President Obama posted a heartfelt plea on Facebook asking legislators to rethink their support of the heinous Trumpcare bill and encouraging citizens to speak out. An excerpt:
I recognize that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has become a core tenet of the Republican Party. Still, I hope that our Senators, many of whom I know well, step back and measure what’s really at stake, and consider that the rationale for action, on health care or any other issue, must be something more than simply undoing something that Democrats did…
I was careful to say again and again that while the Affordable Care Act represented a significant step forward for America, it was not perfect, nor could it be the end of our efforts – and that if Republicans could put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we made to our health care system, that covers as many people at less cost, I would gladly and publicly support it.
That remains true. So I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win, that there’s a reason we all chose to serve in the first place, and that hopefully, it’s to make people’s lives better, not worse.
But right now, after eight years, the legislation rushed through the House and the Senate without public hearings or debate would do the opposite. It would raise costs, reduce coverage, roll back protections, and ruin Medicaid as we know it. That’s not my opinion, but rather the conclusion of all objective analyses, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which found that 23 million Americans would lose insurance, to America’s doctors, nurses, and hospitals on the front lines of our health care system.
The Senate bill, unveiled today, is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America. It hands enormous tax cuts to the rich and to the drug and insurance industries, paid for by cutting health care for everybody else. Those with private insurance will experience higher premiums and higher deductibles, with lower tax credits to help working families cover the costs, even as their plans might no longer cover pregnancy, mental health care, or expensive prescriptions.
Discrimination based on pre-existing conditions could become the norm again. Millions of families will lose coverage entirely.
Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family – this bill will do you harm. And small tweaks over the course of the next couple weeks, under the guise of making these bills easier to stomach, cannot change the fundamental meanness at the core of this legislation.
He’s right. Toward the end of the essay, President Obama says, “this debate has always been about something bigger than politics. It’s about the character of our country – who we are, and who we aspire to be.”
That’s what worries me — that the “fundamental meanness” at the core of the GOP bill reflects the selfishness of Americans all too well.
I’ll make my daily calls, show up at meetings and continue to support candidates and programs that make people’s lives better — even stupid people who think the way to give “elites” the finger is to vote for a buffoon in a golden tower who craps in a golden toilet.
But at some point, the people who keep enabling this shit have to suffer the consequences. I’m not talking about morons like Trump, ghouls like Ryan or money-grubbing pricks like McConnell; I’m talking about the voters who put them office.
Maybe when they hit the lifetime cap on their crappy insurance plan, sell everything they own, alienate family members and friends with constant begging and their cancer-stricken child still dies because they can’t afford treatment, they’ll get it. Maybe when their dementia-riddled, incontinent grandmother is ejected from the assisted living facility for non-payment and dumped on their doorstep, they’ll understand.
Or maybe they’ll never get it. Maybe this really is who we are, and who we aspire to be — or enough of us to make those of us who hope for something better irrelevant. If we let these bastards get away with robbing millions of people of healthcare access, if they don’t pay with their jobs, I really don’t know how we can argue otherwise.
Major Major Major Major
For a lot of these voters, hurting others is just more important than helping themselves.
Ian G.
On the last part on the voters who keep enabling this shit, I hope as a New Yorker that the zillions in tax cuts the Wall Streeters get out of this is taken in state tax increases to fund some form of universal health insurance here. If West Virginia is screwed, well, they can always vote against this sort of shit and I’ll be happy to help with federal transfer payments to keep people in that state from becoming destitute.
Sorry John Cole, not to pick on your state in particular, but it’s hard not to see it as a poster child of rural America’s self-immolation. They don’t even have black people there to blame for their problems!
Corner Stone
They enjoy hating more than they enjoy anything else. It’s easier and it is always there.
Mnemosyne
The one person IRL I know for sure voted for Trump is a cousin whose two sons are at very high risk of developing a severe form of MS at a young age because their father had it. But, hey, why should she care if her own children can’t get health insurance, amirite?
It’s probably a good thing I’ll be missing the family reunion this year. There might have been blood otherwise.
katep
That is my biggest fear – that this is who we are as a people. I have been in some kind of fantasy world thinking that we basically good and care for one another as a society. It might take a while but we eventually do the right thing. Now i think i have learned nothing in my 65b years.
donnah
I don’t think the Republicans will regret anything. They will rationalize and explain away and blame Obama and the Democrats for anything that possibly affects them. As I did during the campaign, I am expecting the “next big thing” that will finally tarnish Trump’s golden orange glow, but he deflects everything. The Republicans are managing to destroy the nation’s health care, education, financial structure, civil and gender rights…and we can’t seem to stop them. The investigations into the Russian involvement before and during the election keep revealing more and more levels of corruption, but all Trump has to do is say it’s a witch hunt and a hoax, and his followers will back him all the way.
It really does come down to the Republicans denying whatever is fair and decent.
azlib
You are exactly right Betty, the Republicans will continue to act badly because they have paid no political price for their actions. As Josh Marshal has pointed out this bill was written in secret because they know it is a very unpopular piece of legislation. It is just a huge tax cut to the wealthy because that is all they care about really.
debbie
Trumpcare is likely the most un-Christian act ever to be committed by Christians.
debbie
Can’t believe the richy rich wouldn’t think this applies to them.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: They never thought leopards would eat their faces…
JPL
@Ian G.: What a great ad that would make. New Yorkers receive a windfall while folks in WV die.
ArchTeryx
I’m going to just leave this here, rather then my usual doom and gloom.
You’ve been kept down.
You’ve been pushed ’round.
You’ve been lied to!
You’ve been fed truths.
Who’s making your decisions?
You or your religion?
Your government, your countries?
You patriotic junkies!
Where’s the revolution?
Come on, people!
You’re letting me down!
Where’s the revolution?
Come on, people!
You’re letting me down!
You’ve been pissed on…
For too long.
Your rights abused!
Your views refused!
