The loss of the Democratic candidate in the special Georgia election last week is important not only in that the Democrats failed to pick up any of the four seats vacated by Republicans who went to work for Trump.  It seems now that just tying GOP candidates to the unpopular Trump is not enough to win in 2018.  Beyond that there are couple more things that are related to this loss.

If the Democrats had prevailed last week, it is likely that the GOP health bill in the senate will fail.  Centrist Republicans will be afraid to vote for it.  There would also be Republicans in the House who might think of retiring rather than to fight a difficult fight.  Now I think the Republicans are more emboldened.  I think there is greater than 50% chance that the health bill will pass.

I think it is time for Nancy Pelosi to step down as minority leader.  Democrats use Trump against the GOP but the Republicans use Pelosi against the Democrats.  Her name is just as toxic as that of Trump.  Whereas the GOP cannot get rid of Trump, the Democrats should get rid of Pelosi as leader.  It is time for fresh leadership anyway. 

The health bill, if passed and reconciled with the House bill, will help the Democrats greatly in future elections.  Instead of the GOP complaining about Obamacare, which is gaining popularity, the Democrats can complain about Trumpcare, which Trump himself has declared "mean".  By decreasing Medicaid funding and insurance subsidies, the eventual GOP plan will hurt the poor white people who voted for Trump more than other groups.   Right now no matter what Trump does, there are 36% of people who would support him.  I think when some of them lose their Medicaid or insurance subsidy, then we will see his core support erode significantly.

Lastly, no tape?   What a shock!  Given his claim of Obama's birth, should anyone believe Trump when he hinted there were tapes?  As is many cases with him, the emperor has no clothes.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the beating death of Vincent Chin.  Chin got into a fight in a bar in Detroit after two layoff auto workers called him a racial slur.  The fight was broken up and things should have ended right there.   But the two men waited outside for Chin with baseball bats, chased him down the street and beat him to death.  For this they  made a deal for manslaughter and got probation.  Not a single day of jail for murder.  That is right, murder.  To me the death did not occurred in the heat of battle in the bar but after they had a chance to cool off.  It was a short premeditation, but it was premeditation.  The justice system had failed Vincent Chin.

The death of Vincent Chin did serve to galvanized Asian Americans.  While we are still under represented in government and politics, we are making progress.  We certainly are less afraid to speak out.  I read an article recently about Bill Maher using the word chink on his show.  He never apologized for that even though he apologized for using the N word recently.  I guess there are not enough Asian views for his show.  I would boycott his show except that I don't get premium channels and thus never watched his show anyway.

I think some people think that using derogatory words can't be that bad given that people in certain  ethnic groups would use the words among themselves.  I think the context is important.  For example, when someone at a NY baseball game shout Yankees, nobody is bothered by it.  But if you are an American in some foreign country and someone yells: "Yankees go home", I think  the American may get upset.  A white guy may call himself white trash to make a joke.  But if he is in the inner city and black guys call him white trash, I am sure he will feel uncomfortable at the very least.  So supposedly liberals like Maher should understand this.

I don't think the Comey hearing changed many minds.  If you believed Trump obstructed justice, the hearing reinforced it.  If you don't then Comey didn't persuade you. There has been a parade of experts who went on CNN and argued about whether Trump obstructed.  Some were quoting sections of the law and I find the language confusing.  One reason people don't like lawyers, I supposed!  But to me, whether he obstructed in terms of the law is not the important thing.  I think he acted like a third world dictator by firing Comey because he was investigating Russia.  He even said it himself.  Despite what his supporters said, Trump did not fire Comey for his performance before that because in that case he could have fired him long before he had private meetings with Comey.  If you are going to fire the guy, why would you have private meetings with him?  So you can argue that Trump has the right to fire Comey.  But it still makes him look like a dictator.

Couple of weeks ago, Trump came back from his trip declaring great things done abroad.  Well, he was seen kissing up to the Saudis and he thinks that is going to help the situation in the Middle East.  Well, this week, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE got together and isolated Qatar.  They kicked out Qatari diplomats and not allowed transportation by air or sea into Qatar.  This is supposedly because of Qatar's support of terrorism.  Talking about the kettle calling the pot black!  Saudi Arabia and Egypt have done way more support of terrorism than Qatar.  The reason for this is because al -Jazeera which is based in Qatar has been an advocate of the Arab Spring which these countries' governments hate.  Qatar also has close ties to Iran which these countries hate.  So they are trying to give Qatar a big lesson.

Trump supports Saudi Arabia and tweeted his approval of this.  I am not sure he realizes that Qatar is home of the largest U.S. base in the area.  If Qatar is driven more toward Iran it can mean danger to our troops stationed there.  At the very least, we may lose the base.  This does not help fight terrorism but will make the area even more unstable.  Instead of trying to get the two sides to reconcile, Trump is flaming the issues with his statements.  Another example of lack of knowledge of the world that is making things more dangerous for us.

It is always about Trump even when it isn't.  Kathy Griffin gets into trouble by holding a fake severed head of Trump.  This is indefensible.  Even Al Franken and Anderson Cooper refuse to have anything to do with her after this.  She gave an apology and then made that hollow with her news conference.  She complained about getting death threats and that Trump is trying to destroy her life.  While nobody should be getting death threats, I don't know what she expected. And Trump did not cause her to lose all of her gigs.  Nobody wants to associate with her after this.  She is apparently doubling down and is saying she will continue to attack Trump.  So is this a case where I have nothing else to lose so just keeping digging?

Of course there are those on the right who say that Griffin should be investigated for threatening the life of Trump.  Come on, if the Secret Service cannot protect Trump from Griffin, we have a big problem in this country.  I would think that Ted Nugent is a more legitimate threat to Obama than Griffin to Trump.  Griffin is just being more grotesque. 

Back to Trump directly.  He is saying that to fight terrorism we have to get rid of political correctness.  So I guess that he is going against political correctness when he banned people from certain Muslim countries even though none of those on the list have killed Americans here.  Is it political incorrectness that he kiss the butt of Saudi Arabia, the country that actually produce terrorists against us and have supply much of the money for terrorists?   Is it because of fighting political correctness that he admires the likes of Putin and Xi while have not so nice things to say about our European allies?  Is it political incorrectness to scrape the Paris Accord to cede the leadership role in fighting climate change to China?  I guess there is a lot stupidity to go around this week.