Will No One Rid Me of this Vexatious President?

How very pathetic to see the effete editors of the New York Times and others agitate themselves over the news du jour, each day bringing fresh hope the Donald will cross some line which will spell his downfall. 

Watch them now, listen to them on NPR,  voices rising through the octaves, as they imagine themselves before the House Committee on Oversight, bringing forth the words which will undo the election of 2016! All is not lost. 

Those in bred ignoramuses of the Rust Belt, those dull eyed, slack jawed dullards will not have the final word.

We will catch the President in some ultimate faux pax and bring him down!

Sadly, no. 
The President is here to stay. 
You cannot undo the will of the voters with clever maneuvering or verbal elegance. 
You reveal yourselves in this frenetic display of wishful thinking cum righteous indignation.  You think you can stir up a groundswell, provoke an earthquake with your adjectives--you are like that king of old who commanded the incoming tide to retreat. 
Recall those crimson fields of Trump signs riffling in the breeze from Pennsylvania to Ohio, to Michigan to Wisconsin.

As Mark Shields noted, you could have driven from Maine to California along interstate highways throughout the Rust Belt Mid West and on to the  Great Plains, over the great Rocky Mountains and never seen a break in Trump signs.

He won. 
We lost.
The banjo boys are now in charge. 

Let us now accept we cannot wish the ogre away--we must plan to deal with him. 

The Pendulum

Speaking strictly for me, I'm enjoying Mr. Trump's presidency. I heard Mr. Sessions on the radio talking about hunting down illegal aliens who are preying on innocent American citizens, and the virtues of executing people, and I thought, "The worst thing for a bad product is good advertising." A couple more years of Sessions and DeVos and Sean Spicer and Trump Tweets and even the hillbillies in Kentucky will have had more than enough.

My sons got to frothing over my shoulder shrugs regarding Trump's likely "collusion" with the Russians during the election, and all I could say was everybody was colluding with someone during the election--that's what elections are all about. Did they think the Germans had no favorite pick in that election? Did they think the Koch brothers were not trying to influence the opinions of the American electorate. Or Fox News? Or Rush Limbaugh? 

But for Trump to work with the Russians--that's Treason!

Actually, Article Three of the United States Constitution: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
I suppose one might argue Trump might have given Russia's Putin, "aid and comfort," but unless we were actually at war with Russia, one can hardly call that treason. In fact, many would argue, much as we find Putin distasteful, he cannot be called, officially, an "enemy," insofar as Mr. Trump said, during the election, he hoped for good relations with Russia, and he did not consider Russia an enemy. 
So who is allowed to define Russia as an enemy?

Even if Trump knew the stolen emails from the Democrats were stolen, there is no law against using the text. It's not like receiving stolen goods, if Wikileaks floods the internet with them. You are free to speak your mind about what someone else puts out there. And he made the most of it: Crooked Hillary! Lock her up!
Did Hillary not do the same with the "Grab them by the pussy" tapes?

So, no. Let us simply listen to Mr. Trump and his demented cabinet and enjoy Saturday Night Live and all those who can help us see them for what they are.

Let Them Tweet Fake

Last night I listened to a former New Hampshire Democratic Congressman talk about how Obamacare came into existence.

Today I read Thomas Edsall's analysis in the New York Times of the impact of the new Republican healthcare act, AHCA (Trumpcare)  most of which will not kick in until after the next Congressional and Presidential elections.


The fact is, I have never read the Obamacare law which I gather may be as long as 1,000 pages. Same is true for the new Republican plan.


These plans are very complicated because they are not Medicare nor any sort of government run healthcare, like the systems in England or Canada. They are complex as insurance policies, not simple like Social Security.


The basic flaw in the American system, Obamacare or Trumpcare is that it is not really designed to deliver health care; it is designed to provide profit for health insurance companies. Some healthcare occurs as a result of each law, but that healthcare is not  the basic feature. There is a difference between health insurance and healthcare.  Obamacare was, in many ways, a health insurance industry rescue act. Along the way, it provided health and dental care to a lot of folks who never had much of either.

Republicans have sold enough American voters on the notion that government=bad to make any government administered plan, like Medicare, become an anathema. All Republicans have to say is, "Oh, you don't want some government bureaucrat controlling your health care, do you?" and people groan, "Oh, no!"  Of course, the alternative is you have some health insurance employee, whose motivation is to be sure you are a profit center for her company.
 The truth is, most people complain about Medicare, but like a longtime spouse, for all the complaints, they would be devastated without it.


