Topics and articles chosen with care. Linked articles in bold purple

◆ No punning pictures of mayo in kitchen sinks for the “Cinco de Mayo.”

Yesterday, no comments on “May the Fourth be with you”

You’re welcome.

◆ A Comment on Health Care: Repeal and Replace, Relief and Regrets 

ZipDialog will feature specific elements of the Repeal-and-Replace bill over the next weeks. For now, though, I want to comment on the overall concept.

• Obama’s achievement. It is easy to see the mammoth problems with the Affordable Care Act. The ACA did not meet the basic promises Obama made to pass it (you can keep your doctor and your existing insurance), is financially unsustainable, and is now melting down. But that wreck should not obscure what Pres. Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid achieved. After the ACA passed, most Americans came to believe that they have a right to healthcare and to the insurance policies needed to pay for it.  That right extends to the poor and to people with costly pre-conditions. It is politically perilous to remove that very costly new right/entitlement. Except for the Freedom Caucus, even fiscally-conservative Republicans are unwilling to risk it. That’s what the fight among conservatives is about.
• Democrats are perfectly happy with the mess created by Obamacare and would be even if Clinton were president. (Well, I should say the ones who remain in office. Many were defeated because they voted for it.) If Hillary was president, the current mess would probably lead to single-payer. The D’s would certainly press for it. With Trump, it leads to a bipartisan lock-in for a vast new entitlement, which will be there forever, in some form or other. Since the hybrid public/private arrangement the Republicans are trying to fashion may not work, the Dems could end up with single payer anyway. If it new bill does not pass, they will certainly pin the failure on the Republicans, and so will many voters. If the bill passes and some people have to pay more or get less coverage, the D’s will blame the R’s, and so will some voters. In a country as angry and divided as America today, it is much easier to be the party out-of-power, as R’s are learning.
• False comparisons. The Democrats and mainstream media will favor comparisons between any new Republican bill and the current ACA promises. The problem is that these are comparisons between a hypothetical Republican plan and an nonexistent Obamacare future. The current ACA is simply not sustainable. To say that “2 million people will lose benefit X or Y” is to assume that they would retain it under Obamacare. But that plan is falling of its own weight, so those people would lose the benefit anyway.
• The falseness of the comparisons probably does not matter to most voters. If they were promised their preexisting conditions were covered, then they will hold Trump and the Republicans accountable for covering them–and paying for it.

◆ This political no-win situation is why the NYT headline reads: G.O.P. Cheers a Big Victory. But Has It Stirred a ‘Hornet’s Nest’? 

Comment: Yes, but failing to act would have stirred it, too. The big questions now are

• Whether the R’s can pass anything that gets signed into law?
• Whether too many people are disappointed? and
• Whether the program is financially sustainable?

◆ North Korea accuses US and South Korea of plotting to kill Kim Jong Un  (New York Times)

Says it was a vast, $20,000 plot. That’s right, $20k.

◆ Trump to make first foreign trip: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Vatican before visiting NATO headquarters and G7 meeting  (CBS)

Comment: In Saudi Arabia, he will try to erase the region’s fears over their abandonment by Obama and his tilt toward Iran. That’s crucial. The NATO meeting will presumably mix his reaffirmation of the alliance with his complaints about free-riding.

We don’t know what he plans for Israel and how much it will involve Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. The broader goal, as Trump said on Friday, is to build a “coalition of friends.” That coalition will be directed against Iran and Islamic terrorism. (It should be noted that Trump still uses the term “Islamic terrorism” but far less often.)

◆ Trump fires the White House “chief usher,” hired under Obama but usually considered non-political. The job involves supervising all White House “personal” staff

The Washington Post says she was the first woman and features her picture, showing she is African-American. They have a historian quoted saying how unusual the firing is.

Comment: It is only speculation, but here’s my guess about the motivation: the Trump people are concerned that Obama hirelings are leaking. They already know insider leaks are a problem, so they are putting in somebody they want to do the hiring and firing.

UPDATE: The person let know, we find out, was a Hillary loyalist. Trump wants a loyalist of his own. That’s what the Daily Mail reports.

◆ George Will writes a very strong column, basically saying Trump is a no-nothing idiot  (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about Donald Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence. –George Will

Comment: Whatever you think of Will’s judgment here, it is important to note that his opinion represents an important view among traditional conservatives–and not just Democrats. Part of it, I think, is about Trump’s anti-intellectual, populist style. Part of it is because Trump has never been a part of the conservative movement, a movement with deep intellectual traditions that George Will knows well and respects immensely. Part of it is because of traditionalists’ never-ending revulsion at the nouveau riche and their gold-plated faucets. They wish the arrivistes would depart, and quickly.  Note that these objections are different from those of centrists and progressives.

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Thanks to Philip Hummer for the George Will column