The Angry Bear

New York Times political reporter focuses on a minor issue involving Democrats and not the utter collapse and insanity of the Republican party. One might think that the story of leading candidate Donald Trump casually revealing top secret information was worth further discussion aside from the article printed on page A3. One might imagine that the complete inability of Republicans in the House of Representatives to do anything non desctructive...

I want to use a tweet by Josh Marshall of TPM to make a broader point about strategic thinking in politics, the situation in the Republican House, and state of competition between Democrats and Republicans. Here is Mashall’s tweet: The idea that Ds should have bailed out McCarthy is a codicil of the larger logic of DC punditry in which R bad behavior/destruction is assumed, a baseline like weather, and Ds managing the consequences of that...

I really really hate to defend Donald Trump, but there is something I don’t get about this story “Trump Said to Have Revealed Nuclear Submarine Secrets to Australian Businessman.” Actually more than one thing, I don’t understand why it isn’t the number one story filling page A1 above the fold like the Anthony Weiner’s laptop has a backup of Huma Abedine’s e-mail story (which it turns out involved no US secrets revealed or endangered IIRC). This...

A follow up to Joel Eissenberg’s commentary on mRNA and how it came to be at BioNTech. This seemed interesting enough to add another post on mRNA discovery. Some more detail . . . Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines (msn.com), Carolyn Y. Johnson The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to two scientists whose research laid the groundwork for messenger RNA vaccines that transformed...

LARC (Long Activer Reversible Contraceptives) are highly effective. It seems to me past time for the US Federal Government to pay for contraceptives (all types not just the device of pharmaceutical but also cost of care from the prescribing physician if required) for everyone who wants them (including Elon Musk if he changes his mind about reproducing as much as possible — no means test). I think that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi should make a big...

The current economic “big picture”: by no means are we out of the woods  – by New Deal democrat There is no particularly important economic news out today, so let me take this opportunity to step back and give you more of a “big picture” view of my current thinking. To the extent there is a consensus, it is that a recession has been avoided and a “soft landing” of low inflation and positive jobs and income news will continue. So far, the...

Charles Gaba at ACA Signups in Michigan has been doing the yeoman’s labor of tracking Medicaid, Chips (for children) and the ACA. A good blog to read. He is my go-to person for information on the ACA, etc. CMS releases June 2023 enrollment data: Medicaid/CHIP enrollment dropped another 1.2 million as #MedicaidUnwinding ramped up, ACA Signups, Charles Gaba via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): In June 2023, 92,614,205...

This is the upper end or the delivery of product and care of the healthcare food chain. If you want to improve healthcare delivery pricing, you might want to go down a couple of levels more also. The costs of pharma and healthcare supplies are areas to investigate. It may have a bit more of an impact. Rituxan at Medicare prices or private insurance prices. There is a price in between which can be achieved and better than today’s prices. A...

Wednesday (October 4, 2023) found more than 75,000 union employees of Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health providers, walked off the job, marking the largest health care worker strike in US history. Kaiser Permanente unionized health care workers go on strike across dozens of locations, cnn.com, Samantha Delouya. Open Thread – NPs and PAs are Handling Primary Care Visits, Angry Bear...

I think Democrats were probably right to refuse to bail out McCarthy.  The main reason is that this will likely prolong the current shitshow being staged by the House Republicans, which will help Democrats in 2024 by reminding voters just how crazy and exhausting the Republicans are.  The Republicans can’t do this often enough. The fact that McCarthy lied is a reason to oppose him, but a less weighty reason – what is the chance that his...