They Voted to Repeal Obamacare. Now They Are a Target.
Protesters waited outside the office of Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen in Morristown, N.J., on Friday to confront him after he voted with fellow Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
For months, protesters have been rallying outside Senator Cory Gardner’s offices in Colorado, urging him not to join fellow Republicans in their push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When he refused to hold town hall meetings, protesters staged them in his absence, asking questions to a cardboard cutout of him.
Now they are escalating their tactics.
With the controversial Republican health bill heading to the Senate, organizers of opposition groups say they plan to bird-dog Mr. Gardner’s whereabouts and show up at his events, buying seats at fund-raisers if necessary. They want to remind him that he promised to protect the expansion of Medicaid and guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, both provisions undone by the bill the House narrowly passed last week.
“I’m really angry right now,” Katie Farnan, an organizer of Indivisible Front Range Resistance, said. “It seems like they’re out to destroy the country.”
Grass-roots groups around the nation have pledged to confront their members of Congress more intensely than ever in the hope of stopping the bill in the Senate, where Republicans have expressed concern about the millions of Americans expected to lose health insurance coverage or benefits if the bill is passed in its current form. And they are looking ahead to the midterm elections next year, vowing to punish Republican House members who voted in favor of the American Health Care Act, the formal name for the bill. …
WATCH: John Oliver destroys House Republicans over Trumpcare vote
Oliver prepared 217 House Republicans for swarms of constituents furious over their reckless vote
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
On Thursday, House Republicans passed the American Healthcare Act, but the fight’s far from from over, explained “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver late Sunday. Because, in addition to facing a tough vote in the Senate, members of Congress must own up to their actions upon facing their constituents during recess this week.
The hastily passed health care bill drew support from 217 members of Congress, although “multiple members . . . admitted they hadn’t even read the whole thing,” Oliver pointed out.
For example, Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., revealed on CNN he “attempted to read the entire bill” by turning every page; a move Oliver dismantled in seconds.
“That’s not how you read a bill; that’s how you check a bill for spiders,” he quipped. …
FCC insists John Oliver didn’t break its website, net neutrality group disagrees
Last night, John Oliver put a call out for his Last Week Tonight viewers to band together and let the FCC know how they feel about net neutrality and the need for ISP regulation, going so far as to buy gofccyourself.com and set it up to redirect back to a page on the FCC’s own site where users can leave comments and express their concerns. This was a repeat of a similar move Oliver tried three years ago, shortly before the FCC did agree to classify internet services as a utility. With Trump and his administration looking to dismantle every good thing in the government and sell it for parts, though, our precious internet freedom is once again in danger. That was Oliver’s angle, at least, and apparently he was so convincing that the FCC’s comments page actually crashed overnight.
The general assumption was that Oliver had mobilized his viewers so successfully that the FCC site couldn’t handle the influx of traffic, but now the FCC itself is saying that its website going down had nothing to do with Oliver’s call-to-action. As reported by Deadline, the FCC claims the outage was due to a distributed denial of service attack (or DDoS if you’re hip) that coincidentally lined up with the broadcast of Last Week Tonight. The FCC says that the attack came from “external actors” who were apparently attempting to shut down the commenting system and prevent “legitimate commenters” from voicing their concerns. …
After a Breathtakingly Disingenuous Email from Paul Ryan, Seth Meyers Invites Him on His Show
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
After a news cycle dominated by Sally Yates’ Senate testimony and the presidential Twitter meltdown that followed, Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment on Late Night with Seth Myers feels almost like a blast from the past. Meyers touched on this morning’s pre-Yates revelation that President Obama warned Trump not to hire Michael Flynn, but the late-show-ready footage of Yates shutting down Ted Cruz will have to wait till tomorrow. Mostly, Meyers makes more hay from the passage of the catastrophically awful American Health Care Act—but, to be fair, there’s a lot of hay left to be made.
