You too can be on the cover of Time

Mocking up a phony cover of Time magazine doesn't make you special. Even a dog can do it.

And you can fake any message you want.

It’s time to revisit the two-party system

Originally posted on December 15, 2016; edited and updated for today

There was talk during the November election that the Republican Party was splitting apart. That talk died down as soon as the candidate they loved to hate unexpectedly won them the White House, but the concern still has merit. Current debate over House and Senate versions of the Republican health care bill shows that deep divisions still exist within the party.

It also shows the ever-widening partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats which threatens to obstruct any attempt to legislate for the good of the people. The answer, in my opinion, is not to abolish the party system, per se, but to expand it to five, six, eight, 10 parties – whatever it takes to represent the diverse interests of 21st century Americans and actually govern the United States.

As I wrote back in December, if you look closely at the Republicans there are actually three parties – the Establishment GOP, the Tea Party Obstructionists and the anti-establishment Trumpeteers.

The Democrats, meanwhile, had a hard time deciding whether they were Clintonian Centrists or Bernie Sanders Socialists, so they settled on dragging Hillary Clinton too far to her left, where she seemed to be uncomfortable. It clearly didn’t work out for them this time.

Then there were the Libertarians and the Green Party, so that if each was considered separately, you’d have at least seven distinct political parties with their own identities, goals, values, platforms and agendas. The Constitution doesn’t establish Republicans and Democrats as our exclusive political parties, so we just have to agree as citizens to make this change. Organize a party and nominate candidates. That’s all it would take.

That, and eliminating the Electoral College.

I’m an Independent who doesn’t identify with either the Republicans or the Democrats, so I’d be totally in favor of this. I could vote based on issues important to me and since there would be no Electoral College, my vote would actually count.

Imagine if all seven parties nominated candidates in future elections. You’d hold an election and count the ballots and the candidate with the most popular votes would win. Period. In this past election, for example, the seven candidates might well have been Jeb Bush, Establishment GOP; Ted Cruz, Tea Party; Donald Trump, Trumpeteers; Bernie Sanders, Liberal-Socialist Democrats; Hillary Clinton, Centrist Party; Gary Johnson, Libertarians; and Jill Stein, Greens.

I don’t know who would have been elected out of that group, but voting for Jill Stein would not necessarily have hurt only Clinton while benefitting only Trump. Bush and Cruz would have given Republicans someone other than Trump to vote for, cutting into his total. Bernie Sanders would have stayed in the race against the other six and might very well have been the president right now. We’ll never know.

If all seven parties also sent representatives to Congress, every American could potentially be represented by somebody who shared his or her political philosophy, and the two parties we have now that don’t play well together probably would lack the votes by themselves to obstruct legislation, shut down the government or create the gridlock that has plagued our country for years.

Think about it. In such a coalition Congress, it would become less important which party the president represented, because he or she would have to work with a legislature comprised of seven or more sets of representatives. It would force the parties to cooperate, form alliances that might change from issue to issue, compromise on big-ticket legislation and actually get things done for the country instead of the party.

The Centrist Democrats, for example, might align with the Establishment Republicans to promote an infrastructure maintenance program but split on the issue of universal health care, which would be more attractive to the Greens and Socialists. Tea Party Republicans supporting smaller government would find common ground with the Libertarians, and on and on, issue by issue. It's possible, even probable, that no one party would be able to shut down the government or obstruct all legislation the way the Republicans did to President Obama for his last six years. 

The way I see it, it’s time to get this (multiple) party started. I mean right now, today. We just came through the worst election in the history of this country, and the level of vitriol in our current Congress has never risen higher, so there’s no better time to make a change than right now...before it's too late

C’mon, patriots, who’s with me? Let’s make America make sense again.

Get a better job? Why didn’t I think of that?

In 1974, I was the Regional Editor of the third largest newspaper in West Virginia. I had a responsible job, supervised a staff of eight or 10 paid correspondents, worked long hours and traveled around nine counties in the state in my own car (and on my own dime, as I recall).

I was not, in other words, a lazy slacker.

For my efforts, if memory serves, I was paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $8,000 a year with zero health insurance benefits. I had a wife who didn’t work and a two-year-old daughter and, in September of that year, my younger daughter was born. My employer – out of the goodness of its heart – provided us with a maternity benefit to help defray several hundred dollars in hospital costs.

