Thanksgiving Today, Keep Up HOPE.. Better Days Ahead

Today is Thanksgiving. It is a time to reflect on the year we have just witnessed and to share your hopes and dreams for the upcoming year. In a Washington Post opinion article, written by Dana Milbank, an opinion writer for the Washington Post, an article titled

‘Dear Sara Huckabee Sanders: I’m thankful that Trump has failed’

kind of hits the spot for me.

It can be found at the following link.. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/thank-you-george-w-bush-and-sally-yates/2017/11/21/c6ca7504-cf00-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html?utm_term=.8a76f1690c6b

For me and for many Americans, TRUMP HAS FAILED.

What immediately comes to mind is the millions of Americans that he failed in Puerto Rico. Still, after 2 months after the weather disaster that took down their electrical grid, the majority of people living there still are without power, yet Donald Trump is enjoying his holiday weekend in his Florida luxury resort called Mar-a-Largo. He stated in his campaign as he used to mock everyone, that he would not be golfing as much or if at all, as he was comparing himself to President Obama. Has he kept his promise. The answer is an outright NO. He has already golfed more times that the prior President has done for the entire time of his 2nd term and he’s been in office now for just under a year.

What I’m thankful for, number 1, is my family. Second for my health. Third for the Lord that I worship. Forth, for my job with IBM and soon to retire, Fifth, to be able to profess my ideas and truths within this publication and others that I write, thanks to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It prevents Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or to petition for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights. I’ve never been rich, and never will profess to be. But I am thankful for the life that God has given me. Sure, there has been some ‘ups and downs’, divorces and heartaches. But the saying goes, ‘the third time is the charm’, and I can say without hesitation that being married a third time is ‘a charm’. I feel as if I’m still on my honeymoon.

I don’t think I would ever feel safe until Donald J. Trump is out of office. I pray for our country. Donald J. Trump has taken this country down a road of despair, but now is not the time to give up to oppose everything he does. Mark my words, Donald Trump’s time is coming. I feel sorry for his family, as he is dragging them into the depths of hell with him. I pray for countries like North Korea, as Donald Trump may be responsible for the killing of millions of people if the North Korean leader does react on Donald Trumps threats. I pray for places like Guam, and other places close to North Korea and my wifes home country – the Philippines, with millions of innocent people and of American soldiers who have a good chance of being exterminated if North Korea attacks. Within the boundaries of our own country, I pray for the millions of people who may loose their health insurance because of failed leadership and governance of the 45th President of the United States and the failed U.S. Congress who has yet to pass ANY major legislation to help the people of this country. If Donald Trump does not get his tax bill passed, then he will be forever known as being the first lame duck President after only one year in office. The trouble is that if it is passed the way that it is written now, Obamacare will be pushed into extinction because Senate Republicans have decided to include the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most people have health insurance into the sprawling tax rewrite, merging the fight over health care with the high-stakes effort to cut taxes. Hopefully the Congress will see the light and Bob Mueller of the ‘special council’ will be able to enlighten the world all about Donald Trump, starting with displaying his taxes so that the American people can witness what he has been up to within the last 20 years or so. Hopefully the tax bill will fail, thus the beginning of the end of Donald J. Trump.

Decisions Prior and During Trumps Upcoming Presidency

It’s not even the inauguration yet, and Donald Trump appears to be getting warnings from notable people regarding his actions as President-Elect.

Here is what was just reported in the Washington Post titled….

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY IS DOOMED

“Whether he knows it or not, the specter of Lyndon Baines Johnson haunts Donald John Trump. There are some jarring similarities – two big fleshy men given to vulgarities and gauche behavior, boastful, thin-skinned, politically amoral, vengeful. unforgiving and, most important, considered illegitimate presidents. For Johnson, that took some time to sink in; Trump is already there. Johnson ascended to the presidency upon the death of John F. Kennedy and then won election in a landslide over Barry Goldwater. Nevertheless, an air of illegitimacy clung to him like an odor…. But Trump ought to pay attention to [Congressman] Lewis and what he represents. The President-elect will take the oath with a minority of the popular vote – a substantial deficit of almost 3 million votes. He enters the oval office with historically dismal poll numbers, lower now than right after he won the election. He has done nothing to woo the majority of Americans who rejected his candidacy…. Lyndon Johnson would no doubt warn Trump that he is already on thin ice and he will plunge through it the moment Congress takes the measure of his unpopularity.”

