Trump and Co. are playing a dangerous game.
They've not been able to produce anything even remotely resembling a functional Trumpcare bill. Not even close. At last count, the CBO said that the Senate version of Trumpcare would put 23 million people out of medical insurance in the next 10 years. The tiresome yet predictable response from the Whitehouse? Start a Twitter war with Journalists to distract from pathetic results. In fact, it likely goes even deeper as Trump and Co. threatened tabloid exposure on the talk show hosts. So, just to make the perfect Trifecta, Trump is now posing the question: "Could we just repeal the ACA now, and maybe, some time in the future, replace it with something else?" Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) — who proposed this move (which was quickly expanded by Trump with a positive Tweet) proposed repeal today, replace at a later time. Even for this administration, that took my breath away. There are no figures at the current time for the number of people this will affect. Those 24 million will likely lose insurance today rather than over the next 10 years. The insurance companies that have the ACA woven into their structure will collapse. The medical industry will see significant portions of its income evaporate as people can no longer pay. Talk about a nuclear option. This is nothing less than genocide on the citizens of the US. The lawmakers haven't been able to pass anything even remotely resembling a workable plan in the last 6 months. How the hell do they think they can do something in August? We need to be asking ourselves: should any politician willing to consider such a move be allowed to be a lawmaker? They clearly do not care for the citizens who elected them. Why are they still in office?
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The job of being President is unfathomably hard.
They represent not just the hopes and dreams of the 320 million US Citizens, but (until recently) the hopes and dreams of all those in other places on the planet that wanted to be American too. The President manages a workforce of 22 million people. There is justification to say that the government is too big as the government employs almost twice the number of people as are employed in manufacturing, for instance. Still... A President couldn't possibly do the job alone. They need to build a dependable staff, and rely on them to keep the government moving. Though there are jobs that could potentially be cut...there are more jobs that need to be filled to make sure the government continues to function, and the US Administration can coordinate with our allies, and defend politically against our enemies to defuse potential military confrontations. In the most recent case of the three terror attackers in London, the US Ambassador should have been involved to get intelligence back to the White House, but also to communicate concern and compassion to the UK. Trump's failure to nominate an ambassador to the UK meant that there was nobody in the US Embassy to perform the vital functions of representing the US in Great Britain, and to get messages of support and condolences out in quick order...with the predictable result that Trump put out an incoherent tweet that demonstrated both his lack of empathy along with a profound lack of understanding. Given that there are literally hundreds of nominations that have to go through when a new President is elected, we can all appreciate that it's a hard job to do when you've also got a full-time job of running a country. We know by now what Trump's reaction to something hard (that he is incapable of doing) is...he blames someone. Seriously, we elected him. He's spending our money on crazy things (up to $70 Billion worth of crazy) as well as extravagant things (he's played golf more than once per week since being elected, which means 5 airliners worth of people travel with him, and all those people need to be put up for the night, in his hotels, at our expense). At the very least, you'd have thought the monotony of that much golf would convince him to cut down a bit. Before the election I would have said we have a *right* to demand that we're getting our money's worth out of our President. Now, we have a duty to ourselves and each other to ask: What the fuck does he do with his time? I simply cannot imagine what is going through Trump's head, if anything, that he would attack the Mayor of London like this: Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it! I won't link you to it. If you want to read it, go search for it yourself.
It's not enough that so many people have already suffered in this attack...Trump has to embarrass the shit out of Americans everywhere by cowardly attacking the people who were responding to the crisis. Trump: you're a pig. You don't speak for me (and never have). You make me ashamed to be an American. I'll be in touch with my Congress Critters (yet again) to let them all know just how fast I want you out of office. The terror attacks in London were senseless and cowardly. There is no excuse. We will carry on, indeed.
That Trump decided to try to use this as justification for his travel ban is crass, cowardly and grasping. Shame on you, Mr. Trump, for trying to take advantage of this situation to advance a policy that couldn't have stopped the attack in any case and has no relevance to the terror attacks in London. The now seven people that died in the latest attack will not feel better knowing that a travel ban is being touted. Their families will not be comforted knowing that the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth is shitting his pants with fear. Bottom line here: each day Trump demonstrate reasons why he should not be president. To Trump...you, sir, have reached an appalling new low, even for you. So desperate to believe that #covfefe was intentional and not just blatant stupidity, Trumpsters are now discussing the true meaning of #covfefe, as Trump was apparently translating from the original Arabic.
If you believe that, there's another meme going around (that I just started, but I'm sure it's true): If you go past Trump's golden front door, into Trump's golden foyer, and then into Trump's golden cloakroom...there, you'll find in his golden toilet a present just for you: The basis of his real wealth: Trump's golden nuggets. Now this is a discussion that I can agree with.
He says, far more eloquently than I, that Trump has betrayed the middle class people who voted for him. If you are a Trump supporter, or you know a Trump supporter, please have this read this article. Trump has been saying that removing the US from the Paris Agreement is a way to produce more jobs in the energy sector of the US. Really?
Let's think about that a second. This article says that a coal mine is being reopened. How many hundreds or even thousands of jobs will it bring back? 70. The latest figures for employment (March 2017) have been reported. The country's growth is "running out of steam" only producing 98,000 jobs. We'd have to open 1400 mines across the country for our job growth to be called "running out of steam". Further, even though employment in coal mines has drastically tailed off...actual mining of coal reached an all-time high of 1.08 gigatons of coal produced in 2008 (40% on public lands)! That means that increasing coal mining will not, in any sense, produce the jobs that Trump is talking about. Solar energy alone has twice the number of employees than Coal. From the same article, green energy has just under 1/3 of all energy jobs, and hydrocarbon or nuclear energy the other 2/3. Not only that, but the coal jobs no longer exist for people to be hired for them. The coal jobs have been declining significantly since 1923, and they continue to decline. Incidentally, every dollar the government invests in green energy provides 3 times as many jobs as the same money invested in older energy generation methods. On top of all that, burning coal for energy actually produces more radioactive waste than nuclear power. The bottom line here is that, of course, as always with Trump, it's about the bottom line. Some billionaire somewhere stands to make a *huge* amount of money from increased access to public lands, declaring former protected lands as unprotected, and making it easier to mine coal without having to worry about pesky things like polluting streams and rivers. We are watching the rape of the US landscape right here...and the poor, poor people that Trump says he's helping will be impacted the most. No more jobs, lots more pollution. It's a very bad time to be a poor Trump supporter. So we finally have the truth.
Putin has said that "patriotic" Russian hackers "may have" interfered with the US election. This is similar to the "patriots" that invaded Crimea. The "patriots" that invaded the Ukraine. Don't forget, before that, Russia openly invaded Georgia in 2008. Almost 20k people still are displaced from that war. Russia faced huge international criticism for being open during an invasion. So, they learned. In Crimea and the Ukraine, they were covert, but still "little green men" still invaded. With the US election, Russia didn't want the publicity at all. They wanted plausible deniability. And wouldn't you know it, but in walked Trump and his family, with significant investments in their various holdings in Russia, and overly large ego and seemingly little sense. Back a fool in the election, and watch the fireworks. If he fails, nobody expected him to succeed in any case. If he succeeds... well... it would at least be fun. Given the level of upset since the election, both for and against Trump, I expect that Putin has never gotten such a good return on his investment. There's no way he could have possibly hoped to get this level of disruption in his largest enemy without having to fire a shot. Well-played Putin. Now, can we realise this whole sham is a really bad idea for all concerned? I'm not saying we should be putting a Democrat in the White House...I'm saying that this whole election cycle, and the few jobs that have been assigned, should be vacated, and let's re-run the whole thing. It's the only way to clear out the deadwood. With his around-the-world tour, Trump has managed to piss people off in every corner of the globe.
It was bad enough when he was doing it in the US. He's left a trail of hurt and angry former allies now reassessing the US commitment to the world. He's leaving a power vacuum that the EU, Russia and China will be quick to fill. Reduced US integrity, accountability, and willingness to back up existing commitments means that the US will get worse deals, worse intel, and less influence. Trump is doing what Putin or Xi Jinping could never have hoped to do...he's getting America to eat itself, destroying it with neighbor on neighbor violence, useless trade wars, and a string of broken promises to the rest of the world. Lead - to influence or induce; cause:
To lead is to show others the way. To see farther than they can. To chase a better future. Trump handling of the Paris Agreement is a lesson in giving up leadership. This isn't leading, it's a study in retreating...ceding territory to enemies, giving up the political will, throwing in the towel, and quitting. And the practical impact? China and the EU are more than happy to step up and show Trump how it's done. Americans like to think that America is the world's police force. Always willing to do the right thing for the good of the whole world. We like to portray our moral superiority, and condemn (some) others that we disagree with. We claim that America is the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. Except...we're not leading...we're not the land of the free anymore, and Trump's actions demonstrate greed, not bravery. |
AuthorEngineer, Dad, Concerned Citizen. Watching the America I love fading and eroding before my eyes. Archives
November 2018
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