Trump Voters Waking Up From Their Long Snooze?

Why is this woman laughing?

More than just anecdotal evidence that some Trump voters are getting the message directly that the great Trump Tax Cuts of 2017 were a fraud. You can't continue to give the billionaires a cushy ride and not expect the shrinking middle class to pick up the slack. Take a look at this long and angry thread: #GOPTaxScam.

Heather Long: "Millions of Americans filling out their 2018 taxes will probably be surprised to learn that their refunds will be less than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service after years of receiving refunds."

The tax bill in 2017 was Trump's sole major legislative "achievement," and Paul Ryan bragged that it would be a major political achievement that would be a bulwark against Democratic gains in the midterm elections. Didn't work that way. Paul Ryan himself is gone home. In fact, the tax bill has consistently polled badly, and now this public relations nightmare of voters waking up to a new reality about their tax refunds.

Rich people may be ecstatic, but the rest of us ... not so much.

EARTHQUAKE: Paul Ryan Won't Run Again

I didn't think he'd bow out, but it's all over Twitter that Paul Ryan has told his closest associates that he won't run for reelection.

Ryan's expected to make a formal announcement to House Republicans later today.

Maybe it was the #ToxicTrumpEffect or maybe it was the prospect of losing reelection to the #IronStache. Either way, this opens the door wide for either steelworker Randy Bryce or schoolteacher Cathy Myers. A Democrat can win this congressional district.

No sudden Republican retirement from Congress will hit the GOP harder than this one.

Paul Ryan's Rocky Road

House Speaker Paul Ryan has until June 1 to file to run for reelection to the US House from Wisconsin. So far he hasn't, and he continues to say that he hasn't made up his mind. Some think he won't run again, considering the forecast of heavy weather and considering how there have already been two surprising blue flips in Wisconsin this year (here and here, just this week).

Some think he will run again, and I'm one of those. Look, he's a nice guy, and a nice guy wouldn't leave his party without a credible successor waiting in the wings. If he were going to vacate the seat he would have let everyone know months ago, wouldn't he? He's running again, and it may be

Randy Bryce

his most difficult race ever.

"The Iron Stache"
Wisconsin ironworker Randy Bryce announced his campaign to unseat Ryan all the way back in June of 2017 with an announcement video that got the attention of national Democrats including the DCCC. Bryce has since raised almost $5 million, so he's definitely going to be a playah.

He calls himself IronStache on Twitter for obvious reasons -- that horseshoe of facial hair and his laboring life as a union ironworker. He's also a veteran of the army and a cancer survivor, and he fits that Wisconsin district now perhaps better than Paul Ryan does, especially as Ryan has spent less and less time there and stopped holding public town hall events. Bryce says on his website, "My values are my neighbors’ values, and we know that Washington has gotten way off track. Whether it’s healthcare or jobs, national security or education, our democracy or the environment – there’s not one issue where Paul Ryan and Donald Trump are headed in the right direction."

The Iron Stache now has a primary opponent, a school teacher and member of the local Janesville school board named Cathy Myers. (Janesville is Paul Ryan's hometown.) She's also running as a blue collar warrior: "So if you think now is the time for a Member of Congress to represent the truckers, the teachers, the factory workers, and the small business owners, I am asking you to join this campaign." She's perhaps the more orthodox progressive.

Myers also has an effective announcement video:





Bryce can probably overpower her with his impressive war chest plus his long head start, though Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported in yesterday's NYTimes that Myers is gaining support. We'll have to wait until August 14 to see how this Democratic primary turns out.

In the meantime, Paul Ryan -- assuming he runs -- will have his own repeat primary contest with a white nationalist and anti-Semite, Paul Nehlen, who lost to Ryan by 68 points in 2016. He'll easily beat Nehlen again, but the fall showdown may not be so easy, whether it's Randy Bryce or Cathy Myers facing him.

Would You Take a Letter? Or Would You Have My Baby? Answer the Second Question First

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Arizona) was out of the House so fast yesterday it would make your head spin, on the same day that Al Franken announced his retirement (so you may have missed the Franks exit).

Two female staffers said Franks asked if either or both would carry his baby as a surrogate for his wife, who can't (she's had two miscarriages). The Franks have already used a surrogate for their twins.

Speaker Paul Ryan heard the accusations, called Franks in and repeated them, and Franks did not deny them and decided to quit the House immediately.

