Obamacare Crap Cartoons

White House seeks quick vote on healthcare overhaul but hurdles remain

Top aides to President Donald Trump on Monday predicted the House of Representatives would move this week to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, though Republicans remained divided on how to protect sick Americans from insurance price hikes.
The White House is eager to move forward on legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, to make good on a key campaign promise. Republicans tried but failed to pass a replacement bill in March in an embarrassing setback for the Trump Administration.
Lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow states to opt out of Obamacare protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions – provisions that force insurers to charge sick people and healthy people the same rates. It was unclear when or if a vote would be scheduled.
Trump told Fox News Channel that he would not set a deadline for the vote, and indicated he was open to improvements. “We’re either going to have a great plan or I’m not signing it,” he said in the interview.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg News, Trump insisted that the new bill would maintain protections for pre-existing conditions.
“I want it to be good for sick people. It’s not in its final form right now,” he told Bloomberg. “It will be every bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.”
Ten major patient advocacy groups said they opposed the reworked healthcare bill, including the American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association.
Other major medical groups such as the American Medical Association have also expressed concerns over coverage losses and unaffordable insurance for those with pre-existing conditions.
HOUSE DIVIDED
Republican lawmakers have struggled to unite around legislation, with moderates and conservatives within the caucus divided over key provisions.
Once a plan passes the Republican-controlled House, it is expected to face a tough fight in the Senate, where Republicans have a narrower majority and where some party senators have expressed misgivings about the House bill.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn on Monday said in separate interviews with CBS’ “This Morning” that they thought there were enough votes to pass the bill this week.
House Republican leaders were more cautious. As of Monday afternoon, no vote had been scheduled and backers of the healthcare proposal had not released legislative language.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican conference, said Republican members needed time to understand new tweaks to the bill.
“We are having those member-to-members conversations right now,” McMorris Rodgers told Fox News.
Vice President Mike Pence made his way to Capitol Hill late on Monday to make the case to members who are on the fence, a Republican aide said on condition of anonymity, noting leaders are believed to be within five or six votes of having enough support to pass the bill.
The Freedom Caucus, which brought down the previous effort to pass a healthcare bill, has endorsed the new measure. The Republican aide told Reuters all but one or two members of the group will support the reworked plan.
“This bill doesn’t get all the way there but it’s a good step and is … the best we can get out of the House right now,” Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the group, told CNN.
But several moderate Republicans were either undecided or opposed the bill for fear that it would not protect those with pre-existing conditions and cause millions to lose health insurance.
Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, said he still had problems with the latest plan and suspected there were not enough votes to pass it.
“Too many Americans are going to be without coverage,” Dent told MSNBC, adding that the plan could make things even worse for vulnerable Americans.

Senate votes to proceed with confirmation vote on SEC nominee

The U.S. Senate took a procedural vote on Monday to clear the way for confirming Jay Clayton as the next head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a 60-36 vote, the Republican-led Senate voted to end debate on Clayton, with some Democrats joining Republicans in support.
A final confirmation vote is expected later this week, and the Senate may take up to 30 hours to debate his confirmation prior to the vote.

Maine governor sues state’s attorney general in Trump policy tussle

(Please note: Story contains strong language in final paragraph)
(Reuters) – Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage on Monday sued the state’s Democratic attorney general, contending she had abused her power by joining legal opposition to early moves by President Donald Trump that LePage’s office supported.
LePage, a fiery conservative now in his second term, challenged Attorney General Janet Mills for joining a legal brief opposing Trump’s executive order banning immigration from a half-dozen majority Muslim countries.
The governor said he supported Trump’s order, which has been blocked by courts and which the White House says is necessary to protect national security.
“It is no secret that Attorney General Mills and I have differing political views, but that is not the issue,” LePage said in a statement. “The problem is she has publicly denounced court cases which the executive branch has requested to join and subsequently refuses to provide legal representation for the state.”
He said Mills had refused to represent the state in other cases where she disagreed with LePage’s political position and prevented his office from filing its own brief in support of Trump, a charge that Mills denied.
“Instead of signing onto another party’s brief at no cost to the taxpayers, however, or hiring a lawyer to draft his own brief, the governor has wasted state resources by hiring a lawyer to file a frivolous lawsuit, complaining that he cannot do exactly what we have told him he can do,” Mills said in a statement.
Maine is the only one of the 50 U.S. states where the attorney general is elected by the state legislature, rather than elected by voters or appointed by the governor.
The nation’s 22 Democratic attorneys general emerged in the first months of the Trump administration as a major opposition force to his policies, successfully suing to block his executive orders on travel and also challenging environmental policy moves.
Maine is one of eight U.S. states that have a Republican governor and a Democratic attorney general, setting the stage for the conflict that resulted in Monday’s lawsuit, filed in Kennebec County Superior Court.
LePage was first elected to office in 2010 on a wave of Tea Party support and was re-elected in 2014. Both victories came in three-way races.
He was an early supporter of Trump and came under intense public pressure last year after calling a Democratic lawmaker a “little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker,” in a voicemail message that was widely circulated.

