Tag Archives: photos

Obamacare Now Benefiting From an Amazing Life Spiral

by ErnestiMaher Posted on September 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation, here’s a cheerier chart for this morning. It shows the projected premium increases under Obamacare, and it’s really pretty amazing. After years of double-digit increases, next year will bring an average decrease in premiums of 0.8 percent.

That’s genuinely stunning. It’s possible, of course, that the precise number might change as more states report on next year’s premiums, but the trend in the chart is pretty clear: a few small states show sizeable rate increases, but large states (or, more accurately, large cities) all show fairly small changes. It’s not surprising that small states are the ones that tend to show higher variation, but they’re also the ones that don’t affect the overall averages very much. So it seems likely that once all the states have reported in, the overall change in premium levels will be very close to zero.

Paul Krugman calls this part of Obamacare’s “life spiral.” In other words, it’s exactly the opposite of the dreaded death spiral that every conservative in the country has been banging the drum about for years. Basically, as good news accumulates, it breeds more good news. As Krugman puts it, success feeds success. And that’s true. The news about Obamacare has been almost uniformly positive for months. There are still plenty of small problems here and there—most of which could be solved if Republicans would allow it—and the refusal of so many red states to adopt Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is truly a scandal. Nonetheless, it’s clear that Obamacare is basically a success. There’s nothing much that’s likely to change that now.

This article – 

Obamacare Now Benefiting From an Amazing Life Spiral

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare Now Benefiting From an Amazing Life Spiral

Euro Area Economy Is Even Worse Than Ours

by ChristiWallner Posted on September 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Would you like some more dreary economic news? No? Too bad. The latest GDP report for the euro area is in, and GDP was flat compared to Q1 and up only 0.7 percent compared to last year. This comes on top of news from a few days ago that euro-area inflation is down to 0.3 percent, which is dangerously close to deflation territory. The basic GDP chart is below.

Follow this link:  

Euro Area Economy Is Even Worse Than Ours

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Euro Area Economy Is Even Worse Than Ours

Temper Tantrums in the Air May Be Good For All Of Us

by LacyEastham Posted on September 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Three times makes it a trend!

Amy Fine wanted to nap on Delta flight 2370, from New York to Palm Beach, Fla., so she laid her head on the tray table. The passenger in front of her wanted to relax with some knitting. She reclined her seat — smacking Fine’s head and sparking an emotional explosion.

The resulting screaming match caused an unscheduled landing in Jacksonville, Fla., the third diversion in nine days caused by passenger fights over shrinking legroom.

My position is that the passengers getting into these fights are doing us all a favor. If this happens a few more times, nobody will ever recline their seat again for fear of causing a flight-diverting temper tantrum. Fear can be a wonderful motivator sometimes.

Of course, there are dynamic effects to be worried about here. If this continues, perhaps airlines will start disabling the recline mechanisms in their seats once and for all. Just not worth the trouble. And once they’ve done that, some bright spark will figure out that they can reduce legroom even more. And then we’ll all be worse off than before. No one will be able to recline and everybody will have their knees jammed into the seat in front of them. Something to look forward to.

Read this article:

Temper Tantrums in the Air May Be Good For All Of Us

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Temper Tantrums in the Air May Be Good For All Of Us

Republicans Mysteriously Decide to Become Hawkish Again

by BBWWilbert Posted on September 2, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Apparently the kinder, gentler version of the Republican Party is quickly disappearing:

Remember when the Republican Party was quickly shifting toward a new brand of Rand Paul-esque foreign policy non-interventionism?

No more.

Less than a year ago, just 18 percent of GOPers said that the United States does “too little” when it comes to helping solve the world’s problems, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Today, that number has more than doubled, to 46 percent.

….The results echo a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll which showed higher GOP support for airstrikes in Iraq.

So what to account for the shift?

Hmmm. That’s a poser, isn’t it? What, oh what, could account for the shift?