They manipulate and threaten –
With terror as a weapon!
Scare you till you’re stupefied:
Wear you down until you’re on their side!
Where’s the revolution?
Come on, people!
You’re letting me down!
Where’s the revolution?
Come on, people!
You’re letting me down!
— Depeche Mode, 2017.
Uncle Ebeneezer
Pod Save America called this “a political carjacking.” Yup, right on down to Republicans disingenuously point the finger at the Black man. :(
Kay
Whoever came up with the brilliant idea to attack Nancy Pelosi, good job.
Political media are covering Nancy Pelosi instead the of the GOP health care bill. Good work. You’re absolutely genius fucking strategists. We could be laying out the GOP health care bill today. Instead they’re following Nancy Pelosi around asking her when she retires.
It’s incredible to me. Democrats control NOTHING in DC yet they’re covering Pelosi- not the authors of Trumpcare or the President, but the house minority leader who had nothing to do with it. Boy that shiny object must make Republicans happy.
NotMax
FUBARcare.
Zelma
I have never had a high opinion of the human race (I’m a historian), but the last few months have turned me into a misanthrope. I used to tell myself that most people were really pretty decent. It’s just that those who usually rise to the top are especially ruthless because that’s the way the world works. Now I’m not so sure. If the people who supported Trump are not evil, they are at least stupid. And stupid does lots of damage!
Major Major Major Major
@Kay:
That would be Republican strategists operating hand-in-hand with their best friends, the purity progs.
debbie
@Kay:
Direct your fury at Tim Ryan, the bastard.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@NotMax: Deathcare. That’s what it should be branded.
Bobby Thomson
There have been only three times (four counting ACA) that Americans have done big things that weren’t fundamentally mean. One took s civil war, one took the nation’s greatest loss of wealth, and one took blowback from a series of assassinations, most of them televised.
Other changes have been smaller, short-lived, and/or mean. We aren’t nice people. Sticking it to an other is s huge part of our national character.
Cheryl Rofer
Well said, Betty. I have been thinking all afternoon about writing letters to the slimiest of the Republicans, the ones like John McCain and Susan Collins who wring their hands and say they couldn’t possibly vote for an insurance bill that will take insurance away from millions of people. And then come out with a statement that they are sure that insurance will be available to all. They don’t add “Too bad if you can’t pay $10,000 a month.” They parade what they would like us to think is virtue and then go with the hate.
As to our fellow citizens, I think that many can go one way or another. The Republicans have been whipping up hate for so long, though, that it just seems natural that feeling good comes from making others feel bad.
I think the best counter to that would be for Democrats to come up with positive programs. I think we will have to do it at the local level, but I think it can be done.
ruckus
This is the core values system of conservatives. Protect the rich Fuck Everyone Else.
It has always been their core value system. Everything else is intended to cover that up, to make this bullshit acceptable to the people who will suffer by going along. They have hit the trifecta by getting drumpf and that new ass on the court. They own all three legs of this unstable stool now and they are going to give it to us good and hard. They hope. They will pull out all the stops this time around.
Ian G.
@Zelma: I think it’s more that one evil person can get 100 stupid/ignorant people to carry water for them.
Was everyone who ran the gulag or the Nazi death camps evil? Was everyone who picked up a machete in Rwanda evil? I don’t believe it. I think they were frightened and ignorant and easily manipulated by a relative handful of genuinely evil people.
Kathleen
@Kay: So no coverage of people in wheel chairs being roughed up and arrested, I gather. I don’t think I have enough bandwidth for all of the outrage I’m feeling right now. It’s not just the Trump supporters and Rethuglicans who are evil. The noxious vapours who call themselves “journalists” are every bit as culpable. As are the alt-left. I hate them all.
Archon
@Zelma:
The path to a white majority country where whites had assess to the vast majority of political and economic power to a true multi-ethnic democracy is going to be very, very bumpy. We were naïve to think otherwise.
Major Major Major Major
@Ian G.:
Hannah Arendt on line two for you.
ruemara
I don’t think this is who we are as a people. I think they are a very small core of America. But I think we are also a small core of America. And Americans cannot or will not act to save anyone, including themselves, unless they are deeply wounded for a very long time. Even then, some will double down and side with those evil fuckers over there and some will join us. The rest? They stand there either in pure, true ignorance or in a willful ignorance attempting to let the bad thing pass without having to do anything about it. We’ve been very lucky for decades.The insulating fat of prosperity and entertainment mean we have a population that is quick to do very little and hope that resolves it all because why can’t we just get along? I don’t even think it’s worth despairing about. We just have to keep being the obvious side on the right path and take care of each other.
That’s what’s the funniest. Doing bad things to others just can’t get the 70 percent of human lumps to discover a modicum of nobility. But they do love themselves some hero movies and hero stories. It just takes a cattle prod up their asses to be even a bargain basement hero.
@Kay: Word. Can we stop paying attention to these doofai?
Bobby Thomson
@Zelma: this.
Svensker
It make me feel really bad but I can’t help but hope that my fascist cop Trumpista cousin’s mom gets kicked out of her nursing home when TrumpCare hits, they’re so busy saying how great Trump is. I don’t REALLY want it to happen, but a mean part of me does.
Kay
I don’t care that much as far as working class in Ohio and Medicaid. It really isn’t that hard to figure out that if you make 9 dollars an hour Medicaid expansion is a 5000 dollar a year benefit bump. That’s a quarter of what they take home in wages added in value and Obama did it. Trump didn’t do it- Obama did. They weren’t going to be able to keep it without some small effort on their part and they didn’t even bother to put that effort in.
Why should anyone bust ass to get them 15 dollars an hour or any other part of the “liberal agenda”? They wouldn’t hang on to it long even if they got it. They’d happily vote for a person who would repeal it.
You know how he got a standing ovation last night? He told them he would make sure immigrants don;t get welfare. It was a lie- immigrants already don’t get welfare- but he didn’t offer them anything. Instead he promised to harm someone else. They all stood up and clapped.
