“I know, I know, there are few things more boring than people telling you what they dreamed about last night, but I gotta tell you about this one. It is so completely crazy.”
“Okay. If you must.”
“So, I dreamed that Trump hired a new guy to be his communications director named Scaramucci. Calls himself ‘The Mooch.’ Little guy with a lotta slick hair and a sharp suit, and the first thing out of the box, he does an interview where he channels Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas” – talks tough, cusses like a sailor, threatens people, comes across like a Mafioso wannabe. Out loud, in front of the world.”
“Cusses?”
“OMG! He calls Priebus a fucking paranoid schizophrenic! He says he wants to fucking kill all the leakers! He says the swamp is trying to defeat him but they’re going to have to go fuck themselves! He says Bannon sucks his own dick and is trying to build his own brand off the fucking strength of the president!”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Hey, it’s not me saying this stuff. It’s my dream. Anyway, then he says he’s calling the FBI about the leak of his financial disclosure form, which he says is a felony, only he doesn’t know that it isn’t a leak at all because the form is a public document, available to any and all. Then, after he says all this stuff to a reporter, he blames the reporter. He says he made a mistake in trusting a reporter.”
“So, Trump fires him, right?
“No! In fact, he doesn’t say a word. In fact, what he does is fire Priebus, so not only does he not fire The Mooch, but everyone thinks he’s gonna make him his next chief of staff.”
“Does he?”
“No. He gives that to John Kelly, the head of Homeland Security. Everybody says Kelly’s a no-nonsense kinda guy. So a commentator on one of the talk shows says he believes Kelly’s the right medicine – that he’ll bring order to the White House and get Trump to behave. Everyone laughs. Meanwhile, Trump’s Interior Secretary, Zinke, calls up Senator Murkowski and does a Mafia don thing on her about her health care no vote. He says Alaska is such a pretty state – me and the Donald would hate to see anything ugly happen to it. Or words to that effect.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s when I woke up.”
"Boy, that was some crazy dream. The Mooch! Where do you come up with this stuff?"
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Friday, July 21, 2017
Adoption = Sanctions
For Trump supporters who discount his Russia problems, or blow them off as being too complicated to understand, or see them as a plot by Democrats and the media, a discussion of adoptions might be enlightening. When Trump folks talked about this subject, adoption, at the infamous Donald, Jr. meeting, and when Trump himself kicked it around with Putin at G-20, it’s important to understand that they were talking about one thing and one thing only: sanctions.
The narrative is straightforward enough and easy to follow. In 2012, the U.S. Congress, in an overwhelming bi-partisan vote (365-43 in the House, 92-4 in the Senate), passed the Magnitsky Act -- a law, just so we're clear – that imposed sanctions on Russia for human rights violations; specifically, the murder in a Russian prison of whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky. Putin was plenty mad about these sanctions and to retaliate he took it out on innocent children, decreeing that adoptions of Russian children by Americans would no longer be permitted. That’s the “adoptions” connection. Putin’s heartless action of course did nothing to alter these sanctions or others that are equally rankling to him – the ones that were imposed for his country’s bloody invasion of its sovereign neighbor Ukraine and ruthless takeover of Crimea and those that were imposed by President Obama for Russia’s cyber-attack on the United States.
And then came the Trump administration. Putin unquestionably sees this administration as fertile territory for getting these sanctions lifted. Why? Almost certainly because Trump has major business interests (i.e., entanglements) involving Russia that give Russia leverage over him. It is those business entanglements, and what they might mean to Trump’s ability and willingness to do his solemn and sworn duty to protect the interests of his country (as opposed to those of himself and his family), that are being investigated by two congressional committees and the office of the Special Counsel. It is now beyond obvious that Trump is hiding something and working very hard to keep whatever it is hidden, and it is increasingly clear that the sanctions, because of whatever hold the Russians have on Trump, are in play. He has thrown every conceivable roadblock in front of these investigations, undercutting or firing every government official involved, attempting to de-legitimize the work of the Special Counsel, throwing his own intelligence people, including the FBI and the CIA, under the bus, and, now, feeling out the idea of pardons.
