The Senate Will Not Vote on Latest Obamacare Repeal Bill

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The Senate will not vote on the latest GOP health care bill meant to replace Obamacare.

In a devastating blow to Republican efforts to repeal and replace The Affordable Care Act, Senate leaders have decided not to put up for a vote the Graham-Cassidy health care legislation.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-SC., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., was just the latest in a string of legislative efforts to finally repeal Obamacare, a promise the Republican Party has made since the passage of the heath care law in 2010.

Republicans had previously tried to pass health care reform over the summer, but failed to push through a “skinny” health care bill by just one vote.

Supporters of an Obamacare repeal began to feel optimistic as the Graham-Cassidy bill continued to pick up momentum among Senate Republicans.

Speaking to members of the media last week in New York, Trump said the Graham-Cassidy has a “very good chance” of passing the upper chamber.

“I think there’s tremendous support for it. I think it’s actually much better than the previous shot,” Trump said, referring to the past GOP health care bill that failed to clear the Senate.

However, things began to fall apart as various members of the GOP announced their opposition to the bill.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was opposed. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for reasons almost opposite those of his moderate colleagues, announced he would not vote for the legislation unless major changes were made.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who had cast the deciding vote against the skinny repeal bill over the summer, sinking its passage, ultimately came out against the latest repeal effort as well.

Following a closed-door meeting Tuesday between GOP members, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell revealed that there would be no vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill this week.

The need for the GOP to pass repeal this week was essential, due to congressional rules allowing the Senate to pass health care reform by a simple majority until Sept. 30.

With the Republican Party carrying a slim 52-46 majority in the upper chamber, it would be virtually impossible for GOP lawmakers to push through such controversial legislation requiring a 60-vote threshold.

During the news conference following the GOP meeting, McConnell vowed to keep pushing for health care reform. (For more from the author of “The Senate Will Not Vote on Latest Obamacare Repeal Bill” please click HERE)

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California Billboard Urges Drivers to Impeach Trump

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It could be argued that calls for President Donald Trump’s impeachment have become more “California” than blockbuster movies, surfing and the Pacific Coast Highway. In June, California Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman filed an article of impeachment against Trump, and in July thousands gathered in Los Angeles to call for Trump’s impeachment.

On Monday, a group in the San Francisco Bay area upped the ante in its bid to impeach the president, using a billboard to let its thoughts be known. Drivers near the Bay Bridge were greeted with a billboard of Trump’s face next to the word “impeach.”

A California-based super PAC named Courage Campaign is responsible for the billboard, which can be seen below in a tweet from KTVU.

Back in 2013 the organization gained notoriety after spearheading a petition and rally campaigning to prohibit the sale of assault weapons after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The 1.4-million-member “progressive” group actively urges followers to engage in “courageous resistance,” which involves sending letters to Congress opposing the American Health Care Act and refraining from eating in an effort to show solidarity with farmers who make a living off of people buying the food they farm.

Courage Campaign’s executive director Eddie Kurtz said in a news release Monday that impeaching Trump is a “no-brainer.”

“From using his position as president to enhance his personal bank account via foreign interests — in direct violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause — to revealing classified information to Russia and openly admitting that he fired FBI Director James Comey in order to obstruct the Russia investigation, the case for the impeachment of Donald Trump on legal grounds is a no-brainer,” Kurtz said.

Kurtz also blamed Trump’s supposed defense of “white supremacy” and his supposed “misogynistic rhetoric” as factors that have led to the “moral imperative to act.”

“The United States’ constitutional system is one of delicate, deliberately designed checks and balances, and it is Congress’ duty to keep the president from eroding the rule of law,” Kurtz added.

“Such flagrant violations must not go unchecked. Continuing to let Trump’s trespasses go unaddressed plainly and simply undermines the very foundations of America’s democracy. Congress must show Americans the values that our country stands for by taking steps to impeach President Trump,” he said.

According to Newsweek, the billboard was paid for by members of the the Courage Campaign and via a national crowdfunding campaign. (For more from the author of “California Billboard Urges Drivers to Impeach Trump” please click HERE)

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Canada Recognizes ‘Chelsea’ Manning as a Traitor, Won’t Let Him in Country

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Chelsea Manning has been denied entry into Canada, according to a letter [he] recently posted to Twitter.

According to the letter Manning received from the Canadian government, [he] was “inadmissible on grounds of serious criminality for having been convicted of an offense outside Canada,” the letter reads.

The letter further describes Canada’s decision to bar Manning by comparing the offense [he] was convicted of in the U.S.

“If committed in Canada this offense would equate to an indictable offense, namely Treason described under section 46(2)(B) of the Criminal Code of Canada,” the letter states. (Read more from “Canada Recognizes ‘Chelsea’ Manning as a Traitor, Won’t Let Him in Country” HERE)

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Trump: Military Option for North Korea Not Preferred, but Would Be ‘Devastating’

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President Donald Trump warned North Korea on Tuesday that any U.S. military option would be “devastating” for Pyongyang, but said the use of force was not Washington’s first option to deal with the country’s ballistic and nuclear weapons program.

