Tuesday Open Thread [5.12.15]

Bill Maher ridicules Texans reaction Jade Helm… by ewillies

Yeah, Jebbie is done. Bryon York:

“Is it possible that in 2016, more than a decade after the invasion of Iraq, the Republican party’s presidential nominee could become bogged down in debating whether the war was the right thing to do? The answer, a depressing one for many in the GOP, is yes — if the nominee is Jeb Bush.

Bush’s view of the war is considerably less clear-eyed than that of his brother, former President George W. Bush, the man who ordered the invasion. In his memoir, Decision Points, W. wrestled with the dilemma of his decision to start a war on the basis of bad intelligence. Only W. did not call the intelligence ‘faulty,’ as Jeb had. W. called the intelligence ‘false.’

Jeb’s statement is likely to resonate until he either changes his position or loses the race for the Republican nomination. Should he become the nominee, the issue will dog him into the general election campaign.”

He answered the question in the present tense, with the qualification “knowing what we know now..,” and he still said yes. Then lied and said Hillary would too. Now, younger Bush brother who is somehow dumber than W, Hillary would not still vote for the Iraq War today knowing all that we know now. She voted for it back then, yes. But at least she has the courage to admit to wrong decision, however belatedly.

Charlie Cook: “The battle for control of the Senate is finally underway and if early indications are correct, Republicans can be no more confident that they will keep the majority in the next Congress than Democrats could have been at this point in 2013.”

“In the 2014 cycle, Republicans had every advantage. They had few of their own seats to defend, and they got to run against an unpopular Democratic president and his policies… Now the tables are turned. Republicans are defending 24 seats this cycle, compared to just 10 for Democrats. While President Obama carried all 10 of the Democratic-held seats up this cycle, he also carried seven states with Republican-held seats: Florida (Marco Rubio), Illinois (Mark Kirk), Iowa (Chuck Grassley), New Hampshire (Kelly Ayotte), Ohio (Rob Portman), Pennsylvania (Pat Toomey), and Wisconsin (Ron Johnson).”

Paul Krugman:

Last year the vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress. I know it’s not nice to call them that, but I have my reasons, which I’ll explain in a bit. For now, however, let’s just note that these days Wall Street, which used to split its support between the parties, overwhelmingly favors the G.O.P. And the Republicans who came to power this year are returning the favor by trying to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform enacted in 2010.

And why must Dodd-Frank die? Because it’s working.

This statement may surprise progressives who believe that nothing significant has been done to rein in runaway bankers. And it’s true both that reform fell well short of what we really should have done and that it hasn’t yielded obvious, measurable triumphs like the gains in insurance thanks to Obamacare. […]

O.K., why do I call them that? Not because they drain the economy of its lifeblood, although they do: there’s a lot of evidence that oversize, overpaid financial industries — like ours — hurt economic growth and stability. Even the International Monetary Fund agrees. But what really makes the word apt in this context is that the enemies of reform can’t withstand sunlight.

A new AP/GfK poll finds that 56% said the Supreme Court should keep the subsidies without restriction while 39 percent said the financial aid should be limited to residents of states that set up their own health insurance markets. 51 percent wants Congress to amend the law to make it clear that people are entitled to help regardless of what their state leaders do. But 44 percent prefer that Congress leave the law as is and let states decide whether they want to create insurance exchanges that would allow their residents to receive subsidies. The poll found 27 percent of Americans support the law while 38 percent oppose it, and 34 percent say they neither support nor oppose it.

Jonathan Cohn on what this means for the GOP if the Court does strike down the subsidies:

“Republicans keep saying they’ll be ready to act if the Supreme Court upholds the big legal challenge to Obamacare, thereby wiping out financial assistance for millions of people in two-thirds of the states. With the clock ticking down to a ruling, it’s gotten awfully hard to take the GOP’s vows seriously.”

And that is because the choice on health care is more basic than everyone is willing to admit. President Obama passed the market-based conservative Healthcare plan. Obamacare is actually Republicancare. But because a black socialist muslim was proposing it, it had to be opposed until death. And most in the Republican party are fine with that because most really do believe that having health insurance and thus the resultant health care is a privilege for those who can afford it (i.e. the rich), and not a right.

So really the reason there is not Republican alternative is because 1) Obamacare is the Republican alternative and 2) they don’t care if millions can’t now afford health insurance, because if you cannot afford it it means you were not supposed to have it.