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Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday danced around the most controversial element of former President Barack Obamas Presidential Center in Jackson Park: The proposal to close Cornell Drive at the expense of thousands of daily commuters.

One day after his former boss unveiled the library in a campus design, Emanuel was asked whether he supports the plan to close Cornell Drive between 60th and 67th Streets to add as much as 5 acres of new parkland.

Thats almost certain to anger and inconvenience motorists who use the interior roadway every day to connect from South Lake Shore Drive to Stony Island Avenue and the Chicago Skyway.

Emanuel had already walked away from the microphones when a reporter asked the uncomfortable question, then pivoted back to the microphones.

That would be called a Pas de deux, the former ballet dancer said, referring to a dance duet in which two dancers, typically a male and a female, perform ballet steps together.

Watch this answer and youll see a dance.

Then he launched into his political dance, otherwise known as the side-step.

I support the presidential campus. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the entire city. . . . Its part of his presidency. But its also a campus that then looks forward to making sure that social political activity and action continues, Emanuel said.

The mayor then reiterated what Obama said: This weeks unveiling marks the beginning of a process with area residents.

Im gonna make sure that we work through this in a collaborative way, that peoples voices are heard, but we ensure that, at the end of the day, we keep our eye on the prize, and that is we build the presidential campus/library in the city of Chicago, which is why I fought so hard to have it, the mayor said. Peoples voices will get heard. But this is in my view, a significant milestone for the entire city of Chicago.

Emanuel then walked away from the microphones again as a reporter asked aloud, Was that a `yes to the closing of Cornell Drive?

Youll have to interpret the music, he said.

Obama didnt dance at all around the controversial road-closing. He confronted the politically uncomfortable subject head-on and urged his supporters not to get so fixated on traffic that we lose sight of whats possible.

What we have said is, Lets restore Jackson Park to the original vision and lets make sure that traffic is accommodated both on Lake Shore Drive as well as down along 59th Street, the former President said.

Obama said traffic studies have shown the closure may add one to three minutes to the typical commute, but he added that there is hope to get that down to zero.

We are confident that we will not be adding to commute times, he said.

He also tried to pitch the road closing as an extra level of safety.

You cant have little kids playing right next to the road. . . You cant have sledding into the road.

Also on Thursday, Emanuel flatly predicted that the U.S. Senate will reject the Republican bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

He cited four reasons: coverage for pre-existing conditions; coverage for children until age 26; coverage with 20 million people who never had health insurance; and a reduction in health care inflation.

Thats why I think the Senate is gonna look at this and say this is a nonstarter and wont happen, the mayor said.

Thats not gonna go anywhere because people now have a tangible benefit not a theoretical debate.

Excerpt from:
Emanuel dances around road closing for Obama Center - Chicago Sun-Times

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday evening added to the social chatter over the GOP's health care bill passing the House. The outspoken Obamacare advocates called the bill's passage shameful.

"A shameful failure of policy & morality by GOP today," Clinton wrote. "Fight back on behalf of the millions of families that will be hurt by their actions."

The former secretary of state then shared a tweet from progressive organization Swing Left, which links to a donation page.

Clinton is expected to launch a political organization aimed at funding "resistance" groups standing up to President Donald Trump, CNN reported Thursday.

Biden was equally disappointed in the House.

"Day of shame in Congress. Protections for pre-existing conditions, mental health, maternity care, addiction services -- all gone," Biden wrote in a two-part tweet. "Millions of Americans will lose coverage. Up to the Senate now. Hoping for courage to return."

The GOP bill would eliminate taxes on the wealthy, insurers and others and get rid of the individual mandate imposed by Obamacare.

Other Democrats also chimed in on social media -- some threw shade at Republicans, while others promised to continue fighting for Obamacare and their constituents.

The bill now heads to the Senate.

Here is the original post:
Team Obama reacts to Obamacare repeal vote - CNN

Former President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaOvernight Energy: Ivanka Trump to meet EPA chief on Paris decision GOP healthcare bill is not repeal it is ObamaCare-lite, or worse Obama photographer trolls GOP over ObamaCare repeal vote MORE's White House photographer marked the House GOP's passage of their ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill with a throwback to the day Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act.