I talked to a lawyer who does bankruptcies today. He said “this is good for my practice”. That’s true. I suppose it’s a mean thing to say but at least he knows how things work. He makes an effort. He hears something and he applies THOUGHT to it. They have to do that or their family finances will not get better and Obama or anyone else won’t be able to change that.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: Thanks for the reminder that they’re not a majority of the country, or even (one might add) the voters.
Bobby Thomson
@Ian G.: the good Germans were evil, too. That shouldn’t even be controversial.
Gaffer
@debbie: Well there was the inquisition and the crusades, among others.
Peale
@Kay: yep. Gee, we lost elections. Let’s turn “messenging”
And “party discipline” over to the pols who decided today was about their petty grievances with Nancy Pelosi.
Bobby Thomson
@Major Major Major Major: A solid supermajority either agrees with or can’t be troubled to stop them. People suck.
notoriousJRT
Sadly, I think the Right’s response to Obama’s comments will be to double down on the “roll back everything the black guy did” agenda. I wish I felt otherwise but experience won’t let me.
Zelma
@Ian G.: I understand what you are saying and I sympathize. But I disagree with you. They may have been frightened and ignorant and manipulated, but what they did was evil and they alone are responsible for their participation in evil. I claim no moral high ground here; I’ve never been faced with this kind of moral choice. But I know evil.
jl
When you compare the gimmicks in the House and Senate bills, the outrageous and corrupt cynicism is all too apparent. Juggling of dates to try to angle political advantage for re-election by the GOP caucus in each chamber. It’s obvious the Senate GOP is much more concerned about the general election in 2018 than the primaries. House seems eager to display superfluous cruelty and harm by axing Medicaid expansion asap, I suppose as a display for their upcoming primaries, which most of them worry about more than the general election. Senate wants to delay until after 2018, but offers a more savage cut in the program long term, i suppose as a sop to the most extreme GOP reactionaries in the House.
And suddenly Trump WH seems to remember that Trump promised not cut Medicaid. I think at this point, no reason to try to figure out what the heck Trump thinks or why he says anything. But it is now a fact of history that Trump admin was cool on what the House and Senate bills do to Medicaid, so probably should use it if we can. Hey, Trump’s Gallup approval ticked back up to 40% now, he’s a relatively (for him) president again.
The Senate bill contains a retroactive capital gains cut. I hope the Democrats make sure everyone in the country understands what the GOP is up to with garbage like that in the bill. No policy justification for retroactive capital gains cut at all. None. Many ‘lesser’ people will die, become maimed, and suffer for that vicious nonsense.
ArchTeryx
@Bobby Thomson: A lot of the “good Germans” didn’t even know the death camps existed until the end of the war, though there were rumors aplenty and the disappearance of large segments of the population, they weren’t being put to death, were they? Just being relocated.
After the war, when the camps were revealed, the reaction of most of the German populace was revulsion and horror. Part of why the display of Nazi symbology is illegal right until today, and why German kids, from a *very early age*, are taught about the dangers of fascism.
The Russians were much more go-along to get-along, but that’s been their way practically since the country’s founding save for the Bolsheviks – and we all know how that turned out.
Ian G.
@Major Major Major Major:
Never read Eichmann in Jerusalem, maybe I need to.
I’m a big Star Wars fanboy. I’ve always been struck by how few genuinely evil characters were on the side of the Empire. Guys like Admiral Piett or General Veers were ordinary people doing their jobs to the best of their ability. It just happened to be for an evil empire. And this is in a fictional world, where one can make things as black and white as one wants!
SFAW
I’m thinking it’s time to stop calling supporters of shit like this “Americans.” I realize that “evil, selfish motherfuckers” does not trip lightly off the tongue, but perhaps there’s some other equally-pithy-but-more-socially-acceptable phrase. Maybe Frank Luntz can come up with something.
But, just because they live here, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Americans. (And I’m not talking about “illegals” or “the undocumented” or whatever the RWNJs call them — in a lot of ways, they are more American than the RWNJs.)
Ian G.
@Zelma: Of course what they did was evil, but was that because they themselves were evil people, or because something evil was pulling their strings?
Kay
I do miss Obama’s decency. He’s a bigger person than I am and I was okay with that. It didn’t make me feel bad or resentful. I was glad to see it.
The President of the United States led a chant of “lock her up” last night. He’s still advocating imprisoning his political rivals. This is the norm now. The truth is it’s a much lower standard. He’s rock bottom.
Yutsano
@Archon: There is a modern example: New Zealand. I know Maori rights aren’t exactly perfect and a lot has to do with how the natives were treated by the English settlers, but New Zealand is an ethnically diverse culture with governmental structures to incorporate all ideas including the non-white ones. And yes it was rough for them getting there as well. But it can be done.
Major Major Major Major
@Ian G.: One of the things it’s about is that evil doesn’t seem evil from the inside, it’s just sort of, well, banal. But it’s still evil.
ETA: The fundamental question here is ontological, does doing evil make one evil? What degree of knowing about it is acceptable?
grandpa john
@debbie: They are not Christians , they are the faces of pure evil in their hearts , amoral beings who have no soul,no compassion, who worship worldly idols that are constructs that glorify evil acts
SFAW
@ArchTeryx:
Ri-i-i-ight.
James Powell
@Kay:
Obama did it. But since he’s black, they hate him for it. Since its benefits also go to blacks, they’d rather be without it.
Oatler.
Shumer and Cornyn are really dukin’ it out on CSpan2 like it’s British Parliament.
Kay
@Peale:
They focused on 1. Nancy Pelosi and 2. whether Trump lied about taping people
Those were the do or die issues today., inexplicably. They’re really goddammned determined not to cover this health care bill. They should ask Nancy Pelosi about Mitch McConnell’s health care bill. Demand answers! Hold her feet to the fire!
