Tuesday News: Stocks Plummet; “Has Trumphoria Finally Hit a Wall?”; “Boycott the Republican Party”; Kill the Dominion Bill

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, February 6.

• Has Trumphoria Finally Hit a Wall? (“The market isn’t the economy; still, it looks as if reality is breaking in.”)
• Dow sees historic drop as inflation fears rock global markets (“The Dow Jones industrial average plunged a heart-stopping 1,600 points in afternoon trading before gaining back some ground — finishing Monday at 24,342, down 4.6 percent.”)
• Dow futures pare losses after earlier pointing to a more than 1,200-point fall at the open
• Trump, GOP discover peril of taking credit for stock market (“With Monday’s steep fall, President Trump has presided over the Dow Jones industrial average’s biggest one-day drop ever.” #MAGA!!!)
• Global markets take a hard tumble, mirroring Dow’s decline
• Lawyers Urge Trump to Pass on Interview With Mueller
• House panel clears release of Democrats’ rebuttal to GOP memo, setting up a showdown with Trump
• The Nunes memo proves the GOP has plunged into madness
• Is Trump to blame for the market dive? (“…with unemployment at 4.1 percent, now is a strange time to be engaging in expansionary fiscal policy. Usually you do that when the economy needs a boost. This has led to speculation that the Fed may feel more pressure to offset, or correct for, these stimulative fiscal policies; if Congress is going to step on the gas, Fed officials may conclude that they need step on the brakes.” The Republican tax bill, among other things, would have gotten an “F” in Economics 101 class.)
• Reality is catching up with Trump — everywhere (“Stocks rise and fall, but the recent sell-off shows the ultimate folly of the president’s fact-free existence.”)
• ‘The president clearly set himself up’: Trump’s stock market miscalculation (“After cheering the market’s relentless rise, Trump is forced to face the reality of Monday’s swift and historic fall.” Trump is such a dumbass.)
• The cowardice among Republicans is staggering (But not surprising.)
• GOP to play hardball with Dems on funding bill
• Trump Has Lost the Upper Hand in the Immigration Fight
• Trump Goes Quiet as the Stock Market Slumps
• Boycott the Republican Party (“If conservatives want to save the GOP from itself, they need to vote mindlessly and mechanically against its nominees.”)
• Sean Hannity blames Obama for historic market crash (Hahahahahaha. Beyond parody.)
• Trump Supporters Spread the Majority of Phony News on Social Media (“A new study finds that ‘junk news’ is a staple of the #MAGA crowd.” They used to spread it by chain emails, now mostly by Facebook. Either way, it’s disastrous.)
• Nunes: Fine, the FBI Didn’t Lie, But Its Font Was Too Small
• Devin Nunes: Trump never met with Papadopoulos. Reality: here’s a photo. (“An astonishingly brazen lie.” Nunes is pathological.)
• Could A Stock Market Downturn Tank Trump’s Approval Rating? (The problem for Trump is that it isn’t just the stock market; the GOP tax bill could seriously harm the broader economy, as it’s completely/wildly wrong fiscal policy.)
• The Supreme Court Finally Gets Serious About Gerrymandering (“Pennsylvania could prove pivotal.”)
• Republicans concede key FBI ‘footnote’ in Carter Page warrant (“Devin Nunes said Monday the FBI had disclosed political backing for a Trump-Russia dossier in October 2016, but a controversial GOP memo released last week did not mention it.”)
• Reagan economic adviser mocks Trump as Dow falls: The market just realized an ‘unstable lunatic is president’
• Internal FBI documents show White House lied about Comey firing (“Comey was widely loved by the bureau rank-and-file, not the ‘grandstander’ Trump claimed.”)
• Fox News cuts away from Trump economic speech to cover historic stock market drop (LOL)
• Trump says Democrats who didn’t applaud his speech are ‘treasonous’ (“They certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.” We actually love our country a LOT,
  which is one of the reasons why we despise you!)
• Kennedy Could Be the Democrats’ Best Hope (But May Not Want to Be) (“The 37-year-old congressman says Democrats need a ‘big, messy’ 2020 primary—but don’t count on him to be part of it.”)
• Sound the alarm: National GOP breaks glass in Pennsylvania race (“The national party has deployed its full arsenal in a March 13 special House election. A loss would be a huge blow to its hopes in the midterms.”)
• Warner’s warning: YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is susceptible to “bad actors”
• Virginia is punishing the poor — and perpetuating their poverty (Disgraceful and has to end. Now.)
• Meet-And-Greet With Tim Kaine Draws Enthusiastic Crowd (I love it that Tim Kaine is running hard, not taking his reelection for granted, and hopefully winning by a huge margin in November!)
• Va. legislation calls for bigger Dominion Energy refund, but does it lock in higher rates? (“Dana Wiggins, of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, said she is concerned that the way the bill would finance the investments Dominion plans would in effect be double dipping — withholding refunds consumers would otherwise be due while adding those investments into the base of assets whose cost Dominion recovers from its rates…’I just can’t get past the fact that we’re not giving money back to ratepayers and we’re not giving the SCC the oversight the SCC should have,’ said state Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Montross.” Stuart is right. $a$law is wrong.)
• ‘White smoke’ on Dominion Energy regulatory overhaul; bill heading to Senate floor (Message to Democrats: VOTE NO!)
• Governor, attorney general disagree over bill to regulate utilities (Mark Herring is right. Ralph Northam is wrong. The question for Northam is whether he’s going to be more like Dominion errand-boy/puppet Terry McAuliffe or Dominion scourge Henry Howell. Needless to say, the latter would be an infinitely better choice.)
• Bill gets bigger in revised analysis of Medicaid work requirement (“ased on a welfare-to-work program established under then-Gov. George Allen more than 20 years ago, the cost of administering a proposed work requirement for people covered by Medicaid expansion could approach $100 million in state and local money in the second year of the two-year budget, according to a new fiscal analysis by Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration.” Absolutely ridiculous in every way.)
• Northam, Cox announce bipartisan plan to roll back state regulations (Dumb, dumber, dumberest.)
• Republicans on Senate panel resist removing obsolete gay-marriage ban from state code
• Federal appeals court declines to block construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline (Gack.)
• Richmond City Council appears likely to approve Stoney’s meals tax increase next week
• Warmer today, then wintry mix will mess with Wednesday morning commute