whatever it is, we can be sure it’s not at all like the problems with crime, drugs, and broken families that those people in the cities are experiencing.
Barbara
@RaflW: Maybe they stopped autochecking the “make my donation monthly!” box.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: When I lived in Ohio, I had a family of clients who were feuding with a neighboring family. The other family also retained counsel. Instead of shooting at one another like civilized hillbillies (no offense, Ozark), they called their lawyers. Then we called opposing counsel and passed on the complaints with a request that they stop whatever. These guys paid their bills in cash the day after they got them. They might have been the best clients ever.
sdhays
@RaflW: Perhaps having a former President continually demanding the base send him their second mortgage has tapped out some of these donors. After all, someone had to pay for Ivana’s
gravehole in the ground.Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, that’s good to hear.
Another item from the Wagner saga: better the father aspiring to custody of the toddler daughter had never come to the attention of the authorities. They’ve done the higher math, realized he impregnated the (now murdered) Rhoden when she was 15, and he is up on a sex against a minor charge too. That’s in there, in the 22 counts against him.
RaflW
@Ken: I know little about that whole side of things, but it seems like spoofing a bunch of small donor contributions (and with the scammy overhead of winred), when the Butina-types can funnel dark money via c4s and such is unlikely?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Better Call
SaulOmnes.Litlebritdifrnt
Thanks you everyone for your good wishes. Of course the best part about it is that I am good old blighty with the best healthcare service on the planet. If I had stayed in the US it would never have been found because I could never afford to have any check ups or tests. First thing that happened when I got over here was the Doctor set me on a course of full tests to make up for the prior 28 years. I have the best respitory team right down to the personal cell phone number of my Nurse Jo. I could not wish for a better place to be with this going on. Thanks again folks, you are all good people.
Repatriated
@RaflW:
Not if it’s how they’re buying off the people behind WinRed at the same time….
Paul in KY
@Kent: These are the people he got the Hell away from.
HumboldtBlue
Keith Olbermann has a new podcast. Countdown.
And I just listened to the first three minutes and turned it off.
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom: I still say she should have saved time and, instead of a basket of deplorable, simply called them a bucket of shit.
evodevo
@Elizabelle: Not at all surprised…that part of Ohio is its version of Pennsyltucky. Drugs, cockfighting, custody battles between family members, etc. Those episodes of Justified were documentaries…
Uncle Cosmo
@RobertB: Speed of advance, speed of communications, depth of bombardment. Advancing troops moved at march speed (~5 kph), whereas troops brought up by the defenders moved at rail speed (~80 kph) until they ran out of track. Much faster to bring up defenders to meet the oncoming attack, particularly as the attack approached the railheads. Advancing armies could only transmit their situation to the area command or receive orders for the next phase only at the speed of runners – and runners on motorcycles were prime targets for snipers on both sides. Finally, there was no way to deliver ordnance in any significant amounts over any significant width of battlefield deeper than 15 miles or so, the range of field artillery (longer-range guns like the Paris Gun were one-offs with slow rates of fire).
All these factors essentially determined the nature of WW1 on the Western Front until the last few months: generally static, punctuated with brief attempts to “break through” that were always doomed to failure at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.
It should be noted that the reason the Second World War was so different from the First is that in the interwar period, all these problems had been solved (reliable motorized transport and armor; field-portable radios; aerial bombardment far beyond the battlefield).
Tony G
@Ken: My half-baked theory is that, with some exceptions, rural areas (in all countries) have ALWAYS been dystopian hellholes. That’s why people move to urban areas (in spite of all the urban problems). My father was born in a rural area in Calabria, Italy, emigrating to the U.S. as a young boy. When he was retired, I asked him one time whether he ever wanted to visit Italy (if, hypothetically, he had the money to do so). He said that he had escaped from that shit-hole has a little kid, and would never go back there.
Betty
@Soprano2: Went through that last year. Turned out to not be serious. Hope you find out the same. What a mouthful of a diagnosis though.
