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Category: Elections 2020

The Enduring Fantasy of Trump’s Bestest Ever Beautiful GOP Health Care Plan

Trump keeps magically saying he can give everyone better, cheaper, more-inclusive insurance. But he never shares the details.

Donald Trump and the GOP held a majority in both the House and the Senate for the first two years of his presidency.

Despite the fact that Donald campaigned in 2016 on replacing the ACA with something more inclusive — “I am going to take care of everybody … Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” — and despite the fact, just before his inauguration, he pinky-swore that he had a detailed Much More Better Great Bestest health care plan to replace the ACA that was just about ready to be printed, voted on, and passed, once he was in office …

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

[…] Trump said his plan for replacing most aspects of Obama’s health-care law is all but finished. Although he was coy about its details — “lower numbers, much lower deductibles” — he said he is ready to unveil it alongside Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It’s very much formulated down to the final strokes. We haven’t put it in quite yet but we’re going to be doing it soon,” Trump said.

[…] As he has developed a replacement package, Trump said he has paid attention to critics who say that repealing Obamacare would put coverage at risk for more than 20 million Americans covered under the law’s insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” People covered under the law “can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”

… he then just turned to Congress and basically punted it over to them. Because he had no actual plan. 

“Trust me.”

The GOP-controlled Congress tried. They spent all of 2017 crafting and recrafting and negotiating within their caucus to get some sort of “repeal and replace” passed. The closest they got was the AHCA, which kicked a bunch of people off of insurance and didn’t cover pre-existing conditions, and which ended up being defeated in a last-second vote by Sen. John McCain in July. Subsequent efforts to just “repeal” and “repeal but delay repeal for two years” also failed.

(Ironically, just as the ACA almost foundered on the gap between folk on the far left of the Dems who wanted a much more sweeping health insurance reform, and the Blue Dog Dems who wanted something much more conservative, the GOP’s efforts were stymied. on conservative Senators and House members who wanted flat-out repeal, and more moderate GOP congressfolk who insisted on a much softer landing.)

The GOP basically gave up in Election Year 2018, but still lost control of the House in that fall’s election, largely over their shenanigans against the ACA, which people suddenly realized they actually kind of liked (or liked more than the status quo ante).

Which brings us to now, when the Trump Administration is seeking to get the ACA defeated in court, while promising that it has (or will have Real Soon Now) the Much More Better Great Bestest health care plan to replace the ACA. It says that, not because it has such a plan (it still doesn’t), but because it expects the GOP in the Senate to write such a plan — something even Mitch McConnell isn’t willing to do.

So instead, Donald has declared he never really wanted it written and voted on before the 2020 election anyway, and will instead actively campaign on how Beautiful and Great his Brand New Plan will be after the election when he inexplicably expects to have control back of the House for the GOP, and so will be able to have something written for him that will be Truly Awesome.

I imagine one can judge the veracity of the full set of tweets by that final line there.

The problem is, no matter how many think tanks and Senators and policy wonks and zany off-hand comments by the President one throws into the picture, what Donald wants, framed in a way that’s acceptable to his own party, is simply impossible.  Mathematically impossible.

Here’s the problem: Insurance companies are completely correct in saying that people with pre-existing conditions tend to need to spend more on medical care, and therefore are more costly to insure.

There’s no getting around that. You can argue over what constitutes a pre-existing condition (unless you’re an insurance company customer before the ACA, because it was then whatever insurance companies wanted to say it was, from having been pregnant to having diabetes to having once smoked to living in the wrong neighborhood to having had acne to having anything that might possibly every remotely be arguably related to something that you now wanted coverage for), but the bottom line is, literally, the bottom line.

If you are going to actually fully cover people regardless of their pre-existing conditions, you have to spend money. Much more money than if you do what insurance companies always want to do (cover only healthy people who won’t ask for the money back that they spent on premiums). Which means either taking that money from the taxpayers (like in a Medicare-for-All scenario), or maximize the risk pool with even fully healthy people so that everyone is mandated to buy insurance and spends marginally more than they would if they were only covering just themselves (if they were lucky enough to not have any “pre-existing conditions”) (which is the approach the ACA took, based on Romneycare, based on what the Heritage Foundation recommended before the Right decided that Obama had stolen the idea and therefore it was the Worst Idea Ever).

