My bet is they will alter the Senate bill to get the Rand Paul/Mike Lee/Ted Cruz contingent on board (ie, make it way way worse), and then the assholes that are allowed to play moderates for the cameras will sign on anyway because they always do.
currently zero moderate Republicans in the Senate
Zero moderate Republicans, period. It's an oxymoron.
Doesn't Ayahuasca make you puke? Maybe I'm thinking of mescaline cactus thingies. Either way, starting a trip vomiting does not seem to me like fun.
I'm likely to try hallucinogens again, but I don't want some shaman stuffing mystical bollox down my throat. I have enough experience to know I'd respond poorly. I assume people more comfortable with woo would be better able to get something out of it, but I'd just perceive it as a nutter trying to fuck with me. OTOH hallucinogens have shown promise treating PTSD, and having someone around who knows what to expect would be a very good thing. I hope your guy gets everything out of it he needs.
The bill is going to pass with a few token amendments to get the requisite votes and make it seem like the holdouts got something. Trump will sign it, mean or not. The ACA repeal is getting in the way of tax cuts for the 1% and GOP donors are starting to worry that changes won't come in time and they'll have to spend another year paying what are in practice pretty fucking reasonable tax rates, low if anything.
I think I'm agnostic on the shaman, but being out in nature appeals.
Although jungles seem pretty spooky, nature-wise.
Jungles are the worst. I mean I kind of like them in small doses, but I would not want to be tripping there.
The rain forest showcases its biological diversity in a vast array of birds and flowers. The jungle has poisoned fruit and insects the size of hamsters.
The rain forest has shamans who are key members of rooted indigenous cultures. The jungle has shamans who own Ford Econoline vans with murals painted on the side.
Rain forest in the streets, a jungle in the sheets.
I don't disagree about "moderate" Republicans, but Heller and the Alaskans are in pretty tough spots here.
Related to the OP below, if my current bizarre (but FDA-approved) attempt to get out of the depressive pit of despair I'm in doesn't work, then I'm going to pursue psychedelics. Not in a jungle, because snakes and spiders.
11: but you're probably going to see snakes and spiders anyway if you take psychedelics, and it'll be so much more comforting to know that the ones you're seeing are probably real.
I am intrigued by the notion that the paisley shape is somehow baked into the structure and hard-wiring of our brains.
And on the same subject, SCOTUS just reinstated large parts of the travel ban pending its hearings October. Fuck.
What! What is wrong with them?!
it'll be so much more comforting to know that the ones you're seeing are probably real.
I don't know. I think I might prefer imaginary snakes and spiders over real ones.
I think Heller and Murkowski will end up being the 2 no votes.
Can anyone explain to me what's going on with the Supreme Court? There wasn't a circuit split and the 90 days are over, why would Roberts want to get involved? Seems really weird.
When I was in the Peace Corps and drinking heavily, we had a running gag about the DTs in the tropics:
"Lizards! Little lizards crawling all over the ceiling, chirping at me! Where are the lizards? What happened to all the lizards?"
Or "Bugs, crawling all over my skin! Normally there should be bugs crawling all over me. Where did they all go?!?"
14: and also, how is that on the same topic?
Can we not jumble up topics? I can start a separate Supreme Court thread.
19: the topic is maliciously pointless right-wing fucknuttery about which reasonable people are helpless, right?
19: "they'll wear down the activists by doing this month after month until it ceases to command attention, and then it will pass"
22 passes muster, but I started a new thread anyway.
When I was in the Peace Corps and drinking heavily
LB is Ted Stryker.
My recent trip to your lovely country, by the way, involved the following utterances:
1) "A rattlesnake has just slithered over my foot"
and
2) "Dude, pick the tarantula up, I want to get a selfie with it"
Neither uttered by me. But EVEN SO.
I just called Toomey for the hell of it; he is one of the main "architects" and support liars. This is all Club for Growth wet dream material.
But he's almost better in a way than the Republican "moderation" loss leaders.
I have not called Cruz nor Cornyn.
Two new
I know Cruz and Cornyn are absolute snakes, but I still think it's worth calling. They do call counts which has the potential to make them feel the heat and at least stop carrying water as hard, which would make a difference given the big push this is.
If you've already called them, another tack to try - if only for varying things up - might be "I'm confused why they are working to pass a bill so fast, couldn't we spend at least a month studying it?" Conceivable a not overtly anti message gets taken more seriously, and delay could well kill the bill once more.
