• Jon Huntsman accepted the U.S. ambassadorship to Russia. As a Trump appointee, he swears he has never talked to any Russians and never will.

I have long believed that a lot of the folks who said Obamacare was the worst thing ever — worse than Watergate, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition and cole slaw combined — would have had no problem with it if it had been passed by President Mitt Romney. They didn't really think that arranging health insurance for poor and sick people was comparable to mass genocide or anything of the sort.

The problem was that it was a "win" for that president and a bit of evidence that he and his kind were actually running America. They had a lot of problem with the "Obama" part of "Obamacare." Well now, those people should have no problem with what some are calling "Trumpcare," even though Trump doesn't seem too enthusiastic about it and there's no evidence that he really knows how it works. (It does hand him the problem of how to explain how it matches his election promises.)

Well, according to Jonathan Chait, the far-right has a lot of problems with the "care" part of "Trumpcare." They don't like the idea that the government should even be in the business of providing care to Americans or making sure they can get it. Like Mr. Chait, I think it's refreshing that this motive — which many have had but few have admitted — is coming out into the open. That's what a lot of the arguing is really about.

Most of what I'm reading this week is about the Republican Health Care Plan but there's much to be read about Donald…

• The shameless campaign that was McCarthyism gets distorted or redefined all the time and applied to any sort of crusade by anyone. As Jonathan Chait points out, Donald Trump is not the victim of "McCarthyism" but rather a practitioner of it.
• Adam Davidson tells us about a Trump business deal that says a lot about the man now in the White House.
• I had a friend get mad at me when I said in a private conversation that Trump had the racist vote. He wrongly thought I was saying that anyone who voted for Trump was a racist. I certainly don't think that's so. But I do think those who were already inclined to think that way favor Donald and according to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, his election has a lot of racists feeling empowered and more likely to cause trouble.
• And finally, Matt Taibbi cautions that those who expect the Russia Scandal to grow until it swallows up the Trump administration may be making a lot of unwarranted assumptions. A good point.

And I'm sorry to hear Alec Baldwin say that he won't be doing Trump on Saturday Night Live much longer. I wonder who they'll get to play Trump in the future. They're probably looking to see if they have any women who can pull it off.

Leonard Maltin remembers Robert Osborne, who passed away the other day. Sorry to say I never met Mr. Osborne in person, though I certainly watched him on Turner Classic Movies (and elsewhere) and appreciated what he brought to the world of film history.

Our one connection was one night back when he was the Entertainment Reporter on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles. One night on the air, he was talking about the musical My Fair Lady and he slipped and said the original Broadway show was written by Moss Hart. I don't know why but on a whim, I grabbed up the phone, called the KTTV Newsroom and told whoever answered that I wanted to point out a mistake Mr. Osborne had just made. The person said, "One moment" and the next thing I knew, I was speaking with Mr. Osborne.

Startled, I blurted out, "Moss Hart didn't write My Fair Lady. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederic Loewe did. Moss Hart directed it." Osborne said, "Oh, God, of course. How could I have said that?" I felt a little bad because I sounded like one of those people who just lives to find things to complain about. He obviously wasn't uninformed or stupid or anything. He just said the word "written" when he meant to say "directed" — the kind of verbal typo we all make from time to time.

We had a nice three-minute conversation about the show and the movie and I apologized to him if it sounded like I thought he didn't know what I'd told him. Then I watched the rest of the newscast and just before they signed off, he came back on, corrected his wordage and thanked the "loyal viewer" who'd called in to point out his gaffe.

I was impressed that he cared enough to do that…and as I'm writing this, I just remembered another time I corrected him. It was when TCM ran The Sunshine Boys and I wrote about his mistake here. A few days later, I received a nice e-mail from Mr. Osborne saying that he had asked TCM to never run that intro again and to let him tape a new one the next time they aired that film. Again, the mistake is absolutely understandable…and forgiven because he was so conscientious about getting things right. He almost always did and the movie community was blessed to have him.

Well, the American Medical Association thinks the new Republican health care plan is terrible so that makes it darn near unanimous. And as Kevin Drum notes, even Donald Trump seems to be distancing himself from it. He's not out there saying it's terrific, it's wonderful, it's just what he promised the folks who voted for him, etc. That alone suggests it ain't going anywhere. It really is, as others have said, a health care bill written by people who don't want a health care plan administered by the government to succeed.

