President Camacho

I've got too much on my plate to focus too much on politics or the latest Trump disaster. I have said it before, America deserves whatever it voted for. Nothing surprises me and truth be told, I didn't think the orange one could even make it this long without self destructing.

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters,"
Candidate Donald Trump, Sioux Center, Iowa 1/23/16

Donald was correct in his assessment and that goes for people of his party too. Democrats in Congress who expect their Republican associates to join in their tearing of garments and appeals for accountability are in for a long wait.

The Republicans made a calculation with this candidate; if they held their nose and steered him in the proper direction, he could be a useful idiot who could help them fulfill their legislative agenda. And he has for the most part. Witness the recent abortion gag rule, the tearing down of environmental regulations, the push to open National Parks and Monuments to energy exploration, the dumbing down and repression of science, the re criminalization of relatively minor drug offenses, the push for repeal of consumer protection in the financial markets.

It is christmas for these people and they are going to ride this horse until he drops. When he finally falls, and he surely will, they will skulk away and create a construction of plausible deniability. I can hear the protestations now, he was never really one of us, he was a democrat, he was a victim of the unfair fake news media.

The problem is that you go to bed with dogs, you wake up with fleas. The trick with making deals with the toxic, immoral and insane is to not get any on you and that is a tough trick. There comes a time when it is exceedingly difficult to keep the monster that you have enabled at arm's length.

The 2018 mid terms are rapidly approaching. The Trump/Ryan plans to pass AHCA and denude Medicare go against the grain of a huge majority of Americans and worried seniors and sick people in relatively red states are turning up heat at locales that rarely register a mumble. Because they reject the notion that has been voiced by some Republicans that only bad people get sick.

“It will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher healthcare costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now, those are the people who have done things the right way that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”
Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks (R)

“That doesn’t mean we should take care of the person who sits at home, eats poorly and gets diabetes. Is that the same thing as Jimmy Kimmel’s kid? I don’t think that it is.”
Mick Mulvaney, OMB

"Just like Jesus said, ‘The poor will always be with us, there is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”“Just, like, homeless people. … I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just don’t want health care. The Medicaid population, which is on a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying socially that’s where they are. So there’s a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.”
Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS)

The GOP is playing a carefully crafted shell game to conceal and obfuscate their plans to pull 800 billion dollars out of healthcare and give it to their rich buddies in the form of a tax cut. And this was the year to do it, while he had some of that populist momentum that elected him to office.

The next seven months are critical and it will only get harder with these daily scandals regarding Russian collusion, disclosure of classified intelligence and the obstruction of justice.

America may have wanted a disruptor. I can actually see a value in overturning the apple cart. But it can't survive without career people in elected office who actually know what they are doing.

We are seeing what happens when a radical bunch of amateur hour zealots get the keys to the kingdom. It will take years to put things back together to some semblance of normal, that is if it can even be done at this point.

I recoiled yesterday when I heard that the Rock was now leading Trump for the 2020 election. People are talking Oprah, Arnold. Maybe Vin Diesel or Springer will throw their hat in? Is this a government or a reality television show? Have we truly lost our minds?

Anyone who hasn't seen the 2006 movie spoof Idiocracy really needs to check it out. because everyday we are closer to living it.

Government didn't use to be like this. As recently as Bill Clinton, there was a time when the two parties would sit down and talk to each other, legislate and compromise for the good of the country. We have serious national problems that can only be solved in a bipartisan manner.

But that was then.