Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Here is the C-Span feed that just began as the night opens up. A reminder, these first few hours are just a live raw feed of the events going on before the big orchestrated show. I’ll let Cole post that thread.
Sounds like a barnburner tonight with Stevie Wonder, John Legend, and Tim Walz!
It’s so true, @BarackObama. Tim loves his flannels. https://t.co/5Lorg32DWn pic.twitter.com/RfG0sHoU6l
— Gwen Walz (@GwenWalz) August 21, 2024
Open thread
Just got off a plane and saw Betty’s post about Hulk Hogan, and remembered this interview of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. He’s a horse of a different color than Hulk Hogan — to start with, Jesse tried to start a wrestlers’ union, and Hulk opposed him.
What struck me most about this interview was something relatively minor that clearly meant a lot to Jesse. When Minnesota legalized cannabis, Walz invited Jesse to the signing ceremony and gave him credit for getting the ball rolling on cannabis legalization. Walz absolutely did not have to do that, but it was both the decent thing to do, and the politically smart thing to do. Jesse’s politics are a bit all over the place, but he’s loud-and-proud about supporting Walz and defending him against the idiotic “stolen valor” attacks.
Whether it was an act of kindness, smart politics, or a bit of both, Walz knows how to make allies with folks who might not support a garden variety Democrat.
Yikes, looks like we need an open thread! So here we go. I’ve been mired in work but it sounds like the 3 big speeches last night were all A+
Also, a brand-new Angel came forward today, so we have a $1,2500 Angel match in addition to the double external match, so donations will be 6x. Big thanks to exbarrowboy! Pretty sure there’s a story there.
You know the drill, to be matched, tell us about your contribution in the comments or send me email. Matching up to $100 per person.
Update: our new Angel just told me “no limit” on the amount to match per person, until we complete the $1,250 match!
Open thread!
Update: Here’s a sneak peek at the Native-made Star Quilt for our upcoming raffle for Four Directions Montana!
Open Thread & New $1,250 Angel Match for The Civics CenterPost + Comments (32)
The washed-up 71-year-old former WWE performer who calls himself “Hulk Hogan” got drunk and made a fool of himself Monday (PennLive):
In a video obtained by TMZ, the retired wrestler at one point asked a cheering crowd, “Do you want me to body slam Kamala Harris?”
“Want me to drop the leg on Kamala?” he added, referring to one of his iconic wrestling moves.
The dramatically mustachioed quarter-wit also made dumb and offensive comments about Harris’s heritage, invoking ignorant stereotypes about Native Americans because he’s more clueless than Columbus. Later, he blamed beer:
Hogan later walked back his comments and suggested that the remarks he made was not a true representation of himself. He also blamed the comments on the alcoholic drinks he drank at the bar.
“I am going to get heat for that one, brother. That was not me. That was the beers talking,” he added before the video stopped.
No, Bollea — that was your racist, misogynist, drunk ass talking. We see you.
Bollea and his idiot, criminal kids and related hangers-on live in my media market. They all go by Hogan for some reason and are frequently covered by the local news when they maim people in car crashes, etc. Just garbage people who should fuck off into the sun.
Open thread.
NOT breaking news: Terry Gene Bollea is an asshole (open thread)Post + Comments (388)
Over at Blue Sky, Don Moynihan has a good thread on how the government can reduce administrative burdens for social service uptake. The work that he and Dr. Herd have done on admin burden has been a key framing feature of my thinking for the past five years. Cash costs are real, but non-cash costs are just as real and in many cases, just as important. He highlights a key element in this post:
Lesson 3: Make it automatic
Informational nudges help at the margins, but to really reduce frictions and increase take-up, automating coverage is the way to go.
The federal government is claiming credit for pushing ex parte renewal rates up for Medicaid.— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) Aug 21, 2024 at 9:42 AM
In the context of the ACA, reducing administrative burden by informational nudges is helpful. There have been a series of papers using Covered California data and randomized control trials that show that adding information and reminders are cheap and cost-effective. But those nudges are good for 1% here, and 2% there.
Some of my research has looked at dominated plan choice where people choose plans that are more expensive with more cost-sharing than plans offered by the same insurer on the same network. This is an expensive mistake worth $400 to $500 a year in extra premium and potentially thousands of dollars of excessive cost-sharing exposure. Nudges in California were good at moving a couple percentage points of people out of dominated plans. That same paper examined an automatic crosswalk that changed the default to non-dominated plans.
The automatic crosswalk intervention resulted in an 83.0-percentage-point (822 percent) increase in CSR silver plan take-up compared with the control group, with more than 90 percent of households enrolled in CSR silver plans.
My colleagues and I proposed and analyzed a hypothetical re-enrollment algorithm similar in spirit to the California algorithm as well as the 2024 CMS algorithm. In our analysis, similar to California, we found substantial increases in people having zero premium and low deductible insurance. We estimated that these switches could be beneficial to 4% to 6% of all ACA enrollees.
The common thread in these two proposals is that it placed the burden of complexity on the party that is better resourced to handle complexity. The state or CMS has both the expertise to understand the insurance markets and the ability to learn and internalize its learning by doing over millions of opportunities. Individual buyers don’t readily have that capability.
