Nobody has a grammar.

Prompted by the advent of cooler weather and a desire not to have to suit up for a Michigan winter night every time the dog needs her bedtime pee, Alan and I have embarked upon a long-discussed back yard renovation project. It’s modest, really, but as usual, it’s not cheap.

So we’ve applied for a home equity line of credit. I remember when banks were giving these away like logo keychains, but evidently things have changed. This is good — anything to keep banks a little more sober — but honestly, once I got the letters informing us of our credit rating I thought we’d get the money within a couple of days. We’re both above 800! Platinum level, they call that.

Instead, it’s been phone calls and send this document, no, send that document and today was the worst — an email telling us our loan status had been updated, without explaining was it was and what it is now, concluding with this appalling sentence:

If needed, we will be contacting you shortly to collect any additional information that may be required to fully decision your loan request.

Fully decision our loan request, yes. I can’t stand it. Or rather, I am lacking tolerate for this.

Really good piece by Ezra Klein today, arranged BuzzFeed style: The 13 reasons Washington is failing. It’s stuff you think you know (Polarized media makes it easier for politicians and voters to fool themselves) and stuff you probably haven’t thought of (Earmarks are gone) and, well, 11 others. Best single line:

The problem with living in an age when you can choose your own media isn’t just that it’s easier to surround yourself with people who agree with you. It’s that it’s easier to surround yourself with people who, purposefully or not, mislead you.

I know I don’t get much response when I post items about the news media, but this one struck me today, a complaint by a TV producer about aggregating websites — some of which, like the Daily Mail, don’t really own up to being one — outright stealing original stories and repackaging them as their own, sometimes with errors inserted:

Saturday, a “reporter” from thinkprogress.org cribbed from several stories about of an Alaska Supreme Court case with no explicit attribution for any of his news sources. He also introduced several factual errors, and appears to have done virtually no firsthand reporting. The most egregious copying was of a bulleted list of three questions on which the case hinges without quotes.

I see, via social media, how often people post stories from sites like these. That’s not to say they’re all crap, but please, if you do: Consider the source.

I’m watching a great “Frontline” as I write this, about the head-trauma scandal in pro football. Watch it if you can, and certainly if you have a child who plays football. (Suggest he try golf instead.)

How can it possibly be only Wednesday? It feels like next Tuesday.

Posted at 12:30 am in Current events, Same ol' same ol' |
 

68 responses to “Nobody has a grammar.”

  1. paddyo' said on October 9, 2013 at 2:20 am

    Wishing it were next Tuesday, too, as then we might possibly be closer to resolution on the shutdown and the debt ceiling so that I and 800,000 or so other feds could go back to work for all of you.

    Ha! What am I saying? This madness isn’t close to over yet.

    BTW, I run across that aggregated-and-thinly-rewritten-with-errors crap every day — or did, anyway, until they furloughed us eight days ago. Among my various daily public affairs duties (the default landing zone for those of us who leave newspapers and don’t stay in the news biz), I gathered up, via Google Alerts, all the stories I could find involving my agency (rhymes with Rational Bark Surface) and its 401 “branches” across the land. I circulated them via email, with heds and links, to several hundred superintendents, PIOs and various others in the agency.
    I would often see, within hours, the gradual erosion of a news story from original source through several aggregators, each applying its own spin or bent and errors. I peeked last night at the pileup of shutdown stories involving my agency, and the twisting and slanting was remarkable. Kind of a feeding frenzy, actually, almost all of it from the illegal-alien-Obama-is-a-Commie-Obamacare-killer camp. Shocking, I know. But that POV has seeped into sites masquerading as middle-of-the-road, too. (I’m talking to you, Examiner.com …)

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  2. Sherri said on October 9, 2013 at 2:54 am

    Examiner.com masquerades as a news source. I don’t even bother to click on anything from them. The Daily Mail is just about as bad; while in London, I got a chance to pick up various print newspapers, and the Daily Mail was just as crappy in print as it is online. The Times of London was as Tory as expected. Most have gone to tabloid-style formats, and there’s a lot of filler in among the actual news. The sports sections were as big as American sports sections, though of course focused on football(soccer) mostly, with rugby and cricket well behind. The letters to the editors were considerably better than their American counterparts: longer, and far less loony. Nobody, not even writers who disagreed with the PM on everything, ever accused him of being a Kenyan anti-colonialist.

    I’m holding out hope that the President will use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, forestalling complete disaster, and that will give the lunatics fresh meat, as they can then start trying to impeach him instead of trying to destroy the country. You don’t reason with toddlers throwing temper tantrums, you distract them.

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  3. MarkH said on October 9, 2013 at 4:02 am

    So, paddyo’, I’m not clear on who’s doing what in (and outside) the NPS with your ‘news feeds’. You’re feeding park offices legit news stories, and your own PIOs, and others, are regurgitating BS info?

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  4. MarkH said on October 9, 2013 at 4:31 am

    Sherri – the president has already rejected use of the 14th amendment – two years ago and for good reason.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/politics/25legal.html?_r=0

    He reinforced that decision again Tuesday.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-dismisses-14th-amendment-argument-for-lifting-debt-ceiling?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+(TPMNews)

    You actually think such a move would be just a ‘distraction’?

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  5. David C. said on October 9, 2013 at 7:16 am

    I think the charts on Klein’s point 12 showing the parties diverging is extremely misleading unless you are looking for Both Sides Do It(tm) High Broderist non-sense. It implies there is a sort of happy medium right in the middle of each party’s positions where in the past everything was just right and we were all bright eyed and apple cheeked. A more accurate chart would show the Democratic Party holding steady or moving toward the right and the Republicans falling off the chart. As evidence, let’s look at two new Senators. Elizabeth Warren is touted as some radical new leftie. But how radical and how leftie is it to believe that people shouldn’t be screwed over by banks and other powerful institutions. Not very in my book. And then there is, of course, Ted Cruz. He’s a reactionary with no policy ideas beyond burn the whole damn place down. Are there any Democrats who get off at the thought of Daniel Ortega in the same way that Republicans jizz their pants at the thought of Pinochet? I don’t think so. The Democrats look to Bill Clinton. A guy who was only kept from cutting Social Security by needing to shore up his left flank after he couldn’t control his free range dick. So yeah, the parties are more polarized than ever, but only one part is responsible for that.

