Last Call For Mitch's Plan D

GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is running into the reality that Trumpcare doesn't have the votes to pass in his own party, as I mentioned this afternoon GOP senators like Jerry Moran are running from this mess as fast as they can.  So Mitch is going for Plan D, and that's instituting what was always going to be his real plan: a fake and insincere effort to shame Democrats into sharing the blame for massive Medicaid cuts with a bogus GOP "fix" to Obamacare.

A bill focused on buttressing the nation’s insurance marketplaces will be needed if the full-fledged Republican effort to repeal much of President Barack Obama’s health care law fails, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. It was one of his most explicit acknowledgments that his party’s top-priority drive to erase much of Obama’s landmark 2010 statutes might fall short. 

The remarks by McConnell, R-Ky., also implicitly meant that to show progress on health care, Republicans controlling the White House and Congress might have to negotiate with Democrats. While the current, wide-ranging GOP health care bill — which McConnell is still hoping to push through the Senate — has procedural protections against a Democratic Senate filibuster, a subsequent, narrower measure would not and would take 60 votes to pass. 

The existing bill would fail if just three of the 52 Republicans vote no, since all Democrats oppose it. McConnell was forced to cancel a planned vote on the measure last week after far more Republicans than that objected, and he’s been spending the Independence Day recess studying possible changes that might win over GOP dissidents.

“If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur,” McConnell said at a Rotary Club lunch in this deep-red rural area in southern Kentucky. He made the comment after being asked if he envisioned needing bipartisan cooperation to replace Obama’s law. 

“No action is not an alternative,” McConnell said. “We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.”

The problem of course is that GOP senators will lose to Democrats if they pass Trumpcare, but they will be primaried out of a career if they pass a "fix" to Obamacare.  It's Republicans in the Senate who are being held responsible to and for Mitch's hostage crisis, along with what Mitch hopes are enough Democrats to make this a "bipartisan" bill.  Steve M. sees the obvious trap for the Dems here:

Let's say Republicans give up on repeal, then invite Democrats to negotiate on a bipartisan bill to save the system. At that point, why would Republicans have a motivation to ensure the system can still work well? Now they'd have someone to blame for failure. A year from now, the various Trumpcare bills will be down the memory hole. The Republican narrative -- probably persuasive to GOP voters -- will be "We invited Democrats to the bargaining table, and this was the outcome." 

I know the conventional wisdom is that Republicans now own health care, because every voter knows they control the White House and Congress. But Democrats are quite visibly on the sidelines now. If they join in the talks, can't the GOP message machine assign them a disproportionate share of the blame for the results? I know McConnell seems now to be much less of a tactical genius than we thought he was a month ago, but I think he still might salvage a winning (i.e., opposition-bashing) message from this.

Salvage?  As with Gorsuch, Mitch has already won. In fact, the message will be "Democrats forced us into this mess that they created.  We tried to fix it, they blocked it.  Now you're stuck with this failing Obamacare program for good."

Even better, Trump will be sabotaging Obamacare through the White House, and running against his own party.  Republican voters will side with Trump on this.  The real message will be "we need more Republicans in Congress!"

The press will go along too.  It'll be the Medicare doc fix/AMT fix/debt ceiling kabuki all over again, and it'll be Obama's fault.

But we only get to this point if Dems play along.  I'm betting they will: Mitch is all but saying that if they don't go along, they will let Obamacare collapse and people will die as a direct result.  Mitch doesn't give a damn.  Democrats do, so they will give in. Real lives are on the line here.  In the end, Dems won't have a choice.

The bottom line is that Obamacare will stumble along year after year, with a permanent bomb strapped to it, and one Democrats know Mitch and the GOP will detonate and kill millions if they don't obey.

It's happened before.

It will happen again.  Democrats still haven't figured out that they only way to beat McConnell is not to play his game.  Last time, it cost us a Supreme Court seat.  This time it will cost us Obama's legacy and probably far, far worse.

And Moran, Moran So Far Away

Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran thought he could have his July 4th recess Trumpcare town hall meeting cake and eat it too as he held it in the remote western part of the state.  The event in tiny Palco, Kansas, population 277, in Rooks County, population 5,200, a county that Trump won by 70 points in November.

