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Republicans 'move on' to tax reform, and yet it looks oddly familiar - Washington Post

Up until now, Russian and other foreign bots have been chummy with Trump and the GOP on social media, with "nearly half of the presidents followers appearing to be fake or spam accounts," according to Newsweek.

But over the last 48 hours, these bots have begun to change their tune. According to Newsweek:

Russian-linked bots and trolls have caused a surge in use of the hashtag #ResignPaulRyan on Twitter over the last 48 hours, just as the Republican speaker of the House was returning to his hometown of Wisconsin for a month-long respite from Washington, D.C.

A monitoring dashboard established by the Alliance [German Marshall Funds Alliance For Securing Democracy] noted the uptick Monday morning. It coincided with surges in the use of other hashtags by Russian bots, including #TrumpTV, #Magnitsky, #Fake and #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion.

It hasnt been a common occurrence for the Alliances dashboard to pick up on Russian bot activity targeting members of the GOP since the site was first launched last week by former FBI special agent Clint Watts. But Ryan wasnt the only member of Trumps party to face countless bots demanding his removal. A campaign calling on the president to fire National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster received widespread support from bots and trolls over the last several days using the hashtag #FireMcMaster, eventually getting picked up by some right-wing fake news sites that seem to have the presidents full attention, including Breitbart.

Nice time to go on a 17-day vacation.

Image: DonkeyHotey

Twitters indecisive approach to dealing with trolls, harassment and general abusesuspected by the paranoid as a symptom its need for growth and reachconfounds users to this day. But the blind eye enables more interesting phenomena, too, such as bot armies pushing fringe stories into the trending tags list. Joseph Bernstein: MicroChip, who operates behind a []

Biomimicry continues to make amazing strides. Festo just released footage of their OctopusGripper being put through the paces.

In Even good bots fight, a paper written by Oxford Internet Institute researchers and published in PLOS One, the authors survey the edits and reverts made by Wikipedias diverse community of bots, uncovering some curious corners where bots rate-limited by Wikipedias rules for bots slowly and remorseless follow one another around, reverting each []

Working remotely often means using a full-size laptop, or forcing a tablet to do things it was never intended to do. Depending on your job, each may be a reasonable, if somewhat compromising solution, or an impossibly frustrating one. Either way, youll be stuck with a tiny screen and a form factor that will destroy []

Web technology has matured considerably in the last decade, and developers are continually in demand. If youre looking to add some skills to your resume, or are just interested in exploring the possibilities of the web, check out this Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp.In this course, youll get a comprehensive overview of full-stack development using modern []

Even if you only use your PC for web browsing, media playback, or light document creation, default software can sometimes come up short. To give your Windows PC a bit of a boost, weve compiled a variety of helpful, paid apps that can enhance your user experience and make you more productive.In thePremium PC Power []

Follow this link:
Russian bots are turning against GOP, attacking Republicans - Boing Boing

Congressional Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Actso a former Trump volunteer wants to repeal his donations to the party.

Robert Heghmann is a former Trump campaign volunteer, and a sworn enemy of ObamaCare. In a lawsuit filed in Virginias Eastern District Court on Thursday, Heghmann says he and fellow Republicans had donated to the GOP with the understanding that the party would repeal the ACA once they took control of Congress.

But Republicans doomed repeal efforts last month left Heghmann feeling scammed. He accuses the party of running a racketeering and mail fraud scheme to rip off anti-ObamaCare donorsand he wants the GOP to return every donation it received since 2013.

Heghmann, 70, contributed well over $1,000 supporting Republican Party Events and Republican Candidates based upon the pledge... that if Republicans contributed money and votes to the Republican Party and Republicans successfully took control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, Republicans in Congress would Repeal and Replace Obamacare, he claims in his lawsuit.

(Federal Election Committee filings only list $750 in donations under Heghmanns name. Heghmann could not be reached for comment.)

Senate Republicans attempts to repeal the ACA last month were met with national outrage. Protesters risked arrest to demonstrate outside congressional offices. Republicans huddled to draft a repeal bill in secret and moved to proceed on the mystery bill, before their efforts crashed and burned in a late-night vote. But the GOPs failure wasnt the result of a half-baked bill or intra-party dissent, Heghmanns suit argues: Republicans never actually planned to repeal the ACA.

As early as November, 2012, the leaders of the Republican Party knew that the Republican Party was not going to Repeal and Replace Obamacare, his suit reads. After the Re-election of President Obama in the November 2012 election, Speaker John Boehner admitted that Obamacare was not going to be repealed. Speaking to reporters he stated flatly, Obamacare is now the law of the land."

But Republicans kept fundraising on the promise of an ACA repeal. Since Boehners admission, the GOP and its branch in Virginia (Heghmanns home state) have collected over $735 Million by promising that the Republican Party would Repeal and Replace Obamacare, Heghmann writes in his suit. That promise was false and fraudulent.

The alleged fraud was baked into the GOPs now-debunked 2016 presidential election platform, which promised that a Republican president, on the first day in office, will use legitimate waiver authority under the law to halt its advance and then, with the unanimous support of Congressional Republicans, will sign its repeal." Heghmann correctly notes that this did not happen.

If Republicans do not repeal the ACA, Heghmann wants a court to force the party into returning all donations from 2013 until present.

The Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia did not return The Daily Beasts requests for comment.

