The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Trump, liar-nObamaCare and the Art of the Fail
.
A Big, Fat Lie on 'Skinny' liar-nObamaCare Repeal
The Senate GOP's last-gasp attempt at repealing any part of liar-nObamaCare failed late Thursday night as three Republicans — Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and John McCain (R-AZ) — voted with Democrats against so-called "skinny" repeal. And while it is another political failure for Republicans, the reality is that the "skinny" repeal would have barely repealed anything. The effort would have left 411 of the "Affordable" Care Act's 419 sections in place. It was so bad that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), in his effort to get Republican senators on board, had worked to make sure House Republicans would agree to not pass this skinny repeal. In other words, Senate Republicans voted for a bill they didn't even want to make it to President Donald Trump's desk. It was a chess move to get the bill into conference.
It may be tempting to fault the Republicans for failure on this latest attempt at liar-nObamaCare repeal, but the truth is that skinny repeal was such a watered-down mess that it's a good thing it didn't pass.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the failure, The Washington Post chose to run a classic "fake news" story highlighting the supposed real reason for Republican division. The article is titled, "Female Senators Are Increasingly on Receiving End of Insults from Male Officials," and it paints the picture of a Republican Party full of misogynists. So, rather than report on the actual issues that have caused disagreements between Republicans, the Post chose instead to insert the baseless claim of sexism, all in a transparent move to divide Republican women from the party over a phony "war on women."
There's an irony here that seems to be completely lost on these leftist social justice warriors. Feminists demand to be treated by men as if they were men but then turn and cry foul when ... men treat women the same as other men. They call for equal treatment but demand special treatment.
But aside from the contradictory demands of feminists, the greater issue is the Leftmedia's continued production of fallacious articles like this that seek to inject identity politics into issues where none exist. The reason Senate Republicans have become frustrated with Collins and Murkowski is not because they are women — there are six female Republican senators, a majority of whom have sided with the majority of male Republican senators on the issue of liar-nObamaCare repeal. The real issue causing division within the Republican ranks is disagreement over ideological and political perspectives, not sexism. But leave it to The Washington Post to trot out another factually vacuous article designed not to inform but to denigrate. ~The Patriot Post
.
.
Graham Proposes Senate Bill To Block
Trump From Firing Special Counsel
by Jack Davis
by Jack Davis
{westernjournalism.com} ~ Graham has said that any effort by Trump to remove Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, “could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.”... Graham said his bill has the support of “all” the Senate’s Democrats and some Republicans. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate, but the Senate Democrats have been uniform in their opposition to Trump. However, Senate passage would not guarantee that the bill becomes law. It would also require passage in the House, where the GOP has a majority. Graham’s proposal would require “judicial review” if a special counsel is fired while investigating the president or his staff...Graham your are an idiot and this bill will not pass for sure. http://www.westernjournalism.com/graham-proposes-senate-bill-to-block-trump-from-firing-special-counsel/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=patriotupdate&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=libertyalliance
.
GOP-Led House Just Voted $1.6 Billion
Down Payment for Border Wall
by M.J. Randolph
{truthrevolt.org} ~ The vote was 230-196. Republican leaders avoided voting directly on the divisive issue Thursday. Instead, they tucked the wall provision into a broader procedural vote... Trump promised at nearly every rally and campaign event that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico said no, and U.S. taxpayers will have to provide the money. Democrats said they might have defeated the wall if they’d been given a chance. It’s unpopular with more moderate Republicans and those representing districts with large immigrant communities. Money for the wall is part of a broader $788 billion spending bill funding defense and veterans programs... http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/gop-led-house-just-voted-16-billion-down-payment-border-wall
.
DREAMer Protest Fails Spectacularly:
Few Showed Up, 15 Arrested
by Trey Sanchez
{truthrevolt.org} ~ Advocates for liar-nObama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program took an intersection hostage near the Texas capitol this week which ended in 15 of them being arrested... for obstructing a highway and being charged with a Class B misdemeanor. Legal Insurrection reports that the protest was initially scheduled to be a crowded sit-in targeting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but the few protesters that did show up instead chose to make the commute a little harder for the people of Austin. In charge of the protest was radical leftist advocacy group Cosecha, which has a large presence across at least 20 states. However, maybe two dozen protesters were on hand... http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/dreamer-protest-fails-spectacularly-few-showed-15-arrested.
