Shocking News.  Jared couldn’t handle it all, so Kellyanne will take over.  

Take a deep breath and move away from sharp objects.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that pollster Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to President Trump, would oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic.

However: The White House has not yet released a strategy on how to approach the crisis, nor has a head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy been appointed.

Have you looked at her eyes or heard her speak? Do you really think she should be within fifty yards of drug policy?

People are dying because Big Pharm fostered a profit project and the best you have is Kellyanne with No Plan?

Even more worrisome – “More than 64,000 people died in the US of drug overdoses in 2016, largely from opioids such as heroin, fentanyl, and prescription painkillers,” and you’re just now getting started?

Happily, Joe Barton decided not to seek reelection.

Sadly, that means we have to put up with him for another year and two months.

Which is exactly one year and two months too long.  I guess he has more poses he wants to try out.

The Washington Post this morning.

“President Trump this week disseminated on social media three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos, took glee in the firing of a news anchor for sexual harassment allegations despite facing more than a dozen of his own accusers and used a ceremony honoring Navajo war heroes to malign a senator with a derogatory nickname, ‘Pocahontas.’” 

“Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential behavior. But despite the now-routine condemnations, the president is acting emboldened, as if he were impervious to the uproar he causes.”

Okay, here’s where I strongly disagree.  “Trump veered past the guardrails of presidential behavior.” Really? What exactly is presidential behavior? Is it in some textbook somewhere? Written down in a chapter of the super-secret Code of Presidential Conduct?

No, Washington Post.  Let me fix this for you.

Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential human behavior.

There. That’s better.

Goodness gracious, they have started stealing from each other!

Staffers for Senate Republicans’ campaign arm seized information on more than 200,000 donors from the House GOP campaign committee over several months this year by breaking into its computer system, three sources with knowledge of the breach told POLITICO.

Okay, you have to know that you’re facing a total breakdown when you start stealing from each other.

Multiple NRSC (Senate) staffers, who previously worked for the NRCC (House), used old database login information to gain access to House Republicans’ donor lists this year.

So here we have McConnell stealing donor lists from Ryan. That’s horrible. No, wait, that’s funny.  Damn funny.

The Senate Campaign Committee has reason to steal – it is spending more than it takes in.

The NRSC has spent more money than it has raised four months in a row, according to campaign finance reports, leaving it with $14 million on hand and more than $10 million in debt.

The NRCC’s fundraising has continued to climb. The House committee finished last month with $17 million more in its bank account than at this point in any previous election cycle.

Well, that news just made my whole day!

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

It’s been a bad week for LaPierre & the gun grifters. The Supreme Court declined to hear two of their appeals against state laws that restricted unrestricted weaponry possession, and now this.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is [investigating] the role the National Rifle Association played in connecting the Trump campaign with Russians, according to letters from the panel’s top Democrat.

And here’s why.  Trump, Jr. talked with Alexander Torshin, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the deputy head of the country’s central bank, at an event hosted by the National Rifle Association.

Maria Butina

That meeting was arranged by Maria Butina, the deputy to Torshion.

Butina has bragged that she helped connect the Trump campaign with the Kremlin, according to The Daily Beast, and it’s possible her statements were not just bravado. Torshin requested that Trump meet with him on the sidelines of the National Rifle Association’s convention in May 2016. He never met with then-candidate Trump, but he did succeed in securing a meeting with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.  

So, Boris and Natasha meets Annie Get Your Gun meets pick your favorite James Bond movie.

I am beginning to think that Trump, Jr. met more Russians than Field Marshal von Manstein did at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Thanks to Scott for the heads up.

Oops – and please send a picture of what you’re wearing, Joe.

Texas Republican Congressvarmint Smokey Joe Barton ain’t done yet.  The nakkid pictures weren’t enough.

Now the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has some more stuff.

An Arlington woman has shared a series of private messages — some with sexual overtones — she exchanged with U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, a week after he apologized for texting a nude photo of himself to another woman.

The boy appears unable to learn from his mistakes.

The messages, which were obtained by the Star-Telegram on Wednesday, included a mix of politics and questions about whether she was “wearing a tank top only..and no panties.”

Barton and the woman exchanged the Facebook messages in 2012 and 2013 while Barton was still married to his second wife, Terri.