12:09 a.m. March 22, 2010. Treaty Room in the private residence. 80 minutes after Congress had passed the Affordable Care Act. The President was reading text messages on his Blackberry while waiting to make thank you calls. Someone had sent a message that ended with "your mother would be so proud." (His mother had died from ovarian cancer. She had spent her last days worrying whether insurance was going to cover some of the medical expenses because they might consider her cancer a pre-existing condition.)

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on May 4, 2017 at 4:43am PDT

The Instagram post from Pete Souza shows a smiling Obama reading text messages on his Blackberry.

"Someone had sent a message that ended with 'your mother would be so proud,'" Souza wrote.

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Souza has often uses his Instagram account to poke the Trump administration, such as over President Trump's recent decision to keep White House visitor logs a secret.

Link:
Obama photographer trolls GOP over ObamaCare repeal vote - The Hill (blog)

If confirmed, Green would oversee some of the estimated thousands of transgender active duty service members. In 2016, the Department of Defense ended its ban on transgender people serving openly in the US military.

Green, currently a state senator in Tennessee, is already facing fierce opposition from LGBT activists and Democrats for his past comments about transgender people. In 2016, Green told a Tea Party group, "if you poll the psychiatrists, they're going to tell you that transgender is a disease."

On Facebook in 2013, Green shared a blog post from Fox News contributor Todd Starnes on the Obama administration's opposition to a religious freedom amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Critics of the amendment argued it would open the door to harassment based on religious grounds, while proponents of the bill said it would protect the rights of military members to practice their religious faith.

"Mr. Obama supports transvestites in uniform but you can not have a bible on your desk, saying it disrupts good order in the military," Green said in his Facebook post. "Next thing you know we will be sending hundreds of millions to our enemy. Oh wait we've already done that. This guy's attack on the military and the values which create and sustain its success is unsurpassed in the annals of history and reason."

Green later commented on his original post that the "social agenda items" of President Obama led to disorder in the military.

"I agree that freedom of religion means a person has a right, to worship however and whomever," wrote Green. "I'm cool with a coworker having a Koran on his desk. But to suggest that a Bible or Koran would lead to disorder in the military more so than many of the other social agenda items of this president is wrong."

Darren Morris, a political adviser to Green, told CNN's KFile: "Dr. Green reposted an article regarding President Obama's assault on religious freedom in the military. The article stated the Obama Administration 'strongly objected' to a measure that would protect the religious rights of soldiers. Dr. Green believes in protecting all rights of all soldiers regardless of their political beliefs, ethnic background, religious beliefs or sexual orientation. He has consisted stated this throughout his military career."

CNN reported on Tuesday that Green's nomination is in jeopardy and that the nominee might withdraw. Morris called talk of Green withdrawing "completely, absolutely untrue."

Green has also spoken out against allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice.

In remarks on his Facebook in June 2016, Green wrote in reference to the Syrian refugee crisis: "What we really need is a president who will attack the enemy and create safe havens for these people in their own country But he's too busy trying to put men in women's bathrooms."

In that same post, Green referred to the former president as "B. Hussein Obama."

"Despite known ISIS terrorists infiltrating the West as Syrian refugees, B. Hussein Obama insists on pushing them into our communities," he said above photos of a Wall Street Journal article about Syrians being arrested in Germany as terror suspects.

After a commenter questioned Green's use of Obama's middle name, Green suggested that he'd used it to draw a parallel to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"Hussein as in Saddam Hussein was a totalitarian dictator," Green said. "Since Mr. Obama seems to think he can, without the consent of the legislature, release edicts in the form of executive orders, deemed significantly different in scope than previous presidents, he violates the clear separation of power in the constitution."

Morris, Green's adviser, said that Green was just pointing out his disagreement with Obama on Syrian refugees.

"Dr. Green was merely pointing out, via hyperbole, his strong disagreement with President Obama over the Syrian refugee issue and his disagreement with the lack of respect President Obama had for the states, such as Tennessee, to protect its citizens from problems created by the issue," Morris said.

View original post here:
Trump Army pick blasted Obama in 2013 for supporting 'transvestites in uniform' - CNN

Despite the conventional wisdom that it is almost impossible to dismantle domestic programs once they are up and running, the House just took a big step toward doing so.

