On And On To Pyonyang

Well now is where things start getting interesting on the North Korea front, as a carrier strike group anchored by the USS Carl Vinson is on its way to say hi to the neighbors.

A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program.

Earlier this month North Korea tested a liquid-fueled Scud missile which only traveled a fraction of its range.

The strike group, called Carl Vinson, includes an aircraft carrier and will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean peninsula, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity.

"We feel the increased presence is necessary," the official said, citing North Korea's worrisome behavior.

The news was first reported by Reuters.

In a statement late Saturday, the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet said the strike group had been directed to sail north, but it did not specify the destination. The military vessels will operate in the Western Pacific rather than making previously planned port visits to Australia, it added.

This year North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an intercontinental ballistic missile test or something similar could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea's founding president and celebrated annually as "the Day of the Sun."

Oh good hooray!

Well at this point we've already shot at Syria, so we might as well be efficient and go harass North Korea while we're at it, right?

Look, I know this is saber-rattling at its finest and all, but frankly the odds of two unstable leaders with nuclear weapons having an incident that escalates very quickly should something go wrong is spectacularly high here.  Even if you're convinced Hillary would have taken the same actions, there's no way she would be as bugnuts as Trump is when it comes to being so obviously goaded into taking a stupid, dangerous action.

So yes, considering Trump has made the worst possible decision at every turn so far, I do not have a good feeling about this at all.

Last Call For Looney Suit Larry

Hey guys?  Just a reminder that stupid, unhelpful conspiracy theories are not the sole province of the right, as Lawrence O'Donnell floats the idea that last week's chemical strike in Syria was...Putin's doing.

A volley of U.S. cruise missiles had barely been launched into Syria before the Internet filled up with fact-free theories about the real reason for an international crisis.

A popular one on the right-most fringes: The U.S. government actually carried out the chemical weapons massacre in Syria last week — a “false flag” to trick President Trump into retaliating, thus entangling himself in a foreign war.

A slightly more convoluted strain on the left: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the chemical weapons massacre to help Trump — distracting Americans from an investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia by provoking the missile strike.

That theory — evidence-free — was laid out on a small anti-Trump website shortly after the missile strike.

But it went mainstream Friday night, when Lawrence O'Donnell advanced similar speculation on his MSNBC show, “The Last Word.”
“Wouldn't it be nice,” O'Donnell asked a nodding, smiling Rachel Maddow, “if it was just completely, totally, absolutely impossible to suspect that Vladimir Putin orchestrated what happened in Syria this week — so that his friend in the White House could have a big night with missiles and all the praises he's picked up over the past 24 hours?”

The theory was impossible to rule out, O'Donnell said, because of the Trump campaign's ties to the Russian government.

A few minutes later, the host elaborated on his theory under banner text: “Wag The Dog?” — recalling a similar conspiracy theory that President Bill Clinton launched missiles in 1998 to distract from his own scandal.

“It changes the conventional wisdom about the dynamic between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,” O'Donnell said. “President Trump has finally dared to do something Vladimir Putin doesn't like. It changes everything.”

O'Donnell didn't offer any evidence on his theory, promising only that “you won't hear ... proof that the scenario I've just outlined is impossible.”

Jesus hell, Larry.

It's one thing for Trump to spout nonsense, because frankly he's a chronic liar and has all the credibility of a soggy bowl of corn flakes.  But moonbat bullcrap like this, with no evidence, blurted out on cable news, well it's just as moronic when the left does it.

I'm not sure what O'Donnell is doing with this one, but it's only going to help Trump continue to erode the country's stability, especially when actual evidence exists that Putin really is a serious problem.

Knock it off, man.

Bitter Home Alabama, Con't

I've covered the two biggest messes in Alabama GOP politics, the state's GOP leadership stuck in a massive impeachment scandal that has already taken down the state's House Speaker Mike Hubbard while Gov. Robert Bentley is facing an impeachment scandal after the ridiculously failed cover-up of an affair with one of his staff, and the state's attempt to disenfranchise black voters by passing a strict voter ID law and then closing 90% of drivers' license offices in predominantly black counties, a move that generated enough national outrage that the state reversed the closings.

It turns out that Bentley's scandal and the DMV office closings have a connection, and it's Rebekah Mason, the staff member Bentley was having an affair with.

