Lat Call For House Of Mirrors

So after all the noise in the Senate, the Sunday session, Ted Cruz getting on the Senate floor to call Mitch McConnell a liar, an agreement for six years' funding of the Highway Trust Fund and renewal of the Export-Import Bank...the House won't even consider the bill as majority leader Kevin McCarthy says Mitch better pass the GOP House version or highway projects across the country run out of money by the end of the week.

McCarthy’s decision leaves Congress with two possible paths forward.

The House could simply do nothing, leave town and hope that will force the Senate to swallow the five-month highway bill it passed two weeks ago. That measure does not include any Ex-Im language.

Another, less confrontational option would be to go smaller and send the Senate a two- or three-month highway patch, punting the issues of highway spending and Ex-Im until after Labor Day, when Congress returns from its summer recess.

Senate and House Republicans are on different planets when it comes to the highway bill.

Besides the fight over the Export-Import Bank, House Republicans prefer a shorter-term bill to buy time for negotiations with the White House on tax reform, which Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) believes could be used to pay for a full six years of highway funding.

The Senate bill, crafted by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), covers six years but only pays for three years of funding.

McConnell prefers the Senate bill because it would prevent a series of votes on stopgap measures this fall, and possibly in 2016, when the GOP leader wants to focus on helping his conference retain its Senate majority.

A majority of Senate Republicans have backed McConnell, and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) reacted to McCarthy’s comments by stating on the Senate floor that he is “very concerned about what the House is doing right now.”

McCarthy said the House would stick to its schedule and head home on Thursday.

Imagine that.  House Republican are going to wreck a must pass bill because they can.  Oh, and they'll blame Obama when they choose not to even vote on the Senate bill that was worked out very publicly over the last two weeks.

The only suckers here are the American people who thought that Republicans gave a damn about things like "roads" and "governance".

Rockin' The Doc Costs

Obamacare's mission to make health care more affordable has several key components. Making health insurance more affordable and increasing insurance availability, plus having more people on insurance to lower the cost for everyone is what most of the debate about Obamacare involves.

But a big chunk of that is the fact that health care costs aren't skyrocketing like they have been before the ACA was passed.  And as the economy improves, health care costs are remaining flat.

The price of health care has grown more slowly than core consumer prices—what Americans spend on everything except food and energy—over the past five years. It’s the first time that’s happened since record-keeping started in 1959. That’s a remarkable break from decades of health-care prices outpacing inflation, but consumers shouldering a greater share of their medical costs may not notice the difference.
Goldman Sachs economist Alec Phillips pointed out the milestone in a research note on July 22. His analysis uses a broad measure of health-care prices, including what health providers charge government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

The price of health care typically lifts overall inflation, but in recent years it’s been an anchor weighing down overall price growth. What’s behind the slowdown?

Some of it is from government-dictated reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments. Wage growth in the health-care sector has also been slow since the recession, Phillips notes.

But health care prices are in fact stabilizing.  The cost curve is being bent, as predicted.

Maybe it's time to start acknowledging that Obamacare works?

Naah.  We can't have that.

The Huckster Hucks Up Big TIme

The best part of Donald Trump's continued rise in the GOP polls (by showing America just how terrible the GOP base is when they respond positively to him) is that the rest of the pack wants in on the action too.  Behold, Mike Huckabee on the Iran deal:

Former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee blasted President Barack Obama on Saturday over the nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers, saying that by trusting the Iranians, the president "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."

Nothing is out of bounds anymore.  Everything is permitted.

In an interview with Breitbart, the 59-year-old conservative television personality called Obama's foreign policy "the most feckless in American history" and dubbed the Iran deal "the most idiotic thing." "It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people," he said.

Huckabee entered the race for his party's 2016 presidential nomination last May, vowing strong U.S. support for Israel and declaring "Hell will freeze over" before Iran gets a nuclear weapon.

In Saturday's interview, Huckabee urged the GOP presidential hopefuls to simplify their message to the American people, and focus on "conservatism, limited government, more local government, lower taxes, and less regulation to people who sweat through their clothes every day and have to lift heavy things to make a living.”

