Tax Cut Con Game

Catherine Rampell (Washington Post) has written an excellent column on the GOP tax reform con, maybe the best single op-ed I've seen yet on the subject.

Update 5:00 PM Sunday: The single most important reason that Donnie Jerkinov has failed so far as a so-called precedent (sic) is that Congress has consistently overreached since the session began. They're doing it again as part of their tax care for billionaires scam.

The Cruz Curse

Rafael (Ted) Cruz is not only ugly and personally repulsive, he doesn't know shit about how health insurance works. There are only a few states that would elect this oily huckster to a Senate seat, and unfortunately, Texas is one of them.

Added 3:38 PM Sunday 16 July: We now have official confirmation from Tom Price of something we believed all along. The Senate version of Trump Care is basically nothing more than letting insurance companies operate the same way they did before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

Only popular in Texas

The American Way

The determination of House and Senate Republicans to destroy the beneficial aspects of the Affordable Care Act can be explained in one of two ways.

One possibility is that they've finally put together a foolproof system for hacking the voting machinery in key swing states. Since they'll be able to manipulate the vote totals, they don't have to sweat voter retaliation. That possibility seems a little less far-fetched every day.

Then there's the old reliable standby plan: When red state voters start bitching about losing their health insurance completely, or paying higher premiums to get a lot less coverage, just have Fox News tell them constantly that all their problems were caused by the Democrats, who refused to vote for the really great bill the GOP actually wanted and were trying to pass. That trick works because the dumb fucks are always anxious to believe it.

Don't look at me. Blame Pelosi and Schumer.

Blindness

If the chinless wonder plans to force a Senate vote on a Trump Care bill that hasn't been seen, much less debated and amended, he must be extremely confident that his members will pass it in lockstep, sight unseen. If he's right, we have further proof that the GOP has outlived its usefulness and needs to be set out on the curb to be collected as bulky trash.

What's this asshole happy about?

Screwed

We're fucked. Here's why.

There are many reasons why the president should be a person who can read and understand complicated things, instead of being someone who thinks it's really cool to play the president on a TV reality show. Cornholio wanted a win, any win, and he got one. This should keep him purring like a fat kitten for 48 hours. Or at least until some staffer tells him that Cornholio Care now goes to the Senate for a second look. Will those members of the House Freedom Caucus still be in a celebrating, beer-drinking mood when they see the Senate version?

WTF are they talking about?

Take 2

The first shot at getting a trump care bill passed was a spectacular failure. The obvious next move for the so-called precedent (sic) and the House Freedom Caucus was to take the first plan, smear shit all over it, and call it the new plan. In their version of reality, making something worse will always make it more popular.

Added 11:10 AM Wednesday 5 April:

There's probably not a simple explanation, but maybe Republicans are proposing Take 2 because they've realized their jobs were easier when they didn't have total control of the federal government, and surrendering their House majority would make things less difficult.

Sabotage

After the trump care bill fizzled out in the House of Republicans (sic) last week, the so-called precedent (sic) began dropping hints that he'd kill the ACA with bureaucracy rather than legislation. Huffington Post says that approach will probably cause the most pain for people who elected the asshole last November.

In the overall scheme of things, having the so-called precedent (sic) give the only people who still like him a good hard fucking-over is probably the quickest way to get rid of him. Nothing changes minds like putting things on a personal level.

Freedom

The conservative argument for abolishing Obamacare seems to be this: Health insurance costs will be reduced because people who can't afford the premiums will no longer be required to obtain insurance coverage. Their cost goes to zero. Plus, billionaires will get a huge tax break, saving them millions. See? Freedom.

U.S. Representatives only have to win a majority of the votes in their districts, which, for Republicans, are usually drawn to protect the Republican incumbent. That's the reason the House is filled with shit birds like this Jordan guy and the rest of the House Freedom Caucus.

Senators have to win statewide elections, so occasionally some of them have a lucid thought.

Sinking, sinking, sunk

They apparently believe that if they ignore the problem, it will cease to exist. It looks like the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act may be the huge anchor that will finally drag Pootin' and the Republicans in Congress to the bottom of the ocean.

Cheese Dick

The Supreme Court, led by Fat Tony Scalia, is on the verge of ending the ACA this month. Rep. Paul Ryan, the biggest cheese dick in Wisconsin after Walker, tells us not to sweat it because Republicans have a solution.

If the Republicans had a solution, they would be lining up to go on TV and talk about it. Besides, Republicans never have solutions for anything; they only have new ways to fail.

The computers are down? No shit.

Now that the government is operating again, the media have turned the spotlight on the technical failures hanging up Obamacare implementation. One of the problems I've always had with turning government functions over to private sector contractors is that when the shit hits the fan (as it often does), the people who built it are never ready to accept any reponsibility when it falls down. I had experience with privatization during my government service career, and the federal government under Bush 43 privatized as much of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as they could get away with.

My philosophy now is very simple: If the government wants a job done right, it should do the job itself instead of shopping it off to the lowest bidder, whose main concern is making a profit.

