The President and his GOP majorities in Congress are monsters. As one commentator on NPR put it yesterday afternoon, the President's default mode is to toss an armed hand grenade into a room in order to create chaos.  He can then pick out the most vulnerable, and use that leverage to enter into a win-lose deal.

Meanwhile, having been emboldened by the 2011 Debt Ceiling Debacle, the Congressional GOP majorities, who haven't been able to legislate affirmatively, have become specialists in taking hostages and threatening to shoot them unless their agenda is enacted.

Trump and the GOP Congress combined have, as of this morning taken at least four hostages:

DREAMers - the DACA program is being terminated. After an initial claim that a deal had been made to protect young people who had been brought to the US as children and know of no other home, the malAdministration is now taking a hard line, refusing to protect the nearly 1 million enrollees from deportation unless it gets its entire immigration policy enacted.

SChip recipients - this program, which provides medical insurance coverage for over 8 million  lower income children, was allowed to expire on September 30.  Despite assurances from the Congressional GOP that it would be re instituted promptly, nothing has been done.

Puerto Ricans - Unlike Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, which are GOP majority states, the malAdministration never provided prompt aid to the over 3 million Puerto Ricans, and is threatening to withdraw the aid before basic services are restored.

Recipients of Obamacare subsidies - the malAdministration is refusing to make subsidy payments under the ACA to insurers who enroll those who have less than 2.5 times the income of the Federal poverty level, which includes about 7.5 million people who have enrolled under Obamacare.

That's a total of close to 19,000,000 hostages.

All four groups are not GOP constituencies.  Further, three of the four groups of hostages have in common that they aren't presently able to vote, although SChip children do grow up and Puerto Ricans can move to the mainland, and SChip children have parents and Puerto Ricans already have lots of relatives on the US mainland, all of whom can vote.

They are monsters. Real harm is being inflicted on a significant share of the US populace, out of little more than spite. People will die as a result.

Do you think those 19,000,000, or their parents, relatives, and friends, might be motivated to vote in 2018 and 2020?

-From Bonddad

These last 9 months have been incredibly disheartening.  I've watched as the toddler-in-chief (boy do I wish I coined that term) has continued to bully, threaten and in general do whatever he can to harm other people.

Today's executive action to eliminate insurance subsidies was unconscionable.  It will leave millions without health insurance.  It is a move that the entire health care complex voiced disapproval of.  Hospital stocks tanked on the market open.   

It is one of the worst policy decisions ever undertaken by a US President.