The Bigger Picture. Way Past The Time To Start Dishing It Out! Freeman and Noonan Op Ed's Interesting But Cannot Trust 'Slimy' Schumer.

Rep. Jackson wants Trump to resign along with some 24 other Democrats and radicals because they do not like the way he tweets and conducts himself.

I want some Hollywood actors and actresses to  find another endeavor because I do not like the way they perform.

What nonsense.

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It is far past the time for Republicans to send a clear message to the Schumer's, Pelosi's, Jackson's, Waters', Raskin etc. to kiss off and start fighting back.  For decades, conservatives have taken it between the eyes, they have turned the other cheek and they have allowed the left and assorted radicals to wipe the floor with them.  They have forgotten the meaning of the expression : "don't tread on me."

I do not agree with everything Trump says and  the manner in which he conducts himself but I give him credit for punching back and not eating/swallowing what the liberals and their darlings in the mass media choose to serve.  Romney may have been a gentleman and right about many things but he was also a loser.  Trump maybe coarse and boorish but he is a fighter.  I prefer fighters because they are more likely to have a chance at being winners.

Politics is a nasty business.  Truman said it best: 'If you can't stand the heat leave the kitchen.' It is about time Republicans started dishing it out, instead of running from Trump.  It is time for them to support him. (See 1 below.)

So far, as my president, he is fighting for our country and to level the playing field so we are not taken advantage of because we are big and powerful. Obama chose the path of being a pussycat and where did it get America?

I am focusing on what Trump is trying to accomplish and is accomplishing.  Certainly you will never learn anything about this from the mass media. Nor will you see through the fog Schumer and his ilk are spreading in order to undercut Trump as he dismantles Obama's programs etc.

I'll leave others to wrap themselves in his tweets and lose sight of the bigger picture unfolding before their very eyes.

There are some significant accomplishments taking place in the big tent even though the elephants have lost their way. The ship of state is being righted and the water it took on during the Obama years is being drained.

Tillerson is doing it in our State Department and I only wish other Cabinet Secretaries were doing likewise in their various agencies.

The Supreme Court is functioning, Syria is listening, ISIS is on the run, Obama's red tape is being trashed, The Middle East is encouraged by American support and N Korea might soon receive a response to their threats. Chinese banks are being sanctioned, America's economy is stable and moving forward a bit, markets are humming, government vacancies abound and only 6 months have elapsed. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)

Some interesting op eds

Freeman sees Trump as I do and Noonan makes sense but you cannot do business with Democrats when they are being led by  'slimy' Schumer. Schumer is a Jewish Abbas. (See 1c and 1d below.)
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1) Genius of Trump and the NRA

By William L. Gensert

Mika started it with her tweet of a bowl of Cheerios saying “Made for small hands,” implying the size of Trump’s hands (which are small) are a good indication of the size of his penis -- and that is just fine, no crossing the line there. Isn’t she just too classy?

Yet, when the president fights back with his own tweet, he has crossed the line. Keep in mind he made no comment about the size of Mika’s breasts or anything to do with her vagina.

It’s a double standard that has been strictly enforced by left for some time but today more than ever. Trump is the elected first Republican in memory who won’t shut up and take it.

Liberals who believe they are on the side of all that is right and just exercise their moral right to use any tactic or behavior low and vile in pursuit of a more progressive society. They offer conservatives no such option -- Republicans must obey the rules -- you know, the rules they make.

Dana Loesch says it best in this extremely satisfying one-minute video explaining the America we live in today.
Here’s a full transcript:

"They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance.

"All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

"And when that happens, they'll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I'm the National Rifle Association of America, and I'm freedom's safest place."

In response to the video, the left-wing political media went crazy, some saying she is “promoting civil war.” Salon called the ad “Violent [and] Terrifying.” Others called it an “open call to violence.” This from an ad showing left wing supporters rioting, burning, and committing all kinds of acts of violence.

Do you get it? The left can actually do violence and it’s okay, yet, should anyone bring up their progressive penchant for violence, and they’re calling for civil war.

It’s high time we stop acquiescing to this type of one-sided fight.

You see, a liberal nut can actually shoot Republicans and it’s “move on” and “watch your rhetoric” and, after all, didn’t he sort of deserve it for being a conservative?

With the left, conservative free speech constitutes violence. Yet, when they use actual violence to suppress conservative speech, they are merely exercising their right to free speech.

In addition, should a conservative dare to raise his voice in objection it’s a violent act.

The left wants us to believe that there are rules conservatives must obey, while they gad about behaving in any way they choose -- hence, all the fake outrage every time Trump acts exactly the way they themselves do.

