In the largest measure, the basic problem is in 2009 Harry Reid passed the ObamaCare legislation in the Senate with 60 votes. The House then passed the exact same bill, and the Democrats moved to immediate reconciliation to remove the House concerns (Gator-Aid, Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana Purchase etc.).
In 2017 the Republican congress are attempting to repeal and replace that ObamaCare legislation with only 52 Senate votes available, well, maybe.
Unfortunately for the GOP there are not even 52 votes for repeal. Portman, Thune, Collins, Murkowski, Graham, McCain, Blunt, Cochran, Cornyn, Hatch, McConnell and others, are not necessarily on board; that’s 11. (Leaving only 41).
No amount of byzantine rule changes surrounding “reconciliation” are going to overcome that factual vote hurdle. In 2009 Senator Reid started with 60 votes. In 2017 Senator McConnell starts with 52.
So anything coming from the House of Representatives has to keep this reality in mind. Even if support or opposition is based on ideological principle, it still has to pass – or it’s moot.
There’s no doubt the Paul Ryan proposal holds the worst U.S. CoC aspects demanded by Tom Donohue. Heck, Donohue poured a lot of lobbying money into the entire architecture in ’09/’10 and he’s paid republicans in congress hundreds of millions to make sure his interests in keeping ObamaCare around are protected. Ryan is big GOPe and he’s supported by the Big Club.
And, as much as Paul Ryan is beholden to Donohue to retain some form of ObamaCare, so too are the Rand Paul / Ted Cruz types paid by billionaires like Cary Katz (Conservative Review); who want an abject repeal without compromise. (more…)
State Department Journalists are some of the most tender snowflakes in Washington DC. The latest outrage du jour is reporters complaining they are not allowed to fly with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Asia.
There’s no-one stopping the reporters from flying to Asia and covering T-Rex’s visit. The entire complaint is that they don’t get to fly on his airplane.
Who does the State Department run to when they need to voice their alarm,…. well, that would be CNN of course:
(Via CNN) The new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has been all but silent in his first month on the job. And he is planning on traveling to Asia next week without the traditional coterie of traveling press with him.
Journalists are strenuously objecting to the plan. But there is no indication that Tillerson is going to reverse course. The State Department may allow one hand-picked journalist to tag along, but the details are unknown.
In the latest Bloomberg News report on the labor market, Bloomberg buried the lede:
[…] Goods-producing industries, which include mining, construction and manufacturing, added 95,000 jobs in February, the most since 2000.
This is critical for many reasons. However, before going further, again we must remind everyone about the Magic Wand. WATCH:
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What many people do not realize is the scope of four decades of lies being sold by politicians and political operatives, who are espousing the sales pitch of globalists, and who constructed the second (Wall Street) corporate paper economy around the premise of off-shoring manufacturing and industrial jobs.
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Wow. This is really odd. According to this interview with Vice-President Mike Pence, he only discovered General Flynn’s lobbying connections to Turkey yesterday.
That lack of knowledge seems rather puzzling considering that Pence was in charge of the Transition Teams, including all of the vetting [effective November 11th], and General Flynn was picked as National Security Adviser on November 17th, 2016.
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We wrote about the looming conflict-of-interest issue back when Flynn was announced –SEE HERE- because immediately we saw a problem with Flynn connecting to Turkey and the view of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that Recep Erdogan was the nemesis of Egypt, Jordan and the moderate elements of the middle-east.
Really quite surprising to see VP Pence state the Trump administration had no idea about the Flynn lobbying which was quite widely circulated at the time by The Daily Caller and others. (more…)
It’s obvious the financial interests are pouring in money to the R.A.T groups right now in the fight over ObamaCare Repeal and/or Replace. Boy howdy are they all fibbing as they fling their poo at each other. Forget the Democrats in this discussion. For the sake of this analysis we only look at the right side of the UniParty; the Republican side.
There are two financial special interest groups within the Republican fight on ObamaCare. Two groups within the BIG CLUB. Essentially, two swamp R.A.T factions:
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Our President Trump met with the CEO’s of various small and community banks earlier today as part of the financial reform that underpins much of the overall Trump economic agenda.
Previously President Trump issued an executive order which modified, actually tiered, the choking rules, regulations and compliance reporting within Dodd-Frank banking rules which buried smaller locally operated banks with the same regulatory framework as massive financial institutions.
