I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about the last page of the Senate bill:
Assholes.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Everybody saw this coming.
“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.
“Squeaker” McCarthy
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.
If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?
T R E 4 5 O N
Infrastructure week. at last.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
Let there be snark.
Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Venality / Quick Thoughts after Reading the GOP “Health Care” Bill
ChrisH
I’m going to use this joke somewhere
TenguPhule
We have a fucking useless media.
If they spent 1/10th of the time they’d wasted on Hillary’s emails to repeatedly keep shouting this fucking bill is an abomination that will kill people, the Republicans would be fucking cowering in their shells from the blowback.
Fuckers are distracted by shiny objects, Look, a Pelosi Squirrel!
When the rightwing violence turns on the media again, fuck them. They contributed to this fucking mess with eyes wide open.
Sorry Ben, we couldn’t keep this fucking Republic.
burnspbesq
If nothing else kills the individual market, that surely will.
Morzer
Well, seems to me that this murderous turd of a bill is effectively a declaration of war on the good ol’ US of A. I can’t see what else you can call a measure which will kill, bankrupt or destroy the citizens of a country.
BlueDWarrior
@TenguPhule: because we allowed ourselves in the post-war era to believe the mythology of the nonpartisan newsman who only reported facts and held the powerful to account. Since the end of the Cold War, we had relearn the media is only as good as its ownership; and media ownership in this country worships at the altar of Mammon.
Ruckus
@Morzer:
Someone said it is the current day Fort Sumter. Apropos, they are firing on the federal government. We just happen to be in the line of fire. As the walls of the fort.
Morzer
@Ruckus:
Well, it’s either destroy the GOP or watch them steal the country out from under us. I don’t see any point in negotiating with fiscal terrorists, so…
Elizabelle
I am calling my Senators in Virginia to thank them (Kaine and Warner), and calling North Carolina (still hold a driver’s license from there) to excoriate Burr and Tillis.
It’s appalling to be watching this from abroad. Cannot imagine the despair of watching it from the US. We are better than this, and we will win the war, although who knows how this battle will go.
@BlueDWarrior: I am all for breaking up Big Media and tearing down Fox News. They hide behind the First Amendment, while they reduce the ability of others to speak freely. Propaganda is literally killing this country.
Eljai
I was thinking how maybe a Democratic win in GA-6 might have been more sobering to the GOP. But now I don’t think it would have made a difference. The way republicans are going about this shows me they know they have a short window of opportunity, but they don’t care. They have a lot of hubris and hubris has brought down many who thought they were invincible. So, even though I was in a morose mood today, I refuse to give up. I’m going to keep fighting for the soul of this country, as long as it takes.
BlueDWarrior
@Elizabelle: you are right, but busting the media trusts shouldn’t be our only target. Unchecked mergers and acquisitions are strangling our capitalist system to death, for it to be replaced by an overt oligopoly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Getting things ready here for my Milky Way shoot tomorrow night. Trying to schedule the pups feeding and when I need to get on the road and figuring out what I need to take. It should be an interesting adventure. I’m also thinking of going into DTLA to take some pics, or the Huntington, or maybe get my tat finished.
Elizabelle
@BlueDWarrior: Yes. Regulated capitalism is safest. Plutocrats and their employees in Congress have been taking off the brakes, and I hope it destroys them first.
It breaks my heart to see the fucking Quisling Republicans tearing down Obama’s signature act. This is going to affect me and everyone else who does not have employer-sponsored healthcare, and even then, those with insurance through their jobs will see a lot more expense, less coverage, and the pain and suffering of their family and associates without insurance.
I hope we see months of marching — even angry marching — in the streets. I am ready to throw something.
Also, can you imagine how Congressional and Senate Democrats feel? And they are smart, so I hope they have some good moves up their sleeves.
Mitch McConnell is an ugly and destructive man. I hope his time remaining on earth is very short.
Bruce K
Mr. Cole, I don’t think your last word in this post is quite approporiate. It’s not nearly strong enough.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what words would be strong enough. Or that any such words could be spoken without ripping open a hole in the universe.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Or you may see a push in the states to ‘go it alone’ on health care, California is already considering their own single payer plan.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle:
History will not be kind to them. Not that it matters to any of us. We’ll all be dead.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Fat lot of good that will do me. (not saying that to be…. mean? just a simple statement of fact)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: If it works, other states might decide to emulate. Then again Missy.
