Or is even he able to see that this bill if horrible:
A few minutes later, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — another member of the Senate Democratic leadership, representing the right as Sanders represents the left — ambled into the same group of reporters.
“I got an older population, I got a poorer population, and I got an opiate issue we need to clean up,” Manchin said. “And now, talk about insult to injury. You’ve got to have a moral compass inside of you. You can’t do that. Look at the elderly, look at the poor, look at the sick. How can you look at yourself and say, ‘Okay, I’ll help the person who needs help the least, the wealthiest people, with more tax cuts, because I’m going to be taking away from the elderly population?’”
Even alien life form, possible Zodiac killer, potential son of the man who helped plot the JFK, and all around scumbag Ted Cruz thinks the bill is a mess:
Sen. Ted Cruz is weighing in on the Congressional Budget Office’s damning assessment of the GOP’s health care bill, telling reporters that the “most troubling aspect” of the report is a forecast for rising insurance premiums.
“This is not the mandate that we were elected to fulfill,” he said Tuesday, a day after the CBO report was released. “The test of success will be a year from now, two years from now, three years from now: Is health care more affordable?”
The Texan who made his name opposing Obamacare is now openly calling for changes to the American Health Care Act unveiled by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican leaders last week.
Is this all just a Bannon plot to bring down Paul Ryan or are they just this fucking stupid?
randy khan
Manchin’s been pretty good on the ACA for quite a while now. He’s figured out the right focus – how changes will hurt key groups in West Virginia. I’ve been impressed.
Gatchaman
This fucking stupid.
PS: I haven’t been here since Bush was in office! I lost all interest in blogs when we had a functioning, compassionate adult in office. I think I get somewhat addicted to the outrage – its nice to know others feel it. Except for my wife, I feel I am surrounded by nothing but Trump cultists.
rikyrah
HOLLERING!!!
BWA HA AH HA HA HA HA AH HA
rikyrah
Why either/or?
Why not BOTH/AND?
Corner Stone
Yes.
JMG
@Gatchaman: No, it’s both.
Corner Stone
@Gatchaman:
Hey man, why so selfish and greedy?
JPL
Do repubs have a moral compass? Jesus would be stoned by these guys.
Corner Stone
Grandstanders gonna grandstand.
It’s funny that the GOP members who oppose this bill all do so for different aspects but basically all the same reason. It doesn’t go far enough in hurting people.
clay
Color me skeptical of the idea that anyone involved in the current GOP is some Machiavellian genius. Everything they do is on the surface — either out of malice, greed, incompetence, stupidity, or spite. (Or some combination thereof, of course.)
This bill is nothing more than Ryan’s Randian boner come to life.
Corner Stone
@JPL: Matthew 4 : 20? Puff, puff, give unto your brothers on the left hand side? Ohhhh, stoned *by* these guys.
My bad.
OGLiberal
Manchin would be happy to support all Democratic/liberal policies if they included caveats to bring a million coal jobs to West Virginia (impossible even if we got rid of every freaking regulation that prevents the coal industry from poisoning people) and letting every West Virginian own a gun (which, I believe, is already possible and not at risk, even when gun robbing Obama was president). He doesn’t even have to worry about offending black people or preventing them from voting because virtually no black/brown/Muslim people live in WV. (which always makes me wonder by West Virginians seem to hate them so much – based on what experience?)
Brachiator
Of course, the only person with less credibility than Ted Cruz is Chris Christie.
Mike E
Even the great orange sofa nextdoor had to give it up for
Yosemite SamManchin being 3-3 on an issue that oughta count big in any state, frankly… good on that fcuker!clay
@Gatchaman:
I know what you mean. I used to lurk here all the time, posting rarely, until after the 2012 election. I just kind of checked out of the political sphere for a while. (My kids becoming school-age at that time contributed to this.) The idiocracy occurring during 2016 campaign drew me back in.
dm
Who will be the first Democrat to bring up “Death Panels” with the news that the CBO included $3 billion in savings on Social Security because people would be dying sooner?.
ruckus
Can’t it be both?
Stupid and Evil.
Seems to me that’s the normal republican position.
clay
@Brachiator:
You’re forgetting Rudy Giuliani.
notoriousJRT
@rikyrah: I am going with the BOTH / AND option. Fill in the blanks after the AND.
notoriousJRT
@JPL:
The Republican compass is not moral and it points to the magnetic north of giving aid, comfort, and federal $ to the already comfortable and wealthy few. They know only how to do the bidding of their rich masters.
