Republican senators prepare to vote on health care, CA scientists run for office, new comic book shows what would happen if CA actually seceded from the U.S.
What happens to Covered California if Obamacare gets repealed?
Senate Republicans are set to vote again on the future of Obamacare Tuesday.
President Trump made his feelings known on Twitter, posting:
Big day for HealthCare. After 7 years of talking, we will soon see whether or not Republicans are willing to step up to the plate!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
Today's vote is mainly procedural: it will allow the Senate to debate, but it's not entirely clear what bill they'll be debating.
All this uncertainty around healthcare has led California's marketplace, Covered California, to look into options should a repeal take place.
For more, Take Two spoke to Peter Lee, Executive Director for Covered California.
More and more scientists running for elected office
Some scientists are ditching their labs and running for elective office.
As you might expect, there are lots of lawyers in politics, but just 10 out of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representative are trained scientists.
There are some new candidates who hope to change this. For example, geologist Jess Phoenix is running in Southern California's 25th district, and Hans Keirstead, a stem-cell researcher, is running in Orange County.
We spoke with David Siders, who wrote about this movement for Politico.
"There's been some growing frustration, even during the Obama years, when you saw Republicans retake control of the House in 2011, President Obama had a hard time getting innovation spending through Congress. . . there was this frustration, especially among researchers who depend on the federal government for grants. But when Trump was elected, and especially with some of his cabinet appointments and then pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, that's where you saw really intense anxiety among scientists, and that's why you hear some of them saying 'I just felt like nobody else was running, I have to jump in.' And then of course, you hear from some of these scientists that they then learn that there are struggles to jumping in, and that there's some of these barriers to entry."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
In 'Calexit' comic, a seceded California is beset by civil war
Imagine a Los Angeles plagued by electrical outages, drought, and placed under martial law by Homeland Security. Pretty bleak right?
This is the world imagined in "Calexit," a comic published by Black Mask Studios that debuted in May. Set in an alternate reality, the California of "Calexit" succeeds in "exiting" the U.S. after a fictional president issues an executive order that would deport all immigrants.
If that sounds a bit like a heightened version of our current reality, well, that's intentional. While series writer Matteo Pizzolo didn't set out to create something polemical, he didn't want to shy away from the real world, either.
"Our chief intention is to serve the story and the characters, and be entertaining," Pizzolo told Take Two host A Martinez in an interview. "Even if we are also being responsible about the historical place and time that we live in."
According to Pizzolo, this is not out of the ordinary. Comics have always had potential to be political.
"There is not... as many gatekeepers between... the writer, and the artist, and the audience," said Pizzolo. "And certainly comics have a long history of really taking bold political positions, whether it's 'V for Vendetta,' which... became the face of Anonymous ,or more recent books like 'DMZ.'"
But for Pizzolo, political is not the same thing as partisan. He and artist Amancay Nahuelpan wanted to create a California that was more varied than just "Republican vs. Democrat."
"One of the premises that we have for the book," said Pizzolo, "is that if California were to secede, it is so diverse that there would be a civil war within California before any government soldier could get across the border."
"It takes place in California, and it's true to California. We tried to make it as authentic as possible."
Echoing this, Pizzolo is using his earnings from the comic sales to fund his super PAC, Become the Government, with the intention to help non-partisan, progressive candidates get elected in the 2018 midterms.
Comics are a great vehicle for this, says Pizzolo, because of that direct interaction with readers.
"It makes it a place where we can do something and have our beliefs on our sleeves," said Pizzolo. "And make sure that we are entertaining people, but also being very clear about where we're coming from and what we want to do."
"It's interesting that comics are taking a more central role in our politics these days than I think people would necessarily have assumed."
Like a bad neighbor, Jake Paul is there: three tips if you have a jerk next door
Los Angeles may be a big and challenging city, but when you have a bad neighbor all those problems are suddenly very close to home.
Take the case of YouTube celebrity Jake Paul. He's living the life, renting out a house in Beverly Grove.
For fun, though, this 20-year-old and his friends do things like drive a dirt bike into the backyard pool, set furniture on fire, or encourage his fans to flock outside his home at all hours.
His neighbors are pretty angry with his antics.
"It used to be a nice quiet street and now we're just like this war zone," Maytal Dahan told KTLA. "We are families here, and we're more than happy to have them live here if they're respectful to their neighbors, but they're not."
Some of Jake Paul's neighbors are thinking of bringing a class-action lawsuit against him for being a public nuisance.
Need advice on how to handle a bad neighbor? Take Two got some advice from etiquette expert Amy Alkon, author of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say the F-Word."
Don't tell them what to do
"Criticizing someone does not make them want to change," says Alkon. "It makes them want to clobber you."
It's because of a psychological phenomenon where if someone tries to control our actions, our reactionary impulse is to rebel.
Instead, try to treat them as a polite person who just didn't realize that their actions are impacting your own life.
"So you say, 'You probably didn't notice or you probably didn't know, and I just wanted to let you know...," she suggests. "What you don't do is tell them what to do."
What if that person doesn't listen anyway?
