Politics Plus

I have a nurse coming this morning to help me set up services at home, so if this is late, that’s why.  Tomorrow I have to go to TriMet to have my wheelchair measured, so expect only a Personal Update, and that late.  Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos service is with the Raiders, and I get to see it.  Wooo Hooo!!

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From Daily Kos (Classic 10/2014):It’s been in the news. Now it has been confirmed. As of this past weekend, Raymond Leo Burke, America’s highest-ranking cardinal at the Vatican, was officially removed from the Vatican’s Supreme Court, and demoted to chaplain of the Knights of Malta, where he will reign with much less responsibility. The ultra-Conservative and anti-gay cardinal, continuously challenges the jurisdiction of Pope Francis, and the Catholic Church’s new receptive stance on homosexuality.

How ironic it is to find the demoted cardinal is from the United States. What does that say about America – that even the Catholic Church and a pope are ahead of so many anti-LGBT lawmakers and extremists in this country.

Weeks after taking office in 2013, Pope Francis asked, ‘Who am I to judge?’ speaking of the LGBT community.

Although I disagree with Francis on many issues, he is more willing to coexist than any other Pope has been.

From NY Times: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas surged to a 10-point lead in a new poll released Saturday of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, signaling that his campaign is gathering momentum and suggesting that a long nominating fight is ahead.

Donald J. Trump, who continues to lead most national polls, was second in the Iowa poll, with 21 percent naming him as their first choice, compared with Mr. Cruz’s 31 percent.

Ben Carson, after leading an October survey by the same pollster, commissioned by The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics, tumbled to 13 percent, followed by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida at 10 percent.

If anyone could be worse than Hairball, it’s Uranus Inspector.

From Think Progress: In a literally world-changing deal that was almost unthinkable just a year ago, some two hundred leading nations unanimously embraced a plan that will leave most of the world’s fossil fuels unburned.

As part of a concerted effort to avoid catastrophic climate change, the world unanimously committed to an ongoing effort of increasingly deeper emissions reductions aimed at keeping total warming “to well below 2°C [3.6°F] above preindustrial levels.” The full text of this Paris Agreement goes even further, with the parties agreeing “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”

Already, global coal use appears to be plateauing, and global oil use will likely follow suit in the next decade as countries ratchet up their CO2 targets.

To get an idea of how challenging these negotiations have been, imagine trying to get a substantive agreement on any major topic in the U.S. Senate if the requirement for success were unanimity! Tragically, conservatives in Congress are doing everything that they can to undermine this deal, which is humanity’s best chance to avoid decades if not centuries of needless suffering for billions of people.

In my view, this plan does not go far enough, but I prefer it to nothing at all.

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Forgive my brevity.  I have  lot to do today.  Until I’m more stable, I’ll leave Jig Zone duties to our beloved Squatch.

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: A whole lot of us aren’t the best at accepting compliments.

Maybe it’s because we don’t receive them so often. Maybe it’s because we don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s because we don’t believe them. Whatever the reason, the struggle can be real!

This article is directed to people I find beautiful.

From PRWatch: What a mess this court has wrought!" Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson declared in the latest chapter in the state’s John Doe legal saga.

On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority contorted itself to find a new way to protect both Scott Walker and the Court’s biggest supporters–not to mention itself–following its decision in July rewriting the state’s limits on money in politics and ending the "John Doe" investigation into Walker’s campaign coordinating with dark money groups.

Wednesday’s ruling was supposed to be a straightforward decision on a motion to reconsider, in light of additional evidence that Walker and his allies had violated the campaign finance laws that the Court upheld in July.

The Court denied that motion, but then (in a lengthy unsigned opinion) went further, rewriting its July decision to fire the Republican Special Prosecutor who had led the investigation, Francis Schmitz, making it harder for him to challenge the justices’ conflicts-of-interest by appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Those conflicts arise from the fact that the same groups that coordinated with Walker’s campaign were among the majority’s biggest financial supporters, raising concerns under U.S. Supreme Court precedent about whether the justices should have heard the case at all.

Sucking Nevermind is still paying off for the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan.  Click through.

From NY Times: A little-noticed health care provision that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.

So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.

Mr. Rubio’s efforts against the so-called risk corridor provision of the health law have hardly risen to the forefront of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.

The risk corridors were intended to help some insurance companies if they ended up with too many new sick people on their rolls and too little cash from premiums to cover their medical bills in the first three years under the health law. But because of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.

Mr. Rubio’s talking point is bumper-sticker ready. The payments, he says, are “a taxpayer-funded bailout for insurance companies.” But without them, insurers say, many consumers will face higher premiums and may have to scramble for other coverage. Already, some insurers have shut down over the unexpected shortfall.

“Risk corridors have become a political football,” said Dawn H. Bonder, the president and chief executive of Health Republic of Oregon, an insurance co-op that announced in October it would close its doors after learning that it would receive only $995,000 of the $7.9 million it had expected from the government. “We were stable, had a growing membership and could have been successful if we had received those payments. We relied on the payments in pricing our plans, but the government reneged on its promise. I am disgusted.”

I see risk corridors as a temporary indirect subsidy of insured people, not a additional subsidy of the insurance industry. Of course, the solution is Medicare for all. This sleazy sabotage could ret Border Booter the nomination from the Republican Reich.  Click through.

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