House Freedom Caucus' Meadows was one of just 7 Republicans to vote against the 2015 Obamacare repeal

Meadow's leadership against the current repeal bill, which is in fact a crummier bill, obscures his isolation previously. 

The roll call vote is here. Buck, Dold, Hanna, Jones, Meadows, Salmon, and Walker voted No. The majority of the Freedom Caucus voted for the bill, including leaders like Justin Amash and Jim Jordan.

Unlike Meadows, Americans for Tax Reform here also supported the bill at the time, as did the broader Republican Caucus in the House (it passed 240-189). ATR acknowledged the difficulty of repealing Obamacare's policy provisions without 60 votes in the Senate, which remains the problem now in 2017.

Jim Jordan is right. Repass H.R. 3762 and send it to Trump.

From ATR:

H.R. 3762 repeals most of the heart of Obamacare. The individual and employer mandates and their attendant tax penalties are gone. The medical device tax is repealed. The “Cadillac plan” excise tax is prevented from coming into effect (more on that later).

On the spending side, H.R. 3762 repeals some unaccountable Obamacare slush funds, shutters IPAB (the Medicare rationing board that Sarah Palin called a “death panel”), and ends Obamacare auto-enrollment. Importantly, it also defunds Planned Parenthood for the fiscal year.

At a markup for the bill, liberal Congressmen went apoplectic at the effect H.R. 3762 would have on Obamacare. Top House Ways and Means Democrat Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said that the bill ”effectively guts [Obamacare].” Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) said, “this bill really is pulling the legs from under [Obamacare]. It is a deliberate, systematic attempt, not just to repeal, but to destroy [Obamacare].” ...

When the Republicans took the Senate in the 2014 elections, there was a lot of talk about moving bills from Capitol Hill to the President’s desk to force showdowns with the White House. That hasn’t happened, largely because Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has bottled up the Senate in 60 vote purgatory.

The one area he cannot do that is on a privileged budget reconciliation bill like H.R. 3762.

The Wall Street Journal lies: No alternative to AHCA could pass the House and Senate

Here:

No one has offered a better policy alternative to the American Health Care Act that could pass the House and Senate.

Lies! The 2015 repeal bill already passed both the House and the Senate and Obama vetoed it in early 2016.

Republicans knew Obama would veto it, so nothing was really at stake for them at the time.

But now that there is, they won't send that bill to Trump, either because they're afraid Trump might sign it, or because they're afraid he'll veto it too. Instead they've crafted a bill they know can't pass the Congress.

What a contemptible lot are the Republicans, the Democrats, both presidents Obama and Trump, and The Wall Street Journal.

And your mother wears Army boots.

That would be messy spats, but hey, it's Drudge

If the Republicans had any balls they'd send the 2015 repeal bill which Obama vetoed to Trump and make him veto it

Jim Jordan of Ohio supports this.

Trump turns tables on Republican Congress, demands vote on healthcare bill that won't pass

Scorched earth politics, making the Republicans humiliate themselves.

In other words, "You're fired!"

From the story here:

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, a member of the whip team, said he believed Trump's ultimatum is "credible" and predicted the bill's passage during Friday's vote.

Trump Care or Trump Steaks? I'll decide . . .

 

Michigan ranks fourth in the nation for power outages, first on a per capita basis since 2011

Reported here.

And in Crain's Detroit Business, here.

Mickey Kaus had the House Freedom Caucus figured out in 2015: Preeners, and open-borders lunatics just like Paul Ryan

Aka libertarians. You know, that motley crue 100 of which in the same room can never all agree about any one thing of importance.

Here.

AP finally runs story detailing Treasury's leadership of Trump-Russia investigation

Gee, how does the Treasury Dept. "collect a vast repository of records" in order to "piece money trails together and identify leads for criminal investigators", huh?

You don't suppose they ever wiretap anybody, do you?

Here:

U.S. Treasury Department agents have recently obtained information about offshore financial transactions involving President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, as part of a federal anti-corruption probe into his work in Eastern Europe, The Associated Press has learned.

Information about Manafort's transactions was turned over earlier this year to U.S. agents working in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network by investigators in Cyprus at the U.S. agency's request, a person familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss a criminal investigation. ...

Manafort, who was Trump's unpaid campaign chairman from March until August last year, has been a leading focus of the U.S. government's investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. This week, the AP revealed his secret work for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago. ...

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, was established in 1990 and became a Treasury Department bureau soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It collects a vast repository of records that financial institutions are required to report under the Bank Secrecy Act, such as suspicious activity reports and currency transaction reports, and assists law enforcement agencies in helping analyze complex data.

