Third Time's A Horror Show, Con't

Trumpcare 3.0 has passed the House entirely by Republican votes, as the House GOP feels the legislation is now sufficiently cruel enough to the poor.

Republicans are excited about repealing Obamacare. They are not as excited about their legislation that will do it. 

The House passed the American Health Care Act on Thursday afternoon by a razor-thin margin of 217-213 after Speaker Paul Ryan and his deputies engaged in an aggressive whipping operation, with President Donald Trump working the phones to move fellow Republicans into the “yes” category.

But Republicans have been saying this particular bill was set to pass because it’s a now-or-never situation — especially after the embarrassing collapse of the first effort in March — and they’re been finding solace in the idea that the legislation won't be the final product anyway. 

Rep. Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican, called it a "green flag" and a "start." 

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also pushed the idea that Republicans just need to pull the trigger on this bill because it will change. “This thing is going to go to the United States Senate. It’s going to change in my view,” he said on NPR. “At some point you just have to move, and we think this is it. This will create some momentum.” 

"We like the fact that it needs to be repealed," said Scott Reed, chief strategist at the Chamber of Commerce, when asked whether they support the legislation. "... We need to move the process forward."

As I mentioned before, the bill is, as written, a complete disaster for Americans, and above all a massive, trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich.

The bill would end the Medicaid expansion in 2020, a program that millions of Americans who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line (about $15,000 for an individual) currently rely on. The end result would be that people eventually get moved into the individual market, where they would have to pay for private insurance coverage. They would get some help from AHCA’s tax credits, but likely not enough to afford to purchase a plan — keep in mind, these are people who are only earning $15,000 or less per year. 

People already in the marketplace would see significant change, too. Right now, Obamacare’s tax credits are based on income, with those who earn less getting more help. Under Obamacare, people who earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line (about $24,120 for an individual or $49,200 for a family of four) get the most generous help, enough money so that a midlevel plan would cost no more than 6.4 percent of their income. 

Under AHCA, which doesn’t base tax credits on income alone, those people would get substantially less help. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average 40-year-old who earns $26,500 would see her tax credit fall from $4,800 to $3,650 under AHCA. 

For an older Obamacare enrollee, the problem would be even more acute, because insurers would be allowed to charge the oldest enrollees five times as much as the youngest enrollees. This would have the result of raising premiums for Obamacare enrollees in their 60s. 

CBO estimates that a 64-year-old earning $26,500 would see their annual tax credit decline from $13,600 to $4,900. The amount they pay out of pocket for their premiums, meanwhile, would go up from $1,700 in annual premiums under current law to $14,600 under AHCA. Right now, with the tax credit, that person spends very little of her own money on a premium. Under the new bill, she’d spend nearly half her annual income on health insurance.

So what now?  That's up to what Mitch McConnell can get through the Senate with budget reconciliation.  That will most likely be the "real" bill, which will include most of the House provisions, and then the negotiations will begin.  The problem is that the Senate has to pass something awful enough that the House will still vote for it.

This process still has a long way to go.  But Republicans now own the first step for tens of millions to lose their health insurance.  Whether or not voters decide to actually do anything about it in a midterm year, well the odds are extremely low of that coming to pass.

Going Into Overtime (And Ripping It Out)

Don't look now America, but Paul Ryan and the House GOP just voted to give employers the option to end time-and-a-half pay for hourly overtime and replace it with comp time, which employers would be under no rules to actually allow workers to take.  That's right, the cleverly-titled Working Families Flexibility Act just passed the House and is on its way to the Senate.

The measure, backed by Republicans, would let employers give workers paid time off instead of time-and-a-half pay the next time they put in extra hours. The vote tally was largely along party lines, with no Democrats voting in favor of the bill. Six Republicans also voted against it. 

G.O.P. leadership has touted the legislation, called the Working Families Flexibility Act, as an attempt to codify flexibility for employees. 

"I don't think there's anything more powerful than giving them more control over their time so that they can make the best decisions for themselves and their families," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said Tuesday morning in a press conference held by Republican leaders in the House. 

