health care

All you need to know about the fabulous American Health Care Act that passed the House of Representatives today is that it is sooooooo fan-freaking-tastic that the folks who wrote the act made sure to exempt themselves from it.

If that is not all you need to know, then try this one.

I got a call late this afternoon from my son. Jon has a blood condition that requires him to be on coumadin, a very dangerous blood thinner, probably for the rest of his life.  He is not supposed to, but every now and then he has tried to go without his medicine.  When he does, the usual response is that he throws a series of pulmonary embolisms.  Some have been enough to put him in the hospital.  So we know at least until a better treatment or a cure comes along -- not likely in the near future -- he will be on coumadin, and will be required to have his blood tested periodically and to have regular checkups at a specialized hematology clinic.  Jon's wife is a cancer survivor; therefore, she also requires periodic specialized checkups and treatment.  When he called, Jon wanted to know if his health insurance carrier can now drop him, even if his insurance comes through his employer.

Let me repeat that.

I got a call from my son, in effect, asking if insurance companies will now be allowed to potentially let him die rather than pay for medication and treatment that has been keeping him alive for the past six years.

What am I supposed to tell him?

And what is Jon's father in law supposed to tell his daughter when she calls later today to ask him the same question?

Should we tell our children to call their representative in congress and ask them?  I would love to hear what any of those guys are telling their children who might be asking them the same question...  Oh, that's right.  Their children won't be asking them that question.  They are exempt from this law.

In the so called greatest country on earth, we are now talking once again about pre-existing conditions, life time or annual caps on coverage, medical review panels, allowing carriers to throw those they do not want to cover off their policies -- i.e., those who need care and treatment.  We are talking about why it is necessary to charge older people more for their health insurance.  Why?  Because they are old and probably require more care, so they should have to pay more.  We are also talking about why it is necessary to make health care for the poor and sick so expensive that they cannot afford it.  What are they supposed to do?  I would say let them eat cake, but then again, they might be diabetic, which means they have a pre-existing condition, which means they should not be covered anyway.   The issues raised ignore any real issue on earth, but then again, some of these issues must be raised.

Such as...

On what planet is being a victim of rape a pre-existing condition?  I am no doctor, but I am unaware of rape being a medical condition.  What on earth did the rape victim do that is related to any physical, psychological or sociological health condition that caused her to be raped?  In the old days, and frankly even now in some places, you would hear some people saying the victim brought it upon herself.  Just look at the way she dressed, and that smile that melted any inhibition away from that knife wielding rapist.  Under this definition, dressing in an attractive manner should be a pre-existing condition.  After all, if she hadn't dressed that way, she would not have been raped.  So I guess Ralph Lauren should be declared an accessory to a pre-existing condition, and all his creations should come with a warning label that wearing this sexy outfit could cause you to lose your insurance coverage.

In a way, I understand the reasoning behind the pre-existing conditions argument.  After all, if you have had a heart attack, you may be more prone to suffering another one.  Would somebody please explain to me how being raped once makes you more susceptible to being raped again.  Are the insurance carriers putting the rapists back on the street and giving them their victims current addresses?  Are the carriers keeping a list of rape victims and deciding for themselves which ones are "easy"?

What sense does any of this make?  Then again, what do you expect from a sixty page piece of legislation that spends nearly ten percent of the space outlawing lottery winners from getting public subsidies for medical insurance.

Aside from the hideous nature of this particular piece of legislation that is so bad the Washington Post called it an abomination that should be a stain for life upon any legislator who voted for it, as I said in an earlier post, none of this legislation will do any good as long as the focus of the argument remains where it is.

The issue we should be talking about, as I said before, is NOT if people are entitled to medical coverage, but the unassailable fact that PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO MEDICAL CARE.

As long as the focus is on medical coverage, the insurance companies control the narrative; therefore, there will always be health insurers to limit access to medical care, because THE INSURANCE CARRIERS HAVE NO INCENTIVE TO PAY FOR MEDICAL CARE AND TREATMENT.  The only incentive health insurers have is to make sure their companies are profitable, especially if they are for profit companies, as most of them are.  When you allow for profit companies to control access to care and treatment, you will always be debating whether or not people are entitled to medical coverage, not medical care.

