Michelle Wolf is not the problem.
Useful Idiot, a Picture Story Featuring Chris CillizzaPost + Comments (158)
This post is in: Just Shut the Fuck Up, Our Awesome Meritocracy, Our Failed Media Experiment
Michelle Wolf is not the problem.
Useful Idiot, a Picture Story Featuring Chris CillizzaPost + Comments (158)
by Betty Cracker| 107 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Assholes, General Stupidity
Wingnuts are among the most entitled creatures on the planet. They meep endlessly about made-up oppression like the persecution of white Christian men, even though white Christian men have always been the most powerful group in the country. They feel entitled to validation by Hollywood elites and whine unceasingly about being disrespected by writers, artists, musicians, actors, etc.
But for my money, no wingnut entitlement is quite so annoying as the demand that feminists circle the wagons around a conservative woman who has spent her entire career helping powerful men denigrate and oppress women. Even if she’s legitimately a victim of sexism, it takes some goddamned nerve for a conservative woman to demand that the sisterhood kiss her boo-boo when she’s busily advancing a sexist goon’s agenda. She should at least have the fucking decency to accept the terms she’s trying to impose on the rest of us.
Making such demands based on a lie about sexism is even more galling. The latter spectacle has been on display all week, with liars and/or idiots misunderstanding a comic’s routine and shrieking like scalded wombats about a nonexistent insult to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ looks at the WHCA dinner. Here’s a sample of an annoying demand for women to circle the wagons from another lying Trump mouthpiece:
Is an attack on one woman an attack on all women, or does it matter who the woman (women) are? https://t.co/hmQe9UQOJ8
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) May 1, 2018
Talia Lavin on Twitter wasn’t having any of Conway’s bullshit, and the multi-tweet smack-down response (rendered below in paragraph form) is a thing of beauty that not only vaporizes Conway’s dumb comment but gets to the heart of what feminism is with uncommon clarity:
no. you don’t get to work your entire life against women’s rights and advancement, work for the most poisonously anti-woman admin in modern memory, and then turn around and beg for faux-feminist solidarity.
Feminism means something. It is NOT a sugar-spun cloak of girl power. It’s not a pink ribbon on an expensive coat. It is a fight to be free. It is a liberation struggle and the wages of losing are death or worse. You don’t get to make me forget that. I will never forget that.
I will fight against anyone, male or female, who does not want me to be free. I will fight against anyone who wants womanhood to be a punishment. I will fight for my flesh and my blood and my soul to be free until I die.
Too many people think feminism is decorative, a sugar pill to be bottled and sold at a markup. I grew up in a religion that gender-segregated during prayer, that taught me my body was dirty and my mind inferior. I left. Feminism gave me that strength.
I have been raped and assaulted and groped and beaten, and I have had an easy life. So many women are suffering. So many are not free. And this is because of systems of power, political and social, that feminism’s white-hot core seeks to burn down.
We have to claim it. We have to own it. Feminism isn’t easy or simple. You can’t buy it and you’re not born into it because you’re female. You have to choose it. You have to take the power yourself. No one will give it to you.
A-fucking-men. Had the comedian at the WHCA dinner actually insulted Sanders’ appearance, feminists would have spoken up, even though Sanders, Conway, et al, are enablers and apologists for the grotesque sexist nightmare in the Oval Office. But their speaking up wouldn’t be what Lavin rightly calls “faux-feminist solidarity,” and it wouldn’t be out of any sense of obligation to those particular women; it would be part of the larger struggle for recognition of our full humanity. That battle goes on, regardless of the turncoat status of Sanders, Conway and every idiotic woman who voted for Trump.
Turncoats in the Battle for Women’s Equality Demand a Purple HeartPost + Comments (107)
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Catastrophic coverage within the ACA framework are plans which are guaranteed issue, community rated plans that exist in parallel to the metal plans in the ACA individual market. Catastrophic coverage is not subsidized. People are eligible to buy Catastrophic if they are under 30 or if they receive a hardship exemption.
