MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?

By any measure this is not working.

In response to President Barack Obama’s “Change we can believe in” campaign slogan, the great 21st Century American intellectual and orator, Sarah Palin, once asked, “How’s that hopey, changey stuff workin’ out for ya?” Back then, in February 2010, Tea Party Convention attendees, themselves among America’s best and brightest, laughed derisively at Palin’s question.

Eight years later, Obama and the Tea Party are gone, and Palin’s question is still relevant. Today the question is, “How’s that Make America Great Again pipe dream workin’ out for ya?”

Many of you know Make America Great Again is, no surprise, not an original slogan the Trump campaign team devised. Trump lifted Make America Great Again from Ronald Reagan.

Regardless, one sign Make America Great Again is failing is the absence of Sarah Palin, who was visible during Trump’s campaign, travelling with Trump and speaking at rallies. Then, in the blink of an eye, Palin, like Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and others, was gone, discarded by Trump like a caterpillar sheds its skin.

If Make America Great Again was a winning formula right now, Palin would be clamoring to become part of the show. Instead, the well-read, deep-thinking Palin remains silent, thankful her son avoided a prison term after being charged with domestic violence.

As it is, Make America Great Again is an abysmal failure.

Healthcare

Other than immigration and The Wall, Trump’s favorite policy rant during the campaign was that he would do away with Obamacare, post haste. (Putting “Crooked” Hillary in jail does not qualify as policy, although Mike Flynn probably thinks it does.)

Regarding the Affordable Care Act, not much has been fixed, costs continue to spiral upward, and more Americans are being left uninsured. Other developed nations look on in disbelief that a country with unprecedented resources, technological prowess and ingenuity cannot figure out how to provide affordable healthcare for every one of its citizens.

The ACA, while subject to being picked apart like a turkey on Thanksgiving by Mitch McConnell, was not disposed of by Trump “on Day One!” and is still, in fact, the law of the land, as it should be.

A compassionate, bi-partisan effort to improve and make the ACA more practical, and affordable, is what’s needed as low-income Americans, many of them Trump supporters, hang in the balance. But the odds of Dems and GOPers coming together to fix healthcare are about the same as the chance the other Sarah, Huckabee-Sanders, won’t lie sometime in the next 48 hours.

Healthcare, as anyone from doctors to patients to insurers will tell you, is getting worse and is a country mile from being great.

Guns and school shootings

Why does America permit its citizens to legally buy military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons?

We don’t let people with driver’s licenses buy Indy race cars that can reach speeds of 230 miles-per-hour. We don’t let pilots, licensed to fly small prop planes, buy 787 commercial jets. Having a pet cat doesn’t make you eligible to purchase a lion for a pet.

For some reason (called the Second Amendment) America keeps common sense gun control on the porch, left to kick and scream like Fred Flintstone. But Fred Flintstone eventually gets in the house. Common sense still doesn’t have a seat at the gun control debate table.

Every time there is a mass shooting the National Rifle Association, Second Amendment advocates and evangelical ‘Christians’ rail that “now is not the time to talk about gun laws, while emotions are so raw.” Instead, they offer “thoughts and prayers.” With the school shooting epidemic thankfully taking a pause (knock on wood), now is the time to fix things.

Congress, what are you waiting for? Get to work on real gun legislation, bearing in mind this truth:

The only logical solution is to greatly reduce gun consumption, like we’ve done with cigarettes. The goal should be to remove guns from all people who should not have guns. Enough with the polite “we’re not trying to take your guns away” soft-peddling. Because we are trying to take guns away from people who should not have them.

In an article last March titled “When Disaster Strikes”, The Weekly Opine highlighted Japan’s approach to gun control, which results in a remarkably low-number of gun-related deaths. Japan, with a population of 127 million, averages about 10 gun deaths annually. Read about it here: theweeklyopine.com/blog/2018/3/1/when-disaster-strikes.

The fact is, the U.S. government is in the business of placating the NRA and doesn’t care about stopping gun deaths. The dearth of substantive action to prevent mass shootings at schools, gang violence on the streets of America, or domestic shootings anyplace else, is irresponsible, and reason enough for voters to toss both Dems and GOPers out of Congress this fall.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel lights up like a kid blowing out candles on a birthday cake when he discusses Chicago’s odds of snagging Amazon’s HQ2. Too bad he doesn’t exhibit the same passion for doing something meaningful about gun violence in his city. A first step would be to fire his inept Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson.

For his part Trump, in February 2017, revoked an Obama-era provision that funded mental-health background checks as part of the gun purchasing process. (Mental-health background checks is a key component of Japan’s rigorous gun-buying process.)

Meanwhile, the carnage across America continues, with about 13,000 Americans dying from gun violence each year.

To paraphrase Sarah Palin, “How’s that thoughts and prayers malarkey workin’ out for ya?”

Police killing Americans

This certainly didn’t start under the Trump administration. But it shows no signs of abating and the cavalier attitude taken by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions signals a lack of outrage, or even concern, when cops unnecessarily shoot and kill American citizens.

On this front, America is not good, much less great, but instead more Gestapo-like, with each courtroom approved killing of often unarmed citizens by cops.

No doubt there are instances where cops have no choice than to shoot to defend themselves. Some of the police-involved shootings the past few years were undoubtedly warranted. Unfortunately, even good cops, for some reason, cannot bring themselves to admit when a fellow officer commits murder.