Ultimately, as the Edsall article shows with a stunning map, the people who will suffer most from Trumpcare are the very voters who put him into office. If there is any Schadenfreude connected to this, it is some comfort.

Blue is where premiums will fall; brown is where they rise, the darker the bigger the increase

Those folk who were simply clinging to their guns, religion, hate and fear will never know what hit them or who hit them. They will believe it was all Obama's fault or the Democrats' fault or anyone's fault except their own fault or the fault of their cherished surrogate, Donald the Trump.

They are Trump chumps.
The Orangatan rules.

They will love him forever.

After World War II, magazines were forbidden to run a cover photo of Adolph Hitler because the authorities knew if they allowed that they would see those photos framed and hung all over Germany from bars to home parlors.  Parts of Germany were in ruin, reduced to rubble. Photos from the concentration camps were shown. Sons and husbands had been lost. But Germans who loved Hitler still loved Hitler.

 

The will of the people.  Democracy in action.

Trump Chumps and Trump Champs The Rich Get Richer

James Comey got his just desserts for the wrong reasons yesterday.
That, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

Well, almost all I have to say:  I have to say firing is more than that pathetic scum bag of an FBI director deserves; President Obama, bless his soul, should have fired Comey the first time Comey injected himself into the Presidential election with his remarks about how incompetent Hillary Clinton was.

Grackle got no boss. Comey, however, did.

But the American Health Care Act.  Really, this time the Republican talent for naming seemed to have failed them. It should have been The Great American Really Terrific Health Care and Tax Relief Act Which Is Way Better than Obamacare Act.


But I quibble.

Yeah, I know. I'm with you.

Warren Buffet noted that he paid--I don't know, 4 million dollars in income tax--and on line 62 of his return--Who knew there was a line 62? Who even reads his own return?--there was a charge of $40,000 for his share to pay for Obamacare. He was happy to pay it, he said.


But what that meant was the new All American Republican Act, which does away with line 62 is simply a tax break voted through by the Republican House of Representatives for themselves. Line 62 tells you the rich really were paying for the health insurance of the poor, just as Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz said and they don't want to pay for the poor, not one bit.

So here's something to consider:  I do not have the official government numbers on this, so I am relying on Professor Google, but far as I can see, there are about 500,000 physicians actually engaged in patient care as the greatest part of their job in this country of 300 million people. (This does not include nurse practitioners, radiology techs, other ancillary personnel engaged in the care of the American public.) But, just for starters, 500,000 doctors caring for patients.


There are somewhere on the order of 10 to 30 times that number (5 to 15 million) people who work in, or are substantially supported by the American health insurance industry. This includes the CEO of Aetna and the CEO of Blue Cross all the way down to the humble billing clerk in a doctor's office who does nothing but submit bills and keep track of payments, to the people you talk to on the phone about why the company refuses to pay for your hip replacement, to the actuaries who deny you coverage because you once visited an emergency room when you had an allergic reaction to penicillin so now you have a "pre-existing condition" which means they don't want to insure you, to the marketers who devise the ad campaigns, to the health insurance lobbyists.

I'm all for free markets, except when I'm not.

See the distinction: Health insurance is not health care.


If we had Medicare for all, all these people would lose their jobs. No longer necessary. Fifteen million people made obsolete.

A friend once rejected my argument we should legalize drugs the way they've done in the Netherlands and Portugal and treat drug addiction as a public health problem. "Oh, you can't do that," she said, "The entire economy of the inner city in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit would collapse overnight. Lot of people make their living on drugs."
This is a variant of the old saw we said at the cancer hospital: More people make their livings off cancer than die from it.

Trouble is, the healthy rich people have to pay for the sick, poor people. Not fair!

And the same is true of our health insurance industry: Apart from the employment it provides, the jobs, the money, the sustenance to the economy, it is a worthless part of our national life. We only tolerate it because we are afraid of what would happen to all those people who pay for their homes and automobiles and restaurant meals with the money that comes in through the companies.

I love my Medicare.

So there you have democracy in action: We pride ourselves here in the USA on our courage to engage in capitalism, where the markets drive decisions ruthlessly and out of that the most efficiency is generated. But, in fact, in the health insurance and health care economies, we cling to a system of dreadful inefficiency which, if markets really prevailed, would collapse just as soon as Medicare for all got put into place and all the customers voted with their feet to flock to it.

