StupidiNews!

• The Senate will vote on the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Democrats are expected to filibuster, and Republicans are expected to change Senate rules to bypass it. 
• Convicted former Mexican drug kingpin Alfredo Beltran Leyva has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to federal conspiracy charges following his extradition last year. 
• Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with Donald Trump today and tomorrow at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, North Korea, trade, and the environment are among topics expected.
• Investors in the legalized marijuana business are looking north to Canada to set up capital companies ahead of Ottawa's national legalization expected later this year.
• Ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft are blaming a new Massachusetts background check law as thousands of potential drivers for the services have failed to pass scrutiny.

Last Call For Georgia On My Mind

Meanwhile, since Trump HHS Secretary Tom Price moved from the House to take over the task of letting several million people lose their health coverage and left his House seat behind, Democrat Jon Ossoff has been making his move to flip the seat in what could be merely the first major win in the 2018 midterm blue wave.

Democrat Jon Ossoff has raised more than $8.3 million for his campaign to represent suburban Atlanta in Congress, the most significant sign yet that the political newcomer has become a national symbol of the resistance to President Donald Trump.

Ossoff’s financial disclosure, to be released Thursday, shows he has $2.1 million on hand for the final stretch of the campaign. His contributions came from across the nation, including more than $1 million raised by the liberal advocacy site the Daily Kos. Sure to raise eyebrows in Georgia, however, is the campaign’s revelation that 95 percent of all of Ossoff’s donors are from out of state.

The fundraising haul is an astounding figure for a 30-year-old former congressional aide virtually unheard of in Georgia political circles before he jumped in the race to represent the state’s 6th District.

You read that right.  Ossoff has raised $8.3 million.  As a Democrat in Georgia.  For a House special election.  "Unheard of" doesn't begin to cover it.  This is the kind of race that maybe sees half a million combined.  And Republicans in the district are now so terrified they're in full panic mode and going for broke on vicious attack ads.

Just look at this new web ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC “focused exclusively on preserving and expanding a Republican Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.” The ad attempts to tie 30-year-old Ossoff to Osama bin Laden — who was killed by President Obama’s administration in 2011 — and suggests that Ossoff is being funded by terrorists, by using ominous music, a photograph of bin Laden, and an old quote from American Journalism Review, an obscure online publication that shut down in 2015.

They've got nothing left at this point other than to call the Democrat a terrorist.    Ossoff is helped by the fact that the field is flooded by Republicans who never thought he had a chance and they're splitting the conservative vote.  If Ossoff can get to 50% +1 he wins outright, if not, the top two vote-getters advance to a June runoff.

But now Ossoff has the ammunition to battle back for this seat.

Hopefully it will the first of many newly blue seats.

Abandon Ship On A Bannon Ship

Looks like Trump regime Minister of White Supremacy Steve Bannon might be on the way out.

President Donald Trump reorganized his National Security Council on Wednesday, removing his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, and downgrading the role of his Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, according to a person familiar with the decision and a regulatory filing. 

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was given responsibility for setting the agenda for meetings of the NSC or the Homeland Security Council, and was authorized to delegate that authority to Bossert, at his discretion, according to the filing. 

Under the move, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, are again "regular attendees" of the NSC’s principals committee. 

Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, was elevated to the National Security Council’s principals committee at the beginning of Trump’s presidency. The move drew criticism from some members of Congress and Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

Imagine that.  Ol' Steve looks to be in more than a bit of trouble over the recent revelations involving NSC leaks, Devin Nunes, and former Trump staffers cooperating with the FBI.  Kicking Bannon out of the intelligence loop and restoring DNI Dan Coats to the position (shockingly Coats and the friggin Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joe Dunford were not on Trump's National Security Council) may mean that Trump is serious about using military muscle on someone, likely North Korea or Syria.

The big winner in this shuffle is new National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.  If he's calling the shots and Bannon is out of the way, I'm betting these recent events overseas has enabled somebody to talk Trump into taking a much more belligerent tone, starting with turning the NSC towards a "war room" setting.  If McMaster, Dunford, and Coats are calling the shots now, things could get very serious, very quickly.

So we've gone from the NSC being Bannon's toy and front for laundering Russian propaganda and playing spy games to Bannon getting booted and the military now being in charge.  I'm not sure which will be worse in the long run for the world.

We're going to find out shortly, I'd imagine.

TrumpCare 2.0 Is Just As Dead

Hopes by the Trump regime to get to a point where Trumpcare legislation is cruel enough and kills enough poor Democratic voters to satisfy House GOP Freedom Caucus members are quickly turning to ashes as what constitutes the slightly less monstrous rump of House Republicans are fleeing in droves from the plan.

It's a bad sign for Republicans ahead of Vice President Mike Pence's visit to the Capitol tonight. From a senior Republican source:

While we haven't picked up any votes yet, this concept is already showing signs of losing a ton of them.

The Freedom Caucus and conservative group perspective: The bill's text is changing for the worse, and it no longer looks like some of the Obamacare regulations will be waived. Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare's ban on charging sick people higher premiums. Conservatives also want to know what leadership has to say about the "medical loss ratio," or the Obamacare regulation limiting how much of insurers' revenue can be profit.

They're also not happy about the accusation that getting rid of the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums would nullify its protections for pre-existing conditions.

A Freedom Caucus source: "We've never ever wanted to go after pre-existing conditions. That's spin (well a lie) meant to undermine us. Pence said he supports our plan of reforming, and funding changes to high risk pools, specifically to deal with pre-existing conditions."

House leadership perspective: Where the plan is heading will potentially lose more votes than it picks up. The Freedom Caucus, they say, is moving the goal posts again and trying to shift blame.

And all indications are that the meeting with Mike Pence last night didn't help at all, more meetings will reportedly continue, but the odds of an actual vote ahead of Easter recess are approaching nil.  The basic issue persists: after seven years and the largest margin in the House since the New Deal, House Republicans still don't have the votes to pass their own health care legislation, and there's no reason to believe they ever will, mainly because their barely unrestrained glee at killing millions of people keeps getting in the way of their plans.

The Freedom Caucus wants to dump millions of people into "high-risk pools" which is to say that "They'd be able to afford their individual insurance plans if they weren't lazy poors" and "I'm glad they're not driving up insurance premiums for my constituents still on group employer plans" although technically, they will be.  But of course who's counting, poor people don't actually count.

Meanwhile the slightly less evil Republicans don't want any part of this plan because they know it's going to get them killed in 2018 elections.  People hate it.  Most importantly, Republican primary voters hate it because even they've figured out at least some of them will be losing their health insurance, meaning they can't pay for health care and will, you know, get sick and die.

The answer to the age-old question of "Republicans: evil or stupid?" is, as always, both.

StupidiNews!

• Russian officials blame Syrian rebels for a deadly chemical weapons attack that has killed 70 in Syria, saying Moscow had no choice but to strike a "rebel-held chemical weapons factory".
• The White House continues tough talk against North Korea over its missile tests, saying that "all options are now on the table" in further dealings with Pyongyang.
• Islamic State militants are being blamed for a deadly suicide attack on a police compound in Tikrit, Iraq that has killed 31 and injured scores more.
• Republican lawmakers are taking aim at voter-approved state minimum wage increases, looking to delay or even roll back wage hikes set to take effect over the next few years.
• Both Democrats and some Republicans are looking to move forward legislation that would prevent US border searches of electronic equipment belonging to US citizens.

Last Call For Economic Anxiety

Remember folks that the economy was terrible, horrible, and miserable until January 20, 2017.

Now it's great again!

I guess economic anxiety only happens under Democratic presidents.  Especially black ones.

A Page Out Of Putin's Playbook

We've been talking about Trump's Russian connections through people associated with him for years: now-fired National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, now-fired Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and if the Washington Post is to be believed, the brother of Trump's Education Secretary Besty DeVos, Blackwater founder Erik Prince.

But the name we haven't heard too much of recently has been that of now-fired Trump campaign adviser and energy lobbyist Carter Page, who specialized in Russian oil deals.  Turns out that yes, Page's past is just as shady as the rest of Trump nested Russian dolls.

A former campaign adviser for Donald Trump met with and passed documents to a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013. 

The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy, who was later charged by the US government alongside two others for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. The charges, filed in January 2015, came after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring that was seeking information on US sanctions as well as efforts to develop alternative energy. Page is an energy consultant. 

A court filing by the US government contains a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Podobnyy speaks with one of the other men busted in the spy ring, Igor Sporyshev, about trying to recruit someone identified as “Male-1.” BuzzFeed News has confirmed that “Male-1” is Page. 

