Still nothing from the Post, the Journal, or the LA Times, but today the New York Times finally comes through with a front-page story about the secret Republican health care bill. It’s not exactly a banner headline, but it is above the fold. Barely. Now if we can just get the nightly news programs to spend a few seconds on this.

Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via ZUMA

The Trump administration has revoked DAPA, an Obama immigration program that never went into effect. At the same time, Trump is keeping in place DACA, the “mini-DREAM” act that protects young immigrants. In other words, Trump is killing a program that was already dead, and keeping a program that’s actually effective and has prevented thousands of potential deportations. So what do Trump’s fans think of this?

For the most part, they seem to be playing ball, praising him for the meaningless cancellation of DAPA. Even Mickey Kaus and Ann Coulter have ignored Trump’s broken promise on DACA. But not everyone is buying the spin. Here is Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Trump had a lot of options when he took office on how to handle that — he could have rescinded DACA entirely, as he promised to do last year; he could have kept the current permits in place but phased out the program by making those permits non-renewable; he could have maintained the program while closing it to new enrollees. Or he could have gone full Obama by keeping everything in place. The program stays open, current permits are renewable, new enrollees are welcome.

He went full Obama.

Ouch. The full Obama. That’s gotta sting. But as long as everyone else keeps up a brave face and pretends that Trump has struck a mighty blow for the anti-immigration cause, he should be OK.

This Politico story is from yesterday, which is about six months in blog years, but it deserves an extra day:

Trump, for months, has bristled almost daily about the ongoing probes. He has sometimes, without prompting, injected “I’m not under investigation” into conversations with associates and allies. He has watched hours of TV coverage every day — sometimes even storing morning news shows on his TiVo to watch in the evening — and complained nonstop.

….Two people close to Trump note that his is an obsessive personality — whether about businessmen who wronged him over the years, his years-long and fruitless quest to prove President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, to reporters who have written negative stories about him. One transition official said Trump lashed out at reporters over old stories within a day of winning the election in November.

….Trump now has begun fuming about special counsel Robert Mueller, particularly after Mueller hired several prosecutors and investigators with ties to Democrats. Trump has told associates he might fire Mueller, though they don’t believe he will. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump was under investigation for obstruction — and that Mueller wanted to interview the national security officials who reportedly had been asked to make false statements.

Well, it’s true that the Post reported that Trump was under investigation, but that was based on an anonymous source, and the deputy attorney general has told us not to pay any attention to—

I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017

Oh. I guess Trump really is under investigation. “Aides have tried to change the subject,” says Politico, “But none of that has changed Trump’s response.” This is not a portrait of a man in full control of his faculties.

The latest:

Vice President Pence has hired outside legal counsel to help with both congressional committee inquiries and the special counsel investigation into possible collusion between President Trump’s campaign and Russia. The vice president’s office said Thursday that Pence has retained Richard Cullen, a Richmond-based lawyer and chairman of McGuire Woods who previously served as a U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

This is just astonishing. The FBI is actively investigating ties between the president’s campaign and a hostile foreign power. Ditto for his former national security adviser. The FBI director has been fired for refusing to kill the investigation. The attorney general has recused himself. The deputy attorney general has appointed a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is busily hiring experts in money laundering. A few days ago Mueller widened the scope of his inquiry to include a criminal investigation of the president. Bipartisan congressional committees are holding hearings. The president himself has lawyered up, and now the vice president has lawyered up too.

This would not be completely unprecedented if it happened in 2022, six years into Trump’s presidency. But it’s happened in Trump’s first five months. And while we’re all busy gaping at the spectacle of the whole thing, Republicans are trying to take health coverage away from millions of people so they can use the money to fund tax cuts for the rich.

In secret.

This. Is. Not. Normal. It is nowhere close to normal.

Like sunsets, I could take pictures of Monarch butterflies and post them every day. But I need an excuse, so yesterday’s project was to catch butterflies in flight, which is damn near impossible. I quickly decided that the only way to do it was to prefocus on a spot and fire off a burst every time they came near. Then go inside and see if I got anything.

My spot was the flower below, which was poking out into the sunshine. I don’t think I ended up capturing a single picture of the butterflies that was truly in sharp focus, but this one is pretty close, and by good luck it includes both the butterflies that were fluttering around in a mating dance. Enjoy.

It’s been nearly seven weeks since Republicans took up Obamacare repeal. There have still been no hearings and none are in sight. Still no CBO score. Still no press conferences. Still no markups. Still no bill that the public is allowed to see.