Tapper Says Scaramucci 100% Right,
People Trying to Bring Down Trump from Within
by Hannah Mayer
{truthrevolt.org} ~ There's been a great deal of pearl clutching going on since Thursday evening, when The New Yorker published an article detailing White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci's hard-hitting words about leakers inside the administration... Yet, while most of the chattering class are having a laugh at Scaramucci's expense, or are flat-out condemning him for his use of profanity and take-no-prisoners demeanor, CNN's Jake Tapper offered a more reasoned observation: "There are people inside the administration that think it is their job to save America from this president," Scaramucci said on earlier Thursday. "It is not their job from the establishment through calcification to sit there and try to withhold the president, to rein him in, or do things to him that will slow down his agenda.”... http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/tapper-says-scaramucci-100-right-people-trying-bring-down-trump-within
.
Progressive Rep Labels Gen Kelly
Extremist, Trump Militarizing White House
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ California Democrat Barbara Lee complained when Speaker Ryan stripped out her amendment repealing the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force from a House appropriations bill back in mid July... She whined by way of Twitter, “Ryan stripped my 01 AUMF repeal amdt from DOD Approps in the dead of night. This is underhanded & undemocratic. The people deserve a debate!” She added, “Ryan should be ashamed of himself for forcing Republicans to strip out my bipartisan AUMF amdt in the dead of night. What is he afraid of?” Maybe it’s not so much his own fear as it is a healthy awareness of commie legislators abusing their authority and attacking our country. The kind of person who is a traitor, who would label an American patriot as a terrorist and deliberate harm our nation simply to advance her agenda. As Ryan said, “There’s a right way to deal with this, and an appropriations bill I don’t think is the right way to deal with this.” Lee was also the only member out of 435 in the House to vote against the original AUMF in 2001. She’s clearly not a big fan of the military...http://rickwells.us/globalist-progressive-rep-labels-gen-kelly-extremist-militarizing-white-house/.
.
by peggynoonan.com
{peggynoonan.com} ~ It was a political drubbing of the first order. A new Republican president and a Republican Senate and House put everything they had into a bill to repeal and replace liar-nObamaCare, and couldn’t do it. The leadership is rocked. The president looks confused and hapless, while publicly enacting determination and a scolding tone toward those who’d let him down. He rarely showed signs of fully understanding the details or even the essentials of the plan he backed. His public remarks were all over the place: He’ll let liar-nObamaCare collapse of its own weight; he’ll replace it with something big and beautiful; just repeal it; no, let it collapse. He criticized Hill Republicans: They “never discuss how good their healthcare bill is.” But neither did he, not in a persuasive way.
Republicans on the Hill need a popular president with the quasi-mystical clout presidential popularity brings. Mr. Trump does not have it. They need someone who has a serious understanding of his own policies and can gently knock heads together. I remember the story of a GOP senator whose vote President Reagan badly needed. Reagan met with him privately, pressed hard, the senator squirmed: I just can’t do it, Mr. President. You know I’d jump out of a plane if you asked me, but—
Reagan leaned in and said: “Jump.” The senator laughed and gave up. I’m going to tell anecdotes like this until I feel better.
It is true that a central dynamic of the failure was the truism that once people are given an entitlement, they aren’t keen to see it taken away. But another reason some senators voted to repeal liar-nObamaCare in the past and refused now is they believe the ground has shifted. Back in their home states, in the almost-decade since the economic crash of 2008, and since the liar-nObama era, what they’ve seen is more need, not less, more anxiety and dysfunction, and more public skepticism that change will constitute improvement. In politics you have to know how to read the ground, the real topography. You can’t just go by the work of past mapmakers, you have to see clearly what’s there now. It’s unconservative not to.
As for Mr. Trump, the first six months of his presidency suggest many things, including that what made him is thwarting him. He is a man alone, independent and ungoverned. He freelances not because circumstances dictate it but because he is by nature a freelancer. He doesn’t want to be enmeshed in an institution, he doesn’t want to have to bolster and defend it and see to its life. He wants to preserve his freedom—to tweet, to pop off, to play it this way or that. One of the interesting things about his New York Times interview this week was that he met with the reporters alone save for his aide Hope Hicks. Afterward members of his own White House reportedly had to scramble to get tapes so they’d know what the boss said.