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  6. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 7:50 am

    The Frontline was bracing and definitely a wake-up call to parents and schools, but at the risk of sounding like an apologist for the NFL (whose product on TV I’m not much of a consumer of), I was consistently cocking an eyebrow at their attempts to quickly mention and brush aside the role steroids played in these players’ career and post-career arcs. One of the reporter/producers was on our local NPR station’s talk morning show, and was saying some interesting things about the complicated role of the equipment makers like Riddell, the pioneering helmet maker, which did more to share info *and* simultaneously hid more info, because they knew faster and more clearly than anyone else that better helmets actually *created* risk for concussion, because it’s not just about padding.

    But then he said “you can only fit so much into 2 hours, so most of the stuff about the equipment makers was left out.” I understand those kinds of editing constraints, but as for the combination of steroids, drinking, and other prescription drug abuse alongside of repeated impact brain injuries, to then say “but the role of these other factors was negligible” was not supported by the piece. I don’t know enough about the rest of the medicine and science to have a solid opinion, but for some of their interviewees, they think this analysis justifies closing down tackle football, and I don’t see that. What they should do is put those impact meters in more helmets, which are getting surprisingly cheaper, and set a level just like you do with radiation exposure. Get beyond a certain number, and you don’t play. That much seems reasonable.

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  7. beb said on October 9, 2013 at 8:10 am

    There’s a sort of perverted pride that English is so flexible that Americans can speak it and not realize it’s a foreign language. (Americans, of course, should speak Americanese.) But really, who speaks of decisioning a decision. How far up your own butt does your head have to be to start thinking like that.

    Also orientate when orient is the proper word, as in “Let’s get you orientated” when you mean “let’s get you oriented.”

    I wasn’t that impressed with Klein’s 13 reasons why the government it busted because his first reason, the lack of earmarks is so bogus. He argues that horsetrading with earmarks is how party leaders get party members to vote the way the whip wants them to. But has there been any indication of party rebelliousness in the absence of earmarks? No. Everyo9ne votes on party lines. Even the so-called moderates who want to see the end of the shutdown continue to vote with the Speaker. If Klein is wrong about the value of earmarks he’s probably wrong about everything else.

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  8. nancy said on October 9, 2013 at 8:58 am

    Paddyo, how true are stories like this?

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  9. Jolene said on October 9, 2013 at 9:19 am

    But has there been any indication of party rebelliousness in the absence of earmarks? No.

    Beb, this whole situation is about rebelliousness within the Republican party. Boehner can’t get the Tea Party faction to go along with any sensible solution to any problem; over and over, they have kept him from making deals with Obama. I’m not saying that the availability of earmarks would necessarily have made things better (The Tea Party people are just that crazy.), but it might have helped. Ezra Klein is hardly the first person to mention this idea.

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  10. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 9:20 am

    Let’s assume that the National Parks story is entirely true, top-to-bottom (and indeed, the fact that it has quickly become a major right-wing meme makes me tend to discount it right off the bat, but leave that aside).

    Compare and contrast that with the stories that we’re NOT seeing from those same sources – the Head Start programs that are halted, and the looming SNAP food-aid cuts, for examples.

    Isn’t it ‘conVEENyent’ how this government shutdown so pleasantly shows us how little we need “big, intrusive, and wasteful” government, right up until it upsets granpa’s vacation plans – or stiffs the mourning families of dead soldiers?

    THEN – as if by magic, it all transforms into an EVIL PLOT by that Kenyan usurper in the White House.

    Nuts.

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  11. Connie said on October 9, 2013 at 9:33 am

    I have two different friends who have had long planned vacations messed up due to the shut down. One is not seeing the Grand Canyon. The other is not camping in the Smoky Mountains. Both found alternatives, although the camper is a mile higher than planned and bought a propane heater to bring along.

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  12. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 9:41 am

    And indeed, if the parks are closed and the rangers and staff are furloughed, it makes sense to post the parks as off-limits.

    What if people meandering about on National Battlefiled Parks (like Gettysburg) with metal detectors (souvenir-hunting), or out to vandalize and deface public property (such as the way paint was splattered on the Lincoln Memorial?)

    I really think this current ‘crisis’ that our nation is in is the sort of thing that a bored great nation does to itself, from time to time.

    If the antics of Raphael Cruz (The Calgarian Candidate) lead to a default and a breach of the full faith and credit of the United States of America, I think generations will pass before the Republican Party looks at all credible at the national level again…..and Thurston Howell III’s reverence for Harvard men (and disdain for anyone from Yale!) will be forever discredited!

    Seriously, this trifling with the trustworthiness of America’s financial reputation in the world begins to approach treason…especially if we begin looking under the rocks and see foreign money coming into these various super PACs.

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  13. susan said on October 9, 2013 at 9:41 am

    So, I wonder what the powers-that-be will do about this?

    18 USC § 2384 – Seditious conspiracy

    If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

    (http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/115/2384)

    Nothing, obviously.

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  14. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 10:03 am

    George Will has been sniffing panties so hard he’s aspirated his brain out his ass.

    “How does this short-circuit the system?” Will said. “I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’ as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.”

    This law passed both houses. It has been held Constitutional by the courts. There is nothing left to argue, dismantle, or revisit. They taught this shit in my miserable excuse for a high school, for fuck’s sake. This idiot gets paid to pretend he knows what the fuck he’s talking about and sing baseball hymns. Someone drop a load of dirty panties on him and let him asphyxiate himself already.

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  15. Connie said on October 9, 2013 at 10:18 am

    OK she’s still camping in the Great Smokies, just not in a national park campground as planned.

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  16. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 10:20 am

    And comparing the Republican Party’s struggles to find its ass with its hands to incidents in the Civil Rights movement only serves to remind people the extent to which they tuned the whole goddamned thing out, or affirmed the South’s prerogative to kill and anonymously bury any colored or Yankee, or Jew that dared come down there and “Tell us how to act”.

    There isn’t a diesel powered, razor studded Fuck You! big enough for George Will and his band of bowtied shit guzzlers.

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  17. BOb (not Greene) said on October 9, 2013 at 10:20 am

    That national parks story has bullshit written all over it. From the “Gestapo” headline (you know I don’t think these people actually understand what the Gestapo actually was or did) to the “Hulk Hogans with guns bit” to the fact that there’s no indication anyone actually bothered to fact check this poor tourist’s story — if there are armed guards there, someone must be supervising them — this one doesn’t pass the smell test.

