monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Senior Republican congressman Steve King has sparked a backlash on social media after tweeting his support for the Dutch anti-Islam politician, Geert Wilders.

"Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny," Mr King wrote on Twitter.

"We can't restore our civilisation with somebody else's babies," he added.
The outrage from Democratic politicians and commentators across the political spectrum was quick, ferocious and entirely expected. The bluntness of Mr King's message, the talk of "our destiny" and "other people's babies", ensured a vigorous response.

Of greater interest will be how Republican officeholders handle the controversy. So far they have remained silent. That may be increasingly difficult, as this is yet another indication of the growing bonds between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and white nationalist movements in Europe.

Breitbart, the conservative media outlet recently headed by White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, often sings the praises of Mr Wilders, as well as France's Marine Le Pen and Frauke Petry, leader of the Alternative for Germany Party.

In the final weeks of the US presidential election, Veles attained a weird infamy in the most powerful nation on earth; stories in The Guardian and on BuzzFeed revealed that the Macedonian town of 55,000 was the registered home of at least 100 pro-Trump websites, many of them filled with sensationalist, utterly fake news. (The imminent criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton was a popular theme; another was the pope’s approval of Trump.) The sites’ ample traffic was rewarded handsomely by automated advertising engines, like Google’s AdSense. An article in The New Yorker described how President Barack Obama himself spent a day in the final week of the campaign talking “almost obsessively” about Veles and its “digital gold rush.”

Within Veles itself, the young entrepreneurs behind these websites became subjects of tantalizing intrigue. Between August and November, Boris earned nearly $16,000 off his two pro-Trump websites. The average monthly salary in Macedonia is $371...

Conway paid dearly for getting hooked up with Trump. She used to enjoy high respect in DC until she became the spokesperson for ly,n Trump.

Oh nonsense. The fact that liberal has-beens are crying and throwing a tantrum doesn't mean she isn't respected.

...The current head of the CBO is Keith Hall, a conservative, anti-regulation economist who worked for the Bush administration. Still, the CBO analysis of the Republican bill to repeal the ACA is expected to find that between six and 15 million people will lose their health insurance if it is passed and implemented, due to a combination of cuts to Medicaid, reduced subsidies for lower income people to buy private insurance, and the repeal of the individual mandate.

As Republican lawmakers attack the agency's reputation, budget experts from across the political spectrum have been rallying to its defense.

"The office is genuinely non-partisan and seeks to make sure its estimates are grounded in research literature," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who led the agency under President George W. Bush, worked on Mitt Romney's 2008 campaign and now leads the conservative American Action Forum. "Both Republicans and Democrats have led the office, and the work is always of the same high quality."

"They’re the ultimate budget wonks," added Stan Collender, a former top staffer on the House and Senate budget committees who worked for both Republicans and Democrats. "They produce the closest thing you’re going to get to facts in Washington. The Office of Management and Budget is good, but it’s in their interest to protect the White House. The CBO is only there to get the numbers right."

Corn based ethanol is just another example of a boondoggle, in this case a bipartisan one specifically crafted to appeal to a reliable block of farm state voters. A rational energy policy would subject legislation to a cost/benefit analysis and consider choices using a scientific rather than a political calculus.

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Government subsidized student loans have yielded rapidly increasing tuition costs(...)

While government loan subsidies play a part in the steady rise of higher education costs, they are as much a correlation as a cause. The loan subsidies were, at first, a response to widely-shared concerns about college becoming unaffordable. Inflationary forces were already at work.

Like so many of these swamp creatures, she's now into the big bucks by being a parasite in the land of right wing con jobs. But I can't imagine anyone who would behave as she is now has an innocent or ethical past.

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....between six and 15 million people will lose their health insurance if it is passed and implemented, due to... the repeal of the individual mandate.

"Political analysis" or girlish gossip?

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) talked to conservative host Hugh Hewitt on Friday about the Republicans' health care plan, and the GOP leader conceded that his party is "never going to win a coverage beauty contest" with Democrats. He added that Republicans' goal is "not to win some coverage beauty contest."

It was a curious choice of words. We are, after all, talking about American families having health security, not some meaningless pageant. What's more, the GOP congressman seemed to be implicitly conceding that his derided plan will be inferior to the Affordable Care Act when it comes to the most basic goal of health reform: ensuring that Americans have coverage.

And that's ultimately where Republicans are likely to run into the most trouble. Love "Obamacare" or hate it, the ACA has succeeded in its principal goal: bringing consumers health insurance. It's not an accident that the nation's uninsured rate is now the lowest it's ever been. The Republican plan, meanwhile, is projected to take coverage away from between 6 million and 15 million Americans. The Congressional Budget Office's tally will shed additional light on the subject, and it may come as early as today.

So, I guess if I don't buy a new BMW, then I have "lost" a car, that the idea?

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!
5:52 AM - 13 Mar 2017

Or, more likely, he thinks that if he can badger and bully enough he'll get a compliant media to serve him. And if that doesn't work, then at least he can continue to convince his base of malformed brains that he's a victim and that they must turn to right wing media to learn the real truth. Unfortunately, that last one seems to be working.