The Senate votes on a motion to proceed, beginning debate on the legislation. However, unlike typical Senate procedure, many lawmakers are unclear on what the actual healthcare reform bill will be.
♦ Latest: 2:40pm Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have voted against proceeding. All other republican senators have voted to proceed. (live stream link)
3:00pm Senator John McCain arrives to vote “aye”.  Senator Ron Johnson also votes ‘yes’. Senator Joe Manchin has voted “nay”.  All Democrats are voting along party line no defectors..
3:10pm With final vote to proceed tied at 50/50 Vice President Mike Pence casts the tie-breaking vote and the motion to proceed passes.

3:15pm Senator John McCain took to the floor to deliver a speech (video added below). McCain stated he voted to proceed with debate, but he will never vote for the Senate bill.  Instead McCain demands the entire process begin again; starting over in committee (time for more lobbyist $$).
McCain then delivers a 10 minute speech filled with virtue signaling, pearl clutching, and ‘reach-across-the-aisle’ “isms”; while demanding that all senators stop listening to the American people and return to the preferred way of indulging in their own Senatorial best interests.   McCain communicated to the chamber that the American electorate are too stupid to know what’s good for them, and the Senators should rule over the proles.
Despite his looming incapacity and terminal brain cancer, McCain refuses to resign.
Donald Trump was entirely right about John McCain.
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The palace intrigue continues…

(WASHINGTON DC via Fox News) Multiple former Republican National Committee officials who followed Reince Preibus and Sean Spicer to the White House are “seriously concerned” about their jobs now that President Trump tapped Anthony Scaramucci as his new communications director, White House sources told Fox News.
The sources said Scaramucci’s influence has skyrocketed inside the West Wing. The Washington Post reported that “Scaramucci has moved into Trump’s inner sanctum and is now described by some colleagues as almost family to the president.”
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Everything is proceeding according to a natural and predictable path.  Mr. Scaramucci is now in charge of White House messaging, the focus can now look toward the Capitol and go on offense; the “Big Ugly” is very clearly on the horizon.

Anxious Trump voters have been understandably frustrated by the lack of speed with which President Trump is able to force the MAGA agenda onto an unwilling DC political apparatus.  However, if you step back and look at the scope of the challenge, the situation is entirely understandable.
Donald Trump was a 100% pure political outsider, a citizen politician.  There was never any underlying organizational apparatus to support victory.  There was Dan, Hope, Michael and Corey; later Paul then Kellyanne and Steve. Everything else needed to be constructed from scratch and even the party apparatus didn’t support candidate Trump.
On November 9th 2016 President-elect Trump did not wake up with a staff of 50 political career employees sitting at Trump desks with Rolodexes filled with a network of affiliate political allies, personnel and associates to call upon to create the Trump administration.  Consequently President Trump needed to import the entire administrative personnel architecture to support the move to the White House. (more…)

If you watch or listen to the interviews today with new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and then overlay them against a backdrop of ongoing events (including last week), there’s a very solid outlook that Reince Priebus is close to being replaced as Chief of Staff.

Scaramucci says today: “If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.” Where “they” are clearly White House staffers who have been identified as leaking to the media.
When you step back and remind yourself where “they” came from, you recognize this staff is primarily made up of former RNC staff brought into the White House by Reince Priebus the former head of the RNC and now Chief of Staff.
When you step back further you find yourself reminded what ideology those same RNC staffers carried before following Priebus to the White House. Then we quickly realize these are Scott Walker/Ted Cruz type GOPe loyalists who have no affinity for the populist approach of Trump.
There’s the problem that has existed in nuanced form from the outset of the decision to keep Reince Priebus inside the Trump administration as a bridge to the parties legislative and political apparatus in DC.
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The “Big Ugly” Preparation – President Trump has announced Anthony Scaramucci as the new White House Communications Director. Mrs. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is also announced as the permanent White House Press Secretary. Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer is released from his duties; Spicer will finish out August and then exit the White House.
Video from today’s Press Briefing follows:

