Trumpcare dead!? GOP has lost two more votes! Open Thread

Look to Laci Green for why a feminist could stop being one: toxic beliefs can persuade a person to change their mind. Some people are really good at convincing others of things that are not healthy or good for them. Look at gaslighting and how effective that is. Anyone who has been in an abusive relationship knows how easy it can be to fall prey to toxic beliefs.

Perhaps when the GOP repeals and enough voters go without healthcare, maybe then the USA will finally see the need to join the rest of the first world countries in single payer. It seems many must die and suffer in the US for compassion to make a comeback here. It is shocking to watch the US become so cruel to the disabled, poor and needy.

Off-topic, but I think worth mentioning: American Mammotheers might see a Canadian politico pop up here and there on their teevee machines in the coming days to talk about a $10 million settlement with “terrorist” Omar Khadr by that eeeeeevil (but handsome) Justin Trudeau fellow.

The Omar Khadr cases was one of the causes célèbre that anchored my politics towards social justice and really demonstrated how craven the right wing in my country had really gotten. Cliffs notes version of the story: as an adolescent, Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is brought to Afghanistan by his father, an Al-Qaeda sympathizer in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and is made to aid his father in making roadside bombs, IEDs and the like. The building he’s in is struck by a US airstrike and Special Forces personnel sweep the building, unaware that Khadr and one other militant survived. As they’re approaching the room, a grenade is lobbed in their direction, which kills Sgt. Christopher Speer. They return fire, and once the dust clears, they find one wounded militant struggling to reach an AK-47 and he is shot, and the gravely injured Khadr cowering in the corner. He’s captured, sent to Guantanemo and put through those lovely “military tribunals” the Bush administration had with evidence provided by our friendly neighbourhood CSIS agents in hours of lengthy interrogation aided by coercion and sleep deprivation. Found guilty, he spends a decade in Gitmo until the incoming Obama administration wanted to wash their hands of him and send him into the waiting arms of Stephen Harper, who begrudgingly lets him serve his sentence on Canadian soil. Meanwhile the Supreme Court of Canada rules that his Charter rights were violated not once, but twice by the Canadian government, and this payment settles the lawsuit Khadr had against the government for his violated rights.

Now opportunists are crawling out of the woodwork using the settlement as a cudgel against Trudeau, appearing on US TV to lie their rear ends off about the case and the settlement. Ezra Levant was odious enough, but now former Harperites are getting in on the action, with Conservative MP Lisa Raitt leading the charge.

In any other context, Khadr would be a child soldier forced into a warzone by his terrorist father. But under the Bush regime, he was war criminal who murdered an honourable soldier in cold blood (despite no evidence that he actually threw the grenade that killed Speer) and the successive Liberal and Conservative governments were all too happy to collaborate. Khadr spent half his life up to now behind bars for something he may not have even done in a legal hellhole no Canadian or American criminal is subjected to. But former Harper operatives are all over the media up here trying to make political hay over that terrorist-sympathizing punk Trudeau showering Khadr with taxpayer moneys and now they’re taking their shameful circus on the road down south.

Just a heads up.

@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs

Entitlement breeds narcissism. Republicans are what they are because they’re so used to the privilege that has been afforded to them they think it’s the natural order of things, and far more prone than anyone to confirmation bias. Thus, in their world view, the rich, white, male, christians are more deserving than anyone else. That’s why they’re constantly trying to cut funds and programs for undeserving minorities and reallocate the wealth towards those they think worthier and more useful.

@Fishy Goat and Tosca

Thanks, though the close relative in question wasn’t my cousin but someone much closer. It took her some time to get over it, because she also got post-abortion depression on top of the health complications but she’s fine now. Needless to say, if I was against conservatives before I completely abhorr them now.

@Policy of Madness

It’s not like nobody is trying to do this. The last time he was up on the chopping block, the Kentucky Democratic Party decided to run a candidate who looked really good and has all the right family connections. She was a competitive candidate. Unfortunately she wouldn’t take a stand on literally anything; to this day it’s unclear to me if she shot herself in the foot or if her handlers did it for her. Even something that should be as uncontroversial as “eastern Kentucky should have more jobs” just wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She came within striking distance of taking down McConnell anyway, so a candidate with less meal in her mouth could possibly do it

If memory serves me right, wasn’t she the one who was extremely hesitant over admitting whether or not she voted for the Affordable Care Act and acted as if Obama had some sort of hyper-lethal infectious disease?

@Gussie

A person can’t even read comments on anything (in my case on the CBC and Facebook) without some jackass harping on about it. In my opinion Peter MacKay has a lot to answer for, without that lying little weasel it’s unlikely the Reformers would have ever had any influence on anything!

@ hambeast

I love me some dressage as well.

Warning for incoming roadie tale. Back in the day we used to do the lighting and sound for those Lipizzaner horses. The lighting designer loved the horses and was very enthusiastic about his craft.

We walked into a venue one time. He looked around and loudly exclaimed: “We should deck out this entire arena in lilac; these horses deserve it!”

PoM – I had no idea that saddle/bridle-less competition was a thing. It’s pretty gosh-darn nifty! I had to mute the video, though, because the song was making me weepy. I still really miss my dad.

Alan – D’aww!

@Sinkable John, hi! Welcome back! I hope you’re well. I’m a messy mess, but it’s all okay!

JS,

No current information on specifics, though it is quite possible for a handgun to shoot through a car door.

I’m aware of that, however, if both seats were occupied as they’ve seem to have been, the shooter came dangerously close to hitting the driver, as it would have been aimed pretty low to go through the door.

It wasn’t a shootout, after all.

Surely this nitwit means THREE smart scientists?

No, this nitwit expects allegedly smart women to have 12 kids….

@kupo,

We can be leg rod buddies! High five! I got mine from a tib/fib fracture when I got hit by a car while in a crosswalk.

(Also, I saw what you did there.)

My brother and I lost an argument with a tree back in the Clinton administration. I’ve got a femur rod, knee arthritis, and the lingering suspicion that I’ll die of MRSA to remember it by, but at least I don’t have a grave to visit — my brother did better than me in the wreck.

And yes, I was rather proud of it. Not as proud as I am of this one:

Cowboy shootouts are the height of homoeroticism. Two men stare intently into each other’s eyes for minutes at a time, and it all ends with a bang.

Need brain bleach? Don’t say “Neigh”, visit your local riding stable today!

@reimalebario:

It’s one of those “Look I know I totes used to be a feminist but then I growed up and learned better so I’m not just talking out of my arse here” things, I reckon.

I imagine it’s part of her Testifyin’. “I fell in with devils! They tempted me to drink, to dance in the moonlight in the altogether, to give myself to pleasures! I was even [glances left and right, leans right in, hushes voice] one of them feminists!!”