With crumbling public education, crumbling infrastructure, low wage, insecure jobs and sky rocketing health care costs survival for the poorest Americans can only be managed on a day to day basis. Australian professor Philip Alston, a United Nations special rapporteur on extreme ...read more
In Patton Oswalt's latest standup special on Netflix, he described the challenges of covering Donald Trump's presidency as a comedian. He observed that as soon as he develops a joke about something Trump has said or done, it's almost immediately old news, replaced by whatever the ...read more
When the great turn-of-the-twentieth-century labor leader Samuel Gompers was quoted as saying “Reward your friends, punish your enemies,” he was putting forth a practical if somewhat Machiavellian approach to dealing with politicians on behalf of the little guy. Flash forward to ...read more
It's finally over folks. Senate Republican leaders who have spent the past god knows how many years attempting to destroy Obamacare have officially pulled the plug on their latest ridiculous ACA replacement plan. They had planned a vote on the measure at the end of the month, ...read more
It now appears that Graham-Cassidy is officially dead thanks to Sen. John McCain, who bravely stood against his own party and stated unequivocally that he will not vote for the latest Obamare repeal bill. With that being done (which allows the sane to breath a huge collective ...read more
You can almost always be completely certain that whatever policy proposals the Republicans come up with, they will hit the most vulnerable Americans the hardest. From social welfare to health care, the Republican answer to everything is less government, more private industry, ...read more
After so-called moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced the worst Obamacare replacement bill of them all in a last ditched attempt to destroy health care in America, the New Republic's Clio Chang says what we're all thinking: If Trump’s short presidency has revealed anything, ...read more
As Brit living in America, it is difficult to express the horror I feel when watching politicians play political football with people's health care. While there are fierce debates as to how to fund the NHS, the notion that someone could not get health care because they couldn't ...read more
The zombie is back. Just when you thought the crusade to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was dead -- beheaded and dismembered by Lisa Murkowski, John McCain and Susan Collins, along with the entire Democratic caucus -- we're back here again, so grab your phones and ...read more
The Trump administration's announcement that it is slashing the Affordable Care Act advertising budget by a whopping 90% is the kind of move that wins support from his ignorant base, but results in people dying and health care costs going up for everyone else. Reported Vox: ...read more
It shouldn't really come as a surprise that a free market ideologue and political hack would distort the truth and omit inconvenient facts to make their point, but House Speaker Paul Ryan's latest Obamacare lie takes Republican dishonesty to new, truly repellant levels. ...read more
Watching CSPAN 2 last night as Sen. John McCain joined Sens. Collins and Murkowski in voting against the GOP's deeply cruel and cynical "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act was perhaps the most triumphant political moment since before the 2016 election. The rest of the ...read more
Seven months ago, The Daily Banter's Chez Pazienza marveled at the astonishing hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: The unfathomable, breathtaking, staggering lack of even an ounce of shame you'd have to have to say, after Republicans had publicly looked for ways ...read more
John McCain has brain cancer and if the diagnosis is correct, his remaining life expectancy can range anywhere between 12 to 60 months in the best case scenario. As an eighty year old man who was in the armed services, fought for his country in Vietnam, suffered through torture ...read more
Recently diagnosed with the most severe form of brain cancer, John McCain is making a dramatic return to Washington today to cast his vote to further debate in the Senate on the Obamacare repeal bill Republicans are desperate to pass. While McCain and his family deserve the ...read more
Back in 2009 and early 2010, my writing endeavors mainly orbited a single issue: the passage of healthcare reform and, secondarily, the inclusion of a "public option" health insurance plan created and run by the federal government. It was a nearly year-long ordeal that included ...read more
This is definitely going to be a controversial statement, but so be it.. To continue reading this article, please go here. A Banter Membership gets you access to the magazine and all our Members Only content. Your membership also directly funds independent journalism and is ...read more
It appears as if Republican members of Congress are attempting to exempt themselves from some of the more brutal aspects of Trumpcare. But this is a different kind of exemption than their previous "exemption." A few years ago, you might've heard just about every Republican ...read more
Rep. Steve King's astonishing cruelty apparently knows no bounds. The notoriously heartless Iowa congressman told the Examiner that he would find extra money for Trump's ludicrous border wall by denying vulnerable women health care and starving poor children to death. And no, ...read more
Right now, as Senate Republicans literally hide from their constituents, the debate over repealing Obamacare is almost entirely focused on how many people will lose access to healthcare and how large the tax cuts for the rich will be. Essentially, the conversation is about those ...read more
Normally, Donald Trump's tweet about healthcare this morning would've been the biggest news story of the day -- perhaps the biggest story of the four-day holiday weekend. For now, though, it's been more or less lost in the shadow of the Morning Joe story as well as the bombshell ...read more
No matter how many meaningless superlatives Donald Trump blurts on Twitter, and no matter how many times the congressional Republicans try to pass something, Trumpcare will always amount to a de facto repeal of Obamacare and, with it, tens of millions of Americans will lose ...read more
Over the days since Mitch McConnell made the super-secret Senate healthcare bill public he has witnessed a backlash that has been at least as large as the one that followed the release of the House version of their "repeal and replace" Obamacare legislation. Part of that ...read more
David France’s extraordinary documentary (and book) How to Survive a Plague chronicles the history of ACT UP, the group of HIV+/AIDS-infected gay men who fought to make drugs more affordable to those suffering from a condition the government laughed off as a “gay plague.” In ...read more
If you wanted to summarize the Trump Administration's priorities when it comes to repealing Obamacare getting their bastardized health care plan passed, Vice President Mike Pence did just that on his Twitter page. In what looks like an attempt to reassure the hardliners, Pence ...read more
