This has been fun.
Saw several people do this and it looks like fun. pic.twitter.com/54HPei3cwM
— Former Innocent Kid (@Johngcole) October 17, 2017
by John Cole| 87 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
This has been fun.
Saw several people do this and it looks like fun. pic.twitter.com/54HPei3cwM
— Former Innocent Kid (@Johngcole) October 17, 2017
This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Open Threads, Sports
The NFL will continue allowing players to kneel during the national anthem at games, Roger Goodell has announced. https://t.co/daEBOFWRdL
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 18, 2017
I am given to understand that Roger Goodell is an aggregation of marketing slogans made flesh and slapped in a jacket, but it seems that the players still have some pushback here:
… The NFL did not seek commitments from its players to stop kneeling during pregame renditions of the U.S. national anthem but rather focused on helping them in their political activism.
“We spent today talking about the issues that our players have been trying to bring attention to. About issues in our communities to make our communities better,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters.
Trump’s repeated denunciation of the players as unpatriotic for kneeling during the national anthem, which he reiterated as recently as Monday, has only made the practice more widespread…
The small but growing number of players who have taken to kneeling during the national anthem are protesting the killing by police of unarmed black men and boys across the United States, as well as racial disparities in the criminal justice system. More than half of all NFL players are black.
Goodell appeared less interested in stifling the silent protests, despite Trump’s wishes, and instead praised players’ character, saying he wanted to help their political activism.
“Today’s discussion with our players was very productive and very important. It reflected our commitment to work together with our players on issues of social justice,” said Goodell…
Along those lines, team owners and 13 players had a “productive meeting” of their own earlier on Tuesday at the league offices about how to collaborate on positive social change and addressing inequality, according to a statement by the NFL and the players’ union, the NFL Players Association…
Malcolm Jenkins, a player for the Philadelphia Eagles, told reporters that the two sides discussed how to amplify players’ voices and make what he called “long, sustainable changes.”
“We all have mutual interests. … We want to make sure that the quality of product that we put out on the field is great, but at the same time we have a responsibility to the communities that we live in and the communities that we come from,” Jenkins said…
Players and their union have bristled at Trump’s assertion they are unpatriotic. Though still a minority, more players have begun kneeling since the new football season began, and some sympathetic teammates have linked arms with the kneelers while standing themselves…
The NYTimes:
… The league’s rule book never required players to stand for the anthem but says they must be on the sideline during the song and “should” stand for it.
The ambiguity in the rule has made it difficult for the league to fine players who have either sat or knelt for the anthem, and the owners had discussed clarifying the wording to make standing for the anthem mandatory.
By leaving the rule alone, the league has chosen to avoid more internal strife with its players and to potentially weather more criticism from fans and President Trump, who has repeatedly ridiculed the league for not firing players who demonstrate during the anthem.
“We need to be above petty attacks from anybody, because racial and socioeconomic inequality has existed in this country for too long,” Jed York, the chief executive and co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers, said when asked about the president’s criticism of the league. “You got to block out the noise and go do your job, and that’s what we need to focus on.”…
We fully understand that nobody’s gonna pay NFL dollars to watch a bunch of Trump interns in full gear attempt not to injure themselves running around the field every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday evening, Mr. I-Killed-Arena-Football.
…Jenkins said there had been no discussion during the meeting about prohibiting players from kneeling during the national anthem; whether players continue to do so, he said, would be an individual decision.
He also said that Kaepernick had been invited to the meeting but chose not to attend. Kaepernick’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, later said it was possible that Kaepernick would attend future meetings…
The league also continues to grapple with Kaepernick, who filed a grievance accusing the owners of colluding to keep him from joining a team. Kaepernick, who led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2013, has remained unsigned since leaving the team in March.
What say the sports fans?
Sportsball Open Thread: There Is Power In A Union?Post + Comments (34)
by Betty Cracker| 110 Comments
This post is in: Movies, Open Threads, General Stupidity
Name this actor and the 1970s horror film in which he stars below:
God lord, that movie is a giant slab of Velveeta. No more hints! Open thread!
by DougJ| 167 Comments
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M.
A poll, albeit a Fox News one, has the race for Alabama Senate tied. You can give to the Democrat Doug Jones below.
