Just got a news alert saying there was a 6.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northern California. Y’all okay?
Open thread.
This post is in: Open Threads
Just got a news alert saying there was a 6.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northern California. Y’all okay?
Open thread.
by DougJ| 46 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
There was a very interesting note in the excellent Washington Post piece about the Comet Ping Pong gunman:
An oddly disproportionate share of the tweets about Pizzagate appear to have come from, of all places, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Vietnam, said Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University in North Carolina. In some cases, the most avid retweeters appeared to be bots, programs designed to amplify certain news and information.
“What bots are doing is really getting this thing trending on Twitter,” Albright said. “These bots are providing the online crowds that are providing legitimacy.”
Online, the more something is retweeted or otherwise shared, the more prominently it appears in social media and on sites that track “trending” news. As the bots joined ordinary Twitter users in pushing out Pizzagate-related rumors, the notion spread like wildfire. Who programmed the bots to focus on that topic remains unknown.
What a strange coalition of reg’lar folks and twitter bots the right-wing has become.
This post is in: Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Daydream Believers
"To all the little girls watching…never doubt that you are valuable and powerful & deserving of every chance & opportunity in the world."
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 9, 2016
Most shared US tweet of 2016, per Buzzfeed.
If she can do it, so can we. Besides, what other option is there?
What’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
Remember Cole’s favorite candidate?
For 8 years, President Obama has made us proud. For the next 4, it's our turn to return the favor by protecting the progress he's made.
— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) December 7, 2016
Useful reminders, from genuine reporters…
Trump team must think if they say "mandate" 2.7 million times it wipes away fact he lost the popular vote massivelyhttps://t.co/uObhP07whd
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) December 7, 2016
If Carrier didn't have a good union, Trump would never even have heard about the threatened move to Mexico. @HaroldMeyerson
— Harold Meyerson (@HaroldMeyerson) December 8, 2016
1) Cruz attacks Trump over trans rights, loses
2) McCrory signs bathroom bill, loses re-election
3) Dems must reject identity politics— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 6, 2016
From ground zero of #Pizzagate:
Happy to report that Comet Pizza is packed tonight by unterrorized Washingtonians.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 7, 2016
by David Anderson| 30 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, C.R.E.A.M., All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bitter Despair is the New Black, Bring On The Meteor
We’re going to see how the Republican Party can create a death spiral in the individual market in sixty days or less. They have a few choices:
First Philip Klein in the Washington Examiner wants to create one the old fashion way:
In contrast, Republicans could immediately freeze enrollment — allowing those who already have insurance through Obamacare to continue receiving subsidies, but preventing new enrollees from receiving any (though they’d still be free to purchase insurance on their own if they aren’t seeking subsidies). The current open enrollment period for privately-administered insurance ends on Jan. 31, so that would be a natural cutoff point.
Do you know who is extremely likely to buy community rated, guaranteed issue insurance with a subsidy? People who are very sick.
Do you know who is extremely unlikely to buy community rated, guaranteed issue insurance without a subsidy? People who have reason to believe they are very healthy.
This proposal will get the individual insurance market to look like the individual markets from the mid-90s in the non-subsidized, non-mandated guarantee issue states. Super high premiums and very sick risk pools. And since insurers set their 2017 rates with the assumption that subsidies are available for Special Enrollment Members, they will lose a lot of money.
Means #2 is just pulling the Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies. Insurers will flee the market. The American Academy of Actuaries have their hair on fire as they look at the impact of Congress not funding Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies after January 20th.
Eliminating CSR reimbursements could also cause insurers to withdraw from the market Premiums for 2017 have been finalized, and they assume that CSR reimbursements will be made. Without those reimbursements, premiums would have been higher for all individual market enrollees. Regardless of whether CSR reimbursements are made to insurers, the ACA requires insurers to provide cost-sharing subsidies. If those reimbursements are not made, premiums will be too low to cover the costs of care. This creates the potential for insurer losses and solvency concerns. Due to contract provisions, insurers would be permitted to withdraw from the market if CSR reimbursements are not made.