Hey, you hypocrite liberals! He was just family planning.

Trump: Full Frontal with the Democrats

Photo by Al Drago for the NYTimes

House Speaker Paul Ryan had earlier in the day yesterday called "the deal" that Trump struck with Congressional Democrats "ridiculous" and "disgraceful." Yet Trump jumped at the offer from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to tie Hurricane Harvey relief to a three-month extension of government funding and increase in the debt ceiling.

In other words -- and the short version -- Schumer and Pelosi ate Republican lunch.

Besides Schumer and Pelosi, representing the Democrats, who else was there? Trump, yes, but also House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. All those Republicans opposed the Schumer-Pelosi plan -- one might say, opposed it bitterly -- but Trump ignored them. In fact, later on Air Force One, on his way to North Dakota, Trump deliberately praised Schumer and Pelosi for striking a deal with him while not even mentioning the Republicans who were also in the meeting.

Schumer and Pelosi now have more than just leverage. Their three-month deal on the debt ceiling will force another painful vote for Republicans around Christmas time, with every chance of political disaster. Paul Ryan had wanted a debt ceiling extension of 18 months, which would have put another vote beyond the 2018 mid-term elections. Trump in effect shat in Ryan's hat.

Trump also later talked up the mutual willingness among the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi triumvirate to make the "Dream Act" (DACA) into solid law. Trump now wants the Democrats in Congress to save him from the blowback over his tromping on DACA on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ryan and McConnell fumed in the corner like jilted spouses in a nasty divorce.

The deal struck between the Democrats and Trump still has to go for votes in both House and Senate, and many Republicans are steaming mad about it. “The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump deal is bad,” Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted. Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, chair of the Republican Study Committee, said, “I’m still processing this, but my first instinct is I’m not very happy about it." But can Republicans afford to vote against it?

Score one for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Is Trump a Bobble-Head?

On Friday, Trump tweeted that the Senate should suspend its uphill climb to pass a health-care bill and instead just vote to repeal the ACA without a replacement already lined up.

The Hill didn't see that one coming.

Trump had already rejected "repeal first, have a bright idea later" on January 10, ten days before his inauguration. He said repeal/replace had to happen simultaneously. Maggie Hagerman and Robert Pear: "His remarks put Republicans in the nearly impossible position of having only weeks to replace a health law that took nearly two years to pass." Trump upped the ante the next day in a news conference: repeal/replace needed to happen "simultaneously." “We will be filing a plan,” the president said. “It will essentially be simultaneously.”

But that position evaporated like sweat on a very still body.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, working independently from Trump, "wanted to bring a measure to the floor in February or March that would erase big parts of the law -- but delay it for another two or three years, giving Republicans time to come up with a separate replacement" (Paige Winfield Cunningham).

Zig. Five days before his inauguration, he was still promising health insurance for everybody. 

Zag. A few weeks later he was celebrating with House Republicans in the Rose Garden, who-rawing about throwing 20+ million people off their insurance. Take that, Obamacare!

Zig. On May 5 he buttered up the Australian prime minister about Australia's having better -- universal! -- health care, and he said it on camera, and it seemed sincere. Also on camera and during the campaign last year, Trump promised -- repeatedly -- that "every American will have coverage .... That’s just human decency” (Philip Bump).

Zag. Tomorrow: "Whatever you guys say. Just don't make me read anything."

I Feel Good, Part 3

Look at just one of the quality candidates who are right now standing up to run for Congress next year.

Randy Bryce is a Wisconsin ironworker who's challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan. This is his campaign announcement video:


Some Democrats have complained that Jon Ossoff (of George-6 losing fame) was not sufficiently of the 6th district. They won't be saying that about Randy Bryce.

And maybe Paul Ryan is as unbeatable as Karen Handel proved to be. I don't care. Maybe Bryce's prior unsuccessful attempts to win office will also sink him this time. I don't care. I'm proud of the man who stands up for workers against what the Republicans are hatching at this very hour to deny health insurance to millions.

I'm proud of the man who made that video.

GOP, Unfit for Government

So with huge Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Trump blames Democrats for the massive belly-flop his Trump-Ryancare bill suffered yesterday.

BWA-ha-ha-ha!

The man learns nothing.

