Only four days into 2018 and questions abound

It’s four days into a new year, and I’ve got questions. Here are a few:

Just how crazy is too crazy to be the president of the United States? I mean, what exactly is the scale on that? What do the charts look like and when does the insanity go off the charts? When does it become clear that we made a big mistake last election and now we need to fix it? When do you step up to the plate and say, “My country comes before my party?”

Already in 2018:

* Faux-president Donald Trump has tweeted that his nuclear button is bigger and more powerful than Kim Jong-Un’s. That may be one of the 10 most absurd statements ever uttered (or tweeted) by an American president. It’s the kind of thing I can hear Leslie Nielsen saying in one of his spy-spoof movies just before he blasts Andy Griffith into space. Seriously, what’s next, Trump and Kim trading dick pics?

* Then we have the book, Michael Wolff’s tell-all tome about the Trump White House in which he asserts – among other things – that Trump wanted to lose the election and use his celebrity to start his own TV network, thought he could name one of his children Chief of Staff and found the White House so "scary" that he hid out in his bedroom. On another subject, he bragged about sleeping with his friends' wives, saying it made "life worth living."

Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon is quoted extensively in the book as saying things like Donald Trump Jr. will be “cracked like an egg on national TV” because of the Russia investigation and that the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer was “treasonous,” “unpatriotic” and “bad shit.” Trump reportedly went ballistic when excerpts were made public and instructed his lawyers to sue Bannon for libel, slander and breach of confidentiality.

* Next up is Trump’s decision to terminate his Voter Fraud Commission, an investigative body created for the sole purpose of “proving” that Trump received more legitimate popular votes than Hillary Clinton, and that her supposed margin of victory was the result of illegal voting on a monumental scale. He blamed the panel’s demise on states that withheld critical information and not on the realization that no evidence of fraud could be found. The fact that Hillary out-polled him nags at Trump like an itchy rash that won’t go away, and it probably always will. In Trump’s mind, he really did get the most votes…just like the crowd at his inauguration really was the biggest ever.

* Last but not least is Trump’s Twitter pronouncement that on Monday, he will announce “the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year.” He says subjects will include dishonesty and bad reporting in various categories from the “Fake News Media.” I predict that we’ll hear words like “failing New York Times,” “Amazon Washington Post,” “dishonest CNN,” “very low ratings” and “on its last legs,” as well as “total lies,” “completely false,” “didn’t happen,” “witch hunt,” “fabrication,” “no collusion,” “30,000 emails” and “totally vindicated.”

All of this happened in only four days. In my mind, any one of these events should be sufficient for Congress to call in a team of psychiatrists to evaluate the president’s mental health, and probably to initiate removal proceedings under the 25^th Amendment. That is, if Congress had any ba…, uh backbone, which of course they don’t, so on and on it goes.

Here’s another question I have, and Paul Ryan, I’m looking directly at you. For many years, during his quiet moments and even his not so quiet ones, House Speaker Ryan has dreamed of the day he could shepherd through Congress a major tax cut for wealthy Republican donors, followed by legislation to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security under the guise of reducing the deficit. All he needed was Republican control of both houses of Congress and a president who would sign the bill.

He has that now, but the president happens to be unstable, unhinged, irrational, unreliable, uneducated, untrustworthy, unbelievable and unqualified for the office he holds. His vice president, meanwhile, is perfectly capable of holding a pen and scribbling his signature on any piece of paper Congress shoves under his nose...as long as he doesn't have to do it with a woman (not his wife) in the room. He may be a religious zealot and a shameless bigot, but he gives Republicans the bill-signer they require without all the crazy.

So now that Ryan has his major tax cut with Trump’s signature on the bill, what’s keeping him and his House majority from thanking Trump for his service and then sending him away with lovely parting gifts, including the greatest impeachment of any president in history? It beats the hell out of me.

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Oh, yeah, I have one final question: Speaking of Paul Ryan, when he talks openly about cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to reduce the deficit that Republicans just expanded with this joke of a tax bill, does he not know that we can hear him? He’s talking about government programs that happily accepted our money when we paid into them all of our working lives on the promise that we’d get it back with interest during retirement, when we really need it to survive.

There are tens of millions of us out here, Paul, and we can hear you. Make no mistake about that. So go ahead. Try to take away our income, our medical insurance and our livelihood and see what happens. You think town hall meetings were hostile over Obamacare? This is my life you're messin' with, pal, so you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.