But presidential leadership involves being to some degree an institution man, upholding not only a presidency but a government, even its other branches. He doesn’t understand this. In any case he doesn’t do it. It is all a personal drama. This aspect of his nature will probably make further legislative failures inevitable. In time, though no one in the White House seems to fear this, it will lead to his diminished support. His supporters will likely never hate him, and won’t be severely disillusioned because they weren’t all that illusioned. They’ll probably always appreciate him for blasting open the system and saving them from normality—i.e., the dumb, going-through-the-motions cynicism of Washington. They are sympathetic because of everything he is up against—every established power center in Washington—with no one behind him but his original supporters.
But at some point baseline political competence is going to become part of the story. If the president continues to show he doesn’t have the toolbox for this job, he’s going to go from not gaining support, which is where he is now, to losing support. He’s not magic and they’re not stupid.
As for health care, Sen. John RINO-McCain, recovering from surgery, had it right: “One of the major problems with liar-nObamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,” Mr. RINO-McCain said in a statement. “As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to liar-nObamacare’s failure.” Congress, he said, must return to regular order, hold hearings, work across party lines, “and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.”
Mr. Trump should have done this from the beginning.
Is there any legitimate hope of a bipartisan solution? It can be fairly argued, as Jim Geraghty does in National Review, that a Democratic Party that relentlessly lied to pass liar-nObamaCare—you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor, premiums will go down—is unlikely to consider conservative reform ideas in good faith. Democrats will press to keep individual and employer mandates and the status quo on Medicaid; they’ll want billions in higher subsidies to get insurers back into failing exchanges. Some will want more money to offset larger-than-expected claims for insurance companies in the state and federal marketplaces, some will want single-payer. Mr. Geraghty: “Conservatives who oppose government mandates, subsidies, bailout and state-run health care won’t like any of that.”
They won’t.
And yet no fix or improvement in health care is going to be broadly accepted unless it comes from both parties. No reform will be accepted unless it’s produced in a way that includes public hearings in which representatives make the case and explain it all. And any fix, because of America’s current political nature, will be temporary. Democratic presidential hopefuls will be campaigning two years from now on single-payer, whatever happens with this bill.
And health care in battered, anxious America will continue to play against Republicans.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, beats the drum for the bipartisan approach. His logic: The ACA is wobbly; if nothing is done “prices will get outrageous and people will revolt and rebel.”
“Why inflict this much pain?” he says in a telephone interview. “The elderly, the vulnerable—you’re scaring the bejesus out of them.” The Republicans, he says, have tried everything else. “Why don’t you sit down and work with us?” He too asks for regular order.
Yes, he says, some Democrats see this as an opportunity to go for single-payer, but that would be “a big change”: “If you want to talk about that, do a working group.” For now, Mr. Manchin says, both parties should focus on Medicare, Medicaid, the private market, pre-existing conditions—issues on which quick or clear progress can be made. He notes that the Senate has 11 members who are former governors. As executive branch veterans with on-the-ground experience, they’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. They’re mostly moderate, not extreme. Get them in on this, he urges. “We still have some reasonable people here,” he says. “Some are just a little too quiet.”
Trump, liar-nObamaCare and the Art of the Fail
{peggynoonan.com} ~ It was a political drubbing of the first order. A new Republican president and a Republican Senate and House put everything they had into a bill to repeal and replace liar-nObamaCare, and couldn’t do it. The leadership is rocked. The president looks confused and hapless, while publicly enacting determination and a scolding tone toward those who’d let him down. He rarely showed signs of fully understanding the details or even the essentials of the plan he backed. His public remarks were all over the place: He’ll let liar-nObamaCare collapse of its own weight; he’ll replace it with something big and beautiful; just repeal it; no, let it collapse. He criticized Hill Republicans: They “never discuss how good their healthcare bill is.” But neither did he, not in a persuasive way.
Republicans on the Hill need a popular president with the quasi-mystical clout presidential popularity brings. Mr. Trump does not have it. They need someone who has a serious understanding of his own policies and can gently knock heads together. I remember the story of a GOP senator whose vote President Reagan badly needed. Reagan met with him privately, pressed hard, the senator squirmed: I just can’t do it, Mr. President. You know I’d jump out of a plane if you asked me, but—
Reagan leaned in and said: “Jump.” The senator laughed and gave up. I’m going to tell anecdotes like this until I feel better.