Only one small problem, and that is Kansans, even in Rooks County, have had about enough of the GOP.

But about 150 people tried to squeeze into a community center room set up to hold less than half that many people, many of them from outside the area. While the audience applauded Moran for opposing a health care bill written by Senate GOP leaders, the applause was louder for speakers who advocated a universal government-run health care program such as Medicare for the elderly or Medicaid for the poor.

Moran announced last week that he would oppose the Senate Republican bill after a budget analysis suggested 22 million more people would be uninsured under the proposal by 2026. Moran said the legislation needs to protect coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and not hurt rural hospitals. 

“I will choose country over party,” Moran said. “I will choose Kansans over party.” 

Like many other Republican lawmakers, Moran has been a persistent critic of the 2010 Affordable Care Act championed by former President Barack Obama and filed legislation during the Democrat’s administration to repeal it. 

The general push still has the support of many Republican voters in the area, including Ashley Kuhn, the 32-year-old director of a day care center down Main Street from the community center where Moran had his town hall. She said she’s seen her family’s health insurance co-payments double and deductibles rise, and she blames it on Obama’s signature health care law. 

“Health care needs to be changed,” she said. 

But Moran’s town hall drew supporters of Planned Parenthood and members of health care advocacy groups from as far away as the Kansas City area. They were there to press Moran to pursue a bipartisan solution that built on the existing health care law and moved the nation toward broader government coverage. 

“Who doesn’t want health care?” Jeff Zamrzla, a retired and disabled Marine and 59-year-old Democratic activist from Salina, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the east of Palco, said after the forum. “Who doesn’t want to be able to live a life that’s worth living?”

The real albatross around Moran's neck is Kansas GOP Gov. Sam Brownback.  Kansans found out the hard way that Republican economic projections aren't worth a fart in a plains tornado, so you'll excuse them if they don't actually believe Republicans like Moran anymore.

Moran's seat is pretty safe, frankly, but not even he's stupid enough to vote for Trumpcare as it is. That may change, he's still a Republican after all.  But for now, Trumpcare is dead as long as Moran won't vote for it.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As all eyes are on the meeting today between Donald Trump and his boss Vladimir Putin in Hamburg today, it's important to note that Russia expects its new client state to be sufficiently deferential, and that the Trump regime isn't moving quickly enough to remove Obama-era sanctions on Moscow.  As such, it looks like Vlad has sent a message to its American vassals reminding them just who they now work for.

Hackers working for a foreign government recently breached at least a dozen U.S. power plants, including the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas, according to current and former U.S. officials, sparking concerns the attackers were searching for vulnerabilities in the electrical grid.

The rivals could be positioning themselves to eventually disrupt the nation’s power supply, warned the officials, who noted that a general alert was distributed to utilities a week ago. Adding to those concerns, hackers recently infiltrated an unidentified company that makes control systems for equipment used in the power industry, an attack that officials believe may be related.

The chief suspect is Russia, according to three people familiar with the continuing effort to eject the hackers from the computer networks. One of those networks belongs to an aging nuclear generating facility known as Wolf Creek -- owned by Westar Energy Inc., Great Plains Energy Inc. and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative Inc. -- on a lake shore near Burlington, Kansas.

The possibility of a Russia connection is particularly worrisome, former and current officials say, because Russian hackers have previously taken down parts of the electrical grid in Ukraine and appear to be testing increasingly advanced tools to disrupt power supplies.
The hacks come as international tensions have flared over U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election. The U.S., which has several continuing investigations into Russia’s activities, is known to possess digital weapons capable of disrupting the electricity grids of rival nations.

“We don’t pay attention to such anonymous fakes,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, in response to a request to comment on alleged Russian involvement.

It was unclear whether President Donald Trump was planning to address the cyberattacks at his meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an earlier speech in Warsaw, Trump called out Russia’s “destabilizing activities” and urged the country to join “the community of responsible nations.”

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation said they are aware of a potential intrusion in the energy sector. The alert issued to utilities cited activities by hackers since May.

May?  You mean back when the Russians were demanding that the Trump regime return their US compounds near NYC and DC after Obama kicked them out in December?  Trump definitely wanted to do it, but that was too much even for Republicans in Congress to stomach.