    Oh, and what do you know: here is the paper’s editorial from a couple of days ago http://www.eagletribune.com/opinion/x934956974/Editorial-Bitter-Democratic-rhetoric-makes-compromise-more-difficult

    Oh, and here’s a pump primer for the story http://www.eagletribune.com/opinion/x1612855837/Editorial-Monument-refuge-closings-insult-publics-intelligence

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  18. nancy said on October 9, 2013 at 10:37 am

    I agree, Bob. I guess I thought, since this was a “real” newspaper, that there might have been the tiniest bit of skepticism informing the editing, etc. Of course, I used to work for one of these fishwraps, so I should know better.

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  19. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 10:40 am

    Will said. “I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’ as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.”

    The panty-huffer is particularly incoherent, here. Nobody is talking about “genuflecting”, but laws must be abided, or else – what? If George Will knew anything at all about the Fugitive Slave Law, he’d know that candidate-Lincoln speaking at Cooper Union in NYC before he was president (think Raphael Cruz, only without the college degree[!], born in the USA, genuinely intelligent, unsuccessful candidate for the Senate….on second thought – think EXACT OPPOSITE of Raphael Cruz!!) specifically pointed at the Fugitive Slave Law as detestable and onerous – and yet a law that must be obeyed. That’s the thing – civil societies and consequential elections are not infallible, but they beat the hell out of factional strife, ignored election results, and anarchy.

    When good people find themselves confronted with laws they don’t like, they have all sorts of peaceful and civil options; but knocking the game off the table and throwing their Diet Pepsi against the wall isn’t one of them

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  20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 11:16 am

    We had a break in at the church last night, and the fellow who slept here came running downstairs and out the door as the custodian was checking the broken glass; the secretary is beside herself and talking about quitting, my headache of the morning (the guy stole nothing, and left little mess for a street person, but it does show how easy it is to break into an old building and I’m not of a mind to spent $20,000 to keep from twice a year spending $40 on a broken pane, but her concerns are real, and I honestly don’t know what to do).

    But she was almost as disturbed by the cop when he came to take a report — she hadn’t had a face-to-face with a cop for some time, apparently, and his ballistic vest bulk, Glock on one side and Taser on the other, squared off all around by charger clips for the Taser and ammo for the .38, plus the usual cuff case and nightstick — it all was quite horrifying to her, and it took me a while to understand what was adding to her agitation, given that I’m around cops most days, but in a different building and a different job.

    That’s where you get stories later of citizens feeling threatened and intimidated even when that *isn’t* what the cop is trying to do; in fact, silence and terseness gets turned into “he was all belligerent and stuff, y’know, and kept getting on me, y’know, and I felt like he was about to hit me or shoot me, and he was like ‘no, ma’am’ trying to scare me, and all those guns he kept leaning his elbow and even his hand on, y’know, and it was nasty.” When it was the cop, 23, standing there with his notebook asking for a description of the car, wearing what’s now sadly standard uniforming for patrol officers.

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  21. Charlotte said on October 9, 2013 at 11:23 am

    Nance — we haven’t seen any local stories with that spin on them — we have been seeing that folks were turned away at the Gardiner entrance. Here’s a video my friend Bill Campbell did for the AP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddYhKyg2Kgg&feature=share). And we’re starting to see reports of people getting trespassing tickets for running, bike riding, and driving into the park. They’ve issued special window tickets to folks who live in Cooke City, since the road through the Lamar Valley is how they get back and forth all winter (imagine that as your school bus ride twice a day?). What I wonder about is poachers. It’s bow season, and there are guys who have been watching big elk in the park for ages. Also, horn hunters. We’ve come across more than one pile of antlers in the back country …

    I went down to Pine Creek for a hike the other day thinking it would be quiet now that it’s off season, and it was packed! Lots of out of state plates, and foreign tourists. Which is great — at least someone is directing them to a nice hike with a waterfall — I went up to Suce Creek instead which was quieter.

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  22. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 11:24 am

    By the way, I think this is less incendiary than is the mainstream sentiment here, but fairly on point as to where the current GOP leadership (I use the term loosely) is failing: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/08/seven-habits-of-highly-ineffective-political-parties-part-one.html

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  23. Kath said on October 9, 2013 at 11:28 am

    During the state government shutdown in Minnesota, a number of state parks were vandalized, causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. So I can see why they would want to prevent people from entering a closed park.

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  24. Sherri said on October 9, 2013 at 11:53 am

    MarkH@4, you’re right that there’s nothing rational about my hope about the President using the 14th amendment. But there’s nothing rational about this whole situation. What is rational about Republicans threatening the Full Faith and Credit of the United States in order to prevent people from getting health insurance? What’s rational about an opposition party that is willing to call a sitting President a Kenyan anti-colonialist?

    It’s true that even with the 14th amendment, serious damage would be done to the credibility of the US, but hopefully, it would not be as severe as actual default. The distraction is not for the rest of the world, but for the Republicans, who have been dying for a chance to impeach this President since he was elected. They just haven’t been able to find anything to get any traction with.

    It is rather ironic that the people who are always ready to start a war to protect US credibility militarily are so cavalier about US credibility when it comes to paying our bills…

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  25. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 11:56 am

    I wonder what story these preliterates would have yanked out of their asses if the Park Service let some bison rip through a bunch of geriatrics like crap through a goose. Fuck it: Let’s ship some Republicans out to Yellowstone to feed the bears, or cliff dive the upper falls.

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  26. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 12:03 pm

    Sherri: The Republican base is people who don’t pay their bills.

    TBogg:
    When I was a kid, my dad and his brothers had a dry cleaning business and, back in those days, they actually used to deliver dry cleaning to their customers homes. It sounds weird now but it’s true. My dad, being the youngest, used to make most of the deliveries (in fact, we were so poor that the delivery panel truck was also the family car) and he used to tell us how, when he went to deliver dry cleaning to the swells up the hill in La Jolla, often people would leave a note on the door or the gate asking him to leave their clothes because they wouldn’t be home. In those days most people would pay upon delivery, so my dad would knock on the door or ring the house anyway in an attempt to get paid which, at the time, was probably a couple of bucks tops back in those golden days when dimes and nickels weren’t just useless pocket weight. After getting no answer, my dad would leave the clothes to avoid a call to the shop wondering why they hadn’t been delivered which could only mean yet another trip back up the hill. More than a few times, after getting back in the truck, he would look back at the house only to see the curtains move because the occupants were checking to see if he had gone and whether it was safe to come out and collect their belongings.

