Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The revolution will be supervised.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  2. 2.

    Chris

    Been listening to an old TV show on YouTube while at work. The latest episode ends with the heroes tracing the crime of the week to the adviser of a politician who’s portrayed as a paranoid conspiracy-prone complete douchebag. At the end of the episode, this gem:

    The adviser: “I made him! We could’ve gone so far! With me guiding him, he could even have been President of the United States!”
    Main character: “Yeah, he probably could have. Terrifying, isn’t it?”

    Fifty years before Donald Trump…

  4. 4.

    chopper

    so chaffetz is out at the end of next month. man, this day just gets better and better.

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    These people are incompetent. Bloomberg:

    House Republicans barely managed to pass their Obamacare repeal bill earlier this month, and they now face the possibility of having to vote again on their controversial health measure.

    and

    “We’ve got to wait for the CBO score,” said Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which authored much of the bill. “To prove that you meet the reconciliation test.”

    But other senior Republicans weren’t aware that leaders had been holding onto the bill.

    “I had no idea,” Dennis Ross of Florida, another member of the vote-counting team, said Thursday, adding that the prospect of another vote “does concern me.”

    GOP leaders never said publicly they were planning to hold on to the bill for two weeks or longer.

    The gang that couldn’t shoot straight strikes again.

  6. 6.

    chopper

    @Mary G:

    Jesus what a fucking shitshow. used to be these assholes knew at least a bit about what the hell theyre doing. the trump era GOP has really gotten into the jar of bath salts.

  7. 7.

    TenguPhule

    @trollhattan:

    As a wounded Trump continues killing or maiming dozens, perhaps hundreds of beneficial agencies and programs remember the importance of what they do.

    Are you trying to make us all feel worse?

  9. 9.

    ruemara

    Forever 21. Land of the translucent dress. I’m listening to some Soundgarden. This is hitting a friend of mine pretty hard. Sometimes I think I’m so used to tragedy that I accept it as normal.

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    Ryan would just arm-twist a few Republicans from swing districts into doing his bidding this time around. It’s not like they have any actual principles.

    Also, typing with a mild fever is hard. I hate the flu. ?

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    I’m thinking the “Bring out your dead/I feel …happy” scene from Monty Python & the Holy Grail.

  13. 13.

    Roger Moore

    @Mary G:
    Who knew that legislating was so damned hard? Maybe if they had, you know, waited for a CBO score before voting, they wouldn’t have to think about going back and redoing the whole thing. I doubt, though, that they’ll learn their lesson.

  17. 17.

    Raoul

    @Mary G: Yes! I am dearly hoping this turns out to be needed. Another round of House voting, after CBO score and after the first round blowback (plus Trumpocalyse, updated daily) could be mighty interesting.

  18. 18.

    Raoul

    @Major Major Major Major: Paul Ryan was the jackass in my business school classes who always acted like Alex P Keaton but was actually really dumb. He could get someone to do enough of his homework for him (probably at the Frat) to pass.

    But actually do anything? Have a coherent, original thought? Hah.

  19. 19.

    efgoldman

    @Mary G:

    The gang that couldn’t shoot straight strikes again.

    Granny Starver is as bad at speakering as Apricot Asswipe is at presidenting, he’s just quieter.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    @Major Major Major Major: Remember after the election, he said he had a “rocket in his pocket” of bills ready to go on health care, tax reform, immigration, kangaroos maybe, all would be voted on bing, bang, boom? He’s just as bad as Trump – “oh, it’s easy, I can get it done in the first 10 days.”

    @Mnemosyne: Maybe, but seeing all the angry constituents crammed into the few town halls they’ve actually been brave enough to hold, even in the reddest of districts, has got to have them feeling nervous. And it makes great ads for Democrats. These guys had the house and the Senate for the last two years and accomplished nothing besides naming a few post offices and repealing Obamacare 50 times.

  21. 21.

    Chris

    @Raoul:

    @Major Major Major Major: Paul Ryan was the jackass in my business school classes who always acted like Alex P Keaton but was actually really dumb.

    A stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like?

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    you would think at least Ryan knew a thing or two about how to legislate.

    It does seem like relevant expertise for the Speaker of the House. OTOH, look at who Ryan has had a chance to learn from: Boehner, Pelosi, and Hastert. I think it’s safe to assume he’s ignored Pelosi- a Democrat and a woman- so he hasn’t had real paragons of legislative excellence as examples to follow from.

  23. 23.

    efgoldman

    @Mary G:

    He’s just as bad as Trump – “oh, it’s easy, I can get it done in the first 10 days.”

    And in the house, where there are no restraints whatsoever on the majority. It’s not like Nancy SMASH could call up a filibuster.

  25. 25.

    BBA

    In an earlier thread, somebody wondered what Holy Joe’s qualifications to run the FBI are, aside from being a nominal Democrat for bipartisan warm & fuzzies. Well, he was state AG of Connecticut back in the ’80s, so there’s that.

  26. 26.

    Mike in NC

    News is saying Roger Ailes died from bleeding brain. Yeah, 20 years of FOX Fake News would do that to anybody.

  29. 29.

    Calouste

    I’m wondering whether there will be a big juicy bit dropped about the shitgibbon or one of his minions just an hour or so before AF1 is scheduled to take off for his trip. It’s certainly something I would consider if it was in my power, just to see them panic.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    @ruemara: I am haunted by Chris Cornell’s loss. That it was by his own hand. That if he’d been able to resist the impulse last night, he might be with us a lot longer.

