As promised in his tweet Donald Trump signs executive order to start process to repeal Obamacare.

Since Congress can't get its act together on HealthCare, I will be using the power of the pen to give great HealthCare to many people - FAST

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2017

Courtesy of CBS News:  

President Trump on Friday announced he is "starting that process" of repealing and replacing Obamacare with his executive order to unilaterally change some aspects of health insurance coverage. 

Mr. Trump, surrounded by top administration officials, business leaders and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, praised his executive order as step towards repealing and replacing his predecessor's signature health care law. 

Mr. Trump, stuck with a Republican-led Congress that hasn't passed a bill to undo Obamacare, announced earlier this week that he is resorting to his "pen" instead. Mr. Trump, who began to walk out of the Oval Office Friday before signing the order until Vice President Mike Pence reminded him to sign it, used that pen on Friday. Mr. Trump said the order will cost the federal government "virtually nothing," and will force insurance companies to start "fighting" to sign people up for care. 

"You'll get such low prices for such great care," he said. Mr. Trump didn't back down on his desire to repeal Obamacare and fulfill a signature campaign promise, despite the GOP-led Congress' inability to agree on how to do that. 

Mr. Trump said he is still committed to working with Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, "once and for all." The president's executive order is intended to make lower-premium plans more widely available. Mr. Trump has long talked of his desire to make plans available across state lines, something he says this order will do. 

The White House views this as an action that will "increase the healthcare choices for millions of Americans, potentially allowing some employers to join together across state lines to offer coverage," according to a background call before the order's signing. 

Okay as I think everybody is aware there is nothing about this that is going to increase anybody's health care choices. Those are just the bullshit talking points that Trump is using while he prepares to strip away all of the safeguards and benefits that the Affordable Care Act worked to provide.

Of course this executive order does not really accomplish anything at this point except to allow health insurance companies to sell crappy polices that will be of little use once the policy holder gets very sick or badly injured, and it is sure to be challenged by medical groups, blue states, and even some of his fellow Republicans.

Obamacare had a lofty goal, and that was not only to get more people health insurance, but also to make sure those policies covered them completely, and that they could not be kicked off when they desperately needed to be covered.

This is the first step to handing more power back to the insurance companies, and if past is prologue they will abuse that power until somebody makes them stop.

Now it is more important than ever to start talking seriously about single payer, and to take this power away from these insurance companies permanently.

By the way apparently Trump almost walked away again without signing the executive order, but he was stopped by Mike Pence.

Yeah, fuck Mike Pence.

He needs to be removed from office right along with his orange tinted Fuhrer. 

Prototypes are being built for Trump's border wall.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail: 

DailyMail.com has obtained drone photos that offer a birds-eye view of construction on Trump's new Mexican border wall. 

The photos show laborers hard at work on eight different prototypes for the new border wall, which Trump hopes will more effectively keep would-be illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S. 

The prototypes are being constructed in the California desert, near San Diego. Construction began at the end of September, after being stalled three months when firms that didn't win contracts protested. 

Reporters and photographers were invited by Customs and Border Patrol to visit the construction site this week, where crews already had large slabs of concrete poured. 

There of course is still no guarantee that the wall will be built, and currently there is still no real funding for it.

One thing does seem certain however.

If it DOES get built it will be really fucking ugly. 

Budget Director proudly reveals how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump.

What can I say, he's a dumbass.

Courtesy of Politico:  

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget director, walked into the Oval Office in early May on a longshot mission. The slash-government conservative wanted to persuade the president to break one of his most popular campaign promises. 

During his populist run for the White House, Trump had vowed to leave Social Security and Medicare alone. But Trump had also vowed to rein in America’s national debt, which Mulvaney didn’t think was possible without reining in the two biggest chunks of the federal budget. So Mick the Knife brought a cut list to his meeting in the Oval.

“Look, this is my idea on how to reform Social Security,” the former South Carolina congressman began. 

“No!” the president replied. “I told people we wouldn’t do that. What’s next?” 

“Well, here are some Medicare reforms,” Mulvaney said. 

“No!” Trump repeated. “I’m not doing that.” 

“OK, disability insurance.” 

This was a clever twist. Mulvaney was talking about the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which, as its full name indicates, is part of Social Security. But Americans don’t tend to think of it as Social Security, and its 11 million beneficiaries are not the senior citizens who tend to support Trump. 

“Tell me about that,” Trump replied. 

“It’s welfare,” Mulvaney said. 

“OK, we can fix welfare,” Trump declared. 

Sure enough, the Trump budget plan that Mulvaney unveiled a few weeks later would cut about $70 billion in disability benefits over a decade, mostly through unspecified efforts to get recipients back to work. That may sound like welfare reform, but the program isn’t welfare for the poor; it’s insurance for workers who pay into Social Security through payroll taxes. The episode suggests Trump was either ignorant enough to get word-gamed into attacking a half-century-old guarantee for the disabled, or cynical enough to ditch his promise to protect spending when it didn’t benefit his base.

