- Trump loyalists sound alarm over ‘RyanCare,’ endangering health bill (WaPo) "Trump’s allies worry he is jeopardizing his presidency by promoting the bill spearheaded by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), arguing it would fracture Trump’s coalition of working- and middle-class voters, many of them older and subsisting on federal aid. Trump loyalists warned that the president was at risk of violating some of his biggest campaign promises — such as providing broad health coverage for all Americans and preserving Medicaid and other entitlement programs — in service to an ideological project championed for years by Ryan and other establishment Republicans."
- The Original Lie About Obamacare (NYT) "How did the [Republican] party’s leaders put themselves in this position? They’re trying to fix a fictional one: saving America from a partisan, socialistic big-government takeover of health care. The kumbaya plan for which pundits now wax nostalgic was not an option. The reason is simple enough: Obamacare is the bipartisan version of health reform. It accomplishes a liberal end through conservative means and is much closer to the plan conservatives favored a few decades ago than the one liberals did. Today’s Republican Party has moved so far to the right that it no longer supports any plan that covers the uninsured. Of course, Republican leaders are not willing to say as much, because they know how unpopular that position is."
- The CBO’s Flawed Forecast (National Review) "The CBO has long believed that Obamacare’s individual mandate has a powerful effect on enrollment in health insurance — more powerful than a dispassionate look at the evidence can sustain."
- The Budget Trick That Will Be Used to Sell Trumpcare (Ozy) "Why do the figures matter? In a spin-happy town, the CBO scores have long carried weight for their lack of bias. But that reputation stands on shaky ground. Even though the CBO’s chief is a Republican appointee with a conservative background, the Trump administration and others tried to undermine his report on the Obamacare replacement before it was even released by pointing to the CBO’s misses on the original Obamacare. (Its forecast for the health care exchanges was off by millions, in part because it expected more employers to drop health insurance.)"
- Audio Emerges of When Paul Ryan Abandoned Donald Trump: ‘I Am Not Going to Defend Donald Trump—Not Now, Not in the Future’ (Breitbart) "But in conversations Breitbart News has had with no fewer than 15 other White House aides...it is clear that the President and the senior Trump administration team are not happy with this bill’s lack of conservative support. The President and his team were assured by Ryan that conservatives would...be on board with it in the beginning, something that has turned out to not be accurate. Interestingly, much more so than Ryan and his House GOP leadership team, the White House is much more open to significant negotiation on the details in a healthcare bill—including the structure, vehicle, timeline and more. Several senior White House aides confirmed to Breitbart News that while the administration is publicly touting the bill as the party line, the President is much more willing to wheel and deal on this front than Ryan loyalists on his team would have anyone believe. As such...there are now rumblings among House Republicans that they may want a replacement not just of Obamacare but a replacement of Paul Ryan as Speaker. A new Speaker, some argue, would make life much easier for President Trump as he moves forward with his agenda. So the argument goes, as some House GOP members have told Breitbart News, is that if healthcare is this rocky then tax reform, immigration, trade policy and other key Trump agenda items will be worse."
- Democrats’ Sudden Amnesia about Obamacare’s Many Ills (National Review) "Republicans’ alternative to Obamacare deserves much of the criticism it has received. It is the lackluster product of a party that no longer knows what it believes. But no one should be allowed to forget, or misrepresent, the failure it’s trying to fix."
- The House Should Slow Down and Fix the GOP Health-Care Bill (National Review) "Three of its key features, corresponding to the CBO’s three questionable assumptions, should get some attention in particular. First, most conservative health-reform plans in recent years proposed to make an individual mandate unnecessary by using 'continuous coverage' protections to encourage healthier people to buy insurance. Second, the new tax credit envisioned by the Republican bill is means-tested at the top (phasing out for individuals with more than $75,000 in income) but not at the bottom (and so not phasing in with greater support for lower-income people just above the new Medicaid threshold). And third, although the bill does deregulate some of Obamacare’s most onerous insurance rules — including the premium age bands that impose higher costs on younger people and the actuarial-value requirements that lead to higher premiums — it does not reverse Obamacare’s core federalization of insurance coverage."
NEWS:
- Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes (WaPo) "The White House's reactions to Trump's evidence-free claims — be it this one [about wire taping Trump Tower] or the one about millions of illegal votes in 2016 — is to call for investigations. That has the triple benefit of putting the onus on someone else to look into it, to buy some time and hope people forget that the president is making such wild allegations, and, in this case, to give themselves an excuse to clam up. But that also puts Republicans such as Nunes and Graham in the position of having to account for these claims — and calling on Trump and his team to put up or shut up. By pushing the administration to produce evidence — or else — they are effectively putting the ball back in the executive branch's court. The subtext: You can't just make these claims and then ask us to deal with the fallout."
