Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let there be snark.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

This really is a full service blog.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Come on, man.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

In my day, never was longer.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Second rate reporter says what?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

People are complicated. Love is not.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Not all heroes wear capes.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Friday Morning Open Thread: A REPRIEVE!

Friday Morning Open Thread: A REPRIEVE!

by | 125 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,


.

(If we can keep it… ) From the Washington Post:

Senate Republicans suffered a dramatic failure early Friday in their bid to advance a scaled-back plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, throwing into question whether they can actually repeal the 2010 health law…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had hoped to approve the new, narrower rewrite of the health law at some point Friday, after facing dozens amendments from Democrats. But the GOP defections left McConnell without a clear bill to push.

McCain had been seeking an iron-clad guarantee from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that, if the Senate approved this latest proposal, the House would not move to quickly approve the bill in its current form and instead engage in a broad House-Senate negotiation for a broader rollback of the law. Ryan issued a statement intended to assuage the concerns of McCain and two others, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), but the 2008 presidential nominee deemed the speaker’s statement as insufficient…

McConnell’s draft rattled both moderates – Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) were the other Republican votes in opposition – and Republicans who wanted a more robust uprooting of the existing law…

Media Mancrush McCain will be getting 99.9% of the public applause for this, but let’s — as Abigail Adams might say — Remember the Ladies.

It’s been rumored that Susan Collins is thinking of running for governor back in Maine, and her recent hot mic moment certainly sounds like she’s not happy in DC right now.

As for Senator Murkowski…

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    Morzer

    Well, the Rohirrim have saved Gondor; now we have to walk into Mordor and distract the Alt-Seeing I enough for Mueller to drop the One Ring into the GOP’s Crack of Doom.

  2. 2.

    something fabulous

    Emerging from lurking while I happen to be up during a fresh new thread to say howdy. And: WOOT! All of you who worked so hard and made so many calls and everything: well done!

  3. 3.

    Damien

    So what is plan….F? G? M? What are we up to now?

    Is it finally, finally going to be “work together to ensure greater healthcare access for more Americans” or are we looking at “Einsatzgruppen Amerikaner Act of 2017” and they just let it all hang out?

  4. 4.

    eclare

    Tonight and tomorrow we make popcorn and fight. And I call my senators and the ones in other states who actually took a stand, like McCain. Still stunned by that, but then again, maybe you shouldn’t call a POW a loser.

  6. 6.

    Yarrow

    I’m so relieved. THANK YOU, SENATORS COLLINS, MCCAIN, AND MURKOWSKI! I’m making a point of calling all their offices tomorrow to say thank you.

    I’m still so keyed up I can’t sleep. I think I still can’t believe it.

  7. 7.

    NobodySpecial

    Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to destroy Obamacare. But it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.

    John: Whatya means, I’m not helping?

    Holden: I mean you’re not helping! Why is that, John?

  9. 9.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    I live on Hawaii Time, and this was fairly late for me too. I HOPE (probably not) that the media grows a spine and point out how NOT NORMAL this failed attempt was.

  15. 15.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I have been calling Indiana Senator Todd Young’s office every week on this. It has gotten to the point where earlier this week I honestly thought the aide was going to hang up on me, I was pretty brutal. But Young is a hopeless idealogue, He rejects global warming, he is a thru and thru member of the GOP, totally disconnected from reality.

    Anyway, I woke up over an hour ago, could not get back to sleep, probably the steroid pack I am in second day of for my flared up back pain, so it has literally made my early morning to read this news.

    As angry as I have been with John McCain, I have to admit he deserves full credit for standing up to the Orange Stain on the White House, and Sentor McTurtle from that not so great state to the south of Indiana, where I am.

  16. 16.

    Yarrow

    @MomSense: I know!!!!!! I’m still so excited I can’t sleep. I’m going to be a mess tomorrow. Well, today. I need to go listen to soothing music and get a bit of sleep, but I’m still reading Twitter feeds and enjoying the hell out of them. I know you’re as relieved as I am.

    Thank you everyone for your calls, letters, faxes, emails, texts, postcards, visits to offices, marches, protests and anything else you did to help make this happen. I am so very grateful, as I know so many other people are. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in ages.

  17. 17.

    patrick II

    Originally, when asking the House members to vote for their deathcare bill, Ryan said not to worry too much about the parts they didn’t like — the Senate would take care of it. And McConnell’s final appeal was the “skinny” deathcare bill which he told the Senators not to worry about too much because Ryan would take care of it in conference. Neither one of them wanted to be the last one holding that hot potato.

