Thursday Afternoon Open Thread

by 3:11 pm. It has 7 Comments.

Here’s a reminder to keep Thor in Thursday:

goldilocks

Open thread!





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Drowning Reaganism in a Bathtub (Water Courtesy of Flint, MI)

by 11:56 am. It has 162 Comments.

In the morning thread, valued commenter Rikyrah highlighted comments President Obama made yesterday in Flint, Michigan (full transcript here):

It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how responsible you are, how you raise your kids. You can’t set up a whole water system for a city. That’s not something you do by yourself. You do it with other people. You can’t hire your own fire department or your own police force, or your own army. They’re things we have to do together. Basic things that we all benefit from.

Volunteers don’t build water systems and keep lead from leaching into our drinking glasses. We can’t rely on faith groups to reinforce bridges and repave runways at the airport. We can’t ask second graders, even ones as patriotic as Isiah Britt, who raised all that money, to raise enough money to keep our kids healthy. You hear a lot about government overreach. Oh, Obama, he’s for big government. Listen, it’s not government overreach to say our government’s responsible for making sure that you can wash your hands in your own sink, or shower in your own home, or cook for your family. These are the most basic services. There’s no more basic element sustaining human life than water. It’s not too much to expect for all Americans that their water is going to be safe.

This is a theme every Democrat should take up and champion, from Hillary Clinton on down to the lowliest city council candidate in Lizarddick, New Mexico. The situation in Flint is a great illustration of this principle — of the disaster that results from putting balance sheet-focused MBAs with no remit other than slashing costs in charge of public assets.

There’s an example in every single community in America of a facility, infrastructure asset or service citizens banded together and built for the public good — something that’s now falling apart because the cheap bastards in the GOP would rather shovel tax cuts to Donald Trump. It’s a disgrace.

I love what Obama said above because it implicitly calls out Reagan’s “government is the problem” bullshit. It wasn’t over-regulation that poisoned Flint’s water. It wasn’t government overreach that dug the pothole that bashed the undercarriage of your car. It isn’t anti-business bureaucrats who make driving over crumbling bridges a life-or-death adventure.

In a widely misunderstood remark he made during the 2008 primaries, then-candidate Obama said he aspired to have a presidency as truly consequential as Reagan’s. I think history will say he has. And he could have no better legacy than inspiring his party to drown Reaganism in a bathtub and embrace the truth that the government is us.


Trump-proofing the Republican nomination process in the future

by 7:29 am. It has 148 Comments.

This post is speculation. It assumes that Trump will lose and lose big in November and that the Republican establishment as defined by a variety of rules committees has the power and the will to institute changes to the Republican primary process to Trump-proof the process.

The easiest way for the Republican Party to Trump-proof itself is to stop lying to its supporters. The Republican Party elite is fundamentally not trustworthy to its base voters. The core example is the promise that a Republican House and a Republican Senate could force President Obama to unwind PPACA while he sat in the White House. That was not going to happen. Trustworthy elites won’t happen as there is too much money to be made from fleecing the rubes. Once we take policy honesty off the table, rule changes are the next step.

Trump is the delegate leader (and presumptive delegate majority holder once the process plays out) with a low proportion of the total vote.

He benefited from a split field and a rules system that allowed factional plurality leaders to amass delegate strength out of proportion to their actual vote counts. Winner take all elections with more than two candidates have this common failure. There were two sets of winner take all elections in this current Republican primary. The first was state level delegates where the winner of a state received a significant bonus number of delegates and then winner take all at the Congressional District level. The Republicans assigned three delegates to each Congressional District without regard to how many Republicans actually lived or voted in that district.

538 has a good example of how this flat allocation of winner take all delegates by district helped Trump:

If Ted Cruz wins by a huge margin in Milwaukee’s suburbs, as expected tonight, he’ll get all three delegates from Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District, which cast 257,017 votes for Mitt Romney in the 2012 general election. But in two weeks, Donald Trump could capture just as many delegates by winning a majority of the vote in New York’s heavily Latino, Bronx-based 15th Congressional District, which cast only 5,315 votes for Romney four years ago.

Three weeks ago, Trump won three times as many delegates — nine — at the Northern Mariana Islands convention, which drew just 471 participants.

This is problem #1. The GOP primary delegation process favors plurality winners and it favors candidates who can win in very low turnout environments. There is a massive variance between the minimum number of votes needed per delegate and the maximum number of votes needed per delegate. Some districts are extremely efficient and some are extremely inefficient places to win. The Republicans treat districts like the Senate treats states. The first rule change would be to scale the delegate award to some measure of Republican vote strength.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: I Approve This Message

by 6:05 am. It has 99 Comments.


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Also, I still {heart} my senior Senator…


***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the day?


Enough Already, Senator Sanders

by 4:03 am. It has 189 Comments.

Politico, last night — “It’s mathematically impossible for Bernie to win with pledged delegates”:

… After winning Indiana, Sanders has 1,399 pledged delegates and superdelegates to his name, according to the Associated Press’ count. That means he needs 984 more to reach the threshold of 2,383 needed to win.