You can't win if you do not fight; that was a lesson I learned a long time ago. The goal of the progressive movement is to silence their opposition and force conservatives to play a game where they are not allowed to fight back.

If we accept their premise, we are destined to lose this battle.

With the NRA ad and the tweets from Trump, the worm is turning. We finally are fighting back.

I could never say the things about Mika Brzezinksi that Donald Trump said the other day in a tweet. I was brought up to believe that a man never insults a woman in public (or in private, for that matter). Yet you have to admit it was a deliciously aggressive micturition by the president on the progressive political press.

Aggressiveness has been missing for too long on the right. It seems that no matter how far the left sinks in their attacks on Republicans, the right can never seem to bring itself to fight back.

1a)The GOP's 'Better Care' act is better than you think

By Erica Grieder

There's a lot to like about the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the health-care bill unveiled last week by Senate Republicans. As drafted, the proposal preserves the most worthy features of the Affordable Care Act while addressing some of its key flaws.

This is, apparently, a controversial opinion.

Many critics on the right (like Rand Paul and Americans for Prosperity) decry the plan as some watered-down ObamaCare lite. Many liberals, meanwhile, have reflexively tarred Better Care as an unmitigated evil being foisted upon America by heartless Republicans.

Both sides are wrong. The Better Care act is better than you think.

The Senate health-care bill is obviously more thoughtful than the House's version, and not nearly as malign as many Democrats have summarily declared it to be. At first glance, it struck me as the kind of market-based plan conservative policy wonk Avik Roy, who once worked for Mitt Romney, would come up with if asked to replace ObamaCare. And on closer inspection, it is his plan, in key respects. That makes sense, given that Roy is the Republican Party's go-to expert on health-care policy. And considering the context, his influence on the bill is reassuring; when someone's expertise is undisputed, some degree of humanity can be safely inferred.

Many on the left would dispute that, at least in this case. "No tweaks by amendment can fix this monstrosity," tweeted Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut. "If you vote for this evil, intellectually bankrupt bill, it will ruin millions of lives." The bill's passage would, to be certain, have sweeping implications. But Republicans could make exactly the same normative claims about ObamaCare itself. They shouldn't, in my view; it's bad form to denounce people based on assumptions about their intent.

But if we're going down this path, let's at least be consistent about it: While the Affordable Care Act has surely helped millions of Americans, it has also still left millions of Americans uninsured, and many more with higher premiums and deductibles than they had in 2009, when Democrats promised that their plan would deliver precisely the opposite, among other things.

Even now, many Democrats are reluctant to acknowledge that ObamaCare's conservative critics were correct in predicting such problems, and that in some cases, at least, their objections were rooted in concern for the Americans who would be disproportionately affected by them, if so.

The left's default position is that ObamaCare's shortcomings are due to Republican obstructionism prior to its passage, and Republicans' subsequent refusal to cooperate. "I was careful to say again and again that while the Affordable Care Act represented a significant step forward for America, it was not perfect, nor could it be the end of our efforts," noted former President Obama in a statement criticizing the Senate health-care bill. He would, he added, be happy to support Republicans if they could just put together a plan demonstrably better than his, "that covers as many people at less cost."

So, single-payer, right? Nice. This is a discussion that Americans should have, at some point; I'm not convinced that it makes sense to think of health care as a market good in the first place. As it stands, however, that is how many Americans tend to think of it. And the Affordable Care Act, which passed in Congress without a single Republican vote, affirms the premise that we should think about health care this way: ObamaCare's key provisions are about the government's role in regulating, stabilizing, and expanding access to the market we already have, not in replacing it altogether.

The same is true of the Senate health-care bill, of course, and this brings us to a critical difference between the Better Care Reconciliation Act and the Affordable Care Act: The GOP's plan genuinely accepts the premise that Obama and the Democrats merely conceded, and seemingly resent. This would explain why Rand Paul and Co. are grousing that the proposal amounts to "ObamaCare lite" — a revision that would leave the Affordable Care Act's architecture and key regulations in place rather than smashing the law to rubble and lighting it on fire — and Democrats see it as a crime against humanity.

This also explains why there's a lot to like about the Better Care Reconciliation Act. It's a market-oriented plan that's serious about the trade-offs involved in such an approach. If you want to remove some bureaucratic hurdles and government largesse from the health-care market, as many conservatives do, then some people will lose coverage, and others will see an increase in their out-of-pocket costs. That's how markets work, even if the architects of ObamaCare refused to believe it.

