U.S. Politics: Hairpiece In the Middle East Part 2

[Fez]

Oh and among everything else, Trump's budget proposal would cut Medicaid in half over 10 years.

There's also major cuts to food stamps and social security disability insurance.

Overall, it'd cut non-defense discretionary spending in half as well.

 

This is a monstrous budget.

[The Wedge]

14 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Yeah, it's hard to paint any of these characters as being sympathetic. The 11 year-old son, maybe?  

There was a photo of Barron kicking a soccer ball in full Arsenal kit a few weeks back.  No sympathy for that! Anything associated with Stan Kroenke is by definition unsympathetic!

Pick a better club shirt to kick around in, Barron!

[LongRider]

I saw a couple of minutes of TV news last night and they were talking about how the proposed budget would cut Medicare and then showed a clip of Candidate Trump promising to not touch 'Medicare, Medicaid, whatever, not touch it and make it stronger.'  Will this broken promise matter? 

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, Fez said:

Oh and among everything else, Trump's budget proposal would cut Medicaid in half over 10 years.

This - along with the proposed dismantling of Medicaid in the AHCA - is perhaps the strongest reason to oppose the current Republican regime.  I don't really think it's Trump behind it, but the current strain of conservatism wants to decimate the social safety net in profound ways.  They must be stopped.

[all swedes are racist]

dems need to shut the fuck up about russia and basically keep hammering "healthcare healthcare healthcare" non stop

[OldGimletEye]

Today in Tax Cuts Uber Alles:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/23/how-trumps-budget-helps-the-rich-at-the-expense-of-the-poor/

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Republicans argue that Obama’s emphasis on the differences between rich and poor was misguided, and that policymakers should instead try to improve the fortunes of Americans across the board.

Right, because the Republican Party’s super growth enhancing policies work so well.

It’s like Reagan had one good year around 1984 (due to the Fed and Volcker) and ever since the Republican Party has been like the the guy in your fraternity that won’t shut up about the prank he pulled three years ago:

“Do you remember the time I……...”

“Uh ya, we know. Now would you shut the fuck up about it?”

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“I’m not really concerned about how many billions billionaires have,” said Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.

Okay, whatever you say. But, you know, if their gains comes at everyone else’s expense then maybe you should worry about it.

By the way, weren't you the Chairman of the CEA during Dubya? Tell us about how the "Bush Boom" worked out with it's "growth enhancing" agenda. In fact, why don't you get on roof tops and shout about it. It's what Republicans always do when taking about their supply side growth enhancing policies isn't it?

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While economists on both sides of the aisle are skeptical about whether the imagined growth rate of 3 percent or above is possible, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney dismissed that skepticism in a briefing with reporters on Monday.

It’s the party of business! Of course they’ll pull this off.

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“If you are a 30-year-old adult, you have never had a job in a healthy American economy,” he continued. “You’ve either been in a recession or sluggish recovery, and you think this is normal and we are here to tell you it is not.”

Okay, this so maddening, it’s hard for me not to see red. We’re all aware of the last 10 years or so. And who, was nuttier than a fruit cake during this entire episode? Answer: The Republican Party. And people like Mulvaney.

See the problem for you Mulvaney is some of us knew what to do when the liquidity trap got started. We knew it because we were aware of things like A Monetary History of The United States and the General Theory.

See Mulvaney, some of us remember the entire sorry chain of events here:

1. Shit like Amity Schlaes "Forgotten Man" being hawked by Republicans and Conservatives

2. Lee Ohanian’s and Harold Cole's sorry ass paper about FDR prolonging the Great Depression.

3. John Bonehead running around saying the stimulus crowded out private investment as bond yields were cratering.

4. The confidence fairy being pushed by the Republican Party.

5. Gold Buggism being pushed by the Republican Party. Shit like Rick Perry saying Texas would treat Beranke roughly. I’d like to treat that conservative idiot Perry roughly.

6. The Republican Party running around trying to blame poor minority people for causing the crises by alleging the CRA was responsible.

7. Fuckin' Newt Gringrich running around saying that if Obama would have just done things the way Ronnie had done them, all would be well, and conservative idiots just eating that shit up, without the slightest iota of a clue about the differences between those two eras.

Plus other Republican Party idiocy. And the Republican rhetoric on it's record and the actual reality of it.

None of this has been forgotten.

