"The great leader" wants a drug czar and a military parade.

      We live in a world where Kellyanne Conway has been named as the person to stop America's opioid crisis. These are strange times.

Someone should tell the president that you can't just lie away a real crisis such as this and pretend it doesn't exist. Ms. Conway, like her boss, is a habitual liar. But beyond the lying, she is clearly out of her league as recent press reports show.

"White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has taken control of the opioids agenda, quietly freezing out drug policy professionals and relying instead on political staff to address a lethal crisis claiming about 175 lives a day. The main response so far has been to call for a border wall and to promise a "just say no” campaign.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy has been without a permanent director since the president's first nominee for that position, Pennsylvania congressman Tom Marino, withdrew from consideration in light of history of zealous advocacy for legislation friendly to narcotics manufacturers. As a result, the ONDCP was briefly led by a 24-year-old former campaign staffer who lied on his résumé about the length of time he served as vice president of his college fraternity—a distinction that makes him the least-qualified person to hold a White House job who did not marry one of the president's children.

Conway, for some reason, has stepped into this void, steering the administration's opioid response strategy with the help of a "skeleton crew" of political appointees who possess no relevant experience." 

The irony of all this is that the people most affected by this particular drug problem are your typical trump voters. If the administration is treating the problem that affects them most in such a way, how do you think that they will treat the rest of us with problems that are unique to our communities? 

And finally, this scary bit of news: 

"President Donald Trump has asked for a military parade and the Pentagon is reviewing potential dates, Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers said Tuesday.

The spokesman described the planning process as being in its "infancy."

In response to the news, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Trump had asked the Defense Department to "explore" the idea.

"President Trump is incredibly supportive of America's great servicemembers who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe. He has asked the Department of Defense to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation," Sanders said.

The Washington Post first reported Trump told top Pentagon brass last month he wants a military parade.

"The marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France," a military official told the paper. "This is being worked at the highest levels of the military."

Trump's meeting with senior military leaders last month included Vice President Mike Pence, White House chief of staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford.

Trump was French President Emmanuel Macron's guest on Bastille Day last year, and later called the French military parade he witnessed "one of the greatest parades" he had ever seen.

He said last September in a conversation with Macron that when he came back from France he wanted a military parade on the Fourth of July in Washington.

Trump's call for a military parade might be hitting a few snags. The Post said shipping tanks and military hardware into Washington could cost millions of dollars, and that military officials said they were unsure how to pay for it.

After the Gulf War in 1991, the US put on a victory celebration replete with servicemembers and military gear.

Outside of France, authoritarian nations the world over have made massive displays of military power a mainstay of their public celebrations." [Source]

 

Do you know which other countries have large military parades?  Think Russia, North Korea and China.

*Pics from twitter.com

Time to check your microwaves and your medical coverage.

As if right-wingnuts in this country aren't paranoid enough. Now they are going to be afraid to walk in front of their microwaves because according to Kellyanne Conway the microwave might be spying on them. (Yes, she really implied that)

Anyway, in an attempt to cover for their leader, Kellyanne and others have been making absolute fools of themselves with pronouncements like the ones about the microwave in our homes.

I actually watched a little of another trump surrogate today, Sean Spicer, and it was painful, even for me who is no fan of the guy.

But I have to give him credit. To sit there and spin constantly when he knows that he lying, and that what he is saying to the press is complete rubbish, takes a special kind of skill.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with their report today, and, as was to be expected, it was not good for Paul Ryan and the gang. According to the report 24 million more Americans will go uninsured under their plan.  And sadly for some in the GOP, there is just no positive way to spin that one.

They have tried. Ryan has said that the fact that 24 million Americans will lose their insurance means nothing, because (and I am paraphrasing here) they are not sick, and they choose not to have insurance.

Memo to Speaker Ryan: It's called INSURANCE. That's kind of how this insurance thing works.

I hope my that home never has a serious fire, but guess what, it's insured, just in case it does.  I suspect that most people who carry medical insurance aren't sick, but it's there for them in case they do get sick.

I didn't even get to the part of the GOP plan where they cut Medicaid to the states yet.

"UPMC Health Plan has become the biggest provider of government health exchange insurance in the region at a time when Republican leaders in Washington prepare to make it more expensive.

State officials are predicting that federal cuts to Pennsylvania’s Medicaid plan, which was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, would cost the state at least $2 billion by 2020. Medicaid covers many elderly Pennsylvanians, children, people with disabilities and those with low income; with the expansion, it now insures more than 2.8 million Pennsylvanians.

Federal legislation that could be introduced as early as this week could end the government subsidies for Medicaid, leaving about 700,000 Pennsylvanians in danger of losing coverage." [Source]

Oh, and irony alert, most of those affected by the Medicaid cuts would be folks who voted for trump.
He promised his voters while on the campaign trail that they all would be covered and these social programs would not be touched. Well....sometimes life comes at you fast.

"Candidate Trump told “60 Minutes”: “Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say. … I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

Candidate Trump also promised: “You’re going to end up with great healthcare for a fraction of the price, and that’s gonna take place immediately after we go in, OK? Immediately. Fast. Quick.”'

 

What's that quote by  David Hannum?  "There's a sucker born every minute?"

 

Well sometimes it takes more than a minute, but there are still a lot of suckers out there.  At least fifty nine million of them.