Moving to Plutocracy

“The wanton disrespect that these elected Republicans showed Mueller was perhaps the most alarming testament yet to Trump’s total conquest of the Party. In today’s G.O.P., as in Stalin’s Russia, evidently, decades of loyal public service count for nothing when the leader and his henchmen decide someone represents a threat and the apparatchiks have been ordered to take that person down.”

John Cassidy – The New Yorker

Read it here.

Sulking Republicans

Nancy Pelosi demonstrated how to bait the current occupant of the White House

Republicans, that Grand Old Party: the party that strongly believes in personal responsibility; that fetishizes John Galt; that legislates work requirement for SNAP – aka food stamp – recipients; believes that if you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat; that thinks you shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s medical care; that claims to be working for the American people – yes that Republican Party.

Former and soon-to-be-next House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demonstrated how to bait the current occupant of the White House when she declared he did not have the votes to fund his border wall. What makes her so sure? Maybe it’s because lame-duck Republican representatives who lost their seats in the 2018 election are not bothering to show up for Congressional votes. They apparently have decided they’re not going to work for the remainder of their terms.

No doubt they are still cashing their paychecks, however, and utilizing their taxpayer-funded health coverage.

US Health Care in Sound Bites

“Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”

“I usually find that those who are loudest in protesting against medical help by the federal government are those who do not need help.”

“I have had some bitter disappointments as president, but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat opposition to a national compulsory health insurance program.”

President Harry S. Truman

 

“We must seize the moment of freedom’s triumph abroad to make America not just a rich society but a good society. The richest country in the world cannot tolerate the fact that we have the highest per capita health care costs in the world and yet 38 million of our people are unable to get adequate medical care because they cannot afford it.”

President Richard M. Nixon

 

“People can go to the state that they want to live in. States have all kinds of different policies and there are disparities among states for many things: driving restrictions, alcohol, whatever. We’re putting choices back in the hands of the states. That’s what Jeffersonian democracy provides for.”

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC)

 

“We are giving people actual freedom.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

 

“The only people who have to worry about rising costs under Republicans’ health bill are the very tiny segment of the country that waits until they’re sick to buy insurance.”

Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR)

 

“You can’t compare the rest of the world to us. They do not have the big diverse populations that we have. They do not have the inner-city populations that we have.”

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL)

 

“My understanding is that it will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, you know, they are doing the things to keep their bodies healthy.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)

 

(Refused to comment on his yes vote.)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

 

“Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID)

 

“A friend of mine was in Scotland recently. He got very, very sick. They took him by ambulance and he was there four days. He was really in trouble, and when they released him and he said, ‘Where do I pay?’ And they said, ‘There’s no charge.’ Not only that, he said it was like great doctors, great care. I mean we could have a great system like that in this country.”

“We’re going to have insurance for everyone.”

“There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it.  That’s not going to happen with us.  People can expect to have great health care.”

President Donald J. Trump

“Am I doing OK? I’m President! Hey, I’m President! Can you believe it, right?”

 

And in other Republican news…

Minnesota’s state Republican chair apologized Monday to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for a post on the 7th Congressional District Republican Party’s Facebook page calling the congressman “Minnesota’s Head Muslim Goat Humper.”

More From Molly

molly-ivins-color_img2Molly Ivins from 2003, Texas is the future:

“These are Shiite Republicans – they don’t compromise, they don’t deal, they don’t look for the middle way. Because they believe they’re right. They think it’s them against evil. And everybody who ain’t them is evil. I’m just warning you. This is about to happen everywhere. The whole country is being turned into the state whose proudest boast is that sometimes we’re ahead of Mississippi.”