Trump Administration: The Huddled Masses Can Go Fuck Themselves

Posted by Rude One

Let's get one thing straight here right off: If you are a legal immigrant in nearly every other country in the world, you are allowed to participate in that country's national health system. You're paying for the benefit through your taxes and other fees, and, goddamnit, just like everyone else legally in the country, you don't have to worry about paying much of anything else for your medical care. Nothing will be held against you. Nothing will turn you into a "public charge" or whatever fuckin' term for "undesirable" you want to use. And that's because most every other country in the world is not filled with ignorant savages who think that calling health care a "right" is akin to mass enslavement by socialists.

We in the United States happen to live in a country that is, in fact, filled with brutish idiots who would rather die in a ditch of a treatable disease than have a government-run health insurance system for everyone. So that means that only the poorest of the poor get to be on Medicaid, and then you're considered on welfare and a burden to the state. And that means that, unlike every other civilized nation, if you're a legal immigrant, the American government wants to hold it against you if you have a shitty job that doesn't provide health insurance (like, say, in a chicken processing plant) and need help so the flu doesn't financially ruin you.

We are a nation run by sadists who get off on hurting the poor. So, in the new rule, "Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds," published yesterday in the Federal Register, taking advantage of a whole bunch of government programs meant to, you know, help you survive could result in you getting booted from the country.

See, previously, "'public charge' has been interpreted to mean a person who is 'primarily dependent on the Government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at Government expense.'" Yeah, we didn't take into consideration "an alien's reliance on or receipt of non-cash benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps; Medicaid; and housing vouchers and other housing subsidies."

But that was before motherfuckers took over and decided to redefine shit that didn't need redefining unless you are a motherfucker.  Here's the new shit: "DHS is revising its interpretation of 'public charge' to incorporate consideration of such benefits, and to better ensure that aliens subject to the public charge inadmissibility ground are self-sufficient, i.e., do not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities, as well as the resources of family members, sponsors, and private organizations." Wow, sounds almost logical, no? Except it's just fucking cruel for so many reasons. Keep reading.

"This rule redefines the term 'public charge' to mean an alien who receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months in the aggregate within any 36-month period (such that, for instance, receipt of two benefits in one month counts as two months). This rule defines the term 'public benefit' to include cash benefits for income maintenance, SNAP, most forms of Medicaid, Section 8 Housing Assistance under the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program, Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, and certain other forms of subsidized housing."

The fuckery is deep in this, but let's put this simply. Let's say you're an immigrant who has been in the country for a few years totally legally. All of a sudden., you lose your job when the restaurant where you're waiting tables or, hell, the office where you're working closes. For four months, you need to go on Medicaid, you need SNAP, and you need housing assistance. That's it. You can be denied a green card for circumstances completely beyond your control unless you starve, go homeless, and let yourself be sick.

This has been one of the pet projects of presidential adviser and man most likely piss in your swimming pool, Stephen Miller, whose head is essentially shaped like a white hood. It's racism that is so plain, it's almost laughable. Yes, let's punish those who want to come to the United States and work our shittiest jobs so rich pukes can get richer. Yes, let's make them pay sales taxes and other shit that prop up our economy. And by all fucking means, let's take the income taxes of people who may have paid them for years before needing some government assistance.

In the UK, if you are a legal immigrant, once you receive your National Insurance number, you have access to many (not all) financial benefits, starting with the National Health Service. You can apply for Employment and Support Allowance, in case you are too ill or disabled to work. You can apply for a Carer's Allowance if you are forced to stay home because you must care for someone. You can get housing credits, maternity leave pay, and retirement income. And it's specifically because you've been paying into the national insurance while living in the UK that you are eligible. In the United States, it doesn't matter how much you've paid. Go fuck yourself in your old country if you need Medicaid for over a year.

Of course, the demented dullards of the Trump administration are all on board. Acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that verminous cockscab Ken Cuccinelli, couldn't even fake it when he completely undercut the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty, ignoring the "huddled masses" and "wretched refuse" part. And then he insisted that the poem was about Europeans, which, really, just sodomize your ass with a burning cross at that point.

As for resident Ignoramus Q. Shiteater, when asked about the rule and Cuccinelli yesterday, he said, " I don’t think it’s fair to have the American taxpayer paying for people to come into the United States...I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things.  So I think we’re doing it right." We should point out that not only are the taxpayers of the country paying for the months and months of vacation he has taken, but a good chunk of that taxpayer money is going straight into his business coffers and his own pockets.

Frankly, it's pretty fucking clear who should be booted from the country for being a public charge.

Everybody Loves Insurance Companies!

Woman Destroys Chuck Grassley At Town Hall

"Senator Chuck Grassley held a town hall back home in Iowa and he got a little more than he bargained for when one of his constituents asked about his repeated votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In fact, Chuck Grassley has voted seven times to repeal the Affordable Care Act and were it not for John McCain’s heroic thumbs down vote, Grassley and his party would’ve succeeded in taking away health care from millions.

