John Oliver Redux

I'm a recovering Radical Randite. It took me a long time to get past that shit, because (I tho't) it was working for me. It wasn't. It doesn't. It can't because it's a contradiction - and just like Ms Rand always said: Contradictions exist, but they can't prevail.

Samantha

Today's Bamboozle

45* knows he can feed dis-information to the rubes directly, so most of them won't ever hear anything that runs counter to what he needs them to hear - what they already believe anyway - which is what he continues to reinforce, and why he's working so hard trying to freeze out traditional corporate media.

Vox:

What you’re looking at is a massive cut in Medicaid spending. In 2026, the Better Care Reconciliation Act would cut Medicaid spending by about $160 billion, and end Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to low-income Americans.

As my colleague Sarah Kliff writes:

The Senate bill begins to phase out the Medicaid expansion in 2021 — and cuts the rest of the program’s budget too. The Senate bill would end the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to millions of low-income Americans. This program has provided coverage to more Americans than the private marketplaces

It would also cut the rest of the public insurance program. Better Care would also limit government spending on the rest of the Medicaid program, giving states a set amount to spend per person rather than the insurance program’s currently open-ended funding commitment.

Ultimately, the Congressional Budget Office projects 15 million people would lose coverage with the repeal of Medicaid expansion.

So it’s incredibly misleading for the president to claim that Senate Republicans are increasing funding for Medicaid.

This is pretty typical of the Faux Conservative crapola they've been peddling for a long time. It's a variation on one of their favorite themes - "tax revenue goes up when tax rates come down".  So it follows that the rubes will internalize this new crapola and adopt it as part of their catechism - "cutting Medicaid funding now increases Medicaid spending in the long term."

Yeah, OK. And the best way to fill a bath tub is to open the drain and turn one of the faucets off.

A smiling hyena will still eat your children

These people have no soul and no honor.

Today's Winner

From HuffPo, this one wins the internet for today:

I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.
--and--

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

...establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...

How does "I'm good, fuck y'all" fit with the basics of our founding document?

Strike A Blow For Freedom

So there was a little cleanup necessary in Little Rock...

Capitol crews sweep up remnants of the shattered 10 Commandments monument #ARnews #arpx pic.twitter.com/97D4om0ER0

— Emma Pettit (@EmmaJanePettit) June 28, 2017

...because

WATCH: Facebook video appear to show man running over Ten Commandments monument on Capitol grounds #ARNews #arpx #arleg pic.twitter.com/W8Rp2qinuZ

— Austin Kellerman (@AustinKellerman) June 28, 2017

Charlie Gets It

On AHCA, Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

If you put credence into the notion that the Senate bill has an upside because of its effect on The Deficit, hire someone to cut your meat for you for the rest of your life. Try to keep in mind the Blog's First Law of Economics: Fck the deficit. People got no jobs, people got no money.

There isn't a single promise that the president* made on this issue during the campaign that this new tax-cut law doesn't smash to smithereens. The CBO says this bill will knock 15 million people off their insurance next year. That's horrendous. The whole bill is about allowing Medicaid to die on the vine. The CBO says that the Medicaid cut that all those Republicans say is imaginary will top out at $772 billion.

Keith

Word O' The Day: Treachery

A Good Sign

Yesterday, on my way to see about a girl, I happened across the folks of Indivisible Charlottesville who were out in front of the Albemarle County office building to raise a bit of a ruckus - in a purely relaxed-n-groovy kinda way.

You can always tell when it's the Liberals doin' the demonstratin' - the signs are all spelled right.

Check 'em out.

Today's Tweet

There is no pimpier pimp than Newton Leroy (McPherson) Gingrich

Notice how Newt called for Obama, not Trump to appear before Congress? Newt's invokin' "White Executive Privilege". https://t.co/JSbXFetcYw

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) June 27, 2017

Call It Progress - I Guess(?)

Miami Herald

The good news is: the kid wasn't shot.

The bad news is: that's what passes for good news now - that some asshole white cop didn't murder some knucklehead brown kid.

It's unbelievable, but that qualifies as a positive outcome.