Posted: December 13, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Affordable Care Act, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Health care, Indiana Senate Republicans, Obamacare, redistricting |
Good Afternoon!!
Cat and Butterfly, Ohara Koson
Trump is still “president,” and he continues to do terrible things; but there are beginning to be a few positive signs that his grip on the GOP is waning as his approval ratings continue to drop. One of those signs is the refusal of Republicans in the state senate to follow his demand for redistricting. As some people here know, I grew up in Indiana. I can’t help feeling a bit of Hoosier pride about this.
Thomas Beaumont and Isabella Volmert: Trump was unable to insult his way to victory in Indiana redistricting battle.
If Indiana Republican senators had any doubt about what to do with President Donald Trump’s redistricting proposal, he helped them make up their minds the night before this week’s vote.
In a social media screed, Trump accused the state’s top senator of being “a bad guy, or a very stupid one.”
“That kind of language doesn’t help,” said Sen. Travis Holdman, a banker and lawyer from near Fort Wayne who voted against the plan.
He was among 21 Republican senators who dealt Trump one of the most significant political defeats of his second term by rejecting redistricting in Indiana. The decision undermined the president’s national campaign to redraw congressional maps to boost his party’s chances in the upcoming midterm elections.
In interviews after Thursday’s vote, several Republican senators said they were leaning against the plan from the start because their constituents didn’t like it. But in a Midwest nice rebuttal to America’s increasingly coarse political discourse, some said they simply didn’t like the president’s tone, like when he called senators “suckers.”
Trump didn’t seem to get the message. Asked about the vote, the president once again took aim at Indiana’s top senator, Rodric Bray.
“He’ll probably lose his next primary, whenever that is,” Trump said. “I hope he does, because he’s done a tremendous disservice.”
Sen. Sue Glick, an attorney from La Grange who also opposed redistricting, brushed off Trump’s threat to unseat lawmakers who defied him.
“I would think he would have better things to do,” she said. “It would be money better spent electing the individuals he wants to represent his agenda in Congress.”
My mother used to say that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Trump never learned that simple lesson.
Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic (gift link): The Indiana Vote Is an Inflection Point.
In rejecting yesterday a redistricting plan backed by President Donald Trump, Indiana’s Republican-controlled senate did not merely deny Republicans two new U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections. They also engaged in a mass revolt against the president. The stakes of their defiance reach far beyond the midterms. This vote was possibly the most significant blow yet against the authoritarian ambitions that have defined Trump’s second term.
Tabby Cat. Benson b. Moore
The significance of Indiana’s noncompliance lies not in the specifics of what was refused—attempts to gerrymander electoral maps are hardly unprecedented, even though a mid-decade battle violates norms—but in the act of refusal itself. Trump’s authoritarian project relies on the cultlike hold he has over his party. Republicans have come to understand that the cost of defying Trump is the death of their political career. Trump has proved time and again that he will go to any lengths to destroy his intra-party critics, even if doing so harms the party.
That method was on vivid display in Indiana. Trump expected the state to go along with his plans to redraw its map to help his party in the midterms. When the state’s Republicans held back their support, Trump and his allies went on the attack.
Indiana Republican legislators faced bomb threats and intimidation in their homes (such as “swatting,” phone calls, and the like)—a climate of fear, my colleague Russell Berman reports, unlike anything the state has seen.
Heritage Action delivered a Mafia-like threat, as high-minded scholars apparently do these days: “President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.”
This kind of pressure typically bends targets to Trump’s will. What politician is willing to sacrifice their career or their family’s safety for a single act of defiance?
Yet the spines of Indiana Republicans stiffened where so many others snapped. One reason for this may be that the state contains an unusually strong concentration of Trump-skeptical former governors. Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence remain influential in the state, despite having given up national ambitions by failing to submit fully to Trump. Daniels praised the vote as an act of “principled courageous leadership.”
Indiana’s Republicans also demonstrated strength in numbers. Trump employs the psychology of a schoolyard bully who isolates and targets victims one by one. By engineering a 31–19 vote, Indiana’s Republicans worked together to ensure that no single legislator could be blamed for defying Trump.
Use the gift link to read more.
At The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf enumerates the many ways that Trump’s grip on power is waning: President Trump Is Now Triggering His Very Own MAGApocalypse.
It is hard to know whether Donald Trump or the MAGA movement he created is falling apart faster.
The 79-year-old president is deteriorating rapidly before our eyes—cankles puffier, bruises and bandages on his hand more ever present. He’s nodding off at event after event, slurring his words, his behavior increasingly erratic. And he has become painfully sensitive to the fact that his decay is so apparent, going as far as suggesting that media outlets reporting about his health are guilty of treason.
Of course, every effort he makes to prove he’s not one step away from melting into a bubbling orange puddle seems to make it clearer that he’s losing it.
Gertrude Abercrombie, 17 Feb 1909 – 3 Apr 1977
As bad as all that is, however, MAGA may be collapsing even more quickly than its creator. Prominent Republicans are defecting—like Marjorie Taylor Greene—and more are rumored to be threatening to do likewise. More former loyalists are willing to stand up to him—whether Indiana legislators rejecting Trumpian demands that they gerrymander the state or GOP senators leading inquiries into the possibility that war crimes were committed as part of Trump’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” phase.
Others are speaking out against Trump’s opposition to extending vital health subsidies to Americans—including hardliners like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley—or to express their discomfort with new executive orders seeking to block states from enacting AI regulation.
