Yesterday, the Huffington Post had an article here about the apparently-surprising health problems from using coconut oil, titled, "New Study Confirms Coconut Oil is Alarmingly High in Saturated Fat."  I was going to write a scathing piece on this, how surprised the reporter was -- but after I read it, it turns out that while the reporter might have been somewhat surprised, the operative word in the headline was "Confirms."

I watch my cholesterol level (as of course should everyone...), and coconut oil has been on my "Oh, God, No" list for at least 20 years.  When I check ingredients and see "coconut oil," I tend to cringe and drop the product so fast that other customers ask me if I'm okay...  So, why this should be a "surprise" to anyone is beyond me.  It was well-reported at the time the initial studies were released.

It turns out I'm the one who should be a touch surprised, since apparently coconut oil is stocked in health food stores, for some unearthly reasons.  And as the article reports, a new report from the American Heart Association shows that 72 percent of Americans think that coconut oil is actually a health food. 

The HuffPo article references some of that study, most notably --

"In fact, 82 percent of the fat found in coconut oil is saturated ― that’s significantly more than olive oil, which clocks in at 14 percent and canola oil, which contains a mere seven percent. 

"The AHA reviewed existing data on saturated fats and found that in seven out of eight studies, coconut oil actually increased LDL cholesterol ― the bad cholesterol ― which is a cause of cardiovascular disease. The findings were so clear that Frank Sacks, the report’s lead author, told USA Today, 'You can put it on your body, but don’t put it in your body.'”

And again, the operative term in that passage is -- "existing data."  This is not new information.  It's just really important health information that was released over two decades ago that seemingly most of the public and forgotten or been willing to blissfully ignore, because coconut oil tastes good...

Oddly, only last night I was watching a rerun Shark Tank and all this came to mind.  A lady was presenting her all natural, healthy alternative to frosting -- I think the company was called "Dollop."  It sounded great -- until she mentioned it had palm oil.  I cringed.  Palm oil is a kissing-cousin of coconut oil.  It tastes great...and is horrible for you.  But she included this ingredient rather than others (I assume butter), since she said she wanted an ingredient everyone could tolerate.  She even got two investment offers, making a deal with one of them.  So, it was with that cringing on my mind when I read this article today.

A surprise??  Apparently so.  Just not to those who actually pay attention to such things.  As the phrase goes, it was in all the papers...

I know that this eventually made the national news by this point.  But when I first began writing about it elsewhere before the weekend it was still under the wire.  And it's so egregious -- not just a Quote of the Day, but a contender for Quote of the Year -- that it still bears addressing, even now.

And that's the comment made by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), responding to a question at a town hall meeting he was holding.  It was when he said --

"Nobody dies because they don't have access to healthcare"
-- Rep. Paul Labrador (R-ID))

​It's so inexplicably bizarre that trying to comprehend what he was thinking when he said it almost hurts.  And I'm sure that he or at least his communications director has come up with an explanation of what he "really meant," but it doesn't matter because we can hear what he said, in context, and whatever he "really meant" after the fact (at best, bending over backwards until your head touches the ground) still has as its bottom line that healthcare insurance isn't as important as the damn liberals and doctors and health organization want you to believe.  At its best, you still have to wonder what in God's name was in his mind when those words came out of his mouth.

And "at its best" is not a concept one should necessarily apply to Raul Labrador, who has a history of thoughtless, idiotic statements.  When I first wrote about this online, I got a response back from someone who lived in the district that Mr. Labrador represents, and he said (excuse the crudeness, but I'm quoting here), "Yes, he really is a dick."

Mind you, when I say "bending over backwards" what Raul Labrador may really have "meant," I'm going pretty far here, because even days after the fact, I've yet to come across a public explanation from the congressman or a spokesperson from his staff.  Maybe I've missed it, though it would difficult given the amount of coverage.  Or maybe it's what he did mean.  Still, I'm going to continue giving him the massive benefit of the doubt that he's not a complete heartless idiot, just a work in progress.

And because the quote is so monumentally ludicrous, I think it's not enough to just quote it, but actually show it as proof that he really, truly, honestly did say it and in context --
​

The good news is that he's booed instantly by the outraged crowd.  Unfortunately, the video cuts off after two seconds of booing, so we can't see how long it went on.  But since there were no news reports of an angry mob rushing the stage in Idaho, I think we can assume that Raul Labrador didn't have to face that.

But then, short video or not, I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be the last we see of Mr. Labrador saying this.  It's likely that it's already on a loop to be played and re-played endless during the 2018 election cycle, since Raul Labrador is now the Poster Boy for "TrumpCare."

