Tag Archives: Barack Obama

medical news, national news, political news

Why not just repair Obamacare?

All this talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act seems to ignore a possible alternative that’s been done already with other landmark legislation.

Congressional Republicans have been adamant about getting rid of the ACA. They’ve had six years to find a replacement mechanism to provide health insurance to Americans who cannot afford it otherwise. They have failed. They’ve come up with … nothing!

The alternative to flat-out repeal is to repair the ACA.

Congress enacted Medicare in 1965 to provide medical insurance to elderly Americans. It wasn’t perfect, either. Congress and President Johnson got together to tinker with it, to fine-tune it, to make it better. The same can be said of what Congress and other president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did with Social Security when they created that program in 1935.

Reasonable minds can come together to make landmark laws better. It’s been done. Why not now?

Well, my theory is that it’s because the ACA has President Obama’s name on it. It’s been called Obamacare chiefly by those who use that term as a pejorative. They don’t like something that carries the name of a president who House and Senate Republicans have opposed since the beginning of his time in the White House.

I get that the ACA isn’t perfect. I understand that premiums have increased, that health insurance companies are bailing out, that consumers are having trouble finding doctors who will treat those covered by insurance provided by the ACA.

Aren’t there reasonable solutions to fix these problems? Can’t the ACA opponents huddle with those in Congress who support the plan to repair the law?

Oh, no! They’ve got to toss the ACA into the trash heap. They want to declare victory by calling it a “monumental failure,” a “disaster,” a “terrible idea.”

Twenty million Americans have health insurance today who didn’t have it before the ACA became law in 2010. Congressional Republicans are quite sure they can repeal the ACA. Finding a replacement is a bit more of a hurdle.

They have precedent, though, for seeking ways to repair what many folks believe is a flawed idea.

Compromise, folks! That’s how you govern effectively. You either have Americans’ interests at heart, or you are thinking only of your own political futures.

national news, political news

Honeymoon? There is none for Trump

Have you ever seen a presidential transition that has hit as many land mines as the one that is about to conclude?

Donald J. Trump is going to become president of the United States with a public opinion approval rating in the 30s. Yes, that’s right: 30-plus percent of Americans approve of the 45th president. Meanwhile, the 44th president — Barack H. Obama — is about to leave the White House with an approval rating in the mid-50 percent range, which isn’t great, but it’s a damn sight better than what he was registering for much of his second term.

Presidential honeymoon period? There ain’t going to be one for Donald Trump.

Questions are piling onto questions about the new president. They include:

* Potential conflicts of interest involving his myriad business interests and the president-elect’s stubborn refusal to divest himself of the fortune he has amassed through real estate ventures around the world.

* Allegations of Russian spooks hacking into Democratic Party electronic files while looking for dirt to toss as that party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

* The quality of some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, such as the secretary of state-designate, Rex Tillerson, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin; housing secretary-designate Ben Carson, who once declared himself to unqualified to lead a federal agency; education secretary-designate Betsy DeVos, an avowed critic of public education; EPA administrator-designate Scott Pruitt, who detests the very agency he is being asked to oversee; attorney general-designate Jeff Sessions, who once was denied a federal judgeship because of his stated views on civil rights.

I am not predicting this will happen, but I won’t be surprised in the least if Donald Trump — somehow! — is unable to finish his term as president. There’s already dull roar developing about impeachment, given all the potential for missteps.

I have lived long enough to have witnessed a couple of presidential crises that tore the nation to pieces. The first of them came close to a presidential impeachment before President Nixon resigned during the Watergate crisis; the second of them occurred with an actual impeachment and Senate trial of President Clinton over a sexual relationship he had with a White House intern.

Tradition always has granted presidents a honeymoon period. They enter the Oval Office flush with high praise and hope. Donald Trump will have squandered that good feeling with his response to the criticism he has received. He tweets his rapid-fire reactions to seemingly every critical comment leveled at him.

So help me I am trying to give this guy some semblance of benefit.

Damn! I do not feel good about the presidential hand-off all of America is about to witness.

national news

Donald Trump: master of impeccable timing

I’ll admit that the irony of this got past me initially.

Then I read a piece from the Los Angeles Times: Donald Trump’s idiotic tweet about U.S. Rep./civil rights legend John Lewis is rife with irony because of its timing.

We’re entering the weekend in which we’re going to celebrate the birth of the great Martin Luther King Jr. — with whom Rep. Lewis marched during the height of the civil rights movement. Trump took the opportunity on this, of all weekends, to ridicule John Lewis as an “all talk, no action” kind of guy.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-in-a-weekened-celebrating-the-civil-1484407475-htmlstory.html?utm_content=buffer11bc9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Lewis, in remarks to be broadcast Sunday, said he doesn’t consider Trump to be a “legitimate president.” He is deeply concerned about alleged Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election. I share his concern, but I do not consider Trump’s presidency to be illegitimate.

