Counting their chickens a little too soon.

One of my guilty pleasures  in life is EPL soccer. I spend too much time on Sunday mornings watching the match of the day from across the pond.

Anyway, I was just watching the Manchester City Middlesbrough match, and right before halftime Middlesbrough scored to take a one to nothing lead. They celebrated, to be sure, but they knew there was a half to go, so they couldn't rest on their laurels. Invariably, the better side ended up scoring to equalize things, and the match ended in a 2-2 draw.

Which brings me to my post.  Today I watched Donald trump and his band of merry -winngut- men declare victory because the house narrowly passed a bill to replace the ACA. Trump was chirping on the White House lawn about what a victory he had won, and he gloated, once again, that he is the president.

You read that right. There was a Rose Garden ceremony for a bill that passed only one chamber.  But that is so trump. Spiking the ball before he gets in the end zone.

The bill still has to pass the senate, and chances are zero to nothing that it will pass in its present form, if it passes at all. To stay with my soccer analogy, Mr. Orange Hair and his gang are celebrating as if they won the match and it's only halftime. They still have an entire half to go.

These clowns were so desperate for a political win that they rushed through the bill without some of their members reading it, and before it was scored and analyzed by the CBO.

But let's see where this goes from here, and what will happen to some of these GOP politricksters in swing districts when it's time to send them back to Washington.

If you listen to trump and his friends tell it, premiums will go down, coverage will go up, and all will be hunky dory in trumpland. We. Will. See.

"Appearing on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer Thursday, Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY) conceded that he hadn’t even examined the document.

“I will fully admit, Wolf, I did not,” Collins said, saying that he relied on his staff to read the bill and brief him.

Collins was not alone. In the very next segment, Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) likewise said that he was briefed by his staff.

 

Blitzer was taken aback by this. He pressed Collins on whether he had a responsibility to actually read the legislation which stands to impact so many.

“This legislation affects a fifth of the U.S. economy and millions and millions of Americans,” Blitzer said. “Don’t you think it was important to actually sit down and read — read the language of this bill?”'

“You know, I have to rely on my staff,” Collins said. “And I can probably tell you that I read every word, and I wouldn’t be telling you the truth, nor would any other member. We rely on our staff, and we rely on our committees, and I’m comfortable that I understand this bill in its entirety, Wolf, without poring through every word.”'

   

Still stocking the swamp.

When president-elect trump said that he was "draining the swamp" in Washington, he forgot to mention that he was going to restock it with more swamp creatures. I mean seriously, it's almost as if he has been living on another planet for the past few years.  Did he not hear about Bridgegate?

"President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Bill Stepien — Chris Christie’s former campaign manager whom the New Jersey governor axed after becoming mired in the — as his White House political director, his transition team said Wednesday.

Stepien, who ran both of Christie’s gubernatorial campaigns and who the oversized guv fired after his name came up in emails related to the scandal over the George Washington Bridge lane closures, had been working with the Trump transition team in recent months and had previously worked on the presidential bids of George W. Bush and John McCain.

While Stepien’s hire had been expected, it was nevertheless ironic, considering Christie — who had supported Trump quickly after he abandoned his own bid and who became a prominent surrogate for the mogul — will be awarded with no title or responsibilities in the incoming administration." [Source]

Hey, he is male and he is white; that should be good enough for Herr trump.

In other news, republicans are gearing up to repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare. I suspect that they will try to come up with something similar, but with a different name. Their "smart" supporters will be cool with that as long as it doesn't have Obama's name on it.

They better be careful, though, there are a lot of Americans who are pretty cool with the ACA. They keep saying things like "repeal and replace", but they haven't come up with a proposed replacement in eight years.

Pence was in Washington today rallying the troops, but so far we have heard nothing that remotely sounds like a plan coming from the republicans that is better than what we currently have. They will son learn that just being against something isn't enough, you have to give us an alternative, and one that actually works.

What the republicans are floating out there does not work in terms of guaranteeing health coverage for everyone,  and it will be expensive to boot. According to CNN Money, repealing Obamacare will cost us $350 billion dollars.

Unfortunately for republicans, it seems the slogan that Chuck Schumer came up with for them ["Make America Sick Again"] might be all too accurate. 

*Pic from vanityfair.com

The confidence game begins.

It started already, folks. The trump con game is already in full effect.

