Our relief at the failure of the Republican Senate to kill ObamaCare was short lived. With terminally ill John McCain returning to D.C. to shame himself one last time, and with Vice-President Pence casting the deciding vote on a 50-50 tie, the Senate voted to proceed with debating the issue. As CNN reports:
The next step is floor debate on the legislation to overhaul the Affordable Care Act even though there aren’t any guarantees the votes are there to eventually pass it — and it’s unclear what a final bill will look like.
The vote was up in the air until the last moments, when Several Republican holdouts announced their support, including Sens. Rand Paul, Dean Heller, Rob Portman and Shelley Moore Capito.
Trump, who has repeatedly said he’s ready to sign any repeal legislation, celebrated the vote, which creates a path to give him the major congressional victory that’s eluded the White House thus far.
“I’m very happy to announce that with zero of the Democrats’ votes, the motion to proceed on health care has moved past and now we move forward toward truly great health care for the American people. We look forward to that. This was a big step,” Trump said at a White House news conference.
There’s not even a bill to debate, and Lord knows what kind of dog’s breakfast will come from this “debate.” Shame on the Republicans who said they would vote to quash debate—and then caved.
(h/t JSP for the meme)
McCain fresh from recent cancer treatment has decided that millions of Americans don’t need healthcare. Perfect. No words.
I’m sorry for McCain’s illness, but his days as a “maverick” are long gone. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site reports that McCain has voted with Trump 91% of the time. In other words, he is a typical conservative Republican, who is hardly deserving of any accolades from those who consider themselves liberals or moderates. I would never vote for him.
Evidently he has mixed lineage anaplastic oligodendroglioma and glioblastoma multiforme.
No one will have to vote him ever again.
I may have been a little hard on McCain. I just watched a video of his speech to the Senate where he called for bipartisanship to get things done. He said he would not vote for the bill in its current form. The speech was actually quite moving. Unfortunately, stirring speeches don’t usually change votes. I’ll give McCain the benefit of the doubt regarding heath care legislation. But the proof will be in his votes.
McCain lost a lot of respect from me when, at a lecture he gave in London he answered a question about prisoners held without trial at Guantanamo Bay by expressing the view that terrorists don’t deserve a trial.
In my view
a) there is a substantial difference between being a terrorist and being accused of being a terrorist; and
b) the more serious the crime you are charged with (and there are few if any more serious than terrorism) the more important it is that you get a fair trial.
If people are found guilty of terrorism after due legal process then they should certainly be locked away but let’s not forget the due legal process which is one of the key things that differentiates us from the thugs of ISIS, Al Quaeda et al.
Not to mention he has the best healthcare tax-payer money can buy. Which is saying the best health-care in the country.
He was a war hero. They took his food away and broke his bones. He returned to the VA where he was treated, no doubt, rather generously. On the government’s tab. Now, as a senator, his head’s full of cancer. The government plan he’s on will take good care of him. Now it’s down to how do you deal with medicaid and medicare and ACA that cover the constituents that elected you. Now it’s up to you. The door on the left, or the door on the right. Your children and grandchildren are watching.
“….and then caved.”
I am now wondering what side deals have been done to get those votes. *shudder*
Repubs are dumb enough to believe Trump will fire them.
Yes, they still have no bill and are very unlikely to get one. Such a pathetic pack of old men ever to be in one room.
Indeed.
The only hope of any progress is to break the GOP majority in 18. So far I’m not impressed with what I see.
I’m of two minds on ACA. I opposed it back in the day, but it did serve to widen healthcare for the uninsured. I don’t want to see anyone lose those gains however small. The problem I see is if we end up with some frankenstein-ish bill that preserves elements of the ACA then we’ll be very unlikely to get to single payer which IS the solution we need. It’s all very frustrating.
I think you can be confident about one thing. Any health care bill this Administration and or Republican Party comes up with will for damn sure be worse for the US than the ACA. The ACA was a step in the right direction, Trumpcare / Republicancare is a step (or ten) in the wrong direction.
No question. I’m not suggesting the GOP has any interest in actually implementing a solution to healthcare.
The ACA insured more people, in that it was a good thing. It’s execution was a travesty.
As important as healthcare is, this whole legislative act is but a sideshow.
What really matters is that Der Drumpfenfurher has increasingly been unapologetically vocal in demanding personal fealty from basically everybody — and he’s getting it where it counts when the chips are down.
Make no mistrake: the loyalty that the orange-haired idiot is demanding is exactly the same as the loyalty that the Kim dynasty in North Korea demands. The only question is how much more successful the demands will be here.
I still think it’s all going to come to an head in relatively short order. But I still don’t know where, exactly, we’re heading.