The alternative to spending money is to pretend that you are protecting pre-existing conditions. For example, you can require insurance companies to cover everyone, but allow them to charge more for some people — i.e., a person can theoretically get insurance despite their pre-existing conditions, it’s just prohibitively expensive to actually get. Or you can create a special “high risk pool” taxpayer-supported insurance program, and then scrimp on the money you put into it, or distribute it as block grants to the states regardless of inflationary costs or how actual medical care demand is balanced. Those kind of solutions let you claim with a semi-straight face you are protecting people, while in reality throwing them to the dogs.

Of course, you could just go ahead and overtly throw them to the dogs. Some conservative GOP folk think that’s fine — if you can’t pay more, you can go pound sand, I got mine, screw you.

But Trump claims that sort of Randian attitude is unthinkable. But he thinks he will be able to get away with not having to explain the magical details of how he’ll do all these wonderful thing. Like the real estate developer he is, he’ll run on “principles.” just as he tweeted above: Lower costs! Lower Deductibles! Much Better! Everyone covered! We love pre-existing conditions! Puppies and Unicorns for all! We double-dog promise that’s what you’ll get — trust us!

Given the gaps, the people kicked off coverage, the hits to folk who have pre-existing conditions that were coded into the few actual GOP plans proposed over the past couple of years, it’s hard to believe that’s a message that’s going to go over well.

Do you want to know more?

How DO you pronounce “Buttigieg”?

A lot of people have a lot of (wrong) guesses.

Pete Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is one of the flock of Democrats running for the presidential nomination in 2020. He’s also got the name (of Maltese origin) that’s hardest to figure out how to pronounce.

According to his husband, it’s best pronounced “Buddha-judge”. Or you can just call him “Mayor Pete.”

Do you want to know more? How Do You Pronounce Buttigieg? The Internet Counts the Ways | WIRED

Trump finds a new avenue of attack on the ACA

He couldn’t do it through Congress, and hasn’t quite managed it by Executive Order, so …

Donald Trump has made “Repeal (and, I guess, Replace)” of the Affordable Care Act one of his priorities since Day 1 of his election. He’s tried (and failed) to wrangle Congress into doing it for him. He’s chipped away steadily at it through executive action, undoing implementation orders from the Obama era. He’s now escalated his efforts to do so on a judicial basis

Trump’s Justice Department has decided to file a brief in the appeal of a Texas judge’s ruling that the entire ACA (“Obamacare”) is unconstitutional because the GOP Congress got rid of the individual mandate. The brief is in support of that ruling, thus expanding  the DoJ’s previous positions in the case that only portions of the law should be tossed out. Now, it’s Get rid of everything as the official Justice Dept. position.

Were the 5th Circuit to uphold that position, both the short-term and long-term effects would be catastrophic. On the short-term side it would throw private insurance and public assistance into turmoil. On the long-term side, it would mean a return to the pre-ACA days:

  • Returning to Pre-Existing Condition restrictions that prevented millions of Americans from getting health insurance (at all, or at affordable levels), and locked people into jobs for fear that they wouldn’t requalify for health insurance if there was too long a gap between employment positions
  • Returning to having lifetime and annual coverage limits
  • Returning to letting insurance companies charge more for women’s health coverage
  • Dumping 15 million people off Medicaid
  • Eliminating no-charge preventative services for older Americans on Medicare
  • Removing required minimal coverage standards for health insurance policies (ambulatory care, emergency care, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use care, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services, laboratory services, preventive care, chronic disease management, and pediatric dental and vision care)
  • Removing state exchanges that provided structured comparisons of medical insurance plans
  • Removing medical loss ratio standards that required insurance companies to expend money primarily on coverage, not on executive salaries.
  • Kicking off extended dependent coverage to age 26
  • Etc.

