Skinny Repeal and Steve Bannon’s D*ck: A politics open thread

Trump is looking to get into a war, possibly with Iran or North Korea, if he fails to get what he wants on domestic policy. Some of the people with Breitbart have wanted a “preemptive strike” on Iran for the past 15 years. It’s horrifying if we get to a point in which attacking Iran would be politically beneficial to Trump.

On the upside, war is still fairly unpopular, and Trump is probably worried he might lose some supporters if he pulls an Iraq.

@History Nerd

On the upside, war is still fairly unpopular, and Trump is probably worried he might lose some supporters if he pulls an Iraq.

I doubt it. He’s convinced he’ll win any war bigly and there’s no way he can go wrong. That’s how he goes about pretty much everything, even when reality disagrees.

@dreemr

I’ve decided that I’m only going to vote for women in the future (although I do reserve the right to vote for Franken if he is tagged as VP by some miracle)

I made a similar decision on Election Night. I plan to do everything in my, admittedly meager, power to make sure that the Dem nominee in 2020 isn’t a white dude

Yeah, you all are probably right. Sadly, it is way more likely that Scaramucci is that incompetent than it is that he’s a force of chaotic ‘good’ actually trying to take them down from the inside. Shame, really.

I’m usually asleep when Y’all are posting about the latest in the US of A – gotta admit, it’s rather exciting tonight!

PS. I don’t have any plans to exchange my brain with a dog. Or a zombie. Or a zombie dog. Basically, I like my brain as it is.

To Sen. McConnell:

Your bill is bad and you should feel bad. (Imagine Zoidberg meme here, I couldn’t make it work 🙁 sorry!)

@ banned

I would hope so. That was literally what the Korean War was.

I get the feeling North Korea is literally in stasis until either the country actually does nuke someone (provoking literally everyone), or Kim Jong Un dies in some kind of genuinely freak accident or illness (prompting a succession crisis).

Now that it has played out, I think this is what happened (and yes, I think McCain was having his final ego trip on center stage): McCain voted to proceed to debate so that he could argue that he gave them the chance to come up with a satisfactory plan — or, alternatively, so that McConnell couldn’t argue that he would have come up with a satisfactory plan but McCain blocked it with a merely procedural vote. His final vote protected other Republican Senators who didn’t want to vote for the bill but were afraid of what would happen if they voted against it.
Historically, there was a similar situation with the 1965 Civil Rights Bill. Sen. William Fulbright of Arkansas favored the bill but believed that if he voted for it, he would probably be defeated for re-election by arch-segregationist Governor Orval Faubus, but he was willing to vote for the bill if his vote was necessary to pass it. LBJ was able to find enough votes so that Fulbright could vote no. LBJ may have regretted that in the next few years, when Fulbright became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War.

@ooglybuggles: “McCain is still a monster, a war criminal and a coward that left other POW’s to rot”.
I won’t argue about the war criminal part, because I think that the entire Vietnam War was a crime against humanity and McCain was a willing participant, but it’s untrue and unfair to accuse him of letting other POWs to rot. He was, in fact, one of the members of the final POW release group and had earlier refused an early release, which caused him to be severely beaten (which he deserved, but not for that reason). He has a lot of shit things to answer for, but this is not one of them.

Thing is, any other Republican could have voted against it, not just McCain. None of them except the two strong women chose to vote against it. Whether McCain was trolling McConnell, I don’t know, but I’m not counting on the other Republicans being reasonable and suddenly listening to Americans.

Cornyn has apparently deleted the “I’m Just a Bill” cartoon link he posted yesterday night as “just a reminder” that both parts of congress have to agree to pass a bill. Perhaps a “Friendly reminder” that’s that condescending got too much backlash. Sent him a friendly reminder that, if you don’t want a bill to pass, you vote against it whenever possible.

@kupo
Fucking hell, that guy…

“It’s refreshing!”

*snerk*

@kupo

I only have one week left here. Counting the days

Freedom!

@Axe, Oogly
I mean, I’m staying in tech so chances of my new lead also being a brogrammer are pretty high, but here’s to hoping!