Jeffro
Hey guys – Hugh Hewitt has a wonderful and sincere proposal for the GOP regarding the Manchin reconciliation bill…”poison pill amendments” that might actually get 50 GOP + 1 Dem votes, to be included in the final bill:
So sincere and helpful!
Hewitt is at least transparent about his motives:
Someone please explain to me how the GOP going all-out for nuclear power is a sure winner and will help the electorate forget all about Republicans’ crazy stances on women’s reproductive rights, gun violence, and sub-sub-part candidates in general.
Flailing, they’re just flailing at this point…
Baud
@Jeffro:
Despite appearances, I don’t think Manchin is that stupid.
Ken
It may not be obvious to you, but you are not a blue-check pundit like Hewitt, and do not have access to Hewitt’s sources of information and (perhaps more importantly) sources of funding.
Ann Marie
@Litlebritdifrnt: I hope it all goes very well and you are fine. We will all be thinking of you.
Leto
@Baud: I want to agree, but I also won’t take that bet…
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: Nuclear power is something of a wedge issue that divides liberals, since some think it’s necessary to get the grid off carbon-emitting energy. And for Republicans it’s pure red meat since they know it’s a macho technology that the hippies and tree-huggers hate.
(I’m pretty much with Cheryl Rofer, an actual expert, on the issue: a fully decarbonized grid will probably require some use of nuclear power, but the cost issues with it are real, and nuclear advocates are often their own worst enemy–using rhetoric stuck in the 1970s, treating renewables as a sinister plot or scam and generally using nuclear as an “environmentalists are stupid” talking point.)
cmorenc
@Immanentize:
Would’ve made no difference whatever, because the problem was not with Hillary’s choice of derogatory word, but rather that she failed to succinctly qualify that the target was GOP politicians/operatives, and not ordinary citizen voters. Without that critical qualification, GOP pols/operatives would have exploited “reprehensible” just as effectively as “deplorable”.
Sure Lurkalot
@Litlebritdifrnt: Everyone here wishing for the best possible outcome is strong good karma!
Tony Jay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I have every confidence that all will be well and your little nodule will turn out to be a scrunched up winning lottery ticket you accidentally inhaled a few months back while trying out Pilates (once).
See you when you get back.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: ok, now I get #4…I was translating ol’ Hugh’s help as
Inflation is slowing and gas prices are dropping and for the GOP it’s panic time (instead of celebrating)
Nicole
@Litlebritdifrnt: Late to this thread, but sending all good thoughts for a smooth surgery with the desired outcome. Will be thinking of you on Thursday.
Elizabelle
@cmorenc:
Yes. That is the fiction. Let’s be honest. Republican voters can be pretty horrible too. I noticed a lot of unrepentant Facebook friends of friends proudly branding themselves as “deplorables.” It was a badge of honor.
If you are reflexively voting for Republicans because you think Democrats are Satan personified and/or socialists, period, you are a horrible voter, no matter how charming and friendly a person you may be.
Somehow, any insult (or lie) is fair game for a Democrat, but how dare you libel a Republican? It gets sickening.
jnfr
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Sending all the best wishes for no problems at all! Thanks for checking in.
Annie
@Tony G:
All,of Franklin Roosevelt’s sons served, in combat, in World War II. So did Winston Churchill’s only son, and both sons of Anthony Eden, his Foreign Minister. One of Eden’s sons was killed in combat.
JWR
Hey, look! AG “not doing enough” Garland does a thing! Via NBC
trollhattan
@Jeffro: Another of those dudes who believes he’s smrt but proves time and again he’s barely able to remember to inhale.
One new nuke would take California’s total nuke production from our two reactors, which total 2,258 MW to what, 3,400 MW? How does that help, Hughey? Let’s do some ‘rithmetic.
Today’s forecast peak demand: 41,063 MW. So nuke power will be contributing 5ish percent.
