A Day of Rest ...

Yesterday was the first full day of the Biden-Harris administration as well as the first full day of no Trump. It was not that nothing was happening meriting comment -- it was a very busy day of house cleaning. It was just that I was overwhelmed with exhaustion -- from four years of Trump and hours of worrying about the safety of President Biden and Vice President Harris. I needed a day of rest. I woke after the first good night of sleep in a long time and smiled as I stood at the kitchen sink drinking my morning coffee. All of a sudden, a very large and very colorful cardinal flew onto a bird feeder in my full view. We don't really have cardinals in South Texas, and I had not seen one in our backyard in years. I mentioned in Nailing Jello a few days ago that I believe in angels and that I am certain that Guela, my wife's mother, is one. Although my mother-in-law died almost 25 years ago, I am convinced that she looks over us and protects us to this day. The cardinal was Guela's favorite bird. It occurred to me that Guela was paying us a visit yesterday morning just to let us know that everything is once again right with the world.

At any rate, I decided that President Biden was doing just fine and could go one day without having me looking over his shoulder and putting in my two cents worth about his every move.

By yesterday evening I was starting to feel a little antsy and guilty. I was listening as both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and new White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki were answering question after question about impeachment and various cable news pundits and talking heads were expressing their views. I finally could not take it any longer and headed toward my desktop to share my unsolicited opinions on the subject through a Nailing Jello rant. I had no sooner sat down than the news banner popped up on my iPad that Mitch McConnell was threatening a filibuster of any senate resolution implementing a power-sharing agreement that would allow Chuck Schumer to assume the Majority Leader position or the Democrats to take control of the Senate.

I have to admit that little tidbit completely deflated me. It brought back memories of McConnell's meeting to hatch a strategy to make Barack Obama a one-term president on January 20 or 21, 2009 -- Day 1 or 2 of the Obama presidency.

I decided that I needed the day of rest more than I needed to vent. I also wondered just a little where that cardinal had flown off to and whether it would be back.

What were you doing when you were 22 ...

 Amanda Gorman -- WOW!!!

Outsiders are not all they are cracked up to be ...

Shortly after Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, I wrote him a letter wishing him success and expressing concern but hope that he appreciated the burden of stewardship for the office he now held. He did not respond to my letter but he did spend eight years answering my concern. Near the end of his second term, I wrote President Obama again and thanked him for the manner in which he had served, the role model he had become for Americans in general and future Presidents in particular, and the respect and honor he had shown for the office and our democracy. The Obama Presidency had certainly not been a perfect administration but it was a powerful demonstration of stewardship and preservation of the better traditions in the journey to a more perfect union.

That all came to an abrupt halt when Donald Trump uttered the words of the Presidential oath to “... preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution of the United States with no understanding of or appreciation for the meaning or importance of those words. I had no confidence that Trump had ever even read the Constitution, and I did not write him a letter. In hindsight, I probably should have — not that it would have done any good. For four horrific years we have watched Trump do his dead level best to destroy the traditions and guardrails that the institutions of our society and government provide. It is deeply ironic that this was all done under a banner of making America great again. We have seen the wreckage which results from the actions of a President that cares only about the power of the office and cares nothing for the office itself.

I am struck this morning by the fact that Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President almost 48 years to the day after taking that same oath as a young United States Senator. That could be viewed as a bad idea, and I know it is by half or more of America. At the risk of seeming naive, I choose to believe that those decades spent in Washington, as well as the experience of the last four years, have given Joe Biden an appreciation for the better traditions associated with the office of the Presidency and the fragility of our democracy.

