That time when I thought Bush had damaged America beyond repair

Following are two excerpts from a letter I wrote to my U.S. Senator:

“As a citizen, taxpayer, voter and loyal American, I am begging you and your colleagues to do something to stop the madness emanating from the White House. I believe it is possible that the president of the United States might be insane.”

And…

“I voted for Democrats in the last election and I am writing this letter today. I don’t know what else I can do, so I am asking you for help. Investigate him, criticize him, override him and impeach him if you can. Mr. Bush has seriously damaged America, and someone needs to stop him before he destroys what is left.”

That’s right. The letter was written to former Senator Jay Rockefeller on July 7, 2007 – not about Donald Trump but about then-President George W. Bush. While I can’t remember any specific thing that happened around that time to set me off, I was clearly upset about the war in Iraq that was taking thousands of lives, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and eroding American credibility around the globe.  

Back then, if you sat near me in a bar, you probably heard me wondering how long it would take America to repair the damage caused by the Bush-Cheney administration, if in fact we ever could. If only I knew then what was coming in a few years, I might have been talking about baseball or TV shows or girls I knew in high school, because bad as they were, there’s just no comparing Bush’s eight years in office with the two months that Donald J. Trump has been our alternative president.

And I thought Bush was insane? I. Had. No. Idea.

Skipping over his obvious failures, let’s recap the “successes” of the Trump presidency so far:

* Allowing coal companies to dump mine waste into rivers and streams on the phony premise of bringing back coal jobs.

* Dismantling Obama-era climate change protections, because climate change is a hoax that is bad for business and politicians know more about the environment than climate scientists.

* Overturning the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” rule because we must make sure companies that violate wage, labor or workplace safety laws can still receive federal contracts.

* Overturning two regulations for measuring school performance and teacher training, because with Betsy DeVos at the helm, the LAST thing we want are competent teachers and qualified students in our public schools.

* Proposing a budget that eliminates funds for Meals on Wheels and Public Broadcasting, for example, to support a $54 billion increase in military spending and tax breaks for the rich.

* Taking health care away from low-income women by allowing states to withhold money from Planned Parenthood.

* Initiating a review of the Clean Power Plan, which restricted greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants, to end the fictitious “war on coal.”

* Instructing the Labor Department to delay an Obama rule requiring financial professionals who are giving advice on retirement, and who charge commissions, to put their client's interests first.

* Reviving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines despite significant environmental issues.

* Declaring the mainstream media "the enemy of the American people.”

* Declaring the federal court system "a threat to national security.”

There is so much more, but let’s just say that everywhere possible, he’s trampling on the Constitution, not to mention common sense, human decency and people’s rights.

And I haven’t even mentioned Russia.

I also blame Trump for adding the exclamation point to the phrase “the dumbing down of America!” How else do you explain the Republican congressman who told CNN his job was “to work for the president.” The man either missed most of his fifth grade civics class or was brainwashed to believe that all branches of government are now under Trump’s control – which is what Trump apparently thinks.

I’m also at a loss to explain the focus group who told a reporter they saw busloads of illegal voters pouring into New Hampshire to vote for Hillary Clinton, then backed off and said it was maybe carloads, then backed off again and said it was "a car full," then backed off again and said it was somebody else who actually saw it and finally admitted they might have heard about it on TV.

This is the real, bottom line damage that Trump has inflicted on America. He has created a cabal of poorly educated but blindly loyal followers who refuse to acknowledge that he is a pathological liar, or that he has clearly broken every promise he ever made to them and who are either too lazy, too disinterested or too stupid to see they are being scammed.

I don't think they are going away any time soon.

These are the people who see phantom voters, believe Hillary Clinton runs a child trafficking ring out of a pizza shop and think they have TrumpCare health insurance that doesn't even exist. Calling them stupid is an insult to people who are ONLY stupid. These people's stupidity is wrapped in delusion inside a box of falsehoods tied up with denial. I don't believe there is any hope for them – not now and not ever – which brings me to my conclusion:

I don’t know which is worse, the international damage caused by the Bush-Cheney administration (which we still haven’t fixed) or the domestic damage that Trump and Steve Bannon are causing by deconstructing the government of the United States. I tend to believe that Trump’s reign of terror can be neutralized if he and his cronies are stopped in time and logic is allowed to prevail. If not, it’s difficult to quantify how much damage they’ll be able to inflict – and how long it might take to overcome.

With that in mind, I can see myself sitting in a bar a few years from now, wondering how much of Trump’s damage can be fixed…and thinking back to the good old days of George W. Bush.

Treason may not be what you think it is

A lot of people are throwing around the idea that Alternative President Donald J. Trump should be arrested and tried for treason.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, I didn’t play one on TV and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I have researched the law pertaining to treason, and while I could make a fairly substantial list of unsavory and possibly illegal things that do apply to Trump, I'm not sure that treason is one of them.

First, the dictionary defines treason generally as “the crime of betraying one’s country….” That broad definition is what most people believe, but our country is not governed by the dictionary. It’s governed by the U.S. Constitution, which declares that “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

[Click here to read Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution.] 

According to the Free Legal Dictionary, the term aid and comfort refers to “any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States … (or) has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies.”

