It’s All Kabuki Now
As we’ve all heard, the latest iteration of the GOP’s “Appeal and Replace”, better known as “Search and Destroy”, died last night when two conservative senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas, said they couldn’t vote for the bill because it didn’t wreak enough havoc or kill enough Americans to suit them. Later in the evening, TurtleNeck McConnell predictably announced that the Senate would then just vote to repeal with no replacement so even MORE people would die. That idiotic notion died a sudden death today when less insane Republicans said no to that. So what is left of this issue, Donald Trump’s biggest promise to his red-capped mobs who voted for him? This:
For the Republicans, who are hell-bent on erasing Barack Obama from the history books to satisfy their mouth breather base, they can only offer Kabuki, or highly stylized and exaggerated staging, like signing ceremonies for letters, executive orders, and silly truck shows on the White House lawn to make it look like they’re really doing something when they’re not.
In these days of clowns, carnival barkers, and totalitarians infesting the White House, I’ll certainly take nothing over something, which is what the Congress is producing, at least so far.
El Jefe –
1Is Sarah Palin poised to pop out from behind the Black & Gold Death Panel in the middle of the photo? Please say it’s so.
How many trumps does it take to change a light bulb?
None! Trump just tweets that its been changed and all the republicans site in a dark room with their sunglasses on and admire the glow.
2I’m slowly coming around to the view that the Rethugs really are too vicious, greedy, and (in some cases) stupid to effectively and efficiently impose their authoritarianism on us (not that they’re still doing it).
EG: Donnei Trumpov’s personal Rasputin and asswipe, Steve Bannon, has been quoted as saying that SoH Rep. Paul Ryan “is a limpd*cked mofo”.
One wonders what Bannon really thinks of Sen. McTurdle, VP_Pence, Sen. DetesTed Cruz, Uday and Qusay T, etc.
I’ve seen real snakepits, and even they rarely bite each other…
3I’m reminded of Arlo Guthrie’s comment on complaints that Reagan took too many naps: “The more he sleeps, the better off we are! And if we can get a bunch of ’em in one room, to be sleepin’ together, they can do to each other what they been doin’ to us!”
But don’t forget what else is being screwed up and destroyed by all the people who have been put in charge of departments they want to destroy, or are completely incompetent to run. A LOT of damage is being done while the spotlight is on the clown show. To name but two, we have a head of family planning policy who doesn’t believe in birth control, and nobody accepts the reality of climate change.
4Rhea, my family loves Arlo. Those of us who play guitar know his chords, while the rest of the gang knows all the words to sing.
As for the destruction being done out of sight of the media Betsy Devos deserves a meretricious award. Thought we’d hit bottom st00pid, when Dubya slipped into office twice. Then came Donnie. I don’t even want to know how low the st00pid well goes, if Devos has another month at Education.
Ask Congress to repeal their health care first. And, if they truly want tax cuts for the .01%. let them take that out of their own pension funds.
5Remember this the next time someone says that there is no diffetence between Democrats and Republicans. If McConnell could convince just a couple of Dems to break ranks, then many of us would be preparing to lose friends and family to Trumpcare..
I’ll freely admot that the ACA has its problems – primarily, it is far more expensive than it needs to be. It’s just so much better than what we had before.
This is one issue where Trump could have actually kept a campaign promise. There is a way to keep all the parts of Obamacare that everyone likes and drive costs down – adding the public option. If he had gone this route, he could have siphoned off a lot of Democratic support.
6Rhea,
7I’m pretty sure that being “Republican” has a biological basis as a genetically coded trait, or defect (see all the psych studies on “authoritarians”).
If so, a very special form of a gene-based birth control could be developed and marketed to them.
The result would be GMO Rethugs, with innate genetic, built-in, permanently on ‘Con’traception!
The world would be a much better place.
@Sandridge
Ohhhhh nooooo. I’m never gonna give snacilbupeR the defense that their hateful, disgusting, selves are anything more than a series conscious choices they each made. They always, in every situation, on every road, could have chosen to go another way. The bastards didn’t.
8“I’ll certainly take nothing over something…”
Me too. The less this hateful orange clown and his enabling Congress (or is it the other way around?) foist on the American public, the happier I’ll be, and the less the next sane, presumably Democratic, president will have to revoke, repair, and rebuild.
