Is Russiagate Really Hillarygate? Forbes (Like trickle down economics that actually works, the truth about Russiagate will eventually show up, and many will be shocked.)
According to an insider account, the Clinton team, put together the Russia Gate narrative within 24 hours of her defeat. The Clinton account explained that Russian hacking and election meddling caused her unexpected loss. Her opponent, Donald Trump, was a puppet of Putin. Trump, they said, “encourages espionage against our people.” The scurrilous Trump dossier, prepared by a London opposition research firm, Orbis, and paid for by unidentified Democrat donors, formed a key part of the Clinton narrative: Read more…
Needles everywhere: Drug crisis creates pollution threat. Yahoo News. (Let’s deal with the real gateway drugs that get prescribed by doctors)
They hide in weeds along hiking trails and in playground grass. They wash into rivers and float downstream to land on beaches. They pepper baseball dugouts, sidewalks and streets. Syringes left by drug users amid the heroin crisis are turning up everywhere. Read more.
Minneapolis mayor seeks answers in fatal police shooting of bride-to-be. Yahoo News (We need major police reform)
The reason why police did not have their body cameras turned on when they shot and killed an Australian woman over the weekend is a “key question” for investigators, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges told “Good Morning America” today. Read more…
The Senate GOP’s new Obamacare repeal plan is effectively dead. Yahoo News (We wait and see whether they go back and try to resuscitate it, or go for single payer.)
A plan to cleanly repeal the Affordable Care Act appears to have failed in the Senate after three GOP lawmakers said they would not vote to proceed with the latest attempt to reform the health care system.
Shortly after Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said Monday night they would not even vote to allow the original repeal-and-replace proposal to come to the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he would scrap that plan and move forward with repealing former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation. Read more…
Man who pushed stranger in path of train acquitted of murder. Associated Press. (The story goes that this man was hit about a minute after he was pushed onto the tracks. Makes me ask why a train coming into a station to stop couldn’t stop before hitting the man? It was already slowing down to stop.)
A man accused of killing a stranger by shoving him onto subway tracks, where his imminent death by an oncoming train was captured in a photograph splashed across a newspaper front page, was acquitted Monday of murder and other charges. Read more…
Because of Trump, U.S. No Longer World’s Most Powerful Country, Report Says. Newsweek. (Maybe Trump just helped us see that fact more clearly? Or maybe the media is still spinning their hate of Trump)
Donald Trump’s “America first” policies have helped strip the U.S. of its status as the country with the most soft power, according to a new report.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump’s top rival in the handshake stakes, has helped usher a climb in his country’s status from fifth to first place in the annual “Soft Power 30” ranking, compiled by the PR and public affairs firm Portland Communications. Read more…
Prosecutor Can’t Create Drug Squad To Seize Cash From Innocent Drivers, Illinois Supreme Court Rules. Forbes (I don’t know what we have these days, whether a government or the mafia. Our law enforcement has hit squads and squads for citizen shake downs)
In a striking example of policing for profit, an Illinois prosecutor created his own police force and financed its operations with highway shakedowns. Using the state’s civil forfeiture laws, which allow law enforcement to seize—and keep—property even if the owner has never been criminally charged, the LaSalle County State’s Attorney Felony Enforcement (SAFE) Unit confiscated more than $1.7 million from drivers. Read more…
The Controversy That Finally Killed the Senate Health Care Bill. Slate. (Don’t jubilate yet, the House bill “died” too before being resurrected and passed.)
The Senate health care bill appears to be dead—done in by the Republican Party’s inability to agree on a basic philosophical question: Should healthy Americans have to subsidize the sick?
This is the quandary that has dogged GOP lawmakers throughout their entire attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Many of that law’s most popular planks—such as the rules banning discrimination against customers with pre-existing conditions—essentially force the young and well to pay a bit more for their health coverage so that the old and ill can pay less. Read more…
A new poll shows that Hillary Clinton’s approval rating is even worse than Trump’s Business Insider. (I heard she’s gone into the endorsement business. Maybe this is a warning to those still allowing her run their party, and those she’s endorsing.)
After six months in the White House, President Donald Trump is on course to be the least popular president at this point in his administration since the advent of modern polling.
But negative perception of the president hasn’t improved his former opponent’s standing in the eyes of the public.
A Bloomberg Politics poll released Tuesday showed Hillary Clinton with a 39% approval rating, 2 points lower than Trump’s approval rating in the same poll. It was Clinton’s second-lowest approval rating since Bloomberg started tracking her in 2009. The poll was conducted July 8-12 among 1,001 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Read more…
