Shakesville

So This Happened Yesterday

With all the news and anticipation about the ACA ruling to come, this seemed to get buried in the news cycle (emphasis mine):

College students are facing a roughly $20 billion increase in the cost of their federal loans, despite a much-heralded deal in Washington to contain the expense of higher education.

Starting Sunday, students hoping to earn the graduate degrees that have become mandatory for many white-collar jobs will become responsible for paying the interest on their federal loans while they are in school and immediately after they graduate. That means they’ll have to pay an extra $18 billion out of pocket over the next decade.

Meanwhile, the government will no longer cover the interest on undergraduate loans during the six months after students finish school. That’s expected to cost them more than $2 billion.

[...]This week, Senate leaders announced that they had finally reached a compromise on how to pay the estimated $6 billion cost of freezing the rate for one year. Congress is expected to approve the deal by Friday.

[...]

Lawmakers ended a long-standing program that pays the interest on federally subsidized loans for six months after a student graduates from college. The change applies to new loans issued through July 2014.

Students who take out these loans over the next year will receive the lower interest rate — but that amount will be charged to their bill as soon as they throw their graduation caps in the air. Students who apply for federal loans next year will be hit with a double whammy: a higher interest rate that begins after graduation.

That grace period for undergrads has been a tiny saving grace for many people's finances, as they already struggle in the face of high unemployment after graduation.

Many careers require a graduate degree and now the only people who will be able to get one are those who can afford to pay--or afford to gamble juggling finances to pay--the cost while they're still in school and directly after.

Quote of the Day

"Earlier today, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the name of the healthcare reform we passed two years ago. In doing so, they've reaffirmed a fundamental principle: That, here in America, in the wealthiest nation on earth, no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin. I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost—that's how these things tend to be viewed here in Washington—but that discussion completely misses the point. Whatever the politics, today's decision was a victory for people all over this country, whose lives will be more secure because of this law and the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it."—President Barack Obama.

I still have real concerns with the Affordable Care Act. It's got problems, not least of which is that it's not enough. But I am very relieved the Supreme Court upheld it today, in the hope—possibly futile, but hope nonetheless—that this is a meaningful step on a path toward universal coverage.

How the Affordable Care Act Is Already Working

This interactive map is a good resource for understanding how the Affordable Care Act is already working, state-by-state/territory-by-territory.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Amii Stewart: "Knock on Wood"

Blog Note

It's not just you: Comments are failing to load reliably, and are loading very slowly when they do. I'm guessing Disqus is overwhelmed because of the SCOTUS decision this morning. Hopefully, it will resolve soon. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Random Nerd Nostalgia: Wonder Woman Loves SPAM

[Content Note: the image below the fold is a depiction of comic book violence, showing a super-powered character attempting to incapacitate another character via a body blow.]

Watch out, BIFF! POW! and BAM! Now there's SPAM!

Affordable Healthcare Act Upheld

In case you weren't following along in this thread, the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, has been upheld by the Supreme Court. It was a typical 5-4 decision, but Kennedy sided with the conservatives, and Bush-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the less-conservatives.

Amazing.

gif of President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Joe Bidem car-dancing

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog explains: "In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding."

Lyle at SCOTUSblog adds: "Justice Ginsburg makes clear that the vote is 5-4 on sustaining the mandate as a form of tax. Her opinion, for herself and Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan, joins the key section of Roberts opinion on that point. She would go further and uphold the mandate under the Commerce Clause, which Roberts wouldn't. Her opinion on Commerce does not control."

So, essentially, healthcare reform gets upheld on the basis that the government can compel taxation, even though the fed is compelling taxation to for-profit private enterprise (insurance companies) in this case. As opposed to, say, compelling taxation for a single-payer universal system like every other industrialized nation has. But free market conservatives are pissed about the decision, even though it's a giant corporate hand-out to insurance companies.

Meanwhile, progressives are celebrating, even though it's a giant corporate hand-out to insurance companies, because at least people will have access to healthcare.

lol this country.

The decision is available here (pdf).

Garbage Treasures: Wool Edition

In my mailbox recently:

Mini alpacas. Made from alpaca wool. Is it wool if it's from an alpaca? Or is that just for sheep? I don't know. (I don't care.) Alpaca alpacas with eight penny finishing nails for legs. Obviously. Why not? (Why not: Because the legs fall out easily.) The cats love them, so that is something.

As an interesting aside (N.B. this is not interesting) Potter and Jack love all of the Garbage Treasures Liss sends me. Mantis baby, the alpacas, the marshmallow heads. What are the marshmallow heads, you ask? Wait until next week for that one.

SCOTUS Decision on Affordable Healthcare Act

The decision is expected around 10:00am Eastern. In the meantime, here's some background and/or related reading for anyone who's interested...

Kaiser: A Guide to the Supreme Court's Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law [pdf]

Amy Howe: Anticipating the Health Care Decision: In Plain English

Greg Sargent: What the Battle over Obamacare Really Comes Down To

Lyle Denniston: A Reader's Guide to Health Care Ruling

CNN: Supreme Court Set to Make Ruling on Polarizing Health Care Law

Reuters: Obama to Learn Supreme Court Health Verdict from News

E.J. Dionne: Justice Scalia Must Resign

Open Thread

A gibbon jumping out of a tree, arms spread.

