I’ll be stuffing them in envelopes and putting the addresses on tonight and tomorrow and hope to ship Thursday!
Falcon Heavy Live Stream
Space X’s Falcon Heavy rocket is now scheduled to test launch at 3:45 PM EST. The Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9 rockets bundled together in a new configuration from the regular Falcon 9s. The main rocket has a payload attached with two Falcon 9s as boosters. The Falcon heavy has 27 engines and generates more than 5 million pounds of thrust at lift off.
Musk has given it just a 50% chance of actually lifting off for its test flight without blowing up.
Here’s a live feed to watch it.
Open thread!
Well the Girls Would Turn the Color of the Avocado
Since I am here at the sufferance of DougJ, I thought I would look in on one of his old friends. Fairly or unfairly, I’ve always felt like anyone who identifies as a libertarian past the age of fifteen occupies a space somewhere on the spectrum between sociopath and asshole. I don’t know if anyone even takes them seriously anymore. Anyway, our favorite gastroenteritis sufferer has just turned forty-five, gained wisdom, and is comin’ Moses-like down from the mountain to share it via a little something she likes to call…
After 45 Birthdays, Here Are ’12 Rules for Life’
1. Be kind. Mean is easy; kind is hard.
Is it? Does being mean really come so easily to you? Huh. I’ve always found that people respond quite positively to kindness and cooperation. Maybe you are some kind of asshole?
2. …If you have to choose between politics and a friendship, choose the friendship every time.
This second one is really about you being an asshole again, isn’t it?
3. If you can’t afford to order that one extra dish, then the restaurant is too expensive for your budget and you should find a cheaper one.
I guess there is a market for this kind of patronizing “financial advice,” because I see it elsewhere. It’s super irritating.
I give you permission to be good. At anything. (A cheap shot, I know. I gave myself permission.)
5. Go to the party even when you don’t want to. Nine times in 10, you’ll be bored and go home early. But the 10th time, you will have a worthy experience or meet an interesting person. That more than redeems those other wasted hours.
Hey, everyone who invited Megan to a party or talked to her at one? Only a 10% chance you weren’t wasting her time.
6. Save 25 percent of your income. No, don’t tell me how expensive your city is; I have spent basically my whole life in New York and Washington, DC. You can save if you want to…
So galling. It’s okay to never know poverty, never sniff economic hardship, to live out your life assured of your next meal and a roof over your head. I think everyone should get to live this way. But let me drop a little asymmetric info on you: Not everybody does. If you are so uncontaminated by curiosity you cannot imagine what kind of choices people who are bobbing along with their snouts just above water have to make, why should you have an economics column?
7. …Here’s a funny thing I have learned by being just a little bit internet famous: it doesn’t matter how many times you hear them, the words “You are amazing, and here’s why” never get old. They do not go out of style. You will be wearing them to your 80th birthday party, along with a dazzling smile.
Am I the only one who suspects that Megan thinks 2 x 45 = 80?
8. That thing you kinda want to do someday? Do it now. I mean, literally, pause reading this column, pick up the phone, and book that skydiving session. RIGHT NOW. I’ll wait. Pixels are patient.
Can’t, dog. My dreams cost money and I’m hanging onto that 25% of my income. Remember?
9. Somewhere around that same eighth-grade mark where we all experimented with being mean...
We did? I seem to recall experimenting with weed and getting into Pink Floyd. What is it with you and the meanness?
10. Don’t try to resolve fundamental conflicts with your spouse or roommates.
Interpersonal conflicts are something I expect you have a lot of experience with, seeing as though meanness is your default setting. Since you brought it up, I’m listening.
…You should never, ever argue with your spouse about anything that could be solved with a proper application of money or ingenuity.
11. Be grateful. “Gratitude is an alien concept to me. Let me explain it to you as though you don’t understand it either.” This is in there:
Many billionaires, however, squander most of their fortune on bitter recriminations about how unfair everything is. Many of them are right, and it really is unfair.
Since this is Bloomberg, they are editorially bound to say that the rich are right about something somewhere in every column. It’s just policy, folks.
12. …
is just some cutesy-poo foodie shit.
So what can be done about people who both lack basic empathy for others and a set of principles that guide them toward decency and mercy? I’m not sure. In the public sphere, though, it means electing folks from the party that makes an effort to help. And so I bring to you fund that’s split between all eventual
Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.
Well the Girls Would Turn the Color of the AvocadoPost + Comments (163)
All of Them Katie
One of our readers sent in a link to their blog, which has a very thorough rundown of the Senate, House and Governor’s races in the form of a Google spreadsheet. This person gave their full name in the email, which I don’t want to share. The person who did this should sound off in the comments, because the spreadsheet is a great resource that took a lot of work. Open thread.
This Is Only a Test
So, this morning, I’m having my coffee, catching up on the Snarkosphere, etc., when I notice an alert on my iPhone screen:
Never heard of a tsunami hitting the west coast of Florida, but shit, the world quit making sense a while back, so maybe? I clicked through to the Accuweather app, which had the little red exclamation point and the same message on the app screen: tsunami warning for my (low-lying, coastal) area.