American cops killing American citizens is not commensurate with being the self-appointed greatest country in the history of the world.

Net neutrality

Maybe a weird segue from guns and cops, but another example of moving in the wrong direction is the over-reach by the out-of-touch administration lackey, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Nothing less than a big corp money grab, net neutrality is probably not even understood by many Trump supporters, many of whom happen to be the very people who cannot afford to pay more for internet (or any other) services.

The internet was not made greater by the recent FCC ruling eliminating net neutrality. It will be worse.

U.S. allies

Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico and South Korea (and many other allies) certainly do not view America as having become greater since Trump took office.

Trump’s sophomoric, lying rants against Canada are an embarrassment. Do not expect to see Justin Trudeau sporting a MAGA hat anytime soon.

North Korea

Foreign policy has not been great. Kim Jong Un manhandled and battered Trump during the past year. Trump, his ignorance on full display, went for the glitzy photo-op rather than statesman-like concessions from Kim.

Sure, it’s nice Kim says he’ll send to the U.S. the remains of our soldiers (although, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kim has not done this – despite Trump, who lies about everything, saying Kim already sent the soldier’s remains).

But what about the nukes? The nuclear weapons were supposed to be the thrust of the summit. Babble about whether we do, or do not, conduct joint military exercises with South Korea misses the point. And in fact, nuclear experts said this week there is evidence North Korea continues to expand its nuclear capability, which contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that Kim Jong Un agreed to denuclearize at the summit.

To read The Weekly Opine provocative take on North Korea and nuclear weapons, check out this link; theweeklyopine.com/blog/2017/12/21/the-nuke-reality.

Taxes and tariffs

The big Trump tax plan is a bust. The real beneficiaries, no surprise, are one-percenters. And you know the plan is a bust for the rest of us because Trump hardly mentions it, never in any detail. The Trump/McConnell/Ryan tax plan is a failure and may come back to haunt Republicans in the fall of 2018 and fall of 2020.

Now the GOP acts like the tax vote never happened (the surprise is they have not blamed Obama because they would blame Obama if they got a splinter chopping wood). But the tax cut did happen, and it makes the U.S. the most unequal developed country on the planet.

Despite Trump’s America First rhetoric, foreign companies benefit from the tax cuts more than middle-class Americans. Meanwhile, American workers experience job cuts, and jobs and profits moving overseas. Bravo!

Yes, we’ve arrived at the station one of my college professors predicted in the late 1970’s; there will be the haves, and there will be the have nots.

The bi-partisan (is that even possible in D.C.?) Congressional Budget Office estimates the tax plan will add $2.3 trillion to the U.S. deficit over the next decade. Sweet!

In another foolhardy move that undermines a stock market that has soared since his election, Trump shot himself in both feet implementing a haphazard, shoot-from-the-hip, asinine tariffs.

American farmers are spooked by the tariff as they watch soybean and corn prices fall precipitously. The aluminum and steel industries brace for turbulent times ahead.

As a direct result of tariffs, venerable American icon Harley-Davidson plans to move some production to Europe. This prompted Trump to do what no president has likely done – threaten to tax Harley-Davidson “like never before.” Trump went on to say this “will be the beginning of the end” for Harley. Spoken like a schizophrenic madman.

The sad thing is, MAGA hat-wearers, some of whom own Harleys, may turn against the company, allowing Trump to think for them, rather than thinking independently and staying true to themselves.

The tax plan and tariffs are having the opposite effect of making America great.

You can’t eat here

The Supreme Court opened a door that may prove hard to close. SCOTUS ruling that a businessman can turn away some customers who want him to make their wedding cake points us down a slippery-slope. This decision conjures up what should be a bygone American era – when Jim Crow laws prohibited black folks from eating, or staying overnight, at many establishments.

Admittedly, it felt good when the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia turned Sarah Sanders away last weekend, given Sanders’ habitual lying and her fake-Christian hypocrisy. And it is quite possible the only way to reel in people like Sanders is to publicly shame them.

Unfortunately, we see more and more of this. A Starbucks manager has two patrons arrested while they wait for an associate to arrive. A pharmacist at Walgreen’s won’t fill a prescription for an ailing patient. What’s next?

Does the tow truck driver refuse to tow your car because you have red-hair and his ex-girlfriend had red-hair? Or the dental hygienist won’t clean your teeth because you are a smoker. Or the fire department won’t hose down a fire at your home because your kid made the varsity and the fire department chief’s kid was cut from the team?

This is far from great.

Immigration asylum-seekers

Last week’s post was exclusively on this topic, at theweeklyopine.com/blog/2018/6/21/america-revealed-again. And it hasn’t gotten any better. Children beg to see their parents, parents cry for their kids, and Trump, Kirstjen Neilsen and Stephen Miller defy humanity with their callous, Nazi-like smirking. Hell was made for people like this.

Then Congress, led by the Wisconsin Weakling Paul Ryan, failed again this week to pass immigration reform.

Are we great yet?

Nah, America is not becoming great. America is becoming lousy. Led by a lousy, insufferable human surrounded by a lousy, insufferable administration, along with a lousy, gutless Congress, on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans.

Like voters in New York just did, removing incumbent Congressman (D) Joe Crowley and replacing him with upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it’s up to Americans across the country to vote on November 6, and reaffirm the U.S. Constitution, which begins with “We the People”, not “Me the Dictator.”

Douglas FreelandJune 28, 2018