monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Swamp-draining news from all over.

Quote:

A conservative doctor-turned-pundit with deep ties to Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry is President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

...Gottlieb is a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a partner in the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. He has spent more than a decade in Washington rotating between the worlds of government, health policy consulting and political think tanks.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/scott-gottlieb-fda-pick

When did Trump say that people in business were part of the swamp? I must have missed that. He talked about lobbyists and professional career politicians who act on their own behalf rather than that of the people.

He did talk about career politicians in this context, yes.

I seem to remember him mentioning term limits...

The Words We Use About Donald Trump
That’s crazy! That is the instant, intuitive, and, one might think, only possible response of a sane person to a week’s worth of tweets from President Donald Trump. Only crazy people make reckless charges, without any plausible foundation, and then simply shrug and sit on them. Take one recent example: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” This charge is mindboggling, not least for being self-exploding. For Obama to have wiretapped Trump (put aside that that’s not, technically speaking, what is done any longer; the President may have been moved by vague memories of how the feds brought down John Gotti), Obama would have needed his own private team of plumbers to break into, or hack the systems of, Trump Tower. And no one in his right mind suggests that Obama ever had such a team. The most obvious alternative would be that it was done by the F.B.I., in response to a court order spurred by genuine suspicion of grave wrongdoing. In that scenario, Trump would be asserting that someone in the Department of Justice had grounds for such suspicion, sufficient to convince a judge. But he couldn’t possibly have intended to say that. All this suggests that he may not be capable of the normal logic of normal people, of any kind of political bent. And that, folks, would be crazy.

Of course, we are quickly counselled never to say this, in part because calling Trump crazy would be, in plain English, an insult to crazy people. Diagnosis should be left to those with expertise in it; mental illness is not a category to be used casually to describe those whose behavior we find squalid or even abhorrent. And calling people crazy, to take it to the next dimension, is what totalitarian societies do when they want to lock dissidents away.

Understood. But it is still important, for the sake of sanity, to assert that there is a meaningful sense of the word “crazy” that doesn’t demand medical diagnosis. It arises, instead, from an intelligent description of the normal workings of human minds and human relationships. And it’s important to preserve that sense for common usage, because we often need to distinguish between normal people we disagree with or even think may be actively doing wrong—say, taking health insurance away from millions of people in blind pursuit of an ideological passion—and people who are dangerous because they have passed beyond the ability to actively reason with evidence about the world...

LaRouche Associate Addresses High-Level Audience on British Coup against Trump
March 8 (EIRNS)—Longtime LaRouche associate Harley Schlanger yesterday addressed an audience of some 100 businessmen and German reserve officers in Frankfurt on the British-orchestrated coup against President Donald Trump. The event had been organized jointly by the International Division of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU e.V., (the Economic Council) based in Frankfurt and associated with the Christian Democratic Union, and by the Reservisten Kameradschaft Frankfurt am Main, and titled “Who Is Out To Sabotage the ‘Trump Revolution’?” with Schlanger as the featured speaker. Held at the Villa Bonn, a rather exclusive venue for meetings in Frankfurt, there were about 100 guests, half of whom were in uniform.
In his introduction, Col. Axel Ebbecke (res.), introduced many of the more prominent guests, including “A special guest, Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president of the Schiller Institute, whose husband, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, who is well-known in the United States for his presidential campaigns and the fact that he served as an advisor to the Ronald Reagan Administration on the policy of the Strategic Defense Initiative.” Schlanger was introduced with a brief review of his background, including the fact that he served as Mr. LaRouche’s official spokesman and bureau chief of EIR in the Southwestern U.S.
Schlanger gave a very hard-hitting presentation detailing the British-orchestrated and George Soros-financed coup effort against President Trump, underscoring that these were the same people who launched the Nazi coup against the elected government of the Ukraine in 2014. Trump’s election, he said, is part of a global rejection of the policies of the last 20 years and that Trump is being attacked because he has vowed to reverse the policies of perpetual war and globalization.
Schlanger especially elaborated Trump’s intention to establish a positive relationship with the leaders of both Russia and China to reverse the Obama/British-led drive for World War III. In this context he also developed the cause of the ongoing financial crisis, the need to implement Glass-Steagall and LaRouche’s Four Laws, and the urgency of the U.S. and Europe joining China, Russia, and the BRICS in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Throughout the presentation, many of the guests were gesturing or indicating agreement with many points Schlanger made, especially regarding the coup in Ukraine, the futility of sanctions against Russia, etc. Following the presentation, there was a lively question-and-answer period. One TV reporter explained his theory about the terrible German media coverage of Trump. “Do you think the Germans need an image of an evil enemy so they will accept the status quo?” he asked. In responding, Schlanger elaborated on what he had said earlier about the brainwashing of the Germans around “collective guilt.” He spoke of the role of the Bush-Harriman networks in installing the Nazis, and said it is time for Germans to break free of this continuing occupation of their country. Many people approached him afterwards to thank him for saying that, with one commenting that “we, as Germans, are afraid to tell the truth—it is good you did!”
Another guest thanked Schlanger for his presentation, remarking that “you have shown us that you have a deep understanding of American politics. Perhaps you can help us and tell us what is wrong Chancellor Angela Merkel?”...

Trump Appointee Who Tweeted About "Some Muslim Piece Of ****" Is Out From Energy Department
A Trump campaign worker appointed to the Energy Department is a former massage therapist with a history of tweeting anti-Muslim remarks.

It's hard to tell here just what is your complaint about the progress of swamp draining. It was very clear that Trump's main focus here with the swamp reference was to the growing body of bureaucratric elements in our government;

It was very clear that Trump's main focus here with the swamp reference was to the growing body of bureaucratric elements in our government...

At a hearing markup on Wednesday, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) suggested that one reason Republicans object to Obamacare is that men have to pay for plans that cover maternity services, such as prenatal care.

The heated exchange happened during a lengthy markup session for the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Shimkus was responding to a question from Rep. Michael Doyle (D-PA), who asked a different colleague which mandates in Obamacare he took issue with.

“What mandate in the Obamacare bill does he take issue with?” Doyle asked. “Certainly not with pre-existing conditions, or caps on benefits or letting your child stay on the policy until 26, so I’m curious what is it we’re mandating?”

“What about men having to purchase prenatal care?” Shimkus butted in. “Is that not correct? And should they?”

Donald Trump’s embrace of the American Health Care Act, authored by Paul Ryan and other House Republicans seemingly in collaboration with establishment-minded members of his administration, represents a massive betrayal of his own clear and repeated promises to the American people.

To an extent, sophisticated political journalists always knew Trump was likely to break those promises. And his embrace of conventional, conservative House Republicans such as Mick Mulvaney to run the Office of Management and Budget and Tom Price to run the Department of Health and Human Services was a clear indication that he intended to break them. But it would be a mistake to simply gloss over this breach of faith.

Trump’s embrace of more centrist positions on health care and retirement security was a crucial aspect of his campaign, and there was enough campaign-season tension between Trump and the GOP leadership that a voter could be forgiven for assuming Trump meant what he was saying.

He did not. Trump ran and won promising to cover everyone, avoid Medicaid cuts, and boost funding for opioid abuse treatment. He is now lobbying Congress to pass a bill that does none of those things. Instead, millions will lose insurance and Medicaid spending will be sacrificed on the altar of tax cuts for the rich...