OGLiberal
@dm: The answer is probably “nobody” because Dems aren’t allowed to say stuff like that. And, if they do, both sides! Plus, there probably aren’t enough fainting couches available to support Chris Cillizza if some Dem did say that.
trollhattan
@dm:
Whoa. In your face, olds!
AnotherBruce
“the only person with less credibility than Ted Cruz is Chris Christie.” This, peoples, is your 2020 Republican Presidential ticket.
Corner Stone
@OGLiberal:
I don’t know why we don’t propose a huge bill that pays all the former mine workers to start rebuilding the devastated mountain peaks that were knocked flat during the mining process. They’d still be using tools and shit, earning the same pay and benefits. Decent pay for a decent day’s work.
Oatler.
In the middle of chaos, The Corporation fattens…
schrodingers_cat
@dm: Shitting on Democrats and giving us lectures about understanding and loving T voters. I think you are in the wrong comment section.
aimai
@Corner Stone: Because paying people not to work would never work–otherwise we would have price supports for farmers not to grow stuff. And we’d never do that.
TenguPhule
Is this a trick question?
MattF
I saw that picture in the OP and immediately googled ‘ted cruz’s dog’.
efgoldman
@randy khan:
Especially since Yertle McTurtle fucked him (and his own constituents also too) on retired mine workers medical care.
TenguPhule
@JPL:
They do. It only has one direction. Evil.
chopper
if this is bannon’s attempt to fuck over ryan he’s doing a shitty job of keeping his boss out of the blast zone.
KG
Two thoughts…
First seeing that Manchin quote makes me wonder if someone would be so brazen as to take the “I got an opiate issue” part completely out of context.
Second, to answer this question:
The obvious answer is “yes” or at least “why not both?”
OGLiberal
@Corner Stone: I read somewhere – maybe here – not sure – that the government should just buy a bunch of coal, pay people to bury it, pay them to dig it up, then pay somebody else to get rid of it. Or maybe just rebury it. It’s kind of like Atrios’ long-standing idea to create jobs by paying people to dig holes and fill them up again.
Of course, the coal jobs created by this ridiculous idea would create health issues that require something like OCare solutions but the only thing that would make those OCare solutions palatable to the white coal diggers would be those that prevent “those” people from benefiting from those solutions. They’ll find a way to hate anything that, at some point, helps “those” people. (with whom, as I mentioned earlier, they have never had contact with outside of a scary Fox News segment about BLM “rioters”)
KG
@JPL: It’s entirely possible that they have a moral compass, but it’s equally possible that that moral compass points in a very different direction than that of most normal and sane people.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Yep. Republican principles on full display.
dm
@schrodingers_cat: “Shitting on Democrats”? Try reading it again without your BDS filter on overdrive.
But here’s an “Oh, those poor Trump voters” link even you might be able to enjoy.
MattF
@KG: The ‘opiate issue’ suggests that a significant part of the population is trying to commit suicide. I’d call that problematical. Haven’t (yet) seen an analysis demonstrating parallels to the crack epidemic of the ’70s and ’80s– One can guess why the analysis hasn’t been done, but I’d bet that the parallels are there.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
i’d say “money” but let’s not split hairs.
efgoldman
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t read it that way
Villago Delenda Est
Everyone and their mom, their grandmom, their great-grandmom, and Queen Marie of Romania beat me to the obvious answer.
Major Major Major Major
Well, Breitbart did just publish “Exclusive — Audio Emerges of When Paul Ryan Abandoned Donald Trump: ‘I Am Not Going to Defend Donald Trump—Not Now, Not in the Future’”
ETA: I know Trump is going to fuck Ryan over hard some day, but it never even crossed my mind that very publicly killing Ryan’s safety-net destruction–Ryan’s baby–might be how he does it. Mostly since I thought Trump liked that baby. But Trump doesn’t like anything other than people named Trump, now does he?
OGLiberal
RE: the “opiate issue”. In the past, the response to drug issues among the poor was to throw them all in jail. Now that those “poor” people are mostly white, the response is to improve treatment and healthcare options. Things that make you go “hmmmm?”….
Thru the Looking Glass...
@OGLiberal:
They hear things… people talk… Fox News… Breitbart…
mdblanche
Ted Cruz can usually be counted on to do whatever he thinks is best for himself regardless of how it affects anyone else.
TenguPhule
@dm: Good old Tom. You can always rely on him to cut to the heart of the matter.
p.a.
Republican base: “please help me out of this crate and give me drugs so I can function long enough to kick a progressive in the face. then help me back into the crate.”