As for those who maintain that the Russia thing is a non-issue, a distraction, they should understand this: By siding with Russia, the Trump people are protecting a country whose leadership, to maintain their hold on power, works assiduously and ceaselessly to discredit Western democracy, lest their own people get ideas. That work has included an attack on the United States by way of a disruption of our electoral processes – a strike at the heart of what makes America America. People who continue to claim that Trump’s Russia problems are small potatoes are either whistling past the graveyard or don’t understand the problem. Or their unwholesome, see-no-evil hero worship has rendered them completely delusional. In any case, Trump’s stance on all of this is unsustainable. The dots are being connected. It’s all going to come out. The fat lady is about to sing.
The narrative is straightforward enough and easy to follow. In 2012, the U.S. Congress, in an overwhelming bi-partisan vote (365-43 in the House, 92-4 in the Senate), passed the Magnitsky Act -- a law, just so we're clear – that imposed sanctions on Russia for human rights violations; specifically, the murder in a Russian prison of whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky. Putin was plenty mad about these sanctions and to retaliate he took it out on innocent children, decreeing that adoptions of Russian children by Americans would no longer be permitted. That’s the “adoptions” connection. Putin’s heartless action of course did nothing to alter these sanctions or others that are equally rankling to him – the ones that were imposed for his country’s bloody invasion of its sovereign neighbor Ukraine and ruthless takeover of Crimea and those that were imposed by President Obama for Russia’s cyber-attack on the United States.
And then came the Trump administration. Putin unquestionably sees this administration as fertile territory for getting these sanctions lifted. Why? Almost certainly because Trump has major business interests (i.e., entanglements) involving Russia that give Russia leverage over him. It is those business entanglements, and what they might mean to Trump’s ability and willingness to do his solemn and sworn duty to protect the interests of his country (as opposed to those of himself and his family), that are being investigated by two congressional committees and the office of the Special Counsel. It is now beyond obvious that Trump is hiding something and working very hard to keep whatever it is hidden, and it is increasingly clear that the sanctions, because of whatever hold the Russians have on Trump, are in play. He has thrown every conceivable roadblock in front of these investigations, undercutting or firing every government official involved, attempting to de-legitimize the work of the Special Counsel, throwing his own intelligence people, including the FBI and the CIA, under the bus, and, now, feeling out the idea of pardons.
As for those who maintain that the Russia thing is a non-issue, a distraction, they should understand this: By siding with Russia, the Trump people are protecting a country whose leadership, to maintain their hold on power, works assiduously and ceaselessly to discredit Western democracy, lest their own people get ideas. That work has included an attack on the United States by way of a disruption of our electoral processes – a strike at the heart of what makes America America. People who continue to claim that Trump’s Russia problems are small potatoes are either whistling past the graveyard or don’t understand the problem. Or their unwholesome, see-no-evil hero worship has rendered them completely delusional. In any case, Trump’s stance on all of this is unsustainable. The dots are being connected. It’s all going to come out. The fat lady is about to sing.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Trumpcare Makes its Exit
The problem from the beginning with the GOP’s train wreck of a health care bill – a bill that got worse with each iteration, if that was possible – was that Donald Trump and Republican senators and congressmen never really knew or cared if the ACA was a good thing, a bad thing, or a thing in between. Their antipathy for Obamacare was never really about Obamacare. It was about their antipathy for Obama. And for anything of value for which Democrats could take credit.
So, for political survival, they were left with cobbling together something that purportedly did what people wanted but which they could plausibly say was not Obamacare. The result: a thing that was architecturally the same as Obamacare – and, for that matter, the same as “Romneycare,” the GOP-inspired program on which Obamacare was modeled -- but with provisions whose consequences, intended and unintended, helped no one and would have returned millions to the pre-Obamacare tender mercies of the insurance companies.