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Well, if you brought along Siubhan Duinne, in her Mob Enforcer aspect, at least it wouldn’t be yours.
grandpa john
@Kay: I have argued for years that the ultimate downfall of our democracy will be as much the fault of our media as it will be the fault of politicians
jl
@SFAW: But how many are willing to die or go bankrupt to satisfy their bigotry or other forms of selfishness or meanness? These people do deserve to make an informed choice. We have to bet that a critical number of them will chicken out and choose some protection for their own health.
For the hard core Trumpers it will be an easy choice, since they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause, or emulate their leader in thinking like fantasists who are disassociated with reality. Their health batteries will never run down, just like Trump!
Kay
@James Powell:
So we go back to wage garnishing and bankruptcy and it really doesn’t matter- they won’t know who did that either.
The Medicaid program in Ohio is called Buckeye. Back when I was a nicer person they used to say “Buckeye” and I would say “Buckeye is Medicaid” because it’s really essential they know that and it’s a polite way to tell them. But it’s really not my job to unravel these mysteries of how health care seemingly drops from the sky after a 20 year battle. It’s their job. If they want to keep it which apparently they don’t.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
I miss everything about him. Reading that clear, educated, articulate, and grammatical prose, it hit me yet again what we lost at noon on January 20. I cannot think of one single metric where I do not vastly prefer Obama to Trump.
(Well, in truth, I cannot think of one single metric where I do not vastly prefer any form of sentience, from an avocado pit on up, to Trump.)
James Powell
@debbie:
I don’t know about that. I mean, the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans, we could go on.
MisterForkbeard
Regarding Obama’s comment, I have to agree with what others have said: It DOES reflect a fundamental meanness, and unfortunately that really does reflect America – or at least, the Americans that voted to put the current regime in power.
The ability to be wastefully mean is important to a lot of republican voters. They’ll punish themselves if they can punish their “enemies” more, and the harm they’re causing themselves lets these voters pretend that they’re martyrs. It’s sick, but I don’t know what we can do about it. They’ve already suborned religion to push this exact same kind of crap in open defiance of actual Christian doctrine, so I don’t know what could possibly shame them.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
Oh hai.
Humdog
@Major Major Major Major: the question of whether doing evil makes one evil has been bugging me lately. I had been mulling the “evil or stupid” question and got to the point of wondering if there is such a thing as evil stupidity. Germans/people who voted for the rancid cheeto had to keep themselves willfully ignorant in order to not seem actively evil. The end result is evil doing so I am leaning toward they are evil even if they don’t acknowledge it.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
(Just stepping into this handy telephone booth for a minute.)
trollhattan
Something from the Stuff we already knew files.
The Thin Black Duke
Bill Parcells once said, “You are what your record says you are.” Yeah, Parcells was talking about football, but I think his observation is certainly applicable to what’s happening in America these days. The United States is a mean ugly dumb vulgar and cruel country and it’s damned proud of it. Bottom line, over 60 million people voted for that thing sitting in the White House and that inconvenient truth isn’t going away.
SatanicPanic
@ruemara: yes, when people are like, “Americans are jerks!” I’m like… not me and not the people around me. I dunno what’s wrong with people in other parts of the country but they need to get it together, they’re dragging the rest of us down.
SFAW
@jl:
Of whom are you speaking? Senate members? Or their constituents? If the former: that won’t be the reason they chicken out. If the latter: they can chicken out all they want, but unless they call their Senator and make it quite clear that, even though they’ve been lifelong Rs, they’ll do whatever it takes to get a D elected, then it won’t mean shit,. They’ll be stuck with whatever the not-worried-about-losing Rethugs choose to give them.
Right, because RWNJs and their supporters have such a good understanding of reality.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay:
In California we call it Medi-Cal and a lot of people haven’t figured out that it’s Medi-caid.
@Humdog: Honestly this is one of the reasons I eschew the concept of evil, it’s just not a helpful lens for ethical behavior.
SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer
@SFAW:
You called?
MisterForkbeard
@Humdog: Always felt like Evil is a relative thing. If you’re given two evil choices, choosing the lesser doesn’t make you evil.
What makes you evil is seeing your options and not choosing the least evil plan. Sometimes that means you do good. But it should never mean that you decide to help a little bit as opposed to a lot – knowingly choosing to do less good makes you an evil man. Or woman. Or turtle-alien masquerading as a senator.
jl
@Kay:
” The President of the United States led a chant of “lock her up” last night. He’s still advocating imprisoning his political rivals. This is the norm now. The truth is it’s a much lower standard. He’s rock bottom. ”
I forced myself to listen to some of the vicious and silly babble Trump is emitting at his campaign rallies. Confirmed my recent decision to stop trying to figure out what or why or how he thinks. It’s pointless. Why did he punk his own Secty of Defence and State (again!) on KSA and Qatar dispute? Why is he babbling incoherent nonsense about Democrats fault for not contributing to the Senate bill one sentence and then spouting fantasies about a happy bipartisan negotiation on health care next? Just alternatively chaotic, callous and fantastical nonsense strung together.
Most charitable interpretation is he just ad libbed and BS’d his way through and it means absolutely nothing.
Last few weeks has been a disgusting display of the incompetence, cynicism, malfeasance, mindless anger and petty vengefulness that is running this country’s government now.
James Powell
@jl:
Nearly all of them will do whatever it takes to satisfy their bigotry, selfishness, and desire to see people they don’t like suffering. They are fully informed. There is no shortage of information. For example, the people of Kentucky were told, repeatedly, that Kynect as Obamacare. They voted for the guy who promised to get rid of it. Whether it was to satisfy their bigotry, selfishness, or meanness, or all three, doesn’t really matter.
And that bet? Hillary Clinton made that bet last year. It was close, but she lost. We all lost.
Sab
@ArchTeryx: I am so glad that you have insurance. You have been so dogged in trying to protect all of us.
