Tag Archives: America

Idle Thoughts, Small Actions

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As we get further away from that horrific night in November, most of us are probably thinking less about why the Electoral College went the way it did (go to hell, Comey!). We’re also thinking less about the way things might have been. Instead, we’re freaking out about what’s happening now and what’s coming our way.

I haven’t been to any marches or demonstrations yet, but like many of us, I’ve contacted my members of Congress more than ever before. Today I called one of our Senators, although he’s a Democrat, to thank him for delaying a committee hearing on one of T__’s dangerous cabinet selections and to encourage him to do whatever he can to stop the appointment of a racist ideologue as Attorney General (that’s the jerk even Republicans thought was unqualified to be a Federal judge).

People are saying that Congress is being inundated with complaints about the monster(s) in the White House, so it was reassuring that getting through to one of my Senator’s offices wasn’t easy. The line was busy at his office near me, so I called his office in Washington. I was about to leave a message when a recording said his voicemail was full and couldn’t take any more messages. So then I called his remaining office, which is in a less populated part of our state. A nice young woman immediately answered the phone. She assured me that she’d transmit my message to Washington.

Some activities are less immediately practical than contacting Congress. Fantasizing, for example. I’ve entertained the usual fantasies, of course, such as T___ suffering a debilitating stroke or a fatal fall down some White House stairs; a benign military coup leads to a do-over election; and my favorite, that very smart, very kind beings from outer space take control and put us on a more reasonable path, one that includes single-payer health insurance and a fix for global warming. I’ve had a few other fantasies too.

One is that Rupert Murdoch, the evil billionaire who will be 86 next month, finally kicks the bucket and a more reasonable mogul or two purchase The News Corporation and 21st Century Fox. That would inevitably lead to entities like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post becoming reputable organizations again, cutting off the stream of Murdoch-owned right-wing propaganda that has poisoned our democracy in recent years.

Another is that the CEO of Twitter,  Jack Dorsey, known to Twitter-ites as “@Jack” and who has contributed to Democratic politicians, admits that allowing T___ to have an official Twitter account presents a clear and present danger to the rest of us. It would be fine to let Donnie tweet as much as any other deranged right-winger, but he shouldn’t have a verified account that identifies him as “@realDonaldT___” or “@POTUS” (the President). That way, whenever Donnie transmitted his latest lie or insult, it wouldn’t have any effect on anyone but a small circle of nitwits. Nobody could possibly believe it came from the actual President of the United States.

Yet another of my fantasies involves the U.S. Senate. There are now 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats or Independents in what used to be a relatively reputable legislative body. If three of those Republicans were to declare themselves Independents and vote with the Democrats, the Republicans would be the minority again. They’d only have the House of Representatives to play with. Of course, controlling the Senate wouldn’t allow the Democrats to get much done (that’s in the official rules), but they could make sure T___ and his allies did less damage.

Finally, now speaking of other people’s fantasies, I recently took a tiny step toward correcting the fantastic beliefs of the sorry individuals who inhabit the Fox News and Breitbart websites (Breitbart is the far-right, white nationalist outfit that tells T___ what to do). It’s extremely unpleasant to visit those two sites, so I don’t recommend this to everyone. But I now leave the occasional comment, just to let some of them know there’s a real world out here. It’s rather like descending into Plato’s cave and removing the chains from poor souls who have never seen the sun or the sky. It’s a very dirty job, but we’re living in times that require direct action.

One Week and Floundering

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Eight days ago, before the inauguration, we already knew a couple of things (roughly quoting Richard Yeselson of Dissent):

  1. Our new President is an authoritarian, mentally-ill ignoramus, uniquely unfit and dangerous.
  2. The Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Given (1) and (2), I can’t think of anything since the inauguration that’s been more than a mild surprise. Given who he is and who his fellow Republicans are, what did we expect?

I’ll mention a few things anyway:

He gave an interview to a TV network other than Fox. Many observers thought he came across like a crazy person. One said it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. Although many of his supporters probably enjoyed it. There’s a transcript of the interview here.

He’s still using Twitter and his outdated, easy-to-hack phone. He still spends a lot of time watching television and occasionally tweets in response to what he just heard, sometimes repeating exact phrases. One reporter said the tsunami of leaks from the White House make the President sound like a “clueless child”. I think he sounds more like an angry old fool with a severely damaged ego.

He has signed some executive orders, as new Presidents always do. For the most part, these have been aimed at impressing his supporters and may never amount to anything (he can’t get billions of dollars to build a wall by issuing an executive order). An exception is the one that will limit funding for overseas healthcare providers (the abortion “gag-rule”). It’s even worse than similar orders issued by other Republican Presidents. (Vice President Pence, who is an extreme foe of abortion rights, probably had a lot to do with it.)

Of course, that terrific replacement for the Affordable Care Act that he promised to announce in a day or two hasn’t been announced yet. But someone in the administration did take a concrete step regarding the ACA: they canceled an advertisement intended to get people to sign up for health insurance by the January 31st deadline. 

Meanwhile, The Washington Post obtained a secret recording of Congressional Republicans talking about the Affordable Care Act. It demonstrates what we already knew: they don’t know what parts of the ACA to repeal or what to replace those parts with. It’s great to hear them speak honestly for a change, so I’ve attached some choice excerpts at the bottom of this post. 

On the impeachment front, the President isn’t bothering to hide his eagerness to cash in on his new position. He doubled the membership fee at his Florida resort from $100,000 to $200,000; announced plans to build several more hotels in the US; and only plans to stop immigration from Middle Eastern countries where he doesn’t do business or doesn’t plan to (Iran bad; Saudi Arabia – where the 9/11 hijackers came from – good). A lawsuit has already been filed against the President regarding his foreign business dealings. You can read an explanation by one of the lawyers involved here and can see the formal complaint here.

Finally, the President’s spokesman announced that Mexico would reimburse us for the Wall sometime in the future, but in the meantime, companies that import stuff from Mexico (like fruits and vegetables, beer and cars) would pay for the wall through a new 20% import tariff. After it was pointed out that the tariff would be passed along to American consumers in the form of higher prices, the proposal was discounted as merely one of several ways we, not Mexico, could pay for the Wall, which, by the way, Republican politicians in Texas aren’t crazy about anyway.

As a result, and maybe in recognition of the fact that the Executive Branch of our government is now in the hands of knavish fools and foolish knaves, the President of Mexico canceled his visit to Washington.

Oh, and the President wants an investigation of the 3 million people, all of whom he knows voted for his opponent, because that’s how many more people voted for Hillary. Buenas noches, amigos.

As promised, excerpts from the Washington Post article based on that secret recording:

[A Representative] worried that one idea floated by Republicans — a refundable tax credit — would not work for middle-class families that cannot afford to prepay their premiums and wait for a tax refund…

[Another said] “It sounds like we are going to be raising taxes on the middle class in order to pay for these new credits.”

 … A freshman congressman … warned strongly against using the repeal of the ACA to also defund Planned Parenthood…

Of particular concern to some Republican lawmakers was the plan to use the budget reconciliation process — which requires only a simple majority vote — to repeal the existing law, while still needing a filibuster-proof vote of 60 in the Senate to enact a replacement….

… They did not have a clear plan on how to keep markets viable while also requiring insurers to cover everyone who seeks insurance.

[A Senator asked:] Will states have the ability to maintain the expanded Medicaid rolls provided for under the ACA, which now provide coverage for more than 10 million Americans, and can other states do similar expansions?

[A Representative] worried that the plans under GOP consideration could eviscerate coverage for the roughly 20 million Americans now covered through state and federal marketplaces and the law’s Medicaid expansion: “We’re telling those people that we’re not going to pull the rug out from under them, and if we do this too fast, we are in fact going to pull the rug out from under them.”

They are also still wrestling with whether Obamacare’s taxes can be immediately repealed, a priority for many conservatives, or whether that revenue will be needed to fund a transition period.

And there seems to be little consensus on whether to pursue a major overhaul of Medicaid — converting it from an open-ended entitlement that costs federal and state governments $500 billion a year to a fixed block grant…. doing so would mean that some low-income Americans would not be automatically covered by a program that currently covers 70 million Americans.

I Wish I’d Said It This Well

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Paul Waldman writes for The Washington Post. His new column echoes much of what I posted yesterday with the title “On the Bright Side, ACA-Wise”.

Only Mr. Waldman writes for a living and has an editor, so you might want to take a look. His piece is somewhat optimistically called “Donald T___ may have just destroyed the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare”. Please don’t tell him or his paper that most of it is available here. I’m going to have enough trouble because of this:

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Quoting Mr. Waldman:

When even the most committed Republicans came around to support Donald T___ in 2016, they made a kind of bet. It wouldn’t matter much that T___ had no apparent fealty to conservative ideology or that he was a complete ignoramus about policy, because he’d be leaving all that boring stuff to them. The Republican Congress would pass its agenda, he’d sign whatever they put in front of him, and they’d all live happily ever after.

But now it’s not looking so simple. In fact, T___ just dealt a huge blow to their top priority: repealing the Affordable Care Act. Accomplishing repeal without causing the GOP a political calamity is an extremely delicate enterprise, and the last thing they want is to have him popping off at the mouth and promising things they can’t deliver. Which is what he just did:

President-elect Donald T___ said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody”….

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” T___ said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better”.

We should begin with the assumption that nothing T___ says can be taken at face value; the “plan” that he claims is being devised could be no more real than the secret plan to defeat the Islamic State he used to claim that he had formulated. But that’s not the point. What matters is this: Donald T___ just emphatically promised universal health coverage. That’s an absolutely gigantic promise, and it’s one that Republicans have no intention of keeping.

But now they’re stuck with it. Democrats will be saying, “President T___ promised that everyone would be covered!” every day for as long as this debate goes on. Every time a congressional Republican is interviewed on this topic, they’ll be asked, “President T___ said that everyone would be covered. Does your plan do that?”, and they’ll have to bob and weave as they try to avoid admitting the truth.