And it's worth noting that Better Care is realistic, not nihlistic. Like ObamaCare, it recognizes that the government can and should play a role in situations where the market, if left to its own devices, has merciless implications. Most significantly, it largely preserves the protections the 2009 law established for Americans with pre-existing conditions, and provides reinsurance for the insurers who might have balked at doing so. That was a humane and worthwhile achievement which Democrats deserve credit for, even if they are heartless monsters who left millions of Americans uninsured.

It seems possible, as it stands, that none of this matters. On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office released its score of the bill, which found, among other things, that passage of the legislation would result in an additional 22 million Americans being uninsured in 2026, compared to projections based on the current law. The logic underlying this projection was debatable, but its political implications are clear cut. The Democrats who touted Obama Care as a plan that would make comprehensive health insurance affordable to the average American are out of power, at the time being. But perhaps they will regain control of Congress in 2018. And if so, we can all look forward to seeing them unveil their secret plan.

1b) The Other Republican Health Plan

The FDA’s new chief is pushing more generic drug competition.

Democrats have spent most of this week accusing Republicans of trying to create a dystopia where Americans are denied basic health-care treatments. So note that the Food and Drug Administration, under new political management, took initial steps this week to lower the cost of prescription medicine for patients. You might not have noticed amid the latest Trump Twitter meltdown.

Earlier this week FDA published a list of drugs that don’t face competition from generic alternatives even though their intellectual property protections have expired. FDA said it will expedite the approval process for such applications “until there are three approved generics for a given drug product.” The agency says it will take more steps and has announced a July meeting for public feedback.

For some drugs on the roster, no company has submitted a generic application. One reason is that the cost of developing a generic product can run into the millions of dollars, and many can’t fetch the profit to recoup the expense. Yet competition is essential for lowering prices: Consumers pay 94% of the branded price on average when one generic firm enters the market, but that drops to 52% with two competitors and to 44% with three, according to an FDA analysis.

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The savings ripple across the health-care system, and last year generics saved $253 billion, according to a June report from the Association for Accessible Medicines. Case in point are alternatives for chronic troubles like the cholesterol-reducing statin, Lipitor, which cost $3.29 a unit before its patent expired. The generic version last year cost $0.11.

One barrier to innovation is that some manufacturers are abusing FDA safety and risk mitigation regulations to protect monopoly positions. A generic competitor has to prove equivalence to the branded product to win FDA approval, and that requires extensive testing with anywhere from 1,500 to 5,000 tablets of the original treatment. But companies are invoking FDA safe-use and distribution restrictions to avoid handing over the capsules.

In 2014, Alex Brill of Matrix Global Advisors analyzed reported cases of this misuse. Delayed competition for 40 products cost $5.4 billion annually in lost savings, Mr. Brill found. About $1.8 billion of the cost is picked up by the federal government through Medicaid and other programs. This issue will no doubt capture attention at the agency’s public meeting next month, and Congress could help by codifying changes as part of an agency reauthorization. Bills to rein in this behavior have been introduced.

A larger challenge for FDA is developing an approval process for “complex generics,” like the allergy shot EpiPen, that require a device or present some other complication. The good news is that no scholar has devoted as much attention to the issue as new FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who has testified to Congress that the generic approval process was written when most products were molecule pills that were straightforward to recreate. Regarding EpiPen, FDA regulations helped keep a generic alternative off the market by requiring an identical device to deliver a shot of adrenaline.

This week’s announcement is the beginning of a process, and other unresolved issues include that most generics are not approved on the first round, and revisions create substantial work for companies and FDA staff. The agency also has a backlog of applications and has struggled to hire enough staff to keep up with applications.

None of this will ever attract the media attention of “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who jacked up the price of a treatment that faced no competition, or the periodic mugging of some drug company CEO in front of Congress. But Dr. Gottlieb has dedicated much of his career to explaining the benefits that competition can bring to medicine, and now he’s bringing that experience to one of the most resistant bureaucracies in Washington.

1c) Could Trump Really Be Draining the Swamp?

The water appears to be receding at key Beltway bureaucracies.

By James Freeman

The Senate still hasn’t voted on ObamaCare reform, U.S. workers are still waiting for tax cuts to drive economic growth and President of the United States Donald Trump is trading insults with the co-hosts of an MSNBC talk show. Yet Mr. Trump appears to be making progress in what might have seemed the most difficult task given to him by voters in 2016: reducing the power of Washington’s permanent bureaucracy.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wasn’t exactly dying to move to Washington to run a federal department, but he seems to have warmed to the task. Max Bergmann, a former Obama Administration official now at the leftist Center for American Progress, writes in Politico that the “deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.” Discounting for the usual Beltway hyperbole, this probably isn’t as good as it sounds.