The Trump administration also came out in support of the measure on Tuesday. The White House said in a news release that the president's advisers would recommend Trump sign the bill into law if it was presented to him in its current form. 

But Democrats stand in strong opposition. Their chief concern is that employers have the final say on when comp time can be used, which means bosses can defer compensating employees for overtime work.

The GOP House passed similar legislation in 2013, and Mitch McConnell's been trying to pass legislation to end overtime pay for quite some time now, most recently in 2014.   Now that Trump is in the White House and is indicating that he'll sign the measure, only a Senate Democratic filibuster stands between you and "white working-class hero" Trump taking your overtime pay.

But hey, her emails.

StupidiNews!

• House Republicans will make a third attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare today in a rushed vote on legislation that doesn't yet have a score from the Congressional Budget Office.
• Ohio state Republicans have added a budget provision that would put the legislature in charge of appointing oil and gas commissioners instead of GOP Gov. John Kasich.
• Britain's Prince Philip will retire from public royal engagements in August, the 95-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth will continue to attend events over the next few months.
• Post-debate polls in France continue to see centrist Emmanuel Macron with a commanding lead over far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen ahead of Sunday's presidential election.
• Google is warning users to beware of a sophisticated and widespread email phishing attack disguised as a request to open Google Docs files.

Last Call For Our Prosperity Gospel Theocracy

So for those still holding out hope that Jared and Ivanka's brutal pragmatism can be some sort of moderating influence on Donald Trump when it comes to Mike Pence and the GOP's theocracy wing, you should probably consider those hopes shredded starting tomorrow.

President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders.

The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement.

The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement.

Pence and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it. The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.

If that's true, this one's going to be certainly challenged in court, but between the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling two years ago and the nearly 25-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act (thanks Bill!) there may not be very much opponents can do to keep Trump from exempting nearly everyone from anti-discrimination laws or just about anything else for that matter if they are opposed to them on the grounds of religious belief.  From The Nation:

The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”

Language in the draft document specifically protects the tax-exempt status of any organization that “believes, speaks, or acts (or declines to act) in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life.”

The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as “sweeping” and “staggering,” may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“This executive order would appear to require agencies to provide extensive exemptions from a staggering number of federal laws—without regard to whether such laws substantially burden religious exercise,” said Marty Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and an expert on church-state separation and religious freedom.

Almost certainly this would head to the US Supreme Court, with Trump's freshly installed Justice Neil Gorsuch ready to rule in Trump's favor.  Certainly this would be another instance where Kenndy could decide the fate of the country again in a 5-4 decision.

The battle to legalize discrimination begins in earnest tomorrow, it seems.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

So, let's talk about the death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in Texas, his life snuffed out by a cop because Edwards was a black boy in the passenger seat of a car.  This was his crime, and for this he was summarily executed by police in the town of Balch Springs near Dallas.

The police chief in Balch Springs admitted Monday that a car full of teens was driving away from police when an officer armed with a rifle fatally shot a 15-year-old boy in the head.

After reviewing body-cam footage, Police Chief Jonathan Haber reversed his initial account about Saturday's deadly confrontation, saying the teen behind the wheel Saturday night at first backed down the street but was fleeing the scene when the officer opened fire.

"It did not meet our core values," Haber said of his officer's actions.

Haber had initially said the car was driving backward when Jordan Edwards was shot. The officers had been inside a house where they found a large party. They ran outside after hearing gunshots around 11 p.m. Saturday in the 12300 block of Baron Drive.

Jordan, a freshman at Mesquite High School, was leaving the party over the weekend when the officer shot him through the passenger's side window.

The medical examiner's office said Jordan was killed with a rifle and also ruled his death a homicide, though that doesn't necessarily mean charges will be filed.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's public-integrity unit are investigating the shooting.

The medical examiner's office said Jordan was killed with a rifle and also ruled his death a homicide, though that doesn't necessarily mean charges will be filed.