What’s a new nuke cost? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But perhaps instructive, is this.
IDK about y’all but I don’t want my tax money going to such a fabulously overpriced electricity source. $34B X 50 is a largish amount, especially for someone who considers taxes poison.
Current renewable production in California (CASIO only): 16,611 MW, 13,570 of which is solar.
Natural gas: 11,464 MW. That’s the sector we need to continue whittling away at.
Tony G
@Annie: That’s right. WW2 was a very different situation from Vietnam — probably because Vietnam was a true “war of choice” whereas ww2 was an existential threat. I was a kid and young teenager during the Vietnam War (a little too young to be drafted) and what’s remarkable in hindsight was how little the war affected the everyday life of civilians (unless you happened to have a close relative in Vietnam). The war was hell, of course, for the Vietnamese and for the grunts in combat, but for the average civilian it was something you saw on TV.
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt: My very best wishes to you!
West of the Rockies
@Elizabelle:
Oh my God, it’s like people can’t even be stupid and misogynistic racist and homophobic anymore without being called out on it!
Miss Bianca
@West of the Rockies:
And it’s SO UNFAIR!!
ian
@Matt McIrvin: Nuclear energy should be viewed far more skeptically than it is by liberals and policy makers. I hear pro-nuclear energy comments frequently in the liberal blogosphere, and it always somewhat bothers me. Aside from cost and handling issues, people forget that this stuff needs to be mined and disposed of. Neither of those processes are environmentally friendly, and the communities that get the burden of digging it up and putting it back in the ground are almost always disadvantaged. The solution policy makers come up with (like Yucca Mountain) involve dumping our nuclear waste on Native American lands.
If anyone is bored and wants to read about a town rendered completely unlivable by nuclear mining google Uravan, Colorado.
Ruckus
@Tony G:
This is an old story. Which really makes it worse.
Vets have been getting screwed over for at least the half a century I’ve been one. I’ve written of being in the hospital in the Navy and the problem was as much medicine as it was being the VA. But any thing that wasn’t a missing limb was most often treated as the patient was trying to get away with something. Some of that was medicine was changing, some was that was the almost fatal concept that the cure for everything was to be a man and suck it up. Some of which still exists. It can still be frustrating, but it has gotten far better. Like all medical issues there are still gaps in knowledge, gaps in response to issues that don’t have obvious answers, doctors with attitude and egos the size of Montana. And medicine, as far better as it’s gotten still has holes the size of those doctors egos in it. We as humans know a hell of a lot more about medicine than we did that half a century ago, but yes there are still holes. The concept that medications work the same for everyone, the concept that some docs have that they know everything, the issue that a lot of docs have zero concept that often military health issues can be far different than civilian issues. The current issue, burn pit damage, that’s not a civilian health issue, except in possibly fire fighters and possibly fire victims. And even there it is rarely close to the same.
And it is money. That golden issue that always gets in the way. People have a hard time making the distinctions between their financial level and that of a countries level. 400 billion dollars is a lot and it’s presented as one check to be written. The details are vital to the understanding of the problem, as is understanding how military life is often quite different than civilian life.
JanieM
@Ruckus:
The Bonus Army marched on Washington in 1932.
The more things change….
gvg
@cmorenc: Deplorables is rightly some of both. I mean really. The people who got their feelings hurt, were showing who they knew they were.
The people who thought their was some magical wording of Hillary’s that would have avoided the outrage, including saying nothing, revealed they are naive fools (looking at you mom)
trollhattan
@ian: We’re still dicking around with Manhattan Project waste, have no viable permanent storage for our civilian radioactive waste, and none of the whizzbang fission technologies that will totally revolution power generation® has come to fruition.
Siting, licensing, constructing, insuring, operating, securing (against terrorism) remain time-consuming and expen$ive.
I’d divert fission research and development money into the N-Friedman Units down the road fusion power technology, and fission construction money to renewables, power grid, and batteries.