So it looks like we have our response from Vlad, ever so gently reminding us that being able to hack the control systems of several nuclear power plants at will should serve as sufficient impetus to maybe start taking his requests as demands that should be met.

Meanwhile, the intelligence community is warning that Russian agents are running amok right now and the Russians being able to fiddle with our nuke plants may actually be the least of our concerns.

Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election. 

The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations. 

"Russians have maintained an aggressive collection posture in the US, and their success in election meddling has not deterred them," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with Trump administration efforts. 

Russians could also be seeking more information on Trump's administration, which is new and still unpredictable to Moscow, according to Steve Hall, retired CIA chief of operations. 

"Whenever there is a deterioration of relations between countries — the espionage and intelligence collection part becomes that much more important as they try to determine the plans and intentions of the adversarial government," Hall said. 

Since the November election, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies have detected an increase in suspected Russian intelligence officers entering the US under the guise of other business, according to multiple current and former senior US intelligence officials. The Russians are believed to now have nearly 150 suspected intelligence operatives in the US, these sources said. Officials who spoke to CNN say the Russians are replenishing their ranks after the US in December expelled 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying in retaliation for election-meddling. 

"The concerning point with Russia is the volume of people that are coming to the US. They have a lot more intelligence officers in the US" compared to what they have in other countries, one of the former intelligence officials says. 

The Russians are playing the long game and winning.  Obama underestimated them, much to America's sorrow.  But Trump knows damn well that the Russians are a threat and he's ignoring it.  The question is why, and the obvious answer is that they have quite a bit of leverage over him, which means Putin is largely expected to get what he wants from us on a number of things, especially Syria.

As such, Donald gets to check in with his new boss today: the real President of the United States.

Putin.

StupidiNews!

• German police used water cannons on protesters at day 2 of the G20 summit in Hamburg as demonstrators torched cars, staged sit-ins, and disrupted traffic.
• Illinois lawmakers have overridden the veto of the state's two-year budget by GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner, the new plan will increase the state's tax revenues by more than $5 billion.
• Donald Trump will meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin at today's G20 summit in Germany, the two leaders are expected to address a range of topics.
• Months of repairs and signal upgrades in the nation's busiest train terminal await commuters through Penn Station this summer as work gets underway Monday.
• France's environment minister says Paris will continue towards its goal of phasing out power from coal plants in five years and end the sale of both gas and diesel vehicles by 2040.

Last Call For Return Of The Centrist Daleks

Utter failure of a Dem strategist Mark Penn and Trump-vsupporting NYC millionaire Andrew Stein know exactly how Democrats can win in 2018 and 2020...by going back to 1996 and 1998 to TRIANGULAAAAAAAAATE!

The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party. 

In the early 1990s, the Democrats relied on identity politics, promoted equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity and looked to find a government solution for every problem. After years of leftward drift by the Democrats culminated in Republican control of the House under Speaker Newt Gingrich, President Bill Clinton moved the party back to the center in 1995 by supporting a balanced budget, welfare reform, a crime bill that called for providing 100,000 new police officers and a step-by-step approach to broadening health care. Mr. Clinton won a resounding re-election victory in 1996 and Democrats were back. 

But the last few years of the Obama administration and the 2016 primary season once again created a rush to the left. Identity politics, class warfare and big government all made comebacks. Candidates inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a host of well-funded groups have embraced sharply leftist ideas. But the results at the voting booth have been anything but positive: Democrats lost over 1,000 legislative seats across the country and control of both houses of Congress during the Obama years. And in special elections for Congress this year, they failed to take back any seats held by Republicans. 

Central to the Democrats’ diminishment has been their loss of support among working-class voters, who feel abandoned by the party’s shift away from moderate positions on trade and immigration, from backing police and tough anti-crime measures, from trying to restore manufacturing jobs. They saw the party being mired too often in political correctness, transgender bathroom issues and policies offering more help to undocumented immigrants than to the heartland.

Got that?  Screw everyone but white Catholic Midwest working-class straight guys.  Only they matter. Everyone else must take a back seat: black voters, immigrants, women, LBGTQ folks, atheists, the ultimate identity politics are the ones this country was born from.  Forget the DREAMers, forget Black Lives Matter, forget the pink pussy hats, forget the Pride flags, we gotta get those white men back in the party or else!