Splitting the a Replacement Bill into discrete and seperate chunks will also death spiral the market:
I am open to be proven wrong. But statements like this suggest that GOP senators underestimate the complexity of health policy. @sahilkapur pic.twitter.com/JvjyhHH44Z
— Margot Sanger-Katz (@sangerkatz) December 6, 2016
The issue is the popular stuff (guarantee issue, no pre-existing conditions, community rating etc) will get 85 votes in the Senate and 400 in the House. The unpopular stuff (participation enforcement mechanism, definitions, subsidy attachment formulas) won’t get a majority as no one really wants to vote for either a mandate tax OR continuous enrollment criteria without being able to point to a lot of other good stuff enabled by the bad stuff.
So again we’ll get the mid-90s markets of guarantee issue, community rating for only very sick people.
The Urban Institute models out the impact of Repeal without immediate replacmement and it is ugly:
New report: The implications of partial repeal of the #ACA through reconciliation https://t.co/u36qs9xfcj pic.twitter.com/5TKpwaNDe9
— Urban Institute (@urbaninstitute) December 7, 2016
It is mostly a cost shift with massive extraneous suffering.
And that is where I think we’re heading.
So if you have an Exchange plan, I would try to get any problems that I was putting off on taking care of taken care of by January 31, 2017. After that the insurance markets will most likely be extremely chaotic and volatile with a decent tail risk of all carriers pulling all products in a number of states by early spring.
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
100 years from now, this will be one of the key images used to teach history what remains of post-apocalypse society pic.twitter.com/YaPYy2aVjG
— Billy Bragg (@billybragg) December 7, 2016
The TIME cover should be "Person of the Shittiest Year since 1968."
— Schooley (@Rschooley) December 7, 2016
But you can’t say Time‘s choice is “not normal” — the magazine has always had a predilection for showy authoritarians…
…Vladimir Putin, "You," Bono & the Gates', George W. Bush (twice), Rudy Giuliani, and that's all in THIS century. Please, TIME. Enough!
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) December 5, 2016
In the last century TIME has also picked Newt Gingrich, Ayatullah Khomeini, King Faisal, Henry Kissinger, Nixon, Stalin (twice), Hitler…
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) December 5, 2016
Monica Lewinsky: Internet trolls should have been picked for Time Person of the Year https://t.co/7n6T7gMJfr pic.twitter.com/IG9Ne2kn1R
— The Hill (@thehill) December 7, 2016
One was, though. https://t.co/5dkxCP2v3P
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 8, 2016
The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People is a joke and stunt of a magazine that will, like Newsweek,soon be dead. Bad list!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2013
I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015
Collect all four to unlock the end of times. pic.twitter.com/3iZ7KNTrEb
— Dan Worthington (@danWorthington) December 7, 2016
Early Morning Open Thread: Man-Baby Symbol of the YearPost + Comments (39)
by Betty Cracker| 154 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Not Normal
Just our future president, putting the “bully” in the bully pulpit:
Jones’ offense was correctly pointing out that Cheeto Benito’s Carrier deal was less than advertised. So now Jones is getting death threats from unhinged Trump super fans. This asshole may get someone killed before he’s even sworn in.
by John Cole| 76 Comments
This post is in: Religious Nuts 2
This is horrifying:
Ohio lawmakers passed a bill that would prohibit abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected — at around six weeks, before many women realize they are pregnant. Here’s what you need to know about the bill. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Ohio lawmakers passed a bill late Tuesday that would prohibit abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected — at around six weeks, before many women realize they are pregnant.
If Gov. John Kasich (R) signs the bill, it would pose a direct challenge to Supreme Court decisions that have found that women have a constitutional right to abortion until the point of viability, which is typically pegged around 24 weeks. Similar bills have been blocked by the courts. Because of this, even many antiabortion advocates have opposed such measures.
But some Ohio Republicans said they were empowered to support the bill because of President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 high court decision that legalized abortion nationally.
This no Christo-fascist regime is going to take decades to unwind.
Oh and About that Reasonable Republican John KasichPost + Comments (76)