My stepdaughter’s family is about to get blown out of the water by this bill if it becomes law. And they all work their butts off. Medicaid helps the working poor. It’s a freebie to employers who don’t want to pay living wage or provide insurance.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
TO THE RESCUE!!! (Sound of trumpets)
Maybe NOW Mnemosyne will stop hating you for all your trash-talking about LMM and
BurrHamilton.Note to Mnemosyne: I’m joking. You probably knew that.
TriassicSands
For millions of Americans, this (Trumpcare) is really who we are.
@debbie:
Unfortunately, debbie, the list of un-Christian acts perpetrated by Christians is so long it would be hard to even pick a Top Ten.
Trumpcare is just the latest in a long line of atrocities.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard:
Looking at you, third-party voters.
different-church-lady
@Ian G.: [HEADDESK]
jl
@SFAW:
I was referring to this: ” That’s what worries me — that the “fundamental meanness” at the core of the GOP bill reflects the selfishness of Americans all too well. ”
So, I was referring to GOP voters. The only hope we have until 2018 is that enough of them make enough fuss to at least delay the charade and parade.
But defeatist commenters like you should stay here and vent on a blog. It seems to me you people will be useless in trying to persuade anyone who doesn’t think like you do, so your time is better spent typing away here. So, be my guest and have fun. I approve and have no objection to what you say..
Kathleen
@grandpa john: May I sit next to you?
R.Porrofatto
Maybe this really is who we are, and who we aspire to be
It’s certainly who Republicans are. Remember this?
We are the only industrialized country without some form of universal health insurance. France, Great Britain, Canada and Australia — just a handful of examples — have had universal health coverage for decades, and Germany since 1883.
Republicans don’t have to aspire to be immoral, greedy monsters. They already are.
jl
@James Powell: Glad you are typing away here too.
Kathleen
@James Powell: Also, too, slavery.
TriassicSands
Rand Paul (philosopher king) says that the Senate bill “looks a lot like Obamacare.”
Yeah, Rand, in the same way a child’s stick figure looks a lot like Michelangelo’s David or Barbie and Ken dolls look a lot like the Ecstasy of St. Teresa.
If stupidity could be patented, Rand Paul would own the patent. (And Trump would con him out of it.)
SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer
@SFAW:
I have my own family reunion to attend later this summer. Not sure there will be actual blood, like Mnem, but there may be an occasional frosty silence.
ProTip: Mob enforcers have feelings too, you know.
BBA
@The Thin Black Duke:
And even if we ever retake power, we can’t kill all of them.
Steeplejack (phone)
Damn it, Steve Kornacki subbing in for Chris Matthews on Hardball. He has all the gravitas of the earnest intern that he plays when doing his election-results wonk thing. God, why can’t they put Joy Reid in there, or Ari Melber?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Ian G.: Ever since Bill Withers and Steve Harvey left, the local scapegoating business just hasn’t been the same.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Steeplejack (phone):
Well, excuse me all to hell. Kornacki just shut down a GOPAC blowhard with a quickness. Color me surprised. Maybe he should be giving lessons to Chris Hayes.
ETA: And he let the blowhard reboot and start up again. “Free market solutions for health care!”
Major Major Major Major
@TriassicSands: maybe Dr. Rand will start his own patent-granting board and patent it himself like he did with his medical certification.
japa21
@trollhattan: I wish they would add something to the term “right-wing extremists” and call it what it really is, “right-wing Christianist extremist terrorism”. Unfortunately that will never happen.
Concerning the Senate bill, it is much meaner than the House bill, and I didn’t think that was possible. Just a total repeal of Obamacare and go back to the status at that time would be more humane than what this piece of junk does.
quakerinabasement
“So I still hope that there are enough Republicans in Congress who remember that public service is not about sport or notching a political win…”
He’s going to be disappointed.
SiubhanDuinne
@grandpa john:
I agree. And yet… and yet… In a different context, I mentioned earlier today that while I often thoroughly loathe the mainstream media, I am a huge supporter of a free press. It pains me greatly that so much of the MSM seems more than willing to piss away their First Amendment rights and protections for the sake of a click, an eyeball, a scoop. (I may not agree with what they say, but I will defend to the death….)
Iowa Old Lady
@jl: I don’t listen to Trump either. It’s odd because I know he has power and can use it, probably to do harm. But it feel to me like there’s a hollow where the president should be. He doesn’t know anything and if he enunciates a policy, it’s probably just a passing fancy.
lamh36
TriassicSands
@Major Major Major Major:
Someone had to help him with that. He’s way too dense to have thought it up on his own.
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: In any profession, most people are mediocre and some are worse than that. We’re always lucky when a good journalist is working and producing stories. It’s just that it matters more now because other checks have failed.
MomSense
I’m in a dark place today — just so angry. I don’t see how we can be one nation if we have nothing in common and can’t even agree on facts.
JMG
Republican voters would literally rather die than give up the idea their skin color makes them superior. Give the USA the Darwin Award in perpetuity.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: Yep. I kept trying to make this point to some Stein voter friends of mine. Sort of in the line of “Hillary has a chance of winning and represents 99% of what you say you want. Trump represents negative amounts of what you want. But you want to vote for Stein, which will actively harm the chances of Hillary winning. So far as I can tell, she’s the only person you could vote for without making Trump more likely to win… which is something you say is the worst outcome.”
Usually, I was told that telling them how they should vote was a violation of free speech (it’s not), that I needed to understand how necessary it was that 3rd parties win (it’s not), and sometimes how Hillary was super evil and didn’t actually mean any of the things she’d spent the last 30 years pushing for. Oh, and how she had a bunch of secret policy preferences that she’d never alluded to or acted on. And furthermore that voting for “her” wasn’t something they could ethically do, because reasons. Oh, and I was an asshole for trying to get them to change their minds.
