What were they thinking . . . ?

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman put the health care fight in a neat nutshell:

"Surely one of the most cynical, reckless acts of governing in my lifetime has been President Trump's and the GOP's attempt to ram through a transformation of America's health care system -- without holding hearings with experts, conducting an independent cost-benefit analysis or preparing the public -- all to erase Barack Obama's legacy to satisfy a few billionaire donors and a "base" so drunk on Fox News that its members don't even understand they'll be the ones most hurt by it all.

"Democrats aren't exactly a fire hose of fresh ideas, but they do respect science and have a sense of responsibility to not play around with big systems without an ounce of study.  Not so, Trump.  He scrapped the Paris climate treaty without consulting one climate scientist -- and no GOP leader protested.  Think about that."

*     *     *     *     *

And, again in the New York Times, there was Paul Krugman's discussion of what President Trump is doing, now that repeal failed again, to sabotage the functioning of the Affordable Care Act.  Krugman writes:

"This sabotage is taking place on multiple levels. The administration has refused to confirm whether it will pay crucial subsidies to insurers that cover low-income customers. It has refused to clarify whether the requirement that healthy people buy insurance [the individual mandate] will be enforced. It has canceled or suspended outreach designed to get more people to sign up.

"These actions translate directly into much higher premiums: Insurers don’t know if they’ll be compensated for major costs, and they have every reason to expect a smaller, sicker risk pool than before. And it’s too late to reverse the damage: Insurers are finalizing their 2018 rates as you read this."

[Krugman then explores why they are doing this.   Is it a cynical calculation, to make the ACA fail and then claim this proves they were right?   After all, there's no rational reason to refuse to answer these questions about subsidies, mandates, and outreach.  They have to decide some time;  why not now, when it could make a difference in the cost?  But then Krugman says . . . ]

"No, A.C.A. sabotage is best seen not as a strategy, but as a tantrum. We can’t repeal Obamacare? Well, then, we’ll screw it up. It’s not about achieving any clear goal, but about salving the president’s damaged self-esteem. 

"In short, Trump truly is unfit for this or any high office. And the damage caused by his unfitness will just keep growing."

*     *     *     *     *

And, again, I quote Friedman:  "No GOP leader has protested.   Think about that."   It's not just Trump.   They don't want Obamacare.   They couldn't pass their (non)plan.    So . . . just let the American people be screwed.   Who cares?

Ralph

BREAKING NEWS: Sec. Tom Price resigns

The White House has announced that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price offered his resignation, and the president has accepted it.

This follows a week of mounting pressure, as more and more revelations emerged of his extraordinary use of private chartered jets.   Investigative reporters found that his charter jet use for domestic flights amounted to over $400,000 just since May.  And then on top of that they found that he had used military jets to travel within Europe and Africa to the tune of over $500,000 -- making a total of over one million dollars.  And he's been in office less than eight months.

Compare this with his predecessor in the Obama administration, Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, who in her entire 6 years in office only once took one charter flight.  And that was because she was going to a remote place in Alaska that had no commercial flights.

President Trump had been saying for several days that he was "not happy" about Price's travel; and it's pretty clear that Price was pushed out, even after he magnanimously said he would repay for "my seat' on these flights so it wouldn't cost the American taxpayers.   Did he think we're so stupid we wouldn't see through that?   His seat?   You charter a private plane that may have 30 seats.   The whole plane has to go;  it costs the same.  Paying for one seat, and thinking you're making up for it all, is just silly.

Price had another potential headache for the Trump administration.   During his confirmation hearings it came out that, as a member of the House Health and Human Services Committee, he had made large transactions in stock in medically related companies that he had a say in matters that affected them.   Some have said this is the very definition of "insider trading," which is illegal.   That supposedly is still under investigation, but he was confirmed for his cabinet position anyhow.