“We are totally prepared for the second option, not a preferred option,” Trump said at a White House news conference, referring to military force. “But if we take that option, it will be devastating, I can tell you that, devastating for North Korea. That’s called the military option. If we have to take it, we will.”

Bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent weeks have created fears that a miscalculation could lead to action with untold ramifications, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.

Despite the increased tension, the United States has not detected any change in North Korea’s military posture reflecting an increased threat, the top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday. (Read more from “Trump: Military Option for North Korea Not Preferred, but Would Be ‘Devastating'” HERE)

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$200,000 Going to Discover How Trannys Deal With ‘Stress’

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Despite President Trump’s reversal of Obama-era policies on transgenderism, his administration still is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on transgenderism research, the government watchdog Judicial Watch warns.

In August, Trump rescinded an Obama-era policy allowing the military to recruit transgender people. The president also banned the Department of Defense from using its resources to provide medical regimens for transgenders currently serving in the military, citing the “medical costs” as the primary driver of his decision.

In February, the Trump administration ended Obama’s order that public schools open their bathrooms and locker rooms to people according to gender “identity.”

The administration concluded that the transgender bathroom issue should be determined by states.

The left responded to Trump’s reversal of Obama’s transgender mandates with charges the commander-in-chief is “cruel,” “un-American” and “discriminatory.” (Read more from “$200,000 Going to Discover How Trannys Deal With ‘Stress'” HERE)

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U.S. Christians’ Alarming Choice: Betray Faith or Close Business

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The lawyers for the Christian owners of a Minnesota video-services company are firing back after a federal judge there called the couple’s efforts to limit their wedding work to heterosexual couples “akin to a ‘White Applicants Only’ sign.”

Carl and Angel Larsen operate Telescope Media, a video business that the Larsens want to include wedding videos. But they have a problem in the recently amended Minnesota Human Rights Act, which forbids businesses to treat people differently based upon “race, color, national origin, sex, disability (or) sexual orientation.”

Violation of the Human Rights Act could result in fines as high as $25,000 per incident.

The Larsens launched a pre-emptive lawsuit that was rejected last week by federal Judge John Mannheim, who wrote that the effort by the Larsens to film weddings but decline requests to video same-sex ceremonies was “akin to a ‘White Applicants Only’ sign.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, is representing the Larsens. Senior counsel Jonathan Scruggs told WND and Radio America that Judge Tunheim’s rationale is way off base. (Read more from “U.S. Christians’ Alarming Choice: Betray Faith or Close Business” HERE)

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The Pope is a Heretic

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We are in confusing times, with a myriad of cross-currents and whirlpools.

If you have not yet heard, Pope Francis has been hit with a direct pie-in-the-face criticism. Not from Protestants, but from Catholics. Most people reading this will be non-Catholics, but they have a direct stake in what is now on-going in the Catholic Church.

Christians have found common ground in the last forty years, beginning with abortion. First class, ripping-apart-an-unborn-baby abortion.

But many other things they have not been able to agree on, although a few Protestants have come to grudgingly accept the Catholic position … on contraception and on divorce-and-remarriage.

They have discovered that it was, not too long ago, the unanimous consensus of Protestants that contraception and divorce-and-remarriage were incompatible with Sacred Scripture — that supposed lifeline of Protestant theology.

But now it appears that Pope Francis has become … a Protestant. He has admitted that allowing Holy Communion can be OK for the divorced-and-remarried, in utter defiance of Matthew 19 and 1 Cor 11:29. If Protestants reading this have their own explanation of what divorce or Holy Communion is — or was — it was not the historic reality of Christianity. Even the Reformation was not triggered by these controversies, but came later, and not to all of the denominations.

And the orthodox, evangelical, main-line and fundamentalist Protestants have danced around the air-tight admonition of Christ regarding divorce-and-remarriage for nearly a hundred years or more. It has been an internal contradiction of devotion to Sacred Scripture. Some things are open to interpretation. It would appear Christ’s opinion of remarriage after a divorce is not one of them. Many of those reading this have done so, even more than once. I offer no judgment. I only give you Christ’s opinion, an opinion held by both Catholics and Protestants until very recently.

Catholic teaching has maintained it, and it is Pope Francis’ duty, not to reinvent the wheel, but to keep the one that is already in place in good repair. And, it ought to be noted, no divorced-and-remarried Catholic is excommunicated. They are welcome at Mass. Many surreptitiously go to Holy Communion anyway, often with a nod and a wink from their parish priests. Until now, it was a local problem, usually brushed aside by priests and bishops. Now, it is systemic.

If the Catholic Church goes into schism, as it appears it is about to do, then all of Christianity is going to descend into a maelstrom of contradiction, confusion and uncertainty. Indeed, many Protestants will come to realize that their own defense of Christian Truth will now be undermined, since it was the Catholics that long, long ago defended those truths against: Gnostics, Arians, Cathars, Monophysites, Iconoclasts, Monothelites, Albigensians, Nestorians, Waldensians.

I omit Luther and Calvin simply because we cannot agree on that. They will find that with over a billion Catholics in world-wide schism, Christian safety will rest on a foundation of sand before the monstrous and murderous power of the secular world.

