The Republicans are having a fucking party to celebrate disemboweling health care in the country, to the profit of the rich.
Goddamn them all. Goddamn the political movement that spawned them and goddamn the political party in which that movement found a home, and goddamn the infrastructure in which their pus-bag of an ideology was allowed to fester until it splattered the plague all over the government. Goddamn anyone who believes that blind, genetic luck is a demonstration of divine design. Goddamn anyone who believes in a god who hands out disease as punishment. Goddamn anyone who stays behind the walls and dances while the plague comes back again.
And if the Democratic Party can’t reduce these idiots to smoking ash through the stunning visuals that greeted this atrocious vote, then goddamn the Democratic Party, too.
Everyone who voted for this crime must pay a heavy price. The Republican party must be destroyed.
“Everyone who voted for this crime must pay a heavy price.”
Which of course includes every voter who voted GOP and/or Trump in the last few years.
Because this is not some secret scheme plotted in back alleys and mysterious meetings: The repeal of ACA was the expressed will of the entire GOP since before ACA was even enacted. This was not only widely known, it was a major campaign promise of GOP and Trump.
This heavy price will consists of losing their ACA coverage. But we can not forget that Trump and co. where voted in by willing voters.
A la The Great Carnac, holds up envelope. What is the cause of the Democratic controlled House of Representatives in 2018? *rips open envelope, blows it open, pulls out card, and reads* The passage of the AHCA act by the rethugs in 2017.
Really, I’m angrier at the Democrats. Scorpions are going to follow their nature, but if Obama and the Democratic leadership hadn’t made a deal with the insurance and medical industries, we might have medicare for all by now, or at least something stronger and more popular than the ACA. There are lots of reasons she lost, but “medicare for all will never, ever pass” was one of them.
You can’t get a functioning democracy without a credible threat of violence. The New Deal would never have happened if not for the Red Scare and the Russian Revolution. The rich will never give up their power voluntarily. I knew the occupy Wall Street movement was DOA when the bankers went into the streets to laugh and curse at the protestors. I know it’s not polite, and revolutions never end well, and the poor will suffer first in any violence, myself included, but it won’t get better until the rich are scared of what will happen if they don’t compromise. I don’t want it to come to that, but the powerful need to be scared of the masses for democracy to work. Nothing will change until the rich are afraid they will be dragged out of their mansions and strung up by the streetlamps.
Yes, likely enough, just like the fire that killed your spouse and kids, your beloved pets, and destroyed your family photos is why you have that really cool new house. Why aren’t you happy?
I knew a guy who had a Ferrari and a really nice place in coastal California. He got it all via a settlement with the airline that killed his parents. He wasn’t a happy guy.
They don’t expect the law to be enacted. They expect it to be blocked by the Senate and then they will sigh and say “Oh well, we did what we promised, we repealed Obamacare but gosh durn it, the Senate stopped it. We tried. We kept OUR promise.”
At least some claim that is their thinking – but if they don’t really want and expect it to pass, why did they exempt themselves from it’s effects?
From abroad it’s very bizarre to see poor people vote Republican – a political party that clearly actively hates and attacks their interests.
@ #5
“why did they exempt themselves from it’s effects?”
Before passing the bill House Republicans removed that exemption.
> “why did they exempt themselves from it’s effects?”
> Before passing the bill House Republicans removed that exemption.
Oops, missed that update. Guess they really don’t expect it to pass the Senate then.
Bernie Sanders on All In with Chris Hayes. *raises clenched fist for the resistance*
Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post does a decent job describing the AHCA, and her title says it all, “What do Bigfoot and moderate Republicans have in common?”
re @3:
fuck you being angry at the party that was forced to compromise to get anything through the GOP obstructionists. Obama and company managed to get something through their demands to obstruct it. Now the GOP take their revenge by destroying it completely and giving them selves and their cronies huge benefits. You are mad at the wrong people.
I too am angry that the ACA was not perfect. I don;t blame Obama for it, I blame the GOP who forced all the flaws into his proposal in order to get a sliver of it passed.
You are the reason HRC lost the election, by refusing to vote for someone who is not totally rigidly ideological, who is willing to compromise to at least salvage a partial benefit to their constituents.
excuse me for being angry at your writings at #3. I’m venting my reaction to the debacle today.
@#10, slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem))
If this passes the Senate, then it means all the rhetoric about being “forced to compromise” was a damned lie to excuse the Democrats from responsibility. After all, they were “forced to compromise” because they didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That was the reason cited. The Republicans don’t have one either. If the Republicans can pass the bill anyway, it means the Democrats were lying all along, and you were a dupe and a tool for falling for it.
They had the votes to get a public option through. Obama met with insurance lobbyists and agreed to kill it, even while publicly saying he wanted it. It was so called blue dog democrats that they had to negotiate with, not Republicans. Democrats controlled both chambers and could have rammed it through. If they had proposed a simpler, fairer plan they might have gotten a vote before Kennedy died. The simple truth is that they didn’t fight for anything near universal coverage. Then the White House spokesman went on TV and essentially said the 60%+ of Americans, including the entire party base, is mentally ill for wanting “Canadian style healthcare.” Maybe if Clinton had endorsed single payer we could have avoided this catastrophe. The Democrats don’t fight for anything but the status quo. That’s not good enough. The ACA was specifically designed to lock in the status quo, just nudge it a bit to keep it viable a bit longer. I don’t demand perfection, but LBJ didn’t get the CRA and VRA and Medicare by accepting what Republicans and sellouts told him was plausible. But maybe some people think he shouldn’t have fought for civil rights because that lost the South and set us up for this debacle. Democrats should lead, and welcome the wrath of the bankers and bigots, not negotiate with them.
And who said I didn’t vote for her?
The demo lost because all they’ve done for the past thirty years is play Republican lite instead of presenting a real alternative. The majority of them don’t support single payer, all but six of them take corporate donations and PAC money ( talking about the house in that case), they we’re only slightly less pro wall street than the GOP, they are overwhelmingly pro interventionist and pro shifty trade deals, etc…the list goes on. Donald ran a populist campaign. Was he full of shit? Obviously, he’s a billionaire ( supposedly). He said he was anti war(ish), Hillary is a total hawk, he said he opposed TPP, Clinton lied through her teeth when she said she had changed her mind. The Clinton foundation was an obvious pay for play scam. The point is she couldn’t attack donald trump for most of his problems because she’s just as entrenched in the same corrupt system. She wanted Jamie Dimon in her cabinet. The dems ran on Bullshit platitudes, clichés, and outrage and they tipped the scales against anybody who wasn’t a corporatist. They are completely unwilling to take an responsibility for what happened an sooner rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic while it sinks than go in a new direction. They lost to the most unpopular presidential candidate in history because they sucked and the only thing they had to offer is that they’re slightly less shitty than the GOP. As long as the party attitude is to blame everyone but them selves they will continue to lose. It’s their goddammit fault they lost.
slithey tove @10:
Apparently you weren’t paying attention. Instead of handling the ACA through the HHS committee in the Senate, who already had a bill nearly ready to present, the Obama administration put it into the hands of Montana Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Finance Committee, who had the distinction of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. He refused to include a public option, killing the only chance of managing costs by including competition with insurance companies, then dragged out the process unnecessarily for months, insuring(!) that the Republicans had plenty of time to stir up lie-based hysteria in the Republican base — and plenty of noise on TV news.
Don’t forget, the Democrats had majorities in the House and (barely) in the Senate. The ACA ended up being touted by the Obama administration as the best we could do, which was true by the time that gift-wrapped wet kiss to the insurance industry finally hit the Senate floor.
Forced to compromise? You think it’s sensible to enter negotiations by offering huge giveaways to the opposition even before they ask? Then giving away even more, because your milquetoast bill doesn’t inspire enough passionate support from your base to counteract Republican fantasy paranoia and get the Blue Dogs in line? And blame your base for not standing up enough, after you’ve been blowing them off and discouraging momentum on the issue for months?
Then Obama rewarded Sen. Max with the Ambassadorship to China, and we lost that Senate seat.
I will give credit and blame where due, and I know who’s the worst enemy here, but to insist that it was the GOP who “forced all the flaws into his proposal” is simply, sadly wrong. We must keep the heat on Dems as well as Repubs if we’re going to make any progress. And, since you bring it up, HRC would have won easily if only a few more people were a bit less ambivalent about her. She was not a great candidate, but she could have beaten Trump if she had managed to inspire a higher turnout. Even dedicated precinct workers could do little to penetrate the apathy and distrust that she had so much trouble addressing. Hillary might have made a decent president, certainly better than the current state of affairs, but she was a far from ideal candidate. A 50% turnout in a Presidential election is a deep, deep problem.
FIFY.
Seriously. Stop making excuses for people who were willing to throw marginalized people’s lives and any chance of a future for our children away because they weren’t “inspired” enough.
