Lobenthal.com

Hatch’s scurrilous remarks about Medicaid expansion and Medicaid recipients tell us the way that the GOP plans to kill not only Medicaid expansion but Medicaid itself. His sneer about “able-bodied” adults runs in a direct line of descent back to Reagan’s welfare queens.

Yes, Orrin, able-bodied people are treated by Medicaid so that they can try to stay able-bodied, the same way that you have received your Cadillac health-care insurance in the Senate for four decades on our dime and as a result you remain at the age of eighty-two sufficiently upright to continue to do horrific damage to the American people.

Dan Diamond tweets from the Senate floor tonight that Hatch “now attacking Medicaid expansion, saying it puts more able-bodied people into failing program and wastes money.”

Hatch is a despicable human being, and his contempt for Americans is deplorable.

“as you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I’m president, which is — I didn’t know about that until about three months ago, but it’s a nice thing to have.”

That’s what one is tempted to ask, as Rex Tillerson, not only completely unqualified to be Secretary of State but negatively qualified, qualified-challenged, arrogantly pulls the standard Trumpian one-step stonewall.

Sure, I knew that already, but it’s good to get confirmation.

Trump’s hired legal gun and his own bloviating mouth tell us exactly where we stand.

Impeachment proceedings must begin the day Trump takes office.

Her damning 1986 indictment of Sessions and his maniacal pursuit of national  disenfranchisement.

Hand me a bourbon and branch water while I read this and picture the way that Sessions will turn the AG’ office into a vigilante voter suppression shed.

And when he wasn’t coasting by via slithery charm and the John Roberts playbook–smile and tell them what they want to hear–Sessions yesterday dropped more than a few hints of what he’s really going to be up to.

All you have to do it study his ACA “replacement” plan or his lying-through-his-teeth tweets, in which he attempts to coordinate his lies with Ron Johnson’s lies from earlier in the day.

As I said, Alexander is simply offering the so-far defecting GOP senators a short-term cover.

Laced with all the standard-issue GOP euphemisms meant to mask an obliteration of all nation-wide baselines.

There’s the same old hooey about tax-credits, and savings accounts, without any safeguards in place to control insurance premiums.

The minute you hear the GOP talk, as Alexander does, about giving states more discretion & more “flexibility” you know you’ve been warned.

Alexander’s “replacement” is as vague as could be, an egregious attempt to send affordable and accessible health care down the memory hole via endless temporizing and promises of something “better.” Sometime.

What it really is is an attempt to pull back into the fold wavering GOP senators so that repeal can go forward as planned by Trump and GOP leadership.

Bill Berkowitz at Truth Out writes that: “Wat has been a unifying motivation amongst some of Trump’s cabinet picks is the disdain for the agencies they will be heading. With Trump in the White House, this could be the year the Right finally gets to zero-out the agency.”