Massie in KY is my Rep. He might have gone to MIT to prove he's smart, but he's also a hardcore libertarian who wrote a bill to end the Dep of Education and co-sponsored one to eliminate the EPA. He pretty much believes that we should all live without a national government and votes "No" on just about everything dealing with it.

I was just coming back. I had no sources, I was watching the vote live and thought it was the winners, apparently is was the idiot losers :)

Guess we all need to move to Australia then...

Trump praises Australia’s universal health-care system: ‘You have better health care than we do’ - The Boston Globe

The gap between younger and older evangelicals is perhaps most noticeable on LGBT issues https://t.co/0HfBnp9Kyz pic.twitter.com/OJpyk1JpRW

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) May 5, 2017

Interesting.

Don't think it is any big secret that Trump has always been in favor of this. If he wasn't so obviously short sighted I would question if passing this abomination of healthcare bill is so important for him so in a few years he can argue for the system he really wants in place.

Does he really want anything other than money and wins?

Power (which is related to wins). He wanted to be president and had a good plan to get there, which included publicly adopting, for the first time in his life, the textbook Republican platform. I think his real views are a lot more moderate and varied, but they're just not an important part of who he is, compared to other things.

People cheering

I think dubb93 is accurate. In a world where everyone isn't playing a political game Trump would probably push for Universal Healthcare. Taking down Obamacare is what was getting him strong reactions on the campaign trail though so that's what he's going with.

I doubt he has a strong enough understanding of the Healthcare system to see the impact any Healthcare bill and relies on people around him to tell him what it does. That's why he keeps insisting no one is losing coverage and it covers pre existing conditions.

Trump is getting mocked by Democrats for not being able to replace Obamacare and he needs that feather in his cap as an accomplishment he can advertise to his base to show he's doing stuff. I think some Republicans are taking advantage of this vulnerability to get this particular healthcare plan through.

Rightfully so, though not exactly for that reason.

He's failed to deliver since yesterday's misbegotten bill did not repeal. This is precisely the sort of failure neither he nor the party needed. It's a definite box checked off the "ya know, what's the point if they aren't going to do anything" list.

Today we have FCC Chief Ajit Pai saying that Net Neutrality actions should be taken preemptively AFTER things are broken. You can't make that kind of stupidity up.


FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Makes Case For Tackling Net Neutrality Violations 'After The Fact' : All Tech Considered : NPR

Also, you've got news of 5 major investment banks moving a crapload of jobs from London to Frankfurt in response to the idiocy of Brexit.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-br...-idUSKBN1811GA

Welcome to the potential very near term future of the US folks. 62 million people owe those with functioning human brains an apology.

Brexit should never have been necessary .... if not for the braindead willingness of fools & cowards willing to give up sovereignty in the first place.


Those who voted for Obama even once owe the planet an apology. Then again, so does his mother.

Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do --everybody does. ObamaCare is dead! But our healthcare will soon be great.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2017

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

OMG ROASTED

The thing is though that all those Republicans he just begged to do this want nothing to do with this kind of healthcare law.

True enough. I'm just not sure how committed he is to that party anyway.

Macron wins French Presidental election and stops the far-right movement in Europe, at least for now.

And because we're generally innumerate as a species we'll say the polls were right even though the final margin was further from the polls than the Trump or Brexit polls.

So Trump fired Comey in the middle of his investigation into Trump.

This should be interesting.

Will the GOP in congress finally say no?

Doubtful.

From a quick reading of the ABC News version of the story, it looks like this was related to last week's inaccurate testimony. If so, he kinda provided the rope for his own hanging.

Only at their own peril I would figure. I'm seeing a consistent tone of "well FINALLY" and "it's about time" from the right on my social media.

Failure to indict HRC seems to be lingering on a lot of hearts & minds where he's concerned I guess.

Coney had to go. He broke protocol to influence the outcome of an election. Why didn't Obama do this a long time ago?

So the guy that listened to a Lock Her Up chant at his 100 days rally now fires the FBI Director for being too mean to Clinton?

Bullshit.

So Trump has now fired 3 people who were directly investigating him, the Director of the FBI, the acting Attorney General, and the US Attorney of NY.