They gave us $35.

It was so insulting I almost gave it back.

I believe we qualified for food stamps back then, as well as free government cheese, but never applied for those programs out of a distorted sense of pride. The Regional Editor of the third largest newspaper in the state did not accept food stamps or blocks of condensed Velveeta. We also did not enroll in Medicaid.

If we had, I would have been the kind of “able-bodied worker” that Kellyanne Conway thinks should be excluded from the Medicaid program. On Sunday, while discussing the Senate's proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act, Conway said people who will lose Medicaid coverage under the Republican health care plan should just go find jobs that provide health insurance.

Gee, I wish I had thought of that back in 1974. I never would have accepted a job with the lowly Parkersburg Sentinel when I could have demanded to be hired as Editor-in-Chief of The New York Times...or advisor to the president.   

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not sure I qualified for Medicaid in 1974. I called the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources but they don’t seem to know what the income limit was back then. When I asked the question, I was told, “Good luck with that.” I had to email the question to them and I’m still waiting for a response.

It doesn’t matter, though. The point is that millions of Americans are receiving Medicaid benefits while working at jobs that do not provide health insurance coverage. Many of them work very hard at the only thing they are qualified for – or the only job they could get – and do not deserve to be labeled as slackers by a public relations hack who reportedly is paid $176,000 a year to lie to the media and make up “alternative facts.”     

According to Conway, Medicaid was never designed for “healthy people who could work.” Those people, she said, should take better jobs where “they'll have employer-sponsored benefits like you and I do.”  The absurdity of that statement makes it almost impossible for a response, but here’s one anyway:

Jonathan Cohn points out in the Huffington Post that nearly eight in 10 Medicaid recipients live in working families and a majority are working themselves. Fifty-nine percent of them work either part- or full-time. The problem is that they work as parking attendants and child care workers, manicurists and dishwashers – in other words, low-paying jobs that typically don't offer insurance. Take away their Medicaid and they won't be covered at all.

First off, don’t we need people to do the jobs they do? If not for them, who would park the cars and wash the dishes and babysit our children? Who else is going to do that? You, Kellyanne?

And second, I would argue that even the “healthy, able-bodied” adults to whom she refers sometimes get sick and require medical care that the Emergency Room doesn’t provide, or maybe their wives have babies, or they want contraception so they don’t have babies, or they contract catastrophic illnesses and face death, or any of a number of other reasons why they need Medicaid to survive.

But not to worry. When Donald Trump, his children and his 400 closest billionaire friends get their massive tax break, I'm sure they'll create millions of new jobs with full benefits for all of the people who got kicked out of Medicaid. Either that, or they'll buy more summer houses, private jets and yachts. 

One or the other.

Losing isn’t winning, so why not try winning for a change?

I used to be a Democrat, but I changed my registration to Independent around 2009 after they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress for two years and still weren’t able to pass their full agenda, mainly because they couldn't decide how liberal they wanted to be.

I considered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be somewhat boring and I thought Senate President Harry Reid was an empty suit, and neither was the kind of leader who inspired people to action. Certainly they did not inspire me, so I decided I would continue to support liberal causes but did not want to be identified with either political party.

With Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats running Congress, we might have been able to (finally) get single-payer health insurance in this country, except that nobody even tried. (Oooh, that’s too liberal; we can’t do that.) There were other bills introduced that failed to pass despite the Democratic majority, including a climate change security act, immigration reform, the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act and bills promoting employment non-discrimination, reduction in prescription drug prices and medical marijuana and one that would have cut down on voter intimidation.

We did eventually get Obamacare, a bill so convoluted and so heavily amended that it only did part of what it was intended to do and is now on the verge of being repealed, and a few other major gains. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform come to mind.

But gradually, over the next few years, Democrats lost both the House and then the Senate and in a scenario right out of a bad Hollywood movie, managed to lose the White House last year to the worst presidential candidate in the nation’s history. Now, today, with Republicans screwing everything up and a growing number of voters expressing their anger, Democrats see an opening that might lead them back to the Promised Land in 2018.

Last night, for example, Democrats came close to upsetting their Republican opponents in two red state special elections for Congress, and Democrats are celebrating the closeness of their losses. The same thing happened in Montana a couple of weeks ago.