Perhaps the best examples of the importance of that familiarity and experience are the contrasts of this morning's events. Donald Trump left Washington without attending the inauguration ceremony but only after speaking to a sparse group at Joint Andrews Base that consisted mostly of Trump's family, a few White House staffers (who probably had to go there to pick up their last paychecks), and the military men and women who were ordered to be present (an order to smile while seeing him off that was Trump's last act as Commander in Chief). There were no representatives of our government present (not even the Vice President) because they were all attending a church service with President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris. A couple of hours later, the split screen images were also dramatically different. On one side was Trump, as a former president, in Florida at Mar-A-Lago and probably already on the golf course (without the nuclear codes and without his former companion, Lindsey Graham, who was at the Capitol for the inauguration). On the other side, the image was the newest member of the President's Club on the dais with all of the other living members of that Club (Republican and Democrats) except 96-year old Jimmy Carter who was unable to attend due to the pandemic and health issues and Donald Trump who has not been invited to join the Club and probably won't be and who has no interest in being a member or part of it.

I believe President Joe Biden will represent a return to sanity and normalcy but is very cognizant of the fact that some aspects of normal are good and others should never again be part of the new normal. I probably don't need to write him a letter, but I probably will anyway.

Onward and upward! We shall see ...

Bannon a free man? ... or not

Donald Trump is a crime boss and just pardoned another of his lieutenants. And that’s all I have to say about that. Eleven hours to go. He is wandering around the White House in his bathrobe and flip-flops with his pardon list in one hand and a burger in the other. He is finishing up doing as much damage as possible with no limit to his low life sleaze. I guess that was not all I had to say about that.

Make America Great Again ... just like it was in 1776

On the next to last day of his presidency, Donald Trump finally revealed ... no, not his tax returns ... his view as to when America was great and how to make it that way again. According to a White House announcement and press release, The President's Advisory 1776 Commission consisting of "America's most distinguished scholars and historians" issued The 1776 Report, a roadmap to restore American education written and guided by some of the most conservative and controversial political supporters of Donald Trump. In reality, the commission was created and the report was initiated as and intended to be a response to the historical perspective of slavery in the 1619 Project sponsored by the New York Times.

I could not bring myself to read the report yesterday and only scanned it sufficiently to see that it is filled with photos of and quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and words of wisdom from Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, and Ronald Reagan (of course). Despite that blatant hypocrisy, I really began to question the objectivity of the report when I got to the passages expressing the view that, even though many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners, their heart really wasn't in it, and that the evidence is found throughout our Constitution. For example, according to the distinguished scholars and historians, James Madison saw to it that the word "slave" did not appear anywhere, and the 3/5ths compromise and 20-year prohibition against restrictions on the slave trade were actually indictments of slavery introduced by anti-slavery delegates at the Constitutional Convention. Why, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself as we all know, even included a "strong condemnation of slavery" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence before removing it at the insistence of other slave holding delegates. In other words, Jefferson was actually against slavery before he gave in and was for it -- sort of as he engaged in slave holding himself. I finally had to put the report away when I flipped through the pages of the appendices and noticed they were dominated by advocacy for the essential nature of faith-based virtues as a key to restoring "authentic education" and critiques of identity politics and cancel culture. The last straw for me was the directive that, to be genuine, "civics and government classes should rely almost exclusively on primary sources" (so we can educate our children to be little Antonin Scalia wannabees?).

I could not sleep tonight. It is now 2:30 in the morning. I don't know whether it was the disturbing nature of the snippets from The 1776 Report or the fact that today will be the last full day of Donald Trump's presidency and the uncertainty of what that might bring down upon us. The news is full of stories about an avalanche of more than 100 pardons and commutations (going for as much as $2 million each), Trump embedding his loyalists in positions throughout the federal government (remember the Deep State?), an executive order making it easier for federal judges and other officials to carry concealed handguns, and 25,000+ National Guardsmen patrolling our capital city in anticipation of another invasion by white supremacists and sundry other domestic terrorists.

Anyway, I am up and revisiting The 1776 Report to learn more about the "most distinguished scholars and historians" who wrote it. Turns out that most of the commission members are not historians at all. Why am I not surprised that Trump would lie about that?