The Free Legal Dictionary also notes the following:

“The Treason Clause applies only to disloyal acts committed during times of war. Acts of disloyalty during peacetime are not considered treasonous under the Constitution. Nor do acts of espionage committed on behalf of an ally constitute treason. For example, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage in 1951 for helping the Soviet Union steal atomic secrets from the United States during World War II. The Rosenbergs were not tried for treason because the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II.”

That raises another question, "What is war?" Does cyberwarfare count? Obviously computer hacking did not exist when the Constitution was written but is an accepted threat today, and evidence clearly shows that Russia did engage in cyberwarfare against the U.S. during the Trump campaign.

John Shattuck, an international legal scholar and a former senior State Department official, believes that Trump may have committed treason in four different ways in his response to the Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails.

In a December op-ed for The Boston Globe, Shattuck theorized that Trump denied the cyberattack and failed to legitimize the subsequent FBI and CIA investigations of it so he could shore up his political standing before the Electoral College vote. He appeared to undermine the credibility of U.S. intelligence agencies so he could intimidate them once in office, and persuade the American public to follow his version of the truth about national security threats. Finally, Shattuck believed that Trump might have been covering up evidence that he and/or members of his campaign team were involved in, or had prior knowledge of, Russian interference.

To Shattuck, all of that added up to “giving aid or comfort to an enemy of the United States” in violation of the Treason Clause, and would seem to suggest that cyberwarfare should be considered an act of war.

On the other hand, Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California-Davis and one of the nation's leading treason law experts, disagrees with such a broad reading of the Treason Clause.

When Donald Trump openly asked Russia to find and release Hillary Clinton’s emails, he encouraged an illegal act by a foreign country, and his derogatory statements concerning the U.S. intelligence community and its investigation of the Russian hacking may have been unwise, manipulative and not in our country’s best interest.

But according to Larson, these statements alone do not mean that Trump was guilty of treason. For starters, Larson said, only a country or entity that has declared war or is in a state of open war constitutes an “enemy,” so Russia doesn’t qualify when considering the crime of treason.

Second, Larson says, aid and comfort must be something material, not words of encouragement. "Putting the interest of another country ahead of the United States, though a bad thing to do, is just not adhering to an enemy," he said.

We have the freedom to get away with a lot in this country, which is why so few people have been charged with treason during our history, and why I couldn’t find a single case of treason being brought during times of peace. The First Amendment’s free speech guarantee means that Americans can go so far as to advocate the violent overthrow of the government … as long their spoken words don’t incite someone to actually try to do it.

Bottom line: There’s a lot of funny stuff going on in Washington right now, not the least of which are Trump’s business conflicts of interest, his disregard for ethics, his blatant ignorance of the Constitution and his possible collusion with the Russians to influence the election – some or all of which may someday lead to his impeachment – but don’t look for treason charges to be leveled any time soon.

We might not have the “enemy” for that.

‘Exploding’ Obamacare is more popular than Trump

I must be missing something.

In today’s “it’s not my fault” press conference, Alternative President Donald J. Trump made two statements about Obamacare that I don’t understand. Chances are, he doesn’t understand them, either.

First, he said 2017 is going to be a very bad year for the Affordable Care Act but he didn’t explain why.

Well, we’re an Obamacare family now in our third year of the program and it seems OK to me. We have our provider, our plan is pretty good and while premiums for this year went up, they are already set for all of 2017... and with the subsidy we’re able to pay them every month. Do we wish they were lower? Sure, but I could say the same thing about the cost of milk, bread, electricity and cable TV.

If Year 3 is like Years 1 and 2, nothing is going to change until January 1, 2018, so I don’t know how he can argue that it’s going to get worse this year – unless he and Congress do something to sabotage it. The next enrollment period starts in November, so we appear to be set until the end of the year.

Second, he said that Obamacare is going to explode this year.

What does that even mean? When he won the election on a platform to “repeal and replace,” new enrollments went through the roof, as I recall. That means that people who want it went out and got it, with polls showing it is now more popular than he is. (Obamacare has an approval rating in the mid-40s while Trump has dropped to 37%.)

What part of that says “explode?”

I admit that the complexities of the health insurance marketplace are a few steps above my pay grade, so I’m sincerely asking if anybody knows what the hell Trump was talking about? If you do, please leave a comment and enlighten me.

Trump also said today that he never promised to “repeal and replace” Obamacare in his first 64 days in office, which is technically true because he actually said he would do it on Day 1, so I can’t call that a lie.

It is, however, another broken promise, so if anything is exploding in 2017, it appears to be Donald Trump.

Mr. Alternative President, your audience awaits

I have an idea for new reality show. It's called "The Camprentice."

The show obviously combines elements of a political campaign with the competition of “The Apprentice.” Every week, contestants who want to be Pretend-President of the United States hold a campaign rally in some deep red southern state where people fly the Confederate flag, live on welfare but hate the government and think Obamacare and the ACA are two different things.

Donald Trump hosts the show. He opens each weekly segment by making a speech about how his fantastic new TV show is the greatest in the history of television and how all of the people love him again…bigly. Every week the speech is exactly the same, but no one in the audience cares because they’re too stupid to realize it.

They really aren’t paying attention, anyway. They only show up so they can wave posters, shout slogans and openly practice racism, misogyny, narcissism and xenophobia under the protection of Trump police. Like NASCAR fans who go to the track to see wrecks, these people like to watch as Liberals or people of color get assaulted, insulted, minimized and, eventually, escorted from the hall.