TenguPhule
@OzarkHillbilly:
Mind how you go.
Everyone dies. Not everyone gets a chance to die well.
Elizabelle
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am looking at relocating to California (lived there before and loved it), although plotting to move to Spain permanently, if I am able to manage that. I have had enough of the sociopathy on full display in the USA. This is not the country I grew up in.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The Republican geniuses here in Misery have decided to emulate the great successes their compatriots have had in…. Kansas. I shit you not.
BlueDWarrior
@OzarkHillbilly: They labor under the delusion that what they did worked, or at least would have worked if not for all those damn phantom liberals constantly tearing out the gears of the great Kansas Economic engine.
They see liberal gremlins everywhere, tearing at everything, making their girls little lesbian feminists, making their boys weak, effeminate beta-males, super-charging black and brown criminals-to-be to the point where it takes 50 bullets to ‘pacify’ them. All the little gremlins dance around in their minds, taunting them, teasing them, telling them their world is crashing down all around them.
So they will beat those gremlins back, oh yes they will. They will PURGE this land of all the evil liberals and other un-conformists who won’t labor under the same madness they do.
The only question is, will it stay within the realm of politics and rhetoric, or will they feel like the gremlins can only be destroyed by more… permanent means.
OzarkHillbilly
@TenguPhule: With all due respect, my own opinion is it doesn’t matter how one dies, what matters is how one lives.
Patricia Kayden
@TenguPhule: True but this is the media which attended a “press conference” at which no video or audio was allowed. Spineless chum when it comes to Republicans but hardcore and aggressive when it comes to Democrats.
ThresherK
@Eljai: Ossoff winning in GA-6 would not have changed them. Moral event horizon, yo.
Elizabelle
You guys, you need to be in the streets. Now. No more whining on Facebook and sending unflattering pictures of Trump. That does not do shit. Frankly, it’s demoralizing.
Talk to your friends and allies, and be out there in the streets and parks, with signs. Give the media something to cover. We have to stop TrumpCare, or at least scare the least safe of the malicious Republicans out of voting for it.
Easy for me to say from Spain, I know, but this is taking off like a rocket to disaster. Don’t wait for an organized march. Just go. Take your kids and teenagers. Get people to honk support at you. Put up signs with the local Senators’ and congresscritter’s phone number on them — big enough to photograph by cell phone so those driving or walking by know who to call.
Get out there. The lives and prospects of people you love depends on it. Republicans do not care about you. They want a tax cut, and are willing to gut your health insurance to get it. Stop them. We are the only major democracy with such shit-tastic health care access and affordability, and now they’re destroying what President Obama and the Democrats built, to deliver for average Americans. We have to stop them. Sometimes you cannot rebuild what has been destroyed.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Public demonstrations are fine but again, Republicans are going to enact their pro-1% agenda now that they are in full control of Congress. Those are just the facts. No way are they going to let this opportunity pass them by.
But I hope we are calling our Senators and giving them an earful — especially those who live in red states. That’s the least we can do.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Maybe they will, but I think we should give the media a HUGE visual to go along with it. I saw CNN footage of disabled protestors in wheelchairs being removed from a Capitol Hill protest — gently, by our wonderful and well-trained Capitol police.
Full court press. No time for cynicism. They’re counting on it. They’re tearing down and reversing everything they can that Obama and Democrats built. We can cry and wail later, but we’ve got a few short weeks to agitate now.
This sickens me. It will hurt and sicken others, literally.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Whiners. The lot of you. Should have quit when I told you to and saved yourselves the pain. There is plenty of it coming and it will last forever. Bernie never cared about you no one cares about you. Because you are losers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I see the commenter above me has a thing for pie.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: He’s just a whiner and a loser who gets on the internet for the sole purpose of inflating his ant sized life with the superiority of a cockroach.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: I love it. LOL.
kindness
I don’t get why we aren’t hearing from the Republican man/woman on the street thing. We only see Democrats protesting this. How in the world could Republicans who will get crushed by the results of this love this junk?
