In all the news articles triggered by the House passing the Republican "American Health Care Act" (A.H.C.A.), one quote prominently stood out. From an article written by David Weigel in the Washington Post came this extraordinary quote:

"Congress and the White House have focused their public efforts on platitudes and news conferences, while the substance and the details have remained behind closed doors," Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), then the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, wrote in a July 2009 op-ed for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Those members of Congress who voted for this bill already in their committees did so without knowing what the legislation costs."

Back then, Democrats were in the early part of the process of passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), and Republicans were in a snit because they thought the process was moving too fast.

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Congressional Republicans have now positioned themselves firmly between a rock and a hard place on healthcare reform. This would be highly amusing if it weren't for the seriousness of the subject matter, which could accurately be described as a life-or-death subject for millions. Republicans now have the choice of voting for a bill which is massively unpopular with the public (increasingly so, as a matter of fact), or admitting to their own voting base that they've been flat-out lying about the evils of Obamacare for the past eight years. That's a tough choice, because no matter what route they take, it is bound to cause anger among the voters -- at this point, it's just a question of which particular voters (and how many of them) will be massively disappointed.

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I haven't done one of these three-dot columns in a while (as always, in homage to the late, great columnist Herb Caen), but the flood of news tidbits flowing from the White House is relentless, so I thought it was time to catch up on some of the fresh idiocy coming from the Oval Office.

Donald Trump, so far, is having a very bad week. And it's only Tuesday! Trump has already had numerous bad weeks during his presidency, which is remarkable since there really haven't been all that many weeks of it to date. But he seems determined to set even new lows this week, so let's take a quick look at what he's been up to.

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Barack Obama caused somewhat of a tizzy last week, when it was announced he would be giving a speech to some bastions of Wall Street, for a cool $400,000 speaking fee. Some were simply aghast at the idea, for a couple of different reasons. But there's one way Obama could make most of the criticism disappear (at least that portion coming from the left), and that is by making one simple promise. If Obama pledged to immediately release the transcript of his speech right after he gave it, he could defuse a lot of the angst the idea is causing among progressives. The speech reportedly won't be given until September, so Obama isn't facing an immediate deadline; but the faster he swears he'll release the text of his speech, the better for him politically.

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Tomorrow, in case you hadn't heard, will be Donald Trump's 100th day as president. Grading his performance has been a weeklong event in the media. Rather than our normal Friday format, what follows is our honest evaluation of Trump's first 100 days, which might be summed up as: "Coulda been better, coulda been a lot worse."

The most heartening conclusion for liberals, after 99 days, is that Trump's incompetence is his saving grace. Imagine how much worse things could have been right now if Trump really did have his act together, in other words.

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There's something blatantly obvious to point out about President Donald Trump's recent tax plan, which makes me wonder all the more why others aren't forcefully pointing it out in the media today. Because while it's debatable (and impossible to figure without making assumptions which may or may not be true) how Trump's new tax system would affect his own taxes in terms of deductions and "pass-through income" and all the rest of it; there is one very obvious tax cut Trump would love to see happen, because it would reduce his own taxes by a whopping 81 percent. What's even more puzzling (about the lack of coverage) is that it is perhaps the easiest change he's proposing, in terms of figuring out its impact on Trump's own taxes.

We only have one recent year's data to work with, and we only have the 1040 form, with no accompanying schedules, forms, or explanations. So it's tough to figure how several of Trump's proposals would affect him personally, in anything more than generalized terms. But one Trump proposal is very easy to figure the impact, because it is a breakout number on the 1040 form. On the 2005 Trump form that was leaked last month, this number can be found on Line 45: Alternative Minimum Tax. And it's a doozy, when compared to Trump's overall taxes.

Without taking into account things like penalties and interest, Trump paid an impressive total of $38,435,451 in federal taxes in 2005. Of that total, only $5,310,616 was entered on the line most people figure their taxes on (Line 44). But a whopping $31,261,179 of the total taxes Trump paid was for the Alternative Minimum Tax -- which he is now proposing to abolish. Divide it out, and Trump's Alternative Minimum Tax was 81.3 percent of his total taxes.

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Decades ago, a group of American Nazis wanted to hold a march, complete with swastikas and all the rest of the Nazi regalia. The city they wanted to march in turned their request down. The Nazis fought in court, and they were aided in doing so by the American Civil Liberties Union. That's what an unshakable commitment to the First Amendment means -- defending those with whom you do not agree. Which is why I support Ann Coulter's right to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. I certainly don't agree with a single word that comes out of the woman's mouth, but I have to defend her right to spew her bile in a venue supported by my tax dollars.

The Nazi case was a shocking one for many reasons, and anyone who uses the term "trigger warning" today will be horrified (perhaps this sentence should have been preceded by a trigger warning for those who support trigger warnings?) to learn that the city in Illinois where the Nazis wanted to hold a swastika-bedecked march was not only 40 percent Jewish, but by some estimates one out of every six was either a Holocaust survivor or a family member of a Holocaust survivor. In other words, the Nazis weren't just trying to be as offensive as humanly possible, but they also were hand-picking their venue to maximize how offensive their march would be to the residents. But they still had the right to march, and the Supreme Court ruled they would be allowed to display swastikas, as well.

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In 2103, the Republican Party issued a "post-mortem" document which attempted to figure out what had gone so wrong in the 2012 election. It had some very interesting advice -- all of which was then subsequently ignored. Reduced to a tweet, it might have said: "Don't nominate people like Donald Trump." So the party didn't do so badly, even after ignoring their own advice, it must be honestly admitted.

Democrats are at a similar point now to where Republicans found themselves four years ago, but so far there has been no Democratic post-mortem. The GOP document appeared in March of 2013, but we're almost into May and no such Democratic self-examination has taken place. Partly this is because the Democratic National Committee changed hands in the meantime, but Tom Perez has been on the job for a few months now, so perhaps it's time to attempt an analysis of how the party needs to improve?

Absent such an effort, some very ugly cracks have re-emerged, which show there are still serious divisions within the party and no real agreement on how to move forward. Just this past week the whole "Hillary versus Bernie" schism seemed to rip wide open once again, at least in the pages of Salon. An anti-Bernie article was quickly balanced by a pro-Bernie article, and we were all off to the races once again. Some Democrats still hate Bernie with a white-hot passion, and some others have precisely the same feelings for Hillary, to sum the situation up. None of which is helpful, at least not for those who thought we had already laid this argument to rest.

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At the end of the week, Donald Trump has two big deadlines looming -- one real, and one imaginary. The real one is that the government will shut down unless Congress acts, and the imaginary one is the end of Trump's first 100 days as president. Not content with the fact that solving the budget problem is going to be hard enough, Trump is pushing for action on two other fronts as well: tax reform and healthcare reform. He wants a big win to brag about when he reaches 100 days, but he might just be setting himself up for failure across the board.

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We'd like to boldly add a new disease's definition to the political lexicon. We feel this is necessary since Donald Trump seems to have caught a rather drastic case of "100 Days Envy." Symptoms are a tendency to flail around looking for a legislative win you can brag about, and an unnatural fear of being called a loser by the entire planet's media for not even coming close to fulfilling pretty much any of the grandiose promises you made for your first 100 days in office.

The only cure for such a malady is time. Give it a few more weeks, and the media will probably forget all about how much fun it is to mock your lack of achievements. It'll all get better soon, but you're going to have to take your medicine while it happens, sorry about that.

Heh. To put all of this another way: next week's scheduled "100 Days Schadenfreudefest" has already begun, here at Friday Talking Points headquarters.

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