One thing’s for certain: the American Republic and Drumpf are as incompatible and immiscible as oil and water. We shall have the one or the other. The question, of course, is which?
Cheers,
b&
We are moving closer to a banana republic every day.
Making global warming all the more a happy coincedence.
I am glad I don’t live in the US and I am sorry for those who didn’t want Trump in power (and voted accordingly).
I am far more worried about what will happen to the rest of the world not only for actions the US will take directly, but mostly for whatever it is that will fill the power vacuum that the US’s capitulation has caused.
I agree with your concern. Since the end of WWII the United States has accepted it’s role, sometime doing well and sometimes not. But at least it was predictable. This is no longer true and the rest of the world will have to remake everything and basically go on without any of the assurances they had before. It is a new game out there.
The next two biggest powers, Putin and Xi, are both playing their hands skillfully. The second biggest military in NATO is Turkey, who are these days just as likely to side with Saudi Arabia, which also has a huge military – one of the world’s biggest. Without the US, the world’s democracies are not physically strong enough to stand against those prepared to do anything to win.
Aside from the military though, economically the power is China and should also be the EU. The Russian economy does not amount to much. Most countries act based on their best interests but that is no longer the case here in the U.S.
Yes. All those countries that the US is pulling back from in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific are getting investment from China instead. If/when there’s a UN vote to make China pull out of the Spratley Islands, for example, they will vote with China.
NZ hasn’t been a US ally since the 70s because of arrogant behaviour on the part of the US. About 50 metres away from me in my tiny, very poor, town, the Chinese are planning to build a huge resort. The land is next door to our very beautiful golf course, and plenty of Chinese will be happy to come here just to play golf for a week or two. The town needs the investment and jobs (and I’ll still be able to see the golf course but not the resort from my windows). The same story is playing out all over the world.
” . . . whatever it is that will fill the power vacuum that the US’s capitulation has caused.”
Just congenially curious:
to the extent that U.S. power – in the form of military power/intervention – is necessarily/unavoidably required to prevent/fill a given power vacuum (and the U.S. not capitulate) – and which I reasonably take to be your desire – do you personally have an expectation of U.S. youth to join the military to possibly go in harm’s way on behalf of preventing that above-referenced power vacuum?
What would you say to a classroom of U.S. teenagers to persuade them that they have an ethical duty to so join the military and go in harm’s way?
I don’t think they have an ethical duty. One of its strengths is the fact people choose to join.
Would you say that, once one takes the oath and joins the military – obligating oneself if necessary to go in harm’s way on behalf of others – (those who have not joined perceive that) s/he has incurred some kind of ethical duty to country/fellow citizens? Or is it merely and solely a legal, contractual obligation?
What if none, or not enough, choose to join? Is it merely and solely a matter of mercenary “market forces” and ideology (which modus operandi former U.S. Navy SEAL Erik Prince of Blackwater/Xe infamy is pressing Trump to adopt, in place of the U.S. military, as a solution to U.S. problems/involvement in Afghanistan)? Is it a matter of paying someone some sufficient amount of money (whatever that is – the average annual income of the top 1% U.S. elite?)as a “carrot” to go in harm’s way?
Do you say that there is no duty of citizenship, no duty to or obligation of solidarity with, fellow citizens? That there ought not obtain the least semblance of “duty, honor, country” on anyones part?
Would you say that those who choose not to join nevertheless find it convenient and useful for others to join, the latter preserving, protecting and defending the safety and security of the formers’ families, homes, property and personal financial assets (and of course infrastructure held in common)?
I trust that these are reasonable questions and that I have put them sufficiently congenially and civilly.
What I’m saying is that no one MUST have feelings like a duty to country. Some do, and some don’t. Although I don’t have any available to quote, I believe studies show that soldiers etc. feel their greatest obligation to their fellow soldiers.
I think those who don’t join should be grateful to those who do. If enough didn’t join voluntarily, there would have to be some sort of requirement, such as a draft, like there used to be.
Volunteer armies are much more effective and efficient. I think your obligations are really no different than to any employer. I worry that the duty to country thing is taken too far because it means soldiers etc. are taken advantage of. Any requests for better treatment, pay, etc. can be dismissed by playing on patriotic duty etc.
Since currently there are enough joining without going down the mercenary route, I don’t think it should be considered. There are arguments in favour of the model. However, companies like Blackwater are corrupt, difficult to control, have a bad record and reputation, and basically I’d keep away from them. However, I believe there are situations where mercenaries are effective, and there are reliable companies. I think you have to be very careful when, where, and how you use them.
I meant to imply stability rather sound like I was advocating for further stupid military action from the US.
Heather summed up the problem far more succinctly than I ever could, above.
