Tag Archives: Donald Trump

medical news, national news, political news

GOP now reaping what it has sown

John Boehner was angry, man. He was furious when he took the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Republican congressman from Ohio was furious that Democrats had pushed a bill that sought to reform health care without even reading the massive piece of legislation.

He bellowed, blustered and berated his “friends” on the Democratic side of the floor for shoving this bill down the throats of their Republican colleagues.

Boehner’s anger was righteous.

The Affordable Care Act became law in 2010. Boehner would eventually become House speaker. He would file a lawsuit to get the law repealed. Speaker Boehner, though, bailed on public service after continuing to fight with the TEA Party wing of his Republican House caucus. He’d had enough.

Then the 2016 election occurred. Donald J. Trump was elected president. He promised to “repeal and replace” the ACA. This past week, the GOP-controlled House approved a bill we’ll call “Trumpcare.” It’s an alternative to the ACA. It passed by just four votes out of 430 cast in the House.

But wait! Did the GOP leadership know what was in the bill? Did they read the legislation? Did their GOP caucus members read it? Do they know all the nuts and bolts of it?

Hah! Hardly.

They’ve repeated the sin of their colleagues. Does it make their effort to “shove it down Democrats’ throats” any more palatable? Not in the least.

Instead, GOP House members are hearing loud and clear from their constituents a ringing message: The folks back home don’t like what they’ve passed and what they have foisted onto the Senate for its consideration.

Meanwhile, the president who has crowed about keeping his campaign pledge now has to persuade the Senate to follow the House’s lead. Trump, the guy with zero government experience or knowledge of how it works on Washington, D.C., is going to recieve yet another lesson in how Congress just doesn’t do the president’s bidding whenever he barks the order.

And those Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted for Trumpcare are going to get a taste of what they sought to deliver to Democrats in 2010.

Payback truly is a bitch … you know?

International news, political news

French fight back against fear

Is there a lesson to be learned from the French presidential election?

Oui!

It is that terror need not sway an informed electorate.

Moderate centrist Emmanuel Macron today became the youngest person ever elected president of France, defeating far-right extremist Marine Le Pen. It was Le Pen who sought to parlay certain elements of fright into an electoral victory. The source of that fear and loathing was the spasm of terrorist violence that has befallen France since 9/11.

France answers the call

Macron sought a different course for France. He wants to keep his country involved with the rest of Europe and the world, unlike Le Pen, who sought to retreat into a “France-first” dogma that mirrors much of what helped propel Donald J. Trump to victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump called for a ban on Muslims seeking to enter the United States; he wants to build that wall along our southern border; he is seeking to restrict travel of refugees fleeing several majority-Muslim countries. Why? Because he wants Americans to live in fear of further terrorist attacks.

The French know all about the horror of radical Islamic terrorism. Yet they rejected Le Pen’s platform of retreat.

And if you think about it, France’s decision to go with Macron mirrors earlier presidential elections in The Netherlands and Austria, where voters turned back isolationist presidential candidacies in favor of continued engagement.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how the paltry voter turnout in Amarillo shouldn’t be interpreted as a “mandate” for sweeping change at City Hall.

Get a load of this: Seventy-four percent of France’s registered voters turned out to give Macron a 30-percentage-point victory over Le Pen.

I would call that a mandate.

medical news

‘Trumpcare’ it will be

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Barack Obama’s critics have relished the opportunity to call his landmark health insurance overhaul legislation “Obamacare.”

I chose a while ago to forgo that term, preferring to call it by its official name: the Affordable Care Act. Any reference to the “Obamacare” would acknowledge that’s the term others have hung on it. The former president himself eventually would refer to the ACA by the term used by his critics.

Obama no longer is in office. Donald J. Trump is now the president. Trump has pushed another piece of legislation. It is called the American Health Care Act.

In the spirit of those who were so highly critical of the president’s predecessor, I am now preferring to refer to the AHCA as “Trumpcare.”