The revelation of Page’s connection to Russian intelligence — which occurred more than three years before his association with Trump — is the most clearly documented contact to date between Russian intelligence and someone in Trump’s orbit. It comes as federal investigators probe whether Trump’s campaign-era associates — including Page — had any inappropriate contact with Russian officials or intelligence operatives during the course of the election. Page has volunteered to help Senate investigators in their inquiry.

So Page is turning states' evidence, which makes sense because he's largely seen as a smaller fish in this huge pond full of scum.

It remains unclear how connected Page was to the Trump campaign. He rose to prominence seemingly out of nowhere last summer, touted by then-candidate Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page was quickly cut from the Trump team following reports that federal investigators were probing his ties to Russian officials. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last month that the campaign had sent Page cease and desist letters last year, demanding he stop associating himself with it. 

A US intelligence official said that investigators intend to question Page eventually, but that he was not considered a high priority. “There’s so many people that are more relevant,” the official said.

Boy are there ever.  Including, you know, just maybe the guy in the Oval Office.

The Black Waters Of Moscow

Hey kids, remember our old friend Erik Prince, founder of America's favorite private mercenary company Blackwater, who did Dubya's dirty work in Iraq and Afghanistan (and profited mightily from it)?  The guy whose sister Betsy married into the DeVos Amway empire and became Trump's Education Secretary?  Do you think that maybe Erik might have been, I dunno, possibly involved in all of Trump's nasty business in Russia?

The Washington Post's national security investigative reporting team sure as hell does!

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. 

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would likely require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions. 

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian. 

Prince was an avid supporter of Trump who gave $250,000 last year to support the GOP nominee’s campaign, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December. 

U.S. officials said the FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to comment.

I mean Prince just happens to offer his "unique expertise in international relations" to Trump to grease the wheels with the Russians in a super-secret back channel January meeting with one of Putin's guys, after Trump nominates his sister for a cabinet position the month prior.  There's nothing suspicious about this at all, nope.

Please remember Trump screaming his head off to anyone who would listen that he had no contacts with the Russians at all, and it's all just an Obama conspiracy operation except oh yeah, Trump sent the mercenary founder of Blackwater and the sister of his Education Secretary to secretly meet with the goddamn Russians the week before Trump was sworn in, yeah he forgot to mention that. Oops!

The Seychelles encounter, which one official said spanned two days, adds to an expanding web of connections between Russia and Americans with ties to Trump — contacts that the White House has been reluctant to acknowledge or explain until they have been exposed by news organizations. 

“We are not aware of any meetings and Erik Prince had no role in the transition,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. 

“Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication,” said a spokesman for Prince in a statement. “The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump. Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?” 

Prince is best known as the founder of Blackwater, a security firm that became a symbol of U.S. abuses in Iraq after a series of incidents including one in 2007 in which the company’s guards were accused — and later criminally convicted — of killing civilians in a crowded Iraqi square. Prince sold the firm, which was subsequently rebranded, but has continued building a private paramilitary empire with contracts across the Middle East and Asia. 

Prince would probably have been seen as too controversial to serve in any official capacity in the Trump transition or administration. But his ties to Trump advisers, experience with clandestine work and relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates — where he moved in 2010 amid mounting legal problems for his American business — would have positioned him as an ideal go-between.

I mean I could not have sold this plot to Tom Clancy if *I* had given *him* a million bucks to write it, because he would have laughed me out of his office.

But there you are.  Prince is easily on the world's top 100 Actual Villain list and he's the go-between for Trump and Putin after Trump gets elected with Putin's help, so they can talk how to divvy up the spoils or something.  Like, this is the part where James Bond is hiding in the air ducts in the Seychelles hotel conference room getting all this on digital, only it's the FBI doing it for real.

Eat your heart out, America.

StupidiNews!

• The UNC Tarheels have won their sixth NCAA men's Division I basketball title and avenged last year's championship game loss beating Gonzaga 71-65.
• Russian officials are now saying that yesterday's bomb blast in a St. Petersburg subway station that killed 14 was the work of a suicide bomber from Kyrgyzstan.
• Massachusetts' state Supreme Court will hear arguments about state law enforcement personnel detaining undocumented immigrants solely to hold them for federal ICE officials.
• Trump regime officials are pushing for a new deal on a Trumpcare vote with the House GOP, but Republican lawmakers say they haven't seen the proposal in writing yet.
• The Trump Justice Department is warning employers not to use H-1B visas to discriminate against qualified US workers, promising "vigorous" prosecution of discrimination claims.