Governor Robert Bentley's former top advisor and secret paramour Rebekah Mason led a politically-motivated effort in 2015 to close 31 driver's license offices in mostly black counties, a move that embarrassed the state and was later reversed.

The decision also led to a federal investigation and drew civil rights protesters such as Jesse Jackson to the state.

Mason's role was highlighted in a 131-page report released Friday by the investigator leading impeachment efforts against Gov. Bentley, a report largely focused on the relationship between Mason and Bentley.

The report and exhibits can be found here.

According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan."

According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies."

Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation.

Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.

The closures were estimated to save around $200,000, an extremely small savings in a General Fund that typically has annual shortfalls ranging from $100 million to $200 million.

So yeah, the Governor's mistress very much wanted to keep black people in Alabama from being able to vote, and wanted to do so in a way that "protected" her lover.  Nice lady, huh.  Meanwhile, the impeachment proceedings against Bentley continue, and the former state AG?  He's now Senator Luther Strange, Jeff Sessions's replacement.

Alabama keeps on keepin on in the corruption department.

Negasonic Teenage Warmongers

It seems that the feud between White House "evil geniuses" Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner has finally gotten the notice of Trump, and he's sick of the kids fighting in the back seat and he will turn this car around, dammit.

Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner, two warring senior White House aides, had a bury-the-hatchet meeting ordered by President Donald Trump, after arriving at Mar-a-Lago this week.

The sit-down, which was confirmed by two White House officials, was an attempt to smooth over tensions between the two men, which have dominated headlines for days. Whether the meeting was successful in creating a détente – and how long it lasts – is an open question, especially in a White House that has been dominated by infighting.

Bannon and Kushner had for months been allies. In recent weeks, though, there has been substantial discord between them. The fight, people in the administration say, centers on policy differences. Bannon, White House chief strategist, is a flame-throwing populist who formerly ran Breitbart News. He has criticized Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, for his more politically moderate approach. Kushner is suspicious of Bannon’s fiery style and has been concerned about how he’s influencing the president.

Suspicion between Bannon’s team and Kushner’s has intensified in recent days, with both sides accusing the other of planting negative stories in the media.

It's not the fact that Bannon and Kushner are acting like spoiled teenagers in a fight over who gets to be student body president, it's the fact they're doing it while they are affecting the direction of the entire United States of America.

Frankly I don't care which one of these jackasses gets grounded by dad first, the fact is the whole regime needs to go, and the sooner the better.  By 2020 there might not be an America left for these idiots to run into the ground.

It's Quite A Kushner Job If You Can Get It

The worst-vetted White House staff in modern American history continues its greatest hits, this time it's Trump's newest wonder boy and son-in-law Jared Kushner who has run afoul of the security clearance process, and once again the reason why is to hide contact with Russia.

When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years. 

But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest. 

The omissions, which Mr. Kushner’s lawyer called an error, are particularly sensitive given the congressional and F.B.I. investigations into contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee informed the White House weeks ago that, as part of its inquiry, it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meetings he arranged with Mr. Kislyak, including the one with Sergey N. Gorkov, a graduate of Russia’s spy school who now heads Vnesheconombank. 

Mr. Kushner’s omissions were described by people with direct knowledge of them who asked for anonymity because the questionnaire is not a public document. 

While officials can lose access to intelligence, or worse, for failing to disclose foreign contacts, the forms are often amended to address lapses. Jamie Gorelick, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, said that the questionnaire was submitted prematurely on Jan. 18, and that the next day, Mr. Kushner’s office told the F.B.I. that he would provide supplemental information. 

Mr. Kushner’s aides said he was compiling that material and would share it when the F.B.I. interviewed him. For now, they said, he has an interim security clearance. 

In a statement, Ms. Gorelick said that after learning of the error, Mr. Kushner told the F.B.I.: “During the presidential campaign and transition period, I served as a point-of-contact for foreign officials trying to reach the president-elect. I had numerous contacts with foreign officials in this capacity. … I would be happy to provide additional information about these contacts.” No names were disclosed in that correspondence.

Surprise!  Jared Kushner is just as deep into the Russian mess as the rest of the Trump regime, if not more so because he actually knows what's going on as Trump's right-hand and being married into the family.

