It’s a good day. And it’s all thanks to those who protested in the streets, who showed up at Town Hall meetings, who called or wrote their elected representatives, who did anything else they could think of to fight repeal. If you were part of the Resistance, and I know a lot of you were, give yourself a big hand. You did it. We did it.
Without the ACA, there’s no way I could get insurance. There’s no way millions of Americans could get insurance. What a fucking relief this is. What a weight off all of our shoulders.
The fact that this is a massive defeat for Trump and Ryan and the Republicans generally is just icing on the cake.
Consider this an open thread. No Trump fans.
Wonderful, wonderful news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations from a neighbor up north! I’ve been watching the Republicare bill slowly fall down the stairs since it was proposed, and have been crossing my fingers the whole time that it didn’t still get passed through political fuckery. It’s unfortunate that your win was “Man-sized Cheeto failed to ruin healthcare” but it’s a win nonetheless!
I’m glad that we got it pulled. But, I’m also worried that Trump will do the same shit he did with his
Muslim Ban“Travel Ban” and just try to resubmit it again and again until it goes through.The man very obviously doesn’t know what “no” means.
In other news, POWER RANGERS IS A FUCKING AMAZING MOVIE, Y’ALL.
Like, seriously. It was SO GOOD.
And the Blue Ranger, Billy, is an autistic black kid. Like, he has hyper focus on his interests (technology and explosives, because he and his dad who was a miner did that before he died), and he doesn’t get jokes or metaphors, and I whispered to my roommate “Are they coding him as autistic?” ten seconds before he said he was on the spectrum to Jason.
They also didn’t push the Red/Pink ship as hard as the TV show did, and while I’m a little sad they weren’t as overt with Trini’s sexuality as they were with Billy’s autism, they still really portrayed her very well and she was a really awesome character. They all were pretty interesting with their own backstories and motivations and all of that. (No spoilers though. ;3)
Oh, and I nearly flipped. My. SHIT. When the original theme started to play during the Big Fight Scene. They only did the “Go Go Power Rangers” part though, and didn’t include that sick guitar riff though. :/ Semi-disappointed.
Woop woop woop woop!
Here’s a little ditty to celebrate:
@PI I’m worried about that, too. I really hope it stays dead, but I keep worrying that the zombie will crawl up any day now.
I feel so bad for laughing at that gif. I hope that guy was okay ?.
Congratulations, Americans! Here’s to many subsequent victories.
I cackled with glee at RyanTrumpcare not getting enough votes. Just thrilled.
My job involves watching videos people post on social media. Since the election my job has been a non Euclidean unspeakable horror lovecraftian shit show. Today I look forward to seeing Paul Ryan’s sadface over and over again.
My question is, though, did we do it? My impression is that the pubbies that don’t like it think it doesn’t go far enough.
It probably help that most Republicans hated the bill too.
Typical Trump spin:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/president-trump-called-my-cellphone-to-say-that-the-health-care-bill-was-dead/2017/03/24/8282c3f6-10ce-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html
Congratulations !
Now I look forward to the Tiny Tyrant’s angry tweets.
You know Trump fucked up when even the Koch brothers went against him and said “we will pull your campaign funds if you vote for this bill.” Like seriously he had the entire GOP on his side, and then squandered that asset harder than he squandered our tax dollars for his weekly golf trips.
@PeeVee the (Noice) Sarcastic
36 in total IIRC.
Unfortunately, this bill didn’t fail because it wasn’t generous enough. It failed because it was too generous. House Republicans only want bills that put forth efforts to ACTIVELY kill poor people, not passively! However, with that all said, I think the really terrible press it got helped the awful polling numbers, so in that way, perhaps some liberal activism helped. They have admitted they won’t be revisiting this issue again for a while, so… onto Gorsuch! It looks like the Dems may fillibuster and he may not get enough votes. Of course, then the Repubs will go nuclear and get him in anyway. But that’ll mean that next time the Dems are in power, they can get through any Supreme Justice they want with only a simple majority. Here’s to praying that all the Justices, especially the old ones, last four years in this political climate…
@Ooglyboggles
Have you heard about Robert and Rebekah Mercer? They’ve put a shit ton of money into Trump, and they basically hand-picked Michael Flynn as national security advisor and Jeff Sessions. The Kochs look like bleeding heart liberals against those two, and the Mercers are infinitely more terrifying. So Trump, I think, would be more worried about pissing off the Mercers than the Kochs.