Some years back, I became very close friends with one of my doctors and we talked about this one day. He said — and I'm paraphrasing here — that there are two kinds of doctors in the world: Those who are in it primarily for the money and those who are in it primarily to help people. He said it's very important that when two or more doctors open an office together, they all be from the same mindset. The office can work if they're all mercenary or the office can work if they're all "Marcus Welby" (that was the term he used) but if you have a mix, the business end of things is guaranteed to crash, burn and maybe wind up with the partners suing each other. It can't simultaneously please doctors who want to make as much cash as possible and those who don't think that's anywhere near as important as helping sick people get better and healthy people stay that way.

This doctor was, of course, from the Marcus Welby category. So were his partners. So was any doctor to whom he referred me. At one point, I told him I'd been going to a gastroenterologist that a previous doctor had sent me to and he (the doctor of whom I speak) suggested I switch to another guy he knew. He said, "The one you've been going to is perfectly competent but you'll always be just a file chart and billable hours to him. You won't get that personal caring that you get from a really good, non-mercenary doctor." I did switch and I did see the difference.

There's a bit of an analogy between the two kinds of doctors and the two kinds of politicians now debating health care. It's not exact but certainly, the problem faced by anyone trying to craft an Obamacare replacement is that they're trying to negotiate a compromise between two parties working at cross-purposes. One side doesn't care if 10-20 million people lose their insurance and tens of millions more see whopping price increases. They don't care as long as it doesn't rebound on them politically…which it will. I don't see how you arrive at a workable plan if you need to simultaneously please those who want a good government-monitored health care system and those who don't.

Stu Shostak got himself a great guest for his show today — the lovely and gifted actress, Sally Kellerman. You know her from movies like M*A*S*H and Lost Horizon and Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins and I'm sure Stu will get her talking about all those. But I know Stu. He'll also ruthlessly interrogate this woman about her many roles in episodic television on shows like The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Outer Limits, That Girl, Ozzie & Harriet and so many more. She's had an amazing career so it oughta be an amazing Stu's Show.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are 99 cents each or you can go for the super-saver price: Buy three and get a fourth one free. See if you can get that deal at your local Lexus dealership.

I have no idea what to make of this. It's kind of a remake of A Night at the Opera…

Okay…I just drove about four miles behind a Toyota Corolla convertible with the license plate, XTVSTAR. The driver was a gent with white hair and I didn't get a good enough look at his face to see if I recognized him. Anyone have any idea who it was? And yes, I know that here in Los Angeles, that plate could apply to about half the population but my curiosity would like to narrow it down a little.

• Amazing. They had 8 years and they came up with a health plan that even people who hate Obamacare hate more than they hate Obamacare.

Channel 11 here in Los Angeles is currently covering two high-speed car chases out in Lancaster. They're on the same stretch of freeway about a half-mile apart.

Are there too many police chases in Southern California? I'd say yes.

Looks like nobody likes the new G.O.P. "repeal and replace" plan. Folks on the left don't like it because it doesn't do enough. Folks on the far right don't like it because it does anything. A lot of Senators and Congressfolks on both sides of the aisle are saying it'll never pass and of course, if enough think that, it won't.

Josh Marshall has a good article up about the way we should look at this plan and others that may be proposed. Basically, it comes down to this: There ain't no such thing as a plan that will cost everyone a lot less and give everyone a lot more. And it's a diversion to talk about how many people have "access" to quality health insurance. What matters is how many people actually have it. All else is smoke 'n' mirrors.

Here's Michael Hiltzik with another in what will probably be a long list of articles about why the G.O.P. Health Plan is a lot of fancy window-dressing on no plan at all.

• The G.O.P. Health Care Plan is kinda like what you'd get if a bunch of atheists were forced to design a Bible Studies course.

Read "Why Trump's Latest Obama Accusation Could Backfire" by John Cassidy. Briefly, Cassidy thinks that if Trump gets the investigation he's demanding, it could expose all sorts of dealings between the Trump campaign and the Russians — exactly what Trump doesn't want.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog…