A day or so ago, after the failure of the replacement for Obamacare to come to a vote, the Vice President climbed up on the stump to rail at the House Democrats for refusing to consider voting for the bill. Really?
Let's back up a bit, shall we.
Throughout the campaign, as well as rather recently, Donald Trump promised a replacement for the failing Obamacare that would include more people, with better coverage, and cost far less than the current mess.
Was that stuff in the bill that failed?
Because if it wasn't, Mike Pence needs to shut the f up and climb back down off the stump.
And frankly, we know the bill in question was way shy of doing what Trump promised it would do. In fact, the President had stripped out so many basic services—in an attempt to assuage the holdouts—the legislation could hardly be labeled a healthcare bill at all.
Not that it matters. The Republicans did all they could and now it's over.
(It seems they're moving on to tax cuts. Possibly they think this nut will be easier to crack.)
As Paul Ryan said, Obamacare is the law of the land and that's it. The Republicans will do nothing further to molest it. Or try to fix parts of it. The best they can do is sit around in prayer circles, prodding God to hasten its explosive failure.
Which is a shame, because there may be parts that could be fixed—with help the Democrats would likely be willing to give.
If thirty or forty ultra-conservative Republicans opt to stay away, fine. Perhaps a like number of Democrats would be willing to step up. And maybe a lot more.
Proving they don't all hate this country.
Fixing Obamacare—not replacing it—is what the majority of Americans wants to happen. Does that make any difference to Trump and his unruly gang?
Not so far.
It's a shame those guys didn't remember the best way to get difficult projects done—force Mexico to pay for it.
On another subject: It recently came to light there was some "incidental collection" of intelligence concerning Trump and his transition team.
One or more US intelligence agency was involved, apparently while monitoring the communications of foreign nationals. During which Trump's name came up. Or one of the foreign nationals was actually talking to Trump or his pals.
Asked if this new information vindicated his charge of "wire tapping," Trump said, "It somewhat does."
Proving he has no idea what he's talking about. Again.
Here's a question: If Trump knows he made all this up, and still directed Congress to investigate it, is that an impeachable offense?
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
TRUMP'S UNIMPEACHABLE SOURCE
Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, et al., will be written up in the Big Book of Final Days as damnable enablers if they fail to prevent Donald Trump from ending the world in order to distract everybody from the fact we all now know he's a lunatic.
And yes, it's about the "wire tapping" nonsense.
That Trump would jump so deeply into the poop, refusing to this day to back down, is at best a startling reminder of the man's un-presidential rashness.
Or wait, maybe it's not!
Because his confident tweets could also be an indicator of the supremely persuasive nature of his source. I mean, that's not impossible, right?
So, how did Trump "find out" he'd been tapped?
Surely it must have taken a font of unimpeachable veracity to allow the Donald to fire up his outrage and proclaim it to the world—and in the process gleefully libel a former president.
Perversely, though, this irrefutable source is so cloaked in shadow it appears Trump cannot for the life of him remember who or what it was.
If this apparent reluctance to disclose his elusive educator is not a theatrical (and dangerous) ploy to hide his or her identity, I think we have to consider that Alzheimer's (or similar form of dementia) is now in charge of the White House.
Actually, we have to hope it's dementia, and that the disease has taken Trump body and soul.
Because if that's the case, and the man's a total loony, maybe he won't notice he's waved his instability in front of the world, signaling his complete unfitness to be President of the United States.
The danger comes if he's only partial impaired.
If the man still has moments of clarity, he might figure out what he's done. He might realize he's crossed the Nutter Line—and want to do something to distract us.
Like bomb North Korea's missile launching bases and/or its nuclear development and storage facilities. An event Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to be laying the groundwork for right now.
And if we attack North Korea, expect those birds to invade South Korea. Forcing us to go big in the North. At which point China will come in to even things up (as they are wont to do).
And we're off to the races.
Nuclear Winter, boys and girls, and the rest of history might not get a chance to be written by anyone. Leaving Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, et al., off the hook.
