The bully in the oval office lost today. The Senate voted against repealing the Affordable Health Care Act (Obama Care) without a replacement. Also,

On Tuesday night, a version of a repeal and replace plan, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act, failed to overcome a parliamentary objection that the bill had not yet been scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

Here's how they voted.

There are a lot of Republican plans in the works. Here's how they compare.

There may be a vote later this week on whatever Republicans settle on. But they are all bad.

Donald Trump is increasing his attacks on Jeff Sessions. In addition to his recusal on Russia, he's now focusing on investigating Hillary Clinton. He says Sessions is weak on this.

This is classic deflection. He wants the attention off of his children. In his desire to protect them, he's turned into even more of a bullying dictator. Now he not only wants to dictate the outcome of DOJ investigations, he wants to choose what DOJ investigates.

With every turn of the media pump's handle informing us of new allegations of malfeasance by Team Trump, he blasts up the pressure on Republicans. At what point do they feel like fools for voting for him?

Trump seems worried. He must know he's in deep water. He also knows that calling for investigating Hillary will re-energize his under-informed base. He can't afford to lose their support.

Now that he's has a few cabinet and judicial confirmations under his belt, I wouldn't put it past him to try and sneak Rudy Giuliani in the back door to replace Jefferson Sessions. I doubt he's seriously considering Ted Cruz (as was speculated in yesterday's media) because I don't think he'd ever fully trust him. (Cruz will never forget how he used to call him "Lyin' Ted". Neither will we.)

If Rudy Giuliani gets any speaking role in the Trump Administration, I'm going to have a lot of fun re-posting all his peccadilloes. And there are legions of them.

An ailing John McCain flies in to vote, Republicans once again kowtow to the Charlatan's boisterous threats, and Mike Pence breaks a tie vote. The Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act advances.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..... The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles.

This is an utter train wreck that is barreling towards us. [More...]

According to the Washington Post:

Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.

The source of information is current and former U.S. officials. Did Donald Trump order this leaked as payback for Sessions' recusal or Sessions' statement this week he won't step down? If so, the only person I can think of who fights dirtier is Senor de los Cielos. [More...]

The Washington Post has a new article on Jared and Ivanka amending their financial disclosures to disclose additional assets. That's not the interesting part of the story.

The interesting part is how together they have earned more than $100 million since 2016 and have more than $200 million in assets. [More....]

[Note: I wrote this Wednesday and it got stuck in draft mode]

Donald Trump's recent interview with the New York Times reads like a self-pity party. He berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his recusal on the Russia Probe and said he wouldn't have hired him had he known he would recuse himself. He said the recusal was unfair to him [More...]

Made in America week is already backfiring, with the attention on Trump clothes and products made in China, Peru and elsewhere.

Some better songs (than Toby Keith):

There are now so many Trump camp lawyers in the Russia investigations,they seem to be stepping on themselves as they try to control the damage to their individual client, without overtly sinking another family member. Sure, there are those who wonder whether one or more of the lawyers are intentionally trying to shift blame to another lawyer's client, but I'm not a conspiracy theorist and while I can't speak to Trump's lawyers, never having heard of them before, I don't think the criminal defense lawyers involved for Kushner or Donald, Jr. play that way. Nor do I think there's a conspiracy by disgruntled FBI agents to leak information obtained from Kushner's team to get back at Trump for firing James Comey. That's just too convoluted for me to buy into.

What I find significant: [More...]

Donald Trump's approval ratings continue to fall. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll says he is down to 36%, the lowest since Gerald Ford.

Approaching six months in office, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 percent. Overall, 48 percent say they “disapprove strongly” of Trump’s performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W. Bush in Post-ABC polling.

The actual poll results are here. [More...]

So Donald Jr. released his emails. He has now added page 4:

One of the early emails shows it's the Russian Crown Prosecutor he's going to meet with who according to Goldstone, is working on behalf of the Russian government to help Trump win. Why would anyone believe the prosecutor's current denial was crafted by her rather than the Russian Government? Is there even a "Crown Prosecutor" in Russia? (Turns out there is no such thing and she's a lawyer, but not for the Government.)

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote: Good morning. Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting. The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump- helped along by Aras and Emin.

The Trump son responds: [More...]

The Washington Post on Trump's changing Russia stories and on Donald Trump, jr.

The New York Times broke the story. More on Trump jr's two different stories on Russia meetings.

Donald Trump didn't make the G2 meeting on Africa today. Ivanka took his place.

The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump's seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health,” putting her shoulder to shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.

The protests in Germany over the G-20 meetings have been huge.

Iraqi troops finally defeated ISIS in Mosul.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.