Category: Uncategorized

Rock Bottom

In other settings the media normalization of the coming shit storm might be charming or even amusing.

First, we have the “that will never get 60 votes in the Senate” crowd. People, there will be no filibuster when the new Congress convenes in 2017; the only possible hope for a retained filibuster is that Mitch McConnell cynically enjoys power more than actually governing and wants a safety hatch of “someone to blame” (namely: Democrat minority in the Senate) for the outcomes of GOP policy decisions.

Similarly, we have the “what might they do” thought pieces. People, we know what they’ll do. They have an incurious leader that has repeatedly expressed his complete lack of interest in the policy details of even his own policy proposals. Assuming Ryan remains Speaker, we know what he’ll do. He’s been talking about it for years in explicit, legislative terms.
One notable example, “Medicare,” as a name for a program will still exist, but it will be converted to a fixed payment with which program recipients can attempt to go buy insurance on the open market. From Day One of the program, said payment will be insufficient to actually, you know, buy coverage on the market, but you can rest easy in the knowledge that the payment will never increase. But: Medicare is still there, folks! Nothing to see here, and I fully expect it to be reported in exactly those terms, because it’s been reported in exactly those terms every time he’s talked about it. Again, this is not a secret. It’s right there in the Plan for America.

Ryan’s broader proposed budgets actually contains no non-military discretionary spending at all, so the fact that Medicare will at least remain in name only is going to be characterized as a big liberal victory, I guess.

As far as Obamacare (or, really, the ACA): also toast. All the media assurances about “but the GOP will have to do the hard work of coming up with a replacement before repealing coverage” for the ~20M folks that were uninsured pre-ACA: Again, super-funny in other circumstances, media elite. The GOP has had the better part of a decade to suggest a replacement for the ACA and has offered nothing. If anything, they will drop in a high risk pool plan with capped lifetime benefit limits. The more likely outcome is the ACA is replaced with nothing. Is it any wonder that drug company stocks spiked on news of the election?

What a Democratic party should do: there’s no stopping most of it (see: filibuster, lack of), but the better long range strategy is to induce the healthcare death spiral. The community rating and associated benefits of the ACA are extremely popular. With heavy heart the Democrats should offer to gut the unpopular parts of the ACA, namely the mandate and the “Obamacare” portion, which actually subsidizes coverage for people unable to afford it on their own. We need to face the fact that the poors are in for quite the kicking over the next four years, no matter what, and but also work to keep the massively popular parts of ACA in force. The GOP, ever attracted to bad policy like cats to catnip, will be unable to resist, because: hey, popular! And so the Democrats shall have ushered in single payer health care, courtesy of the poison pill; briefly, the community rating forces coverage but eliminating the mandate allows people to buy healthcare only when they really need it, thus slowly burning the medical insurance establishment to the ground. Once there is no functional insurance infrastructure, the only remaining option is single payer. Good thing we still have that Medicare name sitting around and largely going unused.

Mostly, The Democrat needs to be planning based on gaining some seats in 2018, but then creating a wave election in 2020. You’re not going to be in control of any lever of govenment until at least 2018. Plan accordingly. Make small changes around the edges that, longer term, create a death-spiral situations to which your policy provides a positive (and ultimately the only) answer. They’re going to destroy most of the ACA no matter what, you can at least work to keep the popular parts that also happen to inexorably drag our healthcare system towards single payer.

There is zero doubt that this sort of approach creates real pain and suffering in the short term. But we’re going to get that pain and suffering no matter what. May as well make it worth something.

The most depressing message from this election is not that Trump might win. He won’t. What’s truly frightening is that very few Republicans are peeling away from their 2012 voting patterns. The most abhorrent political figure to rise in from our political system, perhaps ever, will inspire a decline in internal Republican support of only about 3-4 percentage points. That tells a terrible story about the weakness of conscience in the face of group pressure. It is a reminder that “it can’t happen here” is a myth.

Chris Ladd, until recently “GOP Lifer” and now writing for Political Orphans

You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, as long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left.

Rush Limbaugh. I really thought I had lost the ability to be astounded by the never ending spew of the far right…and then this happens. Here’s a man apparently discovering the concept of consent but finding the whole idea a little exotic and unbelievable. I really, truly want to know what color the sky is in Rush’s world. Stay woke, Rush.

Clinton: Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.
TRUMP: That makes me smart.
Lemkin: For some reason, I expect to see this exchange in continuous ad rotation right up until blood starts coming from my eyes and or my whatever.