And why do we have this ongoing deflection?  Because when you focus the debate on where it should be, the simple fact that people are entitled to medical care, not medical insurance coverage, THERE IS NEVER ANY ARGUMENT.  Nobody argues that Jimmy Kimmel should be able to get his newborn son's open heart surgery.  We all pray for his son's recovery.  By the same token, nobody argues that a child of a welfare recipient born with the same condition as Jimmy Kimmel's son should be able to have his life saved by the same wonderful doctors and the same wonderful medical procedures.  And everyone would also pray for that child's recovery.  And nobody argues that my son should be able to have his blood tested and his coumadin prescription filled without having him be forced to declare bankruptcy.

And in a nutshell, this is why these three examples from different sociological spectrums are each in their own way why the insurance carriers and their shills in congress keep the argument focused on whether or not we are entitled to affordable medical insurance.  Once you focus on health care, rather than health insurance, the carriers have no argument.  Nobody wants to see anyone suffer.  Nobody wants to see anyone die because they could not get the care and treatment they need.  Once you focus on health care, rather than health insurance, nobody takes the side of the insurance carrier denying care and treatment by denying coverage.

ONCE YOU FOCUS ON HEALTH CARE RATHER THAN HEALTH COVERAGE, THE EYE ROLLING, BLUR INDUCING FOG LIFTS, AND THE CARRIERS HAVE NOTHING LEFT AND NOBODY TO SUPPORT THEM.

As such, until our representatives start talking about the right to medical care and treatment, we will always have this problem, because when you talk about medical coverage, you are always talking about the ability of insurance companies to make a profit rather than how to deliver care and treatment to a sick child, a cancer survivor, a rape victim, a person with emotional handicaps -- all the most vulnerable of our society, the ones we should care about the most.

The time is now to put the focus where it should be and where it should have always been.

MEDICAL CARE AND TREATMENT IS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT.

Once you start with that premise, the rest of it should fall into place.

a healthcare rant, with thanks to jimmy kimmel

By now, many of us have seen the video of Jimmy Kimmel talking about the birth of his son, and the heroic efforts of the health care professionals at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and Children's Hospital Los Angeles.  I cannot imagine anyone who saw the video who was not touched by it.

On second thought, I can.

The talking head shows on all the cable stations showed the salient features of Mr. Kimmel's electrifying monologue discussing his anguish in learning his newborn child, only hours old, required immediate open heart surgery in order to save his life.  On each station, hankies were everywhere, even in the hands of those who thought it was a great time to debate whether or not the present legislation pending in congress should or should not include coverage for pre-existing conditions.  One after another, these disgraceful excuses for moving and talking, but not thinking protoplasm argued over each other, as they usually do, without listening to anything the others were saying, each claiming the high ground by starting off with their hearts going out to the Kimmel family.  It was topped off by the congressman interviewed by one station, who after dutifully sending his "heart" out to the Kimmels, immediately switched gears and announced that this "clearly" shows that "the former president" doesn't get it.

I beg to differ. 

Those who have no hearts cannot send theirs out to the Kimmel family, let alone anyone.

Those who have no brains or common sense have no business mentioning their hearts and the Kimmel family in the same breath.

Yes, the immediate issue was the health and well being of little Billy Kimmel, and the health and well being of Billy's family.  Mr. Kimmel took the occasion to address the big purple elephant in the room, making a point that none of the talking head jerks or any of the congressmen interviewed on television have yet to grasp, or worse, did grasp, but do not care.

"No parent should have to decide if they can pay for their child's life or death".

The congressman and the talking heads went on to debate not only if insurance should cover pre-existing conditions or if the pending legislation does. or does better than the existing law.  Hint -- it does not.  It is yet another sop to for profit insurance companies, but that is a discussion for another occasion. 

What all these jerks failed to grasp is that the debate and Mr. Kimmel's point was not about whether or not we are entitled to pre-existing coverage in our health insurance, or whether or not we are entitled to health insurance at all, as that vacuous boob, who somehow got elected to congress claimed.  The debate, which should not even be a debate, and which Mr. Kimmel clearly stated, yet nobody in front of the cameras got, is that we the people are entitled, or at least we should be entitled not to health insurance, but HEALTH CARE.