The only “positive” aspect of this is that, regardless of how the 5th Circuit (and then the Supreme Court, one can assume) rules on this, Trump has prominently handed a huge issue to the Democrats in 2020. Protecting health care was a major component of the message in 2018 that won the Dems the House (and arguably staved off greater losses in the Senate). It polls as the most important issue for Democratic voters, while repealing the ACA is much further down the list for Republicans.

Trump has long touted “Repeal and Replace” as his goal, even though the replacements proposed have been weak beer in terms of actually helping those whom the ACA provided care for. With this move, Trump’s administration is seeking solely to Repeal; any “Replace” will be a long time coming, as we devolve to the far-more-Darwinian status quo of a decade ago, where health care was for those who could afford what insurance companies chose to charge.

But, then, despite claims to the contrary, that’s clearly been Trump’s desire all along.

Do You Want To Know More?

Protecting incumbents is not my highest priority

Maybe the DCCC will stop sending me political junk mail if I post this.

I have no problem if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm of the House Democrats, chooses to come out as a lobbying and support group for incumbents only . Indeed, I’d rather they be honest about it.

I gave once to the DCCC, long enough ago that I’m sure they have spent more on postage sending me requests for further donations than I gave them the first time. Their open declaration that their priority is only around incumbent congressfolk further frees me from any sense of obligation to donate to them again.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with incumbents per se. Experience and individual track records can be a good thing. But I don’t feel that it’s in the party’s, or America’s, interest to place all our hopes (and money) on them.  Incumbency is not a virtue; nor is preservation of it except for those who benefit from such a mission. And while I expect that, given the truckling over the past few years by national and local GOP politicians to that narcissistic menace in the White House, I’ll be voting for and supporting Democratic candidates in 2020, I can donate quite easily and directly to the ones I care for, rather than hand money to a Preserve the Party Status Quo committee.

Do you want to know more?

Election cycle, or just another opportunity for political junk mail?

Yes!

I would be willing to bet a shiny nickel that department is better known internally as the “Department of Ripping Open Return Envelopes Looking for Donation Checks and Throwing the Useless Push Surveys Away”. https://t.co/iG9Tw5d2kF

I give donations to very specific individuals or causes. The “party” or “congressional committee” don’t count.

Minor props to the DCCC for not hiding the money solicitation at the end of the survey, like most of these do. It’s right there up front, so I can ignore it and add to the recycle bin.

Better Dead Than Red!

Trump has decided that fear-mongering about socialism is his path to the White House in 2020.

The question is not *whether* we will be a “socialist” nation, but how much and in what areas. (Ditto for “capitalist”.) This is not a binary decision, dog-whistles notwithstanding. https://t.co/uYmK0GeguZ

We are not a capitalist country. We do not have a free-wheeling free-market economy. We do not live in a Hobbesian war of all-against-all, Dickensian workshop, Ayn Randian anarchy. Indeed, most people reject Scrooge’s idea of a capitalist ideal for those who don’t succeed:

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.”

“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

We do have, in the United States, what are properly deemed socialist institutions. We have Social Security Insurance for the elderly, and Medicare and Medicaid for the poor and aged and disabled. We help poor people heat their homes in the winter. We have public-built roads, and police and fire-fighting forces that have their costs divided up amongst the whole population, not just those who explicitly call on them. We have national (and state, and local) parks, not just private preserves for those who own them. We have regulations about pollution, and about safe food, and proven drugs; about overtime pay and child labor and a five day work week; about requiring lenders to tell you the truth with some degree of clarity when you borrow money. We have tax incentives for public policy ends, some of them to support individuals, some of them to support businesses. We provide support to farmers to help them deal with wide-swinging fortunes in commodity prices and the weather.

Those are all “socialist” ideas — and many of them were attacked as dire deep-red socialism when proposed, threatening the moral fiber of freedom in our country when they were passed.

