By then, the alphabetical roll call had reached Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. McCain walked over to the front of the chamber, raising his right arm. He held it up in the air until he had the attention of the clerk. No," he said, with a swift thumbs-down.Listen for the "gasp":
It was a "no" that could barely be heard on C-SPAN, and a thumbs-down that viewers would not have been able to easily make out. But the moment was crystal clear for the dozens of reporters watching from the gallery above, who let out a collective gasp and made a stampede exit for the wooden double doors behind them to report the news.
July 28, 2017
"The clerk read the Arizona senator's surname in the microphone of the tense Senate chamber. The two words were met with silence..."
... McCain had stepped out of the room minutes before. But moments later, he reappeared."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
267 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 267 of 267HoodlumDoodlum said...
...
...and redistricting is done based on population changes, and if done fairly would not unduly benefit either party, but your comment implied that Republican gains were in part due to their good lawyering which implies they got an advantage from their good lawyers in how the redistricting was done...which is a Lefty talking point...
It's a lefty talking point and, the way that you nicely articulated it, it is also true!
Fair's got nothin' to do with it. "Legal" is the only criteria. I don't want Republican-drawn districts to be drawn "fairly." I want them drawn as best as they can be drawn for our party. Within the law.
There are fundamental pro-conservative movements in the electorate and in the national geography.
The word you are looking for is "Obamacare."
It will bring down the uniparty. Trump is going to be active in 2018, 2020, and 2022 hammering the traitors we sent to DC who betrayed us.
There are 30 red states now. That means there will be 60 republican senators. The focus in the long term will be removing the uniparty filth from the republican party.
Republicans now control a record number of state legislatures, including holding both chambers in 32 states.
Achilles said...
...
There are 30 red states now...
Are you counting Michigan? Wisconsin? Pennsylvania? Nevada? Colorado? Those are some purple states. How do you get to 30?
You can't possibly count a state that Trump won in 2016 as a "Republican" state in a senate election with the variances in candidates, times, issues, campaigns, etc.
brylun said...
Republicans now control a record number of state legislatures, including holding both chambers in 32 states.
Thanks in no small part to post-2010 redistricting.
Fine. Now go all in to enforce every fucking atom in the ACA. Remove all the precious little waivers. Go to the four corners of those thousands of pages and make enforce.
Chuck questions: Are you counting Michigan? Wisconsin? Pennsylvania? Nevada? Colorado? Those are some purple states. How do you get to 30?
The RINO again shows his hand.
'Moby' is probably more accurate.
mockturtle said...
Chuck questions: Are you counting Michigan? Wisconsin? Pennsylvania? Nevada? Colorado? Those are some purple states. How do you get to 30?
The RINO again shows his hand.
More personal attacks, derailing a substantive discussion.
No; it is that Senate elections are different from U.S. House, state house, and state senate seats. You can't redistrict the United States. You can redistrict the things that have led to a Republican House and Republican state legislatures.
Trump won Michigan by a margin so thin that a recall was nearly automatic. It was a fluke. Wisconsin has a Democratic senator; Michigan has two right now. Pennsylvania has one, and the one Republican (Pat Toomey, as conservative as they get) has to fight like hell every time he runs.
Nobody can seriously claim that Republicans getting to 60 seats in the Senate is easy or some sort of automatic no-brainer. It will be incredibly hard.
More, on Michigan:
In just about every general election in Michigan, there are more Democrat voters than Republican. So how do we get a huge majority in our state senate, a comfortable majority in our state house, and nine out of fourteen U.S. House seats?
Redistricting!
Chuck said...
Achilles said...
...
There are 30 red states now...
Are you counting Michigan? Wisconsin? Pennsylvania? Nevada? Colorado? Those are some purple states. How do you get to 30?
By counting. If you include Nevada, Colorado, and Minnesota, states Trump did not win, you end up at 33.
You can't possibly count a state that Trump won in 2016 as a "Republican" state in a senate election with the variances in candidates, times, issues, campaigns, etc.
Individual level no. Aggregate yes. If you flip a coin 100 times statistics will force the results towards 50/50. There will be variance one way or another but the results are actually very tightly distributed.
