Tuesday, July 22, 2014

WHAT MAKES THEM HAPPY.

Shorter entire right wing: Paupers get their benefits yanked -- HOORAY!

They're already laughing about how Congress didn't cross their t's, giving the antis their big chance in the Halbig decision. I don't think much of Democrats, but I must say it looks like they're at least trying to bring us some relief, while the Republicans (and the conservatives whose hands are up their asses) are rooting for them to fail. Which is pretty much how things are in general, isn't it?


134 comments:

  1. Susan of Texas11:27 AM

    This is terrible, if they get away with it.
    There is no end to their hatred.
    I would be all fired up to join the left and fight to crush the right but the left won't do it.

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  2. gocart mozart11:34 AM

    Important: has the decision been stayed so that the status quo remains on appeal?

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  3. montag211:34 AM

    When you've got a bill that's 2000-odd pages long, there's lots of nooks and crannies in which to insert poison pills, crony capitalist deals, traps that are designed to sail right through Congress but will snare up the regulatory and rule-making processes (and that whole aspect of lawmaking simply gives the lobbyists a second crack at getting what they want), and, of course, it greatly increases the odds of major and minor unintended fuck-ups.

    What I'm wondering is if the section in question is one of those written by Liz Fowler, Baucus' staffer who came from for-profit health care to work on ACA, then immediately left for Johnson & Johnson.

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  4. I was just biking home yesterday and thinking how nice it was I could work the two fulfilling but otherwise low paying and benefit-less jobs and not worry about affording my SSRIs. Fortunately, I live in CO, where the state runs the exchange.

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  5. Susan of Texas11:40 AM

    Scott Lemieux:

    http://prospect.org/article/yet-another-legal-attack-obamacare

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  6. gocart mozart11:42 AM

    LGM thoughts
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/07/everything-can-attack-aca-kind-principle

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  7. Matt Jones11:45 AM

    Better headline: "Appeals Court enhances the effectiveness of GOP sabotage of the ACA"

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  8. Today's ruling vacates the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulation allowing the federal exchange to give subsidies. The large majority of individuals, about 86 percent, in the federal exchange received subsidies, and in those cases the subsidies covered about 76 percent of the premium on average.


    You know what? Fuck good faith. If you're celebrating this - if you're hoisting a glass to the heavens because a lot of people you've never met and have never caused you a pinprick's worth of harm between them are now suffering - then you're a piece of shit. I can't even begin to dissect what's wrong with people like this, why it is that they're so hollow inside. For all of the scummy behavior I've witnessed in my time, this fiendish glee over the deprivation of the underclass may be the one example I'll never understand.


    Fuck it. I have to get back to my own shitty work.

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  9. Except it isn't just paupers and people generally don't like having things taken from them, even if they do shout about government hammocks.

    All of the sane commentary I've seen on the ruling indicates that it is not long for this world. For one thing, random typos are not enough to overturn a law. For another the entire bench of the D.C. Circ. is overwhelmingly D.

    But it has reminded people that the GOP wants you to die. I suspect that by this time next year they're claiming it was another one of Obama's false flag operations.

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  10. Susan of Texas11:59 AM

    And then they go around and give themselves little prizes to celebrate their hateful, destructive rhetoric.
    We've all read far too much right-wing hatred to give them the benefit of the doubt. They love the idea of being superior to others. They love to list all the ways that they are smarter, whiter, richer, and just better than anyone outside the little tribe.
    The more the poor suffer, the more they feel superior. It's time to get really, really mean to them, to make them feel the disgust they engender.

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  11. montag211:59 AM

    Doesn't look like it. The final order is to vacate and remand the case to the district court with summary judgment to the appellants.

    That said, I doubt that this one is going to remain in limbo for very long. I imagine that the government will have an appeal to the full DC court in days, if not hours, with a request to stay the order until the DC court hears the case en banc.

    The case mostly has to do with an IRS rule regarding credits; the full effect on individuals won't come until tax time next year, so it's not as if it's going to submerge ordinary people instantly.

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  12. Derelict12:21 PM

    They're ecstatic about this now. But if this ruling holds up (doubtful, based on what I've read), the subsidy goes away. And suddenly millions (perhaps tens of millions) of people who had affordable health insurance find themselves priced out of health insurance.

    Picture, if you will, someone like, say, Mitch McConnell running back to his home state where the ACA (under the guise of KYNect) is overwhelmingly popular, and Mitch is all smiles because he's helped deal a deathblow to the hated ObamaCare. Which just deprived a huge swath of his constituents of their formerly affordable health insurance.

    How does our hero campaign on the great job he did fucking over the people he wants to vote for him? Does he run on how he'll undo what he did? Does he take pride in saying "Fuckin' die already, you sick moochers!"?