For one thing, the weekend saw hilariously inept congresspeople trying to defend the AHCA to their furious constituents—most notably Raul Labrador, who claimed, “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” It may not be as satisfying to watch a woman tell her congressman, “You’re a fraud, you’re a phony, and your days are limited,” as it would be to have a functioning health care system, but at least it’s not unsatisfying. You can always make the case that exposing the GOP’s laughable hypocrisy and bad faith is a waste of time, since neither Republicans nor their supporters care about anything but winning. But it’s different when they’re trying to bullshit you personally. So when Paul Ryan’s office, stung by Meyers’ examination of his lies about the AHCA, sent a disingenuous email defending himself, there was nothing for the show to do but tear it apart, point-by-point, in the strongest section of the segment. Watch Ryan walk into this buzzsaw:
They took issue with our characterization of the bill as rushed, writing, “This bill has been online for a month, went through four House committees, and the only change this week was a simple three-page amendment.” Which is misleading for a number of reasons. For one thing, that three-page amendment is the reason a lot of Republicans changed their mind and voted for this bill, so you can’t claim it’s a small change. A lot can happen in three pages. That’s like saying, “I made you a cappuccino with hot water, sugar, espresso, and one other ingredient.” You would say, “Well, what’s the other ingredient, Mr. Cosby?”
…
A Medicare Drug Incentive That Leads to Greater Hospitalizations
Many studies have demonstrated what economics theory tells us must be true: When consumers have to pay more for their prescriptions, they take fewer drugs. That can be a big problem.
For some conditions — diabetes and asthma, to name a few — certain drugs are necessary to avoid more costly care, like hospitalizations. This simple principle gives rise to a little-recognized problem with Medicare’s prescription drug benefit.
For sicker Medicare beneficiaries, the Harvard economist Amitabh Chandra and colleagues found, increased Medicare hospital spending exceeded any savings from reduced drug prescriptions and doctor’s visits. Consider patients who need a drug but skip it because they feel the co-payment is too high. This could increase hospitalizations and their costs, which would make them worse off than if they’d selected a higher-premium plan with a lower co-payment.
Though just a simplified example, this is analogous to what Medicare stand-alone prescription drug plans do. They achieve lower premiums by raising co-payments. This acts to discourage the use of drugs that would help protect against other, more disruptive and serious health care use, like hospitalization. …
Did Stephen Colbert cross a line? The government doesn’t get to decide that.
Following an off-color joke that many considered homophobic, the FCC launched an investigation into the comedian. That is troubling.
Stephen Colbert is in trouble for saying that the only thing Donald Trump’s “mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster”. Is that funny? I thought so. That doesn’t mean Colbert, a satirist, shouldn’t be criticized. But that he is being investigated by the federal government – as the FCC is now doing following complaints it received – should alarm us all.
As a gay man, I didn’t find the joke offensive because, to me, fellatio isn’t offensive. I tell and laugh at jokes about oral sex and politics all the time. One of my first cover stories for the Village Voice was called “Who do we have to blow to get gay marriage?” Colbert might not be gay, but he used camp humor – an important part of gay culture – to deride the anti-gay president.
Camp has always been wickedly used to skewer American norms – and what is more worthy of subversion than our idiotic Republican president? The object of Colbert’s derision was clearly Trump. It matters that he is a relatively kind and thoughtful satirist who mostly “punches up”.
That said, the critique about Colbert’s joke is fair, just as it has been fair to critique the mural and memes of Trump and Putin kissing. In listening to other queer people over the last week, I better understand how the “cock holster” joke could be hurtful. But these are all things we can debate as a society – and we are! …
Artificial Intelligence Owes You an Explanation
When an A.I. does something, you should be able to ask, “Why?”
My family has grown very attached to our Amazon Echo, particularly for music. We can access Prime Music by asking Alexa for an artist, song, or station. Even my young kids can navigate the verbal interface to request “Can’t Fight the Feeling” from the movie Trolls or the soundtrack to the musical Hamilton.
As part of the smart speaker’s artificial intelligence, the program picks up on our tastes and preferences, so when we simply say “Alexa, play,” the device will queue up suggested tracks. In theory, what it picks should have some obvious relationship to music we chose ourselves. And songs it selects usually do. Usually.
But recently, Alexa considered our diet of kids’ music, show tunes, the Beatles, the Rat Pack, and Pink Martini, and decided to cue up … Sir Mix-a-Lot.