That’s because the Republican plan, in whatever final form it takes, will absolutely, positively not cover everyone. Universal coverage isn’t even one of their goals. Republicans believe it’s much more important to get government as far away from health care as possible. In place of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for the purchase of insurance that have extended coverage to 20 million more people…, they’ll be offering some tax credits and health savings accounts, which would be very good for the healthy and wealthy, but not so great for other people.

They call this “universal access,” which is meant to sound like “universal coverage” but is actually nothing of the sort. The truth is that there are really only two ways you can achieve universal coverage: by having the government cover everyone in some form of single-payer, or with a set of extremely coercive mandates to carry coverage, much more coercive than the ones in the ACA. Republicans would rather pluck out their own eyes than agree to either one of those. So the trick is to make the public think they won’t take away coverage from tens of millions of people, while doing just that.

That requires some rhetorical subtlety, which is something T___ is just not capable of…. T___ says whatever comes into his head, and whatever seems like it might be popular. People hate out-of-pocket costs, so he promises low deductibles. People don’t like the idea of tens of millions losing their coverage, so he promises that everyone will be covered.

And now, congressional Republicans are going to have to answer for breaking a promise they didn’t even make. At a moment when opposition to the repeal of the ACA is gathering strength, this was the last thing they needed.

I don’t know if it will be so hard for Republicans to admit they’re not offering universal healthcare or “insurance for everybody”. Making stuff up is part of T___’s act and they can always say he “misspoke”. In addition, they’ll claim that their plan will insure almost everyone through the miracle of untrammeled competition (sure, competition between giant corporations that avoid price competition if at all possible). And T___ will keep saying he’s solved the healthcare problem even though it’s obvious he hasn’t.

But it still seems like a good thing that he keeps saying he wants what we want and what sleazeballs like Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan don’t. In parlous times, we must thank the Lord for small favors.

Submitted For Your Approval

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Many of us with gray hair find it almost impossible to encounter a bizarre situation without invoking the title of an ancient television show. It ran from 1959 to 1964 and was in black and white. The program was created and hosted by Rod Serling (1924-1975), a talented writer and Unitarian from upstate New York with a reputation in the TV industry as an “angry young man”.

Sometimes the best part of a Twilight Zone program was when Serling appeared on screen to introduce the show and then later to comment on the weird or scary stuff that just happened. And there was that great theme music!

Given the recent tragedy, it’s safe to say that millions of Americans, including whoever created the image below, had the exact same thought: “It’s like we’re in The Twilight Zone“.

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To worldwide acclaim, a reporter for Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper named Damien Love used his “TV Highlights” column to brilliantly say the same thing (text below):

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 “After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories – among the most common is the “What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War” setting – but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present. The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.”

Believe it or not, that was all preface to what I really wanted to share today. 

Some linkages between The Twilight Zone and the current crisis aren’t so successful:

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We’ll have to wait and see if the Republican Party committed suicide or not, but the real problem here is that Rod Serling never opened The Twilight Zone with “Imagine if you will”. Nor did he say “Consider if you will”, although he sometimes asked us to “imagine” something.  

How do I know this? Because we have Wikiquotes and internet browsers with a “Find” feature. 

It’s amazing but true. One or more devoted souls have transcribed everything Rod Serling said during the five-year run of The Twilight Zone. You can read every word right here.  

Mr. Serling once said “Pleased to present for your consideration”, but it turns out he preferred the word “submitted” as in “Submitted for your approval”:

“Respectfully submitted for your perusal, a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of 350 pounds. Origin: unknown.” (“To Serve Man”, March 2, 1962)

“Submitted for your approval: the case of one Miss Agnes Grep, put on Earth with two left feet, an overabundance of thumbs and a propensity for falling down manholes.” (“Cavender Is Coming”, May 25, 1962)

“Major Robert Gaines, a latter-day voyager just returned from an adventure. Submitted to you without any recommendation as to belief or disbelief.” (“The Parallel”, March 14, 1963)

“Submitted for your approval or at least your analysis: one Patrick Thomas McNulty, who, at age forty-one, is the biggest bore on Earth.” (“A Kind of a Stopwatch”, October 18, 1963)

He also liked “picture”:

“Picture of the spaceship E-89, cruising above the thirteenth planet of star system fifty-one, the year 1997.” (“Death Ship”, February 7, 1963)

“Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, ‘in a quiet desperation.’ (“A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain” (December 13, 1963)

When we used to listen to Mr. Serling’s clipped, sonorous tones each week, we supposed the present age would feature marvels like a three-day workweek and astronauts voyaging to Jupiter and beyond. Some things have turned out better than expected, but we haven’t cured the common cold, it’s legal to parade around with a six-gun on your hip in much of the United States and a mentally-ill game show host in thrall to a foreign dictator will soon be the Commander-in-Chief. I mean, it’s like living in The Twilight Zone.