I basically decided that these people were either stupid, lying, or evil. They either couldn’t understand what they were doing, were lying to me about what they disliked about Hillary or were trying to justify their vote, or just decided that Trump should win over Hillary if they couldn’t have Stein in order to punish the rest of Hillary voters.
I don’t know how you reason with this.
schrodingers_cat
@Iowa Old Lady: Me three. I also don’t spend hours ruminating on the inner workings of the psyches of T supporters.
germy
He’s a sick man. This is all about his personal vendetta against #44.
Obama said if the republicans came up with a better plan, he’d endorse it. He never made it about himself.
MisterForkbeard
@lamh36: Is the anti-Pelosi thing still going on? How? The whole question is farcical: “We lost a race in a +9.5R district so Pelosi has to go” is the ultimate in bad-faith arguments. Not to mention that it actively validates Republican criticisms of her: “See, she’s so awful even Democrats hate her, and they’re leftists! She’s a gay super-communist!”
Lapassionara
@Kay: this! Someone today said his daughter was worried about her mother, his ex-wife, because she had cancer and could not afford treatment. The daughter was ready to say she would pay for it, but he said not to worry, the state will pay for it. And I said, maybe not in the future. Seriously, people do not understand how beneficial Medicaid is for the grown children of the people on Medicaid, not just the immediate beneficiaries. Even if your state does not have a filial responsibility law, imagine being faced with your parent’s illness, and knowing you could help them get well, but at a huge financial cost.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Start by not trying. They made their choice and their choice was to not join us in the fight. Move on to the next person.
BBA
@Kay: Re “lock her up”, what the hell is going on. It’s like time and space and the fact that he’s actually President and she’s never going to be are meaningless. Will no one ask why he hasn’t locked her up yet, or would we not want facts and logic to invade their little paradise?
SiubhanDuinne
@Iowa Old Lady:
Quite right. But the press is (are) singled out in the First Amendment, and to me, that puts a little extra Special Sauce on their profession.
As for “the other checks have failed,” Kay, bless her, has been ranting since November 9, 2016, about the many ways Trump and his family and his team and his advisors and his cabinet and his administration have moved to demolish every single institutional norm. I would include the press/media among these institutions.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Yes. And?
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne:
Whips off glasses…wait!…where are they?
BlueDWarrior
@Humdog: they will fight the label until thier dying breath, even when they know what exactly thier actions mean.
Just like all the not-racists always try and deny thier racism when they can never find anything positive to say about an ethnic minority.
Peale
@TriassicSands: well it his his job to lie about it. Make sure criticism of it is just reported as “Democrats upset” about it so it remains a secret.
The Thin Black Duke
@MisterForkbeard:
You don’t. Stop wasting your time.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: Let’s say… it’s so dumb I can’t see why it has any traction at all in the media. It’s not even being advanced by a large number of people – they only people really behind it are BoBs (all 5000 of them) and the Republicans who want to distract from…
Oh. I get it.
SatanicPanic
@MisterForkbeard: Don’t! These people aren’t worth the effort. They’re on the left, they’re just misguided. They might come out of it someday.
O. Felix Culpa
@MisterForkbeard:
You don’t. I’ve tried too, with RWNJ fb “friends.” Facts, data, reason, logic…nothing penetrates. The best we can do is mobilize those on our side or near it. In theory, we have the numbers. Now we need to turn those numbers into real votes.
Laura
Maybe when their dementia-riddled, incontinent grandmother is ejected from the assisted living facility for non-payment and dumped on their doorstep, they’ll understand.
That was my mother. If not for mediCal, my worst fear was her being disenrolled because her pension and ss exceeded the 2k max allowed her. She received really tender care -well beyond my capabilities, and there is no way I could have kept a job if I got the call to come and get her.
MisterForkbeard
@The Thin Black Duke: I basically did. I don’t engage with those idiots any more.
I did restrain myself from yelling at a leftier-than-thou cousin of mine earlier today. He was talking about how proud he was that he didn’t vote for Obama or Hillary and that gave him the REAL moral authority to talk about how awful Trump is. I wanted to punch him. Instead, just walked away.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Really? We’re you out of the country during the election?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat:
I also prefer to think about fictional vampires, yes.
Aleta
To distract from the plan to withhold health care, and from the criminal investigation of himself, his children and associated waste products, he goes with
“Mexico was just ranked the second deadliest country in the world, after only Syria. Drug trade is largely the cause. We will BUILD THE WALL!”
The former Mexican ambassador to China retorts
SiubhanDuinne
@O. Felix Culpa:
LO to the fuckin’ L!
TriassicSands
Right now on the WaPo website they have this current run down of GOP senators posted:
4 Opposed or leaning “no”
5 Have concerns
43 Unclear of supports
Let’s see, the 4 opposed are extreme nut jobs (like Paul) who want the bill to completely eradicate the ACA and throw tens of millions of Americans off the roles of the insured. They can be bought off by making the bill even meaner.
The 5 with concerns are the so-called “moderates”‘ who are nothing of the kind. They talk softly and normally vote with a big stick. They can be bought off by making the increased meanness — that buys off the 4 nut jobs above — take a little longer to play out.
The 43 who are unclear or favor the bill will just vote the way the leadership wants them to vote.
Tazj
@lamh36: Tim Ryan and company are nothing but preening assholes today.
The only thing I’m able to hold onto today is the courage of those disabled protesters at Mitch McConnell’s office. It was very humbling to watch them conduct themselves with dignity while being dragged out by police. I know you posted a video about this earlier.
People were protesting at the DC airports as Congress returned home. I hope this spirit of resistance spreads, like the protests against the travel bans.
Major Major Major Major
@Tazj:
‘Today’?
SatanicPanic
@TriassicSands:
oh really? Which of these assholes voted for it when it was being passed? oh right, NONE.
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: usually if you think something is a step in the right direction you don’t try to prevent and then later destroy it, yeah…
Tazj
@Major Major Major Major: Touché
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne: Just remember: No capes!
