After the rains, flowers in the Southwest are in full bloom. One highlight is purple, the color for The People’s Party. As for the east coast, things are frozen, both in weather and in politics. Lowering taxes could take time. Getting health care laws to lower health care prices and unshackle employers could take more time. The leading political party’s interests are divided and their opposition has no tactic beneath them. Democrats are filibustering every political appointee as Obama appointees persist; Trump fired 46 Obama-appointed prosecutors. Of course, opposition filibusters and firing federal prosecutors for any new, incoming president are both standard practice. Conservatives expected as much and don’t demonstrate any shock, yet Liberals usually think their loss deserves exception. Everything suggests that Republicans will gain ground in the Senate come 2018, thanks to the Democrats refusal on cloture. Therein lies the real danger: supermajority.
A group of professors had a wild idea: What if Trump had been a woman and Hillary had been a man? Surely that would have flipped election results. Actually, after a carefully-rehearsed reenactment of the presidential debates by one skilled actor and one skilled actress, Liberal supporters were in for another surprise. Hillary supporters adored Trump’s words when they came from a woman and hated Hillary’s words when they came from a man. After learning the truth, they didn’t change their political preferences, of course.
People rarely change their opinions, given new information, no matter what political party they are from. While Conservatives will tout the results of this little theatrical-political experiment, they reacted with much of the same blindness over news about Bush family dealings. Note, the term “Trump dissident” is important in describing this presidential term. Most of the people who voted for Hillary didn’t like her, supported Bernie Sanders, and liked Trump least of all, to say the least.
Hillary’s team met with the Russians before the election, according to the Kremlin. That will make the upcoming hearings even more interesting. The game of chairs keeps revolving. No political victory is final. No enemy is ultimate. And no pettiness evades anyone.
Ben Carson: Slaves Were Immigrants Who Came Here And Worked Really Hard ‘For Less’ | Huffington Post
Politics
New York federal prosecutor Preet Bharara says he was fired by Trump administration | WA Post
Social media trolls Ryan’s PowerPoint presentation on healthcare bill | The Hill
McConnell: Tax reform unlikely by August | The Hill
Trump Lets Key Offices Gather Dust Amid ‘Slowest Transition in Decades’ | NY Times
Republicans still battle each other even after gaining power | AP
Clintonian Reversals
What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Had Swapped Genders? | NYU
Weather
This desert in the Southwest is experiencing a wildflower ‘superbloom’ | WA Post
Major nor’easter threatens to halt travel from DC to Boston | Accuweather