  19. 19.

    Shalimar

    Puts Alaska’s future with the administration in jeopardy? What is Trump going to do about it, sell Alaska to the Russians … oh, shit.

  20. 20.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Oh, and I also need to call Indiana Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly’s office and thank him. He actually led on many points during this fight, introducing some significant language, and standing strong. Which considering he is in Indiana took some guts. He has faltered on some issues, e.g. on support Planned Parenthood, he fell for the hysteria after the faked videos, and I reamed him out on that, but on many, many major issues, he has remained true to whatever shreds of party commitment to what its ideals are supposed to be. After this, I will definitely be working to reelect him, I think he is up in 2018.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Oregon’s borderline teabagger Secretary of State, Dennis Richardson, has told Kobach he won’t be sending him the publically available voter info, because Kobach didn’t fork over $500 as required by law.

  27. 27.

    magurakurin

    @Morzer: but Frodo failed in that task. He kept the ring. Gollum took it from him. Who is Gollum? I’d say Bannon…so, in this story Bannon goes nuts and just testifies against them all…

  33. 33.

    jmw

    @NobodySpecial:
    There is no shortage of rose twitterites expaining how the Democrats stopped this in the wrong way. Also Single Payer was going to happen in 2009 until Obama took an oath on the bald head of a kid going through chemo.

  37. 37.

    Morzer

    @jmw:

    Let’s not forget that Jill Stein would have been the bestest president ever, despite having no support in either the House or the Senate. IT COULD HAVE HAPPENED!

  40. 40.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah: Good morning! And what a very good morning it is! :)

    I’m still up because I’ve been so keyed up I can’t sleep. Fun to see the morning crew check in and find out what happened. Yay!

  41. 41.

    sukabi

    @Morzer: wouldn’t surprise me a bit…there’s a wingnut billboard near where I live that’s been sporting “Freedom is dangerous. Slavery is peaceful.” for about 3 weeks now.

  42. 42.

    Izabela

    These first 6 months of this have been a constant trainwreck of nightmare fuel. It’s weird to wake up, check my twitter feed, and feel so grateful that a small crumb of hope came to it in the overnight.

  45. 45.

    Yarrow

    @sukabi: Whaaa??? Is it just those words, or are they advertising some group for white supremacists or something? That’s awful.

  47. 47.

    aliasofwestgate

    It was good to see it all happen as it did. Such a bit of relief, before heading back into the fight once again. I need to call my two senators, Stabenow and Peters and thank them for not budging at all during this insane bit of crazy times. Especially since Stabenow was ‘targeted’ with the whole announcement of the transgender ban in the military. I think my senior Senator knows more about the military works than Dolt 45 does. I hope she’s laughing all weekend long, because i am too!

    This means i continue to get my own healthcare on MI’s medicaid expansion, and my mom(the permanent resident alien) has help with her supplemental plan for her medicare, continues to get her SS checks.

  48. 48.

    sukabi

    @Yarrow: Just those words on that side of the board…the other side is currently bitching about taxes and jobs…

    Local john bircher owns the sign calls it Hamilton’s Corner…

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    I have tears in my eyes, looking at the videos of the relieved protestors. I can’t believe it. Country Last finally came through.

  54. 54.

    raven

    Well, I was able to sleep until 5:30. I was awakened by a punch to the ribs by the princess!!!!

  56. 56.

    Applejinx

    McCain, walking in to the last vote: “From hell’s heart I stab at thee”

    I’d like to know if the very white-haired dude top center in the blue suit is who I think it is. He doesn’t react to McCain’s thumbs-down… but if you rewatch the video, when McCain comes up and poses with his hand out, white-haired dude gets the attention of the lady next to him. And reacts before the vote happens, with a ‘watch THIS’ gesture.

    If that’s my Senator, now I know why he hugged and waltzed with McCain, and I forgive him for that. At the time I couldn’t work out what the fuck he was thinking, but it sounds like they were in cahoots. Takes one big dramatic ego to understand another, maybe?

    Drama, acquired, in a way that SERIOUSLY wounds McConnell, Trump, et al.

    I’ll take it.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    As Urban League gathers in St. Louis, NAACP issues a Missouri travel warning

    On a day when 20,000 members of the Urban League from all over the country were gathered in St. Louis for the group’s annual convention, a sister civil rights organization issued a warning to African-Americans and other marginalized citizens: Beware of traveling in Missouri.

    That’s the message in an emergency resolution passed by the NAACP on Wednesday.

