Steve Scalise has withdrawn from the House Speaker race. Gym Jordan is back in the race despite the fact that he lost the last time the GOP caucus chose a candidate.
CNN spoke with GOP former Rep. Fred Upton. He basically said that he was relieved to be back in Michigan with his wife and grandkids these days.
House Republicans are meeting again on Friday afternoon. But a number of them have already stated that they would not support Gym Jordan for Speaker.
Journalist David Gregory told CNN that he expects Democrats to eventually jump in and try to work out a solution; the total GOP House shitstorm reflects badly on Congress as a whole and there's work to be done with multiple crises around the world and at home.
Republicans are simply unable to govern. At the heart of all this is Donald Trump having hijacked the party for his own purposes.
Don't let people spew bothsiderism to you about Democrats and Republicans in the House. Whether people agree with her or not, the House was infinitely better managed by Nancy Pelosi for eight years than it was by Kevin McCarthy for eight months.
Calling Something Racist is Worse Than Being Racist, House Edition
Today, the House of Representatives voted 240-187 to condemn "President Trump’s racist comments directed at Members of Congress." A grand total of four Republicans -- Reps. Susan Brooks (IN), Brian Fitzpatrick (MI), Will Hurd (TX), Fred Upton (MI), along with newly-independent Rep. Justin Amash (MI) -- joined every Democrat in voting for the resolution. In case you're curious, Brooks already announced she's retiring, Upton is a major Democratic target in 2020 (and on the retirement watchlist), Hurd -- the sole Black Republican in the House -- is a major 2020 target, and Fitzpatrick is -- you guessed it -- a major Democratic target in 2020.
In any event, in the course the debate over the resolution, chaos erupted when Speaker Pelosi referred to Trump's racist comments as "racist". Republicans sought to strike that from the record, citing parliamentary rules which forbid calling the President "racist" (see page 190). The rulings against calling the President racist, or saying he's made racist or bigoted comments, or of having run a prejudiced campaign, started popping up in 2016 and 2017 (no such rule can be found in the manual for the 114th Congress). How mysterious. Can't imagine what Paul Ryan and company were thinking when they slotted those in.
We now return to our regularly scheduled political commentary about how liberal snowflakes need to be protected from hurtful speech that damages their feelings and will resort to outright censorship in order to accomplish it.
via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2SiDZNC
Can I just tell you guys how great it is personally knowing every candidate running in your district and state? You know what’s even better? Having Fred Upton personally know and hate you with every bone in his body. I couldn’t ask for a better group of students to hold protests with or a better group of people and politicians that I get to intern with everyday. I’m honestly living my dream at sixteen and I couldn’t ask for anything more!!
Forty lawmakers who voted for AHCA had more than $23 million in investments and made more than $2 million in profit. And some of the most heavily invested cast key votes.
The investments may be valued at as high as $39 million and took in as much as $6 million in profits, according to the disclosure reports that require members of Congress to report investments and income within a certain price range.
Several Republicans with key roles in passing the bill held more than $500,000 in medical company shares.
The majority of the companies in which lawmakers own stock represent the giants of the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries. Republicans owned between $1.3 million and $4.9 million in shares of Abbott Labs, Johnson & Johnson, and 3M, three of the country’s largest medical-device manufacturers. They also owned between $2.7 million and $5.5 million in pharmaceutical giants Merck, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and Shire.
The AHCA would benefit these companies by eliminating billions of dollars in taxes and fees on pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers—a provision of the bill that doesn’t reflect a violation of ethics rules because it will have a broad effect across health-care industries, ethics experts said.
[...]
Among the influential members with significant investments is Rep. Thomas MacArthur of New Jersey, who held between $834,000 and $2.3 million in health-care company investments in 2015. MacArthur made between $142,000 and $472,000 in capital gains and dividends on those investments, according to his disclosure forms.
MacArthur authored an amendment to the AHCA that allows insurance companies to deny coverage to some people with pre-existing conditions. The amendment won over critical support from the right-wing Freedom Caucus, allowing the bill to narrowly pass the House. MacArthur ranks seventh among the 40 AHCA supporters who owned the most health-care stock.
Rep. Chris Collins of New York holds the most investments, with $6.5 million in stock in two medical-device companies, ZeptoMetrix and Audubon Machinery Corp. Collins serves as a director at ZeptoMetrix and is one of the founders of Audubon Machinery. (The Office of Government Ethics is investigating Collins’ investments in an Australian pharmaceutical company.) The New York congressman was responsible for an amendment in the AHCA that requires states to pay more into Medicaid at the expense of counties, saving rural areas like his native Buffalo millions of dollars.
Collins’ amendment flipped at least one “no” vote to a “yes,” when Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York announced her support in March.
Another influential Republican with significant investments is Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, who holds between $400,000 and $700,000 in health-care shares. Upton wrote an amendment providing up to $8 billion for states to fund “high-risk pools” for patients with pre-existing conditions. Upton’s amendment eased fears that MacArthur’s amendment would make it impossible for such patients to buy insurance. The $8 billion Upton proposed won’t be nearly enough to pay for all the necessary care, industry analysts say, but it was enough to push the AHCA over the finish line.
Besides MacArthur, Collins, and Upton, the other lawmakers with at least $500,000 in health-care company shares are: Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas (at least $6 million); Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey (at least $2.2 million); Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin (at least $2.1 million); Rep. Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania (at least $1.2 million); Rep. Kenny Marchant of Texas (at least $922,000); Rep. James Renacci of Pennsylvania (at least $663,000); and Rep. Rod Blum of Iowa (at least $531,000).
In a Zoom call last month, Ryan Clancy, chief strategist for the supposedly centrist political group No Labels, admitted that their potentia
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos:
In a Zoom call last month, Ryan Clancy, chief strategist for the supposedly centrist political group No Labels, admitted that their potential “bipartisan” “unity” presidential ticket doesn’t need to have a Democrat on it.
“And what if it’s a Republican and an independent? I think that’s certainly possible,” he told participants in the Dec. 20 “Common Sense Talks With Ryan Clancy” event, according to a recording obtained by HuffPost. Common sense, you see, means excluding Democrats unless they are “Democrats” like former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman (who turned independent to hang on to his seat after losing the Democratic primary in 2006) or West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, perennial spoiler of Democratic policies.
This isn’t entirely new for the group. After all, they indicated last June that if the Republican nominee ended up being Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, they’d probably back down and not field a spoiler candidate. They’re okay with fascism, you see, unless it’s coming from Donald Trump. That’s just common sense, No Labels-style.
One of their prominent spokespeople, former GOP Rep. Fred Upton admitted in an interview with CBS News last July that if it ends up being President Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump on November’s ballot, No Labels is aiming “to actually have a Republican presidential candidate and a Democrat [sic] vice presidential” candidate.
No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, has revealed to the world that they are a de facto Republican organization by admitting that their so-called "unity" ticket need not have a Democrat on it.