    All of this, of course, to get out of paying a $1.50 for services rendered which, by the way, the customer would invariably dispute the next time they dropped their clothes off if they weren’t outright trying get out of paying because of too much starch or maybe a missing button.

    He used to tell us all about it over dinner.

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  27. Scout said on October 9, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    Due to general laziness, my honey and I changed our Havasupai Falls hike to a couple of days in San Diego. Now we’re REALLY glad we did. We leave Saturday for four days.

    Totally unrelated to any topic here today, I would like to share this up lifting story from my granddaughter’s high school. Verrado is a top five finalist for the Katy Perry Roar contest. My granddaughter is seen in the video briefly and is off to the right of the kid who made the video on Good Morning America. I am really impressed with the concept and the execution and I hope they win!
    http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_west_valley/buckeye/katy-perry-contest-verrado-high-school-named-finalist-in-gma-contest

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  28. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    That Alaska Supreme Court case story on TP was actually published last Friday, October 4, and without seeing the alleged original story, I see no reason to accuse the publisher or the byliner, Ari Phillips, of anything. That particular website generally goes to great pains to link to original material. There is actually a link to the entire original KTOO story on the station’s website. Not a citation, but a pretty clear indication that Phillips is not claiming to have reported nor written the story. It would have been easier to find a more damning instance of the evils of aggregators at World News Daily or some bullshit like that that never tell you the material came straight from the Koch Brothers Kriminal Konspiracy, Karl Rove, Teabang Nation, Drudge or some other source of conservative talking points. Actually, I first read this story in Mother Jones several weeks ago and there is nothing in the KTOO story that wasn’t in the MJ story.

    What is rational or even remotely truthful about GOPers claiming the President is causing the shutdown, when the GOP was scheming this game several months ago, under the tutelage of somebody that is corrupt as hell, even by GOP standards, eminent Cali divorce lawyer and Raygun AG Ed Meese? As John Stewart said, they intended this all along because Obamacare is an evil plot. They farted and they are pointing at the dog.

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  29. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 12:55 pm

    I’m kinda thinking GOPers were disabused of political reality when the Brooks Bros. riot stopped the FLA recount and then the Supreme Court appointed Shrub. One good blue-in-the-face tantrum and some paleoconservative activist judges was all it took to trample Americans’ right to pick their leaders.

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  30. Scout said on October 9, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    Own it. Don’t fart and point at the dog.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jon-stewart-to-republicans-just-own-the-shutdown-already-video

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  31. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 1:40 pm

    If the park entrances weren’t barred and guarded and park occupancy not prevented, there would be neo-Nazis and other yahoos tearing them up with four-wheelers and firing assault rifles and 50 cals at wildlife.

    Anybody know how many times the debt ceiling was raised to cover the Shrubco credit card invasions and occupations? Seven, I believe. Anybody know what Dickless Cheney said deficits mean? Doan mean shit, more or less.

    Scout@27: Thanks for posting that link. A bunch of cheerleaders accepting a Down Syndrome kid as a teammate is a light in the darkness. I’m no Katy Perry fan. Next time Rolling Stone does a spread on one of these poptarts is the last issue I ever look at. But she showed some intelligence and humanity in choosing the Verrado kids video. Her publicity people might consider positioning her as the anti-Miley. When my dad was Chief of Pediatrics at Metropolitan Hospital in Detroit, he had a newborn patient born with Down Syndrome at 6+months gestation to mid 40s patients. Hospital social workers told the parents it would be wise to institutionalize the kid at a young age, because who would take care of him when they were really old? My dad lobbied against this, and last I heard of the family, the parents had reached their 70s and the “retarded” son was taking care of them quite proficiently. Anyway, that video made my day. And I admire those girls for seeing beyond the surface, and Megan for refusing to acknowledge any limitations.

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  32. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 1:40 pm

    Out of their hands now. I guess this is the defense Krupp, I.G. Farben and BMW offered at Nuremburg:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/koch-we-never-support-defunding-obamacare

    This is what losing looks like, as though Republicans haven’t had their noses rubbed in their own shit often enough to know.

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  33. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 2:12 pm

    Cooze@32: According to the NYT, in the story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire, David Koch was a key player in the Ed Meese plot to destroy the world economy to protect the United States from voodoo Obamacare. Whoya gonna believe? Too reputable reporters from the still paper of record, or the lying sacks of shit that bought state legislatures and goober-nors in Midxwestern states.

    I’d give more credence to the reporters, and I haven’t heard any GOPers deny the story yet:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all

    Remember when the Koch Kriminal Konspiracy held their oil tankers offshore to drive gasoline pump prices up to try to influence the 2012 Presidential election. Bastards didn’t even bother trying to deny that chicanery. But Mortimer and Randolph insist they never knew nothing’ ’bout no astroturfing. How does anybody stupid enough to buy anything these Ananais Club founding fathers ever say actually feed himself or remember to breathe? And it’s funny cooze mentions those giants of the Nazi German economy, since the previous Koch generation made the money that the current boyos are playing politics with by dealing with those very companies, just as Mortimer and Randolph have lucrative deals with the government of Iran in violation of sanctions. They should be arrested, but the right would go berserk. How about freezing their ill-gotten assets?

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  34. Jolene said on October 9, 2013 at 2:35 pm

    Great story and great video, Scout. Thanks for posting.

    I think I’ve mentioned before that I had a cousin with Down syndrome. He was loved and cared for at home, helped in some ways, but hindered in others–both by the limited understandings of how to help back in the day and by the limitations of his not terribly enlightened father. Is really inspiring to see what a kid can accomplish, despite this disorder, when she is accepted and supported.

    Also, reminded me of Crash, the movie re Kevin Pearce, the snowboarder who crashed and had to recover over a long period and, eventually, to accept that he would always have to live with some limitations. A central part of the story is his relationship with his brother, David, who, because he has Down Syndrome, also has to live with limitations, but David, too, is an incredible example of what someone with a profound disability can accomplish given the right help and the right circumstances.

    The movie will be in theaters soon and available on DVD and online in early in 2014. Very much worth watching. http://www.kevinpearce.com/documentary.html

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  35. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 2:38 pm

    Jeff@22 – superb link

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  36. Sherri said on October 9, 2013 at 3:02 pm

    Jeff’s link is an interesting one, but it’s written by David Frum, who is another Republican who has become persona non grata among current Republicans for daring to write things like this.