Americans are looking for can-do Democrats in the mold of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton — leaders who rose above partisanship to unify the country, who defended human rights and equality passionately, and who also encouraged economic growth and rising wages. That is the road back to relevance, and the White House, for the Democrats.

It's the road back to relevance for white men, and they already have an entire political party just for them.  If Dems go down the same road, they'll arrive at the same place.

Trump Cards, Con't

Reminder: we live in a proto-fascist kleptocracy where Dear Leader seeks to enrich himself at the cost of the citizenry, and he is cheered on doing so because the serfs see him as an avenging sword against the enemy they have been conditioned to hate for decades.

It is rare that a single news organization attracts the level of ire mustered by President Trump, who over the weekend posted on Twitter a video that portrayed him wrestling a figure with the logo of CNN for a head. 

But the president’s denunciations — in stinging tweets and slashing speeches, in phrases like “fraud news” and “garbage journalism” — have far outstripped his criticisms of other prominent news outlets, like The New York Times or The Washington Post. And his attacks have spawned a cottage industry of Trump supporters who have declared a digital war of sorts against CNN, including gotcha videos of network employees and threatening messages sent to anchors’ cellphones.

The onslaught has contributed to a foxhole-like mentality inside CNN’s offices, where security measures have been tightened and some hosts have considered abandoning their social media accounts because of abuse. Other employees, like Chris Cuomo, co-anchor of the morning show “New Day,” insist that the scrutiny has only galvanized them further. 

“I’m comfortable going to work in Thunderdome every day,” Mr. Cuomo said in an interview, referring to the steel-cage fighting venue of the “Mad Max” movies. 

Still, CNN’s troubles have been compounded by a series of recent self-inflicted wounds — not least a high-profile retraction of a sensitive article about one of Mr. Trump’s close allies, which last week led to the forced resignations of three veteran journalists.

Those who serve Dear Leader are rewarded with glory.  Those who oppose him will be snuffed out.

Mr. Trump’s allies argue that it is CNN’s conduct that is unbecoming. Starting on last year’s campaign trail, the president and his aides have accused the network of bias and arrogance, an offensive that heated up again in January after CNN reported on the existence of a secret dossier detailing a series of lurid accusations against Mr. Trump. The network’s reporters now routinely joust with Mr. Trump’s press aides, and Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent, recently denounced the administration’s use of off-camera briefings as an affront to American values. 

White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.

I know it's hard to cheer for Time Warner/AT&T in this scenario because Trump wrecking yet another media mega-merger out of spite would actually be far better for the American consumer in the long run, and it would be yet another very public example of Trump being unfit to govern.

It doesn't however make it right.

The Slobby Hobby Lobby Hammurabi Mobby Robby Jobby

So it turns out that when you have a large, family-owned private corporation that purports to be a Christian enterprise that has no problem using that religious belief to deny their employees benefits like birth control, that same corporation can also reference its religious beliefs in order to justify the theft of religiously significant artifact from other countries as well.

In 2010 and 2011, a series of packages were shipped to Hobby Lobby's headquarters or one of the craft retailer's affiliates. Shipping labels described the contents as clay tiles or tile samples of minimal value, but, according to federal prosecutors, they were actually valuable ancient artifacts of Iraqi origin being smuggled into the United States.

Hobby Lobby has now agreed to forfeit thousands of antiquities that it bought over the years — via a process that prosecutors say was "fraught with red flags" — and pay an additional $3 million to resolve any claims by the US government, according to court papers filed on Wednesday.

US laws restrict the import of Iraqi cultural items that were looted from Iraqi institutions or where "a reasonable suspicion exists that they were illegally removed." Iraq bars the export of antiquities and restricts private possession.

According to prosecutors, an expert hired by Hobby Lobby to advise the company on its acquisitions warned that antiquities likely from Iraq carried "considerable risk," and noted that hundreds of thousands of objects — including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, which Hobby Lobby ultimately purchased — had been looted from Iraq since 1990.

