1. I had a post written on what gifts Trump and the Republican Congress are giving to some in their base when it comes to the repeal and replacement of Obamacare (aka the ACA), but then I found that post already written, and better:
Take it altogether, and a sort of ironic picture unfolds. “The typical person who is going to lose the most in this scenario is a lower-income person in their 60s who lives in a rural area, where the person who gains is the affluent millennial urbanite,” Cynthia Cox, an analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. In other words, the Republican plan doesn't just screw the poor. It screws Trump voters in particular, while giving a hand to a lot of young people who probably voted for Hillary. Go figure.Paul Ryan is also a gift that keeps on giving wonderful presents to the middle-income-class Trump voters:
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday said he’s “not that concerned” about criticism of the wealthy getting a tax cut under the GOP’s new health care bill.He's not that concerned, because canceling those taxes was the whole point of the Republican campaign against the ACA. And neither is he concerned that the way to fund those tax breaks is by taking it off the skins of the poor.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Ryan it’s “kind of a hard sell” to argue the wealthy should get a tax cut under the American Health Care Act. Ryan brushed it off.
“I’m not that concerned about it, because we said we were going to repeal all the Obamacare taxes,” Ryan said. “This is one of the Obamacare taxes.”
2. I haven't written much on all those intricate Russian connections to the Trump campaign, because that is specialist work. But it all sounds like one of the John le Carre spy novels, except with idiots.
I can't quite adjust myself to the pre-election events, however: The powers-that-be, including the Democratic ones, knew of at least some of the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, yet chose to be silent, while Comey appears to have been the decisive factor giving the election to Trump and Putin, because he was not silent.
Well, at least we were saved from the conniving bitch and her email scandals!
3. While we focus, as is intended, on Trump's most inane tweets, all sorts of devious thing are taking place. Regulations are stripped of their power, including those which inconvenience firms over paperwork while trying to protect the health sand safety of workers. It will be interesting to see when food safety regulations are relaxed!
My point is not to argue that all regulations are useful and important. Sometimes regulations should be removed or rewritten, but the Trump principle of abolishing two for every new regulation enacted is stupid. It's also a fact that the corporate wing of the Republican party wants to strip those regulations first which make profit-making harder, irrespective of the true value of the regulations.
All in all, the surface horrors of the Trump Reich (the Muslim ban, the death panels in health care (heh), the Russian plot and the rise in hate crimes which some think are now allowed) serves to hide from us the many other things which are taking place.
It's nicer not to know, and that's one of my grievances with this whole Trump phenomenon. It is eating away the quality of my life. How does one take breaks from this horror reality show? I guess some go to Mar-a-Lago every weekend, to play golf on the taxpayers' buck.