They’re going to try the same thing in PA next year. Off cycle primary for only local races with a shitty deceitfully written anti-abortion amendment on the ballot. Can’t wait to see what happens.

Yeah, Jon Stewart is the GOP's Kryptonite it seems. They remember what he did to Tucker Carlson years and years ago (although, like any other cockroach, Carlson has come back from the dead), and no one wants to volunteer to see if Stewart has his "One Punch Man" evisceration skills still.

Stewart before was calling out in a funny way. Now, he's just going to do the metaphorical equivalent of stabbing incessantly.

Sounds like Sinema just wants some minor changes that shouldn't keep the IRA from passing.

She wants to keep the hedge fund loophole of course.

Yeah, it's ridiculous, but it won't stop the bill.

dola

I'm in St. Augustine this week and it's interesting how the GOP primaries are all about who will best please DeSantis. Every commercial is about how much he does or doesn't like the candidate.

So you saw that electrical storm the other night?


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Bribing Senators pays off for hedge funds.

NEW: DEMOCRATS REACH DEAL WITH SINEMA ON TAXES.

“We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate's budget reconciliation legislation." She will move forward after parl review.

— Tony Romm (@TonyRomm) August 5, 2022

I'm happy that they made a deal. But it's kind of weird that they didn't put them both in a room to work all this out in the first place.

Whatever. One step closer to a good law passing. Not as good as it could be. But good.

This is actually a good idea.

ALSO NEW: Democrats will now seek a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybackshttps://t.co/4hH6WXrXl0 https://t.co/WQTsScpTja

— Tony Romm (@TonyRomm) August 5, 2022

I just saw that and immediately thought of you, Rainmaker. Thought you might like that.

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Yeah. At one point my wife's face lit up and I said what happened and she said the whole sky lit up behind me.

Am I going to get a rebate for the Chevrolet electric car I bought last month? GM was out of rebates previously

These people are sick and I'm pretty sure they royally fucked up...

What’s clear from this is that republicans (like IN state Rep. Davisson) haven’t thought through the implications of these anti-choice bills

pic.twitter.com/EsqGz1XvdU

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) August 5, 2022

"Can you rephrase the question?"

"Can you provide a definition of 'failing to thrive' where the fetus is perfectly fine so I can provide an easy answer?"

"Can you use it in a sentence I can easily respond to?"

"Lastly, could you provide an opening for me to vaguely bring god into this and use as an answer?"

Re: Kansas referendum

After reading a bunch of analyses on the topic, the conclusion I'm coming to is that it turns out that an outright ban was the tipping point to make people sit up and notice.

Prior to Dobbs you had plenty of polls indicating that abortion rights just weren't the highest-importance issue for a large part of the electorate, including Democrats. The polling we're seeing after Dobbs, however, has very much changed. It's charged up Democrats and shifted opinions among Independents and even a small cadre of Republicans.

Which probably shouldn't be surprising given human nature and the fact that a lot of Americans really don't pay that much attention to political minutae.

On the first point, I'd posit that for most folks there's a difference between rights being restricted and rights being abolished. As long as the GOP was mainly doing the former, a lot of people couldn't bother themselves to care too much.

On the second point, I'd guess a huge number of Americans didn't really understand how GOP legislatures were restricting abortion access so dramatically. But then you have a huge news story like Dobbs and it suddenly hits home.

It remains to be seen if this carries Democrats home in this fall's mid-term election cycle, but the Kansas result (which included unprecedented turnout and huge voter registration numbers) definitely surprised a lot of people who watch this kind of thing professionally.

I thought this was an interesting analysis of the ads that ran in Kansas:

What messaging worked in Kansas? Let's look at the ads from the winning "NO" team...

— Bill Scher (@billscher) August 3, 2022

It puts the GOP in a tough position. True pro-lifers believe that abortion is the murder of a child. So it makes sense that they wouldn't allow any exceptions to an anti-abortion law. And they will demand that purity of their GOP reps.

But that puts them at odds with the majority of voters.

If the GOP could pass a law that says something like "Abortion is illegal unless a doctor certifies that it would be in the medical best interest of the mother," that would completely undercut the parade of horribles that the Dems are using to motivate voters.

But a true pro-lifer would never accept that law b/c it would, in their view, allow some otherwise preventable murders.

Yeah, hopefully this will be the kind of thing that hoists the GOP by its own petard.

The analysis I read on 538 pointed out that the % of the electorate who is for abortion being illegal in ALL cases is very small. So basically Dobbs just might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. A majority of the electorate is OK with restrictions, decidedly NOT OK with illegal-no-exceptions.

If you read the ad analysis, it's interesting that they ran a mix of ads highlighting the extreme (no exceptions for rape, incest, etc.) and anti-government mandate messaging. Theoretically, some of the anti-mandate stuff may have pulled from the GOP support, likely those who may not view the abortion issue on strictly religious terms.

Senator Warnock is saying that his $35 cap on insulin is in the bill. That really is huge.

https://twitter.com/chuckgrassley/st...ATUaOmOkL_B0FA

I am not kidding when I say that I respect the level of IDGAF it takes to say “put Republicans back in charge because Mitch McConnell does not mess with my vacation schedule.” Respect.