The agency is a part of an international network of so-called financial intelligence units that share information with each other in money laundering and terrorism financing investigations. Its work has been critical in helping officials piece money trails together and identify leads for criminal investigators.

Like Michael Savage, Scott Adams has succeeded despite anti-white racism

From the story here:

At both the bank and the phone company, Adams has said, his professional advancement was thwarted by diversity hires. “There was no hope for another generic white male to get promoted any time soon,” he wrote in Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert. (Later in the book, he noted that his Dilbert TV show was canceled after “the network made a strategic decision to focus on shows with African-American actors.”)

Laugh of the Day: Black Susan Rice Pot calls Trump kettle black

This woman LIED for weeks on every news show out there, saying the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous event caused by an anti-Muslim video. Now she lectures the Trump Administration about twisting the truth. Ya, sure.

Tea Party Patriots' Jenny Beth Martin just robocalled me to ask me to tell my congressman I support his opposition to Ryan Care

Did that already.

The full-court-press is on to stop this bill.

Hillary so mistaken about her support we never tire of mentioning it anymore

Republicans don't have the votes for Ryan's Obamacare-Lite bill, so . . .

. . . if Ryan allows the bill to come to the floor for a vote and it fails, you'll know Ryan did that to embarrass Trump. It's fully within Ryan's power to whip the vote and to discover the bad news ahead of time to keep the bill from coming to a vote to prevent embarrassing Trump.

Consider how Ryan has been promoting Trump's negotiating skills in this affair in the build up to the vote in the meantime, how involved Trump is, how Trump is closing the deal according to Ryan. Suddenly Ryan is Trump's greatest advocate anywhere on Capitol Hill!

And when the bill fails, Trump doesn't look so hot, does he. The vaunted deal-maker is brought down a few notches. And Ryan blames the conservatives, achieving two objectives in one stroke. Trump is humiliated, and conservatives become even more marginalized.

Ryan is Trump's enemy, not his friend. Ryan is our enemy.

If all that happens, watch out.

It will be war.

Here in Michigan the biggest FU ever recorded in human history still feels GREAT!

March Madness for Trump in Louisville KY tonight

American Action Network is a Fred Malek-Norm Coleman operation

Doug Holtz-Eakin of John McCain Campaign infamy runs the sister organization.

Moderates all!

Don't listen to American Action Network phone calls, they advocate passage of the Ryan Obamacare Lite bill

American Action Network is targeting 29 or 30 congressional districts where Freedom Caucus members oppose the Ryan Obamacare Lite bill.

I just got the call today, asking me to tell Rep. Justin Amash to vote for this repeal and replace bill.

Ain't gonna do it.

We want a clean repeal bill, not Ryan's repeal and replace.

For a change I agree with Justin Amash.

Trump and his advisers know all about the intelligence Obama gathered on them and leaked like water

The New York Times, March 1st, here:

In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. ...

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information ... classified intelligence.

Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates. ...

Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators . . ..

At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies. This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki used by American analysts to share information.

There was also an effort to pass reports and other sensitive materials to Congress. ...

... [W]ith the most sensitive intelligence, including the names of sources and the identities of foreigners who were regularly monitored . . . [o]fficials tightened the already small number of people who could access that information. They knew the information could not be kept from the new president or his top advisers, but wanted to narrow the number of people who might see the information, officials said. ...

On Jan. 2, administration officials learned that Mr. Kislyak — after leaving the State Department meeting — called Mr. Flynn, and that the two talked multiple times in the 36 hours that followed. American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed . . ..

Pew: 23 states still struggle with less revenue than in 2007

From the summary here:

Twenty-three states still collect less tax revenue than at their recession-era peaks, after adjusting for inflation, and most have a thinner financial cushion than they did before the last downturn. In addition, 18 states’ employment rates still trail 2007 levels. 

Economic reality: Budgets in 33 states face shortfalls now or next year, some from Obamacare-related Medicaid costs

From the story here:

A recent Associated Press survey found that more than half of the states — 33 — are currently dealing with a budget shortfall or expect to confront one in the coming fiscal year. Experts say state economic growth has been slower than expected, with revenue in some places failing to meet projections or keep up with rising spending needs. ... Medicaid costs are contributing to budget gaps in Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New York and Rhode Island. Other states are dealing with increasing spending demands in education and health care.

Sen. Rand Paul: We know Obama spied on General Michael Flynn because he outed him

Here.

Trey Gowdy never asks Comey about Treasury's possible role in outing General Michael Flynn

Here.

Muslim attacker at Orly Airport is a dead hypocrite

Notice how quickly the French get the toxicology report finished, here:

Yelling that he wanted to kill and die for Allah, according to the Paris prosecutor, Ziyed Ben Belgacem can be seeing trying to wrestle away the soldier's assault rifle near the small cluster of people. ...