Meanwhile, each contestant will have five minutes to explain why he is the best candidate to make America white, Christian and clueless. (Yes, I meant “he.”) Points will be awarded for each derogatory comment concerning Muslims, African Americans, Latinos, Jews, Asians, any other non-Europeans, women, Democrats, Rosie O’Donnell, educated people and the poor.

Extra points will be awarded for the most memorable campaign slogan, such as “(Only) White Lives Matter,” “Lock [Somebody] Up,” “Take Them to the Ovens” or “Fuck Fake News.”        

At the end of each episode, one candidate "suspends his campaign" and the others move on to the next rally.

The beauty of this show is five-fold:

(1) First, Trump will have a good excuse to resign as Alternative President since he didn’t actually want the job in the first place. He really only got off on the adulation that came from his rallies, which is why he’s still holding them two months into his alternative presidency. This way, he can keep it up for years to come, with no eight-year term limit to hold him back.

(2) Second, it will be a ratings bonanza for whatever networks carry it – just like Trump’s campaign was – only at the end of the show, the winner won’t really be the president.  Just like Trump.

(3) Third, the show can be filmed at Mar-a-Lago, so Trump never has to leave. He can play golf all day and film the show at night – and get the networks to pay for everything.

(4) Fourth, Trump can get his whole family to be judges so they can all get paid along with him, and they’ll still be able to keep all of their other businesses and any other income they can scam from the American people (or foreign governments).

(5) And finally, the government can take all of the money it’s spending on security for Trump and his family at three residences, Aspen ski trips and any country they choose to visit and use it to fund Meals on Wheels.

Or, I suppose they could just give it to the military with all the rest of the money. At least Trump would no longer be commander-in-chief.

What he really means

When this mouth roars, what spills out is pure evil

Mick Mulvaney is quickly becoming one of my least favorite Americans.

He’s first in line to replace Howard Cosell or Morton Downey Jr. or anybody else who has ever been nicknamed “The Mouth That Roared.”

Unlike his boss Donald Trump, who opens his mouth and the alphabet falls out in no particular order, Mulvaney is very clear when he speaks. He’s the White House Budget Director, and what he’s said so far has been heartless, condescending, completely free of human compassion and stereotyping on steroids.

I looked up “evil” in the dictionary and I found his photo there.

I normally give credit to people who are straight shooters, even if I disagree with them, but not when they’re shooting their venom, vindictiveness and vitriol directly at me and other people like me. Take, for example, Mulvaney’s comment on Meet the Press:  

Budget Director Mick Mulvaney

“The president knows who his voters are. His voters are folks who pay taxes as well. And I think for the first time in a long time, you have an administration that is looking at the compassion of both sides of the equation.

“Could I, as a budget director, look at the coal miner in West Virginia and say, 'I want you to please give some of your money to the federal government so that I can give it to the National Endowment for the Arts?’

“I just think we finally got to the point in the administration where we couldn't do that.”

Wow. Where to begin?

First off, I know a lot of people who were coal miners and also went to college with me. Many of them got teaching degrees or some other degree but went into the mines because the pay was better. I would never assume that none of these guys or their families would support the arts just because they once mined coal. That simply isn’t true.

I can’t think of anything more condescending unless you suggested that coal miners should oppose funding for public education because they can’t read and write. Who knows? Maybe Mulvaney will say that next.

And what about other programs getting the Trump/Mulvaney budget axe?  

Let’s say the same coal miner who theoretically doesn’t support the arts has a 90-year-old wheelchair-bound mother who just had her third stroke and now receives Meals on Wheels. What would you say now, Mick?

Or what if the coal miner was laid off and struggling and it helped that his child could get an after-school meal, even though Mulvaney doesn’t think it helps her do better in class? What do you say when you take that away?

“Thank you for paying taxes so we can give it to defense contractors or wealthy businessmen.”

I’m sure those coal miners Mick is so “concerned” about don’t want to lose their health insurance or their black lung benefits, but they would under the health care bill he’s endorsing, and retired miners would like to keep the pensions and benefits they were promised before the coal companies they worked for ducked out of their obligations by declaring bankruptcy, but that appears to have gone away too.

The question you should be asking yourself, Mr. Mulvaney, is “How could I look a coal miner in the eye and say, ‘I know you voted for Trump because he gave you hope, but he was really just trying to get your vote. He doesn’t really care about you at all.’”

Trump knows who his voters are, alright. They’re the ones who are getting screwed the worst.

*   *   *   *   *

Merriam-Webster definition of “evil”

1:  morally reprehensible; sinful, wicked; arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct

2:  inferior; causing discomfort or repulsion; disagreeable

3:  causing harm; pernicious; marked by misfortune; unlucky

Congress needs a ‘travesty’ rule and the stones to enforce it

There’s a rule in baseball that allows an umpire to penalize any bizarre behavior not covered elsewhere in the rulebook. They call it the “travesty” rule.

Say someone does something so stupid or crazy that nobody would have thought to put it in the rules. Umpires can use their discretion to prevent the player or team from doing that stupid or crazy thing if the act would “make a travesty of the game.”

We need that kind of rule for Congress to prevent any bizarre behavior that threatens to make a travesty of the U.S. Constitution, because Alternative President Donald J. Trump is doing this on a daily basis and no one is doing anything to stop him.

