2016 Nov 10^th

 When President Ford pardoned Nixon he said, “Our long national nightmare is over.” At this point I’m afraid that another long national nightmare is just beginning. OK, so I’m a nihilist, perhaps it’s just a temporary condition; we’ll see.

In two hours, at 11 AM, President Obama and Michelle Obama will great President elect Trump and his wife, Melania, at the White House. This is surely the hardest task President Obama and his wife have ever undertaken. Trump has for years questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency by claiming that he was not born in this country. He has also questioned the President’s academic credentials because the President has not authorized the release of his grades. He has announced that upon taking office he will immediately begin to undo all of the President’s accomplishments from his eight years in office.

This is not entirely one sided. President Obama has said that Donald Trump is not fit to be President. He said that anyone who can be baited by a tweet cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes. Trump did once ask a policy advisor, “If we have nuclear weapons why can’t we use them.” If you have to ask, you’ve disqualified yourself from the office.

Both these men have demonstrated fine acting ability so a double contingent of Secret Service protectors will not be needed. (Now they have met and talked for over an hour. Both men can be enormously personable when they feel like it; apparently they felt like it!)

The esteemed Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has declared that Trump now has a “mandate.” Oh come now, how can Trump have a mandate if he couldn’t manage to win the popular vote. He lost that by over 200 thousand votes, depending on when you stopped counting; some mandate. Couple that with polls showing from 60 to 70 percent of respondents believed Trump was unqualified to be President…never mind, many of them must have voted for him anyway. Hillary Clinton just could not un-demonize herself.

Our potential next Surgeon General, Dr. Ben Carson, on Fox this morning offered a plan for the replacement of Obamacare; it is the Medical Savings Plan. This has been around for a while and simply allows you to set aside money before taxes to pay for medical costs. Normally, your medical costs must reach a certain level before they are tax deductible; this plan makes all such costs tax deductible. Unfortunately, this isn’t much help for the indigent; if you have no income you can’t have a medical savings plan. It also doesn’t explain how people with a pre-existing condition can get insurance. Naturally, no one on Fox asked Carson about these issues. They are all employed after all.