We should try, as much as possible, to put burdens on the parties that have the capacity to absorb and usually automate the process.
Delegates from the home states of Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and Joe Biden, along with a surprise appearance from rapper Lil Jon, cheered during a celebratory roll call for Harris during the second day of the DNC. pic.twitter.com/Z3clg7GsQ7
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 21, 2024
We should make everyone from Europe watch this convention so they start to understand just how big the US is that yes, we can justify 100 different accents and regional dialects and that yes four hours is a short drive.
— Cake or Death (@Johngcole) August 21, 2024
President Obama: Trump is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse pic.twitter.com/Dc2jsiZbg4
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 21, 2024
DO SOMETHING. #DemocratsDeliver24 pic.twitter.com/RuFiC4P90m
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) August 21, 2024
?? Magic Johnson on President Biden: "I want to thank President Biden for everything he has done for our country! The love he has for this nation mirrors the love that I and the American people have for him." ? pic.twitter.com/GUM4oeqnlL
— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) August 21, 2024
Common and Jonathan McReynolds perform at the Democratic National Convention. pic.twitter.com/tBjoYvf4ym
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 20, 2024
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Party On – Excellently!Post + Comments (273)
Amid summer COVID surge, FDA reportedly poised to approve updated shots https://t.co/5DroUS4FOC
— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) August 20, 2024
With the country experiencing a relatively large summer wave of COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration is considering signing off on this year’s strain-matched COVID-19 vaccines as soon as this week, according to a report by CNN that cited unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
Last year, the FDA gave the green light for the 2023–2024 COVID shots on September 11, close to the peak of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in that year’s summer wave. This year, the summer wave began earlier and, by some metrics, is peaking at much higher levels than in previous years.
Currently, wastewater detection of SARS-CoV-2 shows “very high” virus levels in 32 states and the District of Columbia. An additional 11 states are listed as having “high” levels. Looking at trends, the southern and western regions of the country are currently reporting SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater that rival the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 winter waves, which both peaked at the very end of December…
Test positivity—a metric that has weakened given the dramatic decline in testing—shows a weekly test positivity rate of 18.1 percent for mid-August (amid a test volume of roughly 43,000). Such a rate, if truly reflective of cases, has not been seen since the initial towering omicron wave of January 2022, which peaked at 30.5 percent (with a test volume of roughly 991,000)…
The good news is that given the substantial accumulation of protection from past infections and vaccinations, the two most serious metrics—emergency department visits and deaths—have not shown similar rises. The weekly percentage of emergency department visits with a COVID-19 diagnosis is low and similar to last year’s summer wave. Deaths are likewise low, though they are still only provisional counts for the most recent weeks…
The FDA has firmly embraced a strategy to offer annual COVID-19 vaccines in the run-up to winter waves, not summer waves. The agency’s thinking has always been to encourage Americans to get their flu and COVID-19 vaccines together between September and November, just before a mob of cold-weather respiratory illnesses strike together. The fresh vaccination boost can dull the levels of severe respiratory disease at a time when health care systems are most at risk of becoming overwhelmed.
But, while seasonal flu and some other respiratory viruses reliably surge almost exclusively in the winter, the seasonality of COVID-19 was never a given. And, so far, summer waves have arisen as consistently as winter ones, creating some awkwardness for the vaccine releases.
The other thing to consider is timing for maximum protection for the likely winter wave. For healthy people 5 years old and above, the CDC recommended getting only one shot last year. The shots offer peak protection for around four months. If you get your annual shot at the beginning of September, your protection may be on the decline if COVID-19 peaks again at the turn of the year, as it has the past two years.
According to the 2023–2024 guidance, people who are 65 and older can get a second COVID-19 booster four months after getting their first. People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised may also get additional doses of the updated COVID-19 vaccine.
“Free to access” info from the Washington Post:
… The mRNA shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna designed to target the KP.2 variant can hit the market within days of approval by the Food and Drug Administration. A third protein-based vaccine made by Novavax, preferred by people who are cautious about mRNA vaccines or who have had bad reactions to them, will probably take longer to be approved and will be distributed in subsequent weeks, according to the federal health official.
Consumers should be able to start getting shots at pharmacies within a week after approval and at doctor’s offices soon after…
The timing of the release is too late for Americans who were looking to shore up their immunity before summer travel and the return of the school year, or for those who face heightened risk because of their age or underlying conditions. In recent weeks, some people weighed whether to get an outdated vaccine for partial protection more quickly or to hang on for the updated version. And those who didn’t want to wait discovered existing shots were no longer easy to find…
Manufacturers have stopped shipping existing coronavirus vaccines. A CDC vaccine finder website to help people locate pharmacies with coronavirus vaccines is down until newly formulated vaccines become widely available. Some CVS stores have run out while others have supplies, the company said. Walgreens is not offering coronavirus vaccines until the new versions arrive…
#H5N1 @CDCgov @USDA
Iowa Congressman wants a 'strategic initiative' to fight bird flu
– Out of the more than 100 million birds that have been affected by HPAI across 48 states since this outbreak began in 2022, nearly 25% have been in Iowahttps://t.co/eWjU5tIm3o— K-in-CT ?????? (@KinCONN) August 20, 2024
COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: August 20, 2024Post + Comments (22)