What do you give an autocratic dictator who helped you land a plum job, when you are trying to keep up the slightest sliver of a pretext that you and the dictator don’t have … a relationship? Donald Trump is looking for an answer.
President Donald Trump has asked National Security Council staff to come up with "deliverables" that he can offer to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Germany next week, The Guardian reported Thursday.
Deliverables. It sounds marginally, but only marginally, better than “thank you gifts.”
It is unclear what those "deliverables" would look like, but they could include an offer to ease sanctions — which the Trump administration has reportedly looked into at least twice since January — or to give back the Russian diplomatic compounds that President Barack Obama ordered evacuated in December.
Those would be the same compounds that Trump was looking at giving back before. The compounds that were expressly taken away from the Russians because of their interference in the election, that both Democratic and Republican senators don’t want Trump to return. The compounds that the Russians have demanded.
But what does Trump get in return? Nothing. Nothing but the sweet satisfaction of showing everyone, once again, that Trump can do what he wants and no one can stop him.
It is unclear what Trump would ask for in return for such concessions, if anything. A former official familiar with the debate inside the White House told The Guardian that the NSC had resisted "offering anything up without anything back in return."
From his own blustering but ultra-generic statements, it has been apparent that Donald Trump has absolutely no idea what the Senate's version of a "healthcare" bill actually contains. Perhaps nobody bothered to tell him; perhaps they have tried to tell him repeatedly but he simply can't retain the information. Also, he is an mean-minded idiot.
So now Republicans are debating whether to ask Trump for his assistance in selling the bill to the public or if they would prefer he keep his pie-hole shut.
[S]ome lawmakers and congressional aides privately bemoan his thin grasp of the bill’s principles, and worry that his difficulty staying on message will do more harm than good.“You know, he’s very personable and people like talking to him and he’s very embracing of that, so there will be certain people he’d like to talk to,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “But I’d let Mitch handle it,” he continued, referring to the lead role Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has played thus far.
Ah, whether to unleash the shouting liar or chain him up in the basement for a while: It is indeed a dilemma. That said, it's not clear that Senate Republicans have any say in whether Trump attempts to "help" them, and they certainly won't have any say whatsoever in how he does it. You'll recall Trump went from holding a celebration with House Republicans in the Rose Garden over the passage of their own healthcare bill, only to blast it as "mean" during the drafting of the Senate version; his habit of changing his opinion to whatever would best impress his audience from one moment to the next has made him an unreliable would-be ally.
And this, too, hasn't gone unnoticed.
One Republican congressional aide said that comment left some lawmakers worried that the president — who had no real ties to the GOP before running for the White House — could turn on them if a bill passes but the follow-up becomes politically damaging. The official insisted on anonymity in order to describe private discussions.
As Republicans scramble to justify their plan to give rich people a tax break by slashing Medicaid, they’re simultaneously claiming that their cuts aren’t really cuts and that Medicaid doesn’t work, anyway, so cutting it is good. Neither of these things is true—the cuts are cuts, and Medicaid definitely works, according to multiple studies and Medicaid patients themselves. Here’s a sample of what Republicans are claiming:
At National Review, Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes, “in a randomized trial in Oregon that gave some individuals Medicaid while leaving others uninsured, recipients gained no statistically significant improvement in physical health after two years.”
Here’s the reality of that Oregon study:
… what it found, in short, was that Medicaid protected enrollees from catastrophic health costs; boosted the likelihood of people reporting they were in good, very good, or excellent health by 25 percent; cut depressive symptoms by about 30 percent; and increased both diabetes diagnoses and treatment.
But the study also disappointed Medicaid’s backers: In particular, there was no evident improvement in blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol levels after two years.
How is that not an improvement? For two years of a small study, those are highly significant results—unless, of course, your priority is denying that Medicaid helps people. That’s not the only study out there, either:
One study compared three states implementing large Medicaid expansions in the early 2000s to neighboring states that didn’t expand Medicaid, finding a significant 6% decrease in mortality over 5 years of follow-up. A subsequent analysis showed the largest decreases were for deaths from “health-care–amenable” conditions such as heart disease, infections, and cancer, which are more plausibly affected by access to medical care.
