Delaying the Trumpcare vote til after recess is a big fucking deal. Why? Because Republican Senators are going to take a lot of shit about how crappy the bill is when they are home over recess. So don’t just keep calling, start going to protests and townhalls if you can, especially if you’re from a state with a Senator who is on the fence. Pretty please with sugar on top. It’s not over yet.
Let us know about any protests that you’re hearing about in the comments.
Yutsano
My Senators are all good here. I can use a friend’s ZIP code in Wisconsin…
Thoroughly Pizzled
They’re putting a human chain around the Capitol tomorrow. That could be fun.
lollipopguild
You certainly know how to turn a phrase.
Gelfling 545
OT but Carl Paladino’s hearing re: removal from the school board ends today. My guess is he’s censured but keeps his post, dammit! He has less understanding of the community he pretends to serve than my cat.
Sarah in Brooklyn
What can those of us with two Dem senators do over the recess to help?
Doug!
@lollipopguild:
It’s from Pulp Fiction
Sab
Apparently we hate Obamacare but we love the ACA. I’m good with that.
Doug!
@Sarah in Brooklyn:
Good question. I’ll try to ask around.
Shell
Yes, God forbid they should be a day late for their extended Fourth of July break.
Aleta
Time for lots of distractions, fake news about Democrats and other Trump opponents on Fox. War hype.
HinTN
Corker is busy, busy, busy. Alexander wrote the damn thing so I’m beyond disgusted but he’s busy, too.
Ben from Virginia
Remember: focus on healthcare. Going to a town hall and screaming RUSSIA!!! will only make you look like a hysterical moron to any moderates/swing voters present, and distract from bread-and-butter issues.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Roy Fucking Blunt here in Misery is unreachable. Feckless Claire has held firm. She realizes her reelection chances depend on showing some spine and for her at least, there are no political downsides opposing this wealth distribution scheme.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Sarah in Brooklyn: You can still call your Senators. They’re tracking how many calls are in favor (ha!) and how many are opposed.
One group in New York is calling liberals in states with Republican Senators to ask them to call. I thought that was pretty smart.
rikyrah
The failing attempt to erase Barack Obama
Nancy the Artist
June 27, 2017
It is well known that on the night of the inauguration of President Obama that members of the GOP met in private with the intention of finding a way to insure that President Obama would fail. The GOP didn’t want him to be able to accomplish anything. They saw him as a threat to their authority and they wanted to be able to undo him. From the very beginning they wanted to erase him and because of this they became completely polarized and began a complete shut down to everything relating to President Obama.
When Trump become aware of President Obama it’s clear that he sensed through his reptilian brain that Obama was a threat to him as well. He began tweeting disparaging things about President Obama and he went on Fox News to demean him. He became a major birther as a means of erasing his very existence. It makes sense that after the Correspondents Dinner where President Obama made jokes at Trump’s expense in front of the country that Trump made the decision to run for president. It is easy to see Trump as obsessed with the need to put President Obama beneath him.
Now that the GOP holds the reins of power they are working to do the polar opposite of whatever President Obama did in healthcare, foreign relations, energy, voters rights and the rights of diverse people and so on and so on. Whatever you can think of that President Obama advocated for they have want to do the polar opposite.
different-church-lady
Hey Brogressives: lecture us all again about how easy it’s supposed to be to pass Health legislation when you have control of the Congress and the White House.
eric
@different-church-lady: even more to the point, consider that this was the other party Obama had to negotiate with for any votes — they want to go back to Herod’s times.
bystander
@Doug!: I thought it was a bid to get Larry Craig and Aaron Schock as commenters. We could use the diversity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
so not quite so feckless. Obama was always the feckless weakling dictator, according to the opposition.
BretH
Is there a bigger prick in power than Rick Perry?
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Sarah in Brooklyn: OfA has virtual phone banks so that you can call to Red states and encourage Dems to push their Senators. Here in CA, we are calling NV Dems. Ask around your friends who do activism or go to Organizing For Action and sign-up/email them.
