Dysfunction, incompetence, and inconsistent.

The President had a good week.

He has gotten his Supreme court nominee onto the court, at great cost to the republic, but he got it done. The sacrificing of the filibuster, a long-held tradition of the United States Senate, and any hope of a less polarized congress was the casualty. He doesn’t care too much. That has been his dysfunction, he doesn’t care about much.

On Monday, he said he didn’t care about whether Assad stayed in power in Syria or not, Friday he wages war against Assad and possibly Russia. We could call it inconsistent, you might give him a pass on that since I might have changed my mind considering the atrocity unleashed by Assad, but I wonder if he thought the whole thing through. It doesn’t look like it.

The real inconsistency is his work on his health care plan, he said “everyone covered for less money, go to any doctor you want,” to negotiating with the “Freedom” caucus to take away health insurance from possibly more people than had gained it under the Affordable Care Act, with the likelihood of higher premiums with less coverage. All he wants is a win.

As of today, of the 553 key positions that must be approved by the Senate Trump has only nominated 24. There are 28 more who have been announced but not yet sent to the Senate for approval. This is only part of the 1200 positions that require Senate approval. There are another 3800 or so total political appointees that have not been sourced. The reason for this is some kind of loyalty test that many potential candidates have failed. What about qualifications for the job? Is he willing to substitute competence for loyalty? Just that he hasn’t made the appointments is incompetent.

With the failure of their health care bill and any compromise on the horizon. Any tax bill looks to be just another fight among the Republicans, I don’t hold out much hope that the Republicans will be able to govern at all for the next 2 years. They’ll get some small things done. Repeal any climate saving rules for the oil and coal industries that were imposed by President Obama, make some rich people richer by making it easier for banksters to siphon off money from our retirement accounts. But they won’t be able to pull off the big transfer of power and wealth to the already obscenely rich and obscurely powerful.

I feel that If Mr. Trump survives his first term, and we have not had a nuclear event, a major war, or a financial meltdown, I am expecting one or more of these. I will consider his presidency a success. The United States will have dodged a bullet.

The best part for me, of this dumpster fire of an administration, is that we may never again have to hear “why don’t we let a business man run the government” Clearly that is a bad idea.

Why the health care bill should pass.

What I think has not been said enough and/or really misrepresented is that health care reform is the first step in trying to contain our national debit. The bill according to the CBO will reduce spending by 100 billion dollars over 10 years. Teabaggers say they are concerned about government spending and the national debit and in the same breath say they don’t want any changes to Medicare. Republicans have been trying to gut Medicare for 40 years. I don’t understand why they don’t take this opportunity to do what they have wanted to do. Medicaid & Medicare are in hard financial straits. They will not be collecting enough money to support their obligations in a few years. If we don’t do something soon both programs will need emergency funding or leave millions of seniors and disadvantaged to suffer in the streets.

I believe this president will get our financial house in order but health care is the elephant in the room (excuse the pun). It has to be tamed because it is the largest entitlement program the US operates and is loosing money the fastest. If we can’t get health care under control everything else is window dressing? It has to get done!

The sooner we get past this issue the faster we can get to jobs and banking regulation. Americans need to get these two tasks done. They are angry and frustrated that they haven’t been dealt with. Banking and Health Care are two issues that business leaders are waiting to see what the future holds. They can’t react until something is done and the longer these issues hang in the public eye, the more they wait to do anything, including investment and hiring.

Besides, I think everyone is sick of just hearing about it any more. I know I am. The problem is Republicans are already talking about ditching the bill entirely. The selfish bastards have an issue in the short run. But it may come to bite them in the ass if they continue to stonewall. If Dems ask them again publicly and loudly for constructive input and they refuse to support any health care bill while the democrats are in the majority then they are again only working for their political gain and not for the American people.