I mentally reviewed the location of my husband and daughter (higher ground, both, insofar as there IS higher ground on this accursed peninsula) and started figuring out how to single-handedly catch and crate the chickens and then drag the dog and a crate of chickens up to the roof. Or perhaps chance fleeing in my car with the dog and chickens in the cabin with me? Neither seemed a good option.
But before putting either plan into action, I figured I’d better go straight to the horse’s mouth and make sure this warning wasn’t some Accuweather fuckery and that the U.S. National Weather Service was really predicting a tsunami right here in Cockroach Acres. Turns out, nah:
I appreciate getting severe weather alerts when an actual threat exists, just as I’m sure the folks in Hawaii are glad there’s a way to alert them of incoming ballistic missiles. But maybe we need to take a step back and rethink how these alerts are disseminated.
In Hawaii, perhaps it shouldn’t be possible for one person to fuck up and push the wrong button and send the population into a panic. And maybe the National Weather Service should work more closely with the weather apps that are authorized to push NWS alerts to make sure “this is a test” is part of the alert message when testing the system. Just saying.
Open thread!
Russiagate Open Thread: Nixon Wept
Lawyers for Trump have advised him against sitting down for a wide-ranging interview with Mueller, four people briefed on the matter tell NYT.
His lawyers are concerned that Trump could be charged with lying to investigators. https://t.co/BuMbXRLfA8
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 6, 2018
Not just ‘Stupid Watergate’, but ‘Incredibly Stupid Watergate’. To give it the proper Nixonian flavor, ‘Unable-to-Pass-the-NFL-Concussion-Protocol Watergate’….
… Mr. Trump’s decision about whether to speak to prosecutors, expected in the coming weeks, will shape one of the most consequential moments of the investigation. Refusing to sit for an interview opens the possibility that Mr. Mueller will subpoena the president to testify before a grand jury, setting up a court fight that would drastically escalate the investigation and could be decided by the Supreme Court.
Rejecting an interview with Mr. Mueller also carries political consequences. It would be certain to prompt accusations that the president is hiding something, and a court fight could prolong the special counsel inquiry, casting a shadow over Republicans as November’s midterm elections approach or beyond into the president’s re-election campaign.
But John Dowd, the longtime Washington defense lawyer hired last summer to represent Mr. Trump in the investigation, wants to rebuff an interview request, as do Mr. Dowd’s deputy, Jay Sekulow, and many West Wing advisers, according to the four people. The lawyers and aides believe the special counsel might be unwilling to subpoena the president and set off a showdown with the White House that Mr. Mueller could lose in court…
Presidents have often agreed to speak with federal prosecutors who are investigating their actions or those close to them. But President Richard M. Nixon refused to turn over to the special prosecutor investigating him tapes of incriminating conversations with aides. The matter eventually went before the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1974 that the president, like every American, was not above the law and had to comply with the special prosecutor’s request.
“The upshot of the Nixon tapes case was that any president is going to have an extremely hard time resisting a request from a law enforcement officer,” said Neal K. Katyal, an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration and a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells.
“In general,” he added, “presidents do sit for interviews or respond to requests from prosecutors because they take their constitutional responsibility to faithfully execute the laws seriously, and running away from a prosecutor isn’t consistent with faithfully executing the laws.”
Mr. Trump’s penchant for bravado has been a factor that his lawyers must contend with. The president has bragged to some aides that he would be able to clear himself if he talked to Mr. Mueller’s team.
“I’m looking forward to it, actually,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House last month, though he added, almost as an afterthought, that an interview would be “subject to my lawyers, and all of that.”…
Stick with me for this: The "president's" friends, advisers & lawyers insist the "president" is completely innocent, but is such a liar that he can't be trusted to speak to the prosecutor. Gotcha.
— John Weaver (@JWGOP) February 6, 2018
As NYMag phrases it, “Trump’s Lawyers Seem to Think He’s Incapable of Not Lying”
… Aside from Trump’s well-documented penchant for lying, the president’s attorneys must also deal with the strong possibility that their client is not, like, really smart. According to the Times, he’s privately claimed he wouldn’t just survive an exchange with Mueller, he’d find a way to exonerate himself: “The president has bragged to some aides that he would be able to clear himself if he talked to Mr. Mueller’s team.”…
Variations in the lived experience in the ACA
The ACA has always been a tremendously heterogeneous lived experience. It varies by year and it varies by county. There is some consistency when the stars and the moon line up. There is inconsistency as a function of the very design of the subsidy structure as well as normal business decision combined with federal policy changes as well.
I want to highlight the picture below as I had to throw it out off of the poster I presented at the National Health Policy Conference on Monday as it was out of the time scope of the work I showed. But I still think it is pretty cool. The left hand side is a set of counties in Tennessee with the Silver Spread (Least Expensive Silver plan minus Benchmark Silver plan) for a 40 year old non-smoker in 2017. The right hand side is the Silver Spread for a 40 year old non-smoker in 2018 in the same counties.
So what is going on here?
Variations in the lived experience in the ACAPost + Comments (4)