Month: May 2017

“To the Mattresses”

 

“President Trump and his advisers, seeking to contain the escalating Russia crisis that threatens to consume his presidency, are considering a retooling of his senior staff and the creation of a “war room” within the White House, according to several aides and outside Trump allies.”

“ ‘Go to the mattresses,’ a line from the film “The Godfather” about turning to tough mercenaries during troubled times, has circulated among Trump’s friends, said two people close to the war room discussions.”

Washington Post, May 28, 2017

The troops are gathering, officers are plotting their strategies, the reserves have been called up, allies are joining the cause, munitions and propaganda factories are gearing up.  No, this isn’t Germany in the late 1930s. This is Donald Trump going to war against his greatest enemy: the Truth.

This strategic threat posed by the Trump Legion has the aura of a true test of whether America will allow itself to be overtaken by  bombastic false promises, personal greed, and flat out dishonesty.

Already the Trump Legion has begun to:

  • Renege on promises in rhetoric aimed directly at the “common man.”  The swamp is not draining, Cabinet Meetings are filled with Goldman-Sachs executives and other financial super heroes. NAFTA is still here and China won’t be tagged as a currency manipulator.  April Fools; he had his fingers crossed when he promised.  As anyone with a seven-year old’s mentality knows, promises don’t count then.
  • Undermine America’s relations with Democracies in Europe and with NATO in order to align America behind (not beside or in front of) Russia. Apparently Trump’s personal hero is Vladimir Putin.  And why not, it could well be that Putin put Trump into the White House.  If so, unless Trump’s America falls in line Putin can threaten to expose how Trump really was elected.  That is why it is so important to us that the Kremlin/Trump relationship needs to be so thoroughly investigated.  It’s also why it is so important to Trump that it’s  not investigated.  If Trump has nothing to hide, why is he going to war to try to stop the investigation?
  • Attack the credibility of the FBI and CIA and all others investigating the secret and perhaps treasonous activities of the Trump campaign and administration. Again, if there’s nothing to hide there’s no reason to go to the mattresses.
  • Give yet another round of huge tax breaks to businesses (including The Donald’s) and to mega-wealthy people (including himself and many of his Legionnaires). Economists warn that these gifts to wealth will inflate America’s deficit quicker and more severely than ever before. We saw the trickledown theory of Reaganomics completely fail to materialize, but let’s try again.  This time we’ll put even more money into the hands of the rich and then see how that magically benefits the average American.   Alternatively, we might do better to remember that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
  • Leave the common citizenry to carry both a hugely disproportionate portion of the US tax burden and an even more overinflated national debt.  Ultimately, it will not be the wealthy who solve the problems in our economy, simply because most of the wealthy are themselves among the biggest problems in our economy. The divide between poverty and wealth is getting larger every day.  When the economy is skewed to benefit the very, very few, it exacerbates the already deplorable conditions suffered by the growing numbers of the poor.  Trump, along with his fellow Republicans, are among the worst enemies of the poor. Trump’s proposed budget has already heavily attacked the poor by gutting programs that are the last lifeline for millions of Americans impoverished by the shameful distribution of wealth in our nation.  He wants to give the money to the impoverished Pentagon instead. Despite his promises, he has never been an honest advocate of the poor or the shrinking Middle Class.  What he promises and what he actually does are as far apart as the rich are from the poor.
  • Work hand in glove with his Republican Congress to turn the Affordable Care Act into the unaffordable American Care Act, leaving somewhere between 20 million to 25 million Americans with no viable health insurance options at all. And those will be the folks who especially who need affordable insurance the most – those in poverty and those with pre-existing conditions.  Since when have Americans become so selfishly ugly as to turn their backs on their unfortunate countrymen and callously condemn them to suffer and die?
  • Incredibly seek to not only to leave the poor and people with pre-existing health conditions in the dust, but try to demonize them by claiming their poverty and their sicknesses are their own fault for not doing “the right things.” (Self-anointed arrogance at its worst.)
  • Seek also to demonize the press by calling their disciplined reporting and genuine search for the Truth (another of Trump’s worst enemies) “fake news.”
  • Send thousands upon thousands more troops back into Afghanistan. (What was that definition of insanity again?)
  • Bamboozle Americans into thinking that he can single handedly bully Mexico to pay for his preposterous campaign promise – The Wall.  Trump hopes we will never think this through, but if Trump has his way the American people will ultimately pay for The Wall up front and again after it’s built.  Trump proposes to build the thing with billions from the US Treasury and then recover the cost of The Wall by putting tariffs on Mexican goods crossing our borders.  He’d like us to think it’s that simple, but the process doesn’t actually end there.  If/when he imposes those tariffs, what do you think Mexican exporters will do?  Obviously, they will charge more for their goods to offset the tariffs.  And who will pay those increased prices? The American Consumer. So ultimately the American Consumer will re-pay the American Taxpayer for The Wall by way of Mexico. Mexico will simply pay the tariff with one hand and collect it back with the other. The Trump Legion knows that full well, but their propaganda is designed to make us believe that ultimately Mexico will pay.

The Fourth Great Lie  + Trust me, I’m Donald Trump +

So now the Trump Legion is preparing for War.  Their enemy?  Anyone who realizes the threat the Trump Legion poses.  The Trump Legion is declaring war on the fundamental rights and well being of anyone who sees that Emperor Trump wears no clothes and says so. Given enough power, anything and anyone will be fair game for the Donald and his cabal of wealthy business friends: the Constitution and Bill of Rights, over 240 years of history (Did you know that Andrew Jackson hated the Civil War even though he died 15 years before it started?), and the scores of millions of Americans who actually recognize that freedom and the rest of America’s ideals are in serious jeopardy.

Trump is about to campaign again, this time on a war footing.  The Trump Legion always fights dirty. Nothing is sacred, especially the Truth.  There is nothing so low as to be beneath them.

The rest of us need to defend those who the Legion attacks and defend ourselves in the battle for the attention of the American people.  We need a presence everywhere Trump goes to point out the Bullshit that comes with him. Let that be our chant, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit.  Let’s fill the streets with crowds whose chant can overwhelm their lies.

The Trump Legion has provided us now with ammunition we never had before.  We can see their end game in their blunders, lies, appointees, policies and positions.  They are all aimed at punishing the poor and paving the way for big business and the rest of the already financially powerful to openly rule this land.

This may well be this generation’s most important war.  The principles and existence of our nation are at stake.

God Bless America and Help Us Protect Our Beloved County!

“the love of money is the root of all evil.”  R.W. Emerson

 

 

Is Stupidity a Pre-existing Condition?

Mo Brooks.

He’s a comedian, right?

No, that’s Mel Brooks.  Funny man.

Mo has to be related.

I mean, who could seriously say:

“My understanding is that (the new health care proposal) will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool,” Brooks said, “thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people–who’ve done things the right way–that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”

No, unfortunately, he’s not a comedian.

He’s not related to Mel Brooks (sorry Mel, to have nearly impugned your reputation).

Yes, he was serious when he said that.

He’s the Republican Congressman representing Alabama’s 5th Congressional District. Seriously.

 

Oh. Well… ah… Maybe he just had a bad day. Or maybe the nasty news media planted this story, you know, like the Republicans always say, it’s fake news.  I mean, he surely didn’t mean that anyone with a pre-existing condition or any other cause to have high health care costs can’t have “led good lives”…”done things to keep their bodies healthy”…”done things the right way.”

I mean, is there anybody that arrogantly stupid?!  Having been sick is a sure sign that someone hasn’t lived “the right way?”  How lame is that?

I wonder how many people who live in Good Ol’ Mo’s Congressional District would be among the losers in Rep. Brooks’s stance.  It’s hard to say.  You see the Republican replacement plan allows each insurer to conveniently define for itself what ailments qualify as pre-existing conditions. Congress apparently wants insurers to have free reign to do what’s best. And we all know how much we can trust the insurance industry to watch out for our best interests.  Who needs goverment protection when we have the insurance companies to cover us?

The Kaiser Foundation estimates that “about a quarter of American adults under 65 have pre-existing conditions that made them ‘declinable.’”  If Mr. Brooks’s constituents are a typical cross section of America (a reasonable assumption), he apparently doesn’t hold 25% of the people he represents in high regard.  Lots of slackers in the doing the right thing department.

Let me see a show of hands here.  If you have had any of the following ailments, please raise your hand:

  • AIDS/HIV
  • Alcohol abuse/ Drug abuse with recent treatment
  • Alzheimer’s/dementia
  • Arthritis (rheumatoid), fibromyalgia, other inflammatory joint disease
  • Cancer within some period of time (e.g. 10 years, often other than basal skin cancer)
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Congestive heart failure
  • Coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery
  • Crohn’s disease/ ulcerative colitis
  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)/emphysema
  • Diabetes mellitus
  • Epilepsy
  • Hemophilia
  • Hepatitis (Hep C)
  • Kidney disease, renal failure
  • Lupus
  • Mental disorders (severe, e.g. bipolar, eating disorder)
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Muscular dystrophy
  • Obesity, severe
  • Organ transplant
  • Paraplegia
  • Paralysis
  • Parkinson’s Disease
  • Pending surgery or hospitalization
  • Pneumocystic pneumonia
  • Pregnancy or expectant parent
  • Sleep apnea
  • Stroke

OK. Everyone with a raised hand, you’re out!  If you get sick, take out a loan or take your chances with divine intervention.

Now, these are just the most common items among most insurers’ pre-existing conditions.  As mentioned, the insurers make up their own lists.  So the rest of you are not completely out of the woods yet.  Technically, insurers could blow up your rates if you’d had a hangnail, or acne, or sinus headaches, or whatever.

“To put it another way,” writes Beth Skwarecki in Gawker Media’s Lifehacker, “the health care bill doesn’t name any conditions that are fair game; but they also don’t explicitly protect any of them, either.”

This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?

Please, remember this:  Republicans now control:

  • The House of Representatives,
  • The Senate,
  • The White House and all of its Cabinet Agencies, and
  • The Justices on The Supreme Court (Republican Presidents selected the majority of them).

This is the Republican Party’s dream arrangement, they are in control of every facet of the Federal Government. It’s their big chance to get what they really want for America.  What happens to you is now primarily their responsibility.   If they’re not on your side, the government isn’t on your side.

So the pre-existing conditions portion of the newly proposed Republican Health Care law is an example of their national government doing its level best to protect:

(pick one)

  1. American citizens
  2. The Profitability of the Insurance Industry