Strategist: Paul Ryan is "probably safe as Speaker because nobody particularly wants to be Henry VIII’s next wife” https://t.co/HPBNCO1niF
— Capital Journal (@WSJPolitics) March 25, 2017
the largest share of blame for this health care cock-up goes to The Wonk https://t.co/WYt1yDho9p
— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) March 24, 2017
What I wanna know — when did “wonk” become a synonym for “soulless ideologue”? Or is that just one of those IOKIYAR exemptions?
.
Unbelievable: media *still* peddling the Ryan myth. He's never produced a policy idea that could withstand scrutiny https://t.co/k68MlyNB1E pic.twitter.com/WrMm4gcOpT
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 25, 2017
Paul Ryan's great skill is making the media think he is good at policy and legislating when is actually an amateur at both
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) March 25, 2017
The dishonesty of @SpeakerRyan claiming "the people voted for this" when Trump promised cheaper, better coverage is breathtaking.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 24, 2017
Trump promised a pony and Ryan delivered a dumpster of horseshit, so you know, people voted for this.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 24, 2017
Analysis: Paul Ryan failed because his bill was a dumpster fire https://t.co/hL3T4UXxej pic.twitter.com/fz1BuRDUUO
— POLITICO (@politico) March 26, 2017
Ryan: "the conference is let down and disappointed. We were on the cusp of achieving an ambition we've had for 7 years and we fell short"
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) March 24, 2017
Will never not be weird that they're this sad about failing to boot 24 million people off their health insurance https://t.co/JJQ9tfpDgM
— laura olin (@lauraolin) March 24, 2017
1) Slickly rebranding GOP policies that help the rich & hurt working people
2) Ingratiating himself with powerful & influential people
2/
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 24, 2017
Many of the stories about why Ryan would be a good Speaker cited the fact that he would go on TV a lot. That should have been a red flag. 6/
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 24, 2017
Of course, Ryan didn't fail bc he goes on TV a lot- but that stood-in as a selling point bc he had little experience actually leading… 8/
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 24, 2017
In Paul Ryan's defense, who could get a group this diverse to agree on anything? pic.twitter.com/S1iua7IWpo
— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) March 24, 2017
Roger Moore
Especially when you remember that 3000000 more people voted for Hillary than for trump.
sdhays
That’s always been my read, although I don’t think the Occupant has that much to do with it. Paul Ryan got the Speaker’s job because the House Republican caucus was so fractured that no one had the relationships or stature to fill the void left by Boehner, who clearly had problems with that as well. Ryan, at least, was the former VP candidate and a media darling.
But even now that it’s clear that he’s a fool bumbling around and his caucus still doesn’t know what the hell it wants to do, nobody has a power base that could actually fill Ryan’s shoes. They might be able to take him down, but it’s really not clear that the party could agree on someone to replace him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Now they are diverse, some have hair, and some don’t.
efgoldman
I dunno’ Maybe Nancy SMASH or Harry Reid, who got the original bill passed? Maybe? Ya’ think?
Maybe a real politician and legislator instead of an asshole Randian ideologue?
Calouste
Ryan misunderstood that the ambition of a significant chunk of his caucus for 7 years was to be pretending to do something while talking on the bucks. The election of the shitgibbon interfered with that cushy arrangement.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: And I count at least two different colors of ties.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sdhays:
I thought that was proved in 2012 when Paulie Blue Eyes debated Uncle Joe.
Another Scott
Ryan today said that they’re still going to work on passing health care legislation this year:
“We’re voting no matter what!”
“We’re not voting! Obamacare is law of the land!”
“We’re moving on to Taxes!”
“We’re not done with Obamacare!”
“We’re merging our teams! We understand each other now!!”
It’s a continuing trainwreck. Will they run out of trains to smash before they destroy the federal government??
:-/
We have to fight them every single day, because they aren’t going to give up no matter how many times they lose.
Cheers,
Scott.
efgoldman
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Some wear grey suits, some blue, some brown.
Some wear white shirts, some blue.
Some wear red ties, some gold, some blue, some paisley….
Some actually pretend to have female plumbing, some hate and fear female plumbing.
Wicked diversified, they are.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: See, diversity.
Roger Moore
@sdhays:
This is not reassuring. These are the people who spent 7 years talking about how they were going to blow up Obamacare without a thought in the world of what was going to replace it. Blowing shit up without a plan for what happens next is the modern Republican MO.
jl
I like Marshall’s analogy of a huge overhand of lies and BS debt.
On the other hand, a dumpster of horseshit maybe just amortizing the costs of the pony up front, very sound finance policy, and only the genius Ryan understood, but just couldn’t explain to mere mental mortals, hence his soulful thoughtful stare into the abyss. Or something…
OK, the something is they have been lying and BSing for years, and now there is a problem because everyone, now even some low info Trump knucklehead voters, will first look for the bottom line, which will be huge payoff to top 2, 1 or some tiny top fraction of 1 percent. This will become great popular sport (maybe displacing fantasy football), because it will always be there, and will be only thing that makes sense in the GOP proposal. Everyone can be top wonk! And spit out a cool list of the Top One Thing You Need to Know about the Latest GOP Proposal on X: Big bucks to the big rich.