Ms. Clinton is hardly blameless. She treated the public’s interest in sound record-keeping cavalierly. A small amount of classified material also moved across her private server. But it was not obviously marked as such, and there is still no evidence that national security was harmed. Ms. Clinton has also admitted that using the personal server was a mistake. The story has vastly exceeded the boundaries of the facts.

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post. There now, was that so very fucking hard to do? Can we now keep these nearly 70 words on a card that is at the ready in the little filofax that is our journalistic brain? I’m guessing no, but I’m an optimist.

Sarcasm

Trump today: Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?
Trump yesterday: No, I meant [Obama is] the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.

We need a government that will deliver serious social reform — and make ours a country that truly works for everyone. Because right now, if you’re born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others.

If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white. If you’re a white working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else to go to university. If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately.

If you’re a woman, you still earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s too often not enough help to hand. If you’re young you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.

Theresa May, presumptive incoming Prime Minister of the UK. For all the recent turmoil in the UK, it’s hard to imagine a US in which the conservative leadership had paragraphs even remotely like these in their stump speeches.

There was a time in this country – and many voters in places like Indiana and Michigan and Pennsylvania are old enough to remember it – when business leaders felt a patriotic responsibility to protect American jobs and communities. Mitt Romney’s father, George, was such a leader, deeply concerned about the city of Detroit, where he built AMC cars.

But his son Mitt wasn’t. That sense of noblesse oblige disappeared somewhere during the past generation, when the newly global employer class cut regular working stiffs loose, forcing them to compete with billions of foreigners without rights or political power who would eat toxic waste for five cents a day.

Then they hired politicians and intellectuals to sell the peasants in places like America on why this was the natural order of things. Unfortunately, the only people fit for this kind of work were mean, traitorous scum, the kind of people who in the military are always eventually bayoneted by their own troops. This is what happened to the Republicans, and even though the cost was a potential Trump presidency, man, was it something to watch.

If this isn’t the end for the Republican Party, it’ll be a shame. They dominated American political life for 50 years and were never anything but monsters. They bred in their voters the incredible attitude that Republicans were the only people within our borders who raised children, loved their country, died in battle or paid taxes. They even sullied the word “American” by insisting they were the only real ones. They preferred Lubbock to Paris, and their idea of an intellectual was Newt Gingrich. Their leaders, from Ralph Reed to Bill Frist to Tom DeLay to Rick Santorum to Romney and Ryan, were an interminable assembly line of shrieking, witch-hunting celibates, all with the same haircut – the kind of people who thought Iran-Contra was nothing, but would grind the affairs of state to a halt over a blow job or Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

A century ago, the small-town American was Gary Cooper: tough, silent, upright and confident. The modern Republican Party changed that person into a haranguing neurotic who couldn’t make it through a dinner without quizzing you about your politics. They destroyed the American character. No hell is hot enough for them. And when Trump came along, they rolled over like the weaklings they’ve always been, bowing more or less instantly to his parodic show of strength.

Matt Taibbi nails it. Read the whole thing

Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump

I’ve never seen a lede buried by putting the entire text of the story inside of it. But this reunited nut is precisely why Trump resonates and the rest of the GOP’s favored class can’t lay a hand on him:

The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak.

Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on Feb. 19, he warned that Donald J. Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November. But Mr. Rove, the master strategist of George W. Bush’s campaigns, insisted it was not too late for them to stop Mr. Trump, according to three people present.

At a meeting of Republican governors the next morning, Paul R. LePage of Maine called for action. Seated at a long boardroom table at the Willard Hotel, he erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump’s nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party. Mr. LePage urged the governors to draft an open letter “to the people,” disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics. The suggestion was not taken up. Since then, Mr. Trump has only gotten stronger, winning two more state contests […entire rest of story…]

On Friday, a few hours after Mr. Christie endorsed him, Mr. Trump collected support from a second governor, who in a radio interview said Mr. Trump could be “one of the greatest presidents.”

That governor was Paul LePage.

The jig is up, fellas. Literally everyone, even your studiously misled base that you’ve cultivated for decades, is intimitely familiar with your game, knows it on sight, and unless and until you set it aside, Trump will continue to rule your world.

Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump

As far as my [most recent tax] return, I want to file it, except for many years, I’ve been audited every year. Twelve years or something like that. Every year they audit me, audit me, audit me … I will absolutely give my return, but I’m being audited now for two or three [years’ worth] now so I can’t. […] Maybe [I get audited so frequently] because of the fact that I am a strong Christian … you see what’s happened, you have many religious groups complaining about that.

Donald J. Trump, presumptive presidential nominee for the GOP, is pretty sure his obsessive readings of Two Corinthians (walk into a bar) are to blame for frequent audits.