- Lawmakers skewer top Marine officer over nude-photo scandal (WaPo) "Last week, reports indicated that the photo sharing wasn’t just a Marine Corps problem and that other parts of the military were soliciting naked photos of female service members from every other branch, including at least two service academies." and Harassed Online, She Remains Determined to Enlist in the Marines (NYT)
- Republicans are defining lunacy down (WaPo) "...Trump does not support things because they are true; they are true because he supports them. And he expects everyone who works for him to publicly and vocally embrace his version of reality. Second, these attacks on the intelligence community continue Trump’s campaign to delegitimize institutions that offer a view of reality different from his own. Third, talk of a 'silent coup' encourages frightening, extraconstitutional thinking. Trump does not face a coup, just a government he has attacked and refused to lead. It is one challenge for Trump nominees to run departments they think should not exist. It is another for a president to declare that America’s intelligence community is plotting against him and comparable to the Nazis."
- How South Korea’s Fake News Hijacked a Democratic Crisis (Gizmodo) "One of the most popular people 'quoted' in fake news stories was not a fictional expert but the real President of the United States. Donald Trump supposedly spoke against Park’s impeachment on December 19th, telling CNN that he was concerned that Park’s impeachment will affect the global economy in broken English. 'I am very sorry that Park Geun-hye impeached. Korea is America’s most influential partner,' said 'Trump' in a now-deleted fake news article, as reported by the left-wing TV network JTBC in one of their many special news segments on fake news. This fake news article was shared at least 1,500 times on Facebook and Twitter, according to JTBC."
- Glenn Beck wants to heal the America he divided — one hug at a time (WaPo) "Now, in a moment of deep gloom for the nation’s intellectuals, life delivers a gleaming gift: Glenn Beck, godfather to the tea party, cable news rabble-rouser of the first order, a hawker of ornate and dire conspiracy theories, not only has spent the past year as a Never Trumper but also has spurned his past and is testifying to the power of love, understanding and empathy — for liberals! 'This is my big regret,' he says. 'I fell into that tribal mode. And now I’m over here, but I still don’t know how to reach people on the other side.'"
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Untold Story of Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell's Visionary 1980s Tech Incubator (Fast Company) "In 1981, Bushnell created Catalyst Technologies, a venture-capital partnership designed to bring the future to life by turning his ideas into companies. In the era of the TRS-80, Betamax, and CB radio, startups funded by Catalyst pursued an array of visionary concepts–from interactive TV to online shopping to door-to-door navigation–that created entire industries decades later. 'I read science fiction, and I wanted to live there,' Bushnell explains. In 1970, with the help of a fellow engineer named Ted Dabney, he hatched the blueprint for the commercial video game industry by designing Computer Space–the first commercial video game ever launched. It was not a knockout success. But the following year, Bushnell and Dabney cofounded Atari."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- This Is the Korean Street Version of Mac N' Cheese and It's Oh So Yummy (Ozy) "Comedian Margaret Cho describes ddeokbokki as 'giant spaghetti drowned in sweet and spicy ketchup.'"
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- The Original Lie About Obamacare (NYT) "How did the [Republican] party’s leaders put themselves in this position? They’re trying to fix a fictional one: saving America from a partisan, socialistic big-government takeover of health care. The kumbaya plan for which pundits now wax nostalgic was not an option. The reason is simple enough: Obamacare is the bipartisan version of health reform. It accomplishes a liberal end through conservative means and is much closer to the plan conservatives favored a few decades ago than the one liberals did. Today’s Republican Party has moved so far to the right that it no longer supports any plan that covers the uninsured. Of course, Republican leaders are not willing to say as much, because they know how unpopular that position is."
- The CBO’s Flawed Forecast (National Review) "The CBO has long believed that Obamacare’s individual mandate has a powerful effect on enrollment in health insurance — more powerful than a dispassionate look at the evidence can sustain."
- The Budget Trick That Will Be Used to Sell Trumpcare (Ozy) "Why do the figures matter? In a spin-happy town, the CBO scores have long carried weight for their lack of bias. But that reputation stands on shaky ground. Even though the CBO’s chief is a Republican appointee with a conservative background, the Trump administration and others tried to undermine his report on the Obamacare replacement before it was even released by pointing to the CBO’s misses on the original Obamacare. (Its forecast for the health care exchanges was off by millions, in part because it expected more employers to drop health insurance.)"
- Audio Emerges of When Paul Ryan Abandoned Donald Trump: ‘I Am Not Going to Defend Donald Trump—Not Now, Not in the Future’ (Breitbart) "But in conversations Breitbart News has had with no fewer than 15 other White House aides...it is clear that the President and the senior Trump administration team are not happy with this bill’s lack of conservative support. The President and his team were assured by Ryan that conservatives would...be on board with it in the beginning, something that has turned out to not be accurate. Interestingly, much more so than Ryan and his House GOP leadership team, the White House is much more open to significant negotiation on the details in a healthcare bill—including the structure, vehicle, timeline and more. Several senior White House aides confirmed to Breitbart News that while the administration is publicly touting the bill as the party line, the President is much more willing to wheel and deal on this front than Ryan loyalists on his team would have anyone believe. As such...there are now rumblings among House Republicans that they may want a replacement not just of Obamacare but a replacement of Paul Ryan as Speaker. A new Speaker, some argue, would make life much easier for President Trump as he moves forward with his agenda. So the argument goes, as some House GOP members have told Breitbart News, is that if healthcare is this rocky then tax reform, immigration, trade policy and other key Trump agenda items will be worse."