In just this past week alone, these bizarre and crazy things happened in our government:

* Despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump continued to claim that he has been “wiretapped” or “surveilled” or some other word that fits between two sets of “air quotes” and that maybe the British did it. When someone supposedly apologized to Great Britain for the insult, Trump said he didn’t apologize and kept pressing the ridiculous claim.

Nothing crazy about that, right?

* Trump hosted the leader of Germany at the White House, refused to shake hands with her and then after she'd gone accused her country of welshing on its obligations to NATO.

* On St. Patrick’s Day, Trump insulted Ireland by reading an “Irish proverb” that was actually a Nigerian poem and tweeted out a misspelled Gaelic greeting that he could have gotten correct by googling it in under 20 seconds – like I did.

So he managed to piss off England, Germany and Ireland, and it only took two days.

* Then there was that whole Russia thing that continues to grow and grow and grow. According to Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of The New Agenda, members of Trump’s cabinet, advisers and friends keep popping up as foreign agents working for Russia, or they get jobs working for Ukrainian oligarchs with ties to Russia or they collaborate on financial ventures with Russian businessmen.

Russian elites have invested close to $100 million in Trump luxury towers in Southern Florida, a Russian yacht is spotted buddying up to one owned by Trump financial backer Robert Mercer and former national security adviser Mike Flynn is found to have received three formerly-undisclosed payments from Russian interests totaling $70,000, which he failed to report as required.

There’s more, but let’s move on to China.

* We’re watching as Trump’s family continues to use the White House as a profit center with China becoming a major player. Son-in-law Jared Kushner is in line to make $400 million by selling a New York office building to a dubious Chinese entity, daughter Ivanka imported 53 metric tons of Chinese goods while her father was making his “Buy American” speeches and a businesswoman with ties to Chinese Intelligence and the country’s ruling elite purchased a penthouse in a Trump property for $15.8 million.

* Trump’s wife continues to live in New York at a cost of $150,000 a day, the “president” continues to spend weekends in Florida at a cost of $3 million a trip and now I hear that his children and grandchildren took a ski vacation to Aspen with 100 of their favorite Secret Service protectors at an additional cost of who-knows-how-many-thousands more?   

Somebody stop me when we reach the “travesty” plateau.

* Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Trump’s budget director defended cutting out funds for Meals on Wheels and school lunch programs because “we’re not seeing the results” we expected for our investment. He said those words out loud. In public. With the media present. Are you kidding me?

Feeding people who desperately need food – including children and the elderly, infirm and disabled – offers no return on investment? What were you expecting from them, dividends on your stock? Ever heard of compassion? Seriously, Mr. Alternative President, where did you find this guy, Evil ‘R Us?

* The very same guy sees nothing wrong with adding $54 billion to the Pentagon budget so we can buy more tanks and missiles and submarines and ships and bulk up to fight World War II all over again.

* Vice President Mike Pence tweets that the most powerful army in the world is going to become “even more powerful,” raising the question, “Exactly how many times do you need to be able to turn the planet into cinders before you’re powerful enough to defeat a few thousand terrorists who don’t own a single airplane, submarine or boat?

Yeah, but Trump is doing a lot of things to make America great, right?

Right. He’s endorsing a health care bill that has no chance of passage, proposing a budget that legislative leaders say is dead on arrival in Congress and trying twice to institute a Muslim ban that keeps getting shot down by judges because of that pesky thing called the Constitution.

The only thing Trump has accomplished so far, as near as I can remember, is signing an order that allows coal companies to pollute our rivers and streams.

I said this week that Trump is creating a country that no decent person would want to live in. That must be true, because even Canada’s version of the Girl Scouts canceled a trip here because of concerns over the Muslim Ban. When your country isn’t good enough for the Canadian Girl Scouts, you know you’ve slithered back into the swamp.

I’m 67 years old and I have seen a lot in my lifetime. I always knew there were stupid people out there. I always knew there were people who were evil, hateful, despicable, thoughtless, ruthless, self-centered, bigoted, callous, heartless, greedy, vindictive and [add your favorite adjective here]… but I had no idea of the sheer magnitude of it until Donald Trump started running for president.

When I realized it, I admit I was shocked.

Trump started a whole new ballgame of crazy and bizarre. He is writing a whole new definition for the word “travesty.” He is giving us reason after reason why we need a travesty rule in government the way they have one in baseball, to keep him from contravening our Constitution until he can flush the whole document down a Trump Tower toilet.  

Of course, to make a “travesty rule” effective, someone in Congress would have to grow a set and actually step up to enforce it. So my question is, who is it going to be, and when are they planning to start?  

When is a wiretap not a wiretap? When it’s asparagus

Once again on Monday, administration punching bag Sean Spicer was forced to redefine the English language while walking back the words of Donald Trump. This time it was the unsubstantiated claim that President Obama tapped the Trump Tower phones during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It seems that Trump wasn't actually referring to “wiretapping” when he tweeted about “wiretapping,” because the words “wire” and “tap” in Trump’s dictionary don’t actually refer to any kind of “wire”… and certainly not the kind of “wire” that can be “tapped.”

See what I “did” there? More on “that” in a minute, but first, let’s review what Trump actually tweeted:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

See? Thanks to Sean Spicer, we now understand. We were supposed to know that because Trump used quotation marks in his tweets, it meant, “Please ignore any words you might see between these marks. Sean and Kellyanne Conjob will tell you what the words actually mean at a later date.”

