The GOP Goes Nuclear!

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    Today Mitch McConnell, the most corrupt, most divisive, and most hypocritical Senate Majority leader of modern times pushed through the nuclear option to have Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, seated on the Supreme Court.  This means that the GOP has changed the rules for approving a Supreme Court nominee from a consensus vote of 60 to a mere majority of 51. This means Gorsuch will be sworn in without a consensus opinion of the Senate, and thus the American people.

    Invoking the nuclear option and okaying Gorsuch forever changes the Senate and perhaps the Supreme Court. He is a far right conservative, who may destroy the advances in civil rights, gay rights, women's rights and the environment, that we have all fought for over the years.  He definitely favors corporations over individual people, the wealthy over the poor and middle class and the extreme religious right over all else!  

    McConnel, for sure is gloating over his perceived victory, forgetting the atrocious behavior he exhibited in denying Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, because it was Obama's last year in office.  What this miscreant does not realize is that the GOP will not be in power forever! As early as 2018 the Democrats could regain control of the Senate and even the House of Representatives.  This could and most likely will come back to bite him in the ass.  

    Not only was his action to invoke the nuclear option extremely partisan and dirty politics, but it should never have happened at a worse time.  McConnell denied Garland a hearing as it was during Obama's last year in office, a partisan and ridiculous rule fabricated by the old goat. This is Trump's first year in office, but it could be his last. This nominee should never  be voted on because Trump is actively under criminal investigation by the FBI, for possibly treason!  The  vote should be delayed until after the FBI and Congressional investigations into Trump's ties with the Russian involvement in his election.  These investigations may discover that more people than Trump and his campaign staff and cabinet members were involved, but even possibly members of Congress and even Gorsuch himself.  It seems as if McConnell is pushing this through in hopes of covering his and other GOP leaders' asses!

We Really Should Be Afraid

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    What do all of the men in the above picture have in common?  They are or were brutal dictators that would do anything to stay in power.  Why should anyone reading this really care about this fact?  Well the terrifying answer to that question is because our current President has a tendency to admire such men!

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     Throughout his campaign Donald Trump has carried out a love fest with Vladimir Putin, the brutal authoritarian leader of Russia, who thinks nothing of murdering his political opponents or anyone who disagrees with him.  Trump has continued to lavish praise on Putin while attacking our democratically elected allies and members of our own government.   The Obama administration insisted that  the dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, must go if there is to be any peace agreement in the years old Syrian civil war.  Assad routinely kills his own people in order to remain in power. Only a couple of months in power, Trump has changed all of that and is willing to accept Assad's brutal regime.

    Trump has also said that China showed  "strength" in putting down the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests where approximately 300 people, mainly students, were killed by the Chinese government.  He even admired Saddam Hussein, for killing terrorists, without having to deal with the justice system.  He also admired the way former Libyan dictator, Qaddafi, used his strength do eliminate his opposition and terrorist elements in his country. Just recently Trump welcomed the leader of Egypt, el Sisi, who took power in a coup and has established himself as an authoritarian leader obliterating any opposition. While Trump may call these dictators "bad guys" or "evil" he obviously admires their mechanisms of holding on to power, while denigrating the democratic processes of our own country.

    In the very short period of time since Trump has been in office he has attacked the press as "the enemy",  a common practice of all dictators.  Throughout his campaign he brutally attacked anyone and everyone who opposed him or said anything negative about him.  Since being President he has attempted to control the news cycles to his advantage, while condemning all factual news as "fake news".  He has put members of his family into staff positions in his administration so as to have more control over his agenda.  Meeting with foreign heads of state and setting foreign policy, traditionally the responsibility of the Secretary of State, are now allocated to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has absolutely no foreign policy experience!  The Secretary of State is now just a figurehead, who doesn't event talk with those in his department!  Trump trusts no one, unless that person is a member of his own family, another trait of authoritarian leadership. 

   In the first few weeks of Trump's administration he signed a flurry of executive orders, mistakenly thinking that if he said they were law, they were law. His attempt at governing by decree!  He is now in the process of destroying everything that Obama had done during his eight years in office, obviously in retaliation for Obama making fun of him during a 2012 White House correspondents dinner.  The direction that the Trump administration is taking, to me,  is quite obvious. He is leading this country in the direction of establishing a strict authoritarian regime, with Trump, his family and a few rich oligarchs at the helm.  He is out to destroy our democratic way of life and he could succeed, especially with the help of the spineless Republicans in Congress.

