The 'skinny repeal' bill just got voted down by the senate with John McCain making the crucial 'no' vote.
The back and forth of this zombie piece of gooseberry fool legislation must be absolutely nightmarish for those who would be affected by it. Please let this be the end of it FFS.
Monkey Man wrote:The Mooch continues to play Happy Family's -
On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy.
“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.” The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited. “Reince is a strawberry floating paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: “ ‘Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the strawberry floating thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’ ” (Priebus did not respond to a request for comment.)
Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the strawberry floating strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)
He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the strawberry floating Department of Justice.” “What?” I interjected.
Cuttooth wrote:The 'skinny repeal' bill just got voted down by the senate with John McCain making the crucial 'no' vote.
The back and forth of this zombie piece of gooseberry fool legislation must be absolutely nightmarish for those who would be affected by it. Please let this be the end of it FFS.
Trumps strategy here is stupid and childish. The Republicans have been doing all they can for the last 8 years to make sure Healthcare in the US is a shambles and now it's a shambles Trump wants to let it collapse completely and somehow not get blamed for letting it collapse. He somehow thinks he can take credit for the economy which he's done strawberry float all to help because it's now his time but he doesn't want to take ownership of problems because that's not his fault. That people can back him up with such obvious hypocrisy would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.
I almost want to see a country with the healthcare system the Republicans really want just to show them how terrible it would be for anyone who isn't rich but I get the feeling some people are so brainwashed that even as they die from lack of healthcare they'll still say their system is best.
DOJ steps into court case to say LGBTs don't have civil right protection
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department told an appeals court this week that federal civil rights law does not ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
It's another big setback for the LGBT community, a group that candidate Donald Trump pledged to support when he held up a rainbow flag at 2016 rally in Colorado.
The government's court filing comes in a discrimination lawsuit against a New York skydiving company. One of its instructors, Donald Zarda, said he was fired for being gay.
He claimed the firing violated the Civil Rights Act, which, among other things, bans discrimination "because of sex." The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed. "Discrimination because of sexual orientation cannot rationally be distinguished from discrimination because of sex," the EEOC said.
But the Justice Department unexpectedly stepped into that case Wednesday, even though the government was not involved in the dispute, to say the law applies only to discrimination that treats men and women differently.
While there have been "notable changes in societal and cultural attitudes about discrimination," the government said, Congress has consistently declined to amend the law in light of those changes.
The Justice Department's position was consistent with the way most federal appeals courts have ruled on the issue, but it marked a turnaround from the approach taken during the Obama administration.
The Justice Department brief, filed in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, came the same day the president said transgender people cannot serve in the U.S. military.
"I think the community feels very much under attack and under siege by this administration. In a very real sense, it was the administration's anti-LGBT day," said James Esseks of the ACLU.
But some conservative groups welcomed the Justice Department’s action. “Only Congress can amend the federal law, and that diverse body of legislators has rejected several requests to do so. I applaud the DOJ for upholding the rule of law," said Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel.
I find it sad that we have people in power in the US who will stand up and with a straight face argue that a section of people should be allowed to be discriminated against for something they have no control over and have the temerity to berate people who point out the obvious stupidity of that viewpoint. If the exact same legislation was just amended slightly to say instead of transgender it said republicans they would be so angry it would be comical but they just can't see the hypocrisy.
Seriously, I can't see how they can argue that transgender people should be allowed to be discriminated against and at the same time uphold the idea of a politician helping all his constituents.
President Trump told police officers not to be "too nice" to suspects they are arresting while giving a major law enforcement and immigration policy speech in Long Island, N.Y., on Friday.
"When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddywagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said please don't be too nice," Trump told the audience at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, where the county's police force is centered.
"Like when you put somebody into a car and you protect their head? ... I said you can take the hand away, OK?" Trump added.
Trump was referencing the way officers routinely place suspects into the back of police cars, appearing to suggest officers take less care to make sure suspects don't hit their head while entering the vehicle.
The suggestion was met by cheers in the crowd.
Trump was giving a speech detailing the administration's plan to defeat the MS-13 gang. New York is a sanctuary city, and Trump's speech was expected to take a hard line on the link between immigration enforcement and the rise of gang-related crime.