RANDY BRYCE wants to unseat Paul Ryan. #BRYCE2018

A unionized iron worker is taking on Paul Ryan in a 2018 showdown in Wisconsin. Randy Bryce's every man charm has taken the political world by storm, and could be the key to refreshing the Democratic Party. Ring of Fire's Josh Gay discusses how.

Counsel Investigating Trump For Money Laundering

If Trump made an illegal deal with the Russians, Robert Mueller wants to find out. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

“In addition to investigating whether or not Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, special counsel Robert Mueller is also reportedly investigating “money laundering by Trump associates,” the New York Times reports. The Times report corroborates a separate bombshell Washington Post article, published Wednesday, that said in addition to possible obstruction, investigators are also “looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates.”

“A former senior official said Mr. Mueller’s investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates,” a source told the Times. “The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would most likely have been done in exchange for some kind of financial payoff, and that there would have been an effort to hide the payoffs, most likely by routing them through offshore banking centers.”

Read more here:

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/special-counsel-mueller-also-investigating-possible-money-laundering-by-trump-associates/

Jon Ossoff Continues Corporate Democrat Losing Streak

"AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Georgia, where the Republicans have pulled off a victory in the most expensive congressional race in history. In a special election in Georgia’s 6th District, Republican Karen Handel won nearly 53 percent of the vote, defeating her challenger, Democrat Jon Ossoff, to be—to fill the seat left vacant after Tom Price resigned to become secretary of health and human services.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/21/as_jon_ossoff_loses_georgia_special

The candidates and outside groups spent more than $55 million on the race, a record-shattering amount. While the seat has been held by a Republican for decades, Democrats were hoping to pull off an upset in the suburban Atlanta district where Trump’s approval rating is just 35 percent. This marks the fourth congressional race Democrats have lost since the election of Trump. Speaking Tuesday night, Handel thanked Trump.”

Help make the Democratic party more progressive at: www.justicedemocrats.com The establishment Democrat losing streak continues. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

Everything You Need To Live Without Electricity

Lehman's Hardware is a retail store located in Kidron, Ohio.

Originally specializing in products used by the Amish community, it has become known worldwide as a source for non-electric goods.

The 35,000 square foot facility bills itself as a "Low Tech Superstore" and a "Purveyor of Historical Technology," both of which are reflected in their motto, "Simple Products for a Simpler Life."

The quarter mile long structure is made up of the remnants of a log cabin and three pre-Civil War buildings, including a hand-hewn barn. It is also a popular tourist destination.

Lehman's also maintains a smaller, more traditional hardware store in Mount Hope, Ohio, where their Amish customers may shop with less interference from curious tourists. In addition to the two stores, there is also a catalog and online business.



https://www.lehmans.com/

Trump seeks sharp cuts to housing aid, except for program that brings him millions

Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to private landlords.

One of those landlords is Trump himself, who earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City, the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/trump-seeks-sharp-cuts-to-housing-aid-except-for-program-that-brings-him-millions/2017/06/20/bf1fb2b8-5531-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html

Don't be stupid. It wasn't the voting machines that won Handel the election.

By GaYellowDawg

It's because it was a heavily Republican district, and Republican voters, just like the politicians they elect, always put party before country. You couldn't get most southern Republicans to vote for any Democrat over any Republican with a car battery and wet alligator clips. They just don't fucking do it. You could run Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, or a big old cow shit in the South and it would win elections in a lot of districts. I'm not kidding. If you dressed someone up in a cow shit costume and ran a campaign as "Vote Cow Shit in 2018. I Love Guns, Jesus, and Murka, and Fuck Democrats", then Cow Shit would win elections all over the south in landslides. LANDSLIDES.

Look at my handle. Pun on yellow dog Democrat. You know the origin of that, don't you? When the Democratic Party was conservative and racist, you couldn't get a Republican elected in the South, ever. When the parties traded places with respect to ideology, southern voters flipped and now it's just the reverse. And it's much, much, much worse with Fox News and right wing hate radio rationalizing all their dumbass votes and the awful fucking bigotry.

It's the fucking South, y'all. When you have a region full of people waving flags over a failed rebellion that got the region shitstomped over 150 years ago, how the hell can you expect rational behavior? I was born in Georgia. Raised in Tennessee. I know my people, and they are fucked up. Clannish and fucked up. They're wonderful people if they recognize you as their own, and are the worst shitheads on earth if they don't. You don't need Russian intervention or hacked voting machines in the South for even a mean, obnoxious, self-righteous, bigoted, judgmental, out of touch asshole like Karen Handel to win. All you have to do is put an (R) beside her name and stand back. It's a goddamn miracle that Ossoff was within 20% in that district.