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  13. Derelict12:24 PM

    If by "left" you mean Democrats. I will never understand how or why Democratic politicians have become convinced that they have to repudiate any policy that's popular or obviously good for most people. But that's the way it is. No Democrat today wants to be tarred with the label "liberal."

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  14. BigHank5312:24 PM

    Back when Calvinism was the hoppin' new thing, the rich could rest comfortably, knowing they had a golden ticket that could be used twice: the first time here on earth so they could live in luxury, and the second time to buy their way into heaven. Ayn Rand's intellectual heirs aren't willing to wait for an uncertain afterlife, though: they want the poor to suffer and die right now.

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  15. montag212:29 PM

    In the case of Kentucky, TurtleMan will run back saying that he's saved the nation billions of dollars, and his constituents probably won't feel it, because KYNect is the de facto state exchange, which is not affected by this ruling. If I understand it properly, this ruling applies only to states that opted out of creating their own exchanges and allowed the feds to set up federal exchanges in their states.

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  16. Derelict12:33 PM

    My bad--substitute some other GOP lawmaker from one of the 34 states that use the federal exchanges.

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  17. Susan of Texas12:34 PM

    No money in it. It used to be different but no unions, no power.
    If we pooled our power we could buy our own politicians but we support those who can win now instead. We are always playing defense and never offense.
    I can be offensive!

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  18. (or sabotage disguised as a fuck-up).


    Never attribute to malice, etc. Ambiguities and drafting errors are not exactly unknown in laws. That's why a bedrock principle of statutory construction requires evaluating a passage in light of Congressional intent, legislative history, and the context of the entire law. Well, it was a bedrock principle until today, at least.


    So don't look too hard for saboteurs. As Judge Friedman's lower court decision that this overturns noted, this should not even remotely have been in dispute.

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  19. Derelict12:37 PM

    We are always playing defense and never offense.

    ACORN
    Shirley Sherrod
    OCCUPY
    MoveOn.org

    The list of people and organizations that Democrats have abandoned because of one unsubstantiated right-wing accusation is long and depressing. Sadly, the ACA is right up there as well.

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  20. Susan of Texas12:37 PM

    What a hateful person she was. She used to get together with her inner circle and have them all berate one of the group for not being Objectivist enough.

    Philosophy is just an excuse to control through emotional pain to them.

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  21. Derelict12:39 PM

    Well, it was a bedrock principle until today, at least.

    It was bedrock principle until the Voting Rights Act got in front of the Supreme Court. Then, congressional intent did not matter at all--it was the precise wording that was paramount.

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  22. montag212:40 PM

    Ah, well, I offer both as possibilities. But, let's be frank, we've seen an unending stream of legislation literally dripping with malice ever since the USA PATRIOT ACT. We've become inured to it.

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  23. BigHank5312:40 PM

    Oh, head on back to Ledbetter if you want to see the SC letting a corporate defendant off the hook.

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  24. FrenchFriar12:45 PM

    Adler also aptly pointed out that the decision was a strict non-biased interpretation of the law and not some activist, liberal judge kind of thing.

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  25. Derelict12:46 PM

    She used to get together with her inner circle and have them all berate one of the group for not being Objectivist enough.

    Funny how that was one of the major features of Maoism.

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  26. Okay, both points taken. Hell, I'd even add Alito's reading of the RFRA. I guess I've always seen the tiniest scrap of figleaf before this, though. There's something about "This sentence doesn't match the boilierplate in this other sentence, so Congress must have not intended what the legislative record and everything else in the statute make plain that it intended, and which would be required to make the law workable." I mean, the Republican hacks in today's majority partially relied on the "legislative history" of a proposal that wasn't part of the basis for the PPACA. That really seems to be a further abandonment of pretense to me.

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  27. No, he blames Obama for creating a law that contained a typo.

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  28. gocart mozart12:51 PM

    It's ironic that those godless secular anti-Christian demoncrats are always expected to "turn the other cheek" and to "love their enemy", isn't it?

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  29. petesh12:53 PM

    Great work, Comrades Griffith and Randolph! Those contradictions won't just heighten themselves. The en banc appeal may be a stumbling block, but we can rely on Comrades Roberts, Scalia, Alioto, Thomas and Kennedy to raise the proletarian consciousness. The revolution awaits!

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  30. Jay B.12:53 PM

    The brazen inhumanity of providing subsidies that help people not die, while simultaneously bringing down the overall cost of healthcare is something Republicans and Libertarians can not abide by anymore. It's about time this cruel abomination of decent public policy is given the burial America so richly deserves.

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  31. Susan of Texas12:53 PM

    They take our desire for morality and use it against us. Since they have none it's easy.
    The solution is to reject false pleas for morality. I can't understand how anyone can let a republican shame them for anything ever.

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  32. Haw! Someone needs to tell him that irony is already dead, so he can stop desecrating its corpse. Not that he will.