According to Kellyanne, the words “wire” and “tap” might have something to do with microwave ovens or vacuum cleaners or maybe laser beams from outer space. That depends on which morning shows you watch (why do they still allow her to appear?) and whether or not she was claiming to be Inspector Gadget at that point in time.

Not a wiretap

Also, instead of “wiretap,” Trump might have used the word “asparagus,” because according to Spicer, it would have meant basically the same thing, which is to say, something that’s not a wiretap. 

A wiretap can’t be a wiretap if it’s asparagus, now can it, Sean?

With that in mind, I have consulted the Not-Merriam-Webster Alternative Facts Trump-to-English Fake News Translation Dictionary to help us understand what Trump means when he uses certain words. Here are some excerpts:

* When Trump says “Obama wiretapped my phones,” what he really means is, “Look at this shiny object. Oooh, pretty. Now, stop investigating the obvious collusion between my administration and the Russians.”

* When Trump says “I haven’t called Russia in 10 years,” what he really means is, “I talk to my pal Putie almost every day… but I have a secretary place the call.”

* When Trump says “the monthly jobs numbers are bogus and/or factual,” what he really means is, “I’m taking credit for every good thing that happens in this country, while anything bad that comes along is either fake news or Obama’s fault.”

* When Trump says “I dig coal,” what he really means is, “What the hell is coal?”

* When Trump says “I’m going to bring back all of your jobs,” what he really means is, “I don’t know how all these hillbillies got in here but give me something I can say to make them vote for me in November.”

* When Trump says “I love the poorly educated,” what he really means is, “Would you look at all of these idiots who think I care about them? Thank god they were never educated.”

* When Trump says “I have a plan to defeat ISIS in 30 days,” what he really means is, “I’m just saying that because I don’t think my supporters can remember anything for 30 days.”

* When Trump says “Obamacare is a complete disaster that’s going to implode,” what he really means is, “I don’t know how this smart-assed half-black Kenyan socialist who embarrassed me at the Correspondents’ Dinner got to be president in the first place. We need to get rid of his stupid law immediately while making rich people richer.”

* When Trump says president Obama “wasn’t so popular until he left office,” what he really means is, “Polls that say he’s more popular than I am are rigged. I don’t care how you do it, but you have four years to completely erase his presidency from our history.”

* And when Trump says “I’m going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it,” what he really means is, “Hurry up and get all of these brown people out of my country so we can make America white again. I don’t care what it costs… and I don’t care who pays.”

GOP health plan: Is this stupidity or just another big lie?

Listen to this:

“The idea of Obamacare is … that 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.”

“We're not going to make an American do what they don't want to do. You get (health insurance) if you want it.”

*     *     *

The idea that Republican leaders in Congress and the Trump administration have such a flawed understanding of the insurance industry – while they’re in the process of rewriting insurance regulations – would be a really funny joke if it wasn’t so pathetic and sad.

Or is it?

The two quotes at the top are attributable to Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives. Paul Ryan is supposed to be the “Republican brain” while I’m just a humble blogger with a small college bachelor’s degree and a basic understanding of the world, but even I know how stupid these comments sound, at least on their face.

First, Mr. Ryan, a question: How do you think insurance works? Car insurance, health insurance, life insurance, homeowner’s…it’s all the same. I’ve been paying car insurance all my adult life but have used it so rarely that I can’t even remember the last time. So where do my monthly premiums go? To pay claims from people who do have accidents. That’s how car insurance works.

In addition, Paul, I am required by the government to have car insurance or I can’t drive my car.

I pay a lot of money for homeowner’s insurance, too, but the only claims I ever made were denied. The money I shell out in premiums every month is paying other people’s claims, because that’s how homeowner’s insurance works.

And yes, Paul, people are required to have homeowner’s insurance to get a mortgage.

Health insurance works the same way. A lot of people, including those who are in reasonably good health, helped to pay for my wife’s $123,000 back surgery a couple of years ago. Premiums we paid when we were younger helped to cover someone else’s cancer treatments, and so on.     

Breaking news, Paul: The government does tell us we have to have insurance for a lot of things, and in all cases, the many help to pay the bills for the few. You might know that if you didn’t get your salary, your perks and all of your benefits provided by… wait for it … the government.

So Paul Ryan is just really stupid, right? Well, not so fast.

Ryan is a devotee of the Ayn Rand School of Selfishness and a believer in the flawed concept of trickle-down economics. He believes that the economy is powered by America’s wealthiest one percent, and that giving tax cuts to the wealthy (and to corporations) will create jobs. The money transferred to the wealthiest Americans will then, theoretically, trickle down to the middle class.

So, far from being too stupid to understand insurance, Ryan is apparently smart enough to make it pay off bigly for the wealthy in America at the expense of the nation’s sick and the poor. The problem is that trickle-down economics has never worked – has never trickled anywhere, in fact – because of one simple fact: When you give free money to the wealthiest Americans, they usually just keep it.

Sometime today or tomorrow, the Congressional Budget Office is going to tell us what “Ryancare” will actually cost the citizens of the United States of America. I can tell you what it will cost one of us. A 63-year-old woman with pre-existing conditions is currently paying $735 a month to a health insurance provider and receiving a $660 subsidy from the government, making her actual monthly premium $1,395 and her annual cost a ridiculous $16,740.

Her annual subsidy is a couple dollars short of $8,000, so take that away and replace it with a $4,000 tax credit that Ryan proposes and two things happen: (1) she has to dig into the family budget and find at least $660 more a month just to keep her same insurance and (2) losing the subsidy will cost her $4,000 more a year right off the top.