Meanwhile, it takes a Republican member of Congress to put his finger on exactly the psychological condition that makes this bunch so lame at governing:

“We have to do some soul-searching internally to determine whether or not we are even capable of functioning as a governing body,” said Representative Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “If ‘no’ is your goal, it’s the easiest goal in the world to reach.” ("In Major Defeat for Trump, Push To Repeal Health Law Fails")

Trump: All Hat, No Cattle

Amazing how fast Trump abandoned his repeated (and repeated) campaign promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something far better. Much, much better. So better it'll make your head swim. Believe me.

Those were applause lines, and Trump loves applause. He loves applause a whole hell of a lot more than he loves public policy, and he's never had (a) much of an idea what was even in the Ryan health insurance bill and certainly not what got changed to please the Freedom Caucus and (b) a plan of his own. He doesn't care what's in the bill. He just wants to sign a bill. Because that would be winning.

So he threw a snit-fit late yesterday and sent a stern message to recalcitrant Republicans in the US House -- demanded, really -- told 'em to take an up or down vote on the Ryan bill (as changed, mainly to remove more and more "essential insurance services" from coverage, like emergency room visits), and if it didn't pass, he said, then WE KEEP OBAMACARE FOR ETERNITY.

So much for the art of the deal and the magic touch of the almighty businessman.

And about all that applause that Trump laps up like a pussy cat laps cream and which he always gets when he promises to repeal Obamacare:

A Quinnipiac University national poll found that voters disapproved of the Republican plan by lopsided margins, with 56 percent opposed, 17 percent supportive and 26 percent undecided. The measure did not even draw support among a majority of Republicans; 41 percent approved, while 24 percent were opposed.

Meanwhile, into the face of that adverse wind, Trump tweeted out at 7:28 a.m. yesterday morning, “Go with our plan. It’s going to be terrific.” Nobody with at least two active synapses believes the fool, and fewer and fewer are even listening to that kind of empty talk.

Republicans Caught on the Horns of a Dilemma

What will they do today? More specifically, what will Virginia Foxx do? (We know. We just love to ask.)

Either Republicans will pass the Ryan-Trumpcare bill that will wreak havoc with their own voters and impact their own re-election prospects.

Or they will vote it down, undermining President Steve Bannon's agenda.

If the bill fails, “How do we have any momentum to do anything else?” asked Representative Richard Hudson, Republican of North Carolina. “Without this bill, I don’t know how you do tax reform,” he said. If the bill fails, “it’s going to have negative repercussions for all of us.”

But what if it succeeds? (And of course Foxx will vote for it, because she's a company suck.) For true right-wingers, success for this bill means abject failure for the promise to repeal Obamacare: “The bill maintains Obamacare’s overall structure and approach, an approach that cements the federal government’s role in health insurance” -- Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.).

For more moderate Republicans (you mean, there are still some of those left on this earth?!), success for this bill will mean more hardship for their constituents. Doctors, nurses, and hospitals have come out strongly against the measure, and insurance companies have been largely "skeptical," to put it mildly.

"Much has changed in the years since the Affordable Care Act passed, with millions of Americans, many in red states, now getting health insurance as a result of the law, as well as treatment for the prescription drug addictions that have plagued scores of communities" (Jennifer Steinhauer).

Spending money to help people is exactly what the Republican "Freedom Caucus" intends to stamp out. Ordinarily, Virginia Foxx would be right there with them, but she owes Paul Ryan for her committee chairmanship. So "Obamacare Lite" is fine with her.

How Do You Run Government When You Hate Government?

Watching the Republicans in Congress flounder on health insurance reminds us all that they have no talent for making government work. Their big talent is for bashing government, for screaming "un-American" about any progressive idea, and for shredding the social safety-net the minute they have power.

Radio yakker Laura Ingraham is warning Trump that the Paul Ryan replacement for Obamacare is "a trap" that will take Donald down in 2020. Is Trump too far into the trap to suddenly get out? He threw his Twitter support behind Ryan's bill before anyone told him what's in it, and he's holding a big campaign rally in Tennessee later today to promote it. Because being applauded by a few thousand supporters is the same as conducting wise government.

Love what former Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said about this current moment in Republican mismanagement: "Most of the people who are in opposition to this [Ryan's bill] have never governed, don’t know how to govern, and don’t want to govern. Unfortunately, Republicans now control the government and have to learn how to govern. The Laura Ingrahams of the world, who make their money agitating, aren’t functional in a situation where the president has to govern.”