- Democrats’ Sudden Amnesia about Obamacare’s Many Ills (National Review) "Republicans’ alternative to Obamacare deserves much of the criticism it has received. It is the lackluster product of a party that no longer knows what it believes. But no one should be allowed to forget, or misrepresent, the failure it’s trying to fix."
- The House Should Slow Down and Fix the GOP Health-Care Bill (National Review) "Three of its key features, corresponding to the CBO’s three questionable assumptions, should get some attention in particular. First, most conservative health-reform plans in recent years proposed to make an individual mandate unnecessary by using 'continuous coverage' protections to encourage healthier people to buy insurance. Second, the new tax credit envisioned by the Republican bill is means-tested at the top (phasing out for individuals with more than $75,000 in income) but not at the bottom (and so not phasing in with greater support for lower-income people just above the new Medicaid threshold). And third, although the bill does deregulate some of Obamacare’s most onerous insurance rules — including the premium age bands that impose higher costs on younger people and the actuarial-value requirements that lead to higher premiums — it does not reverse Obamacare’s core federalization of insurance coverage."
NEWS:
- Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes (WaPo) "The White House's reactions to Trump's evidence-free claims — be it this one [about wire taping Trump Tower] or the one about millions of illegal votes in 2016 — is to call for investigations. That has the triple benefit of putting the onus on someone else to look into it, to buy some time and hope people forget that the president is making such wild allegations, and, in this case, to give themselves an excuse to clam up. But that also puts Republicans such as Nunes and Graham in the position of having to account for these claims — and calling on Trump and his team to put up or shut up. By pushing the administration to produce evidence — or else — they are effectively putting the ball back in the executive branch's court. The subtext: You can't just make these claims and then ask us to deal with the fallout."
- Lawmakers skewer top Marine officer over nude-photo scandal (WaPo) "Last week, reports indicated that the photo sharing wasn’t just a Marine Corps problem and that other parts of the military were soliciting naked photos of female service members from every other branch, including at least two service academies." and Harassed Online, She Remains Determined to Enlist in the Marines (NYT)
- Republicans are defining lunacy down (WaPo) "...Trump does not support things because they are true; they are true because he supports them. And he expects everyone who works for him to publicly and vocally embrace his version of reality. Second, these attacks on the intelligence community continue Trump’s campaign to delegitimize institutions that offer a view of reality different from his own. Third, talk of a 'silent coup' encourages frightening, extraconstitutional thinking. Trump does not face a coup, just a government he has attacked and refused to lead. It is one challenge for Trump nominees to run departments they think should not exist. It is another for a president to declare that America’s intelligence community is plotting against him and comparable to the Nazis."
- How South Korea’s Fake News Hijacked a Democratic Crisis (Gizmodo) "One of the most popular people 'quoted' in fake news stories was not a fictional expert but the real President of the United States. Donald Trump supposedly spoke against Park’s impeachment on December 19th, telling CNN that he was concerned that Park’s impeachment will affect the global economy in broken English. 'I am very sorry that Park Geun-hye impeached. Korea is America’s most influential partner,' said 'Trump' in a now-deleted fake news article, as reported by the left-wing TV network JTBC in one of their many special news segments on fake news. This fake news article was shared at least 1,500 times on Facebook and Twitter, according to JTBC."
- Glenn Beck wants to heal the America he divided — one hug at a time (WaPo) "Now, in a moment of deep gloom for the nation’s intellectuals, life delivers a gleaming gift: Glenn Beck, godfather to the tea party, cable news rabble-rouser of the first order, a hawker of ornate and dire conspiracy theories, not only has spent the past year as a Never Trumper but also has spurned his past and is testifying to the power of love, understanding and empathy — for liberals! 'This is my big regret,' he says. 'I fell into that tribal mode. And now I’m over here, but I still don’t know how to reach people on the other side.'"
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Untold Story of Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell's Visionary 1980s Tech Incubator (Fast Company) "In 1981, Bushnell created Catalyst Technologies, a venture-capital partnership designed to bring the future to life by turning his ideas into companies. In the era of the TRS-80, Betamax, and CB radio, startups funded by Catalyst pursued an array of visionary concepts–from interactive TV to online shopping to door-to-door navigation–that created entire industries decades later. 'I read science fiction, and I wanted to live there,' Bushnell explains. In 1970, with the help of a fellow engineer named Ted Dabney, he hatched the blueprint for the commercial video game industry by designing Computer Space–the first commercial video game ever launched. It was not a knockout success. But the following year, Bushnell and Dabney cofounded Atari."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- This Is the Korean Street Version of Mac N' Cheese and It's Oh So Yummy (Ozy) "Comedian Margaret Cho describes ddeokbokki as 'giant spaghetti drowned in sweet and spicy ketchup.'"
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
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