 So how did Chuck Grassley respond? He stammered around saying he didn’t think the courts were going to rule the Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional, even as Republicans and the Trump Department of Justice are trying to get the courts to do just that.

This Iowa woman did not let up and Grassley seemed at a total loss. He had no defense whatsoever."

Hosts: Brett Erlich, Aida Rodriguez, Nando Vila
Cast: Brett Erlich, Aida Rodriguez, Nando Vila

Medicare for all: threat or menace?

Republicans Will Hurt You More Than 100 Caravans of Immigrants

Posted by Rude One

You have to be a special kind of son of a bitch to look at filthy, exhausted people wearing rags and desperately trying to get somewhere they won't be raped, tortured, murdered, or forced into gangs or where they won't watch their children starve to death, and think, "Fuckin' stop them because they gotta be terrorists." You gotta be a particular type of motherfucker if you exploit those families, those mothers, those fathers, those children in order to whip a horde of idiots into an orgy of xenophobia and racism where a perverse, heaving mass of flesh, all sweat and pimples and whiteness, so much whiteness, pumps and sucks, fucking themselves until they reach an undulating roar of intolerance.

Goddamn, the stink.

At each of his rallies of the damned, resident Donald Trump, a lump of cow shit with bits of undigested hay stuck in it, has been that son of a bitch and that motherfucker, frothing in a Mussolini-esque squawk about the immigrants and the vile Democrats who allowed this to happen and the depraved leaders of Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico who have not halted the march of the immigrants. Jesus, how the mob of Trumpistas lap it up like semen spooged straight from Jesus's circumcised dick, fighting over each other for who can ingest the last precious drops as Trump does his dance with the ghost of Hitler, demonizing, condemning, promising violence, stopping just short of advocating violence himself, but ensuring that the mob's adoring hatred will drive them to the voting booths to protect him, protect the future he has promised, the white future, the rich future, when the nation is Mar-a-Lago and you're either a member or you're staring in longingly from the gate.

Trump has mastered the art of layering lie upon lie, creating a shit parfait of lies, the essence of his entire career. He told the gathered villagers in Houston last night to get their pitchforks and torches ready for the "caravan" of immigrants traveling to the United States border with Mexico because "I think the Democrats had something to do with it and now they're saying I think we made a big mistake because people are seeing how bad it is...look, that is an assault on our country and in that caravan you have some very bad people. You have some very bad people and we can't let that happen to our country." Yes, the president of the United States, with no evidence at all, is saying that the opposition party is behind a mass of immigrants who are hiding evildoers. He said earlier in the day that, if you search the thousands of immigrants walking over 1000 miles, "You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything."

Many of the Hondurans and others are fleeing from vicious gangs who have threatened to kill them or their families, who have killed family members, who have taken over communities. You think that they'd want open gang members to be along with them? Or are they in disguise as young children being carried by their parents? And, as for Middle Easterners, you think that immigrants who want to start a new life are totally fine covering up for terrorists? They'd probably be able to tell the difference between a Saudi and a Guatemalan.

You know what would happen if those immigrants were treated like asylum seekers and refugees ought to be treated in the supposed wealthiest, greatest, mostest wonderfulest, sexiest nation in the history of the earth and universe forever? The adults would get jobs. They'd open businesses. The kids would go to school. They'd all create safe communities if they didn't have to worry about ICE coming in to tear their worlds apart. They'd want to become Americans if our shit system for allowing that wasn't hopelessly backlogged and broken. They would barely be a blip in the immigration radar.

Some would commit crimes, sure, but, statistically, at a lower rate than citizens. And a few might join a gang because that's just how the world goes. But the vast majority just want a goddamn life and a chance for their kids to survive and thrive and they are willing to fucking walk 1,500 miles for the barest thread of hope. (And, by the way, the caravan is just inside Mexico. Walking nonstop, it'd be at least two months before they got to the border, unless George Soros provides them with some helicopters, so everyone just calm the fuck down.)

Even if every single one of the immigrants were let into the United States, it would have no effect on your life (unless you work in resettlement or enforcement). They're not all gonna settle in your neighborhood. Some would live with family already here. The rest would be dispersed to different areas. The most you might see is a new family moving in next door. If that frightens you, well, you're a fucking dumbass and aren't worth talking to.

You know what will have an effect on your life? If Republicans continue to run the government without any check on their power, Mitch McConnell has vowed to go after Medicare and Social Security cuts to help pay for the tax cuts for the greedy, wealthy pig fuckers who fund our fraught and frayed political system. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your family.

If Republicans keep both the House and Senate, they have vowed to try again to overturn the Affordable Care Act, even as they blatantly lie about protecting the pre-existing conditions exemption. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your health.

If Democrats lose in the midterms, we'll fall even further behind on anything to slow climate change as even supposedly smart Republicans have come down on the "Well, the climate is changing, sure, but we don't know what causes it" side of the bullshit (even though we totally know what causes it). That's a real goddamned threat to you and safety and security and property.