Still, Trump’s moronic response illustrates the utter tone deafness of the president-elect — who built his political career by perpetuating the myth that sought to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency by alleging he was born in a foreign land and, thus, was unable to serve as the nation’s first African-American president.

As the LA Times’ Cathleen Decker writes: “John Lewis is an icon of the civil rights movement who is fearless in the pursuit of justice and equality,” said Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat. “He deserves better than this.”

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/03/rep-lewis-still-stands-tall/

national news

Biden deserves the high praise

A question came to me after my post about Vice President Joe Biden receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction today from President Barack Obama.

It came from a reader of this blog who asks, simply: “What were Vice President Biden’s accomplishments?” The reader recalled when Biden in 1991 chaired the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that decided whether to recommend Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. He called Biden a “duplicitous blowhard.”

My sense, though, that Biden brought a kind of maturity to Barack Obama’s inner circle. He brought decades — three decades’ worth — of Senate experience; moreover, he brought several years, before his election to the Senate in 1972, of public service in Delaware.

Was there a signature achievement? Did the vice president author a policy or a strategy that the president followed? Was Joe Biden singularly responsible for a public policy decision?

I don’t believe he was successful in an outwardly visible way that the public would recognize.

I’ll accept the president’s accolades as a testament to the guidance and wise — and private — counsel that the vice president gave him during the tough times.

The gentleman who asked the question likely knows all of this. He did ask it, though, and I believe it’s worth sharing a brief response here to others who read these musings.

I suspect a lot of Americans perhaps are wondering the same thing about what Joe Biden accomplished during his eight years as vice president. We might not see it with our own eyes, but the man with whom he served in the White House surely did.

That’s good enough for me.

national news

Yes, Americans will miss this team

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Presidents and vice presidents haven’t always had the kind of relationship that Barack Obama and Joseph Biden have developed.

Lyndon Johnson famously summoned Hubert Humphrey to the White House for a conference … while LBJ was sitting on a commode; Dwight Eisenhower once responded to a question about what Richard Nixon contributed to his administration by saying: “If you give me a week, I’ll think of something”; John Nance Garner once referred to the vice presidency as being worth “a bucket of warm piss.”

To watch the current president bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the current vice president is to witness a true friendship that doubled as a national governing partnership.

The president added a final “with distinction” honor to the presentation, noting that such an honor is bestowed only rarely. He noted that his three immediate predecessors honored Pope John Paul II, President Reagan and Gen. Colin Powell “with distinction.”

With that, Vice President Biden joins some heady company.

And he deserves to stand with them.

Their partnership and friendship no doubt will make me miss them once they leave the public stage.

national news, political news

A little self-awareness is in order, Mr. President-elect

Self-awareness doesn’t appear to be part of Donald J. Trump’s psychological makeup.

Today he blasted what he called “fake news” reports linking him to allegedly compromising relationships with Russian officials. He called a press conference a few days ago to clear the air on some other matters … then the news broke about these alleged relationships.

They’re false, he said. Phony. Made-up stuff. They’re the product of “fake news” reports.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-acknowledges-russian-involvement-in-meddling-in-us-elections/ar-BBya5DE?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Well …

How does he then describe the falsehood he perpetuated for years about President Obama’s place of birth, linking those “fake news” reports to whether the president was constitutionally eligible to serve in the office he held for eight years?

Trump doesn’t touch that one.

I have no clue as to whether these allegations are true. For the sake of our national integrity and the attempt to avoid a serious constitutional crisis, I hope they are as false as Trump says they are.

I want them to be as false as Trump’s own lies about Barack Obama.

If only Trump could discover a latent self-awareness gene.

national news

Speech brings out the sap

Time for an admission.

It is that I can be a sap. I tend to blubber. I’ve teared up at films that I know to be fiction, scripted, performances done by actors who are pretending to evoke emotion. My family knows this about me; so do my closest friends.

So it was tonight when President Barack Obama turned to his wife near the end of his highly publicized farewell speech to the nation and said, “Michelle.”

The crowd stood. It cheered loudly. Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, clapped vigorously. Michelle and Barack Obama’s older daughter, Malia, began wiping away tears.

The president called Michelle “my best friend.” More tears.

The president then wiped a tear from his own eyes with a handkerchief. He had trouble holding it together.

And there I was , way out here in Texas, swallowing hard as I watched the emotion flowing from the TV screen before me.

Here’s the deal. These folks weren’t acting. It was real. It’s the kind of real-life drama I get a sort of perverse joy in watching. It demonstrates that even the most powerful, influential and high-profile folks among us are filled with real human emotion.

As is this sap.

national news, political news

Obama pitches a roaring farewell

Presidents don’t usually say goodbye the way Barack Obama did tonight.

For the past 60 or so years, they usually have sat behind their big Oval Office desk and delivered remarks to virtually no one in the room, but to the TV audience way out there … somewhere.

The president tonight spoke in an atmosphere that to me made it sound more like a campaign speech than a farewell address.

OK. That’s as borderline negative as I’m going to get. I was proud to have voted twice for Barack Obama. Tonight he reaffirmed my pride in his call for Americans to rediscover all the things they have in common, that we’re all merely just citizens.

Yes, indeed, there were plenty of veiled comparisons to his successor. He implored us to steer away from divisions of Americans along racial, religious or ethnic lines. The presidential campaign we’ve just endured — in my view — was a divide-and-conquer endeavor. The president reminded us that our republic works best when we do not allow those divisions to consume us.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2017/01/10/full-text-of-president-obamas-farewell-speech/?mod=e2tw

There were a few omissions worth noting. I heard virtually no mention of Congress, which fought him virtually at every step along the way. There was no mention of some of the foreign-policy missteps that occurred during the past eight years.

However, I intend here to give the president all the credit he deserves for this fundamental triumph.

The nation, he said, is fundamentally better off — in any measurable way you can fathom — than it was when he took office.

We are safer. Our economy is stronger. We’ve expanded civil rights protection.

Our country remains — despite the fear-mongering rhetoric of some among us — the greatest nation on Earth.

Well done, Mr. President.

And, oh yes, I will miss you.

 

medical news, national news, political news

GOP set to repeal … but what about the ‘replace’ part?

It’s not like the Republican Party’s members of Congress haven’t had time. They’ve had six whole years to consider how they would replace the Affordable Care Act if they ever got the chance to repeal the law.

They seem set on the repeal part of the ACA. What, though, is taking them so long to come up with the replacement?

The ACA — aka Obamacare — is President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. He’s no doubt going to speak highly of it when he bids the nation farewell in just a little while.

The ACA has enabled about 20 million Americans to obtain health insurance. Has it been “affordable,” as the president pitched it? Not entirely. Premiums have gone up; medical plans have had trouble marrying up doctors and health insurance companies.

It is not, as the GOP has maintained for the past six years, a “disaster.” They seem to dislike it mainly because a Democratic president came up with the idea of providing insurance for uninsured Americans.

But hey! He got the idea from Massachusetts, which had a Republican governor — a guy named Mitt Romney — that had developed a nearly identical plan. Obama copied Romney’s plan, more or less, and adapted to the national model.

What’s more the president himself has said that he would have been willing to accept an alternative if it did a better job than the ACA. Republicans, though, aren’t ready to provide an alternative.

What in the world has taken them so long? Are they content only to bitch and moan for the sake of political expediency without giving serious thought and discussion to how they would replace the ACA?

They’ve got the repeal part down pat. How about giving us something with which to replace it? If they intend to govern, they need to flesh out the details of how their ideas on health care are better than what we have.

military news, national news, political news

This farewell won’t be your usual farewell

I miss Barack H. Obama already … and he’s still on the job as president of the United States.

Tonight, though, he’s going to bid us all farewell in a speech delivered in Chicago. I don’t usually remember specifics of presidential farewells, other than recalling how I felt in real time as they were delivering them.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/10/509052320/obamas-farewell-address-how-presidents-use-this-moment-of-reflection

I anticipate a mixed feeling tonight as I listen to President Obama recount his successes and, perhaps, his failures. As with all presidents, they have their high- and low-water marks.

My appreciation for this man hinges on the dignity he brought to the office. He stood proudly as the leader of the free world and as commander in chief. He seemed to wear both titles well, which is saying something for the latter, given that he didn’t serve in the military. He brought a certain bearing to that role.

I trust, too, he’ll remind us yet again about how difficult life had gotten in this country when he became president. He’ll tell us of the measures he pushed through Congress to stimulate a collapsing economy.

Yes, I’ll miss him.

It might be as well that my feelings for Barack Obama — and his family — are tinged in large measure by the feeling I harbor toward his successor. I won’t belabor that particular point here, except to say that the juxtaposition of those two emotions highlights and underscores my sense of sadness as I watch the current president say goodbye.

I won’t predict that we’ll hear a signature phrase that we’ll take away from this speech tonight, but neither will I be surprised to hear one. I guess the most memorable of those phrases in my lifetime came from President Eisenhower, a one-time general of the Army and hero of World War II, who warned of the “military-industrial complex” wielding too much power in the future.

Imagine such an admonition, coming from Ike, of all people!

It’ll be a watershed moment to be sure.