You know something is happening here but you don’t know what it isPost + Comments (167)
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Bring On The Meteor, Decline and Fall, I'm Too Big To Cry/Hurts Too Much To Laugh
the Hanoi Hilton was nice and all but it didn't have as good an omelet chef as the Hai Phong Hyatt pic.twitter.com/E5m28dBvTI
— Kilgore Trout (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 16, 2017
.
Imagine you were an idiot, and imagine you were a Trump voter. But I repeat myself!
.
Apart from [all the facepalms], what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Why the Election Was Close Enough to StealPost + Comments (166)
by David Anderson| 31 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
It seems that Senators Alexander (R-TN) and Murray (D-WA) have most of an agreement together on appropriating CSR funds and tweaking elements of the ACA.
One of the tweaks is expanding access to Catastrophic plans. Catastrophic plans can not currently receive premium subsidies. I had been scratching my head on this for a couple of days as Catastrophic plans are currently sold to people under 30 or have a hardship exemption. It has a similar to Bronze actuarial value. A standard Catastrophic plan has $7,150 deductible with 3 PCP visits covered before the deductible has to be paid.
This is a risk adjustment play to lower premiums.
Rebecca Stob, a health insurance actuary who wrestles with risk adjustment every day lays out the mechanical implications:
Rates use same index rate but there is an additional discount based on the "eligibility criteria" of Catastrophic plan
— rebeccastob (@rebeccastob) October 17, 2017
Right now in 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.
IF the Catastrophic concession is to open up Catastrophic plans to all ages and includes APTC subsidies while not integrating Catastrophic into the common risk adjustment pool, we get a quasi-split risk pool. Very few people will buy Bronze plans as Catastrophic will be cheaper as the Catastrophic plans won’t be sending money to the Silver-Gold-Platinum plans while Bronze plans have to cover their own medical costs plus kick money into risk adjustment outflows. Few Bronze buyers means the Silver-Gold-Platinum plans all get more expensive as they will be receiving far less risk adjustment money coming from Bronze plans.
The Catastrophic pool will still be fairly healthy as the $7,150 deductible is scary to anyone with a chronic condition but premiums will be low as the pool just needs to cover their own costs without funding risk adjustment outflows to cover sick people in Silver-Gold-Platinum.
From a distributional point of view, this is good for healthy subsidized and non-subsidized buyers, no significant change for subsidized CSR buyers, slightly worse off for subsidized Gold and Platinum buyers as the relative price spreads will increase, and bad for non-subsidized metal buyers. It might be a net improvement for non-subsidized but very high cost buyers with severe medical conditions as they were always guaranteed to hit the Out of Pocket Max in any scheme but premiums might drop enough.
Update 1 If I had to vote on this legislation, based on the reporting of the past couple of hours, and with the proviso that I actually need to see the text, I would be a yes with at most modest grumbling.
by Betty Cracker| 416 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Trump Crime Cartel, Assholes, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, General Stupidity
We bitch about the Beltway media a lot around here, and God knows they deserve it. But sometimes, talking heads say something worth hearing. Such was the case on AC 360 last night, when the panel was discussing Trump’s shameless, infuriating lies about how President Obama and other predecessors interacted with the families of soldiers killed in action.
In the clip below, Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker (at left in the screen grab) wonders why Trump “makes shit up” and “lies all the time.” The melon-headed butt-munch seated at right who’s failing to hide his chinlessness behind a goatee — co-panelist and former Trump flack Jason Miller — lamely tries to defend Trump’s staggering and unprecedented mendaciousness. But Lizza is having none of it, repeatedly calling Trump out for lying constantly.
Lizza is getting high-fives all over the Twitters for it, but IMO, the real hero of the clip is Tara Setmayer, who comes in at the 1:40 mark and drops the following truth bomb about why Trump is such a lying piece of shit (transcribed below the clip for those who can’t / don’t want to watch the video):
Ryan Lizza on Trump claiming Obama didn’t contact families of fallen troops: "Why does the (President) lie so much?" https://t.co/hbUaa5NcHq
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 17, 2017
SETMAYER: Because he’s done this his entire career and never been held accountable for it. Now he’s in front of the entire world, where he has people who will actually hold him accountable for the things he says, and he does not know how to process that, because its not in his character to do so. He’s been a liar his entire life! He’s a BS artist! And when he gets backed into a corner, then his default is to lie, make something up, deflect and divert, and when people call him on it, he says “fake news.”
Exactly right, and well said, Ms. Setmayer.