You know what's not a threat to you, your family, your health, your safety, your security, and your property? The fucking caravan of immigrants in Mexico right now. If you give an actual shit about protecting your ass, you'll get rid of the people who have flat-out promised to do shit to kill you.

Vote for Democrats like your ass depends on it.

Republicans want to take away your Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid

By Laurence Lewis

 

Mitch McConnell is disappointed:

After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

The Republican tax cuts for the wealthy gutted federal revenues and exploded the deficit, just as the CBO said they would, but it's not the Republicans' problem. That's Republican logic for you. And of course their solution isn’t to undo the damage they inflicted but to inflict more. By gutting the budget. McConnell has some very specific spending targets:

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

Trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt. He's saying he wants to slash Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, but he can't because his party controls all the branches of government. Democrats have no interest in destroying these popular and enormously beneficial programs, but somehow McConnell can only get it done with their help. The point seems to be that in order for an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda to be enacted, Democrats need to be elected. Which may be his way of saying that if you don't want an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda you need to keep Republicans in power.

Did I mention that trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt?

But the point is clear. However he gets it done, he wants it done. Whatever the politics, his policy goal is to gut funding for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. And as for his reference to any objective standard as to the driver of the debt, well he seems to have a different standard of objectivity than reality. That the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy would explode the deficit was known all along. Both before they were passed:

The House Republican tax plan may have a deficit problem.
The GOP bill including some changes would increase federal budget deficits by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That includes money for additional debt service payments due to the bill.
Under the plan, U.S. debt would rise to 97.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2027, up from 91.2 percent under current CBO projections.

And after:

The deficit - the amount that Washington’s spending exceeds its revenues - will expand to $804 billion in fiscal 2018, which ends on Sept. 30, up from $665 billion in fiscal 2017, CBO said.

The national debt is on track to approach 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2028, said the nonpartisan CBO, which analyzes legislation for Congress.

“That amount is far greater than the debt in any year since just after World War II,” CBO said, adding that the debt is now about 77 percent of GDP, a measure of the size of the economy. The Republican tax legislation, passed by Congress without Democratic support, along with a recent bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending package, are expected to drive economic growth faster than initially expected, CBO said.

Of course, McConnell was lying about it all along:

Nearly a year ago, as the debate over Republican tax breaks for the wealthy was near its end, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted that the tax cuts didn’t need to be paid for – because they’d pay for themselves.

“I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue neutral,” McConnell said in December 2017. “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Whether the GOP leader actually believed his own rhetoric is an open question, but either way, we now know the Kentucky senator’s claim was spectacularly wrong. The Republican tax breaks have, as Democrats and those familiar with arithmetic predicted, sent the nation’s budget deficit soaring.

And just last month the Republican House of Representatives was pushing through yet another round of tax cuts:

A second round of Republican tax cuts would add an additional $3.2 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade, according to a new report released by a centrist think-tank...

The GOP’s “tax reform 2.0” would make permanent many of the individual and estate tax provisions in the tax law Republicans passed last fall, which the Congressional Budget Office said would already add about $1.9 trillion to the deficit, factoring for interest costs.

The second round of cuts would cost $631 billion before 2028 and an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that, according to the Tax Policy Center. The finding was somewhat larger than the $2.4 trillion cost over 10 years projected by the Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

The first round of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy exploded the deficit, leading the Republican Senate leader to call for cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and the Republicans already are pushing for yet more tax cuts for the wealthy, which would further explode the deficit, undoubtedly leading to more Republican calls for more cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and absolutely anything else that serves the interests of anyone other than the wealthy beneficiaries of the Republican tax cuts. For decades, this has been the Republican Party’s dream. If they retain control of Congress they can make it happen. As I wrote eight years ago, just don't call it class warfare:

It's not class warfare. Don't you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn't discuss money in polite conversation. And it's important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don't even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is.

This isn't new. It's a pattern. It's the basis of the Republican Party’s economic history. As I wrote more than seven years ago:

Ronald Reagan used the deficit as an issue when he ran against President Carter. As president, Reagan ran up the largest deficit in U.S. history. The Republicans of his era talked a lot about a Balanced Budget Amendment, while consistently voting to run up the largest deficit in U.S. history. Reagan's successor, the heir to the Bush dynasty, outdid his mentor by running up an even larger deficit. President Clinton raised taxes, eliminated the deficit and created a surplus, and just coincidentally oversaw an enormous economic expansion and near full employment. The next heir to the Bush dynasty cut taxes, eviscerated the Clinton surplus, and outdid both his father and Reagan by breaking their records for creating the largest deficits in U.S. history. He also all but broke the economy. This isn't complicated. This isn't difficult to explain.

