The clown car caucus needs a new windmill:
After five years and more than 50 votes in Congress, the Republican campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act is essentially over.
GOP congressional leaders, unable to roll back the law while President Obama remains in office and unwilling to again threaten a government shutdown to pressure him, are focused on other issues, including trade and tax reform.
Less noted, senior Republican lawmakers have quietly incorporated many of the law’s key protections into their own proposals, including guaranteeing coverage and providing government assistance to help consumers purchase insurance.
And although the law remains very unpopular with GOP voters, more than 20 million Americans now depend on it for health benefits, making even some of the most conservative Republicans loath to cut off coverage.
Facing the prospect that the Supreme Court this year could strip away insurance subsidies provided through the law in most states, several GOP lawmakers have proposed extending the aid, perhaps even until a new president takes office.
Not only have they given up trying to repeal it after 50+ votes, they are now afraid of a backlash if their wet dream at the Supreme Court comes through. Although, they do have one exceedingly popular laughable option they could pin their hopes on should the slow motion right wing junta in the Supreme Court give them their old wish:
In 2008, while Democrats were declaring that the time was right for national health care reform, Marco Rubio, the speaker of the Florida House, had a ready response: Florida should build a market-based system that would help contain the cost of insurance and make it more available.
Rubio pushed his no-mandate health insurance exchange, dubbed Florida Health Choices, through the state Legislature that year. “It’s about competition, it’s about choice, and it’s about the marketplace,” he told The Palm Beach Post at the time.
Florida Health Choices, which finally opened last year, now covers 80 people.
Obamacare, which Rubio wants to repeal, covers 1.6 million in Florida alone. And 93 percent of them are subsidized.
Eighty people. That’s fewer than the 106 Republicans in the Florida House and Senate alone. To give you another comparison, it’s a safe bet at least 80 people in Florida were arrested last week for trying to have sex with a tree while screaming about chemtrails and high on meth.
Florida Man Claims He's Thor as He Tries to Stab Cop With His Own Badge http://t.co/gmECOOkI8H
— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) April 15, 2015
Fucking Republicans.
srv
What’s better than getting one liberal? Two!
GatesGate coming to a Congressional committee (or two) near you.
Cervantes
If you figure the state legislature has allocated about $2,400,000 for the program so far … and it has been in operation for about a year …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
whom amongst us has not…. wait…. what…?
They use jobkillingObamacare as one word. I wonder has any Chuck Todd or other spokesmodel ever pointed out the steady decline in unemployment that has coincided with the passage and implementation and asked them to justify that nonsense.
I’m sure our friend Steve, President, CEO and Chief of Dust Mitigation Projects at Steve’s Acme Job Creator Really Good Company, a massive small business that employs eleventy hundred people and that he keeps afloat on his mom’s Discover card, will be along to tell us about the massive layoffs he was forced to undertake.
I wonder if that was intended to sound snarky? I guess Politico must have some good writers, since at this point they’re pretty much the Amazon of punditry, hoovering up everything and everyone in their path.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The republicans are already saying without ACA, unemployment would be lower.
MattF
It’s been noted before, but if the Supremes put the knife to O-care, Republicans will be in the position of the dog who finally caught that truck. The socially irresponsible part of me really wants to see that happen.
mai naem mobile
Marco Rubio is a looozer. I have no idea why all these right wing pindits think he’s a gifted politician. I just do not see it.
Germy Shoemangler
@MattF: It’s been noted before, but if the Supremes put the knife to O-care, Republicans will be in the position of the dog who finally caught that truck. The socially irresponsible part of me really wants to see that happen.
They would bite a tire, cause a blowout, then point and yell “Look at what that cat [democrat] did!”
Mike in NC
Weekend edition of USA Today had an article on implementation of ACA in Appalachia, where many people are still wary due to something about That One being behind it all.
