The best book on both successes and failures of the Soviet Union is Mancur Olson’s “Power and Prosperity.” If you haven’t read it, you should. The second best is Randall Collins essay in Macrosociology. The great problem with most critiques of the USSR is that they do not explain its successes. In the 20s and […]
Wasn’t that nice? Aren’t you relaxed? Do you want me to turn the lights down? Should I bust out my eucalyptus and mint massage oil and loosen up that lower back? Of course I’m naked. How did you know? Let me whisper something in your ear…
Ok, fun time is over.
Now, go call Pat Toomey and tell him again how you don’t believe a single thing the motherf#%ker says about the Senate Health Care bill. That is, if you’re in Pennsylvania. Here are the numbers:
Allentown/Lehigh Valley
1150 S. Cedar Crest Blvd Suite 101
Allentown, PA 18103
Phone: (610) 434-1444
Toll-free phone (for callers in PA): 1-855-552-1831
Bernie was in Pittsburgh yesterday. I was supposed to go. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked my my lawn, whose grass was “as high as an elephant’s eye”. But I have friends who went.
Anyway, Bernie asks a good question about Trumpcare that I invite our Trumpster lurkers to answer (don’t be shy. I know you’re there.):
This is the Republican Congress at work. There is no one to stop them or Trump from ramming this, or any other selfishly cruel policy, through before 2018. Just a reminder to those of you who voted for these people that you voted for these people.
Please don’t try to hide behind your morality. Anyone who enabled this hasn’t got a moral bone in their body.
At the age of 40, a ballerina’s days on stage are numbered. Ballet at the principal level requires daily discipline of ballet class, flexibility and strength training that is exhausting. The body can never take a day off. Injuries inevitably start to take their toll. At some point, you have to step off the stage and plan for the rest of your life.
Diana Vishneva gave her last performance for American Ballet Theater on Friday. She was one of the great dancers of her generation. She didn’t have the perfect ballerina body, her legs were a bit spindly and short. But she inhabited her roles and performed each movement with a fluidity that is missing from many dancers today. I wish I had been able to see her dance in person. Fortunately, there are plenty of videos on YouTube for us to marvel at just how good she was in both classical and contemporary pieces, whether she danced on pointe or on her knees.
Here are three examples. The first is a contemporary dance made on her for F.L.O.W., choreographed by Moses Pendleton to the Gayatri Mantra*. The second is the iconic White Swan Odette variation from Swan Lake. Enjoy! The third is from an ABT performance of Giselle with partner Marcelo Gomez. No one floats so weightlessly. Pick it up at the 1:20 minute mark. (Recording is not great, dancing is magnificent)
*Translation:
“Unveil, O Thou who givest sustenance to the Universe, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, that face of the True Sun now hidden by a vase of golden light, that we may see the truth and do our whole duty on our journey to thy sacred seat.”
The Republicans are going to try to ram through a vote on their horrific “health care” bill by the end of next week. I was no fan of the ACA. The Medicaid Gap was ridiculous and likely the reason why the working poor hated Obamacare. Then there were the unaffordable deductibles and the self-defeating way that Democrats separated workers into two distinct classes: those who were blessed to have employer sponsored health insurance and the growing contractor class who has to fork over a huge chunk of their unstable income to it. Add in the fact that the subsidies would have had to be paid back if the contractor underestimated his income by a little bit and you have the makings of a very short sighted policy. But hey, the Obama “liberals” were all for it because of the pre-existing conditions and who could argue with that??
Who indeed.
It almost seems like it was designed to have a lot of bad policy wrapped up in one or two good ones. We can thank the Republicans for adding amendments to the ACA that made it into the unappetizing melange it turned out to be.
But the AHCA is turning out to be no policy at all. It’s just a transfer of health care dollars away from the people who need it, especially children who will lose Medicaid and CHIP insurance, to the pockets of the very well off through tax breaks. Jamelle’s Bouie at Slate’s Political Gabfest breaks it down for us in chilling detail. The biggest campaign donors want this roll back of health insurance no matter what. They want what they want and they want it now. That’s what they hired their Senators and Representatives to do. What happens after that is not their problem. It’s everyone else’s problem but what do the Republicans’ biggest donors care about that? They don’t have to look at the people who will get royaly screwed by this. Did I mention that up to 50% of children will lose their health insurance? And what about the mentally ill?
It’s sickening. Literally.
Senator Al Franken has more:
You don’t have to be a liberal to hate what Senate Republicans are doing behind closed doors. We’re just ahead of the rest of the class right now.
Just wait.
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Lady V adds this from the comments:
ACA/ACHA repeal/replace vote is planned for the end of next week.
McConnell is “allowing” Dems (and the public) only 10 hours to read the bill and vote on it. Now is the time to take action on this. It’s a horror: http://www.UpholdTheseRights.com/Healthcare.html
The ACHA removes pre-existing coverage protections for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, and a host of other mental conditions, as well as classing obesity, hepatitis, HIV, diabetes, hospitalization, pregnancy or being the partner of a pregnant person, etc.–basically, almost everything–as a pre-existing condition and therefore subject to high-risk pool (premiums $10K-$25K/yr and up).
A pre-existing condition is something one had or was ever treated for prior to obtaining insurance coverage from a specific carrier.
GOP will make out like bandits and people will actually die.
Everyone is tired, and people are in “June/summer denial.” I hope the resistance is still out there and active.
Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: Goodbye, and Good Riddance, to CentrismThe idea that people who want expanded health care, reduced income inequality, fewer wars and more public services are "unrealistic" springs from an old deception in our politics. For decades pundits and pols have been telling progressive voters they don't have the juice to m […]
