Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I was promised a recession.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

This blog will pay for itself.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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Giving the Dog a Bone

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It’s been about 48 hours since someone sent a photo of an engorged under-wear clad penis from Anthony Weiner’s twitter account seemingly directed at some young co-ed, and right-wingers are in a tizzy:

One thing is for sure, we can expect these intrepid sleuths to tug on every lead, massaging the facts until they get to the root of the issue. They are swallowing every detail, and eager for more, until they reach a triumphant conclusion.

In all seriousness, I have no idea what is going on- Weiner claims he was hacked, but the person the tweet was directed at was someone who was following him and mentioned Weiner in her own tweets. It wouldn’t surprise me if Weiner was this stupid- particularly stupid considering he is married to the beautiful Huma Abedin, but at this point I know about as much as you do.

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Friday night book and open thread

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The Bookworm - Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885)

I love books, almost as much as I love authors, and have spent much of my life collecting as many of both as I could.

Frankly, however, my authors have often been a bit of a disappointment in the sack.

Not Hemingway, of course. During the years where I was undercover as Castro’s mistress (Fidel smelled like a sheep and liked to call me “Jackie”), I managed to get in a few nights with Papa on the side before he left Cuba. He was a hoot – a man of very few words, who could induce multiple orgasms without either putting down his cigar or spilling his drink.

Then I had a fling with Gore Vidal in the early 60s. Jack Kennedy seemed to enjoy Gore’s company so much that I wanted to find out what I was missing. He was fun sometimes, but I fairly quickly tired of a sex life that seemed to consist entirely of me dressing up in an army uniform while Gore wept and called me Jimmy.

I went for a spin with Anaïs Nin, but that was all a little confusing because she could never remember which of her husbands she was supposed to be cheating on when we were together.

Arthur Hailey was just hard work. He wouldn’t have sex unless he knew it was going to involve 17 people and last for three days.

More recently, I managed to seduce James Frey – before all the unpleasantness, of course. He was hung like a winkle, had no idea what to do and eventually had to pay someone else to come in and finish the job.

Hark at me, rabbiting on, when all I really wanted to do was talk about a couple of books that I have read recently.

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The “500 billion” attack is back, and it’s wearing white shoes

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This fact-check piece is about a series of lies Pat Boone is being paid to tell about Ryan’s plan to end Medicare. Not particularly interesting or remarkable: a conservative group (60 Plus) retained a paid hack to go out and spread the gospel.

But. This one lie he’s telling should probably get some attention, because I assume they’re going to cycle it into rotation again:

The claim: Boone also says Ryan is “not proposing to take $500 billion out of Medicare – that’s President Obama’s plan!”

Closer look: Actually, while Ryan would kill the health law, it would retain the $500 billion (over 10 years) in Medicare savings called for in the law, money that comes from cutting some payments to hospitals and cutting some funding from the Medicare Advantage program.


You all will remember this, I’m sure. Democrats didn’t really defend on this attack, because it is (mostly) true that Democrats shifted 500 billion in Medicare Advantage subsidies to the uninsured:

Last fall, Republicans spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats for cutting Medicare. Those cuts—which reduced reimbursements to drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies and totaled about $500 billion over 10 years—were made to pay for the new subsidies to younger, uninsured Americans.

“Maybe Schauer’s trying to hide his own vote to cut $500 billion from Medicare,” said one typical television ad, this one targeting then-Rep. Mark Schauer (D., Mich.), who lost his re-election bid. “Let’s save Medicare, and cut Schauer.” Like others, this ad was paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee. A total of about $70 million was spent on TV ads attacking Democrats on Medicare, mostly for supporting the cuts in the health care law, according to tracking by Campaign Media Analysis Group.

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, released his budget proposal. It included a major restructuring of the Medicare program, and repealed much of the Democratic health care law. But his plan keeps in place the Medicare reductions.

500 billion less to Medicare Advantage and more uninsured.

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Medicaid Fact versus Fiction

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Good list of ten myths about Medicaid (pdf).

Myth 3—Medicaid spending is out of control.
FACT: The per enrollee cost growth in Medicaid (6.1 percent) is lower than the per enrollee cost growth in comparable coverage under Medicare (6.9), private health insurance (10.6), and monthly premiums for employer-sponsored insurance (12.6).

One would think this next would be obvious, but apparently, it’s not:

Medicaid is a program that is most in demand when the country is experiencing economic difficulties. Over the past few years Medicaid spending growth increased due to a sharp rise in enrollment of children and parents in low-income families during tough economic times. However, the spending growth has moderated as the economy has improved. Although Medicaid costs continue to increase, so do health care costs throughout the American health system, indicating there is a more systemic issue of rising costs.