So damn, just stop it with the voting machines bullshit. You want to know the main reason we lost? Because of 40% voter turnout. If Democrats and/or progressives - everyone here obviously excepted - would get off their stupid asses and just go vote, we'd win a lot more elections and even maybe pull an upset here and there. The higher the turnout, the better Democrats do. I don't know what the solution to that is. Sometimes I think we need to put a shock collar around every progressive in the country and zap the fuck out of them until they go goddamn VOTE. Fuck, I'm disgusted with tonight.

GOP May Cancel August Recess To Inflict More Damage On The Working Class

Republicans in Washington, D.C. might be cancelling their month-long August vacation because they just haven’t accomplished enough of their agenda.  Keep in mind, that agenda involves doing away with safety regulations, cutting taxes for millionaires, and taking healthcare away from millions of American citizens. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.



http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/338220-gop-considers-cancelling-august-recess-to-salvage-agenda

The Honest Cabinet

Trump's Bizarre Kiss Ass Cabinet Meeting

Donald Trump opened a cabinet meeting by inviting the media in to hear the important business of the country.

What did the country hear?

First, Trump took time to praise himself, saying that “nobody would have believed” how many jobs were created in the last seven months … which was less than the jobs created in the previous seven months.

And that the papers were full of “big stories” about new mines opening.

There was also a self-celebration of Trump’s great achievements as a signer of legislation. Which are the greatest. The most ever.

It may be hard to think of a single piece of substantive legislation that bears Trump’s scrawl, but that’s because you’re not thinking hard enough. Besides, every tweet now counts as legislation.

What’s passing that Lilly Ledbetter Act next to calling Comey a coward from the toasty comfort of your bed?

 Once Trump got tired of hearing himself explain how great he was, it was time to share the duty with others. That big smacking sound was each Trump appointee taking his or her turn at telling Trump what a wonderful man he is, how right he is about everything, and how much everyone loves him.



Full story: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/12/1671049/-Donald-Trump-turns-a-cabinet-meeting-into-a-butt-kissing-ritual

Nina Turner Speaks To The People's Summit 2017

"How To Spot A Stoner," featuring Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

Steve Scalise Supported The Lack Of Laws And Regulations That Allowed His Shooting To Happen

Posted by Rude One

A good-sized chunk of Representative Steve Scalise's congressional career has been devoted to making guns easier to get. Scalise, a Louisiana Republican who is the Majority Whip in the House of Representatives, was one of five victims shot by James T. Hodgkinson in Alexandria, Virginia. The wannabe mass murderer was carrying a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol. Hodgkinson was gunned down and killed by Capitol police, but he had apparently come to the baseball field to specifically take out Republicans. A motivation beyond a deranged vision of how to achieve progressive goals hasn't been announced.

Scalise is proudly, even obnoxiously devoted to the Second Amendment. He has an A+ rating from the NRA and a 100% pro-gun voting record, and he has, on many occasions, spoken against any laws that might even minimally effect the free acquisition of all kinds of guns, including the kind of rifle used today on him.

On April 25, 2013, Scalise made a floor speech where he used the Sandy Hook massacre of children to support the rights of gun owners. "I think they counted over 40 different laws that were broken by the Sandy Hook murderer," Scalise said. "Then somebody is going to tell you that one more law, which makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get a gun, would have stopped him from doing that." The congressman doesn't mention that a law banning assault weapons would have actually slowed down Adam Lanza. And we're not even allowed to discuss banning handguns anymore, which would have done a great deal to stop the bloodshed.

Scalise co-sponsored a resolution that praised the Supreme Court for its Heller decision that eliminated limits on gun ownership in Washington, D.C. Prior to the decision, he had co-sponsored a bill that would have done the same thing, including repealing the ban on semiautomatic guns. And he co-wrote a 2015 letter to the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives condemning a reclassification of a kind of bullet. In the letter, he talks about the "the failed 'Assault Weapons Ban.'"

A more substantial action was that he voted to overturn President Obama's rule that prevented people who had been determined to be mentally ill from purchasing guns. I'd also bet that Scalise supports laws that allow people arrested for domestic violence to retain their guns. Hodgkinson had been charged several times for that kind of assault.

Look, this isn't a "blame the victim" type of thing. There is nothing that Steve Scalise did today that brought on the shooting. And I hope he and all the other victims recover fully.  But if a pig is gonna build a house out of straw, he shouldn't be too shocked when a wolf comes along to blow it down. It'd be something like a miracle if this caused Scalise to reconsider his blind devotion to the NRA and its perverse version of the Second Amendment.

