June already. Still trying to wrap my head around that...
- The recently retired super-blogger Dave Dayen, arguing for restoration of the cuts that were made to adult dental far in California's Medi-Cal program:
This is not a particularly expensive program to restore; somewhere between $75 million and $130 million annually will get you there. Factoring in the savings in uncompensated care, the total cost is much lower. And the public health impact is astonishing. Research shows that chronic dental disease adversely impacts quality of life and makes it hard to secure employment; your smile, after all, is your first impression. Attend any free health clinic around the state and you’ll see most of the treatment going toward dental care. Sen. Rod Wright used a hearing last week to talk about people in his district waiting three days in line in at one of these clinics. “I had three people who were there who got tired of waiting and violated their parole so that they could go back to prison to get tooth and dental care,” Wright said. Similarly, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s visit to a free dental fair last year fueled his passion over the issue, which he made a priority.
If this were a case of crazy, big-spending liberals wanting to give away the state’s hard-earned surplus, that would be one thing. But last week, the Senate Budget Committee voted unanimously to restore adult dental care to Medi-Cal, with the entire Republican delegation on the committee agreeing. California has the most polarized legislature in America, and there isn’t a close second. You can count the number of unanimous votes in the state over the last decade on one finger.
This is true. And yet, Gov. Brown seems set on preserving a more austere record.
- Drivers in Oklahoma City took shelter from the recent tornadoes and storms by breaking into a convenience store. Hope everyone stays safe.
- This is heartbreaking. I remember visiting Grindelwald as a boy, and it's just one more tragic consequence of climate change.
- Megyn Kelly of Fox News stands up to Erick Erickson on his atrocious misogyny:
Comparing Erickson to the people who used pseudo-science to argue against interracial marriage a half-century ago, Kelly asked, “Why are we supposed to take your word for it, Erick Erickson’s science, instead of all these experts?”:
KELLY: In this country in the ’50s and ’60s there were huge numbers of people that believed that the children of interracial marriages were biologically inferior and that is why it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in some states in the country up until 1967. And they said it was science and fact if you were the child of a black father and white mother or vice versa you were inferior and not set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama.
Apparently, there's only so much even a Fox News host can take.
- Rep. Louie Gohmert is now blaming both Sen. John McCain and President Obama for the incident at Benghazi. You know, in other eras of history, leaders had nicknames. Alexander the Great, Aethelred the Unready...so why not "Gohmert the Conspiratorially Insane"? Has a ring to it.
- Once a Howard Dean fan, always a Howard Dean fan. Here's the former DNC Chair expressing his opinion of the National Review:
“National Review is just silly,” he began. “Who is going to take them seriously? It's a right-wing conservative nutcase. Let’s just be blunt about the National Review, right? They claimed last week that I said that the death of four Americans in Benghazi was a joke. What I said was that the investigation was a joke. This is crap. Who gives a damn? This is why I don’t read editorial pages 'cause I don’t give a damn what these people think.”
Basically, yes.