Reading Avik Roy talking about the Senate bill, I strongly suspect that he's palming a number of cards, but some of his comments are ones that I need to think about rather than dismissing out of hand. One of them is question of what a functioning market-based health insurance would look like. He says:
The reason why that's so important is that if you have my point of view about things, I'm an advocate of market-based universal coverage, the first step to achieving market-based universal coverage is to make sure we have a robust, thriving, competitive, and affordable market for individually purchased health insurance for the most vulnerable people in our society: lower-income people, people with poor health status, people who are nearing retirement. Those are the people who the market has to work for in order for the market to work for everybody.
It makes me wonder what other markets he (or other market-based advocates) would think are most comparable to health insurance. My default assumption is that most markets work best when consumers can go through an iterative process of buying something, seeing how it works, and then trying something different if they're unhappy.
With health insurance it's difficult to do that because one of the most important aspects of health insurance is how much protection it offers against unusual but extremely expensive risks, and most people won't have any reason to find out about that (for much of their lives).
In terms of insurance markets I think of car insurance as fairly consumer-friendly; there are a lot of options, there's clear price-competition, and it's easy to switch from one insurer to another. But the caps on the amount of money involved are lower and people are much more likely to use their car insurance than they are to use their health insurance for major (as opposed to routine) care.
In some ways I would think of health insurance as most resembling life insurance and I have a vague sense that the life insurance market is not very transparent or consumer-friendly, but I don't actually know.
But I'm curious, if anybody's willing to play Devil's advocate and pretend to be a conservative who sincerely believes in the power of markets what would you say that [X]" would be in the statement, "In an ideal world the market for health insurance would like like the market for [X]"?
That first paragraph was supposed to be, Two new senators are making lukewarm noises, Sasse and Cassidy.
GOP senators face a collective action problem rephrased in more epic terms in the recent book The Traitor Baru Cormorant, called there the Traitor's Qualm, maybe a little more entertaining writing than most of what's before us today:
You cast your lot with the rebellion, or with the loyalists. You are ruined if your side fails. You hold your position, maybe even benefit, if your side wins. But the thing about rebellions is that they involve a great deal of treason, mm? The traitors cannot condemn treason. So the safest bet is to remain a loyalist at first, and then switch sides if the traitors seem certain to win, pretending you're terribly clever and have been hampering the loyalists from within. You see the difficulty?
...If the rebellion doesn't begin with a decisive and spectacular victory, no one will gamble on it. It gutters out.
No rebellion can succeed without winning over the cautious and the self-interested. The zealous rebels and firm loyalists must attract the middle.
We need the asshole dukes!
You know single-payer is creeping into more general awareness as a valid alternative when Sean Spicer uses it to try to scare people.
For what it's worth, the busy signals and "try your call later" messages at the Cruz/Cornyn offices have made calling an exercise in futility. I have resorted to email (and just dialed Cruz's Austin office to confirm...still can't get through.)
I know this is an exercise in futility, but plan to continue to pester relentlessly.
Heller and the Alaskans are in pretty tough spots here.
To me the one to watch is Sullivan. Murkowski may well take one of the two free no votes along with Heller, but they can't lose people like Sullivan. He's no kind of moderate and is usually very good about voting with leadership, but he's been holding back so far on saying much about this bill, which early analyses are showing will massively screw over Alaska. (Probably not quite as much as the House bill, but that's cold comfort.)
If ayahuasca were the individually-transformative agent that so many people claim, then they would say and write different things about it, instead of picking lint off the same secondhand towel.
Unless, of course, the occult purpose of the universe is for every sentient being to become Joe Rogan.
I have a good friend who studies ayhuasca usage in the Peruvian Amazon. It's hard to tell if it's the fault of ayhuasca, but going by him I would not recommend regular prolonged ayhuasca use over a long period of time.
And now that the CBO score is out, it's hard to see 50 votes for the thing.
I haven't been calling my worthless senator Daines, although I know I should have been, but this is bad enough that I guess it's time to start.
I see that Brad DeLong has decided that he can have more impact by signing on to a joint letter.
37.2: He seems to have a constituency office round your way. Maybe they keep themselves sealed up in times like this, but you could just go yell through their windows for a bit.
Highlights of CBO score:
* Newly-uninsured 22m, compared to 23m under House bill as passed - quite a feat considering McConnell was explicitly trying to game the score, including making some changes only kick in year 8
* No death spiral for the insurance market, just a market that does very little good for the low-income or sick (lower premiums offset by skimpier plans with much higher deductibles and cost-sharing, and premiums not low enough to be in reach for the low-income cut out)
* Similar Medicaid cuts of $772b
*Surprisingly, BRCA does make a half-hearted effort at closing the Medicaid gap, by making premium subsidies available to those below 100% FMAP. So people at 75% of poverty could get a bronze plan for an estimated $300 year after subsidies; but the CBO estimates the cost sharing will be so enormous very few will take the option. And people at 175% of poverty will see net premiums grow by 30-280%.
