Spelling It Out

• Robert Reich at AlterNet:

  Meanwhile, Congress is in the hands of Republicans who for years have only said “no,” who have become expert at stopping whatever a president wants to do but don’t have a clue how to initiate policy, most of whom have never passed a budget into law, and, more generally, don’t much like government and have not shared responsibility for governing the nation.
  
  As a result of all this, the most powerful nation in the world with the largest economy in the world is rudderless and leaderless.
  
  Where we need thoughtful resolve we have thoughtless name-calling. Where we need democratic deliberation we have authoritarian rants and rallies. Where we need vision we have myopia.

• Mmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmm...a proposed funding cut for the National Institutes of Health.

  For years the National Institutes of Health have received bipartisan support. Unless the voting public has gotten distorted beyond the point of even faint recognition, political reality dictates that no congressperson can go back to his or her home district and proudly proclaim to have cut funding for medical research into grandma’s cancer, mom’s heart disease, baby’s developmental disorders and Trump’s mental illness. The White House’s NIH cuts are likely to face stiff opposition from both parties. And it pays to remember that congress is the one who passes the budget.
  
  Yet the question remains, if both parties support the NIH, whom is Trump representing when he cuts it? Big Pharma. That’s who.

  Julianna Forlano, Crooks and Liars.
  
• Another massive case of voter fraud. That is:

  On Tuesday, Colorado prosecutors threw a wrench into that already dubious theory, accusing Curtis of voter fraud for allegedly filling out and mailing in his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot for president, Denver’s Fox affiliate reported.
  
  Curtis, 57, was charged in Weld County District Court with one count of misdemeanor voter fraud and one count of forgery, a Class 5 felony, according to local media.

  Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post, via Comrade Misfit.  Oddly, "voter fraud" seems to be largely perpetrated by Republicans.  Projection much?