    The resolution is signed by interim president and CEO Derrick Johnson; chairman of the national board of directors Leon Russell; and senior vice president for advocacy Hilary Shelton. Citing the signing of Senate Bill 43 by Gov. Eric Greitens, a law that rolls back discrimination protections for employees in the state, the NAACP resolution said the organization “shall warn people of the dangers of travel through the State of Missouri and nation.”

    The resolution is not a boycott but a “travel advisory,” and it cites more than the controversial legislation that will make it easier for employers to discriminate. The document is a reminder that three years after Ferguson and the death of Michael Brown, being black in Missouri can get you killed.

    That’s what happened to Tory Sanders in March when he died at the hands of jailers in rural Mississippi County. His crime? Driving While Black. Sanders, who lived in Nashville, Tenn., and was mentally ill, was driving in the rural Missouri county when he ran out of gas. Stuck in Missouri, he called his mom. “If I go to the police, will they help me?” he asked, according to a story by reporter Doyle Murphy in the Riverfront Times. “Sure, they’ll help you,” she replied.

    Hours later, he was dead. Sanders was pepper sprayed and hit with a Taser at least three times. Now the sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, is being investigated by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley. Hutcheson was already facing 18 criminal charges in two unrelated incidents.

    The resolution cites two men from India who were shot near Kansas City this year because a white patron in a bar thought they were Muslim. Srinivas Kuchibhotla died from his injuries. He was 32.

    “Missouri fosters racial and ethnic disparities in Education, Health, Economic Empowerment, and Criminal Justice,” the resolution reads. The travel advisory is the brainchild of Jefferson City attorney Rod Chapel, president of the NAACP in Missouri.

    In February, Chapel was silenced by the chairman of a Missouri House committee when he appeared to testify against a bill that was similar to the discrimination-rollback measure that became law. As Chapel recounted recent Missouri history, from Ferguson, to the University of Missouri protests, to the annual racial profiling numbers issued by the attorney general, he said the state had become a national “laughingstock” when it came to discrimination. The chairman, Rep. Bill Lant, R-Pineville, cut off his microphone. He didn’t want to hear what Chapel had to say.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chapel told me at the time. “It’s nuts. He invited me to give public testimony at his committee and then wouldn’t let me talk.”

    That’s my state of Misery.

  60. 60.

    rikyrah

    Andy Ihnatko‏Verified account @Ihnatko

    We can rejoice, but we can’t relax. We stopped an angry, inhuman army’s attempt to advance and kill more of us. But they’ll be back soon.
    12:01 AM – 28 Jul 2017

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    Chadfreeman
    Replying to @Ihnatko

    The ruling party will probably destroy ACA some day. But not today.
    12:19 AM – 28 Jul 2017

  64. 64.

    Cermet

    I guess it took a brain tumor to convince McCain to finally, and I do mean finally, vote no as he said he should on a policy issue that his fellow thugs wanted him to vote yes on. Maybe if (a lot) more thugs came down with brain tumor’s they too might vote in a manner that would make it appear they were human rather than what they really are – shit that floats.

  65. 65.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: You know what you did, and if you don’t you get another punch in the ribs for being so insensitive.

  70. 70.

    Morzer

    And the Prime Minister of Pakistan has been removed from office by their supreme court:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/28/pakistani-court-disqualifies-pm-nawaz-sharif-from-office

    Pakistan’s supreme court has removed the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from office in a unanimous verdict over corruption allegations that will further upset the country’s unstable political landscape.

    The verdict by the five-member court caps a year of political controversy over corruption allegations unleashed by the 2016 Panama Papers leak.

    The governing party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said Sharif had stepped down immediately. The party must now choose an interim prime minister to be accepted by parliament.

    The ruling will throw the governing party and the country at large into turmoil ahead of elections due next year.

    C’mon, John Roberts. Are you really going to let Pakistan do the right thing and just sit there sucking your thumb while Trump wrecks the USA?

  72. 72.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Don’t forget to DUCK!

    “Pups” are doggies, NOT ducks!

    I thought, being in the hinterlands, you’d know the differments.

    I guess that as long as you don’t call Poco a “duck,” you’re ahead of the game. But still …

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    SO NICE TO WAKE UP TO GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE!!

    Also – fuck yoooouuuuu Turtle, you utter scumbag

  76. 76.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Applejinx:

    Drama, acquired, in a way that SERIOUSLY wounds McConnell, Trump, et al.