Morton Blackwell, a member of the RNCs Virginia leadership team told the Virginian-Pilot that Heghmanns suit was frivolous but sign of conservative anger that the Republican-controlled Congress has not yet repealed and replaced Obamacare.

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Heghmann is far from the first Republican to attack his own party over its repeal failure. During Donald Trumps presidential campaign, Heghmann co-chaired Trumps operations in Carroll County, New Hampshire, a county that accidentally listed a journalist as a chair, forcing the journalist to contact the Trump campaign asking to be removed from its New Hampshire literature. (The journalists vacated seat was awarded to an 18-year-old.)

On the morning of the Senates most recent ACA repeal vote, Trump took to Twitter to cheer on what many viewed as an uphill effort for Senate Republicans.

Come on Republican Senators, you can do it on Healthcare. After seven years, this is your chance to shine! Don't let the American people down! Trump tweeted.

The following morning, when the sun rose on a thoroughly trounced GOP bill, Trump tweeted again to voice his disgust with 3 Republicans and 48 Democrats who let the American people down.

Heghmann claims that was the plan all along.

Continued here:
Republicans Sued for 'Racketeering' Over Trumpcare's Failure - Daily Beast

In recent weeks, we've seen Sen. John McCain defy the President by sinking the effort to repeal Obamacare. Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Trump to back off his criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions or it would be the beginning of the end of his presidency. Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake published a new book lambasting Republicans for remaining silent as they watch the dysfunction of this administration play out in real time. People are already speculating about potential primary challengers to Trump, should he run for reelection in 2020.

And a growing number of conservative pundits feel comfortable expressing doubts about President Trump, even in the conservative holy land of Fox News.

But this is not an easy stance for Republicans. In fact, they own President Trump. They can try to disassociate themselves from him, but they and their party are as culpable as anyone for creating a path in American politics that allowed him to win election and to govern in the way that he does. He is in fact a Republican, given what the party has become, and is not some maverick who has stolen away the party. It wasn't that he outwitted the Republican establishment, it's that the Republican establishment has changed.

To understand the roots of President Trump, it is vital to remember that the Republican Party thus far has generally stood behind him and his agenda. Evangelical voters entered into a Faustian bargain with their support for a candidate who personally seems to be the antithesis of everything that their movement supports.

Almost no Republicans have objected to the extreme measures that President Trump has been pursuing through executive action, such as rolling back regulations to curb climate change or ramping up border security.

From Newt Gingrich's election as House Speaker in the wake of the 1994 midterms through the emergence of the tea party, the Republicans have steadily shifted to the right on public policy and adopted an aggressive, do-what-it-takes style to governance that laid the groundwork for the Trump presidency.

If Republicans really become dissatisfied with President Trump and what he stands for, they will have to take a deep dive into their own history and reckon with it. Otherwise, any effort to cleanse the party of President Trump's impact won't really work. Republicans will find themselves in the same place come 2020.

See the article here:
Like it or not, the Republicans own President Trump - CNN

By

August 6, 2017, 1:15 PM EDT

Senate Republicans are expressing a willingness to consider a bipartisan approach to strengthening the individual insurance market under Obamacare, even as President Donald Trump is deciding whether to end payments for it.

Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Saturday hed be open to the attempt,which follows the collapse of Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, according to the Associated Press. Republican Senator Thom Tillis said hed be obligated to consider it.

We have got a destabilized market where insurance rates are going to go up 20, 30, 40 percent next year, Tillis of North Carolina said on ABCs This Week on Sunday. Anything that we can do to prevent that and the damage that that will have on people who need health care I think is something I have to look at.

The Senate health committee will begin bipartisan hearings in early September on stabilizing and strengthening the Affordable Care Acts individual insurance market, Republican Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and top Democrat Patty Murray of Washington said in a joint statement on Aug. 1.

While saying he was open to a bipartisan plan for subsidies, McConnell also said on Saturday there was still a chance to address a repeal and replacement of Obamacare -- but that it was quickly becoming unlikely, according to the AP.

Trump has also tweeted to his 35.2 million followers that senators, who are away from Washington for their summer recess, shouldnt vote on anything else until theyve completed the effort to revamp President Barack Obamas signature health law.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said July 30 that no decisions been made on whether to continue key subsidies under the law to health-insurance companies, but that the administrations job is to follow the law of the land.

The payments,called cost-sharing reductions, help insurers offset health-care costs for low-income Americans. Trump has repeatedly suggested ending the payments as bargaining tactic to bring Democrats to the negotiating table.

The next payment is due on Aug. 21.

Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The cost-sharing reductions over time need to be eliminated, Tillis said. But we cant just all of the sudden pull the rug out from underneath an industry that has had this in place for about seven years.

Appearing together on CBSs Face the Nation on Sunday Republican Governor John Kasich of Ohio and Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado said both parties should work to find a solution.

Republicans are going to have to admit that there is a group of people out there who will need help, Kasich said.

I think well be surprised at the number of senators that are willing to kind of step back and say, All right. Lets roll up our sleeves, and work on a bipartisan basis, and see how far we can go, Hickenlooper said.

Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said we do need to stabilize those markets but urged his colleagues to move on to other priorities.

I really do think we probably ought to turn our attention to debt ceiling and funding the government and tax cuts until we can really get all the parties together, Johnson said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday.

With assistance by Mark Niquette, and Patricia Laya

View post:
Senate Republicans Nod at Bipartisan Push for Insurer Payments - Bloomberg