Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

The willow is too close to the house.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

“woke” is the new caravan.

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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Friday Night Open Thread (and question for last year’s philadelphia meetup peeps)

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Totally open thread.

Question related to last year’s Philadelphia meetup:

Last year on June 15 the Philadelphia BJ peeps had a meetup, and even won second place in a game of Trivia.  The current keeper of the second place gift certificate  – zmulls – is looking for guidance on the gift certificate.

If there’s going to be another Philly meetup soonish, then he would like to pass the gift certificate on to the group.  If not, is there someone else that can take possession of the gift certificate?  I don’t even recall how much the gift certificate is for.

Winning Trivia Team (second place)

Suzanne
brendancalling
zmulls
Ceci n est pas mon
gene108
Leto, Avalune (+ kid!)
rekoob

Meetup on June 15, 2023  (Link to post)

Somebody let me know what you want to do?

Otherwise, open thread!

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War for Ukraine Day 842: Pray I Do Not Alter It Any Further

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Quick housekeeping note. Rosie is still doing very well. She’s had no significant negative side effects from last Monday’s chemotherapy treatment. Her next one is next Monday. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Right now, just like last night around this time, which is very early morning in Ukraine, all of Ukraine is under air raid alert.

Air raid alert map of Ukraine at 8:42 PM PM EDT on 14 June 2024. The entire map is colored red because all of Ukraine is under air raid alert.

President Zelenskyy was traveling from the G7 to Switzerland for the peace forum, which is why there is no video address today.

I arrived in Switzerland for the Global Peace Summit. There will be two days of active work with countries from all parts of the world, with different nations that are nonetheless united by a common goal of bringing a just and lasting peace in Ukraine closer.

The Peace Summit will provide an opportunity for the global majority to take specific steps in areas that matter for everyone in the world: nuclear safety, food security, and the return of prisoners of war and all deported persons, including deported Ukrainian children.

Around 100 countries and international organizations are set to participate in the summit. I am grateful to everyone who chose to attend and demonstrate global leadership and commitment to peace, international law, and the UN charter.

Together, as responsible global majority, we must make every effort to ensure that wars, aggressions, and colonial occupation can be ended and that they will never repeat. I am certain that everyone in the world is interested in just peace and respect for every nation.

This is why the summit is designed in such a way that each nation has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in achieving shared goals. The voice of the responsible global majority has the potential to bring peace closer and restore full force to the UN Charter.

#PathtoPeace #PeaceforUkraine

Putin decided he needed some public attention of his own to explain what peace in Ukraine means to him. For now. So he held a press event and laid down his current terms for pausing his genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine.

Putin offers a ceasefire in the event of the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, within their administrative borders (most of which Russia does not control and actually withdrew from after a defeat of Russian formations, such as in Kherson), in addition to rejection of NATO accession plans.

We need to really listen to what Putin is communicating, both in his statement today and his actual actions. As Rob Lee makes clear, these are Putin’s minimum objectives. They are also not a peace treaty or an end to the war. Rather, these are Putin’s minimum requirements for a ceasefire! A ceasefire is a temporary pause in fighting, so more accurately what he is offering is a truce in exchange for a significant chunk of Ukraine, including areas he has no control over right now, as well as his maximalist objectives of Ukraine never joining NATO and, just as important for Putin, all of the sanctions are lifted.  All of Putin’s demands are intended to give him time and space to reconstitute his economy and his military so he can come back and finish the job. It also would allow him to steal significant portions of Ukrainian agricultural products, energy generation capacity, all while simultaneously moving his borders westward so he can more easily threaten Europe.

These are not terms for a relatively or comparatively equitable peace. They are threats and demands. This war can only be ended on the battlefield because there is no way to negotiate a resolution with Putin because the only end to the war he will actually accept is one where Ukraine ceases to exist, he and Russia are rewarded for their genocide, and he then positions himself to repeat his actions in Ukraine with Moldova, Romania, the Baltics, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

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Friday Night Open Thread

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I have some very exciting news for you all. It has taken since I moved in here, but 6-7 years later after steady feeding and providing oak and maple trees, the neighborhood squirrels have taken notice:

Friday Night Open Thread 12

Look at that chonk! I will be adding more corn and some peanuts to the bird feeders now that I know this is happening!! I am so excited.

***

Breyana and I just got back from the farmer’s market. Picked up some nice berries and tomatoes, a bunch of kettle corn for dad, and some fudge for Breyana’s mom. We went out to eat at a new (to us) Mexican place and it was very very good. Just a lovely last day before the heat dome comes in and makes it miserable outside. I know, I know, it’s hotter elsewhere, but until you have done 98 degrees with WV humidity, you can just can it.