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  37. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 3:14 pm

    I guess voodoo Obamacare is actually redundant if you compress to account for dog whistle code. When will some reporter actually ask Orange Boner to explain what he means when he says Obamacare is dangerous? Dangerous? really? Is this a reprise of the thoroughly discredited $Palin “death panels” bullshit, or what?

    Here’s a superb piece of guerilla reporting from inside an ALEC speed-dating convention. There may still be some valid arguments for free market economy (mostly it’s all Hobbesian bullshit and we’re just supposed to accept the shitty end of the hoe), but extending it to free market government is obviously anti-American as anything can get. Too bad Scalito and the homunculus Clarence didn’t think about this when they foisted Citizens United on the USA. Would some of those truckers get over to the Supreme Court Friday and arrest these traitors. Only way to be rid of these troublesome paleoconservative priests. The Elizabeth Warren vid at that ALEC link is worth listening to, too.

    We’re listening to a new album that arrived today. It’s a blues band called The Rides, formed by Steve Stills and Kenny Wayne Shephard. Mighty good guitar playing, obviously. Great barrelhouse piano by Barry Goldberg.Best surprising part is Stills seems to have recovered his voice. A bit more gravel than used to be, but pretty powerful. Excellent lyrics. And a great version of Neil’s Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World by Steven, a viciously angry remake of Stills’ own Word Games, and a cover of Search and Destroy (Iggy). Pretty damned timely. Goldberg was the keyboard player in the seminal Electric Flag.

    Kevin Pearce. ESPN did an excellent video piece on this kid.

    Anybody ever see Frum and Dodo David Brooks on the same talkoveryou show? Both of these guys are determined to get their Atwater-style mea culpas in before the deathbed. As is Andrew Sullivan, who seems to have finally tweaked to the idea that none of those people ever liked his gay ass in the first place.

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  38. Dexter said on October 9, 2013 at 4:04 pm

    http://morbid-curiosity.com/id91.htm

    “…cuz I’m going down
    To Strawberry Fields…”

    October 9, 1940.

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  39. David C. said on October 9, 2013 at 4:15 pm

    I just finished grinding and stuffing 40 lbs of sausage. Life is good and nitrate, nitrite, and high fructose corn syrup free. Tired as can be too.

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  40. MarkH said on October 9, 2013 at 4:24 pm

    Nancy and Bob(NG), can we hold on just a second here? Regardless of your opinions of the use of the word, ‘Gestapo’, everything in this story was properly sourced. The ‘Gestapo’ quote was attributed to a story in the Livingston, MT Enterprise, as was the note that an effort was made to verify the Old Faithful incident with Yellowstone Park officials. Calls were made, but no responses came back. This is interesting, as YNP spokesperson Al Nash has made himself available to media even though he is furloughed. Whether the indicent was exaggerated can be argued, but people are pissed off and were quoted as such.

    Charlotte, maybe you missed this, but here is the link below to the article in your hometown paper:

    http://www.livingstonenterprise.com/content/visitors-and-employees-impacted-ynp-closure

    The Old Faithful story has mede its way down here to Jackson, and while not official sources, people I know working in Teton Park have supported it, without editorial comment.

    Here is what likely happened: The parks were ordered closed on October 1st. Everyone, all concessions were given 48 hours to clear out, including hotel guests. So that meant midnight Thursday the 3rd was it. In order to make sure visitors, especially groups like tour buses actually left the park, rangers escorted everyione to the entrances. There was no quarter given to any visitor or ‘recreating’ niceties (more about this later). So any stop like the one at Old Faithful Lodge for bathroom purposes was tightly supervised. They have orders to not let you, me or anyone else access park amenities. Reasonable or not, closed is CLOSED. All park rangers except law enforcement rangers and a few for the entrance stations to shoo people away, were furloughed. All park LE ranges are equipped the same as our local police and sheriff’s deputies, i.e. semi-auto sidearm, tazer, light body armor. Additionally, their vehicles all carry heavier flak jackets, shotguns and AR-15 type weapons, just in case. The park LE rangers have deployed this additional weaponry for closure enforcement. Hence, the ‘Hulk Hogan’ descriptions. There are no ‘armed guards’. If park spokespeople aren’t returning calls, it’s hard to clarify this.

    Here is a more reasonable account of what’s happening since Oct. 1 from our statewide paper:

    http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/trespassing-will-get-you-cited-in-grand-teton-yellowstone/article_ffb4daa8-547d-526a-b3ff-bccda652e13c.html

    As you might imagine, here locally, everyone is up in arms about the park closure. We here in Teton County are in a blue oasis in a red desert, so you can imagine a lot of the comments here. One example of frustration: US highways 26/89/191 run north from Jackson through the park and on to Yellowstone (191 and 89) and Dubois (26). Since these routes are not in the fee area, they remain open. BUT all turnouts along these roads in the park, whether scenic or for safety have been closed. You can’t even pull off the road to outside the turnouts to take a picture. Unless your vehicle is broke down, rangers are to move you on your way. It is really ridiculous. Grand Teton Park’s superindentent, sick of all the confusion and contention, has placed the responsibility squarely at the feet of the administration and the interior department. More here from our local weekly:

    http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=10369

    paddyo’, what’s your take?

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  41. Deborah said on October 9, 2013 at 4:27 pm

    Prospero, Wikipedia says the debt limit was raised 7 times during W’s administration and 18 times under Reagan. Only 3 times so far with Obama.

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  42. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 4:41 pm

    Grand Teton Park’s superindentent, sick of all the confusion and contention, has placed the responsibility squarely at the feet of the administration and the interior department

    He might just as well place it at the feet of Santa Claus, or Bambi, or the man on the moon.

    Maybe “Grand Teton Park’s superindentent” should watch that Schoolhouse Rock short cartoon on how a bill becomes law

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  43. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 4:54 pm

    Brian: Mark has as much credibility on this as he does Benghazi! or Mitt Romney’s debating skills, or the IRS, or Acorn, or whatever else a Republican drags out their arse.
    The article he links to contains a bunch of tea party whingeing from the likes of recently outed bagman John Barrasso (R-le) and another couple of cowboy hat wearing frauds.

    The money quote from the director of Teton national park (Mary Gibson Scott) is this:”
    “Decisions to close or remain open were not at my discretion,” Scott said. “They were made by our Washington office and by the administration.”

    The administration closes offices within its jurisdiction when it runs out of fucking money. People who work for offices in that jurisdiction implement the closure of those offices. This is how government works. It is not a goddamn fairy tale from Fox news or the shit spattered humidor of Darryl Issa’s brain box.