Last Call For Testing Our Patience

If there were somehow any doubt left over the fate of the Dubya "compassionate conservatism" era of the GOP, it's been put to rest in the era of Trump meanness and retribution for good.  Even at the state level, Republicans are running on punishing the poor and working class and of course the state leading the way on that front is Wisconsin and GOP Gov. Scott Walker.

Now that House Republicans have squandered their shot at reordering Medicaid, governors who want conservative changes in the health program for ­low-income Americans must get special permission from the Trump administration. 

Near the front of the line is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who not only supports work requirements and premium payments but also a new additional condition: to make applicants undergo a drug test if they’re suspected of substance abuse. 

If Walker gets his way, Wisconsin would be the first state in the country with mandatory drug screening for Medicaid enrollees. The governor plans to release his proposal in mid-April and submit it to the Department of Health and Human Services by the end of May. 

The approach — which also would mandate treatment for those testing positive — aligns with the goals of several Republican governors intent on tightening the program’s rules. Although the Obama administration allowed them to place expectations on enrollees, they’re hoping for far more leeway from HHS Secretary Tom Price. 

The goal behind Walker’s proposal “is to help people get healthy so they can get back in the workforce,” said Julie Lund, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Yet states that have started screening their welfare applicants over the past few years have turned up few drug users. In North Carolina, less than 0.3 percent of applicants to its WorkFirst welfare program tested positive for drugs during a five-month period in 2015. Michigan didn’t find any welfare recipients abusing drugs during a year-long pilot program in 2016. 

Opponents of Walker’s idea say the data shows that drug testing for Medicaid applicants isn’t worth the cost and effort. 

“They haven’t turned up much use of drugs among that population,” said Jon Peacock, research director for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

People who have problems with paying for basic medical care and prescription drugs don't exactly have a lot of extra cash on hand to pay the local meth dealer, guys.  It's common sense, but helping people beat addiction and abuse isn't the point despite Walker saying that those who test positive will be treated.

The real issue is that Walker and Republicans across the country believe that adding stigma and shame to Medicaid along with additional qualification burdens will simply keep people from signing up for help they qualify for (which if you notice has been wildly effective in curtailing access to reproductive health care through abortion procedures, there's a pattern here) because if people don't sign up for it, the program doesn't have to pay for them.

Oh, state taxpayers still have to deal with the burden of indigent care and ER visits, but hey, unhealthy poor people don't tend to stick around quite as long as drains on the tax base if you catch my drift.

If you really wanted those SNAP benefits to feed your family, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted those unemployment benefits, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted that abortion, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted to cast that vote, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted that Medicaid, you'd jump through these hoops.

Invest long in hoops futures, is the lesson.

Cruisin' For A Bruisin'

Amy Walter at the Cook Political Report surmises that unless something drastically changes the fortunes of the Trump regime for the better, Trump's dismally low popularity combined with traditional midterm losses by the party in control of the White House means that Democrats could very well be back in charge of the House in 2019.

The very public intra-party fight between President Trump and the Freedom Caucus is just the latest twist in the ongoing fight over the philosophical, strategic and ideological direction of the Republican party. As has been his mode of operation since his candidate days, Trump has taken to Twitter to shame/intimidate/cajole members of his own party. In this case, it was to get rebellious GOPers to “take one for the team” and support a flawed, but nonetheless GOP-authored Obamacare replacement bill. But, in the end, it’s not the Freedom Caucus that gets hurt by this infighting. They sit in safe Republican seats and know their voters better than anyone in DC. Instead, it’s the vulnerable GOP incumbents who lose this fight. Why? The more the GOP gets bogged down in process instead of progress, the more likely it is that their voters become disillusioned and that independent voters abandon them. Combine these ingredients with an energized Democratic base and you have all the ingredients for a disastrous midterm election in 2018 for the GOP.

In fact, if you look back at the last four midterm elections where the party in the White House lost control of one or both houses of Congress, you see that they share the following traits in common: the president has approval ratings among his own partisans under 85 percent and approval ratings among independents in the 30’s or low 40s.

For example, in November 2006, President George W. Bush’s job approval ratings among his own party were 81 percent. Just 31 percent of independents gave him a positive job rating. His party lost 30 House seats – and control of the House. Four years earlier, in the 2002 midterms, Bush’s job approval ratings among Republicans were a robust 91 percent and among independents they were at 63 percent. His party picked up eight seats in the House that year. We are less than 75 days into the Trump Administration and the president is flirting very close to the danger zone territory. The most recent Gallup survey put his approval ratings with Republicans at 85 percent, but he’s sitting at just 33 percent with independents. If he drops a few points among GOPers, Trump’s ratings today would look exactly like those of President Bush right before his party was routed in 2006.