As you likely know by now the Senate version of Trumpcare, authored entirely in secret by a cabal of white male Republicans and rolled out just days before the vote, contains breathtakingly massive cuts to Medicaid, the very popular health insurance program for low-income ...read more
If you think that the Republican health care bill proposed in the Senate only affects poor people and minorities, you would be completely wrong. The New Republic's Brian Beutler makes a powerful point about just how important the Affordable Care Act has been for everyday ...read more
The only way to stop the GOP from wrecking health care in America is to get as much information out about their ludicrous plan as possible, and then act on it by demanding your congressman or woman doesn't vote for it. Yesterday, President Obama weighed in on the bill proposed ...read more
Elizabeth Warren took to social with a video yesterday to lay waste to the Republican health care bill proposed by the Senate yesterday -- a bill negotiated almost completely in secret for several weeks. Warren labeled the bill "blood money" that pays for tax cuts to the rich ...read more
As Mitch McConnell allows us filthy peasants to finally see the healthcare bill he's been crafting in secret, we're finding that instead of making the already cruel and sadistic House bill "better", he's made it worse. With deeper cuts to Medicaid, McConnell is counting on the ...read more
The Republicans don't want you to know what they're doing. "The Silent Treatment" seems to be the new strategy driving the congressional GOP as well as the Trump White House. And their most loyal disciples don't care. But they should. We'll return to this presently. The strategy ...read more
Earlier in the month, Trump and Republicans in the House threw themselves a party in the Rose Garden to celebrating passing an "abomination of a health care bill" that, if made into law, would fulfill Paul Ryan's college dream of starving the shit out of the sick and elderly to ...read more
by Matthew Casper With the House passage of the American Healthcare Act of 2017, jubilant House Republicans have once again taken to the airwaves to blanket the country with their current talking points regarding the effects of their legislation on the people of the country. As ...read more
On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump, and the Human Centipede calling itself the House GOP threw a party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the most monumental “fuck you” in American politics to the sick, poor, and almost specifically women. This pale gaggle of subhumans dropped a ...read more
In a brutal segment on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert laid to waste any notion that he might be backing down from mocking Donald Trump. Last night he comprehensively ripped into the health care bill passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives yesterday for not only ...read more
Trump began his remarks in the Rose Garden by saying Trumpcare -- the American Health Care Act -- wasn't passed for the Republican Party, it was passed for everyone.... To continue reading this article, please go here. A Banter Membership gets you access to the magazine and all ...read more
After weeks of wrangling and negotiations with the various factions that make up the Republican party, GOP leadership finally managed to get their Obamacare replacement, Trumpcare 2.0, to a vote in the House of Representatives. The bill sparked a lively debate on both sides of ...read more
It was a regular performance by the Republican Congress during the last few years of the Obama administration: repeated votes to repeal Obamacare. Even though they knew that the president would veto any legislation to that effect that was put in front of him, still GOP leaders ...read more
While Trump and the GOP have consistently claimed Obamacare is a disaster, their latest attempt to get rid of Obama's signature piece of legislation includes one amazing provision that lays bare their mind boggling hypocrisy: they will be exempted from their own plan. Reported ...read more
After failing to pass the cack-handed health care bill he didn't write (or bother reading), Donald Trump is still not done with Obamacare. In a new attempt to dismantle his predecessors signature piece of legislation responsible for insuring tens of millions of Americans, Trump ...read more
Between the horrific chemical attack in Syria and Steve Bannon being ousted from the National Security Council, you may have missed the Trump White House waving the white flag on its second run at destroying Obamacare: Now, Zombie Trumpcare is staggering back to its grave; House ...read more
On November 8, 2016, America went from a nation that was admittedly rife with problems — albeit problems that we were slowly overcoming — to a goddamn dystopian horror show in the blink of an eye. To make matters even more terrifying, Donald Trump, the squinting, carrotoid ...read more
The Right wing's never ending war on poor Americans and the sick is far from being over. After last month's monumentally embarrassing set back for the Trump administration, the president is now looking for another deal that would woo hard right House Republicans who thought the ...read more
Adam Kinzinger is the Republican congressman from Illinois' 16th congressional district and he's angry! He's rip-roaring mad about the GOP's humiliating Trumpcare defeat and he knows just who to blame: From my perspective, however, claiming that the party was in disarray is ...read more
Central to Donald Trump's ideology is that the American public can have its cake and eat it. They can get huge tax cuts and massive infrastructure spending. They can vote for a man who will reduce the federal government to rubble and still have amazing education, a great ...read more
Despite the Left's insistence that Trump's presence was enough to destroy the Republican party once and for all, America is now in the grips of a right wing revolution the likes of which put the Bush administration's attempts to dismantle the state to shame.... To continue ...read more
The Republican healthcare plan called the American HealthCare Act suffered a monumental defeat of historic proportion on Friday March 24th, 2017. The bill was promoted by President Donald Trump and Republican leadership as repeal and replace legislation that would finally rid ...read more
If you’ve been following the Republican’s spectacular failure with the American Health Care Act (a.k.a. Trumpcare — He loves to put his name on things. Make him own that shit.), then you’re probably already aware of the now-inescapable revelations from this endeavor, but they ...read more
by Matthew Casper To the surprise of no one, perhaps save the most ardent boosters of President Donald J. Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the Republican plan to massively cut taxes for the upper 2%, repeal and (rhetorically) replace Obamacare failed Friday, being ...read more
Update: Here we are, four months later in July, and even though the House managed to force through an abomination on their second or third attempt, the Senate fell prey to exactly the same problem the House had: The bill was too extreme for the moderates and too moderate for the ...read more
