Clinton says Comey’s letter, Russian hackers cost her the election

Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she was on the path to victory in the 2016 presidential election until late interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James Comey scared off some potential supporters.
In her most extensive public comments on the Nov. 8 election, Clinton told a New York conference she was derailed by Comey’s Oct. 28 letter informing Congress the Federal Bureau of Investigation had reopened a probe of her use of a private email server and by the WikiLeaks release of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, allegedly stolen by Russian hackers.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she told a women’s conference moderated by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comey’s letter and Russian WikiLeaks,” the Democrat said of the loss to Republican Donald Trump. “The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days.”
Clinton, who said she is going through the “painful process” of writing a book dealing in part with the election, also said misogyny played a role in her defeat. Becoming the first woman U.S. president would have been “a really big deal,” she said.
Clinton took personal responsibility for the campaign’s mistakes, but did not question her strategy or her staff. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had,” Clinton said.
She said she had no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the election for Trump, and bluntly criticized the new U.S. president for some of his foreign policy views and for tweeting too much.
“I’m back to being an activist citizen – and part of the resistance,” she said.
Clinton said broader negotiations involving China and other countries in the region were critical for convincing North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. She questioned Trump’s recent suggestion he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances.
“You should not offer that in the absence of a broader strategic framework to try to get China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, to put the kind of pressure on the regime that will finally bring them to the negotiating table,” Clinton said.
She also said she supported the recent missile strikes ordered by Trump in Syria but was unsure if they would make a difference. “There is a lot that we don’t really yet fully know about what was part of that strike,” she said.

Macron and Le Pen to square off in French pre-election TV debate

France’s presidential rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen, go head-to-head on Wednesday in a televised debate in which sparks are sure to fly as they fight their corner in a last encounter before Sunday’s runoff vote.
Opinion polls still show Macron, 39, holding a strong lead of 20 points over the National Front’s Le Pen with just four days to go to the final vote, in what is widely seen as France’s most important election in decades.
Voters are choosing between Macron, a strongly Europe-minded ex-banker who wants to cut state regulations in the economy while protecting workers, and Le Pen, a eurosceptic who wants to ditch the euro currency and impose sharp curbs on immigration.
Macron finished only three points ahead of Le Pen in the first round on April 23, but he is widely expected now to pick the bulk of votes from the Socialists and the center-right whose candidates were eliminated.
Though Le Pen has a mountain to climb to catch Macron, the 2017 campaign for the Elysee has been packed with surprises, the exchanges between the two have become noticeably sharper and the 48-year-old National Front veteran has shown she is capable of catching him out with clever public relations maneuvering.
Macron warned he would not pull his punches in Wednesday night’s televised encounter against a rival whose policies he says are dangerous for France.
“I am not going to employ invective. I am not going to use cliches or insults. I’ll use hand-to-hand fighting to demonstrate that her ideas represent false solutions,” he told BFM TV.
Le Pen, who portrays Macron as a candidate of high finance masquerading as a liberal, said: “I shall be defending my ideas. He will be defending the posture that he has adopted.”
“His program seems to be very vague, but in reality it is a simple continuation of (Socialist President) Francois Hollande’s government,” she said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
MUST-WATCH EVENT
In that interview she reaffirmed she wanted to take France out of the euro and said she hoped the French people would have a national currency in their pockets within two years.
An Elabe poll for BFM TV and L’Express published on Tuesday showed Macron winning 59 percent of the votes in the second round versus 41 percent for Le Pen. Other pollsters have consistently shown roughly the same figures.
Commentators said Wednesday’s debate could still have an influence, particularly on potential abstainers, many of whom voted for the candidate of the hard left who came fourth in the April 23 first round.
“What he (Macron) has to do it to convince the people who didn’t vote for him (in the first round) and who do not agree with his program that they will be respected,” said one outgoing government minister, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The final face-to-face debate between rivals in a French presidential election, aired live, is a ‘must-watch’ event across the country, when the candidates take the gloves off to land whatever punches they can.
Some clashes have entered into political legend.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a center-right candidate, famously bested the Socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1974 when the latter referred to “a matter of heart” when discussing an economic point.
Giscard d’Estaing hit back saying “You don’t have a monopoly on the heart, Monsieur Mitterrand” – a phrase which stuck and which he later said helped his victory over the Socialist in what was an extremely tight contest.
In 2002 conservative Jacques Chirac, then the incumbent in the Elysee, refused to debate with Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen, after the National Front’s founder unexpectedly got through to the second round.
Chirac said no debate was possible “in the face of intolerance and hate”, a reference to Le Pen’s policies and thinking, which were considered to be xenophobic.
Chirac defeated Le Pen senior in a landslide.

Trump struggles to win over moderate Republicans on healthcare overhaul

Time was running short for President Donald Trump to attract enough votes to pass a new bill to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system this week as Republican party moderates held out, fearing a backlash from voters worried about losing insurance benefits.
A senior House of Representatives Republican aide said on Tuesday night no decision had been made on bringing legislation to the floor this week before the House is due to start a week-long break late on Thursday.
A bill would need to be filed by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning to hold the vote before the break.
Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who heads the conservative House Freedom Caucus faction that helped block Trump’s first attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, said earlier on Tuesday Republicans were still “a handful of votes away.”
The lack of movement among Republicans puts Trump in danger of his second major legislative setback, raising questions about his ability to secure passage of other parts of his agenda, including a major tax reform plan.
Most House Freedom Caucus Republicans have gotten on board with the new proposal, but Democrats are vowing to oppose any attempt to unravel Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare overhaul.
The latest Republican plan would allow states to opt out of Obamacare provisions that force insurers to charge sick and healthy people the same rates. That is seen as a concession to conservatives to attract their votes.
Trump insisted in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday that the protections for those with pre-existing conditions would remain.
“I think it’s time now” for a healthcare vote, the Republican president said at the White House on Tuesday.
Even if a plan passes the House, it is expected to face a tough fight in the Senate, where Republicans have a narrower majority.
OPPOSITION
Republicans contend that Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare law, which allowed some 20 million Americans to gain medical insurance, is too intrusive and expensive.
The White House sent Vice President Mike Pence to the Capitol on Tuesday to meet Republican holdouts on the party’s latest effort to pass a healthcare overhaul.
Republicans remain divided over key aspects of the healthcare bill, with some lawmakers worrying about a potential spike in the number of people without coverage, or sharp increases in insurance premiums.
Representative Daniel Webster, whose central Florida district is home to many retirees, said Pence told him he would try to work out problems caused by proposed Medicaid spending caps that would limit nursing-home beds.
“I just think it’s going to cost us a lot in Florida,” Webster said.
Another Florida Republican, Thomas Rooney, said confusion over the potential loss of coverage for pre-existing conditions had his constituents scared that “they’re going to die because of a vote that we might be taking.”
Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action started to increase pressure on moderate Republicans who were resisting the bill, such as Representative Billy Long of Missouri.
“Billy is using liberal talking points to distort the truth,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said, adding that Long “may want to keep Obamacare.”
Left-leaning groups, including the Center for American Progress (CAP), were pushing their members to call lawmakers to urge them to oppose the healthcare bill, including via 7,000 medicine bottles delivered to congressional districts. Emily Tisch Sussman, a CAP organizer, said those efforts had generated “tens of thousands” of phone calls.
Patient advocacy groups, including the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, also oppose the reworked bill, while the American Medical Association and others have expressed concerns.

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.