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  33. montag21:03 PM

    As Roy notes, there's an unalloyed glee in this decision, a "we won! we won! neener-neener!" flavor to it, so I doubt that the mouthbreathers have given any thought to the blowback that comes from cheering on something that hurts a lot of people.



    But, in truth, they'd rather celebrate this "victory" and then lie about it later, when the bill for damages comes due. After all, we're not talking about people, as a group, who are known for their intellectual honesty. It's not the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last. They can't resist the urge to shit on people they've already disparaged, and people tend to resent that treatment. They may bull their way through the 2014 midterms and they may well win in 2016, but, eventually, the cumulative damage becomes so great that even the people that bought their bullshit will realize they've been sold down the river to buy the fatcats another yacht.



    When that realization comes, one of the things prompting it will be this unrestrained meretricious giggling over taking money out of ordinary people's pockets.

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  34. FrenchFriar1:05 PM

    He has tenure at my old alma mater. Now, that's irony.

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  35. montag21:06 PM

    And, by "desecrating," you do mean necrophilia, yes?

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  36. montag21:10 PM

    Two words: Frank Luntz. He's been twisting language to that end for a couple of decades, at least.

    Why he hasn't already been stripped and flogged at a national convocation of the MLA yet is beyond me.

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  37. Hey, sometimes he jsut wants a change from live chickens, you know?

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  38. montag21:14 PM

    At the top of that list should be Van Jones. Geez, he didn't even get his office wall photos unpacked before he was chased out by the rabid horde. Hell, he was dumped so fast that you'd think Rahm Emanuel had strapped an ACME jet pack to his back and lit the fuse.

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  39. Cue skrees of "Activist Judges!" and "Judicial Overreach!" Maybe the rapid change of direction will give them whiplash.

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  40. Jay B.1:16 PM

    How does that work now? Knife fight to decide the winner?

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  41. montag21:17 PM

    One needs vertebrae to get whiplash.

    Carapaces don't suffer from that particular malady.

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  42. Derelict1:18 PM

    I'm waiting for the day that Republicans start telling Democrats that breathing clean air is wildly unpopular--after all, look at all these guys coal-rollin' in their trucks!!!! And Democrats decide that we really need to gut the EPA.

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  43. Derelict1:19 PM

    Are you saying it's a shell game?

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  44. Okay, so once the en banc D.C. Circuit reverses, they'll be in agreement with the Fourth Circuit, and one obvious justification for the Supreme Court to grant cert will be lacking. Anything to keep this away from the Fuckyou Five. (Based on NFIB v. Sebelius, Roberts might be uncomfortable joining his fellows in openly declaring basic standards of statutory construction dead and dancing on their ashes, but it would be best not to risk it.)

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  45. PulletSurprise1:26 PM

    For all of the scummy behavior I've witnessed in my time, this fiendish glee over the deprivation of the underclass may be the one example I'll never understand.

    "That Ebenezer Scrooge guy just didn't have the courage of his convictions."

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  46. montag21:31 PM

    Up until very recently, that was Microsoft's management technique, as well. (And, curiously, it was a favored method in a few of the more fractious--and ideological--communes of the `60s and `70s.)

    It was also a foundational management principle at EDS when Perot ran it.

    Something tells me William Golding was onto something when he wrote Lord of the Flies.

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  47. Susan of Texas1:34 PM

    It's classic authoritarianism; cohesion through ritual purification.

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  48. Jimcima1:37 PM

    Well to be fair it's just a small mistake; it's not like anyone is going to die because of it.

    Oh, wait...

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  49. Derelict1:44 PM

    It won't even be that good: workhouses are, after all, just one more thing the moocher class would take advantage of.

    I'm thinking maybe reinstituting vagrancy laws. But we impose the death penalty and sell off the vagrant's immediate family into chattel slavery. That's the only way to discourage poor people from being poor.

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  50. gocart mozart1:54 PM

    Makes sense

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  51. Susan of Texas1:59 PM

    If we just reinstated slavery then they wouldn't be the big losers that they know they are.

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  52. Gromet2:11 PM

    I can hear it now... "The American People wouldn't be affected by the gutting of the ACA if Obama hadn't told us the lie, 'You can keep your insurance.' But he did lie, and people lost their insurance, so now we have a national tragedy."


    Nevermind that people traded up when they lost their old insurance, and nevermind that Republicans have been relentlessly suicide-bombing the new insurance program. I'd hoped they'd quit trying to blow it up since it was getting popular, but I'm naive. Of course they'll still kill it, and then just tell a million lies until 51% of the population starts to say, "It did look like a good idea, but we know now that it would have destroyed liberty, turned us into a borderless Greece full of drug-dealing Central American kids, and Benghazied the Ukraine right into gay marriage with Strong Handsome Putin. We couldn't risk it!"