Tom Price was the Congressman whose district I got corralled into when they redrew the district lines a few years back.   I never like him then, so there's a certain amount of good old German Schadenfreude for me in this -- not to mention that he has been the one in charge of administering the Affordable Care Act and therefore responsible for the sabotage of Obamacare that our government has been doing.   Although it seems to be a policy Trump wanted, Price seemed only too eager to play his part and was the one directly carrying it out.

Ralph

"God, guns, and defiance"

You want to know who Roy Moore is?   Three words define him:   God, guns, and defiance.

Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange to be the Republican nominee to fill the U.S. senate seat for Alabama, vacated by Sen. Jeff Sessions when he became Trump's Attorney General.   The general election in December will decide between Moore and Democratic candidate Doug Jones.

Moore is a 70 year old firebrand for God and guns who not only loudly proclaims what he believes but does something about it.   A former professional kick-boxer, he has carried that same pugilistic determination into the political arena.  David Mowery, who helped run a Democratic campaign against Moore in 2012, said:  "He doesn't just say he's going to do this.   He gets thrown out of office over it.  And then he gets re-elected."

Jim Zeigler, Alabama state auditor, describes Moore as "Huey Long with religion.   Huey Long would tell it like it is.  He ran against the establishment, he would not compromise with the establishment.  Roy Moore does all those things, but he has a biblical worldview.

Indeed he does.   Moore thinks the Bible should supplant the Constitution, yet he also rails against the dangers of allowing Muslims to bring Shariah law into our country.   He doesn't want just any theocracy;  he wants a Christian theocracy.  He is anti-immigrant (an avid Obama "birther"), anti-Islam ("a false religion;"  being a Muslim should make U.S. citizens ineligible to serve in Congres, same for atheists);  anti-gay (homosexual acts should land you in jail);  but most of all he wants to put God -- his God -- back into the courthouse . . . and everywhere else.  Perhaps Moore's most outrageous and hurtful claim was that the Sandy Hook School shooting that killed 20 children was retribution for people turning away from God.  

His first notoriety came when, as a young judge, some people objected to the fact that Moore opened his court sessions with prayer -- Christian prayer.   Years later, he got elected to be Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court -- and created controversy that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court over his installing in the court building a 2.6 ton granite replica of the Ten Commandments (just like the one that Charleton Heston brought down from the mountain in "The Ten Commandments" movie.

Moore dug in his heels and was eventually removed from his elected position as Chief Justice for defying the court order to remove the monument.   One thing Alabamans like about him is that nothing makes him change.    After failing to elect him governor, they later elected him again to be the Chief Justice of their Supreme Court.   And once again Moore got kicked off the court, because he defied the U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.   He had ordered all the state officials not to obey the order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  And he claimed that SCOTUS couldn't tell Alabama what to do.

He's probably the only person in American history to get elected twice to the highest judicial position in the state -- and both times removed from that office for refusing to obey a court order to uphold the law.

So . . . that's Roy Moore.   Some people think that it's a foregone conclusion that he will be elected to the senate.   But opponents don't agree.   In fact, there is some good evidence that Doug Jones has a decent chance of beating him, not the least being a poll that shows Moore's lead over Jones is within the margin of error.  It's also likely that Jones will evoke a bigger vote turnout among black voters.

They also point out that people had other reasons for voting against Luther Strange.   He was appointed to serve as acting senator, pending this election, by Gov. Bentley.   Now Bentley was himself under impeachment investigation by none other than Attorney General Luther Strange.

So Bentley appointed him to go to Washington, and the investigation got put on hold.  No direct evidence of quid quo pro.  But it looks bad.  And a lot of voters were turned off by that, as well as the fact that Strange went to Washington and fell right in with the establishment, voting with the party 97% of the time.  And the party leaders, including the president, endorsed him.

Now, who is Doug Jones?    A Democrat and a prosecuting attorney who is known  for having prosecuted -- and won a conviction of -- the two remaining Ku Klux Klan men who had been (many years later) identified as part of the group that in 1963 set off the bomb in the Alabama church that killed four little black girls in Sunday School.

