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U.S. Politics 2016: The Mayans Were Only Off By 1418 Days


Mr. Chatywin et al.

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From the last thread

29 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

The mandate was there to solve the adverse selection problem. Yes, without the mandate or something like it, rates would go up.

You either have something like the mandate or you go back to the days of denying folks with pre-existing conditions insurance.

I want to respond to this in some sort of thoughtful way, but really all I have to ask is why are people so stupid?  Is this just plain partisanship or do Republican voters who want the ACA repealed really not understand these things?  

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Just saw that the House passed the 21st Century Cures Act, 392-26 yesterday, with plans for the Senate to vote next week and Obama has said he supports the bill. I'm somewhat surprised Republicans are willing to do a big bipartisan bill like this in the lame duck when they could just wait two months and then pass a more conservative version.

Its not a perfect bill at all, but it has $1 billion to address the opioid crisis, $5 billion for NIH research, and various new funding for child and young adult mental health programs. On the other hand, it weakens the FDA approval process for new drugs.

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Just now, Dr. Pepper said:

From the last thread

I want to respond to this in some sort of thoughtful way, but really all I have to ask is why are people so stupid?  Is this just plain partisanship or do Republican voters who want the ACA repealed really not understand these things?  

It's hard to say. Some of it is probably ideology and part of it is probably "I got mine" fuck everyone else. With regard to the second, some of the worst hypocrites are the people that get employer sponsored health coverage and then bitch about the ACA. What these people refuse to acknowledge is that employer sponsored health coverage didn't come about because of the goodness of their employer's little old hearts, but because of the tax exclusion for employer sponsored healthcare. The government subsidizes employer sponsored healthcare.

These are the same people that will make some kind of dumb argument about the ACA being "a takeover of 1/6 of the economy" without realizing that the government has been involved in healthcare in a major way for a long time. Medicare being one example. Employer sponsored healthcare being another.

I'm personally not a huge fan of employer sponsored healthcare. One reason being, it gives employers too much power, I think,

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13 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

This is pretty good, definitely. It's trendy to rail against "the establishment", but if we're all burning things down all the time, what are we left with? This fascination with "outsiders" isn't going to get us anything but a political system that is less responsible to the American people. Did most Americans want the shutdown? Did most of them want to default on the debt ceiling? Hell, did most of them even want Donald Trump to be president? (Nope.) 

I think Rauch is right; this breakdown of party influence is only going to encourage politicians to eschew compromise in favor of the pursuit of their own interests. After all, why should they compromise for the party when they owe the party nothing?

Agreed. Here's another really good podcast about how journalism might be dead:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016-11-30/how-journalists-are-rethinking-their-role-under-a-trump-presidency

What the pro=Trump journalist says about facts being irrelevant in modern era is rather horrifying. 

 

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Tywin,

I suspect Haley has her sites on higher office.  She does need some foreign policy experience.

Maybe in the past, but that's not really a requirement anymore. Either way though, I'd assume that someone with future ambitions wouldn't want to tie themselves to Trump. We shall see.

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20 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

According to this article from Vox, this bill could potentially harm patient safety and appears to be a giveaway to pharmaceutical industry lobbyists.

Like I said, not a perfect bill. But if it was just a giveaway, it wouldn't have the support of the vast majority of Democrats and Obama. Who all supported the bill prior to the election as well it should be noted; so this isn't a case of trying to get anything done before Trump takes office.

The FDA approval stuff is concerning, but at the same time, there were serious problems with the current process as well; like being far too easy for the FDA to being pressured into protecting existing medications and not approving new ones.

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Also, because it depresses me and should depress all of you, Clinton lost in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by fewer votes than were cast for Jill Stein in each of those states.

 

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8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, because it depresses me and should depress all of you, Clinton lost in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by fewer votes than were cast for Jill Stein in each of those states.

 

It depresses me NOT AT ALL. Trump turned all those states red by actually going there and talking to the people instead of fundraising with Katy Perry and George Clooney.

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10 minutes ago, The Brandon Stark said:

It depresses me NOT AT ALL. Trump turned all those states red by actually going there and talking to the people instead of fundraising with Katy Perry and George Clooney.

And (at least in PA) by promising people that coal would come back, which, uh, isn't something he can do.  

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13 minutes ago, The Brandon Stark said:

It depresses me NOT AT ALL. Trump turned all those states red by actually going there and talking to the people instead of fundraising with Katy Perry and George Clooney.

And the Republicans enacting voter suppression tactics in each of those states.

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7 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

And (at least in PA) by promising people that coal would come back, which, uh, isn't something he can do.  

While also promising to invest in other forms of energy production that are more efficient and profitable than coal which will ultimately lead to the end of the coal industry, mind you. 

And really, Trump promised basically everything. It will be interesting to see his supporters' reactions when he can't deliver on almost all of them. 

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4 minutes ago, The Brandon Stark said:

Proof? I heard everything from Russians to Racism as to why Trump was elected. Face it, Hillary was an out of touch candidate.