It is true that a central dynamic of the failure was the truism that once people are given an entitlement, they aren’t keen to see it taken away. But another reason some senators voted to repeal liar-nObamaCare in the past and refused now is they believe the ground has shifted. Back in their home states, in the almost-decade since the economic crash of 2008, and since the liar-nObama era, what they’ve seen is more need, not less, more anxiety and dysfunction, and more public skepticism that change will constitute improvement. In politics you have to know how to read the ground, the real topography. You can’t just go by the work of past mapmakers, you have to see clearly what’s there now. It’s unconservative not to.
As for Mr. Trump, the first six months of his presidency suggest many things, including that what made him is thwarting him. He is a man alone, independent and ungoverned. He freelances not because circumstances dictate it but because he is by nature a freelancer. He doesn’t want to be enmeshed in an institution, he doesn’t want to have to bolster and defend it and see to its life. He wants to preserve his freedom—to tweet, to pop off, to play it this way or that. One of the interesting things about his New York Times interview this week was that he met with the reporters alone save for his aide Hope Hicks. Afterward members of his own White House reportedly had to scramble to get tapes so they’d know what the boss said.
But presidential leadership involves being to some degree an institution man, upholding not only a presidency but a government, even its other branches. He doesn’t understand this. In any case he doesn’t do it. It is all a personal drama. This aspect of his nature will probably make further legislative failures inevitable. In time, though no one in the White House seems to fear this, it will lead to his diminished support. His supporters will likely never hate him, and won’t be severely disillusioned because they weren’t all that illusioned. They’ll probably always appreciate him for blasting open the system and saving them from normality—i.e., the dumb, going-through-the-motions cynicism of Washington. They are sympathetic because of everything he is up against—every established power center in Washington—with no one behind him but his original supporters.
But at some point baseline political competence is going to become part of the story. If the president continues to show he doesn’t have the toolbox for this job, he’s going to go from not gaining support, which is where he is now, to losing support. He’s not magic and they’re not stupid.
As for health care, Sen. John RINO-McCain, recovering from surgery, had it right: “One of the major problems with liar-nObamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,” Mr. RINO-McCain said in a statement. “As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to liar-nObamacare’s failure.” Congress, he said, must return to regular order, hold hearings, work across party lines, “and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.”
Mr. Trump should have done this from the beginning.
Is there any legitimate hope of a bipartisan solution? It can be fairly argued, as Jim Geraghty does in National Review, that a Democratic Party that relentlessly lied to pass liar-nObamaCare—you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor, premiums will go down—is unlikely to consider conservative reform ideas in good faith. Democrats will press to keep individual and employer mandates and the status quo on Medicaid; they’ll want billions in higher subsidies to get insurers back into failing exchanges. Some will want more money to offset larger-than-expected claims for insurance companies in the state and federal marketplaces, some will want single-payer. Mr. Geraghty: “Conservatives who oppose government mandates, subsidies, bailout and state-run health care won’t like any of that.”
They won’t.
And yet no fix or improvement in health care is going to be broadly accepted unless it comes from both parties. No reform will be accepted unless it’s produced in a way that includes public hearings in which representatives make the case and explain it all. And any fix, because of America’s current political nature, will be temporary. Democratic presidential hopefuls will be campaigning two years from now on single-payer, whatever happens with this bill.
And health care in battered, anxious America will continue to play against Republicans.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, beats the drum for the bipartisan approach. His logic: The ACA is wobbly; if nothing is done “prices will get outrageous and people will revolt and rebel.”
“Why inflict this much pain?” he says in a telephone interview. “The elderly, the vulnerable—you’re scaring the bejesus out of them.” The Republicans, he says, have tried everything else. “Why don’t you sit down and work with us?” He too asks for regular order.
Yes, he says, some Democrats see this as an opportunity to go for single-payer, but that would be “a big change”: “If you want to talk about that, do a working group.” For now, Mr. Manchin says, both parties should focus on Medicare, Medicaid, the private market, pre-existing conditions—issues on which quick or clear progress can be made. He notes that the Senate has 11 members who are former governors. As executive branch veterans with on-the-ground experience, they’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. They’re mostly moderate, not extreme. Get them in on this, he urges. “We still have some reasonable people here,” he says. “Some are just a little too quiet.”
Comments