Last Call For This All Feels Familiar

It's no coincidence that after the ugliest tax bill in history on top of a year-long market bubble that saw the Dow gain 35% in 15 months that the law of averages would finally kick in in a big, big way.

It was the scariest day on Wall Street in years. 

Stocks went into free fall on Monday, and the Dow plunged almost 1,600 points -- easily the biggest point decline in history during a trading day. 

Buyers charged back in and limited the damage, but at the closing bell the Dow was still down 1,175 points, by far its worst closing point decline on record. 

The drop amounted to 4.6% -- nowhere close to the destruction on Black Monday in 1987 or the financial crisis of 2008. But for investors lulled to sleep by the steady upward climb since Election Day, it was alarming. 

The White House said through a spokesman that "markets do fluctuate in the short term," but it stressed that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

Now, where have we heard that phrase before?


Oh, right.  The 30 seconds where John McCain lost the 2008 election.

A Republican giving a speech about how good the economy is while the Dow loses several percentage points while that Republican is talking.

Why, that happened to Trump today.  As he spoke here in Cincinnati, the Dow lost nearly 600 points.  He was oblivious to it too.

You can bet voters weren't oblivious, either.  Why, this all feels very familiar to ten years ago, something I've been warning readers about for some time now.

The Dow has lost 1,700 points in two days, erasing all 2018 gains so far.  And America is realizing that the guy in charge of fixing this mess is Donald Trump.

Here we go.  Things get very, very bad from here.

Trump Is The Symptom Of A Far Worse Disease

Just a reminder this morning that the racism, hatred and bigotry of the GOP is the defining feature of the party in 2018 and of the people perfectly happy to vote for them, not an aberration or fluke. 

Arthur Jones — an outspoken Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and white supremacist — is poised to become the Republican nominee for an Illinois congressional seat representing parts of Chicago and nearby suburbs.

“Well first of all, I’m running for Congress not the chancellor of Germany. All right. To me the Holocaust is what I said it is: It’s an international extortion racket,” Jones told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Indeed, Jones’ website for his latest congressional run includes a section titled “The ‘Holocaust Racket’” where he calls the genocide carried out by the German Nazi regime and collaborators in other nations “the biggest blackest lie in history.”

Jones, 70, a retired insurance agent who lives in suburban Lyons, has unsuccessfully run for elected offices in the Chicago area and Milwaukee since the 1970s.

He ran for Milwaukee mayor in 1976 and 13th Ward alderman on Chicago’s Southwest Side in 1987.

Since the 1990s to 2016, Jones has jumped in the GOP 3rd Congressional District primary seven times, never even close to becoming a viable contender.

The outcome will be different for Jones in the Illinois primary on March 20, 2018.

To Jones’ own amazement, he is the only one on the Republican ballot.

No more "This isn't America, this isn't us" garbage.  This is exactly how America has worked for 400 years, and only through taking power away from the racists and the bigots does the country grudgingly improve.

Any Republican in Chicago could have run against Arthur Jones.  Nobody chose to.  Not this year.   Not that the seat was even in trouble as Democrat Dan Lipinski has represented the 3rd since 2013, the last time a Republican won in this district was literally before I was born.

But Jones is the GOP candidate.  He represents the Republican party there by choice.

That's who the GOP is in 2018.  Trump was the outcome, not the cause.

There Goes Traffic For The Day

Donald Trump will be in Cincinnati today pushing the GOP tax plan and causing traffic snarls all afternoon as he visits a hydraulic cylinder plant in Blue Ash.

President Trump is coming to Cincinnati on Monday to pitch his new tax law as a boon for America’s economy.

Polls show the nation has warmed to the law since Republicans approved it in December, but Trump still has some work to do. A majority of Americans remain skeptical the tax overhaul will help them or the broader economy, recent surveys say.

The effort to turn public opinion is crucial because Trump and his fellow Republicans have made the law the cornerstone of their campaign to hold on to power after the November midterm elections.

The president expects to find a friendly audience here, just as he did when he held rallies in Greater Cincinnati during and after the presidential campaign in 2016. He won Ohio by 8 percentage points.

After flying into Cincinnati, Trump plans to visit Sheffer Corp. in Blue Ash, which makes industrial cylinders. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, also a Republican, laid the groundwork for the visit in January when he toured the plant to tout the tax law.

At the time, Portman said Sheffer had given its employees $1,000 bonuses in December as a result of the tax law.

Trump is expected to deliver a speech at the plant sometime after the tour. It’s not known whether he will make any other stops while he’s in town.

The stakes are high for Trump and Republicans as they travel the country making their case for the tax law in advance of the midterm elections. The GOP has a razor-thin 51-49 majority in the Senate, and both parties are bracing for a dogfight for control of the House.

Republicans pushed the tax law through Congress with little public discussion and passed it with no Democratic support. The law slashes corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent and also cuts individual rates for most Americans.

Those admissions by Dan Horn of the Enquirer in the story that the GOP is responsible for the tax plan and not "Congress" are downright miraculous for that paper.  The protest against Trump will be down the street.

It seems the public Trump so desperately wants to win over will be locked out of Trump's visit to the plant.

Even in Trump-friendly Cincy.

Go figure.

StupidiNews!

• The Philadelphia Eagles and quarterback Nick Foles held off a late charge by Tom Brady and New England Patriots to win Super Bowl LII 41-33 to win the franchise's first Super Bowl title.
• The TSA says it found nearly 4,000 firearms at airports across America last year, five in six of them were loaded at the time.
• Convicted Samsung Group heir Jay Lee is out of jail after Seoul's High Court reduced his sentence for bribery and embezzlement ahead of the country's Winter Olympics this weekend.
• The House and Senate return to Washington this week facing a Thursday night deadline to keep the government open as another shutdown looms over Trump ending protections for Dreamers.
• Former Donkey Kong world record holder Billy Mitchell's recent high scores have been vacated after evidence of fakery, a new world record has been set by Robbie Lakeman.