Paul Ryan was on Face the Nation yesterday morning talking about the Republicans’ new anti healthcare bill they’re trying to sell to the American people.  Host John Dickerson tried numerous times to get Ryan to acknowledge that millions will lose their healthcare and that all major medical associations are opposing the measure.  Ryan engaged in his now familiar obfuscation with a big smile, repeating this most often used mantra of giving people “choice” and fostering “competition” in health care delivery.

Here’s the problem with the Republicans’ key economic assumption in their ideology.  Choice and competition come from a functioning free market.  You can call our healthcare delivery system in the US a lot of things, but “free market” is not one of them.  Here’s why:

Over 30 years ago, Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School developed a model to describe markets.  In his model, he describes 5 essential forces that control markets.  To be a fully functioning market, the power of buyers must be in parity with the power of the sellers.  At the same time, buyers must have alternatives from existing competitors, and those competitors must be continually under threat from new entrants into the market as well as new products or services that can substitute for the product already being sold.  An example: You want a car; you have numerous choices between new and used, expensive or thrifty.  You can buy online, you can buy from individuals, you can buy from numerous dealers.  You can check prices online, making the market relatively transparent.  As well, you can choose when you buy that car.  Or you can buy a motorcycle.  Or you can not buy a car and take Uber.  This market balance represents a relatively free market, subject to truth in advertising and financing laws.

Now, let’s look at our healthcare markets: Sellers (insurance companies and healthcare providers) dictate coverage and pricing.  The polices are intentionally complex and pricing is completely opaque.  In most Americans’ cases, EMPLOYERS pick which plan their employees can buy.  In this market, the sellers hold all the power and the buyers have only the choices that are dictated.  Additionally, the insurance markets are protected by state agencies, making it very difficult for alternatives to get into the market.  To make matters worse, when you’re sick, the LAST thing you have time or the inclination to do is price shop for healthcare.  Removing the market protections the ACA provides puts individual buyers at  the mercy of this cruel government protected market.  Republicans are trying to jam free market ideology into a market that is anything but free.  The cabal of insurance companies and healthcare delivery companies is impossible to to fight, especially by individuals.

So, with these clear market realities that make the Republican plan unfair and unworkable, what does that say about Paul Ryan’s argument for his plan?  There are two possible answers: 1) Ryan is stupid with no understanding of the realities of markets; or 2) He’s a lying sack of sh*t (sorry Momma) who is looking out for his base and the interests of his largest donors to the detriment of everyday Americans like you and me.

I’ll take Door Number Two, Alex.

Late last week Illinois Republican Rep. John Shimkus got steamed at Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle.

Shimkus was powerfully upset with the “mandate” in Obamacare that men have to pay for pre-natal care.  I suspect that’s because in Republican-World, men don’t have anything at all to do with pregnancy nor do they benefit in any manner whatsoever in healthy women or healthy babies.

Democrat Doyle pointed out that there is no such thing as a la carte insurance and that insurance companies don’t give you a list of what you want covered.  But, hollers Shimkus, that’s what I want! He wants people to be able to negotiate with the insurance companies for what things they want covered.

That’s stoopid. There are diseases and viruses that don’t even have names yet. Plus, can you even imagine – “Yes, you are covered if you get struck by lightening but not if your friends gets struck by lightening and then touches you. There is no touch clause in you policy.”

Republicans are idiots.  Idiots with testicles that I should not have to pay for.  Welcome to reality, Mr. Shimkus, your insurance premium on testicular cancer just doubled.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Please allow me to introduce you to Congressweazle Kevin Brady, another Republican from east Texas.  Brady had long been known as one of the best friends of the Texas Alcohol Commission because he single handedly tried to drink all the alcohol in Texas.

In 2005, he plead no-contest to DWI in South Dakota.  He got a $350 fine and his right to drive in South Dakota was suspended for 30 days.

He’s kinda a jerk.

Last week, Brady’s PAC, the Making America Prosperous PAC, got a letter from the Federal Election Commission saying that his financial report was a damn mess.

Gerrymandering has been blood sport in the US almost since the founding where partisans established districts that favored one party over another.  Both sides did it for decades up until computer modeling raised it to an art form in the early 2000s.

Starting in 2002, pushed by good ol’ Tom Delay, Texas Republicans rammed through a mid-decade redistricting that turned state politics on its head to take control of the state house and delegation to Washington.  The result has been a slow death spiral of our state by almost every measure causing declines in education, health care, and infrastructure lead by screwballs like Louie Gohmert, Dan Patrick, and Blake Farenthold.

To make matters worse, Republicans, knowing that their constituency of white angry people is aging and shrinking, have continued to tighten their grip to maintain power as the demographics of Texas push them into the minority.  When they yet again gerrymandered Texas districts in 2011, using computer technology and a technique called “packing and cracking”, people who tend to vote Democratic were either packed into small districts or spread out so much that their votes didn’t count.  These techniques discriminate against not only white Democrats, but disproportionately affect Hispanics and African Americans.

Friday, the story began to change when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the redistricting plan of 2011 saying,

“The record indicates not just a hostility toward Democrat districts, but a hostility to minority districts, and a willingness to use race for partisan advantage.”

The court also noted the “strong racial tension and heated debate about Latinos, Spanish-speaking people, undocumented immigrants and sanctuary cities.”  Finally, a federal court has spoken the truth about those who lead Texas – that they’re racists.  The record of open hostility to minorities convinced the majority that this wasn’t just simple gerrymandering, which is bad enough, but actually a strategy to keep the votes of racial minorities from counting.

This judgment will very likely end up in an appeal to the Supreme Court.  In the meantime, Texas has to go back to the drawing board.  It’s about time.

Hey guys, I’m distracted now but some of you want to talk about the Texas redistricting and others want to talk about Preet Bharara.

Talk about what you want to.

Cecil Webster has been my friend for ten years, maybe even a little longer.  He’s a retired Colonel in the United States Army and one helluva gentleman farmer in Carmine, Texas.  A long time ago, Cecil married way above himself to the gorgeous and talented Marsha Webster.

Cecil is the former Democratic county chair of Fayette County, a national delegate for Barack Obama in 2012, and currently serves on the State Democratic Executive Committee representing Texas Veterans.

I like Cecil.  But even if I didn’t, he’s not a man I would want to piss off.

So, when Cecil got a call that his congressvarmint wasn’t going to do a town hall, but that he would have a mass phone call where he did all the talking, Cecil was willing to even do that.

It did not go well.

First came this …

Cecil is a patient man but when it became apparent that he’d been snookered …

Mike McCaul’s official name is now Grass.

I kinda think we ain’t heard the end of this.  At least I hope we haven’t.

Sic ‘um, Cecil.