And all of that assumes that her premiums remain the same – highly unlikely considering that even before Obamacare when she had group insurance through an employer, her premiums went up a little bit every year.

When Tom Price, our new Secretary of Health and Human Services, stated over the weekend that “nobody will be worse off financially” under the health insurance program the Republicans are proposing, Breitbart News called that statement “the lie of the year.”

When you're a Trump cabinet appointee and a conservative, alt-right, pro-Trump propaganda machine like Brietbart News calls you a liar, don't expect me to believe a word you say.

In conclusion, I could agree with Paul Ryan that the government shouldn't require me to carry insurance, but that would be really bad news for State Farm when I stop sending in my premiums every month. I mean, that is what you had in mind, isn't it Paul?  

The tape on the tie dilemma

Dear Alternative President Trump:

There's a right way and a wrong way to use Scotch tape to keep ends of your neckties together. You're doing it all wrong.

Please follow these simple instructions and see if you can get it right next time. Otherwise, you're an embarrassment to necktie wearers all over the world.

Will Steve Bannon deconstruct Congress next?

Note to Congress:

How long are you going to sit on your asses and watch Steve Bannon deconstruct America?

We have foreign diplomats coming here for meetings that the State Department doesn’t even know about, let alone being a participant. Conversely, we have Trump administration officials doing a circle jerk with Russian spies before and after the election,

We have the alternative president supporting a health care bill that is opposed by virtually every stakeholder affected by the law, and which was drafted without one single legislative hearing to receive input from, oh, I don’t know, doctors, nurses, hospitals, insurance companies, senior citizens…

And that’s just today’s headlines.

Steve Bannon has said openly he wants to deconstruct the agencies that run America, and he’s off to a flying start. You’d better be careful, Congress, because when he’s finished with our administrative apparatus, he might try to deconstruct you.

I'll see your half-Windsor and raise you a four-in-hand

I was recently asked by a Facebook friend to expound on (using her words) “the sartorial faux pas of the overly long, shiny, Scotch tape affixed, four-in-hand knot necktie.”

I assume she was talking about Donald J. Trump, our alternative president who, despite his wealth, seems to own only one dark suit, some white dress shirts (never blue or beige) and three neckties – one red, one light blue and one with blue and white stripes.

Up until that time I hadn’t really thought much about Trump and his neckties, although I have noticed that his ties are about a foot longer than they need to be. I don’t know what he’s hiding under those extra 12 inches, nor do I want to know.

However, my friend’s request for comment was so eloquent and so well-phrased that I couldn’t let it pass without writing something back to her, so I recalled a brief essay I had once written about the necktie in general. I’m going to repeat it here on the shieldWALL, and who knows? I may even add a few new lines.

It was back in the late ’80s or early ’90s, as I recall, when neckties were wide and very loud. I had just come from a newspaper job where I wore jeans and t-shirts to work and now I had to wear a suit every day. This was long before “business casual,” and I really wasn’t all that into neckties.

Best I can recall, my original essay went something like this:

I’d like to meet the guy who invented neckties. I mean, who thought it was a good idea to rip down the draperies, cut them into strips, make a noose and then tie it around your own neck? Seriously, is this really a fashion statement or the preamble to suicide?

And how did he decide how to tie the tie? If no one had ever done it before, there was no one to teach him the various knots the way my father taught me…but somebody had to go first, right?

That means that someone, somewhere, some time, had to stand in front of a mirror with the first necktie in hand and say, “OK, I think I’ll start out like this. I’ll hang it around my neck like a scarf, then pull this end down and wrap this over this way… and then go around just so… and then maybe wrap that back over the other way… and then I think I’ll tuck this part in here and pull it tight while (gag, cough) sliding... it... up... like... this...

"Yes. Perfect."

The guy most likely was an Englishman. I mean, who else would think up something like that? He was probably so proud that he ran down the street to the Four-in-Hand Club in downtown London to show off his new idea. There, the conversation would have gone something like this:

“Well, isn’t that lovely, Charles? I see you’ve tied a strip of drapery around your neck. That’s quite splashy indeed, old chap. What do you call that knot you’ve made?”

“I hadn’t thought of a name, Sir Edmund, but since we’re here, how about we call it the four-in-hand knot?”

“Splendid. Care for tea?”

I can only assume that similar conversations took place following the invention of the Windsor and half-Windsor knots. I always preferred the full-Windsor myself, believing that if you’re going to go Windsor at all, you don’t want to cheat yourself out of half of it.

Ultimately, the kind of knot you tie in your necktie depends on the length of the tie itself, and that brings us back to the four-in-hand knot and that curious roll of Scotch tape. On the back of a necktie there’s a little strip of material affixed to the wide end where you can tuck in the shorter, narrow end for a neater appearance and to keep your tie parts from flapping about in the breeze.

Sometimes, however, the short end isn’t long enough to reach the tuck-in receptacle, so people have been known to roll up some Scotch tape, sticky side out, and fasten the short end to the back of the long end.

I have to confess that I, myself, have on occasion used rolled up scotch tape to hold my ties together, which may be the only thing I ever had in common with Donald J. Trump. I thought I was being clever by doing that until I found out that he does it, too.

Now I just feel ashamed.

Who to trust with health care, doctors and nurses or Paul Ryan?