MattF
@mai naem mobile: IMO, the Republican field is Looozer City. The media keeps looking for one who they can pump up, but the Designated One, whichever one it is today, keeps losing air out the back end faster than he can be pumped up through the front.
mai naem mobile
A friend of.mine works with a guy who could very well possibly be living on the streets if it wasn’t for the government assistance he receives. He listens to Glenn Beck etc. and hates the government. Sigh. Votes against his own interests. He truly believes his church and others are going to volunteer the services provided by the government to him currently. Really. Maroon. These are the idiots who vote for Dubbya et al.
greennotGreen
When will the Supremes announce their almighty judgement about the ACA, and will it come with a caveat that it only applies when the President is black? I care because, well, I care, but also because I have a major predisposition and I’ll be eligible for Medicare in August.
lahru
I can’t wait for it to be pointed out that the Republicans are making a mockery of running for POTUS. There is not a non-grafter in the whole bunch, except for Bush and he has an issue with his last name, and the party’s has been good at getting elected on the local and state level using hate as a motivator. It just doesn’t have a majority appeal nationally.
JPL
@greennotGreen: Even Kennedy said, whatever decision they made, congress would be given a time for a fix. It should get you to August. How you feeling. You haven’t been around much.
mai naem mobile
@lahru: Bush is a grafter in the sense that the only reason he wants to be POTUS is for the treasure he and his cronies can pillage from the country. He doesn’t give a sheet about the country.
RSA
It’s notObamaCare, which is just like ObamaCare except for the black guy.
Suzanne
@mai naem mobile: I don’t see it, either. To me, he looks like a total poseur. I don’t know anybody who’s excited about him, and I know lots of Republicans.
JPL
@RSA: It will be interesting to see how much their plan adds to the deficit.
Felonius Monk
Hereinafter, they shall be referred to as
ReDumboKlowns
mai naem mobile
@greennotGreen: From what I’ve heard they aren’t even going to dismantle it for next year, forget this year. The way I understand it, you essentially sign a contract with the insurance co. until the end of 2015( as long as you make the payments) so they can’t just cancel the coverage. Also it doesn’t affect the non subsidy people.
Ruckus
@mai naem mobile:
He’s a gifted republican politician. That means it’s possible that he can tie his own shoes and at least 50% of the time he won’t tie both of them together.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT:
Drezner, Larison and Barro all IIANM self-ID as conservatives, though Barro might protest that a libertarian is not a conservative. They are willing to mock this dangerous horseshit, and call ignorance, ignorance. Members of the liberal media would just say: “Ted Cruz, Senator from Texas and presidential candidate, thank you so much for joining us today, Senator.
Emerald
@mai naem mobile: He’s good looking and he’s Latino.
That’s it. All of it.
Violet
@mai naem mobile: @Suzanne: Agreed. I don’t see it at all. How in the world is Rubio a great politician? What exactly do they think makes him so great?
johnnybuck
@MattF: They make Romney look good by comparison!
J R in WV
It’s a pretty day here today. A little hot for April, 80 or so. I turned on the AC, and scrubbed the bathroom floor, which was a mudhole. It isn’t pristine glittery white, but it is a lot cleaner, and thanks to Lysol, probably pretty near sterile.
Pooped now. Hardest thing I’ve done since surgery. Will plant some stuff tomorrow, ramps mostly. And lop off as many autumn olive as we can, a terrible invasive introduced as a reclamation plant on strip mines. Unfortunately birds eat the fruit, and they spread wildly all over the countryside.
Recently research has shown that the big mountaintop removal strip mines create a cloud of mineralized microdust, with many harmful compounds in it. This has a big negative affect on the health of everyone living within that cloud of particles.
Many years ago, while company doctors were still denying that coal dust could cause permanent damage to miners’ lungs (black lung disease, still happening) I learned that people living downwind of above ground coal handling facilities (load-outs, prep plants, stockpiles, ect) were also coming down with black lung, without ever earning a penny from the mining companies.
