The Fascists only control SOME of the levers of government - we still have hope

This past month, we have seen the murders of 2 American Citizens by Trump's Gestapo, ICE. His henchmen are labeling these killings as people wrongfully interfering with law enforcement activities in their propaganda releases.  But the public is starting to see through these lies.

Right now, we have both a worthless Congress and corrupt Supreme Court who are more than willing to make this country a fascist state. The rights given to all Americans under the first, second, and fourth amendments to our only apply for our 21st century Nazis.  For the rest of us, the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are worthless as long as the Trump is in power.   

What is happening in Minnesota can be seen as cruelty designed to intimidate the American public, something meant to trigger anticipatory obedience to authoritarian leadership.  This is exactly what happened in Germany during the 1930's.  Gradually, laws were implemented so that people wouldn't notice the erosion of their civil and human rights.  We're seeing that in the USA right now.  First, the Snowflake attacked Transgenders and their history.  (Look at what happened to the Stonewall national monument.)  Next, he started to erase the history of Blacks, Latinos, and other Minority Americans from national parks and other federally administered historic sites. And now, he's trying to erase America's "Original Sin", Slavery.  It's as if the White race could do no harm, and that everyone else was a criminal class not fit for America.

Currently, ICE is paying recruitment bonuses of up to $50,000 to new recruits.  This wouldn't be bad if they went through the full training that State Police and the FBI goes through - months of in-person training.  With ICE, it's less than 8 weeks of online training from what I remember.  How can anyone deal with potentially dangerous situations that could escalate to violence by only online training?  It's as if the design of this training is meant to encourage dangerous escalations.

Why is this happening?  The Gurdian has reported that Trump has cut funding for ICE body cameras, as well as for personnel oversight.  Elsewhere, it has been reported that Trump wants control of Minnesota's voter rolls and its public assistance rolls.  So what is really going on at another level?  As I see it, Trump will try and disqualify as many likely Democratic voting Minnesotans from voting, so that he can engineer a GOP majority in the House.  Additionally, he could be waiting for violence to break out, so that he can invoke the insurrection act and make it impossible for people to vote, also preserving the GOP majority in the House.

For the most part, we still can regain control of the House this year if we work for it.  Yes, we will have to keep our cool and stay non-violent even though Trump's Gestapo imprisons and and tries to kill us to force submission.  We need to remember the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, and how Blacks gained de jure Equal Rights, albeit not de facto Equal Rights.  In my lifetime, we've seen people like Martin Luther King Jr. change from being seen as agitators to being national heroes worth honoring.  Trump wants to erase this movement.  We must not let it happen.

How do we stop him?  Simply make sure that as many people as possible see the truth.  Even MAGA loyalists are starting to say - "we didn't sign up for this."  There are some signs that even Fox "News" is souring on Trump as he descends further and further into dementia.  We must do our damnedest to prevent him from invoking the insurrection act, while also preventing him from asserting Federal control over state elections.  Once we gain control over one part of the legislative branch, we can cause Trump a lot of grief.  But first, we have to get there. 

 

There are 3 kinds of lies about Healthcare

Mark Twain once said that "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." And in the case of Obamacare, Trumpcare and the Healthcare debate, all three kinds of lies are in play.

When the Affordable Care Act was enacted, it had no support from the GOP, even though the design came out of a GOP think tank. The GOP was so focused on making Obama a one term president, that it became an extremely polarized opposition to anything supported by Obama. And this included the beginnings of a national health care system based on free market principles, yet tempered by the realities of unequal wealth distribution and unequal health across subgroups of our nation's population.

I was surprised to find that a president and party would have spent so much political capital oh health care. And in retrospect, I am reminded of LBJ who noted that by standing up for civil rights, he was giving the "Old South" to the GOP. It seems like healthcare reform may symbolize something similar for Democrats, as the GOP has used Obamacare as a tool to rally the base.

Over the past few years, the Democratic party has been losing seats in both the House and the Senate. In 2016, the Democrats finally lost the presidency, which gave the GOP a chance to remake healthcare in ways that may reflect either an ideological purity or a pragmatic recognition of reality. Unfortunately, the first important draft at a reform bill will only serve to double the number of uninsured people, and give excessive tax cuts to the rich.

Designing reforms to a health insurance system is not something that can be done in days. It took the Democrats months to flesh out a plan, and then they had to pull out all stops (including bringing in a sickly Ted Kennedy to help break a filibuster) to get the bill passed. Even then, the bill was far from perfect - and was signed into law with known problems. The Obama administration figured that Healthcare reform was now in play, but repeal would be political suicide once the average citizen started to receive the benefits of this new entitlement.

