When the RealityTVPresident mounts the podium in the Senate chamber to deliver his first State of the Union address, he believes he’ll be starring in must-see TV, just what Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it. At least, it is traditionally must broadcast TV for commercial media. He’ll have to wait for the ratings to get the number of viewers who opted for HBO or Netflix.
There will be nothing new. Once again, RBG can afford to snooze through the speech. 45 will read haltingly from a teleprompter, covering his stumbles with adlibs, usually “believe me” and “I can tell you that”. No lofty rhetoric. No inspiring ideas. Just Trumpian hyperbole ala the self promotion his Art of the Deal proposed as good strategy. His address will be overflowing with the praise Trump feels he so richly deserves. If he were not a bottomless pit of desire for adulation, it would be enough.
He‘ll talk about his largest electoral majority (not true) and the largest inaugural crowd (not true). He will tell the audience that he has passed more legislation in his year than any other president in history (not true). He’ll take full credit for the largest tax cut in the country’s history and expound on the windfall for the middle class (not true). He will tell us that he has created hundreds of thousands of jobs (not true) and that there are millions more jobs to come because his tax cut will benefit businesses (true) and spur economic growth. He will say that he deserves credit for the employee bonuses, one time bonuses, not wage increases, already announced by a few large corporations in the wake of the tax bill. There’s no harm in sucking up to the Chief Executive. There have even been a few companies that have raised their minimum wage perhaps largely because of growing competition for labor as unemployment has declined. The economy is humming because 45 made it happen.
Trump will croon over record stock market prices as an indication that the economy is better than it ever has been although the market has become curiously unhinged from economic growth and is riding high on corporate stock buybacks. He will claim that he has decreased the unemployment rate overall and for African Americans in particular where it is 6.8%, the lowest ever recorded. Then similar to a chiding tweet to JayZ for criticizing Trump’s “shithole” country comments, The King of Fake will fake reaching out to African Americans to join the Trump train. To be fair, the unemployment rate for Black Americans had fallen from over 13% to 7.5% and the overall unemployment rate to 4.7% at the end of the Obama administration, so the changes the last year have been small. At some point, the president is likely to also throw a bone at bipartisanship, by which he means the Democrats should do what he wants without concessions from him. That will be fake too. But it sounds good.
Yes, he believes he has made America Great Again. He will claim that the United States is once again respected in the world. Witness the homage paid to him by the Chinese reception in Beijing, in Saudia Arabia, at the G8 and most recently, at Davos, a meeting where he came uninvited because he said he could. He sees unctuous praise for his person as respect for this country, confused by his idea that Donald J Trump is the United States. Why shouldn’t world leaders smile in his face as they laugh behind his back; they’re excited about the opportunity to move on their own agendas to fill the power vacuum created as Trump withdraws from world leadership.
Prominent among his other accomplishments, 45 will claim he defeated ISIS, certainly a welcome achievement. It is not surprising that he hasn’t given props to his idol, Vladimir and the Syrian armies who played a major role. His cardinal rule: never share credit with anyone. But to compliment Putin as the apparent momentum of the Mueller investigation builds and GOP efforts to discredit the FBI and the investigation escalate may be an inch too far. However, there can be no question that the entry of Russian airpower and forces in the Syrian civil war marked an effective turning point in the war against ISIS.
Neil Gorsuch will come up, maybe even as a nontraditional, doin’-his-own-Trump-thing kind of nod from the podium to the Justice sitting in the front row; this is a critical win for his evangelical base. The number of federal judgeships appointed, due primarily to GOP stonewalling appointments under Obama and a large number of retirements from the bench, as another accomplishment that Trump will trumpet. Some nominees plucked from the conservative Federalist Society list have been singularly unqualified except for their political philosophy; one had never been a courtroom. But then numbers have always been more important than quality to the Don. He’ll add the presidential pivot to enforce a growing conservative Christian hegemony over the rest of the country’s lives; religious freedom to discriminate against whatever and whomever they don’t like. Anti-abortion rhetoric, abstinence rather than sex education and contraceptive counseling, refusal to provide medical care as dictated by law and attacks on science have all seeped into governmental policies.
This is AmericaFirst in action Trump will say. At some point 45 will identify the “enemy”, those counterpoints against he battles. That may come after he’s patted himself on the back for decreasing the number of border apprehensions. He won’t say that the number of people crossing the southern border illegally had been dropping significantly before Trump took office. Most coming now are seeking asylum and readily present themselves to agents to start the process. No doubt, he will launch into his exposition on the Wall. He is never one to miss an opportunity to divide, a necessary component to unite his ducklings against the others: people of color, Muslims, immigrants, the press, whomever. The Wall is a hook he uses often to launch that routine.
What will the Great Dissembler propose for the coming year. It’s irrelevant. Surely, if Trump has consistently demonstrated anything, his word is like invisible ink: gone in an instant. For anyone to speculate on grandiose projects with sketchy outlines which are likely to melt away is a colossal waste of time except for pundits who need to fill air time. Trump is as slippery as a greased pig and that’s what he thinks makes America great.
Once upon a time, doctors took the Hippocratic oath which obligates physicians to take care of all comers. That was back in the days of Dr Kildare, when the cost of care was cheap. Then medical costs ballooned as medical care leaped into the modern age with the multiplication of new techniques, devices and intensive hospital care. We have Medicare to thank for that; Medicare brought guaranteed payment of hospital and physician bills, 
The moment was fast approaching when the federal government apparatus is going to be switched off. Having suffered from plummeting ratings with the last GOP government shutdown, precipitated by backroom manipulations from Ted Cruz in an effort to skirt traditional Congressional leadership to vault his national reputation, the party wanted to get out ahead in the messaging game. The CelebrityPresident led the charge with a tweet blaming the Dems for threatening the military. His GOP henchmen have taken up the chant. Always the clever messenger, linking a shutdown with the military captures fears over American security, which in turn links to racial prejudices (brown and Black people have been superimposed onto the colored Muslim terrorist threat). It all calls for a red, white and blue patriotic response. Can any one seriously imagine that American defenses will be down during a shutdown. Of the many things that will be hurt by a government shutdown, the military is not one. Military operations will be unaffected, personnel will continue to be paid; any assertion otherwise is ludicrous. Mick Mulvaney lied, as he often does, from his news podium, saying the military will keep working but will not get paid. In fact, Congress passed a bill that would continue paying military personnel during a government shutdown. NSA, the FBI, the CIA and Homeland with its border guards will not skip a beat. But the idea plugs into national anxieties more effectively than trying to elicit sympathy for government workers who will not get paid or Social Security recipients who will have their checks delayed. That would call for empathy which is sorely lacking in the Republican base. For the many Americans who live check to check, even a short interruption can have significant consequences, although they will get paid when the government reopens unless agencies will consider the period a furlough or leave. Such a development is not farfetched in an administration that has staked its reputation on hating government workers and is always looking to save a buck. Mulvaney refused to answer a question about that when asked directly during his news conference, strongly suggesting this option is being pursued but they don’t want the message to get out ahead of the game, particularly if a shutdown was avoided.
oleblacklady 