Hope A Dope

The hope is the election in France. In electing Emmanuel Macron President the French gave Vladimir Putin the finger. They also reaffirmed their commitment to NATO, the EU and democracy. Congratulations and thank you France. I can only hope that voters in this country and elsewhere will follow your good example.

Dope is everything Trump and in particular the dopes who voted for him and continue to support him! Hoping you can change those dopes is bound to lead to disappointment. As Forrest Gump would say, stupid is as stupid does and you don't get stupider than a willful and unchanging ignorance.

I would like to follow Jon Stewart's example and tell the entire Republican Party to go screw itself, but they give every indication of doing that without my encouragement. They are doing it in regard to health care and they are doing it in regard to the connection between Trump, his campaign and Russia. Let's deal with health care first. The Republicans spent seven years lying about what they call Obama care and promising to repeal and replace it. Now they are in power and it has become quite obvious that doing away with the many things people like about the ACA is not going play well. The problem is that the Trump Chumps and others, many of whom do not reap the full benefits of the ACA because they were unwise enough to give control of their state governments to Republicans, do not want the government to be involved in health coverage.

A perfect example of the problem Republicans now have is the Congressman in my district, Paul Cook. I just received a “Legislative Update” from Congressman Cook. One of the questions asked on the first page of this missive is, “Do you support or oppose Obamacare?” I found this question rather odd because on page four is a paragraph entitled “Reforming Healthcare.” Needless to say that in that paragraph Congressman Cook follows the party line by stating his support for the repeal of Obamacare and “its replacement with something better.” He went on to say, “I had particular concerns with the original House Republican plan that was introduced earlier this year, particularly its potential effects on older and sicker Americans, but I will continue working with my colleagues to replace Obamacare and provide the American people with the sort of patient-centered quality health care they deserve”

And how did Congressman Cook continue working for the “sort of patient-centered quality health care [we] deserve? He did it by voting for the bill Trump supported and the House Republicans passed like a partially digested meal of flaming hot peppers. While this bill does not accomplish Mr. Cook's desire to repeal Obama care, it does kick millions people off of Medicaid, and it allows insurance companies in many states to charge prohibitively high rates because of preconditions. According to the CBO's report in March over 24 million people now covered by the Affordable Care Act would be deprived of health care coverage by this bill if the Senate passes it without changes, and it gives huge tax breaks to the rich! What more could you want? A bill that plucks money from the dying bodies of the neglected and untreated and then gives that money to the rich and greedy; you cannot get more Republican than that! Is this what Congressman Cook thinks we deserve?

Trump was so giddy over getting this bill passed by the House that he bussed the congressmen who voted for it to the White House to thank them. One really has to marvel at the optics of politicians cozying up to a President who 50% of the people disapprove of, and posing with him with big smiles of gratitude on their faces as he praises them for having the courage to vote for a bill that screws so many of their constituents. The Republicans are now lying about what the bill does, but the people who face sky high premiums or are denied coverage will soon know who to blame as will their families and friends. I will bet that a majority of the congressmen who voted for this abomination will avoid public meetings during the recess. Here is a hint for the morons screaming about free market health care coverage solutions: That is what we had before the ACA, and it gave us rapidly escalating premiums, outrageous coverage exclusions, denials of coverage based on what the insurance companies deemed to be preconditions, and coverage caps that denied coverage to people who were in the most dire need of coverage!

Every bit as disastrous as the Republican Health care bill is the so called investigation of Russia's interference with our Presidential election and the participation in that interference by people close to Trump. During FBI Director Comey's testimony before the Senate Committee Senator Grassley and others demonstrated that they are now part of the cover up. Senator Grassley revealed the Republican strategy for covering Trump' s ass in a letter to FBI Director James Comey that the Senator’s office made public Monday afternoon. In that letter Grassley called a plan to pay British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, to continue his investigation into the connection between Trump and the Russian government, “troubling.” In the warped world of Senator Grassely the proposed payment to Steele somehow became a partisan act rather than an indication that the FBI found much of the information in the dossier credible. It should also be noted that the FBI never actually paid Mr. Steele or relied on information in the dossier. This letter and Grassley's questioning of Director Comey during Mr. Comey's testimony was clearly a matter of Senator Grassley trying to disparage an independent investigation of Trump and Trump's staff.

And the obstruction continued during the testimony of Sally Yates and James Clapper. But despite continuing attempts to distort Mr. Clappers testimony and to portray Ms. Yates as an insubordinate partisan supporter of Hillary Clinton the fact is that the Trump administration received repeated warnings about General Flynn and either negligently ignored those warnings or chose to make him the Security adviser for other, probably much worse reasons. This makes Hillary Clinton's email scandal seem like nothing at all.

For me the obstruction of the investigations by Grassley and other Republicans is deja vu. Even during the hight of the Watergate hearings many Republicans did their best to defend Richard Nixon. This should serve as a warning to all of us about the need for an independent prosecutor and maybe a select committee of some sort. It should also serve as a warning to Republicans such as Senator Grassley who are trying to cover Trump's ass like a diaper. Diapers get soiled and when the stench becomes great enough the diaper will be removed and discarded. Just look at the results of the elections as the Watergate scandal unfolded.