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  53. montag22:24 PM

    Oh, dear, to faithfully render that last bit, you must have had to watch way too much of the Fox Five. I hope your insurance--for now, anyway--covers emergency mental health services. Or, at the very least, brain bleach.

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  54. It's all part of this weird misanthropy that's really blossomed as of late. You see it on Fox News all the time - more and more of their stories are not "conservative" so much as they're irrationally angry over things that shouldn't inspire anger. Hell, why not? They're just playing to their audience.


    And that's why the fury and schadenfreude directed towards the poor is so deranged - there's no motive for it at all. It's this weird inversion of empathy that resists any attempts to explain it. You want to see it in its purest form? Every now and then, a newspaper will do a soft-touch piece on poor kids getting school supplies or little presents or free meals from the community. They're just little human interest pieces, really, the kind you're meant to glance at, think "oh, that's nice" and then move on. But go into the comments under the article and you won't have to go far before you find people (often large groups of them) who are just stewing with rage, like this is the greatest injustice they've ever seen. Even if they think poor kids getting free backpacks is somehow "unfair," their anger is way out of proportion to anything they've read.


    Now the GOP has decided that they want these people, that they can build an electorate around the most spiteful assholes in the country. They deserve each other.

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  55. Brian Schlosser2:27 PM

    It's also one of the ways that David Miscavige keeps the Thetans in line at the Scientology Head Offices

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  56. Brian Schlosser2:30 PM

    We can always hope for Scalia to have a rage-induced heart attack in the next year or so. That would give Obama two seats to fill...

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  57. montag22:32 PM

    Let's hope not, because as much time as Obama spent in Chicago, he's woefully uninformed on Chicago rules.

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  58. John Robinson2:33 PM

    No, we can't have that - those slaves just had it too easy, what with free room and board and all. Maybe slavery but with payment for those benefits by forcing the slaves to have children who could be sold for organs?

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  59. willf2:34 PM

    Nevermind that people traded up when they lost their old insurance,



    Not everyone traded up. Lots of people have been forced to buy insurance that they can't afford to use because of high deductibles and copays.


    Also many unions that had been able to provide good policies to their memberships had those policies derided by the Obama administration as "Cadillac coverage" when it moved to destroy them during the catastrophe that was the passage of the ACA. There are many union members that will never be able to get those policies back.

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  60. Brian Schlosser2:37 PM

    Here, here!

    Democrats play as though there is a referee. Republicans know that there isn't one, and so play as dirty as possible.
    It's impossible for us to win unless we cheat as good or better than they do. Yeah, we'll get muddy and they'll get pissed off and act like they've only ever been good little angels, but fuck it. I'd rather win and be a little dirty than stay clean and see them win and bury us all.

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  61. willf2:42 PM

    Not too sure about that.


    The Roberts court upheld everything about the original ACA except the medicaid expansion. Everything else in the bill was just fine with the most business-friendly SCOTUS in US history. They were just fine with a massive transfer of wealth into the pockets of big health insurance corporations.


    And seeing how the 3 judge decision could result in big insurance losing some big money, I'd be willing to bet that Roberts overturns it.

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  62. Brian Schlosser2:43 PM

    I'm reminded of the Tax Denies who claim that because Ohio's statehood paperwork was botched in 1803, the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified and therefore they shouldn't have to pay taxes.

    The difference, of course, being that the courts dismiss that argument for the load of claptrap it is.

    Maybe the Tax Truthers should try again with the DC Circuit?

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  63. willf2:44 PM

    Sometimes progress is taken away incrementally.

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  64. montag22:45 PM

    And Hubbard before him. I wonder why it is that sadism is an ingrained feature of American business group dynamics.

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  65. willf2:48 PM

    I will never understand how or why Democratic politicians have become convinced that they have to repudiate any policy that's popular or obviously good for most people.



    Because they can make obscene amounts of money if they go the other way.

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  66. It's interesting the way they went after the rage-o-path vote. I think it is because Bush II turned the GOP into a bunch of lazy assholes. When Obama got elected they decided the rage-o-paths would be easy to satisfy and have been trying to do so ever since. The problem with that is it drives off the people who aren't rage-o-paths and there are only so many times you can yell insults at the president before normal people, even the ones who support you are like "Yeah, but could you do something about the economy?"

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  67. Robots! Sexy robots.

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  68. Derelict3:23 PM

    Well, it the ACA has certainly proved a sore test of Roberts's allegiance. Does he strike a blow at the Kenyan Muslin Usurper? Or does he uphold the ACA to keep the sweet, sweet cash flowing to the insurance companies?

    This far, he's opted for the cash. But he's also sided with Scalia's interpretations that precedent, congressional intent, and the generally accepted meanings of words as we understand them in English are all meaningless when they stand in the way of a good rightwing ruling.