Trump is losing in the courts. His illegal picks to be U.S.
attorneys are being kicked out; his efforts to, well, trump up charges against opponents like
James Comey and Letitia James have been shot down by grand juries that simply will not go along with cases so obviously fabricated and motivated by retribution rather than any respect for the law.
And he is losing at the ballot box. Recent election results suggest that the onetime star to whom so many MAGA upstarts have hitched their wagons to in the past decade is now electoral poison. Across the country, elections last month produced resounding defeats for the GOP, while in the few elections in which Republicans squeaked out victories, their margins shrank considerably compared to 2024 support for Trump.
The economy is floundering. Deficits are exploding. Tariffs are unpopular. Trump’s inhumane and draconian immigration crackdowns are alienating substantial numbers of his erstwhile supporters, while his foreign policy plans have alienated our allies and empowered our enemies. His overt corruption and catering to billionaires at the expense of average Americans is driving real backlash.
Donald Trump has fallen and, given projections of a rough year ahead, it seems increasingly likely that he can’t get up.
There’s more at the link.
In a guest essay at The New York Times (gift link), E.J. Dionne writes: Trump Is Losing the Reasonable Majority.
Believing in democracy does not require faith that majorities are always right. It does mean having confidence that most of your fellow citizens will, over time, approach public questions with a basic reasonableness. Abraham Lincoln, tradition has it, said it more pithily: “You cannot fool all the people all the time.”
A corollary to Lincoln, that you can’t fool all the people who voted for you all the time, explains the sharp decline in President Trump’s approval ratings.
Cat in Bamboo, Hiroshima, by Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani
A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach, even when they sympathize with his objectives. Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.
Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t.
The upshot: A great many Americans who helped put Mr. Trump in office have absorbed what’s happened since. They may not be glued to every chaotic twist of this presidency, but they do pay attention and have concluded, reasonably, that this is not what they voted for.
How many? Let’s take Mr. Trump’s 49.8 percent of the 2024 popular vote as a base line and compare it with his approval ratings. A New York Times analysis of public polling this month found his net approval rating had dropped to 42 percent. A A.P./NORC poll and a Gallup poll pegged it at 36 percent. This suggests that 15 to 25 percent of his voters have changed their minds
I think of these shifts as the triumph of reasonableness — and not because I agree with where these fellow citizens have landed (although I do). I’m buoyed by the capacity of citizens to absorb new facts and take in information even when it challenges decisions they previously made. It turns out that swing voters are what their label implies. The evidence of their own lives and from their own eyes matters.
Use the gift link to read the rest.
So, there really are some positive signs.
Republicans also continue to hurt themselves by refusing to help millions of Americans who are about to lose access to health care because of the drastically increased costs Republicans instituted with their Big Ugly Bill.
Ali Swenson at the AP: Higher cost, worse coverage: Affordable Care Act enrollees say expiring subsidies will hit them hard.
For one Wisconsin couple, the loss of government-sponsored health subsidies next year means choosing a lower-quality insurance plan with a higher deductible. For a Michigan family, it means going without insurance altogether.
For a single mom in Nevada, the spiking costs mean fewer Christmas gifts this year. She is stretching her budget already while she waits to see if Congress will act.
Less than three weeks remain until the expiration of COVID-era enhanced tax credits that have helped millions of Americans pay their monthly fees for Affordable Care Act coverage for the past four years.
The Senate on Thursday rejected two proposals to address the problem and an emerging health care package from House Republicans does not include an extension, all but guaranteeing that many Americans will see much higher insurance costs in 2026.
Young Cat Sleeping, by Mabel Wellington Jack
Here are a few of their stories.
Chad Bruns comes from a family of savers. That came in handy when the 58-year-old military veteran had to leave his firefighting career early because of arm and back injuries he incurred on the job.
He and his wife, Kelley, 60, both retirees, cut their own firewood to reduce their electricity costs in their home in Sawyer County, Wisconsin. They rarely eat out and hardly ever buy groceries unless they are on sale.
But to the extent that they have always been frugal, they will be forced to be even more so now, Bruns said. That is because their coverage under the health law enacted under former President Barack Obama is getting more expensive -– and for worse coverage.
This year, the Brunses were paying $2 per month for a top-tier gold-level plan with less than a $4,000 deductible. Their income was low enough to help them qualify for a lot of financial assistance.
But in 2026, that same plan is rising to an unattainable $1,600 per month, forcing them to downgrade to a bronze plan with a $15,000 deductible.
Kelley Bruns said she is concerned that if something happens to their health in the next year, they could go bankrupt. While their monthly fees are low at about $25, their new out-of-pocket maximum at $21,000 amounts to nearly half their joint income.
“We have to pray that we don’t have to have surgery or don’t have to have some medical procedure done that we’re not aware of,” she said. “It would be very devastating.”
Read more health care stories a the link.
Speaker Mike Johnson will allow a vote on an Obamacare extension next week, but it is expected to fail. From Politico:
House GOP leadership will permit a floor vote to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies — an olive branch to moderate members who have been clamoring for a chance to go on record in support of an extension.
Republican leaders unveiled text of their health care package Friday evening, which they plan to put on the floor next week.
“The process” for considering that package “will allow” a vote on an amendment to prevent the subsidies from lapsing Dec. 31, according to a House Republican leadership aide granted anonymity to share the unannounced plans.
It’s a concession from leaders who have been reluctant to endorse an extension of the subsidies, which divides congressional Republicans. It’s a win for centrists and vulnerable incumbents, who see political peril in not acting on the tax credits and have been promising to push discharge petitions that would circumvent leadership and force votes on their own legislative proposals.