Paul Ryan and Virginia Foxx Believe It's Every American's Right NOT To Have Health Insurance

According to the Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday, Trumpcare, the GOP bill to revise the Affordable Care Act, would nearly double the share of Americans who are uninsured from 10 percent to 19 percent over the coming decade. That comes out to 24 million more people who will go without health-care coverage over 10 years if the bill is enacted, including 14 million next year alone.

Anticipating this devastating news, a 501(c)(4) issue-advocacy group closely aligned with Paul Ryan had TV ads already cued up to run in 15 congressional districts represented by Republicans who've managed to get the Trumpcare "stank" all over their fine clothes.

The ads urge viewers to “thank” the GOP lawmakers for living up to their promise of “replacing the Affordable Care Act with the better health-care you deserve.” The ads do not use the word “repeal.” The new, product-tested verb is "improve." Because 14 million fewer insured people during the first year of Trumpcare will be an improvement.

"The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" commercial looks like this in Congresswoman Barbara Comstock's district in Virginia:

The same ad is running or will run in the following congressional districts (where, evidently, the Republican incumbents are now considered vulnerable because of Trumpcare): Jeff Denham (Calif.), David Valadao (Calif.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Darrell Issa (Calif.), Mike Coffman (Colo.), Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), Rod Blum (Iowa), David Young (Iowa), Don Bacon (Neb.), Greg Walden (Ore.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Kevin Brady (Tex.), Will Hurd (Tex.), and Paul Ryan Hisownself (Wisc.).

Who believes this propaganda? Some people, no doubt, but probably not the Republican congress members who've hatched it, and the ad above sorta proves that they're chumming the waters with their own precious bodily fluids and drawing the sharks.

Trumpcare = Public Resentment

“If you ask someone to give up something, there will be resentment. If that claims my congressional career, so be it. It will be worth it to me to have effected this change.

--Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health

Congressman Burgess's comment reveals the current kamikaze attitude among US House Republicans. Trump needs a legislative victory. Trump doesn't know what's in that bill repealing the Affordable Care Act. He certainly hasn't read it. It doesn't come close to fulfilling the promises he made about insuring every American. But none of that matters. "Get it passed!" So Rep. Burgess is ready to go down in flames to give Trump his victory.

Congresswoman Foxx just luvs Trumpcare

The Congressman's comment also reveals the truth of the matter (something none of them have admitted in public and certainly not in front of TV cameras): "We Republicans are taking away health insurance from you idiots who voted for us." Republicans would take away more if they could get away with it ... Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security ... the entire social safety net that they've always despised. Look no further than Congresswoman Virginia Foxx to see the mean face of Republican intentions. Conservative Republicans are actually fighting Paul Ryan's repeal bill on the grounds that it isn't mean enough, does too little to reduce subsidies for the poor.

If Rep. Burgess and Foxx get their wish, and if the US Senate goes along, chaos will ensue and will fulminate well into the 2018 general election season. According to Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan, "A growing chorus of Republican policy experts and senators are pleading to slow the process down or risk a political blood bath."

But Trump enjoys a good blood bath. He takes his almost every morning between 6 and 7 a.m.

Trumpcare -- we're not supposed to call it that, but too bad -- has been harshly criticized by medical professionals, hospitals (especially rural hospitals), insurers, and various state officials, who said it "could increase the number of uninsured and destabilize insurance markets." The Congressional Budget Office is expected to render its verdict on the legislation this coming week. Republicans should maybe brace for bad news. Not that they give a good goddamn about the truth. They're living in a post-truth, alternative facts universe.

Trump World! You have to get there through the looking glass (but please exit through the gift shop!).

This Is How They Act When They Know Their Bill Is Crap

They kept it hidden as long as possible, and now they intend to rush it through committee hearings and to a floor vote before everybody catches on to what's in those 400 pages. None of them will appear on camera to talk about it or answer questions, which is a dead give-away of just how bad it is.

No one's talking about Paul Ryan's health insurance overhaul except, of course, the man absolutely guaranteed not to have read one word of it -- Rollerball Trump, who obliged Ryan this morning by tweeting praise for something he's ignorant about. ("Who knew health care was so complicated?!")

Another dead give-away: Republicans offered no estimate of cost nor any estimate of how many people will lose or gain health insurance, because ... because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the strictly non-partisan tribe of bean-counters on the Hill, has not "scored" the bill for its costs or for its unintended by-products. And get this: Paul Ryan & Co. intend to push the whole mess through the House without those CBO estimates.