Watch Huckabee's number rise sharply.  Watch the rest of the pack keep reminding America just what the GOP stands for in 2015.  He won't pay a price for accusing a sitting President of another Jewish Holocaust.  He will only benefit, because Republicans are awful, awful people.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Alsaka's southern Fox Islands, part of the Aleutian chain, on Sunday night, with no immediate reports of injuries or tsunami warnings.
• Twelve people, including several children, were injured Sunday when an amusement park swing ride at Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky tipped over and crashed.
• US auto safety regulators are hitting Fiat Chrysler with a record $105 million fine involving the automaker's lapses in recalling vehicles over safety issues.
• Chinese stocks took their biggest plunge since the 2007 financial crisis, with the Shanghai Composite losing nearly 8.5% of its value Monday.
• The $48.5 billlion AT&T/DirecTV merger is all but done as the company is required to expand its broadband internet base by 12.5 million customers in order to promote competition.

Last Call For Aptly-Named McCarthy

The National Review has collapsed in credibility to the point where editor Andrew McCarthy is calling for the impeachment of President Obama over the Iran deal because he "surrendered to the enemy" or something by going to the UN Security Council to approve the deal.

So, in his signature “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan” style, the president has come up with a fraudulent scheme: use the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) as a smokescreen. His administration now cynically claims that these critical agreement components — the rationale for lifting American sanctions on and making American commitments to the “Death to America” regime — actually have nothing to do with America . . . they are strictly between Tehran and the IAEA. Translation: Blame the IAEA, not Obama, for the abandonment of Obama’s core commitments.

This would be laughable if it were not so offensive — and so perilous. Put aside that the Constitution does not permit the U.S. government to delegate American national security to anyone. The IAEA is not an independent actor. It is an international bureaucracy forged by the United States in the 1950s. Not only is the U.S. is a staple of its governing board; the American people underwrite over 25 percent of its budget. Furthermore, the IAEA reports to the United Nations (to which the American taxpayers’ contribution also far exceeds that of other countries) and, specifically, to the U.N. Security Council (of which the United States remains the dominant permanent member).

Now consider this: Under cover of this IAEA ruse, Obama ran to the Security Council and rammed through a resolution commencing implementation of his Iran deal before Congress or the American people could consider it. He thus undermined American sovereignty and the Constitution by scheming to impose an international-law fait accompli. And he thus undermined American national security by transferring his inspection commitments to an international agency that he knows is not close to being capable of executing them — an agency that will be further hampered by notice restrictions that, as Charles Krauthammer concludes, render the inspections “farcical” in any event. 

The Constitution forbids providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies. And the Framers’ notion that a president would be punishable for deceiving Congress regarding the conduct of foreign affairs meant that lawmakers would be obliged to use their constitutional powers to protect the United States — not merely shriek on cable television as if they were powerless spectators. 

Well?

Well, you spittle-flecked moron, you need help.  Seriously.  There's a reason everyone's having a good laugh at this today, and that's because your temper-tantrum is so completely embarrassing and outright stupid that it's become the comedy hit of the week.

The same people who thought nothing about lying us into a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars are convinced that doing the opposite is impeachable.

Utterly ridiculous.

Chamber Of Horrors

Don't look now, but the war between Tea Party GOP and Country Club GOP is about to get absolutely nasty.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is gearing up to challenge some House Republicans in primary elections, frustrated after much of its agenda has been stymied by a small pocket of conservative GOP lawmakers. 

The influential and well-heeled business group is already eyeing several races, but the plans are still in their infancy and the targets have not yet been decided upon, according to more than a half dozen Republican sources on K Street and Capitol Hill.

The group’s apparent new willingness to engage in hand-to-hand political combat to take out sitting Republicans would represent a major shift for the business community, which has largely shied away from targeting sitting lawmakers. 

House GOP leadership sources say they’re unaware of and don’t support any attempt to target sitting GOP lawmakers. But the Chamber’s internal dialogue comes as House Republican leaders have struggled to maintain discipline in their ranks. Recent attempts to crack down on dissenting lawmakers have backfired. 

The early discussions by top-level Chamber operatives like Rob Engstrom and Scott Reed reflect a broad consensus among companies with business before Congress that the political dynamic needs to change on Capitol Hill.

