Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This is a politics free open thread. Any topic but politics. I will open- my shoulder hurts worse than it did yesterday, by a wide margin, and I am in an epic foul mood. I am going to watch the Dog Whisperer and whimper.
Also- if you find your comment moderated in the spam filter, submitting the same comment ten times with “WHY AM I IN MODERATION?” accomplishes nothing but pissing me off.
Laura W. and I are working on a Cafe Press site, and we are going to send the proceeds to Evelyn, Little Bitsy’s rescuer, and the pound where I got Lily and Tunch. Here is another possible mug:
For those of you interested in contributing some graphics, just email them to me.
Also, has anyone watched Sanctuary?
Commenter Comrade Luke passes along the sad news that his friend’s niece died in the Haitian earthquake:
The family of 22-year-old Molly Hightower, of Port Orchard, was told early today that searchers found the young woman’s body in the wreckage of the Haiti orphanage where she worked as a volunteer.
Her father, Mike Hightower, said the word the family had been dreading came in a phone call from the organization that runs the orphanage.
***Hightower was a 2009 graduate of the University of Portland. Her majors included sociology and French. She arrived in Haiti in June for a year of service working for Friends of the Orphans, which operates with the help of several hundred international volunteers. She helped at an orphanage, at a hospital and also worked with disabled children.
Such a loss.
Here is something you can do to help the team- if you haven’t already, donate to Martha Coakley. Between you all here and Scott’s gang at Bill In Exile (NSFW), we are almost to our ten k goal:
Great job!
This was sent in yesterday, and if I ever get around to making Balloon Juice t-shirts, this is going on the back:
How awesome is that!
For those of you interested, my shoulder feels much worse today than it did yesterday, which I sort of expected would be the case. I went through two windshields (on separate occasions) in car wrecks and fell off a roof once and off the back of a tank once, and each time I felt worse the next day. Still icing it and taking motrin and another painkiller, but the painkiller seems to be mainly making me itch (which, according to WebMd, is a well known side effect). Also, I couldn’t sleep at all in the bed last night- kept waking up every fifteen minutes Think I will sleep in the chair tonight (and no doubt today).
Lily and Tunch, on the other hand, just seem to be happy I am not moving fast and they can sit on me in the La-Z-Boy. At any rate, here is a morning open thread for you all.
Last week I asked you all to explain to me why the cadillac tax was such a big deal (because it seemed to me that taxing plans over 26k was not that big of a deal), and I started to become persuaded that the politics of it was so bad it should be scrapped, but it seems like that is no longer an issue:
The White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions said Thursday that they had reached agreement on a proposal to tax high-cost health insurance policies, resolving one of the major differences between the House and the Senate over far-reaching health legislation.
Their negotiations produced changes to a tax included in the bill passed by the Senate last month. The changes would lessen and delay the impact of the tax on workers and would reduce the amount of revenue collected. The revenue would help finance coverage for millions of people who are uninsured.
Labor leaders hailed the deal and said they were prepared to fight for passage of the legislation.
I really would like to know why we don’t just end the employer loophole.