Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Friday]

"Pass Health Bill or Obamacare Stays, Trump Tells the G.O.P."

Oh please, don't throw us in that briar patch.

"We were unconvinced about Trump's plan until he threatened us with a heaven-like utopia," says a GOP rep from The South. "We realized that if we did not vote to pass Trump's healthcare plan, a world where everyone was happy and at peace would occur. We had to fall in line. Preventing health, happiness, and causing as much death as possible is more important than all other concerns."

GOP rep from The South went on to add: "Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to a utopia if it only included white heterosexual males and their robot slave girlfriends."

[zaratustra]

Asked whether he supports that proposal — which would go to the Senate after House approval — Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican dude from Kansas, delivered this douche-y quip to Talking Points Memo: "I sure don't want my mammogram benefits taken away."

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a9 ... care-joke/



sorry. i'm sorry. i'm trying to delete it

[Thad]

I'd say "I really wish more Republicans would just say what they really mean", but then again Trump got elected anyway.

[Mongrel]

[McDohl]

Get REKT, cruel health care law.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

This is old, but so, so appropriate:

[Mongrel]

THANKS OBAMA

[Destynova]

Just need Trump photoshopped on Immortan Joe's body

[beatbandito]

[Thad]

Well, it only took, what, 7 years? But it looks like we were right that the GOP was going to eat itself.

This isn't really so different from what happened with the budget in '11.

I mean, yeah, the result's completely different, obviously. But "Speaker has no control over Freedom Caucus, and establishment Republicans don't actually want to blow everything up" is the same root cause.

This result is, obviously, a huge relief. And I hope it's a sign of things to come, in terms of Republicans being unable to enact their most destructive goals. But it's also a sign that yeah there's a pretty strong likelihood we're heading for another government shutdown, and who knows how many other failures of basic governance?

Meanwhile, I still think Gorsuch's appointment is a foregone conclusion. There are places where the psychopathic fringe and the establishment are on the same page, important ones, and far too many of them.

Obviously I'm happy about the AHCA going down. Both for positive reasons (relief that people get to keep their healthcare) and schadenfreude (political damage to Ryan and Trump). But it doesn't really lighten the existential dread any.

[Mongrel]

schadenfreude (political damage to Ryan and Trump)

[Grath]

Sadly, Paul Ryan listening to Papa Roach as he left is actually fake news. But Papa Roach dunking on him anyways isn't.

[Mongrel]

Breitbart is apparently running a story that Trump and the GOP are allying to oust Ryan as the scapegoat for the votefail.

I suspect this one of the few things that Breitbart will ever publish that is actually legitimate and accurate news.

[Mothra]

Brietbart: Our president's massively idiotic failure was actually the masterstroke of a genius House of Cards-style political play

[Thad]

So far Trump is blaming it all on the Democrats.

Which is probably the best move he's got, but it sure makes the Democrats sound a lot more competent and together than they actually are.

[Büge]

[Thad]

Chait has a pretty good rundown of why the AHCA failed (tl;dr it was bad and nobody liked it). And he quotes a rare piece from David Brooks that I agree with:

The core Republican problem is this: The Republicans can’t run policy-making from the White House because they have a marketing guy in charge of the factory. But they can’t run policy from Capitol Hill because it’s visionless and internally divided. So the Republicans have the politics driving the substance, not the other way around. The new elite is worse than the old elite — and certainly more vapid.

[Thad]

Best headline I saw today: Trump advisor Steve Bannon ordered conservative Republicans to vote for Trumpcare and they just laughed at him

Quoting Axios:

When the balky hardliners of the House Freedom Caucus visited the White House earlier this week, this was Steve Bannon's opening line, according to people in the conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:

"Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill."

Bannon's point was: This is the Republican platform. You're the conservative wing of the Republican Party. But people in the room were put off by the dictatorial mindset.
One of the members replied: "You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn't listen to him, either."

I believe that the correct response to being given an order by Steve Bannon is "Fuck you, you nazi fuck." But "lol you're not my dad" is acceptable.

According to The Daily Beast (quoting anonymous sources), Bannon's response is to advise Trump to keep an enemies list, because this is a White House that thinks Nixon's only mistake was resigning.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of thinking the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I'm not going to forget that the reason these guys refused to go along with the AHCA is that they thought it didn't take away enough people's healthcare. But it's nice to know Bannon's not in control, and I'll take his humiliation as an added bonus.

[Mongrel]

Well, not in control of the HFC.