Never in doubt
We just can't help but turn to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for the last, best Democratic word on President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey last week. The outspoken Waters is seldom right but never in doubt.
Waters, on MSNBC, was asked by host Peter Alexander why in January she said Comey had "no credibility" but when the president fired him she condemned the president for saying his reasons for doing so didn't pass the "smell test."
Would the congresswoman support the president's decision to fire the director if the president were Clinton? the host wanted to know.
"Let me tell you something," she said. "If she had won the White House, I believe that given what [Comey] did to her, and what he tried to do, she should have fired him, yes."
Alexander then had to point out the discrepancy to Waters, who apparently was oblivious to what she'd just spouted.
The exchange, host Doc Thomas said after watching it the next morning on MSNBC's "The Morning Blaze," was his "favorite clip of the year. I don't know if anything is gonna top this."
Defending it to the end
Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, he of the infamous 2014 quote about "the stupidity of the American voter" in allowing the health care bill to pass Congress, now says President Donald Trump is at fault for rising premiums and insurers leaving the state exchange programs.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor asserted on a Fox News show that 2016 increases - the most recent of several in consecutive years - should have covered the "massively underpriced" policies that were offered initially on the state exchanges.
Told that, as is happening in many states, only one insurer was participating in the exchanges in 94 out of Iowa's 99 counties, Gruber answered, "Whose fault is this? Since President Trump has been elected premiums are going up and insurers are exiting."
"Wait," said host Chris Wallace, "you're going to blame the problems with Obamacare on President Trump?"
Gruber then said the president's decision to cut by four days the 2017 advertising period for enrollment "undercuts open enrollment" and that all else with the health care program was "trending positively" or was "positive."
Except, of course, that it wasn't.
"Really?" said Republican strategist Karl Rove. "The problems of Obamacare are going to be solved by four days' worth of TV ads?"
Perhaps if you're the creator of a sinking ship, you have to defend each plank, but each time Gruber leaves academia to do so his credibility dies just a little more.
Brown in the red
Since she is a Democrat, the news won't have the legs it would if she were a Republican, but a 12-term Florida congresswoman was found guilty last week on 24 money-related charges for using a charity she founded as a "personal slush fund."
WTLV-TV in Jacksonville reported that Corrine Brown, 70, solicited more than $830,000 in donations between 2012 and 2015 to allegedly help poor and minority students get an education. But the One Door for Education Foundation paid out only $1,200 in scholarships. However, she was reported to have used at least $300,000 for lavish receptions, box seats at sporting events and concerts, and trips for her and her aides.
She also was convicted of lying on her federal income taxes.
Well, said, Brown, it was just "a lot of sloppy bookkeeping."
"It was a mistake on my part," she said, "and I needed to get on top of my taxes."
Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Tysen Duva used different descriptions, saying she had a "significant entitlement attitude," and the case was about "lying, cheating and stealing" and "fraud and corruptions [by a] member of the highest level of the American government."
Brown has yet to be sentenced for her "sloppy bookkeeping."
Blinded by science
Bill Nye, the not-so-science guy, had a woman explain on an episode of his children's show in 1996 that one's sex - male or female - is determined by one's chromosomes, which has been the viewpoint of most geneticists throughout the ages.
Nye doesn't believe that anymore.
So Netflix has taken care of that, probably at his request. Updated segments of the 1996 show now have edited out the woman telling viewers that babies have a 50-50 chance of becoming a girl or a boy, all depending on their mom's XX chromosome and their dad's XY chromosome.
Nye himself has gone off the graph lately, telling people population control might be a way to combat global warming, complaining that CNN had the audacity to bring on a real scientist to debate him on climate change, positing that the U.S. Constitution supports climate change research and saying he is open to criminal charges for climate change dissenters.
Judging by his recent pronouncements, the mechanical engineering-degreed celebrity may have drunk from the wrong test tube in his laboratory.