AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH: March 24

pocochina:

HEALTH CARE:

ACA REPEAL FAILS!
Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the bill, which means that the Republican
majority didn’t even bother to vote on it. This is huge. If you
showed up for this – if you called, protested, went to a town hall
– you helped save tens of thousands of lives.

While nothing is
stopping Republicans from trying to repeal Obamacare in a different
way, a defeat this humiliating
is likely to discourage them from trying in the foreseeable future.
Ryan and Trump can’t throw each other under the bus fast enough,
the various factions in congress have turned on each other, and
they’re still on the hot seat for being filthy traitors. (I guess
they did get tired of winning!) Meanwhile, Schumer is breaking some kind of record for smug
concern-trolling, and the once and future Speaker literally kicked off her shoes for
a celebratory little dance on the Capitol lawn.
And rightly so, because this was only possible because of Democratic
discipline and solidarity. Anyone who tells you the two parties are
the same but Democrats are flops is trying to screw with you.

To be clear:
human dumpster fire
and possible criminal
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price still has a lot of
power to undermine the bill. Congressional Republicans can and will
pull every shady trick in the book to sabotage it just out of spite.
They are also in a position to wreck American public health by
destroying access to reproductive health care, poisoning us by
gutting environmental regulations, and trashing workplace safety
laws. People have to stay engaged. And also, if a few more folks had
bothered to be engaged six months ago we could be celebrating
progress instead of avoiding disaster.

All that’s
important! But what’s most important is that the millions of people
who would have suffered or died if the Republicans had gotten their
way are not going to lose access to their health care.

RUSSIA:

Remember on
Monday (WE WERE SO MUCH YOUNGER THEN) when the House Intelligence
Committee had that public hearing into Russian interference? That was
supposed to be the first public hearing on the issue, with a second
one scheduled for early next week. The committee’s credibility came
into question on Wednesday, when committee chair Devin Nunes found
out…..something, which he shared immediately with the Speaker of
the House before running over to the White House, but has still not
disclosed to the rest of the committee.
Today he decided – abruptly, and again without any input from the
rest of the committee – to cancel Tuesday’s hearing.

Nunes was
actually somewhat involved in this story before he decided to make a
scene yesterday. He was on the Trump transition team – that is, the
group of people who help to staff an administration between Election
Day and Inauguration Day. Just that he is in such a powerful and
sensitive position during these investigations is pretty sketchy.
When asked about people now under suspicion of collaboration, Roger
Stone and Carter Page, he pretended not to know who they were. Like,
you probably recognize their names, even if you’re not paying close
attention, but he was on the transition team and somehow didn’t
know ‘nuthin.

Amnesia seems to
have been contagious on the Trump transition team: Mike Pence was the
head of the transition team and yet claimed to be unaware of former
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had been talking to the
Russian ambassador before Inauguration Day.
When Flynn was exposed in mid-February, Pence lied about not knowing
what Flynn had done. He had been briefed on January 26^th
that Flynn had been recorded in those conversations with the Russian
ambassador by former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Yates was
fired four days later.
At the time, it appeared as if this was due to her refusal to defend
the unconstitutional Muslim ban.

And that’s
where we come back around to Tuesday’s hearing, for which Sally
Yates was one of three people scheduled to testify publicly. Again, nobody – not even the rest of the Intelligence Committee – knows why Nunes canceled the hearing.

So! A good news/baffling news end to the week. Keep your eyes peeled.