D58826
We have seen this movie before in the House. The moderates gave their blessing to a bill that was even worse than the original. Now while it wasn’t as bad the the Freedom caucus wanted, enough of the FC and the moderates voted for it to pass.
All this is really just a version of the old saying ‘Madame we have established what you are and now we are just haggling over the price’. We will watch a Yurtle haggles with a couple of his ‘madames’.
I saw this on twitter
It was posted by a writer for the national review, so his criticism of Obamacare is to be expected. But the only way that other countries have keep costs under control are with stiff regulations and yes ‘rationing’. Neither approach will fly among the right wing and may not fly among the left. The problem is that the world ‘rationing’ has been so demonized that no one will support it in this country. Now if by rationing you mean the first 30 people per month get care and the rest tough luck, then yes that is wrong. On the other hand if you mean by rationing that the hip replacement is scheduled 6 months before you really need it rather than having a hospital full of orthopedists just waiting to operate tomorrow, then maybe rationing is not so bad.
None of these complicated issues will ever get discussed because as soon as one of the is raised it will get the ‘death panel’ treatment
https://twitter.com/michaelbd/status/879501147664510976
Raven Onthill
And talk up the negatives of the Senate bill. Talk up the Nazi precedent.
Let’s stir up more opposition here!
Marcopolo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You know, your personal jihad against McCaskill is tea party level stupid. You just admitted she’s walking the walk in regards to opposing the Senate healthcare bill at the same time as you labeled her feckless. What the feck! That’s some major league derp. Look, I am far to the left of her politically. Maybe I’d I lived across the river in IL and she was my senator I’d be pissed but I’m happy to have her in MO.
And for folks in St Louis, tomorrow 11:30 am, the corner of Hanley and Old Bonhomme Indivisible St Louis and MO Jobs for Justice will be holding a rally against the Senate healthcare bill outside of Roy Blunt’s Clayton office. Come on out, bring a sign, bring a friend, we’ll be there till around 1. At noon there will be a opportunity for 10 people to meet with his staffer in his office to give personal testimony against the bill. We won’t change his vote but we also won’t quit fighting, and we won’t let him off the hook. To learn about other actions in the St Louis area your best bet is to go to the Mobilize Missouri website and check out their calendar.
Website: https://www.mobilizemo.org/events/month/
schrodingers_cat
@BretH: The one in the WH.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
thanks for this.
debbie
@lollipopguild:
I use that phrase almost every day, yet it was eye-opening to see it in print. Even though it’s accurate.
catclub
@BretH: Donald Trump springs to mind.
trnc
@BretH: Yes, but that won’t stop Perry from going for the gold.
Stan
Twenty bucks says we bomb Syria before the vote.
…or some suitable brown victim country.
Wag
I left yet another message for my senator, Cory Gardner, urging him to vote against the repeal of the ACA. I’ve left numerous messages in the past and I’ve actually had the chance to speak to a couple of his staffers, letting them know that this would be a devastating bill. As the medical director of a large primary care clinic where we see 25,000 patient visits per year. We have hundreds of patients to have gained health insurance under the ACA and the proposed bill would devastate our patient base.
My hopes are not high.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Marcopolo:
Oi vey. I knew somebody would start in on this.
One week she’s fine, the next week, she’s back to being the poster child for timid pols. And although it’s too late for me to say “and before anybody tells me ‘but she’s from Misery’ blah, blah, blah, she has no excuse for her swings. If she spent half as much time listening to her constituents and acting on their behalf as she does bashing half of those who got her elected while triangulating for money, I wouldn’t call her feckless. Or as Charlie Pierce once labeled her: Claire “I feel strongly both ways about that” McCaskill.
She send me regular emails for money. I’m a regular door knocker and phone banker and yet half the time all she does is bash Dems like me as she’s out there trying to get mythical Misery independent voters.