Let’s hear 2 cheers for the age of populist wonkism, which may be upon us.
Kay
It’s so boring for the rest of the country that we have to wait while conservatives figure out what everyone else knew in 2009:
They have to pay attention and try harder. The rest of the class wants to MOVE ON. Put them in a special area with a tutor. When they’ve done their preparation they can rejoin the country.
You really wonder about those think tanks. My God, it’s like pulling teeth for them to grasp these concepts. SLOWLY they start to pick up all this shit, stuff that was debated endlessly on the Democratic side for my entire adult LIFE.
It will all have to be gone over again and the conclusions will be exactly the same because these things are true now and they were true in 2009 and they were true 20 years ago.
Republican governors just discovered Medicaid. They love Medicaid. Obama had to force them to expand it and now they’re all doing it. My God, the time we waste while they dither around with this bullshit about “socialized medicine” and all the rest.
Gian
@efgoldman:
the republicans in the house are a mix of grifters happily spending the cash from the right wing billionaire trust funds, and the true believers who think that ‘deconstructing the administrative state’ is a great idea and that Ayn Rand’s writings are the source of all information needed to govern
dmsilev
@Another Scott: So how exactly is that supposed to play out? I guess he starts by horking up a hairball designed to be nasty enough that the House Freedum Caucus signs on. At which point the CBO says “remember that 24 million number we gave you last time? What with all the kids kicked off their parents’ insurance and so forth, this time it’s 34 million.”. And that will end well.
I guess he really does truly believe in his cause of taking things away from poor people, otherwise there’d be a certain amount of reluctance to take a second lick at that power socket.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Also, there’s a token guy-not-wearing-a-suit-jacket. That’s affirmative action, that is.
khead
Tired of politics.
Have some kittehs from this past weekend.
burnspbesq
It was always the case that when you unpacked the Affordable Care Act and polled people about the various components, they pretty much all (with the possible exception of the individual mandate) polled positively. Even among people who “hated Obamacare.” And for whatever reasons, huge numbers of people quickly figured out that the AHCA was not a step in the right direction.
It is possible to get much better health outcomes out of a system built around private insurance than we get in the US; the Dutch and the Swiss figured it out a long time ago, and the Swiss even did it in a federal system (although they are not burdened with anything like McCarran-Ferguson). It requires a genuine desire to succeed, which is notably absent from the Republican Party.
jl
@Kay: Probably the quickest way to get single payer is for the GOP to keep BSing around about healthcare. Medicaid and Medicare expansion will slowly be adopted as stopgap measures, while the GOP shits its bed with sabotage, delay and flimflam.
I think Trump would do it, force it through with moderate GOP and Dems, if it put a little uptick in his popularity. By this time, clear that there is no chance he understands any policies, or cares about the principle of anything.
dmsilev
@Kay: Here, let’s build a conservative comprehensive health care plan. You start with the assumption that making health care available to as many people as possible (really available, not Ryan “accessible”) is your goal. Add in the assumption that this should be done primarily through private insurance rather than Medicare/Medicaid (many liberals of course disagree with this, but it’s the conservative position). So that everyone can buy insurance, you require no denial of coverage from pre-existing conditions. Given that, you need a mandate of some sort to prevent people from only buying in when they’re sick. Given that, you need subsidies so that people at the lower end of the income scale can afford it.
Surprise, you’ve just recreated a large swath of Obamacare!
burnspbesq
@efgoldman:
Have you inspected the ladybits of the Republicans who claim to have them? If yes, what did you conclude?
Sonoran
@Roger Moore: They did however vote for a majority Republican HoR and Senate. I know, gerrymandering and all…but nevertheless. Not enough Dems showed up to vote and the citizens now have a govt for the rich, by the rich.
lahke
So this seems relevant:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/opinion/the-all-male-photo-op-isnt-a-gaffe-its-a-strategy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
It’s somewhat scary to consider the proposition that Mitt Romney is way smarter than the average Republican (at least on this issue)
efgoldman
@burnspbesq:
Not only did they want it to fail, they long ago started believing their own mythical arithmetic and Granny Starver’s magick asterisks.
Not even with your eyeglasses,
Villago Delenda Est
Krugman is absolutely right about Ryan; Hillary is a wonk. Ryan is a dilettante at best in wonkery. The slavish worship of the dipshit by the Village is yet another solid reason to wipe them out, all of them.
dmsilev
@burnspbesq: Bear in mind that it was really “Mitt Romney plus a Democratic legislature with a veto-proof majority”.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think Ryan and company know this. They just don’t see covering as many people as possible as an important priority when compared to tax cuts for the ultra-rich. The apparent lack of understanding is just a mask, or possibly a result, of an underlying lack of desire to provide healthcare to everyone.