The theory is simple: The Chamber spent some $70 million in 2014, mostly to help Senate Republicans build their majority. But many of their legislative priorities — immigration reform, the renewal of the Export-Import Bank and a long-term highway bill — have been held up by a clutch of conservative lawmakers in the House.

The Tea Party was fine until the whole "shutting the government down" and "breaking the economy" thing started cutting into the bottom lines of America's biggest corporations.  Going after hippies in the Democratic party was one thing.  Going after corporate subsidies, transportation infrastructure used to move goods, and immigration as a source of labor, well, now that the GOP is firmly in control of Congress, suddenly it's gotten a whole lot more cost effective to replace the nutjobs.

I don't know who to root for here, but whoever wins this battle, we all lose in the end.

Sunday Long Read: What Happens In Vegas...

America's right-wing domestic terrorism problem, the anti-government, anti-authoritarian "sovereign citizen" types who believe they are a law unto themselves and nobody else, was personified in the Las Vegas shooting by David Brutsch and Devon Newman two years ago.  Ashley Powers at The California Sunday Magazine looks at that fateful and deadly summer of 2013.

Devon Newman parked her black Honda Civic outside the warehouse. Her friend David Brutsche glowered in the passenger seat — they’d spent the 12-minute crawl across Las Vegas bickering about the mission. How committed are you, David barked, in that prison-guard way of his. Is this a joke to you? A game of let’s pretend? A few weeks ago, when the mission was still a dark fantasy, their pal Scott Reibach had warned them: “What we’re doing, you know, is dangerous. We could be hurt, we could be shot by these knuckleheads, we could be thrown in prison for the rest of our lives.” David didn’t flinch. “I’m willing to give my life for this,” he said.

It was mid-August and over 100 degrees. The air chapped lips, parched throats. The sun was starting to dip behind the mountains that ring the Las Vegas Valley; the Strip was shaking off its afternoon slumber. From outside the warehouse, David and Devon could glimpse the tops of the Wynn, the Encore, the Palazzo, and the Trump, its 64 stories sheathed in 24-karat-gold glass. That was not their Las Vegas. Neither was the Vegas of foreclosed McMansions — that was farther out, near the mountains, in the gated communities in Henderson and Summerlin.

Devon and David’s Las Vegas hadn’t lost its sheen in the recent recession; it had none to begin with. It was a Vegas of dollar stores, check-cashing services, EZPawn shops, gas-station slot machines, and storefronts stripped of fancy names — they offered DOG GROOMING and NAIL TIPS, nothing more. Everywhere there were apartment complexes painted in earth tones, their nameplates missing letters, their yellow welcome flags frayed. It was a Vegas of frustrations and resentments, of second and third chances squandered — the Strip’s opulence in sight, but always out of reach.

The warehouse was similarly glamourless, building B in a warren of squat structures. Scott worked there at a fledgling video-​​production business, near Code Red Emergency Plumbing and H&J Trophies. His boss didn’t mind if David and Devon stopped by. They mostly huddled in a backroom, on three couches arranged in a U, mapping out the mission until the sky was black and the Strip ablaze.

The mission: Kidnap a cop at a traffic stop. Jail him (or her, but likely him) at a house in the burbs. Hold their own trial. And then:

“Put a bullet in his head,” David said. He grinned.

The plan of course went horrifically wrong as police got wind of it and the pair were arrested after dozens of meetings with an undercover officer.  But it's a chilling reminder that in the age of Obama, this domestic terrorism movement has grown exponentially, and so has the danger they pose.

Last Call For Mad Turtle Disease

Something something definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result, see Mitch McConnell and Obamacare repeal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has set up a vote to repeal ObamaCare in a bit do appease conservatives upset over a second planned vote to revive the Export-Import Bank. 

McConnell on Friday announced he would file cloture — a motion to end a filibuster — on amendments to fully repeal ObamaCare and to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank. Both votes likely will take place Sunday. 

McConnell argued that taking votes on both amendments offered a "balanced" way forward.

"Ex-Im shouldn't be the only vote we take on this bill, and under the compromise I just filed, it won't be. That's a much fairer way forward," he said, adding that Republicans will "continue to fight for" a repeal of ObamaCare. 