All kidding aside, the State Department is one federal agency that was actually contemplated by America’s founders. Conducting foreign policy is an important and necessary task for our central government. But like so much of the Beltway bureaucracy State has been over funded and under managed for years. Now, despite what you may have read about untouchable bureaucrats unaccountable to the public they are supposed to serve, Mr. Tillerson has found ways to clean house, at least according to Mr. Bergmann:

As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible. Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleague—a career senior foreign service officer—but was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.

The former Obama appointee is apparently so unnerved by the Trump-Tillerson era at State that he lets slip the fact that the career staff didn’t think much of the previous management either, and that the conservative critique of the department is at least partly true:

When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Department’s structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, he’s downsizing.

Do taxpayers dare to dream? As odd as this sounds for regular observers of the federal leviathan, the new boss seems to be imposing the kind of tough measures often seen at struggling companies, but almost never witnessed at government departments that have lost their way:

While the lack of senior political appointees has gotten a lot of attention, less attention has been paid to the hollowing out of the career workforce, who actually run the department day to day. Tillerson has canceled the incoming class of foreign service officers. This as if the Navy told all of its incoming Naval Academy officers they weren’t needed. Senior officers have been unceremoniously pushed out. Many saw the writing on the wall and just retired, and many others are now awaiting buyout offers. He has dismissed State’s equivalent of an officer reserve—retired FSOs, who are often called upon to fill State’s many short-term staffing gaps, have been sent home despite no one to replace them. Office managers are now told three people must depart before they can make one hire.

Perhaps the Tillerson method could work at other agencies too. Mr. Bergmann for his part seems to be disappointed that the un-elected career staff has not been able to impose its will on the duly-elected political leadership:

At the root of the problem is the inherent distrust of the State Department and career officers. I can sympathize with this—I, too, was once a naive political appointee, like many of the Trump people. During the 2000s, when I was in my 20s, I couldn’t imagine anyone working for George W. Bush. I often interpreted every action from the Bush administration in the most nefarious way possible. Almost immediately after entering government, I realized how foolish I had been.

For most of Foggy Bottom, the politics of Washington might as well have been the politics of Timbuktu—a distant concern, with little relevance to most people’s work.

Here’s to making the will of voters more than just a distant concern-- and highly relevant to the work of federal agencies.

Meanwhile over at the Environmental Protection Agency, new boss Scott Pruitt is not just draining the bureaucratic swamp in Washington, he’s taking away the agency’s power to oversee swamps nationwide. The Journal reported on Tuesday:

President Donald Trump’s administration is moving ahead with plans to dismantle another piece of the Obama administration’s environmental legacy, the rule that sought to protect clean drinking water by expanding Washington’s power to regulate major rivers and lakes as well as smaller streams and wetlands.

And now the Journal reports:

President Donald Trump declared a new age of “energy dominance” by the U.S. on Thursday as he outlined plans to roll back Obama era restrictions and regulations meant to protect the environment.

In a speech at the Energy Department, the president promised to expand the country’s nuclear-energy sector and open up more federal lands and offshore sites to oil and natural-gas drilling.

Mr. Trump also celebrated his decision earlier this month to withdraw the U.S. from the 195-country Paris climate accord and the Environmental Protection Agency’s rescindment this week of the Obama administration’s clean-water rules that farmers and business groups found onerous.

“We don’t want to let other countries take away our sovereignty and tell us what to do and how to do it,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump also issued a special permit authorizing the construction of a new pipeline between the U.S. and Mexico that would carry fuels across the border in Texas, the State Department said.

If Mr. Trump can finally reform the Washington bureaucracy and make the will of voters its primary concern, voters may decide he can tweet whatever he wants.

1d) On Health Care, a Promise, Not a Threat

McConnell warns GOP senators they may end up having to work with the Democrats. They should

By Peggy Noonan

We are coming up on a great American holiday. There will be fireworks and children frolicking in pools; there will be baseball games, cookouts and flags. America will be looking and acting like America. So this is no time for gloom.

This moment in fact may be, perversely, promising. The failure so far of Senate Republicans to agree on a health-care bill provides an opening. Whatever happens the next few days, moderates and centrists on both sides can and should rise, name themselves, and start storming through.

The difficulties the Republicans have faced were inevitable. They are divided; they don’t have the will or the base. The party is undergoing a populist realignment, with party donors, think-tankers and ideologues seeing things more or less one way, and the Trump base, including many Democrats, seeing them another. The long-stable ground under Republican senators has been shifting, and they’re not sure where or how to stand. The president, philosophically unmoored and operating without a firm grasp of the legislation he promotes, is little help. He has impulses and sentiments but is not, as the French used to say, a serious man. He just wants a deal and a win, and there’s something almost refreshing in this, in the lack of tangled and complicated personal and political motives. It makes so much possible.

