...annnnd as of 4pm EST, Paul and Don just got the double handed bitch slap of death! Turns out "the closer" is a talent-less hack who couldn't convince his own party to pass a bill after fifty odd prior successful attempts. Who knew?

He's blaming the Democrats now. Because, BENGHAZI!

Been reading a lot of articles in this mess that all basically say how easy it is to scream how things will be different when you're in charge, when you're not in charge.
It actually kind of reminds me of the run up to the first war in Israel (I think? One of you history nerds correct this if I'm wrong), where the Arab governments were screaming bloody murder and swearing war if Israel came into existence, which was great and got them lots of local support.
Till Israel came into existence.
At this point the governments were more or less painted into a corner and forced into attacking an opponent that their militaries weren't ready for.
I think that's how it went, but history class was a long time ago.

From what I gather, after adding a number of provisions to gut basic protections and coverage to appeal to the radical extremist, same people continued to refuse support this morning. Moderates began to defect when they saw how difficult this was going to be to explain to their constituents.

Apparently, it's a lot easier to throw temper tantrums like four year olds when there is an adult in power who can set limits and stop you. Put the four year old's in charge, and you get this.

@Killer Joe:

That's kinda accurate, kinda not. Nobody really knew what the Arab military potential was...including the Arabs. Similarly, nobody really knew what the military potential of (the newly founded) Israel was.

In the actual event, the Arabs got their asses handed to them for a couple reasons:

1) Multi-national coalitions are always weaker than the sum of their component militaries, both because co-ordination is hard and also because the individual countries always have slightly different priorities, goals, and preferred tactics.

2) The Israelis viewed the war as a fight for survival, so they enlisted almost every able-bodied adult, and everybody was gung-ho for the fight. The Arab countries, on the other hand, viewed it as just another conflict, so their armies were less motivated and smaller than the Israeli one.

But you'll have the choice of being rich and living or being poor and dying!

Before everyone was stuck with the chance to live! What a horrible communist nightmare!

Trump will go after the Priebus/Pence/Ryan triad. Unfortunately, they're the only ones keeping him in office right now. I fully expect Priebus to be gone by Monday.

Representative Joe Barton (R-acist) came out with this gem:

Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game. We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.

The Conservative tears are delicious!

This wasn't about governing, it was about dropping a deuce on Obama's legacy's chest.

I want the inevitable crazy ass Trump "distraction tweetstorm". Why wasn't there one last night? Hopefully he'll wake up at 4am and do some good pyjama tweets tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxCdh1Ps48

I agree with Bort.

This is the point where someone says "well the ACA is actually a Republican plan" and to that I say:

1) No it's not. The Heritage Foundation Plan and the ACA both have an individual mandate, but that's where the similarities end. The ACA expanded Medicaid, put a bunch of regulations on insurance companies to make sure they cover things they'd prefer not to, and offers subsidies to help low income people. The Heritage Foundation plan didn't do any of that.

2) All the Heritage Foundation plan demonstrates is that the Republicans were capable of sketching out a conceivably sustainable system (not a very good system but conceivably sustainable), and had no interest in actually implementing one. That's like a salesman who, if you pour enough alcohol into him, will admit that his product doesn't work and can tell you why the competition is better.

"Mr. Ryan, sir, the Serious Numbers from the CBO are here. I know you, a certified policy wonk who takes numbers seriously, will pay close attention to these figures."

"Great! How'd they score my plan?"

"They said a million billion people would die."

"As a man who cares very much about numbers, I say we gloss over this."