Speaker Mike Johnson and senior Republicans met Friday morning on the topic to chart a path forward.
But Republicans leaders ultimately expect the extension vote to fail, resulting in skyrocketing premiums for millions of Americans when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.
You read that right: Johnson has come up with a Republican “health care plan.” AP: Speaker Johnson unveils health care plan as divided Republicans scramble for alternative.
The Senate failed to get anywhere on the health care issue this week. Now it’s the House’s turn to show what it can do.
Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a Republican alternative late Friday, a last-minute sprint as his party refuses to extend the enhanced tax subsidies for those who buy policies through the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, which are expiring at the end of the year. Those subsidies help lower the cost of coverage.
Two Cats, Eleanore G. Cohen
Johnson, R-La., huddled behind closed doors in the morning — as he did days earlier this week — working to assemble the package for consideration as the House focuses the final days of its 2025 work on health care.
“House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the package. He said it would be voted on next week.
Later Friday, though, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said: “House Republicans have introduced toxic legislation that is completely unserious, hurts hardworking America taxpayers and is not designed to secure bipartisan support. If the bill reaches the House floor, I will strongly oppose it.”
So what’s the GOP plan?
The House Republicans offered a 100-plus-page package that focuses on long-sought GOP proposals to enhance access to employer-sponsored health insurance plans and clamp down on so-called pharmacy benefit managers.
Republicans propose expanding access to what’s referred to as association health plans, which would allow more small businesses and self-employed individuals to band together and purchase health coverage.
Proponents say such plans increase the leverage businesses have to negotiate a lower rate. But critics say the plans provide skimpier coverage than what is required under the Affordable Care Act.
The Republicans’ proposal would also require more data from pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, as a way to help control drug costs. Critics say PBMs have padded their bottom line and made it more difficult for independent pharmacists to survive.
Additionally, the GOP plan includes mention of cost-sharing reductions for some lower-income people who rely on Obamacare, but those do not take effect until January 2027.
The emerging package from the House Republicans does not include an extension of an enhanced tax credit for millions of Americans who get insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Put in place during the COVID-19 crisis, that enhanced subsidy expires Dec. 31, leaving most families in the program facing more than double their current out-of-pocket premiums, and in some cases, much more.
I think Republicans will find that this issue will destroy them in the midterm elections.
More news stories to check out:
The Washington Post: VA plans to abruptly eliminate tens of thousands of health care jobs.
The New York Times: Hundreds Quarantined in South Carolina as Measles Spreads.
The Hill: US set to lose measles elimination status: The ‘house is on fire.’
The New York Times: Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation Effort.
City Beat: Cincinnati ICE Leader Accused of Strangling Woman Held on $400k Bond.
The Washington Post: Trump takes first step in possible bid to control D.C.’s public golf courses.
Politico: Trump seems to wave the white flag on his US attorneys gambit.
That’s all I have for today. I tried to stick with somewhat positive stories. (FYI, the images in this post comes from the Smithsonian collection of cat art.)
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Posted: December 27, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2022 Elections, 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: "presidential immunity", 2024 polls, Congress, Democratic party, fake electors, George Santos, Health care, Joe Biden, Lauren Bobert, Matthew Reum, Simon Rosenberg, Supreme Court, U.S. Economy |
Good Day!!
Boston Sunrise this morning, 12-27-2023
I’m going to try to be upbeat today, although I will still have to include Trump-related stories. I can’t handle the war news today, though.
I’ll begin with a post by Simon Rosenberg, who is a very optimistic political commentator. He was one of the few poll-watchers who predicted the Democratic sweep in the 2022 midterms.
According to Wikipedia, Rosenberg is “founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.” He publishes at his website, Hopium Chronicles. You may have seen him on MSNBC last night.
Rosenberg’s latest post is at MSNBC.com: Biden’s 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize.
As we head into 2024, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are on the back foot for next year’s elections. But there are three reasons I am optimistic that 2024 is going to be a good year for Democrats:
First, PresidentJoe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today.
Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.
And the Democratic party is historically strong.
Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.
In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.
What was visible of fog-bound Boston from the air yesterday, 12-26-2023
This year, Democrats flipped a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeated a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; kept the Virginia state house, debunking the idea that Republicans could hide behind a 15-week abortion ban; and took state legislative seats, municipalities and school board seats across the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, grew his margin of victory from 2019, and Republicans lost mayoral elections in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida, two of the largest GOP-controlled cities in the country. And in over three dozen state legislative special elections around the country, Democrats outperformed 2020– an election we won by 4.5 percentage points — by an average of 5 percentage points.
While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden’s supporters with confidence.
Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump’s historic baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.
I hope you’ll read the rest at the MSNBC link. It’s well worth your time.
Next, a couple of stories about House elections:
Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Democratic group makes a $5.9 million bet on flipping George Santos’ House seat.
The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC is putting down $5.2 million in initial reservations for TV and digital ads to try to win the House special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., the group told NBC News.
The group said it will spend $3.7 million on TV and $1.5 million on digital platforms, along with $700,000 on mail ads, in the weeks ahead of the Feb. 13 contest in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The election pits Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former congressman eying a comeback, against Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.
The competitive district, which includes parts of Long Island and Queens, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before it elected Santos in 2022. But his subsequently unearthed biographical fabrications and sweeping federal indictment prompted the House to expel him on Dec. 1. It is the type of district that will be heavily contested next November, and it could determine which party wins the chamber, which Republicans now narrowly control.
The contest “represents the first step to Democrats taking back the House in 2024,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said in response to written questions. “A resurgence in New York represents House Democrats’ best path to the majority.”