Hey, I am as critical of the current president as Barack H. Obama’s critics were of him. My loathing for Donald J. Trump entitles me, therefore, to refer to his version of health care overhaul as Trumpcare.

media news, medical news, national news

Trump assails media yet again

Why is it that the Fake News rarely reports Ocare is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives? It’s dead!

That, dear reader, is one of Donald J. Trump’s latest tweets in a Twitter tirade he launched late today against the national news media.

I find it fascinating.

The president accuses the media of failing to report that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing.

Excuse me, Mr. President?

Trump and his allies keep saying it. The media keep reporting it. It’s no longer a novel notion.

I happen to disagree with the president’s assertion about the ACA. Isn’t that fair enough? He’s entitled to his opinion, while others are entitled to theirs — even if they are at odds with what the president says or believes.

The road ahead for the bill that the House approved to replace the ACA remains full of land mines. The U.S. Senate isn’t likely to adopt the House’s version of health care overhaul.

The media’s job is to report the progress of that journey regardless of whether it’s positive news or negative news for the Trump administration.

You can bet your last nickel, though, that the media are reporting precisely what the president is saying, which includes pronouncements about the future of the Affordable Care Act.

business news

This a ‘disaster,’ Mr. President?

The job numbers came in this morning — and they look pretty darn good.

The U.S. Labor Department reported today that the economy added 211,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in April and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent.

The boost in jobs was considerably greater than analysts had predicted. The jobless rate has inched a bit closer to what one might consider to be “full employment” in the United States.

Donald J. Trump used to disparage the Labor Department figures as phony, bogus, cooked up, fake. That, of course, was during the Obama administration. The president doesn’t say those things now that he’s on the job.

Hey, I’ll give the president credit for presiding over this sparkling jobs report. Let there be many more of them.

I do have one question: A little more than three months into your presidency, is this the economic “disaster” and the “mess” you have said repeatedly you inherited from Barack Obama?

military news

Another Army nominee hits the road … what gives?

The United States is chock full of qualified individuals capable of administering the U.S. Department of the Army.

But now we’ve just witnessed the departure of the second consecutive nominee to become the Army secretary. Why is it so damn hard for Donald Trump to fill this post?

The first fellow to pull out, billionaire Vincent Viola, cited his myriad business dealings, that they were too complicated to unravel. He hit the road.

Now we learn that Mark Green, the president’s second Army secretary nominee, has pulled out because of his rather weird statements regarding transgender Americans and whether public school students are being “indoctrinated” by Islamic influences.

Good grief, dude.

According to The Hill newspaper: “He’s said that ‘transgender is a disease’ and agreed with a questioner who said ‘we need to take a stand on the indoctrination of Islam in our public schools,’ among other controversial statements.”

Green was a Tennessee state senator when he popped off about transgender individuals and Islam.

A person’s sexual orientation is no “disease.” It is part of an individual’s persona. Is there some virus that is infecting individuals with transgenderism? As for a so-called “indoctrination of Islam” in our public schools, someone will have to demonstrate to me where and how that’s occurring anywhere.

Green said he is being attacked because of his “Christian beliefs.” Please. The man’s faith has nothing to do with it! At issue is the belief that this man seems to exhibit a strong vein of intolerance.

Back to my initial point.

This country has many capable administrators who have not expressed themselves in a manner that gets them in such trouble.

Where are they?

medical news

Mr. POTUS, you’ve just contradicted yourself on health care

I am scratching my head so vigorously now that my scalp is likely to start bleeding.

Donald J. Trump sat next to the Australian prime minister, Malcom Trumbull, and praised his the health care system provided in the nation Down Under.

Australia has a universal health care system, which the U.S. president declared is far superior to ours.

GOP goes in the opposite direction

Why, then, did the president praise House of Representatives Republicans for approving a bill that some analysts suggest is going to deprive as many as 20 million Americans of their health insurance?

Trump declared victory after that vote. He said premiums will decline, no one will lose health coverage and he intends to march forward with an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The alternative appears to provide less coverage than the ACA.

