What's your favorite line or lines from the movie "Airplane" (1980)?

STEWARDESS
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking.
We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused.
This is due to periodic air pockets we encountered.
There is no reason to become alarmed and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight.
By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?

GOP Push to Replace Obamacare Reflects Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America

Democracy Now
June 29, 2017


As Republicans attempt to revive a bill to overturn Obamacare, we look at the radical right's attempt to reshape the role of the federal government - from healthcare to education to housing.
We speak with Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, author of the new book,
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America"
MacLean also uncovers the instrumental role the late libertarian economist James Buchanan played in the right's campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting and privatize schools.

NERMEEN SHAIKH
While the Congressional Budget Office predicts 22 million would lose health insurance as a result of the Senate healthcare bill, some forces in the Republican Party, including the billionaire Koch brothers, say the bill does not go far enough.
This comes as the Koch brothers recently announced plans to spend between $300 million and $400 million in the 2018 midterm elections.
During a retreat last week, Charles Koch said: "We are more optimistic now about what we can accomplish than we have ever been."

AMY GOODMAN
Well, as the Koch brothers gear up for the 2018 elections, we turn now to look at the idealogical roots that have reshaped the Republican Party in recent decades.
A new book by the historian Nancy MacLean uncovers the instrumental role the late libertarian economist James Buchanan played in the right's campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize schools and curb democratic majority rule.
Her book is titled "Democracy in Chains:The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America."
MacLean is a professor of history and public policy at Duke University.
Nancy MacLean, welcome to Democracy Now.

NANCY MACLEAN
I'm so pleased to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN
Let's start with today's headline, the healthcare bill..Deeply unpopular.
Let's just look quickly at the polls, across the board.
You have the Quinnipiac poll that says 16 percent of the people in this country approve the Republican plan.
You've got the USA Today poll, only 12 percent.
You've got NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 17 percent.
And yet the Republicans are attempting to revive it and push it through once again.
In your book, Democracy in Chains, you lay out the deep history of the radical right's stealth plan for America.
Talk about this as an example of what you have found.

NANCY MACLEAN
Yes..I had never encountered James Buchanan before I started the research that ultimately became this book.
But what I learned in the course of that research is that this economist, who was trained at the University of Chicago, who was part of the same milieu as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Kayek and so forth, he went a distinctive way.
And he used the economic tools he got at the University of Chicago to look at politics in a new way.
And he produced, ultimately, the kind of pernicious cynicism that we see all around us today and that Donald Trump's candidacy and rhetoric embodies.
And in the healthcare debate, what we see is that Buchanan gave the advice to others on the right and to his corporate funders and donors and the people that he talked to that for capitalism of a kind they wanted to thrive, that democracy must be enchained.
Democracy must be, in effect, shackled, to prevent the majority will from being expressed, because it would take too much from people of great wealth, and that would be a problem for them.

More:
http://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/29/republican_push_to_replace_obamacare_reflects

GOP Infighting Erupts Over Healthcare Bill

The Hill
June 28, 2017
06:50 PM EDT


Senate Republicans are struggling mightily to find a path forward for their Obamacare repeal bill, with infighting between moderates and conservatives threatening to create an impasse heading into the July Fourth recess.

GOP leaders say they want to have an agreement on changes to the legislation by Friday, but senators said they made virtually no progress at a lunch meting on Wednesday.
In fact, the two sides seemed to grow further apart.

Conservatives represented by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) squared off against moderates led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) over lunch. according to lawmakers who attended.

They battled over Cruz's "Consumer Freedom" proposal, which would allow companies to sell health insurance plans that don't meet the requirements of the Affordable care Act.

Collins and other moderates expressed opposition to the plan, fearing that it would lead to sicker Americans becoming segregated in the insurance markets.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis), meanwhile, continued to chastise leadership for not running a more open process in drafting the legislation and ignoring many ideas from rank-and-file colleagues-
criticisms he has voiced over the past few weeks.

One senator described the talks as "running in circles."

More:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/339956-gop-infighting-erupts-over-healthcare-bill

New study in Annals of Internal Medicine: "Being uninsured can raise death rates by 3-29 percent"

Democracy Now
June 27, 2017


A stunning new study in the "Annals of Internal Medicine" is estimating some 26,000 people could die early deaths if they lose health insurance.
We're joined now by the author of the study, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, professor at
CCNY-Hunter College, primary care physician, lecturer at Harvard Medical School and
co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

AMY GOODMAN
Welcome to Democracy Now

DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
My pleasure

GOODMAN
Tell us what you found.