But wait! Here’s some breaking news for the Democratic Party: Losing isn’t winning. Period.

If a baseball team loses 25 games in a row, it doesn’t pop the champagne corks because it only lost the last game by five runs. In politics as in baseball, if you’re not winning, you’re losing, and continuing to lose – regardless of the margin – won’t change the balance of power in Washington. Only winning can do that.     

With that in mind, here's some advice for the Democratic Party:

(1) Get rid of your entire leadership team and bring in some fresh, young, creative and energetic leaders who won't be satisfied with "almost winning" in states like Montana, Georgia and South Carolina. There are more Democrats in this country than Republicans, and I’d like to think there are fewer Deplorables in the blue states, so surely there is someone smart enough to craft a winning strategy for the party that represents the most people.

(2) Take another look at last year’s election map. Notice what color dominates it? It’s RED. It’s great that you consistently win the cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco and other urban areas of the country, but your voters are surrounded by millions of people who get their information from Fox News and Alex Jones. In case you missed it, they put a racist, narcissistic idiot in the White House. You need a message that will win some of those votes for your side.

(3) Finally, start sending out some bright young Democrats not named Clinton, Biden or Sanders to make appearances on Sunday talk shows and evening newscasts and at public events like fish fries and county fairs. I know you have a list. See which ones start to gain a following and which ones don’t. Then cultivate an enthusiastic slate of possible contenders who can get you the White House without having to explain their vote on the Iraq War or defend their stupidity where email is concerned.

Now is the time to start building momentum for the next presidential election, especially if you have to introduce someone new. If you wait until the official campaign season, it will be too late, and your party will default to another 70-year-old relic who doesn’t inspire voters and won’t get people to actually come out and vote.      

I offer these suggestions free of charge. I’ve got more ideas but that should keep you busy for a while. If not, I’m available for further consultation, and you can always find me here.

Members of Congress must have skipped civics class

(Click the links to read source material.)

I remember civic class. Fifth grade, I think it was. Mrs. Gray’s class.

I remember her for another reason. Before there were adult crossing guards, boys from the school called “Patrol Boys” were sent out with red flags to stop traffic and escort students across busy intersections. We wore white canvas belts that went over one shoulder and had badges pinned on them. We looked about as official as little kids could look.

Patrol Boy sans flag pole.

Every year, the Patrol Boys were rewarded with a bus trip to Washington, D.C., but when my turn came around, Mrs. Gray determined that I wasn’t responsible enough to qualify for the trip and she wouldn’t let me go. To this day I don’t know why she did that. I think she had me confused with someone else.

Years later, as a responsible adult with a very responsible job at a newspaper in Maryland, I made up for the slight by taking my own kids to Washington and showing them all of the important sites. Take that, Mrs. Gray!

Anyhow, back to civics class. I’m getting the feeling that schools don’t teach civics any longer, or they don’t teach it very well. How else do you explain how little Americans know about the government that represents them? Here’s a little refresher, courtesy of Wikipedia:  

“Civics is the study of the theoretical, political and practical aspects of citizenship, as well as its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body and to the government…(and) the role of citizens in the operation and oversight of government.

(Remember that word "oversight.")

“Voting is an important component of civics. Voting involves studying candidates on the ballot to understand each candidate's position and qualification (and) directly affects how government functions by selecting the candidates to work in the government.”

In the United States we have a “representative government,” which yourdictionary.com describes as “an electoral system where citizens vote to elect people to represent their interests and concerns. Those elected meet to debate and make laws on behalf of the whole community or society, instead of the people voting directly on laws and other debates.”

At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. All 330 million of us can’t go to Washington every week to vote on legislation, so we elect people to do it for us. Ideally, as voters, we pay attention to the issues and the positions of the candidates and vote for people who will go to Congress and do what we want them to do.

Except when we don’t...and then they don’t.

It’s been a long time since I was in the fifth grade but I’m pretty sure there was no chapter in my civics book about secret Senate meetings in which 13 old white men would draft secret legislation that will affect tens of millions of people with no input from anybody, no hearings and no debate, then sneak it out to the floor at the last minute so that 51 people can vote for it unconditionally, even though it’s not what their constituents want. Most of the ones who vote for it won’t even read it to know what it says.

Similar legislation was passed by the House of Representatives a few weeks ago, although most of the House members didn’t read the bill over there, either. This was done even though only 17% of the population was in favor of the legislation. Now I could be wrong, but I don’t think 17% of the population qualifies as a mandate in the true spirit of “representative government.”

It’s pretty sad that elected representatives can so easily ignore the will of their constituents and vote for legislation that benefits their donors instead, but that’s the way things work in Washington. That’s not really news.

It’s sadder still that we as voters don’t exercise our part of the “representative democracy” equation – the oversight part where we hold our elected representatives accountable for their actions and vote out the ones who don’t represent our interests.

I’m part of the 83% who oppose draconian changes to the Affordable Care Act, especially the changes that will take health care away from millions of poor, elderly and sick Americans so that rich people can get a break on their taxes. I qualify as elderly and sick, and I’m poor enough that this legislation will hit me hard.

So if they pass this bill, I’ll do my duty as a citizen under a “representative government” and as soon as I can, I’ll vote against anyone who doesn’t represent my interests. (I’m looking at you, Shelley Moore Capito.) Unfortunately, they’ll only give me one vote. Millions of other people who missed civics class will be allowed to vote as well, and that makes me very afraid.

An attack on one of us really is an attack on all of us

Click the links for source material.

Yesterday, reacting to the shootings of a U.S. congressman and others at a baseball field in Virginia, House Speaker Paul Ryan took to the House floor to say this: "An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us."

That might have been a good speech if Ryan was talking about all Americans, but unfortunately, he was limiting his concern for members of Congress. I'd like to suggest to Paul Ryan and the rest of our political leaders that they need to broaden their scope.

For example, I submit that the December 14, 2012, shooting murders of 20 innocent school children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was not just an attack on those little children, but an attack on all of our children. When I heard about that mass killing and we began seeing photos of the dead children, I cried.

A lot of Americans, like me, took the Sandy Hook killing personally, especially when doctors reported on the amount of damage suffered by those little bodies when hit with multiple rounds from an assault rifle. I’ll spare you the details.

You could say the same thing about the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. An attack on one of those victims was an attack on all of us.

You can say it about the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, or the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, or Virginia Tech, or all the way back to Columbine High School… there are so many others I could list.

The point is, an attack on one of us really is an attack on all of us. If we’re not safe in school or the theater or a dance club or a baseball field, where exactly are we safe? The answer is “nowhere.”

Now, I’m not going to get deep into the gun debate again, because that’s kind of a lost cause. If Sandy Hook didn’t make us want to do something about guns then probably nothing ever will. But now that Paul Ryan and the other members of Congress have seen the gun violence problem up close and personal, I want to make a simple suggestion.

Please step outside your office building and look around. Mass shootings and gun violence are not just a problem when congressmen are the targets. It seems as if we have one every week.  In every case, they don’t affect just one of us, they affect all of us, so get away from the lobbyists, find a quiet spot where you can concentrate, and consider whether you think some action is required.

I realize you probably don’t care what I think and the NRA money is too good to pass up when you’re running for re-election, so you're not inclined to take any action while we’re all here on earth…but Paul, if you believe in Heaven, I’m pretty sure the 20 Sandy Hook children would be there right now, and I’m guessing that Wayne LaPierre and his cronies at the NRA – who put gun sales ahead of human lives – probably wouldn't make the cut.

What would your story be?

It’s not really self-destruction if somebody lit the fuse

Click the links for source material.

Some things that self-destruct:

* Certain kinds of land mines, naval ships and rocketboosters.

* Sigourney Weaver’s spaceship in the first “Alien” movie.

* Messages from the Mission Impossible Force to Mr. Phelps.

* Honey bees that die after they sting you.

* Dissolvable sutures.

* Patients of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Things that do not self-destruct:

* Obamacare.

Contrary to what you’re being told, Obamacare is not self-destructing. It may blow up some day, that’s true, and that day might come sooner than we think, but rest assured that if the Affordable Care Act does explode, it’s going to have a pair of tiny hands lighting its fuse.

Back in May, Faux President Donald J. Trump floated out one of his famous rumors, reportedly telling his advisors he wanted to pull the plug on federal subsidies that help pay premiums under the ACA. Doing so would send insurance prices soaring into the stratosphere for millions of covered Americans. For example, a woman I know pays $735 a month for her insurance and receives $660 a month in subsidies from Uncle Sam. Without the subsidy, her premium would be a ridiculous $1,395 a month.

