Donald Trump met today with insurers to ask them to work together to replace Obamacare.  Yeah.

The meeting included leaders from Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Anthem, Kaiser Permanente and the industry lobbying group, America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Hellfire, there’s enough evil, greed, and slime in that room to burn a hole the size of Montana all the way through the earth.

And, it the largest collection of old white guys in the White House since … well, the last time Trump held a meeting there.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Well, he’s gonna get a military parade like every other despot has, by gawd.

The fake New York Times has a story this morning saying the Trump will ask for a $54 billion increase in military spending.  And who will pay for it?

A day before delivering a high-stakes address on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Trump will demand a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, according to four senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plan. Social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees, would also be hit hard.

The EPA, State Department, and little hungry crippled children.

I have a visual image of Kushner and Bannon playing with little army guys with tanks, bombers, and trucks on the coffee table, with Daddy promising to get them life-sized ones.

I never thought I’d be saying this, but maybe he wasn’t so bad.

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. We needed the media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power.”

— Former President George W. Bush, in an interview on the Today Show.

Yeah, I’m stunned.

Get ready for Donald Trump to gut punch another Gold Star Father.

The father of a Navy Seal killed in a raid in Yemen last month has demanded an investigation into the planning and timing of what he called a “stupid mission”.

If my memory serves me correctly (I occasionally do have fake memory), at the Republican National Convention last year a heartbroken mother said that Hillary Clinton killed her son in Benghazi.  None of us said anything about her except that she had our deepest sympathies for the loss of her son, who was a civilian working in Benghazi.

At the Democratic convention, Gold Star father Khizr Khan asked Donald Tump to recognize the importance of Muslim Americans to our country.  He and his wife were viciously attacked by Trump.

Get ready for the same thing to happen to Bill Owens, the father of the SEAL killed in the Yemen attack, even though the attack is beginning to look like a testosterone party for Bannon, Kushner, and General Mathis.  Donald Trump was gleefully twittering during the attack.

I admire Bill Owen for having the courage to speak up after what happened to the Khans.

Henry Rousso is a 62 year old Egyptian born senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research.  He lives in Paris.  He had been invited to speak at Texas A&M’s Hagler Institute Symposium.

He was “mistakenly detained” at the airport.

According to Richard Golsan, director of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M –

“When he called me with this news two nights ago, he was waiting for customs officials to send him back to Paris as an illegal alien on the first flight out.”

After learning about the dire situation, Golsan said he immediately called university officials, leading A&M President Michael K. Young to enlist the help of Texas A&M Law School professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic Fatma Marouf.

“Due to her prompt and timely intervention, Rousso was released,” Golsan said.

Holy crap, y’all, neither Egypt or France are on Trump’s list, but perhaps he tweeted “intellectuals” last night.

First Mohammed Ali, Jr. who was detained and asked, “Where did you get that name?” and “Are you a Muslim?”

Then the ICE raids in California where legal residents where dragged out of their beds and their children were  terrorized.  ICE lied to the city and doctored documents.

Remember when this picture outraged Republicans?

Well, now it’s the official symbol of the Republican Party.

Thanks to Scott for the heads up.

In the wake of news organizations pulling out of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, SCROTUS just announced he is not attending. Of course, he did it on Twitter. He’s trying to avoid the huge  embarrassment of being savaged by unrelenting truth.