Heh.
We Have Puppies!
In case your day needs some cuteness, foster puppies!
Friend of mine, LFern, is fostering…again. She and the rest of the Fern family have been very successfully fostering this past year (since losing their beloved Kodiak).
Doing the foster dog thing again. This time I have a mama and 8 puppies. There were 9, but only 8 by the time they got to me. I’ve never had puppies this young. They are so adorable. they should be weaned in about 2 weeks, neutered about two weeks after that (at 8 weeks old) and then ready for adoption. Let me know if you need a puppy or check with Weld County Humane Society. Lolly the mom is an amazing dog too.
Previous fosters have all been successfully placed..now we’ll need homes for these guys. We’re going to go see them this week, I can’t wait. Bixby won’t be able to do his foster magic (he’s been so good with all her fosters) until they are much older, so he and Bailey will have to stay home for now.
Lolly, the mom, has already stolen my heart.
To see individual photos of the whole gang, click here (I could not get them to embed properly and didn’t have time to upload them again).
Open thread!
Also, Writing Group update – anyone who wants to write up something about their experience of self-publishing or traditional publishing, please email me. (whats4dinnersolutions at live dot com)
I can see for miles and miles
I like to try to keep an eye on what’s going on in the world of right-wing media and blogs, but I find reading Fox, let alone, Breitbart, just too soul-crushing to do on a regular basis. I read alicublog and I’ve started following Will Sommer on twitter (he’s the guy who had all the great pictures of the Pizzagate rally). Sommer also has an excellent newsletter.
What do you guys read to keep up with the wingnutosphere?
Ain’t too proud to beg
Jon Ossoff is polling well ahead of the Republicans in the jungle primary in GA-6 and polls show him neck-and-neck in the general. This would be a big win for Dems and would scare the shit out of the Republicans in Congress. So make it rain.
Jared Kushner’s “SWAT Team”: Early Contender for Dumbest Idea of the Week
Kushner: "The government should be run like a great American company." This is a harbinger of a doomed initiative. https://t.co/tS7Q1T2PY4
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 27, 2017
I admit that’s a high bar in these turbulent days, but this new Trumpstunt is such a shining stinking exemplar of every half-bright, wholly-dishonest sackful of grift and self-deception that I’m not sure it won’t have been declared inoperative by the time this is scheduled to show up on the front page. From the Washington Post:
President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions.
The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements…
In a White House riven at times by disorder and competing factions, the innovation office represents an expansion of Kushner’s already far-reaching influence. The 36-year-old former real estate and media executive will continue to wear many hats, driving foreign and domestic policy as well as decisions on presidential personnel. He also is a shadow diplomat, serving as Trump’s lead adviser on relations with China, Mexico, Canada and the Middle East.
The work of White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has drawn considerable attention, especially after his call for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Bannon will have no formal role in the innovation office, which Trump advisers described as an incubator of sleek transformation as opposed to deconstruction…
Bannon’s a mucker and a mean drunk, but he’s not dumb or vicious enough to let his name be associated with this disaster-in-the-making. Take it away, internets!…
Once you dig through 7 layers of bullshit, you get to the real goal of Jared's latest grand adventure. pic.twitter.com/4rbW0Hvcff
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 27, 2017
Also what is it these idiots think SWAT teams do?
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 27, 2017
@mattyglesias kick in the doors of freedom and deliver a flash bang of efficiency to the face of the American public
— Stephen Powaga (@spowaga) March 27, 2017
That, "Am I going to have to visit this dad in FPC Montgomery too?" look. pic.twitter.com/CxQYOV387R
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 27, 2017
Thank goodness Hillary Clinton, who would have let family members exercise the levers of power, isn't the president. https://t.co/pfphhP6u6P pic.twitter.com/EAbb40onlv
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 27, 2017
Jared's workload: 15% Middle East, 5% Mexico, 10% China, 2% supervising Tillerson, 10% gov as biz, 58% spinning media to appear as good guy.
— Jorge Guajardo (@jorge_guajardo) March 27, 2017
Kushner is unqualified and a nepotism hire but, on the plus side, as a Trump appointee, he'll probably get nothing done. https://t.co/8SHBSKrYk5
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) March 27, 2017
Some big names in tech are helping Trump and Jared Kushner set up a new "innovation office" https://t.co/CJH2koxmj4 pic.twitter.com/r42O8bVKiY
— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) March 27, 2017
what if we made the wall… an app https://t.co/A5jUFoRST9
— extremely volcel guy (@thetomzone) March 27, 2017
It is mystifying to roll this out two days after the first White House legislation got chewed by longstanding war https://t.co/xux3F5TCe4
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 27, 2017
Good luck, Jared! pic.twitter.com/flZBKE9AQ0
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 27, 2017
Jared Kushner’s “SWAT Team”: Early Contender for Dumbest Idea of the WeekPost + Comments (261)
Monday Morning Open Thread: The End of the Beginning
ok it is time again for that wiener dog running happily on the baseball field it is spring training season so here is that wiener dog for u pic.twitter.com/09M40HcCWB
— darth™ (@darth) March 25, 2017
A BFD win, if we can keep it — and for once, it looks like we just might. Per the NYTimes, “Democrats, Buoyed by G.O.P. Health Defeat, See No Need to Offer Hand”:
…Invigorated by the Republican dysfunction that led to a stunningly swift collapse of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and relieved that President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment remains intact, Democrats are in their best position since their embarrassing loss in the November election.