Kay
@Another Scott:
There aren’t 5000 ways to cover uninsured people with health insurance. There’s no magic health care rabbit they can pull from a hat. If there were Democrats would have pulled it out 30 years ago. They have Medicaid and they have a subsidized private insurance market. A + B has to equal C, and “C” has to equal as many as are covered under Obamacare. They don’t have single payer, Democrats might but they don’t, so that option is off the table. There is no combination from Column A and Column B that will cover more people with equivalent quality more cheaply. All they can do is cut quality, cut number of people covered, or shift costs. They did all three with the last crap bill. They had to.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: The Dems will NEVER accept Ryan’s tax cuts for the parasite overclass. Never. So Ryan can fuck off and die. In excruciating pain.
hovercraft
@Another Scott:
He has no choice, it’s what the Kochs, Mercers, Adelson and all the rest paid for, they don’t want to have to pay for health care for peasants. If they can’t afford to pay for their own insurance, too bad, remember these are Randians. Heritage and the like opposed the ACHA for being too generous, they want Obamacare completely gone, that was supposed to be step one in dismantling the entire safety net. The annual Ryan Budget was supposed to be the blueprint for the Twitler agenda. This was supposed to be the easiest part because everyone already hated Obamacare, they spent 400 million trashing it and softening it up. For Ryan to give up and walk away would hurt him with his financiers, instead of lying to the rubes, this time he’s lying to the money men and women.
lollipopguild
@burnspbesq: I always thought Romney might have made a good democrat if he had been willing to move over earlier in his career. He did come up with Romneycare but then ran away from it like a scalded cat when he ran in 2012. Not exactly Profiles in Courage.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: The box that they’re in is that they realize, however dimly, that coming out and saying “yes, 24 million people will lose health insurance because Charles Koch needs another tax cut” would be a bad idea, politically speaking.
Of course they build this box themselves, so no sympathy.
seaboogie
Every time I see Ryan referred to as *a Wonk*, I immediately translate that to *a Wank* in my mind, because he’s a right Wanker. Given that his wanking material of choice is Ayn Rand and sticking it to poors, that has moved him from “preference” to “perversion”.
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
Nothing so drastic. He and his benefactors should have their marginal tax rates raised to the highest 1950s rates. That would be sufficient.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I actually don’t think they care about the health care plan at all. They have to couple the tax cuts with something and they promised to “repeal” Obamacare so they started with that. It doesn’t matter though- the bullshit health care focus could have just as easily been the bullshit “infrastructure” focus. It’s all a cover for tax cuts for rich people. The infrastructure bill will suck too because it doesn’t matter- the thing is to couple SOMETHING with the tax cuts so they can say they did something other than cut taxes for rich people.
Villago Delenda Est
@khead: I like 23; angry Russian Blue snarling at that annoying paparazzi!
amk
Amazing how the fifth columnist fourth estate is still peddling zegk as a fucking wonk.
and teh librul kevin fucking drum is advocating fucking ‘bi-partisanship’ (hyphenation courtesy wilmer)
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Well, that’s excruciating pain for them, so same difference.
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
Well, some kind of Democrat, anyway. Whatever kind had absolutely no principles. He claimed to be pro-choice when he ran against Ted Kennedy.
Keith P.
I’ll post this again just because it’s so damn funny -> YOUNG GUNS!!!!
Amir Khalid
Back when Paul Ryan was the VP nominee, I noted in one thread here that he practised a cargo-cult approximation of economic wonkery. These days, he’s also practising a cargo-cult approximation of political leadership.
marcion
So looking ahead, suppose they do get some big upper-tax taxcut done… then what? Are they going to twiddle their thumbs for 4 years? If these guys can’t agree on the Evil Obamacare what else can unite them?
hellslittlestangel
Someone tell Trump that the Speaker of the House is not required to be a member of Congress. I want to hear him demand that Ivanka take over.
dmsilev
@Kay: I disagree somewhat. The point, for the GOP, of repealing Obamacare was that they’d get to reduce taxes and reduce spending (on poor people) simultaneously, so they could give their rich backers their Precious Tax Cuts and do so in a way that avoided blowing up the deficit (important not because they care about the deficit, but because the reconciliation rules say that deficit-increasing measures have to sunset after 10 years). Just cutting taxes, without the accompanying drop in spending, would run the risk (in the GOP view) of those cuts only lasting a few years. And cutting a trillion dollars out of the rest of the budget is hard, especially if you don’t touch Defense and are afraid of doing much to Social Security and Medicare (since those would piss off your voter base).
sdhays
@Roger Moore: I guess to refine what I was saying, I think that more of Ryan’s colleagues now know he’s an idiot, but I don’t see anyone credibly (in the caucus) saying, “I could have made it work, vote for meeee!!!” I think many of them at least tacitly acknowledge what their Preznit said the other day: “Who knew healthcare reform was so hard?”, so even though Ryan handled it terribly, it’s not all his fault.
I think that for someone to depose Ryan, he (going out on a limb here regarding gender) would have to at least have a somewhat credible belief (and have enough of his colleagues agree) that he would be able to do a better job than Ryan. And I just don’t see anyone with that kind of broad support and well-recognized political chops in the caucus at the moment because if he existed, he would have become Speaker when Boehner left.
But if they did kick out Ryan somehow before 2019 and wound up without a new consensus candidate, that would be awesome. The House would just get absolutely nothing done while the Republicans dithered around for weeks, and for this Congress, no output is good output.
efgoldman
@seaboogie:
I wonder what he tells his priest at confession – and what his priest tells him!
It would serve him right if his confessor was a Jesuit.