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  69. Derelict3:24 PM

    Shakes! Wake up, Shakes! I think Glenn Reynolds has nym-jacked you! Wake up!

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  70. Call me crazy but I'm going to assume no one was ever allowed to criticize Ms. Rand.

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  71. Does he strike a blow at the Kenyan Muslin Usurper? Or does he uphold
    the ACA to keep the sweet, sweet cash flowing to the insurance
    companies?Weirdly enough, Alito seems to keep picking the former. I guess he really hates big business.

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  72. Perhaps you kid, but I think this has opened up the floodgates to exactly that kind of case.

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  73. PersonaAuGratin3:43 PM

    I suspect Scalia may be one of those types for whom rage is stress-relieving, not stress-compounding.

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  74. ... Er, I mean, once the anti-big-business anarcho-syndicalists appointed by GHW and GW Bush are overruled by the en banc Circuit court (brought to you by Humana(TM)), the decision will be harmonized with that of the corporate shills of the Fourth Circuit. Then the most business-friendly-in-history SCOTUS bloc of Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan won't have to try again to peel off either Roberts or Kennedy from the business-hating opposite side.

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  75. Brian Schlosser4:01 PM

    I kid, but definitely in the "Ha ha but seriously" sense. These people really would like to see the Republic dissolved on the basis of a typo.

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  76. Susan of Texas4:07 PM

    True. But if they have kids you'll have to give them more food.
    It would be best if you create a corporation, force your employees to pay all their own expenses, and offload all your expenses on them as well.
    But that could never happen.

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  77. John Robinson4:10 PM

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEzH40l-Dg8


    Goldberg's dream...

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  78. Susan of Texas4:10 PM

    The day we can't demolish those little brown-nosing, unthinking, self-pitying, cloyingly sentimental, violently malicious thugs is.....never.

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  79. Another odd similarity: Ayn Rand disliked bathing, and so did Mao Zedong.

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  80. Jon Hendry4:15 PM

    I think Obama should start inviting conservative SC justices to play hoops on the regular.

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  81. Well thanks. The idea of Reynolds jacking anything of mine has given me a Level V case of the dry heaves.

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  82. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps4:21 PM

    Lots of people have been forced to buy insurance that they can't afford to use because of high deductibles and copays.

    Like who?

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  83. L Bob Rife4:23 PM

    The people who didn't have insurance, ergo sum they did not 'trade up' so neener neener.

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  84. Naturally. The fact that an African-American was twice elected president proves that the Great American Experience has failed.

    Speaking of which, I fully expect the kkknuckleheads to reheat the Roberts' stumble during the 2008 Inauguration.

    Also, expect many Serious Reviews the Confederate surrender and all of the Constitutional amendments except #2.

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  85. PulletSurprise4:38 PM

    A death panel by any other name...

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  86. StringOnAStick4:41 PM

    "...weird misanthropy that's really blossomed as of late."
    Stop me before I Godwin, because damn, could it be any more obvious?

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  87. tigrismus4:43 PM

    How does that argument work? It was ratified by well over the number of states required even if you bought their addled notion and removed Ohio.

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  88. StringOnAStick4:46 PM

    This is something that caught my attention over 15 years ago, when we started spending time in Canada and made a few good friends there. When the fear of medical bankruptcy/dying isn't constantly hanging over your head, you can piece together a pretty good life doing fulfilling things. That must be why they hate it so; only the rich deserve that kind of choice.

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  89. Brian Schlosser4:48 PM

    The argument DOESN'T work, that's how goofy they are. But they do have counter arguments, mainly that since Taft was from Ohio, and Ohio wasn't a state, that he couldn't have been president. Which is countered by the fact that the President doesn't come into play during the Amendment process, it's entirely a Legislative process. To which they say "Buh buh buh TYRANNY!"

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  90. Susan of Texas4:52 PM

    Alice Miller did a psychological assessment of Hitler (and other monsters, real and literary). He was routinely and viciously beaten as a child. He had terrible nightmares as an adult, in which he would still be counting the blows.
    He took all that pain and anger and packed it down tight like peat in a bog and then lit the match. He burned down half of Europe to satisfy that anger, and his audience joined in with wild glee because they had the same anger inside. Rigid, authoritarian, repressed Germany watched and smirked while the thugs took out their anger on the Jews, the Other, the weak.
    Then they started killing them.
    Abused children turn into abused adults that try to abuse others. Authoritarian followers were given permission by their leaders to hate and punish. That is why a thousand rages are blooming now.
    But they are weak. They are easily led and easily manipulated. If we can force the leaders to rein in their followers the latter would obey.

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  91. Abused children turn into abused adults that try to abuse others.


    And this is the final joke that society plays on victims. "Oh something bad happened to you? Well now you're a monster too."


    I could further pick apart the necroanalysis of Hitler, but screw it, I can't be arsed. Just stop. Please. Thank you.