Well, let’s cast our minds back a year or two. We were fighting in Libya, a war that President Obama got us involved in. We were fighting in Afghanistan, a war that Obama ramped up as soon as he took office. We were fighting drone wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, all thanks to Obama.

Then what happened? The civil war in Syria heated up, but after a brief bout of indecision Obama decided not to get deeply involved. Russia ramped up military action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and Obama decided not to get deeply involved. ISIS took over a huge chunk of Iraq, and Obama decided not to get deeply involved.

So let’s review. A year or two ago, we were involved in three overseas wars, all of them supported by Obama. At the time, Republicans were unaccountably dovish about military interventions. Today, Obama is refraining from getting deeply involved in three overseas wars. And guess what? Republicans have suddenly become hawkish again.

Yep, this is a poser. What could possibly account for this change in Republican attitudes?

Link: 

Republicans Mysteriously Decide to Become Hawkish Again

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republicans Mysteriously Decide to Become Hawkish Again

Quote of the Day: "We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet."

by KatiaSimas Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From President Obama, asked if he needs congressional approval to go into Syria:

I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet.

That’s not going to go over well, is it? Three years after the Syrian civil war started and (at least) half a year after ISIS became a serious threat in Iraq, you’d think the president might be willing to essay a few broad thoughts about how we should respond.

Don’t get me wrong. I think I understand what Obama is doing here. He’s basically trying to avoid saying that we do have a strategy, and the strategy is to do the absolute minimum possible in service of a few very limited objectives. And generally speaking, I happen to agree that this is probably the least worst option available to us. Still, there’s no question that it’s not very inspiring. You’d think the brain trust in the White House would have given a little more thought to how this could be presented in a tolerably coherent and decisive way.

In the meantime, “We don’t have a strategy yet” is about to become the latest 24/7 cable news loop. Sigh.

Oh, and the tan suit too. It’s quite the topic of conversation in the Twittersphere.

Source – 

Quote of the Day: "We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet."

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: "We Don’t Have a Strategy Yet."

Quote of the Day: Congressmen and Crackpots

by CarmenWhitson Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From Jon Chait, responding to Paul Ryan’s list of favorite books about economics and democracy—which notably fails to include his former favorite book, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

It seems the lesson Ryan has drawn from the harmful publicity surrounding his Rand fixation is not that he shouldn’t associate himself publicly with crackpot authors but merely that he should find different crackpot authors.

Here is Chait’s description of Jude Wanniski’s most famous book, which earns a place on Ryan’s list.

The Way the World Works is a novel argument that the entire history of the world can be explained by changes of tax rates. The fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Nazis — Wanniski attempts to explain it all as a result of taxes. It is a work of genuine derangement on the same intellectual level as the sorts of unpublishable hand-scrawled diatribes that I used to scan through when I sorted the mail as a magazine intern.

But…but…but—look! Michael Moore!

More here: 

Quote of the Day: Congressmen and Crackpots

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Congressmen and Crackpots

Yes, Republicans Really Are Unprecedented in Their Obstructionism

by HyeNelmsamd Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When we talk about Republican obstruction of judicial nominees in the Senate, the usual way is to look at filibusters and cloture votes. But that can sometimes be misleading, since cloture votes can happen for a variety of reasons. Or we can look at the raw number of seats filled. But that can be misleading too, since this can depend on how aggressive the president is about nominating new judges in the first place. A better way may be to simply look at how long nominees are delayed. That’s easier to measure, and long delays mostly happen for only one reason: because the minority party is blocking floor votes.

Via Jonathan Bernstein, the chart on the right comes from @Mansfield2016. It shows pretty clearly what’s happened to judicial nominees over the past couple of decades. Under George HW Bush, nominees that made it to the Senate floor were voted on almost immediately. The majority Democrats waited only a few days to schedule a vote.

That jumped suddenly when Bill Clinton became president and Republicans started delaying his nominees. Things settled down and delays plateaued during George W Bush’s administration.