Per Tax Policy Center simulator, 68% of tax cuts go to top quintile; 45% to top 1%; 25% to top 0.1%, who see average tax cut of $250,000.
But I'm not at all thinking this score will necessarily sink the bill, considering for the GOP nothing but wealth accumulation matters.
There's going to be a human chain around the Capitol in DC Wednesday, for anyone there.
Oh: keeping subsidies while repealing medical loss ratio requirement (which currently keeps insurers from pocketing all the premium money not spent on services) will likely let insurers take some off-exchange (unsubsidized) plans, move to exchange, jack up the price so that the net premium to the customer after credit is the same, and just suck the subsidy into their own profits.
30: Avik Roy is a tool of the Republican establishment, advises the Republican party, and has been writing and speaking in bad faith about Republican health insurance policy for far too long: it's an exercise in futility to suppose he actually has something cogent in mind here. Sorry, Nick, but he's pulling a classic "Look, a squirrel!" maneuver. Not a good idea to fall for it. He's stalling for time.
Regarding Dean Heller, he may yet fold: the party has put him on notice that they'll be running attack ads against him unless he plays ball. It depends on whether liberal Nevadans have enough gas in them to counter that electoral threat. ALL persons in states with Republican Senators should making calls.
And Heebie, in the OP:
the real lesson for Senate Republicans is from the House vote: If the opposition rallies against you, just wait a month and try again. It takes tremendous energy from everyday, non-elected voters to wage these oppositions, and we can't do it over and over again.
This is undoubtedly their strategy, along with McConnell floating a dreadful bill at the outset in order to later say that they've now improved it, so no one needs to worry.
Sorry, Nick, but he's pulling a classic "Look, a squirrel!" maneuver. Not a good idea to fall for it. He's stalling for time.
I have no doubt that you're correct. My interest is that I can spot some of the cards that he's palming, but I'd like to be able to catch more of them.
Besides, I thought the classic time to say, "look, a rabbit" is when the other party is looking like they're about to pass something. That's where you try, "wouldn't your plan be better with these five market reforms" to try to get them to waste time on that (or see if you can pry apart the agreement between centrists and liberals). In this case there's not much time for him to play for, people aren't going to ignore the Senate Bill just because he's doing some cardistry in the corner*.
* the one area in which he might have influence is trying to raise doubt about the CBO score but none of the Republicans are behaving as if they take it literally to begin with.
Now that I say that I wonder if some liberal should be trying to come up with an (incomplete) sketch for legislation which would deliver everything that Ted Cruz wants and arguably pass muster with the Byrd rule -- see if you can get Republicans to spend two weeks arguing about that.
CBO score says net fiscal impact is 200B less than House bill so they have that much to bribe so-called moderates who can then claim their principled stand saved the day and rescued insurance for 1M people or created a new addiction treatment program or whatever. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if McConnel has explicitly told some senators to play the game that way.
A vox article titled, "What might CruzCare look like?"
I sort of like this idea. It's unlikely to make a difference, but not impossible given how strongly they're trying to avoid delays.
I've never heard of Roy until recently but I doubt he has or has ever had a belief in universal coverage through private markets, or universal coverage at all. Of course, to his face, or in broad public forums, you can't say that because the response would be "are you calling me a liar" and then you'll look mean and petty and the US will have to invade a country because people like you are always wrong and it's your fault there's a moral obligation to do the opposite of what you say and if the invasion is wrong that's ok because it was for the right reasons and that's why political opinion on tv, radio, and newspapers will and should continue to be dominated by conservatives because you just can't trust people who go around saying other people are liars even if they are being less than truthful.
Avik Roy (this goes to show the truth of, "there's no such thing as bad publicity." I knew that I remembered his name from the original obamacare debates, but had forgotten the details).
In health policy land, Roy is best known for steadfastly drumbeating bad analyses to assert that poor people are better off uninsured than on Medicaid.
He probably is genuinely ecstatic that the bill extends subsidies below the poverty line, since that provides a clearer path to the outright destruction of Medicaid.
(The House bill had subsidies for them too, but flat dollar amounts not tied to income weren't plausibly dressable as assistance for the sub-100s.)
||
Historiography bleg: I'm about to finish reading Fintan O'Toole's White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America. I suppose I could have finished the book last week, but I've been dragging it out: it's such a treat to read something that is both well-written and highly intelligent, and I don't know what to read next. And I can't believe it has taken me so long to develop an interest in the French and Indian Wars, but this is a topic about which I'd now like to read more.
