Senate Republicans begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act. They all voted against an amendment to preserve the famous ban on insurers kicking people off policies for pre-existing conditions; think that'll show up in Democrat attack ads come 2018? I kid, of course; these are Democrats we're talking about. For my money, the worst thing any Senator had to say about it came from Mississippi's Roger Wicker: "This is our opportunity to keep our campaign promise...This is our opportunity to help the president-elect and the vice president-elect keep their campaign promises and show to the American people that elections have consequences." The part about "campaign promises" is irrelevant, since we good Americans communicate our will to our representatives regardless of their promises. And the part about "consequences" sounds rather like a threat.
Michael Corcoran calls 2016 "A Bad Year for Democracy" but the "Best Ever" for "Big Media." Why, it's almost like the two phenomena are related! Seriously, though, big media corporations got almost $2.5 billion in campaign ads, CNN demanded "40 times its normal rate" for ads during its September 16 Presidential debate, and even the NFL -- the NFL! -- seemed to lose viewers to cable news channels during the campaign. This is why we need a Constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United and corporate "personhood." It's also why we need to be able to buy cable channels a la carte -- when we can withhold money from these clowns, they'll clean up their act.
Buried in the House rules resolution that failed to deep-six the Office of Congressional Ethics is this dung nugget: the House has forbidden the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the cost of the Affordable Care Act's repeal. What do they have to hide, you wonder? Well, the CBO estimated back in June, before having their hands tied, that Obamacare repeal would cost between $137 billion and $353 billion over the next decade -- and the CBO, having been hamstrung by the Republican House in other ways in recent years, is probably low-balling that figure.
Apparently the so-called Project Veritas group -- a creation of James O'Keefe, who destroyed ACORN and almost destroyed Shirley Sherrod's life with deceptively-edited videos -- has been trying to bribe left-wing activists to riot at Mr. Trump's inaugural. Of course, the "liberal" media won't report this, since they're still embarrassed that they completely fell for Mr. O'Keefe's ACORN scam despite, you know, having had all that post-modernist literary training at major universities that would have alerted them to the presence of suspicious edits in film. Really, some people are so smart, they're dumb.
In a related note, BuzzFeed informs us that a horrible anti-Trump sign at an anti-Trump protest back in November was actually the brainchild of a right-wing activist looking, of course, to discredit protestors. Why can't they play fair, you wonder? Because if they play fair, they'll lose. And why are their protests so witless? I sure hope it isn't because liberals possess the lion's share of wit in America, because I do like to believe the best about people. I mean, Evelyn Waugh is very funny.
Finally, I understand Donald Trump had a, shall we say, spirited exchange with the press on Wednesday, dressing down a reporter in front of his peers. But if you remember wishing Barack Obama would do more than dismiss the "chattering classes" -- that is, if you wished he had offered a cogent critique analyzing how bad the "liberal" media is at its job and why -- you can't get too upset about Mr. Trump's latest tantrum, particularly when the liberal "media"'s response to his abuse is please-sir-may-I-have-another. And I still find all the "liberal" media's handwringing over "fake news" to have a pot-kettle-black problem. They might, you know, want to try doing actual journalism about things that really affect good Americans' lives, instead of pandering to the alleged shallowness of the American people for easy money. They might also want to consider whether the report alleging various "compromising personal and financial information" might have come out shortly before the press conference for a reason.
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