I also think think that it’s far more likely that US soldiers and intelligence operatives will find themselves risking their lives for agendas that are not attached even to US national interests to say nothing of democratic values (which the US no longer holds or supports).
I appreciate your clarification.
Clarification was obviously needed. An explanation beginning with what I “meant to imply” suggests it was all a bit nebulous to begin with!
What a long, strange trip it’s been for the senior senator from Arizona since the “Straight Talk Express” of Campaign 2000. I doubt I could’ve ever brought myself to vote for him on policy grounds, but I admired the man then for his pluckiness, his honesty, and his good humor. It was a different guy who chose Mooselini as his running-mate in ’08.
Slap me for going all sentimental, but I hope McCain still has at least one mavericky beau geste move left in him — like maybe, when the time comes, casting the 67th vote in the Senate to send Hair Führer packing.
Unfortunately McCain just blew his chance to make his beau geste (incredibly, things lined up in just such a way that his vote COULD have made the difference):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/25/john-mccain-healthcare-senate-vote-republicans
However, this maverick thing seems to be just an image. McCain may present himself a a straight talker, but he almost always follows the party line in voting (87% I read – haven’t checked this myself)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/07/25/mccain_s_sorkinesque_speech_after_advancing_a_bill_that_could_kill_thousands.html
Yeah, I had fleetingly hoped McCain might make a stand with his vote yesterday, but, alas, no. (He did give a pretty good speech on the Senate floor, nonetheless.)
Say what we will about McCain (and I’ve often been uber-critical of him), he at least had the class to call out the woman who called Obama an Arab at one of his 2008 campaign rallies. (We know that Trump, under similar circumstances, would’ve encouraged her, so as to whip up his crowd.)
Maybe I’m just getting dotty in my own dotage, but I wouldn’t put a final grand stand past the man who put his ass on the line for the grandest of all beau gestes — refusing early release from the Hanoi Hilton.
If (deja vu) the uninsured must return to the ER to obtain emergency (or otherwise) healthcare and, if ERs are still required to treat them, we’ll go back to the costs being spread out among the hospital’s paying customers again. What a disgusting mess! At this point, many hospitals have contracted with private businesses to run their ER operations and ER patients who think their treatment is completely covered by insurance(s) are shocked to receive an exorbitant bill from ER doctors who have no relationship with insurance companies.
Gotcha!
I think using that picture is invidious. There is a story behind that picture, which falsely represented a Trump supporter as giving a nazi salute. This is beneath you.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-a-woman-gave-the-nazi-salute-at-the-chicago-trump-rally-2016-3
Her stated intent when making the gesture was to demonstrate a Nazi salute. She was not hailing a taxi. That much is not falsely represented, nor is the fact that she is a Trump supporter.
The text of that image macro questions the rationality and reasoning ability of the person depicted. Given that she felt the best way to illustrate the difference between Trump and Hitler was, as a Trump supporter, to give a Nazi salute, well…
A cursory examination of the photo shows a woman doing something stupid and spiteful.
A full accounting of the events from the woman herself and the man pictured still shows a woman doing something stupid and spiteful.
If you feel the woman herself has been unfairly tarred as a Nazi, good for you, I guess, but it’s not as if the comparison was forced on her, nor is the context all that exculpatory.
No one present at the time of the event, fully aware of her statements and actions immediately prior and subsequent, would have any reason to suppose she was different from Richard B. Spencer.
In that sense, I feel that nothing relevant was omitted, unless you feel it important to add, “She later claimed she wasn’t really a Nazi and was just demonstrating what Nazis were like.”
This is exactly what was done to Sam Harris with the “why would you want more Muslims” thing.
Unlike (indeed, completely opposite to) Sam Harris, Trump has courted the neo-Nazis in the alt-right. He can own them now, too.
The point is SHE is being “misquoted” visually in exactly the same way as Harris was verbally. That is no way to argue, and no rhetoric any serious person should use. Our host is better than that.
She isn’t being “visually misquoted” to criticize HER. (Indeed, few know or care who she is.) Her image is being used to criticize Trump, who has encouraged support from people who employ Nazi symbolism.
That said, I think it would have been better to use an image of one of Trump’s actual neo-Nazi supports, rather than that of Ms. Peterson (assuming, for present purposes, the accuracy of her claim that she was employing the Nazi salute solely for demonstrative purposes in the subject photograph).
Is there an excuse for this one, too? How about for all the screams of “Lügenpresse!” at the Trump rallies?
DPKR News Service sums up
https://twitter.com/DPRK_News/status/890112135585464320
“It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument.”
–Wm. Gibbs McAdoo, former US
Sec’y of the Treasury