There's only one reason for keeping everyone ignorant, and you know what it is. Actually, maybe you don't. Paul Ryan is keeping the costs under wraps as a guard against his right wing -- people like Virginia Foxx and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who don't like spending a thin penny on poor people. Meadows, who leads the conservative Freedom Caucus, has warned Ryan that anything but "a clean repeal" will not pass. We don't want no "Obamacare Lite," Meadows growled on the Fox News website.

The Ryan bill -- oh, let's go ahead and call it Obamacare Lite -- actually keeps federal subsidies via a backdoor, by granting the states that expanded Medicaid coverage $100 billion over nine years to subsidize the Medicaid poor. States that didn't expand Medicaid -- like North Carolina dumb -- get far less, mainly some piddling money to shore up rural hospitals that are already hurting because of NC dumbness.)

But let 'em pass it. The political fall-out has already started, and 2018 general elections are not that far off. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, the Senate is waiting:

On Monday, four Republican senators — Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — signed a letter saying a House draft that they had reviewed did not adequately protect people in states like theirs that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. [Reporting of Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan]

The Environment Will Go To Hell, and We Will Go To War

So Trump wants to increase military spending by $54 billion and slash environmental protections and strangle the State Department, because why would you even need diplomats when the Great Negotiator is in charge, and Steve Bannon wants war with Islam?

Clean air and water? You can always buy Trump bottled water.

“I don’t know how you take $54 billion out without wholesale taking out entire departments,” said Bill Hoagland, a longtime Republican budget aide in the Senate and now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Trump's budget proposals were otherwise vague on detail, but supposedly he doesn't intend to touch Social Security or Medicare, thus giving Paul Ryan a serious nosebleed which still hasn't stopped.

But rest assured, Trump will not inflate the military like that without using it. We're going to war, folks. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of our lives.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

1. Our new governor Roy Cooper announced that he will file the paperwork tomorrow to expand Medicaid in North Carolina under the Affordable Care Act. As many as 650,000 working people who can’t get private insurance or otherwise make too much to get Medicaid could benefit, generating jobs, helping rural hospitals, and boosting the economy. GOP legislative leaders said Cooper would be violating state law if he went forward. Cooper replied that the 2013 NC General Assembly law banning Medicaid expansion intrudes upon a governor’s “core executive authority” to accept federal funds and look out for the public’s health.

2. Donald Trump has formed a united front with Julian Assange in claiming that the Russians did not hack emails in order to help get Trump elected president.

3. Yesterday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Julian Assange a “sycophant for Russia.”

4. Franklin Graham has converted to veganism.

5. After a contentious closed-door meeting between Republican senators and Vice President-elect Mike Pence over how and when to repeal Obamacare, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, “What we [Republican senators] own is the responsibility for getting something that can actually improve health care. That was the message that was coming across in the meeting today.”

6. People who live very near busy roads may be more susceptible to dementia.

How Did Virginia Foxx Vote?

That didn't take long. Last night, in a secret vote, the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which was set up in 2008 following congressional scandals. We don't know what the vote was, because it was secret. We don't know how Rep. Virginia Foxx voted, because the vote was secret, peckerheads!

It was a preliminary vote involving the rules that the majority Republicans can -- and will -- impose on the operation of the House. The package of rules has to be voted on again today in the full body. One wonders whether enough Republicans opposed the very bad "optics" of this move to join the Democrats in voting this down. We do know from inside sources that both Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke against the motion.

Power breeds corruption. We've known all along that the Trump administration is likely to be the most corrupt in history, with more self-serving conflicts of interest than genes in the human genome, and now the Republicans in the U.S. House seem to be paving the primrose path to hell. We look for weak accountability over wrong-doing.

The Office of Congressional Ethics was established following a string of "bribery allegations against Representatives Duke Cunningham, Republican of California; William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana; and Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio. All three were ultimately convicted and served time in jail."

Instead of an independent agency conducting investigations, we'll now have the House Ethics Committee, a bi-partisan bunch which has been more than just reluctant in the past to lower the boom on corruption. They pussy-foot, because they're foxes guarding the henhouse, and the American public are the chickens.

Memo To: The Rest of America; From: North Carolina -- "We've Already Lived Through What You're About To Experience!"