We live quite a ways from the nearest mining facility, and so probably haven’t suffered personally from the coal bizness. But so many have.
So I segued from planting to loping invasive plants, to the strip mining health hazards, etc… sorry, a pretty day outside, enjoy spring, right!!
Fucking Republicans!! Maybe if they were actually fucking, they wouldn’t be so repressed, and hence less mean spirited. Ya think?
Nah!
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And on the eighth day, they gave us flowers as liberators.
greennotGreen
@JPL: I had chemo on Monday which takes much of the day. Tuesday I did shopping so I’d have instant food when the inevitable downturn hit, then Wednesday, Thursday, and most of Friday in bed. But today I’m pretty good, and tomorrow I should be better still. Losing three days out of every three weeks is sucky, but if I don’t do it, I don’t survive until the next recurrence, and if I don’t survive until the next recurrence, I don’t survive until new therapies come on line.
Science is slow, but we scientists work hard at it, and it does progress.
It’s been a beautiful day here, and I have an orchid in bloom that smells wonderful. As long as we can find joy in the world, life is worth living.
(And a pause to wish wellness to Soonergrunt. May he also find joy.)
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@mai naem mobile:
27%, everybody, 27%. That’s what we’re dealing with, here.
And the snag over the long haul is that the Republican Party has gone out of its way to make these people the base. There’s no way in hell they can be even remotely responsible when they’re beholden to these 27% people when they run in their primaries. I keep hoping that sooner or later, even the national news people (outside of Rachel Maddow and her cohorts) will wake up to this. Even people like Chuck Todd and David Gregory.
You can’t have a country that works for too damned long when these people have such a hold on our politics. I don’t know how we’re going to get rid of these people (get them out of politics, I mean, not get rid of them altogether, enticing as that might seem), but we have to find some way.
Maybe some clever liberal can start a long-term scam to set himself up as a fundamentalist televangelist and win these people over, and then tell them all that politics is evil and worldly, and if they want to get to heaven, they have to keep out of it altogether. I don’t know what else there is…
mdblanche
Since when does the klown kar kaucus ever move on to a new windmill? You could nuke them and you would still have Hiroo Onodas around for decades to come.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Libertarians love to talk about pie in the sky liberty so you won’t notice they don’t give a shit about people who are actually oppressed. It’s the same logic as ‘Blacks are the real racists!’
fuckwit
The other day I had to step out of my left-wing urban hipster bubble and go into the old folks retired redneck rural world, and FAUX news was on.
I was shocked. It’s all-Iran, all the time. Iran Iran Iran Iran. Bomb Iran, Obama is selling us out to Iran, war war nukes Iran Iran. 24/7. And Iran, too.
Also, all the ads are for retirement products and veterans, and products/services for retired veterans. Veteran mortgages, veteran etc. And old people. The ads were like being in a retirement community.
I cannot believe for a minute that FAUX “news” is making a profit. At all. On anything. It has got to be subsidized by Murdoch and the rich Rethug establishment. Those ads for sketchball companies can’t possibly pay enough to pay for the programming. It has got to be a money-loser. I saw no ads for products that could be making enough sales to pay for expensive airtime, which leads me to believe the airtime is cheap, which leads me to believe that the network is being subsidized by something other than advertising— maybe the Koch brothers, who knows.
The Rethug party strikes me as a rump party of old cranky white men, if FAUX is its propaganda arm.
And, what it wants more than anything is more war.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@greennotGreen: Thanks for the update. Keep slugging away at it. Wishing you (and Sooner) the best.
Cheers,
Scott.
Shell
Yes, but not cause they don’t want to deprive people of their only access to health insurance, but because they’re afraid it’ll hurt them politically.
Iowa Old Lady
@MattF: The Rs can talk about their “deep field” only because none of them has the sense to know s/he hasn’t a prayer, and the media has to pretend they’re all plausible.
@mai naem mobile: I find I’m suddenly confused about what the ACA lawsuit would end. Is it the subsidies to the federal exchanges? Or is it the exchanges themselves?
