Better break out the smelling salts:

Religious leaders gathered in the Oval Office laid hands on President Donald Trump to pray that God gives him guidance, wisdom and protection. On MSNBC’s “AM Joy” on Saturday morning, Barber called the prayer “theological malpractice bordering on heresy.” “It is a form of theological malpractice that borders on heresy when you can p-r-a-y for a president and others when they are p-r-e-y, preying on the most vulnerable,” Barber said. “You’re violating the most sacred principles of religion.”

Barber’s comments set the North Carolina Republican Party ablaze. In a news release on Sunday, the party said it was “shocked and outraged” over Barber’s “claim that it’s a sin to pray for President Trump.”

Barber's right. I've never seen such a level of religious hypocrisy than that which surrounds Trump. He not only violates the Ten Commandments on a daily (if not hourly) basis, he doesn't even remotely resemble what the New Testament outlines as a good Christian, let alone a leader of such. And where is the GOP's outrage when televangelists describe Trump as some sort of Prophet, divinely inspired by God? Crickets. Make no mistake, Trump's embrace of religious dogma has a lot more to do about coldly calculating the number of Christians out there than it does any sort of heart-felt beliefs:

WITH TWO MORE REPUBLICANS DEFECTING, MCCONNELL GIVES UP ON SENATE HEALTHCARE BILL: After Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Jerry Moran said Monday evening they would not vote to advance the GOP healthcare bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he would abandon the effort to repeal and immediately replace Obamacare. McConnell said in a statement Monday night that the two senators defections made it “apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful.” Instead, McConnell endorsed an approach supported by President Donald Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act without immediately replacing it with different health care legislation.
http://www.newsobserver.com/latest-news/article161888003.html

The sheer magnitude of irresponsibility is breathtaking:

528 million—amount in dollars of the cost of the tax cuts enacted in the two-year budget passed by the General Assembly this year (Ibid)

900 million—amount in dollars of the full cost of the tax cuts passed by the General Assembly this year when fully in place (Ibid)

3.5 billion—amount in dollars of lost revenue thanks to the combined tax changes made by the General Assembly since 2013 (Ibid)

It's rare for me to be able to summon analogies on Mondays, I usually just hunker down and wait for the coffee to do its magic. But today, I have two analogies warring for my attention, derived from recent news stories, which I believe accurately reflect Republicans' actions. The first has to do with termites eating away at the foundations of a house, year after year, until the house actually collapses from weakened timbers. If that doesn't trick your trigger, there's also the sinkhole phenomenon: Groundwater erosion which slowly washes away soil and mineral deposits, creating unseen gaping voids of missing support, which inevitably eventually collapse, dragging the house down in the process. Okay, I might need more coffee, but you get the picture. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and the displacement of mass or energy in a formula alters that formula in its entirety. These tax cuts are not "rhetorical," and neither will be the results. And we will have to live with those results for years to come.

IN ADDITION TO GENX, SIX MORE CHEMICALS FOUND IN CAPE FEAR DOWNSTREAM FROM TEFLON PLANT: All seven of the chemicals were found in the river below the plant, where more than 300,000 people get their drinking water. None of the chemicals was discovered in the river above the plant, leading researchers to believe Chemours was the source. It is not known whether GenX or the other chemicals that researchers found pose a health threat to humans because they are classified as “emerging contaminants” and not regulated by state or federal agencies. But the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement Friday saying studies on animals found that GenX caused testicular, pancreatic and liver cancer. “Whether or not animal effects will be the same in humans is not known,” the statement said. Scientists say the chemicals found in the Cape Fear River are so new that they cannot determine exactly how much is in the water or how harmful they might be.
http://www.fayobserver.com/news/20170715/genx-not-only-possible-toxin-in-cape-fear-river