But at least Comey will get replaced by someone honest and non-partisan.

No, that's not what I said (if that was meant for me). I said that his recent testimony was inaccurate, which was the key point highlighted in the breaking version of the story I read. That wasn't my take, that was what was being pointed out by a decidedly not-pro-Trump organization.

I've seen, since that post, the impetus being described as "The Attorney General's office made the recommendation to fire the FBI director to the President based on Comey's announcement back in July of last year the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails was closed. The Attorney General's office says that wasn't Comey's call to make."

Now if that is the case, I'm not sure why they waited unless the more recent bit of rope he provided (as described by ABC News) pushed the button.

This seems to be a theme with this administration.

Trump and his corrupt team was just looking for an excuse to help beat back everyone that will accuse him of simply firing someone else that's investigating him. Which will hopefully not work.

As for Comey, I don't think he was working to help either side of the aisle, he's just a completly incompetent dunce that loves the spot light. Not a great combination.

I'm not even sold on the notion that he craves the spotlight insomuch as he was simply overmatched by the job. He kept trying to do -- if I'm being generous -- the right thing ... he just couldn't quite figure out definitively what that was.

I'm not at all sure that there isn't a long game there ... in this case I just don't really see what it is.

There is at least one possible "escape hatch" that I can see possibly for the odd thing about this (supposedly? reportedly?) being based on an AG recommendation.

Sessions was confirmed on Feb 8th. Let's be generous (just work with me here, as an exercise if nothing else) and say it took him a week or two to get various things moving, another 4-6 weeks to review Comey's conduct. That could put things at mid/late April for that recommendation to have been made.

Would it be that unreasonable for the chief executive to give such a thing a week's worth of consideration? Something like last week's testimony (if I have the timing of that right) could then conceivably be the sort of last straw that tipped the scales for agreeing with the recommendation.

If, on the other hand, the recommendation was made weeks or months ago but was only now acted on, the timeline gets harder to situate.

I'm generally okay with Comey being let go but reserve final judgement until I know who the proposed replacement is. I really don't think the investigation can be shut down.

If this is Trump's version of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, I'm looking forward to the drama playing out.

Yeah. I think he was fine with the run-of-the-mill stuff, but when the stakes got higher, he tended to bungle things.

My impeachment bet is looking good in the preseason.

Mostly because I'm watching house of cards, but I think they were waiting if/when senate went nuclear. Now they can confirm a much more sympathetic director without a filibuster

Not sure there is a set of testicles in the bunch.

Talking about the Senate committee working on the Health Care Bill again?

I see Trump fired Comey. In Werewolf terms, that is called "bussing"

The leaks that will come out will sure be something.

What a shit show.

Dicatorship 101.

Bill Kristol‏Verified account @BillKristol 4h4 hours ago




Rod Rosenstein has been Deputy AG two weeks. That's a pretty short time for him to have done the work to make so serious a "recommendation."


Bill Kristol‏Verified account @BillKristol 4h4 hours ago





The Rosenstein memo is dated...today. So there was no real recommendation from DOJ. Trump wanted to do it, and they created a paper trail.

And even the most HFC of the HFC is aghast:

GOP's Amash calls for independent commission on Russia after Comey’s firing | TheHill

edit: They didn't think it was going to be a big deal. Apparently, they're the only ones who thought so.

https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/862090285584498688

Probably this.

He could nominate Guliani. Not sure if he'd get through even with 51 votes. It has to be someone with no ties to Trump or some senators like McCain and Graham might not go along.

lol

GOP moderates always do what they are told to do. I'm sure Graham and McCain will be very concerned while they cast their Yes votes.

Meanwhile Trump is just spending the morning retweeting Drudge.

This is who 46% of the country wanted to be President.:banghead:

It's disgusting how anyone attempts to rationalize this. If this happened in some far off eastern European place, we'd be mocking them and pointing out how uncivilized their country is.

How does this stay up for over an hour?

CNN now stands for Cardiac Care Network because their ppl are having heart attacks over Trump doing what Dems once demanded-fire Comey.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) May 10, 2017

Wouldn't Cardiac Care Network be CCN?