Medicaid works. Expanding Medicaid works. Republicans are just looking for excuses to put the very healthy bank accounts of the very wealthy over the physical health of low-income people.
The end of Medicaid as we know it? No exaggeration. The Senate version of Trumpcare has worse long-term cuts to Medicaid than the House version, to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121, and give them a piece of your mind. Tell us how it went.
An all-girl team from the city of Herat in Afghanistan has been invited to the United States to participate in the prestigious FIRST Robotic Competition. Despite great difficulty in obtaining both supplies and instruction, the girls have worked hard to design, construct, and program a robot for the competition. With the help of the first female tech CEO in the nation, they’re polished their skills and prepared. And they’ve literally risked their lives to be a part of the contest.
To interview for their visas, the girls risked a 500 mile trek cross-country to the American embassy in Kabul – the site of several recent suicide attacks and one deadly truck bomb in early June that killed at least 90 people.
Their application for a visa? Denied. The girls even made a second journey to revisit the embassy. Denied again. There is still a chance that their robot is coming to America.
Back home in Herat, Team Afghanistan is racing against the clock, putting the final touches on their ball-sorting robot that will travel to the U.S. to compete against 163 other machines from around the globe. The students are screwing together joints, programming the machine's sensors, and still trying to find one chain.
In order to bribe Republican senators from the Medicaid expansion states hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, namely Shelley Moore Capito (WV) and Rob Portman (OH), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown $45 billion in treatment funds at them, $4.5 billion every year for the next decade. That's not going to cut it, say addiction experts, because they can't offset the drastic cuts to Medicaid in the proposal.
Medicaid currently pays for about 1.2 million adults to receive opioid addiction treatment, according to an analysis from Harvard and New York University researchers. Repealing the expansion, those researchers found, would rescind about $4.5 billion in annual funds that currently cover addiction treatment.
The solution, at least according to Portman and Capito, is to insert that money back into the system, albeit as a grant rather than within the Medicaid system. The number could still shrink, however, as Republicans spend this week hammering out many of the remaining provisions of their repeal plan. […]
Addiction experts fighting the epidemic, however, said the senators’ proposal overlooks the complicated spiral in health issues that can be brought on by addiction.
“Sure, yeah, you know, it sounds wonderful. Here’s billions of dollars to help combat this issue. But the issue is larger than that,” said Mark Drennan, the executive director of the West Virginia Behavioral Healthcare Providers Association.
Senate Republicans are still talking Trumpcare, and plan to bring it back after July 4 recess. We absolutely MUST make sure they don’t have the votes. Keep calling your Republican senators at (202) 224-3121. Tell them “NO DEAL” on Trumpcare. Then, tell us how it went.
When it comes to immigrant rights activism, some of the most important and consequential work hasn’t happened in D.C. or even state houses, but in an RV with a handful of attorneys. Since 2014, Santa Fe Dreamers Project has provided legal aid to immigrant clients via fixed locations and a roaming RV office, assisting immigrants with complicated forms, applying for DACA, answering legal questions, and helping others facing deportation. While an immigration attorney can cost up to $2,000, Santa Fe Dreamers Project charges only $150. It can mean the difference between staying or being ripped away from your home:
This catalyst for her mobile legal aid clinic came in 2006, before she was a lawyer. At that time [Sante Fe Dreamers Project founder Allegra] Love was a 24-year-old third grade public school teacher.
She was teaching a class of 20 children in a small immigrant town in the Santa Fe school district when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a raid on her school. The next day, her class was reduced to just three.
“Kids just stopped going to school,” says Love.
Appalled at the politics in play within her classroom, Love decided she wanted to advocate for these families whom she had grown to respect and cherish during her brief teaching career.
“Why were we terrorizing these people?” she wondered. “They’re good people … They work hard.”
Scott Pruitt is taking the EPA past simply refusing to act on climate change, and acting as an idea factor for climate change deniers.
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is leading a formal initiative to challenge mainstream climate science using a "back-and-forth critique" by government-recruited experts, according to a senior administration official.
The program is designed to discover “vulnerabilities” in the scientific argument that can be exploited by climate change deniers.