That's certainly one aspect of it. But it's also an aspect that the Russians hacked emails and did so in order to meddle in the election results. It's an aspect that Trump ran on overt racist policies. It's an aspect that the FBI sent out an alert 10 days before the election, which did have measurable changes in polling. All of these things can be true. And it is likely given that 80,000 votes made the difference that if any one of these things were not the way they were, Clinton would be president. 

That said, how are you personally feeling about two Goldman Sachs officials being appointed to the Trump cabinet? 

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6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That said, how are you personally feeling about two Goldman Sachs officials being appointed to the Trump cabinet? 

Nice of Trump to drain the swamp at Goldman Sachs.   ====eyeroll====

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18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That's certainly one aspect of it. But it's also an aspect that the Russians hacked emails and did so in order to meddle in the election results. It's an aspect that Trump ran on overt racist policies. It's an aspect that the FBI sent out an alert 10 days before the election, which did have measurable changes in polling. All of these things can be true. And it is likely given that 80,000 votes made the difference that if any one of these things were not the way they were, Clinton would be president. 

That said, how are you personally feeling about two Goldman Sachs officials being appointed to the Trump cabinet? 

What I find amazing about the hacked emails is that the Left is convinced it is Russians, and even if it is whats amazing is that few from the Left are angered by what those emails contained. Sabotage of the Sanders campaign, collusion with CNN, calling Latinos "Tacobowls", Pay for Play, mandates from George Soros, and 1000s of emails that were work-related that Hillary destroyed. So an actual aspect of the emails is that maybe if she played by the rules and kept all her emails on state.gov server the Russians or whoever hacked them wouldn't have. But then again, how could she meld State and Foundation scams without a private server? As to the Goldman Sachs officials, not overly worried. Its a finacial company and they are put in charge of financial posts. 

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4 minutes ago, The Brandon Stark said:

What I find amazing about the hacked emails is that the Left is convinced it is Russians, and even if it is whats amazing is that few from the Left are angered by what those emails contained. Sabotage of the Sanders campaign, collusion with CNN, calling Latinos "Tacobowls", Pay for Play, mandates from George Soros, and 1000s of emails that were work-related that Hillary destroyed. So an actual aspect of the emails is that maybe if she played by the rules and kept all her emails on state.gov server the Russians or whoever hacked them wouldn't have. But then again, how could she meld State and Foundation scams without a private server? As to the Goldman Sachs officials, not overly worried. Its a finacial company and they are put in charge of financial posts. 

the 'left' is convinced it's Russians because the entire intelligence department - which is largely Republican - has stated it's Russians. As have independent security firms. 

You are aware that the hacked emails were not Clinton's, right? Like, they didn't actually come from her? And the DNC ones that were hacked were, actually, on government servers? You know that's the case? And even more amusingly, while she had her emails on a private server the public servers were actually hacked, and millions of social security numbers and personally identifiable information was stolen from government employees? 

But yeah, let's go to Goldman Sachs for a second. I don't really care to relitigate the Clinton thing all that much. You're totally fine with Trump - who declared that Clinton was in the pocket of Goldman-Sachs during the campaign several times - appointing multiple Goldman Sachs and hedge fund people to lead the government, and you don't believe that the people who have made billions on Wall Street running the treasury department is possibly, maybe, a conflict of interest?

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So at Trump's campaign rally's his supporters loved to chant "Lock her up!" and "Drain the swamp!"  Now that he said he won't persure Clinton on the email issue and has appointed Goldman Sachs officials to be part of gov't, what will the rubes chant at his Victory Tour Thank You Rallies now?  Guess we'll find out later today...

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8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

the 'left' is convinced it's Russians because the entire intelligence department - which is largely Republican - has stated it's Russians. As have independent security firms. 

You are aware that the hacked emails were not Clinton's, right? Like, they didn't actually come from her? And the DNC ones that were hacked were, actually, on government servers? You know that's the case? And even more amusingly, while she had her emails on a private server the public servers were actually hacked, and millions of social security numbers and personally identifiable information was stolen from government employees? 

But yeah, let's go to Goldman Sachs for a second. I don't really care to relitigate the Clinton thing all that much. You're totally fine with Trump - who declared that Clinton was in the pocket of Goldman-Sachs during the campaign several times - appointing multiple Goldman Sachs and hedge fund people to lead the government, and you don't believe that the people who have made billions on Wall Street running the treasury department is possibly, maybe, a conflict of interest?

 what exactly is the intellingence department and when did it state that it was the Russians?

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Seeing reports that Trump is considering two Democratic senators for his cabinet. Manchin for Energy and Heitkamp for something unspecified.

Manchin doesn't matter, the governor's a Democrat and will appoint a Democrat and whoever it is will probably have about as tough a race as any West Virginia Democrat would have in 2018; including Manchin. But Justice proved that the right Democrats can still win in that state. 

Heitkamp is tricky though. The North Dakota governor doesn't get to appoint senators, so that's good at least. But a special election there seems like a real hard thing for Democrats to win. I don't know what the bench is like there though, maybe there's someone popular enough in the state to do it.

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