Earlier Saturday, a police officer was shot in the face with birdshot when officers stopped Belgacem for a traffic violation.

Authorities say Belgacem, a 39-year-old Frenchman, had a long criminal record of drug and robbery offenses.

Autopsy toxicology tests found traces of cocaine and cannabis in Belgacem's blood, according to the Paris prosecutors' office. He also had 0.93 grams of alcohol per liter of blood when he died Saturday, the prosecutors' office said. That is nearly twice the legal limit for driving in France.

In an interview Sunday with French radio Europe 1, a man identified as the suspect's father said that Belgacem wasn't a practicing Muslim and drank alcohol.

James Comey couldn't find any information to support "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower"

Yeah, that's because the FBI didn't do it. Plausible deniability.

Congress should subpoena Jack Lew.

All is not lost: Some kids are still impervious to liberal indoctrination, and liquor laws

ABC's cross-eyed Terry Moran is an object of ridicule in American homes

We told you in October 2012 that the income tax makes big government POSSIBLE

Here:

As an invention of progressivism the income tax eventually worked a revolution in government by allowing government to grow to gargantuan size with a ready pool of available cash, stolen by force from the population's income. And it is no coincidence that the first major expenditure financed by the income tax was US entry into The Great War. Not long after which came The Great Depression. If progressive ideas were good ones, no one seems to have paid much heed to the early evidence to the contrary.

Every effort by the people since the introduction of the income tax to obtain deductions, exemptions, credits and other incentives in the tax code should be understood by conservatives as wholesome reactionary, counter-revolutionary, rear-guard opposition to what the income tax represents, but today you can hardly find a conservative who will even entertain the idea of overthrowing the income tax, let alone any other of the so-called "achievements" of the progressive era. In fact, some so-called conservatives have become veritable cheerleaders for the income tax. Rush Limbaugh, for one, can't seem even to imagine an America without one for the first 137 years of its existence. An originalist in name only is he.

The problem with so-called Reagan conservatism, then and now, is that it makes peace with the tax code, just as it does with the social welfare state, including Social Security and especially Medicare. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan actually campaign on just such a platform of preserving Medicare for future generations. As Reagan compromised in the direction of liberalism in the 1986 tax reform, so will they.

Brian Domitrovic and Larry Kudlow aren't the first to tell you the income tax made big government possible

Their book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, released in September 2016, makes the point well, as does this article in Forbes:

And sure enough, with the income tax presenting itself as patriotically taxing the rich—at times with utterly fictional 91 and 94% top rates, from the 1940s until the 1960s, as Larry Kudlow and I marvel at in our recent book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution—government was able to grow where government under the tariff could not. The income tax supervised the rise of the federal government to well over a fifth of national output—from 3% during the era of the tariff. ... The dishonesty at the heart of the income tax was the key that unlocked the financing of big government, by the little guy no less.

We've been making the same point, more or less, since at least 2011, and especially in March 2016 here:

[Mark Levin's] tariff rant this evening ignores that the America of his precious founders was a tariff regime until the dreaded income tax of 1913.

The America of the founders was also a limited government for that reason until that very day.

But open wide the avenue for revenue, and you open the maw of the Leviathan and crawl into it.

Funniest headline of the weekend: Women's Strike a Huge Bust

Here.

Equally funny comment: "Most women blew the whole thing off."

And: "Who were the big boobs that thought this might actually succeed?"

Maureen Dowd, upper-class bunko artist

Maureen Dowd, the ever clever mistress of written fraud, makes it appear as if Nunes says Trump must be taken literally as commander in chief, but makes sure not to quote him saying as much:

Even Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gave up the Sisyphean effort of defending Trump’s tripe. He said that if you took Trump’s remarks “literally” — as we expect to do with our commander in chief’s words — “clearly the president was wrong.”

The fundamentalism is all hers.

Fundamentalist Maureen Dowd calls her own newspaper's claim of Trump wiretaps "unhinged" from which the Times hasn't backed off since publishing it

Here:

For two weeks, [Trump] has refused to back off his unhinged claim that his predecessor tapped his phones during the election. ... Even Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gave up the Sisyphean effort of defending Trump’s tripe. He said that if you took Trump’s remarks “literally” — as we expect to do with our commander in chief’s words — “clearly the president was wrong.”

No longer afraid of John McCain and Hillary Clinton, Russia cuts defense spending over 25% in 2017, the most since the early 1990s

Janes Defence Weekly, here.

Trump says he and Merkel have something in common, both wiretapped by Obama

What did he say?