Let me say that again.

I do not give a damn about health insurance.  We, the People.  We are entitled to HEALTH CARE.  We are entitled to the right to appropriate medical treatment as determined by our own doctors when we are ill or injured, not the right to contribute to the profitability of health insurance companies.  The argument being conducted in Washington, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc. is the red herring that never goes away.  

Do I want a government bureaucrat telling my doctor whether or not he can treat me the way he sees fit?  Of course not.  But tell me how this is different than a dweeb in an insurance office denying my treatment, even if my doctor says it is the appropriate course.  

Think it doesn't happen?

Those of you who live in states like New York, where we have no fault insurance, know that eventually, patients are sent to "independent medical examinations" where doctors are paid to examine the patients and report back to the carriers whether or not the patient requires more care, or more insidious, if they are truly injured, but have reached the point where further care would not achieve anything, referred to in the business as "maximum cure".  Who pays these doctors?  The insurance carriers.  Some of these M.D.'s which in this case refers to "medical disgraces", make a living pretty much doing nothing but these "independent medical examinations".  At least the guy who examined me once told me at the outset that his job was to tell the carrier I did not need further treatment and my job was to convince him that I did.  Apparently, I failed.

Then there are the carriers who send their patients to doctors who so clearly have no business seeing some patients that the mere fact that the carriers sent them there in the first place amounts to bad faith both on the part of the carrier and the doctors themselves.  A member of my family whom I love with all my heart hurt her back so badly in an on the job accident, that she is in constant pain, has been for two years, and requires extensive surgery on her back to prevent further permanent damage.  The doctor she was originally sent to by the insurance carrier agreed and even offered to do the surgery himself.  The carrier's response?  They sent her for a second opinion.  This doctor issued the report that those of us who deal with these cases directly or even peripherally in the legal profession have come to expect.  Yes, she is not faking her injuries, and yes, she is seriously injured, but no, the surgery will not do any good.  The carrier, of course, immediately used the report to deny authorization for the surgery.  The original doctor then called this charlatan to find out how she would have treated the patient, and was told that she has never handled anything like this in her own practice, because she is a gynecologist an has no experience treating patients like this.

This deserves to be repeated.

They sent her to a gynecologist, who had never treated a patient with a spinal injury to get an opinion as to whether or not my family member should be approved for spinal surgery.

So, think about it this way.  When a government employee denies a medical procedure, who benefits?  When a for profit insurance company denies coverage, wanna take a guess as to who benefits?  Can you say "conflict of interest"?  Wanna take a guess as to why the cost of medical care and of medical insurance coverage continues to go up?

I do not give a damn if insurance companies make a nickel of profit.  The fact that they make any money at all off our health is obscene.  The fact that they have incentive that they use to deny service we are entitled to is more than obscene.  It should be criminal.  And then somebody thought it was a great idea to allow these companies to be publicly traded, which further incentivizes denial of claims in the name of profit.

Jimmy Kimmel is absolutely right.  

No parent should never have to make a decision as to whether or not a parent should have to decide if their child should live or die based upon whether or not they can afford health insurance.  Not in supposedly the greatest country in the free world. Not in any country.  No person should have to worry about whether or not they can see a doctor -- even for a freaking mosquito bite.

The health insurance model does not work and will never work, because regardless of the platitudes the companies put out claiming they are there for us, their interests will always be to spend as little as possible for you, and to line the pockets of their shareholders and themselves at your expense.

Jimmy Kimmel is right.

When will the rest of us listen?

a few random musings

Ok, I know it's been a while since the last post.  I am sorry.  Those of you who were on hunger strikes can now have a Milky Way bar.

We were in London recently, spending a great deal of our time hiding from our friends there whom I had confidently predicted the last time we were there that there was no way on earth he would be elected president.  I am surprised they let us back in.  Then again, since the last trip, the English have had their own cross to bear, what with the Brexit vote, so this could explain why very few locals brought up the present resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this time.  After all, I am sure they did not want to deal with my rearing back in my fully pent up and mocked up outrage at being asked about he who is in office, with a mighty "Oh yea?"...

Of course, why would the subject of he who is the so called leader of the free world come up when the locals could ask me about United Airlines dragging customers semi-conscious, yet kicking and screaming from the planes for having the audacity of taking seats they had actually purchased.  I was asked about United so many times you would have thought I was the chairman of UAL.  I started practicing looking in the mirror in the hotel room and saying, "He brought this on himself".  Alas, my undergraduate degree is not in business, but in American Civilization, which is to say that I can tell you approximately when most older buildings in colonial Virginia were built, when an old bottle found in the woods was made, and the words to most old folk songs nobody bothers singing anymore.  I cannot, however, issue decrees making coach seating on most commercial flights small enough to make a munchkin uncomfortable, and then kick them off the plane if they take umbrage.  Being an attorney, however, I am qualified to tell you on behalf of my clients that he brought this on himself; therefore, practicing in front of the mirror did achieve a business purpose.  Maybe I should try to deduct the trip as a business expense.

But, as Gail Collins would say, I digress...

While a degree in American Civilization did not make me a history scholar, it did require me to have a certain level of knowledge of the history of this country, even if that knowledge was at a rudimentary level that most eight year olds would know.  The fact that I got my degree from the same Ivy League university he did is, to put it mildly, a bit disconcerting.  I may not have studied the abolitionist movement all that closely -- all right, I fell asleep during half the lectures -- but I did not need any prompting to know that Frederick Douglass unfortunately did not survive to his one hundred and seventy-fifth birthday, and therefore will not be helping us blow out the candles when he turns two hundred in February next year.  I may not be a Civil War scholar, but I am reasonably confident in saying that the Civil War did not happen in spite of the best efforts of Andrew Jackson to stop it, even putting aside the fact that he died fifteen years before the first shot was fired, and as family members have pointed out elsewhere, he may have theoretically tried to stop the war simply so he could maintain ownership of his slaves. 

So as a public service to the president, I offer these kernals of wisdom in case the subject comes up some time in the future, and if he ignores these pearls, I would ask my alma mater to strip him of whatever degree was conferred upon him.

1.  The new world was not discovered by Captain Jack Sparrow.

2.  The charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill was not led by Millard Fillmore.

3.  Zelig aside, if you are looking for Woody Allen in a team picture of the 1927 Yankees, you can stop looking.

4.  Speaking of sports, the Black Sox scandal of 1919 was not caused by people wearing bermuda shorts hitched slightly above their naval.

5.  Moby Dick is not a venereal disease.*

6.  Elephants are not indigenous to Oklahoma; therefore, unless there was a breakout at the Tulsa zoo, when you hear an Oklahoman sing "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye", they are not singing about something they actually saw.

7.  Speaking of Oklahoma, Will Rogers may have never met a man he did not like, but then again, he never met you, especially considering he died about eleven years before you were born.  Then again, maybe he met Andrew Jackson and joined him in the heroic effort to stop the Civil War.

8.  William Henry Harrison did not have a really good first hundred days, especially after the thirty-first.

9.  It has been conclusively determined that the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square is not presently working as a traffic zebra in La Paz.  Bonus point -- La Paz is a city in Bolivia.  Second bonus point -- Bolivia is a country in South America.  Third Bonus Point -- South America is not anywhere in the United States located south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Fourth Bonus Point -- the Mason-Dixon line is... oh never mind...

10.  I have it on good authority, even if I was not there at the time, that "Ivana" was not the actual response your first wife gave when you proposed.

I offer all this as a public service.

No charge

*I must confess.  This one was on the wall in the locker room of my high school track team.  Aside from the fact that Moby Dick is, in fact, not a venereal disease, this is still my all time favorite graffiti.

UPDATE -- the buck stops... somewhere

Mediamatters.org is now reporting that the "very talented lawyer" relied upon by he who resides in the White House has been taken off the air by the Fox Cheerleading Network indefinitely.  Apparently, when James Comey, who in a congressional hearing, in which one of the parties conducting the proceedings appeared to believe the more serious issue was finding out who leaked the fact that crimes, possibly amounting to treason, are being committed by our own government, rather than the fact that -- well -- crimes, possibly amounting to treason, are being committed by our own government, testified that there was no evidence backing the claim that President Obama had anyone, least of all the British national intelligence agency, wiretap his Tower, and that neither the FBI, the Justice Department, the British GCHQ, MI6, Scotland Yard, the bartender at Billy Bob's or cub scout pack 579 in North Bellmore, New York was aware of any such evidence being in existence at all, that was enough for the Fox cheerleaders.

