Tag Archives: GOP

national news, political news

POTUS keeps ’em hopping at White House

It’s tempting to feel a bit of sympathy for the White House media machine, and for the vice president, and for the senior West Wing advisers.

Why? They are working for someone who doesn’t have a clue on how to “control a message,” or even how to conduct the business of being president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Mike Pence, the vice president, said he acted on the advice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein. But wait! Trump then said he decided before consulting with Sessions and Rosenstein to fire Comey.

Pence also said that the FBI probe into the Russia hacking matter had “nothing to do” with Trump’s decision to fire Comey. Then, what do you know? The president contradicted the VP directly by saying, yep, Comey was spending too much time on the “Russia thing.”

White House press flack Sean Spicer has been keeping a low profile since the stuff hit the fan. Deputy flack Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been back-filling like crazy, trying to provide some semblance of sense to the chaos that has enveloped the Trump administration. She’s not succeeding, though.

In the midst of all this the president is tweeting himself silly with threats to Comey about possible recordings of conversations. He’s continued his attack on the media, threatening to suspend the daily press briefings.

And the media haven’t yet asked him directly about whether he committed a conflict of interest violation by asking Comey directly if the FBI was investigating the president. Trump had the power all along to fire the FBI boss and he shouldn’t have even thought about meddling directly in an ongoing investigation. Holy cow, man!

It’s tempting, yes, to feel sympathy for the president’s senior staff.

I’m managing to resist falling for it, though. They all ought to have known what they were getting into when they signed on.

local news, medical news, political news

Talk to us, Rep. Thornberry

The fellow who represents me in Congress has made his point pretty clear: He doesn’t intend to conduct “town hall meetings” with constituents during these lengthy congressional breaks.

I beg to differ with Rep. Mac Thornberry’s reluctance to speak to groups of his constituents.

The Clarendon Republican lawmaker has just voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to replace it with a Trumpcare version of health care overhaul.

Congress is taking some time off. Its House members and senators have fanned out across the land. Some of them are facing their critics, namely their constituents, who are questioning them about their votes in favor of Trumpcare. Rep. Thornberry, to my knowledge, hasn’t scheduled any such public events.

He ought to rethink his schedule.

Do I expect him to get a dressing down from angry 13th Congressional District constituents? Well, I don’t know. He is considered a lead-pipe cinch for re-election in 2018; his district is as reliably Republican as any in the country. Then again, other GOP House members who are equally safe and secure have been getting pounded by their constituents.

I actually want to applaud those Republicans who have voted for Trumpcare to stand before their “bosses” and explain themselves. I think much less of those who have chosen other pursuits while they are at home, ostensibly tending to “constituent business.”

Thornberry’s been in Congress for a long time now. He took office in 1995. He chairs the House Armed Services Committee. He’s got a big job. He once led a GOP effort to come up with ways to protect us against cyber-crime. I’m hoping whatever he came up with is being employed by our spooks to protect our national security secrets against hackers from, oh, Russia!

However, health care is on people’s minds these days. Even, perhaps, out here in the 13th Congressional District.

We’ve been represented in Congress by someone who has aligned himself with those who want to throw out the Affordable Care Act. The Trumpcare replacement well could cost a lot of Thornberry’s constituents their health insurance.

I believe he owes them a thorough explanation of why he cast one of the House’s “yes” votes.

medical news

‘Nobody dies’ because they lack health care?

U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador needs to have his mouth washed out with soap.

The Idaho Republican went home this week, stood before a town hall crowd, and said this in response to a statement from one of his constituents:

“Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

That was the wrong thing to say, young man.

The Lewiston, Idaho, crowd shouted him down. They hooted, hollered, hissed. Why? The answer is clear: They disagreed with Rep. Labrador’s silly assertion.

Of course people have died because they can’t get health care!

Rep. Labrador had just voted for the Trumpcare proposal that repeals the Affordable Care Act and replaces it with the Republican-crafted alternative. It passed the House by the thinnest of margins, 217-213 and now heads to the Senate, where it’s likely to be torn up, tossed into the trash bin; senators then will write their own version of health care overhaul.

Other lawmakers have gone home and they, too, will get a bellyful of bitching from their constituents over the vote that the House has just cast.

A word to the wise to the rest of them: Don’t repeat Raul Labrador’s silly comment.

medical news

As if we needed reminding … POTUS is clueless

Donald J. Trump’s endorsement of the Australian universal health care system confirms what many of us have thought for as long as this individual has been involved in politics.

He doesn’t know anything. Not about public policy. Or governance. Or public service. Nothing outside the realm of personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement.

The president and his Republican colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives had just passed a bill that repeals the Affordable Care Act and replaces it with something called the American Health Care Act. Then he jetted to New York and sat next to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — and then lauded the Australian health care system.

The president said we should pattern our system after the Aussies’ system of providing universal health care for every citizen. How do they do it? The government pays for it.

But wait! Didn’t the GOP members of Congress want to do away with government mandates? Didn’t they insist on letting the marketplace set the price for health care insurance? Haven’t they been savaging the ACA as some sort of “socialized medicine” scheme cooked up by the socialists ensconced in the White House, led by President Barack Obama?

The GOP’s main man, the president of the United States, just endorsed a government-run health care system that reportedly works pretty well for the people it serves.

The president doesn’t know anything! He is utterly and completely unaware of the very public policy he says he favors.

He’s been involved in politics for less than two years. He rode down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his presidential campaign. He got elected and has continued almost daily to demonstrate his absolute ignorance of the office he now holds and the awesome responsibility he has assumed.

I truly don’t expect him to learn all there is to know about everything in such a short span of time. However, it wasn’t too much to expect that he at least had some semblance of a grasp of policy matters before deciding to run for president of the United States.

entertainment news, medical news, national news, political news

Former congressional loudmouth pops off

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Joe Walsh once was known as a loudmouth politician from Illinois.

Now he’s just a former loudmouth pol, who has entered the discussion about health care reform in a most undignified and ironic manner.

Late-night TV comedian Jimmy Kimmel went on the air Monday night and revealed that his newborn son was born with a heart ailment. Nurses detected a problem with the baby, a renowned cardiac surgeon was summoned and he repaired the infant’s heart.

Kimmel gave a heartfelt and tearful testimony that saluted the medical staff at the hospital where little Billy was born — and argued on behalf of efforts to guarantee health insurance for all Americans.

Then came Joe Walsh, who tweeted, “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.”

Social media erupted with outrage at Walsh’s insensitive reaction. Walsh is a former Republican lawmaker who once popped off with remarks about Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama that some folks had interpreted as a threat. Walsh, who’s now a TEA Party activist and a talk-radio host (imagine that), was defeated for re-election.

There’s more — of course.

Walsh also once was caught failing to pay child support for his own children; he reportedly owed about $117,000 in support payments.

Tsk, tsk, tsk …

For this clown to interject himself into a heartwarming story involving an entertainment personality and his family speaks pretty graphically about this individual’s profound lack of character and compassion.

The word “hypocrite” also comes to mind.

medical news, national news

Who needs analysis of ACA repeal bill? Not the GOP

Did I hear this correctly?

Congressional Republicans are pushing a vote on a measure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act without knowing the “score.” Is that right? I guess it is. That’s what the “enemy of the American people” media are reporting.

Republicans got themselves into a jam the first time they tried to repeal the ACA when the Congressional Budget Office delivered some bad news about the American Health Care Act: The AHCA, according to the CBO, would toss about 24 million Americans off their health insurance programs.

That frightened enough Republican congressmen and women to forestall a vote on a repeal/replace measure.

So, the GOP leadership found a way around that. They made the new repeal/replace law more drastic than the previous one and have scheduled a House vote before the CBO has a chance to “score” it.

The conservative Freedom Caucus, which bucked the original bill, is now on board. Moderate Republicans, meanwhile, are the wild card in the vote that’s coming up.

Democrats? They hate this bill even more than the first one. They’re out. Forget about the Democrats.

Memo to GOP leaders: This is not how you build a “good government” environment.

To think, too, that Republicans were just furious that Democrats allegedly tried in 2010 to shove the Affordable Care Act down Republicans’ throats.

Who’s angry now?

medical news, national news, political news

Why not repair ACA instead of repealing it?

Barack H. Obama used to say it all the time: If Republicans have any improvements they want to make to the Affordable Care Act, I am willing to work it with them.

The Democratic president was open to tinkering with the ACA. He said he was keeping an open mind on ways to improve his signature piece of domestic legislation.

Then his time as president expired. His successor, Donald J. Trump, had vowed to “repeal and replace” the ACA starting with Day One of his presidency. He has labeled the ACA a “disaster.”

But the president can’t seem to bring himself to persuade his fellow Republicans in Congress to do as his predecessor has suggested regarding improving the ACA. They have dug in hard in their effort to repeal and replace the ACA. Trump has joined them. They now are left to fighting among themselves over the best way to replace the ACA.

The ACA is not the “disaster” that Trump has asserted about it. The law has provided health insurance for more than 20 million Americans who couldn’t afford it.

I am willing to concede that the ACA isn’t perfect. However, it is the law of the land. Why in the world can’t the GOP pick the law apart, huddle with Democrats, agree on what’s working and then seek to reform the elements of the ACA that aren’t working?

Oh, no. They cannot go there. The intention among the GOP leadership is to throw out every vestige of the ACA because, I’m going to presume, it has President Obama’s imprimatur. The Republican congressional caucus had declared its intention to make Obama “a one-term president,” and the ACA — approved in 2010 — simply had to go.

Tinkering and mending this law doesn’t constitute an unprecedented solution. Congress did as much with Medicare in the 1960s and with Social Security in the 1930s.

They managed — somehow — to improve those other two pieces of landmark legislation.

What about the here and now?

national news, political news

‘Most divisive speech ever’ by a president

David Gergen is no squishy liberal. The CNN political analyst has worked — in order — for Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

Three of the four are Republicans. I believe Gergen calls himself a member of the GOP.

But then he said something about Donald J. Trump’s speech Saturday night in Harrisburg, Pa. While commenting on the speech in a CNN interview, Gergen called it the “most divisive speech” he’d ever heard from a sitting U.S. president.

Pay attention, Mr. President. One of your own has called you out.

Campaign rhetoric doesn’t fly

The speech was full of red meat for Trump’s political base. He made the trip to Harrisburg after deciding he wouldn’t attend the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, becoming the first sitting president since Ronald Reagan to skip the event. Then again, President Reagan had a good reason: He was recovering from a gunshot wound in 1981 after John Hinckley tried to assassinate him.

One can expect criticism of Trump’s speech from Democrats. They’re still steamed that Trump beat their candidate in 2016. I share their outrage, truth be told, which is why I spend so much of my energy on this blog with criticism of the president. I doubt I’ll let up any time soon — if ever!

That such criticism comes from a longstanding Republican — and a former key adviser to three GOP presidents, including the revered godfather of political conservatives, Reagan — gives it even more punch.

Trump surely will dismiss it. He’ll say that Gergen doesn’t matter. Neither does CNN, in Trump’s view.

So the war against the media and — everyone who disagrees with the president — will go on … and on … and on.

national news, political news

Hey Dems, don’t be obstructionists, too!

I’ve spent a lot of emotional energy with this blog bashing congressional Republicans for what I believe has been their obstructionist habits as they dealt with a Democratic president, Barack H. Obama.

My sense of fairness compels me to instruct congressional Democrats to avoid following their GOP colleagues’ lead as they now must deal with a Republican in the White House, Donald J. Trump.

I understand that the roles aren’t entirely parallel.

For much of Obama’s time as president, Republicans controlled at least one congressional chamber. They took control of the entire Capitol Building after the 2014 elections. I remember, too, when Sen. Mitch McConnell, then the minority leader, declared his No. 1 priority was to make Obama a “one-term president.”

The GOP fought the president along every step. Republicans opposed the president’s economic stimulus package right out of the chute in 2009; they opposed the Affordable Care Act; they — along with a handful of Democrats — resisted calls for new laws on guns even after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 20 first- and second-graders.

The GOP now controls Congress and the White House.

What’s left for Democrats? They’re angry (a) over the way Republicans treated Barack Obama and (b) that they lost the 2016 election that every pundit in the country seemed to think was in the bag for them.

Is obstructionism the way to go? No. For one thing, Democrats are operating from a much weaker position this time than Republicans had when Barack Obama took office.

Still, some congressional Democrats are insisting that they intend to block the president and his fellow Republicans in Congress. They don’t intend to work with their “friends” on the other side. Some Democratic lawmakers have declared their intention is to ensure that Trump gets impeached.

Government isn’t supposed to be an ideological battleground. It’s supposed to serve the people whose votes put politicians in office. There surely ought to be ways for Democrats can look for common ground with Republicans. Need they surrender their principles? Not any more than Republicans should surrender theirs.

I feel as though I should remind Democrats — just as I reminded Republicans during the Obama years — that many of us out here want government to be a functioning body. We want government to enact smart legislation. We insist that members of the House and Senate hue to the principle of good government.

And good government, by definition, means that it works on behalf of those of us who pay for it.

Uncategorized

President redefines ‘populism’

I would venture a guess that if one were to ask Donald J. Trump to define “populism” off the cuff that he would say something like: It’s the philosophy on which I campaigned successfully for the presidency of the United States.

Translation: He likely doesn’t understand a philosophy aimed at taking power away from big corporations and the rich folks who run them.

This billionaire real estate mogul and TV celebrity campaigned as a populist, declaring his intention to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and “work for you, the people.” He would surround himself with the “best people” to run the government and would “drain the swam” of the corporate corruption he said has infected American politics since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

He is governing, though, as anything but a populist.

The president did sign the executive order that took the United States out of TPP. NAFTA? Well, in the span of just a few days he said he would consider pulling out; then he said he wouldn’t after talking to the leaders of Mexico and Canada; then he said he would like to “renegotiate” the treaty. The “best people” surrounding him include a healthy cadre of executives from Goldman Sachs, the big-time investment outfit he criticized freely during the campaign. The “swamp”? It’s still full of muck.

I want to focus for a moment on NAFTA. Free trade is an example of orthodox Republican philosophy with which I agree. I dislike artificial barriers, such as import taxes and tariffs, that inhibit trade, particularly among bordering nations. NAFTA’s intent is to open markets throughout three major nations: the United States, Canada and Mexico. Is it perfect? No. Is it as flawed and “disastrous” as the president has contended? No to that, too.

It has fostered a freer flow of goods across the borders of all three nations and has been a significant net plus for their economies.

I am heartened to sense the president is beginning to understand that campaign rhetoric often must differ with the way one actually governs.

NAFTA is not the bogeyman that Trump called it while winning the presidency.

As for whether he can govern as the populist he portrayed himself as being, I only can point to the weekend lifestyle he still enjoys as he jets off to Mar-a-Lago, his glitzy, glamorous and posh resort in southern Florida.

His attachment to all the decadence associated with it suggests to me that the president is a populist in name only. Hey, maybe we can create a new acronym: PINO.