Tom Guild

Pelosi is serious when she appoints members to the House Science Committee. Ryan and Boehner always thought it was a time for humor. Imagine the laughs when Ryan appointed Scientologist and Big Oil puppet Lamar Smith chairman. How about Orange County crackpot, stoner Dana Rohrabacher? Webster (FL), Loudermilk (GA), Biggs (AZ)... all laughingstocks. Ryan just put another Arizonan on the committee last week, newly elected crazy person Debbie Lesko (AZ).

Crucial Senate primaries today in West Virginia and Indiana-- states that Trump won by big margins in 2016 (68.5% to 26.4% in West Virginia and 56.8% to 37.9% in Indiana)-- are a mess for the Republicans.

Laura and MiloEver hear of Milo Yiannopoulos? Don't worry, no one else has either... unless they watch Fox News commentators as a lifestyle.

Since Kirsten Gillibrand first ran for Congress, joined the Blue Dogs, got appointed the the Senate and kept making nice with Wall Street all the way through, she's taken $9,148,338 from the finance sector.

Some congressional candidates campaign explicitly on impeaching Trump. The DCCC advises against that. Kaniela Ing, for example, warns Democrats at the top of his issues page that "It's not enough to simply resist Donald Trump. People are struggling and feeling left behind.

Public education is a great egalitarian experiment. All children of all races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, and of varying abilities have access to a public education in America and in Oklahoma. Sadly, tragically really, the political ruling class has tarnished this noble experiment by benign neglect or with malicious intent. They have failed Oklahoma, K-12 education, higher education, Oklahoma’s educators, and most tragically Oklahoma’s children.Oklahoma’s teachers are 49th nationally in salaries and haven’t had a pay raise in ten years.

Yesterday after months of careful vetting, Blue America endorsed the progressive candidate in the CO-06 race, Levi Tillemann. I was struck by one of the points on his website about making banksters-- not just bank shareholders-- pay for bank criminality. "[W]e need to ensure," he wrote, "that ALL Americans are treated equally under the law. This includes white collar criminals from powerful banks on Wall Street.

In 2014 Oklahoma reelected conservative Republican Mary Fallin over conservative Democrat Joe Dorman 460,298 (55.8%) to 338,239 (41%). Although there have been some shocking recent special election wins by Democrats in Oklahoma, the state Senate has 39 Republicans and just 8 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 28 Democrats. The Oklahoma congressional delegation consists of 5 Republican congressmen and 2 Republican senators...

According to a Gallup survey released a week ago, Trump's overall jon approval is 38% and his disapproval is 56%. What does that tell us for the midterms 9 months from now? Not all that much, primarily because despite Trump's overall poor showing, it's in states that senators and governors are elected and in congressional districts where House members are reelected, not nationally.