The Dallas County Sheriff's Department and the district attorney's public-integrity unit are investigating the shooting.

Attorney Lee Merritt, who represents Jordan's family, said Jordan and four other teens heard gunshots and decided to get in a car and leave the party. He said the teens heard someone cursing and then three shots were fired into the car.

The officer, who has not been named, has been placed on administrative leave. No officers were injured.

Tuesday the family of Jordan Edwards responded.

In their first statement following Jordan Edwards' death, the 15-year-old's family called him a "loving child with a humble and sharing spirit."

The statement also said he had an indescribably strong bond with his family, especially his siblings. The family said his brothers witnessed Jordan's death.

"Not only have Jordan's brothers lost their best friend; they witnessed firsthand his violent, senseless, murder," the statement reads. "Their young lives will forever be altered. No one, let alone young children, should witness such horrific, unexplainable, violence."

The family asked the public to refrain from protests and marches in Jordan's name as they prepare for his funeral. "We do not support nor do we condone any violence or threats made against the Balch Springs Police Department or any other law enforcement agencies."

"What we desire only second to having our beloved Jordan back, is JUSTICE FOR JORDAN," the statement reads.

Jordan Edwards wasn't a thug or a criminal.  He was a straight-A student and a football star as a freshman with his entire life ahead of him.  That life was taken carelessly and stupidly by police.  Meanwhile the Jeff Sessions Department of Justice is refusing to press any charges against the Baton Rouge cops who killed Alton Sterling last July.  Sterling was black.  The cops killed him.  Case closed in Trump's America.  They're always righteous shoots when somebody who looks like me dies to police bullets.

There is one piece of good news on this front: the officer that shot Walter Scott in North Charleston, SC in 2015, the murder caught on video, will plead to a single federal charge after last December's deadlocked trial.  The officer, Michael Slager, faces up to life in prison.

Black lives matter.

Shutdown Countdown: Maybe You Deserve It

Trump regime budget director Mick Nulvaney seems to think that him completely failing at his job and shutting down the government would teach those pesky Democrats and their supporters a lesson, and that lesson is "you can't have government work for you if it doesn't work at all" or something.

The White House budget director on Monday threatened Democrats with a government shutdown if they don’t “behave” when it comes time to write a federal budget in September. He also defined a “good shutdown,” advocated earlier by President Donald Trump on Twitter, as one that proved Trump correct about the dysfunction of the federal government.

An animated Mick Mulvaney responded first to a reporter who asked about Trump’s Twitter dispatches Tuesday morning, in which the President urged, “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”

“I think the President is frustrated with the fact that he negotiated in good faith with the Democrats and they went out to try and spike the football and make him look bad,” Mulvaney said, presumably referring to Democrats’ taunts that Trump got almost nothing his White House budget advocated for.

“I get that frustration because I think it is a terrible posture for the Democrats to take,” he continued. “If we are sitting here trying to prove to people that Washington is going to be different, that we’re going to change things and can figure a way to work with them and they do that to this President, listen, I would have taken offense at that so it doesn’t surprise me at all that his frustrations were manifested in that way. We’ve got a lot to do between now and September. I don’t anticipate a shutdown in September. But if negotiations — if the Democrats aren’t going to behave any better than they have in the last couple days, it may be inevitable.”

“How would a shutdown clean up the mess?” one reporter asked.

“Sooner or later, we’ll have to start doing something different,” Mulvaney said, adding: “If we get to September and it is still business as usual, business as usual, business as usual and nothing changes, and takes a shutdown to change it, I have no problem with that.

Later in the press conference, NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Mulvaney to define what he thought Trump meant by a “good shutdown.”

“I don’t know,” Mulvaney said, pausing. “We haven’t had one.”

But a Trump™ brand Shutdown would be a good shutdown, because America.

Remember that point I keep making about Trump supporters being fine with whatever pain inflicted by Trump just as long as black and brown people suffer the most?  Watch Trump, or at least the Bannon wing of the Trump regime, start talking up the notion that a shutdown would be vital in "getting rid of the dead weight" in government.  Mulvaney's already on board.