The Export-Import Bank is staunchly opposed by conservatives, including presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who shortly after McConnell spoke denounced the decision. 

Bringing back the bank is important to vulnerable GOP Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.), one of the Democrats’ top targets in 2016, whom McConnell wants to help win re-election. 

Also, Democrats have insisted that the six-year highway deal McConnell negotiated with liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) include the Ex-Im Bank reauthorization. 

McConnell has often said he personally opposes reauthorizing the bank, an agency panned by conservatives as a tool of corporate welfare. 

He plans to file cloture to repeal ObamaCare and renew the bank’s charter after offering the highway bill on the Senate floor Friday.

So, bottom line, Republicans are planning to poison the must-pass Highway bill with a repeal of Obamacare. It won't pass, the amendment will need 60 votes, but it's amusing to see McConnell throw out a smoke bomb like this to cover his ass on the Export-Import Bank authorization.

But Mitch isn't very good at his job.  He does however think Republican voters are pretty stupid.

Bevin The Bulldozer

Earlier this week Kentucky Democratic AG Jack Conway and Republican Matt Bevin squared off at the Kentucky Farm Bureau forum, the first time the two gubernatorial candidates faced each other in debate.  Al Cross has more on the fact the forum's conversation quickly went to Bevin's promise to dismantle the state's successful Kynect health exchange and Medicaid expansion.

At a Kentucky Farm Bureau forum in Louisville, Bevin and Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway were asked how they would pay for the expansion of the federal-state program once the state starts paying 5 percent of the bill in 2017, rising to the federal health-reform law’s cap of 10 percent in 2020. 

Conway cited a study for the Beshear administration predicting that the expansion would pay for itself through 2020, by creating health-care jobs and tax revenue. It says there would be a net loss in 2021, the last year of the study. 

Conway said there are too many people on Medicaid, but said the solution for that is a better economy. “What I am not going to do is what my opponent will do on day one, which is by executive order kick half a million people off health insurance based on whether we can or can’t afford it in 2021. To me, that’s not courageous, that’s callous. . . . If we can’t afford something, we can potentially scale back.” 

Bevin said the “day one” line was “an absolute lie,” but when he was asked in February about the expansion, he said “No question about it, I would reverse that immediately.” 

As he has done before, Bevin conflated the Medicaid expansion with Kynect, the state health-insurance exchange where Kentuckians can get subsidized health insurance or, if their household income isn’t more than 138 percent of the federal poverty line, sign up for free Medicaid.

“With respect to the Kynect program, we cannot afford to have 25 percent and fast growing toward 30 percent on Medicaid, period, whether you like it or not, whether you think it’s fair or not, whether there’s supposedly a need or not, truth be told, we can’t afford it.”

He said later, “We’re gonna dismantle the Kynect program. We’re not gonna have 25 percent of Kentuckians on Medicaid."

To recap, Conway will address the costs of Medicaid expansion, and there will be costs.  Bevin on the other hand doesn't give a damn, and will just scrap arguably the country's most successful state exchange in Kynect and throw 430,000 people off Medicaid and say "Good luck with healthcare.gov."

Money shot in the last paragraph, though:

As the questioning continued, Bevin said he had explained what would happen to the 430,000 new Medicaid beneficiaries. Told that he hadn’t, he replied, “They’re Kentuckians. They will continue to live in Kentucky if they choose to.”

What a nice guy.

As I've repeatedly said, the entire point of Republicans killing Medicaid expansion is simple: you either die or move to another state.  Either way, you're no longer that state's problem.

Bevin absolutely is running for governor of the Commonwealth on that platform, and right now he's ahead in the polls because of it.  Meanwhile, Jack Conway is going to learn that as with Alison Lundergan Grimes, if you run away from Obama, you're going to lose.

Planned Out In Advance

It's almost like Republicans have been gearing up to destroy Planned Parenthood well before the doctored videos showed up.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell started a fast-track process Friday on legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding in the wake of two controversial videos showing officials discussing delivery of fetal parts.

The Republican leader began "Rule 14," which will let the legislation skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote.

The move comes after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed McConnell during a blistering floor speech earlier Friday, suggesting the Kentucky Republican wanted to dodge a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.