RICHARD COHEN…

It is a valid statement. Donald Trump still doesn’t get that fact that he will become the most powerful person in the world. Everything he says and does, on Twitter, with the news media, speeches, and personal comments made without serious thought all count and will effect everyone who has the slightest involvement in the topic at hand. But to this point even with his growing power, Donald Trump does not know how to keep quiet when he needs to.. He seems to take pride in taking fights with people. He’s made various comments about his intelligence community, and other leaders of other countries. One notable famous leader – Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, a traditional ally, has been attacked with his words when he says….

“And nobody even knows where they come from. So I think she made a catastrophic mistake, very bad mistake,” adding that he always had “great respect” for Merkel and that he still viewed her as one of the most important world leaders.

So what’s his motive now, to rule the world with what he believes is right and everyone else may be wrong?

He is going head on with people that will be supporting him, protecting him and the citizens of this country. He behaves in a way that is seemingly non-Presidential. The result is that he is loosing support from a majority of people from the time of the election up to his inauguration. Who does this kind of thing? Actually, no-one except Donald Trump has ever done this. His popularity is plummeting now to around 40%, while his unfavorable rating has risen to 54%. In EVERY election in the past, the nominee received rising popularity. He is digging a hole around him that he may not be able to climb out of.

Everyone accepts that Trump won the election, even if he didn’t do it with the popular vote. He did it by the electoral vote, but the majority of voters voted for the other candidate. If Donald Trump continues in this fashion, he will eventually run head-on with his own Congress and if this happens, he will then ‘fall through the ice’ in a sense to loose complete control of his Executive branch and then after that there will be calls for his impeachment.

My last comment, turnaround is fair play. Donald Trump called President Obama an Illegitimate president as he stated he was not born in the United States. All proof has it that President Obama was born in Hawaii, and Obama himself produced his own birth certificate. That was done in hopes that Trump and Obama’s critics would stop spreading the false allegations. Now when civil rights leader John Lewis, now a member in the U.S. Congress as the Representative for Georgia’s 5th Congressional district, has now called Trump an illegitimate president, Donald Trump is the first to use his favorite media ‘Twitter’ to tweet against the civil rights icon, a person who is respected by almost all on the planet who believe in the thought of a democracy and personal freedom.

This is what he has done so far as president-elect, but what does he promise to do when he becomes president? In another column quoted from ‘The Washington Post’, columnist Michael Gerson mention this in his piece….

TRUMP HAS STACKED THE DECK AGAINST HIMSELF

“[Trump] has promised a tax cut that will, by one estimate, reduce Federal revenue by $7 trillion over 10 years. He has promised an infrastructure initiative that may cost an additional trillion. He has promised to rebuild the military. He has effectively promised not to make changes in Social Security and Medicare. And he has promised to move swiftly toward a balanced Federal budget. Taken together, these things can’t be taken together. Trump has made a series of pledges hat can’t be reconciled.”

Michael Gerson

So with the intention to bring down the national debt, he will succeed by doing the opposite, which means that his plans as stated above will never get approval through even the Republican led Congress, as led by Paul Ryan want to do things to decrease the national debt. He still has yet to realize that he needs all the support he can get from Paul Ryan. It appears that only the self appraised businessman does not have a solid grasp of the outcome if his policies around spending are implemented.

In just a few short days now, President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. My hopes are that with knowledgeable people around him, he will govern without giving the American people all these false hopes that he plans to fix everything. He’s even stated that he now has his own medical insurance replacement, something that even Republicans can tell you that they do not know anything about.

The disarray in Washington has already started, even before Donald Trump has been sworn in, and it’s being felt around the world.

The 115th U.S. Congress Sworn In – Donald Trump to become POTUS on January 20th

The 115th U.S. Congress now led by Republicans were sworn in on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2016. The new U.S. Senators were sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden, along with the House members lead by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. This is now the beginning of a total Republican takeover of Washington D.C. to now include the Executive Branch, soon to be run by the new 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, along with a solid majority of Republicans in both the House and Senate.
You would think that now it’s clear sailing for the Republicans as far as legislation powers go. In a sense, they do have the upper hand with a 52-48 advantage in the Senate and a 241-194 advantage in the House. The fact is that the U.S. Senate only needs 60 votes to approve bills, and you would think that the new Congress will have an easy time repealing Obamacare. Actually that is the furthest from the truth. In order to fully repeal the ‘Affordable Care Act’ known as Obamacare, the Republicans will have to acquire bipartisan support to get their major tasks fulfilled such as replacing Obamacare, or reforming of the immigration system. Even passing spending bills or raising the federal borrowing limit will require help from the Democrats to get things moving forward.
Nevertheless, the Republican agenda for January and February is to accomplish more in under 90 days then the Congress even attempted to handle the entire year of 2016. Their efforts will be bogged down at first, with the Democrats promising a fight with Senate confirmations, especially during the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, picked by President-Elect Donald Trump as his Secretary of State, and Senator Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General. With Tillerson’s ties with Russia, both the Republicans and Democrats will vet Tillerson in his confirmation hearings, which may not turn out well. How will Tillerson handle Russia after receiving that countries ‘Order of Friendship’ award’ in 2013, now that he is supposed to represent the values of the United States in the political arena, not as a CEO of an oil business?

Why did Tillerson receive the reward? As reported in the Washington Post in an article by David Filipov on December 13, 2016,

“Tillerson won the award after signing deals with the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft, whose chief, Igor Sechin, is seen as Putin’s loyal lieutenant. The partnership had begun a drilling program in the Arctic’s Kara Sea, where Exxon made a find, and had agreed to explore shale oil areas of West Siberia and the deep waters of the Black Sea. But then U.S. sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea kicked in, and the partnership was put on hold.”

If Tillerson is not confirmed, then who may be Donald Trump’s second choice? Maybe Donald Trump may call on Mitt Romney for his second choice as Secretary of State after Trump finally figures out how difficult it will be for him to get what he wants all the time in the Congress.
In Donald Trumps world of today, he gets everything he wants. When he becomes the President of the United States (POTUS) on January 20th, he will not have a total say on everything that he wants. He will highly depend on the U.S. Congress to pass all the bills, led by newly elected Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who does not agree with everything the new President will want, along with Mitch McConnell, who also believes that Trump is already stepping over the line when it comes about speaking in favor of Russian President Putin. He will also be sidetracked many times, beginning with the onslaught by Democrats with all of the ‘conflicts of interest’ charges that he will face.

The question is not only how will Trump handle the U.S. Congress and issues regarding the national front, but how he and his newly confirmed Secretary of State can handle problems throughout the world, beginning with issues from Syria, North Korea, China and Iran, not to mention ISIS.

There are even more questions. Where will Donald Trump get the money or the support from the new Congress to build the wall on the Mexican border? Does anyone actually believe he will be able to get the money from Mexico? What does he plan to replace ObamaCare with, how does he pay for it? What Executive orders does he plan to reverse on day one? Will he commit U.S. Troups to wars in the Mideast? Will he attack North Korea? Will he become good friends with Russia, On the home front, will he kill Medicare or Medicade? So many questions, and so far, no answers.

On day one, January 20th, President Trump will inherit ALL of the problems of this country. He will have to make decisions every day on national and foreign fronts. I will support him publically on this blog when he does the right thing, and I will flog him with my comments when he does the wrong thing. His first 100 days in office will be the telling tale of his presidency, and I’m wishing him well, but I truly don’t expect him to survive the onslaught of problems he will inherit. He’s chosen many people in his cabinet with no experience and expects them to help him make decisions of great importance to our security and future as a free country.

Privatizing Social Security and Medicare

Not a good decision

It all started back in 2005 by George W. Bush. His State of the Union speech, centered around his belief to prioritise the New Deal’s guarantee of a dignified retirement. It became his number one priority. Back in 2005, then House of Representatives Minority Leader from California, Nancy Pelosi rejected the plan from Bush then, and is willing to begin all over again with President Trump after he takes his oath of office of the Presidency in January.
During the election campaign, Donald Trump swore to protect Medicare on the campaign trail, but now is compiling a list of privatizers, beginning with Paul Ryan who has been trying to gut Medicare and turn it into a fist full of vouchers beginning next spring. Then there is Georgia’s Congressman Tom Price who is be designated as Trumps Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you check history, Tom Price has a long history of wanting to slash Medicare and Medicaid and stands behind Paul Ryans plan to voucherize Medicare.

Will the Democrats fight again?

Here is a quote from Elizabeth Warren as she commented on the issue in 2005.

“The American people didn’t give Democrats majority support so we can come back to Washington and play dead. They didn’t send us here to wimper, whine or grovel. They sent us here to say no for efforts to sell Congress to the highest bidder. They sent us to stand up to what is right, and now they are watching, waiting and hoping, hoping that we show some spine, and start fighting back”

The Democrats fought and won. They were rewarded by voters. They picked up 31 seats in House in 2006, while Nancy Police became the House Speaker and Harry Reed became the Senate majority speaker.

It appears that the Republicans are already ready to pick a fight that they absolutely cannot win. The Democratic party built Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that helped protect the American middle class.
Donald Trump is in the process of creating a Cabinet full of millionaires and billionaires and they will attempt to roll back all the gains created for the American middle class. If he is as wise as some may think, Donald Trump may veto any such plans for privatisation. But I wouldn’t bet money on it.