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  92. Not to bitch *too* much, but this is one of the central problems with O-Care, that it conceded much too much - an acquaintance of mine is heading up a campaign here in the state to implement a Vermont-style plan, which would of course cover all of us, regardless of who is in office.

    Alas, Dems here are terrified to endorse or accept the viability of option that would damage the successes O-Care has had; in other words, even though it has worked - in its goofball, Rube Goldberg way - for a lot of folks, it's not particularly resilient.

    I would hate to see health coverage go the way of the environment, or reproductive health, or any of the other things the State does for the people at large - that it becomes a "special interest" that gets hauled out and waved at the plebs during election years, but otherwise gets chipped away at, piece by piece, through compromise or ignorance or direct assault, rather than becoming written into the social contract.

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  93. StringOnAStick5:11 PM

    Rein in their followers, how? Fox is looking at 12 on the dial and Perry's sending the Texas National Guard to scare off kids at the border, a macho and stupid action bound to really get some of the haters in a lather.
    Them acting to rein it in would be the same as admitting their ideas are flawed, something I've never, ever seen an authoritarian do. We need a Plan B.

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  94. Keep reminding people about their benefits being yanked- hopefully they'll catch on before November.

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  95. Also, I'm pretty sure that if any member of the Red Meat Brigade were to stand up and say "Now, let's forget all of that unpleasantness and all try to get along," that person would have the life expectancy of a glass hammer in a nail driving contest.

    Maybe I'm just projecting common sense where it can't exist, but if I were someone like Perry, I'd be afraid of my biggest fans.

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  96. Susan of Texas5:27 PM

    That is not at all what I mean. And if you know victimization as well as you think you do, you know nobody has to make a victim feel like a monster. They do it to themselves. Guilt, self-loathing, pain, anger, loneliness, grief, alienation--it has to go somewhere.
    Society doesn't give a shit about victims. They're expensive and troublesome. The victim has to make sense of it all himself. And he has to deal with the mostly negative coping mechanisms he picks up to survive.
    Why don't you just stop. Nobody made you the spokesman for the suffering. If you have a reason for negating Alice Miller's theories say so.

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  97. Susan of Texas5:29 PM

    Bob Altemeyer said if you present a conflicting authority you will confuse them into inactivity, more or less.

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  98. Start collecting all of the triumphant quotes. Ted Crud is tweeting that today is a victory but we need to keep donating to his campaign pushing for full repeal.

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  99. Jon Hendry5:34 PM

    Scrooge lacked a proper theoretical foundation; he should have read Mises.

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  100. Yes, I know no one gives a shit because when someone says something like "Hey, stop with the myth that abuse victims try to abuse other people," even Concerned folks blurt out hopelessly childish responses like "You're not the spokesperson for all victims."

    I admit I am not. Neither am I the boss of you or your mom.

    However, it doesn't change the fact that your statement is a common lie that's spread about victims and it creates one more issue that they have to cope with.

    Again. Please. Stop.

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  101. Susan of Texas5:48 PM

    Some abuse victims who never find a way to deal with their abuse will abuse others. Many will not. That's pretty obvious. The reasons why some will and some won't are less obvious and are the focus of a lot of Miller's work. She said people who form some kind of connection with a person-almost any person-will be able to deal with the betrayal and lack of love.
    And not just people. Some victims have nothing but their dreams, or something in their lives that they love very much and gives them happiness in return. As long as they learn to love they will never be monsters.
    But hey, let's ignore the issue because some assholes like to blame victims.

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  102. montag25:49 PM

    Ah, but it's class warfare to criticize the wealthy. They are just successful entrepreneurs who should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors without being made to feel as if they are unfeeling monsters.

    America is a cruel, cruel place if one has money. One is a virtual pariah, forced to shutter one's self behind the walls of gated communities, pushed away from the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, crowded together with a few like-minded souls in private clubs, unable to even drive one's own limousine. One is not even able to travel as the ordinary folk do, so often whisked around security and quickly and anonymously ushered into tiny jet airplanes no bigger than the Wright Brothers' Flyer while the general public is often accommodated in gigantic air buses. And then, of all things, the wealthy are told that a small tax exemption to maintain those cramped little aircraft is unseemly. Do they truly wish the wealthy to crash and burn? And schools! How the children of the wealthy are persecuted, often so viciously that there is no choice but to hide them away for months at a time at boarding schools, veritable orphanages, but the only islands of stability for the anguished tykes in a tumultuous sea of state-sponsored mediocrity.

    And all the nattering and caterwauling over taxes, as if the nation depended upon them. Take that poor Mr. Schwarzman, for example. Constantly berated on the subject of taxes, even though the carried interest exception means he's forced to borrow money to live on.