I'm still giggling.

Five 9th Circuit judges say fellow 3-judge panel usurped Trump's constitutional presidential rights

Here:

Aside from the procedural defects of the process, the five panel jurists then noted the deep legal problems with the panel’s order: its a-historicity, it’s [sic] abdication of precedent, and its usurpation of Constitutionally delegated Presidential rights. Mirroring much of the Boston judge’s decision, the five judges then detail and outline what other critics, skeptics and commentators have noted of the prior panel decision, including critical commentary from liberal law professors and scribes Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz, and Jeffrey Toobin. The original 3-judge panel “neglected or overlooked critical cases by the Supreme Court and by our making clear that when we are reviewing decisions about who may be admitted into the United States, we must defer to the judgment of the political branches.” Of particular note, the five panel judges note how the 3-judge panel decision in “compounding its omission” of Supreme Court decisions and relevant sister Circuit precedents, also “missed all of our own cases” on the subject. The 5 judges conclude the panel engaged in a “clear misstatement of law” so bad it compelled “vacating” an opinion usually mooted by a dismissed case.

At $1.1512 trillion, Trump's 2018 budget request is actually 1/2 percent higher than Obama's projected

Story about pre-emptive first strike against North Korea is total crap, Rex Tillerson never used the term

The dishonest media put the words in his mouth, but Tillerson never used them.

It's an effort to paint the Trump administration with the stink of George W. Bush.

Foreign Policy acknowledges preemption is only hinted at, here.

All the Obama wiretapped Trump news that's fit to print

Wilders' Dutch Freedom Party gains 5 seats over 2012, ruling People's Party loses 8, media say Wilders defeated

Clearly Bernie Sanders has not been paying his fair share in taxes

Obama's legacy of student loan dependency: America has 2 million too many enrolled in college

In 1990 7.3% of the civilian noninstitutional population was enrolled in college or graduate school.

In 2016 that has grown to 8.1%.

The difference in 2016 comes to almost 2 million.

That's one reason why college tuition has exploded, along with the student loans to fund it.

Loans outstanding in 2016 are FIFTY-ONE TIMES their size in 1997.

The current balance of $1.05 trillion is an artifact of the Obama disaster, financing "education" for the chronically unemployed.

Just ask the kids using their loans to finance Spring Break. 

Trump orders review of Obama's crazy CAFE standards

From the story here:

Mr. Trump on Wednesday announced plans to re-examine the fuel mandates, taking a step back from Obama-era environmental regulations. ... The standard for passenger cars stayed at 27.5 mpg from 1990 until 2007. In 2009, the government set a fuel economy standard of 34.1 mpg for cars and light trucks by 2016. In 2012, it set a new target of 54.5 mpg by 2025. The number can change depending on the mix of vehicles customers buy. Right now, it stands at 51.4 mpg because people are buying more SUVs and trucks.

Michigan's Steve Gruber and Tim Walberg peddle stupid, continue to insist Obamacare passed with fewer than 60 votes in the Senate

This morning on Gruber's radio show before the eight o'clock hour.

Republicans continue to peddle this ridiculous idea that Obamacare passed without 60 votes in the Senate, for political reasons.

They're trying to build support for the current repeal effort, and give it a legitimacy with their constituencies which it will never have on its own, by elevating the possible outcome which won't pass with 60 votes in the Senate by denigrating Obamacare's legislative legitimacy.

That way they hope that the repeal bill, which won't repeal the shell provisions of the law because it can't, only the budget (reconciliation) provisions, will acquire an authority politically which Obamacare indisputably possesses because it passed with 60 votes.

But since the non-budgetary provisions of Obamacare will remain, and will not be repealed until Republicans have 60 votes in the Senate like Democrats had in 2009, Obamacare as law will continue to tower over this fiasco.

They all know that. They just don't want to remind you of that.

It's a Rube Goldberg strategy as ridiculous as Obamacare itself, except that Democrats beat Republicans with a stick in passing Obamacare and remain able to wield it.

Don't think that they won't.

Unhinged John McCain says Rand Paul is working for Vladimir Putin: The American people were right not to elect McCain

Imagine this guy in charge of the nuclear arsenal, quoted here:

“You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin... trying to dismember this small country [Montenegro] which has already been the subject an attempted coup.

If they object, they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin and I do not say that lightly.

I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification or any rationale for the action he has just taken.

That is really remarkable, that a senator blocking a treaty that is supported by the overwhelming number—perhaps 98, at least, of his colleagues—would come to the floor and object and walk away.

The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is he has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians.

So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”

Laugh of the Day: Josh Gerstein owned over "replaced" vs. "ousted"

Hey Mark Steyn, the patriots weren't polite to the enemy!