Far fetched? Who can say, anymore.
It's still possible the whole wiretapping flap is itself a manufactured diversion from other White House gaffs. Which unfortunately doesn't rule out newer, even more devastating actions.
Trump's pathological stubbornness is almost always on display. The man cannot be seen to lose in any contest of wills.
Which is why he insisted on issuing his revised Travel Ban.
A fully sane man might jump ahead and implement the mysterious policy called Extreme Vetting. After all, this was supposed to be the point of a "temporary" ban on issuing visas—to give Trump more time to work out the kinks in the vetting process.
The fact he's already had six months to figure out the new procedures doesn't enter into it. He's going to pound away on the Travel Ban until he can declare victory.
Because this time—like every time—it's personal.
Trump will insist on his illogical position—that the Travel Ban is not a Muslim Ban, and that failure to put the Ban in place endangers America.
You can't have both.
If it's not a Muslim Ban, it has—by definition—no chance of preventing attacks by radical Islamic terrorists.
Besides which, there are already plenty of Muslims in this country, and just the idea of a Muslim Ban (since the courts would probably never allow an actual ban) can only serve to radicalize those individuals already on the fence about their new home.
But try telling Trump that.
Or worse: Try telling Trump anything that doesn't make him look good and other people look bad.
Folks, were up against a fundamental truth of human nature. With or without dementia, we tend to believe good things about ourselves and bad things about everybody else.
But that's us: Full of crap—and loving it!
And yes, it's about the "wire tapping" nonsense.
That Trump would jump so deeply into the poop, refusing to this day to back down, is at best a startling reminder of the man's un-presidential rashness.
Or wait, maybe it's not!
Because his confident tweets could also be an indicator of the supremely persuasive nature of his source. I mean, that's not impossible, right?
So, how did Trump "find out" he'd been tapped?
Surely it must have taken a font of unimpeachable veracity to allow the Donald to fire up his outrage and proclaim it to the world—and in the process gleefully libel a former president.
Perversely, though, this irrefutable source is so cloaked in shadow it appears Trump cannot for the life of him remember who or what it was.
If this apparent reluctance to disclose his elusive educator is not a theatrical (and dangerous) ploy to hide his or her identity, I think we have to consider that Alzheimer's (or similar form of dementia) is now in charge of the White House.
Actually, we have to hope it's dementia, and that the disease has taken Trump body and soul.
Because if that's the case, and the man's a total loony, maybe he won't notice he's waved his instability in front of the world, signaling his complete unfitness to be President of the United States.
The danger comes if he's only partial impaired.
If the man still has moments of clarity, he might figure out what he's done. He might realize he's crossed the Nutter Line—and want to do something to distract us.
Like bomb North Korea's missile launching bases and/or its nuclear development and storage facilities. An event Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seems to be laying the groundwork for right now.
And if we attack North Korea, expect those birds to invade South Korea. Forcing us to go big in the North. At which point China will come in to even things up (as they are wont to do).
And we're off to the races.
Nuclear Winter, boys and girls, and the rest of history might not get a chance to be written by anyone. Leaving Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, et al., off the hook.
Far fetched? Who can say, anymore.
It's still possible the whole wiretapping flap is itself a manufactured diversion from other White House gaffs. Which unfortunately doesn't rule out newer, even more devastating actions.
Trump's pathological stubbornness is almost always on display. The man cannot be seen to lose in any contest of wills.
Which is why he insisted on issuing his revised Travel Ban.
A fully sane man might jump ahead and implement the mysterious policy called Extreme Vetting. After all, this was supposed to be the point of a "temporary" ban on issuing visas—to give Trump more time to work out the kinks in the vetting process.
The fact he's already had six months to figure out the new procedures doesn't enter into it. He's going to pound away on the Travel Ban until he can declare victory.
Because this time—like every time—it's personal.
Trump will insist on his illogical position—that the Travel Ban is not a Muslim Ban, and that failure to put the Ban in place endangers America.
