Sunday, October 15, 2017

Sunday Morning Comin' Down



Since the Sunday Shows were the same fawning, repetitive puppet theater of trite, played-out nonsense they have consistently been year after year after year --


-- I going to jump back in time.

To Friday.

For this absolutely textbook example of how completely the biggest and most corrosive lie of all -- the Big Lie of Both Sides Do It -- has polluted out nation's political groundwater.

(And, as I confirm anecdotally every single day out here in the middle of Middle America, when talking to any Republican or Conservative about anything remotely related to the subject of "political accountability" the interval between the first words out of your mouth and a mindless, fully-automated riposte of "Yeah, but really, it's Both Sides.  Yadda yadda what mainstream Murricans really want... Yadda yadda Coastal Elites..." can be measured in nanoseconds.)

Behold how utterly the Beltway Republican Alibi Machine has destroyed our ability to have an honest, grownup political conversation about anything with anyone on the Right...



Rush transcript thanks to the lovely and brilliant Blue Gal, with highlights added to attract your eye:

​CHRIS HAYES:  Tom Reed is a Republican from New York who voted for the House bill to replace Obamacare. How does stopping the payments make anyone's lives better when we know it will make people's lives worse?

REP TOM REED:  Well, first of all, these are illegal payments. It has been ruled by the courts they are illegal. They are not in the law, they are unauthorized by the executive branch and what the president has done is put the pressure on Congress to deal with this problem and I'm part of 46 members on both sides of the aisle that put together a proposal that will address this issue of the destabilizing of the marketplace.

HAYES:  So just to go back for a second. A federal judge had ruled that the -- the payments were not appropriated by Congress. But he stayed that pending appeal. So just to acknowledge, this is an affirmative decision by the president he is under no obligation to do this and he is choosing to do this and explicitly, he is taking people's health care ransom.

REED:  And these payments are not authorized and we have to go through congressional process to get it paid and the president is following the law and we're elected to fix this problem.

HAYES:  This is the thing that drives people crazy. It is 266 days -- there is nothing in a has passed --

REED:  Because we have been playing shirts and skins, us versus them.  Enough -- enough of -- that's why I'm in the Problem Solvers Saucus...

HAYES:  I know from your the Problem Solvers Caucus but people in Oregon that said their premium is going up and across the country --

REED: And I've been seeing those notices for years and the lack of choice across the country.  This is a problem.

HAYES:  I know that. But this is gone up more over and above, it is not just the same thing. Yesterday the premiums were one thing and today they are 15 or 20% higher. So you have a complaint from those people getting the bills in the mail where you guys, Republicans, in Congress-- which controls all three branches of government-- can't solve the problem without making them pay more money out of -- pocket.

REED:  This is not about Republicans, this is about Congress. Democrats and Republicans solving this problem. For the people we represent. --

HAYES:  Congressman, you control --

REED:  --appreciate the people in the Problem Solvers leading on this issue.

HAYES:  But you are not leading!

REED:  Yes, we are.

HAYES:  But I hate to tell you

REED:  -- it is 80% victory on both sides of the aisle to come forward to solve the health care problem...

HAYES:  If you were leading and "solving the problems" was happening we wouldn't be in a position where people are getting notices from insurance companies saying your premiums are going up.

REED:  And that is why the extremes on both sides and right and left putting us in this gridlock positions have to be broken. We are part of the effort to do this.

HAYES:  Congressman, the President of the United States took this action today. I feel like we're -- we're not acknowledging that. The president took an action today. It was an action he had not taken before and an action that he didn't have to take as evidenced by the fact that it took him 266 days to take it. So why is it the case that people should have worse health care or pay more money for it, because Congress, and the Republican Party in particular, which controls Congress, cannot fix their health care?

REED:  I think you nailed it right there. Congress needs to act to fix this problem. And that is where it rests and I fully take that -- that path in order to solve this -- it will take legislation working together to get things done.

HAYES:  So here is a proposal, a lot of people in your party do not like long legislation, one of the knocks on the ACA. You could find a three or four lines appropriation bill to appropriate the bill to the floor tomorrow. Can do you that?

REED:  That will not fix the whole problem. We could start with the marketplace --

HAYES:  But it is a problem!