Republicans never did actually care about deficits. They cut taxes, explode deficits, then use those deficits as a rationale to cut government spending. It's not complicated. It never has been complicated. It has, in fact, been transparent all along. And it's transparent now.

Underneath his bizarre, Byzantine gaslighting, McConnell revealed the Republicans' ultimate goal. He wants to blame the Democrats for what his policies have wrought, and he wants to make the Democrats complicit in his further goals of wreaking further economic havoc. But the Democrats want no part of it. But cut through the misdirections and circumlocutions, and one thread of truth runs through McConnell's rhetoric. He admitted what he wants to do. He admitted what the Republican Party wants to do. And make no mistake that if they retain control of Congress, Republicans will push it through. They will blame its disastrous consequences on Democrats, but it is their agenda. More tax cuts for the wealthy. More cavernous deficits. And their ultimate goal: eviscerating Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.

So much is at stake in next month's elections, and it's sometimes hard to focus when Trump, McConnell and the Republicans are burning down the republic in so many ways, but don't lose sight of this one. The existence of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are on the ballot this November.

Because the Republicans want to destroy them.

GOP Hypocrisy On Health Care

Republicans are talking up pre-existing conditions protections on the campaign trail after working for years to repeal health care. Lawrence discusses with Jared Bernstein and Ron Klain.

Larry Kudlow has a heart

By Jeremy Diamond, CNN

US resident Donald Trump's chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow suffered a heart attack, the resident tweeted as he arrived for his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center," Trump tweeted, 25 minutes before he was set to meet with Kim for the first time.

Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018

Kudlow, 70, was not traveling with the US resident in Singapore, but he had just returned to the United States from the G7 summit in Canada, where trade tensions dominated the atmosphere.

The Washington Post reported that Kudlow's wife, Judith Kudlow, told the newspaper, "He's doing fine" and the doctors are "fabulous."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed the resident's tweet in a statement Monday night.

"Earlier today National Economic Council Director and Assistant to the resident Larry Kudlow experienced what his doctors say was a very mild heart attack," Sanders said.

"Larry is currently in good condition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and his doctors expect he will make a full and speedy recovery," she continued. "The resident and his Administration send their thoughts and prayers to Larry and his family."

Kudlow's heart attack came less than three months after Trump tapped the former CNBC host and commentator to chair the White House's National Economic Council.

Kudlow has been at the center of the US resident's trade feuds in recent months, joining US delegations in Beijing and Canada to address trade disputes. Though he has long been opposed to tariffs, he has supported Trump's decision to erect tariffs against both China and key US allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, calling them a useful tool.

Kudlow was front-and-center in the administration's rebuke of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday, accusing Trudeau of having "kind of stabbed us in the back" during a news conference after Trump had departed the summit early.

Vice President Mike Pence also tweeted Monday night that he and second lady Karen Pence "are praying for our dear friend @Larry_Kudlow tonight."

Kudlow suffered a cocaine and alcohol addiction in the 90's, taking leave from the financial firm Bear Stearns to check himself into rehab.

He told The New York Times in March he has been sober for 23 years, calling it "the center of my life."

CNN's Sophie Tatum and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

Charles Krauthammer says he has 'only a few weeks left to live'

By Brian Stelter

2 hrs ago

© Fox News

"This is the final verdict. My fight is over."

Charles Krauthammer, the famed conservative columnist, informed readers on Friday that he is confronting an aggressive form of cancer.

"My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live," he wrote.

Krauthammer shared the devastating news in a short, matter-of-fact note on the website of the Washington Post, where he has been a columnist since 1984.

"I leave this life with no regrets," he wrote in the farewell message. "It was a wonderful life -- full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended."

Krauthammer was also a longtime commentator on Fox News.

He had to step away from both jobs last August for surgery to remove what he called a "a cancerous tumor in my abdomen."

There were numerous complications.

"Special Report" anchor Bret Baier occasionally gave updates to viewers about Krauthammer's recovery.

"Colleagues and viewers alike had held out hope that he would return to the evening show he helped establish as must-viewing," Fox's story on Krauthammer noted on Friday.

Last month Baier offered some good news via a message from Krauthammer: "The worst now appears to be behind me."

But then Krauthammer received the worst possible news.

"Recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned," he explained Friday. "There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly."

In his note to readers, he thanked colleagues, readers, and viewers "who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life's work." He wrote: "I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation's destiny."

Republican Congressman Who Mocked Sick People As Immoral Announces He Has Cancer

Republican Congressman Mo Brooks from Alabama recently announced on the House floor that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and was greeted with the utmost sympathy from his fellow members of Congress.

But just a few months ago, this same man said during an interview with CNN that people who lead good lives don’t get sick because they do everything right.

He also wants to deny millions of Americans the same healthcare benefits that he receives.

His diagnosis is sad for him and his family, but his actions as a Congressman are absolutely disgusting. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

The Republicans Are What We Thought They Were

First, they pass tax cuts and run up the deficit. Then, they use the deficit to ‘prove’ spending is out of control, and start slashing entitlement programs.