So we're taking about stolen Iraqi artifacts looted from the pre-Desert Shield days of President Poppy Bush and the first Iraq War, and of course Hobby Lobby and Steve Green had zero ethical problems in obtaining these over the last 25 plus years.  Providing insurance that covered birth control for their own employees, that however was worth going to the goddamn US Supreme Court over.

Hobby Lobby reached an agreement with the government to give up thousands of artifacts and to adopt new internal measures to make sure any future acquisitions comply with customs laws and regulations. The company will also have to file regular reports for 18 months about new purchases of "cultural property." Hobby Lobby did not admit any criminal wrongdoing.

Hobby Lobby said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News that the company "did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process," which led to "regrettable mistakes."

“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled,” Hobby Lobby president Steve Green said in the statement. “Hobby Lobby has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation, and with the announcement of today’s settlement agreement, is pleased the matter has been resolved.”

The forfeiture comes as Green prepares to open the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, a project that he has spearheaded and that will reportedly feature items from his vast private collection of biblical artifacts. The forfeiture case filings don't mention the museum, but the company said in a statement on Wednesday that Hobby Lobby had been buying artifacts over the years to share "with the world in public institutions and museums."

So, we're talking about a billionaire (Steve's worth at least $5 billion according to Forbes) who is literally appropriating Iraqi culture for his own art collection but covering birth control for his own employees was a literal federal case.

Christian values indeed.  And he's going to get away with it because he's going to open a museum with his stolen crap after getting slapped on the wrist for less than 0.1% of his net worth.  And what makes this utterly, completely perfect is that "selling stolen Iraqi artifacts to morality-free Western billionaires" is pretty much the chief source of funding for the Islamic State, which is why even the Trump DoJ is involved with this.

That's right.  Hobby Lobby is essentially funding ISIS through buying stolen antiquities.

Can't make this up, guys.

Also, I will never apologize for that post title.  Ever.

StupidiNews!

• GOP Rep. Steve Scalise has been readmitted to a Washington DC hospital in serious condition after concerns over an infection and other complications from being shot last month.
• US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is warning of military action after this week's successful ICBM test by North Korea.
• Donald Trump praised Poland, criticized Russia, and threatened North Korea meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzei Duda ahead of a G20 summit in Germany this weekend.
• Several states are looking to bring new net neutrality and privacy rules for broadband carriers after the Trump FCC reversed Obama-era consumer protections earlier this year.
• The third time was the charm for SpaceX as the commercial spaceflight company was able to put a satellite into orbit after scrubbing two previous launches this week.

Last Call For Running On Something

With Republicans hiding from constituents over Trumpcare during the summer recess, Democrats in Congress are rolling out a positive message based on economics.  Sort of, anyway.

Democratic leaders are zeroing in on a new mantra for their long-promised economic agenda: a “Better Deal.”

The rebranding attempt comes as Democrats acknowledge that simply running against President Donald Trump wasn’t a winning strategy in 2016 and probably won’t work in 2018 either. The slogan, which is still being polled in battleground House districts, aims to convince voters that Democrats have more to offer than the GOP and the self-proclaimed deal-maker in the White House.

But even as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi prepare a jobs package centered on infrastructure, trade and the minimum wage, some of their most vulnerable members are making other plans.

Several moderate Democrats facing reelection next year told POLITICO that no matter what leadership does, they’re preparing to craft their own pitch to voters. The ideological and political divides that gripped the party during the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders primary wars are far from healed, and leadership may not find universal support for the left-leaning platform, particularly from those trying to defend seats in Trump-friendly states.

“Message has always been a challenge for Democrats, because it tends to get too convoluted and not very simple,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said in a recent interview.

“We ought to have a message already,” added Tester, a former chief of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm who is up for reelection in 2018. “I’m not sure we have a cohesive message. But we’ve certainly got one for Montana.”

Freshman Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), who beat a progressive challenger to win his Orange County seat, which includes Disneyland, also declared his independence from leadership: “If the left and the right are going to have a certain message, I’m going to have my own message,” Correa said.

He isn’t alone.

Several lawmakers interviewed by POLITICO said the overarching lesson they learned from the 2016 election is not that Democrats need a more cohesive economic message. Instead, they say, they need to be able to run a strong campaign in spite of the national Democratic platform.