Anyway moving on:

http://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-myth-of-the-exploding-safety-net-0

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To be sure, Medicaid is slated to grow faster than GDP. But that’s due to the aging of the population, which will make more seniors (who have higher health care costs) eligible for Medicaid, and to rising costs throughout the U.S. health care system, which partly reflect medical advances that improve health and save lives but add to costs. In fact, Medicaid costs far less per beneficiary than private health insurance, and its costs are rising more slowly. Thus, Medicaid is actually the health insurance system’s most economical and efficient part.

Critics often cite the spending growth in these areas over the past decade to justify large cuts, but the decade really consists of two very different periods.  Mandatory spending for low-income programs outside health care — including on SNAP (formerly food stamps) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — rose from 1.2 percent of GDP in 2007 to 2.0 percent of GDP in 2011. This reflected increased need during the Great Recession — the worst recession since the Great Depression — and policies adopted in response. It also reflected expansions of the EITC and Child Tax Credit to help low-wage workers better provide for their families. 

But as the economy has improved, this spending has dropped significantly since 2011 and is expected to equal 1.5 percent of GDP this fiscal year.  (It’s fallen in inflation-adjusted terms as well since 2011.)   As one illustration of this pattern, the number of SNAP participants has fallen by 5.5 million since peaking in December 2012.  Mandatory spending on low-income programs outside of health is projected to return to the prior 40-year average of 1.3 percent in 2020 and then to fall below the historical average in 2024. 

Now, I remember when the Republican Party went around calling Obama the “food stamp president”. Now, I’ll be charitable here and will say “the food stamp president” wasn’t a race baiting dog whistle (which it most likely was. but for the sake of argument I'll pretend it wasn't.). I’ll just say that it seems to me that these programs worked like they were supposed to. They expanded during a terrible recession and then subsided during recovery.

And ultimately, they are such a small part of the budget, they hardly worth worrying about. I can’t see any reason to cut them, than just wanting to be a bunch of pricks. Our fiscal problems have more to do with getting the cost of healthcare down.

 

[House Balstroko]

34 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The vote for Trump in France probaby would still have been 2:1 against him. So despite Le Pen being in the run off the end result was a substantial rejection of her brand of populist nationalism.

The problem with that logic is that it's very simplistic. Yes, Le Pen and Wilders ended up ultimately losing in the final election, but both parties got further then they have before. 

The popular vote may have played a key role as well. Both Brexit and Trump were also achieved by a slight majority (Brexit case) or electoral college (Trump) so it's more a case of both movements winning through a combination of luck and votes, something that could one day happen in other western countries.

 

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, commiedore said:

dems need to shut the fuck up about russia and basically keep hammering "healthcare healthcare healthcare" non stop

Democratic strategists want to do exactly that, and Quist is doing that in Montana. But a lot of the grassroots is focusing on Russia, which makes it hard to do otherwise.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, Fez said:

Oh and among everything else, Trump's budget proposal would cut Medicaid in half over 10 years.

There's also major cuts to food stamps and social security disability insurance.

Overall, it'd cut non-defense discretionary spending in half as well.

 

This is a monstrous budget.

Wait a minute, are you saying that Trump..............lied?

7 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Funniest thing I've read today: Fox news numbers are way down, finishing third in an important demographic, and a big part of that could be because of Trump supporters tuning out because they don't want to hear news of him breaking promises. Too depressing.

There was a study that recently came out that found that even a majority of Fox's coverage of Trump has been negative. That can't be good for their bottom line. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, Trebla said:

According to the Washington Post, Trump asked two intelligence chiefs to push back against FBI collusion probe after Comey revealed its existence

 

And funny enough, Coats is testifying in front of the Senate today. Solid timing! 

ETA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/politics/congress-testimony-john-brennan-russia-budget.html

[Fez]

 

::faceplam

[ljkeane]

16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And funny enough, Coats is testifying in front of the Senate today. Solid timing! 

ETA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/politics/congress-testimony-john-brennan-russia-budget.html

He didn't actually confirm it but he also was careful not to deny it either.

[all swedes are racist]

16 minutes ago, Fez said:

 

::faceplam

motherfucking kansas all over again (except closer!)

i'm going to laugh so fucking hard if ossoff loses

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

2 hours ago, commiedore said:

dems need to shut the fuck up about russia and basically keep hammering "healthcare healthcare healthcare" non stop

I agree, anything with Russia is basically out of the Democrat's hands at this point.

On the topic of Right Wing Nationalism worldwide- I feel like Trump's election actually hurt it, by making a a senile* buffoon the face of the cause. I suspect, though I have no evidence for this counterfactual, that if Trump were elected before the Brexit vote, then the Brexit vote would have gone the other way.