Why Kushner has anything remotely resembling a security clearance after, you know, actively lying to the FBI about "dozens of contacts" is a mystery to me, as is why Kushner isn't currently languishing in federal prison (which is what you or I would get if we lied to the FBI dozens of times.)

Hopefully the FBI will quickly remedy both of these glaring issues.  Keep that in mind while Trump tries to distract the world with Syria.

Syria's As A Heart Attack

Didn't even take Trump three months to get into a situation where his "leadership" failed so spectacularly on the domestic front that he pulled a "Wag The Dog" move and launched several dozen Tomahawks into a Syrian airbase.

The United States fired cruise missiles on Friday at a Syrian airbase from which President Donald Trump said a deadly chemical weapons attack had been launched, the first direct U.S. assault on the government of Bashar al-Assad in six years of civil war. 

In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, Trump ordered the step his predecessor Barack Obama never took: directly targeting Assad's military as punishment for the chemical weapons attack which killed at least 70 people. 

That catapulted the United States into a confrontation with Russia, which has military advisers on the ground assisting its close ally Assad. 

"Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed and failed very dramatically," Trump said as he announced the attack from his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

"Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack," he said of Tuesday's chemical weapons strike, which Western countries blame on Assad's forces. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror." 

The swift action is likely to be interpreted not only as a signal to Russia, but also to other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran where Trump has faced foreign policy tests early in his presidency. 

The Syrian army said the U.S. attack killed six people at its air base near the city of Homs. It called the attack "blatant aggression" and said it made the United States a "partner" of "terrorist groups" including Islamic State. Homs Governor Talal Barazi told Reuters the death toll was seven. 

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike had seriously damaged ties between Washington and Moscow. Putin regarded the U.S. action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. 

Russian television showed craters and rubble at the site of the airbase and said nine aircraft had been destroyed.

Let's review this from the point of view of the various audiences Trump performed this action for, shall we?

First up, Trump's base.  They were starting to seriously stray from side, with his overall approval ratings sinking into the mid-30's.  Trump and the GOP have suffered losses (with the extremely important exception of the completion of the theft of Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat, but that entirely because it had nothing to do with Paul Ryan and the House GOP) on repealing Obamacare, on numerous executive orders running into immediate judicial buzzsaws, and most importantly on the Russian investigation front.

Now, they have a big, manly win to be proud of, and anyone left who is somehow surprised that "Never Trump" pundits and commentators will suddenly come around to embrace Trump, the guy who would fire missiles into Syria when wimpy, wussy Muslim Obama wouldn't, needs to get a lot of other things checked too.  This was always going to happen, it just happened far more quickly than even I anticipated.  If the "Never Trump" movement wasn't dead before, its death by self-flagellation using the huge war boner from this missile strike will come by the weekend.  The stories on MikeFlynn go away, the hagiography of Mad Dog Mattis and H.R. McMaster being firmly in charge now are the story of the day. Can I get a Hoorah and a Semper Fi from the congregation?

And that brings us to number two on the list: the Village.  America's worthless media pundits do so love a good Tomahawk-ing of sandy countries full of swarthy men with funny clothing.  They're falling all over themselves congratulating Trump this morning.  FOX News has been running missile porn for hours and will for days.  Serious-minded thinkers on the left and the right will tell us that Trump made the right choice, and that more importantly since we learned precisely nothing over the last 16 years, we'll be told once again that challenging this action is no longer allowed and that it's time to support "our president".

Again, there's nothing more the Village loves than a big national tragedy that sells, and now they can talk war, giving them a very convenient reason to completely forget the narrative of the last several months.  Trump wanted a story to make the Obamacare repeal disaster and Russian investigation go away, and he's got it for at least the rest of the month.  Trump will see the effectiveness of the action and will continue down this path, guaranteed.  He wants to be a "winner" and this is a "win" in the eyes of the Village press.

Number three of course is Putin and Assad.  The Russians want out of Syria and with both Assad and Trump working for Vlad, it's easy to game the system.  This is the next phase of Moscow's plan, and it's working wonderfully so far.  I know, you're saying "But if Putin wants out of Syria, why have Assad do something guaranteed to make Trump step in?"  Well, what better way to disarm Russian critics in the US than to be the shadowy bad guy behind baby-gassing Assad, right?  Russia can't possibly be working with Trump if we're at loggerheads in Damascus, you see,  And Putin gets his cover, after all he wants this Russia investigation to go away too.