What is to come next regarding plans for Medicare from a totally Republican controlled Congress led by Donald Trump is not predictable. On one hand, Trump says that he will not allow Medicare to be prioritised, but on the other, he nominates people for Cabinet positions that want to prioritise Medicare. But to be sure, Donald Trump will loose his base overnight if he tries to mess with Medicare that helps the middle class. If Trump doesn’t realise that it would a very stupid thing to do, then I sincerely believe his political future will be in jeopardy, not to mention how stupid it is in the terms of economic management.
So essentially how they want to prioritise is to give everyone 401K’s, giving wall street the edge and our 401K funds will be dependent on the ups and downs on wall street.

Here is what President-Elect said in a speech he gave back on June 15, 2015…

“Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it. Get rid of the fraud, get rid of the waste and abuse, but save it. People have been paying into it for years, and now many of these candidates want to cut it. you save it by making the United States, by making us rich again by taking back all of the money that’s being lost.”

But Donald Trump reverses course on just about anything he says or promises. But if he even attempts to mess with Medicare or Social Security for that matter, it will be nothing less than a disaster in the making. The Democrats will come at this with everything they have and the political impact would have a incredibly negative effect against Trump.

So at first when I heard about some of the hires to be in Donald Trump’s Cabinet, I was alarmed, but all you have to do is go into the history books and look up George W. Bush and what happened to him when he tried to prioritise programs that would hurt the middle class.

Decisions about Promises that Donald Trump Cannot Keep

Not good decisions

Trump is already making decisions about promises that he made during the election that he is not willing to keep.

Originally, Trump made the decision to totally gut ObamaCare stating “On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.” Now he is backing off at the moment. He signalled last Friday that he is now willing to keep parts of ObamaCare, namely the ‘Pre-existing conditions’ and ‘Children staying on parents insurance policy until age 26’ clauses. I highly doubt if Donald Trump completely understands ObamaCare, but the fact is that in order for him to keep these parts from ObamaCare, there is no way he can gut any it. To fully dismantle the Affordable Care Act, Republicans would have to secure 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Now, even with the majority, those votes remain out of reach. Besides, it would be such a headache for him if he even tried. There is not a single Democrat of the 48 in there who would vote for that. He also claims that he will be able to roll his new new insurance package in place of Obamacare without any lapse in coverage, as everyone covered now will have continuous coverage during a transition period.

So now it appears that Donald Trump does not have any real advisers on this subject, but hopefully he will have them in place by his formally accepting the Presidency as the 45th President of the United States on January 20th, 2017. Donald Trump may again change his mind, and most likely will. So it is hard to truly believe what he will plan to do with medical insurance until when he actually implements one approved by the U.S. Congress. Trying to gut Obamacare would waste too much of his time. It is very well known by now that Trump will enjoy passing many laws handed for his signature from the Republican dominated House and Senate. Within the last year, The Republican controlled Congress did turn in a bill to overturn ObamaCare within the last year, but Obama promptly administered a veto to keep ObamaCare in place. It was just a formality, as not even the Republicans believed that Obama would kill his signature legislation. Even if the Republicans wanted to kill ObamaCare, how will they insure all the millions of people now receiving coverage from ObamaCare? Killing ObamaCare is just another promise that he cannot keep.

The next decision he has made that he does not plan to keep is to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email problems. He is taking credit for now saying that he would rather move forward and get the country on the right track, then to look back and make decisions about Hillary Clinton, even though he said publicly at one of the presidential debates that he would have her prosecuted.

Now this decision of his is quite interesting. Why? Because Donald Trump would never have the right or the power to prosecute Hillary Clinton. His promise was hollow, and just rhetoric. The FBI already stated that they would not prosecute Hillary Clinton. So who is Donald Trump fooling. He acts like he is doing her such a favour. Hillary knows that Donald Trump could never prosecute her without the decisions made by the FBI, and they have already made their decision on the matter of her emails, and Benghazi. She is in the clear. What Donald Trump really needs to be concerned about is all the lawsuits that will surface even after he becomes President of the United States.

The next decision he is apparently making is that he does not plan to carry out a Muslim ban. He drew an outrage by many people when he claims that all Muslims needed to leave the country and he would do just that if elected President. At the moment, he is President-Elect, but now he seems to be backing off the Muslim ban. He originally modified his decision claiming that there will be “extreme-vetting’. On Capitol Hill last Thursday, President-Elect Donald Trump was asked if he would “ask Congress to ban all Muslims from entering the country.” He just walked away, and would not comment that he would ban Muslims.

What else will Donald Trump walk-back on? Was anything he said honest and true and planned to keep his word? Apparently not when it comes to ObamaCare, Hillary Clinton and Muslims. I wonder how many followers he is upsetting when one of his follows main chants at his rallies was “LOCK HER UP”.