Come on, folks, President Trump will not issue mass pardons in order to thwart Mr. Mueller's investigation of his Russian ties. I'm sure Republicans have already told him exactly how that would look to the nation, but why would Mr. Trump want this whole Russia drama to go away in the first place? I mean, the man loves drama, and he also loves the way drama keeps people from looking where they ought to be looking, at things like his crappy health care "reform" bill and his crappy tax "reform" plan and his crappy "voter fraud" commission. Which is why we pay attention to these things, and not the big drama.
And never mind Mr. Trump's young-people-paying-$12-monthly-in-premiums figure, which sounded like hyperbole from the get-go -- his statement that letting health insurance corporations sell policies across state lines would reduce premiums by "60 and 70 percent" is the real whopper. Of course no one in the Trump Administration can cite evidence for this assertion, because it's utter rubbish. And it's not just rubbish: it's also a plot to wipe out what little power state regulators have to keep health insurers from screwing you. Note well, also, that healthy-people-should-pay-less-than-sick-people is an article of faith on the right, never mind that folks can be both sick and healthy at different times in their lives.
Neal Gabler explains the right-wing's Russia-love by telling us that "conservatives have a deep affinity for authoritarianism and an even deeper distrust of modern Western culture." I'm sure that's true of some folks who call themselves "conservative," and I don't doubt that Mr. Putin's "embrace" of "moral values" tricks some conservatives as well, but of course I'd argue that a love of authoritarianism is fundamentally not conservative -- and that a true conservative would fight concentrated power everywhere, even when that concentrated power benefits him in some way. So that should tell you that the biggest lovers of Vladimir Putin shirtless on horseback are not conservative, but reactionary, like too many who call themselves "conservative."
Some liberals sure are wringing their hands over the hosts of the Chapo Trap House podcast telling center-right Democrats that if they want to work together to beat Trumpism, they have to "bend the knee" to more hardcore liberals. Speaking as someone who finds Chapo Trap House sympathetic, I do find it more than a little absurd that this article spends more time wondering if "bend the knee" might be sexist or whether "dominance politics" is incompatible with egalitarianism than examining whether DNC let's-all-get-along types have thoroughly bollocksed everything up and maybe the real liberals should drive the car for a while. (And calling "bend the knee" sexist is a reach, though it's not a big reach.)
Ho hum, a Republican punditoid, who used to go on cable news all the time to defend President Trump, has taken money from Mr. Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. At least the Fox Business Channel has started to identify Mr. Serrano as a Trump campaign "senior advisor," but dig the Trump campaign saying they paid him for "communications consulting" and not for his TV appearances! It's like they think we're the stupidest people on the face of the Earth. Let's keep reminding them that we're not.
Finally, now that the Congressional Budget Office has said the Trumpian repeal-and-then-maybe-replace-later bill would kick more than 30 million folks off their health insurance, Republicans are stepping up their attacks on the CBO itself. But surely they know their arguments ("they were wrong about a relatively small matter a while ago, so of course they must be hysterically wrong about this much larger matter!") will be even less persuasive now that the CBO has been telling them the opposite of what they want to hear for months now. And if they keep the CBO from looking at the Trump tax "reform" plan, they must know how that will make them look, too -- i.e., like diaper-loaded infants, without the promise that they'll be charming again once you change their diaper.
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