The program will use "red team, blue team" exercises to conduct an "at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science," the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations.
Pruitt needs new ways to attack climate change, because he wants to go back to court and challenge the finding that rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere represent a danger that the EPA must address. The EPA is now engaged in spending millions to destroy its court-ordered function.
Executives in the coal industry interpret the move as a step toward challenging the endangerment finding, the agency's legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and other sources. Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., said Pruitt assured him yesterday that he plans to begin reviewing the endangerment finding within months.
Colorado disability activists have been trying to meet with Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) to discuss the pending Republican healthcare bill, one Sen. Gardner had a hand in writing, that absolutely decimates Medicaid, leaving disabled citizens in terrifying limbo. Many will not be able to stay in their homes and could be forced into institutions if their Medicaid benefits are taken away.
Sen. Gardner’s staff refused to meet with them and these fearless activists decided to settle in for the night. Their reason for hunkering down and demanding a meeting is nothing short of heartbreaking:
When asked why they would choose to spend all night in the hallway, Morris responded, “because they spend the night in a hallway in this building or they spend the rest of their life in an institution where they’re locked away.”
The overnight protest stretched into two nights and was headed into a third when Sen. Gardner’s office and the Denver police showed up late Thursday to tell the constituents they were violating the lease by having people sleep in the building and they had to go or face arrest. They held their ground, chanting, “Rather go to jail than to die without Medicaid” and one by one, they were arrested.
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Continue reading Toyota’s cute support robot helps Army Ranger at home
Toyota’s cute support robot helps Army Ranger at home originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsJeff Bezos is buying Whole Foods and now Amazon’s one step closer to becoming the kind of monopolistic mega-corporation previously only seen in the Robocop franchise.
The days of antitrust laws are long gone, but maybe one day there will be the political will to break up Bezos’ empire like Ma Bell and Standard Oil.
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Continue reading We drove the Ford Ranger | Autoblog Podcast #520
We drove the Ford Ranger | Autoblog Podcast #520 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsThe U.S. Supreme Court just summarily dismissed an Arkansas case that tested whether the equal treatment conferred upon same-sex couples by the high court's 2015 marriage decision extends to the realm of birth certificates and parenting.
The Texas Supreme Court now seems committed to testing the bounds of that equal treatment in the realm of benefits, writes the Texas Tribune:
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lower court ruling that said spouses of gay and lesbian public employees are entitled to government-subsidized same-sex marriage benefits. The state's highest civil court unanimously ordered a trial court to reconsider the case.
As part of a case challenging Houston’s benefits policy, the Supreme Court suggested a landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage does not fully address the right to marriage benefits. Justice Jeffrey Boyd, writing on behalf of the court in a 24-page opinion, said there’s still room for state courts to explore the “reach and ramifications” of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“We agree with the Mayor [of Houston] that any effort to resolve whether and the extent to which the Constitution requires states or cities to provide tax-funded benefits to same-sex couples without considering Obergefell would simply be erroneous,” Boyd wrote.“On the other hand, we agree… that the Supreme Court did not address and resolve that specific issue in Obergefell.”
The article notes that LGBTQ advocates will probably appeal the ruling to federal courts.
But we are likely to see many more challenges of this sort designed to test the depth and breadth of what the Supreme Court meant in Obergefell. Whether we like it or not, those challenges are coming, which means it's probably better for the LGBTQ movement if they come while Justice Anthony Kennedy still sits on the court. He's more likely than any Trump replacement for him to protect the integrity of the decisions he wrote equalizing treatment for same-sex couples.
Just a few days after Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III claimed that his Justice Department will “protect the rights of all transgender persons,” the Trump administration has hired Bethany Kozma, an anti-LGBT activist who fought to restrict bathroom access for trans children, to the office of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the US Agency for International Development.
With just hours left in Pride Month 2017, guess Donald Trump couldn’t help but offer one last F-U to LGBT Americans, after failing to even acknowledge the occasion with a presidential proclamation for the first time since the George W. Bush administration:
In July 2016, Kozma published a post at the Daily Signal, a publication of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, calling for a national campaign in opposition to the Obama administration's guidance saying transgender students have the right to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. She called the campaign "United We Stand," and made her case against the policy by repeating the unsubstantiated assertion that policies allowing transgender people to access the bathroom matching their gender identity leads to sexual assault.