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  44. coozledad said on October 9, 2013 at 5:04 pm

    And another Republican who doesn’t understand debt obligations:
    http://wonkette.com/531152/if-this-south-carolina-rep-doesnt-pay-his-bills-why-should-the-u-s-government#more-531152

    Personal responsibility just isn’t in their corroded strands of DNA.

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  45. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 5:45 pm

    Only recalcitrant and inveterate liars could spew this park closings cowflop smokescreen to try to cover up the cancer treatment studies closed down, the Head Start program shutdowns surely putting working mothers out of work, non-payment of death benefits to military KIA, while Orange Boner makes sure the gyms stay open for the Congressional assholes that haven’t been doing their jobs recently. Rep. Orange is cementing his place in history as the worst Speaker ever, by endangering the world economy to save his own sorry-ass job while continuing to collect his paycheck. He’s chickenshit scared to death of a few dozen idiot idealogues who got into Congress with very few votes in the grand scheme of things, who show no signs whatsoever of intelligence, competence, sanity nor humanity. When jerkoff NYPeter King says the votes are there for a clean CR, obviously Boehner is lying his ass off about this.

    And, ya know, GOPers have been trying to shut down the National Parks since Raygun made the idiot racist James “Tight Pussy, Loose Shoes” Watt Secretary of the Interior, and that assclown tried to sell the Grand Canyon to Mickey D’s.

    GOP is now dedicated to Ananias, the biggest liar in the New Testament, who was struck dead by God for lying to the Apostle Peter. The USA could use that sort of Deus ex machina soon, to get these monster prevaricators’ hands off the throat of the government.

    Until anybody in the GOP wants to deny that the shutdown was their go-to plan since at least last spring, everything they say about it can reasonably construed as an outright lie.

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  46. ROGirl said on October 9, 2013 at 6:41 pm

    Isn’t their goal to kill government, damn the consequences? That’s the logical progression of this whole thing. We can stop the government in its tracks, ergo government doesn’t work. It props up people, institutions, beliefs and values that shouldn’t exist, in our worldview. It’s illegitimate because we say it is.

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  47. David C. said on October 9, 2013 at 6:46 pm

    “Tight Pussy, Loose Shoes” was from Earl Butz, Prospero

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  48. MarkH said on October 9, 2013 at 6:55 pm

    You both left out “…a warm place to shit.”

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  49. Prospero said on October 9, 2013 at 7:40 pm

    More evidence that GOPers planned to hold PP/ACA hostage by threatening to crash the global economy. And how the hell did Clarence “Homunculus” Thomas convince himself it was ethical to choose not to recuse himself on the ACA decision? Never a word about this with his nutcase wife, Ginni “Statue of Liberty” Thomas?

    Yeah that was Earl Butz of all Jokes. James Watt was most famous to objecting to the Beach Boys performing at some washington shindig because they wer hippies or something. But it was James Watt that wanted to sell public land and naming rights to corporations like Macdonalds. Butz was ratted out by Pat Boone, who found the “joke” offensively racist. You never know who will play the race card, eh? It’s only rumor that Butz resurfaced recently with those obnoxious Hillary Clinton buttons in California. Which “joke”, if they were honest, the asshole perpetrators would have to admit applies more aptly to Mrs. Shrub. I mean weren’t these jerks bitching all over the intertubes not long ago about the scandalous Hillary cleavage?

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  50. Charlotte said on October 9, 2013 at 7:51 pm

    Yup Mark, missed that one in the Enterprise. We all knew people were upset, of course they were — but I don’t blame the NPS for closing down the park. There are consequences to holding the government hostage because you don’t like a law that has been passed by both houses of Congress, signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court. I’m sorry as anyone that these tourists are having their holidays ruined. But I’m far more upset that there seems to be an attempted coup going on in Washington. If I had my say, the Tea Party radicals who have pulled this stunt would all be thrown out of the House for violating their oath of office.

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  51. LAMary said on October 9, 2013 at 8:07 pm

    I’m as pissed off about everything federal being closed as everyone else is, and personally I blame the Republicans who are so up the ass of the tea party jerks they can’t see they are self destructing. Having said that, while the account of the Yellowstone visitors that Nancy linked to was over the top and slanted, I’m going to defend MarkH’s take on it. When you live near a national park you view it differently. You value the beauty and the wildness and the unique qualities of the place, but you also might be dependent on that park being open to make a living. The towns nearest Yellowstone or Yosemite or Rocky Mountain National Park live off the tourists. Take that away and you’ve got angry people and they blame someone, rightly or wrongly. It’s not quite the same anger I have at the government being so disfunctional and in my opinion so anti-Obama, that it’s gridlocked. I’m angry that someone feels the need to protect us from healthcare so they put 800,000 people out of work and shut down a lot of important places and services. The guy who runs the Best Western in Livingston is angry he’s losing money and is angry for all the same reasons I am.

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  52. Deborah said on October 9, 2013 at 8:20 pm

    I’m beyond angry about the mess the tea party/republicans have gotten us into. And it will probably get much worse. What a bunch of morons. I’m all for paying down the debt, but as Paul Krugman says, now is not the time to make it the number one priority. Jobs should be the priority now and getting people healthcare. IMHO.

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  53. Sherri said on October 9, 2013 at 8:33 pm

    I’ve watched “League of Denial” now. I was glad to see Alan Schwarz get credit, because his articles in the NYTimes were excellent and very important in keeping this story alive when the NFL was stonewalling.

    I would have liked to have seen a mention of the fact that the NFL is doing this while being the beneficiary of very favorable tax treatment. Not only are most of the the stadia taxpayer-financed, the NFL itself is a 501(c)6 organization. (The teams themselves are not tax-exempt, but the organization that pays Roger Goodell’s $29 million salary is.) The NFL also expects Super Bowl host cities to exempt NFL employees from all local taxes, including hotel taxes and parking taxes. That’s no small matter – for example, for the Super Bowl in 2015 in Glendale, the NFL is requiring 35000 cost-free parking spaces within a mile of the stadium on game day.

    So, while Big Football acts like Big Tobacco, they do so with our subsidy.

