Some nights it just falls in your lap. As Rachel Maddow explained in her show tonight, if there’s one thing in political polling that has ice cream popularity across all demographic and party lines, it’s the idea of lower drug costs. It has something like an 80% popularity rating in almost every poll.
Which is why the Democrats went to the mattresses this year to keep the measure for Medicare to directly negotiate prices directly with the Big Pharma companies to bring down drug costs overall. They also capped insulin costs for seniors on Medicare at $35 a month. Which the Democrats have turned into a standard talking point in the run up to the midterms. The GOP managed to smack down a portion of the bill that would have capped insulin costs at $35 a month for everybody, which the Democrats have been hammering them over the head with.
In a stunning display of political incompetence, the GOP once again showed that they have no valid public policies. The GOP just introduced a bill in the Senate that has one purpose, and one purpose only. And that purpose is to obliterate all of the prescription drug benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act. Really? We’re 29 days away from the midterms, and your best closing argument is to cancel out legislatively something with an 80% public approval rating?
Actually, the filing of the bill didn’t really amaze me. After all, the GOP has been in the minority for so long now, and so totally bereft of programs and ideas, that they just throw these things up in congress like clay pigeons, and wait for them to get shot down. This was different because usually the GOP uses this tactic to gin up their base, but this time, the only recipients are Big Pharma, who don’t vote. Everybody else hates the idea.
Bit what did kind of gobsmack me was when I looked at the list of GOP cosponsors. Does anybody recognize the name of L’il Marco Rubio? No shit. He’s one of the cosigners. And obviously a world class idiot. Back in my career with United, from late October to January, we had an official nickname for flights from East coast cities like New York, and Boston, and midwest cities like Chicago to southern Florida cities. We called them Sunbird flights, taking vacationers but more northern retirees down to Florida for the winter. 35 years ago, Florida was a winter haven for seniors. They lived there, and voted there in the winter, and then rented their condos out in the summer when they were back up north.
Hell, if I know this from all those years ago, it’s political malpractice for Rubio to not even know that his state, the one he represents has one of the largest senior citizen populations in the United States. And if he can read a poll, even he has to know that his frost tops like me don’t want to pay any more for prescription drugs than they have to. And even if The Villages are full of rich, GOP voter fraud shitpokes, they don’t want to have too pay any more for their prescription drugs than more modest seniors like me do.
And it’s not like Rubio has this race in the bag, and can afford to just run roughshod over everybody. The aggregate polling I’ve seen has Rubio up, but only by 4-5% points. And Rubio has been whining non stop on FUX NEWS as well in e-mails and text blasts about how poor he is. And yet, 29 days before the midterms, he’s signing off on a bill that is going to piss off about 80% of his constituents, and give a pretty well funded Val Demmings a month to hammer him over the head with a Big Pharma stick.
And so, for being such a useless, wishy-washy, spineless Trump sycophant and Big Pharma tool that you don’t even bother to consider the actual age demographics of your own voting constituency in an election year, when you’re not out of the woods, Senator Marco Rubio, Stand up and take a bow, FOOL!
He also voted against disaster relief after the hurricane. He said there were too many other things in the bill. I don’t think Floridians, especially those affected by the storm, care about what else was in the bill. They just want help. He is such a lousy candidate, Val Demings should win going away. Apparently the largest block of registered rethugs were in the path of the storm and DeSantis still has not approved arrangements for those counties to set up voting centers, because the precincts no longer exist. You would think the gov would want his voters to vote, but apparently not.
I beg to differ on one point; Big Pharma does vote early and often by their donations to politicians. In the republican party that overrides citizen voting every time.
Florida has the 2nd largest group receiving Medicare in the US. Good job pissant!!! Seems you’ve been up frumpy’s ass too long to see the light. Keep it up!! Why not make a law in the nursing home & reptile sanctuary known as florida that no one who gets social security is allowed to drive? Or create a small country out of frumpy’s complex, similar to the vatican…make him king/pope/the fucking messiah, and allow him to keep the nuclear secrets so he can have some nukes. How about a wall cutting florida off from the rest of us? You have enough debri. Get cracking!!! All great ideas. About as good as your last one.
Just watch all those brain challenged lemmings happily vote for Rubio my friend It’s easier to just do it and not bother to actually look at issues or policies and all that fake media stuff. I got news for all those of you. Some day Trump will die!!! You know that right???
I suspect that what he will do is just use the Trump playbook and that would be to say he didn’t vote against it the Democrats did and he’ll maybe even blame Val Demings for it.