I don't think we can tie all Republican in the House of Representatives who voted for the TrumpCare bill to this statement by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID).  Cruel, heartless and thoughtless are different than clueless and insane.  But I do think from the vote and the silly "celebration" at the White House Rose Garden before this House bill is even addressed in the Senate, and from comments from many of those who voted for it that -- at best -- what they believe Rep. Labrador may have been "meaning" to try and say about the unimportance of health care that he was indeed speaking for many of his fellow Republicans.  Or else why vote for a bill whose predecessor was scored to show that 24 million Americans will lose their health care and by all accounts this version is worse.

And so, I just thought it appropriate, if not necessary to bring the quote up even days later and also show it in full Technicolor.

​I was going to say "living color," but...well, I thought that that just didn't fit.

Still, I can't help but think the most bizarre thing of all was when House Republicans went to the White House Rose Garden to celebrate.  And what did they celebrate?  That the Republican-controlled House after numerous attempts finally passed their version-only of a bill that has a 17% approval which they'd failed to pass previously despite having a majority, that they've already voted over 50 times to repeal while waiting now to see what the Senate does -- if anything -- before it has a chance to pass and then be reconciled to the exact same language before it can become a law.  Hey, bring on the party hats and streamers!!  

One thing you can be sure of:  if you missed seeing that celebration, don't worry because the video of Republicans and Trump celebrating the first step to throwing 24 million Americans off of health care and gutting pre-existing conditions and essential benefits will be played over and over and over and over and over in Democratic ads as we near the mid-term elections.

In fact, to show how wildly premature the Rose Garden celebration was, when CNN was discussing the House bill and pointing out the long process and all the many steps still needed for the bill to become a law, right before they finally went to a commercial, the network wickedly cut first to a clip of an old cartoon episode of "Schoolhouse Rock." that taught children how a bill becomes a law,

Hey, in case you yourself have forgotten, just like the president or Republicans in the House seem to, here's a reminder for you.

​By the way, a final P.S.  As it turned out, yes, Trump did sign the Executive Order that dealt with religious organizations being more involved in politics, something that could open the door wide to :"dark money" political donations and blurring the protective line created by the First Amendment separating Church and State.  As it turned out, however, the Executive Order on "religious liberty" which was also to have had a major negative impact on women's reproductive rights got so much flack that it was ultimately turned "toothless" according to the ACLU and just a "photo op."  (Among other things, it only directed the IRS to use maximum enforcement "discretion" when enforcing the existing law, which is known as the Johnson Amendment.")  As a result, the ACLU said they feel no need to file a lawsuit .  

​Take care....

While the pleasure for Democrats over the TrumpCare bill getting dropped is understandable, this should not be taken to mean that the Affordable Care Act has been saved and is now comfortably home free and warmly safe. That's not even remotely close to the truth.

The reality is that there are many individual features of the ACA that can be adjusted -- and negatively so -- by the Department of Health and Human Services, and I think it's safe to assume that Secretary Tom Price will attempt to do that.  Even further, it must be remembered that there is currently a lawsuit filed by the Republican Congress against the government subsidies which are paid to those most in need who sign up for the program.  Though that suit would have been aggressively defended by the Justice Department if the case had came to court when the Obama Administration was still in office, that has changed, and the so question is now whether Trump will defend the lawsuit, not only just as aggressively -- but at all?  I think if you are someone who likes to bet, putting your money on "not at all" might be the safe money.

The point being that the Affordable Care Act is still under serous bombardment from Republicans and the Trump administration.

That said, it's important that Republicans realize there is a real risk for them to push ahead with their plans to dismantle ObamaCare.  For starters, as we've seen, the public actually likes the program and even loves many of the existing provisions a great deal.  So, trying to rid of those provisions yet again will again bring about the exact same outrage.  To think otherwise is a fool's errand.  But beyond that, the risks are even greater --

It's one thing, after all, to "repeal and replace," to just get rid of a law in its entirety as one general entity and quickly replace it with other provisions.  Although doing that didn't go well for the GOP last week, it's at least an understandable concept.  And the main reason it didn't work because the replacements offered were so awful, starting with 24 million people losing their health coverage.

But it's another thing for a political party and an administration to piece-by-piece dismantle a program one provision at a time with the fullness of attention on what they're specifically doing, and have your own name branded to a specific action that directly hurts people.  If you do that, then it's not only All On You -- but it's on you with a bright klieg light intensely shining on it, highlighting what you're doing with each cut and with your name emblazoned across it all.

To put it simply:  it's one thing to take a good, popular program and fix flaws to make it better.  It's another thing entirely to dismantle it, and make it crash and burn.  That's on you.  And your actions can't be hidden inside a 15,000 page document.  Your actions will each be front and center.

So, though Republicans and Trump will likely still attempt to tear down the Affordable Care Act, it will still be difficult, and if they succeed -- which is very possible -- they can pay a disastrous Price. (Pun unintended, but recognized.)