Apologies: feeling a little punchy right now, because dismayed.
D58826
@lamh36: Listening to Harold Ford run along the same path ‘Pelosi has to go’ path. Now maybe it is time for Nancy to hang it up and then maybe it isn’t. To remove her because the D’s lost in 4 districts that haven’t voted D in recorded history is insane. As long as what motivates the GOP voter is that they hate liberals more than they love their kids it doesn’t matter who the D leader is. There were the Kennedy liberals, the crooked Clintons, Harry Reid something and others. And when they didn’t have a name/face it was ‘tax and spend democrats’ or ‘soft on communism’ If the House D’s put a fire plug in charge of the caucus, the GOP would pass legislation to dig them all up. It is the real world manifestation of the suggestion that if Obama said drinking bleach was bad the GOP would make a run on bleach to drink it. Just to spite Obama. What ever the D’s do they should not chase a shiny ball thrown out there by the GOP.
Bobby Thomson
@ArchTeryx:
Bull shit.. Human bodies leave a distinct odor when burned.
Bobby Thomson
@Ian G.: Evil is as evil does. Whatever distinction you are trying to draw smells a little evil in itself.
Nora
Re: bitching about Nancy Pelosi — of all the stupid wastes of time — the NYFT had a big article on the front page, above the fold, about how democrats were demoralized and there was criticism of Nancy Pelosi for the losses in Georgia and S. Carolina. Nowhere on the front page of that article was there a mention of the long-term republican leanings of those two districts. I really hate those fucking people.
Bobby Thomson
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, and I really don’t think the question even needs to be asked.
Peale
@D58826: the fact that Harold Ford and the even the liberal MSNBC are on it, kind of makes me think this is the talk of the New York high hair Democrats. You know, the ones who created the idea that Kristen Gillenbrand was the wrong senator for New York and created this myth that Harold Ford should replace her. They managed to get the New York Times to follow him around the state and kept reporting how everyone who met him loved him. Turned out, only those dozen doofuses wanted him to run. They want a rightward Democratic Party (and oddly seem always to have problems with women in leadership roles). Times liberalism. It’s about as far from the concerns of WWC heartland as you can get.
El Caganer
@SatanicPanic: Couldn’t they just have shortened “Republican moderates who think Obamacare was a step in the right direction” to “liars?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tweety Show?
InternetDragons
For anyone interested, here is something you can do. Organizing for America (the grassroots arm of Obama for America) is coordinating actions and responses to the ACA repeal bill:
https://www.ofa.us/we-have-to-keep-fighting/
SgrAstar
@Ian G.: You pick up the machete and you’ve crossed the line. Period.
Kathleen
@MomSense: I am with you there. Praying for justice for Du Bose family but dreading prospect of another hung jury. Between that and this fucking DeathNotCare edict I’m a mess.
Peale
@Nora: yep. The only alert I got on my iPad today from the times was about the Trump tapes. My guess is the Times ownership is concerned that the Democrats aren’t doing the soul searching it wants. Namely, they are staying together at this time and the debate is weather to stay leftward or move further left. Not enough Dems are really doing what the times always wants – which is to debate moving back to the right. There ought to be at least some democratic congressmen by this point who argue that we need to give up on healthcare altogether, and maybe throw some constiuency that we have now away so that we’ll get some hypothetical more conservative base in the future. But so far it’s been barely anyone.
I think if we get thrown go this, we’ll have a group of representatives who don’t have that “he was able to reach across the aisle and voted for awful things” stigma that Bush II senators carried around with them.
Kathleen
@Nora: And I’m sure there was nothing about DeathWishCare or the sulfuric vapors from Hades that belched it out, ammirite?
Gator90
@ArchTeryx: Daniel Goldhagen on line 2. .
TenguPhule
@Ian G.:
Yes.
SATSQ.
TriassicSands
@SatanicPanic:
I’m not sure why you directed that comment at me — that isn’t my quote.
I don’t believe there are any genuine moderates in the GOP. I think Collins is a poser who moans and groans and falls in line when it matters most. She could vote against this bill — she’s got a lot of cover. But will she? I wouldn’t bet on it.
If I were going to re-write the quoted text in your comment:
Republicans are ideologically divided between conservatives who fundamentally don’t believe in the government’s role in health care and faux moderates who pretend they’re moderate.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Probably the same geniuses who convinced the Labour PLP to attempt a coup again Corbyn right after the Brexit Vote.
Pretty much the same outcome too.
TenguPhule
@Bobby Thomson:
And now we will get all of them at once. Progress!
MisterForkbeard
@TriassicSands: It’s telling what “Moderate” is supposed to mean in the GOP right now. It means you have concerns about throwing 24 people off their insurance before the next presidential election, NOT that you actually have concerns about all the people who will get hurt and die because of your policies… just a little later than the original bill.
And we all know the moderates won’t even do that. They’ll eventually get a token change that won’t actually solve any of their ‘concerns’ and then with “heavy hearts” vote for this massively awful republican bill that will kill American citizens so the rich can have a tax cut.
LongHairedWeirdo
I have to say, this bill is one where I keep wondering, what is the GOParty-of-Wealth’s end game?
We’ll suck hundreds of billions of dollars out of the health care industry, meaning job losses, and poorer health, so that the wealthy have their few percentage points of higher income – hey, when you make a billion a year, 1% is 10 million bucks, and that ain’t chump change, even at that level!
Okay, and then? People are getting poorer and will become less able to afford health insurance and health care. As medical care gets priced out of reach of more and more people, there will be fewer jobs, less money to be made, and a lot more people suffering and dying for no reason. Is *that* the end game?
Or is it waiting for Democrats to pass another health care reform bill that they can attack and destroy?
If there’s *any* wisdom at the upper echelons of the GOParty-of-arseholes, they must all be thinking “STOP US! PLEASE! WE’RE RIDING A FRICKIN’ TIGER AND HOLDING ON FOR DEAR LIFE AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE KILL THE TIGER!”
