Trumpcare

A minister belonging to a group protesting the Trump administration’s budget proposals and health care bill, is arrested during in the Russell Senate Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 18, 2017. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to reports on Tuesday evening from journalists on Capitol Hill, who alleged that Capitol Police were blocking reporters’ access as they tried to cover healthcare protests.

By now you know McConnell's Motion to Proceed into the murky depths of healthcare legislation-- virtually none of the senators voting yesterday knew exactly what bill would be proceeded to-- passed when Mike Pence broke a 50-50 tie.

-by NoahOne of the most famous episodes of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone deals with a malevolent race of aliens who land here on Earth and seemingly promise a utopian future. They bring promises of advance technologies and cures for disease. All we earthlings have to do in exchange is send some of us humans to their planet while some aliens set up home here. All sounds hunky-dory. Peace! Brotherhood! A brilliant future for all!The lead or head alien ambassador is an alien right out of central casting.

House Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) is having a fit again. If I was in the FBI and if someone blows up the Senate with a bomb, I'd look at Meadows' alibi very, very closely.

-by Tom SullivanThe U.S. Senate vote to repeal Obamacare is coming any day. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have lost (or given a bye to) two votes: Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Susan Collins (Maine). If one more Republican senator goes rogue, a half dozen more will follow and the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) will be a zombie again.

When I worked for Time-Warner, I was a divisional president. Presidents and chairmen got the best health insurance corporate American has to offer. When i retired I was very nervous because I had a pre-existing condition and was basically uninsurable. But what I soon found out-- much to my relief-- is that my Time-Warner platinum-plated health insurance would continue until I turned old enough for Medicare.

Earlier this morning, we looked at Bernie's rally in Morgantown and at West Virginia GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito's statement that she's willing to cast the decisive third vote to kill TrumpCare in the Senate if it comes to that.

Over the weekend we looked at how well Bernie had done with Monongalia County primary voters. It's the third most populated county in West Virginia-- Morgantown is the county seat-- and on primary day last year these were the results:

Axios had a very popular little post yesterday about how unpopular TrumpCare is among voters: the most unpopular bill in three decades . Not only is TrumpCare more unpopular now than Obamacare was when the Tea Party was rampaging through the streets (and airwaves) lying about death panels, it's more unpopular than Bush's TARP bailout bill-- and by a lot.

Friday Paul Krugman was reminiscing in The Times about the promise the Ryan-led Republicans would "move their party off its cruel and mindless agenda of tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor, bringing back the intellectual seriousness that supposedly used to characterize the conservative movement." He points out that not only did that never happen but