I don't know any more about him right now, but I intend to support him for two reasons.  First, we don't need another side-show in Washington.  Donald Trump more than adequately fills that slot.   Someone described Moore as "The Old Testament version of Donald Trump."

Second, this is an important vote in terms of the senate makeup.   Just look at the recent votes to repeal Obamacare.   With every single Democrat voting No, it still required three Republicans joining them to defeat the bill.    Flipping this seat to the Democrats would be one very important step closer to regaining control of the Senate.   The difference that would make in who gets confirmed as federal judges, alone, is worth every effort to win this seat.

Ralph

PS:   Sounds like Republicans may be a bit over-confident.  News shown on MSNBC last night showed some GOP members of Congress already referring to "Senator" Moore.

So much . . . losing.

Who could forget candidate Donald Trump's boastful campaign promise:   "We are going to win . . . so much.   Believe me, we're going to win so much, you'll get tired of winning."

So, how's that working out lately?    Just look at all the losing over the last few days.

1.   Trump pushed the Graham-Cassidy bill, -- and lost.  The Republican's latest effort to repeal Obamacare.   Reportedly, Trump made a lot of phone calls to senators, trying to get their votes for the bill;  and we know, from news reports, that he sent out some tweets, publicly insulting one or two of the No voters.
   Tuesday, the leaders decided not even to bring it up for a vote, because three senators:   Rand Paul, John McCain, and Susan Collins declared they would vote No.   That was the crucial number, so repealing O-care was dead, again.   Of course, Trump blames everyone but himself.   He'll proclaim to support whatever they tell him is their plan, since he's never had one of his own;  and he has no understanding of the ones he supported.   So he could not be much use in going after tough holdouts -- he couldn't explain anything or rebut their arguments;  and they knew he didn't know what he was talking about.   So, OK, Trump has to share the blame.   Count this a loss for him, especially since he said he would repeal it on his first day in office.

2.  Trump supported an Alabama candidate -- who lost.  A special Republican primary election was held in Alabama, also on Tuesday, to choose their candidate for the seat left vacant when Sen. Jeff Sessions became Trump's Attorney General.  Alabama's governor had named his own Attorney General, Luther Strange, as the temporary, acting senator;  and Gov. Bentley set the election for January 2018, giving his appointee a year's incumbency before having to face the voters.
   This choice raised as lot of questions and gossip, because the governor himself was in a heap of trouble over a scandal involving a woman employee;  and impeachment proceedings had begun against him.   There's no evidence of quid pro quo;  but it raised a lot of questions:   a governor facing impeachment appoints the AG to a senate seat in Washington;  then he gets to name the replacement AG;  then somehow the impeachment gets put on hold.
   Sen. Strange quickly became part of the GOP establishment in the U.S. Senate, voting with the president 97% of the time.   Trump, along with VP Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all endorsed Strange, and Trump and Pence both went to Alabama to campaign for him.
   But when the votes were counted Tuesday night, it turns out the pre-elections polls were right.   Strange had been defeated by the colorful, cantankerous Roy Moore, a far-far right former judge who thinks homosexual acts should be criminalized and who -- not just once, but twice -- was removed from his position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying a court order from SCOTUS.
   The first time was following his refusal to remove the 10 2.6 ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments he had installed in the Judicial Building;  the second was his refusal to accept the U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, saying that Alabama law superceded the federal law and the constitution.
   And then there's the colorful part.   Moore rode into his campaign rallies on a horse, wearing a Stetson, a leather vest, and at one point pulled out a handgun and waved it around, in defiance of any restrictions on so-called Second Amendment rights.   You know, those rights in that Constitution that Moore obeys only when he agrees with it.
   To find a comparable character in politics, I think we have to go back to Lester Maddox, Georgia's staunch segregationist governor from 1967-71.  He first came to notice by refusing to serve African-Americans in his restaurant, in defiance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, threatening to take an axe handle to any who tried to cross his threshold.    "Ole Lester," as he was called, had one skill that he enjoyed showing off.   He could ride a bicycle . . . backwards.  Nevertheless, he served four years as governor.   Perhaps his most memorable quote was in explaining what to do about the bad state of Georgia's prisons.   Maddox suggested that what we needed was "a better class of prisoners."