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  54. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 9:44 pm

    It would appear that if your indignation and attitude does not encompass fecal references and allusions to non-typical sexual practices, you’re not only wrong, you’re stupid as well as uncreative. There is literally no room for dialogue here, which is precisely what is wrong in Washington. If I wanted to cast my personal sense of decent restraint aside, I could probably cast scatological aspersions enough to satisfy the standard benchmark expectations about Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Pat Leahy, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but that wouldn’t be tolerated, would it? No, liberal firebrands have principle, while right-wing stalwarts are only pervs and creeps; criticism of the left is unfair and baseless, but you can say anything you want about conservatives, and it’s only what they deserve.

    I very much appreciated Ezra Klein’s piece, which summed up much of what I’d wondered about left and right about how we got to this appalling pass. Sorry, I don’t buy that this is entirely a right-wing conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected administration, and some of you are too intelligent to keep making this whole debate be about closeted homosexual and coprophagic impulses. We are spending too much money, we are giving too much authority to central authorities, and I’m working overtime to get people onto ACA exchange websites right now, and trying to figure out what it going to work.

    Meanwhile, it is happening ALL around me: Bob Evans and UDF and Sears and Ace Hardware are all slashing employee hours to 25 hours max. This is corporate greed? Fine, but what are they supposed to do? They’ve done the math, and it isn’t going to work out for them. Penneys and Hobby Lobby are quietly making plans to close by years-end in this county, Sears may or may not follow them. I KNOW that health care insurance can’t go back to the status quo, but can anyone say “I have serious doubts about how ACA/ObamaCare is going to play out, and if the administration is concerned enough to give businesses a year’s grace, why not consumers?” and not get spattered with juvenile, non-relevant, ad hominem crap?

    Too many folks here are enjoying the righteous indignation, the childish glee in making gibes about one’s opponents’ personal projected habits, and frankly? It sound exactly the same to me as my son’s fellow sophomores making jokes about “that’s just GAY.” Which, as a conservative fucking Christian? I wade in and tell those kids to stop, and think, and then REALLY stop. Most of you are doing the moral equivalent of the same damn thing.

    Or if you want all non-progressive commenters and readers to just go away, and have a nice circle-jerk of your own, say so. If enough ask us to go, we surely will. But the reason I started reading regularly here and commenting occasionally was that this was a place where vigorous, even vehement argumentation could occur without bile or personal spewage in general.

    Now, Prospero is no longer defining the root cellar. His commentary it starting to look like a primary truss.

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  55. Deborah said on October 9, 2013 at 10:04 pm

    Sorry Jeff, I’m not buying your argument. Hobby Lobby etc should have been paying employee healthcare all along. They have gotten by for years being stingy and yes, unchristian because they could. Pocketing enormous profits for themselves. Leaving people in the dust is not right, just because you can legally. Shame.

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  56. Jolene said on October 9, 2013 at 10:37 pm

    Jeff, here is part of your answer to why the employer mandate can be delayed, but not the individual mandate, embedded in a discussion of K. Sebellius’s interview on The Daily Show. For more, click the link at the bottom of the article. Short version: The individual mandate is critical to the operation of the healthcare exchanges; the employer mandate, because it affects so few businesses and those that it does affect are so small, doesn’t have the same broad effect on overall implementation of the ACA.

    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/jon-stewart-roasts-kathleen-sebelius-call-her-liar

    Further, I think you are overreacting to what’s been said here. What I sense is not so much hostility or meanness, which I do think characterizes lots of opposition to the ACA, but frustration with people who are dishonest about their motives, distort the truth, and, moreover, often do not know what they’re talking about. For examples of the latter, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/01/this-obamacare-video-will-make-you-sad-for-america/

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  57. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 10:44 pm

    I’m just tired of the nastiness. And of the ginned up “despair” of so-called right-wingers who enjoy their anxiety about the apocalypse as much as lefties enjoy their indignation. It’s just not doing anything other than helping the fundraising appeals, which at my worst I think is all the names at the top are really playing this for.

    Helping Jane and Joe Sixpack get decent, ongoing, preventive and effective medical care? Not so much. I don’t see a reason to think anyone this side of Hillary (yes, I said Hillary, dammit) actually care about everyday working people, and that goes DOUBLE for Democratic party leadership, and I use the term loosely.

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  58. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 11:00 pm

    Okay, I read the link at the end — http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-answer-jon-stewart-should-have-gotten-on-obamacare-2013-10 — and it just makes the point I keep trying to ask for conversation on: why not just drop the employer tax credit, shift the revenue thru wages into taxes gleaned in the usual manner, and put us all under 65 on Medicare Part E? If fairness is “everyone participates,” then why not have . . . everyone participate? And if it’s a political “we can’t get a majority,” then let’s figure out how to get one, and not just demonize the opposition to try to make the majority somehow slink away in humiliation. How can a public option with a baseline plan that restructures the tax code not a potential majority?

    Maybe not a 60%+ majority, but that’s why, despite my own personal nausea at Harry Reid’s unctuousness and sanctimony, I think he should nuclear option already, and be done with it. Let’s see how 50+1 majorities work for a season. It’s not the seventh seal. And if it clears the way to a simple majority passing a public option baseline care plan with an end to employment based coverage for decent health care: BRING. IT. ON.

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  59. brian stouder said on October 9, 2013 at 11:10 pm

    Jeff – agreed.

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  60. Sherri said on October 9, 2013 at 11:13 pm

    I’m all in favor of Medicare for everyone, but I think the insurance companies would have a problem with it. We have the ACA, flawed as it is, because that’s what it took to get the insurance companies to not destroy it.

    I hate the filibuster, too, but I’m not holding my breath for anybody to get rid of it. They’re always afraid they’ll need it in the future when they’re in the minority.

    I’d like for our political system to be about something other than power and money, but Cincinnatus isn’t around. I’d settle for people to stop trying to blow things up because they didn’t get their way.

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  61. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 11:16 pm

    What, Medicare meant insurance companies can’t soak my parents for unnecessary supplementals? They seem to be doing that just fine. I think the insurance goobers can have all kinds of profitable fun in a world where everyone has a baseline prevention and maintenance health care plan. They’ll just be “supplementals” to the baseline, which Republicans can argue is too generous, and Democrats can argue doesn’t cover enough. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past.

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  62. Jolene said on October 9, 2013 at 11:19 pm

    Jeff, you ask these “Why not do X?” questions as if someone in this forum had the power to respond, to enact a new system. Most of us probably agree that a single payer system for all would be best, but, as you may have noticed, quite a few people think the world is going to end because of the relatively modest changes involved in te ACA. Can you imagine how far Obama would have gotten if he’d opposed a system more similar to any of the single-payer systems in Europe?