French Voters Finally Prove They Are Smarter than US

My one and only visit to Paris, there were intimations the French are not what I had thought through long, agonizing exposure to the French language in American schools. (In fact, the only French teacher I ever had who I liked was Algerian, which probably says something--I don't know what.)

But today the French scored higher on the national IQ test we call general election than the folks from the American heartland. 

As a matter of fact, they are looking a bit smarter today than their arrogant British neighbors on the other side of the Chunnel. 

As Paul Krugman noted some days ago, the French have cradle-to-grave high quality healthcare, job security, great wine, wonderful bread, and the only reason they are not as productive as American workers, overall, is they have so much vacation time which means the calculation of worker productivity skews toward Americans who tend to work closer to 50 weeks a year, as opposed to 39 or whatever the French work. When they are actually at work, they work quite effectively. But having a lot of vacation in an economy which works well may not be such a bad thing.


The French do smoke too much. That they have to work on. 
But they have decided to go forth boldly into the world, rather than quake and wail behind walls.

Actually, the New York Times had a great article today about the futility of building a wall along the Mexican border, which has many aspects to it, but can be summarized in a single word called, "TUNNEL." And, apparently, efforts by Americans to shore up the wall have created a golden opportunity for Mexican drug cartels, which have combined muscling in on the illegal crossing trade while combining it with transporting cocaine and meth, so building a wall has in fact helped with cross border trade, just not the kind you can tax.

We take our pleasures where we can nowadays. 
The Republican house passes a tax cut bill they called the American Health Care Act and it was almost worth it just to read Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe disembowel the whole frat boy crew. "All Smiles As American Healthcare Flatlines," is a masterpiece. Apparently, they were playing the Rocky theme in the House during the vote.  It really brought out the best in Ms. Abraham. 
We've had worse Sundays. 

The Efficacy of Hate

Here's a fascinating factoid: Did you know that there are more Jews living in Alabama, USA than in Poland? (In fact three times the number in Alabama.) More Jews in New Hampshire than in Poland?

Grief and History

Or, how's this: There are more Jews living in Colorado than in Germany? And more in Arizona than in Germany?


Or, Missouri has more Jews than Ukraine.


Or, Maryland has more Jews than Russia, by about 100,000 souls.

Wowser.


I suppose it should be no surprise, when you think about what happened to Jews between 1935 and 1945 in Germany, Poland, Ukraine and, of course, Russia has a long history before and after of killing or otherwise being unkind to Jews.
So Poland has 3,200 Jews; Ukraine has 63,000; Germany 99,695 and Russia 186,000.


Before the Holocaust Poland had 3.5 million Jews, near as I can tell from Professor Google. Afterwards, 3,200, a reduction of 99.9%.
Germany had only 525,000, (reduced by about 80%) and Ukraine had almost a million (down 95%) .
Each of the countries surrounding Germany (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Austria) had more than Germany itself. But when German troops stormed over the border, the slaughter of Jews followed the Wehrmacht troops, as special Jew killing brigades rounded up Jews for slaughter. I haven't figured the reduction in their Jewish population.


So, when Hitler and his merry gang of murderers conceived of "The Final Solution," well, they got pretty close to finality. They did not quite exterminate every last Jew within their boundaries, but apparently, they came pretty close.


And these reductions have been durable: They've held up for 70 years.


You have to say this  was a government program which achieved its stated goals.

Hank Greenberg

I suppose none of this is surprising, really. If you were a Jew living in Germany, Poland or Ukraine where the local folks so enthusiastically joined in rounding up Jews and killing them, even if you managed to escape that dragnet, would you want to hang around, living among these people?  Would you not try to hop the next train, boat or horse to get as far away from these nasties as you could?



There are some curiosities in the numbers:  There are 465,000 Jews in France. France cooperated with the Nazis when the Nazis occupied France and sent thousands off to die in the concentration camps. But, apparently, at least that core stayed on after the war. More recently, with a rise in anti Semitic attacks in France, Jews have been crossing the Channel to live in Britain, which has only 269,000 Jews, which is fewer Jews than Massachusetts or Illinois or Maryland.

Why so few Jews in Britain?  The Brits  weren't collaborating with the Nazis during those years, not hardly. Quite the opposite. But the gentile anti Semitism of the Brits may be unsettling in its own way. It goes back to Dickens and Shakespeare--Oliver Twist and the Merchant of Venice.


Here's one nugget: Texas, which is one of our three  big mega states, has only 160,000 Jews. The other big ones (California, New York) have more than a million each.  So maybe Jews have got the vibe from Texas not a good place to be, if you're a Jew.