    Another day, I’d be delirious over Roger Ailes’ leaving this mortal coil. No loss whatsoever there. We would be in better shape if he had never been born or, if born, had been hit by a bus early in life.

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    @Jeffro: All I can put it down to is an impulse that he couldn’t fight back last night.

    And he’s amazing. I’d not listened to his acoustic work, or his range.

    My sympathies to his young family. Oldest daughter is 15, if that. And to his band mates and fans.

  33. 33.

    Origuy

    A friend of mine is in Chaffetz’s district. His Facebook feed contains a post from Provo mayor John Curtis, saying that he is considering running for Chaffetz’s seat. Seems like a decent guy; his opponent was a Republican legislator who tried to cast Curtis as a Democrat, although Provo city elections are nonpartisan. Probably as good as you can get elected in Provo.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:
    Absolutely. My go-to argument for why term limits are a bad idea is because legislators need their own knowledge and skill to get the job done, and if they and their staff don’t have it, the work will wind up in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and lobbyists.

    I’ve been thinking about the arcane procedural rules that legislatures have built up, and I have what I hope is an interesting perspective on it that highlights what’s wrong about Ryan’s approach to legislating. It’s not my main job, but one of the things I have to deal with at work is GMP (good manufacturing processes) and similar quality procedures. When I first started dealing with it, it seemed like a lot of work for not much value, but I’ve come around to accept a lot of the general principles. A key one- possibly the key one- is that you can only get a quality product by following repeatable procedures and checking the quality of your product throughout the process. If you aren’t doing those things, you might wind up with a quality product, but it will only happen by chance. It’s far more likely that problems will creep in along the way and you’ll wind up with a piece of shit.

    Far from being a bunch of arbitrary rules, I think a lot of the process issues in Congress reflect hard-won wisdom about those kinds of quality issues as they apply to legislation. You have to run things through committees so the top legislative experts can look at what you’re proposing and look for problems. Those committees have to hold hearings so they can listen to outside experts. All this stuff has to be done publicly so anyone else who knows anything about the issue can contribute. Both amendments and the full legislation have to be out there for long enough that everyone in Congress can read them and make up their mind. And you have to have impartial experts at CBO look at the thing and judge it so it has a second set of non-political eyes doing technical vetting. If you short-circuit some of those steps, you’re not following a well controlled process. If you leave out CBO scoring, you’re ignoring quality control. It’s always possible that you’ll somehow manage to get decent legislation through without that process, but it’s far more likely you’ll wind up with a piece of shit like AHCA.

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

    Report: Trump Official Offered Insurers Quid Pro Quo For O’Care Repeal
    By Tierney Sneed Published May 18, 2017 6:14 pm

    A top official in the Health and Human Services Department allegedly suggested that if insurers supported the House GOP Obamacare repeal bill, the administration would continue funding subsidies that President Trump has threatened to halt that keep out-of-pocket costs down for low income consumers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

    The offer — put forward by Seema Verma, the Trump-appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (pictured above) — left insurance industry officials “stunned,” the newspaper said.

    “It made no sense,” one of the officials told the Times.

    The subsidies are known as cost-sharing reduction payments, and they go directly to insurers to subsidize costs like deductibles and co-pays for low-income consumers, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act. They are the target of a House GOP lawsuit mounted in 2014 against the Obama administration that claims the payments are illegal because they were not explicitly appropriated by Congress. The case is on hold while the House GOP and the Trump administration figure out their next steps, but Trump on his own has threatened to halt them because he believes that would force Democrats to negotiate on repealing Obamacare.

    Insurance companies have warned that an elimination of the payments will cause them to jack up their premiums to make up the shortfall or withdraw from the market entirely. Insurers have also raised concerns about the whether the Trump administration will continue to enforce the individual mandate after an executive order signed in January suggested they wouldn’t. Early filings for the 2018 plan year have shown major hikes in premiums, which Republicans have pointed to to justify their repeal effort.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/seema-verma-offered-insurers-quid-pro-quo-for-ocare-repeal?utm_content=buffer66abd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  37. 37.

    rikyrah

    Armando‏ @armandodkos

    It’s very telling that even Manchin says No to Lieberman. / Senate Democrats reject Lieberman for FBI director

  38. 38.

    TenguPhule

    Trump getting his wood on

    A U.S. airstrike struck pro-Syrian government forces that the coalition said posed a threat to American troops and allied rebels operating near the border with Jordan today, the first such close confrontation between U.S. forces and fighters backing President Bashar Assad.

    Must be a day ending in y again.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    The womenfolk aren’t going to like this one.

    Iowa lawmakers voted in April to strip Planned Parenthood of $400,000 in annual payments, which the group received as reimbursement for providing STI tests, contraception, and cancer screenings at no cost to patients on Medicaid. The funds cannot be used to pay for abortions.

    The payments to Planned Parenthood came from a $3m Medicaid fund that the federal government provided to Iowa so the state can subsidize family planning services.

    But, now because Iowa has violated Medicaid rules by blocking Planned Parenthood, the state will lose the entire $3m.

    Planned Parenthood’s opponents felt it was worth it.

    The GOP want every woman in America barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen.

Comments are closed.