It won't be long before somebody talks Trump into it too.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump will meet with House Republicans still opposed to the current bill to repeal and replace Obamacare as the GOP bill's support continues to flag.
• The leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee says testimony from former acting AG Sally Yates later this week could be "the ball game" when it comes to Trump and Russia.
• A suicide bombing attack on a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan has killed eight and injured dozens as several civilian vehicles in the area were damaged or destroyed in the blast.
• Auto theft in Mexico is up more than 20% from this time last year as police are struggling to keep up with recovery efforts.
• San Francisco and AirBNB have settled their lawsuit over the city's short-term rental policy, and the city will keep its Office of Short-Term Rentals and require registration for room rentals.

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.

Last Call For Economic Anxiety, Again

The "economic anxiety" excuse for why Trump won will never, ever die it seems, and the latest proponents of the odious theory are the Democrats themselves.  Greg Sargent took a look at the internal polling from the Democratic "autopsy" of the 2016 campaign and has some grim figures:

One finding from the polling stands out: A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy — twice the percentage that said the same about Trump. I was also permitted to view video of some focus group activity, which showed Obama-Trump voters offering sharp criticism of Democrats on the economy.

Priorities USA, the super PAC that is working to restore Democrats to power, conducted focus groups of Obama-Trump voters in Wisconsin and Michigan — two states that Trump snatched from Democrats — in late January and polled some 800 Obama-Trump voters nationally at around the same time. The pollsters also conducted focus groups with so-called drop-off voters — people who voted for Obama in 2012 but didn’t vote in 2016 — in the same states and polled 800 drop-off voters nationally.

“[Hillary] Clinton and Democrats’ economic message did not break through to drop-off or Obama-Trump voters, even though drop-off voters are decidedly anti-Trump,” Priorities USA concluded in a presentation of its polling data and focus group findings, which has been shown to party officials in recent days.

The poll found that Obama-Trump voters, many of whom are working-class whites and were pivotal to Trump’s victory, are economically losing ground and are skeptical of Democratic solutions to their problems. Among the findings: 

• 50 percent of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes are falling behind the cost of living, and another 31 percent said their incomes are merely keeping pace with the cost of living.
• A sizable chunk of Obama-Trump voters — 30 percent — said their vote for Trump was more a vote against Clinton than a vote for Trump. Remember, these voters backed Obama four years earlier.
• 42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump. (Forty percent say that about congressional Republicans.) A total of 77 percent of Obama-Trump voters said Trump’s policies will favor some mix of all other classes (middle class, poor, all equally), while a total of 58 percent said that about congressional Democrats.

“If you felt like your life wasn’t getting better over eight years, then you might draw a conclusion that Democrats don’t care about you,” Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, told me in an interview. “Certainly a subset of these voters were responsive to what Trump was selling them on immigration. But you had a lot of consistency with the Obama-Trump voters … in terms of the severe economic anxiety they face.”

The economic anxiety angle remains an excuse.  I know that because Clinton adopted a lot of Bernie's economic policies before the election, and Tom Perez has adopted even more now ($15 minimum wage comes to mind) and yet nobody seems to give a damn.  If it was ever really about economics and not a white supremacist in the White House, the Dems would have won.

The message is clear: the Dems have to kick black, Hispanic, and Aisan voters to the curb and go after white votes, because only they matter.

I'm tired of it and I'll fight that every step of the way.

The Whitest Of Whitewashings

Don't look now, but not only is Trump trying to rehabilitate his political hero Andrew Jackson, he's actually trying to say that Jackson could have stopped the US Civil War if he had been around.

President Trump during an interview that airs Monday questioned why the country had a Civil War and suggested former President Andrew Jackson could have prevented it had he served later. 

"I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart," Trump said during an interview with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito.

"He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.'"

Jackson, the nation's seventh president, died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.

The president further questioned why the country could not have solved the Civil War.