Regardless what happens to the Affordable Care Act on a piece-by-piece basis, however, it's worth noting that there is one specific benefit from the failure of the TrumpCare bill.  And it's that in Trump's first Really Big Bill brought before Congress -- it crashed and burned.  And that generally has long-term, devastating effect on an administration.  Among many things, above all it tells its party's representatives how little that administration will have (or be able to have) members' backs in the future.  Moreover, the bill failed because Republicans themselves -- holding the House, Senate and White House -- fought among one another and showed contradictory interests.  And this was highlighted even more afterwards as Trump began pointing fingers throughout in his party -- including at the conservative "Freedom" Caucus and even Speaker Paul Ryan -- indeed at everyone but himself.

In fact, Trump even promoted a "Fox News" show that opened with a scathing attack on Speaker Ryan, calling for his removal.  How huge a rift is that??  (Interestingly, the White House later insisted that that was purely coincidental and that Trump was merely promoting the show to help a friend.  The awful thing is, even if we accept the word of the White House on this -- a deeply risky venture, to be sure -- that then means Trump was promoting a product, which as we've seen recently is actually an ethics violation, the sort of thing that got Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, and others in the hot seat.)

The point being -- ObamaCare might be saved for the moment, but...health care is so complicated. And contrary to Trump, everyone knew that.  And are still seeing it now.

Oops, sorry, I was a bit premature there this morning.  It turns out that they aren't going to vote on the TumpCare bill tonight, since Trump called the Washington Post's Robert Costa to say he was pulling the bill.

And just for clarification's sake -- this is the bill he approved that Trump called "Wonderful" the day it was presented.  In Trump terminology, I believe the expression is "#Sad."

So, let's check the scorecard:

Seven years for the Republican Party to come up with their own health care bill. Countless Republican votes to repeal the ObamaCare.  Continued promises by Trump to repeal ObamaCare on Day One of his administration. And after all of that -- this was the best that they could do.  The Republican bill only got 17% support.

It's still possible that Republicans could bring healthcare up later, but the same issues remain.  To get enough votes, the GOP is going to either make the bill more palatable to the public -- which will lose conservative Republican votes in Congress -- or take away more protections...which will make the public hate it even more.  More likely is that there are healthcare regulations that the administration can (and likely will) change.

And though it all, the best we get from Trump is that no one knew how really complicated health is.

We all knew.

In 2015, when Donald Trump addressed whatever in the world his health plan would be if elected, he explained that "Everybody's got to be covered."  It may not have been especially detailed, but it was to the point and what he kept repeating throughout the campaign.

Indeed, when January, 2017 came around, and he spoke about the health care plan that his administration would push, he was still little-detailed but nonetheless insisted that at its core it was going to be even better than the Obamacare, and less expensive.  And just to reiterate, "We're going to have insurance for everybody"

And now we get to yesterday, when reality has kicked in.  That's when his budget director Mick Mulvaney went on ABC's This Week, and corrected things just a wee bit.  No, he said of the Trump health plan, "We don't have universal."   Well, oops, that's different.  But as was also the case when Mulvaney gave his reasoning last week why the "Meals on Wheels" program would be cut (that it wasn't "showing results,"), the budget director again was tone deaf in his reasoning.  "The only way to have universal care, if you stop to think about it," he said, "is to force people to buy it under penalty of law.”

"If you stop to think about it."  As if -- Hold the phone! -- no one ever had stopped to think about it before.  This is as empty-headed a concept as when his boss Trump explained in wide-eyed naivete to a completely-knowing public that "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."

Bad as Mick Mulvaney's "If you stop to think about it" explanation is why there won't be universal health care offered by the Trump administration, he misses the point.  This point isn't that there's a good reason for not having it, or a terribly bad reason for not having it.  The point is -- that throughout his run for the presidency, Trump insisted that his administration WOULD offer health care for everyone.  And now isn't.

And this is where we cue all the Trump fans to once again express their dismay, "Wait, but we believed him!  We didn't think he would actually do this."  The exact same thing they said only last week when his proposed budget shut down the Meals on Wheels program to feed needy seniors.  Or the same that they said when Republicans started making plans to actually repeal Obamacare.  Expressing dismay is an understandable reaction when you keep having the rug pulled out from under you, though it does seem to lose its impact after a while.  However, it still hurts every time you land.