Larry Arnn, the Chairman, is the long-time president of Hillsdale College, a private conservative university that refuses to allow any federal grants, Pell or other student loans or grants, or athletic funding so that they do not have to comply with affirmative action guidelines or federal anti-discrimination rules. Arnn is an outspoken critic of Common Core curriculum standards and what he considers government interference in educational institutions. When the Michigan Department of Education claimed that Hillsdale College violated diversity standards, Arnn fired back saying, "... we didn't have enough dark ones, I guess, is what they meant." Arnn is not a historian. He has undergraduate degrees in political science and accounting and graduate degrees in government. Of course, Arnn supported and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

Carol Swain, the Vice Chair of the advisory commission, is even less of a historian and is even more controversial than Chairman Arnn. She has degrees in criminal justice, political science, and legal studies. Swain is a black woman who has called the Black Lives Matter movement a "Marxist organization" and compared BLM groups to the Ku Klux Klan. She is a frequent conservative television political commentator and analyst who supported and voted for Trump. Before she retired as a professor at Vanderbilt University, students presented the administration with a petition accusing her of being "synonymous with bigotry, intolerance, and unprofessionalism" and engaging in hate speech toward Islam. The students demanded that she be fired. In her religious life, Swain has progressed from being a devout Jehovah's Witness to baptism in the Pentacostal faith. She is currently a Southern Baptist -- another one of those good Christians who practice what they preach and pray on Sunday so they can prey on the rest of us the other six days of the week.

The other members of the 1776 Commission may be "distinguished" most by their conservatism and support for Donald Trump rather than any distinction as historians or scholars.

Brooke Rollins is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development and a law degree from the University of Texas. She was formerly the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an ultra-conservative think tank, and a policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry. Thomas Lindsay, another member of the 1776 Commission, also works for TPPF as its Director of Education. Rollins has been working in the White House since May 2020. Her portfolio has been focused on criminal justice reform, but she and Larry Kudlow are forming a nonprofit organization to continue Trump's public policies after tomorrow morning.

Phil Bryant is a former governor of Mississippi with a degree in political science. Before politics, he was a deputy sheriff, an undercover drug enforcement officer, and an insurance claims investigator. As governor, he was an ardent defender of the Confederate symbols in the Mississippi state flag and refused to support their removal.

John Gibbs was a computer software engineer and has worked in various positions in the Trump administration since 2017. He is best known as Trump's White House personnel director charged with cleansing non-loyalists from the federal government. Gibbs is well known for his alt-right leanings and conspiracy theory postings on Twitter and social media including claims that John Podesta engages in Satanic rituals. When Trump nominated Gibbs as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the Senate refused to confirm the nomination.

Scott McNealy was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and his other claims to fame are that he considers himself to be primarily a "raging capitalist" and a "golf major" He was probably on the golf course when Trump talked him into playing a distinguished historian and scholar on television.

Charlie Kirk is a college dropout who rose to fame in high school by writing a Breitbart News op-ed about liberal bias in high school textbooks. Kirk is the founder of a conservative activist group known as Turning Point USA and appears frequently on Fox News. He is a dedicated and active spreader of a wide variety of conspiracy theories about Covid-19 as a hoax and 2020 election fraud.

Peter Kirsanow is a Republican labor attorney and a long-time political appointee to the NLRB and the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. He testified before Congress as an opponent of the confirmation of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan and in favor of the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Michael Farris is a constitutional lawyer and the founder of Patrick Henry College, "...a Christian institution with the mission of training students through a classical liberal arts curriculum and apprenticeship methodology to impact the world 'for Christ and for Liberty.'" Farris is also the founder, chairman, and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association -- an organization which he badly needs to succeed since he has ten children and twenty-two grandchildren. Known by the associations he keeps, Farris enjoyed long-time friendships and alliances with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schafly.

Bob McEwen has a degree in business administration and is a former Congressman from Ohio and is currently a lobbyist.

Victor Davis Hanson is the closest thing to a real historian or scholar on the 1776 Commission. His specialties are ancient and classical warfare and agrarianism. In 2019, Hanson authored The Case for Trump, a book in which he defends Trump's insults and incendiary language as "uncouth authenticity" and praises Trump for "an uncanny ability to troll and create hysteria among his media and political critics." Not surprisingly, Trump praised the book as a classic and awarded Hanson with a position on the 1776 Commission and a designation as one of "America's most distinguished historians and scholars".

Don't expect to see The 1776 Report on the New York Times best seller list unless Trump can talk the Republican National Committee into buying several hundred thousand copies.

At least I have gotten some venting out of my system and relieved a partial cause of my insomnia. I think I will try to take a little nap before starting to dread the potential horrors which may be coming our way the rest of today.

Dr. King and Security Blankets ...

Before writing yesterday's post on Nailing Jello, I had gone back and read all of my earlier posts beginning with the early days of Barack Obama's 2008 primary campaign and continuing up through the first 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency. I had forgotten many of the posts and had certainly not remembered posting a video clip of a "Chamma Chamma" dance scene from a Bollywood movie or my letter to the editors of the Valley Morning Star (our local newspaper) when I cancelled my subscription while lecturing them about my faith in America's marketplace of ideas and its power to resist the vile message of modern day Nazis. I also was reminded that I had early on posted a permanent link on Nailing Jello to a fantasy tale titled The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche by Peter S. Beagle. All of those things, plus the movie Jeremiah Johnson, are quirky security blankets which I resort to from time to time for mostly inexplicable reasons -- inexplicable at least to most everyone but me. I will try to shed some light on those reasons in a moment -- not that anyone asked or maybe even cares.

Today is the day when most of America celebrates the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was reflecting about him this morning and reading excerpts from a number of his speeches. One quote triggered me to think about my weird security blankets and why, of all the blog posts, those were the ones that struck me during my stroll through past thoughts. In his April 3, 1968 "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech the day before he was assassinated, Dr. King responded to God's rhetorical question regarding the age in human history he would most like to live in by saying,

Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, 'If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.' Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

Well, I think perhaps it may have finally gotten dark enough on January 6 when a nation watched in horror as crazed Trump cult members stormed the Capitol with blood curdling threats of murder and execution. It may have gotten dark enough because many of those invaders were ordinary Americans who had been hypnotized and lulled over the last four years by Trump, the authoritarian narcissistic con-man, and his avalanche of lies.

I am thinking that Dr. King was right and that it has finally gotten dark enough that we may be able to see the stars going forward. I feel like we may be awakening and coming up for air after a four-year nightmare. In part, the survival of our democracy may be due to a couple of bedrock security blankets built into our Constitution and into our national psyche. Both are security blankets which I have fervently believed in for my entire life.

The first is an independent judiciary that almost always falls back on the principle that the United States of America is a nation of laws and not of men. Even Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court and to district and appellate courts across the country resisted and came through when it counted the most. When I was in law school fifty years ago, I almost always viewed the cases decided on the basis of standing or lack of standing as cop outs by judges who were unwilling to decide issues on the merits. Well, over the last several months, I have finally come to appreciate that I may have been wrong. Of the sixty or more lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies and insane legal team, almost all of them have been dismissed for lack of standing.

The second national security blanket is the protection provided by that marketplace of ideas I referred to in my subscription cancellation letter to the Valley Morning Star and the collision between that marketplace and the First Amendment rights of assembly and free speech. Our nation has been able to survive actual Nazis marching in Skokie with their swastikas and vile hatred, and now we are in the midst of struggling to survive another version of nationalist white supremacy and venom spouted by our own president and his enablers. Although I have had my doubts from time time over the last four years, I am now believing that the overwhelming majority of Americans will reject this latest version as well.

Hopefully, I will soon be able to go back to my own personal security blankets -- Chamma Chamma, the philosopher rhino and Professor Gottesman, and Jeremiah. They each give me comfort, and I resort to them often.

I have never been able to explain or even understand myself why the Bollywood dancers in Chamma Chamma lift my spirits but they do no matter how many times I watch the video clip. During this god-awful pandemic, my understanding spouse and I have even used our own version of Chamma Chamma to prove to our kids that we are alive and well. I would post that video here but I am afraid that Merced would either divorce or murder me.

I am not a religious person; however, I do believe in angels. My own mother and my wife's mother are definitely angels and watch over us and our family from somewhere in the universe. I also have an undying affection for rhinos. They are my spirit animal. Years ago, I came across Peter Beagle's fantasy tale about a mythical rhinoceros who is a companion and soulmate to a philosophy professor in his final years. In the end, the rhino is undoubtedly an angel who comforts Professor Gottesman and eases his final journey. It is a tranquil tale, and I have read it many times. When a friend or family member loses someone or is having a bad time of it for any reason, I will often send them a copy of this story and Michael Dashow's wonderful cover illustration of the rhino and professor in conversation. I am sure the recipients wonder if I have lost my mind but perhaps my security blanket gives them a little comfort too even if they don't understand why.

For those who are not familiar with Jeremiah Johnson, it is a movie about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of trials and challenges. It is also about the strength of character and kindness. I have watched it dozens of times and never tire of it. 

My own security blankets may seem to others to be the height of silliness but, after the last four years, it would be nice to enjoy a little singing and dancing, some reading, and a movie. It has been dark enough long enough that we deserve a little star gazing.

Back from the brink ...

My last post on Nailing Jello was just 109 days into the Trump presidency. It came shortly after Trump, with the aid of then-Speaker Paul Ryan and a horde of Republican enablers passed the "repeal" portion of their assault on the Affordable Care Act. As long suspected, there was not even a hint of an effort to implement the insincere and meaningless "replace" part of that slogan. It appeared at the time that the disgusting and heartless American Health Care Act which had passed the House was on a glide path through the Senate to Trump's desk. I think that was the final blow of many during Trump's first 100 days that broke my determination to constantly record my thoughts and optimism that our democracy could and would survive the madman living in the White House and his court of jesters. Of course, it was not long after that when John McCain gave the ACHA a "thumbs down" on the Senate floor in the middle of the night. That simple act of courage and honor should have brought me back from the brink but, by then, Mitch McConnell had launched his crusade to completely make over the federal judiciary, and I had become little more than a bewildered observer. There were lots of days of despair, and what had begun as a joke of a presidency and an embarrassment had now become a genuine threat. 

Looking back after an almost four-year absence from Nailing Jello, I am sorry that I lost my will to chronicle the sorry history of the Trump presidency. A lot has happened -- much of it predictable but some of it unimaginable. As I write this, we are a little more than 48 hours from the Biden-Harris inauguration ceremony, almost a full year into the Covid-19 pandemic that has taken almost 400,000 American lives with no end in sight, and just eleven days after witnessing the horrific and heart-breaking assault on the U. S. Capitol and our country at large by Trump's army stoked and incited to violence by our outgoing president, his family, his blindly loyal enablers, and a pack of lies. Armed white supremacists, calling themselves "Proud Boys" and "Boogaloo Boys" and every kind of "patriot" they can think of, are gathering at State capitols across the country waiting for a call to arms from their dear leader. QAnon conspiracy cult members are anticipating that Trump will finally pull the trigger on the deep state, declare martial law, and "drain the swamp" by arresting President Elect Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris and all of the other traitorous satanic pedophiles.

In case anyone is still wondering how dictators gain power while ending a democracy or how something as ghastly as the Third Reich can evolve into Nazi Germany, we have witnessed over the last four years how it can happen. Without a shot fired. It only takes lies and more lies and so-called leaders who begin to believe those lies, or worse, pretend to believe them for reasons of their own because it serves their own purposes.

But, in case anyone is still wondering how you avoid the death of a democracy, we have witnessed that too over the last couple of months since the November election. Despite Trump's unrelenting attack on our democratic institutions and the free press and McConnell's aiding and abetting through the confirmation of three Supreme Court justices and countless appellate and trial court judges, I am finally confident that we are going to survive. The pain is not over, and the challenges will be many. But, as I have said before and as I continue to believe, "Some things are too easy to accomplish and are hardly worth the effort. Others, like nailing jello on the wall, are merely impossible and, therefore, worth every ounce of effort they may take. So it is with justice, fairness, ethics, and democracy and such." It all got a little harder on January 20, 2017 but it is going to get back to being a little easier -- merely impossible and worth the effort -- on January 20, 2021. 

I can't make any promises but maybe I will have the will to be a more diligent chronicler of our path back from the brink.

DJT Day 109 - Byrd Bath, anyone?

All of a sudden, we all are going to have to become super nerds. A woman named Elizabeth McDonough, the Parliamentarian of the United States Senate, has become one of the most important and influential persons in the nation and may not be sleeping very well at night. Within the next few weeks, Elizabeth will either be the heroine or villain of millions of Americans.

She will become the de facto arbiter of the scope and application of the Byrd Rule and will be deciding whether key provisions of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed in the House have more or less than "a merely incidental impact on budgetary outlays or revenues". If she says "more than merely incidental" as to any particular provision, it can stay in a bill that can be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate under the reconciliation process. If instead, Elizabeth says that same provision is "merely incidental" or "less than merely incidental", it has to either come out of the bill or, if it stays in, a filibuster can kill the bill if it has the support of fewer than 60 Senators. Just as a reminder, there are only 52 Republican Senators and no Democratic Senator in his or her right mind will ever vote for the AHCA.

So, even such staunch Republicans as Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn are already wondering if certain critical provisions can survive the Byrd Rule -- provisions such as those allowing the State waiver of essential health benefits or dumping folks with pre-existing conditions into high risk pools or permitting insurance companies to surcharge senior citizens for health care (e.g., up to five times more than younger people). Stripping the offending provisions out of a bill to avoid the threat of a filibuster is a process affectionately known as a "Byrd Bath". The visual image of middle-aged and older pale white Republican men with their floppy underarms and bellies splashing around in their saggy swimwear in an algae-filled bird bath is just too delightfully humorous for words to describe.

I think we are about to find out how secure Elizabeth McDonough is in her job. Senate parliamentarians have been fired before if their Byrd Rule decisions resulted in obstacles to their bosses' agenda. Better yet, if Trump will lambast a solitary United States District Judge or fire a sitting albeit acting United States Attorney General, can you imagine how unwound he will be when he learns that the President of the United States cannot tell Elizabeth McDonough "You're Fired".

DJT Day 108 - Why Doesn't He Just Shoot Them Now?

Well, Trump smashed right through that 100-day barrier to what turned out to be a truly bizarre week -- even in the Trump world. He spent this last week lying through his teeth, making up his own reality as he went, and breaking virtually every promise he made during his campaign. At the same time, but out of the other side of his mouth, Trump was claiming to have kept every one of those same broken promises. As far as I know, he did not shoot anyone on Fifth Avenue to prove that his supporters would not care. What he actually did will almost certainly prove to be far worse, and it does appear that his supporters and allies really don't care.

On Thursday, Paul Ryan finally got his years-long wish and led 217 House GOP members over the cliff by voting to repeal (i.e., gut) the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replacing it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA) -- in other words, ACA + the Hateful new provisions = AHCA. The AHCA eliminates the Obamacare individual mandate and the subsidies which made insurance premiums more affordable for many lower income families. Of course, Trump and Ryan were not able to muster the votes to pass the AHCA the first time around several weeks ago. So, they changed it by adding even more hateful provisions to get the support of Freedom Caucus members in the House. Freedom Caucus are euphemistic code words for the most conservative Republican members of Congress. Trump and Ryan were able to a few additional Freedom Caucus votes. All they needed to do was include language allowing the States to opt out of coverage for essential health benefits (such as obstetric care, hospital care, emergency room care, EMS ambulance transportation, mental health care, opioid and drug addiction care). In other words, let States and Republican governors and legislators opt out of health care coverage entirely. But, even with those changes, Trump and Ryan were still a few votes short because the new version of the AHCA just wasn't mean-spirited enough. What to do? Well, late Wednesday night, Trump and Ryan, in cahoots with several sneaky House members from the so-called Tuesday Group, came up with a truly Machiavellian idea to effectively eliminate coverage entirely for all those individuals with "pre-existing conditions". Of course, Trump had promised America and his supporters that he would never do that -- his plan was going to be beautiful and better and cover everyone for a whole lot less. So, the elimination of health care for pre-existing conditions had to be done in a way that would allow Trump to lie and claim he was keeping that campaign promise. He had to be able to lie to the mothers and fathers of those newborn infants with birth defects and congenital conditions. He had to be able to pretend that he actually cares about those women who have somehow managed to survive breast or cervical or uterine cancer or those men suffering from diabetes or cardiovascular disease. And, on and on and on. That cabal of cruel villains gathered on Wednesday evening had their work cut out for them but they were up to the task. They came up with a scheme with a front door of lies and a back door through which to slink away from the consequences of those lies. Under their plan, the AHCA would (i) require insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions (the "front door") to support whatever bald-faced lie Trump wanted to tell the American people (including all of his supporters who fell for the con and believed him) and (ii) simultaneously allow the States to obtain a waiver and opt out of the mandatory coverage (the "back door") by forcing all of those unfortunate souls with pre-existing conditions into "high risk" pools with spotty coverage at best and premiums so high that almost no one can afford to pay them.

With that tricky little maneuver, the AHCA was finally heartless enough to attract the final two or three GOP votes necessary to pass the House by a margin of one single vote.

I don't care what Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) says. People will die as a direct result of not having those essential health benefits or coverage for pre-existing conditions. Those State waiver provisions added to the AHCA to get the necessary votes to pass the House will prove to be deadly to many. However cruel they may be, those provisions merely return us more or less to the pre-ACA state of affairs as far as private insurance is concerned. The available insurance will not be any better or any cheaper or any more available than it was before Obamacare. In fact, it will probably be worse and more expensive -- particularly if the private health insurance companies are allowed to manipulate the system the way they did before and the way they are doing now. Does anyone really and truly think that the insurance companies dropping out of insurance exchange markets in South Carolina and Iowa and Virginia and elsewhere is anything other than a ploy to pressure the GOP and Trump into eliminating those pesky claims for pre-existing conditions which eat into their profits?

But none of this -- as bad as it is -- is the worst thing Trump and Ryan and their co-conspirators have done this week. All of the other stuff is nothing more than camouflage for the truly cruel elements of the AHCA which will result in the outright killing of thousands of poor people, sick children, and the chronically and permanently disabled who depend upon Medicaid for their very lives. The AHCA eliminates Medicaid expansion entirely (to the detriment of those who live in States that elected to expansion Medicaid coverage under Obamacare) and reduces Medicaid reimbursements and benefits for everyone (including those living in the idiotic or selfish States that never agreed to expand Medicaid in the first place). The cuts to Medicaid amount to almost $900 million over the next ten years. That is the cruelty. The truly sadistic twist to that cruelty is that more than 95% of that $900 million stolen from the health care of the poorest of American families and from single mothers and their children and from disabled and mentally ill Americans goes straight into the already bulging pockets of the wealthiest 1% in the country.

Come to think of it, it might actually be less cruel if Trump just stood in the middle of 5th Avenue and started shooting those thousands of unfortunate Americans down all at once rather than spreading their miserable deaths over the next decade. Unless three Republican Senators can muster a little courage and good sense in the next few weeks, the blame for all those deaths resulting from the cruelty of Trumpcare will fall directly on Trump and Ryan and the rest of those heartless GOP Congressmen who followed them like lemmings over the cliff.

I don't think they are going to be able to lie their way out of this one.

DJT Day 101 - OMG

In the linked article, David Remnick has hit the nails right on their pointy heads -- or most of them at least. The first 100 days of Trump have been every bit as disturbing as any of us thought they would be and then some. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/a-hundred-days-of-trump