And then came Barack Obama. Once more delays spiked. Even after the rules were changed, delays have stayed high, averaging about 80 days. This is far higher than it was under Bush or Clinton. Bernstein comments:

I believe that Senate rules requiring super-majority cloture for judicial nominations are an excellent idea, provided the minority observes the Senate norm of using filibusters rarely. Unfortunately, Republicans simply haven’t abided by longstanding Senate norms. After Obama’s election, they suddenly insisted that every nomination required 60 votes — an unprecedented hurdle. They blockaded multiple nominations to the DC Circuit Court. They have, before and after filibuster reform, used Senate rules to delay even nominations that they have intended ultimately to support. Since reform, they have imposed the maximum delay on every single judicial nominee.

Ideally, I’d like to see a compromise that restores the minority’s ability to block selected judicial nominees. But right now, the more pressing concern is that if Republicans win a Senate majority in November, they may simply shut down all nominations for two full years. That would be absolutely outrageous. Yet it seems entirely plausible.

That final comment is what makes these numbers even more outrageous. It’s fairly normal for a minority party to start delaying nominees in the final year or two of an administration. Obviously they’re hoping to win the presidency soon and they want to leave as many seats open as possible for their guy to fill. This tends to inflate the average numbers for an administration.

But that hasn’t happened yet for Obama. His numbers for his first five years are far, far higher than Bush’s even though Bush’s are inflated by delays during his final year in office. It’s just another example of the fact that, no, both parties aren’t equally at fault for the current level of government dysfunction. Republicans greeted Obama’s inauguration with an active plan of maximal obstruction of everything he did, regardless of what it was or how necessary it might be in the face of an epic economic collapse. No other party in recent history has done that. It’s a new thing under the sun.

Link:  

Yes, Republicans Really Are Unprecedented in Their Obstructionism

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yes, Republicans Really Are Unprecedented in Their Obstructionism

This Time Is Different

by CallumH19ixiut Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I was chatting with a friend about the relentless, one-sided hawkishness on display yesterday on the morning chat shows, and he responded:

The recurring “stay tuned for” loop are clips of McCain (“We never should have left”), Graham (“ISIS no longer JV”), Ryan (“What’s the president’s plan for eradicating ISIS?”). Over and over again. Nowhere are clips of people urging caution or restraint. War is great news, is action, is drama. Whether consciously or not, the media simply drives inevitably to pushing for a clash.

It’s really beyond belief. Israel invades Lebanon and gets Hezbollah out of the deal. We arm the mujahideen and get the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the deal. We depose Saddam Hussein and play kingmaker with Nouri al-Maliki, and we get ISIS out of the deal. But hey—this time is different. Really. This time we’ll be done once and for all if we just go in and spend a decade wiping the theocratic butchers of ISIS off the map. This time there won’t be any blowback. This time we’ll fix the Middle East once and for all. This time things can’t possibly get any worse. Right?

Of course, the hawks always have Munich, don’t they? Always Munich. And so we need to fight. We need troops. We need leadership. And no one with political aspirations really wants to argue the point. There’s no future in siding with the thugs, is there?

Besides, maybe this time really is different.

See the article here:  

This Time Is Different

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Time Is Different

Bonus Sunday Cat Blogging – 24 August 2014

by KarmaSpell Posted on August 24, 2014

Mother Jones

I’ve gotten several queries about how Mozart is doing, and as you might expect, the answer is that Mozart is delighted with his new home. Last night at dusk he was leaping around in my mother’s native habitat garden and chasing all the little things that only cats can see at dusk. Everyone else is doing fine too. So as a bit of bonus catblogging, here’s my mother’s entire brood. From top to bottom, we have Mozart, Ditto, and Tillamook. Enjoy.

Visit site:  

Bonus Sunday Cat Blogging – 24 August 2014

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bonus Sunday Cat Blogging – 24 August 2014

Friday Cat Blogging – 22 August 2014

by DominikWertz Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s Domino helping Marian with a bit of gardening in the front yard. The days may not be sunny and warm forever, so she’s taking advantage of whatever ones are left to her.

Read this article:

Friday Cat Blogging – 22 August 2014

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Cat Blogging – 22 August 2014