So I’ll fucking call her feckless any goddamntime I want to because her track record warrants it. Not a day goes by that I’m not glad she’s one of this state’s Senators but she doesn’t deserve a free ride on anything from those who’ve busted our asses over the years getting her sorry ass elected.
Being the timid pol that she is, she’s got an acute sense of what works against her outside Crawl Over Glass Dems like me and this is one of those times, hence why she’s held firm.
Steve in the ATL
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: talk about truth in advertising–you aren’t joking about the “rage” part!
J R in WV
@Stan:
I have no doubt we’ll be bombing Syria, and perhaps Qatar and Iran! That will be the next flashy bang to distract us from activity to bury real treason more deeply. I think half of this health-care fandango is to distract us from worse things being done by the dark of night in basements.
I can’t figure out what worse stuff is being done under cover of the health care scare, but I’m sure it’s down there. And since I think the health care scare is really about genocide of Democratic voters, what’s worse must be really bad.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
I think one of my Senators (Jeff Flake) as on the fence but he just announced that his father passed away and he worshiped him. So the likelihood of his being able to vote even after the recess is much lower AND he isn’t going to care what messages are being left about the bill. Any advice on what to do? Still keep calling?
Kay
I’ll try to go to a Portman event. Does he do “events”? He seems too boring for that.
They know we really don’t want to call them and go see them, right? I hope they don’t think this means we like them.
bupalos
For my money, this part of it is likely part of the planned Kabuki. Obviously it’s good we raised enough of a stink to get the delay, but I’m pretty sure this option was baked in for McConnell.
Republicans have been unified enough to get to this point, and basically agree on the fundamentals – give as much tax rebate money as possible to the wealthy, at whatever cost to the poor and middle class and the healthcare system as a whole. Their whole problem is one of political appearances. Stopping once or twice and appearing to make concessions is a sure winner for them, given what I believe is the political reality: They WILL do this. My guess is that next on the block is changing some timelines both to get a better CBO bottom line and to put medicaid more into a frog-boiling situation than blitzkrieg.
Mnemosyne
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
Keep calling. You don’t want him to sneak on a plane back to D.C. for the vote.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
hmmmm….
Bless her heart, if true
Mnemosyne
@bupalos:
It probably is part of the kabuki. Our part of the kabuki is to keep calling, writing, and protesting to try and make them rethink their part.
Brachiator
I don’t trust Trump, but we might as well try to use this to our advantage. Trump gets bored quickly and wants a victory that will allow him to run out somewhere to great applause.
Call and write the White House and demand that Trump keep his word to make Obamacare replacement better, the best health plan ever, bigly good. He should make sure that the final plan is not mean.
To be clear, I don’t expect anything substantive from Trump, but hell stroke his ego and throw a curveball at him.
If this thing can be delayed over the holidays, you not only have more time to write to Congress, but you can also (if you have the stomach for it) talk about it with your Trumpeteer friends and relatives and do that FaceBook and social media thing. Be focused. A “better” replacement would cover more people, discourage the insurance companies from jacking up rates or leaving markets, expand Medicaid, and keep in place payment mechanisms, expand Medicaid, etc. A better bill is what is better for people, not just what is better for the insurance industry.
Marcopolo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I see a lot of blather there and another label: “timid pol.” Maybe that’s another word for moderate in your book?
We are half-way through 2017. So far as I can tell, McCaskill has been a solid opposition vote to everything Trump & the R Senate have horked up to date. I know she is working across the aisle on opioid issues. I know she would like to work across the aisle on infrastructure spending (though not Trump’s version of it). She’s actually been one of the more outspoken Dems on the healthcare bill. So what else specifically would you want her to do post the 2016 election? Specifically.
Oh, and by the way McCaskill was a yes vote on the ACA back in the day. Was that timid? She’ll happily list off the names of the D senators from ND, LA, AR, and a few other states that no longer serve due primarily to that vote.
Mnemosyne
If anyone needs some encouragement, amygdala linked to this Twitter thread about a spontaneous demonstration at the Capitol yesterday headlined by many Democratic senators and starring Rep. John Lewis.
Keep going. People are paying attention.
janelle
@Marcopolo: I assume you mean “Hanley & Bonhomme”, not “Hanley & Old Bonhomme”, because there is no such address (Old Bonhomme is a real street, but it never intersects with Hanley). I work in downtown Clayton – that’s just a couple blocks south of the Centene construction site.
LurkerNoLonger
@Doug!: More movie quotes in your titles, Doug. I get those. The lyrics and song titles, not so much.
Marcopolo
@Kay: Can you grab some folks and create an event for him? That’s what we’ve done here in MO for Blunt & Ann Wagner. They don’t show, of course, but we’ve had the local media cover the events.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
possibly true, but all the more reason to keep calling. Call during the day, resist-bot if you like (endorsed by Jason Kander and George Takei!), and snark about trump tweets outside of office hours
Marcopolo
@janelle: My bad, you are correct. Maybe you’ll come out and join us for a bit?
Mnemosyne
@Marcopolo:
We even had a few of those here in California — Democratic reps were holding healthcare townhalls for Republicans who were afraid to show their faces. ?
Marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: Great idea! I just called McCaskill’s DC office to request she hold a townhall in/near St Louis to talk about the Senate bill since we all know Blunt won’t.
J R in WV
I notice that I blocked goblue72 and NR and Amusing Ourselves to Death with the mew pie filter, and none of them appear to have commented since I did that. No pie discussions at all. I find that quite interesting.
I wonder if I was perhaps not the only person to pie them? Perhaps ranting to people once you have understood that nearly all of them are seeing you talk about your pie problems isn’t much fun? And who’s seeing me talk about wonderful Pie?
‘Cause I do talk about pie from time to time.
dance around in your bones
@Kay:
They know we really don’t want to call them and go see them, right? I hope they don’t think this means we like them.
(Blockquoting on my iPhone requires Tinkerbell digits, sadly no have)
Kay, I love your understated dry wit. You always wring a wry smile out of me ;)
Thanks!
randy khan
@Sarah in Brooklyn:
Call Republican Senators. If you don’t want to tell them you’re from some random town in their states, call after business hours, or comment on their Facebook pages, or send them faxes. Keep the heat on them.
Also call your Senators to thank them for standing firm (not that there was any doubt if you’re actually in Brooklyn).
different-church-lady
@J R in WV: They only show up when there’s a setback, so they can strut their superior worldview over us hapless morons. So it’s inevitable we’ll be seeing them again at some point.
amygdala
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the signal boost. Giving myself a day to strut around in a long purple coat humming ? “You’re gonna need Congressional approval and you don’t have the votes.” ?
randy khan
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
Keep calling. You don’t know when the vote will be.
low-tech cyclist
@Doug!:
Given your penchant for lyrics, you had me wondering, “What the heck song is that from?!”
D58826
NEWS Flash
Sen. Rob Portman : I am a no vote on Trumpcare
Reporter : the bill has been pulled
Sen. Portman : Well I was a no then also
Mnemosyne
@amygdala:
Such a blunder, it almost makes me wonder why I even bring the thunder.
Ocotillo
I know it’s worthless looking back but if only Toomey, R. Johnson and Lil’ Marco had gone down in defeat last year. We wouldn’t have this mess.
low-tech cyclist
I would expect a lot of Senators to be showing up at a July 4th event somewhere in their states. If you can find out where and when, that would be a good place to show up with signs and stuff.
Ditto Representatives. After all, if this abomination gets through the Senate, God forbid, it’ll be coming their way next.
Mnemosyne
@Ocotillo:
And all three of those states had restrictive voter ID laws and/or other voter suppression measures in place. Just sayin’.
(PA wasn’t supposed to be checking for voter ID, but there were widespread reports that poll workers were asking for it and turning people away if they didn’t have it.)