    What is the next step?  I'm afraid to think! Could it be a war started by Trump to solidify his power and wiping out all opposition to his authority?  Could he stage a fake terrorist attack to give a reason to stifle opposition?  We really should be afraid!

American Coal Miners Can Go Back to Work, Unitl They and the Rest of Us Die from Pollution.

    
 

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    Today Trump rolled back regulations on coal mining and the amount of pollution coal burning facilities can release into the environment, thus fulfilling his promise to coal miners to bring back their jobs. These actions have squarely put America back into the 19th century!  I feel sorry for coal miners who have been out of work because of a lack of jobs, but let's face reality, coal mining and coal powered energy plants are a thing of the past.  Burning coal is a filthy destructive process that is being abandoned by the rest of the world.  There is no way to make coal burning cleaner.  Coal miners, traditionally have gone right into the coal mines as soon as they were able to quit school. They have historically lacked the education or the skills to do anything else other than mining coal.  It may sound cruel, but it is their own fault for not preparing for the demise of the coal industry.  Because of their inability to adapt to the changing workforce, coal miners are forced into doing a job that will eventually kill them.  When regulations that were enforced during Obama's years, are rolled back, owners of coal companies will no longer have to pay attention to the health and safety of their workers. 

    Trump's supporters, will no doubt hail him as the savior of their jobs and the coal mining industry, but in reality they are the losers.  He cares nothing about them, their health or their jobs.  All of this deregulation benefits not the coal miners, but the owners of big businesses, who are now free to spew as much pollution into the environment as they wish,  in order to create even larger profits.  What  is even worse, is that once these coal miners begin to suffer from the health hazards of their industry, the Republicans will have succeeded in taking away their healthcare! When they die Trump will shed no tears!

Obamacare is the Law of the Land

 

    After the Republicans were unable to even take a vote on their repeal of Obamacare, House Speaker Paul Ryan admitted defeat by declaring that "Obamacare is now the law of the land".  The Republican's replacement for Obamacare, Trumpcare, was only favored by 17% of the American people, a dismal failure.  The Democrats did not at all support the bill, while moderate Republicans were against it because too many people would be hurt by it and The Freedom Caucus (the former Tea Party) thought it was too generous and too much like the original Obamacare. Apparently the Freedom Caucus doesn't really give a damn how many poor people dies, as long as there  is a windfall for the wealthy! 

    Immediately after the defeat Trump blamed everyone but himself. He blamed the Democrats because they did not support the bill, while in actuality the Republicans are in the majority and do not need a singe Democratic vote! At first Trump didn't blame Ryan, but just today he changed his mind and placed the blame on Ryan, suggesting he resign. If anyone needs to resign, it's Trump! Trump then totally gave up on offering a decent healthcare bill and decided  to move on to something else to occupy his short and shallow attention span.  He was surprisingly calm about his epic failure, which is quite uncharacteristic. He did however, say he would wait for Obamacare to completely implode, which was a veiled threat that he would do everything in his power to destroy it, regardless of how many people, both his supporters and non-supporters, would suffer.   His whole life he has been a very vindictive person and he is going to retaliate for his failure and take it out on the American people, if he can.

    The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not offer its citizens free healthcare, instead it has the highest healthcare costs in the world, so that CEOs of big pharma and healthcare insurance companies can receive outlandish pay packages.  The Republicans have had over 7 years to come up with a plan that would benefit the American people by offering decent affordable healthcare and keeping costs down, but all they could come up with was a plan to benefit the wealthy, while taking away healthcare from 24 million people and punishing older people, children, middle class families and women! How compassionate of them! 

     For the past 7 years they have promised to repeal Obamacare, the first and only healthcare plan for the American people, which just happened to be from the first Black president.  They succeeded in replacing the actual name of the plan, the Affordable  Care Act, with the name of the Black president who gave it to us, thus linking it to Obama and pandering to its racist base.  It is unbelievable how so many people support the ACA, but not Obamacare!  There is only one sensible solution to the Republican healthcare plan and that is to change the name to something associated to a white person, instead to a person  of color. Perhaps, call it White America Health Plan for Real Americans!  Then all of the GOP and surely all of Trump's supporters can support it!  But the best thing this country can do for its people is to offer healthcare for everyone under Medicare. This will never happen because with the Republicans in Congress, if anything is to be done for the Average American, a hell of a lot more has to be done for the wealthiest of Americans who don't need it!