Ruckus
@Tony G:
Good points.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: Nuclear is not a help finishing the move to renewable. It’s baseload power – and very expensive – so it’s not practical to keep some in reserve for shortfalls. If 10% of the grid is nuclear, making the remaining 90% resistant to shortfalls is exactly the same problem as it would be if renewables were 100%.
20 years ago nuclear could have played a role in decarbonizing but it’s too late now. It makes sense to keep the current ones on longer until the renewables and storage are actually built, but new nukes are dead other than perhaps in far northern areas with limited sun.
mrmoshpotato
@Litlebritdifrnt: Hope everything turns out for the best.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Your way would be fought just as hard and just as stupidly. (Not saying your take is stupid at all, it’s the stupidity on the part of rethuglicans)
And I wonder if that change in the funding concept is available once the bill is signed and implemented….
In many ways our legislative branch has restrictions that have been there forever as ways to keep the “people” from having as much power as the “monied” do. A democracy was a concept that much of the rich and powerful do not actually want, and they often got/get their way. Our current tax structure, and our current actual federal system is not set up as the most democratic system possible, as is the case in most countries. Which is one reason there is such a disparity between the monied and everyone else.
West of the Rockies
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Hoping for the very best!
Jay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
best wishes, will keep you in my thoughts,
oh, and, fuck cancer.
RaflW
OT, but the Alex Jones trail, which was guaranteed to be a circus, has hit a new level IMO. Jones apparently went on air during a recess today and attacked the father of the kid that the defamation suit I guess centers on (I’m not following closely, but today’s development just caught my eye). The father testified just yesterday.
The opposing counsel asked the judge to allow the segment to be aired this afternoon, basically minutes after Jones uttered his screed outsidd of the courtroom.
Of course Jones’ atty objected but the judge said, it can’t be a one-sided surprise because it just happened for all parties, and allowed the playback. The jury was described as ‘very attentive’ to the segment.
Now, how it is that Jones doesn’t get whacked with serious contempt for such outrageous behavior, I do not know. But – not that there was any doubt – he’s such a scumbag lowlife POS.
cain
@Litlebritdifrnt: Crossing my fingers on a benign result.
Leto
@JanieM:
Fucking over vets is as American as apple pie, racism, and broken promises.
Kent
There are two completely separate issues.
The first is the technical issue that led to them bringing this up again. It has nothing to do with the mandatory or discretionary funding. It is something to do with how a different provision was worded that could potentially make part of it vulnerable to a court challenge.
The mandatory vs discretionary issue is completely separate and just something the GOP invented in order to oppose the bill.
Geminid
The Los Angeles Times reports that President Biden and Vice President Harris have endorsed Representative Karen Bass for LA Mayor. Part of their joint statement:
Elizabelle
@Geminid: Good to hear. Rooting for Karen Bass.
Grassroots and political experience, vs. top down and $$$$$. As someone explained in a much better comment, either here or in previous thread. (CEO vs. politician)
Ken
“But your honor, it will be a surprise for my client, because he never pays attention to what he’s saying, nor does he have any idea what he’s talking about.”
Steeplejack
@RaflW:
Liz Dye is live-tweeting the trial. Here’s this afternoon’s session. You can skip down to [checks feed] three minutes ago.
dnfree
@Matt McIrvin: I worked at a national laboratory in the later 1960s to early 1970s, and the general belief was that nuclear reactors would create electricity so cheaply that it would be free.
Bill Arnold
@Fair Economist:
My back of the envelope calculation suggest that 250 (metric) tons of carbon/300 tons of coal [1] is about 1 human death (or not-birth) if the reduction of global human population due to the RCP 6[3]path we’re headed down is about 50 percent/4 billion. (Could be more… a lot of non-linearity.)
If only roughly 1 billion die, it’s 1 human life per thousand tons of carbon.
