Another eventual day …

The six months and five days of this presidency have been as eventual and newsworthy as they can be. Trump and his leadership make it so. Let’s see yesterday:

The Healthcare Vote:

Let’s see, it was a 50-50 vote so the VP had to cast the decider. What did it accomplish? We can have a debate on a bill. Let me understand, the fifty who voted no want what then? Do they want Obamacare to continue?
Did fifty senators really believe the rising costs and declining insurers were the future of our healthcare? Are they serious?

We propose again an open debate on C-Span is the best thing we can have. Present a bill draft, now both sides can propose changes, amendments or adjustments. Propose, vote and let’s emerge with a new plan that is better than we have. Isn’t that the job?

Didn’t John McCain in his valiant return hit it right. We don’t always agree with McCain but yesterday we did. Here’s part of what he said.

“I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments be offered, I will not vote for this bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. We all know that.”
He then called for both parties to work together to bring forth legislation that would improve healthcare for all Americans.
“We keep trying to win without help from the other side of the aisle. We are getting nothing done, my friends, we’re getting nothing done. All we’ve managed to do was make more popular a policy that wasn’t very popular,” he said, referring to Obamacare.
“The administration (Obama) and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition a program that brought forth social and economic change as massive as Obamacare.
And we shouldn’t do the same with ours”.

Does anyone not see the logic in that? We said it weeks ago. Lock them in for August, call it PeopleCare and get a bill that works for all of us and our budgets.

On AG Sessions:

This is a short comment section. The President is a disgrace on this. Turning on his first major supporter and degrading him over and over is a bad (and sad) move. This will hurt him with his supporters and have lasting damage. The Trump ego is hurting him here.

One possible boomerang is it was quietly announced that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is taking a few days off. The inside story is the tensions and infighting in the WH have him considering his future in the role.
If he departed that would be a further sad day and blow to the WH.

Scaramucci In Action:

New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci promised on Monday that if you leak you are fired.
On Tuesday morning, White House press aide Michael Short abruptly resigned. It had leaked he was about to be fired so he quit. 

Why is this not big news?

An information technology aide (name: Imran Awan) for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. (Remember she is the former head of the DNC who had to quit for cheating to help Hillary),who is at the center of a congressional computer equipment scandal was arrested while trying to flee the country and charged with bank fraud.

There’s more to the story about the arrest. 
According to a report by the Daily Caller the FBI seized smashed hard drives from the employee’s home. At the center are three Pakistani brothers who have worked for Democratic lawmakers.

“The suspects in this probe are people who worked for a long time for Democratic members in the House… brothers named Imran Awan, Abid Awan and Jamal Awan and they are criminal suspects”.

The large sums of money Imran Awan’s family received when he got the job with Schultz raised suspicions as well. “Soon after this guy Imran started working for Debbie Wasserman Schultz all of his relatives appeared on the payroll and they collected $4 million, very unusual.”

Seems like a story that should be covered to us.

Two John Boehner Stories:

He said Republicans are “not going to repeal and replace Obamacare” because “the American people have gotten accustomed to it. Here we are, seven months into this year, and yet they’ve not passed this bill. Now, they’re never — they’re not going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Boehner told crowd in Las Vegas, according to the Washington Post.
“It’s been around too long. And the American people have gotten accustomed to it. Governors have gotten accustomed to this Medicaid expansion, and so trying to pull it back is really not going to work.”

He also talked of the great divide in this way. When he met with Obama he would sneak into the White House. “If I didn’t sneak in, if I went in like I would normally go in, the right-wing press would go crazy. ‘What is Boehner up to’?”
The “left-wing press would go just as crazy,” Boehner continued. “‘What is Obama doing? He’s going to let Boehner roll him again. You’re dead before you even have an agreement.”

The Ratings:

Here’s Saturday and Sunday (Fox wins Saturday easily and narrowly edges CNN Sunday), and the morning shows and evening news (ABC wins both) for the week of July 17th.

Total Viewers (Live +SD)  SATURDAY

• Total day: FNC: 1.148 | CNN: 612 |  MSNBC: 651 | HLN: 261
• Prime time: FNC: 1.396 | CNN: 553 | MSNBC: 667 | HLN: 302

	4p:	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	NwsHQ: 863	NewsHQ: 990	NewsHQ: 1.079	Report: 1.124	Watters: 1.560	Pirro: 1.580	Gutfeld: 1.048	Watters: 971
CNN	Nwsrm: 635	Nwsrm: 624	Smerc: 569	Nwsrm: 635	O.J.: 486	Declassified: 659	90s: 515	90s: 515
MSNBC	News: 674	News: 688	AMJoy: 649	Maddow: 674	O’Donnell: 712	Williams: 742	O.J.: 546	Lockup: 416
HLN	Files: 342	Files: 325	Files: 239	Files: 301	Files: 420	O.J.: 244	O.J.: 242	Files: 32