    When you have Congressional leaders (I’m looking at you, John Boehner.) who endlessly repeat the idea that we have the best healthcare system in the world, despite having the highest costs, severe limits on access, and many quality problems, do you think a bunch of charts and graphs demonstrating these facts would have convinced the “if Obama likes it, we’re agin it” faction?

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  63. beb said on October 9, 2013 at 11:20 pm

    Because, Jeff, medicare for everybody eliminates the health insurance industry. The only reason The Affordable Care Act got passed was because Pres. Obama made a deal with the insurance companies to keep them in the game. Single-payer would never be allowed to happen because so many rich people would lose their cushy jobs. The insurance industry wasn’t happy that the ACA set a standard for how much profit an insurance company can take out of their premiums.

    Also I don’t think lefties relish their indignation the way that righties relish their despair. The right swallows in its sense of victimization. The Left jut wants the world to run smoothly. They are not mirror images of each other, they are asymmetrically different.

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  64. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on October 9, 2013 at 11:35 pm

    I agree that the right wallows in their misperceived victimization. I have a conservative wince at the idea of the world running smoothly. A steamroller runs smoothly.

    And I am just too tired and stupid to helpfully keep the discussion going anywhere useful. I’d love to hear more (a la T.R. Reid as Jolene has said elsewhere) about anyone’s experience of the French model of HCI, which apparently gives insurance interests plenty of room to play and not hurt anyone as they do so, but ensures that everyone gets care on an ongoing, meaningful basis.

    Deborah, aside from my own personal (and tendentious) reaction to how Hobby Lobby somehow is the big sinner in employing people part time without benefits, that’s precisely the problem. MOST employers across the board have been working to have more staff they don’t pay benefits for over the last thirty years, and universities are tops on that list (can you say “adjuncts”?), let alone WallyWorld and other big boxes. The employment basis for coverage is the problem, not that the owners of Hobby Lobby are getting out of obligations they can’t accept by closing and liquidating. I don’t have the issues with contraception or abortion that they do, but I’ll defend their right to step out of any federally obligated situation that forces them to do so . . . but also note that they’re a distraction from the main issue, as are so many of these brush fires: employment CAN’T be, in a modern economy, the basis for whether or not you get baseline health care. So let’s end that.

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  65. Deborah said on October 9, 2013 at 11:51 pm

    Jeff, that has been the case since WW2. Employers offered healthcare since wages were frozen. It had become “doing the right thing”. And what’s wrong with that? If you want to start a business you should pay your workers a decent wage so they can feed their families and pay for their healthcare, etc. If you can’t do that then it’s morally wrong for you to have a business. I’m sick to death tired of people saying “what are companies to do?”. They should just freaking DO THE RIGHT THING. And we the people shouldn’t let them get away with not doing it. That means not buying their merchandise and we should be expecting the media to call them out about it, instead of throwing up our hands and letting it go on and on.

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  66. Deborah said on October 10, 2013 at 12:11 am

    Of course I realize that in this day and age there’s no way a company can compensate anyone enough to pay for a catastrophic health crisis without insurance, but pay them enough to purchase insurance at least. And obviously single payer, universal healthcare is the answer. But tell that to the tea party.

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  67. paddyo' said on October 10, 2013 at 1:06 am

    Hey, my apologies for having rolled that government-shutdown grenade out there late last night and then gone M.I.A. today. It’s 10-something p.m. here in Mountain Time now. Sorry I was away. Man, being on furlough is hard work!

    But thanks to Mark H and Bob (NG) and the rest, you pretty much sorted out the truth yourselves today about the jack-booted Yellowstone National Park thugs without me. That’s what I love about the NN commentariat. Bullshit-meter phasers are permanently set on stun.

    Which is to say that yes, Nancy, that “Gestapo tactics” story from the Massachusetts paper with an apparently very big political ax to grind badly misconstrued when actually happened. As Al Nash very ably explained to the Livingston paper (which the AP picked up later), park rangers do not “guard” lodges or lock up busloads of tourists overnight. But once the park was officially “closed,” recreation was over. the 48-hour window was for people to leave the park, not extend their vacationing. Yeah, it sucks, but they were doing what they were assigned to do — and with skeleton crews and dozens of other things to worry about because, OH YEAH, there’s NO MONEY to pay for the park’s normal operation when the government shuts down, remember?

    Interesting, too, isn’t it, how the Eagle Tribune managed to lift the incendiary “Gestapo tactics” quote from the Livingston paper’s report while ignoring the rest of the article, especially the part where Yellowstone explained it all? No hostages. No trapped-in-the-lodge. No armed guards. And then? To say we-tried-to-reach-the-park-but-didn’t-hear-back? Given the amount of ink that rag gave to tour-bus visitor Pat V.’s semi-hysterical account of events (“fear, guns and control,” et al.), they could have and should have paraphrased/rewritten the park’s explanation, with all due credit to the Livingston Enterprise. Truly pathetic.

    And now, the deeply flawed Eagle Tribune version of events is the gift that keeps on giving, rattling around the online echo chambers of Wingnutistan all day today. I stopped counting various bile-spewing versions and re-posts at about 15 or so. It’s probably 2-3 times that now. Feeding the hate machine, which is already working overtime. The national parks make great backdrops for sophomoric let’s-storm-the-gates! acting out (lashing out, actually). But this isn’t a middle-school field trip. It’s a goddamned government shutdown.

    Anyway, MarkH, that’s my take.

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  68. paddyo' said on October 10, 2013 at 1:38 am

    Oh, and P.S. for MarkH, @3:

    What I send to “NPS in the news” readers are headlines and URLs/links to stories, commentaries, screeds, etc. Not every last one, especially if it’s ping-ponging around the interwebnets in virtually identical versions. But most, yes. Original links. No “editing” except deciding how many/few versions of the same story to include.

    It’s sort of like being a newspaper wire editor. I sift out the most representative story links and send them in a daily email — at least 50 to 100-plus items on average. When I first joined NPS five and a half years ago, I noticed there was a ton being written, posted and broadcast about the parks — and very little of it was being shared widely among staff and management (especially in the regional HQ in Denver where I work).
    And yes, I do send along even the BS stories, so that parks people know as much as possible of what’s being said about them and the places they manage and care for.

    As you might imagine, it is excruciating that I can’t share some of this preposterous stuff with my “readers” right now . . . but I’m shelving the “best” stuff for the first “NPS in the news” that I’ll send out once this fucking shutdown is over.

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