9They have been lying to their base for 7 years.
Trump lied to them.
At what point will they ever learn?
Saw this on Democratic Underground
10Mitch McConnell is suffering from low white vote count.
It sounds serious.
Happy Tues!
Micr,
11Not sure if you’re being snarky, but it works either way.
I think marketing a hidden Con’traception product to them all, like the way the supposedly ‘grASSroots’ Tea Party scheme was sold to the RWNJ’s, would be a highly effective way of neutering the feral kkkat Rethug colonies around the country.
Hooray for R women Senators!
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today (Tuesday) that the Senate will hold a vote to proceed to a measure to repeal Obamacare early next week.
The vote is expected to fail, as three Senate Republicans – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia – have already said they won’t vote to advance the bill. McConnell can only lose two GOP senators on the vote.
12OK, this is why I’m confused. IF the repugs just allowed us to legalize pot – we could all be smoking up a storm and chillaxing and not giving a damn.
13@Sandridge
WOW did I miss all the intended humor in that post. I wish I had enuf hair to poof the hairline above my ample forehead. So to catch some of the stuff that flies over my head. Apologies.
14We certainly need more contraception for the GOP. A few elections ago, when there were still 8-10 pols running for each nomination, the WashPost did a profile chart of everybody. None of the Dem candidates had more than two children, and none of the GOP candidates had fewer than three– often five or six. As H.L. Mencken used to say, probably in another context, “The sons of b****es are gaining on us!” (And don’t get me started on the wacko religious ones who think the uterus is a clown car.)
15Chloe Bear, can you give me a reference where Lisa M. said she wouldn’t vote for it? She was holding out for some special $$ stuff for Alaskans, and she got that, so last I knew there was no word saying she wouldn’t vote no. I sent her an e-mail every day letting her know what I thought of it, but I didn’t get any feedback.
16Nevermind, Chloe Bear, I was out visiting a neighbor and just took the time to catch up on the latest doings. I’m pleased to see that Lisa took the high road at last.
17Arakasi, yes, you are right. But the crowd in the White House and their minions elsewhere can’t think. The people who think they are running this country on the R side are in so deep that oxygen cannot get to the brain! Prime example picked because he is young enough not to have early onset Alzheimers is Donnie Junior. Somebody sent him a message to come to them. Junior, when your da-da is running for the White House, you don’t go to anyone who does this. You make them come to YOU, fool! So what if they were a few floors down in Trump Tower. They still pulled YOUR strings. But, hey, that thing I mentioned about oxygen and brain. If you had forced the meeting on your terms, they would have had to be security checked before they set foot in the door to your security camera and tape recording office. Whenever folks come to Washington from the hinterlands to see their Capitol Hill critters or even the CIC, they have to fill out background forms and submit them some time before the meeting. As a result, they are either approved or disapproved. Get with it, boy! If the “lawyer” and her entourage had to do this, 10 to 1 you would never have laid eyes on them. And your da-da is wrong about anybody would have taken such a meeting. There are plenty of us who have a built-in sense of not just No but Hell No!
18The Executive Department (Donald Trump) pays the household (via the Secretary of Transportation) of the Majority Leader (Legislative) the paltry sum of almost two hundred thousand dollars a year. In return Elaine Chow stands behind Trump in most photo ops to remind the Senators who they serve.
In the olde days we used to call that a violation of checks and balances, a conflict of interest and a violation of the separation of powers doctrine, any one of which would seem to disqualify McConnell on the date of her hire into the Executive Department.
It seems akin to the Texas prohibition against dual office holding. And if they have no community property laws like this in The Swamp or its Constitution, at the very least, it seems something the Party would be raising holy hell about, but it ain’t.
19Apparently, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito are Republican women of strength, intelligence and compassion who missed the above mentioned gene. Thank God!
20I try not to be a vengeful person. But after 8 years of obstruction, and months of acute anxiety, I took immense pleasure in watching Mitch McConnell’s face as he was forced to eat the Obamacare Repeal crap sandwich.
And I’m giddy with glee that it was fed to him by his own party.
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