DR WOOLHANDLER
We reviewed the world's scientific literature on the relationship between health insurance and mortality....And there is really now a scientific consensus that being uninsured raises the death rates....It raises your death rates by between 3 and 29 percent....And the math on that is that if you take health insurance away from 22 million people, about 29,000 of them will die every year, annually, as a result....There was a similar review in the New England Journal of Medicine.
We published our own study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which is the official organ of the American College of Physicians, the nation's largest medical specialty society.
So, being uninsured raises your death rate.
That is established scientific consensus.
And many of the Republicans have been trying to say:
"Oh, you can take away health insurance from 22 million people, and nothing will happen."
That's simply contradicted by the scientific consensus.

(From later on in the interview)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
"I want to see - and I speak from the heart - that's what I want to see..I want to see a bill with heart."

AMY GOODMAN
Your response?

DR STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
Well, Trumpcare has no heart whatsoever.
The House bill was going to throw 23 million people off insurance.
The Senate bill is going to throw 22 million off in ten years but then keep throwing more off.
You know, they're going to make health insurance worse for people with private coverage by getting rid of the rules about what has to be covered, so your private insurance will no longer have to cover maternity care.
They're actually robbing money from the Medicare Trust Fund.
They're taking $117 billion out of the Medicare Trust Fund, which pays for the health insurance when people turn 65.
$117 billion is taken out of that trust fund to give tax cuts to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
That's not heart.
That's the opposite of heart.

Read transcript of entire interview//Watch full show:
http://www.democracynow.org/2017/6/27/senate_gop_healthcare_bill_estimated_to

Feeling blue in deep-red America: Advice for progressives in Trumpland

Salon.com
Monday, June 26, 2017

An ethical culture specialist has advice for progressives in predominantly conservative areas.

According to Dr. Richard Koral, a leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture,
it's a lonely life - but it doesn't have to be.

"Progressives living in predominantly conservative areas sometimes feel isolated and alienated from their community and yearn for the society of others who share their most basic outlook in life, even if they do not agree on every feature of a plan or program," Koral explained to Salon.
"People find emotional sustenance in having an opportunity to be heard and understood by other people.
It gives them confirmation of their core beliefs as well as support and encouragement to take a moral stand."

His advice for these individuals?
Become activists, even if the opposition around you feels overwhelming.

"In the age of screaming, it's important to stop and listen - even to those who do not support our views.
We strive to remember and recognize the humanity of others who have a different perspective.
In order to effectively communicate one's views, especially in a way that will spark change,
it is important to be patient, empathetic, and a listener as much as a talker."

This advice may seem obvious - get involved in activist movements, think beyond yourself and show empathy toward those with whom you disagree.
In a era that elected a race-baiting, science-hating reality TV star as it's president, however, even common sense sometimes needs a boost.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the ethical culture movement's broader objectives,
it's hard to dissent from their sense that our society needs a lot of activism and empathy at this juncture in it's history.

Read entire article:
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/26/feeling-blue-in-deep-red-america-advice-for-progressives-in-trumpland/

Third Annual Trump Limerick Contest

There once was a grumpy old fart
Who turned lying into an art
He couldn't be trusted
But never got busted
His lawyers were always too smart

White House officials complaining they can't get through to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Washington Post via Raw Story
June 23, 2017


White House officials have complained they can't get through to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose chief of staff has closed off access to her boss.

The former Exxon Mobil chief executive has frustrated White House officials by surrounding himself with a tight circle of aides, led by his chief of staff, reported the Washington Post.

State Department chief of staff Margaret Peterlin has built a barrier around Tillerson, some Trump aides told the newspaper, and put herself - "and only her," one administration official sniffed - at the center of information and decision making in the diplomatic agency.

Peterlin has been limiting access to Tillerson, one outside advisor told the newspaper, which has forced White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and other top officials to "sneak around" or call the Secretary of State on his cell phone.

"It is stoved-piped," one senior administration official said.
"Calls aren't getting returned. It's that kind of crap."

More:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/rex-tillerson-out-of-touch-with-the-white-house-calls-arent-getting-returned-that-kind-of-crap/

What's your favorite Beatles album?

Senate Democrats Need To Go Nuclear On Trumpcare Right Now

Source:
The New Republic


Senate Democrats need to go nuclear on Trumpcare right now.
Senate Republicans are working to fast-track a health care bill in utmost secrecy before the
July 4 recess.

It's clear that the bill - which is shaping up to be as disastrous as the House-passed
American Health Care Act - won't be let out of the dungeon until the very last second to avoid scrutiny.
Republicans aren't planning to hold any hearings and they won't publicly release a draft of the bill because, as one senior GOP aide told Axios, "We aren't stupid."

If Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority want to pass a bill taking away health insurance from some 20 million Americans, there isn't much that Democrats can do about it in the end.
But they can delay the process - and activists are pushing them to do just that.
Groups like Indivisible and MoveOn want Democrats to withhold consent - a parliamentary maneuver that slows down Senate business - to trip up McConnell.

According to Jeff Stein at Vox, Senate Democrats don't have any current plans to do so.
They argue that "going nuclear" would only unify Republicans in their resolve and would, at most, stall the inevitable by a few weeks.

But those few weeks can be vital.
When the House passed the AHCA in May, speed was of the essence: Activists were caught flat-footed and were unable to put pressure on House members in full force.
The political theater of Senate Democrats making a last stand to defeat the bill would help garner more publicity for that effort.
More importantly, it would shine a light on what Republicans are doing:
They are jamming through a massive overhaul of the health care system IN SECRET, one that will likely kick millions of Americans off their health insurance, literally leaving some people to die by 2018.

More + links:
http://newrepublic.com/minutes/143300/senate-democrats-need-go-nuclear-trumpcare-right-now


"TRUMPCARE: Tell Democrats to shut down the Senate now"
http://act.democracyforamerica.com/sign/shut-down-the-senate-trumpcare/

Senate Dems finally planning an offensive against Trumpcare

Daily Kos
June 16, 2017


The clock is winding down and unless Senate Democrats take bold action, Republicans will repeal Obamacare

Democrats can slow Trumpcare down for days and possibly weeks by forcing votes on an unlimited number of amendments, delaying the vote until they run out of amendments.
This vote-a-rama will finally force a public debate on the bill Mitch McConnell has been hiding from everyone.

(From LA Times last Friday, June 9, 2017)
"While You Watched Comey, Senate GOP Moved to Cripple Health Care&quot
Having learned from their colleagues in the House that the best way - possibly the only way --to pass a grossly unpopular healthcare repeal bill is to hide the details, the Senate GOP used the cover of the Comey hearing Thursday to move the repeal along.
While the eyes of political wonks across Washington, D.C., and the nation, were glued to telecasts of former FBI Director James Comey's testimony about his closed-door encounters with President Trump, Senate Republicans worked to fast-track their version of the American Health Care Act, the measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act that was passed by the House GOP on May 4.
On Wednesday (6/7/2017), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), invoked Senate Rule 14, which allows a bill to bypass committee consideration and be brought to the floor for a vote....That means no hearings and no debate, and improves the prospect of a vote before the Senate leaves Washington for it's August recess.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-senate-healthcare-20170609-story.html

(From Democracy for America, June 11, 2017)
"Elizabeth Warren is Sounding the Alarm: Trumpcare is Coming To a Vote in the Senate"
Here's what Sen. Warren said:
"Senate Republicans are going to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act by the end of the month...And here's the horrifying part - They seem to think they have the votes in the Senate to do it...I'm not crying wolf here...I'm really worried...Health care for millions of Americans is on the line in the next (two) weeks...The Republicans are counting on the fact that so many terrible things are happening right now - and everyone thinks that Trumpcare is dead - that they can slip this through before we have a chance to get organized."

The Senate version of Trumpcare is just as bad as the bill that passed the House last month.
It would destroy Medicaid and leave millions without health care.
It would still leave people with illnesses and pre-existing conditions being unable to afford or receive health care.
However, if just three Senate Republicans vote against Trumpcare, we can stop this bill in it's tracks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10029189965


Back to: "Senate Dems finally planning an offensive against Trumpcare"
Senate Democrats CAN "slow Trumpcare down for days and possibly even weeks by FORCING votes on an unlimited number of amendments, delaying the vote until they run out of amendments...This vote-a-rama will finally force a public debate on the bill Mitch McConnell has been hiding from everyone."
"Senate Democrats Plan Offensive To Try To Save Obamacare"
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/13/senate-democrats-save-obamacare-239493


What Daily Kos is suggesting is that we call our DEMOCRATIC senators and ask them to prepare as many amendments to Trumpcare as possible.
If the phone lines are busy, send e-mails.

(Use the sample script below )
"Hello, my name is ___ and I'm calling from (your zip code) in (your city or town).
We need to delay the Trumpcare vote as long as possible.
I'm urging you to prepare as many amendments as you can to the healthcare bill.
Please hold a vote-a-rama to stop Republicans from repealing Obamacare.
Thank you.