Things that make you go "hmmmmmm..."

You have to wonder if @Sen_JoeManchin and @SenSchumer put the carried interest provision in their draft just so @SenatorSinema could shoot something down before signing on to the bill.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 5, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...ort-july-2022/

what in the actual fuck is going on with the economy? Good/bad, whatever

It seems to be doing decent for the average worker which is making economists and rich people incredibly mad because it's leading to an increase in wages.

I don't think she is making those decisions. Someone joked that you should just negotiate directly with the lobbyists who are giving her money and save the time.

That's not a joke, that's reality.

Retire right now Chuck and you can have all the reunions you want for what's left of your life.

That's why Roberts was always content to just keep grinding away abortion rights with things like limited bans and more procedural stuff like admitting privileges that really stops abortions but requires paying attention to the details

SI

Brings to the mind the old saw about boiling a frog. If you do it slow enough, the frog never notices its danger until it's too late to hop out. If you turn up the heat too fast, the frog will instantly jump out. And in this case, the frog (being women and folks who support theoretical abortions, even if it with some restrictions) jumped out and realized that yeah, they're not interested in degree. It's right and wrong to them.)

Remember when Chris Coons decided not to call witnesses during the impeachment trial because he wanted to get home for Valentine's Day?

The is still in, but the f-ing parliamentarian has ruled it doesn't fit reconciliation. So the Democrats are forcing the Republicans to vote it out of the bill. It looks like they will. Republicans will never miss the chance to stand in the way of anything that will benefit the poor.

Insulin has been around a while and don't really understand why there are not generics to lower the cost.

I know pharma's will tweak formulas to extend their patents but assume 2022 - 20 years insulin formula still works well.

I'm guessing this problem exists for numerous other drugs.

So how about the government provide incentives for generic companies to expand their portfolios, or to increase number of generic companies. You'd think this will save on Medicare and Obamacare costs also.

better to incentivize, dictate, or just let full free market capitalism decide?

In this case....with a life saving drug that certain people are required to have....dictate.

Sure enough, the Republicans blocked it though it was only three votes short of breaking the filibuster. Mit Romney once again proves he is a POS.

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I really think that the R's just go around and draw short straws to see who will put in some token votes, and who will vote against, just so it looks like it was sort of supported by some, but ultimately opposed in general. Like you can't tell me Hawley wanted to support that part of the bill.

This is one I'm perfectly happy to Both Sides. That has happened for a long time on both the Dem and GOP side - like Lieberman took the fall for the Public Option but if it wasn't him, it was going to be Max Baucus or someone else who was highly paid by the insurance industry. For the longest time John McCain (Lindsay Graham, too) was allowed to be the "maverick" vote on so many things that didn't matter - though I think his thumbs down vote on the ACA repeal was personal and not planned.

SI

At least the insulin cap is still in on the medicare side.

Except a lot of people won't live to get Medicare because if this bill.

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Only 3 companies make it and they have banded together as a cartel to fix the price. It is also illegal to import it from other countries so there is no competition.

Can’t they just declare diabetes a public health emergency and bypass a lot of the pricing rules? I also read something about how an off label monkey pox treatment requires a 27 page application and that type of stuff is total nonsense.

Legislative cosplay is all it is.

In 2020, @SenJoniErnst warned about the “heartbreaking” consequences of high insulin costs and called on lawmakers to “come together” to lower them.

Ernst voted against the insulin copay cap today. pic.twitter.com/AY2RzCWJQ0

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) August 7, 2022

My preference is incent. Assuming we can break from the special interests & lobbyists, I can see a heavily subsidized generics industry really help bring costs down with the most popular drugs (after the 20 year patent wears off).

I don't think it'll necessarily help with less (currently) impactful diseases like Monkey Pox though.

Yes, they can do that. They can also starting importing it from overseas and flood the market with it.

Can't have dems getting credit for saving lives with their legislation this close to mid terms.

Our only-in-America political system:

A 57-43 vote to cap insulin prices fails.

A 57-43 vote to exempt private equity subsidiaries from the minimum corporate tax rate succeeds. pic.twitter.com/ReUFRWlMGT

— Steve Morris (@stevemorris__) August 7, 2022

Conservatives are countering the obstruction to the insulin price cap by attacking Biden for killing the EO that Trump issued that would have put a cap on insulin prices.

The key difference is the Trump EO would have had almost zero impact at all. It was only for very low income families that are seen at Federally Qualified Health Centers. Only about 9% of people in the country are seen at a FQHC and then you factor in the fact that you would have had to make 350% under the federal poverty line and it was an EO that wasn't really going to help anyone.

However, when presented with something that would have helped with insulin prices the pro life party made sure it didn't succeed.

Reading through all of the proposed amendments, Republicans really didn't want that IRS expansion to go through. They also tried really hard to ram through that SALT cap for at least one year. That would mostlt screw people in Blue states, plus could be called a middle class tax increase.

I don't know enough about the district to predict anything, but the primary for Ilhan Omar is surprisingly tight right now.