Friday, July 21, 2017

Weekend Reading: The Heading to a Wedding Edition

I don't get to rollerblade today, because we have a wedding to go to. I thought maybe I could still squeeze in an outing... but no luck. Oh well.

Instead of a rollerblade, I took a short post-lunch nap. My husband found an interesting looking new mystery show on Acorn, called Loch Ness. He pitched it to me as a mix of Hinterland and The Brokenwood Mysteries, which sounded great. So we started watching it, and... it is good, but it is not like Hinterland and Brokenwood! Each episode in those series is a self-contained mystery. In Loch Ness, there is one mystery stretched across the entire series. This makes it harder to stop after one episode. It also increases the chances that I'll end up having weird dreams involving the show. So we stayed up too late last night watching the first three episodes and I still had weird dreams. SIGH. Hence, the short nap so that I am not a grumpy mess for the wedding we're going to.

Anyhow, on to the links for the week.

I found the Pod Save the World episode with Julia Ioffe ("Why Did Putin Do It?") really interesting and a bit scary. I recommend it, though, if you want to try to understand what we're up against.

Speaking of scary, this Brian Beutler piece... yikes. But also true. And then James Fallows' note about it is depressing, because I can't honestly say I have confidence that three Republicans in the Senate will step up if it comes to that.

If you, like me, have been reading Josh Marshall on the Russia connection since during the campaign, you'd probably be unsettled by the fact that he is now arguing it is probably worse than we think. But I can't argue with his points. We're in scary territory.

Meanwhile, healthcare... the Senate repeal effort came back from the dead. Even though the CBO found a big problem: some of the plans it would create violate existing laws. Of course, those laws could be changed, but maybe not via the reconciliation process.

And speaking of the reconciliation process, the "Byrd bath" has begun... here is an explanation of what that means. But details of what BCRA provisions are not going to make it through are not yet out anywhere I can find to link to them. This tweet thread has some early details:




To be honest, I am having a hard time keeping up on what is going on with healthcare. That is may be by design, I don't know. I do know that if I lived in a state with a Republican senator, I'd be calling every week to reiterate my opposition to this mess.

In other healthcare news, it looks like the Trump administration used taxpayer money to run ads undermining the ACA.

Moving on....

I hadn't seen this story about John McCain and Mo Udall before.

This book on the decline of White Christian America looks interesting, and would probably help me understand why so many white Christians feel under attack. I will try to make time to read it.

In personal promo/cross links news:

Here's the cover reveal for Water into Wine, the next Annorlunda Books release. It will be out September 27, 2017 and available for pre-order August 30.

I made a beach lounger I made for Petunia's teddy bear.

And now my husband is hovering wondering when I'm going to get ready for the wedding... so I'll close out. Here's this week's cute bunnies:


No comments:

Post a Comment

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.