Conflicts of Interest with Health Sec Tom Price

Donald Trump has so many crooks up for cabinet or other high offices it’s hard to keep track of them.  Health Secretary is another such case.  Democrats grilled Tom Price on his trades of healthcare stocks while a member of Congress, raising questions about conflicts of interest.  Under questioning from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Price acknowledged that he had bought stock in a biotech company called Innate Immunotherapeutics after discussing the company with Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).  Democrats have warned that Price could have violated the STOCK Act, which bans stock trading by lawmakers based on their inside congressional information.   Price argued that while Collins told him about the company, there was no inside information shared.  "I had no access to nonpublic information," Price said.   “I studied the company for a period of time and felt that it had some significant merit and promise,” he added.  Democrats noted that Price bought the stock as part of a private offering to a small group of people.   “These sound like sweetheart deals,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).   Collins, for his part, has faced questions after Politico reported that he was overheard talking on his cell phone in the Capitol about giving stock tips to people and how many "millionaires I've made in Buffalo."  Clearly like so many others, Price IS profiting from insider information.  Yet only the small peons ever get prosecuted for this crime.   Meanwhile Sanders and Elizabeth Warren grilled Price about the meat of his policies.  These cabinet people never will come out and say "Yes I am out to slash funding.  I am out to privatize".   Price says he's compassionate but in the end gives you the equivelant of a Paul Ryan style $2.50 discount on a Dominoes pizza.  So let's not kid anyone.  

One thing in the news lately is Donald Trump’s approval numbers and I can’t find any previous references to them.   One poll had him at 44% approval and another had him at 37% approval.  The latest poll has him at forty percent approval just before he takes office.  This is the lowest reading for any incoming president in the past forty years.  I guess Nixon breaks this trend.   Normally presidents come in on a popular high figure and that is the best they can expect and they only go down from there.  Clearly there is no “honeymoon period” but Obama didn’t have one of those either.  The Republicans made it clear from day one they were going to give Obama “No Quarter”.   There are now 53 democratic congressmen who have pledged not to attend the inauguration ceremony in two days.  Now we hear Trump has plans to trademark the phrase “Make America Great Again”.  Copyright laws are getting out of hand.   We all know the real saying is “Make America Hate Again” anyhow.  I think we continued to be shocked and bewildered as Trump continues to break with tradition.   They say “unlike the conventions of last year, we can’t put a fence around the whole thing.”   Clearly though bumping off Donald Trump would be counter-productive because we’d only be left with Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and there would not even be a glimmer of hope that the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement would be defeated or any other trade deals.   For this reason it would be suicide to even think about impeaching Donald Trump legally for even a moment. 

Sometimes I think Thom Hartman gives the so called “Radical Republicans” of the post Civil War era more credit than they deserve.   To me, it’s not that that they loved Black people all that much but that they hated certain southern Confederate leaders more.  What they did and said was more geared to getting back at these confederate leaders rather than to “give every Black person a job at a living wage”, As Thom Hartman proposes.  We are reminded that Philip Randolph was the head of the Civil Rights march on Washington in 1963 and not Martin Luther King.  And the phrase was “jobs and freedom”.  Jobs came before freedom.   I wish they would play Martin Luther King’s ENTIRE speech more often.   I would say the same thing of the Rev Jeremiah Wright.  Rather than just hear a few “hateful sentences” of his – I’d like the whole enchilada.  I’d like to hear a whole sermon or better yet multiple sermons of his, and also know of his other pastoral activities before I throw mud around in judgement like Rush Limbaugh does routinely.   Rush Limbaugh lies about everything anyhow.   Just about every sweeping generalization he made on his show this morning was a lie.

