July 28, 2017 6:52 AM
HomeMorning ReadsMorning Reads for Friday- July 28, 2017

Morning Reads for Friday- July 28, 2017

By  Morning Reads  28 Comments

Filling in for the incomparable Ginny Ray! Happy Friday, y’all!

State

National

The Feel Good Stuff

About Author

Theresa Garcia Robertson

Wife. Mama. Foodie. Political Junkie. Southern Enthusiast. Taco Lover.

28 Comments
  1. Dave Bearse

    The Mooch tells a reporter that Priebus is an “f—–g paranoid schizophrenic”. He says the leaking of financial information about him was a felony, and suggests that Priebus did it.
    .
    Except that the financial information was public record that had been duly requested and provided.
    .
    Yeah, the Mooch certainly is “refreshing” as stated by a commenter, in the GOP-conservative sort of way we’ve come to expect from GOP control of the national government.

    • Saltycracker

      That’s a BS spin. The “refreshing” was a clear answer to the inept moderator who should have been able to understand. What is going on now with internal tweet shocking the home team is depressing.

      We are witnessing opportunities blown in biblical proportions. Hope we don’t get your wish as big government is inept and financially irresponsible in trying to control so much.

  2. Dave Bearse

    A recent political science finding is that undermining public trust in government benefits conservative parties. The party with the message, “Government sucks and should be torn down” benefits when people internalize the message that government is inept, incompetent, and unable to touch anything without ruining it.
    .
    Government sucks has been conservative mantra since St. Ronnie, but now Trump with conservative acquiesce is extending it to voting, one of the few remaining aspects of our system that people believe in. Going forward, every election can be cast as illegitimate because “everybody knows” that there’s fraud, and any news to the contrary is fake. That benefits conservatives too, since a majority that relies on appeals to racists is slipping away, but it will Make America Great Again.
    .
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/07/27/how-trumps-delusions-of-voter-fraud-will-turn-election-results-into-fake-news/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.66c22c4fc4b2

  3. Benevolus

    Curious that they never even considered Tom Price’s plan.

    • Dave Bearse

      As to the Price plan, his silence as HHS confirms even he knew it was junk.
      .
      If your haven’t noticed, fellow Georgian Sonny is doing things at USDA. Who knew that whispering that farmers needed cheap foreign labor would be so effective at starting dialogue?
      .
      Speaking of importing foreign labor, there’s of course the irony in Trump applying for foreign labor for Mar a lago during “Made in America Week”. Trump’s got his, Sonny. The chump farmers you’re supposed to be representing ought to get off their butts and get theirs like Trump does.

  4. Sally Forth

    It ain’t over til it’s over. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. The fat lady hasn’t tuned up yet. Hmmm….. how many more cliches can we think of? This highly publicized vote was high drama, but certainly not the end of the efforts to repair our broken healthcare system.

    McCain seized the opportunity to stick it to the Prez, pure and simple. He screwed up the work done by all his Republican colleagues, jumped ship and voted with the Democrats, aka Trump haters.
    Now the senator goes back to Arizona for his medical treatments with a smile on his face, leaving everyone else to deal with the mess he has made by this petty act of spite that has such huge consequences for all Americans.

    • Benevolus

      Another way to look at it is that McCain voted against a bill that even those who voted for it admitted they didn’t want it to actually become law.

      8 senators who voted for that ridiculous bill are up for reelection next year. They just pre-loaded their challengers cannons.

      • Sally Forth

        And 48 Democratic senators who voted against moving the bill forward for further work have a fair number up for reelection next year also. Those people just guaranteed themselves opposition. 2018 should hold some pretty interesting races.

        • Dave Bearse

          “took a bullet” was the precise phrase that occurred to me when I read Benevolus’ comment.
          .
          First things first. The first order of business of nearly every GOP incumbent is not to be outrun on the right in a primary. The slow crumbling of healthcare insurance isn’t yet a GOP incumbent worry. The GOP undermining the system being fake news is good until the end of the year if not beyond.

    • bethebalance

      I’m sure plenty will argue that it was spite, but I give him credit beyond making important votes based on pettiness. Rather, there’s some good science out there that says when an elected official is in their final months or year of office, they are much more likely to vote according to what they personally believe, as they are logically less concerned with re-election. So maybe, in light of his health and recent brush with mortality, he just voted his conscience.

  5. Sally Forth

    Certainly the bill had not been perfected, and the vote was to simply advance it to a joint House-Senate conference committee, where the really hard work on details must still be done. McCain has been around a long time and understands the legislative process, had to know that what he was doing was a detrimental delay to achieving repairs for the American people. This was no high-minded vote, but rather a poke in the eye of a political adversary, a personal vendetta pure and simple. Unless the brain cancer has affected his thinking and judgement, as we’ve noticed the last few months in his committee meetings, this was a deliberate act at the expense of millions of people. Very unbecoming for a man who has been held in high esteem and considered a hero.

