1. It is the first Monday of the Trump Reich, and the global gag rule is back in place, because the fundies must be fed their customary chunk of women's flesh.
The global gag rule will kill poor women abroad. It will also slow down any progress toward gender equality.
The killing of the ACA and other traditional conservative projects of stripping health care from all but the wealthiest will kill people here at home.*
Someone should document the corpses.
2. Trump brought his own applause troops to his CIA speech:
Authorities are also pushing back against the perception that the CIA workforce was cheering for the president. They say the first three rows in front of the president were largely made up of supporters of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
An official with knowledge of the make-up of the crowd says that there were about 40 people who’d been invited by the Trump, Mike Pence and Rep. Mike Pompeo teams. The Trump team expected Rep. Pompeo, R-Kansas, to be sworn in during the event as the next CIA director, but the vote to confirm him was delayed on Friday by Senate Democrats. Also sitting in the first several rows in front of the president was the CIA’s senior leadership, which was not cheering the remarks.
Clapping keeps him happy, they say.
3. Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer has taken a leaf of the Dictatorship for Dummies** book: What Dear Leader believes is the truth, and that truth will be rammed down our throats.
In case that bothers you, Trump's spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway tells us that lies are not lies but alternative facts. For instance, it's an alternative fact that I'm really a brawny guy from Alabama who adores Budweiser's beer.
More seriously, the idea that facts are whatever you want them to be troubles me greatly. The red light at the traffic junction is not green just because it would suit you better, and if you act on that "alternative fact" you are going to get someone killed. But that's how the Trump administration seems to think.
I've heard that the idea of confusing everyone about what the truth might be is also a favorite weapon of Vlad the Impaler Putin, because it sows the seeds of discord which he expects later to harvest as the death of Western liberalism, human rights and the outdated idea of democracy.
-------
* The problem with the Trump Reich is that we are going to get all the usual conservative programs: income redistribution towards the rich, attacks against women's rights, workers' rights and civil rights in general and attempts to speed up the killing of Mother Earth, and we are also going to get whatever a disgruntled and unhappy narcissist might dole out to us. The latter looks more and more like a dictatorship to me, though of course democracy has been under conservative attacks for at least a decade, as evidenced, say, by the successful attempts to make it harder for African-Americans to vote.
Added later: This article suggests that the deaths from abolishing the ACA might be as many as 43,000 per year. But then of course the "tax burden" on the wealthier Americans will be less.
* Does such a book exist yet? If not, I should write it, based on our current experiences.