I think there may in fact be an element of revenge on Young Master Munster… and a few perhaps salivating for his job.
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“We’ve gone to two so far,”
Interesting way to describe forcing votes in the small hours of the morning after a manifestly inadequate period for debate of a bill written in secret literally behind closed doors - closed and guarded doors.
Republicans: responsible for more projection than IMAX corporation.
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“fine-tuning our consensus” = “extorting our members”
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Nancy Pelosi would never allow a bill this big to start the process if she hadn’t already counted 218 votes.
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His overuse of “legislative process” is akin to his use of"well,its a little bit wonky, so I won’t get into it". Its short hand for “I don’t know”.
Just look at how much his story has changed in the past 48 hours. They are now removing the key linchpin that holds it together…the penalty for being uninsured. Which they pretty much had to get it through the reconciliation process. That of course kills the bill from an insurance standpoint, and dramatically changes the CBO scoring. Premiums go through the roof because insurance companies are basically faced with only providing insurance to sick people. Why bother paying for insurance if there is no penalty for not having it? Just wait till you get sick or seriously injured.
Now he is saying the Senate can and will amend the bill. That was NOT the plan that McConnell spoke about. He was going to take the bill, AS IS, from the House and put directly to the floor for a vote. Amendments means more Senate committees and stretching the timeline on this out for months, if not longer. And after all of that, it has to go into conference so the House and the Senate can resolve differences between themselves. (Something I guarantee McConnell is NOT looking forward to).
Ryan, in just 2 days, has made the entire bill unworkable AND consumed the rest of the legislative calendar year for any thing else major. It takes a special type of idiot to pull that off.
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Evergreen quote…
“I think I do it better. Not to knock John [Boehner], but I spend more time with all of our members on a continual basis…what I’m trying to do is be responsible with the power that comes with this job and decentralize that power to make members more empowered.” (4/21/2016, Paul Ryan)
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Yes…and with that, he destroyed his power as Speaker. Because he has no ability to actually bend arms to get people to vote for any bill. Something he is not particularly good at, anyway. His “strength” was pretending to be a wonk, not in counting heads or developing relationships with other Congress critters.
Its kind of like being a hockey goalie with really, really bad eyesight…and deciding that by plucking both of them out, it will make you the best NHL goalie of all time. You start in a poor position and deliberately take steps to make it even worse.
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Such absurdity. Of course the main thing RAyn doesn’t want to do is educate the public on what’s in this horrible bill. RAyn doesn’t feel any obligation to tell people what’s in it because he knows people will be unhappy about it and knows most people are already against it. It was 9 months of educating the public about the PPACA, if not more, before it was voted on. RAyn would love to ram this bill through as fast as he can so no one knows what’s in it.
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Never underestimate the willingness of Republicans to cram a shit sandwich down the throat of the 99%.
But in this instance there does seem to be a genuine schism within the party. Looking at the Senate, it looks like Cruz, Lee and Paul are in opposition to the first draft from the right, whereas Collins, Gardner, Heller, McCain, and Murkowski (plus Portman and Capito, I expect them to fold like cheap suits though) are expressing doubts from the left - RSC’s effort should make them more reachable of Democrats (I really can’t believe how hard AHCA fucks Alaska over, doesn’t Ryan understand how close Murkowski is to being the Senate’s median vote?).
Cotton I was assuming was opposing from the right too, because he’s pretty damn extreme, but when he said it couldn’t pass the Senate he focused on the “adverse consequences for millions of Americans” so maybe just once he’s not being maximally terrible.
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‘fine tuning’ vs being ‘tuned up.’?
Don’t gild Icahabod’s liely… He’s got to appear to be a caring individual if he ever hopes to reside in the WH with a lot of help from his everso rich power gluttons Koch boys.
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Oh for the days of old when votes could be assured by earmarks. 
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We should find out if Cotton found his empathy gene or…oh wait this is still that piece of crap from Arkansas and I know that McConnell has got to have something on him.
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You can’t find what doesn’t exist.
But maybe he’s wise to the fact that Arkansas has a lot of people who actually benefit from the ACA and kicking them to the curb (and again while they’re down) might be a vote loser.
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Thanks, Speaker Ryan; you could have saved your breath by just reminding us of this:
Cotton strikes me as a chicken-fried version of Walker - dead weasel eyes, adheres to extreme-right orthodoxy, Kochs will write checks on demand. Didn’t exactly work out well for Scottty boy this go-around and he had a lot more basis to claim what the GOP primary electorate seem to believe are successes.
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Breaking News on WaPo. RAyn retreating
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Somewhere in Ohio’s 8th district, John Boehner sits on a barstool with a glass of scotch crying tears of joy and laughing his ass off!
I don’t think there are too many out there who want to see Ryan fail more than Boehner.
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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said Wednesday that he was confident that Republicans’ proposal would pass the House of Representatives, though he hedged that Republican members of Congress were “fine-tuning our consensus" on the bill.
In other words, I know that whatever bill can get out of the House won’t pass in the Senate. And by “fine-tuning our consensus,” I mean we don’t have enough votes for the bill, as is, to even pass the House - so, there’s not, like, a real consensus. There was more of a hope that we’d get enough Republican reps to vote for something that was not as totally bat-shit crazy as it looks like we will need to draft to even get it through the House. Validation.