Michael Tomasky

12.15.17 7:41 PM ET

You’re surprised at Bob Corker? Really? Please. Yes, he’s a deficit hawk. And he’s a senator who has, from time to time, made some effort to work in a bipartisan fashion.

But come on. He’s a Republican. He likes tax cuts. He believes, as they all do, in supply-side economic theory. And he has donors and constituents in Tennessee who wanted this. See what he said in defending his switch from no to yes on the GOP tax bill: He changed because of “many conversations over the past several days with individuals from both sides of the aisle across Tennessee and around the country.” In other words, rich people.

Besides, he’s not going to buck the team. Not on something like this. There’s a history here. Read Robert Kaiser’s great book Act of Congress, about how the Dodd-Frank bill became law. Corker was working with Chris Dodd. In absolute good faith! But Corker couldn’t—or wouldn’t—bring any other GOP senators along with him. A crucial defection, incidentally, was Richard Shelby, whom we’re praising this week for helping to save us from Sen. Roy Moore. Corker ultimately voted against it.

Marco Rubio? That was a joke from the start. He seems to have gotten a portion of what he wanted on the child tax credit. Rubio called the changed that leadership agreed to a “solid step.” We all know what words like that mean. They mean: Well, it kinda sucks, but it’s enough for me to save face, especially with Americans for Tax Reform and Club for Growth and all these other people threatening to find someone to primary my ass if I vote no.

Like the coach said, the Republicans are who we thought they were. So it’s done. Or is going to be.

As I wrote in The New York Times Friday, it’s the second most unpopular piece of major domestic legislation of the last 27 years. The first most unpopular? The attempt to repeal Obamacare earlier this year. Nice work, 115th Congress!

You think this is bad, think about what’s next. What’s next are cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other domestic spending programs. Because this is the Republican formula:

1. Pass massive tax cuts for the top 1 percent.

2. Run up the deficit.

3. A year or two later go, “Oh my God, look at the deficit! This proves that spending is just out of control!”

4. Start taking the axe to entitlement programs and the domestic discretionary budget.

That’s how it works, ever since supply-side became part of conversation. Ronald Reagan cut taxes and ran up deficits like mad, tripling, quadrupling them over Jimmy Carter’s level. George H.W. Bush raised taxes a little, but the economy was so in the doldrums that the deficit was still bad. Along came Bill Clinton, who had to fix it. He raised taxes. He did investments. He got the economy humming. He eliminated the deficit. Gave George W. Bush a surplus.

Then Dubya cut taxes. Twice. And started two unfunded-mandate wars. Up shot the deficit again. Ach, they all said! These deficits. We must cut spending. And bring Social Security under control.

But they never did cut spending, and popular will against Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme was so strong that that one died on the vine fast. Meanwhile they turned the banking system into a casino, and that crashed.

Then came Barack Obama, who, again, had to fix it. He wasn’t able to, quite enough, because his stimulus package should have been much larger than political realities allowed. But he did reduce the deficit substantially. As a percentage of GDP, it went from the 10 percent Bush handed him to around 2.5 percent. And he oversaw 75 consecutive months of job growth. He handed Donald Trump exactly the economy that 14 months ago Trump was saying was a disaster but now is saying is beautiful.

That’s the cycle, folks. That’s how it works. And now, thanks to the GOP, we’re about to open another gash in the deficit. They’ll try to slash away, but I hope and think that by and large they won’t succeed, because if you thought this tax bill was unpopular, wait till you see what happens when they start openly talking about tinkering with people’s nursing home care (Medicaid), prescription drug benefits (Medicare), and fixed pension distributions (Social Security).

And so a Democrat may well get elected in 2021, inheriting a mess from Trump. A deficit. Maybe a bad economy. And it will be on the Democrat to fix it again. And he or she will. But only to a point.

The Republicans, then in opposition, will obstruct and not allow the next Democrat to really fix things, because Republicans will know deep down that public investment would fix the economy, but they’ll rail against it on the grounds that it will… increase the deficit! So they will try to engineer things so that the recovery is tepid, so they can get the Democrat out and cut taxes for the rich one more time and balloon the deficit and start the whole grim process again.

That’s the game. It feels like we’re fated to play it for the next 50 years.

There’s one way out. The next time the Democrats are in power, they need to really turn the tables on tax reform. Not nip and tuck, but really fundamentally do something different. This isn’t the place for all the details. Maybe some future columns. But that will be the only way to break the pattern. They can’t do anything about what Congress is about to do. But they can smash the glass next time they have the hammer, and they’d better do it.

Trump can't hold President Obama's jock strap

Trump, Chieftain of Spite

Charles M. Blow OCT. 15, 2017

It must be cold and miserable standing in the shadow of someone greater and smarter, more loved and more admired. It must be infuriating to have risen on the wings of your derision of that person’s every decision, and even his very existence, and yet not be able to measure up — in either stratagem or efficacy — when you sit where that person once sat.