States would be allowed to obtain waivers to remove requirements on insurance companies to provide "essential health benefits," including protecting people with pre-existing conditions. The last-minute compromise would provide money to help these Americans pay for more costly insurance, but, most experts agree, not nearly enough to address the problem.

Perhaps most damaging of all to lower-income Americans, the Medicaid expansion, which has been essential to expanding insurance coverage, would be phased out. In addition, states would be allowed to receive Medicaid funds as a "block grant" which would result in steep cuts since the change would end the federal guarantee that every person who applied for benefits and was eligible would receive them. Under the block grants, states would have more authority to restrict eligibility and slash benefits.

These changes to Medicaid could also be damaging for the elderly, since Medicaid -- not Medicare -- covers a significant portion of nursing home care.

The vote in the House was a pivotal moment for President Trump. To be sure, the prospects for passing this bill in the Senate remain difficult. Senate Republicans are not excited about moving forward with this extremely conservative measure and fear the electoral consequences of this vote. And Republicans will certainly be hearing from angry voters in the coming week about the benefits that they would be losing.

Nobody is certain how the CBO will score this measure, which means that the implications of the legislation remain unclear. Nor is it certain that Senate Republicans will be able to use the budget reconciliation process, which prohibits a filibuster. If the legislation is not deficit neutral or if the parliamentarian decides that the waivers are not related to the budget, Senate Democrats will be able to filibuster the bill.

Yet Democrats should not be too confident. There will be a lot of partisan pressure on Republicans in the upper chamber to finish the job. Senator Mitch McConnell and his colleagues will realize that a victory would give President Trump and the party an enormous boost in his political standing. The legislation would strike a blow at the heart of President Obama's expansion of the social safety net. A complete victory on health care would also generate substantial political momentum for Republicans to move forward on other much-desired measures like a massive supply-side tax cut and legislative deregulations on energy markets.

Senator McConnell will do everything that he can to find ways to make this work. The same dynamics and dealmaking at play in the final hours of the House deliberation could be at work in the Senate as well.

All of this is to say that those who have been dismissing President Trump at the end of his first 100 days are greatly downplaying the impact that he can still have. The same radical possibilities that were evident in the days that followed the historic election, when Speaker Ryan claimed that President Trump had earned a mandate and most Republicans fell in line, are very much in play. Yes, President Trump's tweets are outlandish and insulting; yes, he failed miserably on the legislative front in the first months of his presidency; and yes, the President and his advisors sometimes seem to have no idea about what they are doing.

But that doesn't mean that the conditions are not still ripe for this President to push through a radically conservative agenda. United government in an era of intense partisan polarization is a powerful force. Republicans are chomping at the bit for this President to send them legislation that will dismantle the welfare state, strip free markets of regulations and cut taxes.

President Trump has been making considerable progress through executive actions and, with this vote, we see that if he gets his act together and focuses on legislation, he will find Republican colleagues who are prepared to take big steps to support him. In the House, enough moderate Republicans were willing to accept this compromise while the Freedom Caucus moved away from its all-or-nothing approach to reach a deal on this bill. In the final days of the debate, the Democratic activists who were so successful in blocking legislation the first time around were caught off guard.

Democrats might be feeling like George Foreman when he fell victim to Muhammad Ali's rope-a-dope strategy in 1974. The Democrats spent the last few months taking many swings at the President and keeping him against the ropes. It looked like President Trump was politically bruised and battered.

But at the very moment that Democrats were feeling confident, President Trump struck back with a vengeance. At least at this moment, the Democrats are the party laying on the ground.

This presidency is far from over. The stakes of what takes place in the next few months are enormous. Democrats should take this vote as a lesson that this White House and Congress can still pack a powerful punch. Conservatives will come out of this decision, as well as the executive order easing up restrictions on the political activities of religious organizations, feeling energized and determined. As a party, Republicans will feel better about what they can accomplish with Trump up top. Senate Republicans will be prepared to do whatever is necessary to finish this job through the reconciliation process.

The obstacles facing this administration remain immense, as do the steps needed to bring this health care vote to completion. The incompetent manner in which President Trump has handled legislation and the congressional process could easily result in disastrous stumbles in the week ahead.

But this is a big moment for President Trump and Republicans who now have a taste of just how much damage they can inflict on the strength of government if they are able to get their act together between now and the midterms of 2018.

More:
Obama's legacy is in jeopardy - CNN