Specifications: I probably don't want to read a thousand pages about every last damn battle; but, on the other hand, 400-500 pages of mostly military stuff does not scare me. That said, the more social and cultural history the better (but I actually, and somewhat weirdly, genuinely like military history in small doses, though not if it stretches out into 800-1000 pages).
Suggestions?
|>
Fred Anderson Crucible of War is pretty good, though uses no French sources if I remember correctly. It's still more military/political than social/cultural, but not just battles & stuff.
If you want to read something more social/cultural, and also pretty influential academically, not specifically about the French and Indian Wars but touching on them, read Richard White's Middle Ground.
I enjoyed Jennings many years ago. I'm sure actual historians don't approve.
https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Fortune-Crowns-Colonies-America/dp/0393025373
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/15/books/there-was-no-indian-side.html
Jennings is indeed great, though the only thing of his I've read is The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire. Also great is Alan Taylor, although he tends to focus on a slightly later period than the F&I War.
I haven't read it, and he's a politico rather an an historian so it may be suspect from the start, but Kevin Phillips's The Cousins' Wars has intrigued me for a while. I'm sure the actual historians have much better-informed views of it than I do.
Jennings was an actual historian. I've only read about his Invasion of America, haven't read anything by him. My takeaway was that his revisionism was being revised, as one does.
Anyway, the actual historians aren't really around much anymore.
the real lesson for Senate Republicans is from the House vote: If the opposition rallies against you, just wait a month and try again. It takes tremendous energy from everyday, non-elected voters to wage these oppositions, and we can't do it over and over again.
But, then again, neither can they. It is already nearly July. Just over sixteen months to the next election. If the only thing the opposition achieves is making everything take a month longer, then that's a significant achievement.
...If the rebellion doesn't begin with a decisive and spectacular victory, no one will gamble on it. It gutters out.
No rebellion can succeed without winning over the cautious and the self-interested. The zealous rebels and firm loyalists must attract the middle.
AIMHMHB, understanding this depends on understanding that the centre are generally not in the centre because their sincerely held beliefs fall midway between the sincerely held beliefs of the two opposing parties. They are in the centre, by and large, because above all things they desire power, and the feeling of being on the winning side*. The way to persuade them is not to argue that your side is morally right; the way to persuade them is to argue that your side is inevitably going to win.
(*Yes, this is a spinoff from my hobbyhorse** that we need to say less about ooh weren't the Nazis/Confederates/whoever terrible evil people, and more about how they totally and completely lost; some people quite fancy being Amon Goeth, no one fancies being Frostbitten Obergefreiter Schwartz, being rooted out of his foxhole somewhere in Belarus and marched off into captivity.)
(*Spinoff performed by professional hobbyhorse rider on closed track. Do not attempt this yourself.)
I did a phone bank yesterday. We got a bunch of people to agree to call Senator Capito. I don't see getting tired of stuff like that. Spend a few hours for a tiny chance at saving 100k lives over a decade? Sounds good to me.
So hot sauce keeps, right? Like if you found some in the fridge that you opened two years ago it's OK to use it so salvage the disaster of an omelette you just made for lunch? I was under the impression that the vinegar and oils in the sauce killed the pernicious and malicious leaving the nutritious and delicious, but I'm wondering now.
Note to self: togolosh has apparently been bitten by a radioactive urple.
I don't think that's even in the same category. Everybody leaves hot sauce in the fridge for a few years.
55: The Global Seven Years War by Daniel Baugh is quite readable, and fits the American war into the context of the larger conflict.
Until reading it I hadn't fully appreciated what an utter disaster the whole thing was for France. I mean, I knew they lost, but I didn't have a sense for how catastrophic and avoidable it was.
but I didn't have a sense for how catastrophic and avoidable it was
They could have lost a lot harder if George III hadn't personally disliked Pitt. The peace let them off the hook.
Everybody leaves hot sauce in the fridge for a few years.
That's a sign that you aren't eating enough hot sauce. It's good for you; clears the sinuses and triggers endorphin release.
This is Yucatan Sunshine, just about the best hot sauce there is, so I'm taking a chance. If I end up with explosive diarrhoea I'll be sure to share with everyone.
Also Autocorrect suggests "Rhodesia" as an alternative to diarrhoea, which is no doubt a sign that it's becoming sentient.