It's not that is matter unless the bill can get 67 votes.  But the pressure on what few Red State Democrats are left will be pretty strong.  We'll see how it goes, but let's remember that this is a snow job from the beginning, and that Republicans have been in on this the whole time.

Racing To Conclusions

A new NY Times poll shows that most Americans believe race relations have gotten worse.

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week reveals that nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad, and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.

America found out the hard way that the backlash against a black President brought out the racism long ignored by most of us.  It was a rude (and in some cases, deadly) awakening.

The swings in attitude have been particularly striking among African-Americans. During Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, nearly 60 percent of blacks said race relations were generally bad, but that number was cut in half shortly after he won. It has now soared to 68 percent, the highest level of discontent among blacks during the Obama years and close to the numbers recorded in the aftermath of the riots that followed the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King.

A big part of this is the rise of social media.  Where shootings involving black victims don't make the news, they do make Twitter and Facebook.  We're more aware of these killings, and they're happening more often.

The divide, seen in the answers to virtually every question in the poll, was stark when respondents were asked whether they thought most Americans had judged Mr. Obama more harshly because of his race. Eighty percent of blacks said yes, while only 37 percent of whites agreed.

“I’m not surprised it’s gotten worse under President Obama,” said Elizabeth Gamble, 33, an African-American cook from Albany, Ga., “because he’s black, and so he already had that strike against him once he got into office.” 

Deep racial schisms were also evident in responses about law enforcement and the criminal justice system. About three-fourths of blacks said they thought that the system was biased against African-Americans, and that the police were more likely to use deadly force against a black person than a white person. Only 44 percent of whites felt that the system was biased against blacks. 

Clearly, views of the police are informed by personal experience. Four in 10 blacks, and nearly two-thirds of black men, said they felt they had been stopped by the police just because of their race or ethnicity, compared with only one in 20 whites. Fully 72 percent of blacks said they had suffered what they perceived as racial discrimination, compared with 31 percent of whites. 

At a time when the unemployment rate for blacks is double that for whites and black households earn 40 percent less, blacks continue to assert they do not enjoy an equal shot at attaining financial success. The share of blacks who said whites have a better chance to get ahead rose by 14 percentage points in about a year’s time, to 60 percent. More than half of whites said blacks have equal opportunities, compared with about a third of blacks who said so.

The problem isn't race relations.  The problem is the reality of black America in the era of social media is coming into the homes, the TVs, the PCs, and the tablets of white America, and frankly white America doesn't know what the hell to do about it other than to lash out.

We're seeing the results of that now.

I'm sorry that existing as a black man in America in 2015 upsets you so.

Naah, I'm not sorry.  You needed your bubble popped a long damn time ago.

Last Call For Just A Phase For Jeb

And while everyone's got their eyes on Trump's antics, Jeb Bush is quietly telling us exactly what his plans for Millennials and younger Gen Xers like myself are as far as "entitlement reform".

"The left needs to join the conversation, but they haven’t. I mean, when [Rep. Paul Ryan] came up with, one of his proposals as it relates to Medicare, the first thing I saw was a TV ad of a guy that looked just like Paul Ryan … that was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. That’s their response. 

“And I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”

Tie to phase out Medicare and move to a new system, huh?  Of course Boomers will get theirs, but me and anyone younger?  Hope you don't plan on ever being able to retire or afford health care when you're in your 70s, because that's not happening after a GOP government takes over in 2017, folks.

I'll tell you what, if Democrats can't find a way to bury Jeb here after saying he wants to phase out Medicare, I don't know if anything can save anyone under 40 from a lifetime of crippling austerity. Steve Benen:

Obviously, all of these projections come with caveats because no one can say with certainty what will happen in the future, but the projections are encouraging – and far more heartening than they were before the ACA passed. 

But Jeb Bush is under the impression that Medicare is, without a doubt, doomed, so we might as well get rid of the program now and see what Paul Ryan has in store for seniors in his far-right bag of tricks. 

There’s a better way. Medicare’s future is looking brighter, it’s as popular as ever, and its fiscal challenges can be addressed without tearing down the entire system. It’s a matter of political will – either elected policymakers will fight to protect Medicare or they’ll push to eliminate it.

