...It's his AUDIENCE that's fucking nuts.  He hijacked a cult. And he knows what to feed the cult. And he knows how to feed the cult the immoral nourishment they crave.

In exchange for reinforcing their every bad thought, wish, every politically incorrect racist, sexist, homophobic impulse they have, he gets to loot the country along with the Republican elites....

The assumption that Hillary should have been paying close attention to a small non-capital consulate in Libya was always freakishly laughable - and here's some idea what other diplomatic cat-and-mouse games going on to hold her attention. But Dana Rohrenbacher, say, wasn't concerned about his Russian friends' behavior - it was a benefit, not a bug for him.

WITH CHART Top Health Care Companies by Net Profit, Analysis @ Axios.com, May 17

The health care industry recorded an immensely profitable first quarter, according to an analysis of financial documents for 108 companies. Year-over-year earnings among the 10 biggest health care corporations by net profit soared by 8.4%. [.....]

By Glenn Thrush & Thomas Kaplan @ NYTimes.com, May 18

WASHINGTON — The factional rancor threatening Republicans heading into the midterm elections this fall erupted into the open on Friday when a slugfest among moderates, hard-line conservatives and House leaders over immigration and welfare policy sank the party’s multiyear farm bill.

The twice-a-decade measure — which would have imposed strict new work requirements on food aid recipients while maintaining farm subsidies important to rural lawmakers — failed on a 213-to-198 vote. It was a rebuke of Speaker Paul D. Ryan by a key bloc of conservatives over his refusal to schedule an immediate vote on a restrictive immigration bill sponsored by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Republican moderates, for their part, were moving in the opposite direction [....]

The fights were striking, not only because of their intensity but also because of the participants. Capitol Hill has grown used to altercations between Republican leaders and their adamant right flank — showdowns that have shut down the government and edged the government toward defaulting on its debt. But in past fights, the party’s moderates have proved compliant [....]

Here’s the difficulty. We want Congress to exercise oversight when it comes to the activities of our intelligence services, to prevent them from abusing their awesome powers and to maintain public confidence that such abuses — of which there is a long history in this country — aren’t happening once again.

But there comes a point at which legitimate oversight might cross over into something else: An active effort to pervert Congress’ investigative machinery, in the name of exercising fake oversight, into a kind of defensive weapon, one that is employed against legitimate law enforcement activity, to prevent accountability from being meted out and justice from being done.

How do we identify where that line is, and when it has been crossed? And what do we do if and when that happens?

The Post has a blockbuster report today which tells us that President Trump has joined his allies in Congress in “an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source.” ....

.....

Concise on point summary and analysis of the latest skullduggery out of this White House and fellow congressional Republican enemies of the Constitution and constitutional government.  By Greg Sargent, WaPo today.

By Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman & Nicholas Fandos @ NYTimes.com, May 16 

• It began with an F.B.I. mission to London and a pledge of secrecy. Crossfire Hurricane was its code name.
• President Trump has described an investigation as a political effort to undermine him. But agents repeatedly took steps that ultimately benefited him.

WASHINGTON — Within hours of opening an investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.

Their assignment, which has not been previously reported, was to meet the Australian ambassador, who had evidence that one of Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew in advance about Russian election meddling. After tense deliberations between Washington and Canberra, top Australian officials broke with diplomatic protocol and allowed the ambassador, Alexander Downer, to sit for an F.B.I. interview to describe his meeting with the campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos [....]

WASHINGTON — North Korea threw President Trump’s planned summit meeting with its leader, Kim Jong-un, into doubt on Tuesday, threatening to call off the landmark encounter to protest a joint military exercise of the United States and South Korea.

“The South Korean authorities and the United States launched a large-scale joint air force drill against our Republic even before the ink on the historic inter-Korean declaration has dried,” the official Korean Central News Agency said. “There is a limit to our good will.”