Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

We will not go back.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

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Friday Evening Open Thread: Last Night’s Last Word

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Lawrence O’Donnell’s monologue from last night is getting a lot of attention on social media, plus at least one request from a commentor here to front-page it. So, here’s an intro:

And here’s the full thing, via MSNBC’s YouTube channel:

 

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Impact of step therapy on prescription drug use patterns

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In this week’s JAMA Health Forum, Dr. Angela Liu and colleagues (disclaimer: I’m working on a couple of projects & grants with Dr. Kelly Anderson and I have a grant with Dr. Dan Polsky (among others) under review), examine how prescription drug use patterns change after one insurer institutes a step therapy requirement in Medicare Advantage integrated drug plans. Step therapy is a requirement that a certain drug is used first before other options are allowed.

They find decent size but not absolute effects:

For the first administration of a treatment episode, the control group was prescribed bevacizumab 63.5% and 63.7% of the time, before and after implementation of macular degeneration step therapy (to which they were not subjected), respectively. Within the treatment group, bevacizumab was prescribed 61.2% and 69.2% of the time in the before and after periods, respectively, demonstrating an 8.0−percentage point increase in bevacizumab prescribing after step therapy implementation (Table 1 and Figure 1).

An 8 percentage point increase in bevacizumab is about a 13% percent increase in the use of this drug as a first treatment.
I was slightly surprised that the effect of step therapy institution was not higher. I would have thought that a credible threat to not pay would have changed clinician behaviors. The researchers note that the behavior changes were bigger in the HMO product than the PPO product. This makes sense to me as PPO clinicians have a much more credible threat to go out of network so the insurer has less effective leverage and control.

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This Is Very Tim Walz

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I don’t know if this is real or photoshopped, but this is very Tim Walz, whether it is actually Tim Walz or not!

h/t  JCJ

The whole image, so you don’t want to click on twitter:

Update:  While we’re on the subject, this is very JV Vance.

h/t JWR

Clearly photoshopped, but undeniably VERY Vance.

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Watch the Balloon Juice Zoom with NC Black Alliance (Just $250 needed to reach our goal)

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I want to share some of the feedback we got from Bj peeps who attended the zoom with NC Black Alliance.

This one:

“I think this might be the best zoom ever with one of our organizations!”

And this one:

“The NC Black Alliance zoom was as good as WG said it would be. They are doing so much now, they’re so dedicated and thorough in their work–I don’t think they’ll be sleeping at all from Sept-Nov. I hope there are groups like them throughout the south. Again–thanks to NC Black Alliance, WG, angel matches, and all who donate–and to John who came by as well!!!”

And this one:

I want to offer an Angel Match. Listening to Marcus Bass tonight had a huge effect on me. I am not a person who is going to knock on doors, even in a safe, friendly area, and I want to help fund and protect the people who are willing to do that.

Two individuals are responsible for me deciding to do this: One is Marcus and everything he said, and the gravity of it, and the hope of it, and second is you [WaterGirl] saying that you wanted to give NC Black Alliance more money— those two factors are responsible for my decision.

If you can, please let Marcus know that he is the instigator for this Angel Match.

I hope others who attended will chime in as well.

Please think about watching the zoom – they put together a great presentation for us, the questions people asked were great, and the responses and the back-and-forth were even better.

I can almost guarantee that you’ll come away with a better understanding of the times we are in and what we’re facing.  But most of all, I think you’ll come away inspired.

We have one more Balloon Juice Angel for NC Black Alliance – for $1,250.   BJ Angel + external match = 4x donations.

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: The Great *Exhale*

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread 12

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

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On The Road – PaulB – The Cascade Loop, Part 11

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PaulB

Welcome to stage 11 of “Washington’s Ultimate Road Trip,” the Cascade Loop. Today, we’ll be paying a visit to Greenbank Farm or, more specifically, to the garden next to the farm. Greenbank Farm began as a dairy farm in the early 1900s, according to the Farm’s website. The farm later transitioned into a turkey farm, and then a loganberry farm. “At one time, Greenbank Farm was the largest producer of loganberries in the United States.” The farm was acquired by the Port of Coupeville in 1997 and it now contains a variety of businesses, galleries, shops, and a cafe.

I didn’t realize until preparing this post that I was so focused on the gardens that I didn’t take a single picture of the farm itself. Oh, well… just another excuse to go back for another visit. I can recommend the cafe, as I ate lunch there (seafood chowder, toasted cheese and bacon sandwich on sourdough bread, and homemade cherry pie).

Note: You can see full-size versions of these photos here.

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On The Road - PaulB - The Cascade Loop, Part 11 7
Greenbank FarmMay 18, 2024

The gardens border a lovely pond, and you can see one of the farm’s buildings off to the left.

Late Night Open Thread: Confusion to Our Enemies!

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They’re pretty confused already…


Quietly: Always putting substance(s) first:


Just totally normal foreign espionage, nothing dirty about it!


 
Meanwhile, back in the center ring:

one of the basic problems with the Trump campaign at the present moment is that it does not appear to exist. there are very few ad buys. there are very few field offices. there are very few staffers. trump himself isn't out campaigning. what is even going on?

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— rev. howard arson (@theophite.bsky.social) Aug 7, 2024 at 5:37 PM

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