That said, we are not a socialist country, either — at least not in the state-controlled-economy Stalinist-Communist model, which is what the anti-socialist commentators condemn. Supply and demand largely control the economy. People can start (and end) businesses. People purchase goods and services almost solely from privately owned companies and corporations that are “public” only insofar as their stock is sold to the public. People can spend their money pretty much as they prefer, and pass on much of their wealth to their children (or to their cats, or to a charity of their choice).

There are no Democratic candidates who are proposing the sort of Stalinist/Maoist collectivist state as their ideal — even the stereotype of Bernie in his wildest dreams.

But that’s not what you hear from Trump and the GOP. From their perspective, the entire Democratic field consists of Levellers and people who want to tax everyone at 100% and allocate money out to everyone on an even basis, regardless of whether they are patriotic “maker” entrepreneurs or lazy “taker” welfare queens.

One could have a serious discussion about individual policy proposals — Medicare for All, Tuition-free College, Child Care subsidies for working parents, whatever — looking at the pros and cons of their goals, the costs and benefits, the risks and rewards. Heck, one could have a considered relitigation of those socialist programs and policies already in our society.

But instead, the Right is pivoting Red-baiting mode, coloring any sort of “socialist” proposal as hurtling down Perdition Road toward a Venezuela or Cuba or Soviet Union. (If pressed, they’ll also condemn “Euro-Socialism” as a terrible evil, no matter how happy the people of the more socialist states in Europe poll as being.)

Ideally, as I said, we would debate individual proposals and policy points. Apparently Trump has decided — and the GOP have agreed to follow — the concept that anything done for the common good is some sort of crazed communistic “socialism,” and therefore should be painted as a horrifying evil. The goal of the Democratic candidate in 2020 — and of the party in general — has to be to note those areas where we already have “socialism” in what we as citizens accept as normal and beneficial, and clarify that the discussion should not be about facile philosophical labels, but about specifics as to what people do or don’t want, and the costs and benefits of pursuing that.

“Capitalism” and “Socialism” are neither necessarily contradictory, nor are they a binary choice of all-of-one or all-of-another. Making that clear is the best messaging that Democratic politicians could put forward, in opposition to the scaremongering already coming from the Trump campaign.

Do you want to know more? ‘High-level fear-mongering’: Trump’s economic team drives ‘socialism’ attack – POLITICO

Packing the Supreme Court (again)

Dems are considering expanding SCOTUS to counter GOP shenanigans

In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, coming off of a massive electoral victory and irked that the Supreme Court had stood in the way of his New Deal on various occasions during his first term, had legislation introduced that would expand the number of seats on the Court, which he would then be able to presumably appoint sympathetic justices to.

(The size of SCOTUS is not dictated by the Constitution, but has been fixed in law at nine since 1869.)

However, he did so in a clumsy and impolitic fashion, annoying some key Democrats who had to support the bill. That, and some other bad luck, led to the initiative’s eventual defeat, though he was in office long enough to craft a SCOTUS that would support his key policies.

The Democrats in 2019 are toying with a similar idea. The concept is that Trump has taken advantage of GOP Senate shenanigans to start filling the high court with appointees that will carry on his policies for a generation to come. Only by diluting or countering those appointees can the Dems level the playing field (if not tilt it to their side).

Justices Gorsuch and Kavanugh

These GOP shenanigans in particular are used as justification for playing such a hardball tactic:

  • The GOP’s 2017 elimination of the filibuster/cloture rules for SCOTUS appointees, meaning the simple Senate majority the GOP had could seat anyone they wanted. (The Dems had previously eliminated the filibuster for other federal court nominations in 2013, against GOP intransigence in passing any of Obama’s nominees.)
  • The 2015 move by Mitch McConnell to block President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, over a year before the next election, by simply not taking up his nomination.

Boy.

On the one hand, the McConnell / GOP moves were naked politics, as outrageous and unfair and damaging to the politics and process as the suggestion by some Dems that a court-packing scheme is the best counter to Trump’s appointment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (and whomever else he manages to get in there over the next 1-5 years). And it’s hard to argue with them on that argument.

On the other hand, carrying on that tradition seems only liable to make things worse — and simply provides further justification for the GOP to do something even more extreme (“Eleven justices? Bah! We’ll make it 15 for Don, Junior’s first term!”). That way madness lies.

On the still-other hand, the GOP has shown they will do anything in this arena. Being unwilling to counter it is to surrender the field. If only one side is willing to protect an institution, it’s not really being protected.

All this is contingent, of course, on the Dems taking back the White House and the Senate in 2020. That seems certainly possible at this stage, though by no means a lock, so this may all be just idle speculation.

But expect to hear this question come up during presidential debates. And the Dems are going to have to have good answers to keep themselves from not looking like the villains of the piece.

Do you want to know more? 2020 Dems warm to expanding Supreme Court – POLITICO

 

And yet another Democratic candidate heard from

Hopefully a crowded field won’t divide the effort to defeat Trump in 2020

After teasing about it for some weeks, Beto O’Rourke has joined the herd of Democratic candidates for President in 2020. Remarkably enough, there may still yet be some undeclared candidates (looking at you, Joe Biden).

On the one hand, there’s a lot of value in a crowded field like this — it offers up opportunities for new and interesting ideas that might not bubble up when only one or two candidates dominate the field, and it creates enough breadth for people to feel like someone they really like has an opportunity to make a difference. (One of the criticisms of the Dems in 2016 was that Clinton’s nomination was treated by the party powers as a fait accompli, which led to some untoward behavior and people feeling turned off by the process.)

One of the dangers of such a crowded field, though, is that it gives everyone a chance to find that One, True Candidate That They’ve Always Been Looking To Follow … and it’s altogether possible that person won’t get the nomination. Which, then can lead to people being turned off (“How dare ‘they’ not choose X?! Fine, I won’t compromise my pro-X principles by voting for Y! Let it all burn!”).

That wasn’t the only dynamic going on in 2016, but it was certainly one of them.

To which I can only say to my fellow Democrats (et al.), you may very well feel that one candidate or the other has all/most of the right answers to being the leader of this country. You may rightly feel that the candidate who gets the Democratic nomination has some significant flaws — too radical, not radical enough, held some unfortunate ideas a decade ago, still holds some unfortunate ideas, whatever.

You betray your preferred candidate — and your country — far more if you let Donald Trump get re-elected. We don’t get to vote for the individually best candidate; we vote for the candidates that are selected in the nominating process.

The only “message” I am interested in seeing next fall is a sound rejection of Trumpism and the GOP that has capitulated to it. Anything short of that from the Left is self-indulgent twaddle.

So do go ahead and cheer and shout and campaign for your Dem of choice. That’s what this period of time is about. Caucus, vote in the primary, splatter their videos all over your social media.

When the candidate is finally chosen, remember, the choice is no longer between your ideal and the reality, it’s between that reality and another four years of Donald Trump and what he is doing to this nation and the world.

And, honestly, kudos to O’Rourke for illuminating that.

“Any single Democrat running today — and I may not be able to enumerate every single one of them — would be far better than the current occupant of the White House,” O’Rourke, a Texas Democrat, told a packed coffee house here. “So let’s keep this in mind, and we can conduct ourselves in this way every single day for the next 11 months until voting begins here in Iowa.”

“Ultimately, we all have to get on board with the same person, because it is fundamental to our chances of success that we defeat Donald Trump in 2020,” O’Rourke added.

Do you want to know more? Beto O’Rourke announces presidential bid, calls for unity to defeat Trump

The “Equality Act” is back in the legislative queue

But will Republican Senators have to pay any attention to it?

The analysis here is, honestly, optimistic. Even though a significant majority of Americans overall favor the Equality Act — extending federal civil rights protection for employment, housing, and public business access to the LGBT populace — a majority of Republican voters don’t.  And so, presumably, the GOP in the Senate will block it, en masse or simply by Mitch McConnell issuing a pocket veto by not bringing it to the floor.