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, Slavitt is right. The bill is only going to get worse. Republicans are counting on Capito, Murkowski and Portman to fold, while probably letting Heller and Collins have the no votes. ISTM the first three are the most important calls. Gardner seems like a wild card, as does Rand Paul. In my view, Paul is obviously an idiot but at least he is true to his word. Repeal it, just repeal it. Problem straight out repeal makes the budget go haywire and no goodies for tax cuts. Not sure Paul has the guts to stand true on this one though.
Barbara
@D58826: Not so much the home of the brave anymore are we?
Marcopolo
@low-tech cyclist: Heck, you could even go to a 4th oh July parade and stand with an anti-Senate healthcare bill sign. Something along the lines of “taking healthcare from those in need to give tax cuts to the rich is unamerican/unpatriotic.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Marcopolo:
She voted to confirm every Trump nominee up to DeVos and Pruitt. She voted to kill the Streams Act, and she represents a state that heavily sells itself to hunters, fishermen, etc. She votes with Twitler 45% of the time. Okay, that’s not Machin territory (58%) but it gives pause. She mouthed her usual “save the filibuster/keep our powder dry nonsense” before Gorsuch. Yes, she eventually supported it but not before she trotted out her usual, feckless, approach to these things.
She won in a wave election in 06. She supported Obama in 08 so had some political loyalty regarding the ACA. She had 3 years to put that behind her plus she lucked out with the worst possible opponent in 2012. Admittedly, her skull fucking campaign strategy against Akin was brilliant.
Look, we’re nominally on the same team here and clearly disagree about her style and her record, it’s not gonna stop me from calling her feckless and you taking umbrage at that. So be it. Unlike Our Progressive Betters, it doesn’t mean I won’t vote for her or do Democratic outreach if she’s our nominee in two years. But as it appears with her “no” votes against Devos and Pruitt, Dems have to constantly be on her case, otherwise, she slides. It’s not a jihad as you liken it, it’s reminding her that there’s a “D” after her name.
The only thing that I’ve seen her staunchly Democratic is supporting women’s reproductive rights. I can’t call her feckless on that.
Regarding town halls, having one in the St Louis area is all fine and good but she’d be better served doing exactly what she did earlier this year: head out into the heart of Trump country (like my second reddest county in the state) and hold those town halls. She got amazingly positive press out here earlier this year. She’s gonna need that kind of head start because the GOP here won’t make the same mistake again with another Akin in 2018.
Bobby Thomson
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: good post.
Shana
@Sarah in Brooklyn: Do you have friends and/or family in another state? My MIL lives in OH, my brother is in NV, etc. Their senators, or at least one of them, are R and it’s totally legit to petition on their behalf.
Priest
Scrolled to this post title when the comment total was 69.
Elizabelle
@Priest: Lol. Decorum, even among jackals, deserves no less. Well done, sir.
A non mouse
Portman just posted on FB he will vote no.
mudslide567
We got into Cory Gardner’s (R-CO) office and literally filibustered his staff all day in Colorado Springs… women all dressed as Handmaids… while we took turns reading the constitution, the draft of the AHCA, personal stories of how AHCA will hurt. They even turned off the A/C so the temperature got to over 90… yet we persisted. We live broadcast it on FB
zhena gogolia
@mudslide567:
Good for you!
Sarah in Brooklyn
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Do you know what group that is?
Sarah in Brooklyn
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Cool, thanks.
Mudslide567
Still going. 7 hours now. Staff cannot go home. Gardner’s state director drove from Denver to negotiate an end. If everyone does this we will get message through.
Caphilldcne
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: keep calling. He will eventually forced into a vote
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ugh, I saw an article in today’s paper suggesting Greitens should run for Senate next year. He gives me the creeps – he’s too “perfect”, if you know what I mean. Plus, he’s wasting our tax money with these stupid special sessions. For claiming to be the party of “fiscal responsibility”, Republicans sure can waste our money when it benefits them.
HelloRochester
Toomey DGAF and has said so. Casey’s ours.