What this means is that once again the White House is forced to send out their troops to try and divert attention from the gaping sinkhole in the freeway.  (The "Don't look at that man behind the curtain" syndrome -- the larger problem here being that if you cover your eyes, you risk falling into the sinkhole.)  Unfortunately, the best that spokesman Sean Spicer has been able to explain away this 180-degree contradiction between what Trump said repeatedly throughout the campaign and what actual action is being taken is that every time Trump repeatedly promised "We're going to have insurance for everybody," he apparently only meant it as an ultimate "goal."   That it turns out he accidentally omitted the word, "someday."   Sort of like if Martin Luther King left out the "dream" part of his "I have a dream" speech.  No, no, think of what Trump kept saying as being more along the lines of, "You're going to get that new Atari game console for your birthday" merely leaves out the words, "Someday, down the line, eventually, I hope.  Perhaps by the time you're 25, maybe.  That's the goal."  The problem is that we didn't accept that explanation when we were eight years old, and we don't as adults.  Of course, the larger problem is that "We're going to have insurance for everybody" is perfectly clear.

The thing is, though -- if you do stop to think about it -- Mr. Mulvaney is not even correct.  Forcing people under threat of penalty to buy health insurance is not the only way to have universal coverage.  After all, you could provide single-payer universal health insurance, funded by taxes.  So, there actually is another way to have universal care.  I'm not saying this should be the program or not, just -- "if you stop to think about it" -- that Mr. Mulvaney is wrong.

Shocking, I know.  Given that he's also the same man who only about a week or so ago tried to claim without any evidence that the Obama Administration's jobless numbers had been fixed.

If you stop to think about it...  

Gee, y'know, maybe it was only Trump who didn't first stop to think about it.  Though I think the most likely explanation is that he just didn't care one way or the other.  He just knew that saying it sounded like the right thing.

I received a note yesterday from one of those die-hard Trump supporters (a phrase which is taking on new meaning...) who doesn't actually care about reality, only that whatever Their Leader says it must be true and the greatest thing ever. "We don't need universal," my correspondent wrote. "Trump fans don't want government provided insurance."  Never mind, by the way, that we don't have "government provided insurance."  Private companies still actually provide insurance.  The government only helps defray some of the cost and and requires that certain basic concerns must be covered.  That touch of reality aside, such thinking by my pen pal makes the massively-unsupported assumption that Trump supporters who currently get health insurance thanks to Obamacare (who are many) are not going to be livid when they discover that they are among the 24 million people who will be losing theirs.

"Wait, but we believed him!  We didn't think he would actually do this."

Methinks they are going to be livid at the thought of being hoodwinked (as if one shouldn't have been able to see this coming at 500 paces), not to mention distraught at now being without coverage.

During the election, we heard the mantra from giddy conservatives that liberals and the press were the only ones who believed what Trump said and not what he meant, while Trump supporters believed what he meant but not what he said.  Ha ha ha, they laughed, it was such a funny turn of the phrase.  All those misguided liberals the the press.  Ha ha ha.

I suspect many are not laughing now.

If you stop to think about it.

It would have been so perfect if yesterday had been Friday the 13th when Jason made his horror-filled reappearance.

Yesterday on CNN, Jason Chaffetz R-UT) explained that poor people shouldn't buy an iPhone if they need health insurance, because he was all about "self-reliance."  Well, bully for him!

“Americans have choices, and they’ve got to make a choice,” he said. “So rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.”

Or to put this another way, translating the above from the original French -- "Let them eat cake."

Let's understand something really simple.  An iPhone costs $800, give or take, depending on the model.  That's a lot, though you can of course get a less expensive Android phone.  But also, people may get one every 2-3 years.   So, that breaks down to about $350 a years.  Or even less if you're really scrimping and keep your mobile phone even longer.  (Never mind if destitute people actually do get an iPhone or any mobile phone.  But for the sake of argument and to make Jason Chaffetz happy, let's assume that they do.) On the other hand, good healthcare might be around $8,000. More if it's for two people.  And it costs that every single year. Year after year.  
 
This isn't about "self-reliance."  This is about self-righteousness. This is about pompous, selfish, holier-than-thou, nasty selfishness. 

He did try to walk about his statement about iPhones, but the words were out there in the ozone.  And even his explanation showed the same thoughtless sensibility, just couched in less-outlandish words.  But the crass meaning was still the same -- it's your fault if you're too poor for expensive health care, and if that means you die in the process, well that's the way it goes.

But then, keep in mind that Jason Chaffetz is the same person who endorsed Donald Trump, and then removed his endorsement after the Trump/Access Hollywood tape, saying he didn't know how "I could look my daughter in the face" -- and then figured out how he could look his 15-year-old daughter in the face since he later endorsed Trump once again.

What I'm trying to figure out at this point is if he's able once again to look his daughter in the face after what this time is his own thoughtless, cold-hearted, mean-spirited statement.  Though before explaining himself, one wonders if he has to ask her to put her iPhone done first.

But then, he'll also have to explain to all the people struggling to make ends meet, who don't have a mobile phone, why he's supporting cuts to their health care while increasing cuts to older Americans even if they're multi-millionaires.

In the end, the question isn't how Jason Chaffetz can look his daughter in the face, or look at the poor in the face, but how he can look at himself in the face.