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This communications transition must be considered against the backdrop of an executive office accepting the intransigent nature of the DC Administrative State, the Deep State and financial interests, has finally reached a point where direct conflict is unavoidable.
President Trump’s election was the disruption the American electorate voted for. The DC based Administrative state will not allow this disruption.
The middle-class economic agenda, the primary focus of the Trump administration, is now being intentionally blocked by the UniParty and their lobbying financiers in the professional political community.
The UniParty decision to impede healthcare reform is, necessarily, also carrying the motive of specific intent to derail the sequential tax reform policy.
The down-stream budgetary impact from retaining ObamaCare will destroy the U.S. economy. The multinational corporations and multinational banks are positioned favorably toward this endeavor.  They have built this position over decades.
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A recent article written by Roger Ailes confidant Michael Wolff affirms one of the more transparently obvious hidden secrets in the 2015/2016 presidential race and election.

Fox News owner/mogul Rupert Murdoch was intensely against the candidacy of Donald Trump. So much so that Murdoch instructed former President of Fox News, Roger Ailes, to shape favorable coverage toward anyone other than Donald Trump, including a request to tilt toward support for Hillary Clinton.

New York – […] It was Ailes’ tacit support of Trump that, in part, made his removal from Fox all the more urgent for the Murdochs. And it was not just the liberal sons who were agitated by Ailes’ regard for Trump, but also the father, whose tabloid, the New York Post, helped create Trump, but who found him now, with great snobbery, not of “our” conservative class. (“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch senior tweeted the day after Trump officially declared himself a candidate.)
Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary. (Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch’s periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon’s instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.)

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Short interview with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney discussing ObamaCare and the potential for Tax Reform.  Unfortunately, one of the key budgetary issues with the failure of ObamaCare reform is the downstream effect on any middle-class tax reform.
Within ObamaCare’s current -mostly political- structure, the expansive growth of Medicaid means tax-paying workers will pay more for insurance premiums and will also be held captive to the need for additional revenue to pay for medicaid; a double whammy.

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Looks like the suspicions many people had were correct.
It was announced tonight that Senator John McCain is diagnosed with Primary Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
It appears from the reporting the initial operation removed cancerous tissue (a tumor), not necessarily a ‘blood clot’ as originally reported, and clear margins were achieved.  Unfortunately this type of cancer can quickly spread to the brain stem where the primary function of respiration can become quickly affected.

(CNN) – Sen. John McCain, 80, has been diagnosed with a primary glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor, Mayo Clinic doctors directly involved in the senator’s care told CNN exclusively. The doctors spoke directly to CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The senator underwent surgery to remove a blood clot on Friday at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. Lab results from that surgery confirmed the presence of brain cancer associated with the blood clot.

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Reports surface today that President Trump has cancelled the 2012/2013 covert CIA program giving weapons to ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria.  [Washington Post Link]

Various news organizations frame the issue as cancelling the program to “arm the moderate opposition to Bashir Assad”.  However, those news reports are entirely false.

We know the Obama administration was arming ISIS as part of the larger Syria strategy because Secretary of State John Kerry went on record admitting the Obama Syrian strategy was actually to arm ISIS and extremist Islamic groups (al-Nusra) against Assad.
We also know Secretary Kerry was being truthful in that media-hidden, albeit recorded, admission because CTH specifically tracked and investigated the CIA weapons shipments as an accidential outcome of the finalized Benghazi Briefing material in 2013/2014.
The Washington Post might be claiming today that President Trump is discontinuing a covert CIA plan that armed “moderates”.  But we know, if Trump is actually canceling this program, the actual recipients of the covert weapons plan were ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra in Syria – By their own damned admissions.
There simply is no doubt of that truth.   The Washington Post is lying, and despite their earnest efforts we can actually prove their framework is a substantive and factual falsehood.    Here’s some of the proof, including Kerry’s recorded admission:
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“For seven years you promised the American people you would repeal Obamacare. People are hurting and frankly inaction is not an option.”
~ President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump held a luncheon for Senate Republicans on Wednesday and delivered stern remarks toward their failure to reach agreement on repealing or overhauling Obamacare.  President Trump demanded they keep their campaign promises and find a new healthcare approach.

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President Trump told the 49 senators who came to a White House luncheon today they should not leave Washington for a planned August recess until they can find common ground on healthcare and do the job Americans are paying them to do.
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