The American Nurses Association has denounced the Republican House plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, saying it “does not improve care for the American people.” The ANA is the largest organization of health care professionals in the United States with a record of being vocal about health care issues.

House Speaker Paul Ryan

They joined the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors group, which have also come out against the GOP plan.

In addition, the AARP strongly opposes it because it would hurt senior citizens – the people who need it most – and a recent Monmouth University poll shows that even a majority of average Americans want to keep the Affordable Care Act in some manner.

Results of the poll show that 51% of those surveyed said they would prefer to keep and improve the ACA and another 7% said they wanted to keep the health care law as is.

Comparatively, only 31% of people wanted ACA repealed with a replacement and another 8% wanted the law repealed without a replacement.

So let’s recap:

Pro – wealthy Republican legislators who get free health insurance for themselves.

Con – doctors, nurses, hospitals, senior citizens and a majority of voters.

Pro – politicians who represent lobbyists and rich donors instead of the people who elected them.

Con – non-partisan organizations that represent the very health care industry you’re allegedly trying to “fix” and the people (as in “voters”) who use those services.

Pro?

Con?

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s easier than shooting fish in a barrel? Shooting bears while they sleep.

We have an expression we use when things are too easy. We say it’s “like shooting fish in a barrel.”

So what could be easier than shooting fish in a barrel? How about shooting bears and their babies while they sleep? At least the fish in a barrel would be awake.

*     *     *

Bear cub and hibernating mother

So I got a call yesterday from the U.S. Humane Society, urging me to ask my senator to vote against Joint Resolution 18, which would allow the brutal killing of animals in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge. Under this resolution, which has already passed the House, it will be legal to hunt bears from airplanes, kill wolf pups in their dens and kill mother bears and their cubs while they are hibernating. That means killing them while they sleep.

“Killing hibernating bears…and chasing down grizzlies by aircraft and then shooting them on the ground is the stuff of some depraved video game,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. “No decent person should support this appalling, despicable treatment of wildlife.”

[Read the Humane Society’s press release here.]

Currently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prohibits such egregious killing methods targeting grizzly bears and wolves on the 76 million acres of Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge – the one category of federal lands specifically set aside for the benefit of wildlife. 

According to polls, most Alaskans object to these barbaric hunting practices.

Also, existing rules do not apply to subsistence hunting or restrict the killing of wildlife for public safety purposes or defense of property, which means you can still kill animals for food and you could still kill a bear if it raided your garbage cans, mauled your children or ate your dog.

On the other side of the issue you’ll find the NRA (of course), the Safari Club International and other trophy hunting lobbyists who leveraged their campaign contributions to convince more than 200 members of the House of Representatives to vote against common sense.

Rep. Don Young of Alaska, a former board member of the NRA and a licensed trapper who conceded on the floor that he used to kill wolf pups in their dens for a bounty, initiated this action in the House while Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska introduced Res. 18 in the Senate.

Young and other proponents claim the federal rule restricts hunting and fishing rights while admitting, strangely, that the forbidden practices don’t ever actually occur. If these activities don’t occur, it’s hard to see how prohibiting them by regulation restricts anything. I mean, if you didn’t smoke and Congress passed a bill that said you couldn’t smoke, would you be harmed in any way?

Here’s a far more likely scenario: Bears and wolves are natural predators of such animals as moose and caribou. Alaska attracts a lot of big-money moose and caribou hunters. If the state can find a way to reduce the population of wolves and bears – say, by killing mothers and their babies in their sleep – that will create more moose and caribou for – wait for it – trophy hunters to kill.

It’s all about killing one kind of animal or another, and it’s hard to hunt a moose that’s been killed by a bear, so they want to kill the bears first. It’s a win-win for hunters and a lose-lose for the animal kingdom…and for basic human decency.

When I first heard about this resolution, I thought it might be one of the 10 most barbaric and inhumane things ever proposed. Now that I have researched the legislation, I’m sure of it. I mean, is this supposed to be sport? What kind of sportsman shoots sleeping bears? What’s the achievement in that? When they mount their trophies, are their eyes still closed? Do they mount them with or without their blanket and pillow?

I became so outraged by all of this that I did what the caller asked. I called Senator Joe Manchin’s office and left a message, asking him to “please oppose SJR 18, which doesn’t sound like hunting to me. It sounds like murder.”

Will he vote against it? I doubt it. This is the same Joe Manchin who regularly votes with Republicans and who campaigned for the Senate by shooting a rifle at a tree to show us he’s a manly man. Or maybe that was to get the NRA endorsement? I forget.

But I called him all the same.

To me, this comes down to a simple issue. The hunting ground in this debate is a national wildlife refuge. A wildlife refuge is, by definition, a sanctuary in which animal species are protected from hunters, predators or competition, so why does anybody think that hunting there is a good idea? Can’t people find somewhere else to kill animals besides the places set aside to protect them?

Seriously, what’s next? Hunting in zoos?

One toke over the line, sweet Jesus…

Click to enlarge

I heard an interview today between Wolf Blitzer and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. I didn’t agree with much of what General Kelly said, but at least he didn’t say anything too outrageous – right up until the end.

While discussing Alternative President Donald Trump’s assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, Kelly said he was good friends with FBI Director James Comey, who disputes the whole idea. That prompted Blitzer to ask, “If James Comey went public and said this never happened, would you believe Comey?”