Mao say me love you long time: China makes it illegal to insult ‘heroes and martyrs’ of its Communist Party

China makes it illegal to insult ‘heroes and martyrs’ of its Communist Party

Maybe up to 1 million lost power in Michigan, but mlive says "millions"!

The age of hyperbole rolls on.

Everything is awesome.

Here:

If Trump nuked North Korea it might at least GLOW in the dark

Judicial overreach: 3-judge panel invalidates 3 Texas congressional districts, 2 Republican, 1 Democrat

Never mind every congressional district in America is a joke.

There is no way one man or one woman can claim to represent the interests of 743,126.4 people, on average, as is the case now countrywide.

Texas has 36 men and women representing nearly 27 million in the US House, but 254 counties. Give Texas 254 seats in the House, and representation would increase to 106,299.2 Texans per member of Congress, on average. Who knows, the members of such a Congress might actually knock on your door every two years.

Do the same with the rest of the country and we could dispense with legislatures redrawing district lines every ten years after every Census, and more importantly with meddling courts trying to interfere in the politics of self-government.

The county system is ancient, venerable and stable. Black counties will have black representatives, Latino counties Latino representatives, and so on, just as it should be.

The time is long past to reform representation in the United States so that we actually get some for a change. Not coincidentally, that's the main impediment to it.

From the story here:

[T]he court ruled that the legislature drew the lines with “the intent and effect of diluting Latino voter opportunity.” ... [T]he court said the legislature used race to draw the lines, packing Democrats into the district and thereby diluting their voting power elsewhere. The court also ruled that the legislature pushed Hispanics into the district in an effort to defeat Doggett if a Hispanic candidate challenged him.

Come on, people, Speaker Paul Ryan thought Medicare was a conservative CAUSE in 2012

You expected him to think differently about Obamacare?

The Tell: The RNC fundraised me today on the Gorsuch nomination . . .

. . . not on the American Health Care Act.

Always fundraise on the winner.

Year over year additions to full-time jobs in February 2017 were not much better than in 2013

Year-over-year additions to full-time were 1.8 million in February 2017.

In February 2013 1.6 million.

Nothing like 2015's 3 million, 2016's 2.5 million, or even 2014's 2.1 million.

Save your money. You're going to need it.

Mlive: 800,000 lost power in Michigan on Wednesday, two days later more than 615,000 still in the dark

Of those still without power, 515,000 are served by DTE Energy, 100,000 by Consumers Energy.

The story is here.

If the surveillance of Trump was about "financial transactions" (NYT) and "money from the Kremlin" (McClatchy) maybe the Treasury Dept. spearheaded it

I still haven't read anyone saying this.

Instead of obsessing on the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and the DNI, and on the process, maybe journalists ought to be focusing their efforts on the last named agency instead, and the substance.

If it's about the money, the Treasury Dept. might very well have led the investigation for the government of Barack Obama, and the spying.

McClatchy, January 19th, 2017:

The FBI and five other law enforcement and intelligence agencies have collaborated for months in an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump, two people familiar with the matter said.

The agencies involved in the inquiry are the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and representatives of the director of national intelligence, the sources said.

The New York Times, January 19th, 2017:

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said. ...

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit.

Justin Raimondo is so close and yet so far:

So the FISA issue is, I believe, a false trail . . ..

Jack Lew has been awfully quiet.

Looks like Obama was a natural born citizen of Kenya after all, according to his half brother

Here and here.

Does this mean that the last eight years are invalidated?

Or did Obama just use this to get cheap tuition as a "foreign" student?

Remember, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your healthcare plan, the ocean levels have begun to recede, our planet is beginning to heal and we are the ones we have been waiting for!

And, to quote Howard Dean, "Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Hm . . . CIA hacks the Democrats, leaving Russian fingerprints?

Rush Limbaugh is wrong, as usual, about Obamacare passing the Senate without 60 votes

Obamacare passed the Senate 60-39 on December 24, 2009 with 58 Democrat and 2 Independent votes (one Republican did not vote, Jim Bunning).

The House passed this bill unchanged March 21, 2010, thus avoiding having to go through the House-Senate conference process and another vote again in each chamber. The bill's elements, if changed, were subject to filibuster back in the Senate because Scott Brown's election to the Senate in the interim on January 19, 2010 foreclosed the possibility of Democrats being able to overcome the 59-41 barrier.  60 votes are required to overcome the filibuster.

Reconciliation was used instead to change only budgetary elements in the bill, which were wanted by the Democrats in the House. For reconciliation purposes, simple majorities only are necessary.

Without a filibuster proof Senate majority, Republicans will be unable to repeal Obamacare.