In this case 27 red 17 blue with 6 purple is going to land you around 60/40 with some variance. I don't think Wisconsin is all that purple anymore either...
Because Democrats in Detroit are casting votes that don't, effectively, matter.
and I would agree that redistricting is not the sole determinative factor in our success in the House. There are fundamental pro-conservative movements in the electorate and in the national geography.
Right, so Republicans winning on the merits is part of it and Republicans winning by "cheating" through redistricting is part of it...yet your initial comment only mentioned the latter. Exactly what I'd expect from a Lefty/Dem, but not at all like I'd expect from a LifeLongRepublican. Weird.
Hey, let's talk percentages here. What % of Republican gains are due only to redistricting/gerrymandering/better lawyers, and what % is due to all other factors? See, the Dems say it's close to 100% gerrymandering, which is why that's usually all they attribute Republican gains to (sometimes they'll thrown in some shit about Rush Limbaugh and stupid/deplorable voters choosing candidates based on racism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia, etc). Which, you know, is pretty much what you, a LifeLongRepublican, did as well by only initially mentioning that factor.
So, as a LifeLongRepublican, how do you think it actually breaks out? Follow up--if your opinion is that it's not mostly from gerrymandering/redistricting why would you focus on that in your initial comment?
Asshole. No surprise there.
Chuck said...
More, on Michigan:
In just about every general election in Michigan, there are more Democrat voters than Republican. So how do we get a huge majority in our state senate, a comfortable majority in our state house, and nine out of fourteen U.S. House seats?
Because most of the democrats live in a few very small areas. Corrupt areas that have "amazing" turnout and a lot of illegal/dead voters.
Redistricting!
Only a democrat is dumb/ignorant enough to say that.
You had to be there. It was a silent gasp. Silent but deadly passing of gasp.
Wow, this conversation is turning stupid.
Redistricting is not done on the basis of geography; it's done on population. It matters not, for districting, that "most of the democrats live in a few small areas."
We can't legally get away with "packing" city districts with 90% black voters who are all Dems. We have to create at least two majority-minority districts, (now the 13th and 14th districts) where we have to be careful about racial "packing" and "cracking" rules.
Look; I reject all of the Dems/liberals' arguments to force Michigan into some new "commission" scheme for redistricting. I want the Republican legislature to keep doing it.
But here is a marker of our success, before and after the 2010 redistricting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Michigan/comments/5rno4u/gerrymandering_in_michigans_congressional/
Right, so Republicans winning on the merits is part of it and Republicans winning by "cheating" through redistricting is part of it...
It's not cheating (with or without the scare-quotes) if it is legal. And with good election lawyers, it can be made legal!
Chuck said...
Wow, this conversation is turning stupid.
Redistricting is not done on the basis of geography; it's done on population. It matters not, for districting, that "most of the democrats live in a few small areas."
A map of michigan voting results by county.
If you are too stupid to figure out what is going on by looking at that map this is a pointless discussion.
OK, leftists.
You 'won.'
You own Obamacare lock, stock and barrel.
All of it.
You own it.
Now, choke on it.
Achilles what does that have to do with redistricting? County lines are fixed and permanent like state lines. If you are saying that population in Michigan is clustered in Southeast Michigan, and a bit around Grand Rapids and the Tri-cities (Midland, Bay City and Saginaw) that's fine. But that is just the start, for how we draw congressional districts. How we draw congressional districts looks like this:
https://wcmu.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/MichiganCongressionalMap2012_zpsea6825f8.png
Look at the 9th, 11th, 13th and 14th districts! That's how we get to nine out of fourteen districts being Republican. We've only got two, maybe three, swing districts. It takes work, and skilled election lawyering to get to that.
After he beautiful address to the Senate the day before I sure didn't expect a no vote. Is he all there?
Chuck whines: More personal attacks, derailing a substantive discussion.
Every 'substantive discussion' in which you participate is all about Chuck. All the time.
From ABA Journal (linked from WSJ):
Could Tom Price Kill Obamacare from the Inside?
Has annyone ever seen LLR Chuck and John McCain together in the same space?
