So, Ted Cruz has a bright idea.  With the deficit exploding, Ted knows how to make America great again – tax cuts for the super-rich.  No, I am not kidding.  Hell, he even wants it without congressional approval!

He’s demanding that Steve Mnunchin index capital gains to inflation with his executive powers, whatever the hell that is.  And because very few people understand what that means, he’s telling them it means trickle down.  Your damn leg. He’s asserting that by giving the super rich another damn tax break, they will use that money to make high-paying jobs.  Nope, they won’t.

Missing from Cruz’s call for Mnuchin to use “executive authority” to end this “unfair” treatment of taxpayers, which was signed by 20 of his Republican colleagues, is the fact that, according to the Penn Wharton Budget model, a whopping 86% of the benefit of indexing capital gains to inflation would go to the 1 percent (and reduce annual tax revenue by an estimated $102 billion over a decade).

So, instead of working for us, Ted is working for the super rich, again.  He’s a sumbitch.  And you can paint that on the barn.

Another Republican member of congress calls it quits.

Utah’s longest serving congressman, Rob Bishop, is not running in 2020.  I winder if that will include him climbing out of the pocket of mining and the oil and gas industry?

Bishop never once in his entire life liked an environmental regulation. It’ll be nice to see him gone.

Well, we learned how to upset him.  With any luck at all, we’ll give him an existential crisis where he’ll have to run to the senate floor and deny that he’s the love child of Nikita Khrushchev and Leon Trotsky.

Allow me to introduce Moscow Mitch.

Deb T has some other suggestions: How about Comrade Cornyn or Red Rand?

Thanks to Deb T for the heads up.

Arizona State Senator Republican Sylvia Allen, please take a seat before you kick something, is off on a tear again.

She is now very, very, concerned about “the browning of America,” and she doesn’t mean tanning beds.

She found herself at the state Republican Party Headquarters speaking to the “Mormon Political Pioneers.”  I would like to stop right here and thank Sweet Jesus that I have never been asked to speak to that group at that location. In the future, any time I start feeling sorry for myself, I will say yeah, Babe, but at least you ain’t having to speak to the Mormon Political Pioneers at the Republican headquarters in damn Arizona.

After using the term, ‘the browning of America,” she said … and there’s a tape …

“I said we needed to be able to control our immigration process so that we have time to assimilate people into our society and economic system. Jobs, housing, education, and health care,” she said. “Plus to be able to teach them about the American form of government. That’s all there was to it.”

“The median age of a white woman is 43. The median age of a Hispanic woman is 27,” she said. “We are not reproducing ourselves, the birthrates. But here’s what I see is the issue. It’s because of immigration.”

When the tape was released, she claimed she was just talking about the fact that some South American counties are “socialist” and we need to “retrain” the next generation on how America works.  She also said that we needed to make sure we had jobs for them before we let them into America. I guess it’s okay if you need some yard work or roofing done. You could go pick up one down at the border and borrow one for the day.

She also referred to a book called The Browning of America by Dr. James Johnson.  She didn’t read it, of course, because his book explains that immigrants give more to America than they take.  But, somehow, the title of his book gave her the right to abuse the term.

Now, if all this has a familiar ring to it, that’s because this isn’t Sylvia Allen’s first trip to the beauty salon.

Nope, she’s the same one who wanted to make church attendance on Sundays mandatory.  Yeah, this is the same woman clutching her pearls over socialism.

And she thinks the world is 6,000 years old. Period. No arguing allowed.

Now we come to why I’m telling you this story.  I spent some time this weekend with a longtime friend who has been pondering on this religious stuff and how it fits in with the new Christians.  She said that she believes the religious right sees America the same way they see heaven:  It’s not paradise if everybody gets to go.

I think she’s right.  They need their country club heaven and their exclusive America so they can have people to look down on.

Thanks to S Gray for the heads up.

Holy crap, y’all.

Trump now claims he was at 911 with the first responders.  And he did it while in the Rose Garden patting himself on the back for Jon Stewart’s work.

“Many of those affected were fire fighters, police officers, and other first responders,” the president said. “And I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder, but I was down there, I spent a lot of time down there with you.”

No, no, nope, no.  Tump was on the radio bragging that he now had the tallest building in Manhattan.

This is not the first time Trump has been very confused about his role in 9-11.  Mostly, it appears, he made money off it.

Thanks to Alan for the heads up.

Republicans whined two years ago and said they lost the House because of too many retirements.  Not because of Trump, mind you. It was because too many Repubicans jumped ship.

Michigan Rep. PAUL MITCHELL, Texas Rep. PETE OLSON and Alabama Rep. MARTHA ROBY all said they were calling it quits. Republicans say they lost the House because of too many retirements last cycle, yet they are seeing a steady stream of lawmakers forgo reelection once again.

I, of course, am most interested in Pete Olson, who spent his term in congress pretty much imitating a tree stump.  He is my damn congressvarmint.  Olson went from winning by 18 points in 2016 to 5 points last year. It has become one of the most diverse districts in the country. Olson may be dumb as a sack of hammers but even he saw what’s coming.

The district is now considered a tossup. Can you imagine the smile on my face that Tom’s DeLay’s home district, which he personally gerrymandered, is flipping blue?

My friend Buck told me that if the district flips, he and I are riding his Harley to Tom’s house and dance right there in the street to a Willie Nelson tune. I hope I get arrested because I know some some folks who would get in line to pay my bail.