"People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?" Trump said during the edition of "Main Street Meets the Beltway" scheduled to air on SiriusXM.

"People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

During the interview, the president also compared his win to that of Jackson.

"My campaign and win was most like Andrew Jackson, with his campaign. And I said, when was Andrew Jackson? It was 1828. That's a long time ago," Trump said. 

"That's Andrew Jackson. And he had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest. And unfortunately, it continues."

The fact that Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War and served as president more than 30 years before aside, Jackson was one of America's biggest proponents of slavery.  Jackson's estate, The Hermitage, was a slave plantation, pure an simple, and Jackson himself signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, leading directly to the Trail of Tears.  This is a man who thought both blacks and Native Americans were savages who could not be reasoned with because he didn't view either group as human.

“My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength,” he said during his Fifth Annual Address to Congress in 1833. “That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain.

“They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”

Jackson’s steadfast belief in racial inferiority fueled his early career as a slave trader, which in turn funded his purchase of the Hermitage plantation in 1804. More than 150 slaves worked the land at one point and throughout his life, Jackson is believed to have owned upwards of 300 slaves.

And this is who Trump not only admires, but is someone who Trump believes could have prevented the US Civil War.  I'll leave the theories on how a man who directly profited from slavery and ran tens of thousands of Native Americans off their lands would have "worked it out" to you, dear reader.

But I do know that Trump has long been Old Hickory's biggest fan, and has often pointed out the parallels between his campaign and Jackson's in 1828.  That shouldn't aurprise anyone at this point, because of course we elected both of them.

Third Time's A Horrow Show

Republicans in the House say they are very close to having enough votes this week to finally and completely dismantle Obamacare, and the resulting pressure on Republicans to pass Trumpcare 3.0 is enough that party leaders are going all out to secure the votes that they need.

House Republican leaders and White House officials are increasingly confident about passing their long-stalled Obamacare replacement bill: More lawmakers than ever are committed to voting “yes," they say, and GOP insiders insist they’re within striking distance of a majority.

But the window of opportunity for Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team is closing fast. The House is scheduled to leave town for a one-week recess on Thursday, and some senior Republicans worry that failing to get it done by then would fritter away critical momentum. Skittish Republicans would return home to face a barrage of pressure from Democrats and progressive outside groups.

Some senior Republicans and White House officials are advising Ryan (R-Wis.) and his top lieutenants to cancel the recess if needed, and to keep the House in session until they have the votes.

"I think they could have voted on Friday," President Donald Trump said in a Sunday interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" to discuss his first 100 days in office. "I said, 'Just relax. Don't worry about this phony 100 day thing. Just relax. Take it easy. Take your time. Get the good vote and make it perfect.'"

"I think health care reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare is just around the corner,” Vice President Mike Pence added on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think we’re close.”

While Trump and the White House have been overly optimistic before about repealing Obamacare, senior House Republicans agree with them this time.

“We’re very close," Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

All sides agree that right now the Republicans are still short on the votes, and if they don't get it done this week, it might never happen.  But that's no reason to relax.  If like me you're in a GOP district, it's time to make some phone calls.  Thomas Massie is still a no here in NKY, so that's something at least, but we still need a few more no votes to seal this thing in the dumpster.

There are a lot of undecided Republicans out there still.  Time to convince them to say no.

StupidiNews!

• A bipartisan budget deal in Congress will keep the government going through September but several Trump priorities are not in the bill, including funding for a border wall with Mexico.
• Donald Trump is facing heat from both parties for inviting Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte to the White House after a Saturday phone call between the two.
• North Korea vowed Monday to boost nuclear testing "to the maximum" in continuing violations of UN resolutions, saying it will do so "at any moment" to counter the US.
• Global soccer organization FIFA is now seeing the fallout of last year's bribery scandal spread to Asia as the head of Guam's soccer association admitted to taking $1.1 million in bribes.
• Toxic algae blooms in the Atlantic are becoming more widespread and more frequent as oceans warm, but there are some differences in the Pacific according to researchers.