Many Republican senators see that the American people are not in the mood for tax cuts to the comfortable and coverage limits on the distressed. Democratic senators, on the other hand, are increasingly aware that ObamaCare is not viable, and in some respects is on the verge of collapse.

This gives both parties motives to join together and make things better.

Republicans believe they must repeal ObamaCare because they’ve long promised to do so. Keeping promises, especially in our untrusting political climate, is a good thing. But polling suggests America isn’t eager that promise be wholly kept. The Senate’s repeal-and-replace bill is deeply underwater in most polls, barely above water even with Republicans. If you campaign promising mayonnaise but once you’re in office voters start saying they prefer mustard, Politics 101 says, at least for now, hold the mayo.

Here again is our big wish: that both parties join together and produce a fix. It would no doubt be ungainly and imperfect, but it would be better than the failing thing we have. And Americans, being practical, will settle, for now, for better.

The GOP’s donor class would likely hate the eventual bill, as the Democratic Party’s nihilist left, which wants no compromise, would hate it. But their opposition would suggest to everyone else the bill must be pretty good.

There is the beginning of a movement in the Senate for a bipartisan approach. Republican Susan Collins of Maine has it exactly right: Asked if she thinks it necessary for both parties to work together, she said: “That’s what we should have done from the beginning.” Republican Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said on Fox News Wednesday night: “I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and work with the Democrats.” Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin says it’s a ‘mistake’ to attempt a partisan fix. Democrat Joe Manchin, also of West Virginia, says he’s “ready” for a bipartisan effort. The New York Times reports senators from both parties met privately weeks ago to discuss core issues. Mr. Manchin was there along with Democrats Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Among the Republicans were Sens. Capito and Collins, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

That’s a good start.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, disappointed in the GOP failure earlier in the week to get to yes, told his own members, in front of the press, that if they can’t get it together, they’ll have to work with the Democrats. It sounded like a threat, not an invitation; he seemed to be saying Republican voters wouldn’t like it. Many wouldn’t, but the polling suggests many would.

This column respects history and tradition. I’ve banged away on the fact that any big legislative change that affects how America lives, especially on something so intimate and immediate as health care, has to receive support from both parties or it will never work.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in creating Social Security in 1935, knew he had to get Republicans behind it and owning it, or America would see it as a Democratic project, not an American institution. In the end he persuaded 81 Republicans to join 284 Democrats in the House. So too with the creation of Medicare in 1965: Lyndon Johnson wrestled and cajoled Republicans and got a majority of their votes.

Every president until Barack Obama knew this. He bullied through ObamaCare with no Republican support, and he did it devilishly, too, in that he created a bill so deal-laden, so intricate, so embedding-of-its-tentacles into the insurance and health systems, that it would be almost impossible to undo. He was maximalist. His party got a maximal black eye, losing the House and eventually the Senate over the bill, which also contributed to its loss of the presidency.

Is it fair that both parties must fix a problem created by one party? No. But it would be wise and would work.

Here is a thing that would help: a little humility from the Democrats, and a little humanity.

It would be powerful if a Democratic senator would go on the Sunday shows this weekend and say something like this: “Republicans have proved they can’t make progress. They’re failing in their efforts, and I’m not sad about it, because their bill is a bad one. But I’m not going to lie to you, ObamaCare has big flaws—always did. It was an imperfect piece of legislation and it’s done some things my party said wouldn’t happen, such as lost coverage and hiked deductibles. The American people know this because they live with it. The answer is to do what we should have done in the past, and that is joining with Republicans to hammer out changes that will make things better, that we all can live with, at least for now. We’ll make it better only by working together. I’m asking to work with them.”

That person would be a hero in the Beltway, which prizes compromise and constructiveness, and admired outside it. “My God, it isn’t all just partisan for her.”

The Democratic Party made this mess. It’s on them to help dig out of it. If they show some humility, Republicans would look pretty poor in not responding with their own olive branch.

Show some class, help the country. When it’s over, use whatever words you want: “We forced Democrats to admit the bill was flawed and dying.” “We forced Republicans to back down.” America won’t mind the propaganda, they’re used to it. Just make a bad thing better.

Don’t give what you produce a grandiose name. Call it the Health Reform Act of 2017. There will be more. Wait till we’re debating single payer in 2020.

But move now. Do the work, break Capitol Hill out of its shirts-and-skins stasis. Solve this thing.

A happy 241st anniversary to America, the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.

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