Hosted by a gibbon.

Question of the Day

Is there any word you compulsively mispronounce, because you got it into your head it was pronounced one way, and even though you've found out it's totally not pronounced that way, the mispronunciation refuses to unstick?

Capillary. Which is correctly pronounced KAP-uh-ler-ee, but which I persistently mispronounce ka-PILL-er-ee.

Iain is famous for these. He has one of the most prodigious vocabularies of any person to whom I've ever spoken—it's genuinely impressive. It was also gleaned almost entirely from a voracious reading habit, so he's often never heard these words actually spoken by anyone but himself, and it turns out he's not the greatest pronunciation-deducer of all time. My favorite ever was Las Vicious, not an evil city in Nevada but his pronunciation of lascivious, followed closely by you-BICK-tchoo-us, which is how ubiquitous tumbled out of his mouth.

I should note, in case it isn't obvious, that I find this habit to be one of the most charming, utterly endearing things evah about him.

Tweet of the Day

BREAKING Justice Kennedy To Cast Deciding Vote Following Flip Of Enormous, Specially-Minted Coin bit.ly/r8BnSG
— Alan Pyke (@PykeA) June 27, 2012

lolsob forever!

I feel super anxious about the Supreme Court's decision on Obama's healthcare reform tomorrow. Not only because I fear they will make the wrong decision, but because I fear I will not be able to take it when I have to see other USians fucking gloating about restricting access to healthcare.

Quote of the Day

"We Americans take these institutions for granted. We assume that private enterprise generates what is so casually called 'innovation' all by itself. It does not. The Web browser you [may be] using to read this essay was invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The code that makes this page possible was invented at a publicly funded academic research center in Switzerland. That search engine you [may] use many times a day, Google, was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation to support Stanford University. [If you] didn't get polio in your youth [it was] because of research done in the early 1950s at Case Western Reserve. California wine is better because of the University of California at Davis. Hollywood movies are better because of UCLA. And [if your] milk was not spoiled this morning [it was] because of work done at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

"These things did not just happen because someone saw a market opportunity and investors and inventors rushed off to meet it. That's what happens in business-school textbooks. In the real world, we roll along, healthy and strong, in the richest nation in the world because some very wise people decided decades ago to invest in institutions that serve no obvious short-term purpose. The results of the work we do can take decades to matter—if at all. Most of what we do fails. Some succeeds. The system is terribly inefficient. And it's supposed to be that way."—Siva Vaidhyanathan, writing about the recent crisis at the University of Virginia, in which conservative business executives on the governing Board attempted to oust university president Teresa Sullivan.

BushQuotes!

Chapter 6, page 67: Yay we have reached an exciting new chapter! It is called "Reading: The New Civil Right," so you KNOW it's going to be great.

"I had campaigned [for Texas Governor] on a platform of fundamental reform in four major areas: welfare, juvenile justice, tort laws, and education. All four are important, but education is closest to my heart. As I said in speech after speech, education is for a state what national defense is for the federal government, the first priority and most urgent challenge. If a state doesn't educate children, if the federal government doesn't defend America from foreign threat, whatever important issue comes next seems a very distant second."

Spoken like someone whose childhood never knew a hungry day, sustained abuse, or the potential deportation of one's parents. Just to name a few of the things facing Texas children who don't share his privileges.

[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]

Photo of the Day

a plume of smoke rises high into the sky over a freeway

A plume of smoke is seen over Interstate 25 as the Waldo Canyon wildfire moved into subdivisions and destroyed homes in Colorado Springs, Colo. , on Tuesday, June 26, 2012. [AP Photo]

The Colorado Springs' Waldo Canyon wildfire, which started over the weekend, doubled in size overnight, forcing nearly 30,000 people from their homes. Still only about 5% of the fire has been contained.

My thoughts are with Shakers who live and/or have loved ones in the affected areas. It seems coarse to wish that you and your loved ones are all okay, when we know that there are people who are not okay, but there it is. I am hoping you are among the people who are physically unhurt, and you have my profound compassion and sympathy for the hurt and fear you are all certainly feeling.

The American Red Cross is providing temporary shelters and other critical help to those who have been forced to evacuate. They are in need of donations, which can be made via their website, via phone at 1.800.RED.CROSS, or via text: Text "REDCROSS" to 90999 to make a $10 donation.

Also: There will be so many pets and livestock in need of help, shelter, medical aid, food, and protection in the wake of such devastating fires. Please consider making a donation to the Colorado Humane Society & SPCA, or other rescue organization. If you live in the area, they will also be desperate for foster homes for rescued animals, so please consider volunteering if you can.

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave other ideas for teaspooning opportunities in comments.

Twitter Recommends...

Whoooooooooooooooooops! A typical miss, Twitter!
[Note: I don't actually know anything about Mike Birbiglia, who is a stand-up comedian that some people whose opinions I trust say isn't totally horrible. The only thing I've ever seen him in was a one-off scene in Girls where the main character makes a rape joke during a job interview. Oof.]

Texting! With Liss and Deeky!

While I was having lunch with an old friend recently…

Deeky: How's your friend?

Liss: She's good!

Deeky: Cool. Say hi! (Even though she doesn't know me.)

Liss: She says she knows all about you because she reads the blog. She says you're a filthy monster.

Deeky: LOLOLOL! Of course.

Liss: She says to tell you she didn't say you're a filthy monster. I confess—it was I!

Deeky: Like I didn't already know that.

Liss: LOL! I know, right?

Deeky: Yeah. Your friends are cool and would never say that. You, on the other hand, are a dirtbag.

Liss: LOL! No doi. (French.)

Fox News and the Vatican: Together at Last

[Content note: this post contains references to antisemitism, Islamaphobia, and rape.]

Now this is just perfect:

The Vatican has brought in the Fox News correspondent in Rome to help improve its communications strategy as it tries to cope with years of communications blunders and one of its most serious scandals in decades, officials said Saturday.

"Communications blunders." Yes the problem is definitely just awkward messaging!

The Vatican has been bedeviled by communications blunders ever since Benedict's 2005 election, and is currently dealing with a scandal over Vatican documents that were leaked to Italian journalists.... Benedict's now-infamous speech about Muslims and violence, his 2009 decision to rehabilitate a schismatic bishop who denied the Holocaust, and the Vatican's response to the 2010 explosion of the sex abuse scandal are just a few of the blunders that have tarnished Benedict's papacy.

Whoooops those wacky papal "blunders!"

Now I'm no fancy-schmancy Fox News propagandist/member of Opus Dei, but I offer the Vatican this advice, free of charge:

You would probably have fewer "communications blunders" if you got some new messages that were a little less (how shall I put this?) GARBAGE. Say, something along the lines of "We will turn suspected predators over to the authorities immediately" or "We will not tolerate Holocaust denialism from our leadership" or "We stand against harmful anti-Islamic stereotypes." For a start.

Daily Dose of Cute

True Fact: Dudley is the goofiest goofball that ever goofed. Exhibit A:

Video Description: Dudley the Greyhound lies next to me on the couch, looking at me upside-down. He rolls his head around and flops it down beside me. "What are you doing?" I ask him, reaching out and scratching his head. I stop, and he nudges his nose under a pillow between us, then looks up at me plaintively. "What you are you doing, Dudley?" I scratch his head and he yawns, then rolls around friskily. He rolls onto his back with his gangly legs in the air, tossing his head around, then yawns dramatically, his impossibly long tongue lolling out of his mouth. He hangs his head off the couch, and I pan over to his body, perpendicular to his head, legs in the air. He flops his head back onto the couch and rolls around some more, rubbing his nose, then collapsing back beside me. He looks up at me, then gets up, stretches with his back legs still on the couch, shakes his head, and trots away, all the while in his own Dudley world.

image of Dudley lying on the couch looking goofy, with his tongue hanging out

image of Dudley lying on the couch looking goofy, with his tongue hanging out

"What?"

This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Paul Farhi in the Washington Post—Women aren't principal news sources on women's issues, 4th Estate analysis finds:

Men have long been the predominant sources for the news media on issues such as the economy, politics and the military. And a new analysis of campaign coverage found that women aren't even the principal news source on a topic they would presumably know best: women's issues.

Major news outlets, print and TV, turn mainly to male sources for their take on abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood, according to a study by 4th Estate, a research group that monitors campaign coverage.

Women don't even rate as the most common sources for reports about "women's rights," a catch-all category that excludes reproductive issues, the group said. Women accounted for less than a third, or 31 percent, of the sources in these reports, with men in the majority, 52 percent, and institutions and organizations comprising the balance.

On some topics, such as abortion, men were four to seven times more likely as women to be the ones offering an opinion, according to 4th Estate, an offshoot of Global News Intelligence, a company that monitors media sources for government agencies and companies. It concluded: "The gender gap undermines the media's credibility."

Michael Howe, a spokesman for 4th Estate, said his group's findings suggest that reporters might have "an unconscious bias" when it comes to selecting people who offer expertise and opinions about the news. "The thinking [among reporters] may be that men have more authority on a topic than women do," he said.

Emphasis mine.

Here are some labels at Shakesville (which we only started using in the last two years) and the numbers of posts filed under those labels:

Abortion: 185.

Anti-Choicers Do the Darnedest Things: 133.

Chipping Away at Roe: 189.

Chipping Away at Griswold: 24.

Contraception: 27.

Reproductive Coercion: 33.

Reproductive Rights: 194.

War on Agency: 9.

Those are just the labels explicitly associated with reproductive rights, not including other subjects that may be of interest to women, e.g. Women (126), Misogyny (288), Rape Culture (410), Homophobia (150), Racism (146), Fat Hatred (172), Feminism (87), or Economy (234), which is by no means a comprehensive list.

Number of times I have been approached by a member of the US mainstream media as a source for a story on women's issues: 0.

[H/T to @PeterDaou.]