Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This fellow has turned into quite the character and personality. One of these mornings I have to record the dueling meows of Maxwell and Steve as they scream for their morning breakfast.
It was another spectacular day today with perfect weather. This is the best time to be in West Virginia.
Fuck Republicans.
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
If you’re going to spend hours arguing about average incomes in Russia, just do us all a favor and click through to ROSSTAT, which is the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia. Make sure you use a VPN and a secure browser. Here’s the link to the English language site. If you scroll down under Indicators you’ll see the “Average monthly accrued wage of employees for the Russian Federation, October 2021” is 54649 roubles. You can also just scroll down this page and download the XLSX files if you want to have the data for whatever. Though if you do, please note the average real income is presented as a percentage of the previous year. Which is why for 2021 all of Russia is listed as 103.1. As in the 2021 average real income was 103.1% of 2020’s. I don’t cook Russia’s books, I just tell you about it. Enjoy!
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:
NEWS: 241-187, House votes to adopt the rule to advance the Biden-McCarthy debt limit legislation.
29 Republicans vote NO.
52 Democrats vote YES.
This sets up a final House vote later today.
A very good sign for the bill's prospects of passage.https://t.co/KgWEyD9fBR
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 31, 2023
Note: There will almost certainly be some GOP "yes" votes on the rule who vote "no" on the bill. Likewise some Democrats who voted against the rule are highly likely to vote for the actual bill.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 31, 2023
Rothkopf’s not wrong here, but this twitter-essay is maybe just a little over the top…
Stealthily, without proportionate recognition, Joe Biden is not just having a good presidency, he's having one that is historic in its concrete achievements and successes. The fair & balanced types in the media won't characterize it fairly because to do so, would "feel" biased.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) May 30, 2023
The opposition won’t cover it because it is not in their interests to tell the truth. (It’s why they never do.) Editors and producers will shy away from it because positive stories don’t sell like conflict does. Consequently most of the media won’t present the simple facts.
It should be said, Biden uses the lack coverage to his advantage. He let’s the crazies & the partisans and the weathervane pundits and the people who have forgotten that the first job of journalists is to report the truth as it is, as a kind of shield while he just does his job.
He sidesteps controversy. He does not rub his opponents noses in it every time he outmaneuvers them. (Yesterday he explicitly stated he was conscious of this, that he was not going to bang the drum about the debt deal because it would imperil it.)
I have been working all day and I just saw this tweet:
Grab your shovels. We’re going to Bedminster.https://t.co/DTC42g9mzy
— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) May 31, 2023
Does god love us this much?
Update: So Trump wouldn’t let Corcoran search Trump’s office, so Corcoran didn’t want to sign off on the document saying they had done a diligent search, but he was willing to the the female attorney sign off? What a piece of shit.
🚨🚨 BREAKING 🚨🚨
Evan Corcoran was WAVED OFF from searching trump’s office for classified documents. He was told to just look in the storage room. https://t.co/3z6zTf2PPC
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) May 30, 2023
Open thread.
The Georgia Office of Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire, the state’s insurance regulators, just announced that the ACA insurer, Friday Health Plans, will be shutting down mid-year in Georgia because there are substantial doubts that Friday has the ability to pay all claims if they continue to operate.
Friday Health Plans was placed into administrative supervision on March 8, 2023, by consent order to try to cure its surplus deficiency reported to our office on March 3, 2023. During this period of enhanced supervision our office has closely monitored the Company and determined that continued operation of Friday Health Plans was not possible without putting policyholders at risk, so we are acting to protect them.
Friday Health Plans policyholders that have health insurance coverage through the federally facilitated exchange – Your health insurance coverage will end at the end of the day on July 31, 2023. To ensure Friday Health Plans policyholders have an opportunity to replace their current exchange coverage before it is terminated, effective August 1, 2023, our office coordinated with the federal office known as the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight to implement a special enrollment period for members to select another exchange health insurance plan.
The special enrollment period starts on June 1, 2023, and ends on September 29, 2023. If you purchased health insurance from Friday Health Plans through the federal exchange you must choose a new exchange health insurance plan by July 31, 2023
So what does this mean?
If you are not insured via the ACA, this means nothing.
If you are insured via the ACA in Georgia but with a different company [DISCLOSURE: I have consulted with Alliant Health Plans, another Georgia ACA company, on a few different topics in 2023], this means very little. In some counties, the benchmark may be reset if Friday had the cheapest or 2nd cheapest silver plan, which may slightly increase affordability for plans in the 2nd half of the year.
If you are insured via Friday in Georgia, this means something:
Now the only surviving insura-tech from the 1st and 2nd wave of VC money bonfires is OSCAR as BRIGHT is effectively gone and FRIDAY is going… more thoughts on this later this week.
Friday having a mid-year Termination event in GeorgiaPost + Comments (19)
Legislation to suspend US debt limit advances to full House of Representatives https://t.co/4TifQYKdHe
— Jonathan Landay (@JonathanLanday) May 31, 2023
Legislation brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to lift the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling and achieve new federal spending cuts passed an important hurdle late on Tuesday, advancing to the full House of Representatives for debate and an expected vote on passage on Wednesday.
The House Rules Committee voted 7-6 to approve the rules allowing debate by the full chamber. Two committee Republicans, Representatives Chip Roy and Ralph Norman, bucked their leadership by opposing the bill.
That vote underscored the need for Democrats to help pass the measure in the House, which is controlled by Republicans with a narrow 222-213 majority…
All four Democrats on the Rules Committee voted against the bill, as they typically do on Republican-backed legislation. It was unclear whether that might influence other Democrats to do the same on Wednesday, even as Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party would provide the support McCarthy needs.
Many Democrats in Congress did not want Biden to engage in budget-cutting negotiations with Republicans until they lifted their hold on enacting a debt limit bill…
White House Budget Director Shalanda Young, who was one of Biden’s lead negotiators, urged Congress to pass the bill.
“I want to be clear: This agreement represents a compromise, which means no one gets everything that they want and hard choices had to be made,” Young told a news conference.
A Senate vote could possibly stretch into the weekend if lawmakers in that chamber try to slow its passage.
At least one senator, Republican Mike Lee, has said he may try to do so, and other Republicans have also expressed discomfort with some aspects of the deal…
Everyone trying their best to channel their high school theatre acting days pic.twitter.com/8plVHNQNPA
— vocational politics appreciation account (@Convolutedname) May 31, 2023
Back from vacation, got up at 6 to water before the un-godly heat comes up today. A girl leaves town and suddenly it’s no longer Spring-ish, it’s the heat of the summer! And I was only gone for 5 days. Did time speed up while I was gone?
What did I miss? Besides all the debt ceiling negotiations. I missed that, but I see that we are still in the land of uncertainty.
Open thread.
Honey, I’m Home Wednesday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (74)