"To put it simply, a boy claiming gender confusion must now be allowed in the same shower, bathroom, or locker room with my daughter under the president’s transgender policies," she wrote. "When I learned that predators could abuse these new policies to hurt children in school lockers, shelters, pool showers, or other vulnerable public places like remote bathrooms in national parks, I realized I had to do something."
Kozma celebrated Donald Trump ending former President Barack Obama’s guidance earlier this year, writing that "the silent majority must no longer be silent. With Trump, we now have a president who is focused on remedying the lawlessness of the prior administration." Happy Pride from Donald Trump!
State election officials are not rushing out to bow down to the massive information demand from Donald Trump’s voter suppression commission, a commission that just got another member whose life’s mission is to keep people from voting. In fact, the rush is in the opposite direction—a constantly growing number of states have said they won’t hand over part or all of the information that the commission’s vice chair, the notorious Kris Kobach, wants.
A few states, like Virginia, California, New York, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Massachusetts are just saying no. “NY refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not comply with this request,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted, with similar statements coming from officials in other states.
Many other states—a rapidly growing number—are saying they will not give Kobach any information that is not already publicly available, like the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, for instance. Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin are on that list. Vermont’s secretary of state, slammed the commission itself: “While it gives me pause to enable the work of this Commission in any way, I am bound by law to provide our publicly available voter file.” But you may notice that this is not a list of blue states. It turns out that even some secretaries of state who are themselves major voter suppression fanatics are not eager to turn over people’s personal information. Some are particularly surprising:
The list of states saying no to everything or no to everything that’s not already public continues to grow. But nothing is going to dent Kobach’s determination to disenfranchise as many Americans as he can.
What the …
This is quite a development in the saga of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, in his role as vice chair of Donald Trump’s voter suppression commission, asking every state to provide him voter registration information including the last four digits of ever voter’s Social Security number. State Kobach will apparently not give National Kobach what he wants.
Let’s be clear about one thing: Kobach not getting Social Security digits doesn’t mean the threat from his request is gone. He is still planning to collect a lot of information and disenfranchise a lot of voters with it. But it was nice of him to demonstrate how extreme his efforts are in this way.
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Continue reading Alpine's latest receiver brings wireless CarPlay to all, for a price
Alpine's latest receiver brings wireless CarPlay to all, for a price originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 16:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsNotice what Republicans are not talking about this Friday? Medicaid and how $772 billion in cuts isn't really a cut. No Republican has tweeted out any distorted graphs purporting to prove that cuts aren't cuts and really, they're adding money. They're not talking about Medicaid at all. Particularly not about that Congressional Budget Office analysis talking about how funding will be 26 percent lower relative to current law in 2026 and 35 percent lower in 2036.
While the CBO warns that projecting beyond the first decade is difficult, the new report estimates that the slower growth rate would drive relative spending down even further in the second decade. By 2036, the government would spend 35 percent less on Medicaid than it would under current law.If states couldn’t find ways to administer the program more efficiently, they would be forced to raise taxes, cut benefits, heighten eligibility requirements, or reduce payments to doctors and hospitals to make up the decline.
According to CBO, the reduce spending would likely mean states would cover fewer people. The report predicted “enrollment in Medicaid would continue to fall relative to what would happen under the extended baseline.”
Democrats, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), have no problem talking about who asked the CBO for this evaluation. "This analysis makes clear that the massive cuts to Medicaid are only going to get worse," he said "These cuts will leave states with unfathomable choices like whether sick children get essential treatment or pregnant women get prenatal care or older Americans can receive adequate nursing home care."
These cuts make the Senate version of Trumpcare even worse than the House version, and are a key part of why America hates this bill so much. That's opposed to the massive support—74 percent approval—Medicaid has with the public. When this KFF poll was conducted, just 4 in 10 knew about the deep cuts to Medicaid the proposal would make. As the new CBO analysis generates headlines, though, that awareness will increase. So will people's anger at Republicans about what they're trying to do.
