Specialist Pound Cake

• I'm thawing/softening a stick of butter which may take forever.  
• I begin to suspect that God did, in fact, create perfect people to populate the planet, and then got Bored.
• Looking at Tom Price, who doesn't understand why the insurance companies don't want to return to pre-Obamacare practices:

  "But if you look at the Republican plan to modify it and replace it, more than 10 medical groups are against it. Thirty-two cancer organizations oppose it. And on Thursday, in a rare joint statement by the biggest insurance companies in the country, called the Cruz Amendment unworkable in any form and warned it would lead to, quote, 'widespread terminations of coverage.'
  
  "So, Dr. Price, why this wall of opposition?"

  (Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)
  
• Looking at Rand Paul:

  So you're talking about fighting insurance companies in fifty different states -- often in states where those companies are based. Good luck with that!
  
  You're also talking about underwriting and administering all these smaller groups -- groups that won't save that much money because their risk pools aren't large enough.

  (Also Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)
  
• The Rude Pundit:

  Republicans are saying, in word and action, that they hold their constituents in contempt. The voters are disposable. In fact, they are saying, let's help them along, whether by starving them or taking away their health care. And then let's make them thank us because, we can say, we kept our promises.

• Cornered?  (William Rivers Pitt, Truthout,  via Alternet)
• Sounding an alarm for conservatives:

  One of the reasons why the radical right was able to overcome conservatives back in the 1930s was that the conservatives did not understand the threat. Nazis in Germany, like fascists in Italy and Romania, did have popular support, but they would not have been able to change regimes without the connivance or the passivity of conservatives.

  (Timothy Snyder, The Guardian, via AlterNet)Also, some parts of them were in unspoken agreement with the fascists.
• Yastreblyansky tweets about the meeting with the Russians.  The comments are of interest, too.
• More efforts to reduce the number of registered voters (via twistedchick on dreamwidth).  In the name of Republican Satanic panic "voter fraud" "prevention," of course.