So McCain first votes against the full repeal. And then, a few days later, votes against the thin repeal which all the conservative and liberty-minded folks in Congress saw as the only route to repealing and replacing ObamaCare under "traditional" senate rules: hashing it out in conference. And then has the gall to say he couldn't vote for the thin repeal because it wasn't a full repeal?
Disingenuous, but there seem to be enough "conservative" Republicans who are parroting his argument, including on here, so apparently it worked.
(Has any Republican at the national level been more destructive to conservative and liberty interests in the last 20 years, all in the name of "decorum"? Decorum only works if every one plays the same game. It's a sucker's game otherwise, unless you want to be liked more than you like to actually do what you profess.)
Chuck knows Michigan is a red State, always has been.
Chuck knows the extent of voter fraud in Saginaw, Flint, Detroit, Grand rapids, Pontiac.
Chuck knows we have 2 democrat Senators because of the unions, and non-existant republican ground game in this State like forever-
How do I know Chuck knows this?
Because every Michigander knows this.
Rigelson asserts: Decorum only works if every one plays the same game. It's a sucker's game otherwise
I'm glad someone else noticed this.
I think many of you are forgetting something.
Elections.
No Republican wants to lose their seat in 2018. They do not want to risk the media calling them "grandma killers" which is what they will do if any form of TrumpCare is passed. So they will bounce it back and forth in procedural acts until after the elections. Ocare will stay to save their butt. Even the red state citizens like the protection of pre-existing conditions and Medicaid expansion, if not for themselves, their families.
All this philosophizing over the loss of Republican healthcare is useless. Conservatives know the media is after them and Trumps' bravery (or rudeness, take your pick) only ads more spice to the media's ire of the right.
Kid Rock ahead in Michigan!
https://twitter.com/RobertCahaly/status/890938278995558400
They do not want to risk the media calling them "grandma killers" which is what they will do if any form of TrumpCare is passed.
So, did the media get Hillary elected? No? Why should the GOP give two shits about the media's reaction?
He's a good man. Doesn't want to leave millions of Americans to die without the care that he's been able to obtain in his own life.
Republicans are totally immoral. He's better than they are.
Achilles what does that have to do with redistricting? County lines are fixed and permanent like state lines.
You'll find that Achilles occasionally hits on the right and decent thing, but more often than not flubs basic ideas due to this strange aversion he has to rudimentary knowledge. He really does seem to find a basic understanding of what he's talking about to be toxic.
I don't get it at all.
Moral: using government to take others' property
Immoral: personal responsibility
Got it.
Pro-social: Promoting the suffering and early deaths of millions of your countrymen.
Anti-social: Prioritizing the prevention of their deaths over a few extra tax dollars returned to an already undertaxed elite.
Got it.
Birkelstock would have millions suffer and probably as many consigned to a nasty and early death, in order to make sure that an well-heeled elite that already pays less of their income than those struggling at the middle and bottom can pay even less! Just so people know. He thinks money (that he doesn't even have and can't claim!) is more important than whether other Americans live or die.
Obviously the property is more important than the life that makes its "acquisition" - let alone enjoyment - even possible in the first place.
Birkel - I look forward to your impending suicide, just so that you can do what you obviously believe is right: To relieve your property of the burden of being owned by someone who obviously doesn't even value his own life, let alone what little he has in it.
" And then has the gall to say he couldn't vote for the thin repeal because it wasn't a full repeal?"
McCain is an asshole and I was a volunteer for him in 2000.
When he came back from Vietnam with the POWs, he was evaluated by a Navy psychiatrist who said he has a "Histrionic personality," probably a pretty good appraisal.
Grandstanding is what he does best.
If insurance generated health care, you would have a point, TTR. You are bankrupting the future with your trillions in debt leading -inexorably - to high inflation.
The 1970s called. They want their monetary and fiscal policies back.
Grandstanding is what he does best.
Good leaders will long be remembered for their inspiring words. Pissy little lockjaw-ridden weasels, OTOH - especially those that waste 7 years of their worthless lives trying to deprive others of accomplishments or the care of their countrymen, and then go down to ignominious defeat in failing to COUNT VOTES! - can't be forgotten soon enough.