On May 19, a White House official told CNBC that the government would continue to make subsidy payments through the end of the month, but had not made any commitment on further payments. “No final decisions have been made at this time, and all options are on the table,” the White House said.

Trump’s idea, according to Politico, was to dangle the subsidies over the heads of Senate Democrats and force them to negotiate with Republicans on a replacement plan for the ACA. In the real world, that would be called “extortion,” but in Washington it’s simply “politics.”

But wait! That wasn’t even the most nefarious part of Trump’s agenda.

Trump later said he would keep the subsidies in place for a while, but unfortunately, that news was too little and too late to stop some insurance carriers from dropping out of the Obamacare marketplace. You see, insurance companies – like the stock market – do not like uncertainty, and even the vague possibility that many of their customers could be priced out of the market has caused some of them to launch a pre-emptive strike and drop out in certain states.

Coincidence? I think not.

After the House of Representatives failed to vote on its first version of “Obamacare Repeal and Replace” back in April, it was rumored that an angry Donald Trump might try to sabotage the health insurance program and cause its premature death. What better way to do that than to discourage insurance companies from offering coverage and then blame the failure on Obamacare itself (wink wink, nod nod).

And now, to put the final strychnine icing on this arsenic cake, Trump and his pet puppy Mike Pence are flying around the country, meeting with “Obamacare victims” and making speeches that describe how Obamacare is about to self-destruct.

That’s not really what’s happening, but inventing an alternate universe is what Trump does best. As I said a few paragraphs ago, Obamacare may explode some day, but only because Donald Trump lit the fuse. I mean, even Sigourney Weaver had to pull up those big silver cylinders before the Nostromo went ka-boom.

When committing suicide, you don’t get 15 shots

It’s time for news reporters and pundits to stop saying the words “political suicide” when referring to Faux President Donald J. Trump.

The latest reference came last night when rumors began to spread that Trump was considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller. “I don’t think Trump will do that,” one pundit said. “It would be political suicide for the president.”

Political suicide? You mean like the time Trump insulted prisoner of war John McCain for being captured, or when he shamed that Gold Star family whose son died in battle? Times like that?

Or like the time he mocked the disabled reporter for the New York Times?

Or the time he admitted to sexual assault in the Access Hollywood interview? The pussy grabbing and all of that?

Or the fact that he operated a scam university for years, took people’s money, denied there was anything wrong and then settled out of court?

Or the way he continues to operate the White House as a profit center for himself, his children and his wealthy friends in violation of the emoluments clause?

Or the time he fired everybody who was investigating him, including the head of the FBI?

Or maybe the way he tries to bypass the legislative and judicial branches of government so he can rule the country like he’s the Most High Holy Potentate of Prevarication? 

Shall I go on? 

Does anyone think there is anything Trump could do at this point that would actually measure up to the phrase “political suicide?” I’m no expert on firearms, but when people kill themselves, I don’t think they get 15 shots, and if they do -- and survive -- well I’d call that person “bulletproof.”

Trump is continuing to do the things that Trump does best. He lies on demand, starts false rumors, deflects attention from real issues, tosses out threats to intimidate those who oppose him and does whatever else is necessary to cover up his involvement in Russia’s hacking of our election. Now he's even covering up the cover-up. 

He may or may not be considering firing the special counsel, but regardless we are well into our second news cycle in which Trump and his minions are trashing Mr. Mueller and the attorneys he has hired and have gone after James Comey as a “leaker” whose alleged indiscretion got us a special counsel in the first place.

None of that holds up to actual scrutiny but it will play well with the Deplorable 35 percent who would stand by and watch if Trump rolled up to their front door, stole their money, killed their dog, raped their wife, burned their house and kidnapped their children… and would still vote for him in the next election.

I don’t think for one minute that Donald J. Trump worries about political suicide. Why should he? He's dodged his 15 bullets and is still alive and kicking. Compared to what he has done (and gotten away with) in the last two years, the Watergate break-in was just an after-hours scavenger hunt by some Cuban drinking buddies and Nixon’s subsequent cover-up was only a fraternity gag.

We have to move Christmas to July. There is no other way.

This past December I bought some solar Christmas lights. I didn’t even know they existed until I stumbled upon them in Big Lots. I wanted to decorate an area that doesn’t have easy access to electricity, and I thought they would be perfect.