The end of Medicaid as we know it? No exaggeration. The Senate version of Trumpcare has worse long-term cuts to Medicaid than the House version, to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121, and give them a piece of your mind. Tell us how it went.
This one shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. The Trump White House is evaluating whether or not they should shut down the White House Council on Women and Girls. Now, the fact that a Republican administration is considering eliminating this group whose mandate is to provide the president with advice related to the welfare of women and girls isn’t new. George W. Bush did the same with the Office for Women’s Initiative and Outreach when he took over from Bill Clinton. And Republicans aren’t exactly known for being champions of women’s issues. But as awful as a person that George W. Bush is (and we have to admit that he’s looking marginally better daily in comparison to Trump), sexual predator is not one of the labels we can use to describe him. It is truly fitting that under a serial sexual assaulter, the White House isn’t sure that this council is relevant any more.
“We want the input of the various agencies to understand the assets they have so that we make this office additive, not redundant,” said White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks.
She added that the White House “is evaluating the best positioning of this office going forward (and other legacy Obama offices)” and flagged other policy initiatives, including adviser Ivanka Trump’s push for paid family leave and STEM education for girls, that will address gender disparities.
Let’s get this out of the way right now so we don’t have to deal with it ever again—Ivanka Trump is no champion for everyday women and girls. There is nothing in her very privileged life or career that shows she’s remotely in touch with those of us mortals here on Earth. Sure, she has marketed products for women, books for women, videos for women. But this is because she wants women’s money, not because she cares about the conditions of actual women. She is the very same woman who did not have a maternity leave policy in her own company. Everything she does is vapid and lacks context about the struggles faced by poor women, women of color, disabled women, queer women—basically the struggle of any woman who has never had a billionaire for a father and has had to actually live, work and try to thrive in a sexist world.
You’d think that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would have other things to worry about, like the fact that the three felony charges hanging over his head could land him in the slammer for up to 99 years.
But on the very same day Paxton’s legal team met with the new judge presiding over his criminal case, Paxton and Republican officials in nine other states announced they will sue Donald Trump if he doesn’t end former President Barack Obama’s popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 immigrant youth to work legally and pursue their dreams.
Texas already paved the way to killing Obama’s 2014 immigration action, which would have protected the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents from deportation and allowed them to work legally. Now these anti-immigrant charlatans want an end to DACA as well:
Joining Paxton on the letter were Idaho Gov. Butch Otter and the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and West Virginia.
The letter said the threatened lawsuit against DACA would follow the same legal reasoning that prompted the federal courts to block Obama’s 2014 attempt to expand DACA and add protections for unauthorized immigrants who were parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Texas led a 26-state coalition that successfully challenged that order — known as DAPA, or Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — arguing that the Obama administration did not have the legal authority to issue an order protecting about 4 million people from deportation.
Kelly formally rescinded a Homeland Security memo that implemented the DAPA policy on June 15 but kept the DACA memo in place, prompting Paxton’s letter Thursday.
“It’s outrageous and wrong for these far-right Republican politicians to attack immigrant youth and DACA, a program that has worked incredibly well for the past five years,” said Greisa Martinez, a leader with immigrant youth led organization United We Dream. “Make no mistake, we will organize and fight to defend, preserve and protect DACA. We call on all people of conscience to speak out in favor of protecting immigrant youth, our families, and our communities. The racist agenda must be stopped.”
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Continue reading Next-gen Nissan Leaf launches September 5; new photo teased
Next-gen Nissan Leaf launches September 5; new photo teased originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 14:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently doesn't think much—or anything—of the big "repeal now" idea popular vote loser Donald Trump has decided to sign on to. He's in Kentucky, and from there had his Communications Director David Popp release this statement.
Member discussions and calls are ongoing within the Conference and Administration as staff continues their work. Leader McConnell is back in Kentucky and will be fully engaged during the State Work Period."
So the big contribution to the debate from Trump (and Sens. Ben Sasse [NE] and Rand Paul [KY]) isn't worth even acknowledging or commenting on, and also too, there won't be a bill going to the Congressional Budget Office for a score today, as McConnell had planned.