Apparently, Jerry Brown and the State of California plan to launch their own satellites into space to get weather and other information if the threat I heard today was valid, that the Trump administration plans to shut off NASA satellites because Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear any more news about global warming.  This would truly be cutting off your nose to spite your face.   But apparently this sort of shit does on in government all the time.  You know how the gun lobby got government information on gun violence squelched by a ruling from- - somebody.   Now there is the case of Gov Brownback of Kansas.  Brownback has run his state into the ground economicly with his disastrous trickle down policies.  So Gov Brownback just closed down the office of management and budget or whatever so that Brownback no longer heard this distressing information.   Meanwhile someone must have hacked FOX news because on this morning’s news on FOX a story ran that NASA satellites reported that earth temperatures were record high in 2016..  Now there is a 27 mile long fissure on an ice block in Antarctica and a government outpost has to close down because if they don’t close, the whole place may be set adrift on the ice.   (Is that a bad thing?)

Chelsea Manning the noted transsexual has been pardoned out of an impressive number of leaving office pardons by President Obama.  Chelsea Manning used to be Bradley Manning and he was notable to giving Wikkileaks a whole lot of damaging information about this country.   He was given a 35 year sentence but now the term is shortened to seven years and he’ll be freed in May.  But still Don Siegleman languishes in a prison cell though he did nothing wrong besides of course getting in Karl Rove’s way. 

Here’s an interesting question.  We know that all causes have effects and that all effects have causes.  But can we therefore say that there is not a First Cause that has no prior effects?   If you look on God as a computer programmer you don’t think in term of an endless chicken and egg regression but rather in terms of a straight line, with a definite beginning and usually a definite end.  That would be the control Z function if you’re in DOS doing an EOF character.  In other words- - God is like the programmer.  He is the first cause as well as the sole cause of the effects to follow.  But then the question arises as to whether God has his own self imposed “Sunset clause” by which there will come a time when all of God’s many “effects” will run their course and come to an end.  In terms of today’s soap opera, we can safely say that Eric, the onetime Priest did the right thing in talking that suicidal young woman off of the ledge.  He was rewarded for his efforts but now is engaging in the sort of self flagulating behavior Eric is famous for saying “Everything I told her about the sustaining love of God was all lies and bullshit.  That makes me a hypocrite”.  But in truth Eric really didn’t have any choice.  He had no moral choice but “teologically” God really was “the decider” in this issue and Eric was just a tool used for good by a sovereign act of God.  In the other event on “Days” it seems there is a three way peace summit of Dario, Sonny, and Chad concern who owns that computer chip that was stolen and restolen.  I think the only solution that will work here is that if all three agree to share what ever information is gleaned from these computer chips gets shared by all three.  That way no one party will have the advantage.

Rush Limbaugh was all in a twist about this one North Carolina republican senator who says that “We in congress need to end gridlock by learning to compromise with the Democrats to get things passed and not have a repeat of the past eight years”.  I agree with that statement, but Rush just went hysterical over it.   Apparently Bill Handle is concerned about the number of porta-potties at the inauguration.  Gary and Shannon were saying that yes there is being constructed an eight to ten foot high security fence all around a huge perimeter.  The question now is how are they going to smuggle all of those marijuana joints in the security area?  We had a filet of chicken breast for lunch.  Glenda thought it was dry but it had sauce on it.  People have forgotten that good white meat is supposed to be firm.  It’s better than the water logged mushy stuff we’ve gotten so much of before.   I would have had seconds but they didn’t have them.  We had cauloflour with that and we had fruit cocktail with cream in it that was supposed to be amberosia, I guess.  Then I had to get in the line to see Dr Messina.  I was behind that shy East European lady.  (Not Eugenia but the newer one)  It was a fast moving line.  We were only in line because Federico said we were on his list.  I asked Dr Messina about Abilify and how come he wanted me to take it that one time.  He said “Weren’t you hearing voices or something back then?”  I said No.  I complained about how I need coffee to get up.  What I didn’t tell him was that often I am plagued with anxious, restless thoughts in the early morning.  I wondered if Abilify might somehow help grapple with these symptoms some might call “depression”.   Then I listened to Gary and Shannon for the hour on KFI.  I had instant coffee at 1:30.  Oh yeah, the President had another press conference.  I wonder if they covered it on TV.