What Republicans should do (but clearly lack the stomach for) is stick to their religion and advocate for not only the repeal of Obamacare but for a complete and total absence of government involvement in health care. Get medical insurance from your employer, buy it on the open market, don’t get it all, but keep the government out of it. That is GOP orthodoxy and Republicans should advocate openly for it and accept the electoral consequences. But they won’t do that because they know what those consequences would look like. It’s not what the American people want. What they want is help – help from the government, which is to say help from each other -- in dealing with the outrageously burdensome cost of health care in this country.
Therefore, what Democrats should step up to is getting fully behind Medicare for all, and be willing to put that to the electoral test. That way, people who want zero government involvement in health care and people who want full government involvement will have a clear choice to make, and won’t have to settle for well-intentioned half-measures like Obamacare or malicious-intentioned ones like Trumpcare. As for those in the former group who worry about the taxes that will be needed to pay for Medicare for all, they should understand this: We are already paying that “tax.” We may not call it a tax, but whether it’s in the form of health insurance we buy on our own or higher prices charged by employers that buy it for us, it’s money leaving our wallets. Just like the money we pay to the tax collector, it’s money we have no choice but to part with. Either way, we’re gonna pay.
Meanwhile, the outlandish cost of health care continues to put millions of Americans on the brink of financial catastrophe and/or deprive them of medical care altogether, to exercise undue influence over where and how we live and work and what we do for a living, and to suck billions of dollars to itself at the expense of all other sectors of the economy. Given the demonstrated inability of the health industry or any outside actors to stabilize costs let alone bring them back to earth, the contention here is that including health insurance on the list of things we spend tax dollars on is therefore a not unreasonable idea. Why not “chip in” for health care? (And, no, it’s not “socialized medicine” or a government takeover of health care. The government would own no facilities nor employ any medical personnel. It would simply pick up the tab for insurance – as it already does, efficiently and effectively, with Medicare.)
No doubt, the underlying problem – the thing that drives all of these discussions and that makes insurance so pricey – is the cost of healthcare products and services themselves: practitioners, facilities, medicines, and all the rest. This is a mind-bogglingly complex problem with many moving parts, and it will not be solved by a magical stroke of legislation or an executive order from King Trump. The system is riddled with inefficiencies, unexplainable cost inconsistencies, duplication, non-standardization, fraud, and so on, and is remarkably resistant to the normal market forces that shape cost/price matters in other industries. A way to address all of this in a systematic way is elusive, but that’s what has to be done if the system is going to be tamed and prevented from having the excessive influence over the way we live our lives that it now has.
So, for political survival, they were left with cobbling together something that purportedly did what people wanted but which they could plausibly say was not Obamacare. The result: a thing that was architecturally the same as Obamacare – and, for that matter, the same as “Romneycare,” the GOP-inspired program on which Obamacare was modeled -- but with provisions whose consequences, intended and unintended, helped no one and would have returned millions to the pre-Obamacare tender mercies of the insurance companies.
What Republicans should do (but clearly lack the stomach for) is stick to their religion and advocate for not only the repeal of Obamacare but for a complete and total absence of government involvement in health care. Get medical insurance from your employer, buy it on the open market, don’t get it all, but keep the government out of it. That is GOP orthodoxy and Republicans should advocate openly for it and accept the electoral consequences. But they won’t do that because they know what those consequences would look like. It’s not what the American people want. What they want is help – help from the government, which is to say help from each other -- in dealing with the outrageously burdensome cost of health care in this country.
