National Intelligence Chief Clapper on TV

Congress had Clapper testifying before a committee.  Clapper was saying that yes the Russians did mess with the 2016 election.  But he wasn't very convincing to me.  Every thing he said was a generality, and opinion or a conclusion.  He never spoke of real evidence, not even a wiretapped phone call or intercepted email or snail mail.  No statements like, "We followed Russian embassy staffer so-and-so-ski to a face to face meeting with [any heavy weight person] on such and such a date and time.  We eavesdropped the meeting and heard them discussing [payments, jobs, embarrassing emails, protection from prosecution, locations of dead drops, other spy stuff]".  No cancelled checks, no deposits of large amounts of cash.  Clapper never said anything solid, that could be checked, he just bloviated.
   Clapper did manage to get several hours of TV time on Fox. 

Assassinating Kim Jong whats-his-face

The Kim regime accused us Americans of plotting Kim's assassination.  They detailed a complex plot involving satellite phones, biowarfare bombs, and an unnamed agent who they are interrogating.  God rest his soul. 
   That's not how I would go after Kim.  I'd  get his location, where he sleeps, when he will review the troops in public, when he will appear in public.  Then I'd send a fighter up there and use a smart bomb to take him out.  Fly good and low, and the enemy radar won't see you on the way in.  Use a good size smart bomb to kill all the close in eye witnesses.  Say 750 pounds, none of those 250 pound Small Diameter Bombs.  Stay good and low and get out of North Korea ASAP. 

Democrats don't get the point on Healthcare

We have Democrats on TV saying that the Republican healthcare bill will cost them at the polls next year.  Those Democrats clearly don't get it.  In actual fact, after 8 years of threatening to repeal Obamacare and endless campaign promises to do so, the Republicans faced a disaster in the 2018 election if they failed to pass an Obamacare repeal and replace bill.  We are currently debating what the bill they passed yesterday will do, but at least the Republicans got their act together and passed something.  If they had not, they could kiss their thin Congressional majorities farewell in 2018.  

Republicans pass a health care bill

I don't know just what is in it and what it means.  But they did get just enough votes in the house to pass it.  About time.  We voters elected a Republican congress to get us some reforms.  Up until just now, the Republicans had not passed squat, and a lot of us voters are thinking and saying, what good is a Republican congress if it cannot pass anything? 
  Early reports say that twenty Republicans failed to vote for the bill.  We should get their names and publicize them.  Congress critters so disloyal and dumb as to not vote for their party's bill need to be voted out of office.  

FBI director Comey

The Congress critters grilled him all morning.  Lotta talk about how the Russians helped Trump.  In actual fact Comey himself helped Trump and hurt Hillary far more than any mythical Russians ever dreamed about.  When Comey came out and said he had new evidence from Anthony Weiner's laptop, that October Surprise did hurt Hillary.  Lotta talk in code word and code numbers, like "702".  I am gonna have to  Google for 702 and see what it means.
   And I have posted about this before.  The Russians wanted Hillary for president.  They know her, she isn't very bright, she isn't very brave, and  she would be no match for Putin.  Trump is impulsive, and unpredictable, and has political capital that Hillary can only dream about.  Enough political capital to allow him to send an American armored division to Georgia, or Syria for example.  Hillary would never be able to do anything like that.  The Russians aren't dumb, they knew damn well that Hillary was far far better for them than Trump.  Of course, the Russians read American news media which was 100% behind Hillary and predicted her winning.  So they didn't do all that much anyhow.    

Shed a tear for Puerto Rico

They will declare bankruptcy to day, unless some last minute deal is made.  Over the years Puerto Rice managed to borrow $73 billion dollars from bone headed Wall Street bankers, who should have known that the island didn't have and never would have the revenues to pay off the debts.  Wall St bankers must have been taking stupidity lessons from the Euro bankers who lent to Greece. 
   The money ran out last year, and to complicate matters, Puerto Rice as a territory had been left out of the bankruptcy law.   You have to be a real US state to declare bankruptcy.  Territories don't count.   So last  summer Congress passed a law to allow the island to go bankrupt.  Being Congress, they put a few bells and whistles and a committee to negotiate into the law, but today the red tape unwound and bankruptcy is going to happen. 
   Anastasia O'Grady, writing on the Wall St Journal's op-ed page is all kinds of indignant about this.  She never really says just what gets her all riled up, but riled up she is.  Puerto Rico got access to a lot of credit, her politicians took advantage of that to borrow when they had no way of paying off the loans.  Politicians are like that.  And the banks deserve to loose their money.  Those were stupid loans, and loosing the money might smarten up the next generation of bankers.
   Capitalism depends upon intelligent distribution of capital.  Capital used to build businesses, employ people, grow the economy, is intelligent.  Capital used to pay government workers, politicians, and pensions is wasted.  It's clear that Wall St wasted $73 billion that it loaned to Puerto Rico.  Let's have the banker's smart for it. 
   It will take a few years (five maybe ten) for bankers to forget a bankruptcy and begin to loan again.  That will be a little tough on Puerto Rico, but that's the way the world works. 

Let's do the American Health Care Cost Reduction Act.

American health care costs too much.  We spend 19% of GNP on  health care.  Twice as much an any other country in the world.  And plenty of other countries, Canada, Britain, Japan, Germany, and many more, have public health every bit as good and in America, and they only pay half as much money as we do.  When we export American products, the price of those products has to be marked up 19% to pay for the worker's health care.  When every other country in the world exports product, they only have to mark up their price by 9.5% because their health care costs and half what ours are.  One big reason that manufacturing jobs are leaving the US, is the outrageous cost of health care in the US.   Want to make America great again?  Lower the cost of health care.
   Obamacare raised the cost of US health care.  Obamacare is a scheme to subsidize the cost of health care for everyone who doesn't get health insurance from their employer.  Obamacare did nothing to make health care cheaper.
   Here is what we could do to reduce the price of health care.
1.  Rein in malpractice suits, pure welfare for lawyers.  Don't allow lawyers to advertise for plaintiffs.  They didn't use to be allowed to do that.   Go over to the British system, loser pays the court costs.   Pass a law saying that manufacture, distribution, and prescription of any FDA approved drug or device is never malpractice, even if the FDA later pulls the drug or device off the market.  FDA takes so long to approve anything that any reasonable person assumes that anything FDA approved is safe.  Lawyers (all Congress critters are lawyers)  hate this, but there are more hardworking voters than lawyers.
2.  Allow duty free importation of drugs from all reasonable first world countries, places like Canada, England, France and some on.  Any drug approved for sale to the public by the authorities of a first world country can be imported even if the FDA hasn't gotten around to approving it yet.  Reason:  the health care authorities of other countries sandpaper the drug companies into lowering their prices, often by half or more.  Those Epipens that made the news last year when the maker raised the price to $600 each.  You can buy Epipens in Europe for $20.  Drug companies hate this, but  companies don't vote.
3.  Pass a federal law authorizing every American health insurance agency to sell policies in all 50 states of the Union, WITHOUT having to do any state paperwork.  If you are an insurance company selling health policies in your home state, you can sell them in every state.   The insurance companies hate this, but companies don't vote.
  We could run the Health Care Cost Reduction Act thru Congress while they are still fumblng around with Obamacare repeal and replace.  We could even get some Democrats to vote for it.