That’s not to say they won’t accept a new party plank if it materializes and fits their districts. But they’re not counting on it either.

“It would be helpful if there was a good national message, but the Blue Dogs do not count on that or rely on that,” said Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), chairwoman of the moderate Blue Dog super PAC. “If you have the right candidate, who’s a good fit for his or her district, that is what matters the most.”

But I was told that a unified, solidly progressive and left-leaning economic message would win across the country, including winning over Rust Belt, Midwest, Mountain West and Southwest voters in Trump states.   I guess that's why Bernie won all the primaries outside of California and New York.

Oh, wait.

Instead, I see multiple Democrats announcing now that they are running on their own message.  Why, it's almost as if Dems in conservative areas understand that bold liberalism doesn't work in places like Montana, Orange County, California or southern Arizona.

A one-size-fits-all economic approach doesn't work in every state, rather you need to smartly contest all 50 states with people who can win?  That's crazy talk.

Obama-Scare Tactics

As part of the Trump regime's push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the White House has been pushing the notion that millions of Americans are "victims of Obamacare" and that it's somehow a moral imperative to rescue these "victims" from the evil Democrats.  Indeed, several state GOP parties are joining in this parade of apparent bureaucratic brutality, including VP Mike Pence's home state of Indiana.

Only one problem: when asked what "horror stories" these "victims of Obamacare" had to share, they instead told the Indiana GOP how much the Affordable Care Act had improved their lives.

The Indiana Republican Party posed a question to Facebook on Monday: "What's your Obamacare horror story? Let us know." 

The responses were unexpected. 

"My sister finally has access to affordable quality care and treatment for her diabetes."

"My father's small business was able to insure its employees for the first time ever. #thanksObama"

"Love Obamacare!"

"The only horror in the story is that Republicans might take it away."

Oops.

By 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Indiana GOP's post collected more than 1,500 comments, the vast majority in support of Obamacare. 

Within hours, Facebook users and pages, including county Democratic party pages and the popular Periods for Politicians/Periods for Pence page, shared the post to encourage their networks to comment in support of Obamacare, too.

And so it goes.  Remember, as Indiana's governor, Mike Pence signed on to Medicaid expansion. Yes, Indiana's hybrid Medicaid mess has a lot of caveats and hoops to jump through being touted as "skin in the game" and "personal responsibility" but people are getting coverage.

Remember, the GOP Senate bill would not only reverse Medicaid expansion, it would give states the option to opt out of Medicaid coverage altogether and take the money as a block grant instead that doesn't have to be spent on Medicaid at all.  And once a state waives its Medicaid program under the GOP Senate bill, it's permanent and cannot be changed.

This is what Republicans have been wanting for decades, and they're going to get it unless enough Americans start sharing stories of Obamacare's success like Indiana voters are doing.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The Trump regime's plan to assemble a national database of voters under the guise of "voter integrity" has run into not one but two buzzsaws: blue states understand full well that the information will be used for targeted voter suppression purposes, but red states know that voter registration systems have been completely compromised by the Russians.  Neither group trust the incompetent Trump regime and now 44 states have rejected participation in the scheme.

Forty-four states have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration's election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states. 

State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation -- from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public. 

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which President Donald Trump created by executive order in May, sent a letter to all 50 states last Wednesday requesting a bevy of voter data, which he notes will eventually be made available to the public.

The problem is nobody trusts the regime with a massive database of personal info, especially since that info has already been shown to be vulnerable.

But the commission, which is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, seemed to misunderstand voter privacy laws nationwide. Every state that responded to the commission's letter said it could not provide Social Security numbers, for example. Others said they consider information such as birth dates and party affiliations to be private. 

What's more, Kobach asked states to supply the information through an online portal. Many states have rejected this specific request, noting that the commission should file a voter information request through established state websites, as any other party would. 

As of Tuesday afternoon, two states -- Florida and Nebraska -- are still reviewing the commission's request. Another two states -- Hawaii and New Jersey -- have not returned CNN's request for comment. And while six states are still awaiting a letter from the commission, four of them -- New Mexico, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia -- have already pledged not to provide voters' private information. The other two of those six states, Arkansas and Illinois, have not released statements ahead of receiving the letter.