Therefore, what Democrats should step up to is getting fully behind Medicare for all, and be willing to put that to the electoral test. That way, people who want zero government involvement in health care and people who want full government involvement will have a clear choice to make, and won’t have to settle for well-intentioned half-measures like Obamacare or malicious-intentioned ones like Trumpcare. As for those in the former group who worry about the taxes that will be needed to pay for Medicare for all, they should understand this: We are already paying that “tax.” We may not call it a tax, but whether it’s in the form of health insurance we buy on our own or higher prices charged by employers that buy it for us, it’s money leaving our wallets. Just like the money we pay to the tax collector, it’s money we have no choice but to part with. Either way, we’re gonna pay.
Meanwhile, the outlandish cost of health care continues to put millions of Americans on the brink of financial catastrophe and/or deprive them of medical care altogether, to exercise undue influence over where and how we live and work and what we do for a living, and to suck billions of dollars to itself at the expense of all other sectors of the economy. Given the demonstrated inability of the health industry or any outside actors to stabilize costs let alone bring them back to earth, the contention here is that including health insurance on the list of things we spend tax dollars on is therefore a not unreasonable idea. Why not “chip in” for health care? (And, no, it’s not “socialized medicine” or a government takeover of health care. The government would own no facilities nor employ any medical personnel. It would simply pick up the tab for insurance – as it already does, efficiently and effectively, with Medicare.)
No doubt, the underlying problem – the thing that drives all of these discussions and that makes insurance so pricey – is the cost of healthcare products and services themselves: practitioners, facilities, medicines, and all the rest. This is a mind-bogglingly complex problem with many moving parts, and it will not be solved by a magical stroke of legislation or an executive order from King Trump. The system is riddled with inefficiencies, unexplainable cost inconsistencies, duplication, non-standardization, fraud, and so on, and is remarkably resistant to the normal market forces that shape cost/price matters in other industries. A way to address all of this in a systematic way is elusive, but that’s what has to be done if the system is going to be tamed and prevented from having the excessive influence over the way we live our lives that it now has.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Selling Out the USA
“…have the Trumpites not been telling us for six months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say: Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it. What’s left of your credibility when you make such a casual about-face?” Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
Not only are Trump backers saying spying, as exemplified by Russia’s interference in a U.S. election, is routine, going both ways and, for that matter, every which way, but they are also saying that concerns about Russia, whom they see as largely benign, are overblown or even groundless and that Vladimir Putin is a figure to be admired. Clearly, they understand nothing about Russia and its leader and have no interest in any such understanding. Nevertheless, we offer up some noteworthy information about the object of their admiration, Mr. Putin, and the country he rules...
The KGB, in which Putin was a high-level player, was a Soviet secret police organization whose specialty was the suppression of internal dissent, in the service of which it imprisoned and/or exiled and/or murdered thousands and thousands of people within Russia itself and in the many “satellite” countries Russia had taken over by force after World War II. Internal dissent was defined by, among many other things, the practice of religion, which was forbidden in the Soviet Union and brutally suppressed, and by any criticism of communism or the government. The organization was the embodiment of Orwell’s “Big Brother,” with operatives and informants everywhere, in a closed-off, paranoid society in which the only “news” was government propaganda and in which it was necessary to be extremely careful about whom you were talking to and who might overhear, lest you be grabbed up in the night, held incommunicado, and sent to the Gulag for the rest of your life. The KGB was a merciless and brutal force, not unlike the reviled Gestapo and SS of Nazi Germany.
Under Putin, the Russian economy as measured by GDP is about 1/12th the size of America’s. America’s is the largest in the world; Russia’s is 13th. It has a robust and predatory mafia, endemic and rampant corruption at every level of government, and an oligarchy/kleptocracy that puts vast wealth in the hands of a miniscule minority, the connected, and precious little in the hands of everybody else. It produces little else but oil, military hardware, government bureaucrats, and spies. Putin’s leadership consists of persuading his countrymen that life would be good if they could only return to their chest-thumping ways of old when they strutted on the world stage and enslaved most of Eastern Europe. It also consists of silencing anyone who questions the aims and values of the regime. U.S. allies in Europe, countries we have solemnly promised to defend and who have promised to defend us as members of NATO, are deathly afraid of Russia. And Russia gave a vivid and bloody demonstration of just how justified that fear is by its ruthless theft of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the former Soviet satellites ruled over by the Kremlin with an iron fist.