The only glimmer of hope is the Senate race in 2020 is as bad for the GOP as it was in 2018 for the Dems. There are a number of GOP Senators running in “purple” states (including my own Cory Gardner) that might find their race all the more difficult should they be too hardline against this bill, whatever their personal preferences.

Will that be enough? We will see. Especially since the opposition is making it clear and loud their argument is that they have a religious right to discriminate against anyone they want — in employment, in housing, in business services — and so adding another “protected class,” especially one they’re willing to publicly desire to discriminate against, is a profound wrong.

As I said, we will see.

Do you want to know more? Legislation banning LGBTQ discrimination could split the Republican Party – The Washington Post

Socialists! From! THE FUTUUUUURE!

They’ve Come To Destroy Our Country!

The more things change …

Via They were… Socialist Invaders from the Future! / Boing Boing

“Very Nice Language”

Donald Trump: “I think my language is very nice.” He realizes his best chance in 2020 is to make enough Democrats’ heads ‘splode. https://t.co/2PrdcWJK0y

Democrats

RT @Stonekettle: I’m sitting here these last 48 hours, watching liberals shit their colons inside out, furiously fighting among themselves…

An Alabama Example of Gerrymandering

This is why politicians — primarily, at the moment, GOP ones — like gerrymandering. Also an example of why some conservatives want to get rid of the 17th Amendment and move US Senate elections back to the (gerrymandered) state legislatures.

Jones won 49% of the state-wide vote; Moore won 48%. But as Leonardo Carella notes:

If yesterday’s Alabama Senate race had been a House election, the Republicans, who got fewer votes, would have won 6 out of 7 seats, and the Democrats, who won the vote statewide, only 1 out of 7. That’s how gerrymandered Alabama is.

And that’s why gerrymandering is wrong. I wonder if SCOTUS will do anything about it in the upcoming case they are reviewing?




Leonardo Carella on Twitter
“If yesterday’s Alabama Senate race had been a House election, the Republicans, who got *fewer* votes, would have won 6 out of 7 seats, and the Democrats, who *won* the vote statewide, only 1 out of 7. That’s how gerrymandered Alabama is.”

View on Google+

Tweetizen Trump – 2017-08-18: “Let Me Tell You A Story”

TGIF, Donald.

On the bright side, you seem to have stopped talking about Charlottesville. On the down side, it’s because you’ve pivoted to other destructive zaniness.

[Being a look at the @RealDonaldTrump Twitter account, with a glance at the @POTUS account, grouped for your topical pleasure.]

===

So the big news the last 24 hours was a major terror attack in Barcelona, and subsequent counter-terrorism activities there. Which apparently was a tremendous relief to you, as it gave you something to Stand Tall and In Charge about, rather than the continuous hole digging of the past week.

See? That’s how a presidential tweet is done. Compassion, firmness, targeting the behavior being condemned, offering to help. I knew you had it in you, Donald!

Now, if you can just avoid saying something too stu…

Sigh.

So this isn’t the first time you’ve brought up this story, Donald. And every time you bring it up, people correct you to note that it’s simply not true, or certainly not part of the historical record.

Which is really funny, given that you’ve been trying to convince us this past week that you are very careful about gathering all the facts because you don’t want to say anything that others will later point out as wrong.

While there’s some evidence that commanders in the US Army fighting the Moro insurgency in the Philippines did occasionally use bury pig carcasses with the bodies of dead insurgents, there’s no evidence that Pershing himself did such a thing (though he was aware of it), let alone using magically blood-cursed bullets himself in executions to deter them.

In fact, his stint as military governor was as much about “winning hearts and minds” as about terrorizing the terrorists (who may not have been particularly deterred by such tactics anyway). Pershing negotiated with the Moros, he got the leader of the Ottoman Muslims to reach out to them to ask for peace, he drank tea with them, and he convinced them that, unlike the Spanish, he wasn’t there to push them off their land, just to quell the violence.