Tenar Darell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I notice that none of them are in the electric TV machine either.
JPL
@greennotGreen: Thanks for the update and like you, I’m hoping that Sooner finds some joy.
Tenar Darell
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes this is true:
I’m apparently a pie in the sky idealist when I wonder why the media has to pretend these guys are plausible. /sigh
Brachiator
@RSA: Any day now, I expect the GOP to talk about how that visionary, Mitt Romney, brought universal health care to Massachusetts and how Obama stole the idea and ruined it.
Violet
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I don’t think David Gregory has a job anymore. I think he’s being paid to speak at functions and he wrote a book that’s coming out in September but I don’t think he’s working in news anymore. Not that he was before, but you know what I mean.
chopper
he’s Thor? I can hardly pith.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@fuckwit:
Hey, the great thing about being an old, cranky white guy is that they can clamor for all the fucking war they want to, and feel good knowing that it’ll never be their sorry asses out there getting shot at. What’s not to like?
mdblanche
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Wherever you put the GOP’s floor nationally, the 27% is a majority of the GOP’s base, possibly as much as a 2 to 1 majority. I have no idea how the orderlies can retake control of the asylum.
greennotGreen
@chopper: Groan!
satby
@greennotGreen: The very best wishes for you and Sooner too!
Cervantes
@Iowa Old Lady:
As you can imagine, there have been a number of ACA-related lawsuits.
There are states without their own exchanges “established … under section 1311.” The question you’re thinking of may be whether people in these states are eligible for subsidies in the form of federal tax credits.
J R in WV
@chopper:
Aaaarrrrggghhhh! So good. Wish I had said it!
@greennotGreen:
Thanks for the update. Three days out of each 3 week period seems like a fair deal to me. In exchange you get some more spring days!!
Keep hanging in there! And tell us more about the orchid with the great smell, in my experience they usually don’t smell much at all!
Around here in the spring people go into the deep woods and dig a wild leek, called ramps. Then they sit by the roadside with a sign and coolers full of ramps, and sell them. Some people claim they make you smell strange, but I have never found that to be true.
They taste great, if you like garlic and onions and leeks and such.
On our little farm there were no ramps, so I buy them from the roadside ramp diggers, and we eat half of them and I plant the others on the wooded hillsides. After several years we now have a pretty good patch coming along. They send out runners and other ramps grow up next to the one’s we planted, next year.
I’ll harvest a few in a couple more years, but as long as I can buy them from the diggers on the road side, I’ll do that. Support the underground economy!
They’ll be gone in 2 or 3 weeks, they’re strictly a spring event. Why, I saw a link to an article about ramps in the Washington Post just a little while ago, so they’re becoming a high-style food product now!!
Happy spring weekend, all!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tenar Darell:
Sympathize.
I blame celebrity reporters like Woodward and Bernstein, gotcha interviews like 60 Minutes, and Ted Turner. Why is news reporting so broken? It’s because it’s not high-quality newsgathering reported by people who can read and write English any more. It’s not dogged, careful fact-gathering and developing expertise in an area any more.
Now, it’s “compelling pictures”. There’s video? It leads. Our pretty reporter can get the subject to cry or get emotional? It leads.
I imagine there’s the tension between a reporter needing to be seen as an expert in an area and developing a good Rolodex and good sources, and the need to have something to report every day.
60 Minutes got viewers with their “gotcha” interviews and muckraking. Sometimes they got sloppy even when there was something important there. Sometimes they let reporters run far, far ahead of any evidence to present a “compelling” story that is BS.
Turner did some good with CNN, but it, and the culture it created, rewards speed and video and emotion over care and nuance. It’s gotten worse with the overtly politically slanted Fox News.
Magazines dying, nightly news broadcasts dying, and the spread of “news” on the web is making the problems worse because there’s not a good “micropayment” system that readers will yet accept.
