I think I blinked and missed it.
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Get their name right.
They’re the Freedom Cauc.
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These days, anyone with a handful of friends and a rich patron calls themselves a think tank.
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Freedom Caulk! Prevents leaks! Not very effective.
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Curse you, white women!
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… which is what makes the EU leaders’ vow of unity, made in the last couple of hours, especially worrying.
Worse than that, even - because they’re the ones who are going to be blowing up the ACA by sabotaging it on the federal level as they have been on the state level up until now. Once it’s thoroughly broken - even worse than their legislation would have accomplished - with millions of people not getting care, or getting care they can’t afford, once people have suffered and died for a while, they either will have achieved their goals, or they can more easily get some other legislation in place.
Yeah, that’s true - and quietly sabotaging the ACA behind the scenes accomplishes many of the same things and (apparently) leaves their hands clean, politically.
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So in the good news, the CIA & FBI have averted a major terrorist attack on the US.
Apparently millions of people were at risk from a shadowy terror group known as “The GOP” that is believed to have been behind many previous attacks. There are suspicions that they have links to dangerous foreign powers and middle-eastern theocratic organisations that have caused strife across the world for thousands of years.
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This, all of this. Democrats seem to have this weird tendency to despair about everything, to the point where this, a big, obvious and humiliating defeat for Trump, Paul Ryan and congressional GOP, makes you worry about being played.
What happened here? Ryan and Trump both were made look incompetent and weak. The House GOP was made look incompetent and crazy. Their big huge anti-Obamacare bill went down in flames, not because the Democrats hated it (though they did), but because they couldn’t get enough votes from their own majority to pass it.
Of course Trump is going to blame the Dems. That’s what he does anyway! And of course some GOP voters are going to lap it all up, never mind it being obvious bullshit. But a lot of people are going to see it what it is, even if they don’t like what they see.
This defeat means that Trump will have a lot harder time getting any of his ideas done in the Congress in the future. It means that the Freedom Caucus is going to be emboldened and unruly, and the more moderate GOP reps are pissed off and scared of the voters’ reactions back in their home districts. It means that Ryan’s authority is weaker, his position less secure, and he now has good reasons to be mad at Trump. It means that the hypothetical impeachment is a lot more likely than it used to be.
So: relax, people. Rejoice! This was a sound defeat for the Orange One and the GOP. It’s not the end of either, of course, not by a long shot, but it’s unquestionably a blow to their ability to do anything. So celebrate this win, now, and get back to protesting and resisting, tomorrow. 
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Well we’ve pretty well seen how intellectually defunct their whole movement is. They’re pushing one policy. Cut everything to give tax breaks to the wealthy and various benefits to big business. They don’t have a healthcare plan even with 7 years to work on one because the ACA is the best they could come up with in the preceeding 20 years. And they called that EVIL for marketing/elctioneering purposes. So instead they peg marketable idiots who done talk real good as their thought leaders. But the central policy is the same.and it’s still bad. And even their own base doesn’t really support it when it comes down to brass tacks.
All they have left is obstruction and rigging elections.
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read that as Gallstone Institute
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Near enough. It’s Islamophobia Central.
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Anyone taking bets on how long it’ll be before they try to slip “Trumpdontcare” in via another bill, one completely unrelated to health care?
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Nowadays “think tank” is synonymous with an alternate version of academia constructed for the purpose of justifying conservative ideology because reality’s well-known liberal bias was unfair.
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He’s right! Republicans are better than Democrats because Republicans make bad bills and then they can’t, um, fix them, so…
Nope. I lost it.
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Bleh! I started paying attention to how dodgy right “think tanks” were during the Harper years. (Yanking charity status from groups like PEN for “political activities”, while their own highly-political Frazer Institute coasted right along.)
But I had no idea that it was that bad! I guess the argument “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts” is just wasted meat-flapping noise to those people.
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You guys use the word “wonk” in a really weird way. It translates badly into Australian, I had to look it up!
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Yep. And as a longtime practitioner of aikido, I can assure you that, even in that real-life situation, people will do exactly that. (-:
I’ve found that there’s nothing that will piss off a belligerent drunk quite so much as being unable to hit me when he tries, and repeatedly running into the wall instead.
[It’s why I’m no good as a bouncer — I enjoy pissing off belligerent drunks too much. (-:]
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