A few states have signed on at least.  Sort of.

Just three states -- Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee -- commended Kobach's attempt to investigate voter fraud in their respective statements. 

"We are very glad they are asking for information before making decisions," said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican. "I wish more federal agencies would ask folks for their opinion and for information before they made decisions." 

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, also a Republican, echoed Williams' sentiment in a statement Friday: "The commission's questions are fair and we will be glad to assist in offering our thoughts on these important matters," he said. "I look forward to working with Sec. Kris Kobach and the commission on its findings and offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people's confidence in the integrity of the elections process."

I'm betting state legislators and governors of those states will want to have a word on releasing that data, let alone the voters themselves.

Still, this has to be considered a complete failure by now if Trump can't even get blood red states like Texas and Oklahoma to play ball, or GOP-leaning swing states currently controlled by Republicans like Florida, Ohio, or Wisconsin to pony up data either.

The question now becomes if the regime will compel states to comply or not.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will travel to Hamburg, Germany this week for the annual G20 summit of world leaders, including formal talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• Record-breaking hot dog eating champ Joey Chestnut again smashed his own 4th of July hot dog contest record by eating 72 hot dogs in ten minutes and earning his tenth career win.
• After eight months of fighting, Iraqi military commanders say they are close to victory over Islamic State forces in Mosul this week.
• Automaker Volvo says it will phase out combustion engines and have electric and hybrid motor models for all its new vehicles by 2021.
• Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a famed "tower of skulls" in Mexico City as excavations into the ruins of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan continue.

Last Call For Pyongyang's Power Play

The Fourth of July fireworks today were thousands of miles away from the US as the Kim Jong Un regime has definitely upped the temperature on the Korean Peninsula by test-launching what appears to be North Korea's first ICBM. That move, combined with North Korea's previous multiple nuclear tests and very loud and pointed threats has the Trump regime calling for "global action" to be immediately taken against Pyongyang.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson strongly condemned North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launch, calling it "a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world" in a statement Tuesday. 

"Global action is required to stop a global threat," he said. "Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime."
Tillerson also called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and stated the US "will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea." 

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it was just that. A statement from Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday's test was of a new, nuclear-capable ICBM. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it an Independence Day present to the US, adding "we should deliver big and small presents often," KCNA said. 

Tillerson's strong statement marks a striking contrast to when North Korea conducted a test in April and Tillerson said: "North Korea launched yet another intermediate-range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment."

Two nuclear-armed and mostly incompetent regimes led by narcissitic madmen?  What could possibly go wrong?

The US and South Korea also announced they had conducted a joint exercise in response to North Korea's launch. A South Korean statement said the drill which was "intended as a strong warning against North Korean provocation" took place along South Korea's eastern coastline and "showcased precision targeting of the enemy's leadership in case of an emergency." 

The drill is a clear signal from the Pentagon that the US and South Korea have no intention of stopping joint military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its missile and nuclear testing, as China and Russia earlier suggested. 

Earlier a US official told CNN that the US had "high confidence" that Monday's launch was an ICBM. 

The official said analysis suggests a second-stage booster ignited and produced 30 seconds of additional flight. 

Trump administration national security, military and diplomatic officials gathered for unexpected July 4 meetings to discuss what options might be needed, several administration officials told CNN.

We live in a world where right now China and Russia are playing the role of "voices of reason".  Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP couldn't have asked for a better "wag the dog" scenario to distract America while they make their final moves on Trumpcare.

Watch these developments closely.  Between this and Qatar's outright rejection of Saudi Arabia's demands as the blockade of Doha continues, the world just shifted into a far more dangerous place than it was a few days ago.

Red, White, And Brownshirt

History teaches us that a political party having its own armed security force is a really, really good predictive sign that said political party is going to descend into bloody fascism with no small amount of both celerity or gusto, particularly when that force is already made of people who gladly extol the "virtues" of using force to resolve political conflicts in the name of "liberty".

I mention this because five weeks ago we had that nasty train stabbing by a white supremacist in Portland, and the response from the GOP there is that maybe hiring armed militia groups would be necessary in order to protect them.

It should then come as no surprise here in the American moment of 2017 that this has now come to pass and right-wing militia groups like Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters will be deputized as the GOP's newest personal private security force in the era of Dear Leader Trump.