Historians have also pointed out that the Moro Wars didn’t actually stop under Pershing’s tenure, and even when hostilities scaled back, violence did continue.

And even that, Donald, ignores your historically bizarre conflation of the Moro conflicts with the outside colonizers of the Philippines (first the Spanish, then the US) with modern terrorist conflict in the Middle East. Suggesting that the Philippine Muslims of turn of the 20th Century had anything particular in common, as motivations, with ISIL or al-Qa’eda, a century later and thousands of miles away is just goofy.

So, to summarize, Donald. (1) There’s no record of anyone using bullets dipped in pig’s blood, (2) there’s no indication that Pershing did anything even resembling that, (3) nobody magically stopped “Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years” (or 25 years, the last time you told the yarn), and (4) the Moros were not ISIL or al-Qa’eda.

Aside from that, you got pretty much everything correct, Donald. I mean, at least the spelling and margins.

Of course, all this ignores your thesis that the only way to discourage terrorists is to be more brutal than they are. Suggesting that summary shooting of prisoners, not to mention humiliating them religiously, is a valuable tactic that the Spanish government should consider, is not only the attitude that got us Abu Ghraib (which ultimately did far more harm to the US than to the Iraqi insurgents), but simply isn’t in keeping with national or international law or the Military Code of Conduct. It’s a war crime.

For the President of the United States to make such a suggestion shows a fundamental unfitness to be the Commander in Chief. You might want to consider that, Donald.

(Interesting side note: Pershing, one of the great US military commanders, was commonly known as “Black Jack” — but that reference was a softening of the epithet “Nigger Jack”, given to him as a West Point instructor by students who disliked him and because he had held a command in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, a “Buffalo Soldier” African-American unit. Now _that’s_ trivia worth repeating, Donald.)

Then, this morning:

[Retweeted on @POTUS]

While I realize that DHS would and should be more vigilant after such an attack … it seems a bit odd, Donald, that you had to emphasize that. Are you trying to be reassuring, or are you trying to take on the mantle of National Protector?

So are there any particular issues that have arisen cause by “Obstructionist Democrats” that have led to loss of life — or, heck, even possible loss of life — since you took office? Or are you just doing that fear-mongering thing?

[Retweeted on @POTUS]

Um … which “protective rights” are those, Donald?

And this is most likely just being rhetorical, Donald, right? I mean, “any means necessary” is kind of a broad way to phrase things, esp. after your bullshit tweet about John Pershing. What means are you talking about to “stop terrorism” (which, like “stopping crime,” seems a bit quixotic a goal)? And what means are off the table?

I mean, are we stepping back, for some reason, to the “and kill their wives and children, too” rhetoric you were playing with during the election campaign? What US (or International) laws are you proposing be set aside? What limits on brutality, inhumanity, and destruction are allowable, Donald?

Hyperbole much?

And Camp David? I thought you hated that place, Donald? What, all the banquet rooms at Bedminster already booked?

Of course, a lot of this is simple theatrical posturing on your part, Donald. I mean, you’ve taken a hell of a (largely self-inflicted) shellacking the past week, so it’s not at all surprising that you’d launch into an effort to do the thing that garners you most support: Talk Tough on Terrorism. That’ll bring those mean GOP politicians back into line, right? That’ll distract from your bungling of the Charlottesville situation and all the other problems and scandals circling the White House.

I don’t think it will work, Donald, but I have little doubt it will make things worse.

And because, even in the midst of a National Security Crisis, you can always be distracted by someone saying flattering things about you, you retweeted a couple of messages from radio pundit Hugh Hewitt …

Virtue signallers, Hugh? Condemning Nazis is now virtue signalling? Yeesh.

 

Hear that, Donald! Your support in California is increasing! Awesome! Now if you can just pick up a few million more votes there, you just might be able to win the state!

 

Your Social Media Minion also tweeted …

… a retweet of VP Pence condemning the Barcelona attack [on @POTUS].
… about elevating the status of the US Cyber Command to Unified Combatant Command.