Aleta
No matter what they say or change they’re out to destroy. You can’t make a comfortable killing in land and the housing market without debt and foreclosure. “If we have to lie, steal, cheat or kill….As God is our witness, they’ll never have affordable coverage again.”
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, he does seem awfully fond of ‘Vladimir’… too…
catclub
@dm: hey, is there any mention in the CBO report of the reduced – presumably – lifetime of the medicare Trust fund? I know ACA improved it, so the GOP plan should reduce it – and wear a goatee.
guachi
This fucking stupid.
SATSQ.
TenguPhule
@Villago Delenda Est:
There are sentient patches of fungus living in a cave that beat you to the answer. Step up your game, mate!
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone:
Ain’t REAL work ‘less’n coal come OUT the mine and ‘less’n the lungs is black like mine and ma pappy’s ‘fore ‘im. Now git!
TenguPhule
@p.a.: “And remember, the colored folks next to me don’t get a crate!”
Yarrow
Both.
humboldtblue
@Gatchaman: @Villago Delenda Est: @KG: @TenguPhule: @clay:
What all these motherfuckers said.
And Yarrow too.
And Guachi too.
FlipYrWhig
@p.a.:
Republican politicians: God helps those out of crates who help themselves into crates. It’s called “personal responsibility.”
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: You! YOU!! How *DARE* you show your highly educated, subversively homophobic gay-bashing self in this sacred space?! HOW DARE YOU!!
Brachiator
@clay: RE: Of course, the only person with less credibility than Ted Cruz is Chris Christie.
No, Rudy G didn’t have to undergo the Trump rituals of humiliation and degradation to the same extent as Cruz and Christie.
Roger Moore
Nobody would come up with a plot that required this much cooperation from the victim. This may be taking advantage of Ryan’s stupidity and vulnerability to get rid of him, but Ryan put out the AHCA without any prompting.
catclub
@MattF:
1% is 3Million, but only 30k (??) deaths per year. Is 1% a significant portion? Not trying terribly (1% of that 1% succeed) hard to kill themselves.
Maybe I am looking at it wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@TenguPhule: I think it’s “and the crate next to mine is too fancy!”
Corner Stone
@humboldtblue: Awww-uh! Why can’t I be one of those motherfuckers?
***pouts***
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
He didn’t have to. Trump only turns things that aren’t already irredeemable piles of human shit into irredeemable piles of human shit.
Barbara
@OGLiberal: I once got into an on-line discussion with a woman who said that in the 1930s, West Virginia and Minnesota had the same average incomes, but that they began to diverge over time and now Minnesota’s is quite a bit higher (see below). The natural resource trap is real. People become fixated on the resource instead of the full panoply of potential economic activities that might be sustainable given the skills of the population. Minnesota had and still has its share of mining, but it didn’t take over the whole state. West Virginia needs something besides coal. Coal has officially become an excuse for not doing better.
U.S.
Median household income (in 2015 dollars), 2011-2015
U.S. is $53,889
MN is $61,492
WV is $41,751
Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2015 dollars), 2011-2015:
U.S. is $28,930
MN is $32,157
WV is $23,450
Persons in poverty, percent
U.S. is 13.5%
MN is 10.2%
WV is 17.9%
MattF
@catclub: Trying, but too dysfunctional to succeed.
humboldtblue
@Corner Stone: I always miss at least one motherfucker. Sorry, corner.
Guppy
@OGLiberal: That’s basically Keynes’s absurd but mathematically sound fiscal stimulus example. Bury a huge pile of money – the market will find the investment resources to hire people to dig it up, the diggers will buy groceries, the grocers will buy shoes, the cobblers will buy new suits, and so forth. Voila, bootstrapped economy.
Governments can and have achieved similar by building pyramids and railways. Atrios says you can get to the same result by just giving poor people money.
Of course, those solutions solve for a recessed economy, they don’t solve for technical and geography-driven job displacement, which is what coal miners are facing. If they want to keep working in coal their best bet is to learn to operate strip mining equipment and move to Wyoming.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
And Mittens, while he got pwned in public with the faux SoS “interview” can just go home to his car elevator with the knowledge he’s worth more than Trump and thus, Winning.
I remember when I thought he was the moment the Republicans would decide to stop digging. Stupid me.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan:
It would be safe, at this point, to assume there’s no such thing as peak wingnut and plan accordingly.
Corner Stone
@humboldtblue: Nah, it’s ok. I been at this motherfucker game a long time. You learn to take your good days with the bad.
