Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

Everyone has at least one. Here’s mine: the distinction between conscious (being alert, awake and oriented) and conscience (one’s moral compass) has really broken down in popular usage. Case in point:

I was reminded that I had taken this picture in Target when Erik Loomis of all people made the same mistake.

I realize it’s not then end of the world, but for some reason this one really bugs me. I think autocorrect and/or voice recognition might be part of the problem because it reinforces bad usage when texting. Anyway, share your biggest grammar peeve or anything else in this open thread.

Grammar Pet Peeve Open ThreadPost + Comments (520)

An Amtrak passenger train derailed around 4 PM yesterday near Joplin, Montana. Of the roughly 150 people on the train, three were killed and an unknown number were injured. Joplin is in northcentral Montana, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There are a couple small critical access hospitals in the region, but any passenger seriously injured will be transported to a “big” hospital. The closest big hospital is 100 miles away in Great Falls. The next-closest big hospital is in Helena, another 90 miles down the road.

Unfortunately for any of the passengers on that train, the Helena hospital has already implemented crisis standards of care, because their critical care units and their morgue are completely full. The Great Falls hospital just asked for twenty National Guard troops to assist them due to their load of COVID patients. As of last report, Billings and Bozeman hospitals were planning on implementing surge and/or crisis care plans.

Montana is a beautiful part of the world, and normally I’d recommend that anyone interested in seeing a beautiful place visit there. But, when your case curve looks like this, any human activity, from recreation to just passing through, is far more dangerous than usual if you’re unlucky enough to get injured.

(Side note about Montana: Jon Tester could be as big a drama queen as Sinema or Manchin, but he avoids that temptation and generally has a clear-eyed view of how DC works.)

TrainwreckPost + Comments (141)

Kevin Drum points out that one of the casualties of shrinking the reconciliation bill from $3.5 trillion will be the extended Obamacare subsidies. Other middle-class benefits on the chopping block include the child tax credit, universal Pre-K, two years of free community college and funding for long-term care done at home.

I wrote a while back about my adventures looking at Obamacare plans. There is nothing great about this insurance. You can easily pay $7-14K out of pocket for relatively common medical issues. But, at least with the extended subsidy, people making > 400% of the Federal Poverty Level can get a subsidy. For example, a couple making $80K per year, which is just a wee bit over 400% (which is $70K), would get a $470/month subsidy. This cuts your Bronze plan premium to about $500/month, and Silver is about $740/month. That’s still expensive when you’re making $80K. But without that subsidy, a couple making $80K is on the hook for almost $6K more in premiums. That’s huge.

When you take money away from someone who is budgeting on it, you really piss them off. In the minds of most normies, the Democrats control government. We own it when their insurance premiums go up $470/month, or when they aren’t getting a child tax credit, or when they have to pay a lot more out of pocket for the home health care grandma needs when she’s living at their house. We are the ones that they’ll be mad at. I wouldn’t blame anybody who lost a $6K government benefit for slamming the door in the face of a Democrat who came to their doorstep looking for a vote.

Screwing the Middle ClassPost + Comments (32)

That’s Politico, today. Here’s CovidActNow, today:

Over the last week, Florida has averaged 376.4 deaths per day, more than Mississippi, goddam, or Texas. That’s like a 777 full of passengers crashing without survivors every day. It’s 7 Greyhound buses or 54 minivans. Every fucking day. New York has less than one tenth of that number of deaths per capita.

Yes, cases are down. But anyone with more than a goldfish’s worth of mental capacity might remember just how many people this clown has killed on his watch.

Where Is Thy Sting?Post + Comments (118)

“They are beholden to their corporate donors” is such an oft-repeated phrase we tend to ignore it, but watching Manchin’s behavior tells you pretty clearly what corporate donors want. On the reconciliation bill, they want the Senate to go slow so they can review and pick apart the reconciliation bills to make sure that everything they don’t like gets deleted. Going slow also increases the possibility that nothing will happen, and the status quo is pretty good to corporations right now. On the debt ceiling, they don’t want default, but minority rule via the filibuster has been good to corporate donors, so they don’t want that changed. Instead, we’ll have a really ugly game of chicken and a compromise that will make Democrats want to puke.

Similarly, it’s all but forgotten by the media that the Republicans are the cause of all the debt ceiling anguish and they’re constantly willing to ransom the government, not to mention the health of the nation, to win, or at least make Democrats lose. The both-sides media coverage of the debt ceiling fight is a huge enabler of Republican behavior, and the media is apparently institutionally unable to change rapidly enough (or, in some cases, at all) to keep up with the Republican tactics. So, the Republicans will keep doing it.

So, while I’m all for applying pressure to Democrats to have them make an exception to a stupid rule of the Senate so they can lift or invalidate the debt ceiling, it probably won’t happen, and even if it did, the media would still shit all over Democrats for doing it. That goes double for minting a coin or any other novel solution, because if the status-quo-worshipping DC media hates anything more than something new dreamed up by Democrats, I don’t know what it is.

I don’t think any of the above is new, shocking or even controversial, but maybe you disagree.

Minting a Coin and/or Stopping the Filibuster Probably Won’t HappenPost + Comments (125)

Josh Marshall has been doing good work trying to figure out Kyrsten Sinema, with the help of his readers. His latest letter from a reader has this conclusion:

She’s in a DC bubble of her own making. She has virtually no in-state presence, no public schedule, no press conferences, no interaction with regular voters, and other than industry-funded SuperPACs, no support system. She’s in a tough spot, and she put herself there.

The problem here is obvious: as her polling in state looks worse, Sinema will want more money for her Senate run. Since she’s unpopular with the kind of people who send monthly donations via ActBlue, her other option is to double down on things that corporate donors like.

All of Josh’s posts about Sinema are behind a paywall, but the gist of them is that she’s sending lots of direct mail to “independents” because she thinks her re-election hinges on making them happy. In other words, she thinks she’s the next John McCain. The problem with that strategy is that winning in a purple state requires both an energized base and popularity among independents. That energized base will be the one doing your GOTV.

Even in blue states, Senators get out and talk to regular constituents. Pre-COVID, Chuck Schumer could reliably be found at one or more Rochester festivals, accompanied by a staffer holding a sign saying “Meet Chuck Schumer”. If Josh’s correspondent is right, and Sinema is relatively absent from the state, she’s going to be even more beholden to corporate cash instead of in-state donors.

Being a Senator is a performative act in many ways. But floucing on the floor to reject a $15/hour minimum wage with a thumbs down (a clear homage to McCain’s better vote), posting on Instagram with a “fuck off” ring, and taking a two-week paid internship in California making wine rather than spending time in your state aren’t the performances that will gain you votes.

It’s beyond fucking annoying that this donor-beholden political dimwit/flake is one of the reasons the Biden agenda is in danger.

Corruption Feeds CorruptionPost + Comments (191)

Yesterday, Lili Loofbourow wrote a piece at Slate where she churned out a bunch of words about the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. Some if it is well observed, some of it is Slateish. I know some of you read the Herman Cain Awards subreddit because I saw a comment there referencing Balloon Juice. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a place where Facebook posts of anti-vax morons are re-posted after that person gets sick (“Nominated”) or dies (“Awarded”). This got long and a little ugly, so read on if you have the stomach for it.

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The Hermies Give Journalists a Bad Feeling in their Feeling PlacePost + Comments (234)