    It seems that America no longer respects initiative and drive, is no longer willing to sacrifice a few jobs for the betterment of the bottom line, even guffaws at the sensible proposition that one can still be a self-made man after inheriting only a few hundred million dollars. It has become a place of broken dreams for the striving well-to-do, a nation of complainers, a hapless region where ennui sucks the life out of the energetic rich. American once fostered and admired accumulation by its best citizens, gave its markets free rein and stood aside as the thundering steeds of capitalism charged ahead, and now it is beset and befuddled by communists and fellow travelers and freeloaders.

    And the ungrateful.

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  103. Wait...what? The Democrats get us the fucking ACA which includes the largest Medicaid expansion of all time--they offer all the states an enormous pot of money to cover indigent and working poor single adults for the first time ever using the Medicaid expansion--this is torn away from the actual poor by a rogue Republican Court which rejects long standing custom and law about how to interpret such laws. The Medicaid refusing states also refuse to set up their own exchanges (again, something that no sane person could anticipate) and then sue to prevent subsidies from being offered to individuals on the federal exchange and this is all the fault of the Democrats who are such wimps, losers, and corporatists that they somehow haven't actually brought us the law in the first place, fought for it through the courts, and fought to have it tweaked to make it fireproof all for the indigent, the working poor, and the people that no one gives a fuck about? Get back to me when the imaginary leftists stop dancing on the head of a pin and manage half so much.


    20 million people are now insured under the ACA. 20. Million. Most of whom would not have been insured previously.

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  104. He should arrange to have Scalia go shooting with Cheney again. Second time's the charm.

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  105. There are some people who are getting screwed--but only relative to some other perfect system we don't actually have. People whose employers are providing them insurance at a reasonable rate as individuals, but whose family rate is too expensive, are "screwed" because in this first iteration of the ACA they can't choose to go on the exchanges and get a better rate. Its important to remember that creating affordable coverage for 300 million people, many of whom have pre-existing conditions which made them previously uninsurable or who live in areas where the health care infrastructure is crumbling due to massive numbers of uninsured poor people, is a complicated task. You should expect that the law would go into effect, be found to have some holes and a sane government (i.e. one without Republicans) would simply go about fixing those holes. That is totally normal with a large piece of major legislation. It was true of Medicare, it was true of Social Security, it is always true.

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  106. randomworker6:39 PM

    Nothing says freedumb like heading off to the emergency room.

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  107. hellslittlestangel7:14 PM

    I think you would both appreciate Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon.

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  108. willf7:16 PM

    Great.


    I hop- er.. wish for them that they can afford to use that insurance when the time comes, that the doctors and procedures they need haven't been squeezed out by narrow networking, and that they aren't sent into medical bankruptcy by high deductibles and copays or having to undergo necessary operations that aren't paid for by the network.


    And I hop- um... wish further that all of their claims aren't simply denied out of hand by the same huge insurance corporations that had such a hand in corrupting the current process.

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  109. hellslittlestangel7:21 PM

    Unfortunately, there are millions of people who agree with you.

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  110. hellslittlestangel7:35 PM

    Really. A story about partisan Republicans sabotaging the ACA turns into a "Democrats suck" thread. What the fuck is wrong with us?

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  111. willf7:38 PM

    "Austerity austerity austerity" is a bipartisan agenda.

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  112. Ok--so you don't know anything about how insurance works now, under the ACA? 1) Narrow networks are not a punishment but a form of cost control. Its a way of trying to shift people into accepting adequate but lower cost care rather than insisting on prestigious care at name brand hospitals that gouge the patient with high prices for ordinary tasks so they can subsidize the treatment of other patients with rarefied/expensive treatments. 2) There is a cap on out of pocket expenses. 3) The subsidies were designed to enable people to purchase the silver plans for their region which are not higher deductible than the average plans people were enabled to buy through employer sponsored health insurance if they could have gotten that before. My spouse and I have always had a 6000 dollar deductible through our employer. Health care costs a shitload of money. Many parts of the system are being redesigned to bring costs down and many of the most ordinary needs of ordinary people are now covered without cost sharing. People are, at any rate, no worse off than they were before and many --like fucking millions--are better off. You simply don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

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  113. Bitter Scribe8:44 PM

    Imagine a political party that pins its political hopes on denying millions of its fellow citizens health care.

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  114. Tehanu10:36 PM

    If "Ted Crud" is a misprint, more power to misprints! If you actually intended it, good for you!

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  115. mortimer200011:09 PM

    Two more words: Roger Ailes. In terms of damage to civilized discourse and the entire political process, he and his mercenary journeymen and epigones have drowned us in such a sea of lies and propaganda that I don't see the society recovering any time soon. Murdoch must be so proud.

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  116. mortimer200011:16 PM

    What the fuck is wrong with us?
    Yeah. I used to think this kind of factionalism and endless idiotic sniping was something you just never see on the other side. Lately, what with the teabagging and Thad Cochraning and all, the Goopers are starting to resemble Democrats in this regard. Small comfort.

