Last Call For Mitch Doesn't Wan't The Blame

GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell knows that the only thing between him and total Republican victory right now is the filibuster.  Without it, the GOP could pass every bill they wanted to, with zero Democratic votes, and Trump would sign it.  No surprise then that this level of responsibility is the last thing he wants.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is shooting down President Trump's push for Republicans to change the Senate's rules for blocking legislation.

Asked if Republicans would nix the 60-vote filibuster to allow legislation to pass by a simple majority, McConnell told reporters, "That will not happen."

"There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar" on legislation, McConnell said during a weekly press conference.

Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning that voters should either elect more Republicans or get rid of the 60-vote requirement needed for ending debate on legislation.

"The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good 'shutdown' in September to fix mess!" he wrote in a series of tweets. 

But McConnell — who pledged last month to keep the filibuster — said the move would "fundamentally change the way the Senate has worked for a very long time. We're not going to do that."

Again, why not?  What's Mitch afraid of?

Unless of course he realizes that Trump and the House GOP would absolutely wreck the country and that the Senate would be blamed for helping them, and that it would empower the Democrats for a decade or more.  Mitch is a lot of things: vile, odious, greedy, possibly even a criminal depending on who you ask, but he's not stupid.  He knows what's coming.

And he doesn't want any part of it.

Billy Versus The Bill

It's no secret that Republicans are trying to quietly sneak the end of Obamacare through undetected after the very public collapse of the first two versions of the legislation.  But tt turns out that the most powerful voice against Trumpcare 3.0 (and its provisions to let states opt out of protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions) may be that of late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, and his newborn son Billy.

In a heart-wrenching 13-minute monologue, Jimmy Kimmel opened up about his son’s heart condition, which was discovered just hours after his birth ten days ago. With tears in his eyes, the host described the harrowing ordeal, which started with a nurse noticing baby William John Kimmel’s color was off and ended with him being rushed into open-heart surgery.

Baby Billy is doing well, though he’ll need several more surgeries. Kimmel closed with a plea for politicians to make sure others have a similarly happy outcome, even if they aren’t born to wealthy parents. 

We were brought up to believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, but until a few years ago, millions and millions of us had no access to health insurance at all. You know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there’s a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance, because you had a pre-existing condition. You were born with a preexisting condition. And if your parents didn’t have insurance, you may not even live long enough to get denied because of a preexisting condition.

If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make. I think that’s something that whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right?

Kimmel said that regardless of party, “We need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly.”

Last night America saw just how callow and cruel our Republican "leaders" are.  maybe they'll choose to do something about them, not just today, but 18 months from now on election day too.

Going After Her Lunch

The Trump Regime continues its erasure of the Obamas in every way, this time completely dismantling former First Lady Michelle Obama's championed programs for kids, including global education for girls.

The Trump administration is discontinuing a signature girls education initiative championed by former first lady Michelle Obama, according to officials. 

The "Let Girls Learn" program, which she and President Barack Obama started in 2015 to facilitate educational opportunities for adolescent girls in developing countries, will cease operation immediately, according to an internal document obtained by CNN. 

While aspects of the initiative's programming will continue, employees have been told to stop using the "Let Girls Learn" name and were told that, as a program unto itself, "Let Girls Learn" was ending. 

"Moving forward, we will not continue to use the 'Let Girls Learn' brand or maintain a stand-alone program," read an email sent to Peace Corps employees this week by the agency's acting director Sheila Crowley. 

" 'Let Girls Learn' provided a platform to showcase Peace Corps' strength in community development, shining a bright light on the work of our Volunteers all over the world," Crowley wrote. "We are so proud of what 'Let Girls Learn' accomplished and we have all of you to thank for this success." 

Gotta get "Moochelle's" name off the letterhead I guess.  But the real hatred against her has always been over her efforts to make school lunches healthier, a national initiative that fostered unending, volcanic, inchoate and incandescent rage among conservatives.  Those standards are now in the dumpster as newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue's first move.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue took steps Monday to roll back healthy school lunch standards promoted by former first lady Michelle Obama in one of his first regulatory acts.

In an interim final rule, aimed at giving schools more flexibility, Perdue and his department are postponing further sodium reductions for at least three years and allowing schools to serve non-whole grain rich products occasionally as well as 1 percent flavored milk.

The rule allows states to exempt schools in the 2017-2018 school year from having to replace all their grains with whole-grain rich products if they are having a hard time meeting the standard.

USDA said it will take “all necessary regulatory actions to implement a long-term solution.”

“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement.

“If kids aren't eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”

The real issue was of course healthier meals are something that A) poor black and brown kids who can't pay for school lunches don't deserve apparently, and B) something that Big Ag was furious about having to help provide when they could be selling snacks and soda to kids in vending machines in every school in the country instead.

For this, Michelle Obama was treated as an object of pure racist hatred, for the unforgivable crime of wanting kids to eat healthier and for girls to learn more.  Thank goodness we're making school lunches great again, or some garbage like that, cause that Obama bitch needs to be put in her place, right boys?

God some days I hate this country.  I really do.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the subjects are expected to be Syria, North Korea and terrorism.
• Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage is suing Maine Democratic AG Janet Mills for opposing Trump regime court cases that LePage says the state must join under his orders.
• North Korea is warning that the US is pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war after the US flew nuclear bombers in a joint training drill with Japan and South Korea.
• US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says that fracking will allow the US to gain not just energy independence, but global dominance as oil drilling is massively ramping up under Trump.
• Netflix's Orange is the New Black is the latest victim of hackers posting entire seasons of shows online months before their premiere date unless their ransom demands are met.