This is a definite setback, but that doesn't mean we can let up in the pressure. Keep calling, and since at least some senators will be going home, show up at their offices. Particularly Mitch McConnell's, since we know he's home.
We delayed Trumpcare—for now. But the GOP leadership is hell-bent on denying health insurance, and is working hard to coerce Republican senators. We need three Republicans to stand firm. Call your senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them “NO DEAL.” Then, tell us how it went.
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Continue reading 2018 Volkswagen Atlas | Drivers' Notes
2018 Volkswagen Atlas | Drivers' Notes originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 13:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsRepublicans have not been shy in recent years about wanting to cut the safety net to ribbons, slashing programs like food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Medicaid and Medicare and heating assistance and unemployment and basically everything else that keeps struggling families afloat. But now even that eagerness to hurt poor people may not be enough. The far-far-right House Freedom Caucus is taking its own party’s budget hostage to demand more and deeper cuts. They have a long list of ways to keep people from getting the help they need, like making work requirements harder to fulfill—currently an able-bodied adult without dependents has to work about 20 hours a week to be eligible for SNAP and the Freedom Caucus would increase that—among other ways of cutting the safety net out from under people. They have a trade-off in mind: less assistance for poor people in the form of food, more assistance for rich people in the form of giant tax breaks.
It’s hard to avoid this point, as the Freedom Caucus is literally proposing to tie welfare reform to tax reform. Jordan himself has hinted at it, calling it “reverse-engineering”: whatever you can “save” from cutting these programs can be reallocated to other party priorities. Ideally, he doesn’t want to stop at SNAP and TANF.
“There are tons of different means-tested welfare entitlement programs that we can work at achieving savings in. Obviously Medicaid work requirements — expanding what’s already in the health care bill. There’s real money there,” Jordan told Vox in mid-June, in a revealing moment about how conservatives are approaching poverty-related policy. And this is one of the only ways conservatives will sign on to the budget resolution.
In public, Jordan and his Freedom Caucus buddies like to pretend that they wouldn’t be hurting people.
There’s a new chapter to the current Donald Trump vs. Morning Joe drama. In a Washington Post op-ed, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough say simply, "Donald Trump is not well." They publicly revealed top Trump staffers privately threatened them:
The president’s unhealthy obsession with our show has been in the public record for months, and we are seldom surprised by his posting nasty tweets about us. During the campaign, the Republican nominee called Mika “neurotic” and promised to attack us personally after the campaign ended. This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.
Incredibly, Donald Trump himself responded on Twitter (where else?!) and confirmed that there was a conversation about a National Enquirer article. He also seemingly confirmed that he does have some editorial control over what goes in this tabloid!
Scarborough wasted no time in calling this a flat-out lie and said he has the receipts:
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Continue reading The 700 horsepower Porsche GT2 RS is the wildest 911 ever
The 700 horsepower Porsche GT2 RS is the wildest 911 ever originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsDonald Trump's baseless contention that anywhere from 3 to 5 million people voted illegally led to his dubious "Election Integrity" commission, headed by Mike Pence and anti-immigrant and voter ID law advocate Kris Kobach. Now Trump has tapped another crusader for restricting voting rights to sit on the panel, Hans Von Spakovsky. TPM's Tierney Sneed writes:
Von Spakovsky served in President George W. Bush’s Justice Department during an era when the agency came under fire for politicizing voting rights issues. Von Spakovsky approved Georgia’s voter ID law, over the objections of career DOJ employees. Since leaving the federal government, he has continued to be an advocate for restrictive voting laws and has fanned the unsubstantiated fears about voter fraud.
Von Spakovsky didn't just approve that Georgia law over objections, he also penned his own op-ed in support of it under a pseudonym so no one would know it was him. In other words, while working in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 2005, he cheated in support of a position that undermined civil rights and then later tried to cover it up. Here's the Washington Post, circa 2006:
After leaving Justice for the Federal Election Commission, von Spakovsky has acknowledged writing a law review article that endorsed photo identification, which was Georgia's approach, before the state's proposal was even submitted to Justice for review. He also took the unusual step of using a pseudonym, "Publius," in publishing the article, which appeared in the spring 2005 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.