The Make Way for Ducklings statues in Christmas attire.
Jake Swearingen at Business Insider: An avalanche of money is coming to kick Lauren Boebert out of Congress.
Lauren Boebert is facing a brutal and very expensive reelection fight in 2024.
Adam Frisch, the main Democratic challenger to the lightning-rod Republican congresswoman from Colorado’s 3rd District, has been raking in jaw-dropping amounts of campaign cash.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Frisch’s campaign has raised over $7.7 million so far, making him one of the top fundraisers in the 2024 House races. As spotted by the Time reporter Mini Racker, that’s enough to put him behind Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in total funds raised.
Frisch came close to unseating Boebert in 2022, falling short by just 546 votes in what was considered a safe Republican district. That electoral performance was before the litany of controversies that have made Boebert a tabloid favorite, including a scandal this summer when she was booted from a Denver theater after vaping and groping her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”
Boebert has raised $2.4 million for her campaign this cycle. The money gap becomes even starker when you compare totals for just the third quarter, July 1 to September 30, the latest reporting period available from the FEC: Frisch pulled in $3.4 million, while Boebert managed just $854,000.
There’s a chance Frisch’s fundraising may not even be used against Boebert. She’s facing a substantial primary challenge from the Republican attorney Jeff Hurd, who raised over $412,000 in the third quarter, though his campaign launched only in August.
In Trump-related stories:
Danny Hakim at The New York Times: A Fake Trump Elector in Michigan Told Prosecutors of Regret, Anger.
One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times.
The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against all 16 of the state’s fake Trump electors. In October, Ms. Nessel’s office dropped all charges against Mr. Renner after he agreed to cooperate.
Newbury Street (a downtown shopping district) on Christmas
Mr. Renner, 77, was a late substitution to the roster of electors in December 2020 after two others dropped out. He told the attorney general’s office that he later realized, after reviewing testimony from the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that he and other electors had acted improperly.
“I can’t overemphasize how once I read the information in the J6 transcripts how upset I was that the legitimate process had not been followed,” he said in the interview. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”
Charges have now been brought against fake electors in three states — Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — and investigations are underway in other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have looked far beyond the electors themselves and charged Mr. Trump, the former president, and many of his key allies over their efforts to keep him in power despite his loss in 2020. Mr. Trump also faces charges over election interference from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In Michigan, Ms. Nessel, a Democrat, has only charged the electors, but has said her investigation is still open. During their interview of Mr. Renner, her investigators asked about a number of other people involved, including Shawn Flynn, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on the ground in Michigan, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. (Mr. Giuliani is among those charged in Georgia; both he and Mr. Trump have pleaded not guilty.)
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trump Is Testing the Bounds of Presidential Immunity—and Losing.
For years, Donald Trump has hid behind the presidential seal—a claim of immunity that he continues to make to this day to avoid legal jeopardy. But as Trump’s cases proceed, he’s increasingly finding that the protections he was afforded as president don’t exist for a former president.
In criminal and civil cases across the country this month, judges have issued critical opinions chipping away at Trump’s attempt to shield himself. Their rulings are leaving him exposed to potential prison time and massive financial penalties, potentially ruining his 2024 re-election campaign and destroying the billionaire’s famed wealth.
And the most definitive answer could be just weeks away.
Boston official Christmas tree, 2023
The legal maelstrom underway in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, New York and elsewhere will be settled at the Supreme Court, which earlier this month agreed to review the immunity issue raised in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The question is seemingly simple: Can an American president commit crimes while in office without ever facing criminal charges?
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” said Paul Saputo, a Texas defense lawyer. “We’re not even going to have a 5-4 decision. I don’t think it’s going to be a close call. They realize that in order for them to really keep the country together, it’s got to be pretty unanimous.”
The growing consensus by legal scholars is that the Supreme Court will lean conservative—in the traditional American sense, not a political one—starkly setting limits on executive power that will leave Trump in the cold. And that’s despite the liberal public’s concerns that Trump will benefit from the current roster at the nation’s highest court, where a third of the nine justices were appointed by the man himself.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
A Guest essay at The New York Times, by Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake and Anat Shenker-Osorio: A Trump Conviction Could Cost Him Enough Voters to Tip the Election.
Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.
It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.
A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.
Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 election. That trial had been set to start on March 4, 2024, but that date has been put on hold, pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and will probably issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.
“Jingle Bells Composed Here”
The authors look at the polls:
The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.
To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.
Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.
In another new poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times/Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.
The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.
Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with Mr. Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.
There’s more interesting number crunching at the NYT link.
I’ll end with one more positive story about a man in a desperate situation, rescued by good Samaritans. Fox News: Indiana man found by good Samaritans rescued from car wreck after 6 days trapped in vehicle: ‘A miracle.’
An Indiana man who crashed his truck and had been trapped inside it for nearly a week was found alive on Tuesday by two fishermen who happened to spot the wrecked vehicle.
The fishermen – Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia – noticed the crashed truck under an overpass on Interstate 94 as they were walking along Salt Creek in Portage, Indiana, looking for fishing holes. They initially believed they had seen a dead person inside the vehicle until one of them touched the body and the man turned his head and spoke to them.
Christmas in Boston
“I went to touch it, and he turned around,” Garcia said at a press conference. “And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”
“He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that,” he added. “He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.”
The two good Samaritans called 911 and first responders rushed to the scene at about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday. The driver told the fisherman he had been stranded and paralyzed in place since Dec. 20.
The driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was heading westbound on Interstate 94 when his truck left the roadway for unknown reasons, Indiana State Police said in a news release.
The vehicle was driven into a ditch before making it into a creek and stopping under the bridge. Reum was pinned inside the vehicle and was unable to reach his cellphone to call for help.
The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department were able to cut Reum from the vehicle using heavy machinery. He was then flown to a hospital in critical condition for treatment of severe, life-threatening injuries.
I hope he recovers.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
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Posted: June 30, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Climate change, Congress, just because, morning reads, SCOTUS | Tags: abortion, anti-choice violence, Environmental Protection Agency, filibuster rules, Health care, immigration, Joe Biden, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Remain in Mexico, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court decisions |
Good Morning!!
I feel emotionally wrung out this morning. We are living through important events that will reverberate down through history, and we still don’t know which side will control how future generations see these events. Will we succeed in rescuing U.S. democracy, or will the forces of fascism win in the end? Will we survive the stunning series of decisions the reactionary Supreme Court has inflicted on us in the past couple of weeks? With the societal divisions being sown by the GOP and the Court lead to a new civil war? Today I’m going to focus on the latest decisions from the Trumpist SCOTUS decisions.
Nina Totenberg at NPR: Supreme Court restricts the EPA’s authority to mandate carbon emissions reductions.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a major blow to the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions that cause climate change. The decision by the conservative court majority sets the stage for further limitations on the regulatory power of other agencies as well.
By a vote of 6 to 3, the court said that any time an agency does something big and new – in this case addressing climate change – the regulation is presumptively invalid, unless Congress has specifically authorized regulating in this sphere.
At issue in the case were rules adopted by the Trump and Obama administrations and aimed at addressing the country’s single-largest carbon emissions problem – from coal-fired power plants. The Obama plan was broad, the Trump plan narrow. The Obama plan didn’t regulate only coal-fired plants. Instead, it set strict carbon limits for each state and encouraged the states to meet those limits by relying less on coal-fired power plants and more on alternative sources of energy – wind, solar, hydro-electric and natural gas. The goal of the plan was to produce enough electricity to satisfy U.S. demand in a way that lowered greenhouse emissions.
The concept worked so well that even after Obama’s Clean Power Plan was temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court and then repealed by the Trump administration, most utilities continued to abandon coal because it was just too expensive, compared to other energy producing methods. In fact, even without the regulation in place, the reduction targets for carbon emissions were met 11 years ahead of schedule.
Fearing the Obama approach might someday be revived, the coal industry, joined by West Virginia and 16 other states, went to court in support of the Trump plan and its more restrictive interpretation of the Clean Air Act. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled against them in 2021.
But on Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with the coal industry, ruling that the Clean Air Act does not authorize anything other than direct regulation of coal-fired plants….
The decision appears to enact major new limits on agency regulations across the economy, limits of a kind not imposed by the court for 75 years or more. The decision, for instance, casts a cloud of doubt over a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would require companies offering securities to the public to disclose climate-related risks – like severe weather events that have or likely will affect their business models. Also in jeopardy is a new interim rule adopted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “aimed at treating greenhouse gas emissions and their contribution to climate change the same as all other environmental impacts [the Commission] considers.”
The Supreme Court deigned to give Biden one win, on immigration. The Washington Post: Supreme Court clears Biden to end Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the Biden administration on a controversial immigration policy, saying it had the authority to reverse a Trump-era policy that requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are reviewed in U.S. courts.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for himself and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the court’s three liberals, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Roberts said federal immigration law gives the executive discretion: He may return asylum seekers to Mexico, but is not required to do so.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
Barrett said that she agreed with the majority on the merits of the decision but that the court should not have decided the case and should have remanded it to lower courts.
Alito, writing for himself, Thomas and Gorsuch, said the Department of Homeland Security should not be free to “simply release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings. This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way.”
From NPR, another bit of good SCOTUS news: Ketanji Brown Jackson to be sworn in as first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in Thursday at noon as the 116th Supreme Court justice and the first Black woman to serve on the high court.
Biden nominated Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it! We’ve made it — all of us,” Jackson said in remarks at a White House event the day after the Senate vote.
“I have dedicated my career to public service because I love this country and our Constitution and the rights that make us free,” Jackson also said.
Jackson, 51, has been confirmed since April, when the Senate voted 53 to 47 on her nomination. It was expected she would replace 83-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer — whom she clerked for after shed graduated from Harvard Law School in 1996 — when he stepped down. His retirement will be effective Thursday.
Jackson will take two oaths during the livestreamed event: a constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, and a judicial oath, administered by Breyer.
Biden and Congressional Democrats are still struggling to deal with the Court’s decision to take away American women’s control over their own bodies and turn women in their childbearing years into broodmares.
The Washington Post: Democrats call on Biden to declare abortion national health emergency.
Lawmakers and advocates are pushing President Biden to declare a national health emergency to increase financial resources and flexibility in states that continue to allow abortion access following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Congressional Black Caucus made the initial request the morning of the court’s ruling, and the House Pro-Choice Caucus is privately urging the administration to act swiftly.
“The fundamental right to control your body and future has been ripped away from American women,” Assistant Speaker of the HouseRep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.) told The Early. “Declaring an emergency is an immediate step to help patients access the care they need.”
Supporters say time is critical because the remaining abortion clinics are seeing a massive increase in demand that is going to be difficult to meet.
“They are doing everything they can,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said of an abortion clinic treating women in the northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. “But they are severely resource constrained in terms of the providers that they have, in terms of the physical facilities that they have, in terms of the financial resources they need to try to expand access to care, which they desperately want to do.”