But I digress from Trump's spate of "losing."   Trump somewhat reluctantly endorsed and campaigned for Strange, especially when he saw that he was lagging about 8 points in the polls.    Then, along came Steve Bannon, who campaigned for Roy Moore.    Double double trouble.   Trump even said the night before the election,  "Maybe I made a mistake in endorsing him."   And, in the most Trumpian way of distancing himself, he deleted his positive tweets about the candidate -- the most significant one being from the morning of the election, which (falsely) proclaimed that Strange was "shooting up in the polls since my endorsement."  . . . .  Pathetic.   Definitely a loss for Trump.

3.   Trump told NFL coaches to fire players who knelt during the national anthem -- and they didn't.  This whole war Trump started with the NFL players who have taken to kneeling during the playing of the pre-game national anthem isn't working out too well for him.    Oh, his base loves it, because it's one more way of poking the establishment and the black players, who began it as a protest of police brutality and unequal treatment for blacks.   Trump latched on, turned it into his own crusade for patriotism, denigrating those "who do not respect the flag and the sacrifice of our patriotic military."    Trump is playing a calculated strategy to keep his base tightly in his corner -- because he doesn't have much support beyond them.    For others, it's a cheap trick that is backfiring.   This isn't over yet, as to whether it's a win or loss.   In exciting his base and in taking attention away from other problems, maybe it's a win.   But for the majority who find Trump to be obnoxious, it's just another loss.

4.   Two important agency heads, career professionals, have resigned because of Trump's lack of respect for the law and for ethics.   This looks bad for Trump, especially that they're both being vocal about why they resigned.   So count these are losses -- for him, but even moreso for the American people and for good government.
   The acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Chuck Rosenberg, announced his resignation to be effective this weekend.  In a letter to his associates at DEA, he said that he "has become convinced that President Trump has no respect for the law.  
   Rosenberg is a career professional, not a political appointee.  It seems similar to the resignation a few weeks ago of Walter Schaub, the Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the top ethics officer, also a career professional in the ethics office.  Appointed to his position by Obama, Schaub initially stayed on in the job after Trump's inauguration -- but then resigned when he realized that he could be more effective in a position outside the government than he could be inside in an administration that pays no attention to ethics.
   Both of these are very good, dedicated public servants who cared too much about professionalism in their highly sensitive positions to be able to tolerate working in a Trump administration.   We will all lose -- as will Trump himself too -- because their replacements will not come anywhere close to the high level of expertise, integrity, and effectiveness of Rosenberg and Schaub.

Is that enough losing, Mr. Trump, so you're supporters don't get tired of winning?

Ralph

Trump bristles at suggestion he's too preoccupied with NFL players' kneeling -- and ignored Puerto Rico's destruction.

Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory island of Puerto Rico.  We've known for days that the entire island is without electric power;   and it's not expected to be restored for at least six months, because the electric grid itself was destroyed.   Even those with their own generators are now running out of fuel to run them.

After an initial response,  President Trump then went three days without even a tweet mention of Puerto Rico.  And then on Monday, he went on a twitter rant against the near-bankrupt government, saying that they are in "deep trouble" due to "broken infrastructure and massive debt."   Then he added that they still owe "millions to Wall Street."

To be fair, the president did approve a declaration of emergency on Sept. 17th, and FEMA is helping.  But, rather than at least contriving to appear compassionate, as he did with the victims of Harvey and Irma, Trump sounds irritated with the victims of Maria.   Could it be that they speak Spanish?   That they were already on the verge of bankruptcy . . . i.e., "losers," in Trump-speak?