President Trump promised that he would sign a repeal of Obamacare the day he took office. It's been roughly two months since he took office, and no repeal or replacement bill has been signed into law at the time I'm writing this entry. The GOP never thought that they would be in a position to fulfill its promises to repeal Obamacare, and now they are caught between keeping this promise and doing the right thing.

The GOP is saying lies of varying magnitudes in regard to the ACA. What they are not saying is that their lack of cooperation in congress and in their statehouses helped to cause major problems in the "Red States". Obamacare is in trouble in many of the Red States, as quite a few did not accept federal monies for Medicaid expansion.  As a result, many people who could have gotten medical care were caught in a gap - between Medicaid eligibility and being able to afford healthcare. So they got screwed by their own leaders, just because of a political game that was being played.

In the "Blue States", we see a system that is relatively successful. Yes, there are problems. But people are accessing healthcare who could never have afforded it in the past. So, what's going to happen to them now that the GOP is in charge? Trump and the rest of the GOP do not want to look at the statistics regarding Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office did predict a $370+ million savings due to the GOP's most recent health care reform bill. But it said that the number of uninsured would more than double. This means that the GOP will need to tell big lies to mollify its base - a base which is finally coming to terms with the Affordable Care Act, not realizing that it is one and the same as the dreaded "Obamacare".

There are Senators warning GOP house members that the current bill will be DOA if it reaches the Senate. Both the President and the Speaker of the House are saying that this bill is the only one that might pass muster in the House. Yet something more may be going on here.  Could a bad bill be written up, making it possible for purists to say they voted for an acceptable bill that will never come to law - and please their constituents?  Could a future bill be designed to "repeal" the ACA, but merely be a set of tweaks to make the existing law more palatable?

What is most telling is that TRUMP, a man who puts his name on everything, boils red when he hears the phrase "Trumpcare". He doesn't want his name associated with a GOP suicide pact. And yet, that's what seems to be happening right now - GOP Congressmen and Senators are avoiding their constituents in order not to address their fears of losing affordable health care.  Does this mean that because of ideological concerns that the GOP may commit political suicide?  Who knows?

The other night, Bernie Sanders held a town hall in "Trump Territory". And it is amazing how he addressed the concerns of West Virginia voters better than that of their own leaders.  In fact, one person there said that he was amazed that Sanders was looking out for retired coal miners more than Mitch McConnell, a Senator from a nearby coal mining state. What does this say about our 2 party system? To me, it says that if a party ignores the concerns of people who are minorities in the party, it will lose the votes to the other party - even if the only things given are lip service and lies, as the GOP has done for years.

Even in a state that bleeds red, the ACA has shown to be useful. It made sure that coal miners suffering from Black Lung disease got the benefit of the doubt when claiming benefits - something that would be lost in an ACA repeal.  People in Trump Country see this, and do not want the ACA repealed - they want it fixed.  Even so, our VP went to Kentucky and talked about all of Obamacare's failures - even when the little guy is starting to see the benefits of the law.  I can only imagine what would happen to the GOP if more people started seeing the lies for what they are - mistaken tribal and ideological opposition to a "lesser of evils" law.

In the major Western nations, there is no country which has free market health care - not even us.  In a free market, people would die if they were taken to the hospital without money or insurance coverage. Out of humanity, we require hospitals to treat all people regardless of ability to pay, and then those hospitals shift their unreimbursed costs to those least able to pay "rack rate" for medical care. And yet, the GOP keeps arguing that a free market can work with health care when there are no examples in the world of a free market working for health care.  What lies will they tell to bamboozle their base to convince them that a return to healthcare's past is what is needed in a "reform" effort?

Luckily, there are a few GOP Congressmen and Senators willing to buck party ideology and demand that a replacement bill actually be better than the system we have now. It's not important that they dress up their verbiage in fantasy talk or pragmatic statements. Instead, it's important that they are realizing that if the GOP breaks Obamacare without having a better Trumpcare ready to roll, then the GOP could lose both houses in the next election, and possibly start losing the statehouses as well.

I predict that we will hear a lot of misinformation spouted over the next few weeks while ACA repeal is being discussed. Luckily, the Democrats still have the ability to filibuster many bills that come through the Senate, and have an effective veto that can be used for most half-assed attempts to repeal the ACA. Hopefully, the Democrats will use what little power they have left in both a wise and effective manner.  And I hope that in the middle of this political game being played, that people lose the ability to purchase healthcare that they once enjoyed under the ACA.

A short note on a small plot of land.