The article and its unusual authorship prompted a letter of complaint to the Justice Department last week from the Voting Rights Project, an arm of the American Civil Liberties Union that is opposed to Georgia's voter identification plans. The group said the article shows von Spakovsky had already made up his mind on the issue and that his attempt to hide his views may have violated Justice Department guidelines.
In addition, a link to the Publius article suddenly disappeared this week from the FEC Web site, which had featured the article among a list of von Spakovsky's writings.
Because nothing says "integrity" like lying.
Trump's commission already made headlines this week when it asked states to hand over the personal details and party affiliations of all voters. Gee, that doesn't sound fishy.
Most Senate Republicans are all but laughing at popular vote loser Donald Trump and their fellow senators Ben Sasse (NE) and Rand Paul (KY) for the hare-brained suggestion that they just do repeal of Obamacare now and figure the hard stuff out later. It's a lead balloon.
- "Not going to happen," said one senior GOP aide. "15 votes for that strategy. Which is why we are where we are."
- Another senior GOP aide went further, saying if the president continues his erratic messaging, "Not really seeing anything happening in July if this keeps up."
- And a third GOP aide said the chances of repealing first and replacing later are "zero."
That's not going to stop Paul from running to the microphones to claim credit for the idea (it came from Sasse) and to say that Trump is all for it.
"Senator Rand Paul suggested this very idea to the President," Paul's spokesman Sergio Gor told Yahoo News Friday. "He fully agrees that we must immediately repeal Obamacare and then work on replacing it right away."
That's not going to happen. Largely because that first aide is right—the large majority of Republicans would completely reject it. And because it would completely screw up the legislative strategy they crafted to do both repeal and replace and tax reform. Under the rules they passed with budget reconciliation instructions, they can only do one Obamacare thing. Once it's done, they can do the tax thing. They don't have a mechanism for doing a second health bill outside of regular order, where they have to have 60 votes. And it doesn't seem too likely that McConnell would go nuclear—get rid of the filibuster entirely—for this. If he can't get 50 votes together for Trumpcare, he'd face a revolt if he tried to force this.
What this does do, however, is create more turmoil for McConnell and give us more time to fight it. That's the positive. The negative is that it's just one more indication from Trump that he's ready to do whatever is necessary to blow up Obamacare, and that's a big problem for insurers, already facing uncertainty and confusion about the future of the program. That's bad news for Obamacare, but far worse news for the people who need it.
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Continue reading Introducing the 2017 Audi A4 Allroad, round 3 of our long-term test
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Permalink | Email this | CommentsThe Congressional Budget Office's new numbers on how dramatically the Senate Republicans' plans for Medicaid would cut it is creating more turmoil among Senate Republicans. The CBO said that in the next ten years, Medicaid spending would be slashed by more than a quarter—26 percent, and in 2036, it would be reduced by more than a third—35 percent, relative to current law.
“That is going to cause a lot of harm, and that’s one of my biggest concerns about the bill,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a crucial holdout on the bill, told CNN after the release.For Republican leaders who say Medicaid spending is unsustainable, the findings might be seen as evidence that their policies would work. They want to put annual caps on Medicaid spending and roll back the expansion of the program, which has extended coverage to millions of people in 31 states.
But for Republican senators from some of those states, including Nevada, Ohio and West Virginia, the pain of those cuts may prove politically untenable.
The $45 billion Collins and those senators squeezed out of McConnell for opioid treatment funding is looking even more paltry in light of this analysis. But that concession on opioids—and the talk of retaining taxes on capital gains to pay for it and other elements to shore up help for lower income Americans has pushed the far right further right. As far to the right as raising the issue of repeal without replace once again.
That repeal proposal has been shot down by other Republicans, but it shows just how chaotic things are now in the Republican conference, with some senators just flying off and freelancing in wild directions. McConnell's plan to have a revised bill today isn't happening, and senators are heading home. This is our best chance to stop this thing.
The end of Medicaid as we know it? No exaggeration. The Senate version of Trumpcare has worse long-term cuts to Medicaid than the House version, to pay for tax breaks to the wealthy. Call your Republican senator at (202) 224-3121, and give them a piece of your mind. Tell us how it went.