Kay
Kansas had to wait until Obama was gone to expand Medicaid. This is why I say they’re bad people! They knew they both wanted and had to expand Medicaid but they had said all that bullshit about Obamacare so they made people wait years.
There are people in Kansas who died waiting so GOP politicians in the state wouldn’t have to admit they adopted a Democrat’s health care law. They sacrificed their lives so Kansas state lawmakers wouldn’t have to take any political risk.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
As far as I can tell, they have two basic plans for dealing with the tremendous unpopularity of trying to throw all those people off their healthcare:
1) Flimflam marketing that tries to disguise how many people will lose their insurance. This is why they talk about “access” to insurance, trash the CBO, etc.
2) Trying to jam the thing through as fast as possible and with as little debate as possible. This is why they kept their bill under lock and key, held overnight committee meetings for markup, and so forth. They were trying to rush it through before anyone could coordinate opposition to their plans. This probably would have worked if they could have gotten the Freedumb Caucus on board before rollout; it was that unified block of votes that really doomed the proposal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Keith P.: That was barf worthy.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Sorry, but high tax rates are not enough for Ryan and his ilk. They can be drowned in the same bathtub as Grover Norquist.
Another Scott
@sdhays: Mostly true, yes. But remember that the Continuing Resolution runs out midnight ET Friday April 28. No action means no budget means no federal government spending (with some exceptions)…
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith P.: Yeah, the Clantons reborn!
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: Francis has not been one of his fans.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I think Ryan’s versions of wonkery and leadership are more of the Potemkin version than Cargo Cult, i.e. he’s trying to fool others but doesn’t believe in it himself.
amk
@Kay: Misplaced sympathy. They had a golden opportunity in 2016 and decided to hit their own faces.
hovercraft
@Roger Moore:
For once Bill Kristol was right. All their talk was worthless, once they failed to stop it from becoming law, they were never going to be able to take health care away from people without paying a steep price. They may yet kill it, but it will come at a high political price.
Aleta
@Kay: and.suffered without the right medicine, physical therapy, dental care, counseling
slag
I remember when Obama thoroughly owned Ryan on national television re: healthcare, and our vaunted punditry class claimed the only reason Ryan wilted was that, as president, Obama had higher stature. It never occurred to them what was impossibly obvious to the rest of us: Ryan was a poseur and a moron in a Brooks Brothers haircut. Sad.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Trump has an additional problem though, and it’s Medicaid. His voters really are on Medicaid. Also- all those GOP governors who cut taxes counting on the magic of tax cuts to increase total revenue? It didn’t work. Kasich has a one billion dollar budget hole and he has tens of thousands of people on Medicaid. Something like 24 states aren’t reaching revenue projections because GOP governors cut taxes and their stupid theory doesn’t work.
piratedan
@amk: yes… its fucking amazing and who knows, maybe the Dems really are that fucking stupid (I don’t think so, but lets wait and see). Its as if they expect Nancy Pelosi, who watched this entire shit show for the last six years; after two years of excruciatingly heavy lifting, to simply come to the table and work with these guys who essentially froze them out of the process of governing for the last six years and simply let it all slide.
NO ONE from the media ever says that the GOP has to apologize for ANYTHING.
No help on the ACA, no help on the infrastructure bill… post 2010… they even started to renege on their agreements on the budget sequester, after they voted for it! It’s as if the media has completely forgotten thee number of hats that the GOP has shat in and completely expects the sane rational party to extend the branch of peace once more in the expectation that perhaps they can hammer out something less odious than previously planned.
well… fuck that! You want the Dems at the table, you better bring something to eat pardner, because there is ZERO incentive to work with these fuckers. After watching what they pulled with Benghazi and voting rights, they only thing I would be handing these guys are matches, after they’ve doused themselves with petrol.
Maybe we can have another round of Sunday political shows where the GOP calmly commiserates how the the Dems are affecting the well-being of the USA by not participating in a bipartisan dismantling of everything they’ve worked for.
Roger Moore
@sdhays:
To explain in more depth what I was saying, I don’t think the kind of strategizing you’re describing would be the most likely way for Ryan to lose his job. He’ll probably keep it, but if he does lose it, it will most likely be because some group like the Freedumb Caucus throws a tantrum and decides to get rid of him without bothering to consider the consequences. As I said, careful planning is not their strong suit.
amk
@piratedan: 8 years of no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO and NOOO. And kevin the pundtwit thinks now is the good time for fucking bipartisanship
Frankensteinbeck
@sdhays:
This. Remember, folks, Boehner had to find and lobby hard for his own replacement before he could quit. He wasn’t kicked out for the same reason Ryan can’t be kicked out – you don’t boot the Speaker, then find a replacement. You replace him, and that boots out the old one. There is no replacement. No one wants the job who could possibly get wide enough support among Republicans.
@jl:
Trump is just plain mean. He does not want to help people. More importantly, he is a grudge holder bloated with spite, and he hates Obama so much it keeps him up at night. He will not sign on to improving Obamacare.
efgoldman
@Kay:
Not just any Dem – it were that ni[clang]
Kay
@slag:
They got away with saying “across state lines” for a decade as if that was “a health care plan”. Now we all get to watch as they go thru the exact same discussions and debates we all had 8 years ago as if they’re new and no one has ever encountered these trade offs before. There is a lower standard for these people. It has to stop if for no other reason than the rest of us will die of boredom.