    Could break the shell of the turtle. Pentagon is ignoring the trans tweet, Putin has ordered the US to curtail diplomatic presence (so what) as he is realizing that the curtailment of Trump’s ability to relieve sanctions is veto proof, and that Putin has had to disrupt a potential asymmetric attack on St Petersburg by central Asian rebels, and China is joining Russia in Baltic drills.

    The thrall may be over.

  78. 78.

    sm*t cl*de

    @Morzer:

    C’mon, John Roberts.

    He’s actually in New Zealand at the moment, possibly checking the asylum options.

  84. 84.

    Patricia Kayden

    @something fabulous: Yes kudos to all of those who made calls to their Senators — especially those of you in red states where you knew you were talking to the enemy. Good for Murkowski, Collins and (quite shockingly) McCain for doing the right thing. Interesting that in his sad trombone speech, McConnell blamed Democrats but didn’t mention any of the defectors from his side by name. As McCain was casting his no vote, McCain’s eyes remained on the floor and he didn’t make eye contact with McCain.

    What a sad day for turtles everywhere.

  85. 85.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Cermet: Yes perhaps more tumors are needed because I’m quite surprised that so many Republicans were willing to vote for a bill which would take away healthcare from millions of their fellow Americans but I guess this is who they really are. They have shown their true colors and hopefully voters will remember this. Clearly, there is a political party which is okay if millions suffer just so that they can give tax breaks to people who don’t need them.

  86. 86.

    OzarkHillbilly

    It’s just all too mooch:

    Scaramucci, ‘the Mooch’, spent all of a week inside the West Wing before he reached breaking point, ripped off his Scooby Doo face mask, and revealed himself to be some kind of Torquemada, purging the White House of its evil heretics.

    The subject of his Inquisition are the devil-worshippers known as “leakers” who speak to the press. The Mooch has brilliantly discovered these people working in the White House press office, where the disloyal lowlifes spend their days engaging with Beelzebub’s reporters on all sorts of calumny ranging from transgender soldiers to Russian collusion.

    His solution: fire one of them to teach them a good lesson. Well, maybe not fire them in the technical sense of the term. Maybe just tell everyone he was going to fire the innocent and hapless Michael Short – a linchpin of the conspiracy from his vantage point as assistant press secretary. Like the great comms chief he is, the Mooch leaked news of Short’s departure before actually firing him. So Short quit of his own accord, denying strongly that he was a leaker at all.

    The Mooch quickly decried the leakers who made the firing such a disaster – somehow overlooking his own role in the leak – before hatching a new plan: he would fire everyone in the press shop!

    This is a unique communications strategy – firing the entire press office. But it seems to be playing on the mind of the Mooch, who told his best buddy Sean Hannity (of Fox News fame) that he was going to “hermetically seal off” the press team, if he had to.

    Why not vacuum pack the entire press shop and cook them sous-vide? That will stop their loose lips from flapping. Of course, it will also do nothing to close what the Mooch memorably called last week “the arbitrage spread” between what the Trumpistas and the media think of the great orange leader. But hey, that’s the price of a good purge.

    Much like his boss, the Mooch isn’t in the West Wing to do the obvious stuff, such as communications. This Inquisition is much bigger than that. Having forced out Short and his old boss, Sean Spicer, he is finally turning his sights to the real enemy. That man is Reince Priebus, the weakest chief of staff in living memory, and the mentor to both Short and Spicer.

    So on Wednesday night when the Mooch’s public financial disclosure forms became, you know, public, our Grand Inquisitor turned on the screws known as Twitter. “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept,” he thundered, before deleting the tweet, like all good comms experts.

    Never mind that the Harvard Law School grad is wrong about the felony and thus the investigation he is demanding: the public disclosure of a public disclosure form is no felony. The Mooch’s hair is on fire and nothing will extinguish the flames except the confession of the man he tagged in his tweet: Priebus.

    In a bizarre and rambling CNN interview on Thursday – as bizarre as Donald Trump’s speech to the Boy Scouts – the Mooch said it was up to Reince to clear his own name, before the Mooch cleared out his brain. “If Reince wants to explain he’s not a leaker, let him do that,” he said on national television.

    This is a man he described as a brother last week. Now he explains what kind of brotherhood he had in mind. “When I said we were brothers from the podium, that’s because some brothers are like Cain and Abel.”

    Ah, yes, the murdering brother story. Such a great parable for this Inquisition. But let’s get back to the real enemy: the deep state represented by the Dark Prince Reince and his RNC establishment types. There are reports of White House diagrams revealing the ultimate leaker’s identity, but they may have just lifted them from The Da Vinci Code.