Catastrophic plans tend to have a significant pricing advantage over similar Bronze plans. Structurally, a Catastrophic plan is effectively a funny looking Bronze plan in its benefits and actuarial value. The premium differential is due to the combination of a much younger risk pool, a healthier risk pool as the very high deductible acts as a health sorting mechanism and a risk adjustment play.
the ACA there are two distinct risk adjustment pools. The catastrophic pool shifts money between catastrophic insurers. The money is mostly covering healthy and young people. The other risk adjustment pool is the Metal pool. Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum buyers are all shifting money amongst the plans. Typically Bronze plans will send a significant proportion of total premiums into the risk adjustment pool while Gold and Platinum plans will be net recipients of risk adjustment funds.
Using the same interim risk adjustment data as yesterday’s post, we can see the states’ ratios of risk scores for the catatastrophic market to the individual metal market.
The most important thing to note is that all state average risk scores for Catastrophic plans are significant below the average risk score of the metal plans. Since Catastrophic and Bronze plans are functionally similar, Catastrophic plans enjoy a significant risk adjustment pricing advantage as they don’t ship money out to cover some of the claims for Silver, Gold and Platinum buyers unlike Bronze premiums which cover all of their own claims and sends money into the risk adjustment pool.
Colorado’s legislature recently sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would fund an actuarial study to see if opening up Catastrophic plans to all ages would have a positive impact on premiums. And if the study found a positive impact, the bill would require a 1332 waiver to be submitted with the go-live date of January 1, 2020. Colorado’s catastrophic score is 38% of the metal score and it is highlighted in red.
(1) (a) THE COMMISSIONER SHALL CONDUCT AN ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS TO DETERMINE IF THE SALE OF CATASTROPHIC HEALTH PLANS TO PERSONS THIRTY YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER WHO DO NOT MEET A HARDSHIP REQUIREMENT WOULD RESULT IN A REDUCTION IN THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ADVANCED PREMIUM TAX CREDITS RECEIVED BY COLORADO RESIDENTS OR WOULD INCREASE THE AVERAGE PREMIUMS OF INDIVIDUAL HEALTH PLANS IN COLORADO. IF THE ACTUARIAL ANALYSIS DEMONSTRATES THAT THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ADVANCED PREMIUM TAX CREDITS RECEIVED BY COLORADO RESIDENTS WILL NOT DECLINE AND THE AVERAGE PREMIUMS OF INDIVIDUAL HEALTH PLANS IN COLORADO WILL NOT INCREASE, THEN THE COMMISSIONER SHALL APPLY TO THE SECRETARY FOR A FIVE-YEAR STATE INNOVATION WAIVER IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 1332 OF THE FEDERAL ACT AND 45 CFR 155 TO WAIVE SECTION 1303
This is going to be a tough set of criteria to meet. Catastrophic plans should have a significant non-subsidized pricing advantage over Bronze plans. Bronze plans probably have a pricing advantage over Catastrophic plans for folks who receive advanced premium tax credits. This will be more notable as Colorado is switching from a Broad CSR load to Silver-loading their CSR costs in 2019. The target buyers for Catastrophic will be non-subsidized healthy buyers who are currently ineligible for Catastrophic due to age. They are currently buying minimal Bronze coverage.
If these current Bronze buyers shift to Catastrophic, they will increase the average risk score in the metal pool as they are some of the lower scored individuals in that pool. That will increase premiums for the metal buyers. It will increase the premium tax credits as the aggregate index rate for the metal pool will increase as well but it will make the remaining non-subsidized buyers worse off.
I am having a hard time seeing how an actuarial evaluation of this plan will come back with a recommendation to expand Catastrophic access given the policy constraints the Colorado legislature has placed on a potential 1332 waiver.
Catastrophic’s risk adjustment advantage and ColoradoPost + Comments (3)
by Alain Chamot (1971-2020)| 54 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Open Threads, Readership Capture
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
So, let’s hope this births a new Wednesday tradition: more great stuff from BillinGlendaleCA!