More likely, though, it will just make him and his firearms-mad colleagues double-down and demand even more guns and fewer restrictions. And they will blame Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park, Black Lives Matter, angry liberals, and anyone and anything for this rather than take a single second to look in the hospital mirror to ask what they could do differently.

Like maybe stop talking romantically about using guns to solve problems.

10 Ways Mitch McConnell's Secret, Evil Senate Operation To Destroy The Affordable Health Care Act Will Make Life Hell For Many Americans

Mitch McConnell's politics have always been abysmal. But now he's playing with people's lives.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

June 13, 2017, 4:54 PM GMT

Photo Credit: cspan.org

As details emerge from Senate Republicans’ backroom deliberations to write a single bill repealing Obamacare, defunding Medicaid and deregulating health insurance, it's clear that virtually no American household—apart from the very rich—would be immune from fiscally painful and medically harsh consequences if the GOP gets a bill to the president’s desk.

For the past month, an 11 man committee appointed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has been meeting in secret to fine-tune the House-passed Obamacare repeal legislation. They are not starting anew, but are polishing a bill that will leave 15-20 million people without health care, prompt higher insurance and medical costs for all but the youngest adults, freeze and shrink state-run Medicaid (which now covers 45 percent of the children in rural America), and defund Planned Parenthood. This is according to analyses by the Congressional Budget Office, Kaiser Family Foundation and others.

Even the pro-corporate Washington Post editorial board has called out the GOP for its chaos-creating prescriptions, writing that they are “motivated to solve a problem that does not exist—saving a health-care system supposedly on the path to inevitable collapse by repealing and replacing Obamacare.” None of that seems to matter to McConnell, who wants to pass the as-yet-unreleased bill before the Senate’s July 4 recess. While defections from the GOP’s far right or few moderates could thwart any Senate bill’s passage, the White House has made it clear it wants McConnell to pass something the president can sign.

What’s unfolding in Washington right now is appalling. Beyond the cowardly political tactics, the GOP is literally playing with the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Everyone ages, and many will get sick and develop chronic illness and disease. The consequences can be devastating if the GOP shreds medical safety nets for the poor and allows the insurance industry to charge more yet deliver less health security in myriad ways.

What follows are 10 takeaways from the Senate’s Obamacare repeal process.

1. McConnell’s skullduggery is back. As Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from 2015 to 2017, wrote in a Washington Post column Saturday, only 8 percent of the public supported passage of the House’s Obamacare repeal bill (which also slashed Medicaid and included major tax cuts for the rich). He could have told senators to fix Obamacare’s problems, such as allowing small states to form insurance pools.

“Instead, McConnell put a plan in place to pass something close to the House bill using three simple tools: sabotage, speed and secrecy,” Slavitt wrote. “He formed a committee to meet secretly, hold no hearings, create a fast-track process and pressure Senate skeptics with backroom deals.” Trump just wants it done, Politico.com reported. “He’s definitely leaving it to Mitch to lead. But he very much wants it to happen,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, told Politico.

2. Congressional chaos is having its desired effect—2018 premiums to rise. The GOP is not just sending mixed signals about what they may do to one-sixth of the U.S. economy. They are intentionally provoking insurers to raise their prices for 2018 as a pretext to pass their legislation.

This was cited in a Washington Post editorial, “The GOP’s Obamacare Sabotage Continues,” in which the editorial board was unusually clear-eyed. “‘Insurers have made clear the lack of certainty is causing 2018 proposed premiums to rise significantly,’ House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Thursday, arguing that Congress should step in.” That’s creating a problem to fit a solution.

3. Meanwhile Trump’s team is also embracing more chaos. The Trump team is doing everything it can not to enforce Obamacare, such as “lax enforcement of the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, inadequate efforts to enroll more people in coverage and other gratuitous subversions of the finely tuned system Obamacare sought to create,” the same Post editorial said. As significant, the White House is refusing to commit to paying 2018 Obamacare subsidies for millions, according to Vox.com, which reported that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price wouldn’t even tell a U.S. Senate committee what the administration’s plans were.

4. Against this backdrop, the Senate is 'making progress.' That’s the word from a handful of center-right Republicans who have been shown glimpses of what’s going on behind closed doors—as if reversing one or two planks of the House bill is supposed to be a sign of moderation. That is absurd. Moreover, what the Senate is said to be doing is terrible.

For example, restoring Obamacare’s pre-existing condition rule—which requires insurers to sell people policies—but without cost controls or coverage requirements. Last month’s Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House-passed bill said a wide swath of the public “would be unable to purchase comprehensive coverage with premiums close to those under current law and might not be able to purchase coverage at all.” Moreover, many policies are likely to cover less once minimum coverage standards are deregulated.

