Yes, a very troubled man happens to have been elected president of the United States by a discordant group of discontents. It seems we will be stuck with him for longer than many weak stomachs can hold out. Unfortunately there are sick days in the offing.

Calvin Coolidge once said the business of America is business. A true capitalistic statement if ever there was one. Until some wiser judges gained seats on the Supreme Court breaking the hold of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants we were treated with decisions like those that ruled that the laws prohibiting child labor interfered with the right of contract between employer and employee and thus were unconstitutional. Only a Trump-WASP could believe there was equality in bargaining position between a 13-year-old boy sorting coal and the mine owner.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Any identification with real life individuals is merely coincidental.  There is a compelling story that remains to be told about this matter but it did not start with the murder in July 2016 which the police passed off as a failed armed robbery as the victim was returning home in the early morning hours from a visit with his friend.

Too often the police for lack of effort where no witnesses are present and the likelihood of solving the case appears remote throw out the idea of a stranger to stranger murder where the tragedy resulted during a flubbed up situation.  It is sometimes hard to think outside the box when one horror piles upon another. How would the cops expect that what they came upon may have been a hit?  Isn’t the idea behind a”hit” is to make it appear like it wasn’t a hit? What better time for one than getting a chance in an empty street in the early morning hours before dawn begins to lighten up the scene and the cops are tired after a long journey through the perilous night? What better place than DC where street crime swells in the darkness?

Obamacare required people with pre-existing conditions to be covered. It made the insurance companies charge the same rates for all. It put the onus on all policy holders to help with these extra costs.

Trumpmare will allow people with pre-existing conditions to be thrown into high risk pools. These have been failures producing limited coverage, long waiting periods (while the condition eats away at you) and huge premiums. It lets the healthy young people be given reduced premiums. That is a nice windfall for the insurance companies since almost all of these people won’t be making claims. Trumpmare will help insurance companies reach the goal of taking in oodles of money and not having to pay anything out.

Here’s an article on the pre-existing coverage that explains it fairly well.  Yes, when the Trump and the GOP say they cover pre-existing conditions that is true. What they don’t say is the coverage will be worthless and not affordable. Sort of like being asked to buy a season pass to the Cape Cod Tunnel for $15,000.

Well, it is good to know that Obama was not the only one to avoid using the term “radical Islamic terrorist.” Wasn’t that one of the big things you had against him? You were so happy to find a guy who was going to call a radical Islamic terrorist a radical Islamic terrorist.  That’s what he was about — you’re type of man. A man who would speak truth to power. No pussy footing around for him.

He stood talk behind the dias shouting out those valliant words you longed to hear.  Ah, you thought that his middle initial “I” stood for intrepidness. Boldness to confront those who would lessen America’s standing in the world or who threatened us you knew was coming. He was the type, you really believed this in your heart, who would stand up to people — mano a mano — face to face. If he did not think someone was doing right he would tell them and not send another to do his dirty work.

I’m not sure of the purpose of an article I read recently. The headline read: “Want healthy food?  In much of Mass., it’s hard to get.”  That word “Mass” is an abbreviation for the state of Massachusetts.  Having lived there I don’t recall  ever having faced that problem. It is not the Catholic Church Mass. If it were the latter it would make sense because it is rare to find healthy food at a Mass.

The article starts off about a woman who lives two miles from “the  nearest full service grocery store” which appears to be another name for supermarkets.  It takes her two hours to get there by public transportation on three buses. What is supposed to be done about this? Are we to build supermarkets at the corner of every street or within 1,000 feet of every home?

The article then makes the really brilliant observation: “But most of northern Berkshire County and nearly all of Hampden County are also low-access spots. In rural areas, people can drive miles before they find a grocery store. . . . ”  Obviously if you live out in the country then you’re not going to find many supermarkets there. Berkshire County has about 134 people for every square mile; Norfolk has 1575, and Suffolk has 6500. You cannot build a supermarket if there is no one to come.

Well knock my socks off! I’ve suffered a rude awakening this last week or so. I though we were living in a nirvana of racial harmony until the lid was lifted off of it when the people from South Boston showed up to protest busing. Haven’t a million local and copy-cat national media articles blamed South Boston for racism pointing back to the ill-conceived court order in 1974 which required the busing of children to achieve racial balance and which resulted in more racial imbalance.

How was I to know it existed long before 1974 and long after the idea that busing could accomplish racial balance in school was flushed down the toilet. It’s not that South Boston did not have among its protesters to busing some people who were racist, it did. It had one of the foremost racists in the area in the person who when running for office stood in front of buses as people were getting on handing out her card and saying: “you know where I stand.”  

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein was boxed. Having participated in the firing of James Comey the FBI Director he was then the one responsible for overseeing the investigation into what President Trump called the fake Russian investigation. I am sure he believed that he could have done it fairly and with integrity. Perhaps he could have done it. But what he initially failed to realize is that his involvement with the Comey firing would always taint any decision he made.

He hung tough. Earlier this week he let it know he was going to handle the investigation but then something changed. Did his friends and associates tell him no matter how upstanding he is that any conclusion he reached would not be accepted by the public? He was seen too close to Sessions; he was seen as a Trump fall guy.

Perhaps he believed that the investigation was “fake” as the president proclaimed. Perhaps he had other reasons to think he could handle it. But he changed his mind. He did so without so much as a “how do you do” to Trump. Well, that’s not true, he did give him an hour’s lead on his decision which he knew was not enough time for him to get him shut down.

One thing that I did not like about Obama was that he did his best to keep us out of war. Oh, I know some  blame him for Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and god knows what other places but the incursions into those places was minor or was necessitated by decisions made by a prior president.

Iraq and Afghanistan started under Bush who was in office 2001 to 2008 and continued by Obama from 2009 to 2016. In Iraq during Bush years American military suffered 3908 fatalities while under Obama 290; in Afghanistan under Bush 630 and Obama 1732. For the most part we pulled out of Iraq which gave rise to ISIS and put more troops into Afghanistan to continue the ever losing fight against the Taliban.

The ball has now been tossed into Trump’s hands and he has pretty much continued on the Obama policies in Afghanistan by putting more troops into the fire. Things are a mess in those two countries and for now, at least in Afghanistan, there is no exit.