But, but …

The president now sings praises to Australia’s universal health care system — which the government provides for every citizen — as being better than what we’re doing here.

Here’s how the Washington Post described the Australian plan: “Australia has a government-funded health-care system, called Medicare, that exists alongside private insurance. The system is funded in part by taxes, including on the wealthy.”

Go … figure, man.

International news

‘Greatest threat … on Earth’

FBI Director James Comey had a big day earlier this week fielding questions from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bulk of the attention regarding his testimony dealt with the 2016 presidential election and how he justified blowing the whistle on Hillary Clinton’s e-mail matter while staying quiet about an FBI probe into Donald J. Trump’s alleged connection with the Russian government.

Buried in all that testimony came his answer to a question about whether Russia poses a threat to the United States.

Comey’s answer? He called Russia “the greatest threat of any nation on Earth.”

I heard the FBI director’s response and wondered immediately: Why cannot the president of the United States treat Russia as the “greatest threat of any nation on Earth”? Why doesn’t the president condemn the Russians for seeking to influence the outcome of the 2016 election? Why couldn’t he acknowledge flat out on national TV that Vladimir Putin is a “killer”?

Comey’s assessment of Russia’s threat to this nation harkens back to a Cold War-era fear of the Big Bear, the Evil Empire. Putin’s rule of Russia only heightens that reminder.

If only the president of the United States would speak as strongly against Russia and its subversion of our electoral process as the FBI director as just done.

His relative silence on Putin and the nation he governs seems to speak eloquently about something no one in this country should want to hear.

national news, political news, religious news

Trump is evangelicals’ ‘dream president’?

Jerry Falwell Jr. attended an executive order signing ceremony today and declared that Donald J. Trump is the “dream president” for the nation’s evangelical Christians.

Wow. Let’s ponder that one.

* Trump has been married three times. I don’t fault him for that, per se. However, he has boasted about cheating on his first two wives.

* The president was riding a bus a dozen years ago with Billy Bush and was overheard telling the “Access Hollywood” host that he grabbed women by their private parts. He said he could get away with that kind of behavior because he is a “celebrity,” a “star.”

* The president has mocked a reporter with a serious physical disability.

* Trump has talked about how he was able to walk in on half-dressed beauty pageant contestants because he owned the pageant.

Today, though, the president signed some executive orders that allows preachers to endorse political candidates from the pulpit. He also signed an order that enables business owners to cite religious objections when they refuse to provide services to, say, gay customers.

He did all this in the name of “religious liberty,” which pleases Falwell, the president of Liberty University.

Thus, evangelicals’ dream has come true. All the other stuff, the boorish behavior, doesn’t matter.

Oh, boy.

national news, political news

Comey didn’t order Hillary to stay out of Wisconsin

I didn’t realize David Axelrod is such a smart aleck.

Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s trusted political guru, offered a tart response to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertions over who is to blame for her stunning election loss in 2016 to Donald J. Trump.

“Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention,” said Axelrod on CNN. “Jim Comey didn’t say ‘don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign.'”

Clinton had said earlier this week that Comey, the FBI director, might have torpedoed her campaign by issuing the letter to Congress informing lawmakers that he had some additional information pertaining to the Clinton e-mail controversy.

Yes, the former Democratic presidential nominee took plenty of blame for losing to Trump. But Axelrod’s assessment is on target in that Comey didn’t call the campaign shots that ultimately cost her critical Electoral College votes on election night.

Axelrod added: “She said the words, ‘I’m responsible’, but everything else suggested she doesn’t really feel that way,” he said. “And I don’t think that helps her in the long run.”

The complete history of this amazing election is being written. It no doubt will dish out its share of blame — or credit — to individuals and/or actions that deserve neither.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the candidates for president. One of them did a lot of things wrong while the other one did many things right.

We can argue ourselves hoarse over our whether the election turned out the right way. Axelrod, though, is correct to admonish Hillary Clinton about shifting responsibility for her loss. She needs to own it — and then leave it at that.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/david-axelrod-reacts-hillary-clinton-james-comey-237924