monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

We understand why McConnell and crowd are operating so secretively. We understand why they'd like to get this "done" with no public debate and with no public awareness of what they are up to and the real-life consequences for American citizens. And we understand that they hope/believe they can somehow get away with this through deceits and obfuscations which will be supported and forwarded by the media system on the right and thus minimize electoral consequences for them.

What is to me the most interesting element here is why they are doing this at
all.

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Not sure if mentioned here earlier but Fox has dropped their "Fair and balanced" motto.

There will be jokes.

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Quote:

Eric Lipton ✔ @EricLiptonNYT
Trump Era Moment: EPA's Scott Pruitt, with 45 CEOs of largest oil and gas companies in the USA for private briefing. Profits, to Trump Hotel
6:04 PM - 15 Jun 2017

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

What you guys call the French defense is called in French la défense Philidor....I like the Sicilian better,

The ouverture of The Rake's Progress is quite nice, too Wink

1 Reply

@blatham,

So they can say they kept a promise to repeal Obamacare?

1 Reply

If you read anything today, make it this

Quote:

I’ve covered Obamacare since day one. I’ve never seen lying and obstruction like this.

Vox

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@snood,

Quote:

So they can say they kept a promise to repeal Obamacare?

We would be very naive to presume that "keeping our promises" is a moral principle that resides deep in these peoples' bosoms. But it is true that this particular promise stands above others as a consequence of how they used it as a political device over 8 years. They placed themselves in this trap and they fomented notions in their base which sets them all up for serious threats of being primaried out of office. So, yes, that's part of the story.

But what is more fundamental in all of this, it seems to me, is that the modern party is now so bent towards the conception/axiom that "government is the problem" that they cannot permit citizens to enjoy any large government programs which clearly and obviously (through the lived experience of citizens) makes those citizens' lives better. Because this would utterly defeat that basic modern conservative conception/axiom and show it to be not merely false but deeply destructive.

That's the real threat.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

NOW these pigs are saying "The hate must stop". Like I said, 'hypocrisy' just doesn't quite say it...

Which one of those "pigs" is saying "The Hate Must Stop?

BTW - There's nothing wrong with what Ernst, Cruz or Rand said. The rest of the statements are reprehensible.

1 Reply

Quote:

Republicans are poised to take the unprecedented step of passing a sweeping piece of legislation — a bill to eliminate health insurance from millions of Americans — without so much as a single hearing. In defense of his plan to keep his bill secret, and rush it into law with minimal public scrutiny, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claims the debate has really been going on for seven years anyway.

“Look, we’ve been dealing with this issue for seven years,” McConnell tells the New York Times. “It’s not a new thing.” McConnell adds that there have been “gazillions of hearings on this subject” over the years.

The reality, of course, is that Republicans have spent seven years attacking Obamacare and promising to deliver something better.

...In 2017, when McConnell finally had the full control control of government that he sought, he promised that he would not return the health insurance system to the pre-Obamacare status quo. “Some contend that, by fulfilling our promise to the American people, we’re somehow trying to go back to the way things were before ObamaCare — which we all know is untrue.”

The entire trick, all seven years, was to avoid committing himself to any particular alternative. And the reason was simple: McConnell could not produce an alternative that actually delivered what he promised. He has spent seven years sustaining the fiction that he can produce the magical better plan without any trade-offs. The “gazillions of hearings on this subject” have all been about the bill Democrats wrote. None of them have concerned the one McConnell wants to pass in secrecy and haste.

Jon Chait

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

I love a great many individual liberals. The tribe? Not so much.

I'm happy to condemn rhetoric that explicitly or implicitly coveys that violence against liberals is an appropriate or preferred means of responding to their politics.

I draw a pretty tight line on "artistic expression" in this area as well. Tighter I suspect than you or snood.

Hate is a self-destroying emotion. I urge against the use of hateful rhetoric, but its protected free speech

1 Reply

@snood,

snood wrote:

From them, it would be progress to see just any small acknowledgement of where most of the vitriol has come from.

I'd say that over time it's been about equal.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I have noticed a lot of your post are disingenuous. Those particular republicans might not have said the hate must stop, however, for eight long years we have had republicans making very provocative hate filled statements and now for republicans to talk about stopping the hate when it's their guy up in the oval office stinks and is hard to swallow. They sure didn't stop the hate when Giffords got shot regardless of it not being "proved" is was political driven. Moreover, Fox News and other conservative media went on about Obama for eight years every bit as much as MSN (so called) media is now. There just happens to be more to report about Trump because of the very real Russian investigation and Trump and his associates ties to it. Moreover, Trump makes provocative statements daily, sometimes more on the same day, it is how he got elected.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

layman wrote:
Every foreigner, in every country in the world, would be better off today if their grandparents had come to America. ... They had their chance. We allowed unlimited immigration, back then.

That's why the indigenous population population invited them, isn't it?

Walter, how did I miss this......brilliant

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@revelette1,

Quote:

I have noticed a lot of your post are disingenuous.

...and since he's obviously a pretty bright guy, that's troublesome. If he was just stupid it would be easier to dismiss the stupid things he says. But since he's smart you have to think he's being consciously disingenuous, or that he is somehow self-deceived so completely its almost on an organic level.

How can a smart person think it's somehow okay for an elected federal official to be suggesting people resort to "2nd Amendment solutions"?
How can someone honest look at the ravings of right wing radio shites like Michael Savage ( I know Finn is trying to act as if he's barely heard of him) or Alex Jones for the last two decades and pretend there's been any thing even remotely like their equivalent in vitriol and outright hate mongering on the left?

They can't. Not someone who's smart and honest. So Finn is displaying something else when he pretends the left and right have equally dirty hands in the hate-speak.

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@snood,

Quote:

So Finn is displaying something else when he pretends the left and right have equally dirty hands in the hate-speak.

No "pretending", I'm sure. Finn believes this. The error is one of carelessness in analysis and beneath that, a psychological resistance to what careful analysis might tell him.

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

Nobody has done that, ever. Try and calm down. Maybe if your head is a bit cooler you'll be able to see the increasing polarisation of US politics from outside that very partisan polarization.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

Hate is a self-destroying emotion.

That's very true. Sheeshus! I agreed with you twice today.

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Quote:

Trump’s media allies use attack on GOP baseball practice to delegitimize the press

MM

This should not surprise. As I've noted before, the most fundamental notion forwarded by right wing media (and this is done every hour of every day from every element in this media universe) is that all other media has a left-wing bias.

That formulation:
1) provides their reason for their existence
2) justifies any level of bias they manifest
3) facilitates the capture of a large segment of the population for political purposes
4) provides a huge eco-system of big money profit-taking through eyeballs, clicks, books, speeches, donations, funding from entities served by them, and a vast array of associated sales gimmicks.

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@gungasnake,

Let's not forget that Shakespeare himself was British, hence terminally evil...

<smirk>

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Let us note the truth of things

Quote:

James Fallows ✔ @JamesFallows
Percentage of recent Trump-related, anon-sourced reports in WSJ/NYT/WaPo that have proven wrong: very low

% of Trump’s own claims: v high https://twitter.com/AllMattNYT/status/875552694114627584 …

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