Day 3 folks. Yet again, no p. 1 coverage of health insurance at risk for 23 million ppl — @latimes; @nytimes; @WSJ; @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/wXypNWRo1F

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) June 15, 2017

Sarah Kliff is appalled. “I’ve covered Obamacare since day one,” she says. “I’ve never seen lying and obstruction like this.” And that’s just the headline.

But if it works, Mitch McConnell doesn’t care. And so far it’s working.

More chocolate news today:

Nestlé SA said Thursday it is considering selling its U.S. confectionery business, maker of such products as the Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars….The possible sale by Nestlé doesn’t include its much larger global chocolate business, which includes Kit Kat and chocolate drink Nesquik.

“Nestlé remains fully committed to growing its leading international confectionery activities around the world, particularly its global brand Kit Kat,” Nestlé said.

Nestlé wants to sell Butterfinger and Baby Ruth in order to focus on its “global brand” Kit Kat? I wonder why Butterfinger and Baby Ruth have never caught on outside America? They’re just variations on chocolate, peanuts, and caramel goop. What’s not to like?

From Caitlin Dewey:

Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the National Dairy Council.

….For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have griped that many Americans are basically agriculturally illiterate. They don’t know where food is grown, how it gets to stores — or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what’s in it. One Department of Agriculture study, commissioned in the early ’90s, found that nearly 1 in 5 adults did not know that hamburgers are made from beef. Many more lacked familiarity with basic farming facts, like how big U.S. farms typically are and what food animals eat.

I think Dewey misses the real question here: Why did the National Dairy Council commission a survey about whether chocolate milk comes from brown cows? I don’t know, and I can find no trace of the NDC’s survey online. However, common sense suggests that it has something to do with the milk industry’s endless battle to convince the American public that chocolate milk is good for you.

I agree, of course, since I think that chocolate anything is good for you. But I’ll concede that Science™ doesn’t really have my back on this. In any case, who cares? I’m pretty sure that 7 percent of Americans believe the sky is blue because it’s surrounded by a giant ocean.

But I do wonder where these 7 percent think white milk comes from?

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, it’s kind of a slow news day. Why do you ask?

John Arthur Brown/ ZUMA Wire

Ezra Klein makes an argument about Obamacare that I’ve heard a lot of lately:

If Republicans wipe out the Affordable Care Act and de-insure tens of millions of people, they will prove a few things to Democrats. First, including private insurers and conservative ideas in a health reform plan doesn’t offer a scintilla of political protection, much less Republican support. Second, sweeping health reform can be passed quickly, with only 51 votes in the Senate, and with no support from major industry actors. Third, it’s easier to defend popular government programs that people already understand and appreciate, like Medicaid and Medicare, than to defend complex public-private partnerships, like Obamacare’s exchanges

This sounds pretty plausible to me. If passing a cautious, incrementalist program like Obamacare doesn’t provide any protection against Republicans destroying it, Democrats have no motivation to bother with cautious, incrementalist programs. They might as well just bend the rules, pass national health care, and be done with it. If insurance companies don’t like it, tough. Democrats contorted themselves into pretzels to design a program acceptable to insurers, and were rewarded with disaster. Insurers screwed up both their pricing and participation so epically that they brought Obamacare to its knees, and when Republicans proposed ditching the whole thing they just sat on their hands. It’s obvious now that the support of the insurance industry provides zero—or maybe negative—benefit. So the hell with them.

And that’s all in addition to the fact that the Bernie movement has made single-payer health care a live possibility in a way it’s never been before.

Republicans are basically hellbent not on any positive agenda, but on repealing everything Obama did in his eight years. Dodd-Frank. Obamacare. Paris. Higher taxes on the rich. A less interventionist approach to the Middle East. Immigration. Cuba. Net neutrality. Almost literally, they have nothing left of their own that they’re interested in doing. If the technology existed, it wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to reanimate the corpse of Osama bin Laden on the grounds that it was a mistake to kill him and leave the field open to ISIS.

Note to Republicans: I’m just joking about that.

Msgt. Lance Cheung/Planet Pix via ZUMA

Wait a second. WTF is going on here?

Qatar will sign a deal to buy as many as 36 F-15 jets from the U.S. as the two countries navigate tensions over President Donald Trump’s backing for a Saudi-led coalition’s move to isolate the country for supporting terrorism. Qatari Defense Minister Khalid Al-Attiyah and his U.S. counterpart, Jim Mattis, completed the $12 billion agreement on Wednesday in Washington, according to the Pentagon.

A couple of weeks ago the president of the United States goaded Saudi Arabia into leading a blockade of Qatar. It was time to crack down on support for Iranian-backed terrorists! Today, his secretary of defense agreed to sell Qatar three dozen F-15s. I guess Trump must have forgotten to tell Mattis that Qatar was on the presidential shit list.