Archive for August, 2013
Late Night Video — How Ed Asner Pissed Off Conservatives
Ed Asner does the voiceover for this very interesting animated short called Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale, created by the California Federation of Teachers to show how teachers (and other public employees) are targeted to deflect away from how rich people are milking the system. This is good stuff — a little simple, […]
Saturday Open Thread [8/10/13]
Yesterday was Starbucks Appreciation Day — but the only people doing the appreciating were gun groups. The Starbucks in Newtown, CT closed early rather than be descended upon by these idiots parading their guns:
Earlier, however, more than two dozen gun rights supporters, some wearing pistols, camouflage or Connecticut Citizens Defense League T-shirts, showed up to show their support. The company said it had no participation in the event. Gun critics also turned out to voice their opposition.
Long after the store shut down around 4:30, people on both sides of the gun divide stayed outside in the heavy rain, the gun supporters standing on the left, many smoking cigarettes, and the gun opponents to the right, holding lighted candles.
“Little do these ignorant people know that we come in here every day for coffee, carrying our weapons,” said Tom Catalina, 64, of Newtown. “Starbucks has always been open about their support of the Second Amendment and our right to carry, whether open or concealed. Guns make people safer.”
The Open Thread for Friday, August 9, 2013
Byron York is right: “In 2012, he won 11 primaries and caucuses, making him the solid second-place finisher in a party that has a long history of nominating the candidate who finished second the last time around. (See Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.) And yet now, no one — no one — is suggesting Santorum will be the frontrunner in 2016, should he choose to run. As far as the political handicapping goes, Santorum’s 2012 victories don’t seem to count for much.”
You know the reason why? Because even they know that Santorum is insane.
As Jason noted in a posted last night, there is now polling evidence that senior citizens have turned against the GOP by such margins that former Speaker Pelosi could soon be future Speaker PelosiL
—In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)
—When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2011, 43 percent of seniors gave the Republican Party a favorable rating. Last month, just 28 percent of seniors rated the GOP favorably. This is not an equal-opportunity rejection of parties or government — over the same period, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating among seniors has increased 3 points, from 37 percent favorable to 40 percent favorable.
Booman notes that Republicans in several states have done a great job at gerrymandering the House districts to such an extent that even though the Democrats won the majority of the popular votes for Congress in 2012, the GOP maintained their House majority by 20+ seats. And that fact is not going to change in 2020, assuming that the demographic groups vote in the same way as they did in 2010 and 2012.
If these numbers are real, a lot of supposedly safe seats are not really safe. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel needs to get busy recruiting candidates, because it looks like a strong well-funded candidate can compete much better than we thought in a lot of House districts.
Around the Horn for August 2-8, 2013
Steve Newton at Delaware Libertarian has begun a must read series about whether Karen Weldin Stewart’s favorite company Highmark is trying to build a monopoly for MedExpress in Delaware:
[T]he current incestuous relationship between Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield and MexExpress urgent care clinics is a classic example of government utterly failing at “regulating” a market.
To begin with, let’s go back and recall that Senator Patti Blevins and Insurance Commissioner Karin Weldin Stewart teamed up to exempt Highmark from the Attorney General’s authority to require the insurance company to set aside $175 million in reserves for a foundation to benefit taxpayers.
This was Highmark’s condition for entering the Delaware market–$175 million plus multiple other exemptions and exceptions to existing insurance law. If you bother to go look at either Blevins’ or Stewart’s campaign donation pages at the Delaware Commissioner of Elections page, and you take the 2-3 hours necessary to trace down the bewildering array of PACs and healthcare related donations that each woman received in 2012, you will discover that they were well compensated for screwing Delaware taxpayers out of $175 million.
Next, you need to recognize that Highmark holds a $51+ million stake in MedExpress urgent care clinics. To put it as clearly as open sources allow: Highmark holds at least a 10% ownership stake in MedExpress, probably more.
So it was no surprise that, as in Pennsylvania, when Highmark came to Delaware, MedExpress quickly followed behind. In the past year, MedExpress has dumped FOUR new clinics into New Castle County, and is (or has) added four more in Kent and Sussex. These new clinics arrived with tens of thousands of dollars worth of smaltzy advertising about “your new neighbor.”
Here are the harsh realities: the arrival of MedExpress is only the FIRST STEP in a tried and true Highmark business model for vertical integration. Basically, the plan involves four steps…
Go to Delaware Libertarian and read on. Great work, Steve. Come inside to check what other Delaware bloggers have been blogging about this past week.
Seniors Fleeing the GOP
I’m not a big fan of GOP eulogies. The GOP leadership is as well-funded and ambitious as ever, and zombie corps of brain-dead halfwits are as tirelessly stupid now as they were when they were the 20% still giving George Bush positive reviews in 2007. That said, this polling memo from Carville-Greenberg is awesome: There’s […]
The Open Thread for Thursday, August 8, 2013
You have to love Rick Perry. The Dallas Morning News traveled with the Texas Governor for a speech to a group of conservative bloggers. Said Perry: “There are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach we’ve taken over the years. I’m in one today — Florida.”
“We’re in Louisiana,” someone shouted.
Newark to get a new mayor after 9 years.
Newark Mayor Vance Funk is resigning effective December 31 (that’s a lot of notice). He says that he is resigning due to health reasons. If health concerns are the reason, why isn’t he resigning right now, and not four and a half months from now?
The Open Thread for Wednesday, August 7, 2013
The National Journal says the GOP is worried the gender gap could grow because of incidents like this:
“When the House Judiciary Committee passed a late-term abortion ban in June, Republican leaders scrambled to find a female, media-savvy legislator to bring the legislation to the floor. Their biggest problem: Not a single Republican woman was represented among the committee’s 23 Republican members. They eventually settled on Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who isn’t on the Judiciary Committee.”
“The episode underscored a growing problem that is worrying Republicans: Women are badly underrepresented within their party in the Congress. Only eight percent of House Republicans are women, and there are only four female Republican senators. Of the long list of potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, there’s not a single woman.”
Well, women tend to get turned off by Republican policies and attitudes towards women, and then there is the picture on the left. Come inside and find out what it is,
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