The Multnomah County Republican Party voted this week to use far-right milita groups as private security at events.

The resolution is the brainchild of party chairman James Buchal, who last month suggested to The Guardian that the GOP could use Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, two paramilitary groups, as security guards to protect them from antifascist protesters, or antifa.

"Antifa" is the new catch-all bogeyman of the Trump Era, the way "Occupiers" were during the Dubya years.

"We are an all-volunteer organization with no money," Buchal tells WW. "So if we are going to get security services, we are going to get them from volunteers. And people who are going to volunteer to provide security services to Republicans are generally going to be people who share the view that the government has developed an unconstitutional overreach of power."

Buchal says he and the Multnomah County GOP won't be attending tonight's far-right "free speech" protest near the Waterfront Blues Festival, unless he is personally invited. (He hasn't been.)

WW reported last week that Buchal has been fundraising by warning of "threats of Leftist violence" making it difficult for Republicans to hold events in Portland.

His last fundraising letter repeated his plan to hire Oath Keepers as security guards. “Organized bands of masked thugs who call conservatives fascists or Nazis are rising rapidly within the city,” he wrote.

So naturally the logical response to being compared to right-wing white supremacist fascists like the Nazis is to behave exactly like the Nazis did historically., right?

Fun fact, because it keeps coming up: Oregon was founded as a haven for white supremacy and in particular Portland and Multnomah County, Oregon has a rather nasty history of racism. Today Portland remains the least diverse and whitest major city in America.

So of course the rise of the American Brownshirt is happening there

More Republican security forces of armed "volunteers" will follow, I guarantee it.  And when they finally get around to killing someone in that capacity, that's when this country will be truly tested in a way it hasn't in a long time.

Independence Daze

A new Marist poll for PBS NewsHour and NPR News finds that 70% of Americans believe the country has become less civil since the Trump regime came to power, with 61% saying they have little or no trust in the White House right now. While that's certainly a good sign, a far more frigening aspect of the poll shows that Republicans in particular are very receptive to Trump's attacks on the media, on those who protest the regime and on voting rights, and a healthy chunk of Republicans want all of these groups restricted.

When asked if they trust the media, fewer than a third of U.S. adults — 30 percent — said they do at least a good amount. And the differences along party lines show sharp divisions with only nine percent of Republicans saying trust the media, a stark contrast to 56 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Independents who said the same. And on the media’s right to freedom of the press, four out of 10 Republicans said the nation had “gone too far in expanding the right,” while two out of 10 Independents and one out of 10 Democrats agreed with that statement. Overall, a quarter of U.S. adults said the press had too many rights, while nearly half of Americans — said “things are okay the way they are.”

Delving deeper into the traditional American values, 52 percent of Americans said the nation should preserve the right to protest and criticize the government. But just 41 percent of Republicans think the right to protest should be scaled back, while only seven percent of Democrats and 11 percent of people who identify as independents said they feel the same way. 

Overall, half of U.S. adults said freedom of religion in this country is just fine as it is, while an additional third of Americans said the United States now restricts this right too greatly, and one-tenth of all respondents said the country needs to do more to rein in this freedom, something Republicans were more likely to say than Democrats or Independents, according to the survey. 

And when asked about the right to vote, six out of 10 Americans overall think the United States needs to change nothing. But among Republicans, a quarter of respondents think the U.S. has gone too far in expanding that right, far more than five percent of Democrats and eight percent of people who are politically independent. And half of U.S. adults said they have at least a good amount of trust that the nation’s elections are fair. Of those, 17 percent of Americans said they trust elections “a great deal.” Nearly as many respondents — 18 percent — said they don’t trust elections at all. Only six percent of Republicans said they had no trust at the ballot box, compared to 19 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of Independents who said they felt the same.

Some of the cross-tabs are dismal.  For example, of people making less than $50,000 a year, only one in 4 trust the media at all.  More 18-29 year olds trust the Trump regime (27%) than the media (22%). That's true of all age groups save those over 60, who slightly trust the media more by one point.

Meanwhile, 40% of Trump supporters think America has gone too far in allowing people to criticism the government.  Let that sink in.