So shutting down a nuclear power plant is an act of mass murder in the fullness of time, if the power is not entirely replaced by no-carbon-emissions power. The risks of nuclear waste and even of Chernobyl-level dispersal of volatile radioactive material from a reactor core are essentially noise, at this scale[4]. (To be very rude, those German Greens – killing millions of people with darker skin is a German tradition.)
[1] My notes say that a gigawatt plant burns 8-9K tonnes of bituminous coal per day.[2] 25 human lives per day at 300 tons of coal per human life.
[2] e.g the now closed 2.5 GW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Generating_Station burned 22K tons (US) of bituminous coal per day.
[3] say 1000 petagrams/gigatons of excess carbon. (1060+/-200)
[4] Quantifying the increased risks of nuclear proliferation is difficult, but … acknowledged.
Chief Oshkosh
@Chief Oshkosh: Just checked over at Drum’s site. He hasn’t responded to my question of whether he actually read and compared the various iterations of the bill. Oh well. Calpundit was always a little too conservative for me…
Uncle Cosmo
@dnfree: Oh, bullshit.
The old saw about “electricity too cheap to meter” referred to fusion power, the fuel for which could literally be processed from water. Which it was “generally believed” we were only a few years away from making work, (Which we’re still 20 years from making work, 60+ years later, and may be for the foreseeable future.)
If your coworkers “generally believed” that fission power would be “free,” then you worked with a bunch of imbeciles. Which would surprise me not in the least – get most engineering types outside their narrow area of expertise and they qualify.
Paul in KY
@Tony G: Only complete weirdos wanted to go to Vietnam.
Tony G
@Paul in KY: Absolutely. Everybody hoped it would be over before they turned 18. (Turned out to be that way for me.)
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: Thanks for finding the extended quote. I’ve been calling it the “Two Baskets” speech, and find it symptomatic that so many of them just disregarded the other half, especially since they were more than a side note.
Fair Economist
@Uncle Cosmo: There was a lot of pro-nuclear propaganda in the midcentury. I remember the first science book I ever read as a child – a Disney book series aimed at children – extolled the virtues of fission, including that it would provide miraculously cheap power (sorry, don’t recall exact wording). As you say, patently false, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from saying it and even more believing it. Including me, for many years.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Fair Economist: I recall from childhood a pamphlet produced by Con Ed in NY. I don’t think it said “too cheap to meter” in so many words but close. This was when the Indian Point reactor was new.
Tony G
@Leto: Soldiers and veterans are labor, so of course they’re usually screwed over.
Bill Arnold
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Now that it has been decommissioned, natural gas burning is replacing most of the electricity it generated. Dumb, and to be frank, mass-homicidal. That plant was being run into the ground by some vulture capitalist types (Entergy?), but still.
I grew up in the area, close enough to have an evacuation siren several hundred meters away, that they tested like once a year. The plant did not bother me much as a kid, since I knew that any leak would be non-lethal (at least 10 miles away), but that siren, wow was that loud.
Another Scott
@Leto: Yup.
I have a vague recollection of a story from a great aunt who said that her grandpa (IIRC, might have been someone else) fought in the Union army and sent his pay home to his parents. Who promptly spent all of it. When he got home, they told him not to bellyache about it.
“I went off to war to preserve the Union and I didn’t even get a T-shirt!”
:-/
It’s rare that we’ve treated our military people who fight in the trenches, in the air, and one and under the seas, well. We can do much better.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@RaflW: I assume that he thinks the bankruptcy will protect him from ruin. If he thinks so, why wouldn’t he double-down on the CT stuff? If the jury finds against him, he gets to rant and scream about the Black Helicopters and the Dark State out to silence him while not actually having a financial penalty. If he wins, then he defeats the Black Helicopters and Dark State and is vindicated. Either way, he can rile up the rubes and rake in more money.
If the bankruptcy is denied, well then …
(I’ll have to check out Liz Dye’s play-by-play.)
Grr…,
Scott.
Ella in New Mexico
@Jeffro: Hewit is a literal and figurative ostomy appliance that needs changing