Bits & Pieces #91

 

We all knew that Rick Perry our Secretary of Energy was dumb as a post, but this week he proved it. This moron decided that he was smart enough to explain supply and demand to those in the nation that didn’t understand it. He isn’t!

His explanation of supply and demand was, if you create the supplies, demand would follow. Other than the fact that he got it completely backwards; if you create a demand someone will fill it, he isn’t really explaining what either one is. But this does not surprise us. Perry is just one member of our current cabinet, all of whom are in line to be President if those in front o them die, that Trump has appointed from among the least intelligent people to be found in this country. I guess it’s just Trump’s way of making sure that no one assassinates him.

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Watched Al Sharpton interview Jessie Jackson about the disaster that has become our Second City. Yes, Chicago has become a catastrophe, a city whose western and southern sections make Syria, Iraq and Somalia look like pleasant vacation choices. With no suitable housing, school closings, the highest black unemployment rate in the country, where drugs and violent crime reign and where during a 4th of July weekend there were 100 shootings in a six-hour period. Chicago has taken on the mantle of “terrorist city” because what is happening in Chicago is what real terrorism is all about.

 

Our pathetic President rails about terrorists getting into the country and killing Americans when we are killing more of our own than any terrorist could ever hope to kill. More American’s are killed in Chicago every week than any terrorist has managed since 911.

And in the midst of this unbelievable decay, Democratic Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, who for the last six years, reigned over the collapse of this formerly great city, has come up with a plan that is well meaning but so ridiculously conceived that one might ascribe it to a village idiot.

Rahm has decided that as of 2020 seniors leaving high school will not be allowed to graduate unless they have an accepted plan to go to college, start a job or enter the armed services. This is a plan that sounds great if you are as dumb as Donald Trump, but how the hell do these 16 to 18 year old kids, who can barely survive getting to school each day accomplish college with its staggering tuition, or a job in a place where there are no jobs? Why should they endanger their lives before they even start, by going into the military and fighting wars started by the likes of George Bush and Donald Trump, neither of whom managed to serve admirably?

Part of the problem is that half of Chicago is fat and sassy with good education, excellent housing, more jobs than can be filled and wealth. That half doesn’t seem to care about the other half and what else is new? They will only learn to care when poverty stricken, hopeless anger boils over and the south and west sides decide to burn the north side to the ground.

Yet this is not an unsolvable problem. Like any place in the world where there is poverty and terrorism the answer is simple; jobs, healthcare, education and housing. The real problem is getting those who can provide these things to understand how simple it is. Chicago is a huge city and the problem is on a scale that is beyond Chicago’s to solve. The city needs federal help even while our GOP led government is unable to get anything done and unwilling to expand to meet its own challenges. Chicago can be saved but it has to get help from Washington and as long as a fool like Trump sits in the White House, that help will never come.

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Watched Ted Cruz being interviewed and he’s still as slick as whale shit. Make no mistake Cruz is smart but he consistently uses those smarts for the wrong reasons. He has absolutely no moral center. He’s rattlesnake dangerous and morally as corrupt as any politician I have ever come across. His basic plan for saving the Senate healthcare bill is to offer multiple plans in each state with only one plan that covers pre-existing conditions. The problem is, that plan will be so expensive that no one will be able to afford it so pre-existing conditions, the bedrock of Obamacare, will never get covered. That will circumvent the whole idea of affordable healthcare.

Unfortunately Cruz is so slick that he can talk his way around many of the objections to his completely immoral plan. What he can’t do is prove it is better than single payer, tax financed, universal healthcare, which should be the only goal of this country. It is time that we caught up with the rest of the planet.

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Walter Shaub head of the Office of Government Ethics resigned this week claiming that he was basically being ignored by the Administration as they constantly violated the ethics guidelines, that his branch of the government was created to control. Quelle surprise! Though it looks like Shaub is a victim, a guy trying to do the right thing and getting punched around by the schoolyard bully, that doesn’t appear to be exactly the reality.

Shaub was accompanied on his interview by a clip of Reince Priebus threatening him over his public complaints about Presidential ethics violations. Shaub used this as one of the reasons why he quit. Please! When you are such a woos that Reince Priebus can bully you, it means you can barely stand upright by yourself.

It’s too bad that Obama wasn’t able to find someone with at least small balls to do the job to which he appointed Shaub. Shaub certainly wasn’t the guy to stand up to a serious bully like Trump if he couldn’t stand up to Priebus, a pathetic shadow of one.

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Trumpcare is a disaster the likes of which we have never seen. It s so bad that insurance companies, yes insurance companies, the most bottom feeding scum in the corporate universe, have come out with a joint letter condemning McConnell’s concept as never being able to work. Just to show what a bunch of scum the GOP has become, Mike Pence praised the plan for solving the problem of pre-existing conditions. This is such a cynical posture that it is not worthy of any kind of leader.

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Then there’s the great promise of this administration to Make America Great Again! Buy American, hire American! This administration will not support manufacturers who create jobs overseas.

Of course it’s all bullshit. Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka has a clothing company and nothing that is made by Ivanka’s company is made in the USA. It’s all made in the low cost labor markets in South East Asia and Africa; all in factories that abuse their workers. Trump has been in office 6 months, yet his daughter, ever mindful, as are all Trump’s, of their personal bottom line, has done nothing to bring her manufacturing back to this country. That’s how much Trump is helping to create jobs for all those suckers who voted for him because they thought he was going to create a job for them.

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On Tuesday the House unveiled a plan to fund Trump’s idiotic wall to the tune of $1.6 billion. That wasn’t good enough for Iowa GOP congressman Steve King who wants an additional $5 billion. Where would he get it? Even he doesn’t know but he wants to take half from the budgets of; Planned Parenthood, food stamps and other help programs. Then, just to prove that he really is the biggest moron in congress, King goes on to tell us that Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, one of those he would cut to finance he wall, has caused obesity in our country. Now, granted King would know a lot about obesity, bring from the state with the 12th highest rate of obesity in the country but it’s the fat between his ears that’s the real problem.

This is a perfect example of a terminally stupid idiot who is an avid Trump supporter pushing a piece of legislation that will hurt Trump’s voters most. After all, 10 out of the top twelve states with the highest obesity rates in the nation went for Trump; as did 7 out of the top 10 that need food assistance, plus many of the elderly and those in need of government supported care, all provided by the agencies that King wants to take from to fund Trump’s wet dream of a wall.

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Jay Sekulow, Trump’s lawyer was all over the tube again, being interviewed by everyone with a microphone and doing what he does best, lying! He was asked about the propriety of the Don Jr., Kushner, Manafort meeting with Russian agents in which the subject was dirt on Hillary. He didn’t answer the question of course, but he went off on a tirade about James Comey. Basically Sekulow is why people hate lawyers. He makes insurance executives look like good guys. He better be a better defense lawyer than he is a truth teller because from everything that is being revealed, his client, Trump, is a prime candidate for an orange jumpsuit.

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Mitch McConnell has delayed a vote on the Trumpcare bill because John McCain is in the hospital recovering from an operation. McConnell obviously hopes that when he leaves the hospital, McCain will vote for the bill. I wonder if McCain would be voting for the bill if he had to live under the terms of that bill and wasn’t covered by a special Congressional health care plan that leaves the legislators free and clear of all medical bills. I wonder is any of the legislators who want to vote to cut their constituents ability to pay for care would do so if they had to live under those rules?

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Watched Dr. Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services put the lie to the doctor’s oath, “Do no harm,” as he attacked Obamacare with a torrent of lies and half truths. When do the Republicans stop lying? When does some small modicum of reality return to politics? But it was in the revelation of the doctor’s organizations and even the insurance companies that were against the bill that he came up against his own lies. The capper was when it came out that all 50 state governors were unanimously against it; that even Price’s ability to lie his way out of anything ran up against a stone wall. This guy is charming and slick but he already proved though his act of submission to Trump at that disgraceful Cabinet meeting that he is not up to heading a department of the U.S. government. All he’s good for is kissing Trump’s ring.