Pope Francis, now a de facto Protestant, has destroyed three of the seven sacraments at once: Confession, because now adultery will not need to be seen as sinful. Next, marriage, because now if we can be open to adultery, why not polygamy, homosexual unions, incestuous and bestial marriages? And finally the heart of Catholicism, the Real Presence of Christ, now merely symbolic and not very important, after all.

Francis is himself is a jumble of contradictions. He is not the friendly, humble papa depicted in the media. He is vacillating, inconsistent, impulsive, mean-spirited and vicious, firing or marginalizing those who have the audacity to challenge his orthodoxy. He expects, obedience — a Catholic concept — to his Petrine Office, while at the same time he reinvents the Truths of Christ, found not only in Scripture, but in the long-standing teachings of the one Catholic Church.

“Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever.” I am not sure all Christians recite this, but Catholics do. If Pope Francis is right, it appears that God can change His mind after all.

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Explosive: The Insidious Roots of Campus ‘Safe Spaces’

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“Safe spaces.” “Speech codes.” “Consciousness raising.”

These are the slogans and catchphrases of the modern politically correct campus. For most Americans, they are simply expressions of political correctness run wild or of overly sensitive students being coddled. And while such developments might seem silly or stupid, most people certainly don’t regard them as dangerous . . .

Those behind this bizarre “new” phenomenon, Kengor shows in “The Marxist roots of the ‘safe spaces’ movement,” have drawn their influence from thinkers from the farthest reaches of the political Left, including:

Michel Foucault, an important theorist of the New Left, author of “A History of Sexuality” – and also a drug-obsessed homosexual and member of the French Communist Party;

Bell Hooks, a cultural Marxist, who worked to promote the idea of “education for critical consciousness,” which transforms the purpose of education from the transmission of knowledge and tradition, to turning students into agents of “deconstruction”;

(Read more from “Explosive: The Insidious Roots of Campus ‘Safe Spaces'” please click HERE)

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400 Arrested in Crackdown on Dangerous Online Meds

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An international law-enforcement effort to crack down on the online sale of illegal drugs and medical devices has netted 400 arrests worldwide, and the confiscation of more than $51 million in potentially dangerous medicines, says a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Authorities from 123 nations were involved in Operation Pangea X, which this year saw a boost in the number of participating African nations, many taking part for the first time.

“The sale of fake or counterfeit pharmaceuticals is a growing concern across Africa, as it creates a dangerous situation for the health of unsuspecting consumers who trust that the products they purchase are safe to use. Global actions such as Operation Pangea X are critical to cutting off the supply of dangerous medicines and apprehending the criminals behind this deadly trade,” according to a statement from the National Central Bureau of INTERPOL in Namibia.

The investigation and roundup targeted Fentanyl, a powerful narcotic that often is distributed illegally and has been linked to thousands of overdose deaths.

One of the thousands of websites shut down even was named “Where to buy Fentanyl without a prescription.” (Read more from “400 Arrested in Crackdown on Dangerous Online Meds” HERE)

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New Law Prohibits Any State Gun Registry

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A law prohibiting any type of state firearms registry is now in effect in Maine. The law will not only protect the privacy of Maine gun owners, it will also hinder the federal government’s ability to develop a firearms database and create a climate less favorable to federal gun control.

Rep. Patrick Corey (R-Windham) sponsored House Bill 9 (LD9) along with a bipartisan coalition. The new law declares:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a government agency of this State or a political subdivision of this State may not keep or cause to be kept a comprehensive registry of privately owned firearms and the owners of those firearms within its jurisdiction.

The House approved the joint Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety’s “ought to pass” report by a 122-24 margin. The Senate unanimously passed it 35-0. Both chambers then voted for LD9 to be enacted by a voice vote. Gov. Paul LePage signed the bill on June 12 and it went into immediate effect.

The federal government depends on state cooperation for all kinds of information-gathering. For instance, most of the data in a DEA license plate tracking database reported on by the Wall Street Journal comes from state and local law enforcement. Local police operate tracking systems, paid for by federal grant money. The DEA then taps into the local database.

In the same way, the ATF, or another federal agency, could easily create a federal gun registry using information gathered by state and local governments. By prohibiting any such databases in the state, Maine ensures this can’t happen. Simply put, no data means no federal database.

Ensuring the privacy of firearms owners also subtly undermines federal efforts to regulate guns. As we’ve seen with marijuana and industrial hemp, a federal regulation becomes ineffective when states ignore it and pass laws encouraging the prohibited activity anyway. The federal government lacks the enforcement power necessary to maintain its ban, and people will willingly take on the small risk of federal sanctions if they know the state will not interfere. This increases when the state actively encourages “the market.”

Less restrictive state gun laws will likely have a similar impact on federal gun laws. It will make it that much more difficult for the feds to enforce any future federal gun control, and increase the likelihood that states with few limits will simply refuse to cooperate with future federal enforcement efforts.

State actions like prohibiting gun registries lower barriers for those wanting to the option of defending themselves with firearms and encourages a “gun-friendly” environment that will make federal efforts to limit firearms that much more difficult. (For more from the author of “New Law Prohibits Any State Gun Registry” please click HERE)

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