My theory is it had an uptick because lately the media started using “Affordable Care Act” more often than Obamacare. Who can dislike affordable care? There’s a reason the bill that took your rights away was called The Patriot Act.
You are a saint for putting it so mildly. As a US citizen, I would be far harsher, as superbly summed up by @nungesser:
I really can’t add anything.
In response to your original post, which I misread egregiously, I don’t remember a situation in which a president has repeatedly promised something so incredibly specific and then delivered exactly the opposite, it’s true. Do his fans have such short memories that they forget him saying “I will give you free, government-supplied comprehensive healthcare” and are now cheering for… higher premiums and lower coverage?
Just as passage of the Clinton’s “pay as you go” tax bill in 1993 led to heavy losses of congressional Democrat seats, the AHCA passage assures scorched earth under the Republicans in 2018. Expect to hear the figure of 30K+ annual deaths from unavailable health care in the run up to the 2018 midterm election.
In a way, the whole debacle has been a poison pill for the Republicans to swallow. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that they wouldn’t even acknowledge that the whole health care/health insurance axis was in a troubling state. The effort to replace the ACA with Trumpdon’tcare has caused some interesting mental gymnastics for them, I’m sure.
I’m not optimistic that they will deal with the problem, but the problem has been ground in the public’s face quite successfully. The next disaster: Big Business shrugging off the expense of providing health insurance for their employees. Why should our Job Creating Overlords be saddled with such bureaucratic regulations? Lobbyists are standing by.
Obama, right?
GIgolos gonna gig.
well, so far the republicans have been successful at a) stopping people who do indeed want to vote, and b) ensuring that those who manage to vote have votes which are so diluted ( via gerrymandering and the electoral college ) their vote doesn’t matter ( much ). moreover, neo-liberals from both parties have helped ensure no matter who wins, wall st. is always in the white house – dispiriting everyone else.
if you want to get people to vote:
- make voting days federal holidays ( and, or allow mail in ballots )
- remove all of the various newly established id requirements
- eliminate gerrymandering
- assign electoral votes proportionality ( and, or get rid of the electoral college )
- restrict large campaign donations, and eliminate anonymous campaign spending
blaming people for not voting fails to recognize the serious flaws which stop them from doing so.
Fixed etc.
Edit typo.
The only conclusion I can come to:
They are raging nihilists who are so angry that they don’t have everything they think they were promised that they don’t want anyone to have anything at all.
Specific policies and proposals? They couldn’t care less. They are just living, breathing tantrums. I know we’re supposed to get in close and nod sagely and sympathize with their “economic uncertainty” (not exactly exclusive to Trump voters) and beat ourselves up for not agreeing that building a 20-foot-high wall is our most pressing national need, but enough is enough. They wanted to fuck shit up, and they fucked shit up.
“The American people are clear they want this done, so I think we have to strike when the iron’s hot”
Well, he was right about that, at least. If it weren’t for the support of millions of Americans, the Republicans wouldn’t have the power to do this. As much as I hate our politicians, it’s American voters who keep putting them there. If it were a simple matter of clearing out the corrupt politicians, I’d have some hope for the future, but time and time again, there are millions of Americans voting against their own interests out of petty hate, racism, fear and sheer stupidity. And it’s only going to get worse. We’re never going to see universal healthcare, a system pretty much every other civilized country on the face of the planet takes for granted, within my lifetime. Taking one tiny step in that general direction has prompted vicious and mindless backlash, the pendulum swinging the other way so hard that it’s broken the clock.
People have been telling me I should stay and fight, that leaving the country is just giving up, but you know what? Fuck it. Someday, not too long from now, I’m going to be old, or sick, and I refuse to quietly give up and die because I’m too poor to afford care. Moving to another country is probably a dream- I’ll never be able to afford to, or they won’t take me, or I’ll have too many loved ones here who can’t come with me. But at least the hope is there. And if I do make it, I can concentrate on making things better in whatever country becomes my new home, on making sure they never let things get as bad as they did here. And if people are too stupid or hateful to listen, at least I’ll have my health, because people outside of the United States, while far from perfect, aren’t completely fucking insane.
“Whore” need not be gender-specific since men are just as capable of selling themselves as women. It certainly can be a sexist insult if it’s specifically targeted at women (implying women are sexual commodities who exist for the pleasure of men) but that largely depends on the context.
It does feel inappropriate and unfair to demean sex workers by likening them to Republican congresspeople though.
i can only imagine that’s the point of the republican’s acronym: sow confusion about which is what. otherwise, im sure they would have named it something more memorable.
That’s why we gotta make sure the term TrumpDon’tCare gets attached to it.
I won’t hold my breath.
I agree with everything you are saying, but non-presidential voting participation in 2014 was 36.4%. There is very little to blame the typical 25-30% drop in participation between presidential cycles on other than voters not voting.
The whole reason there is neoliberalism is because of the awful, awful, awful voter turnout historically in the United States. Our peak turnout is still under 2/3 participation, and that has a lot to do with societal practices beyond political efforts.
Ignoring the gendering of the word “whore” is not honest. It’s like saying we live in a post-racist society, and therefore there’s no raced frission when white folks walk around calling people “niggaz.”
Wanna try that again?
That’s absolutely true for the slash-and-burn nihilists, but it’s definitely not true for the huge numbers of older, conservative, small-town Americans who voted Trump (or voted against Hillary, whichever) and for whom Trump made saving Medicare & Medicaid a central part of his campaign. He absolutely promised older Americans, “we’ll save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts,” and warned them that "Hillary Clinton wants to knock the hell out of your Medicare, Medicaid. And I’m going to save them, OK?”
TrumpCare guts Medicaid by nearly $900 million dollars. It caps benefits for the elderly and takes away protections for seniors. I don’t think older Americans are going to be too thrilled to have their Medicaid taken away.
Roger That!
I disagree. This “smaller, worse, cheaper” bag of crap needs to stay hanging around the neck of all Republicans who voted for it. It’s their albatross. Trump will be gone soon enough, the Repugs will never die. Republican Care, or more properly Republican Death Panels has a nice ring to it.