    It’s like a train wreck. You know it’s horrible and people are going to die, but you can’t take your eyes off it.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    I was away from the media and the Internets for a good chunk of the day and then fell asleep before the vote, so this is surprising good news. McCain’s vote is very welcome. Was there a Republican who previously voted no who flipped to yes?

    Amazing that the Dems have been so solid.

    I now look forward to a Trump eruption. Maybe even a Mooch eruption, now that we have a new clown at the circus.

  89. 89.

    bemused

    @sukabi:

    Jaw dropping and makes me sick to my stomach. I did a little research on the vile people who would put up a billboard like that. The old man Alfred Hamilton put it up decades ago and when he died several years ago, his son continued his father’s rants. Checked out some pics of the billboard and one had said, Public Library, a great place for your kids to meet sexual deviants.

  90. 90.

    Morzer

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Are Scaramucci and Priebus really people as we usually understand the term? They seem more insectoid than anything else, although the Mooch does bear a remarkable resemblance to Josef Goebbels in Downfall.

  91. 91.

    Zach

    The next shoe to drop (if McConnell can’t rescue Obamacare repeal) will be more states joining medicaid expansion now that it’s not perceived as supporting Obama’s politics. Individual mandate/subsidies will always be vulnerable along with insurance regulations, but medicaid expansion is looking safe (absent a GOP position of strength greater than Obama’s 2009-2010).

    Democrats have a few months to figure out how to convince Americans that Obamacare’s failures are Trump’s responsibility because he’s sabotaging it. Come up with some simple explanation(s) and saturate the airwaves with those plus individual stories of how healthcare was great until Trump and the Republicans came along and broke it. A Dem wave in 2018 is a real possibility (though still small Senate majority at best), and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Trump will be just as eager to sign anything Dems get out of Congress as he was with the GOP if he can call it a win.

  97. 97.

    different-church-lady

    The thing that blows my mind is not just McCain’s vote, but the idea that (based on reports I’ve read) he put on an unmistakeably overt display of unity with the Democrats. There seems to be some kind of deeper message here than merely “No to this particular bill.”

  98. 98.

    Lapassionara

    @Zach: Subsidies are very vulnerable, and insurance companies will be planning accordingly. Unless Turtle keeps trying, getting the Gov to pay the subsidies is the next round in the fight. Not sure who to call on that issue, and any suggestions are welcomed.

  102. 102.

    Brachiator

    @sukabi:

    .there’s a wingnut billboard near where I live that’s been sporting “Freedom is dangerous. Slavery is peaceful.” for about 3 weeks now.

    . Reads like standard libertarian gibberish. The idea that true conservatives are tough and free because they do not depend on the government, while those who take government subsidies for health insurance, or who depend on Social Security, etc, are slaves to the welfare state. Bunch of crap.

  103. 103.

    Elizabelle

    Thank Dog. Will put up with all the adulation of John McCain if he helped to stop this odious bill.

    Mostly, congratulations Democrats, for sticking together. And Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins proved they are brave and noble on the subject of healthcare affordability, and kudos to them.

    Just leave the ACA aloooooone. Drop it, Turtle.

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sukabi: I’d choose to read it as being about people who would give away the Bill of Rights to protect themselves from an imaginary terrorist.

  107. 107.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @different-church-lady:

    There seems to be some kind of deeper message here than merely “No to this particular bill.”

    It’s not really very deep, just a simple one fingered salute.

  109. 109.

    oldgold

    There have been worse speeches given in the Senate, but the defeated Turtle’s maudlin diatribe was to my ear the most hypocritical ever uttered.

  111. 111.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Brachiator:

    true conservatives are tough and free because they do not depend on the government,

    I wonder how many roads they’ve paved? Sewer lines the dug? Airplanes they’ve flown? Ad nauseum.

  112. 112.

    oldgold

    From the movie Top Gun:
    Stinger: “Maverick, you just did an incredibly brave thing.”

    Yes, he did. Last night watching an American hero, who because of vanity, falling victim to the lure of power and lazy thinking had badly tarnished his heroic image, late in the autumn of his life, reaching deep into the smithy of his soul and finding the courage to perform a heroic act was damn good stuff. Frank Capra where are you?

  113. 113.

    oldgold

    And, of course, Collins and Murkowski, displayed even more courage than the Maverick! Great stuff!

  114. 114.

    Ken

    @Morzer: It occurs to me that Jill Stein’s “plan” for the presidency was the same as Trump’s – you tell Congress what to do, and they do it because they recognize the righteousness of your position.

