Ben Jacobs also said mean things about Thayer.

Confirmed huge scumbag.

Obviously Gianforte is a bigger scumbag and obviously Jacobs did nothing wrong last night. Gianforte supposedly had it out for The Guardian due to them reporting about him owning shares of sanctioned Russian companies.

He owns some shares in russia ETF's; that's a way overblown criticism.

Gianforte probably gained votes from beating up the journalist because he won't take LIBERAL CRAP.

Also, if i understand it correctly, it shifts the burden onto the states. So while the fed deficit goes down, you gotta presume the state money needs to come from somewhere.

Regardless, senate is writing a whole new bill which will get sent back to the house.

There was a Fox News reporter there to interview Gianforte. She provided an eyewitness account that Jacobs did nothing physical and unprovoked Gianforte slammed him down mounted him and punched him in the face repeatedly.

If someone from Fox is saying that then this guy should be finished. Now hopefully ActBlue can stop trying to guilt me for more money literally 600 times a day.

The scary thing is I wouldn't put it past the ******s of Montana to like this assault because they don't like those smarmy limpwrist media types anyway.

Quist up to 43% on Predictit. Ossof at 62% (which is lolhigh)

Lol at him not dropping out of the race. He should legit be in jail.

60% of voters voted early in Montana, pre-body slam. Probably why Quist is only 43%.

That Fox News eyewitness account is insane. And the guy somehow still has a 57% chance of victory.

havent you heard? montana is actually a blue state, they just really hated hillary

Why would he drop out of a race he's probably going to win anyway? A sense of decency? I think that ship has sailed.

And he shouldn't really be in jail. He's been charged and will be appearing in court in the next two weeks. Unless you think he should be remanded over a misdemeanor assault.

no necessarily, no

Ossof showing a 7-8% lead right now, pretty crazy. Hope it holds

If the reporter had done the same thing to Gianforte he would almost certainly be in jail.

I suppose they might let him sit there for the night, or until his lawyer turned up, rather than just issue the citation and send him on his way. But it would still be a misdemeanor. They would be charged and released and given a court date.

That reporter is the definition of a mangina.

The US really just needs to break up. It makes absolutely zero sense for us to be one nation given how insanely divided the state's are. Its the only way.

Would be hilarious to see Non-NY/Cali devolve into a third-world hellhole after the split.

DoJ confirms today they DID tell Sessions not to disclose meetings with Russian ambassadors.

Sessions probably skates dispute being a genuinely awful human being. Shame

Cool to bodyslam anyone I consider a mangina?

A country consisting of California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and Alaska would be the greatest country on the planet.

So basically I'm all for the half-measure of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska seceding directly into Canada.

Also, without those states the United States is a third world joke that also contains Chicago and New York (Boston intentionally not included in the list of first world enclaves).

+++++

RT, the parliamentarian will determine whether the AHCA can pass through reconciliation. I doubt the CBO's analysis satisfies the test, though I was thinking about this yesterday - that entire process was designed to be applied to budget bills, without considering what would happen if Congress attempted to pass laws that reduce deficits by dismantling entire government programs from the ground up and then called that a budget bill. Like, this isn't how the parliamentarian's analysis is supposed to go. For example, Bill Clinton tried to get his 1993 health care bill through the Senate via reconciliation, and Senator Byrd (D), the guy responsible for the "Byrd Rule" that limits reconciliation to budget bills, told Bill Clinton that a health care policy bill was not about budgets and therefore could not be passed through reconciliation.

That's the crux of this: the Republicans have to convince the parliamentarian not just that the bill is budget neutral or creates a surplus, but that the bill is a budget bill, rather than a health care policy bill. The fact that it affects the budget is one thing, but it is a logical fallacy to conclude that because a bill changes the budget, it is therefore able to be passed through reconciliation.

Put differently: defunding health care in the country for millions of people will obviously not increase deficits (directly), but that's also obviously a POLICY decision, rather than a budgeting issue.

And, as Victor points out, the AHCA is DOA anyway. Senate will write something else entirely.

Washington DC to Maine would also become it's own country Hoya and it would be an elite one.

chiming in from the richest 3rd world country ITW:

what would a strictly budget bill look like? Budgets are just ways to determine the stuff that money is spent on. in this case that stuff is health care.

now I don't know what the particulars of the Byrd Rule actually are but the tests they use have to be more specific than "budget"