The remaining contests, however — Guam, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the District of Columbia — only have 933 pledged delegates to offer.

So even if Sanders were to win 100 percent of the pledged delegates in each of those states, he wouldn’t make it past the mark…

You are perfectly free to keep campaigning, to run against the Republican nominee and all his fellow Repub enablers, to fight fiercely for your goals at the Democratic convention. But if you have any power over your most fervent followers — and you do! — it’s time to let them know that ratfvcking Hillary Clinton for Donald Trump’s benefit is not the way to achieve a better, more equitable society. You’ve made it clear how proud you are to have so many people behind you; let them keep making you proud, not by carrying on like Karl Rove or Roger Stone.


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Never Forget What Got Us Here

by 9:22 pm. It has 215 Comments.

GOP-Elephant-dumps-on-a-US-flag-485x329
(Image via)

So this happened:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s committed to supporting Donald Trump’s presidential bid.
But, the Kentucky Republican wrote, he has expectations of Trump — who he said “now has the opportunity and the obligation to unite our party around our goals.”

McConnell said in a statement Wednesday night that he plans to support the real estate mogul, who became the GOP’s presumptive nominee once Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ended his campaign after losing Indiana’s primary on Tuesday night and Ohio Gov. John Kasich then dropped out of the race on Wednesday.

“I have committed to supporting the nominee chosen by Republican voters, and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee, is now on the verge of clinching that nomination,” McConnell said.

“Republicans are committed to preventing what would be a third term of Barack Obama and restoring economic and national security after eight years of a Democrat in the White House,” he said. “As the presumptive nominee, he now has the opportunity and the obligation to unite our party around our goals.”

There’s going to be a whole bunch of #nevertrump wankery in the upcoming months, but that doesn’t mean they will do anything to defeat him. They may choose to sit out as these two profiles in courage, Bush 41 and Bush 43, but they won’t actually vote for the only other option in the race. But it needs to be said over and over and over again. We are hear because of the Establishment GOP.

For the last couple decades, the GOP has been eagerly supporting the political equivalent of suicide bombers. You can go through the list of the top tier un-elected idiots, whether they be Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, the entire coterie at Red State and Hot Air and the National Review, and the gun nutters and fascists and Bundy bros that they all play footsy with, and every one of them was all in on the teahadists and shit fer brains when it served them. And then the elected nutters from Steve King to Bachmann to that you lie shitbird to on and on and on. I’m not even going to waste your time and give you acid indigestion listing all these toilet bowl clingers.

So yeah, now you’re against Trump. You’re so fucking principled. It’d be horrible for conservatism if Trump wins.

Fuck you.


Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Be of (Comparatively) Good Cheer

by 8:57 pm. It has 101 Comments.

Yes, we must all buckle down and do our very damndest to ensure Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes our next President. But at least we’re not any of these guys!


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NHL/NBA Playoffs Open Thred

by 8:05 pm. It has 36 Comments.

AL has a thread in the works for you non sportsball people.

GO PENGUINS!





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Team Clinton Has Been Waiting For a Couple Decades

by 6:25 pm. It has 302 Comments.

To beat the fuck out of a Republican, so they aren’t even waiting until she has the nomination.

People keep saying that Hillary isn’t going to know what hit her when Trump unloads. I think she does. She’s been dealing with it for decades.

I don’t think Trump knows what it is going to feel like to be bludgeoned by Clintonites who have had negative ad blue balls for a couple decades. They didn’t unload on Bernie and they got warned off Obama in 2008, so Trump is going to get the full treatment. It’s going to be fucking beautimous.





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Bets and the Beanstalk (Open Thread)

by 6:13 pm. It has 43 Comments.

One feature of living in the sun-blasted hellscape of Florida, in addition to the giant, flying, indestructible cockroaches and invasive alien reptiles — one of whom has purchased the governorship — is the option to start spring gardening in February.

Our beanstalks are already 11 feet tall! Here’s today’s haul:

The best way to cook these beauties is to sauté them gently in olive oil, add a split garlic clove, then finish them with some lemon zest and pecorino cheese. Unbelievably good.

But tonight, we’re gonna fry some up in beer batter and dip them in homemade boom-boom sauce. What are you having for dinner?

Anyway, open thread!





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He’s a bandit and a heartbreaker

by 3:20 pm. It has 289 Comments.

It’s still hard for me to believe that #NeverTrump wasn’t able to make a dent in the Donald by hammering away at Trump University and Trump’s misogyny.

This ad about Trump University was pretty good:

As was this ad about Trump’s misogyny:

The media will try to recast Trump as a serious reformicon maverick between now and November. And we’ll certainly get a lot of this:

[T]he Clinton campaign and its surrogates will bring up Trump University and Trump’s bankruptcies and Trump’s mob ties and history of racial discrimination — but these stories will reported with the asterisk “On the other hand, the Clinton Foundation blah blah blah blah blah,” or “In the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton’s cattle-future trading was investigated….” Both Sides Do It, so the press will feel the need to yoke every Trump scandal to a Clinton scandal. This tendency is likely to be extended even to such matters as Trump’s racism: Yes, Trump calls Mexicans “rapists” and wants to ban Muslims, but Hillary Clinton said “off the reservation” that one time.