How many times do we have to do this? I believe we have fully explored the options available with a subsidized private insurance market + Medicaid! Can we move on now?
efgoldman
@Roger Moore:
That’s what they did to Weeping Cheetoh, after all.
efgoldman
@amk:
I thought he got over that between last summer and the election.
That, and the fact that threads get derailed forever by RWNJ trolls (and always the same ones) is the reason I haven’t gone over there since November.
Fair Economist
@Roger Moore:
Backed up by his approach to this, his first substantive bill. He was trying to ram it through before it could be properly analyzed and had the committee votes before even the first-pass CBO report. If he’d thought it was good legislation, he’d have been eager for at least neutral and conservative analysis. But he didn’t and he wasn’t.
Mike J
@Roger Moore:
Ryan says he has Ryancare Mk II, sort of a jazz odyssey, coming up soon, and today Trump tweets that it was the Freedom Caucus that ruined everything. He sure knows how to win over the people he needs to support him.
Chet Murthy
@lollipopguild: @dmsilev: Per dmsilev
No idea who was responsible for which bits. But dmsilev’s right — we can’t actually judge Mittbot’s heart from this, just as we can’t judge Nixon from his liberal acts (ISTR, per the LGM frontpagers, that many of those acts were forced upon him).
slag
@Kay: Agree on every single point. Especially:
It’s the mediocre white guy problem in a nutshell. Class and race hide a multitude of sins, and the rest of us have to put up with their gauzy ineptitude as a result. Frustrating as hell with no clear end in sight.
Fair Economist
@Frankensteinbeck:
No, the Speaker is removed by a motion that declares the Speaker’s office vacant. After that, then there are votes to pick a new one until somebody gets an absolute majority of the House (not just members present or voting). But even the Freedumb Caucus understands that they can only boot him with the cooperation of the Democrats, and so a meaningful motion gives Pelosi tremendous bargaining power with Ryan. It *is* a similar situation to Boehner – few Republicans want to risk a hung House unable to pick a Speaker.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Their stupid theory not only doesn’t work, a damn third grader would be able to tell them this. The problem is all of these idiots read some Rand in fourth grade and it destroyed their minds.
NotMax
@efgoldman
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And the all look just the same
;)
Chet Murthy
@amk: Whoa, there, pardner. That’s a MY tweet, not a KevinDrum tweet. My impression was that MY was …. uh …. significantly more “entitled upperclass twit” than KevinDrum.
All that said, there’s a decent argument that Medicare-for-All -is- a difficult-to-achieve thing. Wait wait, don’t scream at me -yet-. Note:
(1) if you mean “Medicare buy-in”, sure sure, straightforward. But it isn’t clear that that’s what proposed. Instead, it’s “everybody on Medicare”.
(2) That’s going to piss off insurance companies, doctors, pharmas, etc. B/c Medicate actually negotiates rates really well. And insurance companies will be out-of-business.
(3) But further, why isn’t this a GREAT negotiating strategy (admittedly, I don’t want MY doing the talking — he’s ..well, like I said above): Bernie pitches Medicare-for-all, and pitches “yeah, we know that’s impossible, imagine all the oxen who’d be gored — how about Medicare buy-in? or Medicare age-lowering — 50 anybody?”
And we’re off to the races!
There’s a reason the ACA was so difficult to dislodge — PBHO got buy -in- from all sorts of interest groups, and not just from the poor and sick. There’s a lesson there. Not a nice lesson. But a true lesson.
hitchhiker
When Obama did a farewell podcast with Ezra Klein, he said very sincerely that he’d be thrilled to support a plan that covered more people for less money. He of course knew there is no such (non single payer) plan, and I can only imagine him watching events of the last week stuck between laughter and tears.
Fucking waste. I can’t tell if they get it yet — how stupid they look, and how indefensible it is to screw around with something so fundamental to peace of mind.
slag
@Kay: On the plus side, now Jr-in-law gets to play at running the country like a business because we’ve never tried that one before.
Republicans are the type of people who, when sitting on the couch watching an Olympic ice skater do a triple axel, immediately think, “I could do that.”
danielx
@Gian:
“Deconstructing the administrative state” and “governing” are pretty much mutually exclusive, but intellectual consistency is not exactly a strong point with true believers. But then they are not really interested in governing as such. The guys in the Freedom Caucus don’t care about governing, they are there to obstruct government’s workings and burn shit down. They don’t know how to govern. It was just months ago that Mick Mulvaney, one of their leading lights and now director of the Office of Management and Budget (bless his heart) was publicly declaring that he couldn’t see any problem with defaulting on government debt…
To say that this guy is an ignorant dipshit is seriously understating the case, since defaulting on US government debt would be so bad on so many levels that ‘biblical’ comes to mind, as in disaster of biblical proportions. But he’s representative of the group, and when things go up in flames they won’t particularly mind as long as they are ideologically pure flames. Because they were provoked by government spending, you see, and it’s just not their fault, so there. So they’ll say.
