Cute Kids

Be a real shame if anything happened to them.

If y'know what I mean.

Republicans should just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2017

“We’ll just let Obamacare fail. We’re not going to own it.”

-President Trump, describing his plans for 17 percent of the US economy.

— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) July 18, 2017

Yes, President Stupid.

We all know exactly what you mean.

And for any freshly-minted "independents" who want to pretend that the barbarism and hostage-taking of the GOP began with the Rise of Trump, let's remember that well before they put an unhinged racist idiot in the White House, the Republican Congress was already setting new land-speed records for sedition and moral depravity all by themselves.

From me back in 2013:

Let The Hostage-Taking Begin

Against my better judgement, here is a bit of anal leakage from the thing that The National Review has devolved into:

House to Vote on Defunding Obamacare

By Robert Costa

Leadership sources tell me the House GOP will soon vote on a continuing resolution that simultaneously funds the federal government and defunds Obamacare. Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are expected to announce the decision at Wednesday’s closed-door conference meeting.

This means the conservatives who have been urging Boehner to back a defunding effort as part of the CR have won a victory, at least in terms of getting the leadership to go along with their strategy. But getting such a CR through the Democratic Senate and signed into law will be very difficult — and many House Republican insiders say a “Plan B” may be needed.

...

Earlier in the day, the Most Useless Carbon Nodule on Liberal TeeVee -- 

-- told me that, in effect, Barack Obama's Entire!Presidency! hinges on winning a budget fight which was ginned up out of thin air by genuinely crazy people who are perfectly willing to nuke the global economy unless they receive Barack Obama's personal and abject apology for existing and a promise to gut his own, signature legislation.

The meatsticks have built a cult out of killing Obamacare, and their angry, stupid god demands an angry, stupid sacrifice.

Of course Mr. Halperin made no mention whatsoever of the barking-madness of the Republican half of the upcoming budget negotiations, instead opting to incant phrases like "conventional wisdom" and "Washington Insiders" to paste a figleaf over the fact that he was delivering John Boehner's ransom note (Unless you cook our meth for us, you're doomed, Barack Obama! Doooooomed!) on live teevee.  

Of course, this is not really John Boehner's fault, or Eric Cantor's or Ted Cruz's:  the fault lies with squarely with the dog-loyal dregs of the Republican base, who cannot shamble off to their unquiet graves fast enough to suit me.  

My own theory of civic engagement is that such people -- along with their charlatan leaders, tinpot demagogues, and media enablers -- need to be bum-rushed the hell out of the corridors of power and back to squatting on corner barstools raving about hippies where the belong, after which the adults can figure out how to fix what 30 years of unremitting stupid has broken.

But that's just my theory.

There is another theory that holds I have it all wrong -- that the entire shebang should be turned over to the hostage takers.  Just flip the keys to the Gohmerts' and Cruzes and Kings...after which Underpants Gnomes! 

...after which Libertarian Utopia!

At first blush this theory appears to be an even more aggressively idiotic view of the world and how it works than the season finale of "The Newsroom", but some big brains with much, much bigger megaphones than I have absolutely swear by it.

Like, for instance, this guy: