the billy pulpit

We’re well past the current administration’s first 100 days in office. There was a lot of blather about his “accomplishments” (or really, lack thereof) during that period. Of course it’s an arbitrary number and historically pretty meaningless, but for some reason people put a lot of weight behind the significance of that time frame. I heard it originated with Kennedy’s presidency, but I’m not sure that’s true.

Anyhow, we’re watching this idiot dig an ever-deeper hole for himself every time he touches his phone to blast out another “real truth” to his base. I have to describe it that way because nothing else makes any sense. Virtually every pronouncement from him is either ridiculously self-aggrandizing or a diatribe against the unfairness of it all (the media, his enemies, Democrats, and the self-created Crisis du jour.) He’s been noticeably quiet in the last couple of days as Comey’s testimony before Congress unfolds; I can only assume that someone with self-preservation at the core of their motivation took his phone away from him, or convinced him to shut the hell up. I can’t believe a rational person, looking at what he’s tweeting, can conclude it’s actually helping anything other than throwing red meat to his base. Which, by the way, stays loyal to him while his popularity dwindles among the populace. (Remember that his hard-core base is actually quite small; he managed to get elected because enough people didn’t trust Clinton or were desperate for a change—any change—held their noses and voted for him.) He’s hovering somewhere around 33 or 34 percent approval, the lowest of any president in the history of polling at this point in their terms.

Most recently (as alluded to above), James Comey is laying out the case to Congress how Trump committed an impeachable offense by attempting to get him to drop the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn and Russian meddling in our electoral process. At least that’s one way of viewing his testimony; he responded when asked if he thought Trump was “obstructing his investigation” by saying that was up to the Special Prosecutor to determine. Of course Trump tried spinning it as a complete exoneration of himself, because Comey didn’t say that he explicitly directed him to drop his investigation, although Comey said he was clear that’s what the Liar-In-Chief was doing. As this investigation continues I am quite confident we will find out that Trump (or his surrogates) actively colluded with the Russians to hack the DNC email servers and seed false news stories damaging to Clinton as a way to swing the election his way.

But of course, with the Republicans controlling both Houses there is virtually zero probability of Trump getting impeached; they are too interested in getting their agenda of tax breaks to the uber-wealthy and a destruction of the safety net of the middle and working classes to want to have to kick Trump to the curb. After all, he’s the guy that has to sign their bills once they pass. It’s of value to note that an examination of the events that led up to Clinton’s impeachment proceedings were less damning than Trump’s; he was just trying to keep secret his affair with Monica Lewinsky and no one accused him of colluding with our most significant adversary in swinging an election. (And lest we forget, this moron actually tried to defend the betrayal of one of our staunchest allies when he shared intel we got from them with Russia!) It’s clear that their commitment to their ideology of limiting government is more important than what’s right for the country.

The Republicans in Congress should be ashamed of themselves. It’s well past time to impeach this buffoon before he causes irreparable damage.

When Dan Quayle was Vice President (under Bush the Elder) he made a number of gaffes that seemed to indicate he was dumb as a post; the most memorable when he “corrected” a sixth grader for misspelling “potato” in a spelling be, saying it had an “e” on the end of it when of course it doesn’t. (He later said he was going off of cue cards the school provided him which included the misspelling.) Either way, he was pretty thoroughly mocked and the conventional wisdom was that he was behind the door when intellect was handed out.

I’ve also read articles that ranked the various president’s IQ’s (or at least attempted to, since in most cases the actual IQ test results aren’t available, if they exist at all), and most of the time Bush the Younger’s IQ is shown to be pretty low. Low, compared to other presidents, to be sure; they all rank significantly above 100 (average), but only a few get up to the rarified 135 or above. Interestingly, a fair number are 130 or above, generally accepted as the level required to get into Mensa. Dubya was listed as between 119 and 124.
In both those cases, I’ve either read about or spoken to people who have no apparent axe to grind, who have stated that, in actual fact and based on their personal experience, both Quayle and Bush were quite articulate and intelligent and were made out to be stupid by a hostile press. And while I still find their politics contrary to mine, I’m willing to accept the possibility that the two may not have actually been as stupid as I thought them to be. (Note that I still think it’s just a possibility; I saw nothing myself that would lead me to think they weren’t dummies.)

But now we come to Trump. I’ve wrestled with this, for the simple reason that this guy pulls so many boneheaded moves and makes such ridiculous claims that it honestly makes me wonder if it’s all just an act and he’s really pretty smart. How could anyone be as dumb as he appears to be, and be a billionaire? (I’m fairly confident that he’s nowhere near as wealthy as he claims to be, but most people are willing to accept his net worth as being somewhere north of a billion dollars.)

But I’m becoming convinced he’s just simply stupid. His lying is of course well known. Some may say he’s simply exaggerating, but I think it fits the definition of lie: to say something as factual with full knowledge that it is not. But I’m talking about something a little different than lying (which of course is reprehensible, especially for a president); to claim something is true when it is ridiculously easy to demonstrate it as false qualifies as stupid in my book. To claim that his inauguration was attended by “the most number of people in any inauguration in history,” when a child could see otherwise by comparing the two photographs side by side of Trump’s and Obama’s inaugural crowd, is simply stupid.

It was in today’s news that Trump presented to the graduating class of the US Coast Guard Academy, and complained about how badly he’s being treated. He said “No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.”
Seriously? I think that oh, maybe JFK or Lincoln might feel that getting shot in the head is a little worse than having the press point out your lies.

I have tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I simply don’t see evidence of intelligence. Misogyny, arrogance, narcissism and perfidy, yes. But intelligence? Nope.

The House Republicans passed their “repeal and replace” bill last Thursday. This is the most current travesty that’s been foisted on the American people since Trump and his band of morons got elected. Their push to eliminate one of Obama’s signature accomplishments is a mystery to thinking Americans because of the popularity of the Affordable Care Act; well over half of the people in the US are in favor of it and an even higher percentage support the key provisions (such as the prohibition against denying insurance due to pre-existing conditions).

So what was driving this? Why vote to eliminate such a popular program?

One of the things that I’ve read in frequent reviews is that the Republicans in Congress painted themselves into a corner. They’ve positioned themselves as the “party of small government.” Since, like forever, Republicans have railed against the Federal government being involved in healthcare. They were opposed to Medicare when it was first proposed, and it was made into law over their votes and strenuous objections; they called it “socialized medicine” from the beginning and have continued to attempt to chip away at its provisions. It’s now become such a feature that any attempt to get rid of it is generally recognized as a sure-fire way to lose the next election.

But for years the Republicans have predicted that the ACA would wreak havoc on our society. Taxes would go through the roof, the economy would tank, companies would close their doors and people all over the country would lose their jobs as a direct result of ACA. Of course, none of this happened. In fact, the very people who the Republican party has appealed to over the last 30 years are the ones who most benefit from the provisions of ACA. The so-called “Red States” (deep south, rural midwest  and western states) have the highest percentage of people who are currently receiving benefits from the Federal government for their healthcare.

But rather than accept the reality that is represented by the experience of those benefiting from the ACA, Republicans are hanging on to their “small government” mantra. It seems that admitting that there are in fact some benefits from Federal government involvement would lead to such cognitive dissonance that it would call into question their other positions. For example that “trickle-down” economics doesn’t work (which, by the way, it doesn’t), or that states are always better at handling policy administration than is the Federal government (also not true).

So ideology gets to trump reality. (Pun intended.) Republicans would rather let millions  of people (upwards of 24 million by one bi-partisan estimate) lose healthcare coverage than accept that one of their foundational premises is wrong. To me, this is a travesty. And there’s the beginnings of rumbling that they may pay a price for it in getting booted out of office at the next election.

I can’t speak for what goes on in the minds of politicians, but it seems they are cravenly ignoring what’s right for their constituency to stick to a philosophy that’s been proven wrong.

Trump and his band of clowns (the scary kind, not the fun type) have been in power for a little over 2 months now and it’s turning out to be both worse and much better than I thought. Worse because it seems that every single day this incompetent moron digs himself deeper and deeper into a hole. His approval ratings are in the toilet; lower than any president in history at this point in their term. Ordinarily the American people take a “wait and see” attitude for the first hundred days or so, which keeps polls from tanking. And while it seems that the Trump loyalists are still hopeful that this bozo will start to fulfill his campaign promises, the majority of the country is beginning to realize just how badly they were misled. And it’s not just that his approval rating is in the toilet, but his disapproval rating is stratospheric. Since lack of approval may not translate to active disapproval, high ratings in this area are even more indicative of what a train wreck this administration is shaping up to be.

Trump is in full-throated blaming mode. Obama, Hillary, the Press, paid Democratic “agitators,” nefarious people from within his own administration who are leaking stories to the press and everyone else in sight is to blame for the mess in his administration. It apparently is beyond him to accept any responsibility, when it’s pretty plain that his own arrogance, stupidity, poor management skills, lack of ability to build a consensus (or even awareness that he needs one), and general incompetence are at fault. Look in the mirror, Donnie boy. I saw a photo of Steve Buscemi at a rally protesting one of the myriad boneheaded things Trump has done, standing next to a sign with a quote from The Big Lebowski that said “Shut the f**ck up Donny, you’re out of your element!” I’m a fan of that show anyway, but I got a kick out of how perfect John Goodman’s line (as Walter) to Buscemi’s Donny fits in a rally protesting Trump.

Anyhow, with all that weight on the “worse than I expected” side, it might be hard to see any rays of hope, but in fact there are. Trump’s massive failure to fulfill his campaign promise to “repeal Obamacare on my first day in office” is the first and most visible example. I’m not sure the whole thing can be laid at Trump’s feet because the Republican majority led by Paul Ryan drafted the “replacement” (if it could even be called that), and the Republicans are so fractured that they couldn’t agree on what was important to them. The far-right fringe of the party, the so called “Freedom Caucus” is made up of 32 members in the House and their position is that the Federal Government has no business in determining anything to do with health care; that should be left up to states and market forces. What they want is immediate repeal of the Affordable Care Act, putting us back to a market-driven insurance system and eliminating health care for the 13-million or so who didn’t have it before ACA. Presumably they would then work on the “replace” part, where Congress would come up with something. Presumably. The Freedom Caucus wasn’t happy with the plan Ryan came up with because it didn’t repeal ACA immediately. The moderates in the Republican party, able to look out their respective windows and see how unpopular they would be if they eliminated healthcare insurance for up to 24 million people (the OMB’s best estimates of the effects of Ryan’s bill), also balked, so it seems that Ryan managed to come up with a bill that nearly no one in his own party could support. Trump (The Great Deal Maker) weighed in with his much-touted ability to make deals and failed miserably, so Ryan pulled the plug on the bill to avoid an embarrassing down vote.

Add that cluster f**ck to Trump’s disasters in selecting people for his cabinet. (Remember that “Lock Her Up” Flynn resigned in less than a month when it became public that he lied to Vice President Pence about talking to Russians; it’s especially interesting to note that, apparently, Trump knew he lied to Pence; it only became an issue when the general public found out. So it was OK to lie to Pence as long as the public didn’t know.)

And the list of failures is growing. So Trump is finding out that he can’t just wave his arms around and make things happen. It turns out that being President is different than being CEO (SHOCKER!!) and he can’t bully people like he did in his business enterprises. There are actually rules that have to be followed.

And it seems that those rules, coupled with the well-known pattern of the government to move slowly on almost everything, means that many of the things Trump has promised to do may not actually happen. Another good example is his promise to “bring back all the coal mining jobs” to Appalachia. I get that the people living there are in abject poverty, and voted for him because they believed his promise to restore their jobs. But here’s the thing: the reason their jobs went away had nothing to do with government regulations, EPA, or Liberals. It was because of market forces. Coal is simply no longer needed the way it used to be. Natural gas is much cheaper and has been for years, so most of the power companies have switched away from coal to natural gas in their power plants. So even if the regulations against coal-driven pollution were completely eliminated, the market for coal is a fraction of what it used to be. Those jobs aren’t coming back. Trump, assuming he’s as smart as he claims, had to have known that and was cavalierly manipulating the emotions and preying on the hopes of the Appalachian voters. He lied, in other words.

What a surprise.

So even if Trump and his cronies get away with gutting the EPA and eliminating most of the regulations that protect our environment, it appears that existing forces may make those steps moot. And that’s a good thing.