Supreme Court delivers small victory to president as CBO delivers the cruel news
Listen to this articleAccording to the fine people who measure such things, people who click on the pages of this fine online publication spend over three minutes reading every page. That’s almost a minute longer than the average of all online publications. This is the information technology-slash-internet age and people are used to getting their presidential news in 140 characters or less.
News in a 140 characters or less. That’s how the president gets around the news organizations that actually report the honest information. It’s why there are no more televised White House briefings. If the news organizations stop reporting on the bullshit spewed by Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the other dubious mouthpieces of the Trump Administration, maybe the American public won’t know the president and his minkies are lying.
Most news organizations, like this one, add links to articles when posting something to Twitter and most do it via their smart phones. They want you to read something with more depth than a `40-character missive. I’m old school. I have a desktop computer with a massive monitor so I can see everything in a bigly way.
But, most people these days don’t have time for bigly things and don’t have time to read more than 140 characters, or at best, spend more than 90 seconds reading an article because, you know, they’re busy posting their own stuff you should be viewing for more than 90 seconds.
So, President Jumbo the Orange tweets, “Very grateful for the 9-O decision from the U. S. Supreme Court. We must keep America SAFE!”
Wait, what? There was no final decision made. Although it’s a bit of a victory for the president and his pro Muslim ban cronies, but there was no decision made concerning the full case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments concerning the so-called travel ban (Muslim ban) and said parts of the president’s executive order (his second) could go into effect right away. It was an unsigned opinion so we don’t know if all nine judges agreed to the change or one or two that reviewed the case to determine if the court would hear arguments.
The president got a small victory here, but yet he still feels the need to lie about it. The beauty of it for him is the low information voters that make up a large percentage of his followers will read that tweet and believe — despite the evidence to the contrary — the president is right and that the Muslim ban is back in place.
Most won’t take three minutes to read part of an article from an honest, unbiased, news organization, let alone my rather (and obviously) biased screed.
The big question, one which Associate Justice Clarence Thomas calls a “headache,” is this: who decides which people have a real connection to a person or entity in the United States when applying for a visa? If it’s left to the people at the borders and in airports and other ports of entry, we will once again see the clusterf**k we saw in January when Jumbo the Orange first tried out his Muslim ban.
The other notable bit of information, speculation really, that came from the court’s non-decision announcement was this: it appears Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy won’t retire after this term.
He has all summer to decide. The new term doesn’t start until October 2, which is just over three months away.
This non-decision decision took everyone’s eyes off the really big news of the day: the Congressional Budget Office report on the big tax give away to the super wealthy masquerading as a health care bill. Next year alone 15 million people would lose their health coverage. Another 7-8 million in the following six years. Premiums for the sick, elderly and low-income people would go up substantially — 280 percent. Nearly $900 billion would be cut from Medicaid. Sorry poor people. You just don’t deserve healthcare.
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All in an effort to deliver $765 billion to the super wealthy. You know, they are the truly oppressed minority in America. Everyone keeps demanding they pay more in taxes than their secretaries and other office workers, so much so they need to take some of their wealth in off-shore tax shelters. If the super wealthy paid less in taxes they could invest that money in creating more jobs … which has never happened in the 35 years since President Reagan first foisted “trickle down economics” on us. George H.W. Bush had it right in 1980: it’s “voodoo economics.”
If this bill passes and President Jumbo the Orange signs it into law, middle income, the poor and the sick — especially those with pre-existing conditions — will get royally screwed.
The sad thing is there will be a part of the president’s base that reads his 140-character pronouncements and believe they are true, even after their premiums and copays increase a couple hundred percent.
Tim Forkes started as a writer on a small alternative newspaper in Milwaukee called the Crazy Shepherd. Writing about entertainment, he had the opportunity to speak with many people in show business, from the very famous to the people struggling to find an audience. In 1992 Tim moved to San Diego, CA and pursued other interests, but remained a freelance writer. Upon arrival in Southern California he was struck by how the elected government officials and business were so intertwined, far more so than he had witnessed in Wisconsin. His interest in entertainment began to wane and the business of politics took its place. He had always been interested in politics, his mother had been a Democratic Party official in Milwaukee, WI, so he sat down to dinner with many of Wisconsin’s greatest political names of the 20th Century: William Proxmire and Clem Zablocki chief among them. As a Marine Corps veteran, Tim has a great interest in veteran affairs, primarily as they relate to the men and women serving and their families. As far as Tim is concerned, the military-industrial complex has enough support. How the men and women who serve are treated is reprehensible, while in the military and especially once they become veterans. Tim would like to help change that.