Novartis, the drug giant, gave Michael Cohen $1.2 million for insight into Trump’s approach to Obamacare.

Then, today …

They gave him money before they knew he was useless?  And they want you to trust them enough to put their drugs in your mouth.  I dunno, y’all.

Plus, if they spend $1.2 on useless people in hopes that they can hike the price of my drugs, then their drugs cost too much to begin with. That’s an obscene amount of money to gamble while people already can’t afford their drugs.

Plus, heck, for $20 and a Dairy Queen gift card, Thelma would have told them that Cohen was useless.  Thelma is an expert on useless men. Give Thelma some money, dammit.

Okay, here I am wondering how many other Trump or Cohen LLC’s are taking bribes / pay to play/ payola / kickbacks other than Essential Consulting.  I mean, the ones we don’t know about yet.

Small Hands (a Subsidiary of Peabrain), LLC

Rebounding Fabrications, LLC

Greasy Palms, LLC

All the Best People, LLC

Pecuniary Exchange, LLC

Tastes Like Russians, LLC

Cup O’ Cash, LLC

Mandatory Consultants, LLC

Have It My Way Experts, LLC

Shell, The Company, LLC (Not Affiliated With Shell Oil and Gas)

Deposit Money Here, LLC

Come on, join in the fun!

Okay, I know there are a mess of screwy things happening today, but pause for a minute and ponder this one.

DNC data director Seth Rich was murdered in a botched robbery in the summer of 2016 in Washington, DC.

Seth Rich

Fox news immediately saw a giant conspiracy to have Rich killed by Hillary Clinton to keep him from leaking information about God only knows what.

Two months ago, Seth Rich’s parents filed a lawsuit against Fox News, saying that Fox “intentionally exploited” their son’s death “through lies, misrepresentations and half-truths.”

The parents of Seth Rich filed a lawsuit against Fox News for their outrageous false reporting on the death of their son being part of some conspiracy dreamed up by Hillary Clinton.

In a motion filed Monday asking a court for the dismissal of the lawsuit filed by the parents of Seth Rich, Fox News made quite a stunning claim. The network said that while the parents might assert the now-retracted story caused them pain, “other readers might well consider their son to be a hero” because its story portrayed him as a patriotic “whistleblower” fighting supposed corruption at the DNC.

Yeah, that really happened.  Fox News, who has retracted the original story, says the parents should be proud because Fox painted him as a hero.

So it’s okay to falsely report something as news, inflict pain on a grieving family, and be wrong wrong triple wrong as long as the story advances your nobel cause.  In fact, the parents probably owe Fox a deep thank you for exploiting their son.

I’m going nuts.

Hey, I didn’t even think about this.

Taegan Goddard at Political Wire points out something I never even thought about.  And I wonder why the talking heads on the teevee didn’t catch it.

But what’s missing from most of the news coverage is that Cohen was also the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee when these payments were made.

Cohen’s legal troubles obviously present problems for President Trump. But they’re now a problem for the entire Republican party as well.

Could not happen to a better bunch of guys.

Michael Cohen took $500,000 from a company linked to a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin?  After the election?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

He also took money from AT&T for pay to play?

He poured algae in the swamp.

Y’all, we have a logistics problem.  The state of Louisiana, America, is having a very busy week.

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana’s Department of Health will begin sending nursing home eviction notices Thursday to more than 30,000 residents who could lose Medicaid under the budget passed by the state House of Representatives.

Best I can figure, they have no place to put 30,000 nursing home residents.  The “vast majority” of nursing homes will close and “more than 25,000 people” working in health care will lose their jobs.

The Louisiana State House has 105 representatives, the Louisiana Senate has 39 senators.  If my math is correct, that’s about 208 people per state legislator.  So, now the problem doesn’t look so big, right?  So if each member of the legislature would just take 208 people home with them and house and feed them in their backyard, problem solved!

And how about the 25,000 people who will be unemployed?  Simple!  Put them in some of the empty nursing homes until they find another job.

But for goodness sake, do not raise taxes even one penny.