And if there isn’t, they can screw us all well and truly, for a really terrifyingly long time, if they keep going like they are.
Jilli Brown
What happens to those reliant on medicaid when the funding is slashed? Are the sick healed, do the crippled walk? Are the elderly miraculously young and healthy again? Are the opioid addicted cured? Do kids…hell, I don’t know…. PEOPLE and issues don’t just disappear when the funding is cut.
There has to come a point where republicans realize that this isn’t about politics, it’s about people’s lives, right? Ha! Maybe their minions will get the message? Lord, I hope so.
I want my country back.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@germy: And the GOP helped kill it. I hope that fucker has a stroke that renders him unable to speak
Jeffro
The fundamental, petty, unnecessary, 1%-enriching, soulless, IGMFU meanness at the core of not just this legislation, but everything the Republicans do.
When they aren’t busy committing treason and abetting attacks by hostile foreign powers, that is.
SFAW
@jl:
Yet another moron heard from. As Shakespeare or someone else said: Fuck you.
Do you even UNDERSTAND what I wrote? No, of course not.
In the meantime, I’m sure you will gather voluminous evidence of all the times the Rethugs have suffered (since 2009, let’s say) for trying to destroy an effective government. Next, you can tell me how Rick Scott got his ass kicked in the 2014 election, because his 31 percent approval in 2013 was all that mattered. And so on.
Here is the offending part that I wrote:
You were talking about the R-voters — the ones that will suffer — chickening out about the Senate version of AHCA. I said that they need to channel that into action. IF THEY DON’T, THEN IT WON’T MEAN SHIT. That’s not “defeatist,” moron, that’s saying that the snowflakes you’re hoping will “chicken out” NEED TO DO MORE THAN JUST CHICKEN OUT, they need to take action
I’m thinking of teaching remedial reading, I’ll let you know when it is, so you can sign up.
Jeffro
@germy: What fuck does “making it really special” mean? I don’t need my nation’s health care laws to be made “really special”, like Dad taking me out of ice cream, or friends throwing a surprise party or something. It’s just creepy.
Jeffro
Just like with almost every debate/every policy under the sun, the Repubs could have owned this debate with almost no fuss if they really wanted to…if they were actually interested in governing, even through a conservative lens. They could have said, “Look, Obamacare was well-intended, but health care is expensive and folks at every level are going to have to have more ‘skin in the game’ (i.e., pay a bit more)”. Then they’d just gradually ratchet rates up on the working poor and middle class, while gradually reducing the ACA taxes on the rich. Hell if they weren’t so obvious about it, they might have even gotten their precious “let’s block-grant Medicaid to the states” through without much ado.
(I’m not advocating this, mind you. Just noting that they had other options that just being dicks).
But because they’ve been stoking the crazy for years, and because they are funded by the Randians, and because somehow providing preventative care for “others” offends their sense of privilege…this is what we get. Straight-up FU ‘legislation’ that in the oh-so-delibrative Senate bears a striking resemblance to the oh-so-batshit-crazy House’s bill.
I’m tired of talking about Trumpov. While I’m perfectly willing to swing a rhetorical bat at the Orange Ballsack, maybe we should just hammer home that “this is what Republicans – even ‘moderate’, ‘maverick’, ‘outsider’, and ‘businessmen’ Republicans – DO”
TriassicSands
Kevin Drum has some fun statistics up on his site. Going back to LBJ. There have been 90 criminal convictions of administration members. Eighty-nine have been Republicans and one lonely person from the Clinton administration. Nixon is the champ with 55, while LBJ, Carter, and Obama all had zero.
There should be a lot more Republicans, but a lot of people got away with Iran-contra including Reagan and GHW Bush. Reagan and GW Bush are tied with 16 each. Both should be more.
Of course, this glosses over the huge injustice of failing to lock up HRC for at least 2,000 felonies, not least of which was the murder of Vince Foster. And shouldn’t Obama be doing life plus for the ACA?
Ohio Mom
@Ian G.: Doing bad things because you are frightened and ignorant and easily manipulated is what the banality of evil is.
That is to say, evil isn’t some exotic force or thing, rather it can be found in people just “doing their jobs” or “going about their lives” without any self-reflection about anything.
It would be nice to think evil is exotic because then we would know it is foreign to us. But those Germans were in fact evil in the most unassuming way.
Everything comes in degrees, maybe that is what you are grappling with, how to distinguish among degrees of evil?
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx: They might not have known the details, but they knew the outline and chose to avoid knowing more. Besides, they accepted all the things that happened before. When nice Dr Weinberg, the dentist, had to close his practice and start scrubbing the streets on his knees. They just looked away and were embarrassed. “How vulgar of the Nazis, but there are costs to getting the country back on track.” At best, they hoped it was a passing phase. Yeah, so fuck them.
Willard
@Kay: every time I think they cannot possibly get any lower, they do. It’s pure tribalism at this point.
AxelFoley
@MisterForkbeard:
You should’ve punched him.
Jado
@Ian G.:
“Frightened and ignorant and willing to pick up a machete at the direction of someone else” is the definition of evil. Evil is what happens when you choose not to do the right thing.
NorthLeft12
Betty, you nailed it perfectly. And please, this is not a knock from a Canadian against Americans, it is unfortunately the way people in general, all over the world, are acting these days. The difference is that on the health care issue, Canada, Europe, and other advanced countries have an established system that people generally value very highly, for their own selfish reasons. Yeah, there is griping that some people feel they are not getting good value for the high amount of taxes that we spend on our system, but mostly people are comfortable with the system and the security it provides.
It is tougher in the US because without that experience, people seem more apt to believe that it will be worse than they currently have. That is a tough hill to climb, and especially when you have key players who have the motivation and resources to misinform and obfuscate the public on this issue.