Since they are impervious to reason, it seems the only recourse is to allow them to destroy themselves by their own devices. They have plenty of the stoopid to accomplish that. Unfortunately, many innocent will likely be sacrificed on that hideous altar. Again. Recurring theme in human history. The goddamned reset button is no way for an allegedly intelligent species to go about business, let alone life, the bastards.
There is a responsibility in being a citizen in a republic, and it is also the candidate’s job to inspire the voters. Most people aren’t well educated or well informed. Most people are exhausted from trying to get by, and scared about the future. The media sucks, and all the people heard about was Benghazi and e-mails. Then Comey committed his hit job. And yes, a lot of people are also mean spirited and bigoted. They voted for Obama in spite of bigotry, because they craved hope and change. This time it was the republican promising change. And still a majority of voters went against him. But he won critical districts in the places hardest hit by the new economy. He didn’t win just because of bigotry, but also desperation. Not to mention the media insisting that he was going to lose, encouraging complacency. Hell, even Trump looked shocked that night. As I said before, there were a lot of reasons she lost. It was so close you can point at a dozen different factors for blame. But then it should never have been that close to begin with. Sure, maybe this, maybe that, and I won’t say Sanders definitely would have survived the general, but a virtually unknown populist gave Clinton a run for her money despite the backing of the party establishment, and then she squeaked by against false populist that everyone knew was a buffoon. That should tell you something.
By the way, I have more hatred for republicans, despite my earlier comment. I too am depressed by this, in part because there is a good chance I won’t outlive my parents. But I firmly believe that if Democrats turned to the left, if they had at least gotten a simpler ACA with at a public option, the republicans just might be the rump party everyone was predicting in 2009.
Azkyroth:
I make no excuses for anyone; I’m just stating the situation. Since I knocked on hundreds of doors for Hillary, I think I have a pretty fair grasp of the dynamics. I know personally of exactly one Bernie supporter who didn’t vote for Hillary. Bernie supporters were not a significant part of HRC’s GOTV issues — it was primarily blue-collar Democratic men and women who were just not enthused.
Don’t make excuses for Hillary, or the Dem leadership. If we’re not willing to take a hard look at our failures, we can’t become a winning party no matter how bad the Republicans are. I want to get progressives in office, take back state legislatures and Congress before the scary people destroy what’s left of our country. I work for that, very hard. Don’t put words in my mouth, and quit demonizing folks who are doing the work, including the difficult task of taking responsibility and moving forward. Fixing the problem is more productive than fixing the blame.
@3, ionopachys:
Exactly.
Suppose you’re on trial for a crime you didn’t commit. The crooked prosecutor brings in 3 lying witnesses and 6 pieces of fake evidence to implicate you. Your crooked defense attorney brings in only one lying witness to implicate you. Which is the greater threat to your liberty?
People like Azkyroth would simply add up the numbers and say the prosecutor is nine times the threat; the defense attorney only did one thing to implicate you instead of nine. However, that’s a naive way of viewing the situation— given what can reasonably be expected of them, a defense attorney who implicates you at all is far more crooked than a prosecutor who resorts to dirty tricks and fake evidence.
If you were in that situation, you might consider representing yourself. Your odds of beating the corrupt prosecutor on your own are slim to none – and people like Azkyroth would call you a “fuckhead” who threw a tantrum just because your lawyer didn’t give you a pony – but even the slim odds of beating a corrupt prosecutor pro se start to look good when your defense attorney is actively working to convict you.
“The Republican party must be destroyed”
Seen from Europe, this is a red herring. The entire US political system is dysfunctional and should be replaced with something sensible.
Whatever degree of fault may accrue to the Democratic Party, hopefully we all can agree on one thing: Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.
8, Nerd:
Holyshit. The part where Trump praises the Australian health care system is just so unreal.
Just a thought here as a Canadian looking from the outside. I find the dems to be much more insidious than the Republicans. In Canada we have the Con’s, the Lib’s, and the NDP. The NDP are generally progressive and straight forward with their beliefs ( they have never been elected either as I am talking federal politics, so take it for what it’s worth), the Con’s(whom I would not vote for) are also generally not shy about being a right wing conservative pro corporate party. The liberals on the other hand pretend to be progressive during the campaign and for TV interviews and then throw everybody under the bus when they’re in power. The bought and paid for neo liberal, faux progressive, corporate sellout party. They are more dangerous than the con’s because we at least know who we are fighting with them. Half the country stopped paying attention when Obama got elected. Not a single person was prosecuted for the financial crisis which was caused in part because of the repeal of glass-steagal under slick willy. The US actually managed to get into even more wars with no plans to end them. They we’re unable to pass the public option with majorities in both chambers. They just played the PC outrage thing to get votes. Many of them we’re dragged kicking and screaming on gay and trans issues, and the blue dogs never really turned except during the election campaign. They passed many of the fucked up tough on crime bills.