While it is far too soon to suggest that the House Republican majority may be imperiled, Democrats are newly optimistic about picking up seats in 2018, hoping to ride a backlash against Mr. Trump. Seeing an opportunity, they say they will not throw Mr. Trump a political life preserver at what they sense could be the first turns of a downward spiral.
The president’s approval rating was already mired below 40 percent in some surveys, and is likely to remain low after the health bill’s failure. He has no prospects for legislative victories on the immediate horizon, given how complicated and time-consuming his next priority, an overhaul of the tax code, would be even for a more unified party.
And while his electoral success in states represented by Democrats in Congress had been thought to put such lawmakers in a vise between their party and their president, Mr. Trump demonstrated no ability to pick off centrist Democrats in his first significant legislative push. Democrats — red-state moderates and blue-state liberals alike — formed an unbroken front of opposition to the repeal-and-replace campaign…
Though the ability of Democrats to do much more than say no remains limited, their success in helping to thwart Mr. Trump will not only embolden them to confront him again — it will also inspire activists to push them to do whatever it takes to block his path.
“Having tasted victory, the resistance forces will feel even more empowered to insist that Democrats continue withholding any cooperation and not granting Trump any victories when he is so wounded,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist…
Cult-of-the-Savvy high priest and Politico founder Mike Allen, at his new brand Axios:
… It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of the Day 64 defeat. President Trump, who made repeal-and-replace a central theme of his campaign, and House Republicans, who made it the central theme of every campaign since 2010, lost in a publicly humiliating way despite controlling every branch of government and enjoying margins in the House rarely seen in the past century.
This virtually guarantees no substantive legislative achievements in the first 100 days. And it creates rifts and suspicions and second-guessing that make governing much harder.
What’s on the agenda as we start the new week?
America: so sick of all the winning. https://t.co/oGWnNE0dZ5 pic.twitter.com/Nt6AoJSUjR
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 26, 2017
Monday Morning Open Thread: The End of the BeginningPost + Comments (186)
So now what?
So now what?
That is a hell of a question but I think the right way to start probing towards some of boundaries of the possibility space is to ask what happened.
As I see it, the winning coalition that blocked the bill was a combination of unanimous Democratic opposition plus state level Republicans who actually have to balance a state budget and deal with real issues plus Republicans in districts that make them inherently vulnerable during a mid-term swing against the incumbent party plus the reactionaries of the House Freedom Caucus. We were also aided by the ineptitude of the wank “wonk” Paul Ryan and his coterie of enablers.
We told our stories. We mobilized. We stiffened the spine of Democrats whose spines probably did not need much stiffening. We put the fear of god into vulnerable Republicans. We scared the people who have to balance a state budget. We had on our side almost all of the interest groups that had bought into the ACA — doctors, insurers, hospitals, big drug makers and everyone else that gave a bit to get a bit. The only people who were not aghast at the AHCA were high income tax cut fanatics and policy illiterate decision makers.
We had a huge and unusual coalition pushing back against a bum’s rush. Most of this coalition was assembled in 2009 and 2010 to push the ACA through. And it was re-activated days after the election as everyone recovered from their shock, dismay and hangovers. Any time something changed, wonks were ripping through the documenation and making fast, rough and directionally right analysis with maps, figures, graphs and other hooks to allow advocates to tell personal, powerful stories that landed. And we kept on iterating powerful and emotionally connecting truth on every iteration of the bill.
We won. And our win helps our community:
Does it mean I finally can breathe again? That my health care won’t be pulled in a matter of weeks or months, on the eve of my starting biologic therapy for my Crohn’s?
This is why we fight. We’re not going to win every time. But we have to fight for conceding defeat and defeatism without making an effort means throwing ArchTeryx and others to the dogs. We’re not going to win every time, but we need to fight for both the chance to win as we did this week and to be able to look at our friends, our countrymen and ourselves with honesty as we say that we are doing everything that we can. We will need that for immigration. We will need that for global warming. We need that for our LBG and especially T allies. We might not win every time, but we can mitigate some damage, impose some delay, inflict some cost, and build effective coalitions for future action and progress every time that we hold to our values and our ideals.
So what does this mean for policy? The fear is that the ACA is here, but that the Trump Administration will sabotage it. This is a real fear, and it is one that the coalition that won this week will need to be engaged on to protect the implementation of the ACA.