I bought two sets of lights, placed one set around my dusk-to-dawn light pole and the other along my driveway, and aimed the solar panels in the direction of the morning sun. After a full day of collecting the sun’s rays, the lights came on at dusk. They were beautiful. Being December, the lights came on when it got dark around 5 p.m. They were off by a little after 6.

Seriously? An hour and a half is all I get?

I thought maybe they needed to charge up for a few days, so I left them out there and waited. Every night was the same: on at 5, off by 6:30 at the latest.

I think you can see where this is going. The lights are called “solar” lights because they depend on the sun for power, and “Christmas” lights because you display them at Christmas time. Now raise your hand if you see the fundamental flaw in this design.

Got it?

Christmas is December 25. The shortest day of the year is December 21. There simply isn’t enough sunlight in this part of the country at that time of year to operate solar lights. After a few days, I took them down and, just for the hell of it, threw them over the railing on my deck. Last night, after a very sunny day, I looked out at 1:30 a.m. and they were still shining brightly.

So now I have the solution. We have to move Christmas to July. There is no other way.

Can someone drag that dead horse over here? And get my whip, too.

(Click the links for source material.)

Sorry, but I can’t pass this up. 

Two weeks ago, Faux President Donald J. Trump announced that his budget bill was moving smoothly through Congress. Unfortunately for him, there is no budget bill. There’s a page of talking points that his budget director used to talk about the budget…but there is no bill moving through Congress. It’s also not moving through the West Wing or the East Wing or the Department of Water and Sewer or the Mall of America.

The budget bill isn’t moving anywhere right now because there is no budget bill. What’s more, the president doesn’t write the budget bill. That would be Congress…and they haven’t done that yet.

Then yesterday, Trump held a ceremony where he pretended to sign a massive infrastructure bill, complete with an introduction from VP Mike Pence and a round of applause at the end. I hear that he even handed out pens to the crowd. But wait! You guessed it. There is no infrastructure bill. What he signed was actually a list of “principles” on air traffic control that has nothing to do with infrastructure, really, and is certainly not a bill.

Do you see what’s happening yet? This shallow, vacuous, narcissistic, paranoid con man who was accidentally elected president is in way over his head. He is so desperate for adulation and applause and pats on the back and reality-show-style “winning” that he’s making stuff up to make it look like he’s getting things done.

He is not.

And finally, if the phony legislation isn't enough to make you shake your head, today we got the coup de crazy. Remember that $110 billion arms deal Trump announced while visiting Saudi Arabia last month? "It's fake news," according to The Brookings Institution, the nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C

“I’ve spoken to contacts in the defense business and on (Capitol) Hill, and all of them say the same thing: There is no $110 billion deal,” wrote Bruce Riedel, Brookings’ senior fellow for foreign policy. “Instead, there are a bunch of letters of interest or intent, but not contracts. Many are offers that the defense industry thinks the Saudis will be interested in someday, (but) so far nothing has been notified to the Senate for review.”

According to Riedel, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency – the arms sales wing of the Pentagon – calls these so-called agreements “intended sales.” Not only that, he says, but none of them could be considered “new” because they all were initiated during the Obama administration.

“What the Saudis and the administration did is put together a notional package of the Saudi wish list of possible deals and portray that as a deal,” Riedel wrote. “Even then the numbers don’t add up. It’s fake news.” Moreover, he added, it’s unlikely that the Saudis could even pay for a $110 billion deal any longer because of low oil prices and their two-year-old war in Yemen.

So all of this once again begs the question: Just how crazy does someone have to be before he is proven unfit to be president of the United States? How long can someone continue to make up lies, distortions, alternative facts, phony legislation, fake deals and his own private reality before somebody does something about it?

I guess we’ll know if Trump starts tweeting that his phantom budget bill has been approved or his infrastructure program has begun or the first shipment of Black Hawk helicopters and Multi-Mission Surface Combatant Vessels has been delivered to Riyadh.

By the way, the Multi-Mission Surface Combatant Vessel that Trump claims to have sold to the Saudis is a type of frigate that’s derivative of a vessel the U.S. Navy uses. There’s one problem with this particular ship: It doesn’t actually exist yet, either. At least, not outside of the mind of Donald J. Trump.