Myth 6—Medicaid is a welfare system for people who don’t work.
Fact: Sixty-five percent of people who receive Medicaid are from working families.
The program was originally designed to provide coverage to welfare recipients, but it was separated from the welfare system in 1996. Among those beneficiaries who are out of the workforce—such as individuals with severe disabilities—Medicaid coverage serves as a supplement to their cash assistance and provides needed health coverage.

Oh, and Medicaid isn’t one size fits all rigid, either, so there’s no earthly reason conservative governors can’t “innovate” right now. They don’t need Ryan’s plan, unless they’re planning on throwing people off:

Myth 2—Medicaid is a rigid, one size fits all program.
FACT: States have taken advantage of Medicaid’s flexibility to customize their program-about two-thirds of Medicaid spending is for “optional” services or populations. Medicaid is designed with minimum federal standards, which require states to cover certain populations and provide certain benefits to key populations. In many ways it is a system that operates as 50 separate state coverage programs, with states having the choice to cover populations and services beyond minimum standards.

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If you hear it on Meet The Press, assume it isn’t true

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Here’s media favorite Professor Newt Gingrich opining on the US economy, last week:

REP. GINGRICH: Well, it’s very simple. He has policies—and I used a very direct analogy. He follows the same destructive political model that destroyed the city of Detroit. I follow the model that Rick Perry and others have used to create more jobs in Texas. You know, Texas two out of the last four years created more jobs than the other 49 states combined. I’m suggesting we know how to create jobs. Ronald Reagan did it. I was part of that. We know how to create jobs. We did it when I was speaker. And, and the way you create jobs is you have lower taxes, you have less regulation, you have litigation reform….

I know Gingrich was dog whistling, and this isn’t about Detroit or food stamps, but let’s pretend the mass volume of words he produces have actual, ordinary meaning and see about Detroit and paychecks and Michigan and food stamps:

Soon after taking office in 2009, President Obama was looking for a place to dramatize America’s economic woes, and tout his administration’s plan to turn things around. He picked Elkhart, Indiana, a struggling city in a state which then placed 42nd out of the 50 states in unemployment rates. Obama could also have picked a location in Michigan, which had a jobless rate of 13.3 percent that year, the highest in the nation. Or perhaps somewhere in Ohio or Illinois, which ranked 40th and 39th respectively.

As a region, the industrial Midwest has become synonymous in the public mind with the loss of manufacturing jobs, and a potent symbol of U.S. economic decline. So it might come as a shock to learn that over the last year, those four Midwestern states led the pack in reducing their jobless rates. And behind that trend is an emerging body of evidence that supports a much more optimistic view not just of the industrial Midwest region, but of the future of U.S. manufacturing.

Between this March and last, Michigan’s jobless rate dropped from 13.3 percent to 10.3 percent, according to Labor Department numbers. That 3 percentage-point decline led the nation. Illinois and Indiana were second and third–with rates that went from 11 percent to 8.8 percent, and 10.6 percent to 8.5 percent, respectively. And Ohio was tied for fourth, with a 1.6 percentage-point drop. Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio now all have jobless rates below the national average of 9 percent.As one analyst put it: “The economy would be limping along, at best, without the strong manufacturing sector.”

At least for Michigan, another surprising factor may also be playing a role in the turnaround. According to a recent analysis, the fastest-growing market for tech jobs–the sector that, more than any other, may represent the economy of the future–isn’t San Jose, Austin, or North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Instead, it’s the city that’s become our leading icon of industrial decline and urban decay: Detroit.

Gingrich doesn’t know anything about any of the places he talks about, and he doesn’t know anything about food stamps, either.

While Michigan had 18.8% of residents receiving food stamps in 2010, Texas had 15.3% of residents receiving food stamps in 2010, hardly a number for Rick Perry to brag about. Newt’s home state of Georgia, with tort reform, lax regulation and tax breaks, comes in at 17%.

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People die every day, but life expectancy myths live forever

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I saw DougJ’s post on the effort currently underway at the Washington Post to browbeat us all into handing over our anticipated Social Security benefits and then I recalled this from last week, where we found out that Alan Simpson doesn’t know anything about Social Security, and that reminded me of this, from the last round of Social Security mania, where we found out former President Bush didn’t know anything about Social Security, either.