In an ideal world, the map of Israel (and its neighbors) would look something like the map above. Israel could be the orange shaded nation in the middle, while Palestine would be tha nation shaded in gray.  This is the "Two-State" solution that most people want and believe in.

With the effective annexation of the West Bank, successful negotiations could have taken place on Israel's terms, as it would control what land would have been given to Palestine for nationhood.  But this was, is, and probably not be what Israel wants to do.  Instead, it has placed illegal settlements in key sites in the West Bank, making it impossible for a practical two-state solution to be negotiated.

There is no way to say any one party to this inter-generational conflict is guilty or innocent. The forebears of today's Israelis were kicked out of the land by the Romans roughly 2,000 years ago.  The British promised this land to both Jews and Arabs at the end of World War 1, and the aftermath of World War 2 made it necessary for Jews to establish a home in their traditional homeland.

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Recently, the US abstained from a vote condemning Israel for its illegal settlements on the West Bank. Trump went wild, saying that Obama has betrayed our national interests.  But whose interests come first - USA's or Israel's?  The only reason that America doesn't abandon Israel is the political support Israel gets from American Jews and Christian Fundamentalists who want a place for the Messiah's second coming.  Both groups support Israel for religious reasons, and not for reasons that benefit America.

There is only one reason for America to support Israel, and that is a moral one. We should support democracies wherever they are found, and respect them even when they act in their interests, not ours.  But if we did that as a policy, we'd never have had the pissing match with Iran, we'd have never have used the CIA to overthrow Salvador Allende, and we'd insisted on an official "Two-China" policy.  Sadly, Israel is evolving into an Apartheid state, and none of the pro-Israel camp seems to care.  Soon, demographics being what they are, there will be more disenfranchised Arabs in the lands Israel controls, and no way to allow them a voice in their lives - as that would come out as "Death to Israel!"

Time is running out for a Two-State solution, and Israel's actions are only making matters worse for that solution.  Our Secretary of State has effectively said, that in a Single State solution, Israel could either be a Jewish state or a Democracy, but not both. Most people want the Two-State solution, but radicals are making this impossible.  Is helping the radical element a way to make peace?  I doubt it. 

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Today's GOP is filled with people who would usurp the power of the presidency and invite the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress, bypassing the State Department.  It looks like they will give Israel everything it asks for - and then some. This is not a healthy development.  It'll be like a kid in a candy store, and mistakes of excess will likely be made. Slow moving initiatives with countries such as Iran will be scuttled.  Who knows what will happen then?

Every nation has a right to be secure in its borders.  And every people have a right to be treated fairly in the nations in which they live. The Israel-Palestine conflict will likely be with us for generations yet to come, as both sides are taking positions only meant to stir up people for the benefit of those other than themselves.  Religious zealots living in Israel have no desire to live in peace with their Muslim neighbors. The Arab side is no better, as Muslims have been taught for generations that the Infidel is their sworn enemy, and that the Infidel must be expelled from Muslim territory.

In a way, the Arab nations are right.  Solve the problem of Jerusalem and you'll solve the problem of the Middle-East.  Sadly, I don't see a huckster real estate promoter being up to the challenges this region will present him in the next four years....

The clown car, and an unwanted driver

Donald Trump - a man so filled with ego, he has no doubts about himself, even when he's totally wrong about things. He's a man who knows, that if you say a lie often enough, many people will consider it to be the truth - especially when they want to hear that lie become truth.

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As I write this, American businesses are slowly disconnecting themselves from their business relationships with Trump. NBC/Universal has decided not to show the Miss Universe pageant on its networks, Macy's has decided to stop selling Trump branded goods, as well as other businesses keeping their distance from this, the loudest clown in the GOP Clown Car (The GOP's 2016 POTUS Candidates).

Sadly, he's saying what many in the GOP base really wants to hear - illegal immigrants from Mexico are taking American Jobs and are part of the criminal class. Although he walked back his words, the not so hidden meaning was - most Mexicans are criminals who need to be pushed back over the border, something which is furthest from the truth....  And this has gotten the GOP mainstream worried, as Trump recently reached #2 in the polls.  The last thing the GOP wants is to lose the Latino vote for the long term - and Trump's pandering to the base is hurting long term GOP prospects with the Latino population..

Most of the GOP Clown Car is afraid to deal with racism in the party's base. Recently, they ducked the issue of whether the Rebel flag should be flown in South Carolina, claiming that is was a local issue and that the flag reflected "Southern Heritage". Yet, a majority of South Carolinians (including GOP members) supported taking down the flag. Why such a disconnect between the population of South Carolina and the people who want to be our national leaders?  To make things worse, when the issue was brought up in the US Congress, regarding the flying of the Rebel flag in Federal parks, the GOP leadership tried to duck the issue - so that they wouldn't anger the racists in their base who continue to vote them into office. This is a bloody shame! 