Here’s more than 140 characters for Donald J. Trump to read

Dear Faux-President Trump:

I don’t like you very much. Let’s get that out of the way up front. I could list my reasons why, but that would take most of the day, and I’ve got a lot on my mind. You could read this blog to find out, but I know you don’t like to read, so that’s out of the question.

Even though I don’t like you, I am an American and I care about this country, and unfortunately, you happen to be the president right now, so I want to offer some suggestions that will solve two problems at once. First, they will make you appear to be somewhat presidential – and don’t you think it’s about time for that? – while actually making America great, as you promised you would do.

They say you like for things to be kept short and simple, so I’ll throw in some e-z-2-read bullet points to keep you from drifting off. I also know you like to see your own name a lot, and I’ve got that covered, too. So put down the phone and listen up, Donald J. Trump, because this is very important. Your future could be riding on it.

I offer these suggestions free of charge. You won’t have to pretend you’re going to pay me and then stiff me later.

* First off, Donald J. Trump, for the love of god, stop the tweeting. Stop it right now. Instead, use your phone to call some doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, the AARP, rural health clinicians, retirees, cancer patients, children with life-threatening illnesses and military veterans with catastrophic war wounds and invite them to lunch at the White House. Tell them you want to write a new health care law that addresses their concerns, and listen to what they have to say.

These are the people who will be affected if you repeal and replace Obamacare, so let them tell you – Donald J. Trump – what they need. Paul Ryan can’t help you with this; he doesn’t even understand how insurance works. Mitch McConnell is an obstructionist and an empty suit. He can’t help you, either. Once you understand how health care really works in this country, you can get some of these smart people to help you write legislation that might actually pass in Congress and do some good for the American people.

* Next, Donald J. Trump, ditch the chauffeured limousines and golf carts you normally ride in and get yourself into a truck. Don’t just sit behind the wheel and go “beep beep” for the photo op but throw on some jeans, boots and a flannel shirt, sit in the passenger seat with a long-haul trucker and head west toward California. Talk to the driver about his experiences traversing the infrastructure of America. Check out the roads and bridges and toll plazas the rest of us use and watch the trains that run alongside the highways. You want to fix infrastructure, right? First, find out what it is and what it needs. That’s the ticket, Donald J. Trump.

* When you get home, you’ll be ready to kick back and relax with Sean Hannity and the other sexual molesters from Fox News, but you won’t be finished just quite yet. Instead of Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin and the other village idiots you have dined with recently, invite some homeless people over for KFC. Get a few clients from the nearest Meals on Wheels chapter, a widow living on Social Security and Medicaid and a single mother working three jobs at minimum wage to feed her five small children. Have her bring along a couple of the kids, too, Donald J. Trump, to tell you about the meals they get at school.

Make sure your budget director is there as well, so the two of you can see the actual human beings who are affected every time you cut some social program to give you and your 400 closest billionaire friends another reduction in taxes. After dinner, you can start rewriting your budget.

* Finally, Donald J. Trump, give me a call here at home. I’ve got a whole lot of other ideas that I think could really help you in this job. Full disclosure: I used to be a journalist – you know, an enemy of the state – but I’m really not that bad. I have a pretty good brain myself, a decent enough I.Q. and I know a little bit about a lot of things. You see, I read, Donald J. Trump. When I want to know something, I read. I could teach you how if you’ve got time, and I know you do, judging by the number of rounds of golf you’ve been able to play since your inauguration.

So ring me up, Donald J. Trump. I’m retired so I’m available most any time. (Afternoons are best.) I can be there in a few hours, which will give you time to fire Steve Bannon and the other neo-Fascists who have been filling your head with treasonous nonsense for the past two years. Show him and Priebus to the door, send your kids out for pizza and order me a couple of bottles of cold Blue Moon. You’d like it. It comes with an orange.

We’ll sit down and come up with plan that really will make America great. We might even get the rest of the world to like us again…but that’s another whole letter. I’ll be writing that one to you soon.

Until we meet, I am sincerely yours…

Trump really does represent Pittsburgh…circa 1906

Taking criticism over his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement, faux-president Donald J. Trump said on Thursday he “represents Pittsburgh, not Paris.”  Surprisingly, I find this statement to be true, at least in part.