This is the existence of Donald Trump in the wake of President Barack Obama. Trump can’t hold a candle to Obama, so he’s taking a tiki torch to Obama’s legacy. Trump can’t get his bad ideas through Congress, but he can use the power of the presidency to sabotage or even sink Obama’s signature deeds.

In fact, if there is a defining feature of Trump as “resident,” it is that he is in all ways the anti-Obama — not only on policy but also on matters of propriety and polish. While Obama was erudite, Trump is ignorant. Obama was civil, Trump is churlish. Obama was tactful, Trump is tacky.

There is a thing present in Obama and absent from Trump that no amount of money or power can alter: a sense of elegant intellectualism and taste.

The example Obama set makes the big man with the big mouth look smaller by the day. But I believe that this nonadjustable imbalance is part of what has always fueled Trump’s rage against Obama. 

Trump, who sees character as just another malleable thing that can be marketed and made salable, chafes at the black man who operated above the coarseness of commercial interests and whose character appeared unassailable.

America — even many of the people who were staunch opponents of Obama’s policies — admired and even adored the sense of honor and decency he brought to the office. Trump, on the other hand, is historically unpopular, and not just in America. 

As The Pew Research Center pointed out in June: “Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations.” Trump is reviled around the globe and America’s reputation is going down with its captain.

All of this feeds Trump’s consuming obsession with undoing everything Obama did. It is his personal crusade, but he also carries the flag for the millions of Americans — mostly all Republicans — who were reflexively repulsed by Obama and the coalition that elected him.

Trump has done nearly everything in his power to roll back Obama’s policies, but none are as tempting a target as the one named after him: Obamacare.

Republicans — including Trump — campaigned for years on a lie. They knew it was a lie, but it was an enraging one that excited their base: Obama was destroying America’s health care system, but Republicans could undo the damage and replace it with their own, better bill.

First, Obama wasn’t destroying America’s health care system. To the contrary, he simply sought to make it cover more people. He moved to take American health care in a more humane, modern and civilized direction, to make it more universally accessible, even by the sick and poor who often took its absence as a given.

Second, the Republicans had no replacement plan that would cost less and cover as many or more people. That could not be done. So, their repeal-and-replace efforts failed. But that also meant that Trump’s promise was proven a lie. Trump has no problem lying, but in the end he wants his lies to look plausible.

Trump makes assertions for which there is no evidence — either knowingly lying, recklessly boasting or wishfully thinking — then seeks support for those statements, support that is often lacking because the statements are baseless.

He violates a basic protocol of human communication: Be sure of it before you say it. His way is to say something wrong, then bend reality to make it appear right. This is why the age of Trump is so maddening and stupefying: He is warping reality.

Last week he took more swipes at undermining the A.C.A.: Asking his administration to find ways to increase competition among insurers (a move many worry will move younger, healthier people out of the marketplace) and stopping the so-called “cost-sharing reduction” (CSR) payments — federal subsidies paid to insurance companies to help finance coverage for low-income Americans (a move many believe will send premiums soaring for those people).

Trump is doing this even though it will likely wreak havoc on countless lives. He is doing this even though a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released Friday found that most Americans want Trump and Congress to stop trying to repeal the law, and instead work on legislation to stabilize the marketplaces and guarantee health care to Americans.

Furthermore, six in 10 Americans believe Congress should guarantee cost-sharing reduction payments, as opposed to only a third who view these payments as a “bailout of insurance companies,” as Trump has called them. There is no real reason to cut these payments, other than to save face and conceal the farce.

Trump isn’t governing with a vision, he’s governing out of spite. Obama’s effectiveness highlights Trump’s ineptitude, and this incenses Trump.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter (@CharlesMBlow), or email me at chblow@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this editorial appears in print on October 16, 2017, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump, Chieftain of Spite. Today's Paper|Subscribe

Bill Cassidy just won't stop lying about his healthcare bill

By Laura Clawson

Bill Cassidy

“This guy, Bill Cassidy, just lied right to my face,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Tuesday night. And on Wednesday morning, Cassidy did a lot more lying about his healthcare plan. He lied on CNN:

“I’m sorry he does not understand,” Cassidy said of Kimmel. “Under Graham Cassidy Heller Johnson, more people will have coverage, and we protect those with preexisting conditions. States like Maine, Virginia, Florida, Missouri — there will be billions more dollars to provide health insurance coverage for those in those states who have been passed by by Obamacare, and we protect those with preexisting conditions.”