To which Kelly replied: “Jim Comey is an honorable guy…and so is the President of the United States.”

Whoa, Nelly! Stop. Right. There. Back up the bus. And you were doing so well, too.

In no universe does Donald Trump get to wear the title “honorable,” not even inside the fantasy bubble where he resides. Merriam-Webster offers seven definitions of “honorable” and none of them applies to Donald Trump. Let’s check them off:

Deserving of respect or high regard – A man who gropes women and brags about it, defrauds poor people with a fake university, stiffs contractors who work for him and lies pathologically is not deserving of high regard. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Of great renown – This one comes closest. I mean, at least Trump was well-known and maybe even famous before he was elected, but celebrity is way out on the fringe of honor. One man’s renown is another man’s infamy, so merely being famous doesn’t make you honorable. Billy the Kid was famous, in his way. Jack the Ripper was famous. Hitler was famous. Get my point?

Consistent with a reputation that is not tarnished or sullied – Look up “sullied” in your Merriam-Webster and Trump’s photo will be there, walking along with Billy Bush or chatting with Howard Stern about wanting to date his daughter. You don’t have an affair with your second wife while married to your first one, then go out and do it all again with wife number three if you want to maintain an untarnished reputation.

You can consider the other four definitions on your own time.

John Kelly is a member of Trump’s cabinet, so I don’t expect him to go on CNN and tell Wolf Blitzer that the president is bat-shit crazy, or that he suffers from paranoid delusions, or that he sees the spirit of Barack Obama peering into his bedroom late at night.

However, he could easily have stopped with “James Comey is an honorable guy” and maintained his credibility while still playing on the president’s team. He could have said those words with some degree of integrity, but going the extra mile and assigning “honor” to a vacuous, narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist con man tax evading sexual predator who’s also a pathological liar was a bridge too far.

You might say it was one toke over the line.

March updates…or ‘Another two bricks in the WALL’

West Virginia Legislature

Just call it a jobs bill.

Mike Caputo is vice president of United Mine Workers District 31 and a Democrat member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing the 50^th District of Marion County. A week or so ago, the state Democrat Party posted a Facebook video of a floor speech Mike made concerning jobs in the state.

His comments are reinforcement for a blog essay I wrote on February 19, which pointed out that West Virginia voters have a history of electing legislators who campaign on a pro-jobs platform but, once in office, do little to bring employment opportunities into the state.

In his floor speech, Mike read off a list of bills passed during the past few years – all with the promise of bringing jobs into West Virginia. I encourage any interested West Virginian to watch this five-minute video (click here and scroll down) but if you can’t, here is Mike’s list:    

* Passed numerous tort reform measures that were supposed to bring in jobs.

* Passed medical malpractice reforms. Same goal.

* Passed Workers’ Compensation reform because employers said they couldn’t afford it.

* Passed unemployment compensation reform.

* Reduced and eliminated the business franchise tax and the corporate net tax to attract businesses.

* Reduced coal mine health and safety “and called it a jobs bill.”

* Repealed the prevailing wage law that guaranteed decent pay for construction workers who work on public projects.

* Passed right-to-work legislation.

In Mike’s words, “We said we could put a toll booth up and collect money for all of the jobs that were going to come into West Virginia,” but no jobs were forthcoming. I wrote it this way: 

“Collectively, these new laws were supposed to bring jobs pouring into the state from employers who were put off by a strong labor presence. So far, I haven't seen that happening. Meanwhile, the working men and women of the state got screwed over by the Republicans they elected into office in 2014. So what did they do about it? Two years later, last November, they went out to the polls and voted them all back in again.”

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

The Russians Are Coming

Barack Obama served this country as president for eight distinguished years. He made some mistakes along the way, but for the most part he did a lot of things right under the worst of circumstances. Still, he was called a lot of ugly and nasty things, the “nicest” of which were “Kenyan,” “Socialist” and “Muslim.”

If President Obama or just one of his cabinet members or advisors had forged a relationship with Russian diplomats, leaders or spies, he’d have been branded a “leftist Commie traitor” and either tried for treason or impeached.  

So far, these Trump insiders have been shown to have questionable ties to Russia:

• National Security Adviser Michael Flynn,
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions,
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross,
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
• Foreign Policy Adviser Carter Page,
• Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort,
• Trump’s daughter Ivanka,
• Trump’s son Donald Jr.,
• Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner,
• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and
• Adviser Roger Stone.

How many Russian connections does someone have to make before you begin to take collusion charges seriously? I mean, one or two Russians might be passed off because Trump sought real estate deals there or because he once held the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, but you’ve got 11 people listed above with dubious ties to our Cold War enemy, and that’s just the ones we know about so far.

The Sessions connection came to light only yesterday, and now I wonder if Trump administration officials with Russian connections will keep popping up like dandelions throughout the spring.

I wrote about Russia twice under the headlines “If it walks like a Russian and hacks like a Russian…” and “Oh, look, Martha, it’s those pesky Russians again!”  I won’t rehash those essays here, but you can click the links if you want to read them. I will, however, repeat my previous conclusion:

I’m not in the intelligence business, but I know one thing: If it looks like a Russian and hacks like a Russian, it’s probably a Russian. I’d suggest to Trump that he either get ahead of this with some “true truth” or get out while he can. This is likely to get worse before it gets better, and I don’t think it will end well for him.

So far, nothing has changed for the better.