Ruckus
@slag:
Their line actually is “How hard could it be?”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est: I linked to some pics from the M*A*S*H set on the last thread.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chet Murthy: Don’t forget the folk already on employer plans(if you do Medicare for all), that will piss and moan that what was covered isn’t covered now(and there will be alot) and how much their taxes went up.
sukabi
@Fair Economist: well Drumpf might try to get Ryan to step down as speaker and then try to have Kushner installed as speaker…because Jared can do it all…
Only partly snark.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sukabi: No legal reason why SuperJared couldn’t do it.
Major Major Major Major
@sukabi: trump can try to do many things but he is rapidly losing what little capital he had with the house, also everybody.
Chet Murthy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Right right, I forgot them. Indeed a TON of interest groups. Atrios once had a really great screed about this — something like
Of course, none of this means we can’t lower the eligibility age for Medicare to 50. Imagine that! And given that older people are worse risks, one can imagine that insurance companies wouldn’t mind so much. And leaves so much of the population under the current system, so all the current rent-extractors can keep on extracting.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: we almost had something like that too, until somebody told Joe Lieberman that liberals like it. You also have to account for the fact that some people are just assholes. Perhaps primarying him wasn’t the world’s best idea. Remember the garments rent about whether to kick him out of the caucus?
amk
fucking awesome.
Villago Delenda Est
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Saw them and commented on the previous thread! Thank you!
Villago Delenda Est
@?BillinGlendaleCA: SuperJared is like donuts; there’s nothing he can’t do.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve seen the area north of Seoul as well; yup, reminded me of home.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: I sure do. But he was -some- piece of work, and it isnt’ clear he would’ve gone along with it even if he hadn’t been primaried, eh?
Which brings up the other reason single-payer is a hard, hard lift: so many senators from conservative states who exercise effective veto.
Again: not a reason to just give up. But a reason to do it bit-by-bit.
M^4: are you seeing all these A(merican)M(edical)A(ssn) ads in the subways? The Castro station was wall-to-wall with ’em. Wonder WTF that’s about.
Mike J
Did I mention I went to watch sandhill cranes last week? A few pics
slag
@Ruckus: Indeed. And ironically, instead of doing something of actual value with their lives of quiet dilettantism, they sit around at keggers dreaming up ways to fuck shit up.
J R in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They are diverse! Some are evil enough to take health care away from the vast majority of the people they “represent” immediately and others would do so at once.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: I see the fine distinction there.
agorabum
Rare to say it, but Politico is right.
The bill was a dumpster fire.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: wasn’t Lieberman from Connecticut? His veto power over good legislation wasn’t because he was from a conservative state, it’s because he was an asshole.
I have not seen those ads. Are they in BART? I mostly use Muni.
ETA: which currently has a lot of ads that read like a parody of some liberal group. “THEY have packs of lawyers; OUR packs have four paws” or some such.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Urk, sorry, yeah, Holy Joe wasn’t a POS b/c he was from a conservative state. He was just a POS. But there were a lotta conservative Dem senators (and there will be again, next time); there were conservative Dem reps (Bart Stupak, may he go to a hell where he is in labor for all of eternity, never actually delivering).. Ah, well.
Re: AMA ads, they’re in the Castro MUNI station. But you’re right, that I haven’t seen ’em elsewhere.
Re: earthjustice.org ads, man, they sure -are- about as touchy-feely-crunchy-granola-tree-hugger as one can get. CharithNavigator sez they’re legit though. I guess maybe SF is one of the few places that sort of pitch works.
One of the reasons I love it here, is that anyplace else (including The People’s Republic of Cambridge), I’m a flaming leftist. Here, I can be the same person, and …. somewhat centrist some of the time. It’s nice not being the most leftist person one knows.
John Weiss
@Keith P.: Holy batshit Catman!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Woke up super anxious.
A guy in my office who has a collection practice just drew the legal equivalent of the Big Chicken Dinner out of the blue.
Basically, Indiana actually suspended his law license for 90 days on kind of a bullshit case, but he was stupid in how he handled himself and didnt crack open his wallet when it could make a difference. They set some restrictions on reinstatement that are a little problematic and time consuming.
Kentucky just did a reciprocal suspension, and will also wreak a delay of at least 4-6 months, probably a year by the time they get around to it. They issued the order Thursday and gave him 10 days to notify courts and lawyers. He can’t so much as touch money that is coming in right now, and the order is immediate and devastating – it can destroy the practice. He wants me to step in to stopgap the thing (presumably to hand it back to him when he reinstates, assuming he doesn’t just retire), and it involves a ton of work, scary variables and a rent obligation that I understand he’s behind on.
Good part is that it is a volume practice, heavy on paper flow without a lot in the way of court appearances. Bad part is that it really doesnt fit my current practice profile. My assistant is very young, and I’m inheriting a part time lawyer, two assistants and a skip tracer that she’s going to have to integrate with and ride herd over.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy:
I get total whiplash from this, as you can imagine. For instance, I like Scott Wiener, our duly elected state senator, which makes me a neoliberal transphobic prudish capitalist pig who’s in bed with developers and Big Nightlife, or as they call it in the rest of the country, a flaming socialist.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Major Major Major Major:
He did go on kind of a retributional tear after being primaries from the left. Thing is, I don’t remember why that even happened, and why it was Ned Lamont.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: Dude, you’re a total sellout! Total sellout! Scott Weiner sold out when he sponsored that city ban on nekkid guys at the corner of Castro&Market!!!! Man, that just burned me up!