Puerto Rico may have had ineffective, maybe even corrupt, governments that kept them poor.   But now is not the time to be a scold.   Does he even know that Puerto Ricans are American citizens?

Ralph

Dead . . . again!

Republicans have conceded, once again, that they do not have the votes to pass the latest iteration of their "repeal Obamacare."   Despite having loudly proclaimed for eight years that they would "repeal Obamacare," they just can't come up with a bill that can pass.  With Sept. 30th just three days away, time has run out on their latest try.

So . . .  it's dead, again.

To me, it's been so obvious for so long, that there is no alternate -- unless you go even more progressive, which is the exact opposite direction from where the Republicans are trying to take it.

Obamacare is so complicated, because it has to be.   The details are not what they are because someone came up with the particulars as a great idea.   The plan evolved into what it is, as they tried to solve problems that:  (1) would allow it to be passed and (2) would allow it to actually function as health care insurance.

Unless you go to single payer, tax supported healthcare, it's going to require all these provisions that the Republicans insist on getting rid of -- the very things without which it becomes unworkable.   For example, for insurance companies to accept everyone regardless of preexisting conditions, you have to broaden the pool of insureds with an individual mandate, an inducement for young, healthy people to buy insurance.

The Republican's sheer cynicism really came into focus this time around, with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) putting it bluntly:   "You know, I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn't be considered.   But Republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.  That's pretty much as much of a reason as the substance of the bill."

A+ for honesty.   F-  on actually caring about American people's health care.

Ralph

Trump's thrill at insulting Kim Jong Un --- could gets us all killed

Where will it end?    Will we survive the escalating war of insults between President Donald J. Trump of the United States and Kim Jong Un of North Korea?   Does this war of words make it impossible to pull back and assume a diplomatic negotiating stance, as some experienced diplomats have suggested?

In his U.N. speech, Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea, if they attack us or our allies.   Which led Kim to call Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard, followed by his foreign minister raising the prospect of a hydrogen bomb explosion over the Pacific.  Trump tweeted that Kim "won't be around much longer;" and Kim then said that the U.S. "has declared war," so now he claims the right to shoot down American planes.   The U.S. denies it declared war.

China's diplomatic influence over North Korea hardly exists anymore, since Kim and Trump are directly addressing each other in tweets.   China still has some economic sway, as North Korea's only significant trading partner.   But China is reluctant to provoke any economic hardship there, because the result would be millions of starving North Koreans streaming over the border into China.

We're back to square one -- except that now North Korea is close to having nuclear bomb capability, which it sees as existentially necessary, the only way to defend itself against U.S. "aggression."   Trump's aggressive verbal attacks have only heightened Kim's determination to be ready.

For his part, Trump said, in that same U.N. speech that "now is not the time for talking."   And it was Saturday night, that he tweeted that Kim and his foreign minister "won't be around much longer."

The New York Times' Julie Hirschfield Davis writes of this "deep uncertainty about whether Mr,  Trump is all talk or actually intends to act.   The ambiguity could be a strategic part of an effort to intimidate Mr. Kim and keep him guessing.  Or it could reflect a rash impulse by a leader with little foreign policy experience to vent his anger and stoke his supporters' enthusiasm."

Trump himself is enough of a loose cannon.   His national security team and his chief of staff try to keep him from going too far;  but they know that he reacts badly whenever he feels someone is trying to control his behavior.

The situation surrounding Kim may be even worse, though more predictable.  I was impressed by an expert guest that was discussing this on MSNBC a few nights ago.   Dr. Sue Mi Terry is a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University's East Asia Institute.   A former career national intelligence officer, Dr. Terry's specialty is U.S.-Northeast Asia relations, North Korean developing nuclear capability, and Korean politics and foreign policy.