“This would be another way for the full legal authority of the federal government to be brought into play as we try to protect women’s health,” Smith said in an interview on Washington Post Live this week.
Another suggestion is to change the filibuster rules for abortion laws. The Washington Post: Biden endorses scrapping Senate filibuster to codify abortion, privacy rights.
Today, President Biden chastised the Supreme Court for “outrageous behavior” and said he would support an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rules to make it easier to write abortion protections into law. Biden, speaking on the world stage in Madrid, called the court’s decision last week to overturn Roe v. Wade “destabilizing” and said an exception should be made to a Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to advance.
Politico: Biden says he supports a filibuster carveout to restore abortion rights.
“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law and the way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that, and if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be ‘we provide an exception for this’ — require an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision,” Biden said during a press conference at the NATO summit.
Biden’s comments come on the heels of the consequential Supreme Court decision last Friday to overturn the landmark 1973 decision and deny a constitutional right to abortion. The president has previously been opposed to getting rid of the filibuster — which establishes a 60-vote threshold to move most bills through the Senate — but said Thursday he would do “everything in my power” to protect the right to choose .
The president added he’d be in favor of changing filibuster rules to not only guarantee abortion rights but also a constitutional right to privacy — which he said the Supreme Court “wiped” out with its decision on Roe. He said codifying privacy rights would protect access to abortion as well as a “whole range of issues,” including same-sex marriage….
Biden’s support for ending the filibuster is his most concrete call for legislative action yet on preserving abortion rights. With the filibuster as it stands, Democrats almost certainly lack the 60 votes they would need to codify Roe in a 50-50 Senate.
So far, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema haven’t agreed to go along with this strategy.
Republicans have been hoping that violent demonstrations would follow the SCOTUS decision on Roe v. Wade, but their wishes haven’t come true so far. Kathryn Joyce at Salon: Did violence follow Roe decision? Yes — almost all of it against pro-choice protesters.
Before the Supreme Court even announced its decision overturning Roe v. Wade last Friday, right-wing politicians and media had begun warning of a wave of violent demonstrations or riots by pro-choice protesters. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., called on “all patriots” to defend local churches and crisis pregnancy centers, while Fox News hyped warnings about a “night” or “summer of rage” and various far-right activists — from the America First/groyper movement to the Proud Boys to a staffer for Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake — issued threats against leftists they claimed were about to become violent.
But it appears that most of the violence that occurred in response to the Roe decision this past weekend was directed at pro-choice demonstrators, not caused by them.
On Friday night, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a man drove his pickup truck into a group of women protesters, hitting several and driving over the ankle of one woman. Iowa journalist Lyz Lenz, who was covering the protest, noted on Twitter that the attack came at the end of a peaceful event, as demonstrators were crossing the road at a crosswalk while the man had a red light. “The truck drove around other cars in order to hit protesters,” Lenz wrote, adding that the driver “was screaming” while a woman in the truck with him begged him to stop….
That same night, at a pro-choice protest in Providence, Rhode Island, an off-duty police officer named Jeann Lugo — who, until this weekend, was a Republican candidate for state Senate — punched his Democratic opponent, reproductive rights organizer Jennifer Rourke, in the face.
Providence police arrested Lugo and charged him with assault and disorderly conduct, placing him on administrative leave. On Saturday, Lugo dropped out of the Senate race and announced he would not be seeking any political office before apparently deactivating his Twitter account.
In Atlanta, photographer Matthew Pearson documented a group of more than a dozen Proud Boys coming to counterprotest a pro-choice demonstration, while an Atlanta antifascist group posted photos of the group boarding a Humvee painted with the Proud Boys’ logo.
In several other states, police responded to demonstrations against the SCOTUS ruling with heavy-handed tactics and violence.
Read about more of these events at the Salon link.
I’ll add more news in the comment thread. Have a nice Thursday!
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Posted: January 17, 2016 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Democratic Politics, Live Blog, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2016 Democratic nomination race, Background Checks, Bernie Sanders, Brady bill, Democratic debates, Federal Employees' Health Benefits Program, flip flops, gun dealers' immunity, Health care, Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley, Medicaid, medicare, NRA, SCHIP, single payer, TRICARE |
Tonight’s debate is likely to feature some fireworks and a good exchange of ideas between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders–as long as the moderators can keep Martin O’Malley from constantly breaking in with his patented line “I’ve actually already done that in Maryland.”
Mediaite has the basics on how to watch the debate. It will be available on line at the NBC News website and YouTube. It begins at nine and goes for two hours.
The back and forth between Hillary and Bernie this week has been interesting, to say the least. Hillary seems to have gotten under Bernie’s skin too, because he has now partially flip flopped on his vote to immunize gun dealers from liability, his campaign has promised to release specifics on his health car plan and how he hopes to pay for it “very soon,” and they’ve also said they’ll release a “doctor’s note” on Sanders’ health.
Just a couple of days ago the Sanders campaign announced they wouldn’t release the health care tax figures and they previously pooh poohed the need to release medical records.
I’ve thought for awhile now that Sanders has begun to believe his own reviews in the media. After reading what he said on Face The Nation this morning, I’m convinced he has allowed the failure of the media to vet him and the adulation of his supporters to go to his head.
Sanders: I have a “good chance” to win 2016 election.
“I think we have a good chance to win both those states,” he said of Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to hold nominating contests. “I think we have a good chance to win this election.”
If he does win, Sanders predicted his campaign would come to be known as “one of the great political upsets in modern history.”
