Daily Clips: October 26th, 2015
Rubio gives up on the Senate: Does anyone else think its highly convenient that Rubio has all of a sudden found a deep hatred for the Senate? It’s almost like he’s seen that his party’s base hates anyone that’s a politician. But are they dumb enough to fall for this 180 turn? Can Senator Rubio convince them that he’s not a politician?
The GOP has a new speaker, but he’s stuck with the same doomed strategy: Matthew Yglesias has a great piece at Vox which highlights the difficulties which (most probably) await the next (probable) Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Yglesias argues:
The core problem that afflicted John Boehner during his tenure in office remains in place — a band of hard-line conservatives routinely insists that the GOP use routine but critical pieces of must-pass legislation (debt ceiling bills, government funding bills, etc.) as “leverage” to secure ideological concessions from the White House. The plan fundamentally doesn’t make sense and can’t work, which most Republicans know but aren’t willing to say. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it hasn’t changed one bit. And in some ways, things may be worse than ever under Ryan, who isn’t really a practitioner of the kind of crass transactional politics that Boehner used to make it work.
The concealed carry fantasy: The New York Times editorial board used their platform to discuss the delusion surrounding carrying guns and keeping yourself “safe.” Read what they have to say on the matter:
This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research project showing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator.
They’re not done. They then turn their anger towards the gun lobby:
More complete research, unimpeded by the gun lobby, would undoubtedly uncover a higher death toll. But this truly vital information is kept largely from the public. A Gallup poll this month found 56 percent of Americans said the nation would be safer if more people carried concealed weapons.
Still no health insurance? Do not fret! Ever since that blood-sucking, liberty-snatching Affordable Care Act took effect Washington state’s uninsured rate has dropped 40 percent. That’s good news, but that also means there are roughly 600,000 Washingtonians living today without health insurance.
Thankfully, open enrollment starts November 1st as “state and federal officials launch the ACA’s third open enrollment period.”