Their only option is to gut the budgetary elements using their majorities in the House and Senate.

Obamacare will not go away in form until the stars align and Republicans capture 60 seats in the Senate.

It can only go away in practice in the interim by defunding it.

Republicans should re-pass the 2015 repeal legislation, which Obama vetoed, and send it to Trump for his signature as a downpayment.

Update:

Here is the Big Boob on the Right, getting it wrong today:

CALLER: Did the Democrats have 60 when they passed all this? I mean, what the hell?
RUSH: No, the Democrats did not. That’s why they used what’s known as budget reconciliation for many aspects of Obamacare, which was trickery. They didn’t have 60 votes. The Republicans, however, did not have the votes to stop anything at the time.  

Now we're talkin': Jim Jordan of Ohio says send Trump the same and only Obamacare repeal bill Obama vetoed in 2016

Here.

Detroit News: Almost 700,000 without power in Michigan according to just two power companies

The story is here.

Here's the Consumers Energy outage map, accounting for only about 194,000 customers who lost power today in the wind storm which gusted as high as 64mph here in Grand Rapids (our power never went out, oddly enough, even though our phone and internet did):

Damn you Congress, repeal Obamacare outright and dare the president to veto it

William Binney says NSA fingerprints are all over release of Trump phone transcripts with Australia and Mexico

Here:

But Binney did say events such as publication of details of private calls between President Trump and the Australian prime minister, as well as with the Mexican president, are evidence the intelligence community is playing hardball with the White House.

"I think that's what happened here," Binney told Fox. "The evidence of the conversation of the president of the U.S., President Trump, and the [prime minister] of Australia and the president of Mexico. Releasing those conversations. Those are conversations that are picked up by the FAIRVIEW program, primarily, by NSA."

Best news so far from CIA Wikileaks: CIA has cracked encryption like Signal used by Deep State

Every cloud has its silver lining.

From The New York Times, here:

Among other disclosures that, if confirmed, would rock the technology world, the WikiLeaks release said that the C.I.A. and allied intelligence services had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect “audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”

Assuming Clapper's denial that there was a FISA investigation is true, maybe everyone ought to consider they've been had

James Clapper, who lied to Congress about surveillance in the past and was never prosecuted but should be, has stated over the weekend that there was no FISA investigation at all, contrary to the New York Times and everybody else, as reported here:

For the part of the national security apparatus that he oversaw, "there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign," Clapper told Chuck Todd in an exclusive interview on Sunday's "Meet The Press."

So . . ..

Either Clapper is lying again, or there's an alternative explanation.

The New York Times etc. have been reporting a narrative based on anonymous sources, a narrative which derives from the Obama Administration and which it wanted everyone to believe.

I say it's an "Oh look! A deer!" narrative. It was designed to get the bloodhounds off the trail and follow to an inconclusive nowhere.

The real story instead might be that Obama was using the Treasury Dept. to investigate Manafort, giving the FBI, CIA and the NSA the plausible deniability they have asserted. So far Comey and Clapper have denied any spying on Trump.

Well, the Treasury Dept. was involved according to news reports, but so far no one's asked Jack Lew to comment as far as I know.

It was Manafort's financial connections in Ukraine which the Times reported in the summer which caused Manafort to have to bail from the Trump campaign, and Bannon and Conway to be tapped by Trump in August 2016.

The spying on Trump by the Treasury Dept. might have then continued, quite lawfully, endeavoring to uncover evidence of Trump financial wrongdoing in connection with Russia, or some one else, in order to finish him off, but it failed.

Jack Lew served Obama at Treasury to the bitter end.

[T]he Inspector General of the Department of the Treasury shall be under the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to audits or investigations, or the issuance of subpenas, which require access to sensitive information concerning— ...
(E) intelligence or counterintelligence matters; or
(F) other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security or to the protection of any person or property authorized protection by section 3056 of title 18, United States Code, section 3056A of title 18, United States Code, or any provision of the Presidential Protection Assistance Act of 1976 (18 U.S.C. 3056 note ; Public Law 94–524).

Robert Barnes: Obama and his team face jeopardy if they got a FISA warrant by withholding information

From his carefully presented state of the case here at Lawnewz:

and so, third, Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump. Are these allegations true? We don’t know yet, but if any part of them are then Obama and/or his officials could face serious trouble.

Can a President be charged with a crime? Only once out of office. While in office, impeachment remains the exclusive remedy in order to avoid a single judicial branch trying to overturn an election, such as a grand jury in any part of the country could. Once out of office, a President remains immune from civil liability for his duties while President, under a 1982 decision of the United States Supreme Court. However, as the Nixon pardon attests, nothing forecloses a criminal prosecution of the President after his presidency is complete for crimes against the country. Obama, the Constitutional lawyer, should know that.