North Korea says U.S. bomber flights push peninsula to brink of nuclear war

North Korea accused the United States on Tuesday of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war after a pair of strategic U.S. bombers flew training drills with the South Korean and Japanese air forces in another show of strength.
The two supersonic B-1B Lancer bombers were deployed amid rising tensions over North Korea’s dogged pursuit of its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of United Nations sanctions and pressure from the United States.
The flight of the two bombers on Monday came as U.S. President Donald Trump said he was open to meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the right circumstances, and as his CIA director landed in South Korea for talks.
South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a briefing in Seoul that Monday’s joint drill was conducted to deter provocations by the North and to test readiness against another potential nuclear test.
The U.S. air force said in a statement the bombers had flown from Guam to conduct training exercises with the South Korean and Japanese air forces.
North Korea said the bombers conducted “a nuclear bomb dropping drill against major objects” in its territory at a time when Trump and “other U.S. warmongers are crying out for making a preemptive nuclear strike” on the North.
“The reckless military provocation is pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula closer to the brink of nuclear war,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said on Tuesday.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been high for weeks, driven by concerns that the North might conduct its sixth nuclear test in defiance of pressure from the United States and Pyongyang’s sole major ally, China.
China’s Global Times, a state-backed tabloid that does not necessarily reflect national policy, said in an editorial late on Monday the United States should not rely on China alone to pressure Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear ambitions.
April could prove a “turning point”, the paper said, but “Washington … must also continue to exert its own efforts on the issue”.
It was widely feared North Korea could conduct its sixth nuclear test on or around April 15 to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the North’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, or on April 25 to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the foundation of its Korean People’s Army.
The North has conducted such tests or missile launches to mark significant events in the past.
Instead, North Korea conducted an annual military parade, featuring a display of missiles, on April 15 and then a large, live-fire artillery drill 10 days later.
“VIGILANCE, READINESS”
South Korea’s acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn called for stronger vigilance because of continuing provocation by Seoul’s poor and isolated neighbor, and for countries such as China to increase pressure on the North.
“I am asking foreign and security ministries to further strengthen military readiness in order for North Korea not to miscalculate,” Hwang told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
Soon after Hwang spoke, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Seoul said the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, was in South Korea for meetings with the embassy and U.S. Forces in Korea.
The Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified government sources, had earlier reported that Pompeo met South Korea’s intelligence chief and a senior presidential. South Korean officials would not confirm the report.
Trump said on Monday he would be “honored” to meet North Korea’s young leader.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg News in comments that drew criticism in Washington.
Trump did not say what conditions would be needed for such a meeting to occur or when it could happen. The White House said later North Korea would need to meet many conditions before it could be contemplated.
“Clearly conditions are not there right now,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.
“I don’t see this happening anytime soon.”
Trump warned in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that a “major, major conflict” with North Korea was possible, while China said last week the situation on the Korean peninsula could escalate or slip out of control.
In a show of force, the United States has already sent an aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, to waters off the Korean peninsula to conduct drills with South Korea and Japan.
The U.S. military’s THAAD anti-missile defense system has reached initial operational capacity in South Korea, U.S. officials told Reuters, although they cautioned that it would not be fully operational for some months.
North Korea test-launched a missile on Saturday that appeared to have failed within minutes, its fourth successive failed launch since March. It has conducted two nuclear tests and a series of missile-related activities at an unprecedented pace since the beginning of last year.
The North is technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, and regularly threatens to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea.

White House press dinner Cartoons

ASEAN gives Beijing a pass on South China Sea dispute, cites ‘improving cooperation’