The cutting-edge conservatives in the North Carolina General Assembly got the governor who wouldn't oppose them in 2012, and they really went to town on the progressive history of the state. The educate-for-the-future state became the stuck-in-tar state. Tar? How about coal ash and the shutting down of environmental watch-doggery? The squeezing of the poor -- "No Medicaid expansion for you!" -- and the get-lost message to the unemployed (80,000+ newly unemployed workers thrown off unemployment benefits in the first months of 2013). Only the beginning.

An agenda that destructive needs lots of help. Gerrymandering the NC House and Senate seats -- that helped. Coming down hard on liberal ballot-access laws with a new photo I.D. law -- that helped a lot (particularly the squeezing down of Early Voting opportunities, the elimination of straight-ticket voting, the barring of college student I.D.s as valid proof of identity, the use of boards of election as partisan hammers).

They even manipulated the courts, decreeing that you couldn't challenge their legislative acts for unconstitutionality in any forum except a three-judge panel appointed by the Republican Chief Justice, and they stacked the ballot to benefit the partisan election of judges (which backfired on them in the case of Mike Morgan).

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

Get ready, America. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell can now pass what they please, and just look who'll be president. Grover Norquist said years ago that all he wanted in an ideal president was “a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

Trump will go along with them on everything they want. Why else did he pick that bunch of conservative billionaires and lesser millionaires and movement reactionaries to compose his Cabinet? For the mob, he's put on a new persona -- Right-Wing Hard Ass. But he won't play that with Congress. It's mainly pretend anyway.

Look for cold, conservative, opportunistic legislation to come pouring out of the U.S. Congress in time for Trump's first month. In fact, the word's out in Washington that Republicans intend to pass the "Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act," or "Reins," and have it on Trump's desk when he first walks through the door into the Oval Office. ("Reins" would subject any environmental regulation with an economic impact greater than $100 million to a vote of Congress, which would guarantee death for any of the Obama administrations major environmental regs.)

List of what else might be coming, based on David Weigel's reporting in the Washington Post:)

1. Dodd-Frank regs on financial institutions will get "unspooled." They'll use "budget reconciliation" to do it.

2. Planned Parenthood stripped of federal support (and incidentally demonized in the process).

3. Full-bore assault on the social safety net, on many fronts, including most especially figuring out how to incinerate health insurance for the poor, not to mention the much lusted for privatization of Social Security and the phasing out of Medicare. In other words, the Affordable Care Act smells like toast. They'll use "budget reconciliation" for that too. 

4. "Kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whether by giving Congress control over its budget or finding cause to replace its director, Richard Cordray, with a weaker board."

5. Number 3 above will help pay for this: End the estate tax and lower taxes bigly for rich people and corporations. Remember Trump's campaign "stimulus plan" promise for investing in infrastructure: roads and damns and airports? That's now likely been forgotten in favor of "tax breaks." Those'll stimulate you, America, you bet!

6. "Some Republican lawmakers also want legislation that would stop courts from deferring to federal agencies’ interpretations of statutes — a practice known as 'Chevron deference,' after the 1984 Supreme Court case that went against the energy company — and have them instead defer to Congress."

7. New anti-abortion laws.

8. "Legislation to allow concealed weapons to be carried across state lines, a major goal of the National Rifle Association."

Trump's Role

Weigel takes pains to emphasize "how little Trump’s unpredictable, attention-grabbing style matters to the Republican game plan." Trump's intended to be kinda the stud horse to their brood mare. "We need you, standing for service. Otherwise, stay out of our way."

Our guess: Trump will stay out of their way. Trump will hold rallies and accept the adulation of the mob like the Second Coming. He will go along with Paul Ryan's agenda because basically Trump doesn't give a good goddamn about most of government -- all but the parts that directly benefit him and the family business. Don't believe he misses any sleep about workers, or poor people, or any of the other losers that the American Century has produced while he was rising.

America, we've experienced an out-of-control and dogma-driven legislative body, with a cypher chief executive, for the last four long years, and believe us, you're in for heavy weather. What do you do? You take to the streets. You register voters. You stay educated on what's happening and you raise hell about it in every way you can. You do not go along. You resist.

Drip, Drip, Drip...

Told you!

WASHINGTON — Far-right media figures, relatively small in number but potent in their influence, have embarked on a furious Internet expedition to cover Representative Paul D. Ryan in political silt....

"Latest Unease on Right: Ryan Is Too Far Left," New York Times, 12 October 2015