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  117. JennOfArk12:17 AM

    You are all missing the beautiful possibilities here. Primary among them is the opportunity to pound the GOP, day in and day out, for the MASSIVE TAX INCREASE they are imposing on the self-insured through their refusal to vote on a simple fix for the language in the law.


    That's of course if it gets that far.


    But that's the way to approach it. Run ads nonstop about how Rep So-and-So claims to be anti-tax, so why are self-insured people in his district going to see their taxes go up by thousands of dollars? Because that's what this is - if you take away a big tax credit, that's a tax increase. And we all know how sacrosanct they hold the idea of "no new taxes." Of course, they only mean it when they're talking about rich people. But that's no reason to not accuse them of being massive tax increasers anyway. It's not like they would hesitate to do the same - shit, they just make up whatever they like.

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  118. AGoodQuestion12:29 AM

    There must be some energetic birthers if they're going after Taft as well.

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  119. As the old cliche goes, it's always darkest before the dawn. The entire history of this world is the good guys winning. Never winning big, but winning enough. There will always be these horrible assholes and there will always be the little pissants that thwart them. Usually in just the nick of time.

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  120. Word. I think it's come down to who whines worst. The reichtards are running on fumes. The big wheel keeps on turning.

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  121. It is also normal for most of the civilized world.

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  122. Does the state sell the weed too?

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  123. What social contract? Just look at the NFL to see what contracts are worth anymore. America! Fuck yeah!!

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  124. willf4:27 AM

    Narrow networks are not a punishment but a form of cost control. Its a way of trying to shift people into accepting adequate but lower cost care rather than insisting on prestigious care at name brand hospitals



    (Bangs head on desk)


    I never said it was a punishment, only that it is one of the factors which will result in people paying more for needed care.

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  125. willf4:29 AM

    It's so much better when we all stfu and accept any crumbs the less stupid of the two evil parties see fit to drop on us.

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  126. Narrow Networks don't cause them to pay more for needed care. Narrow Networks are a way of trying to ensure that a lot of people get a lot of care at a good price through volume at local hospitals with doctors that agree to a lower price. Wide Networks are used to lure high paying, cadillac groups who don't want to have their appendix out at "no name hospital" and they cost a fortune.

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  127. The ACA is not a crumb. Really. You should try telling the 20 million people who now have health insurance that they are receiving crumbs that might just as easily be taken away from them.

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  128. robert101411:20 AM

    I saw this quote from Joseph Goebbels somewhere on the web yesterday. It seems applicable:

    "The Jews gradually are having to depend more and more on themselves,

    and have recently found a new trick. They know the good-natured

    German Michael in us, always ready to shed sentimental tears for

    the injustice done to them. One suddenly has the impression that

    the Berlin Jewish population consists only of little babies whose

    childish helplessness might move us, or else fragile old ladies.

    The Jews send out the pitiable. They may confuse some harmless

    souls for a while, but not us. We know exactly what the situation

    is."

    Those who scorn the poor and cheer the removal of any scraps that may be thrown to them "know exactly what the situation is." What the situation is, (in their view), is: the poor are lazy and larcenous, wolves presenting themselves as lambs, appealing to our better natures (sic), (our "good-natured German Michael"), all in an effort to steal from us the fruits of our own hard labor. Such obvious criminality must be resisted, called out, wiped out!

    In so successfully stamping out in themselves any capacity to recognize the humanity of the poor (or any self-awareness of the possibility that they might themselves one day need help), these tea-bagging Randian half-wits have erased their own humanity. In the argot of Philip K. Dick, they are androids, mere simulacra of living beings.

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  129. brettvk12:46 PM

    "So far, they've come up with a website that basically says HEY YOU BE HEALTHIER OK?"


    Oh ghods, I know all about this. I work for America's Evillist Corporation (TM), and they're all about publishing in-house mags and workplace posters and badly designed websites urging us stupid associates to be healthier, you morons. The kindergarten approach is enhanced by almost all workplace incentives dangled in front of us being *free food*
    (primarily junk, of course, and especially soda).

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  130. willf2:08 PM

    That's not the history of the world, that's an episode of Scooby Doo.

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  131. Smarter than Your Average Bear6:09 PM

    No imagination required

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  132. realinterrobang12:19 PM

    In Canada, a disabled, chronically ill person like me can afford to have ambitions. And play sports from time to time. If I were the shrine-building sort, I'd have a shrine in my bedroom to Tommy Douglass.

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  133. Just this morning I opened a flyer announcing the "Back to School Open House for Native American Students". At the bottom, in bold, was this:

    Due to spending cuts, school supply vouchers and shoe vouchers will not be available this year.

    I'm sure this will make someone happy. I just don't want to know who.

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