Charlie’s been having some health problems. That’s a little terrifying. It was rough losing Molly Ivins; his voice is one of the few things keeping me sane.
@24 pipefighter
You’re making a lot of good points, but your conclusions are overstated.
Every criticism you make of Democrats/liberals is spot on, but with all that said, they’re still a million times better than the Republicans. Just take this health care vote: the ACA was not perfect, maybe not even good, but it’s better than the abomination just passed by the House (still has a long way to go to become law).
It just isn’t the case that Democrats are more dangerous. And, it should be pointed out, Democratic voters are well aware of this. It was the essence of the Bernie/Hillary dispute, and even people like me who supported Hillary did so with full knowledge of the problems you mention.
They aren’t doing it in secret or getting away with it, the problem is that every liberal/progressive in the country constantly has to choose between ideal politics and stopping Republicans from fucking everything up completely.
As far as I’m concerned, assigning blame comes later. For now, the most pressing question is whether or not this turd of a bill can pass in the senate. What can be done to scare senate republicans away from passing this thing?
I recently read (on tumblr…) about an app called “Stance” (you all probably know about this, just thought I’d mention it in case anyway) that lets you record a message, then it keeps dialling your representative until it gets through and leaves your message in their inbox. So you don’t have to speak directly to a human if you are anxious, and you don’t have to spend hours and hours trying to get through. And apparently it comes with info to guide you through the contact-your-rep process ???
emergence @ 27
Assigning blame on those who passed it in the House and those who are thinking of passing it in the Senate. Loudly, aggressively, and with money attached. There are multiple targeted fundraising efforts on this front. There’s at least $1.5m raised between those two for unseating vulnerable House members and I know they’re not the only ones. At least $1m of that was raised since the House passed this abomination.
People are angry. That anger needs to be directed to enact change. Assigning blame is actually an incredibly useful political tool for scaring the shit out of politicians. Start here on the easy targets, then keep pushing against the whole damn system.
For all the people whose lives where destroyed in all the wars that Clinton supported, fuck you.
Maybe they were brown and far away, but their lives mattered.
Not to Americans of course, who consider NOT inflicting untold violence on other countries an afterthought for the ideologically pure.
You Americans really don’t give a fuck.
Try to pretend at least.
I’m so sick and disgusted of this.
Speaking of effing parties, this is what the front bench of Australia’s conservative government (a coalition of the Liberal [sic] and National parties) did when they repealed the country’s new carbon price:
https://archive.is/CpGTP
The guy on the left, Greg Hunt, was the environment minister at the time…
To give some context, the carbon price was offset to give average wage earners, and below, tax offsets that more than made up for any power price increase, and the carbon price actually worked to reduce emissions. But ideologically the price stuck in the craws of the parties that are funded by Australia’s highly influential coal industry, and it went immediately they came to government.
They really do not care about the future of this country, or of the planet.
Until we remove the corrupting influence of money in politics, there really is enough blame to go around, but it would be good if we all focused on the underlying problem. Stop blaming the symptoms (whether that be Trump himself, or apathetic voters who feel there is nothing in the system to vote for, or a media that painted a hawkish conservative like Clinton and an anti-abortion Democrat like Kaine as the most liberal Democratic ticket in history) and go after the problem directly. Any politician who receives lobbyist money, PAC money, corporate donations, or the like needs to go, regardless of party. This needs to be non-negotiable. Stop treating politics like a team sport, especially when there are substantial contingents of politicians on both major teams that receive obscene amounts of money from the uber-rich to re-write policy in their favor. The alternative is either British colonial America circa 1776 or France circa 1789, and that would not be pretty.
@30 F.O.
In 2000, we chose between Al Gore, who was likely to continue most Clinton foreign policy, and GW Bush. Your opinion of Clinton was wide-spread on the left, leading to a W victory.
How did that work out for citizens of the world?
Your criticisms are spot on, but the choice isn’t between Dubya and Gandhi or Trump and MLK, it’s between deeply flawed, imperfect Democrats and fucking monsters on the right.