Tribalism gone mad I tell ya.
kindness
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There’s no way California gets Single Payer. We’d have to get too many Federal departments to agree to sign over their money to support it. As those departments are now run by Republicans, it’ll never happen unless we change the definition of single payer to shoveling more tax money up to millionaires.
Amir Khalid
Off topic (sorry) but per CNN, Reuters is reporting that Qatar has been handed a 13-point ultimatum from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain demanding, among other things, that Qatar:
— shut down A-Jazeera and its affiliates
— pay reparations (amount not stated) for the damage done by Qatari foreign policy
— close a Turkish military base in its territory
— reduce its relationship with Iran
— announce and to relations with terrorist, ideological and sectarian organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah
?BillinGlendaleCA
@kindness: You could if you carve out the existing Federal portions, leave Medicare and VA as is. Also I didn’t say we are doing it, I said considering it.
ETA: I do agree it would be a heavy lift, but the Feds current position may make it more likely.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Have the Saudis offered to pay for the damage done by their foreign policy?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Don’t think that dog’ll hunt.
Patricia Kayden
@Amir Khalid: What does Al Jazeera have to do with terrorism? I’ve never heard of Turkey being a hotbed of terrorism so why should Qatar have to shut down its base? This doesn’t sound like an attempt to fight terrorism by Saudi Arabia which is itself a hotbed of terrorists. The vast majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi Arabians. We haven’t forgotten that.
Tokyokie
@Elizabelle: I hope his remaining time on Earth is long and extraordinarily painful.
Amir Khalid
Agreed on all points. This is a ransom demand, not a call for justice. Quite a few Arab nations, not just these four, have long wanted Al-Jazeera shut down because of its inflammatory tendency to report stories that make them look bad.
“announce and to relations” in my comment should have been “announce an end to relations”, but I noticed it too late to edit.
Elizabelle
@Tokyokie: But not in power. McConnell is skilled at doing the bad he does.
tobie
@Elizabelle: I agree we need to fight on all fronts. Calls to Senators, letters to the editor, and, yes, protests.
Ksmiami
@OzarkHillbilly: the GOP first. They’ve basically declared genocide against the USA – I say we fight
kindness
@?BillinGlendaleCA: See and my point was California would need Federal cooperation to enact Single Payer. That isn’t going to happen under any circumstances until a Democrat is sitting in the White House. Wishes don’t get results. Now I think Single Payer is the way to go but I’m not going to act as if there is a chance to get it under the circumstances we have now. And in all honesty, Single Payer would put me out of a job. I work for Kaiser. Honestly when one considers the lay of things right now far too much money is caught up in the many HMOs & Insurance Companies for them to be written off the script entirely. It just won’t happen at a legislative level because lobbying money means more to politicians than votes at the ballot box.
Bokonon
@Eljai:
The race in GA-6 shows how the GOP intends to weather out the storms that will hit after they pass this legislation. Namely … they will rely on their fortress districts in the House of Representatives, dump massive sums of dark money into the House and Senarate races where the Democrats raise a credible challenger, and then run on cultural issues and distractions to keep their own party base in line. They believe whatever price they pay will be survivable (and based on past history, the GOP really hasn’t gotten punished by voters for things like government shutdowns and the like … so they are rolling the dice).
Depressing, isn’t it?
Mnemosyne
@kindness:
Not necessarily. Remember, we’re talking about Single Payer, not Single Provider. Since Kaiser is supposed to be a nonprofit, you guys are probably in the best position to adapt to getting your payments directly from the state instead of from multiple parties. You’d probably lose folks in your billing department, but you shouldn’t lose clinicians.
JR in WV
@Patricia Kayden:
Yes, and the whole conspiracy was led by a Saudi millionaire. But no one remembers that. They forgot when they were told Saddam must go.
kindness
@Mnemosyne: Kaiser is a Not for Profit operation, not a Non-profit operation. The distinction is that any profits generated have to be plowed back into the company. And don’t worry about me. I’m close enough to retirement that much of what is being proposed won’t really effect me unless Paul Ryan gets his biggest fapping dream of killing MediCare & Social Security.