He is feeling so good, in fact, that the Vermont senator told “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson that while he was watching President Obama’s final State of the Union address last week, “the thought did cross my mind” that he could be delivering that address in the near future.
Then he caught himself.
“It’s a very humbling feeling,” he said, but added a moment later, “It’s a long way to go before we talk about inaugural speech, before we toss State of the Union speeches in.”
Hmmm…. he doesn’t sound so humble.
I have a few other good links for you on Bernie.
First a diary from DailyKos (!) on the health care law that Sanders has proposed multiple times in Congress: Sanders’ Health Care Plan. The diarist simply reports the contents of Senate Bill 1782, introduced in December 2013. Please go read it.
The law would end Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, the Federal Employees’ Health Benefits Program, and TRICARE. The money that was going into those programs, and use it to fund a “single payer” plan to be run and partially paid for by the states.
We already know that Supreme Court is not going to force states to accept something they don’t want from the Feds. That was their decision on the ACA Medicaid expansion. Even if Sanders could somehow get this through the Republican Congress, it would never get past SCOTUS.
I can’t even imagine what would be involved in implementing this. Right now, Medicare has low overhead costs because it turns over administration of supplemental plans to insurance companies–which would be outlawed in Sanders’ alternative universe.
I’m on Medicare and I get help paying my premiums from the government. Those premiums are more than $100 per month. Basic Medicare only pays for hospital bills, so I also have a government funded supplemental plan with very high co-pays that I get “free.” At least I can go to a doctor if it’s absolutely necessary. What would happen to people like me when all that infrastructure is demolished?
Here’s another must-read that Babama posted in a comment yesterday.
The People’s View: Chelsea Clinton was Right: Everyone’s Health Care is Threatened under Bernie’s Plan.
Recently, Chelsea Clinton got panned for saying that Bernie Sanders’ health care plan – commonly heralded as ‘Medicare for All’ by the revolution-peddlers – would give Republican governors the opportunity to dismantle publicly funded health insurance for the poor and middle class, that is, Medicaid and the health insurance exchanges. Seems absurd to accuse a self-proclaimed socialist with a proclaimed demand for single-payer universal health insurance of trying to take away health care. Politifact rated Chelsea Clinton’s claims ‘mostly false.’
Politifact got it wrong. Bernie Sanders’ plan does, in fact, allow for states to take away health care from the poor and middle-income, if not most everyone in a state. Although, that shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Sanders’ plan itself targets the economically disadvantaged for punishment. As Politifact notes, Sanders hasn’t proposed a full health care plan for his presidential campaign, instead choosing to use a bill Sanders introduced in the Senate in 2013 without a single cosponsor, titled ‘American Health Security Act of 2013’ as the template.
Poltiifact notes it is in fact true that Sanders’ plan repeals all health insurance funding from Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act Health Insurance exchanges. But he would channel the revenue instead to fund the single-payer system! [….]
The problem is, what Sander’s bill “seeks to” do and what it actually does are quite different. Since Politifact helpfully pointed us to Sanders’ 2013 bill, I decided to read it. In short, it ends all funding to Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP an the ACA insurance provisions, directs it to this single-payer insurance program, raises additional revenue on the back of those who can least afford it, and charges states with the job of actually running it.
Each state, in theory, would have its own program that follows basic guidelines and the vast majority of the funding (80-90%) is provided by the federal government. Nonetheless, for states that refuse to run their own program, federal authorities – specifically, a Board – can do so instead. Sanders’ bill would also ban the sale of private health insurance.
Until I read that last night, I really didn’t understand how clueless Sanders really is. Please read the whole thing if you haven’t already, because Robert Reich is running around saying the plan makes sense.
One more Bernie link from Dean Barker at “Birch Paper.” This one has been getting retweeted a lot today. The piece takes us back to the early days of Sanders’ political career when he ran again and again for office, and always lost. Then he got smart and used guns to get into Congress.
Sanders repeatedly talks about how he lost an election because he supported a ban on assault weapons. What really happened is that Sanders did so well in a third-party run that he got Republican Peter Smith elected. After he got to Washington, Smith’s conscience bothered him and he ended up supporting a bill to ban assault weapons.
In 1990, Sanders ran for the House seat again, and defeated Smith with the help and monetary support of the NRA. So when Bernie went to Washington, he voted against the Brady bill–repeatedly.
You have to read that article! There are tons of good links in there too.
Hillary was on the morning shows today too, and she learned from George Stephanopoulos that Karl Rove’s super pac is running an ad in Iowa that supports Sanders attacks on her.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughed off a new attack ad from a Republican super PAC run by Karl Rove during an interview Sunday on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.
The web spot, titled “Hillary’s Bull Market,” was launched by American Crossroads, which is run by the Republican strategist and former President George W. Bush adviser. After watching the ad for the first time during her interview on “This Week,” Clinton just smiled.
“I think it shows how desperate the Republicans are to prevent me from becoming the nominee,” Clinton said about the ad, which goes after her ties to Wall Street. “I find that, in a perverse way, an incredibly flattering comment on their anxiety, because they know that not only will I stand up for what the country needs, I will take it to the Republicans.”
CNN’s report on the morning shows: Hillary Clinton zeroes in on Bernie Sanders.
“I am very pleased that he flip-flopped on the immunity legislation,” Clinton told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” a day after Sanders, who had been hammered by her campaign for his past position, announced he would change course and back legislation to reverse a 2005 law granting firearm manufacturers legal immunity.