The message to blacks is that Social Security screws them because they die younger. By all accounts, that’s what Bush told black business and community leaders at a two-hour private meeting on Jan. 25. It’s also the centerpiece of black community town halls and speeches to black audiences by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman, according to the Los Angeles Times.

As Paul Krugman has explained, remaining life expectancy for a 65-year-old black man is 14.6 years, not two. It’s true that black male life expectancy at birth is only 69, but black-white mortality differences trail off throughout life. (By the late stages, black men outlive white men of the same age.) So, while blacks are likely to spend fewer years taking money out, they’re also likely to spend fewer years paying in.

Here’s Paul Krugman on the last round of lies about Social Security:

Let’s start with the facts. Mr. Bush’s argument goes back at least seven years, to a report issued by the Heritage Foundation – a report so badly misleading that the deputy chief actuary (now the chief actuary) of the Social Security Administration wrote a memo pointing out “major errors in the methodology.” That’s actuary-speak for “damned lies.”

Here’s why. First, Mr. Bush’s remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It’s true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years – but that doesn’t mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years’ worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks’ low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years – not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

So, both former President Bush and Alan Simpson don’t understand life expectancy, and they simply apply that misunderstanding to advance whatever policy goal they hope to achieve. People die younger, people die older, whatever, don’t bother them with details. They’ll use younger (like Bush did) when it fits the push to privatize, but they may also use older (like Simpson did) because that slots in nicely this round.

This cavalier attitude towards a program that tens of millions of working people will rely on doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. There’s a history here. We have been misled on Social Security in the past. That happened. Those of out here in the cheap seats watched it happen, and there wasn’t any crisis that last time other than the crisis created by the people who hoped to push privatization hurry-up-quick, before we noticed.

The crowd that don’t and won’t have to rely on Social Security and their opinion-page mouthpieces have a credibility deficit on social programs, it’s been accruing over years, and they never seriously address it. I’ll get serious when they do.

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Happy Christmas from Ron and Nancy

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A quiet lunch with the Reagans

This is a dreadfully rude and unpleasant story, kiddies, for which I sincerely apologize.

Sometimes real life is like that.

It must have been Christmas 2003. Nancy had invited me to stay at the St Cloud Road house for a few weeks.

We had a lovely time together catching up, although it did take a while to get used to Nancy’s little habit of getting her secret service agents to position Ronnie in random places around the house in order to scare the maids. The new cook resigned on the first day I was there, soon after she walked into the pantry to find him hanging by his feet from the top shelf singing “I’m the Batman”. I’d been sitting on the toilet for 30 minutes one morning, and only realized that Ronnie was propped up in the shower stall wearing a sombrero when he called me “Mommy”. I got over my little constipation problem faster than you can say “Rush Limbaugh is a big fat pedophile.”

Please don’t think that Nancy was being mean. I think she was just bored all alone in that big house, and she said it gave him something to do with his time.There wasn’t much of Ronnie left, and what there was was basically a sweet four year old boy, so it was hard to dislike him, even if he did enjoy playing tricks.

Nancy and I had first met back during her Hollywood career, although of course it wasn’t so much an acting career as an early version of “The Bachelorette” – just Nancy hanging around on set and swilling champagne in the hot tub until someone asked her to marry them.

We used to write each other every month, although our friendship waned a little during the “Just say NO” years, when Nancy used to call Gloria V. and me and rant about us being “drug-addled hell-bitches” every time we got our photo in Vanity Fair.

Anyway, come Christmas time, Nancy decided to invite the Bushes (both 41 and 43) and the Cheneys and Karl Fucking Rove to fly in for a barbecue. I suggested this was like inviting all of the characters in “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” into your living room, but she said that she liked to keep an eye on the latest tenants in her old house.

Of course, once they arrived, I realized I had gotten the reference wrong. Lynne Cheney might look and behave like Bette Davis coming down from a three week whisky-and-blow bender, but the rest of them resemble nothing so much as the cast of the Tim Burton version of “Gilligan’s Island”. Nancy and I would have to fight over who gets to be Ginger, and Ronnie could give a special guest appearance as the SS Minnow – thick as a plank and leaking at the seams.

Nancy and Ronnie and I were seated at the table in the garden when the guests arrived en masse – W wide eyed and giggling a little when he said hello to Ronnie, Lynne eyeing off the cutlery, and Dick gurgling as usual when he walked as the bile and shit and other viscous fluids redistributed themselves within his carapace. Barb and Nancy managed to shake hands without biting each other, which was a nice change.

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