We now know that the line at Fox is drawn at causing a major international incident based upon a complete fabrication requiring the heads of our intelligence apparatus to apologize to their British counterparts and the entire country of England on behalf of the country.  Well, at least there is a line even they will not cross.

On the other hand, there are two people who have not apologized.  One is the "very talented lawyer" who as far as I know, simply has not said anything about the incident or where he dreamed up the possibility of James Bond dropping out of the sky to wiretap his Tower.

The other person who has not apologized is our president.

He has not apologized.

He has not only not apologized, he has repeated his claims, and through his very own personal marionette in the press room, informed us all that the investigation is ongoing, and that we will all find out that he was right all along.

In today's edition of the failing New York Times, David Leonhardt has an op-ed piece in which he reaches the "startling" conclusion that 45 is a liar.

"He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies."

Mr. Leonhardt concludes his piece by noting, "Our president is a liar, and we need to find out just how serious his latest lies are".

I disagree in part.

Yes, we need to find out just how serious his latest lies are, especially if they call into question the integrity of the election, or even worse, that this is a man in the highest office in the land, the hitherto "leader of the free world", who is systematically and deliberately dismantling the government with his constant lies, abetted by the party in power, to the point where it is so weakened intellectually, morally and in every other way, shape and form you can think of so that a foreign agent can bring about its collapse, or it merely is allowed to collapse from within and that foreign agent may then enter the picture and pick up the pieces.  That is not merely lying.

It is treason.

But as much as I agree that we need to find out just how serious his latest lies are, I am stopped by the first part of Mr. Leonhardt's last sentence.  

"Our president is a liar..."

Finally, it has been said, and said openly and clearly.  Then it was said, admittedly not in so many words, by James Comey in today's hearing,  Even his supporters in Congress are starting to say there is a potentially dark cloud hanging over the administration.  But they miss the point, as does Mr. Leonhardt.

Our president is a liar.

Our president, the commander in chief, is a liar.

Our president, the commander in chief and leader of the free world, is a liar.

Our president, the commander in chief and leader of the free world, and the man with the nuclear codes at his disposal, is a liar.

What more do we possibly need to get him out of office NOW.

the buck stops... somewhere

I started out on this one with the intent to present the latest P-MAWs.  There were plenty of candidates to chose from, including Mick Mulvaney's statement that Meals on Wheels does not return any bang for the buck, Jeff Sessions summarily firing forty-six US Attorneys, including Preet Bharara, who reportedly is investigating the president's Russian connections and the Secretary of Health and Human Services' belief that his purchase of stock in health care related companies two days before voting on legislation that was favorable for them did not amount to insider trading, and just about anything Sean Spicer says in public.  We will more than likely have something to say about these gems in the future.  Then he came up with something that, while not necessarily retiring the P-MAWs, was so utterly moronic that it wins by default.  Fear not, the P-MAWs will return.  His and his administration's chronic and perpetual idiocy practically guarantees it.  In the mean time...

On Tuesday this week, under what could lightly be called intensive questioning from Senator Gillibrand, Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller took responsibility for the nude photo scandal related to female members of the Corps and the culture that somehow allowed some marine miscreants to think they could do this and get away with it.  Nobody thinks that the idea for the scandal originated with General Neller, that he encouraged or participated in it, or even knew what was going on until it was made public.

But as Commandant of the Corps, he took ownership of it without hesitation.

On Friday, when asked at a press conference about his administration's ridiculous allegation that the Obama administration utilized a British spy agency to wiretap him during the recent campaign, allegations that have thus far proven entirely baseless and without any even half-hearted attempt to justify or provide even a scintilla of evidence, he pointed to the "fact" that a "very talented attorney" at the fox cheerleading network had broken the "story", and he had simply repeated what he heard; therefore, any questions should be addressed to the cheerleaders at fox.