    (Trump’s plan in his speeches of course. Reality has been a little different.)

  115. 115.

    Ken

    @Shalimar: Don’t be silly. Trump won’t sell Alaska to the Russians. He’ll give it to his bestest buddy and man-crush Putin.

  117. 117.

    Immanentize

    @sukabi: @Brachiator:

    I think Libertarian is spot on. I found this:

    “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” is actually a translation of a Latin phrase that Thomas Jefferson used: ” Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.”

  118. 118.

    Immanentize

    The Republicans have fallen victim to their own spin. In the end, the American people didn’t hate their health care, they were just generally hating on taxes and gays and Obama and all that. The ACA was just a banner in that expression. But the Republicans came to believe that the bloody banner they waived was itself the cause.

    People 1
    Reptiles 0

    But the match will continue.

  119. 119.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Nooners must have written that while chasing her one week chip. Sounded salty, angry and edgy.

    And I hate to give credit to MoJo’s crew, but somebody brought up that the firehose of small lies means they can be trusted on nothing.

    ,

  120. 120.

    rikyrah

    ICYMI:

    Silverman points out the importance of this defeat last night in a reply:

    Adam L Silverman says:
    July 28, 2017 at 2:16 am
    @piratedan: It further backs up the legislative calendar. Without doing the ACA repeal, specifically the tax repeal portions, it is almost impossible to do tax reform. Anything they do will now need to be done under the 60 vote cloture threshold in the Senate, not reconciliation. So that is going to eat up a lot of time and is no longer a sure thing. They have to do either appropriations, other than the defense authorization which is ready to be voted on. Most likely this is now going to be a year on year omnibus CR. They have to do a debt ceiling increase. If they don’t want to trigger the sequester on the defense appropriation, or anything else budget related, they have to pass a Budget Control Act waiver, which they haven’t seem to have remembered to do so far based on the NDAA as it passed the House. The Senate also has a bunch of nominations to get through. They go on August recess at the end of next week. They come back at the beginning of September and half about 3 weeks before the end of the fiscal year to get the NDAA, a CR or individual appropriations bills, a BCA waiver, and a debt ceiling increase done. That is not a lot of time. And everyone in the House and 1/3 of the Senate will start the 2018 midterm campaign starting in the Fall. This Congress is now functionally done. The Senate will get through most of the nominations. They’ll probably get an omnibus CR and a debt ceiling increase. Hopefully they’ll remember a Budget Control Act waiver before the pass the NDAA-defense appropriation next Monday. But that’s it. This is a lame duck GOP majority Congress and time will tell, but we may have a lame duck Presidency with 3 and a 1/2 years to go depending on what happens in the 2018 midterms.

  121. 121.

    Tazj

    It’s great to wake up to wonderful news. I’m out of town and drove so much yesterday I couldn’t keep my eyes open last night when McCain came up to vote. I was following Scott LeMieux’s Twitter feed and he said that if McCain voted no it would be the most delicious crow he ever tasted(or something along those lines).

    I’ve been critical of McCain also, but today I’m very grateful to him and senators Collins and Murkowski for their votes.

  122. 122.

    Jinchi

    @Maeve:

    Giving McCain the credit for defeating this repeal when female Senators Murkowski & Collins were early NOs is EVERY WORK MEETING EVER.

    They all deserve credit. But the entire Democratic party deserves the most. They risked their majority to pass Obamacare in the first place, and they held together against expectations to preserve it.

    I wonder if Portman and Heller are secretly thanking McCain for voting to kill a bill they knew would be a disaster. He allowed them to be good Republicans without suffering the consequences. They deserve our contempt.

  123. 123.

    sukabi

    @Schlemazel: not a joke. Always something critical (and unhinged) about some dem policy or person… (Favorites have been Obama and Hillary) but in the last 6 months those two have been given a reprieve…and the billboard hasn’t been as “entertaining” until the last entry.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    .3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!

    Trump can’t even keep up with his own lies. But now he’s stuck, if the media and the opposition keep at him.

    Trump promised that he would replace Obamacare with something better. He said it would happen immediately when Obamacare was repealed. During a recent press conference, he brought up three families who he claimed were hurt by Obamacare.

    Okay, I call his bluff. I expect for him and his surrogates and defenders to show exactly how Trumpcare are will be better for these families and for the country. And Trumpcare must also increase the number who are insured.

    The Republicans can’t just play their BS games. They need to put up or shut up. And I’m pretty sure they got nothing.

Comments are closed.