Since the Republicans lack the stones to repeal Obamacare...

Maybe they could take some of the heat off by passing a few less controversial  measures to reduce the cost of healthcare.  Remember the United States spends TWICE as much money on healthcare as any other country in the world.  Perhaps bringing the costs down out of the stratosphere will ease things a bit.  As it is,  the Republican failure to deal with Obamacare will  probably cost them control of Congress in 2018.  Both houses. 
   They could try any or all of the following:
1.  Allow interstate sale of health insurance.  Any health insurance company can sell policies in all 50 states, no state paperwork required.  Insurance companies hate this, but they don't vote.
2.  Allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, and the like.  Any medicine legal for sale in the source country can be imported and sold in the United States.   Drug companies hate this but they don't vote.  The FDA hates this but they don't vote.
3.  Clamp down on medical malpractice suits.  They just enrich lawyers and make health care more expensive for real people.  Lawyers  (congresscritters are mostly lawyers) hate this.  Unfortunately congresscritters do vote.
4.   Ease the airconditioning requirements down from the current plus or minus 2 degrees F to a more reasonable plue or minus 4 degrees F.  This will cut costs on new construction. 
5.   Tighten regulations on opioid prescriptions.  Drug companies and pill mills hate this but they don't vote.

Granted, none of these measures will do any thing to prevent  a bailout of insurance companies (stabilize is the new word for bailout), but  at least the Republicans could say they did something about Obamacare. 

Is the Wall St Journal going greenie on us??

Yesterday's Journal published six letters to the editor under the headline "Unchecked Climate Change Will Lead to War".  Of the six letter writers, none discussed the science of global warming, things like is it happening, how fast is it happening,  what causes it.  One asserted that CO2 is poisonous, it isn't.  One talked about examining data over the past 21 centuries.  The thermometer wasn't invented until just 4 centuries back.  Lacking thermometers, ancient writer's ideas of hot and cold are pretty subjective.  Tree ring width indicates amount of rainfall, not temperature.  We have a few records of time of planting and harvest but that's about it.  That ain't 21 centuries of data in my book.  One writer thinks Zika, malaria, and dengue are caused by climate change.   That's false. Diseases are caused by germs or viruses (virii?).  One writer is an anti-fracker, and blames global warming and a whole bunch of stuff on fracking. 
    Dunno about that Journal.  They used to be better than this. 

I got spammed.

Some body found my blog and spammed a lot of my recent postings.  First time for that.   So I zapped all the ones I found.  If this keeps up I will have to tighten up on comments.  Right now it's open to everyone.  Spamming should be made a felony, subject to the death penalty.

Gotta stop the leaks

We cannot have the Washington Post printing Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders.  If privacy cannot be assured, and it can't now,  nobody is going to talk to the US president on the phone.  We need to find the leakers and subject them to a bit of cruel and unusual punishment.  Boiling in oil would be good.  Now would be the right time. 

Firing Special Prosecuters (Mueller) is a bad idea

Nixon fired the special prosecutor who was investigating Water gate.  Can't remember the guy's name now.  Watergate was a long time ago.  Firing caused a nationwide furor and resulted in Nixon resigning the presidency before they got around to impeaching him.   I think for Trump to fire Mueller would work out about the same way.  I hope Trump understands this. 

Opioid Crisis?

How much do places like this contribute to the opioid crisis?  They are spreading.  This one is in Littleton NH, which is about as rural as you can get.  Sources at the Littleton hospital tell me that these guys tried to get office space in the hospital.  The accreditation committee looked at the doctor associated with the operation and said "This guy has red flags sticking out all over him".   So they are in a store front on Meadow St.  All they do is write prescriptions for opioids.

Deported 20 times??

TV news is pushing a terrible story of a lowlife that was deported twenty times and now has murdered someone. This should never have happened.  After deporting a guy a couple of times, we know that deportation doesn't teach him anything.  Should have given him five years in jail back about deportation #3 or #4.   Do we just deport them time and again because it's easy to do and fairly low cost compared to a US jail?   Not good.  After a reasonable number of deportations we know this guy is trouble, letting him loose on the other side of the border is not right.   A good solid stretch in jail might get the message across, and at least will keep him off the streets.