I think The Economist has a decent business model that might survive all of this. The Intelligence Unit (as I understand it) supports the magazine by doing research for businesses, etc. That research also provides content to the magazine. The writers for the magazine are often fairly well known, but there is no by-line, so there’s no artificial celebrity buildup for the reporters. Their writing and reporting has to stand on its own.
So, why does the US pay attention to the clown car candidates? Lots of reasons, but part of it is the way the US news system has evolved over the last 30 years. One of the benefits of having such a highly fractionated new system is that we can read or view other stuff instead.
The good guys should talk more about the good stuff they want to do and less about how horrible the other side is. The Republicans and the Teabaggers have all the patents on fear-mongering. It doesn’t work as well on our side. (I remember when Democrats were running against Reagan saying he’d get us into a (implied nuclear) war. The fear-mongering (even if justified) didn’t work.) It’s got a reputation of not being compelling TV though.
My (overly long) $0.02. FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Iowa Old Lady
@Cervantes: Yes, that’s right. Thanks. I was thinking of Halbig and just blanked.
greennotGreen
@J R in WV: Interestingly, when I bought my house in 1987 it had an open shed built on the back of the garage, and painted on that shed in red was the word “ramps.” I have always thought it must have something to do with the wild leeks.
The orchid that’s in bloom is Coelogyne flaccida (I think. The label is either buried or has crumbled to dust.) Like many fragrant plants, it’s only fragrant at certain times of the day, I believe I first noticed it last night.
Paul T
Please, please, please somebody find one of the Florida 80 and have them explain their Florida Health Choice experience. Please.
Frankensteinbeck
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I see the corruption of national news as several factors that all tie together. Since they all live and work in a close area, talking to the same people, they have formed a social class. That class really got its start in the 80s, when cable television happened. The social leaders of this group, its founders who recruited others and mentored them, are mostly white males who became wealthy during the Reagan years, with a dollop of Wingnut Welfare old timers like Kristol, who were in a position to insert themselves into any such group. So right there, you have a social group that is going to lean Republican and lean to Reagan’s lies.
Then you have the format of 24 hour news. Let’s face it, it does not encourage thoughtful analysis and research. You have to fill too much time. The people who get ahead, become and stay leaders in this journalist group are the people who are good at bullshitting. Bullshitters want to think bullshitting is itself wisdom. They disdain analysis and facts, and like impressive demagoguery. So… they sympathize with conservative arguments, don’t like liberal arguments, and admire people like Paul Ryan. They are the stupid people looking for a stupid person’s idea of a smart person.
Throw in that they’ve inherited the pre-cable conviction that a good newsman (and obviously they must be the best newsman) is ‘savvy’, able to see the truth that politicians hide. It dovetails perfectly with Reagan’s ‘racism is mature and responsible’. Add a pinch of Access, Access, Access.
Cook for thirty years, and you get what we have, a national news system dedicated to pretending the worst assholery of the Tea Party movement is ever so slightly more reasonable than anything a Democrat might consider doing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Asking a question like that by Chuckles the Toddler, or any other of the vermin of the Village, would result in the termination of their worthless careers.
So, no, you’re not going to hear that.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Brachiator
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: The US pays attention to the clown car candidates because that’s what the Republicans have at present. Even the writers at the Economist would acknowledge this.
And the news media has often been more bad than good. And at one time Woodward and Bernstein became journalistic lions because the more well known and well connected journalists didn’t see how big the Watergate story really was.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Could have been forty million. No public option. Obama sold us out.
Hal
Is there such a thing as leaks on the supreme court? Maybe some people have gotten wind of the coming decision and it’s not in favor of the plaintiffs.
jl
@Hal: Gosh golly gee, I just cannot imagine the reactionary GOP tools on the Supreme Court being anything but pure as the driven snow. I am sure they would never leak anything to give their GOP BFFs time to prepare for a decision, just for corrupt partisan purposes.
Why, that is unpossible.