StrangeSox

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 27, 2017 -> 09:21 AM) Unless it's what's already scored from december I don't think they'll be able to do it until tomorrow afternoon. Cassidy says tomorrow morning Here's the rate hikes by state under "skinny repeal" https://www.axios.com/heres-whats-in-skinny...2466204086.html

Interpreting statutes that narrowly would lead to gutting all sorts of civil rights protections in this country. They'd use that same sort of interpretation to overturn Obergefell for sure.

Senate GOP plans to throw something together over lunch today and Cornyn is saying it'll be passed tonight. That's how 1/6 of our economy is going to be rewritten and how millions are going to lose access to affordable healthcare.

GQ's take is a little more spicy but still good John McCain Is the Perfect American Lie

Trump and Republicans treat their voters like morons What’s truly remarkable isn’t that a bunch of cynical politicians thought they could ride their base voters’ anger into control of Congress by lying to them about what they could actually accomplish; it’s that their voters actually believed it. And then those voters got even angrier when it turned out that the president had the ability to veto bills passed by a Congress controlled by the other party. Who knew! So instead of looking for a presidential candidate who would treat them like adults, they elected Donald Trump, a man who would pander to their gullibility even more. Which brings us to where we are today. Republicans couldn’t be bothered for seven years to actually think about what repealing and replacing the ACA might involve, or whether there would be trade-offs and choices to make, or whether setting up a system that accorded with their conservative philosophy might not actually solve the problems of the health-care system. They thought it would be enough to tell their voters to get mad, and worry later about what it would take to keep the promises they made. So now they find themselves with a bill that nearly everyone hates. If it passes (in whatever form), it will be a disaster for the health-care system and will be a political disaster for them as well. But they’ve convinced themselves that the only thing worse politically would be to not pass anything, because that would incur the wrath of those same base voters. In other words, their current position is, “We know how catastrophic this bill would be. But we got here by lying to these knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers for years, and if we don’t follow through, they’ll punish us.” They believe that their voters will say, “Okay, so I lost my health coverage because of you, but you’ll get my vote again because you kept your promise.” That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of outright malice in what Republicans are doing, because there is. Their contempt for people who struggle economically is boundless. They’ve wanted to destroy Medicaid for decades, and they just might be able to do it. But their strongest motivation right now is fear, fear of the voters they regard as too dim-witted to be able to make a rational judgment about the most consequential policy question one can imagine. Am I being unkind? Consider what the president is up to at the moment. This morning he announced that he’ll be banning transgender people from serving in the military, serving up a bogus rationale about how they cost too much money. A White House official told Axios that this is a political masterstroke: Yes, the 2018 elections will hinge on transgender people serving in the military. That’s mind-numbingly stupid, but to believe it you’d have to think that voters are complete idiots. And as The Post reports, Trump addressed a big crowd of his voters yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio: In fairness, many people in the area, even Republicans, understand that’s a complete crock. Those jobs aren’t coming back, and the region’s future won’t be built on factories that employ huge numbers of people who can move into high-wage, high-benefit jobs with little preparation. Yet they still show up at his rallies and cheer while he lies right in their faces. If there’s a note of hope to be found in all this, it’s that this health-care effort has been such a farce — in large part because the public has finally begun to clue in to what the Republican proposals might actually mean. That idea terrifies Republicans in Congress, which is why they are pushing through one of the most sweeping and consequential pieces of legislation in American history without a single hearing and with only a few hours of floor debate. Since one version of the bill was voted down yesterday, the current strategy seems to be to pass “skinny repeal,” which would do nothing except eliminate the individual and employer mandates and a tax on medical devices. If that were to become law, it would immediately destroy the individual insurance market, since you’d be able to wait until you got sick before buying insurance and insurers would still have to cover you. Republicans in Congress don’t know a lot about health-care policy, but they know enough to understand that. They’re hoping, however, that the public is too dumb to realize just how destructive the idea would be. There’s one other path open to them, which is to pass skinny repeal, then go to a conference committee with the House, in which an entirely new bill would be written incorporating the other things Republicans want to do. That bill could then be presented to both houses as a last chance to repeal the hated Obamacare, in the hopes that members would vote for it despite its inevitable unpopularity and cataclysmic consequences for Americans’ health care. If and when that happens, Republicans will make that same calculation again: This thing is terrible and most everyone hates it, but we have to pass something because we fooled members of our base into thinking this would all be simple and we could give them everything they want. Or as Trump said during the campaign, “You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it is going to be so easy.” That was just one of the many lies they were told, and they ate it up. Now we’ll all have to pay the price.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/trump-tr...ilitary-service