Nothing the McConnells say will ever again be taken seriously. Mr. Master Tactician couldn't even figure out how to count votes. I guess his thoughts on any other national arithmetic - from tax policy to the budget and economy - can be forever ignored.
McCain is an asshole and I was a volunteer for him in 2000.
Good to know you're as poor a judge of people as you are of politics.
If insurance generated health care, you would have a point, TTR.
It does. There's a reason the AMA, AHA, ANA, AARP, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum were all lined up against this shit; their members don't work for free and there's no alternative to insurance when it comes to a somewhat rare/limited resource like health care. Poll physicians and see how likely they see the possibility of returning to fee-for-service. Their demand is limited by high standards for acceptance to medical school, and that won't change. But if you knew anything about standards - or school - then you'd get that. The care isn't free and the only way to get it is to make sure the payment mechanism is sound. Insurance is the only way to do it. Without it physicians would only be able to offer current care standards to a wealthy elite, and substandard charity would be the norm for everyone else. Consider that health care "not generated." And that decreased volume for good care would eventually guarantee that they'd lose the numbers to test and find robust ways to improve the quality of the care they deliver.
You are bankrupting the future with your trillions in debt leading -inexorably - to high inflation.
I am? That's funny. Why do you even care about future generations if you can't bother to care about the lives of Americans today? Post-ACA has brought spending or its growth way down.
The 1970s called. They want their monetary and fiscal policies back.
Ooooh... very original! Can I try that game?
Ancient Rome called. They want their low moral standards and medical know-how back. And their ignorance of macroeconomics. You seem to have taken that from them, also.
You really do feel that your brain would explode if you let any factual knowledge into it, don't you? How do you get by in life this way?
Kid Rock ahead in Michigan!
How's Robert Ritchie polling?
Kid Rock? Republicans with sex tapes usually don't do very well. But he does have all the other credentials: As ridiculous as a kid and as dumb as a rock. From the standpoint of a candidate on paper, anyway - he does meet all the Republican requirements. Even the wealth part.
Those groups want monopoly rents. Nice that you criticize somebody about macroeconomic knowledge while ignoring Nobel Laureate James Buchanan.
You support a system that requires doctors perform expensive record keeping in lieu of patient care and imagine insurance - which requires paperwork - allows more care. Did you just invent the 27 hour day?
This is pathetic trolling. I tell you what, I will make your argument, faithfully, if you attempt to make mine. Give it a shot.
"I will make your argument, faithfully, if you attempt to make mine"
Debating trolls is a waste of time but go ahead and see if anything intelligent turns up.
Those groups want monopoly rents.
LOL! And what do YOU want? A monopoly on denying them and their patients what they need to live? HAHA. You have no service or skill to offer in place of that needed service; wonder why? Other than a fact that you're a total failure who doesn't understand shit about the world? Maybe no one wants what YOU'RE selling! You can't relate to what it means to need something valuable to live - let alone to have something valuable to offer!
Doctors now should not keep records on their patients and their care, you say? Hilarious! Maybe you can have fake medical records along with fake news. I'm sure that will work swimmingly. And "paperwork!" In the era of the EMR. Too funny. Apparently all these transitions to electronic records need to be replaced with papyrus, since that's the era you live in. Ancient Egyptian medicine for Birkelstock.
Ask yourself why you hate Americans and their basic needs and the people best able to provide them. The elite special interests - much richer than doctors or nurses or retirees opposing them, BTW - have about as strong a set of monopoly rents as they come. They bought off nearly the entire GOP - and still couldn't get them to take their marching orders. FAILURE.
Too bad it had to take a dying guy like McCain to finally come to Jesus and see the light.
Stop making your life a waste and do something worth being remembered for. A thousand years from now if these comments get read you'll come across worse than Ebenezer Scrooge. At least Scrooge had a purpose, though. It's like you're too dimwitted to know that there isn't even a reason for all the cruelty you want to inflict on Americans. You make your ideology of right-wing social engineering a religion and cease all further thought on it.
Pathetic.
Debating trolls is a waste of time but go ahead and see if anything intelligent turns up.
