Wrecking the Ship of State

[Pelle Svanslös]

After Donald Trump’s surprise election victory, many people on the right
and even in the center tried to make the case that he wouldn’t really be
that bad. Every time he showed a hint of self-restraint — even if it
amounted to nothing more than reading his lines without ad-libbing and
laying off Twitter for a day or two — pundits rushed to declare that he
had just “become president.”

But can we now admit that he really is as bad as — or worse than — his
harshest critics predicted he would be? And it’s not just his contempt
for the rule of law, which came through so clearly in the James Comey
testimony: As the legal scholar Jeffrey Toobin says, if this isn’t
obstruction of justice, what is? There’s also the way Trump’s character,
his combination of petty vindictiveness with sheer laziness, leaves him
clearly not up to doing the job.

And that’s a huge problem. Think, for a minute, of just how much damage
this man has done on multiple fronts in just five months.

Take health care. It’s still unclear whether Republicans will ever be
able to pass a replacement for Obamacare (although it is clear that if
they do, it will take coverage away from tens of millions). But whatever
happens on the legislative front, there are big problems developing in
the insurance markets as we speak: companies pulling out, leaving some
parts of the country unserved, or asking for large increases in premiums.

Why? It’s not, whatever Republicans may say, because Obamacare is an
unworkable system; insurance markets were clearly stabilizing last fall.
Instead, as insurers themselves have been explaining, the problem is the
uncertainty created by Trump and company, especially the failure to make
clear whether crucial subsidies will be maintained. In North Carolina,
for example, Blue Cross Blue Shield has filed for a 23 percent rise in
premiums, but declared that it would have asked for only 9 percent if it
were sure that cost-sharing subsidies would continue.

So why hasn’t it received that assurance? Is it because Trump believes
his own assertions that he can cause Obamacare to collapse, then get
voters to blame Democrats? Or is it because he’s too busy rage-tweeting
and golfing to deal with the issue? It’s hard to tell, but either way,
it’s no way to make policy.

Or take the remarkable decision to take Saudi Arabia’s side in its
dispute with Qatar, a small nation that houses a huge U.S. military
base. There are no good guys in this quarrel, but every reason for the
U.S. to stay out of the middle.

So what was Trump doing? There’s no hint of a strategic vision; some
sources suggest that he may not even have known about the large U.S.
base in Qatar and its crucial role.

The most likely explanation of his actions, which have provoked a crisis
in the region (and pushed Qatar into the arms of Iran) is that the
Saudis flattered him — the Ritz-Carlton projected a five-story image of
his face on the side of its Riyadh property — and their lobbyists spent
large sums at the Trump Washington hotel

Everything suggests that Trump is neither up to the job of being
president nor willing to step aside and let others do the work right.
And this is already starting to have real consequences, from disrupted
health coverage to ruined alliances to lost credibility on the world stage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/donald-trump-health-care-bill.html

--
“Donald Trump is the weak man’s vision of a strong man.”
-- Charles Cooke

[The Iceberg]

NYTimes LOL

[calim...@gmx.de]

Krugman?
Really???

Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!

That guy is a hate-filled fanatic. Pure and simple.


Max