The Gateway Pundit has a full list of Obama's proven wiretap victims

Here, with links.

And here at Wikileaks is the NSA subset.

And somehow transcripts of Trump's calls with Australia and Mexico were made and leaked

Wiretaps.

WaPo, here on February 5th, in the "Style" section:

The breadth of the leaks has surprised — and, of course, delighted — journalists, who say it gives the public an unfiltered view of what those in power are thinking and doing. The leaks of Trump’s calls to Turnbull and Peña Nieto may have been the most surprising of all; it’s rare for transcripts of presidential phone calls or details of meetings with foreign leaders, especially potentially embarrassing exchanges, to leak so soon afterward.

And the White House examined a transcript of a wiretapped conversation of Michael Flynn

Someone in the US government was wiretapping all over the place, and the White House read all about it.

It doesn't matter that Comey at FBI denies he's doing it, or that the FISA court refused to allow wiretaps. Someone wiretapped Flynn during the transition, and Manafort during the campaign, which means at Trump Tower.

President Trump is not wrong.

The New York Times, February 13, 2017, here:

The White House had examined a transcript of a wiretapped conversation that Mr. Flynn had with Mr. Kislyak in December, according to administration officials. Mr. Flynn originally told Mr. Pence and others that the call was limited to small talk and holiday pleasantries.

But the conversation, according to officials who saw the transcript of the wiretap, also included a discussion about sanctions imposed on Russia after intelligence agencies determined that President Vladimir V. Putin’s government tried to interfere with the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Still, current and former administration officials familiar with the call said the transcript was ambiguous enough that Mr. Trump could have justified either firing or retaining Mr. Flynn. ...

Officials said classified information did not appear to have been discussed during the conversation between Mr. Flynn and the ambassador, which would have been a crime. The call was captured on a routine wiretap of diplomats’ calls, the officials said.

And when did the wiretapping of Trump Tower begin?

The same NY Times article told us when, here:

The F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring, and was an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. In August, The Times reported that Mr. Manafort’s name had surfaced in a secret ledger that showed he had been paid millions in undisclosed cash payments. The Associated Press has reported that his work for Ukraine included a secret lobbying effort in Washington aimed at influencing American news organizations and government officials.

New York Times in print version reported American wiretaps provided to Obama White House, now we're supposed to believe there weren't any?

Here, January 19, 2017, in "Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates":

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House. ... It is unclear which Russian officials are under investigation, or what particular conversations caught the attention of American eavesdroppers.

This editorial note appears in fine print at the bottom of the online story indicating that these "intercepted Russian communications" were really American wiretaps:

A version of this article appears in print on January 20, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.

Total government spending is well past the point of adding value

Wayne Winegarden, here:

At one-third of the size of the economy, total government spending is well past the point where additional expenditures add value.

Actually, it's higher than one third, as I previously pointed out here. In 2016 total government spending hit 36.1% of GDP. 

Noted in passing: Publius Decius Mus is Michael Anton, appointed by Trump to the NSC

Reported here. Anton, no surprise, cops to being a devoted Straussian.

The best part about the interview is that he thought Bill Kristol was his friend, until Kristol insinuated that Anton was a Nazi.

Kristolnicht. The guy can't be all bad, then.

Michael Mukasey says Loretta Lynch ordered the surveillance of Trump

From the story here:

“I think he’s right in that there was surveillance and that it was conducted at the behest of the attorney general – at the Justice Department,” Mukasey told ABC’s “This Week.” 

Laura Ingraham on Friday interviewed Mukasey saying the same thing.

Trump's right: It was Obama who tried to sell-out the country to Russia and keep it a secret

Here.

Former Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch calls for more marching, more blood, more death in the streets

The "E" used to stand for "eats too much". In the current video she appears to have lost weight since leaving office.

The video ends showing that it's under the auspices of the Democrats in the US Senate, here. Democrats. The Party of Violence.

Watch gun sales soar again.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for February 2017

Average temperature was 34.7 degrees F in February 2017 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 10.3 degrees above normal, the warmest February on record, beating out 1998's 34.1.

Monthly lowest minimum was 4.0 F. The mean is -2.0.

The high was 66.0 F. The mean is 50.

Precipitation was 2.05 inches. The mean is 1.76.

February snowfall was 2.4 inches. The mean is 13.

Heating degree days came to 842. The mean is 1137.