5. The young will pay less, but everyone else won’t. The only people who stand to benefit, the New York Times reported, are those least likely to get sick. “The budget office [CBO] did note that the House bill would potentially lead to lower prices, especially for younger and healthier people,” it said. “But the budget office also warned that markets in states that allowed insurers to charge higher premiums for people with pre-existing conditions—whether high blood pressure, a one-time visit to a specialist or cancer.” This is what deregulation of the insurance industry will bring. The industry will go back to creating more barriers between patients and doctors.

6. Many policies will only be used for hospitalization. Other analyses include scenarios where people will see deductibles rise to levels where they will pay for most care until a serious emergency requiring hospital care arises. As the Times wrote, that can amount to a major fiscal burden.

“Millions of people could also wind up with little choice but to buy cheap plans that provided minimal coverage in states that opted out of requiring insurers to cover maternity care, mental health and addiction treatment or rehabilitation services, among other services required under the Affordable Care Act. Consumers who could not afford high premiums would wind up with enormous out-of-pocket medical expenses.”

7. Medicaid is going to be frozen, justified by big lies. Another detail that’s leaked out of the Senate drafting sessions is that it’s not a question whether Medicaid will see $800 billion in reduced spending and 14 million fewer recipients during the next decade, as the House bill laid out. Rather it is a question of how fast the Medicaid rollback will be. The Hill reports there’s been debate whether it will be three years or seven years. Vox.com also reports that the Senate wants to institute an approach that could lead to sharper funding cuts than the House: more frequent revisions to Medicaid reimbursement rates.

The White House and GOP talking points on this are a series of lies. HHS Secretary Price told a Senate committee, “We are trying to decrease the number of uninsured,” after the CBO estimated that 23 million people would lose insurance. Trump has said he will not touch Medicare—even though Medicaid pays for nursing home care in that program. And Republicans keep saying this is not spending cuts, but slower spending increases. “What the defenders of this claim—ranging from Karl Rove to Sally Pipes—have insisted is that this is a cut to the growth rate, not cuts to the existing program,” wrote health policy blogger Emma Sandoe. “The reality is that states will have to reduce the number of services they provide or reduce the types of people that can enroll as inflation and increased costs in medical services rise.”

8. This is a war on government and on the poor. What the GOP is trying to do is not just go after Obamacare, but dismantle safety nets dating back to the 1960s. As Sandoe noted, “The GOP has campaigned for decades on the idea that the social welfare state is bloated and that the oversized growth of the welfare state needs to be trimmed. The GOP should embrace the idea of calling per-capita caps and block grants cuts. From a policy perspective, the goal of the per-capita caps and block grants is to reduce the size and scope of the program.”

9. Republicans are pursuing this despite vast opposition. Recent polls show safety nets are incredibly popular while the GOP’s American Health Care Act is not. On Medicaid alone, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll by Democrats and Republicans opposed cutting its expansion and changing its financing structure. “Many other polls show that the majority of voters have favorable views of Medicaid, coming close to the level of support for Medicare,” Sandoe wrote. “Telling is that a Quinnipiac poll found that Republicans oppose cuts to Medicaid. This is one possible reason that the latest [GOP] messaging appears to be focused on reframing the cuts as minimal. Meanwhile, the AHCA has polled from 17–21 percent by Quinnipiac and only 8 percent think that the Senate should pass these reforms without changes.”

10. If this passes, a colossal downward spiral will ensue. The impact of the AHCA, if passed, is not just going to be fiscal—in terms of increased out-of-pocket costs for those with insurance policies. As the Times reported, people age 50 and older, and “millions of middle- and working-class Americans” will once again be trapped in their jobs because they will be unable to pay for coverage. “The Affordable Care Act has enabled many of those workers to get transitional coverage that provides a bridge to the next phase of their lives—a stopgap to get health insurance if they leave a job, are laid off, start a business or retire early.”

For those too poor to buy insurance, Medicaid will contract and likely be forced to focus on emergency and crisis care, rather than prevention. Rationing care will likely ensue, unless states step in with raising revenues to offset federal cutbacks. Safety nets are likely to roll backwards, landing somewhere between where they are now and where they were before Obamacare’s reforms took effect.

McConnell’s Fast Track
As Axios.com reported, McConnell is hoping to finalize the Senate’s legislation this week, because the Congressional Budget Office will need two weeks to “score” it—the Washington term for assessing its financial and programmatic impacts—if it is to come up for a Senate floor vote before the July 4 break. While it's possible that McConnell could present a bill without that analysis, it is likely that more details will emerge in coming days.