Birkel called you a rent-seeker, K. Do you agree with him? 'Cause that's basically the most intelligent thing you'll find that this "intelligent debater" you see him as has to say on the topic.
His answer to the problems of American medical care is to abolish medical records AND the training/licensing? requirements for physicians. If you've got the balls to admit that that's what you see as intelligent debate on the topic, come on out and say so. Stop being a chickensh*t, already.
Take a stand. Get on the record. Stop hiding behind the shadows and have the courage of the convictions that Birkel, even if he doesn't understand them, will at least put on the record.
Stop being a back-stabber. Try being a "front-stabber," like your new news-reader, Scaramucci.
Go on. The incredible Trump legacy depends on it.
Birkel is the High Priest of a right-wing social engineering project of Babylonian proportions.
How horrible to see it all come crashing down like that, Birkie!
Maybe you'll get on with the killing of more Americans and the undertaxing of their elites some other day.
Incapable of making my arguments in good faith? I can make yours, easily.
Give it a sjot, smart-moral-ethical guy
Shot, even...
Your arguments? I'll make my own, thank you very much.
You called providers "monopoly rent" seekers. Your words, not mine. Read your 6:42 comment. Or did you think you could be like Trump and say one thing, and then deny you said it the next day?
Funny thing, this technology stuff. It's like the words from 6:42 that you want to deny are still right there! The nerve of them!
When you're ready to take yourself seriously let me know. I don't debate people who aren't sure of what they want to argue. Let alone people who blame that uncertainty on others.
Oh, and you also used the term in response to my mentioning the AARP? Are they too seeking "monopoly rents?"
How dare organizations representing the elderly actually speak out on behalf of, you know, the elderly.
We should have 6-year olds responsible for the political organization of 65-year olds. Yep, that would make a lot more sense.
Yes, they are rent seekers.
Now what?
The AARP is an insurance company. They represent the elderly like the teacher's unions represent the kids.
What are you gonna do about it, Trumpkins? Huh? You gonna "primary" Lisa Murkowski? You'll need to wait until 2022 to do that. By which time I expect that Donald Trump will be serving a sentence in a federal correctional institution.
You gonna "primary" Susan Collins? She may be the governor of the State of Maine, and retired from the Senate before you can do that.
You gonna "primary" John McCain. Haha! I am dreaming of a conversation between the hero McCain and the draft-dodging weasel Trump, in which McCain says something about how he prefers politicians who weren't captured by the Tea Party.
I.
Just.
Won't.
Vote.
I don't OWE the GOP anything.
The "now what" is what you are going to do about that.
You either deny them control over their standards requirements, leading to an influx of physicians as inept at medicine as you - maybe even with a gas station attendant's uniform and a sewn-on name badge that says "Joe."
Or you accept that the limited supply, the scarce resource, is best distributed through the system of insurance (either public or private or both, as we have. It doesn't matter) - similar, in that sense, to what exists.
So how are you going to "liberate" this market, Birkelstock? No more licensing requirements? And how would such a hard-core capitalist like you claim to be prevent insurance markets (privately or publicly funded) - the most efficient way of distributing care - from continuing?
What's your answer? Or is it that, just like the president, you don't have one?
Maybe, like him, you don't have a clue - other than just a political-ideological agenda and talking points to cover up the fact that you didn't know "how complex" it was - as if you weren't the only one who didn't know?
Go ahead. Lay it out there. Propose your policy.
Who am I kidding? You don't have one. You don't have a fucking clue how healthcare works and even less of a proposal for what to do about it.
You just use it as one more topic upon which to graft your opportunity for meaningless pseudo-political talking points about freedom.
Enjoy life in your right-wing socially engineered fantasy bubble. Enjoy having nothing useful to tell people.
The AARP is an insurance company. They represent the elderly like the teacher's unions represent the kids.
How nice to know how close Birken's finger is to the pulse of the needs and desires of the elderly, and of the kids. Certainly they would be much better off having Burkel speak for them than the AARP or the teachers.
Borkel - is there anyone you don't speak for? Man, you certainly are a regular vox populi. Man of the people - ALL the people. Blurpel speaks for all of them! Just like the politburo did.