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 26, 2017 -> 11:55 AM) Surprise surprise, Bannon and Pence were the ones who pushed for this to appease Trump's base of garbage people http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bows-to...s-trans-troops/ He did it to save funding for his stupid f***ing wall http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/26/t...e-scenes-240990

Why bother? They know the only consequences they'll face are from losing donor funding and potentially even more extreme primary challengers.

Surprise surprise, Bannon and Pence were the ones who pushed for this to appease Trump's base of garbage people http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bows-to...s-trans-troops/

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 26, 2017 -> 11:42 AM) Read that they think passing skinny repeal could lead to a conference where the house bill gets reconfirmed. Heller folded like a weasel. Capito folded like a weasel. This thing depends on Rand Paul actually killing it from the right and I don't see it happening. Have never seen anything like people trashing how terrible a bill is and then folding with NO rationale for why it's better. $$$$$$ The GOP billionaire donor base wants tax cuts, and they leaned on these people.

If it follows the same standards that DADT did, everyone who's discharged under this new order will receive a General Discharge, not an Honorable one, and the reason will be "Mentally Unfit for Service." This means they'll lose access to any and all of the benefits they signed up for and earned, and they'll have to explain that discharge reason to potential future employers.

Sen. Duckworth

I think "skinny repeal" is just individual and business mandates and medical device tax repeal. The first one blows up the individual market, of course. e: and I think the strategy of the skinny repeal is to get something, anything passed so it can be punted to conference where they'll continue to work in total secrecy, come up with some garbage plan, and then vote on it as quickly as possible once it's unveiled.

Chelsea Manning continues to be a very good person

That would be insubordination to the Commander in Chief. The military has been given a directive from the very top to kick out all transgendered members. They're going to be discharged by the thousands. I'm sure it won't have any crippling effects, like the last time we had a GOP Commander in Chief who rooted out all of the gay translators and then oops, we didn't have anyone who could understand the language in Iraq or Afghanistan.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 26, 2017 -> 09:20 AM) How do you know they don't just hate them and want to do everything they can to make their lives miserable? That's why I'm assuming Texas will pass their version of a bathroom bill this week. Because the United States is run by bigots who hate anyone who isn't like them. Because of the quote I posted above where they lay out the political reasons for the move? I have no doubt that they hate them, but they're also taking the politics into account. Just like the Republicans did in 2004 when they ran on a national strategy of anti-gay initiatives, because the GOP is the party of bigots.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Jul 26, 2017 -> 09:09 AM) That is a vile quote. What human garbage this administration is. It's not just disgustingly bigoted and cynical, it also shows that they're making decisions on how to run the military solely based on political calculations.

Pentagon press corps had no idea this was coming, and just a few weeks ago Mattis said there'd be a 6 month review of implementation of transgendered policy, but not looking at reversal. Trump's going to go hard on culture war bulls*** as things get worse for him. There are an estimated 15k transgendered people currently serving in the military, and just this year DoD put out promotional videos featuring open trans service members talking about their experiences. Guess they're all getting tossed out.

just a repeat of the GOP's 2004 electoral strategy of running a bunch of anti-gay ballot initiatives.

Just announced a complete ban on transgendered people serving in the military

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 25, 2017 -> 04:59 PM) I know that he didn't because I didn't see it and nobody saw it except 4 jacobin writers that wanted to get upset. How's your Rauner vote treating you these days?

Few people ever see those sorts of things. Really, not very many people watch cable news.

To be fair I will say that personality matters more than anything else.