Every time I went by on the bus, seeing those guys, was a day with sunshine. I could just imagine Bubba and Momma (from my hometown back in TX) on the double-decker tour bus, pulling up, and Momma sayin’ “Bubba, looooook!” and Bubba’s eyes goin’ wide, and them on the FIRST FLIGHT back to that POS town. And good riddance.
Such a sellout, Weiner!
J/K!!!! J/K!!!!! Well, the story’s true, and I wasn’t happy about Weiner sponsoring the bill, but hey, he’s OK besides that AFAICT.
EBT
@amk: Fifth columnist fourth estate’s third world knob polishing of a second rate politician and first class shit head.
Sorry it was in my head and had to get it out.
Sab
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As I remember it had something to do with a vote on abortion rights. Lieberman voted one way in committee, and then the opposite way on the floor, so on the floor he looked pro-choice but in committee when it mattered he wasn’t. NARAL was okay with his vote. I wasn’t. I cannot remember whether the issue was legislation or a judge. It might have been Aliso nomination.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: Did you know that Wiener supported that awful mean lady Shitlery during the primary that she won handily?
Not sure how I feel about the nudity bill, because on the one hand I guess it’s your right? On the other hand, I’m not entirely convinced it’s your right?
ETA: I also love all the (not-so) thinly-veiled racism that the lefties here have about Chinese people. Did you know Scott Wiener and Hillary Clinton only won because they campaigned in the (stage whisper) CHINESE COMMUNITY? The ones who live (stage whisper, pointing) OVER THERE IN THAT PLACE WE NEVER GO? They’re just such greedy and entitled little money-grubbers who deal in favors and pandering and are too dumb to know what’s best for them.
Sab
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As I remember it had something to do with a vote on abortion rights. Lieberman voted one way in committee, and then the opposite way on the floor, so on the floor he looked pro-choice but in committee when it mattered he wasn’t. NARAL was okay with his vote. I wasn’t. I cannot remember whether the issue was legislation or a judge. It might have been Alito nomination.
EBT
@Major Major Major Major: I still think your friends are shitty appropriating WASPy assholes.
Major Major Major Major
@Sab: I remember when the folks at Kos very much wanted to kick him out of the caucus (or at least his committee) after 2008. Which of course was a terrible idea. IIRC I was for it at the time, but Harry knew best as it turns out.
ETA: @EBT: Huh?
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: One other thing that’s so great about SF: 40-50 years ago, young LGBT folk were fighting for their rights. There were -battles-. -Battles-. Today, they’re all middle-aged homeowners, and worried about property values. About their kids and the neighborhood. ISTR (during the ruckus about that law banning nekkid men parading around) that Bevan Dufty (gay pol here in SF, also had Scott Weiner’s seat as Supervisor) was quoted about his worries regarding his young children seeing nekkid men and all …. and I thought: Man, SF is geting so conservative! Ha!
Just another reason to love the place.
P.S. Just to be clear, I’m not saying I disagree with (former) Sup. Dufty. Rather, it’s great that being LGBT is sufficiently normal here, that he can … well, worry about his property values and the neighborhood. I also recognize that that’s something that can change. E.g. with all these dam’ techbros. But at least for now, it’s lovely.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: Some people hate hate hate that being gay has become normalized enough to give (some) gay men the right to display the full spectrum of political opinions in SF, from super lefty to merely more liberal than the median Democrat.
Sab
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah. I wanted them to do that also but Harry was right as usual.
J R in WV
@EBT:
Well said!! Who are you referring to, if I may be so bold as to actually ask????
I’m guessing all of you guys are on the left coast, that’s why you’re still awake?
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: I am, what’s your excuse?
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
Re:nudity — it’s neither here nor there to me -personally-. But those nekkid guys were our Bible Belt Interceptors! First line of defense! And Scott unilaterally disarmed. Sellout!
Re: Asians — lolwut? Is this some version of those two high schools down in Cupertino I read about, where the student body is -wildly- skewed toward East and South Asians, and white parents don’t send their kids there, b/c … “too competitive” ?? I mean, if so, that’s just -lame-. 100% -lame-. I’m old enough to remember my Jewisn friends in grad school telling me stories about being treated that way from their childhoods. Sheesh.
They say SF is a foodie city, but I can’t see it. Except for the Asian food, which is better than anything I had on the East Coast (admittedly I never made it to Queens, and I hear all the good ethnic food is in Queens).
MomSense
@Keith P.:
That can’t be real! What did I just watch? All the hype and the flags and phallisses and then those three punchable faces wearing I’ll fitting khaki pants?
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: The Chinatown voting bloc skews ‘conservative’, and the way some lefties describe it is as I articulated.
EBT
@J R in WV: Ryan of course. I am both west coast and suffer from issues that often keep me awake in to the wee morning.
@Major Major Major Major: Your cis friends who appointed themselves high lords of what is and isn’t transphobic. I may have a pet issue.