President elect Orange Hair promised his rabid supporters on the campaign trail that he would repeal and destroy the ACA, but today he told the Wall Street Journal that there are parts of it that he will probably keep. 

Get used to it trumpsters, I suspect that after the first year under Führer trump you will be having buyer's remorse.

Let's face it, it already doesn't look like trump is being particularly loyal to some of his peeps. Poor Chris Christie must feel like the Theon Greyjoy  from Game Of Thrones. He thought that serving as trump's manservant and totally sucking up to him would at least get him a nice gig in his administration if he won. Well, he won, and what does trump do?

"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is no longer running Donald Trump’s transition team, with Vice President-elect Mike Pence now responsible for the smooth transfer of power in the White House.

Christie will continue to serve as one of the chairs of the transition team, along with Rudy Giuliani and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, but he will not be the leading man." [Source]

Chris, you and the rest of trump's followers will soon see what hundreds of folks who did business with him in the past already know: That there is not an honest or loyal bone in that man's body.

Anyway, I read an article written by Charles Blow that is getting a lot of retweets on twitter that I felt I should share.

"Donald J. Trump is president-elect of the United States. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Against all odds and against all forms of the establishment, he prevailed. He won, legitimately, including in many states that were thought to be safely blue. The pundits and the polls were wrong. There was more pent-up hunger for change — and also racial, ethnic and economic angst — than many models considered.

Mr. Trump will become this country’s 45th president. For me, it is a truly shocking fact, a bitter pill to swallow. I remain convinced that this is one of the worst possible people who could be elected president. I remain convinced that Trump has a fundamentally flawed character and is literally dangerous for world stability and injurious to America’s standing in that world.

There is so much that I can’t fully comprehend.

It is hard to know specifically how to position yourself in a country that can elect a man with such staggering ineptitude and open animus. It makes you doubt whatever faith you had in the country itself.

Also, let me be clear: Businessman Donald Trump was a bigot. Candidate Donald Trump was a bigot. Republican nominee Donald Trump was a bigot. And I can only assume that President Donald Trump will be a bigot.

It is absolutely possible that America didn’t elect him in spite of that, but because of it. Consider that for a second. Think about what that means. This is America right now: throwing its lot in with a man who named an alt-right sympathizer as his campaign chief.

How can I make sense of the fact that the president appeared in pornos?

How can I make sense of the fact that the man who will appoint the next attorney general has himself boasted of assaulting women? What will this president’s vaunted “law and order” program for “inner cities” look like in an age where minority communities are already leery of police aggression?

How do I make sense of the fact that a man who attacked a federal judge for his “Mexican heritage” will be the man who will nominate the next Supreme Court justice and scores of federal judges?

I can’t make it make sense because it doesn’t. I must sit with the absurdity of it.

I must settle this in myself in this way: I respect the presidency; I do not respect this president-elect. I cannot. Count me among the resistance.

I hope that there are areas where people in Washington can agree to actually advance America’s interests, but I’m doubtful. Trump has made multiple campaign promises, promises he will be obliged to keep, that would specifically do harm.

My thoughts are now with the immigrant families he has threatened to deport and the Muslims he has threatened to bar and the women he has demeaned and those he is accused of assaulting and the disabled whom he apparently has no problem mocking.

My thoughts are with the poor people afflicted by ill health who were finally able to receive medical insurance coverage, sometimes lifesaving coverage, and the fear they must feel now that there is a president committed to repealing and replacing it (with what, I don’t know), and who has a pliable Congress at his disposal." [Read more] 

Scary times.

Before I forget, Happy Veterans Day to all the Vets out there. Thank you for your service! (We still miss my wife's brother in law , who gave the ultimate sacrifice. )

It's a shame that you will be now led by a commander in chief who was too much of a coward to do what you so bravely did and continue to do. 

Obamacare lives. (For now)

It looks like the supremes upheld the most important portions of the ACA today, and that's a big win for this president.

Now, as is to be expected, the right wingers are losing their collective minds.

