Trump the Ignorant, Trump the Cruel

Leave aside the fact that he presented no evidence for his charges[against Iran]. Do you think he could find Iran on a map? Do you think if you gave him three possible answers as to what the capital of Iran is, he’d get it right? If you Photoshopped the face of the Ayatollah Khomeini into a photo of ZZ Top, do you think he’d be able to tell you which of the four bearded guys wasn’t in the band?

Nowhere is he more clearly at sea than in foreign policy—and John Kelly should be ashamed to have stood up before a microphone and said how smart this gossoon is.

  Charles P Pierce

I have seen presidents give great speeches and I have seen presidents do very bad things. I have seen presidents give very bad speeches and do very great things. But I do not believe that any president* ever has been so much of a colossal dick to his own citizens in word and deed as this president* was on Thursday morning. Imagine you're an American in Puerto Rico, and you come home from a hard morning collecting radioactive water so your family will have something to drink, and you hear your president* calling you and your fellow citizens lazy spongers. Calling this cruelty is too dignified. What the president* tweeted is cheap and ignorant. It's every yob on a radio talk-show suddenly discovering that he has control of the federal government.

[...]

Now, since Labor Day, there have been three once-in-a-century storms and a massacre at a concert, and everybody in the country knows that the federal government is the only institution with the capacity—and the moral obligation—to act to relieve the suffering. Platitudes about markets and bootstraps don't slake the thirst of people so desperate that they'll drink chemical waste to survive. Oddly, neither Trump nor [Pau] Ryan nor anyone else is saying this stuff about the people in Houston or in Florida. Maybe there aren't any market forces. Maybe there's a lack of bootstraps. Or maybe there's some other reason. Give me a second and I might come up with it.

  Charles P Pierce

Brave Bob Corker thinks the president* is a serious threat to blow up the world, and Principled Ben Sasse is deeply concerned about the mean things the president* said about NBC. Surely, they must see that his pointless assault on the sick and vulnerable is also of a piece with his unfitness for office, which weighs so heavily on their minds.

However, I checked with The Weather Channel, and they say a hard freeze in Hell is unlikely before Christmas.

Nearly 6 million [ACA] enrollees, or 57%, qualify for the cost-sharing payments this year, according to the most recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services. [...] The uncertainty over the subsidies' fate was a key reason that many insurers are substantially hiking their rates for 2018 -- some by more than 20%.

[...]

Insurers have already signed contracts committing them to participating in 2018 and setting their rates. They must continuing offering the reduced deductibles and co-pays to eligible enrollees, but they won't be paid for them. That's why many asked for such large rate hikes.

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office decided it couldn't wait for the Courageous and Principled Men of Courageous Principles to decide that decimating millions of lives because the previous guy made a mug out of you at a formal dinner party is evidence of a seriously warped mind that shouldn't be within an area code of actual power.

The CBO found that the move would cause premiums for people whose care is supported by the payments to climb 20 percent higher by 2018 and 25 percent higher by 2020. They also estimate that the move would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion dollars by 2026 [...] because insurers would compensate for the lost subsidies by raising premiums across the board, forcing more people to depend on government tax credits.

  Charles P Pierce

Not to worry. The GOP is about to fix the tax code.

This is America.