He lied on MSNBC:

“There will be more people covered under the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson amendment than are under status quo and we protect those with pre-existing conditions,” Cassidy said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

And the reality that Kimmel laid out so clearly—that Cassidy’s bill simply does not live up to the tests he set himself and will hurt a lot of people—remains:

That statement, similar to one Cassidy also made on CNN, is virtually impossible to defend. The Graham-Cassidy proposal, which Republicans are rushing to take up for a floor vote next week, calls for reducing federal spending on health care through two sets of changes. [...]
As for Cassidy’s other claim, that his bill would protect people with pre-existing conditions, that’s not true, at least in the sense most people would understand it. The bill would very explicitly allow states to waive existing rules, which the Affordable Care Act put in place, prohibiting insurers from charging higher premiums to people based on their medical status. With that flexibility, insurers could make coverage prohibitively expensive for people with a variety of medical conditions, from diabetes to cancer.

Cassidy wants to make his bill seem different from the wildly unpopular Republican bills that failed, but the only thing that’s really different is that this time, Republicans are up against a Sept. 30 deadline for repealing Obamacare and the pressure to get on board will be that much more intense. This bill will still gut the Medicaid expansion that’s gotten so many people the health coverage they need and it will still weaken protections for pre-existing conditions and essential health benefits and much more. He lies, he lies, he lies—and he lies in the service of harming millions of Americans.

Another Obamacare repeal bill?! It’s time to jam the congressional phone lines again. Call your senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote NO on any repeal bill.

Fresh Health Care Fuckery: Your McCain Praise Was Probably Wasted

Posted by Rude One

Ah, remember when Mighty Maverick John McCain was the mighty maverick hero last time there was a vote on a bullshit health care "reform" bill with his mighty mavericky thumbs-down?

Remember the ejaculations of praise for this irascible cockhead doing something decent just to fuck with Donald Trump? Remember his slobber-coated speech where he said of the Senate, "Let's trust each other. Let's return to regular order"? Remember how he insisted, "Let the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides. Then bring it to the floor for amendment and debate"?

Yeah, fuck all that noise. Now that the new spiked dildo of health care, the Graham-Cassidy-etc bill, is threatening to be rammed up the hemorrhoidal anus of the American people, with just about every fucking terrible thing as the last attempt intact, McCain said that he wanted to hear from Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona. Ducey had opposed the previous Trumpcare bill because it dicked over Arizonans on expanded Medicaid. Now Ducey has said he supports Graham-Cassidy-who-the-fuck-cares, even though the aforementioned dicking remains, and McCain has tweeted that he's still feeling cranky about the process but is "inclined" to support the bill.

And even if McCain ends up going thumbs-down again, fuck him for even contemplating an upraised thumb. Either you've got principles or you don't, motherfucker.

In all the time the GOP has had, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, since the election, since the failure of the "Fuck You, We Don't Care If You Die Bankrupt" bill in July, they have not made a case for repeal except "We said we'd do it." It's like a bunch of morons promising to light their farts if their favorite team wins a championship. The only people who wanna see that are other morons. Right now, we're down to 8.8% of Americans without health insurance, and a good number of those are because of the assholes in Republican states not expanding Medicaid.

Who does this bill help? It's faith-based legislation. Republicans say that Obamacare is making you suffer, so, if you're GOP-inclined, you believe it's making you suffer (even if it's paying for your chemo or psoriasis medication). And you have staked your entire political belief system on your investment in this bullshit. You'd rather die a miserable death than admit that you were always the mark for a bunch of low-rent Barnums. This way to the amazing egress, idiots. Grab a snipe on your way.

I wrote last week about the remarkable care I received in the UK for free. I was in the middle of the fourth largest city in the country, and every complaint I've heard about single-payer was rendered utterly and completely false.

Yet here we are, unable to even agree that tens of millions of people, including those with pre-existing conditions, who are now covered by the Affordable Care Act, deserve to be treated as human beings. What a stupid goddamned society we've built. It's repulsive. It's disgusting. It's immoral. And yet so many of our dumb fellow citizens think this is the way things ought to be.

The cruelest trick that capitalists ever played on Americans was making them believe they didn't need everyone else. Our fake rugged individualism will be our undoing.

And for those of us who do give a shit about our fellow Americans, it's once more to the phones to make Senators fear for their careers.

White House anti-drug office asks Mass. for medical Marijuana data

An arm of the White House’s anti-drug office has asked Massachusetts and several other states where medical marijuana is legal to turn over information about registered patients, triggering a debate over privacy rights and whether state officials should cooperate with a federal administration that appears hostile to the drug.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/08/25/white-house-anti-drug-office-asks-massachusetts-for-medical-marijuana-data/FIiAccGpbD7az3wfUyoMbK/story.html

Cartoon Roundup

'Skinny Repeal' Defeated, Thanks To Democrats And Senators McCain, Murkowski And Collins

By Karoli Kuns

Tonight, Senator John McCain just paid red don back for his 'I like people who weren't captured' shit.

He was the third vote, with Senators Collins and Murkowski to kill the skinny bill.
I don't know what happens next.
---
All eight pages of the Trojan Horse "Health Care Freedom Act" have been published.

I could tell you what's in them, but the thing is, Senators don't want this to become law. They don't want the House to rubber-stamp this. This is just a placeholder to send over to the House so they can convene a conference committee, which will surely fail.