There are noise laws and as a last resort, you can contact the police. Ideally, do it in coordination with your other neighbors.
"If you're a whole neighborhood going after somebody who's behaving really rudely, the police need to actually do something," says Alkon.
It also makes it harder for the offender to identify – or even retaliate – against one specific person.
How to avoid moving next to a bad neighbor to begin with
"Go and check out the neighborhood at all hours when you're going to move into a place," she says.
See what it's like at night or in the morning, when you're most likely to be disturbed while in bed.
"You do have a right to a quiet environment in your home," says Alkon.
Tuesday Reviewsday: the Blind Boys of Alabama, King James & the Special Men and more
Take Two contributor Steve Hochman stops by with his selections of new music to refresh anyone’s playlist.
Here are his picks:
Artist: The Blind Boys of Alabama
Album: “Almost Home”
Songs: “Stay on the Gospel Side,” “Pray For Peace”
After nearly 80 years and hundreds of recordings, the the Blind Boys of Alabama have made the album of their lives. Which means, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s an album largely about death. Well, facing death.
The album's title is “Almost Home,” refers to the band members, Clarence Fountain and Jimmy Carter, who co-founded the group after first singing together at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in 1939.
Carter is still going fairly strong, touring with the group, though Fountain has been limited in performance activities by various health issues. It’s Fountain’s tale that opens the album on the song “Stay on the Gospel Side,” not a lament of his current struggles, but a narrative of his and the group’s history, back to early childhood, and a fierce commitment to sticking to the spiritual message rather than seek pop fame.
The story told on “Gospel Side” was fashioned into song by co-writers John Leventhal and Marc Cohn, after conversations with Fountain at his home about his life. Leventhal, who has produced Rosanne Cash (to whom he’s married) and many others, brought a country-gospel feel to his tracks, a strong foundation for the compelling journey of the singer.
Not all the songs are explicitly biographical, but most tap into the history and the lives of those who lived it. Among the other highlights are the spritely “Pray for Peace” contributed by the North Mississippi Allstars and the folk-soul “Train Fare” by rising star Valerie June.
Arguably, the one less-than-essential song is Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” a great one that couldn’t fit the theme better, but suffering from over-familiarity and obviousness. The message of that comes much stronger in the title ballad, which serves as the album’s emotional centerpiece, as it turns from the past to looking ahead: “I’ve come a long, long way from Alabama, I’ve been a long time gone,” the Blind Boys sing. “And I'm almost, almost home.”
Here's a video of them singing another song off of the album, “Singing Brings Us Closer.”
Artist: David Rawlings
Album: “Poor David’s Almanack”
Song: “Cumberland Gap,”
Guitarist and music producer David Rawlings is probably most known for his partnership with singer and songwriter Gillian Welch. But once in a while, Rawlings steps forward and while the distinction in the music can be subtle (apart from his voice being up front), the results are both an extension from and expansion beyond Welch’s albums.
Take the song “Cumberland Gap” here on the new album, “Poor David’s Almanack," billed on his name. Where much of Welch’s albums, as well as Rawlings’, take the acoustic folkie root through that metaphorical cultural gap, here the power is revved up in a full country-rock mode, somewhere between “Harvest”-era Neil Young and Gram Parsons, with organ and drums from Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith of L.A. band Dawes.
Elsewhere this hews closer to the expected rural-derived folkiness, with equal measures of rueful restlessness and twinkling playfulness.
Artist: King James & the Special Men
Album: “Act Like You Know”
Songs: “Special Man Boogie,” “9th Ward Blues”
If you're from New Orleans, you might know that on a Monday night, the place to be is the funky Saturn Bar, where King James & the Special Men hold the stage.
Well, not so much a stage as a chunk of the floor against a wall under a not-so-confidence-inspiring overhead passageway.
The music? Exactly what you’d hope to find in such a setting: swinging, stinging rhythm ’n’ roll with blaring horns and razor-edged guitars from a guy called Porkchop and crisp drums from a guy known as Showtime. And in front, "King" James Horn, a swaggering, staggering, swaying, sassy singer.
This Monday night things has been strictly a word-of-mouth thing since it started, but word’s gotten out wider, and the time has come for KJ&TSM to make their album debut.
The just-released, “Act Like You Know,” doesn’t capture the full sensory experience of a Saturn Bar night. That’s impossible, and the band smartly doesn’t try, but instead channels the spirit of that and the band’s deep love for various New Orleans R&B, rock and blues traditions into a set of sharp Horn originals.
Opener “Special Man Boogie” gets right to the point, its rolling, roiling rhythm running back through the Meters via Professor Longhair all the way to Jelly Roll Morton. “Baby Girl” and “Tell Me (What You Want Me To Do)” take the pleading approach in a classic soul-blues mode. “Eat That Chicken” is a frisky double-entendre (or single-entendre, too) shuffle.
Of course, the King James shows at the Saturn Bar can go on for hours with no dip in the party mood. But until you can get there, or get back there, this is a mighty fine slab of specialness. Act like you know, y’know?
“Special Man Boogie” live at the Saturn Bar in May: