Excluded from Trumpcare: Powerball Winners

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan have done Paul LePage one better: In Maine, Governor LePage has been obsessed about people using food stamps to buy cigarettes, but the new Trumpcare bill has four pages devoted to excluding winners of lotteries from getting healthcare insurance.

I have not yet got the bill to read it and I'm relying on a comment from a reader on today's Paul Krugman's analysis of Trumpcare. But who could make this thing up?


Well, the Republican authors of this law certainly have a keen eye toward denying freeloaders and welfare queens any government largesse. You got to go after those Powerball winners and be sure if they are already getting one government pay out, they do not get another. There must be at least a couple of dozen Powerball winners out there, maybe scores.

In the same comment, the author, who apparently has actually read at least some parts of the bill, mentions that Planned Parenthood has been specifically and uniquely excluded from receiving any sort of Medicaid payments for any service whatsoever, screening for sexually transmitted diseases, etc.  No other health care facility is so named. 


So, what this means is the Republicans are willing to allow Planned Parenthood treat women who are wealthy enough to pay for care or who are wealthy enough to have insurance but no Medicaid dollars will be spent on that evil organization. Which means poor women will not be able to get their breast cancer screenings or their cervical cancer screenings or their contraception from Planned Parenthood.

This is like one of those Boco Haram  tactics: Get at the parents by holding a knife to the throat of their children.  Hold those poor women hostage to your insistence Planned Parenthood stop performing abortions.


I don't know if I can get hold of this bill, but it sounds like it provides some entertaining reading.

I wonder if there's a few pages on criminalizing contraceptive counseling, denying lung cancer screening to smokers,  cancelling food stamps for the obese, forbidding Medicare payments for emergency room fees for Democrats.

Paul Ryan and the Dirty Secret of How Insurance Works: Well, Duh!

I'm trying to think of how to break this to Speaker of the House, Republican Paul Ryan gently.

So take a look at this chart. The red slice here are what I would call people with preexisting conditions. People who have real health-care problems. The blue is the rest of the people in the individual market — that’s the market where people don’t get health insurance at their jobs where they buy it themselves. The whole idea of Obamacare is the people on the blue side pay for the people on the red side. The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick.

It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral.

--Paul Ryan

Mr. Ryan must have insured his house against destruction by fire, and he pays premiums every year for this policy.  Here is something he clearly does not grasp: When the house belonging to someone else burns down, it's premiums from Mr. Ryan and others like him which pay for the payout to the guy whose house burned down. The people with the healthy, unburned houses are supporting that guy.

This is the dirty secret of the insurance industry: You got a lot of lucky, unaffected people who never ask for a pay out supporting the guy who needs it when his house burns down, or, in the case of health insurance, when he gets sick.

So, Mr. Ryan rolled up his sleeves and explained, using a very colorful Powerpoint presentation, to the press, his colleagues in the House and to the American people this fatal flaw in Obamacare, namely that you've got this group of people who are sick, represented in the red slice on the pie chart, and you've got this much bigger group of healthy people, in the blue slice,  who support the sick people with their premiums. This is why Obamacare is in a death spiral!  You've got healthy people supporting sick people!

 Is this not the most twisted, unfair, dishonest, corrupt thing you have ever heard of?


It was so much fun listening to Kai Ryssdal play Mr. Ryan's explanation on "Marketplace," the NPR business report, and Mr. Ryssdal let a beat go by, and then said, deadpan, "Uh, that is exactly how insurance works."

Grand Gestures

Steve Bannon is right about one essential point:  Nobody on the left can figure out why Hillary lost and Donald Trump won.

Some news organizations are trying to figure this out by going to those counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan which "flipped" to Trump and asking questions of voters who flipped.


The problem with a country as large as ours is there is rarely just one thing to explain the vote. Usually the winner will claim to know why he won and he'll try to use that to say, "You have to repeal and replace"  because that's what the voters said.  They also said "build a wall" and "ban Muslims" because that's what I said and they voted for me. Of course he also said, "I will give you back your jobs" and "I will make America Great Again." 


So what the voters were responding to remains unclear.

When Donald Trump met with the head of the steam fitters union and the head of some other union in the early days after he moved into the White House and he asked them to send in some guys in hard hats and Carhart jeans, really working men, so he could shake their hands at the White House. And the guys showed up with their union heads and everyone was just so pleased.


How pathetic was that?  Donald wants to show he's the friend of the working man and so he invites them over to the White House. Such a friend. Of course, there are working men and women who are working three jobs, none of which provide health insurance and he is going to cut them off from Obamacare and give them Trumpcare or Ryancare or Swampcare or Rinocare (Republican In Name Only care) or whatever his Repbublican buddies are willing to give them, which is to say, nothing much.


But the mystery remains: How do you undo the pathetic mistake of a President Trump and all his men, including Bannon?

So far the only viable answer has been: We can only sit back and watch Trump fail, and do whatever we can to help him fail, but until the flippers can see they actually made a mistake, there is nothing much to be done about it.

Kris Kobach: Protector of the Realm, Star of PBS News Hour

If the PBS News Hour were around in 1933 during the Third Reich, they would have hosted Goebbels, Goering, Hess and Himmler as regular guests.  These men would have been consensually validated as normal human beings who might hold some extreme opinions, but you could consider inviting them to your next dinner party to spice up the conversation.

Immigrants, poor people, Blacks, laborers don't belong here

So it is with Kris Kobach, who is the New Hour's go to guy whenever President Trump signs a Muslim ban or whenever Steve Bannon suggests we should register all the Muslims in this country, just in case.


Kris Kobach, who is the secretary of state for Kansas, was on the News Hour defending Trump's latest attempt at a Muslim ban, saying that there have been 56 terrorists attacks perpetrated by Muslims from the seven countries targeted in Trump's order so it only makes sense to keep every citizen from any of these countries out of the United States, because, after all this all about protecting the American people.


Mr. Kobach has also gone on record favoring a Muslim registry. 


Illegal immigrants are something of an obsession for Mr. Kobach; in this he makes that blonde Hitler youth esque Dutch guy, Geert Wilders look like the Welcome Wagon lady.

Wilders:  doesn't like immigrants. Says they are troublemakers

But Mr. Kobach also believes in denying the vote to potential Democratic voters, like the poor, the Black and the labor union men. Mr. Kobach likes beating up on the have nots, the undesirables.

The thing about those 56 terrorist attacks is...they never actually happened. Professor Google and his trusty side kick, fact checkers says, actually, no, never happened. There are all sorts of ways to look at crimes committed by various groups, but the only people whose origins derive from the magnificent seven who have ever been convicted of any sort of terrorist related stuff were found guilty of sending money abroad, not stirring up trouble in the United States. The Muslims who have opened fire in the USA were born here and got alienated by guys like Mr. Kobach beating on them. Well, there was the wife of the American citizen who came from abroad, but she's the exception that proves the rule. 


Basically, Mr. Kobach uses that number, 56, like a bludgeon and sounds all intimidating in his conviction, but if you listen to him on youtube, and think, "Bull" he sounds a lot less intimidating and a lot more what he really is--a cheap thug with a tie.

Their spirit lives on in Mr. Kobach: Beat on the little guys

It is true those places (Somolia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan) must harbor some pretty scary radical Islamic dirtballs, but nobody has shown simply denying entry to people trying to get on an airplane from those countries has actually thwarted attempts by bad guys from flying here and harming us.  It does make sense to think, well that's where the wild things are, why not simply stop flights from those places?

The argument is:
1. The wild things are just as likely to fly out of Berlin as out of Somolia--attracts less attention.
2. By the same reasoning, you would have denied entry to all those Jews trying to escape Mr. Himmler and his gang of merry murderers.  After all, all those fleeing women and children and their fathers were coming from a very scary, dark place.  The rule, in fact, used by the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull was that every refugee needed a letter from the local police to attest to the refugee's good character. The Gestapo, which was the local police for many of these Jews, was not inclined to vouch for these people, especially when they were intent on feeding their ovens.


Oh, well. We live and learn.

Stewart Abercrombie Baker

You would think they would have trouble digging up people to front for Donald Trump, especially when it's Donald tweeting about Barack Obama having wire tapped his Trump Tower--President Obama is just so BAD or maybe SICK.

But no, this is Washington, so they can always find somebody by dangling the bauble of 15 minutes of fame, and who rose to take that bait? Some gnome called Stewart Abercrombie Baker.

So here's how this Washington lawyer from the Steptoe and Johnson firm tried to talk past the latest Donald debacle:

"We know from multiple reports, including The New York Times, that there were intercepts and there were FISA orders in connection with Russian efforts to influence the campaign. And we know from Mike Flynn’s resignation that those intercepts covered conversations that members of the campaign had.

And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say, let’s investigate that. What we have heard from former Obama administration officials are very limited non-denial denials. That is to say, the president says, I didn’t order anything. Well, of course, he doesn’t.

But the Justice Department and the FISA court could have. We have Jim Clapper saying, we didn’t target the campaign or Mr. Trump.

There’s a lot of other people that could have been targeted that would look pretty political if it was done in bad faith. I think it’s fair to ask the question, what are the facts?

And that’s what your committee is for."

--Stewart Abercrombie Baker, Lawyer

Now, all this has the patina of respectability, until you realize, actually, Mr. Baker is obfuscating by changing the subject.  The subject was whether President Obama sent in the spooks to wire Trump Tower and listen in to whatever conversations might occur between, say, Ivkana and her lingerie designer. The subject is not whether the Feds were sent to listen to Russian agents and found themselves listening to Trump.
And what, pray tell, is "bad faith?" And how does anything in Washington not look "pretty political?"

 And to say we have "non denial denials" is simply inaccurate. Mr. Obama's men are saying, "We didn't do it. If anyone did do it, wasn't us." A non denial denial? No, simply a denial. What Mr. Baker wants is for Mr. Obama to claim omniscience.

Mr. Baker is picking up the only non lunatic spin you can make on the latest Trump tweet--if the CIA or some intelligence agency were listening to the Russians, as they ought to be, then if someone in Trump tower was talking to the Russians, well then Trump may be correct, someone was listening to Trump Tower for more than tweets.

Of course, as the saying goes, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there's nobody out there trying to kill you. 

What everyone is arguing about is whether Mr. Trump has any justification for believing people are out to get him. So here we have a Washington lawyer claiming the proprietor of a house of ill repute should be taken seriously for complaining about men peeking through the windows and that is bad behavior on the part of the peepers.  Well then, we have to ask about the proprietor.

Looking this toady up on the internet, I was surprised to discover Mr. Stewart Abercrombie Baker  was in my class in college. We graduated the same year.
Looking him up in my yearbook, I surprised to find he didn't look the same then. The larger surprise is he was president of the parachute club. I didn't even know there was a parachute club.  Life is full of surprises. 

 So he went on to law school at UCLA, where he did not become a lawyer to the stars, but he did  become a lawyer to the third tier wannabes, i.e. the Washington, D.C. politicos, and an appointed toady in  various Republican administrative posts having to do with national security and the violation of civil rights in the name of keeping America safe again.

I, on the other hand, settled into happy obscurity, and have never been asked to appear on the PBS News Hour, where this toad was trying to hop into the limelight last night.  Listening to this guy pimp for Trump and the forces of darkness, I had to think, maybe it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
,

Instrumentalities

Never heard of this guy Mark Levin, but he says President Obama used all the instrumentalities of the government to place wire taps on Trump Tower, and the evidence is overwhelming.

Mark Levin, Master of Instrumentalities

We just don't have the evidence but you know it's overwhelming. Or it will be, when we find it. 

Personally, I have to believe anybody who comes up with the word, "instrumentalities."  Microscoft Word underlines that one in red as soon as you type it, so you know it's a great word.

And I thought President Trump had all the best words. Well, apparently one got by him:  instrumentalities. Fantastic. Just incredible. 

Those instrumentalities done tapped the Donald's phones in Trump Tower, which must not be easy, given how high Trump Tower is and how tight the security. You'd need some real serious instrumentalities to get by all that and tap the phones.

"Overwhelming" evidence, as a word, not so much. I like "irrefutable," better. When it comes to adjectives, you want one as specific to the noun as you can get.

Of course, the key thing is whatever the evidence is, nobody's seen it, which makes it really irrefutable. And overwhelming, I suppose.

Justifiably upset by instrumentalities

There was some Washington lawyer on the News Hour tonight who looked like Yoda in glasses, saying that it was perfectly reasonable to think President Obama would have tapped the Donald's phones because we all know President Obama takes politics "very personally." This Republican lawyer was saying, based on that very personal thing, the Senate committee investigating the Russians should investigate President Obama as well. 

One thing I don't quite get: When Wikileaks tapped the phones at the DNC, or hacked their emails or whatever, Donald said, "Oh, you got to love Wikileaks." He was all for listening in then. I thought he sort of liked eavesdropping. Well, maybe he's evolved on that one.

But the guy on the News Hour said the committee should investigate, which only sounds fair. We should utilize the government instrumentalities to investigate President Obama and his wire tapping mania.

A  user of instrumentalities

While we are at it, we ought to re open that Benghazi investigation, and wouldn't you like to know if vaccines really do cause autism? 

Space Aliens Confess All To President Trump!

What I want to know is what President Obama's wire tap on Trump Tower has to do with McCarthyism.

I get the Watergate comparison--you know, the President goes outside the FBI, CIA and NSA to hire some G. Gordon Liddy types to wire tap Trump Tower, but McCarthyism?  
McCarthy was all about witch hunts for Communist spies in the Federal government who sold out the United States, when in fact there were no communists in the United States government and certainly none who could have sold out the USA if they had wanted to.

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger have anything to do with the wiretap?

Wait, is this all about connecting dots?  Like maybe Arnold was working for Obama, and sneaked into Trump Tower and planted the bugs, and then Jeff Sessions got told about it and had to recuse himself from the investigation, but Comey wasn't told about it and didn't know about it because he was just closing in on tracking down Obama's REAL birth certificate which shows, very clearly, he is a Muslim born on Mars, and that's why nobody every knew him in school. 

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has got herself in trouble with one of the space aliens who was hanging about the State Department around the time of Benghazi, which was why she was so cagey about who she spent the night with after she went home from the office that night. It wasn't General Petraeus. It was that space alien.

Obama is just so bad, or sick, or both. Very sick. Incredibly sick, actually.
It is just so incredible. President Trump has all the best words, like "incredible."  Ever think about that?  He says something and then he says "it's just incredible." So he's telling you, actually, he does not think whatever he said is credible. 
So what are we getting so upset about?

I am going to set my alarm for 5 AM every morning so I can get my coffee, turn on my computer and read President Trump's morning tweet.  He is going to put Fox News and the National Enquirer out of business. Who needs them when you've got the Presidential tweet?  First there was FDR and the fireside chats. Not we've got those incredible tweets. So Presidential. Really. I can hardly wait.