And on a personal note, it’s hard to believe it’s been 6 months since that awful, awful morning. I miss you, La Mama.
Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.
It’s Milky Way Season Again!
Yes, the Milky Way has a season, it’s roughly April through October here in the northern hemisphere that you can see the galactic center of the Milky Way. I’ve fired up the Prius and headed to some familiar places(Lockwood Valley in the mountains) and some new places(on the coast). I attempted to shoot at the coast a few years ago when I had no clue what I was doing and actually managed to get a shot of the galactic center, but also the moon next to the galactic center. This time I avoided the moon by shooting after it had set and since the Milky Way doesn’t really rise until about 1:30-2:00am, this wasn’t overly difficult. One thing I acquired in the off-season(a Christmas present) was a sky tracker that moves the camera to track the stars as the earth moves. This allows for a cleaner picture since I can shoot a really long exposure at a low ISO setting.
Milky Way @ Twin Bush with traditional method.
Taken on 2018-04-14
Twin Bush at Point Mugu State Park, CA
This my first trip out there(at least without cloud cover or fog) and I didn’t take the sky tracker. This was shot with a short exposure and a high ISO(10 seconds at ISO 800). I’ve been looking at Google Maps for locations along Pacific Coast Highway with a turnout that I could park at and have a good location to shoot that would be somewhat shielded from the light pollution from LA. This seemed to be a good location, but you can still see quite a bit of light from LA at the left of the picture.
Milky Way @ Twin Bush with the sky tracker.
Taken on 2018-04-18
Twin Bush at Point Mugu State Park, CA
A few days after my first trip to the coast, the conditions looked right(no fog), so I headed back to Twin Bush and took the sky tracker with me. One of the things the sky tracker requires is a clear view of the Polaris so that you can calibrate it. The sky tracker takes sharp pictures of the stars, but the ground turns out blurry(the camera is moving relative to the gound), so you have to take a separate shot of the ground a put them together in Photoshop in post. This is a 4 minute exposure at f/3.5 and ISO 100 taken with the 10mm fisheye.
Milky Way @ Twin Bush with the sky tracker.
Taken on 2018-04-18
Twin Bush at Point Mugu State Park, CA
This was shot with my regular wide angle lens(12mm and f/2), but it’s got something special in it. If you look towards the lights of LA you can see a line of light that fades in and fades out. That’s the sun reflecting off the Hubble Space Telescope.
Milky Way @ Point Mugu
Taken on 2018-04-20
Point Mugu, CA
On this outing I moved a few miles further up the coast to attempt to avoid the LA light pollution, I’m not sure it was overly effective and I actually liked the coastline at Twin Bush better. I did a little light painting for this one, illuminating the rocks at the edge of the parking area(to keep folk from driving into the ocean).
Milky Way @ Lockwood Valley
Taken on 2018-04-21
Lockwood Valley, CA
I shot at Lockwood Valley in the shadow of Mt. Pinos(near Frazier Park) last year and thought I’d try again this year. This is composed of two exposures shot at 6 minutes with the 10mm fisheye f/3.5 and ISO 100.
Milky Way @ Lockwood Valley
Taken on 2018-04-21
Lockwood Valley, CA
I shot this(foreground and stars) at the maximum exposure length the remote camera app on my phone will allow(8 minutes), 12mm f/2 lens at ISO 100.
Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
This post is in: NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, All Too Normal
Nancy Pelosi makes explicit what has been widely assumed but unstated: If Democrats win the House, “I will run for speaker.” https://t.co/0aEoxmLa43
— Russell Berman (@russellberman) May 1, 2018
“It’s important that it not be five white guys at the table, no offense,” Pelosi said, referring to the top two leadership spots in the House and Senate and the presidency. “I have no intention of walking away from that table.” https://t.co/KsqV9I4Mqm
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) May 1, 2018
And a dozen Democrats running in ‘red to purple’ districts get to shake their heads sadly, before explaining how they, of course, would never vote for that mean ol’ lady Pelosi. Thereby sparing them from having to make promises that might actually get them into trouble, when (if) they’re elected. (Just as I would never run away with George Clooney for a wild weekend at his Italian villa — it wouldn’t be fair to poor Amal. The certainty that Mr. Clooney is not about to ask me in no way negates my feminist solidarity.)