And when it fails, this will pass. So I guess that means you should know what's in it.

• Repeals individual mandate, effective January 1, 2017.
• Allows some tinkering by states to Essential Health Benefits
• Repeals device tax
• Defunds Planned Parenthood
• Raises limits to Health Savings Accounts

This bill will immediately increase premiums by 20 percent across the whole marketplace -- not just individual but also employer markets. It will also take away access for 16-17 million people.

I'm afraid (as are many of the health care experts I follow) that this will pass. I will update this post with more as it's available.

D.L. Hughley On John McCain's And Ted Kennedy's Actions At The End Of Their Lives

John McCain Is The Perfect American Lie

By Drew Magary

Seventeen years ago I gave John McCain’s Presidential campaign five bucks. It was my first time donating to a political campaign, much less a Republican one. But like a lot of people, I marveled at his backstory of surviving years and years in Viet Cong captivity (I even read, like, three pages of that big David Foster Wallace story about him), and—more important—I eagerly took all his Straight Talk Express horseshit to heart. Hey, that Republican is saying stuff about other Republicans! He seems like a real rebel!

Back in 2000, McCain scratched that itch for anyone like me who enjoyed pretending to be politically independent, and who happily latched onto McCain as a talisman of that independence. You see, guys! I can vote for a Republican when it’s the RIGHT Republican! And over the course of this century, McCain has dined out on his reputation as The Good Conservative. He’s the senator who gives thunderous copy to reporters, and does SNL, and issues bipartisan reports on the military giving the NFL promo money, and does the occasional cameo on Parks &Rec. He fulfills every Brokawian wet dream certain members of the press still have about politicians setting aside their differences and doing the RIGHT THING, by God.

Today, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to dismantling Obamacare, potentially leaving millions of people uninsured, jacking up their premiums, and letting insurance companies cover only what they feel like covering. John McCain voted for that bill because of course he did. He has always been a big talker, but when it comes to the actual meat-and-potatoes voting process, he falls in line.

He didn’t do the right thing. He didn’t even come within 500 yards of doing the right thing. For the past two decades, he has never done the right thing. He’s a fraud. Alex Pareene had him nailed ages ago. In fact, it’s “nice” Republicans like McCain who provide cover for evil swine like Mitch McConnell, allowing them to gut the American security net and fuck over anyone who doesn’t live behind an iron gate.

But that didn’t stop McCain from having the gall—the unmitigated, repulsive GALL—to stand up in front of the Senate today and put on his Maverick jammies and deliver a sermon bashing the very non-legislation that, only minutes earlier, he had flown cross-country to help will into being:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/889928867468775424

This is the part where I point out that McCain has brain cancer and is likely dying. And while I wouldn’t wish brain cancer on my worst enemy, McCain’s illness shouldn’t act as some magical shield that absolves him from abetting—no wait, LEADING—a GOP whose appetite for brazen monstrousness grows by the day. And yet, there were Senate Democrats giving our man a standing O right after he gleefully fucked their constituents, because Democrats would happily set aside differences with Godzilla for the sake of gentility. There was scumbag opportunist Cory Booker, hugging McCain and acting like this was some kind of heartwarming meeting of the minds. And of course, there were the usual political access merchants who were more than happy to line up and shine McCain’s boots:

https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/889927208646701058

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/889923333982232576

This is vile. John McCain was never anyone’s white knight. This is the man who ushered in the age of troll candidacies by tapping Sarah Palin as his running mate. This is the man who caved to Donald Trump even after Trump had the audacity to mock his time as a POW. This is the man who called his own wife a cunt in public. This is a man who has spent all this time acting as if all the Bad Republicans were forcing him to go along with their nefarious deeds while voting in lockstep with them. He is not a reluctant Republican. He’s a shitbag, same as the rest of them.

If you’re some Pollyanna offering your support to John McCain as he hollows out Medicaid, you’re a naïve dupe. As this guy said, The West Wing wasn’t real. It was never real. The twin illusions of bipartisanship and decorum have always provided handy cover for anyone looking to willfully ignore the fiendish inequalities of the American political infrastructure and the GOP’s rapturous thirst for cruelty; a thirst that has only recently emerged in the foreground thanks to the existence of President Trump.

"John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things."

I was duped when I gave McCain my pitiable little sum all those years ago, but I know better today. Everyone should know better. Everyone should realize that John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things. He served his country honorably in combat, but in no other fashion. And he serves out his time in the Senate, and here on planet Earth, as a pathetic enabler. Never the lion; always the sheep. For seventeen years, gullible people have been waiting for him to make his face turn, to make some grand defiant move for the sake of God and country. But that was always just clever branding on his part, and today should serve as a cold slap in the face to anyone who still thought he might have that kind of political courage left in him.

He's a fucking disgrace.

John McCain Is Neither A Maverick Nor A Hero - He's A Coward