Southeast Asian countries took a softer stance on South China Sea disputes during a weekend summit, according to a statement issued on Sunday, which went easy on China by avoiding tacit references to its building and arming of its manmade islands.
A chairman’s statement of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) was released about 12 hours after the summit ended, and dropped references to “land reclamation and militarization” included in the text issued at last year’s meeting, and in an earlier, unpublished version seen by Reuters on Saturday.
The outcome follows what two ASEAN diplomats on Saturday said were efforts by Chinese foreign ministry and embassy officials to pressure ASEAN chair the Philippines to keep Beijing’s contentious activities in the strategic waterway off ASEAN’s official agenda.
It also indicates four ASEAN members who the diplomats said had wanted a firmer position had agreed to the statement’s more conciliatory tone.
China is not a member of the 10-member bloc and did not attend the summit but is extremely sensitive about the content of its statements. It has often been accused of trying to influence the drafts to muzzle what it sees as dissent and challenges to its sweeping sovereignty claim.
China’s embassy in Manila could not be reached and its foreign ministry did not respond to request for comment on Saturday.
The statement also noted “the improving cooperation between ASEAN and China”, and did not include references to “tensions” or “escalation of activities” seen in earlier drafts and in last year’s text. It noted, without elaborating, some leaders’ concerns about “recent developments” in the strategic, resource-rich waterway
A Philippine diplomat said it was an open secret that China tries to lean on ASEAN members to protect its interests, but that was not the reason for the unusual delay in issuing the statement.
“There are one or two member countries which lobbied for some changes in some text in the statement, but not related to the South China Sea,” the source said.
Beijing has reacted angrily to individual members expressing their concern about its rapid reclamation of reefs in the Spratlys and its installation of missile systems on them.
Another ASEAN diplomat said the statement was a genuine representation of the atmosphere of the Manila meetings.
“We respected the Philippines’ views and cooperated,” the diplomat said. “It clearly reflected how the issue was discussed.”
POINTLESS TO PRESSURE
The softened statement comes as the current ASEAN chairman, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, seeks to bury the hatchet with China after years of wrangling over its maritime assertiveness. After lobbying from Duterte, China agreed to let Filipinos back to the rich fishing ground of the Scarborough Shoal following a four-year blockade.
The no-nonsense leader set the tone for the meeting on Thursday when he said it was pointless discussing China’s maritime activities, because no one dared to pressure Beijing anyway.
As a sign of Duterte’s friendship with Beijing, three Chinese navy vessels on Sunday made a rare visit to the Philippines. Duterte will inspect a guided-missile destroyer in his hometown of Davao on Monday.
Duterte’s foreign policy strategy is a stunning reversal of that of the previous administration, which had close ties with the United States and was seen by China as a nuisance.
That Philippines government in 2013 challenged Beijing by lodging a case with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2013.
Two weeks into Duterte’s presidency last year, the Hague court ruled in favor of the Philippines, angering China. But Duterte has made it clear he would not press Beijing to comply anytime soon, and is more interested in doing business than sparring.
The final chairman’s statement issued made no mention to the arbitration case. However, it did include in a section separate to the South China Sea chapter the need to show “full respect for legal and diplomatic processes” in resolving disputes.
Underlining Beijing’s sensitivity about the arbitration award, the two diplomatic sources on Saturday said Chinese embassy officials had lobbied behind the scenes for that sentence to be dropped, and considered it a veiled reference to the ruling.
One diplomat indicated that ongoing moves between China and ASEAN to draft a framework for negotiating a maritime code of conduct may have been a factor in agreeing the softened statement.
All sides want to complete the framework this year, although there is some scepticism that China’s would agree to a set of rules that could impact its geostrategic interests.

Toned-down White House press dinner carries on without Trump

The White House press corps gathered on Saturday for its annual black-tie dinner, a toned-down affair this year after Donald Trump snubbed the event, becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to bow out in 36 years.
Without Trump, who scheduled a rally instead to mark his 100th day in office, the usually celebrity-filled soiree hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association took a more sober turn, even as it pulled in top journalists and Washington insiders.
Most of Trump’s administration also skipped the event in solidarity with the president, who has repeatedly accused the press of mistreatment. The president used his campaign-style gathering to again lambaste the media.
“I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away,” he told a crowd in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, calling out The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC by name.
In Washington, WHCA President Jeff Mason defended press freedom even as he acknowledged this year’s dinner had a different feel, saying attempts to undermine the media was dangerous for democracy.
“We are not fake news, we are not failing news organizations and we are not the enemy of the American people,” said Mason, a Reuters correspondent.
Instead of the typical roasts – presidents of both parties have delivered their own zingers for years – the event returned to its traditional roots of recognizing reporters’ work and handing out student scholarships as famed journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein presented awards.
“That’s not Donald Trump’s style,” NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell told MSNBC, referring to the self-deprecating jokes presidents in the past have made despite tensions with the press.
Instead, the humor fell to headline comedian Hasan Minhaj.
“Welcome to the series finale of the White House correspondents’ dinner,” Minhaj, who plays a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” program, told the crowd.
He also joked about Trump, despite organizers’ wishes, saying he did so to honor U.S. constitutional protection of free speech: “Only in America can a first-generation, Indian-American Muslim kid get on this stage and make fun of the president.”
In a video message, actor Alec Baldwin, who has raised Trump’s ire playing him on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” program also encouraged attendees.
Few other celebrities graced the red carpet, although some well-known Washingtonians, such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California, appeared.
Trump attended in 2011, when then-President Barack Obama made jokes at the expense of the New York real estate developer and reality television show host.
In an interview with Reuters this week, Trump said he decided against attending as president because he felt he had been treated unfairly by the media, adding: “I would come next year, absolutely.”
In Pennsylvania, Trump told supporters the media dinner would be boring but was noncommittal on whether he would go in 2018 or hold another rally.
Late night television show host Samantha Bee also hosted a competing event – “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” – that she said would honor journalists, rather than skewer Trump.