You can't have both.
If it's not a Muslim Ban, it has—by definition—no chance of preventing attacks by radical Islamic terrorists.
Besides which, there are already plenty of Muslims in this country, and just the idea of a Muslim Ban (since the courts would probably never allow an actual ban) can only serve to radicalize those individuals already on the fence about their new home.
But try telling Trump that.
Or worse: Try telling Trump anything that doesn't make him look good and other people look bad.
Folks, were up against a fundamental truth of human nature. With or without dementia, we tend to believe good things about ourselves and bad things about everybody else.
But that's us: Full of crap—and loving it!
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
MR. TRUMP SITS DOWN AT THE KEYBOARD
I once heard of a woman who was asked if she could play the piano. She said, "I don't know. I never tried."
This response reveals both an ignorance of how things work and a level of confidence that suggests she might just be up to the task, once somebody gave her a shot.
Similarly, someone might have asked Donald Trump if he could run this country. "I don't know. I never tried."
Would probably not have been his reply.
The fact is, Donald Trump is natively outfitted with a supreme dollop of confidence. One might even say, a criminal level of confidence.
His answer would probably have been: "Oh, absolutely! Are you kidding me? I could run the hell out of this country! I could do such a beautiful job of running this country you wouldn't believe it! Not in a million years!"
Confidence!
As a consequence, even now, with the flawed Republican Health Care bill flapping in everybody's faces, he still mutters stuff like: "It'll cover everybody in the country! And for such a low price it'll make your head spin!"
(Not an actual quote, but very, very close.)
But exactly how does he propose to do this?
"Negotiation!" I would imagine him saying.
It's why we elected him, right?
Maybe he'd be willing to negotiate all individual policies with the insurance companies. Millions and millions of negotiations.
Or you could do it yourself. The company wants a thousand bucks a month to cover you? Offer them ten! Hey, it might work! You won't know until you try, right?
Lean on the bastards!
And speaking of leaning on folks, witness the dizzying spin coming out of the White House on the subject of "wire tapping."
As Sean Spicer says, Trump purposely put the term in quotes so it could mean pretty much anything. (One can only speculate about the multitudinous meanings the word "tapp" might morph into.)
For her part, Kellyanne Conway rhapsodizes about surveillance in its many forms, though without yet mentioning cameras that come up out of the toilet.
The trend of the discussion seems to be this: If "wire tapping" means any form of surveillance, and surveillance is (after all) just another word for observation, it isn't that much of a stretch to say Obama might have caught a glimpse of Donald Trump on a TV playing the NBC Nightly News (or the equivalent)—a moment of casual observation that might well count as surveillance.
Which now counts as "wire tapping."
And with Donald Trump's swollen image all over the news for the last year or so, could that sick son-of-a-bitch Obama dare deny such a glimpse took place? Who would believe him?
So, there you have it: Obama "wire-tapped" Trump!
Disgusting, right?
I mean, if you can't rely on your President to tell you the truth, all forms of trust are in the wind.
This response reveals both an ignorance of how things work and a level of confidence that suggests she might just be up to the task, once somebody gave her a shot.
Similarly, someone might have asked Donald Trump if he could run this country. "I don't know. I never tried."
Would probably not have been his reply.
The fact is, Donald Trump is natively outfitted with a supreme dollop of confidence. One might even say, a criminal level of confidence.
His answer would probably have been: "Oh, absolutely! Are you kidding me? I could run the hell out of this country! I could do such a beautiful job of running this country you wouldn't believe it! Not in a million years!"
Confidence!
As a consequence, even now, with the flawed Republican Health Care bill flapping in everybody's faces, he still mutters stuff like: "It'll cover everybody in the country! And for such a low price it'll make your head spin!"
(Not an actual quote, but very, very close.)
But exactly how does he propose to do this?
"Negotiation!" I would imagine him saying.
It's why we elected him, right?
Maybe he'd be willing to negotiate all individual policies with the insurance companies. Millions and millions of negotiations.