Dr. Terry emphasized that the situation is now very dire, because there is such an authoritarian atmosphere around Kim, that no one dares to express any thought that in the slightest way deviates from what Kim has said.   So now that he has vowed to strike back at Trump, no one around him will dare to caution him or try to suggest another approach.

Fortunately, we do still have people who will say No to Trump.   Starting with his Chief of Staff, Gen. Kelly, who is perfectly capable of standing up to Trump -- but who tries to balance that with not provoking Trump's resistance to the point that he loses what influence he has gained.

Christopher Hill was George W. Bush's ambassador to South Korea and, as such, was the last American to hold formal talks with the North Korean government.  Ambassador Hill told the New York Times that he and Secretary of State Condolessa Rice always cautioned President Bush "to avoid personal invectives," because they never help.

Yet senior officials say that Mr. Trump will continue his brinksmanship, especially the tweets, "no matter what his advisers do or say.

The exchange of insults continued over the weekend, with Trump now referring to Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and Kim upping the ante with threats of "rockets" to the entire mainland of the U.S.

Julie Davis' article continues:

"The source of much of the anxiety in and out of government and on both sides of the Pacific -- is whether the [national security team] would step in to prevent the president from taking the kind of drastic action that matches his words, if they believed it was imminent.

"Veterans of diplomacy and national security and specialists on North Korea fear that, whatever the intended result, Mr. Trump's increasingly bellicose threats and public insults of the notoriously thin-skinned Mr. Kim could cause the United States to careen into a nuclear confrontation driven by personal animosity and bravado."

Dr. Terry, again, cautioned that we not get into a situation "where North Korea fundamentally miscalculates that an attack is coming. . . .  It could lead us to stumble into a war that nobody wants."

Talk of nuclear war, blundering into a war that nobody wants . . . is so reminiscent of the Cold War with Russia and the standoff of the Cuban nuclear crisis, when the young Kennedy administration learned that Russia had a nuclear bomb stationed in Cuba, just 90 miles off our shores.

But the Oval Office was occupied than by President John Kennedy. . . .  And President Donald Trump is no John Kennedy.

Somehow, because of the clown-quality of both Trump and Kim Jong Un, we aren't taking this seriously enough.  We're waiting for the punch line, where Trump screams at Kim:   "You're fired."   And then we can turn off the TV and go to sleep.

But this is real life, folks.     That's not the way it works.

Ralph

"Trump's frightening and tightening legal noose"

Andrew Napolitano is a former judge, book author, legal analyst for Fox Niews, and a syndicated columnist for conservative publications.   The headline above is the title of his recent article on FoxNews, which begins with this:

"The Donald Trump I know is a smart guy who often thinks a few steps ahead of those whose will he is trying to bend. But I lately wonder whether he grasps the gravity of the legal peril that is beginning to show up around him. In the past week, we learned of an unfiltered public confession of frustration and weakness among his lawyers and we learned that his former chief confidant and campaign manager is about to be indicted. This is very bad news for President Trump."

Napolitano then describes the disagreement between his criminal defense lawyers, who think Trump is completely innocent of any wrongdoing and therefore want to simply turn over any document Special Counselor Mueller requests, so as to demonstrate cooperation with nothing to hide -- and Don McGahan, the White House legal counsel, whose job it is to be the lawyer for the president in his legal role as president.

McGahan is more cautious, then, because he is concerned about two things:   (1)  that they might turn over something that they later decide should be protected by executive privilege;  and (2) he does not want to set a precedent for future administrations.

On the other hand, the criminal defense lawyers have a different take, one of them having told Trump that Mueller would be "off your back by Thanksgiving."   How do we know all this, Napolitano asks, rhetorically?

Because, astonishingly, those two criminal defense lawyers were openly discussing it over lunch at a popular spot and were overheard by a New York Times reporter sitting at a table nearby.  So now the world knows, and Mueller knows, that the Trump defense team is not much a team and seems to lack a coordinated legal strategy.