"an act of judicial activism" from the Supreme Court designed to "protect the Affordable Care Act." ~Karl Rove~

"With today's Obamacare decision, John Roberts confirms that he has completely jettisoned all pretense of textualism. He is a results-oriented judge, period, ruling on big cases based on what he thinks the policy result should be or what the political stakes are for the court itself. He is a disgrace. That is all." ~National Review~

"[Roberts] will undermine his own credibility as a fair-minded jurist, because he has reached to bizarre and odd contortions in order to save this statute twice." ~Andrew Napolitano, Fox News~

 "an absolute disaster" and wondered "what does [this] mean for the rule of law?" ~Rush Limbaugh ~

"I braced for this decision by SCOTUS still shocked....folks country has fundamentally changed...another giant step toward Banana Republic" ~Fox's Charles Payne~

And on and on it goes.

It seems like only yesterday that Chief Justice Roberts was a darling of the right wing. But this just goes to show you how dangerous it is to throw all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to politics.

Of course this decision will never cause me to change my mind about Chief Justice Roberts. That Citizens United decision will forever tarnish him and his legacy in my book.

 "I am disappointed in the Burwell decision, but this is not the end of the fight against ObamaCare "

Jeb, I am sure you are.

"Five years ago, after nearly a century of talk, decades of trying, a year of bipartisan debate," the law is finally and firmly entrenched, Obama said, .....Health care, he said is "not a privileged for a few, but a right for all.".... The setbacks I remember clearly." However, "as the dust has settled, there can be no doubt that this law is working."

Show off.

A sad comparison, and a republican that republicans can be proud of.

Some of us black folks are upset at the GOP and their lemmings for comparing the failed roll out of Obamacare to Hurricane Katrina.

It's appalling that they would do such a thing, but it's understandable.

Katrina was a poor and brown people tragedy; the suffering that those people went through was not viewed as real suffering by some folks in the majority. Rather, it was a political problem for George Bush.

It's easy to trivialize the suffering of those people down in New Orleans. It might as well have been a typhoon in the Philippines. Most Americans just didn't relate.

So now, here we are years later, comparing glitches in a computer software to one of the greatest natural disasters in our nation's history.

"Just like Katrina, when the big problem President Bush had was diminishing the significance of what was happening, saying ‘Hey, way to go, Brownie,’—you had the president yesterday talking about glitches and kinks. This is bigger than glitches and kinks,” Fournier said.

“The one difference was Katrina was a storm, the health care law was Obama’s creation,” Wallace demurred. “I’m not defending my White House’s handling of Katrina, but it was a natural disaster. This was a disaster of Obama’s creation and imagination.”

Here is a shocker, I agree with Ed Shultz.

“Comparing the law that will save millions of lives in this country to these two dark events is absolutely despicable,” Schultz continued. “George W. Bush’s negligence in the handling of Katrina cost American lives. The botched war of choice, may I remind all Americans, in Iraq resulted in over 4,000 Americans being killed, for what?”

“Comparing these two horrible chapters in American history to a law that will save lives is truly unbelievable,” he concluded. [Source]

Nope, it's truly believable if you understand how the the mind of a wingnut works.

So anyway, I am glad to see that there was an arrest in that case where the Detroit homeowner shot and killed that young lady after she was trying to get help.

Dude is being charged with second- degree murder and manslaughter. He claims it was all just a tragic accident and he thought that she was breaking into his home, but, sadly for him, some things just weren't adding up.

Sorry Mr. Wafer, back in the day you would have probably gotten away with this, but not now. Not after Trayvon Martin and the national attention that his tragic killing received. Prosecutors nationwide are going to have to do due diligence from here on out.

Finally, speaking of prosecutors, I was speaking to a friend of mine today who ran against our DA here in Philly and got crushed. His name is Danny Alvarez, and he is a Latino republican in a town where republicans are down three to one in voter registration.

I met Danny a few years back when he worked as an ADA in my particular division of the courts. We would see each other from time to time and every now and then he would try a case in front of me.

He always struck me as good guy who really cared about the job that he was doing, and he did a good job doing it.

Danny only got 18 percent of the vote, but he had no money and he was outgunned from all sides. He never had a shot, but he gave it the old college try.

I respect him for that.

With what little resources he had he campaigned for every vote and wasn't afraid to go into housing projects and look people in the eye and tell them that he wanted their vote.

Other republicans need to take a page out of his book. If you want to reach black and Latino people and change the perception of your party you have to recruit candidates like Danny Alvarez.

"Wayne, A lot of these people didn't vote for me because they didn't know that they could vote for a republican candidate. I just hope I made them realize that there are other options out there."

Danny, I think you did.