Trump's taxes

Cohen's testimony was riveting. But I was shocked to hear an obviously deranged old woman who slipped by the NPR call filter last night. She was unable to complete a single thought and was either severely drug addicted and/or so intellectually impaired that dialing the phone must have been her biggest accomplishment of the month. All she could say is that Trump is her president and Cohen should be sent to jail. The host took her seriously and questioned her as though she had an IQ above 70, which she clearly didn't.

by NoahWe all now how much Trump loves autocrats around the world. He loves his dream that he could be "President For Life." He loves the fact that those murderous dictators he envies can just do away with their perceived enemies. So, it can be no surprise whatsoever that we now have Trump and his Saudi King pal, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudi, going off and cooking up an absurd excuse about how Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi died.

The nonpartisan ethics watchdogs, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), was blunter than most when it came to defining the Trump/Ryan tax plan: it was designed lower Señor Trumpanzee's taxes. The Alternative Minimum Tax, which Ryan wants to eliminate entirely, cost Trump $31 million in 2005, the one year people got to examine part of Trump's returns. That tax was designed to get something out of crooked millionaires and billionaires who game the system to avoid taxes-- like Trump.

This morning's post on Bannon's attempt to steal all McConnell's fat cat donors is about how the whole project hinges on the tax cuts. The fat cats want their tax cuts. If McConnell can't deliver, they want his head.

Last week the malefactors who prop up the Koch network met in Manhattan for two days. They've gotten wind of the gigantic anti-Trump/anti-Ryan tsunami forming up in the hinterland and heading towards DC.

Is Chris Wallace allowed to say this on Fox News Sunday: "But Director Mulvaney, independent experts say what the president just said there isn't true." Obviously he could have been talking about Putin-Gate, about Trump's spat with the NRA, about Puerto Rico, about anything at all Trump has said to the public... ever. But he was talking about the Trump/Ryan tax plan. Remember Bruce Bartlett, a Jack Kemp economist who was one of the Reagan advisors responsible for the mythical Reagan tax cuts.

-by Noah"Let them drink Cholera." You know, that right now-- right this second as you read this-- some Republican somewhere is looking at pictures of the suffering of Puerto Ricans and saying just that.

By the end of the week, a lot of people were saying Trump's tax plan would fail because of Republicans in New York and New Jersey. They're flipping out because Trump wants to eliminate the federal tax deduction of state & local taxes.

Poor GOP! They're getting ready to reap the whirlwind. It's starting already too. And it's going to get worse as they either manage to move their unpopular agenda or if they fail to move that agenda which is popular with their donors and their 30% moron base.

Former CNN Chief Business Correspondent Ali Velshi, now an MSNBC anchor, is not an idiot... but... On his morning show yesterday the Hairless Prophet of Doom introduced a question to Jared Bernstein, once a professor at Columbia and then Vice President Biden's Chief Economic Adviser, by claiming that Trump's plan to eliminate the estate tax would help the middle class. Before Bernstein got to whatever Velshi's question was, he addressed the GOP talking point Velshi had just slipped onto the air so matter-of-factly. The estate tax only impacts .02% of the richest Americans.