But I think that the reaction to the Trump University scam and “she’s a dog” etc. is visceral in a way that Both Sides Do It can never be. I think the only question is how voters react to MenaGate, TravelGate, MonicaGate, BenghaziGate, and so on. My guess is that most of it is too complicated for non-wingers to understand. I wonder if we’ll see some longer documentaries about the murder of Vince Foster on our teevee screens this fall.


You Think I’m Cute: Barack and Michelle Love Story

by 3:03 pm. It has 47 Comments.

I know, I know, I’m a total fan girl. Thanks to Germy for sharing this.

I predict heads exploding from the usual suspects.

Consider this a pleasant afternoon open thread.


Reducing errors

by 1:16 pm. It has 27 Comments.

One of the better ways to reduce errors is to admit what went wrong and then how to solve those problems.  538 and Nate Silver got the Republican race fundamentally wrong as they were applying a modified “The Party Decides” framework as a core assumption to their analysis. Nate Silver has a good tweet on how he is changing his thinking now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee:

This applies to hospitals and medical decision making errors.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has an interesting approach about errors that are made at the hospital. They treat their errors as learning and process improvement opportunities. More importantly, they publish their errors.  Here is one sample:

What Happened
Nurse A was caring for a patient, Susan, and administered a dose of cough suppressant, which could be taken on an as needed basis every 8 hours, at 7:00 AM. Susan’s next dose, if needed, could therefore be given at 3:00 PM. That afternoon, a second nurse (Nurse B) was assigned to care for the patient while Nurse A was off the unit. Nurse B administered the next dose of medication because Susan was coughing. When Nurse A, resumed care of Susan, she gave her what she believed was Susan’s second dose of cough suppressant at 2:30 PM. Nurse A administered the medication at 2:30 p.m. because Susan was scheduled to leave the unit for testing and would not be back by 3:00 PM when the dose was originally scheduled. The nurse received a message in the electronic health record that the dose was being given early, “Based on the ordered frequency, this medication is possibly being administered too close to another administration.  Please review previous administrations to verify appropriateness.”  The message wasn’t surprising since she was purposefully giving her the second dose 30 minutes early. What she didn’t know is that Susan had already received the second dose from Nurse B. Fortunately, Susan was not harmed by this additional dose. 

What We Are Doing
When Nurse A filed the safety report about this event, she included an idea for avoiding similar events in the future. She suggested that the warning box in the electronic health record that highlights the early medication time, also include the time the last dose was given.  In this case, the warning would have alerted her to the time Nurse B administered the medication and prevented the duplicate dose.

Based on this error, safety report and improvement suggestion, IS (Information Services) is adding a best practice alert (BPA) displaying the last administration time for all PRN (as needed) medications.

We learn by our mistakes. We only learn when we figure out why a mistake was made and we can then re-adjust either our mental model or our practical routines to incorporate that new and valuable information.


Oh thank god

by 1:16 pm. It has 88 Comments.

Now that Trump has become the only game in town for Republicans, Bill Kristol sounds a lot less firm about #nevertrump. I can maybe handle David Frum as long as he stays on the lawn and doesn’t try to mingle. Bill Kristol on the other hand can keep the fuck out of my political coalition.

I am also pleased to see that Dick Morris has adapted from dumb Why Trump will implode tomorrow this time for real pieces to dumb explanations of why Morris was sure all along that Ted Cruz was toast (find your own links to Newsmax). I will feel a lot better about November with the two most reliably wrong pundits in American history on Trump’s side.

Seriously though, Dick Morris. Hillary Clinton. At this point he doesn’t have much choice but get with Trump, does he?

But in general I see no reason why all those Republicans running from Trump necessarily have to jump in bed with the Democrats.

No_Homers_Club

They could always start a new party! Let Trump have his Front National voters and focus on the GOP’s core values of low taxes for rich people, slashing Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security, and military belligerence. Surely racist stupidity could not explain that much of the GOP’s continued relevance as a national party. Why not put the question to a test?


Canada Providing a Preview of the Trump Presidency

by 12:18 pm. It has 41 Comments.

mcmurray

Only because I have Canadian friends (and so do you all- Redkitten!) am I aware that Canada is dealing with a horrifying forest fire:

The sky in Fort McMurray now looks like a wall of fire and smoke as a mammoth inferno swallows parts of the Canadian city.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of about 80,000 people, including the entire city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said Wednesday.

The blaze has already destroyed 80% of Fort McMurray’s Beacon Hill community, RM Wood Buffalo said. Well over a dozen homes burned down, but the full breadth of the destruction remains unclear.

The videos are terrifying. Let’s keep our neighbors to the north in our thoughts.





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