The old rules say that the GOP is going to take serious damage in the 2018 midterms, but the real question is do the old rules even apply anymore in the Trump era?  Given the most disastrous opening 70 days in modern White House history, Trump's still at 85% with Republicans and that shows no sign of getting any worse for him.  Independents and Democrats have already bailed on this President, but it's Republicans who show up for midterms to actually vote, and that's not going to change.

Will Democrats and independents show up with enough force to counter that trend in 2018?  They sure as hell didn't in 2010 and especially in 2014, the lowest midterm turnout since WW II. 2018 better be different. and the time to lay that groundwork for candidates and turnout efforts is now.

Luckily, Democrats at the national level seem to grasp this, or at least Tom Perez does.  Whether this will translate into actual action remains to be seen.

Bill-O's Big Breakdown

The story over the weekend in the media involves new revelations about FOX News mainstay Bill O'Reilly as allegations of a pattern of sexual harassment and verbal abuse and claims by five women at the network came to light. BillO settled these claims and paid them to stay quiet, but the blowback over the weekend is now threatening FOX's most famous face.  CNN's media reporter Brian Stetler:

Murdoch associates winced on Saturday when The New York Times reported that five women received settlement payouts after accusing O'Reilly of harassment or verbal abuse. The Times said its reporting "suggests a pattern:" O'Reilly would wield his influence to "pursue sexual relationships" with women at Fox.

The story stung, but it was not surprising. For one thing, Fox executives and O'Reilly's representatives had known the Times investigation was in the works for months.

But they didn't need an investigation to know about O'Reilly's reputation. Inside Fox, there is a recognition that O'Reilly is a cable news legend, a loudmouth beloved by Fox's base -- but that he's also a liability because of his personal behavior.

O'Reilly settled a sexual harassment suit from ex-producer Andrea Mackris in 2004. (That payout accounts for $9 million of the $13 million in settlements The Times described, according to the paper.) And his ugly divorce proceedings, and the fallout from them, were documented by Gawker and its sister sites for years.

The Times (where I worked until 2013) began looking into the settlement payouts late last summer, after founding CEO Roger Ailes resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal.

The forthcoming story was the subject of C-suite office chatter throughout the winter. Murdoch associates wondered how damaging the story could be and discussed ways to blunt the impact.

The story went through an extensive legal review process. On Friday, as the Times was preparing to splash the story across the front page of Sunday's paper, a lawyer for O'Reilly threatened consequences, saying in a statement, "We are now seriously considering legal action to defend Mr. O'Reilly's reputation."

O'Reilly, 21st Century Fox said in a statement, "denies the merits of these claims."

In a statement on his web site, O'Reilly said he struck settlement deals to spare his children from hurtful headlines about lawsuits.

By the time the story came out, the Murdochs had already decided to extend O'Reilly's contract. The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal was the first to report the new deal, and a source confirmed it to CNNMoney.

O'Reilly's contract, said to be worth about $18 million a year, was due to expire at the end of 2017; now it is unclear when it expires.

All of the parties involved declined to comment. But the news of the new deal is a contractual show of support from 21st Century Fox.

The support has limits, however. Two executives, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested Fox is taking a wait-and-see approach to the controversy that's been triggered by the Times investigation.

In other words, FOX wants to see if BillO's bad behavior becomes a burden on the bottom line numbers before they decide if his treatment of women is actually a problem.  What nice people, huh?

Of course the current occupant of the White House is a serial harasser of women and a sexual abuser and voters didn't mind at all, so why shouldn't the people covering him on TV be any different in the era of Trump?

StupidiNews!

• The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote along party lines today to move Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court on to a filibuster battle in the full Senate.
• Lawyers for actor Bill Cosby will return to court in Philadelphia this week over what evidence will be allowed in his criminal sexual assault trial in June.
• Leftist candidate Lenin Moreno is claiming victory in Ecuador's presidential election over the weekend, conservative candidate Guillermo Lasso is demanding a recount.
• Ahead of Chinese talks later this week, Donald Trump says that the US could unilaterally deal with a nuclear North Korea if China will not assist America in containing Kim Jong Un.
• With Republicans in Congress moving to gut national online privacy rules, the battle moves to states starting with new legislation in Minnesota.