 

* A few weeks ago, someone posted speculation that Trump had dementia or Alzheimers due to the way his speech has gotten less sophisticated and fluid over time. @Ormond threw water on the speculation since they only showed one or two old Trump interviews where Trump sounded more articulate. I just saw this piece which builds a more rigorous, though by no means ironclad, case that Trump has suffered some sort of cognitive decline.

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The vote for Trump in France probaby would still have been 2:1 against him. So despite Le Pen being in the run off the end result was a substantial rejection of her brand of populist nationalism.

France has a very good health care as well as excellent maternity leave and childcare.  And it is hugely less expensive than the mess that is health care in the US.  For a single example, a very good friend had a quadruple bypass -- his out of pocket expense was the equivalent of $3000.  That was it.  This included a long stay in the hospital., the surgery, the drugs -- everything.  $3000.  Compare that with what it would have cost him in the US -- even if he'd had Blue Cross Blue Shield.  He did the math.  He'd have been liable for at least $100,000 in the US.  Would the French really vote to have this gone?  Not to mention their incredible paid vacation leave of at minimum 5 weeks a year -- this doesn't include the holidays, btw.

 

 

 

[Zorral]

Quote

Trump is more an embarrassment than a deadly danger!

He is both an agonizing national embarrassment and a clear and constant present deadly danger.  He's the curtain to keep the suckers' attention behind which the party that hates everyone who isn't themselves sledgehammer the country's destruction while turning it over to Russia and the Saudis -- who already own outright enormous parts of the southwest's land and water, which is then transported back to Arabia to feed their vast number of prized horses, since they don't have the water to grow hay and grain themselves. Among much else of this nation they own, and with a most influential internal group that wants to destroy the USA.

[OldGimletEye]

Today in:
The Republican Party sure does know how to pick 'em.
I didn't think it was possible to be a bigger loser than George W. Bush.
It looks like I was wrong:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/23/trump-proposes-dramatic-changes-to-federal-government-slashing-safety-net-programs-that-affect-up-to-a-fifth-of-americans/

 

Quote

President Trump on Tuesday proposed dramatic changes to the role of the federal government, issuing a budget plan that culls back or eliminates numerous programs that the White House says are a waste of money or create too much dependency.

Some of these programs – including Medicaid and the modern version of food stamps – provide benefits to up to a fifth of all Americans, and breadth of the cuts has rattled lawmakers from both parties who have warned that the reductions go too far.

 

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-sabotage-takes-its-toll-the-health-care-system

Quote

Late Friday, with much of the political world focused on dramatic developments in the Russia scandal, the White House said Donald Trump was considering a radical move in the health care debate. The Republican president, reports indicated, was prepared to scrap cost-sharing reductions, deliberately destabilizing insurance markets, and taking coverage from millions.

Trump had until yesterday to pull the trigger on this threat, but he apparently decided to take a different course. Instead of ending the cost-sharing reductions, the administration said it would delay a final decision by 90 days – which had the effect of leaving industry and its stakeholders in limbo while Republicans plot their next move.

 

[Zorral]

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's stirring speech as to why Those Monuments to the Lost Cause had to come down -- scroll down for the speech in its entirety.

BTW, it's difficult to have a name more rooted in New Orleans's history than "Landrieu." 

Quote

 

Quote:
The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This 'cult' had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. 

It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. 

These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

 

 

[Cas Stark]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

France has a very good health care as well as excellent maternity leave and childcare.  And it is hugely less expensive than the mess that is health care in the US.  For a single example, a very good friend had a quadruple bypass -- his out of pocket expense was the equivalent of $3000.  That was it.  This included a long stay in the hospital., the surgery, the drugs -- everything.  $3000.  Compare that with what it would have cost him in the US -- even if he'd had Blue Cross Blue Shield.  He did the math.  He'd have been liable for at least $100,000 in the US.  Would the French really vote to have this gone?  Not to mention their incredible paid vacation leave of at minimum 5 weeks a year -- this doesn't include the holidays, btw.

 

 

 

No one in the U.S. who has health insurance either through their employer or Medicare, or even Medicaid is going to be on the hook for $100K out of pocket expenses.  That is just incorrect.  

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's stirring speech as to why Those Monuments to the Lost Cause had to come down -- scroll down for the speech in its entirety.

BTW, it's difficult to have a name more rooted in New Orleans's history than "Landrieu." 

 

Eh, you can't sanitize history. While those statues may not be "innocent remembrances" history is rarely benign. Pretending it never happened is ignorance, and I think tearing down these monuments is akin to pretending it never happened.