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But back to Trump....  

Many Americans want a president who can run this country like a business. But if Trump were to run it, we'd have a legacy of failure. His casino ventures didn't do well, his air-shuttle flopped, his vodka is forgettable, Macy's has dropped his clothing line, NBC/Universal has terminated their relationship with his Miss Unvierse pageant, and the only thing he has going for him is the magic of his name tacked onto a real estate deal.  Trump has licensed out his name on a large number of real estate deals, and to me, his quality control seems to be lacking.  Can you imagine how he'd screw up this country?

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Sadly, the clown car keeps moving along, and there is not anyone who I'd really feel comfortable voting for in this race.  Too bad that Kinky Friedman and Jesse Ventura aren't running - either would get my vote.....

Now that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, now what?

If the lunatics were in charge of the above asylum, I'm not too sure of how bad things would get. However, the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum below, and there's no limit to how much damage they can do....

Here's the problem - the wingnuts from the GOP's extreme right wing have taken over the party, and people like Ronald Reagan would be considered a leftist if his actions were listed without his name being attached to them.

Why is this important?

There is a lot of damage that can be done when one party is in charge of the legislative branch. There is even more damage that can be done when the same party is in charge of both legislative and executive branches of government. Regardless of what one thinks of today's Democratic party (and I don't think much of them), I am very upset at the rhetoric coming from the party in power.

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I'm a person who believes that as much power in society as possible should be left in the hands of the individual, and not the big corporation or big government. So my philosophy had led me to support a "pro choice" position on abortion, as well as a "pro 2nd amendment" position on gun control. The opponents of my viewpoints have valid reasons to disagree with me, and I respect their positions as important enough to discuss. In a healthy society, this discussion would lead to policies that would minimize the negative effects of preserving these individual rights. Sadly, in our society, both parties (and their supporters) are shouting past each other, saying nothing that the other side finds worthwhile to listen to.

This post will not be one that attempts to justify my position on these controversial issues. I could almost as easily justify the opposite positions on these issues - save that I don't want big government, big business, or some moral zealot telling me what I can do (or not do) with my body, and another moral zealot telling me what I can (or can't) use to protect myself (and my rights).

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When one party gains too much power, it can implement laws without the consent of a significant number from the opposition party. We live in a society where important decisions are being made with a public that is split 50/50 down the middle on most issues. Sometimes, this is needed. Other times, the opposite (no action) would be the best course of action to take.

Our founding fathers designed the American system to slow down the pace of decision making. The House of Representatives was designed for hot heads to vent their steam, while the Senate was designed to let bad bills go and languish in committee until they are dead and buried. This is very different from a unicameral parliamentary system as used in most of the British commonwealth - where one party can act very quickly. and get voted out (a vote of no confidence) at a moment's notice.

We suffer from a system which has become sclerotic. But should we be in a rush to change our system?  I doubt that major changes are needed. Instead, I think we need "small" changes such as term limits and non-partisan (or bipartisan) drawing of congressional district maps. We might also consider laws that break up the two party monopoly, mandating the governmental support for a third party in the same way that the Democrats and Republicans are supported in most states' laws today. Another avenue to help third parties would be laws to allow third party cross-endorsement of major party candidates. No matter what, we need to do something to destabilize the two major parties, as to help facilitate new ideas in the "public debate"....

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I find it amazing that both the Tea Party (on the right) and many leftists believe that the big banks are out of control. Yet they haven't bothered to look across the aisle to find that common ground needed to design meaningful regulation of the financial services industry, to rebuild checks and balances (like the Glass-Steagall act which once separated Commercial Banks from Investment Banks) needed for a sound economy.

In 2008, we almost saw a complete systemic collapse of the banking industry. I was in a bank that was reasonably well capitalized (I can't say anything about it now, as I no longer follow it in detail), while other "too big to fail" banks could have collapsed had the Federal Government not stepped in to save them.  (The HBO movie, "Too Big To Fail" gives a good idea of what was happening behind the scenes, and shows how close we were to the collapse I still fear so much.)

Recently, in the latest "Must Pass" bill, designed to keep the Federal Government running, we saw a relaxation of the "Dodd-Frank" rules that were designed to help prevent another systemic collapse of the financial system. Sadly, this bill was signed into law.

Right now, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. Will they continue to act irresponsibly, now that they have the power to govern? I'm not sure. But I hope things will change for the better....