Donald Trump and his former-EPA-suing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt represent the Pittsburgh of the turn of the century – the 20^th Century – when the steel mills and factories were booming and the citizens couldn’t breathe. Here’s what it looked like then (click photos to enlarge):

Smoke pours from a steel mill, 1906.

Scenes from Downtown, 1940s

Back then the rule was commerce first and health be damned, which is sort of what Trump said he wants yesterday during his Rose Garden reality show. "This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States," he said. "Withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate."

Except when it does.

To be fair, I don’t think we’ll go all the way back to those smog-filled days of industrial pollution, but we did take a giant step backward yesterday by abandoning a “voluntary” climate change initiative signed by 194 of the world’s leading nations.

You know, world leaders like we used to be before Trump came along to Make America Paleozoic Again.

I have a saying that I may have made up myself or gotten from someone else (I forget), but it doesn’t matter because it’s my saying now. It goes, “You can never get where you’re going unless you take the first step.” This saying assumes that your first step is forward, of course, and not backward into an ugly past. The Paris agreement was one major step forward in combating global climate change. Trump’s withdrawal yesterday was one giant leap in the wrong direction.

I don’t know how far backward Trump will drag us before he is stopped, or when someone else will be elected to start moving us forward again, or how long that will take or whether I’ll even be alive to see it. I just know that we are losing more ground under Trump’s presidency than at any other time in U.S. history, save for such catastrophic events as the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the Wall Street crash of 1929, the Great Depression and the 9-11 attacks.

Congratulations, Mr. Trump. You’ve made the record books.

One man’s covfefe is another man’s joke

Pretend just for a minute that Barack Obama, while he was President of the United States, had accidentally tweeted, “Michelle and I are taking the kids and going covfefe…”

Everybody would have laughed. The media would have laughed. Facebook would have laughed. Twitter would have erupted with jokes... just like it did when Donald J. Trump accidentally tweeted that mysterious word the other night.

Covfefe.

If Obama had done it, Liberals would have laughed along with him and made convivial comments, like “Get a couple of fefes for me while you’re there” or “Be careful, an adult covfefe can be dangerous when disturbed,” while Republicans would have posted snarky comments suggesting in dog-whistle language that Obama, being black, was too stupid to operate a Twitter account and should be impeached (or hanged).

Sean Hannity would have conjured up a conspiracy theory that “covfefe” was somehow tied to Radical Islamic Terrorism and that the Muslim traitor Obama was sending a coded message telling ISIS where and when to strike America.

Obama, for his part, would have probably smiled and played along with the joke. He would have tweeted something the next day like “Had a great time at covfefe” or “After a hard day of being president, sometimes my fingers go off walking on their own.”  He would never have sent his White House press spokesman out to say that “the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”

Seriously, Sean Spicer? That’s the best you can do?

It was the perfect opportunity to show that Trump is at least partly human. Spicer could have made a joke. He could have said, for example, that “the media is always kidding the president about having small hands, so sometimes they just type covfefe.” He could have said it was something Trump learned on his foreign trip, like maybe when he put his hands on the Saudis' mysterious orb. He could have said almost anything except what he actually said.

In two weeks, it will have been two years since Trump and his wife descended the escalator in Trump Tower to announce that he was running for the Republican nomination for president. He has been on television every single day since, and not once in two years has he ever said he was wrong about anything, was sorry about anything, made a mistake about anything or is anything less than the planet's only perfect man.

In those two years he's proven himself to be good at making up lies but completely incapable of telling the truth or even making a simple joke, and I’m sick of it. I’m just so sick of it.

Today, we think he’s going to pull the United States out of an historic climate change agreement that involves nearly 200 nations around the world [UPDATE: He did.] so that his wealthy backers in the fossil fuel business can continue polluting the air and stuffing their pockets with cash. He’ll put us into a new Basket of Deplorables with only two other countries: Syria, one of the most deplorable places on earth; and Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not where I want America to be. Trump should be ashamed to even say those words out loud, let alone in an orchestrated Rose Garden ceremony on national TV, but he won’t be ashamed, and that’s the real shame of it all.

I keep writing that the things Trump says and does would be funny if they weren’t so sad, but Trump doesn’t do jokes, so there is no funny in Trump. The only exception, I thought, was when he rode the golden staircase to tell us he was running for President of the United States, but it turned out that joke was on us... and that was the saddest joke of all.