Last Call For Garland Parade

Mitch and Chuck on Merrick Garland:

“The tradition had been not to confirm vacancies in the middle of a presidential [election] year,” McConnell told Meet the Presshost Chuck Todd. “You’d have to go back 80 years to find the last time it happened… Everyone knew, including President Obama’s former White House counsel, that if the shoe had been on the other foot, [Democrats] wouldn’t have filled a Republican president’s vacancy in the middle of a presidential election.”

“That’s a rationale to vote against his confirmation,” Todd argued. “Why not put him up for a vote? Any senator can have a rationale to not to vote for a confirmation. Why not put Merrick Garland on the floor and if the rationale is, ‘You know what? Too close to an election,’ then vote no?”

McConnell laughed defensively.

“Look, we litigated that last year,” the Majority Leader stuttered. “The American people decided that they wanted Donald Trump to make the nomination, not Hillary Clinton.”

McConnell argued that Democrats should focus on the issue at hand, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

“There’s no rational reason, no basis for voting against Neil Gorsuch,” McConnell opined.

“You say it’s been litigated, the Garland situation,” Todd replied. “For a lot of Senate Democrats, they’re not done litigating this… What was wrong with allowing Merrick Garland to have an up or down vote?”

“I already told you!” McConnell exclaimed. “You don’t fill Supreme Court vacancies in the middle of a presidential election.”

“Should that be the policy going forward?” Todd interrupted. “Are you prepared to pass a resolution that says in election years any Supreme Court vacancy [will not be filled] and let it be a sense of the Senate resolution, that says no Supreme Court nominations will be considered in any even numbered year? Is that where we’re headed?”

“That’s an absurd question,” McConnell complained. “We were right in the middle of a presidential election year. Every body knew that either side — had the shoe been on the other foot — wouldn’t have filled it. But that has nothing to do with what we’re voting on this year.”

Dems should say that since Trump is already campaigning that they can't possibly allow Gorsuch to get a vote and filibuster him, since we can't possibly nominate and confirm a Supreme Court nominee during that time.

Shutdown Countdown, Con't

Don't look now, but the party that can't even pass its own healthcare legislation after seven years needs to come up with a budget in less than four weeks or the government shuts down. Stan Collender:

Funding for the federal government will run out at midnight on April 28. If some type of new appropriation isn't enacted by then, there will be a government shutdown the next day.

You would think the Republican-controlled Congress would want to deal with this immediately, especially in the aftermath of the Affordable Care Act repeal/replace debacle.

But the Senate will be in recess from next Friday until April 24 (the House comes back on April 25) and isn't planning to consider a new funding deal until then. Once it comes back to Washington, Congress will be in session for less than a week before the shutdown will begin.

President Trump has proposed $18 billion in cuts to domestic programs for the rest of fiscal 2017 that the White House will want included in the new funding bill. He's also proposed initial spending for a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Congressional Democrats are against the president's proposals. While they're very likely to vote against the funding bill no matter what, House and Senate Democrats are almost guaranteed to vote against it if any of these hot button items are included.

And guess what?  The GOP budget might not even make it out of the House.

Republican leaders are eager to avoid a government shutdown but the demise of their Obamacare repeal could leave some conservatives spoiling for a fight that raises the odds of a standoff.

The House Freedom Caucus, which helped bring down the GOP health-care bill, says Republicans have yet to notch a significant victory, despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House. One top promise they and other conservatives had to hoped to deliver on with the Obamacare repeal was defunding Planned Parenthood over its provision of abortions.

Now, their next chance comes with a spending measure needed to keep the government operating after April 28, when current funding runs out. But Democrats, and some Republicans, strongly defend the group, which provides many health services to women. The battle, which nearly led to a shutdown in 2015, could be enough to set Congress on a path to another one.

“I’m very concerned and we are going to have to try and work in a bipartisan fashion,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said Monday.

House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested Tuesday that the spending measure was the wrong place to wage the Planned Parenthood fight.

“We think reconciliation is the way to go” on defunding the group, Ryan told reporters, referring to the mechanism Republicans were trying to use for the health-care bill that allows them to avoid a filibuster from Senate Democrats.

But to do that, it will have to make it past the same GOP House Freedom Caucus that scrapped Trumpcare because it wasn't draconian enough. Anyone want to take bets on whether or not this turns into a disaster?

Too late, I'm thinking.