An Island in the Ocean

Obamacare Lives:  Senator Lisa Murkowski finally came out of hiding yesterday but was spared from having to disclose how she would vote on the Republican’s last and worst health plan when Majority Leader McConnell pulled Graham-Cassidy once it became apparent that he hadn’t convinced the requisite fifty Senators to vote for a plan that eviscerated health insurance and drastically cut the Medicaid safety net.  Trump is not a happy camper and is still playing “chicken” with the cost-sharing care subsidies that help reduce the cost of some of the Obamacare premiums. He blames McConnell for weak leadership, McCain for having been a prisoner of war and everyone and anyone for failing to repeal Obamacare.  The not ready for prime time Republican players will now move to tax reform, trying to move ahead with substantial tax cuts without the trillion dollars that they had hoped to steal from health care by repealing those pesky Obamacare taxes.  Republican leadership plans to start the new federal fiscal year, which begins on October 1, by quickly passing a budget resolution so that they can shift gears to tax reform, which they intend to pass using the nifty fifty vote reconciliation process.  Senate rules dictate that only one reconciliation bill can be “open” at any given time so Obamacare should be safe for a while unless an effort is made to combine health care and tax reform into one huge reconciliation bill; so far leadership doesn’t seem interested in creating such an unwieldly monster.  Passing tax reform is another one of those “complicated” things. It’s likely that McConnell will have to reach across the aisle for help from some of the vulnerable red state Democrats because his budget hawks are unlikely to vote for any plan that increases the deficit and all the versions of tax reform under consideration will increase the deficit.  McConnell’s awful day went from bad to worse when his close friend Tennessee Senator Bob Corker announced that he’s retiring at the end of his term and his favored candidate Luther Strange got trounced by former Judge Roy Moore in the runoff for the Alabama Republican Senate nomination.  To the extent that he wins the November general election, Moore, a birther who believes that the 9-11 attacks were punishment for the country straying away from God and who brandished a pistol during his last campaign speech, will be a thorn in McConnell’s side.  He’s a Steve Bannon-like government disrupter who will not tow the party line.  Corker, the respected Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who had said that Trump hadn’t yet demonstrated the stability or competence to be president, was expecting a primary challenge from another Bannon supported candidate. Though he likely would have won what would have been a bruising primary fight, he isn’t interested in returning to the dysfunctional Senate.  Without an incumbent running, the Tennessee seat may now be vulnerable for pick off by a Democratic challenger.                      

Puerto Rico is an Island:   Over the weekend Hillary Clinton tweeted  “Trump, Sec Mattis and DOD should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now.  These are American Citizens.”  Initially, Trump dithered, ignoring Hillary’s pleas because he wasn’t all that concerned about Puerto Rico and he was too busy tweet attacking various and sundry football players, team owners and North Korea’s little rocket man.  By Tuesday, with criticism mounting he decided to heed Hillary’s tweet.  He announced that resources including the USNS Comfort hospital ship will be sent to Puerto Rico while explaining that it’s very tough to deal with the crisis in Puerto Rico because “it’s an island.  In Texas, we can ship the trucks right out there.  And you know, we’ve gotten A-pluses on Texas and on Florida, and we will also on Puerto Rico. But the difference, is this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean.  And it’s a big ocean; it’s a very big ocean.  And we’re doing a really good job.”  It will take more than a week for the USNS Comfort to make the trip to Puerto Rico. In the meantime, though smaller vessels and planes including one owned by Trump’s arch rival, Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, have started bringing needed supplies and personnel, the situation in Puerto Rico is still deteriorating.  Trump reported that the island’s Governor Ricardo Rosello said he was doing a great job. Carmen Yulin Cruz, the Mayor of San Juan believes that the Governor isn’t satisfied with Trump’s performance but, facing a crippling humanitarian crisis, he is too desperate to be critical.  She said that while the island is getting help from FEMA, they aren’t getting enough and its arrival has been slow and uncoordinated.  As to Trump’s earlier comments about Puerto Rico’s “crippling debt” she said “these are two different topics. You don’t put debt above people, you put people above debt.” Trump plans to visit next week, it’s unlikely that he will get another A plus for his report card but NY’s Governor Cuomo, Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and NYC’s Bill De Blasio who’ve all delivered aid to the island are getting gold stars.  Yulin Cruz isn’t the only one who’s having a hard time with Trumpspeak.  Pyongyang has reached out to Republican party experts, including analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation for help decoding Trump’s tweets because “they can’t figure Trump out.”  While they wait for their decoder ring to arrive, the North Koreans have stayed busy, moving their planes into more defensive positions.    

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Roger Stone testified at a closed door session of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday.  He reported that the meeting went well and that he was treated respectfully by everyone except for that disagreeable Congressman Adam Schiff.  Stone said that as far as he’s concerned Special Counsel Mueller should be fired because his good friend Paul Manafort is being subjected to undue pressure to lie and say that Trump colluded with the Russians, even though he asserts that no one in the Trump camp did, ever.  He then went on to allege that everyone knows that the DNC computer hacking was an inside job by someone who downloaded the files to a thumb drive before handing them over to WikiLeaks.  By someone, he means Seth Rich, the young man who’s unsolved murder has become fodder for right wing conspiracy theorists.  Despite his earlier claims that he spoke directly with the Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 and that he’s good friends with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, Stone backtracked from both claims and, according to the disagreeable Schiff, refused to answer some critical questions.  Schiff also reported that Stone was an uncooperative witness and suggested that he will be subpoenaed to testify under oath.  Separately, Senator Blumenthal of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that he is 99% sure that there will be some criminal charges from the investigation.  He added that “Manafort and Flynn are the most prominent but there may be others.”  Though they did not participate in the summer raid of Manafort’s home, the IRS Criminal Investigation unit is now working closely with Special Counsel Mueller and likely has provided him with Manafort and Flynn’s tax records, and possibly Trump’s. The involvement of the IRS could explain why Trump launched into another one of his bitter tirades against Attorney General Sessions, this time at Monday night’s White House dinner with conservatives, where one guest reported that Trump was “dripping with venom” as he complained about Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation.  He told the various Republicans in attendance that Sessions was “ineffective in his job” and asked them to tell him to “get moving.”  So far Sessions is not going anywhere, yesterday he told a carefully screened group of “receptive” students and faculty at Georgetown University Law School that he “will enforce federal law, defend free speech and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come,” by that he means that right wing speakers need more respect, left wingers and football players, not so much.