Or you could do it yourself. The company wants a thousand bucks a month to cover you? Offer them ten! Hey, it might work! You won't know until you try, right?
Lean on the bastards!
And speaking of leaning on folks, witness the dizzying spin coming out of the White House on the subject of "wire tapping."
As Sean Spicer says, Trump purposely put the term in quotes so it could mean pretty much anything. (One can only speculate about the multitudinous meanings the word "tapp" might morph into.)
For her part, Kellyanne Conway rhapsodizes about surveillance in its many forms, though without yet mentioning cameras that come up out of the toilet.
The trend of the discussion seems to be this: If "wire tapping" means any form of surveillance, and surveillance is (after all) just another word for observation, it isn't that much of a stretch to say Obama might have caught a glimpse of Donald Trump on a TV playing the NBC Nightly News (or the equivalent)—a moment of casual observation that might well count as surveillance.
Which now counts as "wire tapping."
And with Donald Trump's swollen image all over the news for the last year or so, could that sick son-of-a-bitch Obama dare deny such a glimpse took place? Who would believe him?
So, there you have it: Obama "wire-tapped" Trump!
Disgusting, right?
I mean, if you can't rely on your President to tell you the truth, all forms of trust are in the wind.
Friday, March 10, 2017
MR. TRUMP STANDS ON HIS HEAD
The cool thing about human beings is that they already know everything—and they can't be wrong!
Much of this happy nonsense goes on beneath the surface, but every once in a while we raise our heads and take a peep at the world, looking for outside confirmation.
At that moment of mental danger, the brain is equipped with several mechanisms to minimize the damage that reality can wreak on our shakily constructed internal universes.
The best is oblivion. If there's something out there that can reach into our heads and rip wantonly at the wires, simply avoid seeing it.
If you can't see it, you never have to deal with it.
You can also disregard any bad news by considering the source of that news. If the person himself is "bad," nothing he says can hold a drop of truth. Impeach his character, and you're home free, whether the information comes from Lyin' Ted Cruz or the Failin' New York Times.
Or you can perform some mental gymnastics: black becomes white, up becomes down, left becomes right, and so forth. Twist your inputs until they line up with what you know to be true.
I mention in the book (What's Wrong with Us) the creationist minister who happened upon an editorial in Scientific American, stating the journal had given up on the outrageous concept of evolution.
Exactly right, thinks the minister. And about time, too.
What his brain failed to tell him, the editorial occurred in the April issue, where topsy-turvydom prevails. It was a joke, see? Evolution is still king at Scientific American.
Donald Trump has performed a similar mental flip-flop.
In his mind, news coming out of the alt-right blogosphere is now anointed as the "real" news. This has to be true, because according to presidential guidelines, anything coming from the so-called mainstream media is fake news.
As a consequence, murmurings from the fringe suggesting Trump might have been tapped during the campaign instantly take on the mantle of rock-solid fact.
Trump "found out" this fact and proceeded to promulgate it in a series of early-morning tweets. He has called on Congress to investigate this outrage, a situation that—had it been made public before the election—would surely have gotten Obama impeached, Watergate fashion.
Oddly, having made his stand, Trump has submerged. He offers nothing more about the matter.
Is it possible he recognizes he has crossed a line?
To my knowledge, the only position he has ever walked back was the business of Obama (and Hillary) being the founders of ISIS. That bit of information transformed, after several days of insistence, into a "joke."
Will the wire-tapping thing also become a joke?
The problem is, it may be too late to go that route. Trump's silence may have already made the matter "real," a matter of public record.
Remember, the President didn't just ask the question: "Was I bugged during the campaign?"
He has given us the answer. The bad (or sick) man definitely did bug him. So sad, and so forth.
Some of Trump supporters suggest the wire-tapping flap is just a diversionary tactic, a kind of Wag the Dog ploy to distract from alleged (or real) chaos in the White House.
But might not such a tactic blow up in his face?
