Obamacare Deadline Miscellany!

• Oregonians have until April 30th to buy health insurance through Cover Oregon — mostly because Cover Oregon is such an incredible clusterfuck. To apply, download the form from here, fill it out, and mail it in. They'll ask you for a lot of financial details (gag). Yes, it's a project. But if you're eligible for fat subsidies or Medicare, it's probably worth it. Of course, if you already have insurance, you can skip this altogether.


• Speaking of which, Cover Oregon is going to replace their site — and Portland company Metal Toad want to do that work, and keep it open source, for the low low price of $10 million. I admire their gusto, but if you ask me, the price tag will be more like $50 million once Metal Toad gets all the requirements.


• ACA signups are heading to 7 million enrollees, matching the original CBO projections before people realized the website was a complete mess. In theory, this is bad news for Republican excuse-making. In practice, the Republicans have won the debate, at least for the next election cycle. Their base is convinced that Obamacare is simply a huge bribe to poor voters (whom they hate), unemployed voters (whom they hate), and disabled voters (whom they hate), to vote Democratic (which they hate). The swing voters are convinced that Obamacare can't work. Finally, Democrats mostly support Obamacare, but Democratic candidates simply don't feel like defending the law, probably because they're listening to mealy-mouthed triangulating idiots like this person. You know it's bad when the ultimate triangulator, Bill Clinton, tells you to 'nad up. Again, this goes to the Democratic and Republican campaign strategies of old: Democrats appease the base and crank the swing voter (the Obama campaigns being exceptions), while Republicans appease the swing voter and crank the base. Guess what wins?

via @LivRaineySmith: The Festival is nearly upon us!

Originally posted by xylograph_rss at The Festival is nearly upon us!

http://xylographilia.com/the-festival-is-nearly-upon-us/

http://xylographilia.com/?p=2503

New Mythos works will be debuting at HPLFF!

Liv Rainey-Smith is pleased to announce that she will be appearing as a featured guest of the upcoming 2014 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. Her original hand-pulled woodcut prints will be available in Artists Alley. In addition to her popular illustrations from the 2012 Arcanum Bestiarum published by Three Hands Press, she will also be debuting a new selection of limited edition prints created for the soon-to-be-released Starry Wisdom Library anthology edited by Nate Pedersen. Mr. Pedersen as well as a number of other Starry Wisdom Library contributors—S T Joshi, Michael Cisco, Edward Morris, Jesse Bullington, Joe Pulver, Molly Tanzer, Pete Rawlik, Scott Nicolay, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia—will also be guests at the festival.

Hand-coloring the grimoire with purpurite.

Attending Kickstarter backers who ordered her hand-colored special edition print Sign! will receive it as part of their rewards package during the festival. Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the Witch-House, Sign! is an exclusive edition created just for HPLFF supporters. If you’d like to see what went into the creation of the edition, the work was documented here.

In previous years, Rainey-Smith has appeared at the HPLFF both as a vendor and a featured guest. This year, attendees will also have the opportunity to see her compete against Allen Koszowski, Nick Gucker, and Lee Moyer in Pickman’s Apprentice, a ninety-minute challenge in which Lovecraftian artists race to complete illustrations based on a theme chosen by the audience. Yes, she will be carving and printing a woodcut in those ninety minutes. Yes, first aid supplies will be at hand.

The 2014 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival will take place from April 11^th – 13^th at the Hollywood Theatre at 4122 NE Sandy Blvd.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit http://www.hplfilmfestival.com/.

Washington Post: the CIA lied to Congress about the need for and effectiveness of torture

The Washington Post posted this a few hours ago:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

In summary, the CIA told Congress that torture gave them critical information that couldn't be obtained any other way, that was vital to the fight against Al Qaeda. That was a lie.

We don't know all the details of what's in the Senate's report; it's still not complete, and it's classified. The Senate is going to vote Thursday on whether to submit it to President Obama for declassification. Even if the Senate decides to declassify the report, Obama's history on this suggests that he'll keep the report classified and continue to cover the asses of the criminals who shamed the United States.