I put the word "proudly" in the headline because while this would seem like the kind of thing one would keep to themselves, or only reveal to a few close lipped confidants, Mulvaney is essentially bragging to the whole world that the guy he works for is an uneducated moron who is easily manipulated.

And apparently he has no fear of repercussions or losing his job. 

I can only imagine how proud Trump voters are of their president after reading this.

Assuming of course some of them can actually read. 

Now that he is president Donald Trump goes all in for endless war in Afghanistan.

And in closing I would just like to point out that it's more of the same.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump put forward on Monday a long-awaited strategy for resolving the nearly 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, but he declined to specify either the number of troops that would be committed, or the conditions by which he would judge the success of their mission there. 

In a nationally televised prime-time speech to troops at Fort Myer, Va., Mr. Trump said there would be no “blank check” for the American engagement in Afghanistan. But in announcing his plan, Mr. Trump deepened American involvement in a military mission that has bedeviled his predecessors and that he once called futile. 

“My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts,” Mr. Trump said. “But all my life, I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

Gee, no shit Sherlock.

By saying that there will be no troop numbers provided to the media, and no timelines made public, Trump is essentially working to remove any tools that can be used to hold him accountable for failure.

Of course that is a little late since continuing the war itself is already a measurable failure.

We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard & quick. Rebuild the US first.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 1, 2013

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

To the wall that Mexico is not going to pay for and the Iran nuclear deal that hasn’t been torn up, to China still not being labeled a currency manipulator and an embassy in Israel still not being moved to Jerusalem, President Donald Trump can now add the Afghanistan war still not ending. 

Seven months into his presidency, not only is he not withdrawing from what he had called a “terrible mistake” during his campaign, he is reportedly approving thousands of more troops, along with an open-ended commitment to remain.

It can be argued that opposition to the wars is what separated Trump from his fellow Republican candidates in the primaries, in fact he even used it to portray Hillary as a war hawk in the general. 

With this speech about staying in Afghanistan, and removing any metrics to gauge success or failure, Trump is essentially committing to sending an unknown number of American soldiers into combat, to achieve an unspecified goal, for an undetermined number of years. 

THAT is exactly what the American people DON'T want.

Donald Trump lied to virtually everybody about what he was going to do as president, and now that he is failing to keep ANY of his promises one has to wonder if that small but rabid group of Trump supporters will finally start to turn on him. 

White Supremacists threaten to revolt if Donald Trump does not discriminate against the immigrants and non-whites like he promised.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Donald Trump will disappoint and disillusion his far-right supporters by eschewing white supremacy, according to some of the movement’s own intellectual leaders. 

Activists who recently gave Nazi salutes and shouted “hail Trump” at a gathering in Washington will revolt when the new US president fails to meet their expectations, the leaders told the Guardian. 

The prospect of such disillusion and internecine squabbling may console liberals who fear a White House tinged with racism and quasi-fascism. All the more reassuring because it comes from far-right influencers and analysts, not wishful progressives. 

Instead of enjoying proximity to power, according to this analysis, vocal parts of the loose coalition known as the “alt-right” could remain on the political fringe, wondering what happened to their triumph.

Jared Taylor, a white supremacist who runs the self-termed “race-realist” magazine American Renaissance, said the president-elect had already backpedalled on several pledges that had fired up the far-right. “At first he promised to send back every illegal immigrant. Now he is waffling on that.” 

David Cole, a self-proclaimed Holocaust revisionist and Taki magazine columnist, envisaged the movement sliding into bickering and in-fighting, stuck in “rabbit warrens” of online trolling rather than policy shaping. “In January Trump will start governing and will have to make compromises. Even small ones will trigger squabbles between the ‘alt-right’. ‘Trump betrayed us.’ ‘No, you’re betraying us for saying Trump betrayed us.’ And so on. The alt-right’s appearance of influence will diminish more and more as they start to fight amongst themselves.”

And here I thought I would have a hard time finding anything to put a smile on my face in the next four years. 

I think watching Trump's racist base freaking out and start fighting among themselves when they find out that Trump has no intention of building a wall or sending all of the undocumented immigrants back to Mexico should provide hours of entertainment.

And you can bet I will document ALL of it.

Before leaving office President Obama WILL close Guantanamo Bay.

Courtesy of Daily News Bin:

Obama has faced a number of hurdles when it comes to closing Guantanamo. The republican congress unilaterally banned any prisoners at the facility from being transferred to super-max prisons within the United States out of pure political spite, forcing the Obama administration to find other nations willing to house them instead. That’s resulted in a slow drip of outbound detainees over the years, with a mere hundred prisoners now remaining. More recently, the Pentagon has played the role of obstructionist, sabotaging Obama’s efforts to move the remaining detainees. But now the President is launching a definitive plan to shutter Guantanamo for good. 

President Obama’s chief of staff says that the plan will soon be presented to congress for approval. When the republican-held congress predictably refuses to allow the measure to be voted on for obstructionist reasons, Obama will then move forward with executive action. So while it’ll have taken him nearly eight years it turns out the President will be able to fulfill his original campaign promise.

Like I said before " One thing that can be said about President Obama, when he makes a promise he does everything in his power to keep it."

It is not the supposed ineffectiveness of this President that really upsets the Right Wing, it is his ability to accomplish things despite every obstacle they throw in his path.

Pentagon seems determined to thwart President Obama's ability to keep a very important campaign promise. To close Guantanamo Bay.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

To slow prisoner transfers, Pentagon officials have refused to provide photographs, complete medical records and other basic documentation to foreign governments willing to take detainees, administration officials said. They have made it increasingly difficult for foreign delegations to visit Guantanamo, limited the time foreign officials can interview detainees and barred delegations from spending the night at Guantanamo. 

Partly as a result of the Pentagon's maneuvers, it is increasingly doubtful that Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in the 2008 presidential election: to close the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama criticized President George W. Bush for having set up the prison for foreigners seized in the "War on Terror" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., and then keeping them there for years without trial. 

When Obama took office, the prison held 242 detainees, down from a peak of about 680 in 2003. Today, with little more than a year remaining in his presidency, it still holds 107 detainees. 

Pentagon officials denied any intentional effort to slow transfers.

The article goes on to say that this Pentagon obstructionism was part of the reason that the President removed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and that since then he has lit a fire under the defense department to get this process moving at a faster pace.

Even if the Pentagon cooperates however the Republicans are set to block Obama from moving the most dangerous detainees to Federal prisons, though it sounds as if the President is perfectly willing to use executive orders to bypass them if necessary.

It is hard to blame the President for losing his patience with this since he has been working on it virtually his entire time in the White House.

One thing that can be said about President Obama, when he makes a promise he does everything in his power to keep it.

Hillary Clinton promises "enough clean energy to power every home in America" by her second term.

Courtesy of The Hill:  

If elected president, Democrat Hillary Clinton says she can create enough green energy to power every home in America by the end of her second term. 

“By the end of my first term, we will have installed a half a billion more solar panels, and by the end of my second term, enough clean energy to power every home in America,” Clinton said at the Blue Jamboree in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday. 

The Democratic presidential front-runner said her plan to subsidize alternative sources of energy would not entail a middle-class tax hike. 

In fact, Clinton said she would reduce taxes for working-class families. 

“And people say, well, can you do that without raising taxes on the middle class? Absolutely,” she said. “That’s why I’m going to be fighting for tax cuts that help hard-working families get ahead.”

Okay look I am already supporting Hillary, and I think her path to the White House is fairly free of serious obstacle, however I am going to say right here that if she makes promises like this she sure as shit better be planning to keep them. 

Getting the country off of fossil fuels and onto renewable energy sources is a big deal to the progressive community, and if she fails to keep this promise she risks losing their support not just for herself, but for the Democratic party altogether.

Do I think it can be done?

You bet your ass I do.

And I think if Hillary is serious about making this happen, that she can do just that. So long as she recognizes that the blowback from big oil is going to be unprecedented.

And that is saying something considering what we have seen during the Obama administration.

Another thing to blame on Obama. For the first time in 30 years unemployment has dropped in every state.

You're welcome.

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal:

Unemployment fell in every state and the nation’s capital last year—something that hadn’t happened since 1984. 

The broad decline, revealed in a Labor Department report Wednesday, offers the latest sign the labor market recovery kicked into a higher gear in 2014. The declines varied broadly. 

Unemployment fell the most in Illinois, where the rate dropped 2 percentage points from the prior year to an average 7.1%. The rate declined by 1.8 points in Colorado, North Carolina and Ohio. 

North Dakota, at the center of the nation’s energy boom of the past few years, had the lowest jobless rate of any state at 2.8% last year. 

Unemployment across the entire U.S. fell 1.2 points to 6.2% last year.

Gee look, President Obama DID fundamentally change America. 

For the better.

President Obama wants to keep yet another campaign promise. Shutting down Gitmo.

Courtesy of Politicususa:  

I am going to be doing everything I can to close it. It is something that inspires jihadists and extremists around the world. It is contrary to our values, and it is wildly expensive. We’re spending millions for each individual there, and we have drawn down the population there significantly. There are a little less than 150 individuals left in this facility. We are continue to place those who have been cleared for release or transfer to host countries who are willing to take them. There’s going to be a certain irreducible number that are going to be really hard cases. We know they’ve done something wrong and they are still dangerous but it’s difficult to mount the evidence in a traditional Article three court so we’re going to have to wrestle with that, but we need to close that facility and I’m going to do everything I can to do that.

Politicususa goes on to affirm that the President is quite correct about the expense, and points out that while it only costs taxpayers about $78,000 a year per inmate in the most expensive supermax prison in the country it costs a whopping 2.8 million per prisoner in Gitmo.

You know if the President is able to find some way to close Guantnamo Bay it will make some of his other accomplishments pale in comparison, and DEFINITELY put a shine on his legacy.

Hmm, I wonder if renewing diplomatic ties with Cuba is part of his plan for putting pressure on the Republicans concerning Gitmo?

Is he really that many moves ahead of the GOP?