On a recent edition of the CBS evening news, former CIA director Leon Panetta was introduced (with a long list of credentials) in order to speculate that Trump had indeed crossed a line, that his credibility had been damaged by this latest instance of Trumpian brainstorm.
According to Panetta, the President's ability to take a stand against an international threat—and to make a realistic case for his position—has been undercut.
A situation that creates, all by itself, a serious existential threat to this nation. If the world fails to believe the President, it might refuse to assist us in a moment of great danger.
Makes me wonder if Trump is filling this communication void with a search for covert operatives who can fake the sort of evidence folks are going to want to see to make his mental hiccup real.
Thus taking the next step in the process of flip-flopping news into a whole new universe of nonsense.
Hey, it's only human.
Much of this happy nonsense goes on beneath the surface, but every once in a while we raise our heads and take a peep at the world, looking for outside confirmation.
At that moment of mental danger, the brain is equipped with several mechanisms to minimize the damage that reality can wreak on our shakily constructed internal universes.
The best is oblivion. If there's something out there that can reach into our heads and rip wantonly at the wires, simply avoid seeing it.
If you can't see it, you never have to deal with it.
You can also disregard any bad news by considering the source of that news. If the person himself is "bad," nothing he says can hold a drop of truth. Impeach his character, and you're home free, whether the information comes from Lyin' Ted Cruz or the Failin' New York Times.
Or you can perform some mental gymnastics: black becomes white, up becomes down, left becomes right, and so forth. Twist your inputs until they line up with what you know to be true.
I mention in the book (What's Wrong with Us) the creationist minister who happened upon an editorial in Scientific American, stating the journal had given up on the outrageous concept of evolution.
Exactly right, thinks the minister. And about time, too.
What his brain failed to tell him, the editorial occurred in the April issue, where topsy-turvydom prevails. It was a joke, see? Evolution is still king at Scientific American.
Donald Trump has performed a similar mental flip-flop.
In his mind, news coming out of the alt-right blogosphere is now anointed as the "real" news. This has to be true, because according to presidential guidelines, anything coming from the so-called mainstream media is fake news.
As a consequence, murmurings from the fringe suggesting Trump might have been tapped during the campaign instantly take on the mantle of rock-solid fact.
Trump "found out" this fact and proceeded to promulgate it in a series of early-morning tweets. He has called on Congress to investigate this outrage, a situation that—had it been made public before the election—would surely have gotten Obama impeached, Watergate fashion.
Oddly, having made his stand, Trump has submerged. He offers nothing more about the matter.
Is it possible he recognizes he has crossed a line?
To my knowledge, the only position he has ever walked back was the business of Obama (and Hillary) being the founders of ISIS. That bit of information transformed, after several days of insistence, into a "joke."
Will the wire-tapping thing also become a joke?
The problem is, it may be too late to go that route. Trump's silence may have already made the matter "real," a matter of public record.
Remember, the President didn't just ask the question: "Was I bugged during the campaign?"
He has given us the answer. The bad (or sick) man definitely did bug him. So sad, and so forth.
Some of Trump supporters suggest the wire-tapping flap is just a diversionary tactic, a kind of Wag the Dog ploy to distract from alleged (or real) chaos in the White House.
But might not such a tactic blow up in his face?
On a recent edition of the CBS evening news, former CIA director Leon Panetta was introduced (with a long list of credentials) in order to speculate that Trump had indeed crossed a line, that his credibility had been damaged by this latest instance of Trumpian brainstorm.
According to Panetta, the President's ability to take a stand against an international threat—and to make a realistic case for his position—has been undercut.
A situation that creates, all by itself, a serious existential threat to this nation. If the world fails to believe the President, it might refuse to assist us in a moment of great danger.
Makes me wonder if Trump is filling this communication void with a search for covert operatives who can fake the sort of evidence folks are going to want to see to make his mental hiccup real.
Thus taking the next step in the process of flip-flopping news into a whole new universe of nonsense.
Hey, it's only human.
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