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: However, it may be possible to detect and form an image of the wingnut event horizon. Then, at least, you’ll have lemonade.
craigie
@clay:
This makes the most sense. Plus “Ryan’s Randian boner” is a Grade A description of this mess.
randy khan
@efgoldman:
That was a miscalculation on Yertle’s part.
PST
I very much liked David Leonhardt’s column today in the New York Times, The Original Lie About Obamacare:
For the benefit of those who were in a coma throughout 2009 and well into 2010, he briefly discusses the history of Republican intransigence about the ACA, but his real theme is how that decision to oppose anything even in the face of the Democrats’ hunger for bipartisan compromise is what has left them with nowhere to go now. I also enjoyed Steven Rattner’s succinct summary of the grossest lies currently circulating: Trumpcare: Fiction and Fact. Krugman isn’t the only good thing the Times has to offer.
Baud
I can’t believe this post isn’t titled “Sen Manchin or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blue Dog.”
clay
@Brachiator:
Well, you can only degrade someone who can be shamed in the first place.
I mean, the issue of “least credible Trump booster” is really a philosophical question, akin to “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. It may be fun to discuss, but it is abstract, beyond human ken, a debate that must go unresolved by definition.
Still, I say Rudy, for the gusto with which he flecked his spittle over the RNC.
Roger Moore
@Guppy:
If they want to keep working in coal, they need to come up with a new use for it that will drive massively higher consumption. Otherwise, the number of jobs is going to keep going down, and a willingness to move won’t help.
Debbie1
l’ll believe when I see these people’s votes. I have lived long enough w/ these Congress members, including alleged-Democrat Joe Manchin, to see them say one thing one day, then vote with the GOP on the next day.
The Moar You Know
@Aleta: Very certain this is the endgame right here. It is, after all, the only thing Trump has ever bothered to understand. They want middle America out of their homes and generating rental revenue as Money Jesus intended.
Brachiator
@clay:
Fair enough.
WereBear
Things that make me go “auauauggh!”
Mike E
@Baud: smdh
Eric U.
@Major Major Major Major: I always thought that Trump would tell Ryan to stuff this plan and just make the ACA better and call it Trumpcare. There is no reason they have to kill the ACA in order to lower Trump’s taxes. This is one area where I wish they were that smart.
Applejinx
@Corner Stone:
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s right! Back to Russia with you, you insufficiently commie bastard!
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: @Applejinx: I’m not entirely sure what the joke is, but I’m glad you’re both in good spirits.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I am not really sure there actually is any joke here, considering the level of gobbledegook:
Sunny Raines
Just more republican fake out: mouth some words sounding almost human then cast their votes to stick it to all but the 1%. How many freakin’ times are a bunch of dolts and the craven corporate media going to fall for it?
TenguPhule
@Sunny Raines:
Always. SATSQ.
VFX Lurker
@Corner Stone: I skip over everything he posts. Looks like I’m not missing out on much.
BruceFromOhio
Other have already covered it, I just like quoting it again.
TriassicSands
I don’t think there is any question about the latter — they are that fucking stupid. (Trump could help out here by adding “very” six or seven times and throwing in a bunch of superlatives although it does seem unfair to let Trump talk about the stupidity of others.).
As for the former, is it a Bannon plot to undermine or bring down Ryan? I don’t know. If what Bannon wants is to have incompetents occupying key positions, I don’t know why he’d want to replace Ryan. Maybe he objects to the fact that the media keep pretending that Ryan is a serious “thinker.”
cynthia ackerman
ACHA is becoming ACHOOPS
Gelfling 545
@chopper: Do you think Bannon sees Trump as his boss? Seems more like a parasite/host relationship to me.
Jeffro
You know I try not to get too far gone on conspiracy theories or assuming that these idiots have any sort of plan beyond getting through the day’s news cycle…
… but it is worth considering that given all of the chaos and “deconstruction of the administrative state” that is going on, you have to wonder who president Bannon thinks will be the white nationalist, beloved, smart, handsome, billionaire- uniting military-guiding person who is going to see all that deconstruction through to its endpoint.
Because while Trump got him this far, Bannon surely sees him as just another tool to bring every institution possible crashing down.
Sherparick
@ruckus: Yes, the eternal question, malicious or moronic? Like most answers I believe it is it quite a bit of both.
Death Panel Truck
Lemme consult my Magic Occam’s Razor Ball (shakes ball)…
Hmm…yup. This fucking stupid.