Across the aisle, a million miles away…
Paul Ryan says increased moral relativism has made Congress a worse place than when he first started.@stephenfhayes asks if President Trump's election was a symptom of that moral relativism.
“Nice try," Ryan replies, chuckling. "You think I’m going to take that?”
— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) April 30, 2018
There’s more and more recognition all the time—and rightly so under Trump—that right wing politics is built on this foundation of feigned outrage and bad faith.
And it all goes out the window, as it did this weekend, when when conservatives direct the bad faith at the media. https://t.co/CZhIiwPUCF
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 2, 2018
It is vast and correct consensus of the press corps that if Obama was one-tenth as corrupt and dishonest as Trump, the right would have been even more awash in fake outrage than it was from 2009-2016.
Yet this consensus occasions no systemic rethinking of how to cover politics.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 2, 2018
Nobody doubts that this is true, and yet when the balance of power shifts again, the right will resume pretending to be outraged over nonsense, and reporters in general (though not Swin specifically) will proceed as if it’s all sincere. https://t.co/JtyiC90lXN
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 2, 2018
Nah, it would’ve still been fake, because as we are seeing, Republicans don’t actually care about corruption and dishonesty, per se.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 2, 2018
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Compare & ContrastPost + Comments (132)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Vagina Outrage, "Lock Her Up!!", All Too Normal, DC Press Corpse, Flash Mob of Hate
That “smoky-eye” joke was in such poor taste. Just horrible. pic.twitter.com/wpQSQtc6rA
— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) May 1, 2018
Keep in mind — Ana Navarro is a professional Republican. Jen Chaney, at NYMag Vulture blog:
… It would have been easy for Wolf to take a cheap shot at either of these women for some superficial offense, like the way they dress or talk. As Nussbaum points out, that’s what Trump would have done, and has done on many occasions. But nothing about what Michelle Wolf did on Saturday night was easy. It was hard, harder even than the truthtelling that Stephen Colbert did to President George W. Bush’s face at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. True, Colbert was dressing down the commander in chief in his actual presence, something Wolf didn’t have the opportunity to do since Trump, for the second year in a row, couldn’t muster the courage to show up for this event. But Colbert could at least hide behind his alter ego as the conservative host of The Colbert Report. Wolf had to go out there as only the fourth female comedian to perform solo at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, drop a bunch of truth bombs, then sit back down with no shield to provide cover…
Not surprisingly, though, it’s the jabs that Wolf threw at Sanders and other Trump staffers that are getting criticized today, not just because some of them were funny but because they legitimately stung. To acknowledge what actually made the smoky eye line funny meant that some of the people in that ballroom had to reflect on the fact that they either lie, enable liars, or act nicely to liars because that’s what they sometimes have to do to get the information the public deserves to know. That’s the sort of situation that makes people itchy.
But here’s the thing: If the worst thing that happens to you while you’re working for Trump is that a woman from The Daily Show says a few mean things about you while you’re wearing a nice dress, eating a free meal, and drinking some wine, you are still having a better day than a hell of a lot of people in this country. Also, this is part of the job when you’re a public servant…
Life in Washington will move on from this, too. But before it does, I want to pause and make sure it’s clear why I and others reacted the way we did to the backlash against Wolf’s speech. It wasn’t because the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is so important to our nation — I’m guessing most of the country, if not the vast majority, has no idea it even happened last night — or because Wolf is the most brilliant comedian who’s ever lived. I thought she was pretty funny, but that’s not really the point. The issue is that those who expressed shock about her performance could not see the obliviousness and hypocrisy in their responses…
But what’s even worse than misguided pearl-clutching is the fact that Wolf is getting criticized for things that she never even said. It’s not unlike the experience that plays out when Trump and his staff, including Sanders, peddle “alternative facts” to the public: If you’re paying attention to the actual facts, it makes you question your own sense of reality. This is why, after seeing the criticism of Wolf’s jokes about Sanders, I felt like I had to rewatch that portion of her speech again because surely I must have missed something.