Mark Levin: Obama's police state used intelligence services to spy on Trump campaign and leak the info

Here:

"We absolutely know this is true, the FBI did a preliminary criminal investigation based on a potential connection between a server in Trump Tower and a couple of Russian banks. That turned out to be a dry hole, but one of the most outrageous things I've ever seen... totally uncovered by the media. Instead of closing the investigation, the Obama administration tried to turn it into a FISA court investigation in June [2016]. Apparently the first application they submitted named Trump."

"Even the FISA court said no. There wasn't enough evidence to make out probable cause involving Donald Trump," he said. "In the middle of the campaign the administration was actively having Trump investigated."

Pelosi caught in lie just like McCaskill about meeting Russians

Black lefty, who once worked for Glenn Greenwald but was fired, arrested for threatening Jews nationwide

What, I thought Trump supporters were behind these bomb threats?!

Story here, where you'll discover he used the very same m/o which got him fired from The Intercept.

Flashback August 2015: 30 Senate Democrats meet with Russian and Chinese diplomats behind closed doors to discuss Iran nuclear deal

Two-faced lyin' hypocritical wankers.

Here:

"Other lawmakers attending the briefing included Sens. Al Franken . . .."

Obama actually has more flexibility now that he's out of office than after he was reelected

Now he can openly conspire against America as a private citizen without fear, with a little help from Valerie Jarrett, who is oddly moving in to the DC residence, and from a federal pension and a fat book contract for tens of millions of dollars.

Obama hated Great Britain, but he's going to take its tradition of shadow government and give it an, er, unAmerican twist, guarded by the Secret Service.

America still has cancer.

Story here. 

Ben Carson confirmed by Senate to HUD 58-41 and Rick Perry to Energy 62-37

"Carson and Perry are the 17th and 18th of Trump's 22 Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominations to win Senate approval."

Bravo Sen. Ted Cruz: Sen. Sessions meeting ambassador a nothing burger

Here:

Jeff was being asked about the Trump campaign communicating with the Russians. I think he understood that he was answering in that capacity. And that is perfectly understandable. 

Reuters/CNBC oil headline says Russian production cuts stall, when the truth is Russia is cheating

So who's working in sympathy with the Russians now, huh?

"US oil settles at $52.61 a barrel, down $1.22 after Russian output cuts stall" says the headline.

"Russia's February oil output was unchanged from January at 11.11 million barrels per day (bpd), energy ministry data showed, with cuts remaining at 100,000 bpd or just a third of the levels pledged by Moscow under the agreement with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries" says the story, here.

Headline should have read: "Russian oil output cuts fall 66% short of those promised two months in a row".

Bravo Sen. Joe Manchin: "We meet all the ambassadors"

Here.

Missouri should get a new senator to replace Claire McCaskill, who can't remember her own shit

Foreign influence flashback March 2016: Top donor to Hillary, Saudi Arabia, also bankrolled Trump critic Senator John McCain

This is real news. Jeff Sessions is fake news, which is why Jeff Sessions is being crucified, and John McCain rolls in the dough. The elites protect their own.

Reported here:

A nonprofit with ties to Senator John McCain received a $1 million donation from the government of Saudi Arabia in 2014, according to documents filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. ...

Founded in 1998 to raise money for then-President Bill Clinton’s presidential library, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from foreign governments over the years, including while Hillary Clinton, now running for president, served as secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s first term. The foundation says that Clinton was not involved in its work when she worked for the Obama administration.

The Saudi donation to the McCain Institute Foundation may be the first congressional instance of that trend coming to light.

“The extent of this practice is difficult to gauge, of course,” Holman said, “because we only know about it when a nonprofit or foreign government voluntarily reveals that information.”

There's lots to like in Trump's speech, but . . .

We can't afford $1 trillion in infrastructure spending and it won't accomplish what people say it will. We are $34 TRILLION behind in spending of all kinds, but that's obviously out of the question. Debt service payments at rock bottom interest rates already exceed 10% of the $4 trillion budget. This is the price we are paying now . . . FOR PREVIOUS "PROSPERITY", which was only borrowed.

Paid family leave, a new entitlement, will cost government and employers a fortune, subduing hiring.

Adding refundable tax credits for health insurance premiums paid by taxpayers to a tax system which already includes the Earned Income Tax Credit is a back door introduction of another new entitlement. It could end up costing the country tens of billions in lost tax revenue each year.

These proposals could be political feints on which he will ultimately never deliver, simple red meat for moderates and liberals thrown out there to garner bipartisan support for his overall program.

Only time will tell.  

Ryan Zinke confirmed by Senate to Interior Dept. 68-31

WaPo admits part of the delay had to do with politics, here.

President Trump sends Vice President Mike Pence to sell his speech to conservative talk radio

So far today I've heard Pence live on segments with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity.