News Burst: May 03, 2017

Hey Guys and Gals,

I hope this finds you well! As promised last night, I’m posting this one later than usual to keep it distanced from yesterday’s later post. I will strive to recapture a more sane and timely schedule for News Bursts moving forward. =)

ICYMI, I added a $55 tier to Patreon today -- just above the $50 tier for postcards -- where I’ll print out the #ADayWithoutAWoman Tweet on good paper, sign it, and send it off to you. Some folks were asking for it, so I made that happen. No need for anyone to move around, otherwise, but I’m not going to widely promote it, and simply wanted to let y’all know.

Otherwise, let’s just right in! Then, I’m going to back to editing tomorrow’s video. No matter how I schedule my time, something always comes up, and I’m always editing the next video the night before it’s due to go up. C’est la vie!

The House Will Vote on Obamacare Repeal: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/house-to-vote-thursday-on-obamacare-repeal-bill-237949

My Take: In the words of the famous Ron Paul GIF, it’s happening. Or, it appears that way, at least. The GOP in the House, led by Paul Ryan, is confident that they have the requisite 216 votes to pass Obamacare’s repeal-and-replace through the chamber, after a series of vote trading alterations and amendments were offered and added. According to Politico, 18 moderate Republicans are publicly against. That means only four more Republicans can vote no. (Obviously, no Democrats will vote yes.)

I don’t even want to focus on what’s in the bill here. What I want to focus on is why the GOP feels like this is a hill worth dying on. Obamacare has never been more popular, and while it’s in its own death spiral, it’s still helping millions of people. Whether or not the government should even be involved in health care is neither here nor there; the fact is, millions are relying on Obamacare as is, and while it might not be there in a few years, it’s there now. And these people will remember if they’re screwed, just like the Tea Party remembered.

This is a poisonous vote for the GOP, and they’d be wise to let this one go. But as I noted yesterday, the only way tax reform gets done in the style the GOP is trying to do it in is to extract significant savings from health care to use in the tax cuts. This is a sequence of events that must fall just right for all to go well. I think the House is going to regret taking this vote, though, especially because I’m not too sure it even has a prayer in hell of passing the Senate. So what’s the point?

Macron and LePen Debate: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-idUSKBN17Z03V?il=0

My Take: Yesterday, I had mentioned that this was happening today, and I had been eagerly anticipating word from France about what had happened. This Reuters write-up tells the tale pretty vividly, yet succinctly. Macron, painting himself as a centrist (even though he isn’t; he was in the socialist cabinet) had an aggressive debate against Le Pen, who preached her usual bag of tricks: Immigration reform, getting out of the EU and off of the Euro, protectionism, et cetera.

What I was most surprised about -- perhaps because I’m somewhat ignorant on the subject -- is the fact that Macron was widely considered the easy victor in the debate. Opinion polling taken directly after the debate saw him winning the exchange comfortably, which mimics his comfortable ~20 point lead over Le Pen in general election polling. As I said yesterday, this is absolutely Macron’s race to lose, and yet I don’t believe for even a second that Le Pen is 100% destined to lose. It’ll all be settled in the coming days.

I’ll also put out a word of caution, not only about the general election polling, which could obviously be suspect (I’d bet Le Pen is way closer than 20 points, but still far out of reach), but also about the opinion polling taken after the debate. Remember that Clinton supposedly beat Trump in the debates in the fall of 2016, and yet, we had an unexpected outcome come election time. Macron is almost certainly going to win, but still, the last few years have taught me to be very wary of conventional wisdom, indeed.

Stephen Colbert Won’t Apologize: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/stephen-colbert-defends-trump-jokes-sparked-firecolbert-backlash-999991

My Take: Good for him. He shouldn’t. There’s way too much apologizing going on these days, way too many people backpedaling to please the forever-offended, the perpetually up-in-arms, and the chronically aggrieved. And it’s getting old. In this fight, Colbert isn’t someone I dislike; he’s an ally and a friend. Then again, he’s on TV and he’s about a million times more well-known than me, so he’s getting it way worse than I did. He’s also a millionaire, so it mustn’t be that hard to sleep at night, regardless.

Then again, he did have a bit of a mea culpa, one far more than I would have ever given, if I were in the same position. While he said he would tell the joke again, and that he doesn’t regret telling it, he would change some words to remove some of the crudeness factor. I think that’s silly. The joke was fine as-is. As I said in yesterday’s News Burst, a person telling another person that he sucks dick is as American as apple pie, baseball, and rock music.

The bigger thing here is this: Partisanship. As usual, no one is actually offended. It’s just a way for people to score political points. The left has certainly become more and more puritanical over time -- I often call them the new Religious Right -- but, here, it’s right wing people upset, not at the joke, but at the hypothetical in which Stephen Colbert was a conservative, and therefore would have been ridiculed. What I say to that is, who the fuck cares. Free speech is free speech is free speech. Let’s not make it more of a partisan issue than it’s already become. We have to change this destructive status quo somehow.

Puerto Rico is Officially Broke: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/business/dealbook/puerto-rico-debt.html

My Take: This has been a very long time coming. The American territory of Puerto Rico is flat broke, and finally had to come to terms with it, by chasing de facto bankruptcy relief on its $123 billion in governmental debt and unfunded liabilities. As the story at the New York Times aptly points out, this is far, far worse than the $18 billion bankruptcy sought not too long ago by the city of Detroit, another micro-economy that fell off a cliff, albeit for some different reasons.

The situation in Puerto Rico is complicated, but the fact is that the territory has been in fairly bad financial shape for decades, and terrible financial shape since I was in college. The story touches on the “brain drain” happening in Puerto Rico -- the idea that the most talented people in Puerto Rico, the ones that can turn the ship around, are instead leaving for the mainland -- which could be the most significant issue of all. It’s kinda like Atlas Shrugged. (Okay, not really.)

The cautionary tale outlined by the New York Times is truly the big takeaway, however. The situation in Detroit was a harbinger of things to come, and Puerto Rico is simply the next fallen domino. The story points out the State of Illinois and the City of Philadelphia as two locales that may find themselves in deep water soon, too. And, of course, Puerto Rico’s creditors are also incredulous. I would be, too. This is a complete mess.

The Queen of England’s Secret Meeting: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4471696/Royal-staff-called-London-emergency-meeting.html

My Take: This is an interesting story to end on. The basic gist of it is that Queen Elizabeth II has apparently recalled her entire staff, from all over the UK, to hold a meeting with everyone, to disseminate some sort of information. Folks familiar with the goings-ons of Queen Elizabeth II cite that the nature of the meeting, the last minute calling of it, and the urgency of it suggest something interesting (and perhaps serious) might be announced.

I’d be talking out of my ass if I said anything else. This is simply something to keep an eye on. I think monarchies are incredibly silly in the 21st century (or the 20th, or the 19th…), even if they are relatively powerless. Yet, I hope that all is well with Queen Elizabeth II. She seems like a nice woman.