She then called on her rival to do the same with the so-called “Charleston loophole,” which allows licensed dealers, once they have initiated a federal background check, to complete the gun sale in question if they haven’t hears back from authorities after three days.
Good news for Hillary:
Time: Poll: Hillary Clinton Leads Bernie Sanders Nationally By 25 Points.
Hillary Clinton is leading Bernie Sanders in a new national poll ahead of Sunday’s final Democratic debate before the Iowa caucuses.
The former Secretary of State is beating Sanders by 25 points nationally, according to according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of likely Democratic primary voters. Clinton is the top pick among 59% of Democratic primary voters, while Sanders has the support of 34%, the survey shows. Third-place candidate Martin O’Malley got the support of just 2% of likely voters.
Read the rest at CNN.
And From US News: Yes, Hillary’s Still the Inevitable Democratic Nominee She can recover even if she loses the first two nominating states to Bernie Sanders. Here’s why. Read about it at the link. It’s not easy find a brief excerpt to summarize the findings.
I’m putting this up a little early so we’ll have time to discuss these articles–or anything else you want to talk about–before the debate begins at 9PM. I look forward to reading your reactions to what happens tonight. This is the most important debate yet!
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Posted: August 27, 2013 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: open thread | Tags: Federal Debt, Health care, Larry Summers, Syria |
Well, only a few days and I already really miss JJ Here are a few headlines to get us through the evening.
There’s no money for these kinds of things:
Before becoming speaker in 2011, Boehner said, he’d watched leaders of both parties delay a long-term solution to a baby-boom-fueled benefit crisis.
“I made up my mind that we weren’t going to kick the can down the road any more,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told a Boise lunch crowd at a fundraiser for Idaho’s 2nd District Congressman Mike Simpson. “We’re not going to inflict all of this pain and suffering on our kids and our grandkids.”
The government will reach its $16.7 trillion borrowing limit this fall. Boehner rejected calls from some quarters to let the government shut down rather than agree to a compromise with President Obama and the Democratic Senate.
“There is no reason for the government to run out of money,” Boehner said. “Our goal here is to stop Obamacare. Our goal here is to cut spending.”
Boehner said GOP control of the House has forced Democrats to agree to three straight years of lower discretionary spending, which accounts for about one-third of the federal budget, savings that will reach $2.5 trillion over 10 years.
“Now, it’s time to deal with the mandatory side,” Boehner said, winning applause from a crowd of 430 at the Boise Centre on The Grove. “I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit.
“The president doesn’t think this is fair, thinks I’m being difficult to deal with. But I’ll say this: It may be unfair but what I’m trying to do here is to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would produce if left to its own devices. We’re going to have a whale of a fight.”
Recalling the 2011 battle over raising the federal debt ceiling, Boehner recalled negotiations that spooked financial markets, prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating and angered ordinary Americans. He warned the audience to expect more of the same.
But there’s always money for war.
The U.S. could hit Syria with three days of missile strikes, perhaps beginning Thursday, in an attack meant more to send a message to Syrian 
President Bashar al-Assad than to topple him or cripple his military, senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Tuesday.
The State Department fed the growing drumbeat around the world for a military response to Syria’s suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels Aug. 21 near Damascus, saying that while the U.S. intelligence community would release a formal assessment within the week, it was already “crystal clear” that Assad’s government was responsible.
Vice President Joe Biden went even further, bluntly telling an American Legion audience in Houston: “Chemical weapons have been used.”
“No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and there’s no doubt who’s responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime,” Biden said.
Fox Expert says that since women have breasts they should pay more for health care. Where do they get these guys?
A Fox News medical expert on Tuesday argued that President Barack Obama’s administration was wrong to force gender equality for health insurance rates because men “only have the prostate,” while women “have the breasts, they have the ovaries.”
“Look, it’s not bias, I’m not saying this as a man,” Fox News Medical A-Team contributor Dr. David Samadi told the hosts of Fox & Friends. “They go through a lot of preventive screenings, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, the Pap smear. Guys, we don’t like to go to doctors, right? Seventy percent of health care decisions are made by women. In my own practice, I see it’s the women who bring the guys, who say, go get screened.”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t that earn us a discount?” Fox News host Gretchen Carlson interrupted. “Basic fact that we are responsible for getting our men to come to the doctor? And what about the fact that women, because they do all this preventative care, maybe their health issues end up costing less than men’s, who don’t go to the doctor until it’s a crisis and a big deal.”
“Yes, that’s a good point, except that, you know, women live longer,” Samadi asserted. “Women live until age 81 and men live only until 76. So, we’re using the health care system much less.”
“In this case, it’s not equal,” co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed. “You have a better time on Earth than we do, you’re here a lot more. You have six years of heaven, where you just have no men around.”
Carlson pointed out that women were blamed for maternity costs, “but men and women have babies together.”
“I agree with you that it’s a shared responsibility,” Samadi said. “But just the way the system are — in my field, we only have the prostate. Women have the breasts, they have the ovaries, they have the uterus. They get checked in every part.”
OH, Please say this isn’t so!!! Oh the Humanity!! Obama source predicts Summers will be named Fed chief soon. Looter Larry as Fed Chair!!!
A source from Team Obama told CNBC that Larry Summers will likely be named chairman of the Federal Reserve in a few weeks though he is “still being vetted” so it might take a little longer.
It’s largely come down to a two-horse race between Summers, a former Treasury secretary, and Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen for the next Fed chief.
It is widely expected that the current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will resign by the end of the year as his term ends in January. President Obama has already said that Bernanke has “already stayed a lot longer” in the role than he expected. Those remarks came in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS in June.
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