Senate's FUBAR O'Care Repeal Effort, GOPer Posts Meme of Car Hitting Protesters, And Haley Defends 'Rocket Man' Talk

September 20th, 2017 Top Stories --------------------------------------------------------------- [Senate GOP Embraces FUBAR Process For Last-Ditch Obamacare Repeal Effort]( The Gist: The Senate has less than two weeks, and just a handful of working days, to repeal Obamacare and block-grant Medicaid with a mere 50 votes. With the clock ticking, Senate Republicans have thrown together a crude imitation of regular order in an attempt to quickly check all the necessary boxes and win over their colleagues who are sticklers for process. [GOP State Lawmaker Shares Meme Encouraging Cars To Hit Protesters]( The Gist: A Republican state legislator in South Dakota apologized Tuesday after sharing a meme on Facebook that appeared to encourage people to hit protestors with vehicles. Under the headline “All Lives Splatter,” the cartoon showed a car apparently hitting people in the street and said “nobody cares about your protest” and “keep your ass out of the road.” [Nikki Haley Defends Trump’s Use Of Term ‘Rocket Man’: ‘It Worked’]( The Gist: United National Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday morning defended President Donald Trump’s decision to refer to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “rocket man” in his Tuesday speech before the UN General Assembly. From The Reporter's Notebook --------------------------------------------------------------- Yesterday afternoon, [TPM's Alice Ollstein ran into]( Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in the basement of the Capitol, and found him extremely pessimistic about the fate of the bipartisan bill to stabilize Obamacare's individual markets that he and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have been negotiating for months. Republican's rush to repeal the Affordable Care Act before the end of September, plus House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump's declarations this week that they do not support the stabilization bill, have sucked all the energy away from his efforts. “I know how to get bipartisan results but I’m not a magician," he grumbled. A few hours later, Alexander put out a statement declaring the bipartisan bill officially dead. Agree Or Disagree? --------------------------------------------------------------- Josh Marshall: "When the weak or the marginalized are defiant or even threatening, there is a self-regulating dynamic which limits the danger or renders it minimal. We can see this on both the domestic and international fronts. Chants of 'black power' may be superficially comparable to chants of 'white power.' [But most of us intuitively understand they are very different](. The defiance and demand of the marginalized or disempowered is inherently defensive in nature whereas the defiance and demand of the powerful is inherently aggressive and menacing." Say What?! --------------------------------------------------------------- "You can have different opinions about the quality of this bill. At the the end of the day, this is the only process left available to stop a march toward socialism." - Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) [trying to build momentum]( Tuesday for his last-ditch effort to repeal Obamacare. BUZZING: Today in the Hive --------------------------------------------------------------- From a TPM Prime member: "Manafort won't rat on anyone. The reason Trump pardoned Arpaio so quickly, and outside of proper protocol was to signal his friends that they would be safe to lie, and safe to be convicted for it. Trump would just pardon them. This doesn't erase their legal bills, but keeps them out of prison and Trump in the White House." Related: [How The FISA Order Against Manafort Could Spell Big Trouble For Trumpworld]( Have something to add? Become a [Prime]( member and join the discussion [here](. What We're Reading --------------------------------------------------------------- ‘Isn’t That The Trump Lawyer?’: A Reporter’s Accidental Scoop ([The New York Times]( A Cancer Patient Desperately Needs A Stem-Cell Transplant. But The U.S. Won’t Grant The Donor A Visa ([Washington Post]( [unsubscribe from this list]( | [update subscription preferences]( | [view email in browser](