No Surprise, Here: Mr. Trump's Latest Health Care Measure Will Fail -- It Will Never Become Law.

Updated -- 2:38 PM CDT: Right now, a positively glowing Cassini is twisting and sliding, gracefully -- as she plunges through Saturn's ring plane. Thus the modified masthead, contrasting the most poetic (and prophetic) of his "Songs in the Key of Life", by Mr. Wonder -- on Saturn specifically -- with the untrustworthy, pathetic and ultimately prosaic 45. . . . Smile. . . End, updated portion. Signal acquired, now.

Well. . . ahem. Just as I have repeatedly predicted, another 45 failure-to-govern. . . emerges. Here at lunch on Tuesday, by my informal count, the Trump Administration is now more than 21 votes shy of any passable measure in the US House alone. The numbers are significantly worse in the United States Senate.

His latest bill, despite all his nonsensical bluster while I was off the grid, is still. . . definitively D.O.A. What a waste of time (and taxpayer money) all of his efforts are. Here's a bit, just now from The New York Times:

. . . . The former chairman of one of the House committees that drafted legislation to repeal and replace large parts of the Affordable Care Act came out against a new version of the bill on Tuesday, saying the measure now “torpedoes” protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, the former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, declared on a local radio show, “I cannot support the bill with this provision in it,” just as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan was insisting that the legislation would protect the sick.

The loss of Mr. Upton, an influential Republican voice on health care, was a huge blow, and it came as Republican leaders faced an onslaught of advocacy groups, political attack ads and even a late-night talk show host, Jimmy Kimmel, saying the bill would harm the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Mr. Upton was explicit: The concessions made to win over the hard-line conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus were costing the leadership support from more moderate Republicans.

“I’m not at all comfortable with removing that protection,” Mr. Upton said of the pre-existing condition concession. . . .

If you missed the Kimmel angle, do go google it -- he's right. And Mr. Trump's grip on even his most ardent supporters is slipping away, day by crazy day. That's how I see it -- and it means he will likely be the least effective President in over a century, when the dust settles. I think even his tax package is imperiled -- and his loose talk of wanting "a good shutdown" should cause the elite GOP to actively resist all that he now has flip-flopped to stand for (or against -- I can't keep track). We shall see. Onward.

नमस्ते