If nothing else, he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is no Harry Truman, which I am sure has the Truman family falling onto their knees in relief.

The "very talented attorney" he referred to is Andrew Napolitano, who is referred to on air by his colleagues and fellow pompom wavers as "Judge" Napolitano, owing to the fact that he once served as a Superior Court judge in New Jersey, which is a trial level court.  He resigned from the bench in 1995, according to the New York Times, objecting to the fact that he was not paid enough to remain on the bench.  He last served as a "judge", if you can count it as such, on a reality show similar to "The People's Court" called "Power of Attorney", where he lasted all of one season presiding over what amounts to small claims cases.  Basically, this "very talented attorney" has not either practiced law or been a real judge for more than twenty years.  He has apparently been making sufficient money blathering on the air about perceived grievances always attributed to either the obamas or liberals in general so that he continues to be a "senior judicial analyst" on the fox cheerleading network to date, although his own show, "Freedom Watch" has not been on the air since 2012.

 It is noted that his last "bombshell" announcement or scoop from "the judge" concerned an allegation that Michelle Obama had used an epithet to describe white people in private.  This "scoop" ended up being entirely uncorroborated by anyone and unfounded, eventually being tossed onto the scrap heap of the fox cheerleading network's abandoned headlines.

The judge's other qualification as a 'very talented lawyer" appears to be the fact that he is a friend of 45, and that he maintains a residence at one of his hotels on Central Park West.

Fox quickly sent Shepard Smith on the air to clearly announce that the cheerleaders were completely unaware of any evidence that the Obama administration had wiretapped him at all, let alone utilized any British spy agency to do so.

He did not back down.

Like it or not, he is the president.  Maybe the "judge" was the source of the story.  The "judge", however, is not the person who repeated the story, and then doubled down on it, even when the fox cheerleading network disavowed it.  Maybe the "judge" in his capacity as a "very talented lawyer" broke the story, but the story was broken as an allegation on a television show, providing no evidence that the story was true.  The job of the administration is not to perpetuate stories without vetting them for some evidence of truth.  Maybe a phone call.  Maybe an e-mail on one of those unclassified and unprotected phones he uses.  Maybe a tweet asking somebody to confirm the allegations.  The only tweet we heard, however, was more along the lines of the chirping of crickets.

The bottom line is he made no effort to determine if the story is true.  He then repeated it for the international press, who must by now think that the entire population of this country is made up entirely of morons.  After all, we elected him.  He repeated it in front of Angela Merkel, who looked like she wanted to dig a very deep hole, and either push him into it, or leap herself.

So without any proof at all, without assuming a shred of responsibility and without backing down, he has now succeeded in insulting Great Britain, putting them alongside Australia and Mexico, all our traditional rivals and enemies.  You could possibly add Germany to the list, assuming Angela Merkel is not hard at work trying to photoshop herself out of any evidence she was ever at the press conference.

Is anyone taking this buffoon, and by extension this country seriously any more?  Can the damage he has wrought in less than two months be repaired in less than two generations?

IMPEACH HIM NOW.

arts and humanities

When the National Endowments for the Arts and for Humanities were created by President Johnson in 1965, the President declared that any advanced civilization must fully value the arts, the humanities and cultural activities.

Today, we took yet another step in announcing our renunciation of being part of an advanced civilization when he proposed a budget eliminating -- let me repeat that word --- ELIMINATING -- both the National Endowments for the Arts and for Humanities. According to the New York Times, the annual budget of both Endowments last year was three hundred million dollars.

We can find anywhere from $12 to $21.6 billion -- that's BILLION dollars -- to build a wall between us and Mexico, a wall that nobody but he seems to want, and we now find out is going to be constructed partially by seizing private property of Americans via eminent domain. Never mind the fact that Mexico is not paying for it -- we are.

But we cannot find three hundred million to funds the arts and humanities.

We can INCREASE the military's budget by $54 billion, forget about what the total budget is...

But we cannot find three hundred million to funds the arts and humanities, just about half a percent of the increase alone of the military's budget.

we can continue to provide billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies that are making billions of dollars in profits even without the tax breaks and subsidies.

