If you were expecting a dissertation on the Nunes memo, forget it.  Nobody gives a shit about Carter Page including me.

Though I have to hand it to the Republicans.  Just like the magician at the carnival, the method involves a trick that plays with your head.

Republicans loathe unions and have been on a union busting mission since before Reagan took office. And to their credit they have been largely successful at it.

From 1960 to 2000 the percentage of workers in the United States belonging to a labor union fell from 30% to 13%.  The irony is that republicans like to harken back to ‘the good old days’ when there was a strong middle class but this was in large part because union wages provided blue-collar workers a shot at living the American dream.  Owning a home.  Buying a car.  Raising a family.  Welders, mechanics, carpenters all had union representation which held wages high enough to live a decent life on.

I remember when I graduated from high school in 1978, one of my best friends Vince Kirchmeier took a union job at Safeway as a checker and was making $9 an hour.  In 1978 that was a ton of money.  I chose instead to go the JC route and hopefully come out of that skilled enough to earn a living wage.  Two years later in 1980 I took a job at Boeing in Everett Washington for $7.50/hr.   It really made me think if my investment was worth it.  I was still behind Kirchmeier and I had just given up 2 years of my life to get educated.

For the most part, those union jobs do not exist for young people today.  They do not have that option in front of them.  It’s basically enter a college program at considerable expense and pray you’ll get your money back, or else something close to minimum wage.  Or the military.  There just isn’t a lot in-between.

In any case, republicans hate unions and some of their leading politicians have made careers out of busting unions.  Scott Walker comes to mind.

What’s clever about it is that Walker didn’t coin the term “union busting movement.”  Instead they came up with the “Right to Work” movement which basically starved unions of their dues and put them out of existence.

Right to work.  Sounds so…. innocent.  So righteous.

Similarly republicans are pulling off another sleight of hand move that will privatize everything including air traffic control – safety-be-damned – under the banner of “Infrastructure Plan.”  Pay close attention to the Infrastructure Plan because it’s likely we’ll have privately owned prisons where Jeff Sessions is a major shareholder.

Republicans held a retreat in West Virginia last weekend to discuss the road ahead.  There’s no shortage of issues facing the country.  The government runs out of money on Feb. 8th – just 6 days from now.  There’s DACA to deal with.  There’s infrastructure to build and a national opioid crisis.  What pray tell did they spend their time on at this retreat?

Given the massive tax cut to the wealthy that passed just after Christmas, republicans know we now have to address spending.  Just as we were warned, after gifting the billionaires more billions, now they are coming after medicare and entitlements.

But what’s step one in coming after entitlements?  Coming up with a clever name for it.  And they accomplished just that.  It’s no longer “Entitlement Reform.”  That’s too obvious that it will be cuts to the poor.  It’s now “Workforce Development.”  This has been Paul Ryan’s dream ever since he finished the last chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.”

So now we have a term for it that will sell quickly on Fox News.  As Republican consultant Frank Luntz aptly put it:

“Republicans are better at agreeing to a term and sticking to it.  There’s a simple rule. You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.”

That would certainly explain “Benghazi” and “E-mails”