I know it is not entirely linked to the Health Care thing, but boy is the White House appear to be going to pains to not have any video/audio clips of them being asked about the bill. (And the know that anything coming unscripted out of Trump's mouth about it will most likely be a disaster.) Fox to the rescue* of course.
*The softballness of their recent questions to him have been soft even by their usual standards...
49: Watch, then they'll find a way to pass it.
77: They haven't actually punched anybody to avoid a question yet. Statesman-like.
If I end up with explosive diarrhoea I'll be sure to share with everyone.
I was told I wouldn't need to post my shipping address.
71: I love how the proximate cause of the war was the first of Washington's successfully upwards failures. That an incompetent backwoodsman screwing around in the borderlands could lead to world war was a complete failure of leadership and diplomacy.
Jane, I'll say it more directly: I think you'll very much enjoy Empire of Fortune.
That an incompetent backwoodsman screwing around in the borderlands could lead to world war was a complete failure of leadership and diplomacy.
NOT FOR THE LAST TIME EITHER.
80: you won't have to. He's going to share with EVERYONE.
AIMHMHB, understanding this depends on understanding that the centre are generally not in the centre because their sincerely held beliefs fall midway between the sincerely held beliefs of the two opposing parties. They are in the centre, by and large, because above all things they desire power, and the feeling of being on the winning side*. The way to persuade them is not to argue that your side is morally right; the way to persuade them is to argue that your side is inevitably going to win.
Probably also a large part of why the biggest expansions of civil rights go together with war mobilization.
85: but that's also when you get the biggest restrictions of civil rights.
I don't think it's that people want to be on the winning side, anyway; I think it's just that war mobilisation is when the government has more power than usual, and so it is able to do stuff (in both directions) that it couldn't normally.
86: But it's also when the state most needs the co-operation of people other than the ruling class.
Yeah, but, as I say, that doesn't explain why you also get massive restrictions on civil rights during war mobilisations.
And if we restrict it to civil rights as in voting rights, rather than things like freedom of speech, movement, assembly and so on... most of those expansions didn't actually happen in wartime. Women got the vote in the US in 1920. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
Another thing that I took away from the book was how screwed the Acadians were. A bunch of subsistence farmers on the edge of nowhere who had been ignored by everyone for decades, and suddenly they're caught in the middle of a world war.
I sort of knew the story already, but the book really detailed their extensive (unsuccessful) efforts to just stay of it.
A narrowing, then? Restriction of civil rights (in better cases, not past wartime) for those who had them previously, expansion civil rights to those who didn't. Of course the expansions often happen after wartime because the bargains are implicit.
Of course the expansions often happen after wartime because the bargains are implicit.
And often they don't; New Zealand gave women the vote in 1891, and I don't think it was in recognition of their plucky service in the Musket Wars some fifty years previously.
I thought New Zealand gave women the vote early because they wanted to get women to move there because the sheep were getting warier.
93 Wyoming was in 1890, so yes. (1869 if you're counting the Territory.)
JPJ, I've been reading Ann Litt/le's blog where she had some interesting excerpts of her new book (The Many Captivities of Esther Whellwright; h/istor/iann.com). A little earlier than the French-Indian wars but Esther ends up in Quebec.
So i guess this round of the healthcare stuff comes down to how effectively McConnell can leverage the $200B they have to spare via buy-offs and "moderation."
JPJ, I've been reading Ann Litt/le's blog where she had some interesting excerpts of her new book (The Many Captivities of Esther Whellwright; h/istor/iann.com).
I follow her blog! And I have a copy of her Many Captivities, though I haven't yet read it.
Thanks to Mr. Carp, I ordered a (used) copy of Empire of Fortune earlier today. And thanks to FA, I also ordered a (used) copy of Anderson's Crucible of War.
What I really want to know is: how/why did the French end up losing this thing so badly, so decisively? It seemed that they were winning for at least the first few years of the hostilities, with the British forces just bungling along; and then, seemingly all of a sudden, the death of Montcalm, and the next thing you know, King George issuing his Royal Proclamation in 1763...
A vox article titled, "What might CruzCare look like?"
HMMMMM?
I'm going to be gauche and bump my own comment before it disappears, because I'm honestly surprised at how closely that vox article matches what I was talking about upthread.
It's a little bit scary, because if Cruz is right that his idea can both serve as the basis for a compromise and pass the Byrd rule then it could help pass the bill. But if either of those things are false (and I think/hope that they are) you couldn't ask for a better "look, a squirrel" to try to disrupt Republican momentum.
The best case scenario is that this convinces conservatives that they can get a better deal than the one on the table, and then spend weeks trying to force that point.