On a night designed to celebrate the importance of journalism, somehow, what some people heard was a jab about a smoky eye. They’re missing the underlying point of Wolf’s comedy: That what should concern every American are the smokescreens that Sarah Huckabee Sanders and other members of the Trump administration create, and that make it so hard for White House correspondents to uncover the actual truth.
— Pam Lamb (@PamLamb20) May 1, 2018
Late Night Open Thread: (Probably) One Last Nerdprom ReviewPost + Comments (29)
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Russiagate, Decline and Fall
SCOOP — Mueller raised possibility of historic presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump’s legal team. And More… Me with @costareports https://t.co/DcJKIKr7ly
— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) May 2, 2018
#1 rule of covering the Trump administration: Never imagine there’s an innocent explanation.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 2, 2018
If the goal was to drive “President” Two-Scoops completely ’round the bend… well, it was a short trip:
In a tense meeting in early March with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, President Trump’s lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
But Mueller responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.
Mueller’s warning — the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump’s legal team — spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president’s lead lawyer.
“This isn’t some game,” Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”
The flare-up set in motion weeks of turmoil among Trump’s attorneys as they debated how to deal with the special counsel’s request for an interview, a dispute that ultimately led to Dowd’s resignation.
In the wake of the testy March 5 meeting, Mueller’s team agreed to provide the president’s lawyers with more specific information about the subjects that prosecutors wished to discuss with the president. With those details in hand, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow compiled a list of 49 questions that the team believed the president would be asked, according to three of the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. The New York Times first reported the existence of the list…
Now Trump’s newly reconfigured legal team is pondering how to address the special counsel’s queries, all while assessing the potential evidence of obstruction that Mueller might present and contending with a client who has grown increasingly opposed to sitting down with the special counsel. Without a resolution on the interview, the standoff could turn into a historic confrontation before the Supreme Court over a presidential subpoena…
The president has repeatedly decried the investigation as a “witch hunt.”…
So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018
Also the leaks obviously came from your side, shitburg. https://t.co/DcBihXG1Jp
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 1, 2018
This is just a bizarre claim. Does he think people won’t realize numerous questions are about collusion unless they use the specific word “collusion”? Does HE not realize it? https://t.co/OApO7lifPH
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) May 1, 2018
The answer to the question "Does Donald Trump not realize …" is always "No. No he does not." https://t.co/0nMk2k6c5D
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) May 1, 2018
I think he has gotten away with claiming “no collusion” and “no evidence of collusion” for so long that he feels he can just brazen his way through, even when his claims can be disproved with math. https://t.co/2GERNNtRLy
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) May 1, 2018
Collusion has been established, and whether journos say so will test whether they'll hold WH accountable for its lies after WHCD fiasco: https://t.co/qzsFDLZIRH
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 1, 2018
It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018
It would seem that way to you, but then again, you're a man easily overcome by inanimate objects, bewildered by simple abstractions, and wilfully ignorant of the law. https://t.co/rUmwTjsi3M
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 1, 2018
Dear Mr. President, you might want to consult your lawyers on this. They may inform you that obstruction of justice is an independent crime. They may also tell you to stop tweeting. Oh well. Good luck with all of that.
— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) May 1, 2018
I hope NYT had an agreement with their source that if Trump started making the friendly leaking of them an excuse to start firing people they out their source.
But doubt that's the case. NYT has repeatedly relished being a prop in Trump's defense. https://t.co/NhALY226m8
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) May 1, 2018
Russiagate Open Thread: WHO <del>FARTED</del> LEAKED?!?Post + Comments (118)