Russia and its cyber attacks are a very big deal. Those who kiss them off as a minor distraction are flirting with the end of democracy in the United States. Or worse. If Russia, or anyone else, should hack its way into our power grid and/or our financial system? Well, good night and good luck. And let’s be clear: This is not theoretical. It happened. Russia hacked its way into the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. So it has the intention and it has the means. If any Americans worked with them to make that happen, and it certainly appears that some did, that would be the biggest deal of all.
“Republicans’ willingness to accept even national betrayal — that’s what Trump Jr. was willing to undertake, after all — will disgrace the party and its leaders for years, if not permanently. It is a party no longer capable of defending our national interests and Constitution from foreign enemies.” Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
Not only are Trump backers saying spying, as exemplified by Russia’s interference in a U.S. election, is routine, going both ways and, for that matter, every which way, but they are also saying that concerns about Russia, whom they see as largely benign, are overblown or even groundless and that Vladimir Putin is a figure to be admired. Clearly, they understand nothing about Russia and its leader and have no interest in any such understanding. Nevertheless, we offer up some noteworthy information about the object of their admiration, Mr. Putin, and the country he rules...
The KGB, in which Putin was a high-level player, was a Soviet secret police organization whose specialty was the suppression of internal dissent, in the service of which it imprisoned and/or exiled and/or murdered thousands and thousands of people within Russia itself and in the many “satellite” countries Russia had taken over by force after World War II. Internal dissent was defined by, among many other things, the practice of religion, which was forbidden in the Soviet Union and brutally suppressed, and by any criticism of communism or the government. The organization was the embodiment of Orwell’s “Big Brother,” with operatives and informants everywhere, in a closed-off, paranoid society in which the only “news” was government propaganda and in which it was necessary to be extremely careful about whom you were talking to and who might overhear, lest you be grabbed up in the night, held incommunicado, and sent to the Gulag for the rest of your life. The KGB was a merciless and brutal force, not unlike the reviled Gestapo and SS of Nazi Germany.
Under Putin, the Russian economy as measured by GDP is about 1/12th the size of America’s. America’s is the largest in the world; Russia’s is 13th. It has a robust and predatory mafia, endemic and rampant corruption at every level of government, and an oligarchy/kleptocracy that puts vast wealth in the hands of a miniscule minority, the connected, and precious little in the hands of everybody else. It produces little else but oil, military hardware, government bureaucrats, and spies. Putin’s leadership consists of persuading his countrymen that life would be good if they could only return to their chest-thumping ways of old when they strutted on the world stage and enslaved most of Eastern Europe. It also consists of silencing anyone who questions the aims and values of the regime. U.S. allies in Europe, countries we have solemnly promised to defend and who have promised to defend us as members of NATO, are deathly afraid of Russia. And Russia gave a vivid and bloody demonstration of just how justified that fear is by its ruthless theft of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the former Soviet satellites ruled over by the Kremlin with an iron fist.
Russia and its cyber attacks are a very big deal. Those who kiss them off as a minor distraction are flirting with the end of democracy in the United States. Or worse. If Russia, or anyone else, should hack its way into our power grid and/or our financial system? Well, good night and good luck. And let’s be clear: This is not theoretical. It happened. Russia hacked its way into the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. So it has the intention and it has the means. If any Americans worked with them to make that happen, and it certainly appears that some did, that would be the biggest deal of all.
“Republicans’ willingness to accept even national betrayal — that’s what Trump Jr. was willing to undertake, after all — will disgrace the party and its leaders for years, if not permanently. It is a party no longer capable of defending our national interests and Constitution from foreign enemies.” Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
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