Napolitano then discusses other signs of a tightening noose.

"Also during this past week, we learned that Paul Manafort . . . was the subject of FBI surveillance for a two-year period starting prior to the campaign [when Manafort had a condo in Trump Tower] and continuing into the transition period after Trump’s election.

"With whom was Manafort communicating on a daily basis in the time period of the Trump Tower surveillance? And who complained forcefully that he had been surveilled in Trump Tower? And who was mocked mercilessly for those complaints?   Donald Trump."

Pointing out that the both the Department of Justice and former FBI Director James Comey had denied having any evidence from electronic surveillance of anyone in Trump Tower;   but there has been no denial of this recent revelation of Manafort/Trump Tower surveillance.   Why the sudden switch to silence?

Napolitano then distinguishes between surveillance pursuant to a search warrant issued by the FISA Court having to do with counterintelligence and could not be used in a criminal case.   However, a warrant issued from an ordinary federal judge in a suspected criminal case, would be admissible in court. 

Because Mueller has said he expects to indict Manafort, Napolitano suggests:

"If the warrant was issued pursuant to the Fourth Amendment [rather than by FISA], that means the FBI demonstrated under oath to a federal judge that Manafort was more likely than not involved in and communicating about crimes while working in Trump Tower, and the fruits of that surveillance could be used against him in a criminal prosecution, as well as against anyone else involved.

"An indictment of Manafort, which Mueller says is coming soon, will be used as an instrument to flip him into spilling whatever beans he has on his former boss. And we can expect indictments of others presently or formerly near the president as part of the prosecutorial process."

And Napolitano -- a conservative lawyer, judge, and political analyst -- concludes:

"Where does this leave Trump? In the hands of incompetent lawyers, under the crosshairs of a team of very aggressive federal prosecutors and publicly indifferent to the tightening and frightening legal noose around him."

Wow !!    I thought Napolitano's title was a bit ahead of itself . . . but maybe not.  And, on top of this, there is the apparently pretty solid case for obstruction of justice against the president.

Ralph

Clinton: "Trump worse than I expected"

Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC Saturday morning, said that President Trump's presidency is worse than she expected it to be.

"I really had such deep doubts about his preparation, his temperament, his character, his experience;  but he's  been even worse than I thought he would be. . . .  I tried in my concession speech to make clear that we should all give him the space to be president for every American.   That's what we want from our presidents, regardless of our partisan differences;  we want to feel like the person in the oval office really cares about and is looking after everybody.

"And that just hasn't turned out to be the case,"  Clinton said, as she elaborated on the "missed opportunity," beginning with Trump's inauguration speech.   "All he did was reinforce the dark, divisive image of America that he'd been feeding to his supporters."

*   *   *

I agree.   I can remember, after election night, trying to console myself with the thought that perhaps the Oval Office would elevate Trump's better self, that he would grow into the job.   What bitter irony and false optimism.

Eight months since inauguration;  and, despite Gen. Kelly having been able to bring some order to the operation of the Oval Office and some control to who gets in to bend the president's ear, he still cannot stop Trump from such a performance as he gave at the United Nations -- or the taunting tweets that have followed.

Word has leaked out that several of his senior aides tried to talk him out of making personal attacks on Kim Jong Un.   And at least one source reported that "Rocket Man" and "destroy North Korea" were not in the script when it was last vetted.

The image of a schoolyard, with Little Donny and Un escalating their name-calling contest, would be a funny -- if the fate of the world didn't rest on some adult coming out to take charge.

If only it were as simple as someone running to call "Miss Hillary" and "Miss Angela" to come, because Donny and Un are at it again.

What we really need is for Mr. Mueller to settle it with investigtive findings of misconduct so un-American that the Republicans will have no other option but impeachment.    And please hurry.

Ralph