The next aspect of Trump’s financial reform will most likely come in some form of reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. President Trump personally put the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall into the GOP platform as part of uncoupling Wall Street financial policy from Main Street financial needs. [More explanation on that below]
[Transcript] 11:17 A.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody, very much. Good morning and I greatly appreciate you being here. We have some real experts with us and we have some great bankers with us.
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In what could have been a great interview, Sean Hannity aimlessly circles his constantus interruptus questioning toward a diminishing conclusion of nothingness. The interview was scheduled to highlight an explosive new report from Circa News, which claims they have actual evidence the Obama FBI was engaged in electronic surveillance of candidate Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, both the interviewer and the interviewee, Sara Carter, missed the central points, whiffed on the premise of their discovery, and exhaustively used thousands of words that traveled in all directions simultaneously while completely missing the target.
The key parts were: Trump’s servers, spies, monitoring, surveillance, Obama, the FBI, wiretapping, Russia, and FISA/non-FISA warrants were discussed. Some assembly required.
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Apparently, based on this FOX ARTICLE, all the explosive investigation information is in an article, on THIS WEBSITE. But that sucks too. So there’s that. If you’re up to the challenge, feel free to assemble the informational matrix in the comments section.
Credit Suisse is a stock rating entity which generates a sliding scale for future stock valuations based on evaluations of brand sentiment. The scale runs from -100 to +100 with zero as a “hold” or “take no position” recommendation.
Back in January Starbucks announced they were going to stand in opposition to President Trump; and to display their virtuous immigration bona fides they announced their intention to hire 10,000 refugees as employees in lieu of current American applicants for employment.
An almost immediate backlash began as pro-USA consumers and President Trump supporters turned away from the Starbucks brand. As a consequence the Starbucks business model has been severely impacted.
Prior to their virtue-signaling announcement, Starbucks held a +80 position with Credit Suisse. Today that rating dropped to ZERO as analysts announced the latest brand rating against the back drop of significant drops in sales.
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FACT: ObamaCare was passed, using the original legislative vehicle, at 1:38am on 12/24/09 with 60 votes in the Senate (see below). The House then approved that Senate Bill without changes; and in February 2010 created a secondary bill which created the opportunity for the Senate to modify ObamaCare using “reconciliation” for a lower vote threshold of 51 votes.
Literally under the cloak of darkness Democrats rammed their holy grail of a socialist construct down the throat of every American. We no longer needed to imagine having usurping representation that did not represent the will of the people – we saw it.
[Understand the full construct by reading HERE] If you do not understand how legislation is created; if you do not understand the difference between the Senate and House; if you do not understand the way ObamaCare was created, you really need to read this first.
A clean repeal bill, meaning a law to repeal the entire ObamaCare construct only, would require another 60 vote hurdle in the Senate.
Republicans, while in the majority, only control 52 seats. Without 8 Democrats voting to approve a “repeal bill”, any House (Or Senate) bill that repeals ObamaCare cannot pass the Senate.
This is why Mark Levin is a con-man; selling snake oil as outrage to keep a listening audience angry, yet clueless and hopeless. That’s what I don’t like.
A complete repeal of ObamaCare is currently impossible. The House Freedom Caucus can push all the repeal bills they want, but they cannot get a clean repeal bill through the Senate because they cannot get the 60 votes needed. Period.
Additionally, despite claims to the contrary, the GOP has never passed an Obamacare “repeal bill”. Ever. What they did previously pass was a “defund bill” using the lower vote reconciliation process. President Obama vetoed it. A defunding bill was possible because of the financial pathway which falls under reconciliation rules. The current Ryan bill is almost identical to the 2016 defunding bill everyone is mistakenly calling a prior “repeal bill”.
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Two important videos containing two important aspects to advancing legislation. In the first video President Trump is meeting with Republican House “whip team”. The role of the House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise, is to get the various republicans factions to unite in support of a singular legislative goal. Unite the clans.
President Trump is not meeting with the House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, because Trump views McCarthy as a weasel (don’t ask – just watch). President Trump gives remarks to the media during the White House meeting:
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The second meeting is Speaker Paul Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Greg Walden. Ryan, McCarthy and Walden outline the three-step legislative process that a full and replace bill needs.
Walden outlines the House Energy and Commerce Committee beginning the mark-ups on the bill which starts tomorrow.
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