Cohesion

An editorial in the Houston Chronicle remarks on the fact the health care reform bill was passed without a single Republican vote. I've often written that the greatest distinction between Republicans and Democrats is the ability of the GOP to unify and march in absolute lockstep. I've watched them do it for years now, and a while back compared the GOP congressional majority to a Panzer division plowing through a field of daisies. Their ability to cohere allows Republicans to take the narrowest majority and use it to ram through any measure their leaders want. It's both awesome and nerve-wracking to behold.

Because Democrats tend to fragment rather than cohere, they need more substantial majorities to get anything done, and usually don't have them. This weekend, their majority was barely enough.

Whether the health care reform laws will survive court challenges or benefit most Americans remains to be seen. Will the Republicans pay a penalty or gain an advantage by having cohered in their opposition to anything Obama wants ? That also is up in the air for the moment.

Another conservative David

Like David Brooks, David Frum is a conservative who is sometimes willing to examine both sides of an issue and isn't totally predictable. Both Davids occasionally stray away from the GOP reservation, making them worth reading from time to time. Frum posted this update on his Forum blog, and throws a slightly different slant on the status of the health care reform fiasco.

I'll repeat the point I've been making all year, namely that Republicans cannot allow health care reform to see the light of day. They've spent most of 2009 talking about how the Democratic proposal will destroy America, but what they REALLY worry about is the opposite. If a reasonably popular set of reforms are enacted and are reasonably successful in improving the status quo for voters, the public calms down, the overheated rhetoric tails off, and Republican support drops back down to bedrock (teabagger) level, roughly 30 percent. If Obama and the Democrats hold the reins of power in Washington until the economy begins its inevitable recovery, Republicans may not get their hands on them again for a decade.

For the GOP, these are perilous times requiring extreme measures. Stay tuned to see what they come up with next.

Sickening

I was a Howard Dean fan in 2004, and was disappointed when his campaign ran aground and left John Kerry to try unseating the Bush-Cheney-Rove triumvirate. In the Washington Post, Dean seems to be telling it like it is --- again. The health care reform debacle is enough to stagger the imagination. It would be bad enough if Republicans were running the train off the tracks --- after all, wrecking stuff is the one thing they do well and it's what I expect from them. Unfortunately the GOP is getting tons of help from the Democrats, help they didn't need to fuck things up royally.

I predict that after making a total botch of everything in 2009, Democrats will start their journey back to the wilderness of political minority in 2010, and their decline will pick up momentum heading into 2012. In itself, that wouldn't be too bad since the Dems have proven they aren't really capable of running things anyway. The worst part is that conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, have been driven absolutely insane by the horrifying sight of those Ns in the White House. As bad as Republicans were during the Reagan years, the Gingrich years, and the Bush-Cheney-Rove years, they're going to be much, much worse in 2012. In 2004, for example, no one had heard of Winky or Beck; now they're the superstars of the party. The small number of good (i.e., moderate, sensible) Republicans has dwindled down to almost zero, and the lunatics really are running the asylum.

In short, the Democrats not only blew every golden opportunity they were handed in 2008, they've made it possible, even likely, that we'll get at least four years of government (2013-2016) that will make 2001-2008 look tolerable in comparison.

Added 9:54 am on Thursday: Lo and behold, E.J. Dionne makes the argument much more intelligently than I can.

Added 10:36 am Thursday: Taylor Marsh, who blogs for real, adds her analyis of this stinking mess at Huffington Post.

Still legislating morality ?

Conservative columnist Star Parker seems to be off to a good start with her assessment of what needs to occur when the Republican renaissance begins, then she runs off the road when she claims the economic conservatives and the evangelical conservatives need to merge into one mighty river (presumably washing away everything in its path). Obviously, the GOP needs the Christian conservatives --- without them, the party vanishes like a wisp of smoke in a stiff breeze. Unfortunately, they're too often allowed to dictate the conservative political agenda. Since much of my own political philosophy is shaped around separation of church and state, the evangelical influence on the GOP agenda is a deal killer for me.

Maybe someday the GOP will come up with a plan to win elections without pandering to the evangelical community by allowing them to write most of the rules. If that day ever comes, I'll be glad to give 'em a look.

Added 11:04 pm: Changing the subject a little, this from Huffington Post on the health care bill passed in the House. Because the current Congress is totally dysfunctional, I'm afraid my worst fears are coming true --- a really ugly mess of a bill has been passed, and anything that ultimately makes it into law will probably be even worse. In the long run, Democrats would have been better off simply cutting their losses and tossing the whole thing in the trash when it became clear there was no party unity on the issue. No bill is much better than a bad bill, which seems like what we're destined to end up with --- and when the smoke clears and the screaming dies down, we'll have something nobody will be happy with, and both parties will share the blame. I say the Republicans should kill this thing dead in its tracks, and let the political chips fall where they may.

Added 7:48 am, Tuesday, 10 November: An interesting column by Paul Krugman on the teabaggers and why they need to be taken seriously.