Major Major Major Major
@EBT: Ah. Yes. ETA: I blame Twitter.
@Chet Murthy: Remember when Scott wanted that Chipotle to move in at Church & Market after Home went out of business? People were all “RAH BLARGH NO CHAINS IN THE CASTRO (except Peet’s and Diesel and…)” and so nothing went in there, and it became a homeless encampment right outside the subway stop for…
what, five years now? Dodged that bullet.
EBT
Also I have been sober and surly for over a week now.
MomSense
@slag:
Kushner made some stupid statement about making govt more responsive to its customers-the citizens. I wanted to reply that we are not his customers. We are his fucking employers and so far he’s been a really bad hire.
MomSense
@EBT:
Surly is good. With time your emotions will recalibrate. Rooting for you.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: So, uh, I’ll confess that I haven’t paid as much attention to SF city politics as maybe I ought. I remember that Chipotle thing, and, well, heh indeed you nailed it. It’s a bigger problem than just one location, ffs. That said, chain size is a problem. But not something you address at one location. If the -state- were to crack down on chains (once upon a time, there were laws), that would change things.
If these Chinese (really? it’s the people of Chinese descent, and not, say, from other East Asian countries? I hear Indian-Americans can also vote conservatively sometimes ;-) voters are “conservative” as you describe (== “typical liberal Dems anywhere else in America”), ffs, those libs really need to lighten up. Big tent, our part, fer cryin’ out loud.
One thing that -does- bother me, and a lot: the way black people in this city are at risk from cops. I remember after the Oscar Grant thing, and the cop skating, and I made a nasty comment about the cop (b/c it was an outrage) and I got a gynormous pushback reaction from one of the other people at the table. And I can assure you, they were all -very- self-described-as-liberal folk. Kinda shocking. Wish I knew what somebody like me could do to help fix that problem (that clearly BL do not M as much in SF).
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: SF has significant law enforcement problems, it’s true.
And for whatever reason people get really cryptoracist about the Chinese-Americans, I think it’s because they’re an established community that is visibly courted in a way that doesn’t happen for Indian-Americans or Vietnamese-Americans or Filipino-Americans. Though it’s starting to with the Vietnamese-Americans in California, after that dust-up down south. Been a long time coming.
EBT
@MomSense: Not that kind of sober, the kind where I am missing the thing that keeps my nightmares and violent self destructive impulses in check.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major:
?? Care to toss out a pointer?
Every Vietnamese-American kid I knew in college was a pre-med, except one guy who was an EE (so was I). I had no idea liberals had it in for successfully-integrated minorities ….
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: That one. There’s also a Vietnamese-American legislator from SJ who’s been making waves. I think they’re an up-and-coming ethnic bloc, hopefully not getting Republican sympathies. (I think they’re like 60/40 Dem right now?) None of the lefties I know have anything bad to say about them, just the Chinese. During the primary they wrote off the Chinatown vote for Clinton the same way they wrote off the black vote.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: I’m not a pol. I’m not paid to balance constituencies and their competing interests. I’m not paid to remember historical grievances and who killed whose families 50 years ago. But these Dems …. really? Like I said, I went to college with kids who came over on those boats. One of them was visibly disfigured by what he endured as a child. He was a pre-med too (I assume, a great doctor today). What would it have cost to ensure that the (descendants of the) victims of the parties for whom Tom & Jane and others advocated, had a part in that day of remembrance? B/c his legacy wasn’t unmixed. ISTR we discussed Jane Fonda here a while back — and her legacy isn’t unmixed either.
ETA: And hell, I have -no- dog in that fight, other than thinking we shouldn’t have been in that war, and even I think people who gave aid & comfort to America’s enemies have something to answer for. Maybe we don’t prosecute them as traitors, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have something answer for.
Sab
@Chet Murthy: In Ohio we don’t.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: Racism against Asian-Americans is very real, even among California Democrats, and for whatever reason people seem to have very little baseline knowledge about how the various ethnicities got here.
ETA: And it’s lights out for me, you kids play nice.
Chet Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: I get it among CA Rs. Hell, some of the stuff going around in TX about East Asians (and of course, south asians — “camel jockeys”, etc) was pretty vile. But amongst CA Dems?
I’d think somebody with a brain in the Dem hierarchy would notice that Vietnamese-Americans are a natural Dem constituency — b/c ethnic, and that’s enough for Bubba to hate ’em. It’s not complicated. Surprised that guy Leon wasn’t order to make his abject apologies.
Patricia Kayden
@Another Scott: Why do they need the Democrats’ assistance? Our side passed the ACA with zero Republicans. Let them destroy it on their own.
Vhh
@Kay:a black Democrat’s health plan, to be precise
NorthLeft12
The above quote is unfairly harsh on amateurs.
Mr. Ryan seems to project some kind of Dunning-Kruger field over the media and the public so that his boobery and ineptitude are not recognized as such. Mass hypnosis?
MomSense
@EBT:
Ugh. Sorry.
No One You Know
@Another Scott: I don’t think this is end of healthcare.
Ah, Sean, we know how that disappoints you. You’ve worked so hard to end healthcare.
No One You Know
@khead: Thank you for kittehs.. What a handsome group they make.