But we cannot find three hundred million to funds the arts and humanities.

we can offer tax breaks for billionaires at the expense of the health care and well being of our elderly and the poor.

But we cannot find three hundred million to funds the arts and humanities.

Regardless of how this turns out, we may or may not have already lost the arts. At least in Washington, and especially in the White House, we have already lost our humanity, if it ever existed in Washington and this White House in the first place.

p-maw, vol. 3

Face it.  I know you missed the Presidential Moronic Act of the Week last week.  In my defense, I was out of town, and frankly, overwhelmed by his consistent moronicosity.  Once in a while, you need a break, even if that break comes only three weeks into the job.  I think I'll go golfing at Mar-a-Lago.

That having been said, it remains my solemn duty to report upon the week's P-MAWs, although one could say there have been so many moronic acts being committed by or on his behalf on an almost daily basis that the award could be retired just as often.  We therefore present this week's nominees.  As always, we welcome your own nominees, although in the spirit of our fearless leader, if I disagree with them, you will be subject to be being fired or named official liaison to the Russian embassy.

1.  THE JEWS DID IT.

For reasons known only to the gods, we are still waiting for a sincere, eyes to the camera, not reading from a script statement from fearless leader denouncing acts of anti-semitism, including defacing graves, threatening synagogues and day care centers, and blaming Jews for everything short of the Fox Cheerleading Network's annual declaration of the war on Christmas.  When he finally did get around to talking about acts of violence against Jews, and yes, threats of violence are acts of violence, he suggested that it was the Jews themselves who had perpetrated these acts as a way of continuing to put pressure on him to say or do something.  Well, he indeed said something, something so moronic that we could have named this weekly award after him.  Come to think of it, we did.

2.  CHUCK SCHUMER DID IT.

Apparently, the world is going to go to hell in a hand basket because Chuck Schumer was photographed eating a doughnut with Vladimir Putin in 2003.  I am going to concede that there is a very strong possibility that this tweet was said in jest, although we have learned in the past what "said in jest" or "just kidding" mean in this administration.  I would suggest, however, that there is a distinct possibility that there is a difference between a sitting United States senator sharing a photo op with Mr. Putin and not ever denying it, and a presidential campaign potentially discussing ways to influence an entire election by feeding information and discussing strategy with a foreign power, which, by the way would be treason.

3.  NANCY PELOSI DID IT.

Ok.  There's a photo going around showing Nancy Pelosi seated at a table that includes Sergey Kislyak.  You know him.  You know, the guy Jeff Sessions never met.  See the above entry.  I would suggest that there is a distinct difference between the house speaker/minority leader meeting with the Russian president on official business where his ambassador this country is present, and a bunch of private citizens descending upon this same person in their individual capacities and against the stated and explicit law of this country discuss influencing the presidential election.  Just a slight difference.

4.  OBAMA DID IT.

Now he says that we should ignore any ties his administration had to anything -- move along, nothing to see here -- because President Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower (I was forced to say his name there -- "His" Tower sounded too awkward or contrived) during the election.  Putting aside the utter absurdity of the accusation, offered without any form of proof, also noting that there has been no request by or on his behalf to have any law enforcement agency conduct any kind of investigation at all, perhaps President Obama's administration, notably, the Department of Justice, had conducted an investigation, and based upon that investigation found probable cause, went before a judge who agreed, and obtained a lawful warrant to wiretap "His" Tower.  Wouldn't that be utterly delicious?

5.  CONGRESS DIDN'T DO IT.

As in authorize any investigation or inquiry, or even  ask a simple informal question while sipping a cup of coffee with him or anyone in the administration over any of the above, or anything else for that matter.  Oh wait, they do want to continue to investigate Benghazi or who welcomed Bears Ears National Monument into the National Parks Service family.

I am sure you will note the obvious omission of Jeff Sessions and fearless leader's continuing belief that the attorney general is perfectly capable of conducting a full, open and honest investigation of himself.  That belongs in another category for the moment, although it may still find its' way into the P-MAWs in the future.  Who knows with this bunch?  We may have to add something into this week's list.  After all, as we have said before in this space, Saturday is not over yet.