2017 Apr 14^th

Our president, ever concerned that the weight of office does not overcome him, has this week scheduled his 17^th golf outing in the roughly 15 weeks of his presidency. Heaven help the visiting head of state who does not play golf, or worse, plays it exceptionally well.

Trump still has about 500 lower level administrative appointments to make so there are many undone tasks that require his attention, but…he’s an elderly gentleman and probably needs his recreation. His excuse for not filling these appointments is that the Democrats refuse to approve them, but if he won’t propose the appointments in the first place that excuse makes no sense.

This past week he had the fun of using American military power (my military) to hit an airfield in Syria and to send a naval strike force to saber rattle off the coast of North Korea and, of course, to drop a 15 ton bomb on a cavern hideout for ISIS in Afghanistan. (The ISIS people were quick to tell us that there had been no casualties.) These military actions got him high marks from those who are unconcerned about answering the question, “what’s next?” Our adversaries in North Korea are expected to test a nuclear device this weekend and Russia with Syria and Iran are wagging a finger at us daring us to strike again because they are really, really upset and will do something awful if we repeat with the missiles.

Here at home we’ve had a decision: The White House visitors log will be closed to the public. There is no need for the public to know who comes to see the president; Trump and friends are concerned with national security and this will help that, so we are told. Most of the list was publicly available during the Obama administration. We’ll probably hear that Trump is more concerned with keeping the nation safe than was Obama and this rule is proof of that. (Didn’t Trump say that for every new restrictive law two old ones had to be eliminated? )

He should enjoy his last weekend free of catastrophe: North Korea’s Kim will be exploding something or other to celebrate something or other and that will require Trump to respond by taking firm action, which, in turn, will require Kim to take even firmer action …,and so it goes until it stops.

We hear that Trump plans a resuscitation of his health care substitute for the ACA. You remember the one that never got to the house floor and had a 17 percent approval rating by citizens? Wel, he’s going to try again. Apparently, the freedom caucus is now more agreeable to much of the content. But this mess still has to get the approval of moderate Republicans and then get past the senate. Why is Trump returning to this battle? His attempt to replace ACA was certainly a defeat and he can’t tolerate a defeat so he’ll keep pounding away at the ACA. If he can be kept busy with that maybe he’ll stay out of other trouble.

The budget is coming up and if he is to avoid a government shutdown, he will have to do some deal making. I believe that most of the “freedom caucus” would be happy to shut down the government. Isn’t strangling the government what they got elected to do? Just think about how popular those folks and Trump will be when Social Security checks stop arriving for their constituents’ parents.

This coming week should be fun for The Donald and even more fun for the rest of us.