At that point, Republicans will surely feel the full wrath of voters who aren’t going to have anything positive to say if their health care is trashed, or if the GOP tries to blame Obama and the Democrats for market chaos they have worsened, not diminished.

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's democracy and voting rights. He is the author of several books on elections and the co-author of Who Controls Our Schools: How Billionaire-Sponsored Privatization Is Destroying Democracy and the Charter School Industry (AlterNet eBook, 2016).

Trump Supporters Are The Walking Dead

It increasingly looks like Russian hackers may have affected actual vote totals.

The Hard Truth Keeps Trickling Out, Little by Little

The Confederate General Babbles Before Congress

Posted by Excommunicated Cardinal

At 2:30pm Eastern time today, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III will testify under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding his contacts with government officials of the Russian Federation prior to the January 20th inauguration, as well as his role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Many burning questions remain for Sessions.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has brought on money laundering experts, a veritable "murders' row" of prosecutors, while the right-wing world has turned on him in a transparent and vicious attempt to undermine the credibility of the investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia and other filthy laundry the investigation turns up.

To complicate matters further for the embattled chief executive, there are reports that he is considering attempting to fire Robert Mueller. Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott of ProPublica have also reported that Trump's personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz has claimed to have been a catalyst in the firing of former US Attorney Preet Bhara.

In other news, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the administration in regards to Trump's self-proclaimed travel ban, unanimously upholding an injunction preventing the implementation of the policy.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is trying desperately to pass another cruel ACA-repeal bill with no public text or CBO score.

The Incontrovertible Evidence

When Trump Said He'd Testify, He Didn't Mean To Congress

Trump will not testify before Congress under oath, a development that legal experts say was expected but that illustrates the pitfalls of the president’s tendency to shoot from the hip in public remarks.

Trump said at a Friday press conference that would “100%” agree to give sworn testimony in response to former FBI director James Comey’s allegations last week.

On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the president was “specifically asked whether or not he would talk to Director Mueller,” the special counsel investigating alleged Russian election meddling, under oath.

In fact, Trump was asked generally about giving sworn testimony rebutting Comey’s allegations that the president asked him to pledge loyalty and to ease up on the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Asked a follow-up about Mueller specifically, the president said he would speak with him as well.

Congressional Democrats were giddy at the prospect of grilling Trump under oath, but experts say that testimony was probably never going to happen. “I think that was expected,” said national security attorney Bradley Moss. “Having the President testify before Congress raises significant separation of powers concerns. The last to do it was Gerald Ford and all others since have adamantly refused.”

But Moss and his law partner Mark Zaid say the president didn’t seem aware of that fact during his remarks on Friday. “This Presidency is marked like none other by a White House tendency to reinterpret the specific words of the President. Every time that happens its credibility suffers,” Zaid said in an email.

—Lachlan Markay

The Oldest Known Surviving PC Operating System

By Jenny List

You’ll all be familiar with the PC, the ubiquitous x86-powered workhorse of desktop and portable computing. All modern PC's are descendants of the original from IBM, the model 5150 which made its debut in August 1981. This 8088-CPU-driven machine was expensive and arguably not as accomplished as its competitors, yet became an instant commercial success.

The genesis of its principal operating system is famous in providing the foundation of Microsoft’s huge success. They had bought Seattle Computer Products’ 86-DOS, which they then fashioned into the first release version of IBM’s PC-DOS. And for those interested in these early PC operating systems there is a new insight to be found, in the form of a pre-release version of PC-DOS 1.0 that has found its way into the hands of OS/2 Museum.

Sadly they don’t show us the diskette itself, but we are told it is the single-sided 160K 5.25″ variety that would have been the standard on these early PCs. We say “the standard” rather than “standard” because a floppy drive was an optional extra on a 5150, the most basic model would have used cassette tape as a storage medium.

The disk is bootable, and indeed we can all have a play with its contents due to the magic of emulation. The dates on the files reveal a date of June 1981, so this is definitely a pre-release version and several months older than the previous oldest known PC-DOS version. They detail an array of differences between this disk and the DOS we might recognize, perhaps the most surprising of which is that even at this late stage it lacks support for .EXE executables.

You will probably never choose to run this DOS version on your PC, but it is an extremely interesting and important missing link between surviving 86-DOS and PC-DOS versions. It also has the interesting feature of being the oldest so-far-found operating system created specifically for the PC.

If you are interested in early PC hardware, take a look at this project using an AVR processor to emulate a PC’s 8088.

George Will: Republicans Are Wrong To Embrace A Political Sociopath