Off to watch some White Collar. I had forgotten just how many attractive people there are in the show- I mean Matt Bomer is like a god among men, and that Marsha Thomason is absolutely gorgeous and so it that Gloria Votsis. I like how it is a non-threatening show and I can watch it without really having to think or get stressed out.

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Friday Afternoon, Dare I Tempt Fate by Calling It a Slow News Day?

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Okay, company here and gone, I was finally able to pick up some glasses today – two whole days without being able to read much is not ideal.  Especially on your birthday when people are texting birthday wishes.  I had a lot to catch up on this morning!

About to cruise my favorite peeps on twitter to see what I’ve missed.

I had a nice time with family and had a nice birthday.  Got some amazing strawberries at the farmer’s market, and made some killer shortbread for my strawberry shortcake last night.  And real whipped cream, although the judges do allow the whipped cream in a can.  Cool whip (shudder) is not allowed at my house.  If that makes me a snob, so be it.

Totally open thread.

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Friday Open Thread

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Looks like SCOTUS made no ruling on Trump’s immunity today?

I’ve been happily offline all week spending time with my niece who found the time in her busy teen years to drive (herself!!) to see me and spend the week. We’ve been out in nature:

Friday Open Thread 1

And met this guy.

Friday Open Thread

I’ve wanted to see him for a while. He is impressive in person. His artist, Thomas Dambo, builds trolls all over the world from recycled materials. This is Isak Heartstone and he’s had quite the journey.  From being shunned in Breckenridge, CO and dismantled to being resurrected and rebuilt by folks who understood his value.

Speaking of exile. I got banned from twitter for 72 hours because I QUOTED TRUMP. It violated their rules. Serves me right for even clicking over there after a week away to see how much bleach his cult members had been drinking on the Milwaukee bru-ha-ha.

Friday Open Thread 2

We are off to take Jasper and Reggie to the vet for routine visits – hoping my vet can give me some more idea on Reggie’s condition and any precautions I need to take. Meanwhile, I watched the little troublemaker jump from the couch to the very far away coffee table without any hesitation. I suspect he’s going to live a normal life even with his little handicaps.

That is unless he keeps turning the robot vacuum on at one in the morning, just to watch it vacuum (again and again – I finally had to put the vacuum in a “cage” so he couldn’t reach the buttons.).  He really is just a little unstoppable spirit.

This is an open thread.

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A simple step to improve risk adjustment in the ACA

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Risk adjustment moves money from ACA insurers whose enrolled populations code as healthier than average in a given state-year to insurers whose enrolled populations code as sicker than average in a given state year.  The intention of risk adjustment is to make insurers risk agnostic, which means, on average, an individual with multiple complex chronic conditions will likely be as profitable as an individual who bought a plan and never saw a doctor during the course of a year.  ACA risk adjustment is a complex set of diagnosis and prescription drug groupings, demographics factors, enrollment duration, plan choices and interactions of those elements to produce a risk score.  Risk adjustment payments are made in the summer after the performance year.  2023 risk adjustment payments will be made in the next few months.

Right now, I think that ACA risk adjustment is imperfect and it is imperfect towards overpaying for low to no risk enrollees and underpaying for higher risk enrollees.  We see narrow and restrictive networks that are attractive to low risk enrollees who only care about premium proliferate while broad networks, Platinum plans and PPOs are very rare.  Those attributes are attractive to individuals with high risk.

One simple step to modestly improve risk adjustment is to charge interest.  Right now the insurers who owe risk adjustment payments because they are covering a low risk population can sit on their cash for an average of 10 months before having to send it out.  They collect interest on that cash.  Insurers who are owed risk adjustment payments have to front cash to pay claims for most of a year.  That cash has either an opportunity cost or an actual cost if it is coming out of a line of credit with interest payments.  Furthermore, we have a demonstrated history of low risk insurers blowing up without the ability to fully pay their risk adjustment obligations.  Insurers that are owed risk adjustment payments will not be paid in full on a timely manner if they ever get paid in full.

Insurers with higher than average health risk rely on risk adjustment payments to make them whole.  They face both the time value of money costs and the risk of not getting paid.  These high risk insurers eat both types of risk.  That makes, on the margin, trying to insure a high risk population with good networks and high value plans less attractive than bottom feeding with hyper skinny networks and restrictive products.  Having CMS charge interest on the risk adjustment transfer would modestly re-align incentives so that the business case to offer broader networks and less restrictive plans gets a bit better.  At the minimum, an interest rate equal to at least the US Treasury 1 year note might partially compensate insurers for the cost of time.

 

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy

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I feel like I should be apologizing — even though none of you probably care — because it’s been a busy couple of weeks IRL for me, and I’ve got a metric fvckton of half-written posts about important news lying around. Of course, much of that work would basically involve bricolaging material under the general metric Would you look at what these numbnuts are up to?!?… so, glass half full, consider yourself lucky!

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