After we stopped laughing, I wanted desperately to ask, “Alexa, why?” What in the name of Weird Al Yankovic was Alexa thinking when it determined that we needed to listen to a one-hit wonder hip-hop artist from the 1990s? …
Parasitic robot controls turtle it’s riding by giving it snacks
Following in the tracks of turtles
In preparation for becoming humanity’s overlords, robots have started controlling turtles. By first getting the reptiles to associate a red light with food, the shell-attached robots can dictate where the turtle moves around a tank, creating a rather unusual parasitic relationship.
Even with the huge progress made in recent years, robots still have some serious limitations. Making their motion robust enough to survive the rigours of daily life is an ongoing battle, as is the puzzle of providing them with enough energy to avoid spending hours recharging.
Nature, on the other hand, can do this easily. Millions of years of evolution have given rise to an incredible variety of efficient ways for animals to move, so researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon set about harnessing this factor.
Robots were first glued to the backs of five red-eared slider turtles. The robots comprised a processor, a frame that stuck out in front of the turtle’s head holding five red LEDs spaced apart, and a food-ejecting tube. They then had to ride their turtle through five checkpoints in a tank filled with water.
The turtles were first conditioned to associate a lit-up LED with food. The robot then simply guided it using the LEDs and fed it snacks as a reward for going in the right direction. Using this process, five robot-turtle pairs successfully completed the course, and each sped up with practice. …
The Falklands penguins that would not explode
The minefields laid in the Falkland Islands were intended to kill or maim British soldiers, but over the last 35 years they have become de facto nature reserves for penguins. For better or worse, however, the time has now come for their home to be demined, reports Matthew Teller.
I’m following a crunching gravel path leading up over a headland.
To one side stretches a sweeping curve of white sand, backed by tussocky dunes, the coarse grass mixed with a low-growing plant bearing tartly sweet red berries that the locals call diddle-dee.
But it’s the sound that startles. Overlaying the booming ocean is a comical honking noise coming from thousands of Magellanic penguins. One, guarding its burrow beside the path, stretches its neck up at me, then lets out an ear-splitting, wing-waggling bray of displeasure.
I can see why these penguins are known locally as jackasses. …
Doughnuts Are on a Global Rampage, and They Must Be Stopped
We love doughnuts. That’s why we must save them from themselves.
Donuts, you have gone too far.
Not long ago, we were your biggest champions. We cheered when you evolved into the scrumptious, flakey cronut, and when you multiplied up and down the West Coast through the Blue Star chain, which brought slick, beautiful rings from Portland, Ore., to Los Angeles. We welcomed such top tier bakeries as Dough in New York; Union Square Donuts in Boston; District Doughnuts in Washington; Curiosity Donuts in New Jersey; and Federal Donuts in Philadelphia. They were making versions of you that were airy, yet were rich, gorgeously glazed, and garnished.
It was a thrill this year when you appeared at Wylie Dufresne’s Du Donuts and Coffee, in Brooklyn, N.Y., in superb cakey style, with flavors such as Creamsicle, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and even the shouldn’t-work-but-it-does “Peanut Butter and Yuzu.” We were also ecstatic to see you take cruller form, coated in maple and cinnamon sugar, at Danny Meyer’s Daily Provisions cafe.
But now, you’ve overreached. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
And Trump? He is in trouble.
What would a viable American populist party look like? What would it stand for? VICE News talked to more than a dozen experts in political science, demographics, and U.S. history and looked at survey data to identify the issues, positions, and rhetoric that might work. This faux campaign video is the result.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Ted Cruz thought he was going to teach Sally Yates a thing or two about the Constitution. Then he got wrecked. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.
“It is not often that you see one woman demolish a state’s entire delegation to the United States Senate, but Sally Yates did the Republic a great service on Monday afternoon by demonstrating that Texas has sent to Washington a remarkable pair of deuces. First, she slapped John Cornyn silly as regards her refusal to enforce the president*’s original travel ban, the issue over which she’d been fired. He pronounced himself disappointed, and she handed him his head. Via The Washington Post:…”*
Michelle Wolf explains why Senate Republicans need to include women on the panel responsible for crafting health care legislation.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Our career counselor has some good news for you: Indiana Jones, the bad boy of archaeology, is based on real people you can imitate.
Max trying to find something to do after his dinner.
Ed. More tomorrow. Possibly. Maybe. Not?