Most Southern states have few Jews, but Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, North Carolina have as many or more than Poland.


And those four states have the Ku Klux Klan.


I guess this goes to show that government programs can be effective.  If you want to get rid of people you hate, you can do it. First, you publicly announce your animus. Then you quietly execute the implications of that attitude. And then you simply allow people to vote with their feet.


If Donald Trump wants to rid the United States of those brown skinned rapists from Mexico and Latin America, he's at least taken the first step.


Have Russia, Poland, Ukraine or Germany regretted the loss of the Jews?
Well, maybe some folks there regret it.
Is their loss our gain?

I would think so.  For one thing, Hank Greenberg did a lot for the Detroit Tigers, in a city where Henry Ford wrote the screed, "The International Jew." 

Oh, and then there was Einstein, who luckily was working for us. 
If that atomic bomb had been dropped on Washington rather than Hiroshima, our lives might be significantly different.

We'll take him and give you a high draft choice

I know I'd miss the Hispanics I know. For that matter, I'd miss the Chinese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese--you name it. I can think of immigrant groups up and down the line and I keep thinking: I'd miss every single one of these groups, and it's not just that I love Thai food. They each add something. And they'd miss each other.


If it weren't for the Jews, who would eat in Chinese restaurants on Christmas day?

When Blue Is Not Enough

With liberal principles in peril, with a call to racism having galvanized an opposition, with antipathy between parties boiling over from emotional cauldrons, we have in this country reached a place where we have been before, but more so,  in the past.

We cannot compare our current state to that of 1860, when racism and sectional hatred, when conflict between rural America and the industrialized urban centers found a coalescing and animating cause: Slavery.  Slavery and its defense encapsulated all the inchoate animosities between rural/ urban,  north/south, educated/uneducated, a social order of landed aristocracy versus an urban order of commercial meritocracy. 

Glamorous and Ineffective 

Though we have not reached the same level of conflict by several orders of magnitude in the early part of the 21st century, we have come to the point where mid 20th century arrangements and attitudes have ceased to function. Bill Bradley in today's New York Times describes how he worked across the aisle with Republicans to pass the 1986 tax reform law which lowered the top tax bracket to 38% by closing loop holes for a whole variety of special interests.  He describes laws being passed in the Senate by a vote of 97-3, something which is today unimaginable. 

The fact is in today's environment, there is no virtue in accommodation, no reason to extol comity. 

When Democrats look to our leaders in Congress and the Senate, we have to ask ourselves: Do we have in these people the leaders we need?

The right color, not the Right Stuff

In 1860, many leaders were called to the colors.  Ambrose Burnside, Benjamin Butler, George McClellan put themselves forward to lead Union forces into the field. But they were dreadfully inadequate leaders and the Union cause nearly collapsed under their leadership, or lack of it.

General Benjamin Butler, Right Colors. Wrong Stuff.

Meanwhile, the South fielded generals of great daring and pugnacity--Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and they nearly won the day. Wearing the blue was not enough. What was important was that the men who wore the blue could win. 

The Union generals who showed promise were each flawed in his own way:  Sherman was depressive, self doubting and thought to be prone to nervous breakdown. Grant was said to be a drunk, often drunk on duty. 

Drank the right whiskey

But Lincoln said, "Tell me what whiskey Grant drinks. I want to send a bottle to every one of my generals. He fights."

Facing the Southern armies standing between the Union forces and Richmond, Grant's generals kept coming to him with warnings about what would happen if they moved in one direction or thrust in  another against Lee, how Lee would counter, how he would outflank them. 

"Don't come to me with your fears about what Lee might do to you," Grant told them. "Go back to camp and think about what you are going to do to Lee." 

More fight in the dog

The Union generals, Grant and Sheridan were small men, but they proved it was not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.  

And, eventually, Sherman proved to have plenty of fight in him. He had spent much of his life in the South, in Louisiana, but when he determined the way to end the war was to bring the war to the people who supported it, he fastened on that strategy with resolve.

"I will make the people of Georgia howl," he said. 

Fierce when aroused

When asked about his troops burning down homes, scorching fields, destroying railroads, he said, famously, "War is not popularity seeking. War is all hell."

And he brought that hell to those who sustained the South and its army.

I'm not yet convinced Carol Shea Porter or Maggie Hassan have that kind of toughness, or that fire in the belly. 

Bernie Sanders does.

We need leaders with that quality now.