Besides, it's not like Putin and Trump are mortal enemies now.  Both need each other.  A chemical weapon attack followed by a bunch of cruise missiles that just happen to all get through Russian SAM defenses that are protecting Syrian air bases is a scheme that stinks so hard it's visible from space.  Trump let Vlad know (and Vlad let Trump think it was his idea), Vlad let Bashar know, and anything important was not at that airbase that got blown up last night.  A win for everyone involved, right?

Ahh, but let's not forget contestant number four in our game, China's Xi Jinping.  There's a reason all this happened on the night Xi was staying in Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach for a summit, with North Korea rattling its playpen bars and wanting attention.  Golf and glitz doesn't impress Xi.  Missiles and warships on the other hand, we'll that just kinda changed the game on today summit talks, don't they?  Suddenly the Trump Foreign Policy Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight pulled this off with the manly generals in charge and you have to wonder.

China's been running circles around Trump in the Pacific as of late, but now Xi has quite a bit to think about on the trip back home.  The US is a player in the Pacific, but so is Russia. Trump's move throws a wrench into the already delicate machinery of the Great Game.  Xi's not dumb enough to buy this "Russia and the US at odds" thing any more than you are, dear reader.  They'll move cautiously, which is what Trump and Putin both want.

So where does that leave us?  Is this a one-time deal meant to buy time for when the Russian investigation shoe drops?  Does Trump really want a boost to his numbers this badly?  Does Vlad care that his machinations are this obvious?

We'll find out.  Stay tuned, guys.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump has launched a large Tomahawk cruise missile strike at a Syrian airbase in response to this week's chemical weapon attack by the Assad regime.
• Russia has condemned the attack and will pull out of its agreement with the US on military air safety rules of engagement in Syria.
• After changing the rules yesterday to eliminate a Democratic filibuster, Senate Republicans are expected to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by a simple majority vote today.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping wraps up his two-day summit visit to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump confirms he informed Xi of the Syrian airstrikes last night.
• Researchers have discovered a botnet that permanently disables internet-connected appliances, possibly as a "scorched earth"effort to prevent the devices from being taken over by others.

My Congressman Is An Idiot, Folks

As a Kentuckian, it's embarrassing enough being a constituent of Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell most days, but the fact that Rep. Thomas Massie makes northern Kentucky look like a bunch of meatheads too is really piling abuse upon abuse here.  Massie's latest massive gaffe on the national stage came courtesy of CNN yesterday as my congressman happily explained to Kate Bolduan that he didn't think Bashar al-Assad was responsible for this week's ruthless chemical weapons attack in Syria somehow, a fact that even the notoriously fact-averse Trump regime seems to recognize.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie expressed doubt Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for Tuesday's chemical attack, and reinforced his stance that US intervention could "end up making the situation worse." 

Speaking on CNN's "At This Hour" with Kate Bolduan, the Kentucky lawmaker told the host that he didn't think the Syrian leader launched the attack, and that further intervention by the US government may aggravate the situation. 

"Frankly, I don't think Assad would have done that," Massie said. "It does not serve his interests." 

Dozens of people -- including at least 10 children -- died, and more than 200 people were injured in a suspected chemical weapons attack in northern Syria Tuesday. Activist groups and some US officials have attributed the tragedy to Assad and his regime, including President Donald Trump who cited Assad's administration Wednesday. 

When a visibly stunned Bolduan pressed Massie on who -- if not Assad -- may be responsible for the attack, Massie seemed to suggest that the incident could have been unintentional. 

"You've got a war going on over there," Massie said. "Supposedly that airstrike was on an ammo dump, and so I don't know if it was released because there was gas stored in the ammo dump or not -- that's plausible."

If that theory sounds familiar, it's because that's the line both the Asaad regime and Moscow are taking on this, that Russian airstrikes on a "rebel-held chemical weapons factory" accidentally released the weapons into the surrounding area.  It's one thing to hear such an obvious lie coming from Putin.  It's quite another to hear the lie coming from your own Representative in Congress.

Massie needs to go, folks.  I don't know if anyone's filed to run against him yet, but when they do, I'm volunteering for campaign help.

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.