    • Benevolus

      Well if Paul Ryan had committed to not passing this in the House then maybe things would have been different, but he didn’t, so blame Ryan.

      And his relationship with Trump might well have been a part of it too. So blame Trump for that.

      Not sure if his brain cancer had anything to do with it, but it’s not hard to imagine that he might have considered that other people in his condition would lose their insurance with this bill or one like it.

      • Sally Forth

        Speaker Ryan did publicly commit on TV yesterday evening, stated that if the Senate sent the bill to the House he would immediately send to conference committee, appoint House conferees and request Senate conferees.
        Sure, McCain supported Hillary in the presidential campaign and he obviously relished voting “no.” But that blame is on him for being petty and spiteful.
        The senator has the cadillac of healthcare coverage that we, the people, provide for him under the congressional plan. He never even has to think about what insurance will or won’t cover, like regular people.
        And if he’d read the bill, he would know that nobody would lose their insurance – that’s just propaganda from the Democrats. The number from the CBO was for a projection of about 10 years on how many people would not sign up, and that number would be less than the incorrect number they projected in 2009 for HCA.

        • Benevolus

          “…he (Ryan) didn’t specifically state what some Senate Republicans wanted him to guarantee — that the House would never take up just the “skinny repeal.”
          .
          http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/27/politics/paul-ryan-conference-committee/index.html

          • Dave Bearse

            And if a conference committee is all that’s needed to produce a bill, then convene one. It’s not as if there’s been any sort of regular order” that McConnell promised. Healthcare legislation development has been nothing but a few weeks private negotiations by select Senators and staff. Invite a few select House members and staff, write the legislation in secret, introduce it in the House and Senate and vote on it ASAP. Voila!

          • Benevolus

            I haven’t been able to verify this, but I am reading that they can only use this reconciliation process once per fiscal year? Sounds sketchy, but I don’t know.

          • Benevolus

            “Reconciliation bills can be passed on spending, revenues, and the federal debt limit[4] once a year per topic unless Congress passes a revised budget resolution for that fiscal year (under section 304 of the Congressional Budget Act).[5] As an example, if a budget resolution’s reconciliation instructions affect both spending and revenues, no further reconciliation legislation can occur on these topics in the same fiscal year without a revised budget resolution.” (Wikipedia)

            So that might explain Trump’s tweetstorm yesterday. Perhaps someone told him they’ll need 60 votes to try it again.

    • bethebalance

      Also, imagine if it was one of his last few moments of legislative importance on this Earth. What would he do? Plea for everybody to work together, then make the vote that could lead to actual bipartisanship.
      I don’t see someone who has faced death recently acting with spite, but with purpose.

      • Sally Forth

        That’s idealistic, not hard ball politics like he’s famous for. In his speech the day he returned to Washington, he said that some of his colleagues who’d said such nice things about him might want to take them back after he did the things he had in mind. That was a red flag to me, that he was planning to do just what he did. He’s a tough guy to the end.

      • bethebalance

        I need my idealism, at least in theory.
        People gotta dream.

        • xdog

          How about this? Even disregarding his grave medical condition, McCain almost certainly won’t be running for Senate in 2022, so he was the perfect guy to vote no and take the heat that Graham, Heller, Cassidy, Capito, et. al. wanted to avoid.

  6. Benevolus

    Priebus out.
    And now Scaramucci’s wife is divorcing him?
    This is just crazy.
    http://pagesix.com/2017/07/28/anthony-scaramuccis-wife-files-for-divorce/?_ga=2.197255279.1589870262.1501274334-1627936152.1501274334

  7. Noway2016

    You all do realize that it’s about time for all those Deplorable Women to start having those TrumpBabies that got conceived on election night, right?! Lol!

  8. Ellynn

    Interesting read. I pasted a few paragraphs
    .
    “To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office . . . .” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I never believed it.”
    He says he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade: “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute—that can’t happen.’ ” But, he adds, “if you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
    It’s a stunning admission from a former member of the party leadership—that the linchpin of GOP electoral strategy for the better part of a decade was a fantasy, a flame continually fanned solely because, when it came to midterm elections, it worked. (Barring, of course, his own.)
    .

    https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/07/26/eric-cantor-republicans-obamacare-donald-trump/

  9. Ellynn

    If you were wondering how the 2018 fundraising is going for house races…

    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/07/24/does-the-opening-predict-a-wave/

  10. Noway2016

    Enough of crap like this! The wall keeps getting taller…
    http://www.kgw.com/mb/news/woman-65-in-ne-portland-reports-sex-assault-break-in-and-car-burglary/459231264

    • Noway2016

      And as the old joke goes , “If I can teach it to cook…you’re outta here!” Lolol!

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