To serve as an example, Rober Mercer believes that your income determines your worth to society. He thinks that if you are on welfare, you have negative worth to society, and that the super wealthy like him have more worth as a human being than a school teacher. This is the level of evil we are dealing with. They also believe in conspiracy theories, such as that the Clintons are murderers.
If you want to lose all faith in the political system, here is the Fresh Air episode about it.
I need to push back against the idea that the phone calls etc. didn’t matter. They did.
The problem for this bill is that the Freedom Caucus thought it didn’t go far enough, but Republican moderates weren’t hip to the changes the FC demanded. If it were as simple as doing a straight repeal of the ACA, believe me, that’s what would have been proposed. There are a significant number of non-FC Republicans who realized from calls and letters etc. that their constituents didn’t want a straight repeal and would ream them if they voted for a strong bill. So that’s why the bill wasn’t strong enough for the FC.
(You’ll also hear some stories about Senate rules that restricted what could be in the bill, but this is the gist of why it failed.)
Ryan pulled the bill rather than force the vote that President Shinra demanded so that none of his party would have to make a politically unpopular choice in deciding how to vote.
@PeeVee and Wanda
they lost Rs from both wings of the party. Couldn’t make it ghastly enough to please all of the “Freedom Caucus” and many of the moderate Rs were swayed by calls/polls/the bill being hot garbage.
I love the reports coming out of the WH are now all about how Trump totally is mad, nope not mad at all, he’s definitely handling this like an adult. Believe me!
ETA: Oh and Trumpites already sniping at Ryan via Breitbart. LOL
https://twitter.com/LauraLitvan/status/845388345903644674
ETA2: Ninja’d
Congratulations. I am so happy for everyone in the US who either resisted and/or would have suffered as a result of the bill.
All the more motivation to attend my fourth protest today. Don’t let up for a minute, folks! Protest Gorsuch, protest the Wall, protest climate change denial, protest his Russian ties… protest each and every iota of Trump’s shtick until the guy can’t stomach it any further and resigns!
@Wanda
I apologize for my poor wording. I meant the Koch brothers threatened to pull the funding of the GOP members’ campaign funds. To be honest I had forgotten about the Mercers in the entire hubub of this dumpster fire. They own Breitbart, that says enough of them. I still don’t understand why they would be in support of this bill when by all means they would want a bill that would kill even more people? I could do at length of why I don’t have much faith in our oligarchy, but that’d be preaching to the choir.
But enough of that, time to post animal pics in celebration!
@JoeB
He even repeated he doesn’t blame Paul Ryan, repeatedly. If only we can watch exactly what level of rage he would feel after being denied yet again.
Of course he blames the Democrats, that’s par for the course.
And my impression of the Freedom(to die) Caucus is that the only bill they’d vote for is one that removes all public funding for every form of health care and required insurers to charge double the rate to non-rich people.
My favorite tweet so far has been (paraphrased) “Health care bill pulled – makes sense, pulling out was the only birth control it covered.”
Thank you, thank you to everyone!
The WH is definitely trying to spin this to make it look like a win. I saw a clip of Trump on the news complaining that they had no support from the Democrats. He tried to blame it on them, completely disregarding the fact that members of his own party had pulled their support. I’m curious to see how he handles this setback. Between this and the travel ban, he’s starting to see that he doesn’t have the complete and unchecked power that he thought he was going to have.
My father-in-law, who is an American medical doctor, believes that health care in the US is free. He made a big speech about how people don’t actually need to pay for care. If you won’t or can’t pay, he says, the doctor will treat it as charity work. He claims nobody in America is ever denied health care for financial reasons. He truly believes that health care in the US is essentially free, but that some people choose to pay because they have the money to spare.