REED:  Repeal the employer mandate up to 500 employees and pay for it in reimbursement that will drive health care costs down and you have a solution to build off of and find a foundation to grow.

HAYES:  I hope you have success in Congress forestalling the disaster and we have you back on the program. But..

REED:  -- I'm working for it.

HAYES:  But forgive me for sharing the skepticism of a lot of Americans.
Godspeed.

REED:  I appreciate that. There are many that want to get this done for the American people.

HAYES:  We'll see. ...
It's as if they made a word cloud of every single shitty column David Brooks has written since 2005.

Creamed off the top five percent.

Liquefied it.

Added the extract of Matthew Dowd's pineal gland. Ron Founier's toe-jam and the ashes of David Broder.

And then passed it around the Beltway like a bottle of Boone's Farm at a drive-in movie.

And lest you think this is some recent Republican Trump-deflecting innovation, allow me to direct your attention to this amazing performance by Little Marco Rubio back in 2012 when he got locked into a recursive dumbass coding loop and literally could not stop replying to every fucking question with the same stupid answer (despite a million angry emails, the embed code Comedy Central uses still auto-starts all videos, which I hate, so here is a link to the video if you want to see it, and here is some of what I wrote about it back in 2012):
In case you missed Jon Stewart's award-verging "interview" with Marco Rubio, here is your rush transcript of Senator Rubio's answer to Jon Stewart every single time Mr. Stewart tried very respectfully to point out that Senator Rubio was, um, lying, and that the relentless, pathological obstructiveness of the Republican Party was unmatched by anything Democrats have done in modern history.
"Both sides..."

"Well, you know, both sides..."

"Both Democrats and Republicans..."

"That's just politics..."

"The Democrats left us no choice..."

"Both sides..."

"Democrats and Republicans..."

"Both sides..."

"Both Democrats and Republicans..."
And so forth, to the point of being comical...

To repeat the same point I have made thousands of times already, Both Siderism is the crutch that holds up the Right.

Knock it down, and the Right begins to collapse.  Let it stand and nothing will ever change except for the worse.

It's that simple.

#BothSidesDont


Behold, a Tip Jar!

6 comments:

dinthebeast said...

Even Steve the reptile Schmidt complimented Chris Hayes for not having an aneurysm while talking to Mr. Reed when he came on for the next segment, and that only means one thing: They are doing this deliberately to fuck with us, they know what they're doing, and at this point the only rational response to their toxic lies is a two by four upside their despicable heads.

Bonk!

-Doug in Oakland

Robt said...

We demand Democrats vote on everything we put on the floor. When I say we, republicans make the law and nod their head yes.

Dems are not helping us confiscate billions from health care to give to rich people via tax cuts.

We demand Democrats kneel. But not like those football players.

They need to work together with republicans to solve everything. Even though we will never listen to them . Like the 8 years of working together with Obama,

Chris Hayes at any time, could have interrupted as the host and asked this clump of used Trump toilet paper.

Take his time and provide his list of all the togetherness republicans provided during the health care debates?


Provide any and all "positive" actions republicans have taken from the beginning of the ACA.

Or why is the ACA good for Alaska and maine to keep it as long as their senator vote to take it away from all the other states?

But Chris wants to peddle down the road of courts and appeals. I guess Hayes wants to be able to book this guy back on the show and have others on that will spank him and repeat the programmed talking points beat into his ass at his last visit to heritage or the Kochs seminars.

bowtiejack said...

"It's as if they made a word cloud of every single shitty column David Brooks has written since 2005."

Kudos!

Rodnchance said...

The very last thing that a republic congress wants to do is have to take a side and actually do something because that makes it so much harder to place blame on Democrats.
They are not going to make a decision on Iran or ACA/healthcare or anything else except maybe name a Post Office.

Alfred Lehmberg said...

Bothsiderists need to be drowned, staked, beheaded and then burned, the ashes swirled in holy water, capped in a pyrex bottle, wrapped in lead foil, centered in a large block of reinforced concrete, and then thrown into the deepest ocean trench!

The Trench could then be teleported to the center of one of Neptune's more stable and frigid moons.

Alfred Lehmberg said...

There can be no agreement, consensus, cooperation, or collegiality. No sense, sensibility, or sentience. No meeting, no joining, and no kumbayah. One does not just _reason_ with rabies!