Guess we better get off our asses and vote, huh?

Em Ess En Be Seeing Ya, Ed

MSNBC’s entire late afternoon lineup is apparently getting the axe.

A well-placed source tells me MSNBC will announce today major changes to its afternoon lineup…arguably the most significant revamp the network has made at one time in its 19-year history. 

Out: The Cycle at 3:00 PM. Now with Alex Wagner at 4:00 PM. The Ed Show with Ed Schultz at 5:00 PM (all times eastern).

Guess who’s baaaaaaack?

In: Chuck Todd at 5:00 PM. Similar to Jake Tapper at CNN doing both weekday afternoons (hosting The Lead) and anchoring Sunday morning’s State of the Union, Todd will also continue to work weekends as moderator of Sunday’s Meet the Press. Todd’s MSNBC show will likely take on its old name The Daily Rundown, but that is not a guarantee. 

More interesting: Andrea Mitchell will keep her program at noon (Andrea Mitchell Reports). Thomas Roberts will continue to anchor his midday news program from 1:00-3:00 PM. The programs being cancelled at 3:00 PM (The Cycle) and 4:00 PM (Now with Alex Wagner) will be replaced by a straight news program (similar to Roberts’ two-hour newscast preceding it). Whether that 3:00-5:00 PM slot goes to Brian Williams is not known at this time, but it would certainly make the most sense to put Williams directly up against Fox’s Shepard Smith (Shepard Smith Reporting) and CNN’s Brooke Baldwin (CNN Newsroom) for the first hour in a similar format.

Yeah, because MSNBC’s problem is that it needs more Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, and Brian Williams.

Jeebus wept. They actually found the one person I’m willing to watch less than Ed “boycott the midterms” Schultz.

And yes, the bullseye is now squarely on the backs of Al Sharpton and Chris Hayes. Maybe you guys can bring in three hours of Tweety while you’re at it. That’ll get the kids running in from miles around.

Trumpenstein's Monster

The ultimate 2016 nightmare scenario for the GOP involving Donald Trump isn't him staying in the GOP hunt, but coming in as a third party candidate with his own billions to spend.

Donald Trump says the chances that he will launch a third-party White House run will “absolutely” increase if the Republican National Committee is unfair to him during the 2016 primary season. 

“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” the business mogul told The Hill in a 40-minute interview from his Manhattan office at Trump Tower on Wednesday. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”

Pressed on whether he would run as a third-party candidate if he fails to clinch the GOP nomination, Trump said that “so many people want me to, if I don’t win.” 

“I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans,” Trump said. “Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.” 

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called Trump earlier this month asking him to tone down his controversial rhetoric. More recently, the RNC rebuked him for saying that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not a war hero. Trump didn’t apologize but has since said that the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is a war hero. 

Trump told The Hill that the GOP establishment in Washington dislikes him because he’s not part of the political class. 

“I’m not in the gang. I’m not in the group where the group does whatever it’s supposed to do,” he said. “I want to do what’s right for the country — not what’s good for special interest groups that contribute, not what’s good for the lobbyists and the donors.”

Voter anger at the government, especially among Republicans, is so high right now that Trump as a third party candidate would be a nuclear meltdown a 2000 Nader run raised to the power of Trump's fortune.  So yes, I fully expect the GOP and the RNC to suddenly start being a whole hell of a lot nicer to the guy in the coming months.

Trump's not going anywhere.  That suits me just fine.

StupidiNews!

• Police say a "58-year-old white man with a criminal record" opened fire in a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana last night, killing 2 and wounding 7 before turning the gun on himself.
• The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that pharmacy owners in Washington State cannot cite religious reasons as justification to refuse to dispense medicine or provide services.
• Health insurance giant Anthem says it will purchase Cigna Corp. for $54.2 billion creating the country's largest health insurance company, in response to rival Aetna purchasing Humana.
• President Obama arrives in Nairobi, Kenya today to meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, his first trip to the country since being elected president.
• NASA scientists have discovered Kepler-452b some 1,400 light-years away, the most similar exoplanet yet to an Earth-like orbit around a G2-class star like our own sun.