All Americans should count themselves lucky to have in Barfel the True One who speaks for all of them. Defending their interests. Who's looking out for you, asked sex harassed O'Reilly? How lucky America was to have Borpel answering the call.
You go, girl.
Free doctors? I answered that above, Mr. Reading Comprehension Problem.
Your spelling needs work. Many of those are repetitive.
The AARP is an insurance company. They represent the elderly like the teacher's unions represent the kids.
Yes, I will have nothing to do with them.
Just like the AMA is a real rent seeker with their Harvard Public Health joint venture on Medicare fees and their theft of the California Medical Association's "Relative Value Scale," which the AMA got the FTC to ban and then issued as the Current Procedural Terminology, or "CPT Code" book. The AMA exists for the benefit of a few Board members.
I knew guys who worked on the RVS as volunteers. The AMA stole it with the help of the government, It was 1972 and I remember well.
The FTC banned it as "Restraint of Trade" and we had to use Xerox copies for a year as every insurance company and Medicare used it for billing. The FTC had demanded all copies be surrendered,
Then in 1974, the AMA came out with the CPT which was identical.
Yeah right. The AMA. You can't accuse them of rent-seeking without accusing every physician. Either you're for entry barriers (such as competitive training and licensing) or you're not and if you are then you admit that health care will never function as the sort of "normal" free market that American conservatives find in all sorts of small-government places such as the Somalian light arms market.
Get coherent or go home.
I'd never tout the AMA as a "perfectly incorruptible" lobby (as if there is one) but every cartel needs a representative. Bashing them for their morally questionable nature may give one the comfort of political wiggle room but it's still a dodge. Reactionary ideologues and other elitist medicine restrictionists simply can't admit that health care isn't and will never be a normal market, but that it's still possible to get it to work much better than it does currently.
So, they're a cartel and not rent seeking?
Do you even logic, bro?
Nothing is better than winning an argument because the other side argues itself into your established, consistent position.
That is especially true of a sophomoric sophist.
Chuck is right about election law, election lawyering and redistricting. Anyone who participates in the political process knows this.
However, I disagree with him on the electability of Kid Rock. Look at Al Franken in Minnesota.
McCain. His legacy will be as a bitter hateful jealous loser.
So, they're a cartel and not rent seeking?
Do you even logic, bro?
Sure do. I admit that they're part of entry barriers but unlike you I possess the presence of mind to admit that those are natural and necessary entry barriers. You fail to see or admit what the issue requires, or doesn't. Either you want to do something about those entry barriers, or you don't. It's part of your mission of being vague and failing to deal with the actual reality of a situation.
Nothing is better than winning an argument because the other side argues itself into your established, consistent position.
That is especially true of a sophomoric sophist.
Keep masturbating there. Are you a left or a righty? Where do you cum? We know Bannon sucks his own cock. You like to mentally masturbate. Thanks for pushing yourself right up to the edge of excitement with that rent-seeking charge, and just not knowing what to do with it. You're about as much a tease as a prom date at a Mormon high school. Just completely useless when it comes to figuring out a resolution to any issue, but endlessly ideologically masturbating around its edges.
Who taught you to be such a loser in life? No one - NO ONE - can run a business, manage or even be a decent employee if all they do is jump up and down about a problem while completely failing to investigate or choose a resolution.
When you pretend to argue with me about a position I haven't taken, does that make you feel smart? Do you recognize how bad you are at arguing? Seriously, you just fail at every turn to address seriously an opposing argument. I assume you are just being an ass hole instead of the more negative assumption that you are incapable of logical thought.
As for the tawdry insults, you are lousy at them. It's base. And it affects me not a bit.
It's just not that hard:
https://www.aei.org/publication/steve-horwitz-8-steps-to-reform-health-care-lower-costs-improve-quality-and-increase-access/#discussion
...but you have to base it on core economic principles and not rents sought.
And so we steam ahead toward single payer, and finally toward national bankruptcy.
As for the tawdry insults, you are lousy at them. It's base. And it affects me not a bit.
And neither do facts, reason or evidence - so nobody cares.
Offer a fact instead of spleen-venting and gratuitous talking points. You cannot or won't. Potato. Spud.
Post a Comment